Tag: political economy

Opinion – China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Pragmatism over Morals?

By Tabita Rosendal, Ph.D. student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden and an affiliate at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS), Copenhagen, Denmark.

Is China beating the US and EU through its pragmatic approach towards cooperation under the “Belt and Road” Initiative (“一带一路”倡议) (BRI)? Despite the advent of the US’ “Build Back Better World” (B3W) and the EU’s “Connecting Europe Globally” (CEG), evidence from Sri Lanka suggests that some countries still look to China for support due to the ‘no-strings-attached’ nature of its investments. The stark reality is that China’s “pragmatic values”, combined with loans, may outcompete the two Western initiatives.

The Maguindanao Massacre: impunity rears its ugly head by Lennart Niemela, M.A., Asian studies, Lund University

The Maguindanao province, located
on Mindanao island in Southern Philippines, made headlines in international
media on November 23, 2009, when a convoy on the way to an election office was
held en route by armed men and 57 people were brutally killed. The governor of
the province, Andal Ampatuan, is pointed out as the prime suspect for the
killings.