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The vast expansion of the Indian middle class takes on a different dimension a few weeks before the election say experts, as India heads into a general election after the India Pakistan conflict in February 2019. This is because national security now has a wider constituency. It could help the incumbent party the BJP with urban voters and swing voters as the issue of security remained prominent in the northern states. In other states where caste and regional politics, farmer agricultural related issues are prominent, this could be less of a factor. Overlooked in this is the manner in which new investments in infrastructure have been pushed forward for rail, road and bridges, and in other infrastructure such as hospitals and universities. The government slogan is that what was once considered impossible is now possible. New metro lines are being inaugurated in many cities including Ahmedabad, Mumbai. The speed with which the Metro in Mumbai is being built, with the head of the project saying it should have been built yesterday, is an example of the urgency given to infrastructure. The government is pushing hard to convey the image that the next 5 years would lead to an infrastructure building boom that it has shown can be done. A recent report in the Guardian shows that China is pouring every 2 years more concrete than the U.S. did in the entire 20th century. This fact drives India under Modi as it heads into the 2019 election, the sense that previous governments had never pushed India's potential for modernization similar to its East Asian neighbors, Japan, South Korea and China.    ...

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Use of oil for transportation has increased from 30% ten years ago to nearly 50% in 2013, according to Sanford Bernstein, as more cars are added to China's roads. This makes it less likely that a slowdown in China's growth will affect demand for oil. Sales of passenger cars increased by 11% in January and February 2014. A study at France's central bank by Gauvin and Rebillard shows only a much smaller effect on oil prices from a hard landing of the Chinese economy, compared to the effect on metal prices. Passenger cars now make up two out of three vehicles on Chinese roads, according to LMC Automotive. The growth in cars is likely to continue, not just in China, but in other emerging markets such as India, Brazil, Mexico and Russia. Metal consumption is different, as it comes mostly from housing, infrastructure and factories which are the most affected parts of the economy in China.

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Jakab's discusses the difference betwen the ADP estimate for jobs added and the Labor Department's figures. ADP numbers had a wide divergence with Labor Department figures for 2011-2013. ADP now uses a different methodology to more closely track the government numbers. For the last five months ADP numbers came out lower than government figures by an average of 32,000, says Jakab. ADP estimate of private non-farm jobs growth is 281,000 for June 2014. A WSJ survey of economists shows nonfarm payroll jobs growth for June at 215,000. In 2010-2011 ADP numbers vastly overestimated the number of jobs created.

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Different estimates on how quickly and how much additional oil would come into world oil markets if sanctions are lifted. The time estimates range from quickly to 6 months for additional new supplies into world oil markets. Estimates of how much production can be added range from 500,000-800,000 barrels a day from private estimates to 1 million additional barrels a day from Iran's oil company, if sanctions are lifted. UK foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, says "there is still a long way to go if we are going to get there." He told a parliamentary committee that the nonnegotiable part is a window of one year advance notice if Iran were to break out and go for a nuclear weapon, which would be based on technical expert opinion of how long it would take Iran to build a nuclear weapon using its knowhow and materials at that Mr Zanganeh took over as oil minister after the election of Rouhani as president 18 months ago. Zanganeh calls the effect of sanctions and the mismanagement of the previous government as "a catastrophe," and he has tried to instill anew discipline in the oil sector. Iran currently produces about 1-1.2 million barrels a day under sanctions, half of earlier levels before sanctions were tightened in 2012 because of the nuclear weapons development issues....

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China passes the U.S. in OPEC oil imports, with daily average imports of 3.7 million barrels compared to 3.5 million barrels for the U.S., according to Wood Mackenzie.

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After years of negotiations Russia and China reached agreement on a memorandum that provides deliveries by Gazprom of 38 billion cubic metres of natural gas to China by 2018, under a 30 year supply deal. The pipeline to deliver gas to China is part of a $50 billion project for a pipeline that takes gas to Vladivostock for liquefaction. A spur from that pipeline would take gas to China. This would make China the largest importer of natural gas from Russia. In 2012 Germany imported 33 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Russia, followed by other large importers Ukraine, Turkey, Belarus and Italy. A new agreement between China and Russia's state owned oil company, Rosneft, doubles the oil imports to 31 million metric tons a year under a 25 year deal. The current level of imports is 15 million tons set by a deal in 2009. The lower price of natural gas going to Europe helped the two countries bridge differences over price. China's National Petroleum Corporation will partner with Rosneft for exploration in new oil fields in the Russian Arctic region....

