Hu Xijin Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the former Soviet Union, passed away last week. Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences. But the real and overwhelming compliments for him came from the West, ranging from US President Joe Biden to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and politicians from the same era of Gorbachev, […]
Read MoreDing Gang The conclusion of the US-China audit oversight cooperation agreement shows the original intent of Chinese companies to go global has not changed. While professionals on both sides view the agreement with cautious optimism, the agreement reveals a message worthy of attention by US policymakers. It is a strong rebuttal to the insistence of […]
Read MoreDang Xuan Dung Having gained independence on Sept. 2, 1945, Vietnam is now among the most dynamic and fastest-growing economies in Southeast Asia and even the world, with an average gross domestic product growth of between 6 and 7 percent prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also regarded as a highly attractive destination for […]
Read MoreYasar Yakis Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev last week announced that control of the Lachin Corridor between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh had been transferred to the Azeri authorities. Because of its strategic importance, this corridor had been the first target of the Armenian forces during the First Nagorno-Karabakh of 1988-94. This news coincided with a trilateral meeting […]
Read MoreMehmoodul Hassan Khan As usual, the western media was very enthusiastic about the US president Joe Biden’s latest trip to the Middle East and rated it as “successful” and “fruitful” in terms of economic partnerships, security deals and political consultations on different regional as well as international issues. In this connection, the shades of brutal […]
Read MoreAgnes Javed The U.S. Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday released the minutes of the committee meeting for July 2022. It shows that policymakers remain committed to raising interest rates as high as necessary in order to bring consumer prices closer to their 2% goal. “Participants agreed that there […]
Read MoreAamer Sheikh Water is not only a critical component of our food system, but a fundamental human right. It is also an essential resource for the growth and prosperity of communities worldwide. For Saudi Arabia — the eighth most at-risk country in terms of water stress according to the Washington-based World Resources Institute’s 2019 Aqueduct […]
Read MoreDr John C Hulsman One of the things I have learned from my decades in the political risk business is that experts usually ignore the fact that specific people truly make policy. It is easy, and intellectually correct, to focus on the grand historical forces of analysis: to look at things like the global macroeconomic […]
Read MoreDing Gang Dr. Henry Kissinger has a fear. He warned a few days ago that America is “at the edge of war with Russia and China.” Singapore also shares this fear. Singapore’s next prime minister Lawrence Wong warns that the US and China may “sleepwalk into conflict.” Many more countries have similar feelings. The reason […]
Read MoreAli Farid Khwaja The US foreign policy shift towards China can end up creating a very divided global society, one filled with intrigues, conspiracies, and suspicion. The riots in Sri Lanka and Pakistan’s current political scene are examples of this. Such fissures will not be limited to the emerging markets but are likely to have […]
Read MoreIshtiaq Ahmad Established in 2001 as a successor to the Shanghai Five, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is the largest regional grouping in Eurasia, covering around 40 percent of the world’s population and 30 percent of global economic output. Owing to its impressive profile of security and economic cooperation, the SCO has gained enormous traction across […]
Read MoreMohamed Chebaro In the sweltering heat that has dominated Northern Europe for weeks, I have often found myself sitting in gardens with neighbors, all of us trying to escape our boiling houses, which are designed to trap heat during the region’s well-known cold weather. Despite those hot evenings, the majority still believe that heat waves […]
Read MoreHu Xijin Several US lawmakers made a visit to the island of Taiwan via US military aircraft on Sunday. This is new provocation. On the same day, it’s revealed by the Taiwan side that China’s PLA sent 22 military aircraft and six warships for combat readiness security patrols in the Taiwan Straits and some of […]
Read MoreAndrew Hammond Boris Johnson declared last month during his speech announcing his resignation as Conservative Party leader, and therefore UK prime minister, that he “got Brexit done.” Yet he leaves his successor with a significant number of EU-related challenges still to be faced in the fall and beyond. The recent long queues of trucks and […]
Read MoreKarl Crowther Alongside the pandemic, 2022 continues to be marred by a significant and ongoing supply chain crisis. Disruption to shipping, increasing freight prices and shortages of everything from semiconductors to HGV drivers has led to empty shelves for consumers and rising costs for retailers. For the last two years, with shattered supply chains and […]
Read MoreDing Gang Not long ago, a US delegation visited the Bangladesh Garment Buying House Association (BGBA). The US is the largest importer of Bangladesh’s textiles, and in 2021, Bangladesh’s apparel exports to the US reached $7.14 billion, an increase of $1.91 billion or 36.69 percent compared to 2020. This delegation was there not to check […]
Read MoreGlobal Times US President Joe Biden will host Pacific island leaders at the White House for a meeting in September, a senior US diplomat said on Saturday, according to a South China Morning Post report. This was confirmed by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who was visiting the region. Since coming to power, Biden […]
Read MoreSyed Zafar Mehdi More than two dozen people have been mowed down in unprovoked, indiscriminate Israeli aerial aggression across the besieged Gaza Strip in the last few days, including a five-year-old girl. Alaa Qaddoum’s life was brutally cut short by a missile on the day world was remembering another little martyr whose neck was pierced […]
Read MoreAnja Engen The metaverse, a $1 trillion annual revenue opportunity, has increasingly attracted businesses seeking to boost growth in virtual spaces. Despite not having an official definition, several businesses have already established their metaverse headquarters. As more companies start operating in these shared virtual environments, several of our daily activities will occur online. For example, […]
Read MoreHu Xijin China and the US are locked in an intense clash over US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s possible visit to the island of Taiwan. Two of the expressions used by China to describe the country’s attitude are very rare, namely: “We are fully prepared for any eventuality,” and “PLA will not sit idly by […]
