Markets

Overnight, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave the strongest indication yet the country will revise down its economic growth goal to 6.5%. They will have an official target when China releases its highly anticipated 13th five-year plan in March next year,...

The Reserve Bank of Australia has decided to leave the official cash rate unchanged at a record low of 2%, but said there was scope for a rate cut down the line. In a statement on the RBA website, governor...

The long-anticipated abolition of China's one-child policy is a first step in the right direction. However, they can do much more.  In the West, the criticism of the one-child policy is that it is a "cruel Communist strategy." In reality,...

It is a strange world if I can greet with pleasure two reports, which actually shame my own country. However, alas, it is so. In the UK, two excellent examinations of food poverty have been published just as Westminster is...

There has been speculation that Australia’s recent change in prime minister from Tony Abbott to Malcolm Turnbull will mean a shift in Australia’s choice of partners in Asia. The change does not mean that Australia will now ‘choose’ China over...

China’s new development blueprint seeks to realize a moderately prosperous society by 2020. At the recently concluded Fifth Plenum of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee, the “Four Comprehensives” became the grand blueprint for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20)....

China’s latest five-year plan, the details of which were endorsed at last week’s fifth plenum, aims to double the nation’s GDP and per capita income by 2020 (from 2010 numbers). The 2020 deadline is important because it is the final...

EM starts the week on a mixed footing.  Turkey is the star performer from the surprise result of the elections that ended the period of political uncertainty, but there was limited spill over to other EM markets.  Energy prices are...

International scrutiny of Japan’s foreign policy direction and defence policy posture has been particularly intense in recent months. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s 14 August statement on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, and security legislation passed...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreed to on 5 October 2015 covers almost a third of world trade and 40 percent of global GDP. By not being part of the TPP, India risks losing out. According to a Center on Global...

China is scrapping its one-child policy and officially allowing all couples to have two children. While some may think this heralds an overnight switch, the reality is that it is far less dramatic. This is, in fact, merely the latest...

There has been a saying in India of late: ‘India never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity’. This is in stark contrast to the Chinese aphorism that President Xi Jinping referred to while addressing the British parliament in October:...

As China’s growth is decelerating, Chinese purchasing power is accelerating. The next five-year plan will boost the change. Only a few years ago, China still enjoyed double-digit growth. According to third-quarter data, the Chinese economy grew 6.9 percent year-on-year. As...

After much internal wrangling, China’s State Council and Communist Party Central Committee have released new guidelines for reforming state-owned enterprises (SOEs). China’s economic reform is setup to balance less formal state interference with more informal Party influence. To the delight...

The Irish poet WB Yeats was not thinking about Southeast Asia when he wrote ‘things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’, but his words may accurately describe the situation in Malaysia. The monarchy governing the state of Johor is rattling...