ICS Analysis

Prior to the adoption of the Foreign Investment Law 中华人民共和国外商投资法 (FIL) by the 13th National People's Congress on March 15, 2019, China had three diffferent laws regulating inward foreign investments. This first, brief note in a series of articles related to the new FIL, will layout the historical background of these three legal regimes that have governed foreign-invested enterprises since China's opening up to foreign investment in 1979.

China has been experimenting with a 'social credit' system which would be rolled out fully by 2020.

The recent developments of Chinese start-ups and technology companies have become possible because of the unique character of Chinese society and largely because of the innovative approach of the Chinese companies.

China has been criticised about its nuclear modernisation a great deal in recent years. With the landmark New START's future looking increasingly dubious, this paper examines the possibility of a multilateral arms limitation treaty involving China in the future.

The idea, purpose, concept and the agenda of the BRI mutates and takes on many forms depending on who is describing it. Opaque structures, institutions shrouded in secrecy and questionable data sets are familiar challenges while studying China’s layers. This lack of clarity spills into literature and conversations surrounding the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as well.

The first half of the 20th century unleashed a trend that saw Bengali personalities venturing beyond their enclosed boundary spaces. It all began with Vivekananda’s travels to East and South-East Asia on his way to the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago in 1893 as a Hindu representative from India.1 This trend continued with Tagore’s several consecutive travels to Europe and East and South East Asia

The Korean Peninsula makes for riveting theatre. Thus, the drama and suspense around the second US-North Korea summit in Hanoi on 27-28 February 2019, that ended abruptly, was true to form. The landmark event had generated sizeable expectations of forward movement.

The announcement on 19 May 2015 designed to transform China from a manufacturing giant into a world manufacturing power was made at a time when the US was distracted internally by the Presidential elections. This plan is to be followed by another two plans in order to transform China into a leading manufacturing power by 2049.

This analysis places the recent developments in health policy in India and China in the context of the departure from the principles and design that informed the Primary Health Care (PHC) approach in 1978.

We survived the technology denial regime of the seventies and eighties and the global competition following the economic liberalization of the 90’s. Clearly we have been moving ahead but the question which we keep on asking ourselves is that at the rate at which China is moving in the science and technology led growth and the rate at which India is moving in the same path, can India survive Chinese competition in the coming years?

The world today is between orders. The so-called “rule-based liberal international order” — which was neither liberal nor particularly orderly for most of us — is no longer attractive to those who created and managed the order from WWII until the 2008 global economic crisis.

The author has attempted to shed light on the risks, hopes and unanswered questions about the current state of Vatican-China Relations.