China’s environmental awakening has brought cleaner skies and greener industries, but the costs of decades of ecological devastation remain immense. Mao Zedong was not a farmer. Though born into a peasant family, he had little farming experience. It was political struggle that interested him. This struggle would come to define his whole life; struggle against everything he thought was holding China back from becoming the Marxist utopia it was destined to be. In 1917, as a you

It doesn’t just change how you see the world—it changes a small part of you. China is not just a country—it is an experience that unfolds gently, layer by layer, revealing stories of emperors, revolutions, nature’s grandeur, and human resilience. It is a land where ancient heritage and modern ambition exist in harmony, where every journey slowly becomes personal, almost intimate. I remember one moment during a group journey when I was leading 38 people that has stayed with me

India’s security battle is no longer confined to contested borders but spans supply chains, trade routes and political narratives. When Indians think of national security, the mind still conjures the familiar tableau of a jawan on vigil on n a wind-swept ridge, guarding a distant frontier. But for a country of India’s scale and ambition, its security today far outgrown the trench and the checkpoint. The country’s security now sprawls across markets and media, rivers and route

France’s surprise veto with Russia and China exposes a fraying Western consensus, raising awkward questions about NATO’s future. For seven decades, the choreography of great-power diplomacy has been comfortingly predictable: when push came to shove at the United Nations, France stood with the United States and United Kingdom, balancing the habitual dissent of Russia and China. That symmetry has now been disrupted. In a jarring diplomatic turn, France recently joined Russia an

As academic incentives harden into predictable pathways, science risks trading curiosity for predictable outcomes. A recent article in Nature magazine describes an unusual online game from China in which players step into the life of a young faculty member. They must publish papers, secure research grants, manage teaching, and navigate institutional pressures. What is striking is not the game's premise but how real it feels to those who play it. This reaction is worth pausi

Under China’s expanding shadow, the once-dominant Indosphere faces slow erosion born as much of external pressure as of India’s own long neglect. The term Indosphere, post its coinage around eight decades ago, was broadly understood to include the whole of Southeast Asia, except the northern or one third of Vietnam. It, by definition as well as by factual development, excludes the later born (2002) and newly admitted (2026) ASEAN member state of Timor Leste. A lot can be said

As other nations rebuild their entire knowledge systems for an AI-driven future, India remains trapped in incrementalism while leaving the deeper architecture of learning untouched. Picture a classroom. Thirty students. Bright faces, packed bags, parents who sacrificed holidays and savings to put them there. Now remove fifteen of them. Tell them that you studied hard, you passed your exams, you did everything right but are not ready for the world waiting outside this door. Th

Cyber fraud, human trafficking and weak states have fused into a criminal ecosystem that even China’s heavy hand struggles to dismantle Chinese actor Wang Xing with Thai police authorities In January of this year, eleven members of the mafia family Ming were executed in China. Their crimes included homicide, illegal detention, and the operating of cyber scam centres across the border in Myanmar. Five members of the family Bai were sentenced to death back in November, and ther