Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
History undergoes serious change thanks in particular to slow events that fly below the media’s radar. Focusing on dramatic, immediate events, the media tends to neglect the major shifts that unfold over time. Paradoxically, slowly developing events that often go unreported tell the true story...
The small Southeast Asian nation of Laos stands out as a success story in COVID-19 control. With only 23 confirmed cases, it has gradually lifted lockdown measures. Success on the medical front, however, will not be enough to carry the country through the economic whiplash that pandemic...
Wildfires have been burning in California, Brazil and Siberia. Brexit is causing unending headaches in both Europe and the UK. The American election campaign has kicked off in high gear. Deaths from COVID-19 have crossed one million. US President Donald Trump’s taxes were the talk of the town,...
China is well on its way to becoming a cashless society. More than 600 million Chinese already use Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay to pay for much of what they purchase. Between them, the two companies control approximately 90% of China’s mobile payments market, which totaled some...
It is a recent tradition among occupants of the White House, as they head out of office, to play a few practical jokes on their successors. The Clinton administration jesters, for instance, removed all the Ws from White House keyboards before handing over the keys to George W. Bush’s transition...
China and India have never been friendly neighbors. The laws of geopolitics set the two Asian giants against one another. In recent years, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s confrontation with the US and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitions for a powerful and global India have inflamed...
India has had a wound around its Himalayan neck ever since it suffered a humiliating defeat to China in 1962. The recent clash between Indian and China soldiers in Galwan Valley on June 15 has only rubbed salt into that wound. It has come to this because when China invaded neighboring Tibet in...
China’s footprint in global foreign direct investment (FDI) has increased notably since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. That served to bring Chinese overseas FDI closer to a level that one would expect, based on the country’s weight in the global economy. China...
Many experts argue India is the weaker power unable to take on China. In an article in Foreign Policy, James Crabtree argues that a trade war with China would be a bad idea for India. In his view, India’s “military is inefficient, underequipped, and dogged by procurement corruption...
As reported by Al Jazeera, China’s President Xi Jinping is seeking to realize the traditional Chinese ideal of harmony within the borders of Tibet. He has a threefold goal: Xi wants to “build an ‘impregnable fortress’ to maintain stability in Tibet, protect national unity and educate the...
On February 3, Prime Minister Boris Johnson laid bare his long-awaited vision of a “global Britain” in a world after Brexit. Speaking amidst the imperial grandeur of Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, Johnson’s message was that the United Kingdom, liberated from the...
