Was just about to type that.
Only pro-American free speech will be allowed from here.
'Free speech' with American characteristics
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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Only pro-American free speech will be allowed from here.
'Free speech' with American characteristics
Most of that hostility is just spin from the Indian media station. But bringing up a border issue when there is a situation where both India and China are on the same side is both poor manners and terrible diplomacy.
Indians are delusional and overestimate their own importance. There was no need for China to make this offer of friendship to India. China can get whatever internation cooperation it wants for now from India through Russia.
Not really stealth, it's pretty in your face...
The Stealth Erosion of Dollar Dominance: Active Diversifiers and the Rise of Nontraditional Reserve Currencies
We document a decline in the dollar share of international reserves since the turn of the century. This decline reflects active portfolio diversification by central bank reserve managers; it is not a byproduct of changes in exchange rates and interest rates, of reserve accumulation by a small handful of central banks with large and distinctive balance sheets, or of changes in coverage of surveys of reserve composition. Strikingly, the decline in the dollar’s share has not been accompanied by an increase in the shares of the pound sterling, yen and euro, other long-standing reserve currencies and units that, along with the dollar, have historically comprised the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights. Rather, the shift out of dollars has been in two directions: a quarter into the Chinese renminbi, and three quarters into the currencies of smaller countries that have played a more limited role as reserve currencies.
A characterization of the evolution of the international reserve system in the last 20 years is thus as ongoing movement away from the dollar, a recent if still modest rise in the role of the renminbi, and changes in market liquidity, relative returns and reserve management enhancing the attractions of nontraditional reserve currencies. These observations provide hints of how the international system may evolve going forward.
See link for full report.
The Stealth Erosion of Dollar Dominance: Active Diversifiers and the Rise of Nontraditional Reserve Currencies
We document a decline in the dollar share of international reserves since the turn of the century. This decline reflects active portfolio diversification by central bank reserve managers; it is not a byproduct of changes in exchange rates and interest rates, of reserve accumulation by a small handful of central banks with large and distinctive balance sheets, or of changes in coverage of surveys of reserve composition. Strikingly, the decline in the dollar’s share has not been accompanied by an increase in the shares of the pound sterling, yen and euro, other long-standing reserve currencies and units that, along with the dollar, have historically comprised the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights. Rather, the shift out of dollars has been in two directions: a quarter into the Chinese renminbi, and three quarters into the currencies of smaller countries that have played a more limited role as reserve currencies.
A characterization of the evolution of the international reserve system in the last 20 years is thus as ongoing movement away from the dollar, a recent if still modest rise in the role of the renminbi, and changes in market liquidity, relative returns and reserve management enhancing the attractions of nontraditional reserve currencies. These observations provide hints of how the international system may evolve going forward.
See link for full report.
lmao India got hit in the crossfire yet again!
Chinese Foreign Minister’s Nepal visit puts Himalayan nation in headlights of big power rivalry in South Asia
- Wang Yi is expected to kick-start at least two Belt and Road Initiative projects after Nepal accepted a US$500 million infrastructure grant from Washington
- A 25-member bipartisan US Congressional delegation will visit in mid-April, aiming to show China and India just how serious Washington is about the region
Topic | remains in the headlights of big power rivalry in South Asia with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Kathmandu for talks and a heavyweight US Congressional delegation expected to arrive three weeks later.
Wang’s weekend visit, the last stop on a swing through South Asia, will mark the first high-level engagement between the two countries since the impoverished Himalayan nation last month , defying China’s calls to reject the package.
The lawmakers’ consent to the US deal to modernise roads and build desperately needed high-voltage power lines was seen by foreign-policy watchers as a major rebuff to , whose influence in the politically volatile democracy has grown considerably in recent years.
Even if the Chinese failed to stop the pact’s ratification, they have one consolation. “They’ve been successful at gaslighting anti-American sentiment here, and that sentiment won’t go away quickly,” said Santosh Sharma Poudel, co-founder of the Nepal Institute for Policy Research.
The decision to accept the money offered by the Millennium Corporation Challenge (MCC), a US foreign aid agency set up by Congress in 2004, came a day before America’s take-it-or-leave-it end of February deadline.
Debate over taking the grant, provisionally agreed five years earlier, polarised the country and sparked violent street protests.
Pro-China advocates, including Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known by his guerilla name Prachanda, said the deal jeopardised Nepal’s sovereignty.
But Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, leader of the centre-right Nepali Congress and considered “pro-West,” argued the package did not go against national interests, and was vital for developing its tourism-based economy still reeling from the pandemic.
There was also worry among Prachanda and other pro-China coalition members that Deuba would make a deal with former prime minister K.P. Sharma Oli – who leads the country’s main opposition – to support the bill and that they would lose power.
The face-saving deal-clincher came after Prachanda and other coalition leaders agreed lawmakers could approve the pact provided parliament also ratified an “interpretive declaration” defining Nepal’s understanding of the grant.
The declaration stipulated the funding was solely for development, did not supersede the constitution, could be cancelled if it violated national interests and it did not make Nepal part of any security alliance, including the US-led .
