Signed and sealed in a video conference ceremony after nearly eight years of grueling negotiations, the world’s largest free trade bloc was forged on November 15 in a show of collective defiance against protectionism that sets the stage for China to supplant the United States as the Asia-Pacific’s main trade engine. Proclaimed as a win…
On October 27 U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo spoke with Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of India’s news website The Print in an interview that descended into an anti-China diatribe by Pompeo, who was fed soft-touch questions. Pompeo refused to abide by conventionally courteous diplomatic practice in referring to “the government” of China, preferring, like Trump, to…
Imagine a bird was led to believe that it was a fish. For a while it might get used to living under water, but it wouldn’t take long before it could sense that something was wrong. If the bird didn’t realize that its nature is to fly and breath the air in time, then its…
The geopolitics of the cyber world is again influencing the global political and economic order. Now, a new international tension arises around a digital tax, known as the ‘Google tax’. Such tension could trigger a trade war, this time between the United States and France, which would reduce world GDP, warned the Organization for Economic…
President Donald Trump, supported by most of the US establishment, deepened the government’s assault on the Chinese economy. The “trade war” seemed to play well with Trump’s political base, who somehow hoped that an economic attack on China would miraculously create economic prosperity for them. In 2018, Trump slapped tariffs on more than US$200 billion…
American democracy would best be served by focusing more on domestically relevant facts than rhetorical attacks against foreign countries like China. The first presidential debate between Trump and Biden saw China presented as the object of their mutual derision, which presented the People’s Republic as a scapegoat for distracting from each other’s controversial stances on…