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Andy Grove of Intel teaches a class at Stanford- he taught aclass earlier this year- and talks about his experiences. Some see Grove's disciplined management style as areflection of his experience escaping the Nazis from Czechoslovakia. Dr Grove says it comes from his experience at the CIty COllege of New York He recounts this in one of his books, where aparticular Professor helped mentor him but who was in the beginning very tough on the young Grove. Grove says that what impressed him most in those early years at City College was the way hard work and talent were rewarded and where students challenged their Professors without any attention to rank. Interestingly this is still true at many universities, and meritocracy prevails there. The opposite is true when one thinks of this at many corporations which gradually fall into astultifying mode where senior managers are not challenged and politics prevails. GM is a good example. Grove says he experienced this at Fairchild -where he worked with computer chip pioneers Moore and Noyce -with its elitist, back-stabbing and lax corporate culture. Senior executives at Fairchild walked in whenever they felt like, and younger employees were penalized or fired for similiar behaviour. When he took charge at Intel Grove imposed a strict arrival time of 8 am with latecomers forced to sign asheet. He also did not go along with trends like flexi-time and teleworking. He became known as ablunt and demanding manager, but afairminded boss who rewarded good ideas whatever the source. Asked about the strict arrival time Grove says that people don't understand that he was never that disciplined himself and he was not even amorning person. His view is that he wanted to avoid what he saw as aoutrageous double standard at Fairchild. With a better culture he was able to attract the best talent to Intel, and he used the strong discipline to improve the lousy manufacturing at Intel. Three decisions shaped Intel. The first, is the recognition of the strategic inflection point when current strategy is no longer viable, because unanticipated external forces make an existing business strategy obsolete. This happened when Intel got clobbered by the Japanese in the memory chip field it had dominated. And at such moments there are internal forces and inhibitions to overcome that make starting over or doing something totally different extremely difficult. For Intel this was the habit forming tendencies from having done one thing so well- the companies roots and the founders and engineering staff's knowledge and preferences lay in memory chips- such that that it became an emotionally stormy thing to break from this past. Grove made a complete U turn to go in another direction which he describes so well in his book -Only the Paranoid Survive. Timing is critical, and instinct and judgement is all that you have got to rely on. Its like a group of hikers in the woods and after suspecting that they are on the wrong track one of them says, "Hey guys I think were lost." Grove even describes the scene with acomparison to a scene in the World War II movie Twelve O'Clock High, where a new commander is called in to straighten out an unruly and undisciplined squadron of fliers in sel-destruct mode. The commander on his way to take charge, stops his car, steps out smokes acigarette while gazing into the distance. Then he he throws the cigarette down, grinds it with his heel and tell his driver "Okay Sergeant, lets go." Grove says he related to this scene in this decision at Intel, with every fiber of his being experienced this crisis personally, and learned what it takes to claw your way through a strategic inflection point, inch by excruciating inch. He says it takes objectivity, the willingness to act on your convictions, and the passion mobilize people into supporting those convictions. The second and third decisions was less gruelling but also courageous. The Intel Inside advertising campaign meant building abrand with customers even though Intel had never done this before. The decision to not have secondary suppliers and press the issue of manufacturing quality within Intel till Intel got it right also had never been done before. Andy Grove's strategic inflection point is what GM missed and set the process in motion towards bankruptcy. See the links in Intelilinks. The management style is also relevant to that discussion. Grove also provides insights in the Cross-Industry Insight Mechanism. He sees strategic inflectionpoints in autos and health care industries. He says the auto industry is going to be increasingly divorced from oil and the next big company will come in the auto battery technology field. He also believes health care and the pharmaceutical industry can learn from chipmaking. The clinical trials in pharmaceuticals take way too long, are slow-moving and bureaucratic. The pharmaceutical firms can learn from the fast "knowledge turns" in chipmaking, so that cycles of learning are accelerated....

