Showing 11 - 20 of 36
Belt and Road: Just a vast mess?
News, David Fickling, Published on 10/01/2019
» Is China's Belt and Road Initiative a bold infrastructure vision, or a slush fund? The question is becoming more pressing.
China is blowing an opportunity with Meng's arrest
News, Published on 21/12/2018
» China is blowing the geopolitical opportunity of a lifetime. There has probably never been a better moment to undo America's greatest strategic advantage by dividing the US from its global network of democratic allies, many of which are horrified by President Trump's rhetoric and policies and deeply worried about Washington's staying power. Yet, Beijing is doing its best to remind that democratic world that it has far more to fear from a hegemonic China than from an erratic America.
China loses its Silicon Valley link
News, Shuli Ren, Published on 11/12/2018
» The death of a prominent Chinese scientist in the US has passed comparatively unnoticed beside the blizzard of global headlines devoted to the Huawei dispute, yet the tragedy bears upon another important aspect of Beijing's quest for technological leadership.
Xi's not for turning? Don't be so sure
News, Published on 05/12/2018
» As president-for-life, China's Xi Jinping is neither bound by rules nor limited by rivals. He has upended a careful political balance by concentrating power in his own hands, and overturned a cautious approach to foreign policy, while throwing in jail anyone he views as a threat. China's most dominant leader since Mao Zedong now has 90 days to head off an all-out trade war with the US provoked, in part, by his own mercantilist policies. Can anybody convince him to make a U-turn?
Trump's phone tap karmic revenge?
News, Published on 30/10/2018
» Specific incidents can sometimes reveal much larger truths. This would seem to be the case regarding recent revelations that the Chinese have been eavesdropping on US President Donald Trump's less-than-secure phone calls and using the information gathered as part of an elaborate plot to influence the president.
China shows the way on drug prices
News, Published on 13/07/2018
» US President Donald Trump exulted this week over Pfizer Inc's decision to delay planned drug price increases a day after he attacked the company on Twitter. He should take a look at China, where President Xi Jinping has done much better.
Australia's turn in the muck of political tribalism
News, Daniel Moss, Published on 22/02/2018
» Australians who thought the disruptions that have led many to view North Atlantic politics with disdain wouldn't reach their corner of the world can no longer ignore reality. The urban-rural divide that drove Brexit and the election of Donald Trump is now reverberating closer to home, and it's not a good look.
The cyber whodunnit and the global blame game
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 21/12/2017
» The US government has officially attributed to North Korea the WannaCry ransomware attack, which encrypted hundreds of thousands of computer drives around the world in May, 2017. And yet as with a series of other highly public cyberattack attributions, little evidence for the claim was made public. It's time for the cybersecurity world to follow the advice of the Rand Corporation and set up an unbiased international consortium that would seek to attribute attacks based on a common set of rules.
Coup against Mugabe is really nothing to celebrate
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 17/11/2017
» As leader of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe has survived longer than Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao in China. If it's coming to an end -- which seems likely given his apparent inability to emerge from house arrest after the military took charge -- it's worth reflecting on the mistakes he made to end such a remarkable run.
Authoritarian cryptocurrencies are on the march
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 18/10/2017
» With Russia and China both embracing the idea of sovereign cryptocurrencies, it's time to ask a simple question: Why is a technology threatening to decentralise money so attractive to highly centralised, authoritarian regimes?