Tag Archives: China

Is China Now Number One?  Actually I think focusing on such questions can be a not very useful exercise, but here I am asking it anyway.  As it is, indeed the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) is indeed Number One on a number of important grounds, although probably the bottom line is that the world is now dominated by a G2, the US and China, with it unclear which is Number One overall.  What has happened is that up until quite recently there was no...

I finished Branko Milanovic's thought provoking Capitalism Alone this summer. But I haven't had much time to write on the blog, as you might have noticed. This is certainly not a review, and I would definitely suggest that you go and buy the book as soon as you can and read it. It is a serious discussion of the future of capitalism, that word that, as Heilbroner often reminded us, was at the center of the discipline, but seldom discussed openly by economists. He cited, if memory doesn't fail...

Pretty good piece in SSIR by Kevin Starr and Sarah Miers of the Mulago Foundation, why don’t big NGOs scale up other social entrepreneurs’ solutions? They spoke to a bunch of leaders and once they got past the laughter and disbelief at the idea, found “Not created here syndrome” that everybody knows about Big funders like government aid agencies prioritize project-based work Differing priorities at country vs. headquarters Hard to replicate someone else’s idea and get it to work They...

This is a direct communication from our staff in China. This is what I mean when I say we have boots on the ground around the world. We do not need to rely on newspapers or TV who love to spin these events. Our direct sources are confirming that life is returning to normal in China. This is not coming from any propaganda put out by the government or other accusations people love to make. I have stated plenty of times, I prefer facts – not speculation. I believe this will peak out also by...

The world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, significantly raised its crude sales to the world’s largest oil importer, China, in 2019, boosting its exports to China by 47 percent and beating Russia for the top Chinese supplier spot for the first time in four years, according to Chinese customs data as carried by Reuters on Friday. While Saudi Arabia restricts production under the OPEC+ deal, it has prioritized shipments to the most prized markets, China and Asia, at the expense of...

  Update on what is known. A lot remains unknown or unclear, especially in the fog of panic. There is also considerable misinformation. The push is on to isolate the disease to prevent pandemic. This creates an impression that the worst is already happening when it is not. The worst case is a mutating virus and as far as is known, this is not happening — yet.  Let's keep this is perspective though. The likelihood of contracting coronavirus is still very low in most places, and the...

There are often attempts in the west to depict China as capitalist rather than socialist. After decades of China going from strength to strength on macroeconomic criteria – and in view of its undeniable achievement in reducing poverty at a rate unmatched in recorded human history – some on the right wish to deny that this could have been accomplished through socialism and so instead claim China to be capitalist. At the same time, there are those on the left who wish to distance notions of...

And the winner is — wait for it — Xi Jinping. This is an important backgrounder to understand the direction that the Chinese leadership is taking. Very dialectical. Xi is bent on effecting a consolidation of Chinese history and culture in the New China. Xi is emerging as one of the most significant thinkers in the history of Chinese thought. Chinese thought is very subtle and quite unlike Western thought. Xi, of course, understands it in depth, but very few Western commentators are able...

Must-read. Note: Xi Jinping was trained as a chemical engineer.Andrew Batson's BlogWhat Xi Jinping thinks about development economics Andrew Batson

China treats Internet access as a public good and provides it universally as a public utility.Actually, many countries have wider access to better connection at a more reasonable price than the US. The Internet in the US is another rent-extraction machine.The US puts its public monies into the war machine and black budget paramilitary.China is arguably wise to do this rather than "generous." The basis for a developed society, including the economy, is security, social cohesion, culture,...