Day: September 21, 2021

At U.N., Biden Calls for Diplomacy, not Conflict, but Some Are Skeptical

Chin@Strategy

President Biden, fighting mounting doubts among America’s allies about his commitment to working with them, used his debut address to the United Nations on Tuesday to call for “relentless diplomacy” on climate change, the pandemic and efforts to blunt the expanding influence of autocratic nations like China and Russia. In a 30-minute address in the hall of the General Assembly, Mr. Biden called for a new era of global action, making the case that a summer of wildfires, excessive heat and the resurgence of the coronavirus required a new era…

China promises to stop backing new coal-power projects overseas

Chin@Strategy

Sep 22nd 2021 IN A TELEVISED speech on September 21st Xi Jinping, China’s president, told the United Nations that the country would stop supporting new coal-power projects overseas. Taken at face value, this should hobble the construction and operation of coal-power plants in developing countries, where demand for power can often be met only by foreign cash. But Mr Xi’s speech left several important questions unanswered, and said nothing on the more important issue of China’s reliance on coal-fired power generation at home. Since 2013, 95% of the foreign financing…

Clamping Down on ‘Spiritual Opium’

Chin@Strategy

Which he did not (although he did not embarrass himself either). What Clegg claimed in his post, “What The Wall Street Journal Got Wrong,” was hard to argue with: that Facebook’s challenges are complex and that the people at Facebook working on them are trying really hard, so give them a friggin’ break. Who can argue with that? No one, since no one is asserting that Facebook is Thanos. Still, he persisted: “These stories have contained deliberate mischaracterizations of what we are trying to do, and conferred egregiously false motives…

China Keeps Virus at Bay at High Cost Ahead of Olympics

Chin@Strategy

Advertisement The Beizhong International Travel Agency in the eastern city of Tianjin has had only one customer since coronavirus outbreaks that began in July prompted Chinese leaders to renew city lockdowns and travel controls. Most of China is virus-free, but the abrupt, severe response to outbreaks has left would-be tourists jittery about traveling to places they might be barred from leaving. That has hit consumer spending, hindering efforts to keep the economic recovery on track. China’s “zero tolerance” strategy of trying to isolate every case and stop transmission has helped…

Australia’s Submarine Deal Adds to Asia Arms Buildup

Chin@Strategy

Positioning the hard-to-track submarines closer to seas near China, Japan and the Korean Peninsula could be a powerful deterrent against China’s military, said Drew Thompson, a former Pentagon official responsible for relations with China. “The Middle East wars have ended,” said Mr. Thompson, now a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore. “We are in an interwar period, and the next one will be a high-end, high-intensity conflict with a near-peer competitor, probably involving China, and most likely in northeast Asia.” After condemning the submarine agreement last…

What Would an Evergrande Default Look Like?

Chin@Strategy

Shares of China Evergrande, the troubled real estate giant whose fate has contributed to jitters in global markets, fell again on Tuesday amid a new prediction that it would soon default. The company’s chairman, Xu Jiayin, told employees in a letter quoted in Chinese media that Evergrande would surmount its problems, which include $300 billion in debt, plunging sales of apartments and a payment due Thursday. “I firmly believe that Evergrande will walk out of its darkest moment and resume full-speed work and production,” he said in the letter, which…

Does Guinea’s Coup Matter to China?

Chin@Strategy

Advertisement This month’s coup in the West African nation of Guinea was the third coup in two years on the African continent – two years that have also been marred by the threat of COVID-19 and poor vaccine access. In his address, the coup leader Lt. Colonel Mamady Doumbouya announced the dissolution of President Alpha Conde’s government and suspension of the constitution. Doumbouya accused Conde’s government of endemic corruption and “trampling on citizen rights.” Joy on the streets of Conakry followed Alpha Conde’s arrest, similar to the reaction after the…

World Bank review finds ‘pattern of government interference’ in scrapped ‘Doing Business’ rankings

Chin@Strategy

It calls for a series of remedial actions and reforms to address the “methodological integrity” of the “Doing Business” report, citing what it called “a pattern of government efforts to interfere” with scoring for the reports in past years. Advertisement “The World Bank needs an introspection. It has been advocating country reforms for better governance, transparency, and practices. Now it has to use the prescription for its own reform,” said Mauricio Cardenas, the Columbia University professor and former Colombian finance minister who chaired the expert panel. The experts faulted the…