Make Sense of the world
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With movie theaters closed all over the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hollywood studios had little reason for celebration over the past year. In business for over a century, Universal Pictures (founded in 1912), Paramount (1912), Warner Bros. (1923), Walt Disney (1923) and Columbia Pictures...
COVID-19 has been ruthless in choosing winners and losers around the world. The obvious “losers” have been those countries led by right-wing nationalists: Brazil, India, Russia, the United Kingdom and (until recently) the United States. These five countries are responsible for more than half...
Following the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on November 15, 2020, media reporting around the world has entered into fanfare mode. Western and Chinese media in particular are reporting on the free trade deal through the narrow lens of US-China competition,...
With a new US administration about to be inaugurated, it is prudent to look at the dynamics and variables shaping the future of one of the world’s most important relationships, that between Washington and Beijing. President Donald Trump came into office looking to take a more aggressive approach...
The one thing the city of Shenzhen — whose nearly 13 million people comprise the industrial engine of China’s Guangdong province — seems unwilling to reimagine is its name. The name Shenzhen, which loosely translates to “irrigation ditch” or “drainage dump,” is the only piece of the...
Joe Biden was not elected for his positions on foreign policy and national security. Few US presidential candidates are. In his debates with outgoing President Donald Trump prior to the election, those issues were hardly discussed. So, the success or failure of the Biden presidency will not be...
John Bolton has done many things in his past, including serving as US ambassador to the United Nations and as national security adviser to President Donald Trump. Wikipedia calls him a “diplomat” because of the posts he has occupied, but both his discourse and his actions in the world of...
The reason for the China-India standoff in the Galwan Valley may not be the oft-mentioned construction of the Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie (DSDBO) road. The new thoroughfare improved Indian logistics in the Ladakh area, meaning that supplies and troops can be deployed with far greater speed....
In early October, French President Emmanuel Macron, as a preparation for the 2022 election, made the decision to mount a campaign blaming France’s Muslims for their failure to embrace the country’s increasingly dogmatic “Republican culture.” To counter Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration...
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...
Chinese espionage cases in the US have assumed alarming proportions. On July 7, Christopher Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, declared: “We’ve now reached the point where the FBI is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours. Of the...
