Noe van Hulst, Ambassador of the Netherlands to the OECD It was a unique event, for sure: China hosting its first G20 summit in Hangzhou on 4-5 September. The city where Chinese leader Mao Zedong half a century ago regularly met with Third World guerrilla leaders to discuss the battle against US “imperialism”. China has […]
Anyone who takes even a passing interest in China can’t have failed to notice a shift in mood of late. Gone are the decades of soaraway growth, when the economy expanded by an annual average of 10%, enabling around half a billion people to lift themselves out of poverty. Instead, at the annual “two sessions” […]
The past few decades have seen developing and emerging economies playing an ever-larger role in the world economy. According to OECD estimates from a few years back, in 2011 China and India accounted for 24% of the global economy; by 2060 that was forecast to rise to 46%, overtaking the combined total for current OECD […]
If crowds are not your thing, this is not a good time to be travelling in China. As the new Year of the Horse gallops in, hundreds of millions of people across the country have headed home to spend time with their families. It’s estimated that around 3.6 billion trips will be made on trains, […]
A friend in Kunming laughed when we told her our travel plans: “Chenggong? But there’s nothing there!” More accurate, perhaps, if she’d said there’s no one there. Under construction since 2003, Chenggong is a satellite city of Kunming, capital of mountainous Yunnan province in southwest China. Such projects are not rare in China, and they […]
It could be the biggest Chinese takeover ever of a U.S. firm. But this deal doesn’t involve Silicon Valley, high-tech widgets or Hollywood stars. Instead, a Chinese firm is proposing to pay a whopping $4.7 billion for a U.S. business that produces … pork. Shuanghui International’s offer for Smithfield Food has attracted some controversy. One […]
What do you look for in a holiday destination – sunshine and sand, fine food, ancient treasures? If none of these send you scuttling off to Tripadvisor, then how about this: fresh air. That’s what one Chinese province is promising in adverts running on national TV: “Take a deep breath, you’re in Fujian.” The campaign […]
