Nairobi-based international development economist Anzetse Were suggests in a new paper that Kenya’s leaders, not China, should be the ones held accountable for borrowing too much money without a detailed, transparent plan on how to repay the loans. She joins the podcast to discuss the growing anti-Chinese backlash in Kenya and the country’s burgeoning economic crisis.
The Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, released earlier this year, emphasized the growing threat of nuclear competition in the Asia-Pacific, specifically with reference to Russia, North Korea, and China. In this podcast, Tong Zhao, of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, sat down with David Santoro, Director and Senior Fellow of Nuclear Policy Programs at the Pacific Forum CSIS, to explore pressing nuclear issues in the region and their implications for the U.S.-China relationship.
China announced a U.S.$60 billion financing package for African states to build out new roads, airports, railways, and other needed infrastructure. While no one questions the need for infrastructure, there are legitimate concerns as to whether it makes sense to borrow so much from China to pay for it.
What are the domestic politics for Xi Jinping of a trade war? How much is the trade war actually hurting China’s economy? And what other effects is this having on China, and on Xi’s ability to govern?
As reported by Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), David Missal, a German citizen and journalism student at Tsinghua University in Beijing, was forced to leave China last month after authorities refused to renew his visa.
Walking through Kabukichō, a densely packed red-light district in Tokyo, one sometime spots 58-year-old Li Xiaomu, eager to point tourists to a good time. Born in the city of Changsha, Hunan province, Li moved to Tokyo in 1988 to study fashion design. To support himself, he found work as a cleaner in Kabukichō. When he realized that he could earn tips and commissions “just for pointing” tourists to places that “tickle their fancy,” Li became an annainin, or “tour guide.” Since then, his charm and his love of Kabukichō have made him a well-known figure in the district.
The Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions recently published an official document listing foreign NGO management work under the rubric of “social stability and preventing enemy infiltration.” Given the timing, it is unlikely the document was fully drafted in response to recent labor-related protests in Guangdong province, but it does hew to previous government portrayals of foreign labor NGOs in China.
Roselyn Hsueh is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University and a Global Order Visiting Scholar at the Perry World House of the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of China’s Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization(Cornell University Press, 2011) and is currently completing a monograph (under contract with Cambridge University Press). The new book investigates the mediating role of market governance in the relationship between global economic integration and industrial development in the BRICS. Her other research examines the politics of trade and the political economy of identity. She previously served as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law & Society, University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and as a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Finance and Asia Pacific Center, Tecnológico de Monterrey, in Guadalajara, Mexico. Prior to arriving at Temple, Hsueh served as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Southern California’s Center for International Studies and a U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Hsueh is a member of the Georgetown University Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues.
In an official document dated late July, the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, the city’s branch of the country’s official, Party-affiliated trade union, outlined the major themes of its work going forward, including preventing “enemy infiltration” alongside its work in managing foreign NGOs.
George Magnus is an independent economist and commentator, and Research Associate at the China Centre, Oxford University, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
Magnus was the Chief Economist and then Senior Economic Adviser at UBS Investment Bank from 1995 to 2012. He had a front-row seat and key managerial position for multiple episodes of boom and bust in both advanced economies and emerging markets, including the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, which Magnus famously anticipated in 2006-2007 with a series of research papers warning of an impending Minsky Moment. For four years, until 2016, he served finally as an External Senior Adviser with clients of the investment bank.
Magnus had previously worked as the Chief Economist at SG Warburg (1987-1995), before that in a senior capacity at Laurie Milbank/Chase Securities, and before that at Bank of America in London and San Francisco.
His China focus derives from a long period of observation and study that goes back to his first visit in 1994. He also opines regularly on demographic trends around the world, as well as on key issues nowadays such as Brexit and the U.S. and world economy. He is a regular contributor to the Financial Times, Prospect Magazine, BBC TV and radio, Bloomberg TV, and other outlets.
Magnus is the author of Red Flags: Why Xi’s China Is in Jeopardy (Yale University Press, 2018). His earlier books are The Age of Aging (2008), which investigated the effects of the unique experience of demographic change on the global economy, and Uprising: Will Emerging Markets Shape or Shake the World Economy? (2011), which examined the rise of China and other major emerging markets.
