Tag: China

  • China Isn’t Dumping US Debt — It’s Quietly Rewiring the System

    There’s a narrative doing the rounds that China is “dumping” US Treasuries and preparing for some kind of financial war. It’s dramatic. It gets clicks. It’s also mostly wrong. But underneath it, there is something real happening — and it matters. China’s holdings of US Treasuries have fallen from around $1.3 trillion in 2013 to…

  • Europe After the American Century

    For most of the last eighty years, Europe has lived inside a system it didn’t have to fully carry.Security came from the United States. Growth came from globalisation. Stability was assumed. The arrangement wasn’t perfect, but it worked well enough that Europe could prioritise prosperity over power. That arrangement is now breaking down. What’s happening…

  • The next 20–50 years: what the post-American-assumption world probably looks like

    If you zoom out far enough, the argument about whether this is “just Trump” stops being the central question. The deeper issue is that the post-1945 settlement depended on one condition: a US political class willing to pay to run the system (security, sea lanes, alliances, monetary architecture) because it judged the returns worth it.…

  • NATO, Burden-Sharing, and the End of a Post-War Security Bargain

    Debate over NATO burden-sharing has intensified as the United States demands greater defence contributions from its allies. While contemporary data clearly show that the US contributes a disproportionate share of NATO’s military capability, this imbalance cannot be understood in isolation from the post-Second World War international order deliberately constructed by the United States itself. This…

  • The Long Clock and the Short Clock: Why Power Is Quietly Shifting

    There is a divide shaping the modern world that most voters sense but rarely see explained clearly. It is not left versus right, democracy versus dictatorship, or even East versus West. It is far more basic than that. Some political systems are allowed to think in decades. Others are trapped thinking in election cycles. Once…

  • Europe Is Sleepwalking Into the Qing Trap — And the World Won’t Wait for Us

    When people draw parallels between today’s Europe and 19th-century Qing China, it sounds dramatic. It shouldn’t. The comparison is uncomfortably close, and the more you study the history, the more you see the same strategic pattern unfolding in slow motion. In the early 1800s, the Qing empire genuinely believed it was still the centre of…

  • The Future of the U.S. Dollar as the World’s Reserve Currency: Navigating Uncertain Waters

    For decades, the U.S. dollar has reigned supreme as the world’s primary reserve currency, underpinning global trade and finance. However, in recent years, there has been growing speculation about the sustainability of the dollar’s status in a rapidly changing international landscape. As economic, geopolitical, and technological forces converge, the future of the U.S. dollar as…

  • FDI into southern Africa

    Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Southern Africa has been on the rise in recent years, reflecting the region’s growing appeal as an investment destination. FDI into Southern Africa is critical for the development of the region’s economies, providing access to capital, technology, and expertise, and boosting job creation and economic growth. One of the key…

  • China & Africa – what’s going on?

    China’s growing influence on the African continent has been a topic of much discussion in recent years. The country has become one of the largest investors in Africa, with a focus on infrastructure, natural resources, and trade. This growing relationship has been driven by China’s need for resources to fuel its economic growth and by…