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Silk Road Redux: China’s Strategic Leap into the South Caucasus

Less than a year after signing a strategic partnership with Azerbaijan in 2024, China and Azerbaijan elevated their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership during Azerbaijani president’s recent state visit to Beijing. The move goes far beyond simple ceremonial diplomacy—it's a deliberate reinforcement of China's ...

Developing Nations Slam ‘Paltry’ $300 Billion Climate Deal

By Nick Perry, Laurent Thomet and Shaun Tandon The world approved a bitterly negotiated climate deal Sunday, but poorer nations most at the mercy of worsening disasters dismissed a $300 billion a year pledge from wealthy historic polluters as insultingly low. ...

China Says COP29 Draft Deal ‘Not Satisfactory’

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To Speed Up Coal Plant Retirement, Policymakers Need to Better Understand the Costs and Benefits

By Rishikesh Ram Bhandary and Kevin P. Gallagher Coal-fired power plants will have to be rapidly phased down to meet the Paris Agreement targets and avoid the catastrophic costs of inaction on climate change. At ...

China Champions ‘Small and Beautiful’ Projects in Africa, Rejects Debt Talks at COP29

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Analysis from Cobus van Staden

Revealing Reactions to China’s Festival of Optics

In terms of geopolitical optics, this week was nothing short of a banquet. It served up at least two sets of images that seem to crystallize our historical moment and that will live on in the Wikipedia of history as shorthand for where the world was in 2025.
One is the waves of uncannily synchronized soldiers and a bewildering array of high-tech weaponry gliding down Beijing’s Chang’an Avenue. The ...