Cui Tiankai’s successor will need to reflect Beijing’s global ambitions while navigating its deepening feud with Washington. Qin Gang has been tipped for the position, but he was previously not considered a front runner.
Read Here | South China Morning Post
Driving the drumbeat are strategic concerns shared with Washington, with possibly some personal ambitions thrown in for good measure. Canberra is seen responding to approaches by Washington to its allies in the Pacific, principally Japan and Australia, to add their weight more openly to the US deterrent…
Read Here | Asia Times
The most striking geopolitical feature of the past four years has not been bipolarity or multipolarity—or even great-power conflict. It has been the spectacle of major economies pursuing self-sufficiency and a partial retreat from globalization…
Read Here | Foreign Affairs
Data is now at the center of global trade. For decades, international trade in goods and services set the pace of globalization. After the global financial crisis, however, growth in trade plateaued, and in its place came an explosion of cross-border data flows. Measured by bandwidth, cross-border data flows grew roughly 112 times over from 2008 to 2020.
Read Here | Foreign Affairs
Two new mega-projects connecting Central and South Asia could transform Eurasian security, significantly increase regional economic activity, and potentially bring peace at last to Afghanistan. But most of the world has so far paid little attention to important recent developments.
Read Here | Project Syndicate
China’s imports and exports continued their strong rebound in March, data released on Tuesday showed.Exports grew by 30.6 per cent last month from a year earlier to US$241.13 billion, down from the 60.6 per cent seen in January and February, and below the median result of a survey of analysts conducted by Bloomberg, which predicted 38.1 per cent growth.
Read Here | South China Morning Post
Battered relentlessly by former President Donald Trump over four difficult years, relations between the United States and the European Union are back on track, with China providing an important spur for the renewed warmth. Expect no automatic and complete U.S.-EU alignment of views on China, however.
Read Here | The National Interest
For 24 hours last week Pakistan gave everyone cause for hope. On Wednesday, Pakistan’s Finance Minister Hammad Azhar disclosed that the government was lifting the ban on import of sugar and cotton from India–something that was widely seen as a signal of a further thaw in the otherwise frosty relations between the two neighbouring countries, especially since both sides had just agreed to restore cease fire along the border. However, on Thursday Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the decision had been “deferred”.
Read Here | Capital Calculus 2.0
In the half-century since it gained independence, Bangladesh has gone from being what Henry Kissinger called a “basket case” to a case study in rapid economic development. A large micro-finance sector, balanced labor regulations, and resistance to religious fundamentalism have been key to the country’s success.
Read Here | Project Syndicate
