Recommended Weekend Reads: November 18 - 20, 2022

We wanted to share a few of the research pieces and notable news stories that caught our eye in the past week. We hope you find it interesting and useful.

·  "CCP: Who makes up the party" The Lowy Institute

Demography is destiny, as is said – and the numbers in China make for a compelling story. In a series of charts and graphs, the Lowy Institute shows who makes up today's Chinese Communist Party and its senior ranks. The short version: It is overwhelmingly male and well over 60 years old.

·  "Interpreting Chinese Economic Policy: Another Brief Guide"  by Derek Scissors/American Enterprise Institute

Chinese economic policy is seen as increasingly important, including to global investors. But transparency has not risen in tandem, and policy is frequently misinterpreted. Here is a guide to understanding China's economic and monetary policy more clearly.

·  "Global Economic Turmoil Calls for a Modernized Global Financial Architecture to Address Needs of the Most Vulnerable Countries"  by David McNair, Executive Director at ONE.org and nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

·       The author argues that, unfortunately, those Western governments with decision-making power and resources to help vulnerable countries respond to the polycrisis are not inclined to use it, given domestic cost-of-living crises in G7 nations, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, and limited domestic political appetite for international initiatives.

·  “Russia’s Defense Industry Growing Increasingly Turbulent” Jamestown Foundation

Moscow has actively tried to restore at least part of its arms lost in Ukraine after almost nine months of its bloody war. The Russian national defense budget has skyrocketed. However, the true reality of the current state of affairs appears to be rather complicated for the Kremlin. Even the trillions of additional rubles will make its defense industry less productive and efficient in the short term due to a number of critical difficulties.

·  “Putin’s Fear of Retreat – How the Cuban Missile Crisis Haunts the Kremlin"  Foreign Affairs

History matters and Russian President Vladimir Putin knows it. Putin has closely studied the detailed events of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He understands that then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was the one who backed down -- not President Kennedy – leading to Khrushchev's removal from office less than two years later. Putin recently spoke of the Cuban Crisis and is clearly desperate to avoid a similar fate.

Chart of the Week: We Reached 8 Billion People Last Week… But Population Growth is Starting to Slow, and India Will Surpass China: 

According to estimates from the United Nations, the world's population surpassed 8 billion people this past week. While populations in sub-Saharan Africa are expected to continue growing substantially over the next 30 years, the annual global population growth rate is now at its slowest pace since 1950 – and moving into negative rates in many advanced economies. Additionally, India will become the most populous country in 2023, overtaking China. By 2050, India's population will be 1.7 billion to China's 1.3 billion.