Category: Business
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Where will the next COVID hotspots be?
Dr Khan explains why cases are rising across the Indian sub-continent, and asks why so many pregnant women are dying from COVID in Brazil. Since its original outbreak in Wuhan we have seen the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic move from the Far East to Europe and the US and, as wealthier countries vaccinate their…
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China wants the world to know that resistance to its rise is futile
L EERS OF CHINA and America share an obsession: the notion that a large enough coalition of Western democracies might have the heft to confront a rising China about its authoritarian, state-capitalist ways, and demand that it follow a new trajectory, one that does less damage to norms and universal values that have governed the…
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Boten: the Renaissance of Laos’s Golden City
A thick morning mist covers the empty buildings as Lao workers lazily walk towards construction sites and Chinese businessmen, waiting for noodle soup, frantically shout into their mobile phone. “In ten years, 300,000 people will live here, they are going to build a hospital and an international school,” says Suk, 35, a Lao restaurant owner…
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China pushes back against critics of its policies in Xinjiang
N OT LONG before the Beijing Olympics of 2008, the Chinese government carried out a vicious crackdown on demonstrations in Tibet. Foreign media drew attention to it, and people outside China held protests. A Chinese academic popularised the idea of “three afflictions”: two that China had faced in the past (“being beaten” by foreign powers…
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COVID: More than three million people have died of coronavirus
The number of lives lost to the pandemic is almost equal to the population of Kyiv, Ukraine, or Caracas, Venezuela. The global death toll from the coronavirus has topped a staggering three million, with cases more than 140 million, amid repeated setbacks in the vaccination campaign and a deepening crisis in places such as Brazil,…
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China’s rulers want more control of big tech
Editor’s update: on April 10th Chinese authorities fined Alibaba 18.2bn yuan ($2.8bn) following an antitrust investigation. The firm is accused of pressuring retailers into offering their goods exclusively on its online store. It is the largest penalty ever handed down by the country’s regulators. C HINA’S TECH tycoons have not been themselves lately. In early…
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After Myanmar’s Military Coup, Arakan Army Accelerates Implementation of the ‘Way of Rakhita’
Despite its support for the national protest movement, various factors have contributed to the armed group’s relative silence since the coup. On March 11, 39 days after Myanmar’s military seized power from the civilian government, it removed a terrorist designation from the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic armed organization in the country’s westernmost Rakhine State,…
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China’s Hard and Soft Lines on Xinjiang
China’s sensitivity to outside commentary on its policies in Xinjiang is nothing new. However, Beijing’s latest line on the region and its reactions to international condemnation of its treatment of Uyghurs appear to strike decidedly contrary messages. On opposite ends of the messaging spectrum: a state-backed musical set in Xinjiang debuting in late March pushing…
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Myanmar’s Unsustainable Social Media Shutdown
Just over two months ago, on the first day of February, an aerobics instructor in Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw filmed a soon-to-be-famous fitness video. The clip shows the woman vigorously performing her routine – fists pumping, body bouncing side to side – in a traffic roundabout as a convoy of armored vehicles cruises by in the…
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The competition for Egypt: China, the West, and megaprojects
Building boom under way as President el-Sisi seeks to modernise and transform the Middle East’s most populous country. China is joining the race with international competitors to participate in a boom of megaprojects and infrastructure developments currently under way in Egypt as President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi seeks to modernise and transform the Middle East’s most…