
Warwick Powell
Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology, Senior Fellow at Beijing Taihe Institute
Jul 28, 2025
While Washington continues to dress up its economic strategy as innovation-driven and market-oriented, the passage of the so-called GENIUS Act suggests the emergence of a desperation, leading to the reckless engineering of systemic financial instability under the guise of modenisation. By enabling U.S. Treasuries to be used to underpin the issuance of so-called stablecoins, the new laws create a synthetic loop of leverage, which could threaten the very stability of the American and global financial systems.
Jun 30, 2025
The genius of China’s approach is that it never triggers a full-scale crisis. It ensures that American companies and politicians exist in a state of perpetual anxiety. Inventories shrink to manage costs and procurement becomes a game of roulette. Meanwhile, Beijing can modulate the pressure.
May 30, 2025
In the week of 25th May 2025, Kuala Lumpur played host to a landmark event: the inaugural ASEAN-GCC-China Summit. It brought together Southeast Asian nations, the Gulf states, and China - three pillars of the emerging multipolar order - in a signal moment of strategic realignment. While headlines may focus on trade, energy, and infrastructure cooperation, the deeper story lies in a quiet revolution in how the world’s fastest-growing economies trade, settle, and invest - increasingly without the U.S. dollar.
May 02, 2025
The recent Financial Times editorial by economist Michael Pettis, in which he advocates for U.S. capital controls to achieve balance in its external accounts, is emblematic of a deeper and more troubling reality: American economic policy has entered a conceptual dead end.
Apr 18, 2025
America needs to come to peace with itself before it can come to peace with the rest of the world. Negotiating an economic detente that contributes to American national healing is, arguably, a question of global interest. But there won’t be any free lunches for the Americans.
Mar 18, 2025
The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same.
Feb 27, 2025
If one takes Marco Rubio’s recent remarks on the end of unipolarity at face value, one could be mistaken for believing that the question of a multipolar world is settled. On the contrary, Rubio’s ruminations, together with remarks from members of the new Trump Administration, including the President himself, buttressed with decisions made in the first few weeks of the new administration, suggest that the issue of multipolarity is very much in question.
Feb 13, 2025
In a social media post on January 30, 2025, US President Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs on BRICs countries unless they committed to “neither create
Jan 07, 2025
The incoming U.S. president must move quickly to avoid being ensnared in the Ukraine debacle, with Russia winning the ground war. For Trump to get a prompt, positive reaction from Vladimir Putin, he needs to throw Europe under the bus and move on. Otherwise, the ultimate defeat won’t just be NATO’s. It will also be Trump’s.
Dec 24, 2024
America’s best-laid plans to change China have clearly failed over the decades. The question now is whether Donald Trump can rise above that history and meet China on its own terms. If not, the incoming occupant of the White House will sadly preside another failed episode of fruitless U.S. ambitions to conquer China.