Two recent changes in government – one in Maldives and the other in Sri Lanka – serve to illustrate the current political and economic battle for influence between India and China in an Indian Ocean that is “Indian” in name only. Although China and India are partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), they are…
The New Silk Roads symbolize way more than high-speed rail lines crisscrossing Eurasia, or a maze of highways, pipelines and port connectivity. They represent a Chinese alliance with at least 65 participating nations, responsible for 62% of the world’s population and 31% of its GDP. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as it’s formally known,…
The Mainstream Media has been propagating the narrative that China’s only interest in “Global South” countries is to deviously ensnare them in so-called “debt traps” so that it can squeeze territorial concessions out of them afterwards such as was the case with Sri Lanka, but the fact that China is curtailing its investment in Ethiopia…
The New Silk Roads, formerly One Belt One Road, then Belt and Road Initiative, were launched almost five years ago by President Xi Jinping, first in Astana (the Silk Road Economic Belt) and then in Jakarta (the Maritime Silk Road). Way beyond the acronym purgatory – and the “lost in translation” factor that neither name…
Financial injections by Qatar and possibly China may resolve Turkey’s immediate economic crisis, aggravated by a politics-driven trade war with the United States, but are unlikely to resolve the country’s structural problems, fuelled by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s counterintuitive interest rate theories. The latest crisis in Turkey’s boom-bust economy raises questions about a development model…
Increased Pakistani dependence on China to help it avert resorting to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to avoid a financial and economic crisis spotlights fears that the terms of Chinese investment in massive Belt and Road-related projects would not pass international muster. Concerns that China’s US$ 50 billion plus investment in Pakistani infrastructure and energy,…
