By Wolfgang Lehmacher and Victor Padilla-Taylor In October 2012, Wang Jisi – professor at Beijing University – urged China to re-open its ancient commercial trade routes with the West. In 2013, China’s President, Xi Jinping proposed to its neighbors the “One Road, One Belt” initiative. China’s aim? To achieve $2.5tn in additional annual trade with … Continue reading
By Chas Freeman China’s “The Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road,” or officially called the “one belt, one road” project aims to bring into being a new economic order on the Eurasian landmass. Everything from the Atlantic to the Pacific is to be connected through hyper-efficient infrastructure and new institutional linkages. … Continue reading
By Sourabh Gupta India’s domestic and international economic choices have not always been the wisest. At independence, India was determined to transcend the distorted pattern of economic integration with the world that two centuries of exploitative colonialism had engendered. But in the process, it ended up effectively locking itself out of global trade and investment … Continue reading
China’s Central Bank has cut interest rates to a record low and has lowered the reserve-requirement ratios (RRR) for some lenders as Beijing seeks to revive the country’s sluggish economy which is poised for the slowest economic growth in twenty-five years. The interest rate cut by China’s Central Bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), is the fourth cut … Continue reading
China’s Central Bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), will reportedly inject $62 billion of its foreign exchange reserves into two state-owned policy banks in order to support its New Silk Road project, which is aimed at creating infrastructure in order to boost connectivity between Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The PBOC will inject $32 billion to China … Continue reading
By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times What’s in a name, rather an ideogram? Everything. A single Chinese character – jie (for “between”) – graphically illustrates the key foreign policy initiative of the new Chinese dream. In the upper part of the four-stroke character – which, symbolically, should be read as the roof of a house – the … Continue reading
Much analysis is missing perhaps the most important potential role of China’s Silk Road aspirations. By Ma Junjie Three years ago, I took part in a tour of the Grand Bazaar in old town Istanbul. Among various spices, embroideries, artifacts, and foods, silk was in short supply. That surprised me; it was as though I … Continue reading