Friction between the United States and China continues to escalate as they continuously fail to come to a trade agreement. The Trump Administration continues to put pressure on China, increasing supervision on their tech companies and tariffs on their exported commodities. Additionally, the United States has been pushing their allies to boycott Chinese exports specifically from Huawei, a Chinese multinational… Read more »
HONG KONG, Feb 27 (Reuters) – Hong Kong-based Bank of East Asia Ltd (BEA) reported on Wednesday a 30 percent drop in its 2018 profit with the previous year’s earnings inflated by divestment of some non-core assets, and as operating costs rose. BEA, which counts Hong Kong and China as its main markets, posted a profit of HK$6.5 billion ($828.12… Read more »
After US President Donald Trump assumed office, the US government labeled China a “revisionist” powers defined the Asian nation as a long-term strategic adversary. Since the Trump administration initiated the Section 232 and 301 investigations to strengthen supervision on Chinese investment in the science and technology sectors and increased tariffs on its export commodities, China-US trade friction has escalated. Despite… Read more »
Since Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in March 2018, the mainstream view in China’s strategic community has evolved. China has gradually come to embrace the notion that Kim’s denuclearisation diplomacy is a genuine strategic shift, not a tactical manoeuvre. It is not clear whether this shift in the strategic community is a state-directed… Read more »
One of the most important factors driving the rapid growth of China’s economy over the previous decade has been the unprecedented expansion of the country’s financial system. Since the global financial crisis, bank assets have quadrupled to an astonishing US$39.5 trillion in 2018, roughly three times the size of China’s economy. This amounts to the largest single-country credit expansion in… Read more »
Democracy seems to be in danger in East Asia. Recently, there has been much turbulence in the region because of immoral and unstable government institutions that refuse to relinquish power in a peaceful and democratic fashion. Most notably, there has been recent troubles in Sri Lanka. This is a nation that democratic world leaders would like to see become a… Read more »
Members of the Royal Commission of inquiry into sexual abuse of children in Australia. (Photo by Jeremy Piper/AFP) This is the second in a five-part series on steps taken by Catholic bishops on the various continents. Australia, which has a 25 percent baptized Catholic population, has experienced a series of crises over the Church pedophilia scandal since the first accusations became… Read more »
Imagine that the editorial page of The New York Times suddenly shifted dramatically rightward and columnists critical of US President Donald Trump were ousted and replaced by sycophantic pundits. Then a tape emerges of the editor justifying these changes as intended to counter accusations that the newspaper is anti-American and the sacking of Trump debunkers as designed to boost government ad revenue and… Read more »
Sri Lanka looks to have averted a political disaster. On 26 October 2018, President Maithripala Sirisena illegally appointed Mahinda Rajapaksa as prime minister and fired Ranil Wickremesinghe who had served in that role since 2015. The nation’s awkward and ineffective coalition government — led by Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party and Wickremesinghe’s United National Party — fell apart. Wickremesinghe was reinstated as prime minister on… Read more »
Cambodia is drifting towards autocracy with a clear trend. An unprecedented crackdown on independent media, civil society and the country’s major opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), hardly suggest otherwise. Whether Hun Sen’s government likes it or not, similar observations about Cambodia will continue to emerge. Although 19 smaller parties participated in the July 2018 national elections, commentators and observers questioned the credibility… Read more »