China's premier called for more to be done to stabilise the world's second-largest economy, issuing an unusually stark warning as the country's zero-COVID strategy bites into growth.China is the last major economy welded to a policy of mass testing and hard lockdowns to eliminate virus clusters, but the strict curbs have battered businesses.Restrictions around the nation in recent months – including on the manufacturing hubs of Shenzhen and Shanghai, as well as the breadbasket

Since going public in 2013, Twitter has only occasionally turned a profit, even if it has a commanding role in politics and culture worldwide.The company's announcement on Monday that it had reached a deal for Tesla boss Elon Musk to buy it outright raises the question of whether this will lead to a brighter financial future for Twitter?Musk has downplayed economic considerations as a motivation for his purchase, saying earlier this month at the TED2022 conference that, "This is not

When Chinese Premier Li Keqiang called for a “sense of urgency” about growing economic risks during a meeting with provincial officials earlier this week, it was his third such warning in days.“We need to be highly vigilant for unexpected changes in the international and domestic situations, and downward economic pressure has further mounted,” China’s No 2 official told a symposium in Jiangxi province on Monday, according to a report in South China Morning Post, less than a week after drawing

Could the world be headed for another recession?Just as the global economy is bouncing back from the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing list of risks is clouding the economic outlook – although most economists still believe a recession this year is relatively unlikely.The war in Ukraine, Russia sanctions, China’s “zero COVID” policies, spiking inflation, and interest hikes by the United States (US) Federal Reserve (Fed) are all set to crimp growth in 2022.The question is whether deteriorating condi

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further dampened the economic prospects for developing countries in east Asia and the Pacific, meaning lower economic growth and higher poverty in the region this year, the World Bank has warned.The Ukraine factor came on top of the existing risks that the region – home to 2.1 billion people and stretching from China to Papua New Guinea – has been facing in recent years.

Vietnam's economy expanded more than five percent in the first three months of the year, the government said Tuesday thanks to a pick-up in exports as the country emerges from the worst of the global pandemic, though officials warned of headwinds.The ASEAN member state has long been a success story among Asian economies, posting growth of seven percent in 2019.But growth came in at just 2.9 percent in 2020 as the pandemic shut most of the world down, while last year saw just 2.6 percent

In terms of geopolitical impact, nothing could be more important than the United States’ (US) shift from strategic cooperation to strategic competition with China.

The decision by many multinational corporations to exit Russia, after decades of engagement between global business and Russia’s state-dominated economy, indicates that investors can no longer rely on the regime to enforce the rule of law. Russian President Vladimir Putin, once regarded as a modernizing autocrat, is now clearly driven by personal obsessions rather than any rational cost-benefit calculation.

China set its lowest annual gross domestic product (GDP) target in decades Saturday, as Premier Li Keqiang warned of a "grave and uncertain" outlook against the backdrop of the coronavirus, a property slump and uncertainty over the war in Ukraine.Li announced the unusually modest target of around 5.5 percent growth for 2022 – the lowest since 1991 – in his speech opening the annual session of China's rubber-stamp parliament.Addressing about 3,000 members of the National People&

Despite strong global economic headwinds, not least from the COVID-19 pandemic, China managed to achieve 8.1 percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth last year, its highest rate in a decade.