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India's central bank chief, Rajan, favors a lower inflation target of 4%, with fluctuations of 2% up or down. Lower inflation is critical for India to achieve higher growth rates. The World Bank lowered the rate of growth in the global economy but kept the rate of growth of 6.4% for India unchanged. Rajan also favors creating a more formal system for setting rates, with a committee like the Open Market Committee in the U.S. deliberating over the different factors for such a decision. Rajan was a professor at the University of Chicago, and chief economist at the IMF, before joining the central bank. Central bank policies have helped stabilize India's currency, the rupee. The lower cost of oil for India with an oil import bill of $100 billion is a big boost for economic growth. For the global economy this comes at a time when China's growth rate is slowing to below 7%.

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Using a new methodology India's statistics agency revises growth for 2013 to 5.1%, for 2014 fiscal year to 6.9%. Growth for 2015 is forecast at 7.4%. For the 3 months Oct-Dec. 2014 the growth in GDP was at 7.5%. Changes in methodology include computing it at market price, not at factor cost. This adds up consumer and firm spending instead of producer costs.

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GDP expanded at 3.5% in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to the Turkey Statistics Office. This follows a contraction by 1.8% in the third quarter of 2016. For the full year the GDP growth is 2.9 percent, a decline from the 6.1% in 2015. In 2015 Turkey gained from lower oil prices. This was offset in 2016 by the politics in the region- the increased instability in the country following a crackdown on the opposition and media, internal conflict in the Kurdish region which appeared for a time to be leading to peaceful settlement. As a result tourism revenues declined by 30% and this was offset by increased government spending. The uncertainty before the referendum also leads to decline in foreign investment and investment by domestic firms.

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Oil prices in the U.S. drop to $55 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and $65 a barrel for Brent crude price. Earlier expectation of the impact of reimposed sanctions on Iranian oil shrinking global oil supplies have been reversed with increased production from Saudi Arabia, Russia and the U.S.

Another new development that caused this reversal in sentiment is that the Trump administration granted waivers to some buyers of Iranian crude oil. The U.S. trade dispute with China has also added to this with lower growth forecasts. Unlike in previous years OPEC or Saudi Arabia cannot by itself shrink global supplies with production cuts. The U.S. and Russian output also plays a significant part.

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Experts in the U.S. say the U.S. made a mistake in not supporting the idea of a new financial institution to meet the urgent needs of development and infrastructure financing of Asia's developing countries. India, Australia, S. Korea, Britain, Germany, France and Italy are joining as founding members in 2015. China has offered leadership in providing resources for the new bank. Jane Perlez says China is looking for the best talent worldwide to help write the charter for the bank and to run it. It is a project pushed forward by China's president Jinping, and was discussed at the 2013 G-20 meeeting in Moscow as a critical part of the agenda. Laurence Brahm, who supported Chinese premier Zhu Rongji in 2001 for entry into the WTO, says it is natural for China to look for ways to use its extra capacity in steel, concrete and pipes to build projects in other parts of Asia, which would mutually benefit China and the region. Paul Haenle of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing, says the U.S. lack of support is shortsighted, as the existing U.S. sponsored institutions World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are sorely lacking the resources to deal with the huge infrastructure challenges in Asia. China's Finance Ministry is looking for the best talent worldwide to write the charter and run the bank. Natalie Lichtenstein, a lawyer with 30 years experience working at the World Bank will write the bank's founding charter. ...

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A key driver of the economic recovery is how India tackles a legacy of bad loans that have piled up in the banking system. Here Nirmala Sitharaman talks to Hindustan Times about the government's plan to remove 2 lakh crore rupees of bad loans from the books of banks, and a new framework that makes more people eligible for bank loans. Clearing bad loans from the banking system will increase lending to small, large business and expand the economy and employment. The government announced that it will provide 30,600 crore in guarantees to the National Asset Construction Company Limited to buy 2 lakh crore of bad loans from banks. This is in a 15-85% split with NACCL offering cash for 15% of the assets and issuing security receipts for the rest which banks can sell in the market.  Sitharaman says the bad laons have value particularly the way this is structured. India Debt Resolution Company is a company that will help make this happen with panels of experts for each of the debt categories. The specialized application of expertise will make sure that the assets are valued in a way that the market will be interested. IDRCL is 49% owned by the banks and the banks through the Indian Banking Association will have to take the initiative. NARCL will pay a fee to the government the longer an asset is not properly resolved. Sitharaman also says in this interview that climate change and India' response will not have an impact on the economy. She says- "Coal dependence will stay to some extent. But we are committed to closing down legacy thermal units that are inefficient, coal guzzlers with low productivity levels. Our economy has different regions at different levels of development. Completely removing thermal is impossible. PM Modi has invested and is committed to renewable energy." She said India had done its work to achieve COP21 with its own funds. None of the funds by developed nations of $100 billion has materialized.     ...

