Written by Amanda Katiraei In November 2023, Chinese factories confronted overcapacity and a struggling domestic economy by boosting exports. These actions to boost their economy have created new trade tensions, particularly in industries like electric vehicles and solar panels. As manufacturers are now facing weakened domestic demand, they are aggressively cutting prices to gain traction…
Category: International Economics
Showdown in the Spratleys: How Economics Drives China’s Claims in the South China Sea
Written by Lizzy Cohn Over the last century, territorial claims in the South China Sea, specifically the Spratly Islands, have been widely disputed among many countries including China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan. In addition to these islands being a prime location along the major commercial shipping routes to northeastern Asia, they are extremely rich…
Op-ed: How ECO Compares to Other Economic Alliances Such as the EU
Written by Bartu Geyik Uzbekistan has recently hosted the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) Summit of 2023, uniting many countries from West to South Asia. This economic cooperation has been ongoing for the past four decades, reaching 10 members during 1992 after the ex-soviet Central Asian countries joined the cooperation. The world is becoming multipolar, evidenced…
The Electric Vehicle Industry: A Background of BYD, China’s #1 Automaker
Written by Avril Yu Amidst forecasts of a future troubled by a climate change crisis and diminishing gasoline supply, the electric vehicle shines: it’s thought of as a newfangled, science fiction illustration—perhaps even a little presumptuous, in its youth and its ideals. If the electric vehicle seems that way even today, then the uncertainty surrounding…
Threats facing European Higher Education Today
Written by Christian Lewandowski Two narratives have featured prominently in European policy debates of the past several decades within the context of higher education: the knowledge society and European integration narratives (Curaj et al., 2015). The knowledge society narrative, one of the most dominant narratives in policy debates globally, is concerned with the role the…
Chained Together: Global Supply Chains & the Pandemic
Written by Tarini Sathe The global Coronavirus outbreak highlighted many problems with various systems and institutions on different scales; one of the biggest problems it exposed was the weakness of supply chains across global industries. A supply chain is a network of entities or stakeholders involved in the production process of a good; the chain…
A US Perspective: The Effect of China’s Growing Presence in the Middle East
Written by Catherine Sancho Since 2013, Chinese diplomacy has shown noticeable signs of expansionary and cooperative interest in the Middle East. Some of China’s most successful initiatives have been through the form of foreign direct investment in technology and infrastructure, like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to integrate many of the world’s…
How Saudi Arabia is Shaking Up Soccer, in a Bad Way
Written by Beck Smolak In early January, a bombshell announcement dropped that Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo agreed to join Al-Nassr FC in the Saudi Pro League, securing a staggering $315 million a season for the next two and a half years. With Ronaldo already 38 years old and entering a different stage of his…
What is China’s Belt and Road Initiative?
Written by Christian Potts The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a massive international infrastructure and economic development program that China began in 2013. The $1 trillion and decade-long project has expanded China’s global economic influence by increasing international dependency on their financial institutions. The BRI continues to grow, with “147 countries …hav[ing] signed onto…
Tony Gao: The Invisible Side of a Young Entrepreneur
Written by Hanzhang Qin Tony Gao, born in 1994, is a young entrepreneur who was listed on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list in 2017. He co-founded Easy Transfer, China’s largest platform for international students to pay their tuition fees. How did he break into the competitive market for tuition payments, and what inspired him to…