China

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – China has just inaugurated its first military base abroad, in the tiny Red Sea country of Djibouti. Beijing has a long way to go to catch up with the United States, which is estimated to have some 800 military bases around the world. In fact, you […]

China

Don’t worry, Trump: Chinese firm provides U.S. coal miners w/ wind energy jobs

contributors

CGTN | (Video News Report) | – – “For years, coal and oil and gas have been Wyoming’s bedrock. 40% of U.S. coal is still produced in the state but the industry is in decline. 1,000 coal jobs have been lost here in the past few years. But now, wind energy is making its presence […]

China

100% Green Energy is Possible & a Chinese Province Just Proved It

contributors

TeleSur | – – New clean schemes push the nation further forward as a leader in search for alternative technologies. Demonstrating that renewables are a viable option for the future, China’s Qinghai Province [, pop. 5.2 mn.] last week ran for seven consecutive days entirely on clean energy. From June 17 to June 23, Qinghai […]

Asia

Apocalypse Soon: Does Trump Downgrade of Diplomacy in Koreas threaten us All?

contributors

By Rajan Menon | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – Defense Secretary James Mattis remarked recently that a war with North Korea would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale.” No kidding. “Tragic” doesn’t even begin to describe the horrors that would flow from such a conflict. The Korean peninsula, all 85,270 square miles of it, is […]

China

Trump, Paris Accords and the End of the American Century

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – As Trump seems likely to pull out of the Paris Climate accord, he will be creating several kinds of leadership vacuum. One is a vacuum of global political leadership. Another is a vacuum of corporate and technological leadership. In short, renouncing American commitments on Climate is […]

China

Is China Now the Adult in the Room? Xi and Macron Consult

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald Trump preferred the Neofascist Marine Le Pen as president of France, who wanted to pull out of NATO and the European Union. Trump’s own Environmental Protection Agency advisers are resigned because of his attack on the science of climate change. Trump is mulling pulling out […]

China

China’s covering a Football field with Solar Panels Every Hour in Quest to End Coal

contributors

By Janet Xuanli Liao | (The Conversation) | – – China’s remarkable growth over the past three decades has elevated it to global superpower status. But its economic miracle has also attracted attention for the wrong reasons: the country is now the world’s largest energy consumer, oil importer, and CO₂ emitter. It led to the […]

China

Sorry, Trump: China is Leading World toward first “Ecological Civilization”

contributors

David Tyfield | (The Conversation) | – – The Trump administration’s hostility towards climate action and research leaves a void in global climate politics. Could China step up? The world’s largest absolute emitter could certainly use US inaction as an excuse to backslide on its promises of greenery. But China could instead see this as […]

Africa

Does Trump’s slashed Foreign Aid Budget give China the Advantage?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The US foreign aid budget is not mainly about helping the poor. It is an instrument for buying influence in countries important to the US. The poorest countries in the world do not get much help from the US. Israel, which is a wealthy country, gets […]