Blog

My last blog highlighted the debate raging about the health of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).[1]  It also reviewed the economic and political rationales for China’s ambitious scheme.  This blog takes the position that the BRI is neither dead nor on life-support.  Such claims ignore the array of enduring…

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which consists of two main components, the sea-focused Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) and the land-focused Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), came into being in 2013.[1]  Since Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the MSRI and the SREB, there has been considerable positive and negative…

This is the last in a four-part series that has looked inter alia at debates surrounding China’s protection of foreign intellectual property (IP) rights (IPR), detailed China’s problematic fulfillment of its IPR commitments, and examined various factors potentially driving China’s poor compliance with its IPR obligations.  The focus of this…

  In my last blog, I detailed China’s continuing shortcomings with protecting intellectual property (IP) rights (IPR) and the emergence of new challenges.  The question arises as to why these problems persist even though it has been more than 20 years since China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), is…

This commentary explores China’s fulfillment of its intellectual property (IP) rights (IPR) obligations.[1]  Herein, “compliance” requires more than Beijing’s embrace of policies, passage of laws, adoption of regulations, creation of IP administrative entities, or restructuring of its court system.  It also, and more importantly for foreign IP rightsholders and their…

China’s protection of intellectual property (IP) remains a continuing and serious issue for foreign companies as the United States Trade Representative (USTR) made manifest in its 2021 Section 301 report and 2021 Report to Congress on China’s World Trade Organization (WTO) Compliance and the European Commission conveyed clearly in its…

This series’s first blog notes the GBA seeks to create a global innovation, research, and technology hub in the mold of “Silicon Valley.”  There are many reasons to expect success.  These range from a “cocktail of inputs” including massive government support to huge capital pools to a strong ecosystem for…

China’s Greater Bay Area (GBA), detailed in my last blog, appears an obvious magnet for inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and catalyst for outward FDI (OFDI).  Beijing’s backing, infrastructure improvements, supportive government science and technology (S&T) policies, the GBA’s surfeit of supply networks, and the GBA’s scale and diversity should…

Possessing about a decade-long lineage, China’s Greater Bay Area (GBA) formally began in 2017 with the signing of a Framework Agreement between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.  The objective is to create a mega economic cluster, involving 11 cities (e.g., Guangzhou, Dongguan,…

This blog is the last of three on China’s Digital Silk Road (DSR) initiative.  The 1st gave an overview of the DSR while the 2nd probed some of DSR’s features in terms of foreign direct investment (FDI) and contracting.  This blog considers two potential political effects of the DSR, its effect on…