Showing posts with label Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Africa. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

BRI - Belt & Road Initiative

23-9-22 Xina’s New BRI $6B Railway in Laos: Massive Debt Trap | WSJ > .23-1-18 Middle Corridor - Inland Silk Road - Caspian > .
21-12-23 Can Australia help to Stop China? (JB's latest move) - VisPol > . skip ad > .
BRI - Chinese Imperialism - Rap >> .
Indo-Pacific Security & Threats - Γαῖα >> .

Geoff Raby interview > .
00:00 - Introduction
04:01 - Chit Chat
05:37 - How Has Your Idea Of China Changed Over The Years?
09:31 - Romatisicing The Early Days As A Diplomat In China?
14:11 - How Has Australia's Relationship With China Changed?
19:36 - Underlying Incentives For BRI (Belt & Road Initiative)
22:32 - What Do You Think Made Bob Hawke So Succesful In China?
27:51 - Geoff Experience With SEZ (Special Economic Zones) Of China.
35:31 - China Managing Their Middle Income Trap.
41:01 - How Do You Manage The Competing Interests Of What You Think Is Right Versus The Australian Politics Of The Day.
43:29 - Geoff Operating As Australia's Ambassador To China.
46:21 - Australian Soft Power.
54:13 - What Would You Have Had Scott Morrison Do?
55:41 - Australia's Dystopian Future.
1:06:12 - An Australian Foreign Policy Based In Realism.
1:10:33 - Security In The South China Sea.
1:16:26 - Geoff Addressing The Uigher Humanitarian Disaster In China.
1:27:51 - How Much Is Hong Kong Foreshadowing For Taiwan?
1:31:51 - What Country Are You Most Bullish On?
1:32:29 - What Two People Would You Witness A Conversation Between?

BRI - Belt & Road Initiative ..

21-7-27 China stocks see biggest slump in US since 2008 financial crisis: The Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index, which follows the 98 biggest US-listed Chinese stocks, has fallen by almost 15% in the last two trading sessions. The index has now plummeted by more than 45% since hitting a record high in February.

The slump comes after a series of crackdowns by Beijing on its technology and education industries. This has led to around $770bn (£556bn) being wiped off the value of US-listed Chinese stocks in the last five months alone.

State-owned enterprises of China w
China has over 150,000 State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), an incredible number when compared against the handful most major economies possess. With 91 Chinese state companies being included in the World’s Top Fortune 500. That’s almost 1 in 5. Here’s why? First, China’s history as a planned economy has meant the CCP has, since 1949, played a central role. Second, the government views SOEs as an integral part of it’s ambitious mega projects, given their scale and strong government links. Being involved in 1,000s of projects, for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) alone. Today they account for some 40% of China’s total Stock Market by value. Third, SOEs are relied upon to get the economy moving. Making up some 25% of the economy, they played a fundamental role in why China avoided recession in 2020.

China Railway Construction Corporation Limited (abbreviated CRCC) is a listed construction enterprise based in Beijing, China, that was the second largest construction and engineering company in the world by revenue in 2014. The limited company was incorporated in 2007 in order to float the assets of China Railway Construction Corporation [Group] (CRCCG, or the holding company) in Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchange. CRCCG retained some assets which was deemed not suitable to float in the stock exchange.

CRCCG is under the supervision of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council. Since February 2008, A shares and H shares of CRCC are listing on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges.

The financial report of the parent company (holding company) is not disclosed. As both parent and subsidiary share almost the same English name, one without the word "Limited" (they have different names in Chinese), the business activities of the holding company was often incorrectly mixed up with the publicly floated limited liability subsidiary by the media.

China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation Ltd. (abbreviation CCECC) was established in June 1979 under the approval of the State Council of the People's Republic of China.

It performs international contracting and economic cooperation, CCECC has been developed from the earlier Foreign Aid Department of the Ministry of Railways (with the experience of executing the biggest foreign-aid project of China, the TAZARA) into a large-scale state-owned enterprise for project contracting.

Its business scope expands from international contracting for railway construction to civil engineering design & consultancy, real estate development, trading, industrial investment and hotel management as well. The business activities of CCECC have expanded to over 40 countries and regions where more than 20 overseas offices or subsidiaries have been established. With its excellent performance and high quality in services, CCECC has been listed among the world's top 255 international contractors for many years and ranked consecutively among the first 70 in recent years by the Engineering News Record "ENR".

China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), a subsidiary of Fortune Global 500 company China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), focuses on global civil engineering and construction projects such as highways, railways, bridges, ports, and tunnels. Growing out of the Foreign Aid Office of the Ministry of Communications of China, CRBC and its predecessors have been executing projects since 1958. In 1979, CRBC was formally established and entered the international contracting market. The parent entity, CCCC, was formed through the combination of CRBC and China Harbour Engineering Co Ltd (CHEC) in 2005.

