China

Roughly speaking there are two types of corporations in China. State owned (SOE) and private. During the policy driven real-estate bust, the countries biggest builder, Evergrande, went under. But there was an assumption that the government would bail out real-estate SOEs. Well the largest one, Vanke, is going under, and the central government is going […]

The misunderstandings packed into this little bit of writing are stupendous: Over the past few years, China has been in deflation, while the US has been in inflation. Yet despite this stark divergence, the CNH has still depreciated more than 10% against the US dollar. This combination — falling relative prices in China and a […]

Elevated from Comments. Piece by KT Chong China is now entering the next phase of its economic-growth engine — humanoid robots. And just like with EVs, the shift is happening fast, quietly, and with the same pattern: Chinese companies industrialize before Western analysts even realize it’s begun. UBTech, Unitree, XPeng — they’ve all started mass-producing […]

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Iain Overton travelled to Tashkent, where cranes rise over Soviet relics and Chinese cars fill the streets, to see how Uzbekistan has become the lodestar of Central Asia’s quiet pivot away from Moscow

So… NASA’s civil servant workforce has varied in size over the years, peaking during the Apollo program. During the 1990s, the Clinton administration reduced the workforce by 25% over five years, a process that some claim laid the groundwork for the shuttle Columbia disaster. This budget proposes to slash NASA’s workforce by nearly 1/3 in […]

Communities living near mines often bear the brunt of pollution, environmental degradation, and the economic instability brought by boom-and-bust cycles, while end-users and proprietors enjoy the economic and environmental gains.

Link: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2025-10-16/debates/CD9953E1-3AFE-436A-BBD6-D170F107AE02/ShanghaiCooperationOrganisation I may have a closer connection with Tianjin than any Member of either House having gone to school there nearly 80 years ago. I hope this will not in itself cause me to be thought of as a security risk. I agree with the noble Baroness that the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation poses challenges … Continue reading Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Debate – House of Lords – 16th of October 2025