Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was in China Thursday and Friday for a fly-by visit that lasted just over 36 hours. Nonetheless, it was an important trip – as Turnbull’s first visit to China since assuming office last fall, it was important to set the tone for the Australia-China relationship under his administration. And that tone was relentlessly upbeat, …

Matthew Sedacca SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Lowering his voice nervously, Yang Kechao confessed that over half of his workers at Huaxinyuan Steel Company are on vacation. The employees did not leave the factory owner with stations half-filled to go bask in the warm weather of Hejin, Shanxi, a North China province where the plant is based. Nor did they head …

  Laos is a country that is usually described in accordance with one of two narratives. The first portrays a Buddhist Shangri-La — the ‘real,’ ‘hidden,’ and ‘untouched’ Indochina dreamed of in Western backpacker fantasies — while the second depicts a highly impoverished country in desperate need of foreign aid and technical assistance. Both depictions have some merit. Laos is …