Misreading China Leads to Another Foolish Market Rout
As the global rout in stocks last week reminds us, markets are always reliable. We can count on investors to overreact to events they don’t understand, including a plump scapegoat like China. By the S & P Global Broad Market Index,…
3 Major Lessons From the China Crisis That Wasn’t
Now that the stock market has ended its foolish careening in response to China’s modest, sensible adjustment in its exchange-rate mechanism, where are we? To borrow from Donald Rumsfeld’s famous observation about defense planning, there’s what we know, what we…
Why China’s Slowdown Will Lead to Sustainable Growth
In less than a week China’s modest, by-the-book devaluation of its currency appears to have escalated into a full-scale political crisis, complete with reports of a Mao-style purge of top leaders and tanks in Tiananmen Square. Suddenly, the world’s highest-flying…
Why a Drop in the Overvalued Yuan Won’t Start a Currency War
A week of mayhem in the financial markets, grandstanding lawmakers on Capitol Hill accusing China of “rigging the rules again”—all because the overvalued yuan depreciated toward a market rate in three dramatic trading sessions. Could we see some evidence of…
Behind the Tensions Over China’s Artificial Islands
There are two useful ways to view the current dispute over the artificial islands China is building atop reefs in much-contested zones of the South China Sea. It’s a mistake to see China’s construction projects in the Spratly Islands as…
China’s New Development Bank: How Obama Blew It in the Pacific (Again)
When China launched a new multilateral lending institution last October amid fanfare in the Great Hall of the People, the Obama administration had already spent many months opposing it. It urged Beijing not to go forward; then it lobbied allies…
Why 2015 Will Make or Break a Spate of Global Alliances
U.S., Russia, Iran, China, Europe all face loyalty tests Call it the “Year of Tenuous Ties” as new alliances take shape Obama has to rethink his approach to both Russia and China Last January this column nominated 2014 as “the…
How China and Russia Out-Maneuvered Obama in Asia
President Obama brought a climate agreement back from his trip to Beijing last week, and Democrats and the media advertise it as a triumphant step in the U.S.-China relationship. At the weekend, he was in Brisbane for a G-20 meeting…
In Hong Kong, the Democrats Will Go Down Swinging
China has unleashed its thugs on the peaceful demonstrators Beijing wants to turn Hong Kong into Singapore—sort of. “You get a refrigerator, a TV, and a small car, but no voice.” It is hard to read the news reports and…
Japan and China Vie for 21st Century Dominance
A specter haunts the great powers of East Asia. It is the specter of ethnic chauvinism and a recrudescent nationalism one would have thought a thing of the past. With this comes the possibility of irrational conflict, and for the…
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