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Ananta Agarwal
Intern
Ananta Agarwal previoulsy joined the Post as an intern in June 2022. She is a journalism student at The University of Hong Kong. Her work has also appeared on NBC News, AFP Fact Check and FairPlanet.
A free-trade deal with Ecuador would be China’s fourth with a Latin American country, after signing agreements with Chile, Costa Rica and Peru. Some US senators are worried about China’s presence in the region.
India is set to announce a new subsidy for local toymakers, an industry body says, further shrinking the share China – the world’s largest toy manufacturer – commands in the domestic market.
Indian traders have begun importing products from China weeks in advance amid lingering concern that authorities will continue with snap lockdowns to contain Covid-19 outbreaks, which may hit production of key inputs.
Report shows China held 19.6 per cent of Sri Lanka’s US$37.6 billion external debt at the end of 2021, but downplayed suggestions of a so-called Chinese debt trap around Beijing’s signature Belt and Road Initiative.
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Canberra has ratified the Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, which looks to take effect in the coming weeks as ‘probably the most comprehensive agreement that India has entered into’.
India is emerging as a viable alternative production base to China, but if it wants to capitalise on Western diversification efforts it must address a raft of challenges, ranging from red tape to skills shortages.
A US-led ban on Xinjiang cotton, Beijing’s zero-Covid restrictions, and supply-chain delays helped drive down China’s cotton-yarn imports during the year’s first three quarters.
A large trade deficit with China has Pakistan looking to address structural barriers that are preventing it from fully capitalising on China’s need for agricultural goods such as rice and other staple foods.
Bangladesh hopes the river restoration will stabilise water flows for farming areas, but environmental concerns, questions about who benefits from development and potential objections from India still cloud the project.
India is attempting strategic decoupling from China, while trying to boost local manufacturing and capitalise on global investors’ efforts to diversify from its neighbour. Things aren’t working as planned, trade data shows.
Seeking to diversify its forex holdings away from the strengthening US dollar, Bangladesh Bank is now letting local financial institutions settle trade deals with China in the yuan.
Overseas students enrolled at universities in China have been forced to study online for over three years due to the coronavirus, but even as some travel restrictions are eased, they still face complicated and expensive journeys to resume their studies.
Geopolitical tension between India and China, a multibillion dollar price tag and terrain spanning some of the highest mountains in the world are just some of the challenges facing the proposed railway between Tibet and Kathmandu.
Drought in China, low rainfall in India and massive monsoon floods in Pakistan are threatening global rice supplies, risking shortages for more than 2 billion people in Asia that depend on it as a staple food.
China’s border restrictions have contributed to a sharp decline in Nepalese exports to the world’s No 2 economy, left merchants unable to receive orders and turned some border towns into ‘dead’ zones.
New figures show that dozens of funding applications have been approved in India to bolster the production of crucial drug components – many of which have come almost exclusively from China for years.
Around 20,000 Indian students are enrolled in Chinese universities, with the vast majority studying medicine, but they face an anxious wait to find out when they can return.
Growing demand for polysilicon made outside China could help spur the development of India’s solar manufacturing industry, experts say, but the country faces numerous challenges to boost domestic production capacity.
US’ boycott of Xinjiang cotton looks to reshape the global textile supply chain by isolating China, but suppliers in places such as Vietnam and Bangladesh could face setbacks as they shift away from such a major source of cotton.
Poised to overtake China next year as the world’s biggest country, India is facing an economic emergency as its rising unemployment leaves more than half of the population jobless.
Firms in the US paid over US$32 billion in Trump-era import tariffs for Chinese technology products from the start of the trade war in 2018 until the end of 2021, stalling growth in production and employment, according to a report.
US firms in mainland China have reported small improvements in supply chain logistics and business recovery, a new survey shows, but Covid-related policymaking still lacks consistency and predictability.
If China makes trade concessions to US in the face of strong domestic opposition, it ‘would risk a potentially destabilising domestic backlash’, according to a PIIE study that cites ‘worrying implications’ for open trade.
China’s exports to India grew to US$27.1 billion in the first quarter of 2022, but India is concerned by its ballooning trade deficit with its neighbour amid strained ties two years after the deadly Galwan Valley clash.
The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) four-day 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) starts on Sunday in Geneva having been already postponed twice due to the coronavirus.
