Stephen Marks

President Obama has got off to a flying start on his foreign relations commitments; drawing up an order to close Guantanamo, announcing his readiness to talk to Teheran without preconditions, ordering the military to draw up plans for a full withdrawal from Iraq, and contacting Middle East leade

‘A hard landing for emerging-market economies may also be at hand. Among the so-called BRICs, Russia will be in an outright recession in 2009.

China’s increasing African involvement often appears to generate more journalism than scholarship, and its coverage all too often tells us more about Western fears and myths than about Chinese intentions and African needs and priorities.

They were also said to be discussing raising the threshold of personal income tax from 2,000 yuan to 3,000 yuan a month to spur domestic consumption.

It seemed unbelievable. An area of Madagascar half the size of Belgium, and equal to half the country’s cultivable land, would be leased for 99 years to a South Korean company to farm maize and palm oil. And the company, Daewoo Logistics, said it expected to pay nothing for the concession.

China and the world crisis

The impact of the world crisis will be felt for years to come, warned South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel as he reported back from the ‘G20’ meeting of heads of government and finance ministers in Washington.

China’s $570bn expansion package has been welcomed by World Bank President Robert Zoellick, particularly as it was announced in advance of this weekend’s top-level meeting of the G20 group of nations to discuss the gr

‘We wish US president-elect Obama well’ said the official English-language China Daily in a fulsome post-election tribute.

The principle of ‘non-interference’ is often seen, especially in relation to Sudan and Zimbabwe, merely as a cynical cloak for the pursuit of China’s national self-interest regardless of human rights and good governance issues. If so, China would hardly be unique.