Opinion

Is China’s 14-month car crash at an end? After more than a year of declining sales, the country’s auto industry has relief in sight. Beijing’s ruling State Council told city governments to loosen or cancel restrictions on new car sales designed to limit congestion, as part of a package of measures to get sputtering economic growth back on track. The ...

You can have too much of a good thing — even, as Germany proves, financial self-discipline. With the economy on the verge of recession and growth in the wider euro area sputtering out, a strong fiscal stimulus is needed from Berlin. Under conditions like these, fear of public borrowing is the opposite of prudent. The government is running a budget ...

With every passing day, India’s economic indicators are turning a little bleaker. The situation is bad enough to warrant using the word “crisis,” arriving just as the government’s fiscal ammunition is spent. The announcement of 5% GDP growth in the June quarter showed the economy growing at its weakest pace in six years. On Sunday, the top six carmakers reported ...

One could almost feel sorry for that decidedly unloved crowd known as pipeline operators. Except they keep finding ways to make it really hard. Tallgrass Energy has received a buyout offer from an investor group led by Blackstone Group. This follows a deal in March in which the group took a controlling stake in Tallgrass. Things haven’t gone well since ...

Tech billionaires Jack Ma and Elon Musk can’t agree whether artificial intelligence (AI) is going to take over the world. Only one of them is what we might think of as a tech guy, and it’s that difference that means the other is likely to be right. Musk, a physicist by training, is a well-known AI radical who sees the ...

What really happened in Biarritz last weekend, with the mysterious visit of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif? US officials saw it as a bit of diplomatic freelancing by French President Emmanuel Macron that sought to foster negotiations but highlighted the obstacles that are in the way. The intrigue surrounding the summit was described by knowledgeable sources who requested anonymity ...

When I headed the US Southern Command a decade ago, I took a trip to the Brazilian military’s jungle training site near Manaus in the Amazon River basin. I spent time both in the jungle with Brazilian troops and on the river, meeting with some of the 300 indigenous groups that populate the region, which spans nine South American nations. ...

Thomas Cook Group Plc’s rescue by Fosun Tourism Group moved a step closer as creditors approved a 900 million-pound ($1.1 billion) bailout led by the Chinese investor. The ailing British travel company’s shareholders could be forgiven for thinking they have got the loungers on the shady side of the pool. Under the terms of the deal, Fosun will own 75% ...

China has long promoted its traditional medicinal system as a national treasure and more recently as a tool of soft power. While the ancient art remains a policy priority, however, it faces very modern challenges including rising costs, complexities of production and treatment, and murky intellectual property rights. Chinese medicine practitioners have been treating patients with herbal medicine and acupuncture ...

The beleaguered Indian economy is finally making a sensible bargain with the rest of the world: “Take our billion-plus customers, give us jobs.” Under a new foreign direct investment policy announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, India is undertaking its biggest liberalisation of single-brand retail in seven years. One major concession: Contentious local sourcing requirements will need to be ...