Opinion

  Duyen Bui SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Vietnamese officials and the Vietnamese people are waiting in anticipation to welcome U.S. President Barack Obama in about a week. But each have very different reasons for awaiting Obama’s visit. The Vietnamese government will be laying out the red carpet for the leader of its former enemy, with whom it now seeks alliances …

U.S. President Barack Obama’s impending trip to Japan for the G7 summit looks likely to be overshadowed by his planned visit to Hiroshima, a first for a sitting U.S. president. There has been extensive debate both among scholars and in the public arena about the justification for the use of nuclear weapons against Japan. This debate mirrors debates that were …

  Given its crucial role as an investment gateway to mainland China, Beijing is striving to appease a sullen Hong Kong during the visit of high ranking Chinese official, Zhang Dejiang, who chairs China’s communist-controlled legislature. The world’s second largest economy is set to strike a compromise between the strategic position of Hong Kong as an investment hub on one …

  Have some money you want to donate, with the goal of bringing about political change? Whatever you do, don’t give it to Hillary Clinton. Or Donald Trump. It isn’t that there’s anything particularly wrong with either candidate. It’s that money donated to presidential general-election candidates is mostly wasted. This is the lesson the Koch brothers have apparently learned. In …

  Luke Hunt SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS When Cambodia announced plans to reintroduce tigers into the wild, the response was predictably negative. The country’s overarching reputation for corruption and mismanagement rose to the fore with its critics using an endangered species to carp about well-documented inadequacies. The Indochina tiger has been functionally extinct for several years. It was initially reported …

  Deutsche Bank is undercapitalized and may be facing “insurmountable headwinds,” James Chappell, an analyst with the private bank Berenberg, wrote in a recent note. He’s not just down on Europe’s biggest investment bank, which he thinks should trade at 9 euros ($10.2) per share rather than the current 14.7 euros — he’s irritated with the entire sector, which is …

  John Micklethwait Over the past few days the Brexit referendum has taken a nasty turn, with Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London and a prominent “leaver,” comparing the European Union to Adolf Hitler and complaining about Germany’s growing power in the EU. He should visit Berlin, which I did last week. Far from wanting to rule Europe, Germany’s …

  When Chinese president and Communist Party chief Xi Jinping gave a speech on cybersecurity and information technology last month, international media noted that even as Xi called for greater tolerance of online criticism, censors were restricting Chinese internet users from posting negative comments about his remarks. However, foreign reporters overlooked other important points in the April 19 speech, including …

  Poland has avoided a credit rating downgrade from Moody’s, and the latest assessment of its economic policies from the International Monetary Fund is rather mild. Although the nationalist government has drawn a lot of adverse attention lately, it might get away with a version of the financial nationalism that Prime Minister Viktor Orban has implemented in Hungary. On Saturday, …

  Senegal, one of Africa’s success stories, looks forward to issuing bonds to fund infrastructure development and accelerate growth that’s being driven by surging peanut and rice production. Yet, the global economic slowdown reverberates worldwide and Senegal could be no exception. Economies try to create new money through issuing the government bonds to sustain on-going development process through what is …