Geopolitics has two related but distinct meanings * International politics, the relationship between states, is complicated. What are a nation’s interests? Determined by who? How do national politics affect foreign policy? Can technology transcend geography? How do culture and “national … Continued
A child’s enquiry about the Cold War brings back memories and raises concerns for the future * The other day a friend’s child asked me, what was the Cold War? Children ask about history all the time, but perhaps in … Continued
A country with several thousand years of distinctive cultural history is governed through European ideology * It is often said that China is one of the world’s oldest civilisations, tracing a history back to around 2,200BCE. Of course there were … Continued
People are often surprised when they ask economists, what is money, and the reply is, well, anything that fulfills the functions of money is money: money is as money does. The classic definition of money is anything that is: i) … Continued
The shift of US attitudes on China owes as much to American disappointments as it does to changes in China’s behaviour * After the revolution that brought the Chinese Communist Party to power in 1949, a shocked US foreign policy … Continued
Recent news of increasingly lethal clashes on the long and disputed border between India and China raises a question, how have the two most populous nations on Earth previously mostly kept the peace? * “Good fences make good neighbours” Robert … Continued
I was asked a question by a student today and I thought I would share my answer in this blog. The question: “You rightly call the global financial crisis of ’08 the North American crisis – in attribution, correctly, to … Continued
Demography, the study of population, is one of the few areas of the social sciences where long term predictions (over one or more decades) can have some value. This is because the dynamics of population growth depend on the current … Continued
A lot of people in the richer economies appear doubtful that economic globalisation has been good for them. But there are hundreds of millions in the rest of the world for whom globalisation has been a critical part of their … Continued
I think the world may be fragmenting into increasingly separate economic and cultural regions, one dominated by China, another led but not dominated by the US, with other nations watching and wondering how best to position themselves. This reminds me … Continued
P2P (peer-to-peer) lending is the biggest and most developed form of alternative finance. But does it have any enduring value to add in the financial system? * P2P lending platforms have sprung up in many countries since the global financial crisis, … Continued
The high and rising level of Chinese corporate and local government debt has been a concern for several years. Recent data from the People’s Bank of China suggests the true figure may be much higher than we thought, but things … Continued
The Chinese stock market rise and fall is relatively unimportant for the Chinese and global economies but it has harmed the government’s reputation and may set back reform. But it if helps to kill the idea that the market can … Continued
China’s $3.9 trillion foreign exchange reserves were not planned but arose as a side effect of a strategy, now ended, of keeping the RMB exchange rate lower than the market would have set it. * Last week I visited the … Continued
Ahead of a trip next week to Beijing to learn more about the lending business of China Minsheng Bank, I’m encouraged to see that the private sector is already flourishing in China. In December 2013, President Xi Jinping made clear the … Continued