In The News

Invading Vietnam’s Waters: Times of India

Nayan Chanda October 28, 2019
China’s expansive claims over the South China Sea and ongoing aggression push Vietnam to consider filing a suit with the Hague for violating the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The international court has already ruled that China’s claims are overly expansive, but the country has not complied. In July, Chinese survey ships entered Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone and disrupted oil drilling...

Plastic Waste to Bricks in the Philippines: Xinhua

October 21, 2019
Plastic sachets are the plastic bags used to package and redistribute bulk supplies of all types of food and other small items. The Philippines, an economy that participates in such repackaging, uses about 60 billion plastic sachets each year, suggests the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. Engineers in the Philippines have developed a process that shreds and mixes such plastic waste...

ASEAN and China in South China Sea: Asia Sentinel

Bahauddin Foizee October 16, 2019
China continues to build up islets as military bases, moving slowly to press claims in the South China Sea. ASEAN, traditionally focused on trade, no longer sits back, and the 10 nations joined the US Navy in maritime drills that extended into the South China Sea. ASEAN may worry that the Trump administration, distracted by an impeachment inquiry, won't make control of the South China Sea a...

NBA Caught Up in Hong Kong Protests: Bloomberg

Eben Novy-Williams October 10, 2019
Through three decades’ development, basketball has attracted an annual Chinese audience of more than 800 million, creating a market with billions of dollars revenue. However, one swiftly deleted tweet may threaten all those painstaking efforts. Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted an image of a slogan supporting Hong Kong’s protesters, and China responded quickly. Some...

Beijing and Revenge on Hong Kong: Financial Times

Jamil Anderlini October 7, 2019
Hong Kong’s status as a vibrant financial center, a base for companies of all types, flourished under democracy. Democracy and fears about erosion of freedoms also fuels protests. Hong Kong, as a special administrative region of China, operates with a separate set of political processes, since 1997 through 2047. Increasing Chinese influence over Hong Kong, including expulsion of specific elected...

PayPal’s Breakthrough in China: Financial Times

Yuan Yang October 4, 2019
After acquiring a 70 percent stake of GoPay, a small Chinese online payment company and receiving approval from the People’s Bank of China, PayPal is the first foreign company to win Chinese payments license. Visa and Mastercard are waiting for license approvals. PayPal will face a huge market opportunity since China’s third-party online payment has risen to ¥277 trillion in 2018. And PayPal’s...

China at 70: Dawn

October 2, 2019
The People’s Republic of China is celebrating its 70th birthday. The nation emerged during an “era of ideological zeal, when the socialist and capitalist blocs were locked in a global battle for influence,” explains an editorial in Pakistan’s Dawn, and its growth miracle started in earnest once Deng Xiaoping opened up the economy and loosened communist ideology. Today, President Xi Jinping has...