China’s Belt and Road Chugging Along in Central Asia
November 17th, 2021
Via the Asia Times, an article on BRI activity in Central Asia: The information war is so intense nowadays that unsung melodies are often more alluring than the sung ones. The lines from English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous ode To a Skylark come to mind: “In the broad day-light / Thou art unseen, but yet I […]
Read more »Digital Silk Road: China installed Himalayan Fiber-Optics Network
November 9th, 2021
Via The Asia Times, a report on China installation of a fibre optic network in certain remote locations of the western Himalayas, giving them new near-real-time ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) capabilities in the area: At the height of the border standoff with India in 2020, China installed a fibre optic network at certain remote locations of […]
Read more »Laos–China Railway
November 1st, 2021
Via The People’s Map, a detailed look at the Laos-China railway: A section of the Kunming–Singapore Railway, the Laos–China Railway is a fundamental component of China’s vision for the Pan-Asia Railway network—a flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in mainland Southeast Asia. Construction on the 414-kilometre standard gauge railway began in 2016 […]
Read more »China Expanding Influence in Africa Via Telecom Network Deals
October 23rd, 2021
Via VOA, an article on how China is expanding influence in Africa via telecom network deals: Telecommunications networks funded and built by China are taking over Africa’s cyberspace, a dependence that analysts suggest puts Beijing in a position to exert political influence in some of the continent’s countries. Bulelani Jili, a doctoral candidate at Harvard University’s […]
Read more »Mapping China’s Digital Silk Road
October 21st, 2021
Via Reconnecting Asia, an article on China’s digital Silk Road (maps in original article): The Digital Silk Road is the technology dimension of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Xi’s Jinping’s vision for moving China closer to the center of everything. As the maps below illustrate, it is advancing several areas: wireless networks, surveillance cameras, subsea cables, […]
Read more »China Fast-Tracks Access To Rebellious Xinjiang
October 21st, 2021
Via The Asia Times, a report on the newly finished Hotan-Ruoqiang rail line completes the circle around the huge Taklamakan Desert on the old Silk Road: Ancient Silk Road travelers cursed China’s largest desert as Takla Makan, an ominous Persian-Turkic expression that translates as “enter and you may never return.” Undeterred by its sandstorms and […]
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.