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If Hong Kong wanted to stay a democracy, it should have built an army

10.31.19

Imagine: China has just mobilized its army from Guangzhou and has invaded Hong Kong. Communications are down, and the China People’s Liberation Army has filled the streets. China has reannexed the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and declared it a regular province. Expats are hurriedly leaving Hong Kong, foreign investments are on sharp decline, and […]

An Old Formula Could Stop This U.S.–China Trade War

10.2.19

In March 2018, President Trump stated that ‘trade wars are good, and easy to win’ as he sparked a trade war with China to fight what he called the country’s unfair bilateral trade balance and intellectual property theft. The trade war has taken longer than expected to “win,” especially as rhetoric on both sides heats […]

Development and Economic Growth

Strategic Environmental Assessment and the Sustainable Development of a Ghanaian Integrated Aluminum Industry

08.19.19

In Ghana, President Nana Akufo-Addo’s Integrated Aluminum Industry Plan (the “Plan”) has sparked a contentious debate about how to exploit bauxite – the primary ore used to make aluminum – in a manner that will not jeopardize the country’s sustainable development. The Plan calls for the construction of mines to triple bauxite output, facilities, such […]

A Million-Ton Disaster: America’s Recycling is Trash

06.6.19

BY LISA SETRAKIAN What happens to your recycling when the noisy, traffic-inducing truck picks it up each week? If you are like me, you picture it arriving at a nearby plant and then magically getting reincarnated. The reality is more complicated. First, our recycling is cleaned, sorted, and packaged into bales at local Materials Recovery […]

Lobbying Pays, But for Whom? The Case of the US-China Trade War

02.28.19

BY LUIS CARLOS RAMIREZ MARTINEZ In the last two decades, the United States has fought at least two trade wars. Both times, the key battleground has been steel, and lobbyists have been in the thick of it. However, one would have to go back almost four decades, to 1981 in fact, to find another example […]

Chinese Jews and Israel’s National Security Strategy in the 21st Century

12.26.18

BY SHAI KIVITY A tectonic movement in the nature of international relations has arrived, with most of the West ignoring it – the rise of China. As China’s GDP has recently surpassed the United States’, making it the strongest country in the world from an economic standpoint, the US has woken up to find itself […]

How Chinese Foreign Investment is Challenging the United States

11.2.18

BY ELLY ROSTOUM For much of the twenty-first century, Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) has rapidly expanded, stretching Beijing’s influence across the globe. The influx of Chinese money around the world has imbued many countries with closer relations with Beijing, to the concern of the United States. Investment from both Beijing and Washington is not […]

The Case for Chinese Aid: Why It Complements, Not Displaces, Western Aid

08.20.18

 BY HAIYANG ZHANG In China’s recent 19th Party Congress, President Xi Jinping spoke confidently about blazing “a new trail for other developing countries to achieve modernization” and providing “a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development.”[1] China increasingly asserts itself as an important development partner to other developing […]

China’s One Belt Initiative: European Economic Opportunity or Dead-End?

06.6.18

BY CAMERON LINDSAY Last month, 27 of the 28 national European Union ambassadors to Beijing denounced China’s “Silk Road” project as one that hampers free trade and places Chinese companies at an advantage. The sentiments, in response to China’s One Belt Initiative (OBI), strongly contrast the themes of cooperation, openness, and mutual benefits espoused by […]

The Art of Trade War

05.30.18

BY SASHA RAMANI President Trump’s long-promised trade war against China has begun. In March, President Trump unveiled tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, and later targeted China directly with tariffs on $60 billion worth of imports on technology and energy industry components. In April, he launched a further 25 percent tariff on Chinese industrial technology, […]

Can the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Bring Equity through Infrastructure?

05.15.18

BY MAX NATHANSON The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will change Pakistan. CPEC — a proposed network of highways, power plants, and Special Economic Zones (SEZs) worth a reported $62 billion — is set to bring Pakistan more than double the entire volume of foreign direct investment that the country received since 2008. But who, exactly, […]

China’s Initiative of Building 1,000 Towns is in Danger of Becoming the Next Wave of Ghost Cities

01.22.18

BY BEN YUNMO WANG A massive government effort to build thousands of commercial-themed towns across China is off to a rockier start than expected. Still largely overlooked in Western media, “Characteristic Small Towns” (CSTs) have become the championed model of urban development in China over the last two years, littered across ambitious initiatives by central […]

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