China's Vision to Reshape the WORLD

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Xi Jinping has a plan for how the world should work, and one year into his norm-shattering third term as Chinese leader, he’s escalating his push to challenge America’s global leadership — and put his vision front and center.

That bid was in the spotlight like never before last month in Beijing, when Xi, flanked by Russian President Vladimir Putin, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, and some two dozen top dignitaries from around the world, hailed China as the only country capable of navigating the challenges of the 21st century.  READ MORE...

The IMF Predicts for 2023

The International Monetary Fund predicts global growth will slow to 2.7% next year, 0.2 percentage point lower than its July forecast, and anticipates 2023 will feel like a recession for millions around the world.

Aside from the global financial crisis and the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, this is “the weakest growth profile since 2001,” the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook published Tuesday. Its GDP estimate for this year remained steady at 3.2%, which was down from the 6% seen in 2021.

“The worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession,” the report said, echoing warnings from the United Nations, the World Bank and many global CEOs.

More than a third of the global economy will see two consecutive quarters of negative growth, while the three largest economies — the United States, the European Union and China — will continue to slow, the report said.

“Next year is going to feel painful,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s chief economist, told CNBC on Tuesday on the back of the report. “There’s going to be a lot of slowdown and economic pain,” he said.  READ MORE...

Self-Determination Shaped the Modern World

Fifty independent countries existed in 1920. Today, there are nearly two hundred. One of the motivating forces behind this wave of country-creation was self-determination—the concept that nations (groups of people united by ethnicity, language, geography, history, or other common characteristics) should be able to determine their political future.

In the early twentieth century, a handful of European empires ruled the majority of the world. However, colonized nations across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and elsewhere argued that they deserved the right to determine their political future. Their calls for self-determination became rallying cries for independence.

Ultimately, the breakup of these empires throughout the twentieth century—a process known as decolonization—resulted in an explosion of new countries, creating the world map largely as we recognize it today.

But now that the age of empires is over, is that map set in stone? Not quite. Self-determination continues to play a role in deciding borders, but the landscape is more complicated.

Many people around the world argue that their governments—many of which emerged during decolonization—do not in reality represent the entire country’s population. The borders of colonies seldom had anything to do with any national (or economic or internal political) criteria. So when decolonization occurred, many of the newly created countries were artificial and thus rife with internal division.

However, for a group inside a country to achieve self-determination today, that country’s sovereignty—the principle that guarantees countries get to control what happens within their borders and prohibits them from meddling in another country’s domestic affairs—will be violated. In other words, creating a country through self-determination inherently means taking territory and people away from a country that already exists.

Whereas many world leaders openly called for the breakup of empires, few are willing to endorse the breakup of modern countries. Indeed, the United Nations’ founding charter explicitly discourages it. And the fact that so many modern countries face internal divisions means few governments are eager to embrace the creation of new countries abroad, fearing that doing so could set a precedent that leads to the unraveling of their own borders.

A road to self-determination still remains, but it is far trickier in a world in which empires no longer control colonies oceans away.  READ MORE...

Ending Global Poverty

Poverty entails more than the lack of income and productive resources to ensure sustainable livelihoods. Its manifestations include hunger and malnutrition, limited access to education and other basic services, social discrimination and exclusion, as well as the lack of participation in decision-making. In 2015, more than 736 million people lived below the international poverty line. 

Around 10 per cent of the world population (pre-pandemic) was living in extreme poverty and struggling to fulfil the most basic needs like health, education, and access to water and sanitation, to name a few. There were 122 women aged 25 to 34 living in poverty for every 100 men of the same age group, and more than 160 million children were at risk of continuing to live in extreme poverty by 2030.

Poverty facts and figures

• According to the most recent estimates, in 2015, 10 percent of the world’s population or 734 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day.
• Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are expected to see the largest increases in extreme poverty, with an additional 32 million and 26 million people, respectively, living below the international poverty line as a result of the pandemic.
• The share of the world’s workers living in extreme poverty fell by half over the last decade: from 14.3 per cent in 2010 to 7.1 per cent in 2019.
• Even before COVID-19, baseline projections suggested that 6 per cent of the global population would still be living in extreme poverty in 2030, missing the target of ending poverty. The fallout from the pandemic threatens to push over 70 million people into extreme poverty.
• One out of five children live in extreme poverty, and the negative effects of poverty and deprivation in the early years have ramifications that can last a lifetime.
• In 2016, 55 per cent of the world’s population – about 4 billion people – did not benefit from any form of social protection.

Poverty and the Sustainable Development Goals

Ending poverty in all its forms is the first of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The SDGs’ main reference to combatting poverty is made in target 1.A: “Ensure significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced development cooperation, in order to provide adequate and predictable means for developing countries, in particular least developed countries, to implement programmes and policies to end poverty in all its dimensions.”

The SDGs also aim to create sound policy frameworks at national and regional levels, based on pro-poor and gender-sensitive development strategies to ensure that by 2030 all men and women have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology and financial services, including microfinance.  READ MORE...

Global Hunger

UNITED NATIONS — The spike in food, fuel and fertilizer prices sparked by the war in Ukraine is threatening to push countries around the world into famine, bringing "global destabilization, starvation and mass migration on an unprecedented scale," a top U.N. official warned Wednesday.

David Beasley, head of the U.N. World Food Program, said its latest analysis shows that "a record 345 million acutely hungry people are marching to the brink of starvation" — a 25% increase from 276 million at the start of 2022 before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. The number stood at 135 million before the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.

"There's a real danger it will climb even higher in the months ahead," he said. "Even more worrying is that when this group is broken down, a staggering 50 million people in 45 countries are just one step away from famine."

