Obama talked of pivoting to Asia. Donald Trump made Asia pivot to America. In the last two years, Trump has done much to increase U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific region. But much more needs doing. A fast start is well and good, the Indo-Pacific contest is a marathon, not a sprint.
Read Here – The National Interest
For the past seven years, Japan has competed against the Chinese initiative, not only by reforming its lending practices and increasing funding for development assistance, but also by articulating a vision for what Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called “quality” infrastructure investment and seeking international partners to advance these principles.
There is no question at this point that the relative sizes of the U.S. and Chinese economy today are much closer than those of Japan and the U.S. in the interwar period. And long story short, underselling the size of the Chinese defense budget and overselling the size of the Chinese economy does tend to obscure the magnitude of China’s defense buildup.
The Japanese and Canadian governments have failed to manage effectively the reputational, economic, and geopolitical implications of the legal cases against Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn and Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou. And, in a globalized world, the risks posed by such cases are likely to grow.
Japanese policymakers often seem like the economic equivalent of Winston Churchill’s take on Americans that they can be counted on to do the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities. There’s nothing new or innovative about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s revival scheme. Abenomics is merely a list of reforms Tokyo should have tackled 20 years ago. Instead, they exhausted every possible alternative, often several times, until delay was no longer an option.
Potentially the most important meeting in Asia this week isn’t on any official summit agenda, features no head of state and certainly doesn’t include China. Senior officials from Australia, India, Japan and the US—a set of countries known as “the Quad”—plan to meet today on the sidelines of a regional summit in Singapore.
Populist leaders and the legions of influencers riding their wave know they can create filter bubbles inside of platforms like Facebook or YouTube that promise a safer time, one that never existed in the first place, before the protests, the violence, the cascading crises, and endless news cycles.
Over the past decade, the world’s largest central banks — in the United States, Europe, China and Japan — have expanded their balance sheets from less than $5 trillion to more than $17 trillion in an effort to promote the recovery. Much of that newly printed money has found its way into the financial markets, where it often follows the path of least regulation.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have vowed to bolster Sino-Russian ties and oppose unilateralism, as the two nations seek to counterbalance the United States’ power on the international stage. The two leaders met for the third time this year on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. The talks coincided with the start of Vostok 2018, Russia’s largest military exercise since the Soviet era, and which involves troops from China and Mongolia.
Read Here – South China Morning Post
Also Read: Shinzo Abe And Xi Jinping ‘Pledge Japan And China Will Deepen Cooperation’
Photo released by German Chancellor’s office shows the isolation of U.S. President Donald Trump at the just-concluded G7 summit.
President Donald Trump said the United States will not sign a joint agreement with other G-7 countries, an abrupt reversal that will further erode relations with key U.S. allies and underscore the country’s increasing isolation under Trump.