Read MoreDing Gang April 7, 1840 is a day that the Chinese will not forget. On that day, the British Parliament debated issues related to China. Historians originally believed that it was that meeting that made the decision for the British to invade China. Later, a journalist investigated and found that British warships were already on […]
Read MoreDr John C Hulsman Despite (or perhaps because of) the Conservative establishment having lined up squarely behind her opponent, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is in pole position to emerge as the new Tory leader and next prime minister of Great Britain. The only poll since the run-off began […]
Read MoreDr Theodore karasik Somalia’s greater incorporation into East Africa is a major undertaking by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud whose election in May 2022 was notable for a policy program that views integration as the key to security in the Horn of Africa. The Somali president has traveled the region in a push to advance his […]
Read MoreDing Gang Professor Da Wei, a professor at School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, recently published a paper called “Security Concerns are Reasonable, Spheres of Influence are Not (The Washington Quarterly Volume 45, 2022 – Issue 2).” The essay provides a Chinese perspective for those willing to understand China’s position on great power diplomacy, particularly […]
Read MoreZhan Debin Since taking office, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has been participating in multilateral mechanisms or events that more or less took China as the target. This includes strengthening trilateral cooperation among the US, South Korea and Japan, attending the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, and attending the NATO summit. Many […]
Read MoreKerry Boyd Anderson US President Joe Biden promised major progress toward addressing climate change, including significant cuts in US emissions. More than a year into his presidency, his climate agenda has hit obstacles in Congress and from the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Americans increasingly are feeling the real-life impacts of climate change, including record high temperatures, […]
Read MoreChristopher Phillips The party is over. Boris Johnson, king of British populism, is stepping down as prime minister. Perhaps future historians will also mark this as the end of the “Brexit years.” This era began in 2016 when Johnson threw his weight behind the campaign to leave the EU, arguably tipping the balance in its […]
Read MoreWang Wen The US Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 9.1 percent year-on-year in June, the highest rate in almost 41 years and way above estimations. In fact, in the past six months, the US inflation rate has exceeded 7 percent, 8 percent, and 9 percent successively. Many economists already believe that the US economy has […]
Read MoreHu Xijin Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Monday that according to UNCLOS and Chinese laws, the waters of the Taiwan Straits, extending from both shores toward the middle of the Straits, are divided into several zones including internal waters, territorial sea, a contiguous zone and the Exclusive Economic Zone. China has sovereignty, sovereign […]
Read MoreChris Doyle Boris Johnson is an unusual, atypical Conservative prime minister in so many ways. His fall from grace was long predicted. His foibles and weaknesses were always bound to catch up with him. He needed dozens of wardrobes for all his skeletons. Yet, unlike his peers, he had certain qualities his potential successors are […]
Read MoreWang Wen The Chinese society’s mixed, complicated reaction toward the assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe is normal and real. Be it joy of many netizens, the warning some public opinion elites issued about being careful not to be taken advantage of by external forces, or some people’s positive appraisal of Abe’s political […]
Read MoreTakatoshi Ito The assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is as sad as it is shocking. Gun violence is exceedingly rare in Japan and it seems clear already that both the Nara local police and the Security Police (secret service) were ill-prepared to protect him. For Japanese of my generation, the tragedy calls […]
Read MoreNidal Yehya The assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has shocked the people of Lebanon. They stand in solidarity with the Japanese people in their grief as they, too, remember the assassination of their own Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on Feb. 14, 2005. A world-class leader, like Abe, he was killed along with […]
Read MoreGlobal Times The US public opinion appeared sour after three major Chinese airlines announced on Friday they will buy a total of 292 planes from Airbus. The order valued at more than $37 billion is said to be one of the largest ever for Airbus. According to Bloomberg, this is China “sending a sign, and […]
Read MoreDakotah Lilly The United States has the dubious distinction of having a reputation for a multitude of things. These include leading the world in school shootings, having stereotypically unhealthy food and having prohibitively expensive healthcare. However, one of the things that the US government has also earned itself a reputation for is the continuous lecturing […]
Read MoreMichael Jennings During his inauguration speech in early June, the new president of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, called attention to the grave threat of famine arising from the severe drought affecting the Horn of Africa. His plea for action echoed similar calls from humanitarian organizations, which have warned that the worst drought in 40 years […]
Read MoreDr Theodore Karasik Human smuggling continues to be a deadly problem. There was a gruesome discovery in Texas this week, with more than 50 migrants found dead in an abandoned truck trailer in a remote area of San Antonio. The US Department of Homeland Security is now leading the investigation into how this tragedy occurred. […]
Read MoreWang Wen In recent days, I have read some media reports about the just-concluded 14th BRICS Summit, and I found in these reports that there was an obvious tendency to deviate from the facts. BRICS is not an anti-Western camp, nor is it a group to fight the West. The keywords of this year’s BRICS […]
Read MoreDing Gang Recently, two European and US politicians presented NATO with a proposal called “Economic Article V” to counter the coercion of authoritarianism. One of these two politicians is former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the other is former US ambassador to NATO Ivo Darder. Because of their past positions, their proposals for […]
Read MoreDr John C Hulsman As a historian, I have always found the end of Percy Shelley’s magnificent poem “Ozymandias” almost unbearably moving as it makes plain that even towering greatness has a finite shelf life. Shelley’s conclusion goes like this: “And on the pedestal, these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look […]
Read More