CRBC is among the largest engineering and construction firms globally, and operates from more than 50 branches and offices throughout Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. CRBC has played a key role in the design and construction of both greenfield and brownfield infrastructure projects in developing countries, especially those located in Africa where it is a market leader. The company has full EPC capabilities, and actively pursues P3 projects, often acting as concessionaire. The company's motto is: "Build roads and bridges, make contributions to society, put employees first, and strive for excellence."

In addition to the design and construction of infrastructure, CRBC is engaged in infrastructure equity investment; real estate development and management; and industrial park equity investment and development.



BRI Africa

Saturday, July 24, 2021

ECE - Economic Corridors - Europe


Geostrategic Projection

Into Europe: The Blue Banana is Europe's first economic corridor. As well as being home to Europe's main financial and political centres, it was the first place where economic integration took place in the European single market. Now other economic corridors are emerging outside of the bloc and the European Union is financing infrastructure Giga-Projects as part of the Trans-European Transport Network. They to connect the economies of its different member states. These economic corridors are connecting Europe together, providing new opportunities for European and International Trade, particularly with Africa.

The Blue Banana (also known as the European Megalopolis or the Liverpool–Milan Axis) is a discontinuous corridor of urbanization spreading over Western and Central Europe, with a population of around 111 million. The concept was developed in 1989 by RECLUS, a group of French geographers managed by Roger Brunet.

It stretches approximately from North Wales through the English Midlands across Greater London to the European Metropolis of Lille, the Benelux states and along the German Rhineland, Southern Germany, Alsace-Moselle in France in the west and Switzerland (Basel and Zürich) to Northern Italy (Milan and Turin) in the south.

The Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) is a planned network of roads, railways, airports and water infrastructure in the European Union. The TEN-T network is part of a wider system of Trans-European Networks (TENs), including a telecommunications network (eTEN) and a proposed energy network (TEN-E or Ten-Energy). The European Commission adopted the first action plans on trans-European networks in 1990.

TEN-T envisages coordinated improvements to primary roads, railways, inland waterways, airports, seaports, inland ports and traffic management systems, providing integrated and intermodal long-distance, high-speed routes. A decision to adopt TEN-T was made by the European Parliament and Council in July 1996.[2] The EU works to promote the networks by a combination of leadership, coordination, issuance of guidelines and funding aspects of development.

These projects are technically and financially managed by the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA), which superseded the Trans-European Transport Network Executive Agency Agency (TEN-T EA) on 31 December 2013. The tenth and newest project, the Strasbourg-Danube Corridor, was announced for the 2014–2020 financial period.

In addition to the various TENs, there are ten Pan-European corridors, which are paths between major urban centres and ports, mainly in Eastern Europe, that have been identified as requiring major investment.

The international E-road network is a naming system for major roads in Europe managed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. It numbers roads with a designation beginning with "E" (such as "E1").

https://community.jmp.com/t5/Scott-Wi...
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https://www.kas.de/documents/282499/2...
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/press...
https://tunnelingonline.com/megaproje...
https://chinadialogue.net/en/transpor...
https://ec.europa.eu/transport/infras...
https://www.dw.com/en/building-africa...
https://www.eib.org/en/essays/the-sto...
https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/...
https://www.portseurope.com/constanta...

Energy Geopolitics Eastern Mediterranean


Turkey’s Mediterranean policy has been framed in large measure by the ‘Blue Homeland’ doctrine, driven by its growing energy deficit and a desire for greater geopolitical influence in the region. Meanwhile, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Lebanon and Cyprus, led by their own economic and geopolitical drivers, have developed a common strategy to counter Turkey. Fiona Mullen discusses how increasing tensions over offshore resources and freedom of navigation, together with regional challenges such as migration and terrorism, impact on energy and geopolitics in the East Mediterranean. 

Full panel discussion > .

European Trade to Xi's Imperialism

Chinese history going back a few thousand years, from the many Dynasties of the Han, Yuan, and Qing to the Century of Humiliation, to the brutal civil war between the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang, to the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, to where we are now, which is China as a world power that actively challenges America's role in the world. The (debt-trap diplomacy) Belt and Road initiative that builds a new silk road, the Chinese Dream policy, and doctrine, the String of Pearls strategy, its influence of Australian and European politics, and the way it created and opened markets in African nations such as Kenya.

Friday, April 23, 2021

FR-AUKUS Fracas

EPo - Europolitics ..

Saturday, November 28, 2020

Arab Spring & Winter

23-7-21 LIBYA | A Foreign Policy Disaster? - J K-L > .
23-6-3 Iraq, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah - Invasion +20 Years - gtbt > .
22-10-3 War in Yemen. Is Peace On The Horizon? [no] - gtbt > .


Corrections: Hafez al-Assad took power in 1970, it was the Ba'ath Party that seized power in 1963. At 4:35 the flags for Egypt and Syria are mixed up with the photos of the leaders. The internationally-recognized gov was in Tripoli, and the self-declared one headed by Haftar was in Tobruk. Also, it seems like the most recent developments for Tunisia were completely skipped over with Kais Saied taking power in July 2021 and suspending parliament.

