“The US vs China: Asia’s New Cold War?” by Jude Woodward
Jude Woodward’s thesis in her latest book is quite simple: Washington is engaged in an orchestrated plot to contain the rise of China economically, militarily and ideologically.
“BRICS or Bust? Escaping the Middle-Income Trap” by Hartmut Elsenhans and Salvatore Babones: an excerpt
The rise and fall of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, the so-called BRIC nations, is the great geo-economic story of the twenty-first century. In the early 2000s, these countries were tipped to redraw the economic map of the world. With a combined population of nearly 3 billion, they constituted roughly 40 percent of the world’s…
“How China Escaped the Poverty Trap” by Yuen Yuen Ang
One of the defining debates in economic development theory is one of chicken-and-egg: whether good institutions and governance are needed for markets and growth, or vice versa.
“China’s Banking Transformation: The Untold Story” by Jim Stent
“Finance is the lifeblood of the modern economy” has become something of a stock phrase for Chinese policymakers over recent years, uttered most recently by Xi Jinping as part of his speech to the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in mid May. Although this sounds like a capitalist mantra, what precisely might be meant…
“Fixing Inequality in Hong Kong” by Yue Chim Richard Wong
Anyone who wishes to opine on Hong Kong’s perceived troubled present and possibly fraught future would do well to read Richard Wong’s Fixing Inequality in Hong Kong first.
“Latin America and the Asian Giants: Evolving Ties with China and India”, edited by Riordan Roett and Guadalupe Paz
The changing balance between Asia and the West is a function not just of the relative rise of the Asian economies but also of the apparent withdrawal of the United States from a multi-decade commitment to global leadership, a development which if anything seems to be accelerating under the only recently-installed Trump administration. One place…
“The People’s Money: How China Is Building a Global Currency” by Paola Subacchi
In The People’s Money, Chatham House’s Paola Subacchi discusses the internationalization, or relative lack thereof, of the renminbi. The subject can be rather like a room of mirrors if one does not follow developments in international currencies, but for those that do, the book serves as a clear overview of the history and the issues,…
