The yen has moved wildly in holiday-thinned market conditions in Japan, falling to a thirty-four-year low of ¥/$ 160.17 on April 29 before correcting to ¥/$ 156.15 owing to rumors of interventions by the Bank of Japan (BOJ). BOJ officials refused to confirm the rumors of intervention but had expressed concerns about the negative economic impacts of the yen’s recent […]

Oil revenue is a lifeline for the Iranian and Russian economies, but Western sanctions have jeopardized both countries’ ability to ship oil and receive payments. In response, Iran and Russia have redirected oil shipments to China—the world’s largest importer of crude oil. In 2023, China saved a reported ten billion dollars by purchasing crude oil from sanctioned countries such as […]

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visited Pakistan for three days starting April 22, 2024. The trip came after the relations between Iran and Pakistan worsened following Iran’s missile and drone attacks on Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, allegedly targeting terror hideouts, on January 16, 2024. Two days later, Pakistan launched retaliatory strikes on Iran. Ebrahim Raisi was given a grand welcome in the […]

In an April 23, 2024 Dari-language statement, the Jamiat-e-Islami party of Afghanistan, agreeing with the U.S. State Department report on human rights abuses, condemned the Afghan Taliban rulers for rights violations in Afghanistan. Jamiat-e-Islami is led by Salahuddin Rabbani, the former Afghan foreign minister and son of Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was president of the country from 1992 to 1996. The […]

Was Xi Jinping’s first trip to Europe in five years a success? It certainly appeared that Xi’s visits to France, Serbia and Hungary, which had both a trade and a political agenda, were successful for the Chinese leader. Can we say the same for France, the EU or Europe? Well, there is not a straight or single answer. And this […]

Pakistan’s military on Tuesday said a suicide bombing that killed five Chinese engineers and a Pakistani driver in March was planned in neighboring Afghanistan and that the bomber was an Afghan citizen. At a news conference, army spokesman Maj. Gen. Ahmad Sharif said four men behind the March 26 attack in Bisham, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, had been […]

The Taliban on Wednesday rejected claims of Afghan involvement in recent attacks in Pakistan, calling it “irresponsible and far from the reality.” Pakistan’s military said Tuesday a suicide bombing that killed five Chinese engineers and a Pakistani driver in March was planned in neighboring Afghanistan and that the bomber was an Afghan citizen. Maj. Gen. Ahmad Sharif, a spokesman for […]

And How It Will Reshape World Politics In the decades immediately ahead, East Asia will experience perhaps the modern world’s most dramatic demographic shift. All of the region’s main states—China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—are about to enter into an era of depopulation, in which they will age dramatically and lose millions of people. According to projections from the Population […]

The timing of President Xi Jinping’s visit to Belgrade yesterday was far from accidental: exactly 25 years before, Nato forces bombed the city’s Chinese embassy during Operation Allied Force, the two-and-half month campaign against what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Given the Nato campaign was justified by the need to halt what was described as a Serbian “genocide” […]

Transportation corridors across Eurasia are not new. China announced the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, and the project has been described as the New Silk Road. Moreover, when the war in Ukraine commenced, the Trans Caspian International Route, or Middle Corridor, quickly gained prominence to decrease reliance on Russian territory to transport goods and commodities from […]