Talking about the rise and rise of Bitcoin in China to the WEF, Eric Mu a local entrepreneur and Bitcoin miner listed the factors contributing to its popularity there: “…a large internet-savvy population, cheap and abundant hydropower, mature electrical manufacturing, capital control and a depreciating currency.” In fact, Mu could have been describing any one […]
After North Korea conducted its sixth underground nuclear test, which was 10 times stronger than its last one, the US responded by warning Pyongyang that any threat to the US or its allies would be met with a “massive military response”. Donald Trump tweeted that he is considering ceasing trade with any country that does […]
Donald Trump has just learned the hard way how much easier it is to be an armchair general than the commander in chief. When you’re a blowhard property developer with a Twitter account calling time on America’s longest war must seem like plain common sense. “We have wasted an enormous amount of blood and treasure […]
In the wake of the corruption crisis, South Korea’s new government is eager to show the public that it is an improvement on the previous administration. Among other things, they have promised to crack down on the bosses of major firms in South Korea. But by doing so, they would be dealing with the symptoms […]
I have just finished reading Neil Monnery’s new book, Architect of Prosperity: Sir John Cowperthwaite and the Making of Hong Kong. This fascinating account of the rise of Hong Kong as a global economic powerhouse is well written and, as such, easy to read and understand. I’m happy to recommend it wholeheartedly to CapX’s discerning […]
The current disruptions on the Korean peninsula can only be understood in the context of the Japan, South Korea and China’s shared desire to return to normalcy. The state of affairs in East Asia since 1945 has been defined by the presence of “abnormal” arrangements that have metastasised into today’s volatile situation. How we deal […]
Lady Thatcher was one of the most significant leaders of our period. Decisive, effervescent, courageous, loyal, she was dedicated to shaping the future rather than following the recommendations of focus groups. I first met her in the early 1970s, when she was serving as Minister of Education in the Cabinet of Edward Heath. At our […]
The drama is being orchestrated in North Korea with its showy missile tests and in the US with America’s showy bomber patrols. The loudest noise is being directed at China, accused in Donald Trump’s tweets of “doing nothing” and threatened thus: “We will no longer allow this to continue”. But the country that really feels […]
On 4 June 2002, the national football team of the People’s Republic of China took to the field for its first ever match in the FIFA World Cup. For the few thousand Chinese fans in the stadium, and the 500 million or so watching at home, the fact the team had made it there at […]
Just where would we be without pop stars to tell us about economic policy? Without Annie Lennox, how would we know that people in poor countries don’t get paid very much? For that is what her latest campaign, The Circle, wants to tell us. According to Lennox, the solution is simple: everyone involved in the […]
Miles of elevated concrete viaducts are sprouting up around some of Lahore’s architectural jewels as construction teams race to finish the Pakistani city’s first ever metro system. Heritage lovers are horrified that the $1.6bn train line will block views of the seventeenth-century Chauburji monument and loom over one of South Asia’s finest Mughal gardens. The […]
While Marxism might still be popular in the upper echelons of the Labour Party, it has become nigh on impossible to find a government in power that actually applies its principles. Those who can still remember the Eastern Bloc are met with blank stares from the under 35s. And you can now even buy a […]
China experienced the greatest advancement out of poverty of all time, partly thanks to the manufacturing boom which followed economic liberalisation in the 1980s. But there is a common misconception regarding the consequent working conditions: many imagine all Chinese factories to be “sweatshops” in which workers toil to serve the “greed” of capitalists. That, however, […]
The Sunshine Policy of engagement between the two Koreas ran for a decade until 2008, won the Noble Prize for its originator, and proved to be dismal failure. Peaceful engagement, dialogue and dollops of aid did little to alleviate the suffering caused by the cruelties of the Kim dynasty, let alone thwart their chemical and […]
The knife-edge result of Turkey’s constitutional referendum on Sunday revealed that the country is deeply polarised. But the sharply differing reactions to it from Berlin and Brussels on the one hand, and Washington on the other, revealed the fault lines over Turkey that exist across the West too. As well as being sharply critical of the […]
China is generally considered the only major ally of North Korea, a regime viewed around the world as cruel, evil, and backward. But whatever the government in Beijing might think of its troublesome neighbour on the other side of the Yalu River, many Chinese people have developed a rather cooler attitude. For some time now, […]
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