Posted on September 30, 2015. Tags: Beijing, China, Culture, Hillary Clinton, Human Rights, UN, Washington, Women's Rights, Xi Jinping
By Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of education and history at NYU Last Sunday, at the United Nations, world leaders marked the 20th anniversary of the landmark Beijing accord on women’s rights. They celebrated women’s progress—especially in education, health, and labor—and underscored ongoing gender inequalities. But they also condemned the jailing of female political dissidents in China, which […]
Read the full story
Posted in China, Religion, UN, World
Posted on September 15, 2015. Tags: Cities, development, Globalization, Housing, India, public private partnerships, South Asia, urban policy
The observant visitor to the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai is offered two contradictory faces of globalisation. Corrugated iron and blue polythene slums throw the air conditioned modernity of Mumbai’s adjacent airport into sharp relief. Few, if any, of these slum residents will ever board one of the planes that land and depart by […]
Read the full story
Posted in Global Economy, India, World
Posted on September 12, 2015. Tags: ASEAN, Asia, China, Indonesia, Islam
On August 17th, Indonesia celebrated its 70th year of independence. You probably didn’t celebrate it but here’s why you should care. First of all, you know more about Indonesia than you think. It’s likely you’ve heard of Java and Sumatra from your local coffee shop. Then there’s Borneo (Indonesia calls it Kalimantan and shares the […]
Read the full story
Posted in Asia, Security Issues, World
Posted on September 5, 2015. Tags: China, Japan, World War Two
The bridge, upon which history this way passed, still stands. Renovated, but with some of the original paving slabs that echoed to the hobnailed boots of Japan’s Imperial army. It was on this bridge that an incident took place that some historians now believe may have been the first shots of The Second World War. […]
Read the full story
Posted in Asia, China, World
Posted on June 7, 2015. Tags: Arbitration, CETA, China, Economics, European Union, international trade, Investments, ISDS, TTIP, U.S.
At the stakeholder briefing during the ninth round of negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), U.S. chief negotiator Dan Mullaney quipped that everyone was discussing Investor to State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) systems except the negotiators. The latter have not discussed the issue since January 2014, when the European Commission launched a public consultation, […]
Read the full story
Posted in Asia, China, Economics, Europe, Global Economy, US, World
Posted on May 31, 2015. Tags: ASEAN, Beijing, China, South China Sea, U.S.
Tensions in the South China Sea were raised once again on the 21st of May when a U.S. P8-A Poseidon surveillance plane was identified by Chinese early warning radar gathering reconnaissance above the Spratly archipelago. The crew of the P8 were warned at least eight times to abort their flight over the contested waters, yet […]
Read the full story
Posted in Asia, China, Security Issues, US, World
Posted on May 13, 2015. Tags: Africa, Angola, China, Nigeria, Oil, Opec
Emerging from a nearly three decade long civil war that began at the time of the country’s independence from Portugal and which did not end until 2002, Angola experienced an oil production boom in the years that followed. With the discovery of massive amounts of oil at several deep water fields south of the Congo […]
Read the full story
Posted in Africa, China, Global Economy, World
Posted on May 2, 2015. Tags: ASEAN, Asia, Drugs, Thailand, United Nations
ASEAN foreign ministers signed the Joint Declaration for a Drug-Free ASEAN on the 25th of July 1998, committing association members to eradicate illicit drug production, trafficking and abuse by 2015. The strategy, founded on the specious belief that taking a sufficiently ‘tough’ stance on the drug trade would result in its demise, has been shown to be as […]
Read the full story
Posted in Asia, Drugs, UN, World
Posted on May 2, 2015. Tags: Asia Defense, Asia Economics, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China, China-South Korea relations, Middle power diplomacy, South Korea, THAAD, THAAD deployment to South Korea, U.S., U.S.- South Korea relations
‘When whales fight, the shrimp’s back is broken.’ The South Korean government has long viewed itself in terms of this proverb when it comes to its relations with the People’s Republic of China and the United States. The two great powers, in their battle for influence over the Asia-Pacific region, often require that South Korea […]
Read the full story
Posted in Asia, China, Economics, Global Economy, Security Issues, US, World
Posted on February 17, 2015. Tags: Africa strategy, China, Djibouti, Guelleh, Maldives, Mao, Mugabe, PLAN, Silk Road, Sri Lanka, String of pearls, Susan Rice, Zimbabwe
Sun Tzu, in his seminal book The Art of War, argued that all warfare is fundamentally based on deception. “When able to attack, we must seem unable; When using our forces, we must seem inactive; When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; When far away, we must make […]
Read the full story
Posted in Africa, Asia, China, Economic Security, Global Economy, Security Issues, World
Posted on January 21, 2015. Tags: China, Corruption, Economics, Graft, Growth, India, Modi, Politics, Poverty, wealth, World Bank
As anyone who has spent any length of time travelling in India will attest, it is a country of stark contrasts. In few ways is this more obvious than the vast disparities in wealth between 500 million of India’s total 1.27 billion citizens living on less than $1.25 per day and a small but increasingly wealthy elite […]
Read the full story
Posted in Asia, Economic Security, Economics, Food Security, Global Economy, India, Uncategorized, World
Posted on January 14, 2015. Tags: Al Qaeda, China, Europe, Globalization, ISIS, Modernity, Terrorism, The Taliban
The main source of hostility in the modern world is the widening gap between the most and least developed segments of human civilization. While some societies are exploring potential life on other planets, life has not changed much for others over the past millennium. Unlike in previous centuries, the permeation of modern day technologies makes […]
Read the full story
Posted in Asia, China, Conflict, Europe, Security Issues, Terrorism, World