Asia

The three-day meeting of the finance ministers and central bankers of the G7 group of imperialist powers held in Stresa, Italy, concluded on Saturday. Significantly, it stepped up its aggressive stance against Russia and China, as well as giving carte blanche to the Israeli genocide in Gaza. A major item on the agenda was how the $300 billion worth of foreign assets of the Russian central bank, frozen by the US and European powers at the start of the Ukraine war, could be used to finance the Zelensky regime as it prepares to throw thousands more men into the meat-grinder, on top of the hundreds of thousands already killed or wounded. As well, revealing the interconnected character of the imperialist war fronts, the meeting adopted a more strident attitude to China and its so-called ...

Abstract Green finance (GF) is recognized as a key driver of sustainable development. While existing studies have extensively discussed the relationship between GF and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), few have explored the coupling coordination relationship between GF and SDGs. In this paper, we use data from thirty Chinese provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) from 2008–2021 to examine the degree of coupling coordination development (CCD) between GF and the SDGs systems using the CCD model. We find that most SDGs and their sub-goals exhibit a significant upward trend, except for SDG8, 14–16. GF presents a fluctuating upward trend, with a significant decline in 2010 and 2019. The CCDs between GF and SDGs and their sub-goals generally show an M-shaped upward trend i...

The UK cannot afford to give the “cold shoulder” to China, the City minister said on Monday, in comments that will distance the British government from the Biden administration’s protectionist crackdown. Addressing financial services bosses at the City Week conference in London’s Guildhall, Bim Afolami said it was “crucial” to engage with strategic competitors such as Beijing, and that the UK risked losing control of its economic future if it failed to find common ground. “Like with any bilateral relationship, we don’t agree on everything, [but] we are very clear that you simply cannot give the cold shoulder to an economy that is home to a fifth of the world’s globally systemic important banks, four of the world’s largest banks, and almost a third of the world’s leading global finan...

In recent years, China has embarked on an ambitious journey to redefine its role in the global financial landscape, leveraging technological advancements to potentially reshape how global transactions are conducted. Central to this initiative is the pilot program for the e-CNY, China's digital currency, which is now making its way into overseas markets, notably in Hong Kong, for retail use which was announced in May 2024. This move mirrors China's previous efforts to expand the reach of its payment solutions, such as UnionPay and Alipay, which have had mixed success abroad. The path forward for the e-CNY is shrouded in uncertainty. The introduction of a state-backed digital currency on an international scale presents a myriad of technological, regulatory, and geopolitical challenges...