Evergrande is today China’s largest real estate company, which started off with selling bottled water and pig farming. It also features in the Global 500, owns around 1300 residential projects, food companies, theme parks and a soccer team called the ‘Guangzhou Evergrande’. Evergrande succeeded on the growth in the Chinese real estate sector. It is …
Opinion
Xi recreating 1930s Europe, this time in Asia
In the praxis of Xi Jinping Thought, he is the sun of the solar system represented by the CCP. The party is itself the sun in the solar system of national life in the PRC, while the geopolitical focus of Xi is to make the country he leads the sun around which all other major …
China’s Tech Crackdown: Why Now?
China’s recent crackdown on its tech giants brings to fore memories of Chen Yun’s ‘bird in a cage’ proposition from the years post the disastrous Great Leap Forward. The debate on whether China pursues socialism with Chinese characteristics or whether it is appropriate to call it capitalism with Chinese characteristics has been a long one …
Afghanistan Crisis Needs Unified Response from Diverse Powers
It was a French philosopher who wrote that “we are never contemporaneous with the present”. The past lingers, even the distant past lingers in the frame, while the present is being considered. When tectonic changes take place in geopolitical plates that affect major changes, if policymakers allow conclusions valid in the past to affect the …
The Henan Floods 2021 and China’s Narrative Creation
Disasters have had a long tumultuous relationship with China, be they natural or humanmade. Of late the line between natural and humanmade disasters has been blurring with examples ranging from the outbreak of Coronavirus in 2019 which still plagues the world; to the floods in Henan this year. In all these cases, because of the …
Questions on Covid-19: What China Needs to Answer
Since last year I have been writing that the origin of the Chinese Virus was from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). It is not a zoonotic transmission from bats to humans in the Wild Life Market at Wuhan – a hypothesis peddled by China. Firstly, virologists need to study the method of such …
India and Global Governance: Lessons from the International COVID-19 Response
For a world order firmly founded on sovereignty of individual states, big and small, the term “global governance” is an idealistic dream at best or simply a misnomer. It is a shadow global government, which seeks to be an international process of consensus building without any erosion of sovereignty of the individual states. The surrender …
Xi Jinping Banks on US-India’s Systemic Issues to Ensure PRC Success
The Covid-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for China to overtake the US in comprehensive global power, given that Xi Jinping has managed the aftermath of the pandemic much better than the leaders of the major countries of North America, Europe and Asia. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken very quickly echoed Henry Kissinger’s recent lament …
Dialogue with ULFA: Need for Circumspection
Formal dialogue with the ULFA (Pro-Talk)—which began in 2011 (but had stalled)—is reportedly going to kick start after the elections of 2021. By all accounts, the last round of talks ended on a positive note with the organisation expressing its satisfaction about the initiatives, which New Delhi had taken. According to an earlier press statement …
India should learn from Rodrigo Duterte’s Unrequited Love
Around 200 PRC ‘fishing boats’ have entered Philippines waters and despite love calls from Duterte to his counterpart in Beijing, refuse to leave. President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte may have his faults, but a lack of confidence is not among them. So convinced was he of the persuasive impact of his charm that …