By Alex Clark In 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a halt to new public funding for coal plants abroad. By this point, China’s state banks and state-owned enterprises had already financed nearly 47 gigawatts of coal-fired power outside China, most of it built the previous decade. This fleet of China-backed plants, concentrated in South […]
By Andrea Zhu Four decades ago, a transnational network of advocates took on the world’s largest development institution. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, coalitions of civil society organizations (CSOs) and grassroots movements waged campaigns against the World Bank, demanding accountability for the destructive impacts its large-scale infrastructure projects had on local communities and the environment. […]
China has committed over US$1 trillion in overseas financing, much of it directed toward productive public assets that have helped close infrastructure gaps and stimulate economic growth. Nevertheless, a series of external shocks—largely unrelated to Chinese financing—have left many countries struggling to pay external debts or borrow at affordable terms. As the Belt and Road […]
Governments around the world are reviving industrial policy to nurture nascent industries through multiple instruments, including tariffs, subsidies and localization policies. This shift is occurring amid intensifying geopolitical competition and weakening multilateral trade norms that are reshaping the global policy space. The electric vehicle (EV) industry, at the heart of global innovation and industrial competition, […]