VW will be bought by BYD, said Schularick. He’s wrong about the verb. Moritz Schularick, president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, said Volkswagen would “likely be bought by a Chinese car maker like BYD.” The press amplified it. Headlines ran with “buys” and “takes over.” A few editorial cartoonists went further, drawing … Read more
Giving the CCP’s dialect a total free pass while policing ancestral roots reveals the bizarre logic of defensive policymaking. Mind Your Tongue Giving the CCP’s dialect a total free pass while policing ancestral roots reveals the bizarre logic of defensive policymaking. Singapore’s biggest newspaper says a Teochew film is dangerous. Meanwhile, Mandarin, literally Beijing dialect, … Read more
Lululemon’s China Sales Grew 30%. Then They Put a Japanese War Drum on the Great Wall Lululemon on placed a Japanese taiko drum on a beacon tower of the Great Wall of China. Not a metaphor. This happened on May 30. The company flew in Chinese TV star Zhu Yilong to beat the drum on … Read more
Trump, the Nation Builder: How an Accidental Architect Built the Nation of Engineers As Air Force One touches down in a self-assured Beijing this May 14th, 2026, a curious moniker echoes across the Chinese internet: Chuan Jianguo (川建国)—or “Trump, the Nation Builder”. It is a title born of exquisite geopolitical irony. To the Chinese public, … Read more
It is not outsourcing. How open weight Chinese AI is silently rewriting the US job market. There is a popular narrative that the recent wave of tech layoffs in the US is simply a cycle of overhiring. However, looking closely at the data from API aggregators like OpenRouter tells a much more structural story. I … Read more
Hong Kong, the unexpected winner of the Iran War As missiles rain on the Gulf, something else entirely is skyrocketing in a familiar safe harbour. By Jaime Xiao As Iranian and Israeli missiles illuminate the night skies over the Middle East, the ensuing panic in global energy markets has triggered a ferocious, structurally permanent pivot … Read more
The Mathematical Illusion of “Aiming Higher”: Why China’s Sub-5% Growth is a Structural Certainty The shift from demographic dividend to intelligent capital: Automation is the necessary macroeconomic response to a shrinking workforce. The Economist recently published a critique of the Chinese government’s 2026 Government Work Report, arguing that policymakers are “dangerously rooted in the past” … Read more
The Engine Room of a New Empire: How Hong Kong Financed China’s Motoring Revolution Three years ago, during the Chinese New Year, I stood in a remarkably quiet Hong Kong. The city was only just emerging from the long shadow of pandemic isolation. The streets were subdued, the entrepreneurial hum was muted, and the eerie … Read more
If you want to understand the shifting tectonic plates of the global economy, you could read the latest policy white papers out of Washington, or you could simply look at the photograph of Friedrich Merz in Hangzhou. There stood the German Chancellor—a politician whose brand is practically forged from stern Atlanticist rigour and conservative economic … Read more
Northern lights, dark factories The Prime Minister’s “Dark” Ambition Ford is right: Mark Carney is about to destroy the Canadian auto industry. And the PM plans to rebuild it at the same time. The architect in the shadows. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plan relies on replacing old labour with new code. IN THE UNION halls … Read more