India Rising, China Slowing Doesn’t Mean Modi Wins

Statistics bear out China’s global dominance. Since Deng abandoned doctrinaire communism in 1978, growth has surged an average of 9.8 percent annually. Since 2001, China has overtaken Italy, the U.K., France, Germany, and Japan to become the world’s second-biggest economy. Its $10 trillion GDP dwarfs India’s $2 trillion. Not only has China built the world’s […]

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Can China Be Contained?

U.S. foreign policy has reached a turning point, as analysts from across the political spectrum have started to dust off Cold War-era arguments and to speak of the need for a policy of containment against China. The once solid Washington consensus behind the benefits of “constructive engagement” with Beijing has fallen apart. Read Here – […]

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Shrinking China: A Demographic Crisis

…Unfortunately for the Chinese, their country’s population is about to peak and then shrink fast. Fewer people may not necessarily mean less power, but a shriveling population requires the country’s leadership to overcome demographic trends rather than be propelled by them, as it has since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. Read Here […]

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How Bribery And Graft Threaten The Chinese Dream

The majority of the people caught up in Xi’s crackdown have been low- or midlevel party members and functionaries. But corruption investigations have also led to the removal of a number of senior party officials, including some members of the Politburo, the group of 25 officials who run the party, and, in an unprecedented move, […]

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China’s Military Might: First, the Good News

Despite its quickly increasing defense budgets in the last 20 years, China still lacks the ability to project combat power in a sustained way far from its shores, and the U.S. maintains full-spectrum military superiority, even in East Asia. Chinese forces lag far behind their U.S. counterparts in quality of equipment, experience and training. Unfortunately for […]

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Asia’s Balance Of Power: Big Fact And Top Trend

The balance of power is one of those concepts that gets the most attention when it’s shifting. Or wobbling. When people are talking about it, it’s time to be worried. And everybody is worried. As Grandma observed, family arguments are getting too loud when the whole village is gossiping about whether the marriage will survive. Read […]

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The New Authoritarians

Since the end of the Cold War, rising gross domestic product and regular elections have come to mark progress in large parts of the world. Such apparent resemblances to Western-style capitalism and democracy still enthuse many commentators. But do they actually conceal the deteriorating political and moral health of emerging economies until it’s too late? […]

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Building The New Silk Road

More than two thousand years ago, China’s Han Dynasty launched the Silk Road, a sprawling network of commerce that linked South and Central Asia with the Middle East and Europe. Today, the idea of a “New Silk Road,” an intertwined set of economic integration initiatives seeking to link East and Central Asia, has taken hold […]

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In China Defence Strategy, The Silent Message

The 9,000-word paper names only three countries — Japan, Taiwan and the US — and all three in confrontational terms. As India is not mentioned, does it mean China does not view it as a primary military concern? Indian defence officials see no clear message. They note an emphasis on “maritime preparation for military struggle”, where […]

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