The Business Times
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Tan Kong Yam

THE WRITER, A FORMER CHIEF ECONOMIST OF THE SINGAPORE GOVERNMENT, IS EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AT NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY. HE WAS A SENIOR ECONOMIST AT THE WORLD BANK’S OFFICE IN BEIJING FROM JUNE 2002 TO JUNE 2005.

US President Donald Trump (left) with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan in October 2025. The most plausible outcome of US-China rivalry is not a clean transition from one hegemon to another, but a fragmented order.
NEW GLOBAL ORDER

US-China rivalry and the Kindleberger Trap: Why inaction – not escalation – is the biggest risk

Rather than rapid speculative surges, Beijing wants equities to rise gradually over time, generating stable dividend income and encouraging long-term investment behaviour.

Can China’s ‘slow bull’ market succeed?

Chinese EV maker Nio's factory in Hefei. China competes not by optimising quarterly return on investment, but by building ecosystems, accelerating diffusion and accepting waste as the cost of capability.
NEW GLOBAL ORDER

Resilience over returns: How China’s economic model sparks a rethink about global competition

Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral race marked not merely a shift in political leadership, but the emergence of a new class coalition – one defined less by ideology and identity, than by a shared experience of economic squeeze. 

Why Zohran Mamdani won New York’s mayoral race: The revolt of the ‘struggling yuppies’

China’s latest rare earth export controls are strategically timed to shape the meeting between US President Donald Trump (left) and China President Xi Jinping at the upcoming Apec summit in South Korea.

The new rare earth Cold War: China’s trump card in US tariff poker?

Industry-specific innovation consortia have been formed in key sectors such as EV production, enabling Chinese firms to become global leaders.

The wind beneath China’s wings: New productive forces

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