Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Across the globe, few are happy with the direction of their country – less than half in 34 of the 39 countries surveyed say things are going well. Satisfaction is particularly low in advanced and developing economies, while publics in emerging markets tend to be somewhat more content. Among the advanced economies, only in Germany […]
Economy Categorization: To categorize the 39 countries surveyed into three categories – advanced economies, emerging markets and developing economies – we started with the World Bank classification of countries by income. The World Bank classifies countries into high income, upper middle income, lower middle income and low income groups. In general, we categorized countries that […]
Washington, D.C. — A new study by the Pew Research Center finds that the already high level of restrictions on religion in the Middle East and North Africa – whether resulting from government policies or from social hostilities – continued to increase in 2011, when most of the political uprisings known as the Arab Spring […]
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s announcement that Japan will join negotiations to create a Trans-Pacific Partnership with the U.S. and other Pacific Basin nations won early support from the Japanese people, according to snap surveys following his statement. The decision was also welcomed in official circles in Washington, D.C., where the Obama administration has long supported Japan becoming party to the talks.
Japan’s decision to join negotiations to create a Trans-Pacific Partnership with the United States and other Pacific nations reflects, in part, the sea change in public opinion that has transformed U.S.-Japan relations. The upcoming TPP negotiations will be contentious. But the political context in which these talks will take place is far more supportive than ever before.
China’s alleged cyber-espionage campaigns against other governments, major corporations and, most recently, the media, have increasingly become a focus of U.S. officials and news reports. In the superpower competition between the U.S. and China, most American experts ranked cyber attacks from China as a more serious problem than the economic or military challenges it poses.