In the past, the key challenge facing China was to stop importing “dark matter”: as one of the world’s largest net creditors, China needed to stop running an investment-income deficit. Today’s challenge is to avoid “matter annihilation”: China must prevent its net foreign assets from disappearing.

In a non-NAFTA world, Canada and the U.S. will still continue to trade and the U.S. will continue to be Canada’s largest trading partner, albeit under somewhat different rules. The real change will be psychological. In the eyes of many in Canada, the U.S. can no longer be trusted to play by the rules, and to assume its traditional role as a champion for liberalized trade. Against this backdrop, Canada and China are going through the preliminary stages of launching their own trade negotiations.

China is increasingly insisting that its oil imports be denominated in Chinese yuan instead of U.S. dollars. If successful, this could make the yuan into the globe’s second or third most important currency overnight. Given that China’s imports will soon dwarf those of the United States, it is perhaps just a matter of time until the more than a half century reign of the petrodollar comes to an end.

The policy of ‘internet sovereignty’ has officially given the Chinese authorities the right to control internet content. An ongoing campaign carried out by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology aims at “cleaning and standardizing” the internet environment. When in China, foreign businesses are required to abide by Chinese internet laws and regulations. How will this affect their willingness to invest in China?

Most of the living and non-living resources in South China Sea are clustered in near coastal waters of littoral states and such resource mapping has far reaching implications in terms of defining potential areas for joint development. Creating potential for joint development of resources between China and the Philippines would put a premium on economic cooperation which has been actively pursued by the Duterte government. While public acceptance and legal challenges remain, it ultimately will be a political exercise of defining national interests and calculating domestic and international responses.

Many observers note that President Xi Jinping’s opening speech at the 19th National Congress did not spell out major new economic reform initiatives. Nonetheless, economic reform has neither stalled nor backtracked in the past five years, and is even less likely to do so if Xi Jinping successfully consolidates his power with the 19th Congress.

Once the US corporate tax rate falls to 20% (the same as China’s and the OECD average), the tax rates of countries around the world will plunge, like they did in the post-Reagan era.

Since 2013, China has been pursuing its “Belt and Road” initiative, which aims to develop physical infrastructure and policy linkages connecting more than 60 countries across Asia, Europe, and Africa. If a few conditions are met, the economic case for the initiative is strong.

China's GDP growth rate will reach 7 percent this year. On October 15, 2017, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan of the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, spoke on China’s economic prospects.

A look at the timeline for when the European Union’s financial centers acquired the infrastructure necessary to be considered as offshore hubs for the Chinese currency provides a new angle to consider how Beijing plans to internationalize its currency.