As Thailand and much of Asia welcomes more and more visitors from China, the region’s leaders and policymakers must take steps toward a more sustainable tourism industry and accelerate supporting infrastructure. Ensuring tourism is a sustainable driver of economic growth will require much more than sustained support for even the best marketing campaigns.

Two major American car manufacturers, Ford Motor Company and Tesla, are moving ahead with plans in China that seem a direct challenge to President Donald Trump’s crusade to keep American manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Surprisingly, the companies seem to have met little resistance from the administration thus far.

Trade relations with an expanding and increasingly outward facing China have placed foreign leaders in a position whereby public engagement with China on investment and trade issues can create a perception of either pragmatic collaboration for mutual strategic and economic benefit at best or collusion and corruption at worst.

Bordered by a strong yet not very friendly Russia, these countries are bearing the blows from forces against globalization. While it might be a good choice for them to cooperate with the United States to build a new political and economic bloc, it’s not clear if there is room for the United States and Russia to compete in both energy and geopolitics here.

it seems that the tough approach on the South China Sea was more a campaign strategy than a policy plan. Like previous administrations, the Trump team sees armed conflict between China and the US as a losing proposition for all sides, and issues of economy, trade and the South China Sea better managed by cooperation than confrontation.

The bubbles in both finance and property are growing too big. The ordinary real economy is increasingly unable to bear the over-expansion of finance and property of the past 10 years. And NASDAQ is the most precarious bubble of all.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization achieved a major boost in momentum at last month’s Astana summit, but realizing its potential will require consistent leadership and resources over the coming year from the Chinese presidency.

In an ideal world, China’s government could respond by stimulating household consumption. But, in the absence of further reforms in areas like social security, growth in consumer spending is bound to be slow.

Despite all the predictions of doom by Western pundits in 1997, Hong Kong has done well since its reversion of sovereignty to China twenty years ago. 

As long as China continues to carry out its export-driven economic growth model through its strong state capitalism, then the U.S. business community will still have to face trade protectionism through non-tariff barriers, industrial policy, subsidies, and currency manipulation.