I spoke with Ameen Talib in Singapore recently. Ameen is Singaporean, but also an ethnic-Hadrami. The Hadramis originate from Yemen, on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, and rank among the world’s great traders. I first encountered Hadrami traders in China buying goods for export to Saudi Arabia. Ameen is a fascinating individual and [...]
Gallery Archive
Thai shippers and Bangladeshi crew
I was in Bangkok on Friday, speaking with the Bank of Thailand about relations between China and the Middle East. I also stopped by Precious Shipping, a large shipping company. The owner is an ethnic-Indian, but his father was born in Rangoon, before eventually migrating to Thailand where he got his start as a rice-trader. [...]
Islamic finance reaches China
I was recently in Malaysia and spent a valuable hour with bankers from Maybank Islamic. In the process, I learnt something about Islamic finance that has implications for the entire region. I had assumed that the bank’s Muslim clients would be the biggest buyers of Islamic wealth products. But it turns out I was wrong. [...]
Chinese banks plant a flag in the Gulf
It’s earnings season, and the Chinese banks are reporting. In its 1H09 release today, China Construction Bank said it plans to earn more revenues from overseas lending. By coincidence, a colleague sent me a separate report today saying much the same thing. IFR, a popular financial magazine, writes that Chinese banks have started to fund [...]
Yemeni authorities take a stern view of Chinese massage parlors
You won’t find this type of trade recorded in the official statistics. Yemeni authorities have closed down Chinese massage parlors and restaurants in the country’s capital, according to this article, claiming the premises were being used to promote prostitution. In one incident, witnesses saw Chinese women being ushered out from the “Arabian Night” onto to [...]
Syria’s Al Thawra links China’s U.S. assets to unrest in the western provinces
Syria’s Al Thawra, a state mouthpiece, has written an editorial that manages to tie the recent unrest in China’s western provinces to China’s purchases of U.S government debt. In short, it argues that the U.S. has criticized China’s policies in the western provinces while ignoring its own policies towards “Muslims all over the world”. I [...]
Visa Problems
There are some smart people starting to wonder if the United States should be focused on Somalia rather than Afghanistan. The risks of Somalia turning into an Islamist stronghold are growing, and that’s bad news for countries hosting large Somali populations. Last month, for instance, the Kenyan authorities arrested several Dutch-nationals of Somali origin near [...]
Hugh Miles and CCTV Arabic
Hugh Miles, author of “Al Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel”, had a piece in the “The National” over the weekend looking at China’s CCTV Arabic. He makes the interesting case that the channel will only advertise China’s reluctance to take a stance on key issues in the Middle East. (So far, [...]
“China cheat sheet helps investors survive”, Bloomberg, September 1, 2010
“No more silver bullets for Beijing”, Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2010
“China’s historic return to the Gulf”, Foreign Policy, April 2, 2010
