Publications

China: No longer the Global Growth Engine?

Feature article in The Global Analyst of June, 2021, a flagship global business magazine of Hyderabad-based Media-Five Publications Pvt. Ltd., India, of which I am on the Advisory Board.

Download China - No longer the global growth engine - The Global Analyst June 2021

A Bloomberg Research report of 6 July 2021 warns that, depending on various imponderables, China may never be able to overtake the United States as the world's largest economy. The report acknowledges that as China's population is four times the United States while its productivity is about a fifth, China would only have to increase its productivity by more than 25% over a period to claim the top slot. However, "...another path is possible. Stalled reforms, fraying global ties, shrinking workforce and financial crisis could keep China indefinitely in second place."

China's Digital Currency

My contribution entitled China's Digital Currency: What This Could Mean for Foreign Companies featured in The Global Analyst of May, 2021, a flagship global business magazine of Hyderabad-based Media-Five Publications Pvt. Ltd., India, of which I am on the Advisory Board.

Download Chinas Digital Currency -The Global Analyst May 2021 

Following is a Chinese translation. Download 中国的数字货币

A live TV panel discussion on CNN News 18 of India of 26 May, 2021 shows the degree of obfuscation on China's digital currency, driven by the popular "China Threat" rhetoric. (The topic starts from time counter 10:30 onwards.)

Of interest is Professor Edward Lai of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's brief on RMB internationalization, heralding his coming book One Currency, Two Markets: China's Attempt to Internationalize the Renminbi    

 

Waning US must overcome fear of China’s inevitable rise to the top

Op-ed in South China Morning Post of 20 May, 2021

What China's Low Growth Means for the World - China's game-changing Five Year Plan (2021-25)

The above is my feature article in The Global Analyst of April, 2021, a flagship global business magazine of Hyderabad-based Media-Five Publications Pvt. Ltd., India, of which I am on the Advisory Board. The subtitle is more to the point of what this piece is about:

"What’s behind China’s Five-Year Plan (2021-25) as GDP growth slows? In a world turned upside down by the pandemic with Great Power rivalries, the 14th Five-Year Plan is a bold blueprint of how Beijing is getting prepared to realize her long-cherished China Dream of national renaissance, against all odds."

Download What China's Low Growth Means for the World 

How the US can offer a realistic response to the "China challenge"

Op-ed in the South China Morning Post of 26 February, 2021.

Along similar lines, Ryan Hass's Op-ed China Is Not Ten Feet Tall: How Alarmism Undermines American Strategy of 3 March, 2021 in Foreign Affairs concludes as follows:

"The more the United States can restore confidence that it is the country best prepared in the world to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, the better it will be able to focus attention where it matters most: not on slowing China down but on strengthening itself. To compete effectively with China, Washington will need to focus on bolstering the United States’ domestic dynamism, international prestige, and unmatched global network of alliances and partnerships. These are the real keys to the United States’ strength, and China cannot take them away."   

China's Economic Interests in the GCC are informed by energy security and global geopolitics

"China has no ambition of dislodging the United States from the Arab Peninsula. A cordial relationship with all Members of the GCC is in its best interest." That is the lead-in to my Op-ed of 17 February, 2021 in Politics Today, an Istanbul-based international online publisher on contemporary global politics. 

China GDP: Growth Sans Productivity - How China is to overcome its productivity hurdle

My contribution entitled China GDP - Growth Sans Productivity featured in The Global Analyst of February, 2021, a flagship global business magazine of Hyderabad-based Media-Five Publications Pvt. Ltd., India, of which I am on the Advisory Board.

Download February 2021 The Global Analyst - China's GDP

Rogue Superpower: Why This Could Be an Illiberal American Century

Op-ed dated 31 January, 2021 in World Geostrategic Insights, an international non-profit geostrategic platform based in Rome. 

How China’s digital currency will thwart US dollar trap and help the world

Op-ed in the South China Morning Post of 28 December, 2020. The fuller original article with 21 linked notes can be accessed here.

How foreign businesses in China should respond to embedded "Party cells"

Asia Sentinel (paid subscribers only) article of 24 December 2020 quotes me as follows -

"Earlier this week, the Canadian government blocked an attempt by the Chinese state-owned enterprise Shandong Gold Mining to acquire a Canadian operator of an Arctic-circle gold mine on national security grounds, the latest indication of growing western unease over the extent to which the Communist Party is playing a growing political role in commercial enterprises.

“Chinese companies operating abroad should be aware of this new era of anti-Communist Party mindset,” said Andrew Leung, a Hong Kong-based China strategist. “They should be wary of any overt or covert connection with non-commercial political activism. They should keep to the straight and narrow of legitimate commercial benefits not only to themselves, but to wider stakeholders in their host countries. Red cells in western firms have stoked anti-China hysteria.”

"There is concern that some of this is overkill. “As the Chinese saying goes, every curved shadow looks like a snake. It's all part of the China Scare reminiscent of the old Cold War McCarthyism,” Leung said.

Leung holds a more benign view of CCP cells, saying: “Provided that the foreign firms don’t have any hidden political agenda, the presence of party cells often offers timely advice on what would work and what political minefields to avoid in China commercially.”