And What Did Today’s World Look Like In 2000?

Nine months before the September 11 attacks—and just days after the Supreme Court halted the Florida recount, handing the presidency to George W. Bush—U.S. intelligence officials published an 85-page prediction for what the world would look like in 2015. It’s a world that seems familiar in some ways, and utterly foreign in others. And it’s […]

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The Big Delete Machine

The final statistics from a 2014 Chinese Internet crackdown are in, and they are staggering. On Jan. 17, Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, announced that Chinese websites had deleted one billion posts in 2014 as part of a government-led operation to jing wang, meaning to “cleanse the web.” Read Here – TeaLeafNation  

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History’s Long Influence

As China’s power and influence continue to grow in Asia and beyond, many analysts look to Chinese history to understand how a strong China will behave and view the world in the future. Many of these attempts to apply an historical lens engage in gross simplifications and misreadings of the relevance and meaning of hundreds […]

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Surrounded By Democracy

(The change in Sri Lanka) marks the third big Asian election in the last 12 months in which voters have installed a new leader: first in India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi thumped the incumbent Congress Party; then Indonesia, where Joko Widodo, an outsider, won over voters with his record of competence as governor of […]

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Towards Digital Well Being

Tripling mobile Internet access over the next 15 years could make the developing world $22 trillion richer. Such improvement in the lives and earning potential of poor people could indirectly help with the other challenges; after all, more prosperous people tend to be healthier, better fed, and more highly educated. Read Here – Project Syndicate

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In Defence Mode

Mr. Rajan, the governor of the Reserve Bank of India, has been honored with awards this winter for his role in helping to bring momentum back to the country’s economy. His unexpected interest rate cut on Thursday helped strengthen emerging market stocks around the world. At home, the view is less favorable, as Mr. Rajan […]

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Showdown In Asia

Hopes that China’s reemergence as an energetic great power would be paralleled by a partly natural, partly orchestrated gravitation toward a new and resilient geopolitical order have faded in favor of a search for new and stronger alignments as states seek to insulate themselves from intensifying geopolitical turbulence. Read Here – The National Interest

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The Devil You Know…

If a Presidential candidate refers to himself as a devil, chances are he’s in trouble. Last week, campaigning ahead of this Thursday’s election, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the incumbent Sri Lankan President, tried hard to endear himself to an audience in the northern city of Jaffna. The crowd consisted almost entirely of Tamils, the island’s largest minority, […]

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