CHINA US Focus - Perspectives shaping the world's most important bilateral relationship

Increasing pessimism about the Chinese economic outlook is emerging owing to the euro-zone debt crisis and gloomy recovery in the United States. Justin Yifu Lin, former Vice President of the World Bank, predicted that China can maintain 8-percent annual economic growth for the next two decades at a conference recently held in Beijing.

China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) this week offered to buy Canada’s Nexen, Inc., for $15 billion. Nexen’s board is recommending the bid to shareholders. If completed, this would be the single largest acquisition that Chinese companies have made in the outward investment splurge that started in 2005. It raises a series of issues for [...]

It is hard to imagine that China could one day lead the world in going green when you look at the smog-filled skies that are everyday reality there. The government knows that energy fuels the growth of nations, and that China's dependence on foreign energy imports creates a national security risk. People, both rich and [...]

This is significant for human society.  In the past 20 years, though achievements have been made in the areas of education, alleviation of poverty etc., the progress has been very slow in terms of the goals set by Rio conference in 1992, according to Mr. Maurice Strong, then under Secretary General of United Nations and [...]

China has become in the last few years the world’s largest emitter of CO2, followed closely by the USA. It has a voracious use of natural resources – most from Latin America – as is usual for nations with a rapid rate of industrial growth. Yet the average Chinese citizen emits only one fourth of [...]

One of the few bright spots in recent international negotiations to replace the expiring 1997 Kyoto Protocol on curbing global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has been the framework agreement concluded at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) that took place in Durban, South Africa in December 2011.  In addition to extending the Kyoto Protocol, [...]