Asia

How Biden Can Defeat China

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In 1930, John Dos Passos wrote that America is many things: it is a “slice of a continent”, “the world’s greatest river valley”, and “a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bank accounts”. “But mostly,” he wrote in The 42nd Parallel, America “is the speech of the people”.  read more »

Western Greed Fuels China's Domination

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There is a hypocrisy at the heart of the West’s attitude to China: although we’re constantly warned about the threat from Beijing, our political and corporate elites seem intent on making this century a Chinese one. Unlike in the Thirties, this appeasement isn’t driven by fear and ignorance; it is motivated largely by greed.  read more »

Confronting the Supply Chain Crisis

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For a generation, the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors in California handled more than 40 percent of all container cargo headed into the US and epitomized the power of a globalizing economy.  read more »

China's Red Lines: A Failure of Central Planning

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Evergrande, China's second-largest property developer, has said that it might not make interest payments on its bonds this week.  read more »

Weird Building & Supertall Skyscraper Ban in China

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The skyscraper is an American invention. During the first 75 years of their existence, skyscrapers were concentrated in a small area south of 59th Street in Manhattan --- in 1962, only one of the world’s 10 tallest skyscrapers was outside that area (Cleveland’s Terminal Tower). It was not until 1975 that a non-US skyscraper entered the top ten (First Canadian Place in Toronto).  read more »

Powering Down the Developing World

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The Covid-19 pandemic has been particularly cruel to the developing world, with Africa, Latin America, and South Asia all epicenters of high fatalities. But something worse may be on the way – this time not from viruses but good intentions, bolstered by often-unrealistic climate projections, which threaten to keep these countries in poverty for the foreseeable future.  read more »

Greater Manila 2020: The Evolving Urban Form

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In 2021, the Manila built up urban area is estimated to have a population of 24.0 million, making it the fourth largest urban area in the world, according to Demographia World Urban Areas, covering 873 square kilometers and with a population density of 12,801 per square kilometer (33,135 per square mile). Only Tokyo, Jakarta and Delhi have larger populations. By comparison, the 2021 population of the New York urban area is 20.9 million.  read more »

America the Indispensable

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God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.

~Otto von Bismarck  read more »

How America Abandoned the World—and Our Own Inner Cities

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In America and across the globe, COVID-19 is diminishing people’s prospects, exacerbating inequality and creating ever-more feudal societies as the pandemic ravages the health and the pocketbooks of the poor and the poorly educated.  read more »

Focusing on World Megacities: Demographia World Urban Areas, 2021

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The 2021 edition of Demographia World Urban Areas includes current population estimates for the 985 identified built-up urban areas (Note 1 describes the background and methodology) with at least 500,000 population.This is a smaller number than last year, due to a methodology that rendered somewhat lower populations for some urban areas.  read more »