Opinion

With the manufacturing sector declining and showing poor figures worldwide partly due to prospects of global economic slowdown, the service sector is widening and may likely fill in the gap to help shore up the world economic growth. The dwindling manufacturing sector isn’t new, as the manufacturing employment has been falling everywhere, including China. By contrast, the service sector has ...

Russia remains the largest supplier of military equipment to India, according to information supplied by India’s Ministry of Defense and quoted by TASS. Over the past three years, Russian defense deals with India exceeded 340 billion rupees (over $5 billion), with the United States coming in at a close second with 300 billion rupees (around $4.4 billion) in deals. Over ...

In an astonishing fashion, and going against everything political scientists have long thought about U.S. politics, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is shooting to the top of the field of candidates. Moreover, Trump is quietly gaining unexpected support in a far-away country: China. Increasingly, Chinese netizens follow Trump’s primary and caucus wins, which have been coming one after the other. ...

Vietnam has been among Asia’s top performers in recent times, bucking a region-wide trade recession despite tensions with China, its biggest trading partner. For the nation’s reformers though, Vietnam’s economic and political rise could be just about to start. In a joint report released February 23 by the Vietnamese government and the World Bank, the authors suggested the Southeast Asian ...

China’s growth is slowing, probably for good. But the form that the slowdown is taking isn’t yet known. The question is whether China’s troubles will be more like a typical emerging-market crisis, or more like the typical bust in a large developed country. Every nation undergoes a growth slump at some point. For good background on the phenomenon, check out ...

Thumbing through the annual report of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is always an education. This year’s 430-page edition is no exception. Crammed with tables and charts, it brims with useful facts and insights. —On page 62, we learn that the growth of state and local government spending on services (schools, police, parks) has been the slowest ...

G20 finance ministers’ disagreement in Shanghai over the best way to stem the economic slowdown had a cascading effect across the universe as hopes pinned on the summit dashed, sending a negative message to the equity markets. Despite being aware about the potential risks, the group’s communiqué did not include the call for coordinated action for which many had hoped. ...

A jump in the core U.S. inflation rate has persuaded many people that deflation is no longer a threat. But even those who never subscribed to the idea that consumer prices might decline for a sustained period should be wary of misreading the data and dismissing the risk of deflation. Core U.S. consumer prices, excluding food and energy, rose 0.3 ...

There is uncertainty over whether Singapore’s economy is headed for a recession, and the online debate certainly reflects that. Overall, there seems to be a general consensus that growth prospects in 2016 will be challenging. As the island-state’s largest export destination, China’s slowing economy is set to be a drag on Singapore’s growth prospects. According to several observers, including Swiss ...

On February 5, 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping made an official statement acknowledging Serbian statehood day. In the press release that followed, Xi highlighted deepened cooperation between China and Serbia in recent years, and reaffirmed China’s intentions to expand economic links with Serbia in the years to come. This statement came on the heels of announcement by Chinese ambassador to ...