Trade Archive

YANGON, Myanmar—Beginning in the early 2000s, China’s rise buoyed commodities markets and improved the fortunes of many resource-rich countries. Myanmar was no exception: Bilateral trade has expanded considerably, with China now accounting for approximately 40 percent of Myanmar’s imports and 15 percent of its exports. Although estimates vary significantly, data provided by Myanmar authorities to the World Trade Organization indicate that China, including Hong Kong, made up nearly 60 percent of approved investments in its southwestern neighbor between 2005 and 2012. Cumulative Chinese foreign direct investment in Myanmar has since exceeded $14 billion, with much of that bound for the […]

When the collapse of the Chinese stock market signaled a slowdown in China’s breakneck pace of economic growth, one could easily identify a long list of countries already showing symptoms of suffering a cold from China’s sneeze. Within that list, one country stands out, one where the impact will have potentially significant geopolitical consequences: Russia. When it comes to Russia, China’s challenges will have global implications. The only question is how severe that impact will be. The Chinese slowdown, to be sure, creates new problems for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his plans to rely on stronger links with Beijing […]

This past May, the European Commission announced a strategy for a Digital Single Market (DSM)—a single seamless market that would expand the European Union’s single market for physical goods and services into the digital domain. The DSM is projected to provide economic gains of as much as €415 billion annually for the EU. Identifying the DSM as one of his 10 priorities as he assumed office in 2014, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker explained his hopes for the DSM: “I want to see pan-continental telecoms networks, digital services that cross borders and a wave of innovative European start-ups. I want to […]

In late July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Beijing, his first state visit to China as president. Weeks earlier, back in Istanbul, Turkish nationalists enraged at the treatment of Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang province had attacked Korean tourists, thinking they were Chinese, and stormed the Thai Consulate after Thailand deported a group of Uighurs who had fled China. With Erdogan pushing a more nationalist agenda to overcome a challenge from the right after his party’s electoral setbacks in June, most observers focused on whether China’s ethnic tensions and Turkish criticism of Beijing’s policies toward the Uighur minority could […]