One future is an Asia that is relatively familiar: a region whose economies continue to enjoy robust levels of growth and manage to avoid conflict with one another. The second future could hardly be more different: an Asia of increased tensions, rising military budgets, and slower economic growth. Read Here – Council On Foreign Relations
China‘s anti-corruption drive seems to be gathering steam, as President Xi Jinping goes after the “flies” and the “tigers. Here is what it means: Read Here – BBC
The reality is China’s official urban unemployment rate has long been a near-worthless measure. Even during the global financial crisis in 2009, when tens of millions of workers in China’s export factories lost their jobs, the official rate barely stirred, and it has been moving between just under 4 percent and 4.3 percent for most […]
Well before Li and President Xi Jinping officially took the reins in March, exports were falling, manufacturing was contracting and economists were downgrading forecasts. Big reforms are always easier when growth is booming. If Li could wave a magic wand and get gross domestic product back into double-digit territory without pumping more air into China’s […]
In the run-up to Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997, the world wondered what officials in Beijing would do with the place. Would Hong Kong’s dynamism and openness catalyze change in China, or would the Communist Party try to remake the freewheeling city-state in its image? Read Here – Bloomberg
There is no doubt that Mr. Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who has leaked voluminous documents about U.S. programs to monitor communications, has damaged the United States, but not in the ways that he had anticipated. Read Here – Japan Times
The Chinese and U.S. approaches to surveillance and how each of their security apparatuses go about organizing and carrying out such activities are fundamentally different in nature. It might be useful to label them into two distinct models: the U.S. approach can be described as the democratic security state model and the Chinese version is […]
China’s economic headache just got a little worse. Along with rising local debt, plunging exports, and lackluster investment, add the specter of weak employment. Read Here – Businessweek
Secrecy is only supposed to work for the strong against the weak. Right now Edward Snowden, the former CIA technical operative who leaked data exposing the extent of Anglo-American state internet surveillance to the world, is in hiding in Hong Kong. Snowden, 29, sacrificed everything to tell the world. Read Here – New Statesman
Leadership changes in China, Japan and South Korea along with the United States have marked another tumultuous year for the Asia-Pacific region. With 2013, the Year of the Water Snake in Chinese mythology, around the corner, what might be in store for the region’s economy? According to “feng shui experts” quoted byMalaysia’s top-selling daily The Star, the […]
looking beyond borders 