HONG KONG – By disrupting the world’s interconnected economic, social, and geopolitical spheres, the COVID-19 crisis has exposed just how fragile and inequitable the institutions that govern them really are. It has also highlighted how difficult it is to address systemic fragility and inequity amid escalating national-security threats.

King Prithvi Narayan Shah was a visionary to understand the sensitive geopolitics of Nepal. His Dibya Upadesh offers a prescription to carefully handle the relations with two neighbors. Geopolitics is a very sensitive issue in power dynamics. Prithvi Narayan had very clear understanding of it but his successors failed to understand the sensitivity of the matter and pushed the country into several problems.

HONG KONG – There is nothing like a pandemic to expose systemic differences. For China and the United States, which were locked in an ideologically driven competition even before the COVID-19 crisis, those differences are stark. But the two countries have at least one thing in common: when this is all over, they will need to rethink their social contracts.