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The astounding fact in this French FR24 report on the Paris Climate Change Agreement and country carbon emissions show that China's emissions accelerated to rise 3 fold in 2015 to about 12 billion tons of carbon emissions from about 4 billion in 2000. US remains at about 6 billion. India is at about 3 billon tons of carbon emissions, about where China was in 2000 when it had about 4 billion tons of carbon emissions. This is shown in the graph on carbon emissions from FR24. The US, European Union graph curves on tons of carbon emissions since 2000 are all flat or declining, India rising slowly from a small base, China's curve is rising straight up from a large enough base at an unbelievable and dangerous rate. What has happened and is it getting worse? China's economy expanded too quickly as globalization was accelerated by banks, and business in the US and Europe, and by the Chinese governments at the local level and the state level. This had negative consequences for US, Europe and China. The too fast growth in China at rates of 10-15% based solely on False GDP indicators that did not take into account damage to the environment and workers was that it hurt manufacturing and working class in US and Europe and contaminated the environment. This was not like growth of Japan in 1960-1980, a smaller country in the way it affected the US and European working classes. Hyper Growth at 10-15% of a large country with 1 billion people compressed over a short period, is cited by Greg Ip in the WSJ as the cause of the negative impact on America.  It hurt China through pollution of rivers and land at an accelerated pace. It hurt China as trade with US and Europe became unsustainable with the loss of manufacturing in the US and Europe leading to a trade war. From these graphs of emissions it now appears that the 3 fold rise in carbon emissions from about 4 billion tons in 2000 to about 12 billion tons in 2015 is the result of unregulated business activity of all those who preferred to push hyper growth in China purely for reasons of profit such as investment banks and corporations in US, Europe, and state or local companies in China.  This has also aggravated inequality in US, Europe and China, and hurt rural populations. Xi Jinping is attempting to correct this in China, Biden is trying to correct this in the US, and Scholz will now attempt to correct this in Germany and the European Union. It is also to be noted that China in 2000-2015 did not have the benefit of the newer technologies that India now has access to, which is why India says it is able to reduce carbon emissions per each unit of GDP by 35% from 2005 levels by 2030. It is this efficiency in producing units of GDP with newer and newer technologies that China lacked in its period of hyper growth 2000-2015 that now looks to have hurt China- with overflow of highly polluting steel mills and other factories which it would prudently and wisely have cut back on. Looking back at this period one sees the wholesale transfer of highly polluting plants in Germany being sold and put up in China, a poor developing country in 2000. Was this a good decision for Germany or for China? In this way the banks and large corporations in the US and Europe who use economic indicators that are limited such as dollar profits, without overall indicators that include negative effect damage to the environment that requires huge investments to correct, problems of trade wars leading to political conflicts, are acting like a person walking blindly in one direction.  With some foresight China and all its trading partners would have done better with slower but more careful Chinese growth of 7-8% that would have better met societal goals in US, Europe and China, avoiding high carbon emissions segments of industries from Day 1. Jinping is doing this in China, and Biden is doing this in the US- cutting out highly polluting factories and segments of industries- but in a climate of mutual distrust, which could have benefitted the world when conducted in a climate of cooperation and trust. The pandemic made the situation even more difficult. Power shortages in factories and blackouts in Chinese cities have led to a reversal of policies on use of coal in China months before the COP26 Glasgow conference and G-20 summit leaving a huge gap. Without the presence of Xi Jinping at COP26 in Glasgow and with Chinese participation uncertain significant progress on climate change is elusive. Estimates by US Renewable Energy Agency is that it would cost $131 trillion to pay for limiting emissions to global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Some major share of this cost can be attributed to the increase from about 4 billion tons in 2000 of carbon emissions in China to about 12 billion tons in 2015, increase by 3 times. One can clearly see from this sudden jump in carbon emissions in China that policies of hyper growth with unregulated polluting industries adding to GDP growth figures was bad policy for China, bad policy for US, and Europe, even if it offered temporary profits for individual companies. India has the advantage of learning from this experience and charting its own wiser course as a partner with US, Europe and Japan and by Modi's vigorous efforts in renewable energy. The lesson- look at all indicators of progress, including climate and society, not just economic indicators in profit or dollar terms, take the tough decisions early in regulating polluting companies and industry segments, and bring full and active public participation with transparent access to data on climate damaging activity in real time because climate and the environment we live in free of polluting substances belongs to all the people, belongs to all life on the planet from trees to animals and birds, not companies that can choose to ignore it. ...

