Insights

A GC team has just returned from Hong Kong, where we held discussions with a series of private domestic and foreign investors about the outlook for China. Many pointed out how private investment, from both domestic and foreign sources, is declining just as China needs more of it. Geopolitics is partly to blame, but an uncertain domestic political environment is also…

Welcome back to the Global Month Ahead, Global Counsel's briefing on the events and stories that will define the month to come. This month, Health and Life Sciences Senior Associate Rosie Hill will hear from different members of the GC team to preview the month's stories before they are in the headlines.

The world economy enters the new year on shaky ground. The post-pandemic rebound is losing steam. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the geopolitical fallout is being felt across the globe. Inflation, rising interest rates and the strong US dollar are impacting countries in every region of the world. Major advanced economies are set to slow – or even contract - in 2023,…

Associate Director Jens Presthus is joined by Senior Practice Director Thomas Gratowski to discuss China's remarkable reversals regarding covid policy.

Welcome back to the Global Month Ahead, Global Counsel's briefing on the events and stories that will define the month to come. In each episode, Global Macro Associate Director Isabelle Trick will hear from different members of the GC team to preview the month's stories before they are in the headlines.

At a private meeting in Beijing before the covid-19 pandemic, President Xi Jinping confided to a visiting foreign guest that there were two things which kept him awake at night. The first, China falling into the middle-income trap. The second, China going to war with the US “by accident”. The latter concern of Xi could not be more pertinent in the wake of…

This episode is part of our annual conference 'The Politics of'. This year's edition, 'The Politics of Decoupling', will present a global perspective on China’s industrial and political strategy for the next decade, and how it will affect its relationship with western-aligned countries.

Jon Garvie, Miranda Lutz, Stephen Adams and Jens Presthus take a deep-dive into the growing prominence of infrastructure spending, exploring how and why it is becoming a geopolitical fault-line between the West and China.

Internationalisation of the Ren Min Bi (RMB) has again become a hot topic. Not just in western media, which often depicts it as a looming existential threat to the dollar-based global economy, but also within China. However, China is currently not in a position where it can remove capital controls – the minimum requirement for making the RMB an international currency –…

In the last 12 months, we have seen countless Chinese companies caught in the crossfire of regulatory change in China – with significant financial impact. 

Global Counsel has supported the European Roundtable of Industrialists in producing a flagship report on the EU’s trade policy and the challenges faced in more complex geopolitical environment. The report argues that being open to trade is a source of strength for supply chains, rather than weakness, and suggests how the EU might best put into practice its new policy of…

The meeting between US and Chinese officials in Alaska on March 19th left little doubt that the new Biden administration does not mean a quick rapprochement between Beijing and Washington. If anything, Chinese officials upped the ante by making it clear that they see little downside to taking a tough line and signalling that China will emerge confident from covid-19. …

The conclusion in principle of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) has been controversial. Many have wondered why the EU wanted to hastily finalise negotiations less than a month before Joe Biden could attempt to revive transatlantic cooperation, including on China. Questions about Beijing’s intentions have received less attention because there has…

Senior Associate, Jens Presthus, and Associate, Frederick Michell, join Senior Director, Stephen Adams, to look at internet regulation in China and Russia. They explore how digital companies, both foreign and domestic, could be affected by future regulation and how each country plans to tackle misinformation. Their discussion highlights that the two countries, whilst…

There is no country in Southeast Asia that has escaped the impact of covid-19 unscathed, although the intensity of the pandemic’s disruption and individual countries’ abilities to adapt have varied significantly. Early government intervention to restrict international travel and the implementation of strict lockdown measures meant that in terms of covid-19 cases,…

The dust has now settled on China’s latest GDP figures. As usual, even without going into questions about the reliability of official numbers, the data dump has led to some confusion. Strong headline GDP growth has been widely reported, both inside and outside of China – pointing to a strong recovery. However, while China without a doubt currently is doing better than…

The pandemic and its economic fallout may have put Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China (CPC) under enormous pressure, but it has also allowed Xi to tighten his grip on power and widen the party’s role in the Chinese economy. He has done this by launching two campaigns: one that focuses on rooting out corruption in law enforcement, and one that seeks to strengthen…

China’s corporate social credit system (SCS) is set to be rolled out on a large scale this year. It rates, sanctions and rewards companies operating in China based on a long list of metrics and imposes strict rules that Beijing says aim to root out “untrustworthy” companies. With the social credit system, it could be argued that Beijing is also more strictly enforcing…