The World Economic Forum’s annual Global Competitiveness Report is the closest thing that exists to a Michelin Guide for national economies. And in a world where businesses looking to establish or expand are perfectly free to choose, say Germany over Canada or Vietnam over China, the report is a helpful cheat sheet. Read Here – http://www.cfr.org Read […]
A Xinhuaeditorial paints the United States as a “sneaky trouble maker sitting behind some nations in the region and pulling strings.” In the Global Times, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences scholar Ni Feng states that the U.S. pivot is “stirring up tensions between China and its neighbors”; while Renmin University scholar Jin Canrong argues that Washington aims to “dominate the region’s […]
ASIA’S economies have long wowed the world with their dynamism. Thanks to years of spectacular growth, more people have been pulled from abject poverty in modern Asia than at any other time in history. But as they become more affluent, the region’s citizens want more from their governments. Across the continent pressure is growing for […]
In what seems an odd juxtaposition, global military spending is slowing down while the global trade in weapons is on the rise. The data are clear about these trends. For the first time in 14 years, global military spending did not increase last year, part of an overall slowdown in global military spending that began in […]
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
What few Americans knew is that the Arab World‘s love for Western-branded fast food is seemingly bottomless, to the extent that in the region’s wealthiest oil exporting countries, high-end fast food restaurants offering $US40 hamburgers and French fries can find a willing clientele. Even ubiquitous brands such as McDonald’s and Burger King can sell their […]
WHERE do the world’s poor live? The obvious answer: in poor countries. But in a recent series of articles Andy Sumner of Britain’s Institute of Development Studies showed that the obvious answer is wrong*. Four-fifths of those surviving on less than $2 a day, he found, live in middle-income countries with a gross national income […]
Over the past decade and a half, Indonesia’s democratic transition has been praised (including by me) as one of the most impressive of any developing country in the world. The distance traveled from the chaos, and potential split-up of the country, in the late 1990s, to the relative stability and high growth of today, is […]
For the last 40 years, Americans have lagged in recognizing the declining fortunes of their foreign rivals. In the 1970s they thought the Soviet Union was 10 feet tall — ascendant even though corruption and inefficiency were destroying the vital organs of a decaying communist regime. In the late 1980s, they feared that Japan was […]
