Forum: Resolution 夬

China's tumbling stocks, slippery and slipping growth numbers, and pollution emergencies were just a few of the crises of 2015 rattling a global economy increasingly dependent on Chinese growth. The central government’s continued elaboration of its One Belt One Road (OBOR) Initiative suggests that China’s leaders, by contrast, are increasingly confident that the lessons of China’s unique experience of development can be applied on a wider stage than previously imagined. The Chinese concept of development finance 开发性金融 provides the set of principles that determine how Xi Jinping’s gauzy statements of intent will actually be converted into bricks and mortar, rail and highways. As a consequence, understanding the Chinese concept of development finance, and its similarities and differences with international orthodoxies is essential for understanding what OBOR is and what it might imply.

On 16 January 2016, voters in Taiwan elected their first female president, Tsai Ing-wen 蔡英文, and gave the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) an absolute majority in the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan’s parliament, for the first time. The election results were a thorough repudiation of the ruling party, the KMT, and Taiwan’s outgoing president, Ma Ying-jeou 馬英九.