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The anti-corruption bill for creation of a Lokpal agency passed the lower and upper house of the Indian parliament in December 2013. It was stalled for two years after the efforts of political activist Anna Hazare's protest movement for passage of the bill. With national elections approaching in 2014 and the ruling Congress party's image bruised badly in state elections of Dec. 2013, party leaders decided to support the bill. In the elections in the capital Delhi a anti-corruption party, Aaam Aadmi (for the common man), created only recently, won a major part of the seats. In India corruption hurts not only at the national and local level as in China, but affects the daily life of the common man as bribes are required from ordinary people for anything to get done that requires approval from the huge government bureaucracy. In that sense it takes a toll on economic development and affects the quality of services received by the vast majority of people, which is why the party calls itself "common man."...

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There is a sense of cognitive dissonance in the states of former East Germany, known as the GDR or German Democratic Republic in the Soviet Union period from 1950's to 1990. The 5 states that formed the GDR continued to build close ties with Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the perception that this would build good long term relations. The crisis in Ukraine with border states of the Soviet Union opting in favor of close ties with the European Union and not Russia have disrupted the economic relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Russia. As long as Russia needed the economic ties to build its economy and standard of living the political issues posed by NATO expansion and EU expansion were set aside by Putin and political parties within Russia. The very ties that were supposed to usher in an era of peace in Europe helped strengthen the Russian and Chinese economies. Leading to a point where these two economies were strong enough by 2021 in the midst of the waning pandemic to  assert themselves on political issues where serious differences existed such as expansion of NATO and Taiwan. When the economic relations such as making China a manufacturing powerhouse  was the path taken by American and European business in 1990's, business interests were focused on the declining quality and high wages demanded by unions and workers in the US and Germany. This could be personally witnessed at Apple's factory in Colorado Springs where quality was failing badly in the 1990's. Apple when Steve Jobs returned in 1997 adopted a China manufacturing strategy when its manufacturing operations in the US failed to deliver the quality and cost structure needed for it to expand. The high margins with low costs of manufacturing in China was the strategy adopted by Steve Jobs to compete with Microsoft and turbocharge its expansion. Soon other companies followed. A similar process happened in economic ties with Russia on a smaller scale. Two decades of such expansion whittled down American manufacturing, hurt American workers, hurt European manufacturing and European workers.  This process could not continue- yellow vest protests in France, the protest vote in US midwestern states in recent elections, the protest votes in German elections and fragmentation of parties, made this clear. The US imposed trade tariffs on Chinese products and moved to restrict flow of technologies to China under the Trump administration, accelerated by the Biden administration. President Xi was once of the view that China's ties with the US were important "thousand fold" in the period as late as 2010. Yet this lopsided trade relationship was not beneficial to American workers or American interests as a technologically advanced leader. It is true that American workers and engineers at Apple had failed to ensure American quality competitiveness in the 1980's into 1990's, yet no advanced country or its business can come up with a false narrative that cedes its manufacturing leadership and jobs for the working