Tag: International Relations

What is China’s Belt and Road Initiative and How Is It Changing?

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China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, founded the Belt and Road Initiative a decade ago to use the country’s economic might to enlarge its geopolitical heft and counter the influence of the United States and other industrialized democracies. China has since disbursed close to $1 trillion to mostly developing countries, largely in loans, to build power plants, roads, airports, telecommunications networks and other infrastructure. Mr. Xi has used China’s cash and infrastructure expertise to tie together countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America and parts of Eastern and Southern Europe. Belt and…

How Nepal’s Deal With China for an Airport Became an Albatross

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On a sweltering June morning, the new international terminal at the airport in Pokhara, Nepal’s second-biggest city, roared to life with the arrival of a Sichuan Airlines flight from China. A water cannon showered the plane, an Airbus A319, the first international flight to land at the airport since it had opened six months earlier. A throng of people gathered in the arrival area to greet the passengers, wishing them a “hearty welcome” to “the Land of Everest” with their signs. These maiden arrivals were athletes and Chinese officials who…

China’s Economic Stake in the Middle East: Its Thirst for Oil

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China has cast itself as a neutral geopolitical player in the Middle East. It brokered a deal in March to help Iran and Saudi Arabia restore relations. And in the days since Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, China has tried to keep its distance, with a government spokesman calling the country “a common friend of both Israel and Palestine.” Yet China’s stakes in the Middle East are high, particularly if the war now being fought in Israel and Gaza were to broaden through the region. One big reason: Oil. No…

China Releases Australian Journalist Cheng Lei

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Cheng Lei, an Australian journalist who was held in Beijing for more than three years, has returned to Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday. Mr. Albanese said Ms. Cheng had been reunited with her two young children in Melbourne. “Her return brings an end to a very difficult few years for Cheng and her family,” Mr. Albanese said at a news conference on Wednesday. Ms. Cheng, who worked for China’s global television network, was detained in Beijing in August 2020 and formally arrested later on suspicion of sharing…

Fragile Global Economy Faces New Crisis in Israel-Gaza War

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The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that the pace of the global economic recovery is slowing, a warning that came as a new war in the Middle East threatened to upend a world economy already reeling from several years of overlapping crises. The eruption of fighting between Israel and Hamas over the weekend, which could sow disruption across the region, reflects how challenging it has become to shield economies from increasingly frequent and unpredictable global shocks. The conflict has cast a cloud over a gathering of top economic policymakers…

How Aligning With China Changed Life in the Solomon Islands

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In Honiara, they’ve just finished this brand-new stadium, and there’s not enough medicine in the main hospital in the country. There’s medicine shortages, so they’re turning people away from the hospital. You couldn’t ask for a more clear contrast in terms of the misallocation of priorities from the Chinese approach. And that really angers people. There is a really quite sad cynicism among many rural Solomon Islanders that nothing will ever change. They saw billions of dollars getting pumped into Honiara previously from Australia in terms of its peacekeeping efforts…

Diesel Prices Could Keep Inflation High

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Inflation has been easing around the world. But what happens next could depend partly on the cost of diesel, a wild card that few analysts have been able to predict well. Higher gasoline prices — lit up on giant signs on streets and highways — are typically the most visible, visceral reminder of inflation to consumers. But analysts say diesel can have a bigger impact on inflation because the fuel powers trucks, industrial machinery and agricultural equipment. The prices of heating oil and jet fuel are also closely connected to…

Nio Loses $35,000 a Car. That Should Scare the U.S. and Europe.

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Nio, a Chinese electric car company that competes with Tesla, employs 11,000 people in research and development, but sells a mere 8,000 cars per month. It has invested so extensively in robots that one of its factories employs just 30 technicians to make 300,000 electric car motors a year. Nio offers $350 augmented reality glasses for each seat in its cars, and has introduced a cellphone that interacts with the car’s self-driving system. And none of it is profitable — far from it. Nio lost $835 million from April through…

Here’s What to Know About Tensions Over Tibetan Buddhism

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Tibetan Buddhism has long been led by the Dalai Lama, the 88-year-old spiritual leader who fled Tibet in 1959 and has been living in exile in India ever since. Beijing considers the Dalai Lama a separatist and asserts that only the ruling Communist Party — an avowed atheist organization — can name his next incarnation and those of other high lamas. By seeking to control the religion’s leadership, China hopes it can all but erase the Dalai Lama’s influence in Tibet and any challenges to the party’s rule. As the…

Athens Democracy Forum: Daring to Hope That Democracy Will Prevail

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That Mr. Putin had to journey to North Korea last month to seek support for a long war was a measure of his humiliating isolation, whatever Russia’s ascendancy in Africa, where it has contrived to present itself as an anticolonial power even as it fights a form of colonial war aimed at reabsorbing Ukraine, or much of it, into the “Russkiy Mir,” or Russian world. Ukraine, of course, is fighting for democracy, freedom, the sanctity of sovereignty and the right of a sovereign state to choose its strategic direction. This…