South East Asia

La bombe nucléaire n’est pas la principale menace pour le monde. Il existe quelque chose de bien plus dangereux.

La principale menace dans la confrontation entre les États-Unis et la Chine n’est pas la parité militaire, mais la surestimation mutuelle de ses propres capacités. La question devrait être de savoir comment éviter le conflit et travailler ensemble à l’élimination des menaces communes, telles que le changement climatique et l’injustice sociale.

Through an opaque network of shell companies in the British Virgin Islands and Luxembourg holding firms, an agency that manages China’s foreign reserves has discreetly scooped up stakes in Europe’s critical infrastructure, utilities, and real estate.

From a gas company in Spain to a police headquarters in Belgium, an agency directed by China’s central bank has been quietly acquiring stakes in companies and properties across Europe over the past decade.

How could one of the world’s oldest and most sophisticated civilizations, shaped for centuries by Confucian philosophy, suffer a humiliating defeat at the hands of Britain, a relatively small island nation, during the Opium Wars? How did this defeat usher in what the Chinese now remember as the “Century of Humiliation”? Why was China—then the world’s largest economy, possessing the most advanced bureaucracy and the greatest productive capacity—unable to recognize the transformative impact of the Industrial Revolution? More importantly, what lessons has modern China drawn from this painful chapter of its history?

Afghanistan’s dramatic collapse in opium production following the Taliban’s nationwide drug ban is fundamentally reshaping global heroin markets, reducing supplies of the drug while raising the risk that traffickers and users will increasingly turn to more dangerous synthetic opioids, according to a United Nations report released Friday.