class of its country. That false narrative is being challenged today by Mr. Biden, Mr. Scholz, and all American and German political parties, and by Mr. Modi with Atman Nirbhar Bharat for local manufacturing. The integration one sees of the port of Hamburg as Chinese export hub with China's economy is one aspect of what has happened. A new leadership is taking its place in Europe and in America that sees clearly the false narrative. The visit of the new Danish prime minister to India is the beginning of the effort to set up a new logistics relationship with South and South East Asia, as Denmark's Maersk is a world leader in shipping logistics for exports and manufacturing. The planned Noida logistics center outside of New Delhi under Gati Shakti integrated development is part of the change happening today as a new supply chain is being built. The unwinding of the one sided trade relationship with China, and its related relationship on energy with Russia, led to the changing perception in Russia and China of the value of the relationship. Political relations superseded economic and cultural relations during Putin's second phase and Xi's second phase with assertive attitudes on NATO, and on Hong Kong, Taiwan under Xi and Putin 2.0. As could be expected Germany and the US were caught flat footed as leaders who were cast in the mold of Putin as a Soviet representative in Dresden, and Xi with his father leading the Communist struggle in the 1930's and 1940's against Chiangkaishek, acted in ways that reflected the Soviet period. Chiang left for Taiwan in 1948 when Mao-tse-tung setup the People's Republic of China. Taiwan and Hong Kong remained important in the perceptions of Xi 2.0, in the effort to build "China Dream" and erase last vestiges of what in Soviet times were seen as western colonialism. US and EU particularly Business and the new IT telecom Business failed to grasp these matters, and historical events such as the opium wars of the 1850's. Business and cultural interests lacked both the inclination to learn and the knowledge of these events in Chinese history and its relations with colonial powers Britain and Japan, and also Russia. In 1900 the Boxer rebellion against ceding Chinese ports to colonial powers Britain, Japan, Russia, ended with permanent colonial settlements in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tsingtao, other Chinese ports. Chinese rejuvenation in the mind of leaders such as Xi from the second generation of Communist leadership, means putting this behind, leading to the action taken in Hong Kong. In some ways as some observers have commented it is as much a problem of the sluggishness of American and European thinking, particularly business interests including in Taiwan, post British Hong Kong, and ignorance of recent Chinese history which was mistakenly thought not to exist or forgotten. This is as much of a problem as the action taken by Putin and moves by Xi Jinping. The great democracies such as India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, were ignored as American and European business interests integrated the American and German economies with China's. In terms of population the population of these regions and related parts of South East Asia such as Malaysia and Vietnam which have a shared cultural history is about 1.5 times the population of China. Travelling through the parts of India's largest state Uttar Pradesh, an Madhya Pradesh one finds how much American and European business interests have failed both their own interests, their own workers and failed the great democracies of the world, by not only not investing in the democracies of Asia, and also of Africa and Latin America and bought into a narrative of China which no longer holds true and may never have been true all along. This is starkly evident in a once in a century pandemic in these great democracies of the world. These democracies have been left to fend for themselves during the pandemic and their leaders facing false narratives in the media such as the BBC and American media outlets even on issues such as vaccination of the largest part of the world's people.           ...

