December 2024
The new world order looks like mercantilism
The chaotic politics of the past 16 years masked the steady development of a new economic order, but trade and the economy aren’t zero-sum games.
July 2024
Rod Carnegie: corporate giant felled at the final hurdle
Sir Rod Carnegie soared across the corporate sky in the ’70s and ’80s but was thwarted in his attempt to secure full Australian local control of mining giant CRA.
June 2024
Putin to Xi: I have options in East Asia
The Russian President’s visits last week to North Korea and Vietnam shows Russia’s residual capacity to stir trouble in East Asia.
April 2024
China has prioritised security over economic growth
The US must avoid setting its strategic goals in a way that implies it is trying to keep China eternally weak and isolated.
February 2024
‘Social stability’: Chinese firms form Mao Zedong-era militias
The People’s Liberation Army mobilisation units reflect Xi Jinping’s focus on security as the economy slows.
Why China can’t stop its decline
The conventional wisdom on China has shifted but still misses the bigger picture.
January 2024
Meet the Aussie who helped China fall in love with tennis
China is obsessed with tennis as its next generation of stars aim to emulate the nation’s all-time best – Li Na – who was coached by a relatively unknown Australian back in the 1990s.
October 2023
China’s former premier, sidelined by Xi Jinping, dies
Once viewed as a top Communist Party leadership contender, Li Keqiang was sidelined in recent years by China’s president. He died of a heart attack on Friday.
August 2023
Xi faces China’s ‘Lehman Brothers’ moment’
China’s financial system is one step away from a full-blown crisis unless Beijing steps in and takes radical action.
China malaise goes beyond the economic slowdown
China’s malaise is only partly economic. The deeper context behind several of the impediments to growth is a strange hybrid of psychological and political factors.
June 2023
Can China’s success still beat the middle-income trap?
The Asian giant has excelled through what economist Keyu Jin calls the “mayor economy”. But can this localised model deal with the next round of growth challenges?
January 2023
Why China’s one-child policy is now backfiring
After three decades of being limited to having one child, Chinese families no longer see the need to have bigger ones as the costs mount up.
China’s drop in births triggers new global challenge
China’s population has shrunk for the first time since the 1960s, a development that will have long-term ramifications for the global economic order.
The Xi nobody saw coming
China’s strongman president has reversed his decisions on a wide range of policies, wrong footing the rest of the world. But his impulse to control may reassert itself when the economy starts to recover.
Wall Street’s biggest China optimist says Xi is killing the dream
A generation of Chinese reformers came close to creating the promised land of economic development. Xi Jinping”s fixation with security is now laying waste to it.
October 2022
Why the era of ‘get rich first’ is officially over in China
With zero-COVID around to stay and equity markets in freefall, China’s wealthy capitalists are leaving in droves.
Room for loyalists only in Xi’s Game of Thrones
Xi Jinping’s absolute authority will be on full display on Sunday when a new line-up for China’s top political bodies is revealed.
Xi Jinping is knocking down China’s house of cards
The confirmation of the president’s third term will mark the inevitable collapse of the institutional edifice Deng Xiaoping established to avoid a repeat of Maoism.
Xi Jinping’s third term is a tragic error
China’s macroeconomic, microeconomic and environmental difficulties remain largely unaddressed.
September 2022
China growth to fall behind rest of Asia for first time since 1990
The World Bank has revised down its forecast for gross domestic product growth in the world’s second-largest economy to 2.8 per cent, compared with 8.1 per cent last year.