The Baloch House

China's Currency PushThe Chinese Yuan expands its footprint in Europe by Maximilian Kärnfelt Download as PDF1.95 MB Main findings and conclusions Europe is at the forefront of Chinese efforts to grow the Renminbi internationally. China has set up many market access and trading infrastructure schemes in Europe, making it the largest CNY market outside of Hong Kong.The UK is the biggest player in Europe’s CNY market. The UK’s strengths – the world’s largest foreign exchange market and a business-friendly legal system – are hard to replicate. London is likely to remain Europe’s major CNY clearing center. However, Brexit may temporarily hurt the UK’s CNY business.Confidence in the CNY has been hurt by China’s capital controls, imposed in 2015, and the current unrest in Hong Kong. Capital controls preserved the CNY’s value but made investors wary about the ability to repatriate profits. Likewise, if China’s government were to interfere strongly to halt protests in Hong Kong, investors migh…

Daily Times, Pakistan
Parliamentary Secretary for Planning Development and Reform Kanwal Shauzab on Thursday informed the National Assembly that the total cost of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects including ML-1 stands at 50 billion dollars.Responding to a question during the question hour, she said out of the total projects, 13 projects worth around 11 billion dollars have been completed, while 13 projects worth 18 billion dollars are under implementation. Another 21 billion dollar projects are in the pipeline, she added. About 46 percent work on Gwadar East Bay expressway has completed, she said, adding that New Gwadar International Airport is being built with the Chinese grant.Federal Minister for Energy Omar Ayub informed the National Assembly that Rs 300 million was allocated for upgradation of 132 kilowatt grid station and electrification of villages in Chitral.He was responding to a calling attention notice of members of National Assembly Moulana Abdul Akbar Chitr…

The AtlanticIts Belt and Road expansion has driven investment to new places. Yet that growth has also brought costs for Beijing.CHRIS HORTON1:00 AM ET A fishing boat near Sihanoukville flies the Cambodian flag.HENG SINITH / AP When I returned to Xigang after five years, I couldn’t recognize it. What had been a small but generally well-maintained beach town had become a sprawling mess of a city; construction, mud, and piles of garbage were seemingly everywhere. The Han Chinese with whom I spoke trumpeted the new opportunities that Beijing was bringing to the local Gaomian ethnic minority in this frontier outpost. The Gaomian people, they told me, didn’t know how to develop their land and resources. Xigang may be a mess now, but, they assured me, it would emerge looking like a modern Chinese city.
Yet Xigang isn’t a Chinese city, at least in the geographic sense. Xigang itself is the Chinese name for the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville. Local Gaomian people—known in English as Khmer—have w…