Beasley spoke at a high-level U.N. meeting for the release of the latest report on global hunger by the World Food Program and four other U.N. agencies that paints a grim picture.

The report, "The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World," says world hunger rose in 2021, with around 2.3 billion people facing moderate or severe difficulty obtaining enough to eat. The number facing severe food insecurity increased to about 924 million.

The prevalence of "undernourishment" — when food consumption is insufficient to maintain an active and healthy life — is used to measure hunger, and it continued to rise in 2021. The report estimates that between 702 million and 828 million people faced hunger last year.  READ MORE...

DNA Analysis of Micronesians

Micronesia is defined as a country and has been a much-ballyhooed friend in need for Israel at the United Nations. It actually consists of roughly 2,000 small islands spread over a vast region in the Pacific. 

Micronesia should not to be confused with the neighboring nations of Polynesia or Melanesia, which also consist of small islands in the Pacific. Now, a new study casts light on the origin of early Micronesians and it is more complicated than had been assumed.

It had been thought that Micronesians shared origins with southwest Pacific peoples, and that Micronesians likely stemmed from a single origin. 

Now, analysis of ancient and modern Micronesian DNA has detected five separate waves of migration to Micronesia in antiquity: three streams from eastern Asia, one from Polynesia, and one of people related to mainland Papua New Guineans, Yue-Chen Liu and David Reich of Harvard Medical School reported with colleagues last week in Science.

The three streams of “first remote Oceanian” migration into Micronesia included a previously unknown lineage, the team adds.

The study is based on genomic analysis of 164 people who lived 2,800 to 500 years ago at five sites around Micronesia, and 112 genomes of present-day people from the same areas.  READ MORE...

China Could Easily Invade Taiwan

The invasion of Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), has been considered by Chinese military planners for decades but only under President Xi Jinping have observers worried this might be increasingly likely.

Taiwan, formerly the island of Formosa, was the last bastion that held out against Mao Zedong’s victorious Communist army after elements of the defeated nationalist Kuomintang military retreated to the eastern island in 1949.

Threats of military action against the self-ruled island have escalated during times when some Taiwanese political parties have debated whether to declare independence. Taiwan has had no seat at the United Nations for 50 years.

President Xi’s rise, with his focus on centralised control and a new, professionally-run, modern military, has set off alarm bells around the world.

This, combined with explicit rhetoric from China’s president that “Taiwanese independence separatism” was “the most serious hidden danger to national rejuvenation” has refocused global attention on the possibility of China using force to take the island. The aggressive patrolling and overflights of Taiwanese airspace by aircraft from the Chinese air force have added a sense of urgency that this could very well happen in the near future.

But how difficult would it be for China to successfully invade Taiwan?  READ MORE...

Self Determination

Fifty independent countries existed in 1920. Today, there are nearly two hundred. One of the motivating forces behind this wave of country-creation was self-determination—the concept that nations (groups of people united by ethnicity, language, geography, history, or other common characteristics) should be able to determine their political future.

In the early twentieth century, a handful of European empires ruled the majority of the world. However, colonized nations across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and elsewhere argued that they deserved the right to determine their political future. Their calls for self-determination became rallying cries for independence.

Ultimately, the breakup of these empires throughout the twentieth century—a process known as decolonization—resulted in an explosion of new countries, creating the world map largely as we recognize it today.

But now that the age of empires is over, is that map set in stone? Not quite. Self-determination continues to play a role in deciding borders, but the landscape is more complicated.

Many people around the world argue that their governments—many of which emerged during decolonization—do not in reality represent the entire country’s population. The borders of colonies seldom had anything to do with any national (or economic or internal political) criteria. So when decolonization occurred, many of the newly created countries were artificial and thus rife with internal division.

However, for a group inside a country to achieve self-determination today, that country’s sovereignity... the principle that guarantees countries get to control what happens within their borders and prohibits them from meddling in another country’s domestic affairs—will be violated. In other words, creating a country through self-determination inherently means taking territory and people away from a country that already exists.

Whereas many world leaders openly called for the breakup of empires, few are willing to endorse the breakup of modern countries. Indeed, the United Nations’ founding charter explicitly discourages it. And the fact that so many modern countries face internal divisions means few governments are eager to embrace the creation of new countries abroad, fearing that doing so could set a precedent that leads to the unraveling of their own borders.

A road to self-determination still remains, but it is far trickier in a world in which empires no longer control colonies oceans away.

North Korea's Counterproductive Actions

UNITED NATIONS – U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemns North Korea’s launch of possible an intermediate-range ballistic missile on Sunday and urges Pyongyang “to desist from taking any further counter-productive actions,” a U.N. spokesman said on Tuesday.

“This is a breaking of the DPRK‘s announced moratorium in 2018 on launches of this nature, and a clear violation of Security Council resolutions. It is of great concern that the DPRK has again disregarded any consideration for international flight or maritime safety,” deputy U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said in a statement.

North Korea’s formal name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

SEOUL — North Korea on Sunday carried out its boldest ballistic missile test in years, raising the stakes in a flurry of launches that analysts said were meant to put pressure on President Biden.

The missile was launched at 7:52 a.m. from the North Korean province of Jagang, which borders China, and flew across the North before falling into the sea off the country’s east coast, the South Korean military said. It was the North’s seventh missile test this month.

The office of South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, called the projectile an intermediate-range ballistic missile and condemned the test as a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions. On Monday, North Korea confirmed that the projectile was the Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile. Flight data suggested it was the North’s most powerful launch since November 2017, when it tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that flew much higher.

Mr. Moon warned that North Korea could soon end the self-imposed moratorium on long-range ballistic missile and nuclear tests that its leader, Kim Jong-un, announced in 2018. Last ​week, Mr. Kim ​suggested that his government might resume such tests.  READ MORE...