- McKinsey makes its 2014 China predictions. The Shanghai FTZ will be a damp squib, apparently. (Thanks Martine.)
- Asia's factories slowly going green.
- My colleague Rodger Shanahan on what the Syria conflict means for the Middle East's Shia.
- Prospect magazine lists 12 ideas that will define 2014.
- China wants to shed its image as a cheap, low-tech manufacturer and establish global brands, says Spiegel.
- Wonderful archival photos of how London's urban fabric changed during the Blitz.
- What China really needs is...a peerage system and a House of Lords?
- With their home country in the doldrums, many Italians are looking to emigrate to the UK. Do they know what they are in for?
- Thirty-five years ago, the Shah of Iran had a tourist resort built on an island in the Gulf. Here's what it's like today.
- Graham Allison was out of the blocks on 1 January with his 1914-2014 comparison:
Will 2014 bring another Great War? My bet is almost certainly not, but with a note of caution. Claims that war is "inconceivable" are not statements about what is possible in the world, but rather, about what our limited minds can conceive. The fact that Presidents Obama and Xi understand that war would be folly for both China and the US is relevant but not dispositive. None of the leaders in Europe of 1914 would have chosen the war they got and that in the end they all lost. By 1918, the Kaiser was gone, the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, the Tsar overthrown by the Bolsheviks, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of the flower of its youth and treasure. Given a chance for a do-over, none of the leaders would have made the choices he did.