Category: Business
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Chinese citizens are running out of food, other essentials as govt imposes harsh Covid curbs
China’s heavy-handed and draconian approach to handling COVID-19 lockdowns has leftmillions of its residents struggling to meet even basic daily needs. Two years into thepandemic, the Chinese government is failing to provide its people with essential supplieseven as it imposes on them stringent curbs bordering on human rights abuse.Case in point: the city of Xi’an,…
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Hong Kong’s new legislature is a mockery of democracy
“D EMOCRACY IN Hong Kong is flourishing.” These words, used by the Chinese Communist Party in a recent white paper, suggest a strange definition of democracy. On January 3rd lawmakers newly elected to the territory’s Legislative Council took their oaths. Not since long before China regained control of the former British colony have the body’s…
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China accuses Walmart of ‘stupidity’ over missing Xinjiang items
The United States and the United Nations have accused China of suppressing the predominantly Muslim Uighur population. China issued a stern warning to Walmart Inc. following allegations that the company’s warehouse stores in the country stopped selling items from Xinjiang, ramping up pressure on the retail giant amid rising tensions with the U.S. over the…
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Glencore’s message to the planet
I N “THE COAL QUESTION” , written in 1865, William Stanley Jevons, a British economist, ascribed “miraculous powers” to the fuel source powering the Industrial Revolution. Coal, he wrote, stood entirely above all other commodities. Such were its superpowers, he fretted about the consequences for Britain if it ran out of the stuff. He needn’t…
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The epic struggle for America’s soul is just getting started
Show caption The Capitol in Washington DC, January 2021. ‘Increasingly, for today’s politicians, honourable defeat is a wholly foreign concept.’ Photograph: José Luis Magaña/AP Opinion The epic struggle for America’s soul is just getting started Simon Tisdall A year after the Capitol insurrection, democracy is still under attack from Republicans in thrall to Trump’s lies.…
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The world in 2022: another year of living dangerously
Show caption Storm on planet Earth. It’s unrealistic to expect any swift improvement in the global climate heating outlook in the coming year. Photograph: Nasa/Getty Images/iStockphoto World news The world in 2022: another year of living dangerously The climate, pandemic and tensions between states means the year ahead is likely to be as tumultuous as…
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No Dragons in the Title Please: A Survey of Indian Scholarship on Indo-Chinese Relations
New Delhi has been wary of its trans-Himalayan neighbor since at least 1959, but the last few years have seen a tremendous rise in publications on China in India. One can assume some of the reasons for this are: (1) the rise of China’s role in the world as such, including in India’s neighborhood; (2)…
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How Washington Soured on China-US Subnational Exchanges
Under Trump, there was new focus on – and concern about – Beijing’s attempts to take advantage of differences between local, state, and federal governments. Then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivers remarks on “The China Challenge” at the Hudson Institute’s Herman Kahn Award Gala at the JW Marriott in New York City, New York,…
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Will China’s Railway in Laos Help Bolster Its ‘Soft Power’?
If “soft power” refers to the power of attraction, then a country needs connectivity channels through which it can attract foreign audiences. These channels can be sociocultural, political, ideological, or economic, the latter being perhaps the most tangible. In early December, the government of Laos inaugurated the Laos-China Railway following the arrival in Vientiane of…
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‘We’ll get it done. Come hell, high water or Covid’: Can 2022 be a super year for nature?
It was supposed to be a “super year for nature”: 2020 was going to be “a major opportunity to bring nature back from the brink”. But then the coronavirus pandemic set in and long-held plans to tackle the environmental crisis, kickstarted at Davos in January, where the financial elite underscored the risks of global heating…