The World’s attention this week may be 12,500 km to the north – east but the dispute over the Panama canal has not gone away. Few infrastructure projects can match it for cost – perhaps 25,000 died when the French tried to build it before the US completed the job in 1914; or for value […]

The Milano Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter Olympics are upon us and behind the wonder – how does Ilia Malinin do that? – and the drama – as I write, Lindsey Vonn has just been airlifted out of a women’s downhill for the second time in nine days – is the equally unfathomable question – are the […]

On 10 October, Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto issued Peraturan Presidena 109, a decree on how to go about “the Urban Waste Management through Environmentally Friendly Technology – Based Conversion of Waste into Renewable Energy” (PerPres 109 / 2025). Indonesia is hardly alone in generating a whole lot of rubbish in that it disposes of the […]

It’s a question that is unlikely to pop up in your local pub quiz: what do Tammy Wynette and Miguel de Cervantes have in common? Especially as the answer lies in Vietnam. Tammy, of course. advised ladies to Stand by their Man back in 1968 (before 68% of today’s potential listeners were even born). Even […]

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi was in HK last Friday to preside over the signing of a UN convention to establish the International Organisation for Mediation. 32 other countries, which were mostly already on board with the Belt & Road Initiative, signed too whilst more than 50 countries and “nearly 20” international organisations including the […]

Forty years ago today, HK’s MTR opened its Island line, twelve stations originally running from Admiralty east through Wan Chai (“Admiralty East”) to Chai Wan (“tea village” so not the reverse of Wan Chai “small bay”). Although not the first – fifteen stations on what are now parts of the Tsuen Wan and Kwun Tong […]

As I write in today’s South China Morning Post, in his budget speech on February 26, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po announced two initiatives related to Hong Kong’s port sector. He allocated HK$215 million (US$27.6 million) for developing a “smart” port by enhancing the flow of data among stakeholders – always welcome – and he said […]

As Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Sports Park nears its formal opening after a quarter of a century and HK$30 billion / US$3.9 billion later, we can ask: was it worth it? Spoiler alert: the answer is yes but it now needs to be filled – as I write in the South China and touch on […]

Ah, Samarkand, city of (amongst others) Timur (Tamerlane) … Xuan Zang loved the place when he visited in 630 as did ibn Battuta in 1333, less so Genghis Khan in 1220 and Konstantin von Kaufman in 1868. James Elroy Flecker may not have visited at all in 1913. More recently, in a country characterized as […]

Labour will win the UK general election on 4 July (hey, I’m going out on a limb here) but, in doing so, has allowed the undeserving Conservatives to salt the earth that Labour will inherit. There is to be no new borrowing, no cuts to services and no increases in the major taxes. So where […]

Today, the tenth World Water Forum opens in Nusa Dua, Bali. High on the list for discussion will be how should cleaner and more reliable supplies of fresh water and treatment / recycling of waste water be financed? And can delegates draw inspiration from ancient Balinese Warrior Frogs to make it happen? All governments’ long […]

Maritime Transit Corridors – think canals and land bridges – have made world trade go round – or rather, enabled it to not go around. The Panama canal saves 15,000 km when sailing between one contiguous US coast to the other; the Suez canal saves 8,900 km when sailing between the Arabian Sea and London; […]

Today HK’s Civil Engineering and Development Department shares with Kowloon City District Council a proposal relating to the much delayed light rail line to run the length of the old runway at Kai Tak. In terms of the timing, the proposal is still at only a preliminary stage so the timeframe for building the system […]

The latest news on Manila airport is that the San Miguel – led consortium, SMC – SAP, has won the bid to redevelop Ninoy Aquino International Airport on a PPP basis. Other members of the consortium are the less well – known RMM Asian Logistics and RLW Aviation Development with airport expertise coming from Incheon. […]

Back in 2016, Jamie Dimon dismissed the annual Davos meets as billionaires telling millionaires about how the middle class should work harder to help the poorest class (at least that’s what X / Twitter tells me so it must be true). It was easy to be similarly sceptical about global efforts on climate change when […]