Downward Slope
After decades of rapid growth, the population of China is on the decline.
After decades of rapid growth, the population of China is on the decline.

Donald Trump is leaning heavily on drug-trafficking accusations to justify his recent kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro. But a new congressional report has found that the vast majority of illegal drugs come to the US via Mexico and China, not Venezuela.

The Bundestag has voted to make Germany the country with the highest military budget after the United States and China. For decades, Germany has tightly restricted social spending — but when the money is for weapons, no such limits apply.

Under the guise of boosting US competitiveness with China, Congress is set to grant another round of massive corporate giveaways. The bill even includes $10 billion for Jeff Bezos’s space venture.

China Miéville’s October depicts the transformative hope of revolution.

Their business is attacking China and promoting right-wing political tropes — and business is booming.

How Iraq brought Australia into America’s war machine — just in time for a showdown with China.

For many in the United States, life is bleak — so bleak that some look to China and see an alternative, decently functioning society that doesn’t allow its citizens to fall below a “kill line.”
There remains a fortune to be made at sea — but no longer in Somalia. Modern pirates have turned their attention to the Singapore Strait and the South China Sea.

From Brexit to Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s anti-China policies, elites are offering their own challenges to the free-trade consensus — just as they did during the early 20th century’s pushback against “globalism.”

Taiwan has been subject to the machinations of great powers for much of its history. A better international order would ensure that all nations, big and small, have an equal voice in the global arena.

New revelations show that Jeffrey Epstein’s interests extended far beyond money and sex with underage girls. Epstein used his influence to push aggressive solutions to geopolitical problems, particularly against America’s and Israel’s traditional adversaries.

Trump’s burgeoning trade war is more about asserting US dominance in the world than helping American workers.

World-renowned scholar Walden Bello on the financialization of the Chinese economy, the middle-class roots of far-right movements, and the urgent need for a radical alternative to capitalism's crises.

Both US and Chinese leaders play down the prospects of a new Cold War — but they never sound convincing. Vast shifts in the world economy are driving a new imperialist rivalry, for which a series of regional wars are creating dangerous flash points.
The foreign policy establishment remains confident it can steer the US into a new age of global hegemony.
Taiwan's recent election was a referendum on its past — and a battle for its future.

Germany is in the midst of an industrial job loss wave worse than the one during COVID. The Right blames the green transition, and parts of the Left blame the Ukraine war. But the real cause is the shortsightedness of Germany’s political elite.

Donald Trump is often blamed for the US’s hostility toward the EU, but the roots of the rift run deeper. Europe’s manufacturing-heavy economy and tough regulation of US tech have put it on a collision course with Washington.