Economics & Business Archive

This is the third of a three-part series on Thailand’s slide toward authoritarian rule. The first article discussed the domestic effects of Thailand’s faltering democracy. The second article discussed the regional effects. This final article discusses the broader implications for the U.S.-China rivalry in Southeast Asia. Thailand’s democratic crisis has complicated its relationship with the U.S., pushing Bangkok closer to Beijing. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s dubious legitimacy and Thailand’s progressive slide toward a military regime have left the U.S. undecided on how to proceed. Washington has not openly condemned Bangkok, but neither has it offered the political support that the […]

When then-Col. Hugo Chávez launched a military coup against the civilian government of Venezuela in 1992, he had not yet grasped the potential value of winning a democratic election. Luckily for Chávez, his coup attempt failed, and he survived to play the democracy game. Today, 12 years after winning his first election for what at the time was meant to be a single five-year presidential term, Chávez has become a master of the game, writing and rewriting the rules, and testing the willingness of his followers to believe they still live in a democratic country. There is no certainty, however, […]

India has recently seen a succession of visits by the top leaders of the permanent Security Council members. The British prime minister was in India in late July, and the American president came calling in early November. Visits by the French president and the Chinese premier followed earlier this month. In contrast to the high-profile U.S. visit, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev flew into India almost unnoticed on Dec. 21. Although the Soviet Union was India’s staunchest ally during the Cold War, India has drifted away from post-Cold War Russia. This stands in stark contrast to India’s ties with the U.S., […]

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited New Delhi last week for the first time in almost five years, accompanied by more than 300 Chinese business leaders. The composition of Wen’s delegation made clear that the Chinese were eager to return to the formula successfully pursued by Chinese and Indian officials during the past two decades: keeping their issues of divergence — primarily strategic issues such as their boundary disputes, PRC ties with Pakistan, and the Sino-Indian military rivalry — in the background, while focusing their talks on areas of greater potential convergence, such as expanding mutual trade and investment opportunities. Although […]

This BBC Four video feature’s an exploration of doctor and researcher Hans Rosling’s use of augmented reality animation to plot life expectancy against income for every country since 1810. Rosling’s work shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.

After a year of turmoil in Sino-Indian relations, India hosted Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last week with a degree of fanfare. Wen’s visit came at a time of newfound assertiveness in India’s China policy. Having tried to brush significant divergences with Beijing under the carpet for years, New Delhi policymakers have been forced to acknowledge — if grudgingly so — that the relationship with China has become increasingly contentious. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggested just a few weeks ago that “China would like to have a foothold in South Asia and we have to reflect on this reality. . […]

In a column two weeks ago, I described the outlines of a proposed grand-strategic bargain between China and the United States. Basically, the “term sheet” that I helped draw up proposed various bilateral compromises over the security issues — Taiwan, North Korea, Iran and the South China Sea, among others — that keep the relationship clouded by profound strategic mistrust. The resulting climate of confidence would encourage Beijing to invest some of the trillions of dollars it holds more directly into our economy, instead of simply using them to facilitate our skyrocketing public debt. Since the column appeared, I and […]

Last week, China reported that over the past year, consumer prices had risen 5.1 percent. While prices have been creeping up in China for months now, the report grabbed international attention, and for good reason. As the world’s factory and its second-largest economy, China’s inflation rate has serious consequences for the global economy and domestic stability. To some extent, inflation in China is a delayed result of the $586 billion stimulus package Beijing announced in 2008. Following the initial onset of the global financial crisis, the People’s Bank of China (PBC) embraced a period of loose monetary policy as a […]

Peru is again on pace to end the year as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, due in no small measure to its ambitious strategy of economic diversification. In 2010, it finalized four new free-trade agreements (FTAs) — three with Asian partners — and launched the test phase of a joint stock exchange, Mercados Integrados Latinoamericanos (Integrated Latin American Markets, or MILA), with Colombia and Chile. Peru’s global and regional trade diplomacy has resulted in more domestic investment and a larger network of export markets for Peruvian goods. Peru’s open-market policies can also be partially credited with the country’s rapid […]

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is the latest head of state to visit India at a time when the latter is looking to award lucrative contracts in energy, infrastructure, security and other areas. As with U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit last month, Sarkozy sought to develop positive atmospherics by making the “right noises” on issues New Delhi holds dear, such as permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council and entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group as well as terrorism emanating from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. The visit also saw forward movement on a number of bilateral deals valued at around $20 billion. […]

This is the second of a three-part series on Thailand’s slide toward authoritarian rule. The first article discussed the domestic effects of Thailand’s faltering democracy. This second article discusses the regional effects. A third article, to appear next week, will discuss the broader implications for the U.S.-China rivalry in Southeast Asia. The ripple effects of Thailand’s withering democracy are being felt across Southeast Asia, a highly dynamic region that has never fully embraced democracy. On one level, Thailand’s slide towards authoritarianism has deprived the key regional organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of its most-progressive leader. Until the […]

When he joined Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on Nov. 23, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao reassuringly said that, “China will firmly follow the path of peaceful development and support the renaissance of Russia as a great power.” Moscow policymakers, armed with nuclear weapons, probably have little fear of a war with China, but they can rightly be concerned about becoming a raw-material appendage to the growing Chinese economic giant. Since Russia and China have settled their joint border and are not engaged in direct military competition with each other, the focus of the Russian-Chinese relationship in recent […]

Over the past decade, the amount of money flowing into developing countries to address health issues has grown at an incredible rate. According to one authoritative estimate, the total annual value of money and goods donated to global health from all sources, public and private, has risen from less than $8 billion in 1995 to almost $27 billion in 2010 — with most of that increase occurring since 2002. Game-changing new organizations have been created during this period, from radically different kinds of private philanthropies, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has made more than $13 billion […]

Through their foundations and personal-diplomacy efforts, Bill Gates and Bill Clinton are changing how the international community addresses global health concerns. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the world’s wealthiest philanthropy, and it has used its wealth to help set the governance agenda for global health. The William J. Clinton Foundation has used the former president’s stature to negotiate agreements between governments and pharmaceutical companies that had previously stymied international trade negotiations for years. The prominence of these two foundations raises a host of issues about the role of private actors in international governance, policy accountability within the international […]

CANCÚN, Mexico — One thing is certain about the COP 16 climate talks in Cancún, Mexico: The summit was not the disaster of last year’s affair in Copenhagen. Though binding agreements were never on the table, even critical observers such as Global Witness, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Greenpeace expressed measured optimism as the conference came to a close at 4 a.m. Saturday morning. “We hope countries can go back from [Cancún] with momentum to take national action, and with a sense of renewed purpose,” said Tara Rao of WWF. Rao nevertheless cautioned that the final agreement was far […]

The decision by FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar was momentous on many levels, but historic on one key score: Never before has a global sporting event of such stature been awarded to a country so clearly stuck in a “bad neighborhood” like the Persian Gulf, where the potential for large-scale regional war between now and 2022 is far from theoretical. FIFA’s decision was bold alright, but it also signals the international community’s growing faith in what Gulf Cooperation Council countries like Qatar have achieved in promoting economic and network connectivity with the […]

While much has been said about the overall merits of the New START agreement, comparatively little attention has focused on the treaty’s Article 10. This relatively short but telling passage borrows decades-old language reinforcing both the United States’ and Russia’s mutual obligations regarding “national technical means” (NTM) of treaty monitoring and verification — diplomatic speak for spy satellites. Article 10 obligates both parties to use NTM in accordance with the principles of international law, to refrain from concealment measures intended to impede NTM verification of compliance, and, most importantly, not to interfere with each other’s NTM. The nod to NTM […]