Opinion

  Walter Andersen / Dániel Balázs SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS US-India ties over the past few years have become increasingly close, but this movement has evoked limited response in China. Beijing’s composure is based on three factors: (1) Indian foreign policy is independent and free of strategic commitments to another countries; (2) India has been cautious in its handling of ...

  Last this week, the London-based PR outfit Portland Communications released its second annual list of nations with the greatest magnitude of “soft power.” Relying on Joseph Nye’s traditional delineation of “soft power” – attraction as influence; the “pull” to hard power’s “push” – the group, patching together a supposed formula, claimed to reveal the 30 nations with the largest ...

  Anthony Fensom Asia’s leaders have warned Britain against contemplating a split from the European Union in its June 23 referendum, fearing the consequences for the global economy. With financial markets already showing the ill effects of nervousness over the risk of “Brexit,” global growth forecasts dropping and analysts warning of further fallout, the downside risk to Asia has rapidly ...

  WASHINGTON A year ago this month, President Obama was delivering a eulogy in Charleston, South Carolina, after the mass shooting in a church there. As he neared the end, he took a long pause and then began singing “Amazing Grace.” It was an unforgettable, transcendent moment. Michelle Obama had reportedly cautioned him against singing, but Obama told her on ...

  With figures showing that Brazil’s economy stalled in 2014 and shrank 3.8% last year, the country heads towards its worst recession amid warnings such a development could cast a shadow on the Olympic Games in August, and deepen the political crisis. The scenario is deplorable indeed. The country’s primary fiscal deficit is forecast to be around $47 billion. And ...

  Mark Gilbert Bloomberg View Germany this week joined the elite club of sovereign borrowers able to raise funds for a decade at an interest rate of less than zero. Other euro zone countries, including France, Spain and Italy, are also enjoying 10-year borrowing costs at or near record lows. Negative German yields are the strongest signal yet that the ...

  Shang-su Wu SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Among the various projects proposed under China’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) strategy, the Singapore-Kunming Rail Link (SKRL) seems to be the most promising rail project. Since announced at the fifth summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1995, this project has evolved from a conventional railway to a ...

  Once described as giver of “stability,” the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), or the Philippine central bank, has tightly guarded the local financial system and inflation during the past six years of overflowing credit in the country. It was not an easy job: 24 positive credit rating actions that allowed the Philippines to move up to investment grade lured ...

Aaron Karp SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS The report that Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, India’s 61-year-old Air Force chief, capped a tour of Sweden with a flight in a Saab Gripen-D on June 10 comes a crucial moment in Indian security planning. Just a few weeks before, when Saab unveiled the Gripen-E fighter, the significance was easy to miss. The ...

  Therese Raphael Though it is only days after the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, Americans aren’t too numb to share a sense of solidarity with Britain over the murder of the Labour Party politician Jo Cox. Former U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords, who was shot by a would-be assassin in 2011, summed up the reaction of many with a ...