Day 1,634: heyday, assertiveness

Even in the heyday of the Belt and Road Initiative, Japanese infrastructure investments in many South-East Asian countries outpaced China’s.

Japanese strategists also see capacity-building in South-East Asia as a way to counter China’s assertiveness throughout the Indo-Pacific.

Japan is a cuddlier friend to South-East Asia than America or China

Artwork of the day 
Towboat leaving the port of Ostend at heyday
Andreas Achenbach
Original Title: Ein Schlepper Verlässt Den Hafen Von Ostende Bei Flut
Date: c.1882
Style: Romanticism
Genre: marina
Media: oil, canvas

Word of the day 
heyday: the most successful or popular period of someone or something
assertiveness: the quality of being confident and not frightened to say what you want or believe

Quote of the day
“There is irony here: the heyday of the railroad would be the 1880s and 1890s. So the Crash of 1850 was due to speculative fever and the wealth created by science, but the real job of railing the world would take many more decades to mature.”

― Michio Kaku, Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100