Tag Archives: Asia

Asia needs commodities for its dynamic global factory and Latin America has abundant natural resources. Asia needs food for its large population and Latin America has fertile agricultural land. One of the new drivers for business confidence is the spread of free trade agreements (FTAs) between the two regions.

The rise of Asia might be better conceived as the re-emergence of a world in which population size and economic size are closely linked. The global diffusion of technology, and institutions, has given poor but populous countries an opportunity to catch up.

Many people, both in Asia and beyond, hope and expect that under Modi’s government India will recover from the political drift and sluggish growth of recent years. But a note of caution is in order about what to expect from India, economically and strategically.

The biggest geopolitical risk of our times is not a conflict between Israel and Iran over nuclear proliferation. Nor is it the risk of chronic disorder in an arc of instability that now runs from the Maghreb all the way to the Hindu Kush. It is not even the risk of Cold War II between Russia and the West over …

World military expenditure totaled $1.75 trillion in 2013, a fall of 1.9 per cent in real terms since 2012, according to figures released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).   The fall in the global total comes from decreases in Western countries, led by the United States, and despite increases in all other regions. In fact, military spending in …

Medical tourism in Asia is booming. People from both Asia and the West are being attracted to cities and ‘hubs’ of medical excellence in a number of countries, such as Malaysia, Thailand, India, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea. This tourism is a reversal of medical travel’s historic trend of being from low- to high-income countries. But the travel for cheaper treatments, …

  Despite the slowing growth in some economies, Asia is still the most dynamic part of the world economy. Output, trade and incomes per head are still growing faster on average than in most other parts of the world economy. But there are threats to Asia’s economic growth on the horizon, not only because of the lingering malaise of industrial-country economies …