The , Nepal’s largest bilateral donor, said it would “review relations” with the aid-dependent nation and that Nepal could lose bilateral and multilateral help if it spurned the “no-strings-attached” deal. Beijing branded the US warnings as “coercive diplomacy” with the purpose of “targeting China.”
Some foreign policy watchers say Nepal has been tilting more to the US since the grant’s ratification. Kathmandu sided with the West in calling for to pull its troops out of , unlike and China which abstained in votes condemning Moscow’s invasion. Nepal has demanded Russia withdraw all of its military forces from Ukraine.
Hari Banshi Jha, visiting fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think-tank, said Nepal is largely seen as having “toed the line of the West” on the Ukraine issue.
Nepal’s foreign minister Narayan Khadka said the government has not abandoned its long-standing non-aligned policy, and sovereignty and territorial integrity are “sacrosanct” and it is applying that principle to Ukraine.
Poudel noted the Russian attack has raised troubling questions for the strategic buffer state sandwiched between China and India. Beijing often repeats its stance on “sovereignty” and “territorial integrity”, but its response to Russia’s invasion indicates the principles are irrelevant if a larger country is pushed against a wall, Poudel said.
The assimilation of Sikkim in 1975 by India, which has territorial disputes with Nepal, “still evokes insecurity in Nepal,” he added. “Our sovereignty is one of those things we hold dear,” he said.
He added that the visit by a 25-member bipartisan US Congressional delegation in mid-April as the two countries mark the 75th anniversary of bilateral ties will show both China and India just how serious Washington is about the region. “We’ve had lots of high-level Chinese visitors but it’s been a long time since we have had a major senior US leader here,” he added.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a media briefing February 28 the government “noted” the deal’s ratification, adding Beijing has always supported Nepal in “choosing an independent development path.”
But Li Tao, executive deputy director of Sichuan University’s Institute of South Asian Studies, writing in nationalist tabloid Global Times, had harsh words, calling the grant a “Trojan horse” and accused the US of seeking to make Nepal “an important part of Washington and New Delhi’s anti-China coalition.”
The government-owned China Daily went even further, warning Nepal in an editorial of serious consequences if the pact is used against neighbouring China, and said “it is in Nepal’s best interest to stay out of the US’ geopolitical games.”
Beijing had hoped Nepal would follow the lead of Sri Lanka, led by pro-China strongman President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Sri Lanka last year rejected a US$480-million MCC grant, asserting the offer was part of a US plan to use the Indian Ocean island for strategic purposes and could put the country in the cross hairs of a US-China confrontation.
The minister will “want to get a feel of what went wrong with the MCC and with the communist parties,” said Poudel. Above all, with local and national elections due later this year analysts say Beijing is looking for stability in politically fractured Nepal, which is known for its revolving-door governments.
Quoting unnamed Chinese officials, Nepal’s Annapurna Express reported Beijing was “livid” at the failure of the Chinese embassy to avert the deal’s passage. But Nepali Congress spokesman Prakash Sharan Mahat said there was nothing for China to be “worried about” and Wang’s visit was an “opportunity for us to dispel the notion the MCC is against China.”
During his visit, Wang is expected to kick-start China’s (BRI), signed with Nepal in 2017, four months before the government struck the MCC pact. Chinese President visited Nepal in 2019 and ambitiously pledged to boost rail, road and aviation connectivity under the BRI, but no work has begun on any project. The BRI is seen as serving as a counterweight to the MCC grant in Nepal.
Wang is reportedly aiming to make headway on initiating at least two BRI projects. But Nepal officials say a lot of paperwork needs to be completed before work can start. Nepal’s nine shortlisted projects still need Chinese approval and agreeing on financing terms would be another hurdle. “Our priority is to secure grants or soft loans,” Mahat told The Kathmandu Post.
The Chinese are not pressing Nepal to take loans for development projects, the government official said. “They’re asking us to consider our payback capacity and come up with feasible projects.” Chinese loans constitute three per cent of Nepal’s total foreign loan portfolio.
Non paywall source:
China’s national wealth remains vulnerable to Western financial sanctions, no matter what it does
- Sanctions on Moscow show that foreign reserves held by central banks are never truly ‘safe’, which is bound to make Beijing uncomfortable
- •Yet when it comes to shifting away from Western currencies, the alternatives – gold, the yuan and foreign infrastructure investment – struggle to match up
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the West’s against Moscow have been among the most draconian in modern history.
The Russian central bank’s assets are frozen, state-owned banks’ assets have been confiscated and the personal wealth of rich Russians has been seized without much due process.
While this financial war will undoubtedly hurt the Russian economy badly, it will also produce many long-lasting consequences for the global financial system.
To read further: non paywall source:
The US is dead serious in attempting to station their elements and forces right up to China's doorstep, don't they?
Bunch of c0wards.
I don't see why people are up to arms for this.
Its the usual things that the hegemon do to contain a rising power. The US is clearly looking to do a Russia to China
Its up to China to manage this.
Absolutely.