Germany showed it still values its economic ties with China despite geopolitical tensions, with the two countries pledging on the weekend to pursue closer financial cooperation, analysts said.

The commitment, made in Frankfurt at the first high-level financial dialogue in four years, also underlined Berlin’s rejection of decoupling, observers said.

There’s been a lot of debate lately over the US strategy of surrounding nations like Russia and China with war machinery in order to deter them from aggressive actions. Some argue that since powerful nations tend to respond aggressively to the amassing of military threats on their borders, this policy actually provokes the very aggressions its proponents claim it prevents.

And to these people I say: hogwash. Only peaceful and harmonious responses can possibly be expected from policies of military encirclement.

China’s property sector has yet to see the worst of the crisis that has cast a pall over the nation’s economy and helped drive an exodus of global funds from the world’s second-largest stock market.

That’s the view from nine of 15 respondents in an informal Bloomberg News survey of analysts and money managers based in Hong Kong and mainland China. Six of them listed housing woes as the biggest risk for equities for the final quarter of 2023, followed by geopolitical tensions.

The Yuan is Coming Out

Pursuant to its responsibilities in the BRICS community as well as its own national goals, it is believed China has taken the position it must finally internationalize its currency more. Until recently, internationalization of the Yuan was a non-starter in China. Yet, as of June 2023, the PBOC began taking public steps to make the Yuan internationally ready.

China’s State Council has released a crucial policy paper titled 'A Global Community of Shared Future: China’s Proposals and Actions' that should be read as a detailed, comprehensive road map for a peaceful, multipolar future.

That is if the hegemon - of course faithful to its configuration as War Inc. - does not drag the world into the abyss of a hybrid-turned-hot war with incandescent consequences.

Journalist and geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar discusses Henry Kissinger's trip to China in July and what it tells us about the failure of the US to win a broader war.

China has spent nine months trying to kickstart the world's second-largest economy after three years of strict COVID lockdowns. 

Despite targeted stimulus measures to boost exports and domestic consumption, growth has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels. Beijing is already forecast to miss its 5% growth target for this year. 

Washington has been sinking billions of dollars into the Ukraine conflict, in the name of defeating and 'weakening' Russia, and yet Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week highlighted China as the real "threat" to the US and the 'liberal world order'. 

A recent article in the Telegraph newspaper in Britain was headlined, “A war-winning missile will knock China out of Taiwan – fast”. Written by David Axe, who contributes regularly to the outlet, he detailed a war game last year that was organised by the US think-tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

On Tuesday, China’s government released a new white paper titled “A Global Community of Shared Future: China's Proposals and Actions.” The paper made an appeal to human unity, arguing that humanity faces common challenges to its survival and future, and therefore must unite and cooperate.