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Bernard Lewis's "The Arabs in History," is a short book which confirms Zakaria's point about the openness of Islamic societies before the 19th century, with some exceptions in certain periods. Most books or a quick look at Wikipedia shows us that the Renaissance in Europe in the 15th century got its boost from books by ancient Greek authors that were available in Arab societies long after they were forgotten in Europe. His point about Indonesia and India is also true to a large extent except for periods such as the one under Aurangzeb (17th c.). Muslim societies in British India (todays Pakistan and Bangladesh) experienced less social and educational reforms under the British than Hindu societies for various reasons leading to larger backwardness, illiteracy which breed extremist ideas. This is likely to change throughout North African Arab societies and South Asia in the next 50 years, especially with the modernization drive underway in India, which is likely to spread to other parts of the region. Islam as a missionary religion with force of arms spread in the 7th-9th century rapidly over Arab North Africa and parts of west Asia, and later to South Asia. Once established there were long periods of openness to ideas and books, and different cultures ( with the exception of preferences for Muslims), and a stress on commerce which inherently reduces religious vehemence, as the example of Britain shows. For this reason the current conditions in Islamic societies is more atypical than typical. A factor that has worsened it is that 19th c.-20th c. Islamic societies have put less emphasis on commerce and industry than historically seen in prosperous Islamic societies, on which more research is needed to understand why. Another factor is the impact of the interface with technologically and scientifically progressing Europe and America not becoming a learning experience for acquisition of this science and technology and making it one's own, a pattern seen in Buddhist societies of Japan in 19th c., South Korea in 20thc.,and China 21st c. Because Buddhism sprang from Hinduism or a response to Hindu ideas in India, India could be put alongside China for the 21st c. rapid assimilation of western science and technology making it one's own. When there is a violent collison between Japan and U.S. Admiral Dewey's ships, or China and British advances around 1900, the initial reaction of rejection is reversed with adoption of western technology and practices making it one's own. Similiar response in India. Islamic societies have had an extended period of rejection for reasons not fully understood even today. This is likely to generate the kind of internal debate about how to revert back to the usual mode of adoption in Islamic civilization, with the potential catalyst in India and other locations in the Middle East. The most respected German of the 19th century is Alexander Von Humboldt, a naturalist who advanced scientific knowledge, and a mentor to Charles Darwin in England, author of "Origin of the Species." Humboldt says- "There are no inferior races, we are all humans, and we are all destined to reach for and grasp liberty." That Humboldt spent most of his best years in Paris, France, which he compared to the provincialism in his native Berlin, goes to show how Humboldt, Darwin and Humboldt's friend Aime Bonpland of France, maintained close cooperation and friendship and anticipated the close cooperation in Europe since the second half of the 20th c., long before European politicians and governments grasped this. Commerce, science, travel, media and free exchange of ideas, are as favorable to progress as politics and ideology is inimical to it....

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NATO's new guiding document and security concept now includes China for the first time as a shared security challenge. In the past there were concerns about China yet Germany and France continued economic engagement with China as before. The clearly worded statement by Xi Jinping and Putin expressing strong disapproval of a world in which the US and the EU play a prominent leadership role, made just before Russia launched its attack on Ukraine, has changed the sentiment in Europe. It is now becoming clear to Germany that the world has changed.Under Merkel Germany expanded trade ties with Russia on energy and with China as a major trading partner. The first steps are now being taken to decouple the trading relationship with China and restructure Germany's trade away from China towards other parts of the world including India, Vietnam and other Asian countries. Mr Scholz pointed to this needed shift during the Trade Fair in Hannover. As part of this shift NATO now sees cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners Australia, Japan, and South Korea and India essential for meeting the challenge of Russia today and of China over the long term. The NATO document says about China that "its stated ambitions and coercive policies, challenge our interests, security and values." Here are some of the ways the world has changed today. There are new administrations and newly elected leaders in the US, Japan, South Korea, and Germany. The new administrations are led by leaders in Japan and South Korea that are keen on working hand in hand with the US to meet the challenge from China. In the US president Biden seems determined to build up America's strength to meet any challenges China can pose. In Germany the administration is run by the SPD socialists with the Greens and the Free Democrats coalition. The Greens led by Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock have taken a strong position to face up to Russia's invasion in Ukraine, and Mr. Scholz is following step by step and has distanced himself from old SPD and CDU policies of  Angela Merkel of close commercial ties with Russia and China.  Indian prime minster Modi was a close partner at the G7 conference in Munich, Germany. The leaders of Japan and South Korea attended the NATO summit in Madrid and met with president Biden as shown here.   ...

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As its economy slows and facing high debt levels, China benefits by an estimated $18 billion a month from lower oil prices in 2015. The estimate is from Starfort Holdings, investment and private equity group. The estimates as China benefits from lower prices of all commodities, including oil, are of about $250 billion annually as China replenishes its stocks of commodities. With $12 million barrels imported daily China is a major emerging market beneficiary, along with India, of the drop in oil prices. Continuing pressure on prices from the expected resilience in shale oil production in the U.S. with learning and the development of new production methods means the benefits are likely to continue. China has also not renegotiated price points in deals made earlier at higher prices with China and Venezuela, as it pursues its foreign interests. Stockpiling of grains and edible oils are being increased by 33% in 2015 by $24.7 billion.