Baloch House

What is behind the Belt and Road Initiative?The EconomistGROWING up in a military dictatorship, Than Swe, a young member of Myanmar’s business elite, saw the Western world as a protector and model. Even when Western governments imposed ever-tighter trade and travel bans to punish the junta that ran his country from 1988 to 2016, Mr Than Swe, along with many compatriots, saw them as upholders of a moral order. Some swagger about Western values could be grating. Visiting America as a teenager, Mr Than Swe remembers being congratulated on reaching a country with good human rights. But as an alternative to local despotism, the West offered hope.“The people still think that the Western countries are the best,” Mr Than Swe, who is 26, says softly, sitting in a university meeting room in the Chinese port city of Xiamen. As one of the 2.5% of Myanmarese who are ethnic-Chinese, though, he increasingly sees an alternative in investment and assistance from a rising China next door. To his dismay…

The “project of the century” may help some economies, but at a political cost

SHUNNING all false modesty, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, calls his idea the “project of the century”. The country’s fawning media hail it as a gift of “Chinese wisdom” to the world’s development. As for the real meaning of the clumsy metaphor to describe it—the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—debate rages.The term itself is confusing. The “road” refers mostly to a sea route; the “belt” is on land. Countries eager for China’s financing welcome it as a source of investment in infrastructure between China and Europe via the Middle East and Africa. Those who fear China see it instead as a sinister project to create a new world order in which China is the pre-eminent power.

One cause of confusion is that the BRI is not a single plan at all. A visitor to its website would click in vain to find a detailed explanation of its aims. There is no blueprint of the kind that China’s leaders love: so many billions of dollars t…

SupChina.comThe drama continues in the U.S.-China trade war. Today, the presidents of both countries mentioned the conflict in public statements — Xi Jinping in a speech at the opening of a multilateral forum, and Donald Trump, of course, on Twitter. Meanwhile, more and more companies are being dragged into the trade fight and voicing their concerns.“A trade war should be rejected because there will be no winner,” Xi Jinping said at the opening of the BRICS summit of emerging economies in Johannesburg, South Africa, AFP reports.“They are being vicious in what will be their failed attempt. We were being nice - until now!,” Donald Trump tweeted this morning, voicing particular umbrage at China’s targeted tariffs of American farm products.Yesterday, Trump attempted to reassure American farmers with a brazenly optimistic assertion: “Tariffs are the greatest! … Remember, we are the ‘piggy bank’ that’s being robbed. All will be Great!” Soon after that statement, the White House announced $1…