The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in response to corruption and economic stagnation and was influenced by the Tunisian Revolution. From Tunisia, the protests then spread to five other countries: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain, where either the ruler was deposed (Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, and Ali Abdullah Saleh) or major uprisings and social violence occurred including riots, civil wars, or insurgencies. Sustained street demonstrations took place in Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Iranian Khuzestan,[citation needed] Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, and Sudan. Minor protests took place in Djibouti, Mauritania, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world is ash-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām! ("the people want to bring down the regime").

The importance of external factors versus internal factors to the protests' spread and success is contested. Social media is one way governments try to inhibit protests. In many countries, governments shut down certain sites or blocked Internet service entirely, especially in the times preceding a major rally. Governments also accused content creators of unrelated crimes or shutting down communication on specific sites or groups, such as Facebook. In the news, social media has been heralded as the driving force behind the swift spread of revolution throughout the world, as new protests appear in response to success stories shared from those taking place in other countries.

The wave of initial revolutions and protests faded by mid-2012, as many Arab Spring demonstrations met with violent responses from authorities, as well as from pro-government militias, counter-demonstrators, and militaries. These attacks were answered with violence from protesters in some cases. Large-scale conflicts resulted: the Syrian Civil War; the rise of ISIL, insurgency in Iraq and the following civil war; the Egyptian Crisis, coup, and subsequent unrest and insurgency; the Libyan Civil War; and the Yemeni Crisis and following civil war. Regimes that lacked major oil wealth and hereditary succession arrangements were more likely to undergo regime change.

A power struggle continued after the immediate response to the Arab Spring. While leadership changed and regimes were held accountable, power vacuums opened across the Arab world. Ultimately, it resulted in a contentious battle between a consolidation of power by religious elites and the growing support for democracy in many Muslim-majority states. The early hopes that these popular movements would end corruption, increase political participation, and bring about greater economic equity quickly collapsed in the wake of the counter-revolutionary moves by foreign state actors in Yemen, the regional and international military interventions in Bahrain and Yemen, and the destructive civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen.

[2021] Some have referred to the succeeding and still ongoing conflicts as the Arab Winter. As of May 2018, only the uprising in Tunisia has resulted in a transition to constitutional democratic governance. Recent uprisings in Sudan and Algeria show that the conditions that started the Arab Spring have not faded and political movements against authoritarianism and exploitation are still occurring. In 2019, multiple uprisings and protest movements in Algeria, Sudan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt have been seen as a continuation of the Arab Spring.

In 2021, multiple conflicts are still continuing that might be seen as a result of the Arab Spring. The Syrian Civil War has caused massive political instability and economic hardship in Syria, with the Syrian pound plunging to new lows. In Libya, a major civil war recently concluded, with Western powers and Russia sending in proxy fighters. In Yemen, a civil war continues to affect the country. In Lebanon, a major banking crisis is threatening the country's economy as well as that of neighboring Syria.

The Arab Winter is a term for the resurgence of authoritarianism and Islamic extremism evolving in the aftermath of the Arab Spring protests in Arab countries. The term "Arab Winter" refers to the events across Arab League countries in the Middle East and North Africa, including the Syrian Civil War, the Iraqi insurgency and the subsequent War in Iraq, the Egyptian Crisis, the First Libyan Civil War and the subsequent Second Libyan Civil War, and the Yemeni Civil War. Events referred to as the Arab Winter include those in Egypt that led to the removal of Mohamed Morsi and the seizure of power by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état.

The term was first coined by Chinese political scientist Zhang Weiwei during a debate with American political scientist Francis Fukuyama on June 27, 2011. Fukuyama believed the Arab Spring movement would inevitably spread to China [wrongly as of 2021], while Zhang predicted the Arab Spring will soon turn into an Arab Winter [correctly as of 2021].

According to scholars of the University of Warsaw, the Arab Spring fully devolved into the Arab Winter four years after its onset, in 2014. The Arab Winter is characterized by the emergence of multiple regional wars, mounting regional instability, economic and demographic decline of Arab countries, and ethno-religious sectarian strife. According to a study by the American University of Beirut, by the summer of 2014, the Arab Winter had resulted in nearly a quarter of a million deaths and millions of refugees. Perhaps the most significant event in the Arab Winter was the rise of the extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which controlled swathes of land in the region from 2014 to 2019.

In 2021, multiple armed conflicts are still continuing that might be seen as a result of the Arab Spring. The Syrian Civil War has caused massive political instability and economic hardship in Syria, with the Syrian currency plunging to new lows. In Yemen, a civil war and subsequent intervention by Saudi Arabia continues to affect the country. In Lebanon, a major banking crisis is threatening the economy of neighboring Syria.


sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...