https://www.scmp.com/rss/320990/feed Robin Hu is Asia chair emeritus at the Milken Institute. He is also an advisory senior director at Temasek, a Singapore-government-owned global investment firm, and a former chief executive officer of the South China Morning Post. en https://assets-v2.i-scmp.com/production/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Robin Hu Robin Hu An aircraft supplier can have parts ready and a customer waiting yet be unable to ship while Washington holds up its licence. In Shanghai, Citi has approval to establish a securities business after years of waiting. Companies must invest, sign contracts and move production while the two governments negotiate. A board needs to know what can proceed now, what remains conditional and what could stop the business after the money has been spent. Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3372307/xi-trump-summits-must-leave-businesses-greater-clarity-not-less https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3372307/xi-trump-summits-must-leave-businesses-greater-clarity-not-less Thu, 29 Oct 2026 12:30:08 +0000 Robin Hu Robin Hu In 2022, Ukraine asked SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to activate Starlink coverage around Sevastopol to support an attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. He refused, saying SpaceX would become “explicitly complicit in a major act of war”; he later also cited US sanctions covering Crimea. At the moment that mattered, one private actor had the final say. It exposed a question hidden inside every chokepoint. We usually ask where dependence is concentrated: a strait, mineral, technology, network. But three... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3363772/chokepoints-and-cost-cutting-access https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3363772/chokepoints-and-cost-cutting-access Sun, 16 Aug 2026 21:30:09 +0000 Robin Hu Robin Hu Writing in Foreign Affairs, Tsinghua University’s Da Wei argued that China wants Europe to function as an independent pole in a changing global order, but that Europe lacks “a more independent soul”. He is half right. Europe has the assets for independence. What it lacks is the strategy. Europe and the United States face the same rival but carry different exposures. Since 2018, the US has cut its direct imports from China. Europe’s have grown harder to unwind. What appears to be decoupling is... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3351632/facing-us-and-chinese-pressure-eu-must-forge-its-own-strategy https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3351632/facing-us-and-chinese-pressure-eu-must-forge-its-own-strategy Tue, 28 Apr 2026 12:30:10 +0000 Robin Hu Robin Hu I pay far less attention to China’s growth numbers today. What matters more is where fiscal capacity is flowing. China has entered a phase where population ageing, security needs and industrial upgrading all draw on the same budget. This shift follows a structural adjustment in property. Income from land sales – once a pillar of local government finance – has fallen sharply and is unlikely to return. Balance sheets will have to be reset. The question is no longer how much stimulus Beijing can... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3342057/chinas-real-constraint-where-direct-limited-fiscal-resources https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3342057/chinas-real-constraint-where-direct-limited-fiscal-resources Tue, 03 Feb 2026 08:30:38 +0000 Robin Hu Robin Hu When ships from China and the Philippines encounter each other near the Second Thomas Shoal, most incidents are resolved without diplomatic intervention. No shots fired, no ministerial calls, no carrier deployments. Within days, encounters are logged, reviewed and absorbed into routine reporting channels. That administrative resolution reveals how stability is maintained in the South China Sea. Debate over these waters still defaults to navies, deterrence and great power rivalry. However, most... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/asia-opinion/article/3338781/why-coastguards-not-warships-are-shaping-future-south-china-sea https://www.scmp.com/opinion/asia-opinion/article/3338781/why-coastguards-not-warships-are-shaping-future-south-china-sea Wed, 07 Jan 2026 01:30:10 +0000 Robin Hu Robin Hu When Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump met in Busan, South Korea, on October 30, they spent nearly two hours discussing rare earths, fentanyl and trade. Taiwan, the one issue most likely to bring the world’s two largest powers into direct conflict, never came up. That silence was the message. It revealed how both leaders prefer to manage rivalry through quiet understanding rather than confrontation. The approach reduces the risk of war but narrows Taiwan’s options. The... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3332430/busan-silence-how-great-power-pragmatism-rewriting-taiwans-future https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3332430/busan-silence-how-great-power-pragmatism-rewriting-taiwans-future Sun, 16 Nov 2025 01:30:08 +0000 Robin Hu Robin Hu At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin this week, the choreography was striking. Chinese President Xi Jinping, flanked by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, unveiled proposals for a development bank, expanded BeiDou satellite services, and cooperation in green technology, artificial intelligence and infrastructure. The message was unmistakable: the SCO is no longer just a security forum. It is evolving into a platform offering... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3324312/chinas-multipolar-ambition-making-us-sit-and-fire-back https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3324312/chinas-multipolar-ambition-making-us-sit-and-fire-back Fri, 05 Sep 2025 22:30:08 +0000 Robin Hu Robin Hu Six months into Donald Trump’s second term as president of the United States, the global order has entered a period of renewed volatility. This is not a return to the past, but the acceleration of a multipolar world marked by recalibrated alliances, fractured supply chains and shifting development models. For China, the question is not simply how it will respond to a more transactional, less predictable US, but also how it will recalibrate its external partnerships, internal growth model and... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3318898/how-china-turning-risks-trump-20-world-opportunities https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3318898/how-china-turning-risks-trump-20-world-opportunities Mon, 21 Jul 2025 21:30:07 +0000 Much ink has been spent discussing the tropes of China’s opportunities and challenges. On the former, China is a massive and fiercely competitive single market which, for all its ebbs and flows, is once again innovating and will eventually succeed. On the latter, geostrategic rivalry, low welfare and in turn consumption, insufficient intellectual property protection, and atypical controls on flows of capital and corporate data continue to plague international confidence. I will touch on four key... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3302061/4-lesser-known-factors-shaping-chinas-destiny https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3302061/4-lesser-known-factors-shaping-chinas-destiny Thu, 13 Mar 2025 05:30:08 +0000 Asia is currently experiencing significant geopolitical shifts, driven by a confluence of interrelated forces. The term “Indo-Pacific” has increasingly supplanted “Asia-Pacific” in strategic discussions, reflecting a broader geopolitical scope that encompasses both the Indian and Pacific Oceans. This shift highlights the interconnectedness of security, economics, and politics across these areas. This article presents six observations on why the Indo-Pacific is becoming the next battleground for... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3284868/6-reasons-indo-pacific-became-battleground-us-china-influence https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3284868/6-reasons-indo-pacific-became-battleground-us-china-influence Sat, 02 Nov 2024 02:00:10 +0000 Click here to read the Chinese version of this article. "Newspaper", as we all know, is made up of two words - "news" and "paper". Over the last 20 years, since the advent of the internet, "paper" has been getting smaller but "news" has never been bigger. The reality today is that we've never spent so much time consuming news. News has taken on new forms and conduits. Apart from print, TV and radio, we now have the web, tablets, smartphones and even wearables. From a 24-hour news cycle for the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1862414/disruptive-influence-can-media-industry-adapt-model-news-all https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1862414/disruptive-influence-can-media-industry-adapt-model-news-all Tue, 29 Sep 2015 10:00:30 +0000