The Asia Pacific Times Online

This is the front page of our current issue, hot off the press! For a week after publication you can find its main articles here online. Thereafter, all articles from the issue's Politics, Business and Life sections are added.

Forging a new model for growth

Asian countries need to boost sales in Europe to maintain their impressive growth rates: a Chinese container ship in Hamburg harbor.

Europe and Asia (ASEM) need to agree a new infrastucture for economic and financial reform – By Fraser Cameron

On Oct. 4 and 5, almost 50 European and Asian leaders will descend on Brussels for the bi-annual Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). Together, participants of ASEM represent half of the world’s GDP, almost 60 percent of the world’s population and more than 60 percent of global trade.

These are impressive figures but ASEM’s track record of reaching agreement on major issues over its 14-year existence is not. There were more positive signs at the last summit meeting in Beijing in 2008 when ASEM’s leaders had the first major discussion on how to contain the global financial crisis. These discussions then fed into the G-20 summits which have replaced the G-8 as the main global economic discussion forum.

Germany reports encouraging figures but what if… – By Uwe Jean Heuser

The economy is growing and even consumer spending has turned a corner. Yet the underlying dangers remain. Banks are uncontrolled and unstable, and foreign markets anything but robust.

As late as April, the German government was forecasting 1.4 percent GDP growth for this year. At the time, that seemed optimistic. In the fall, when the government’s next official forecast is due, those numbers may more than double. Germany’s economic output could expand by 3 percent. Carmakers, machine builders, you name it – many industrial firms are producing full tilt again, needing every pair of hands they can find, and are glad they kept most of their staff on.

Ever since his return to Formula One, Michael Schumacher has been bringing up the rear – By Frank Bachner

He was received like a Messiah: The return of the seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher after three years was supposed to jazz up Formula One racing. Yet half a year later, disenchantment is all there is.

The telephone switchboard simply collapsed. It was rather modern, designed to cope with a large amount of incoming calls, yet it was not up to the Michael Schumacher myth. Everybody wanted tickets for the German Formula One Grand Prix in Hockenheim to see Michael Schumacher, 41, the seven-time world champion. He had announced his comeback a few days prior to the event, after a three-year break. The return of the superstar in a silver Mercedes: a human legend in a legendary car.