Editor’s note for Wednesday, July 7, 2021
A note from the editor of today’s The China Project Access newsletter
My thoughts today:
“China is poised to make an exclusive entry into post-U.S. Afghanistan with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI),” according to the Daily Beast. Sources say “authorities are growing more intensively engaged with China on an extension of the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) — the flagship project of BRI, which involves the construction of highways, railways and energy pipelines between Pakistan and China — to Afghanistan.”
The Financial Times reports that “An Indian government official said China’s approach was to rebuild Afghanistan’s shattered infrastructure in cooperation with Taliban by channeling funds through Pakistan, one of Beijing’s firmest allies in the region.”
As author and economist Adam Tooze tweeted: “What could possibly go wrong?”
Our word of the day is variable interest entity or VIE (可变权益实体 kěbiàn quányì shítǐ).
—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief
