Opinion

  Max Walden SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS In late April 1976, a small fishing boat carrying five young Vietnamese refugees sailed into Darwin harbor. Although representing the arrival of Australia’s first “boat people,” the Kein Giang’s landing on Australian shores barely made the newspaper. Boat arrivals during 1976 and 1977 were largely met with similar indifference by the national media ...

  WASHINGTON The Leave campaign won the referendum on withdrawing Britain from the European Union because the arguments on which the Remain side relied made Leave’s case. The Remain campaign began with a sham, was monomaniacal with its Project Fear, and ended in governmental thuggishness. The sham was Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempt to justify Remain by negotiating EU concessions ...

    The UK has voted to leave the European Union, but the strenuous exit process could take years. Brussels wants an immediate start to it, while London insists it is a new Prime Minister who will negotiate with the EU in October. London’s position doesn’t augur well with sullen Brussels, apparently annoyed by UK’s unprecedented decision to leave the ...

    Catherine Putz SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS There are few topics bigger in the region than the question of China. EurasiaNet is running a five-part series addressing different aspects of Chinese engagement in Central Asia. Raffaello Pantucci tackles the overview, writing that “China’s rise in Central Asia marks one of the most consequential changes in regional geopolitics since the ...

  When Margaret Thatcher visited the College of Europe in 1988, she joked that a British leader coming to address an elite college of European civil servants was like Genghis Khan being invited to a peace conference. But in what became known as the Bruges speech, Thatcher’s message was anything but hostile. Nobody, she said, can deny that Britons are ...

  Leonid Bershidsky “Please tell me I’m still sleeping and this is all just a bad nightmare,” former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb tweeted after waking up to the U.K. referendum results. It feels like a betrayal, but it’s really a wake-up call. The millions of Britons who on Thursday voted their distrust of the European Union are not the ...

Jackson Ewing SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS The major economies of Northeast Asia are developing carbon markets to help meet their climate change commitments. They would benefit from doing so in concert. Like much in the current climate change arena, market activities beneath the global scale are booming. Carbon markets have almost doubled since 2012, with 40 states and 23 cities, ...

  Akhilesh Pillalamarri SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS In 19th century Europe, the old concert of great powers, states which had been dominant since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, was shaken by the rise of two new powers: Germany and Italy, both of which had recently been unified. As was to be expected, the rise of two new powers put ...

A panel of Asia experts recently conveyed to American audiences the alarm that Asian observers feel about U.S. withdrawal from the region. Gathering in New York on Monday for a panel hosted by NTT and Kinokuniya — a Japanese publishing company and book store, respectively – the experts discussed a wide range of divisive issues in Asia’s security landscape – ...

  It is a tough time for major automakers hit hard by scandals over concealing faults that cause pollution. These revelations have a negative impact on investors and consumers as executives try to contain mistrust through redressing these technical errors, but at a huge price. Volkswagen’s admission in September that it had illegally fitted special devices in 11 million diesel ...