Opinion

  Christopher Balding When the Chinese appliance maker Midea Group announced a bid for the German robotics manufacturer Kuka AG this spring, it seemed like something of an omen. Kuka makes robots that specialize in assembling goods on a factory floor — exactly the kind of work that has lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty. After opening up to …

  WASHINGTON It’s the revolution of rising expectations again. Watching Donald Trump last week, I thought of Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political philosopher whose “Democracy in America,” published in the 1830s, remains the most insightful study of our national character. But it was de Tocqueville’s other masterpiece, “The Old Regime and the French Revolution” (1856), that came foremost to …

  The pledge made by the world’s leading economies to do more to lift global growth to deal with fallout from Britain’s Brexit vote and counter dissatisfaction with globalisation is important. These will definitely reverse the slowing global economic growth. With the focus of the British leave vote, the Group of 20 nations hoped to see the UK as a …

  Clive Crook Listening to Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican convention, and scanning the reaction to it, I have the sinking feeling that he might win in November. He’s extremely effective at what he does. His critics, on the other hand, are not. The speech was purest populism: nine-tenths grievances and empty promises, one-tenth stupid policy ideas. Yet the …

  Despite China’s great power aspirations, its cyber warriors threw a fit after losing a legal battle to the Philippines in The Hague. Within hours of the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s unanimous rebuke of China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea last week, at least 68 national and local government websites in the Philippines were knocked offline in a …

  The “spanner in the works” thrown by Brexit at the global economy has failed to massively dent Asia’s growth prospects. But amid warnings of another Asian financial crisis, not everyone is sanguine on the outlook. In its latest “World Economic Outlook” report, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) decided on Tuesday to cut its forecasts for global economic growth for …

  Sudha Ramachandran SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS India’s ambitious plan to interlink rivers to achieve greater equity in the distribution of water in the country reached an important milestone on July 6, when water from the Godavari, its second-longest river, rushed to meet the fourth-longest, the Krishna. The two became the first of 30 rivers to be linked under the …

WASHINGTON America’s top spymaster offered contrarian assessments of some key issues — warning against “hyping” the threat posed by the Syrian terror group Jabhat al-Nusra, cautioning against administration plans to share intelligence with Russia on Syrian targets, and questioning Turkish claims that last Friday’s coup was organized by a cleric living in America. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made …

  Calls for boosting the slowing global economy, dominated G20 forum on Saturday as the declining growth in China and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union (EU) threaten to cut global growth. With their eyes set on turning the slowing economic growth around, central bank chiefs and finance ministers from the world’s top 20 economies met in the southwestern …

  Conor Sen Those who argue that the U.S. Federal Reserve should keep interest rates low typically point to the same piece of evidence: The central bank’s preferred measure of inflation remains below its 2 percent target, suggesting that the economy still needs stimulus. What they ignore is that during the dot-com and housing booms of the 1990s and 2000s, …