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Hong Kong and Macao - Home Ports, Different Tides

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Hong Kong and Macao - Home Ports, Different Tides Hong Kong and Macao entered the 2020s with the same constitutional promise—“one country, two systems”—but their trajectories have diverged in texture and tempo. One city doubled down on its role as a global financial hub while rebuilding its political architecture and security regime. The other, the world’s most gaming-dependent economy, bet on tourism and a carefully managed diversification push next door in Hengqin. As of October 17, 2025, the contrast is stark: the legal frameworks have tightened in both, the economic engines hum for different reasons, and the social mood reflects each place’s peculiar bargains. We set out below a granular comparison of autonomy, economy, and social status in both territories, then sift what is publicly known and what informed rumor mills suggest, before modeling four plausible paths ahead. Autonomy and legal architecture Both Special Administrative Regions retain distinct legal systems and currencie...
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France - Republic at an Impasse

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France - Republic at an Impasse France ’s political center of gravity has shifted from the Elysée Palace to a constantly contested National Assembly , and the country is feeling the strain. The snap legislative election of June–July 2024 broke the spell of presidential dominance that defined the Fifth Republic , returning a fragmented lower house with three roughly equal poles: a left coalition, President Emmanuel Macron ’s centrist bloc, and the far right. On paper, the arithmetic promised stalemate. In practice, it delivered a conveyor belt of short-lived governments, lurching budget battles, and an argument about whether the institutions still fit the country they are meant to serve. The system is holding—for now—but only by leaning on caretaker arrangements and last-ditch deals that substitute improvisation for strategy. The risk is not collapse so much as drift. The numbers matter because they dictate everything else. The New Popular Front (NFP) emerged first in seats after the ...
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Crossroads of Power: How China Will — or Won’t — Become the Next Global Superpower

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Crossroads of Power: How China Will — or Won’t — Become the Next Global Superpower Whether China becomes the world’s next undisputed superpower—or settles into a different kind of primacy—hinges on a handful of hard constraints and a surprising set of tailwinds. Our assessment is neither triumphalist nor fatalistic. China is not fated to rule, and it is not destined to stall. It is a country with formidable industrial capacity and mounting structural liabilities, a state able to move capital at scale and a society that is aging faster than its prosperity can comfortably absorb. What happens next will be shaped by the interaction of five strategic pillars: economic durability, technological sovereignty, military reach, financial influence, and coalition-building power. In each domain China is advancing, but not on a straight line, and the path is increasingly contested. We begin with the economy because everything else—research budgets, defense procurement, diplomatic largesse—ultimatel...
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Lines of Power: America’s Redistricting Arms Race

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Lines of Power: America’s Redistricting Arms Race America’s congressional boundaries used to be redrawn like clockwork—once a decade after the census, with a handful of court fixes in between. That cadence is gone. We’ve entered a period in which maps can—and increasingly do—change mid-cycle, lawsuits are planned like campaign stops, and data science has turned map-drawing into an industrial process. Both parties now treat redistricting not as a compliance chore but as an organizing principle for national power. What follows are five key points that, in our judgment, define the current redistricting arms race—and what it may yield before the 2026 midterms. 1) The rulebook has subtly—but decisively—changed The single biggest reason the fight never ends is that the legal terrain now encourages permanent motion. In 2019, the Supreme Court took federal courts largely out of the business of policing partisan gerrymandering (Rucho v. Common Cause), pushing disputes to state courts and state ...
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