China has lots of capital, and India needs to build a huge amount of infrastructure. But, as ever, something that seems simple on the surface is made considerably murkier due to politics. Of the many contested land borders the People’s Republic of China had when established in 1949, many of the remaining ones are with […]
The oil boom of the second half of the twentieth century brought modern technology to Saudi Arabia, but the aesthetic refinement of classical Islamic architecture began to disappear. Starting in the mid-seventies, the old houses were replaced with drab towers. Modern Mecca feels as if it were built by a people without history or tradition—a […]
Germany’s triumphant World Cup team included players of Polish, Turkish, African, and Arab descent, showcasing the country’s increasingly multi-ethnic complexion. What’s less well-known is that a record flood of immigrants is also giving a big boost to the German economy. Over the past five years, Germany has surpassed Britain to become Europe’s No. 1 immigration […]
Leaders of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — all emerging market nations — launch a $100 billion development bank and a currency reserve pool in their first concrete step toward reshaping the Western-dominated international financial system. The bank, aimed at funding infrastructure projects in developing nations will be based in Shanghai and […]
The key reason for China’s aggressive posturing on the seas is the tectonic shift in Beijing’s strategic environment that occurred following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. For the first time in its long history, China no longer faces any threat whatsoever on its northern frontiers and this immense geopolitical development largely explains […]
In the 1930s travellers returned from Mussolini’s Italy, Stalin’s Russia, and Hitler’s Germany praising the hearty sense of common purpose they saw there, compared to which their own democracies seemed weak, inefficient, and pusillanimous. Democracies today are in the middle of a similar period of envy and despondency. Authoritarian competitors are aglow with arrogant confidence. […]
The Pentagon’s annual report on China says that the scale of the PLAAF’s modernization is “unprecedented in history.” Read Here – The Diplomat
It’s true that economic growth through industrialization altered the social structure of societies and created demand for political representation. But it’s now clear that the process has also led to the opposite of liberal democracy. Read Here – Bloomberg
For the first time in independent India’s history, a general election has brought a conservative party with a clear-cut parliamentary majority to office. Although scores of analysts have weighed in about what that party — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — will do next, three other questions have gone unanswered. First, why has India never […]
The United States is addicted to oil and China’s got a serious coal problem, Simran Khosla writes in Global Post. Read Here
looking beyond borders 