The ability to compare and engage in long-term planning can inspire hope or fear. For the past four centuries, optimism gave Western nations advantages, as citizens embraced technology, progress and global connections. “Now hope is on the move,” suggests the Economist, as the can-do spirit emerges...
Click here for the article in The Economist.
The shrinking of economies in Western countries, particularly in the United States, Canada, and Australia, has led to Hong Kong emigration figures tapering off in the past eight years. The better life once guaranteed by immigration has been slowly changing. If anything, China’s own entry into the...
HONGKONG - The number of Hongkongers migrating to countries such as the United States and Canada has been falling steadily in the past eight years.
Figures hit a 22-year low last year, with only 10,500...
The economies of China, India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa, with 42 percent of the world’s population, totaled about 22 percent of global gross domestic product in 2015, as projected by the International Monetary Fund. The US economy represents the same share of global GDP with about one-tenth...
Read the article from the Financial Times.
Despite a stream of bad news, development plans are underway even among nations with adversarial relations. Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and India signed an agreement in early July to move forward with a 1,700-kilometer natural gas pipeline. “This $7.5 billion project known as TAPI, or the...
Peace pipe: File photo of 2012 summit of TAPI partners, from left, Indian Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Murli Deora; Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari; Turkmenistan President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov; Afghan President Hamid Karzai;...
China and the United States are competing for military dominance of the western Pacific Ocean and war could flare over the South China Sea, reports Peter Hartcher for the Sydney Morning Herald. Beijing has said it won’t comply with a ruling from the International Court of Justice in the Hague that...
Read the article from the Sydney Morning Herald.
China continues to gamble on regional security by placating the Kim dynasty in North Korea. The world’s most populous nation, the second largest economy, is the North’s leading benefactor and trade partner. The country of 25 million is isolated, impoverished and backward, its leaders intent on...
H-Bomb tantrum: North Korea's leader defied China by ordering a test of a hydrogen bomb, top; three days earlier the North Korean pop group Moranbong Band had left China in a huff
SEOUL: North Korea again surprised the world on January 6 by claiming...
Monitoring and surveillance by corporations and government will be the norm by 2060 if not now. “The internet is a tracking machine,” writes Kevin Kelly. “Everything that can be measured is already tracked, and all that was previously [unmeasurable] is becoming quantified, digitized, and trackable...
Click here for the article in Wired.
The United States argues that Iran is an international security threat after withdrawing from a nuclear deal. Germany does not agree and has remained in the agreement along with Russia, China and the European Union. The two countries also do not agree on a budget and funding sources for the North...
