Exactly two years ago, on May 2nd 2014, the Chinese authorities ordered drilling works on the oil platform in the South China Sea. The South China Sea is one of the most contentious places on the map of the world. The two conflicts – one between China and Vietnam for the Paracels Islands and the conflict between China, Taiwan and four ASEAN countries (Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, and Brunei) - for the Spratly Archipelago, are partly connected to the rivalry for natural resources and military domination. However, the control of one of the most important trade routes on the globe is at stake. The conflict involves also other international actors such as the United States, Japan, the G7 countries, as well as India and Australia.

Governing the Indian Union – “an explosive combination” of different States, language, religion and culture – requires unusual political skills. In “the world’s biggest democracy” the scale of tensions and conflicts of interest is proportional to the size and population of this complicated country. It can be seen in the example of the eight (seven till recently) North Eastern States, for decades shaken by all kinds of turmoil. The prevalence of peace, development agenda, as well as finding a way to unleash the human potential constitute three essential challenges of the region. - writes Małgorzata Bonikowska, Ph.D., President of CIR, in the analysis entitled India’s North East CASE STUDY.

Today's world economy is not really a global economy. It has coalesced around three well-integrated regional economies: East Asia, Western Europe, and North America. Countries like Korea, Poland, and Mexico have relatively large populations and high levels of GDP per capita but are nonetheless much smaller than the dominant core countries in their economic zones. They can merge into the cores, but to do so they must match core economies in fixed infrastructure and domestic consumption - writes Salvatore Babones, CIR's associate, in his comment "National Upgrading in a Regional World".