East Asia’s Coming Population Collapse
May 7th, 2024
Courtesy of Foreign Affairs, a look at East Asia’s coming population collapse and how it will reshape world politics and regional economies: In the decades immediately ahead, East Asia will experience perhaps the modern world’s most dramatic demographic shift. All of the region’s main states—China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—are about to enter into an […]
Read more »China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway Construction to Begin in October
May 7th, 2024
Via The Diplomat, an article on the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway for which construction is to begin in October, a railway that Kyrgyzstan hopes will make it “a transit country for the world”: Construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) railway will begin in October, according to Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov. Speaking during a working trip to Osh on May […]
Read more »The Cable Ties to China’s Digital Silk Road
May 7th, 2024
Via the Lowy Institute, a report on the cable ties to China’s Digital Silk Road: Technological competition between the United States and China is transforming the physical connections that make up the digital world and its governance. China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” eventually incorporated digital connectivity under the rubric Digital Silk Road in an effort to leverage […]
Read more »Washington Is Missing the Point on Alternatives to the Belt and Road Initiative
May 7th, 2024
Via The Diplomat, a look at the need for any alternative corridor (like IMEC) is likely to leverage BRI hubs and completed projects – thus making them complementary rather than competing initiatives: U.S. officials have been critical of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since its announcement in 2013. Washington’s concern stems from a flawed zero-sum assumption […]
Read more »World’s Biggest Construction Project Gets a Reality Check
May 7th, 2024
Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, a look at how Saudi Arabia’s plans for twin 105-mile-long skyscrapers have lost momentum amid spiraling costs and construction glitches: The engineers saw a mountain-sized problem. For weeks, thousands of trucks and diggers had worked 24 hours every day, scooping millions of cubic feet of sand at the world’s […]
Read more »How To Make the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor Happen
May 7th, 2024
Via European Council on Foreign Relations, commentary on how to make the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor happen: Summary The war in Gaza and its fallout have stalled plans for the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor, or IMEC. But this grand US-led connectivity project to link the EU and India via the Gulf can still happen – […]
Read more »Focusing primarily on The New Seven Sisters - the largely state owned petroleum companies from the emerging world that have become key players in the oil & gas industry as identified by Carola Hoyos, Chief Energy Correspondent for The Financial Times - but spanning other nascent opportunities around the globe that may hold potential in the years ahead, Wildcats & Black Sheep is a place for the adventurous to contemplate & evaluate the emerging markets of tomorrow.