Via The Wall Street Journal, an article on the United States’ plan to merge several existing development finance agencies: All of Washington these days is scrambling to counter a rising China, and the awakening is necessary. The problem is that it too often is leading to bad policy that imitates China’s behavior rather than playing […]
Read more »Via the Hoover Institute, commentary on China’s BRI impact on the Middle East: Cairenes are not modest about their beloved city. It is Umm al-Dunya, they say, the mother of the world. They also call it simply Masr, the Arabic term for Egypt, suggesting, of course, that there is really nothing worth noting in the vast country […]
Read more »Via Reconnecting Asia, a look at the technological impact of the Belt and Road initiative: As demand for network bandwidth grows among Belt and Road (B&R) countries, China will exert its technological dominance and set global standards through centrally-coordinated fiber-optic roll-outs, the establishment of data centers, and the deployment of communications, positioning, and observation satellites. […]
Read more »Via the World Economic Forum, a detailed look at the digital Silk Road: China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) involves a trillion-dollar investment programme to enhance economic interconnectivity and facilitate development across Eurasia, East Africa and close to 100 partner countries. “Belt and Road” brings to mind a web of enormous physical infrastructures, such as […]
Read more »Via Bloomberg, commentary on CCCC, Belt and Road’s biggest builder, which is besieged by allegations of fraud, corruption, and environmental damage: Christopher Fernando knows the price of rapacious development. It has eaten his kitchen. Only the sink remains along what was once an outer wall of Fernando’s seafront home on the west coast of Sri Lanka, about […]
Read more »Via Silk Road Briefing, an interesting look at the possibility of China joining the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India Pipeline: China has expressed interest in joining the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project, by building a link from Pakistan to China. This could act as alternative to Chinese plans to build a fourth China-to-Turkmenistan pipeline. The China-to-Turkmenistan line has to cross […]
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