In the last half century, East Asia emerged as the uber-performer on the global economic stage. The various countries in the region found success with substantially different systems: state-led capitalism in South Korea, Singapore and Japan; wild and wooly competitive, entrepreneur-led growth in Taiwan and Hong Kong; and more recently, what Deng Xiaoping once described as […]
Chen Shin-chi smiles through his dentures and drops down to the dusty floor of a jail cell to do a push up. He looks up at the crowd watching him, smiles again, and flips on his back to perform sit-ups, his body stretching almost the entire length of the three-by-two-meter cell. In 1968, he lived […]
In its annual appraisal of the Chinese military published last week, the U.S. Department of Defense seems to be describing an object it finds both familiar and mysterious. The report certainly answers many of the important issues concerning China‘s military, including its attempts to develop an anti-ship ballistic missile and its continuing fixation on Taiwan. Read […]
Want to find a job? That’s not a problem if you are trained as a technician and looking for work in China or Brazil. Ditto for sales representatives, who are in hot demand in Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Japan, engineers won’t sit idle. Meanwhile, in Ireland, IT workers are needed. In the Netherlands, it’s […]
“Brand Japan” has long benefited from the strength of Japanese companies in industries as diverse as automotives and music, or “J-pop.” The recent situation in China shows how that close association can also hurt businesses when nationalist sentiments go against them. As big businesses — fairly or unfairly — become the short-term targets of populist […]
During the past four years, the U.S. saw significant declines in nearly all categories of the economic-liberty index. Most significant — and this should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention — is that the size of government grew substantially, particularly when measured by size of government subsidies and transfers and by government consumption […]
In the latest step in its naval modernization and expansion, China recently announced that it is accelerating serial production of an advanced destroyer. This will tilt the regional balance of power at sea in its favor and put it in a stronger position to enforce its sovereignty claims over Taiwan and in the South and […]
Last month, Japanese activists planted their country’s flag on one of the Senkaku Islands (which the Chinese call the Diaoyu Islands), a chain claimed by China, Japan, and Taiwan. The move sparked protests in China and inspired headlines in the West, but the provocation was hardly surprising. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
The case of Nokia, a Finnish mobile-phone manufacturer, is well documented: it contributed a quarter to Finnish GDP growth between 1998 and 2007. But do any other countries rely so heavily on a single company? Read Here – The Economist
looking beyond borders 