On 25 February, Xinhua News Agency reported that the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China had issued a notice launching a party-wide campaign to promote a “correct view of political achievements”. Approved by the…
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From 2015 to 2025, Beijing’s most significant macroeconomic achievement was to break free from its long-standing reliance on the property market. Instead, policymakers turned to poverty alleviation, rural revitalisation, and export expansion in order to deflate the real estate bubble…
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During the Fourth Plenum of the 19th CPC Central Committee in Beijing, I spoke with senior policymakers, leading analysts, and business figures in Shanghai and Beijing about major domestic and global developments. A shared view emerged: the long-term health of…
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Stablecoins—cryptocurrencies pegged to fiat currencies—are fast becoming a cornerstone of cross-border payments. Offering near-instant settlement, minimal transaction costs, and programmable features, they present a compelling alternative to traditional systems like SWIFT. Unlike legacy networks, stablecoins operate without intermediaries, relying only…
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When I began my Ph.D. research in German macroeconomics in 1989, German economic theory still adhered to the principles of a social market economy, despite the popularity of the Hayekian Freiburg School of Economics—the mainstream of Western economic theory. However,…
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Wall Street may be staring down the barrel of a long-term structural crisis—one rooted not in liquidity or regulation, but in a fundamental decoupling from the real global economy. China now commands the majority share of the world’s most dynamic…
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When President Donald Trump stood in the Rose Garden last week and announced a sweeping 10% tariff on all US trading partners, with individual levies for 60 countries to follow, global markets buckled. Almost overnight, the U.S. tariff rate would…
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Beijing appears to be recalibrating its economic priorities as President Xi Jinping convened a high-profile symposium on the private sector on 17 February. The meeting, held in the Chinese capital, brought together top executives from some of the country’s largest…
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Microsoft’s $80 Billion Bet on AI Infrastructure Microsoft has announced an $80 billion investment in fiscal 2025 to expand its data center capacity for artificial intelligence (AI) training and deployment. In a 3 January 2025 blog post, Microsoft disclosed that…
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When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited Beijing in late September 2023, his decision to leave his children in China for their education sparked considerable public interest in the country. Behind this symbolic move lay a stark reality: Assad’s Syria, battered…
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