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The Chinese delegation “rat-f––ed” the negotiations, fumed Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, after yet another day of gridlock. It was a Friday afternoon in December 2009, and the COP-15 climate conference in Copenhagen was going off the rails. U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and dozens of other world leaders had assembled in a last-ditch attempt to salvage a deal. They sat cheek by jowl in uncomfortable straight-backed chairs. The conference table was strewn with empty espresso cups and large…
Chinese policymakers are increasingly convinced that the United States is determined to implement a full-fledged strategy of containment against China. Beijing views the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity as the economic mirror of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and AUKUS, two U.S.-led security pacts that Beijing regards as anti-China coalitions. Chinese officials, academics, and media rhetoric increasingly talk of self-reliance and are preparing for a forced decoupling from the United States. Fang Xinghai, a vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory…
America’s recent turn towards protectionism has raised concerns over the future viability of the liberal international trading system. This study examines how and why public attitudes towards international trade change when one’s country is targeted by protectionist measures from abroad. To address this question, we fielded three original survey experiments in the country most affected by US protectionism: China. First, we find consistent evidence that US protectionism reduces support for trade among Chinese citizens. We replicate this finding in parallel experiments on technology cooperation,…
In 2013 President Xi Jinping announced the launch of two new Chinese connectivity projects: an “economic belt” along the historical Silk Road in Eurasia and a twenty-first-century Maritime Silk Road to expand cooperation between China and Southeast Asian nations. The common theme of both was to increase China’s collaboration and communication with regional nations to bolster mutual development and prosperity.
Over the next decade the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) became a gigantic infrastructure, trade, and connectivity project, spreading beyond Eurasia and Southeast Asia to regions such…
Governments around the world, including that of the United States, have grown increasingly anxious about the nature and impacts of Chinese-financed global development projects. One source of concern is China’s pursuit of influence via foreign aid and less concessional, debt-based financing in other countries. But given the scale and complexity of China’s overseas development portfolio, expectations that development dollars translate linearly into political influence are unrealistic. This essay argues for instead focusing on the major nodes of China’s overseas development program most relevant…
In long-suffering Shanghai, victory seems to have arrived. The city reopened on June 1, with jubilant locals in the streets—even as tens of thousands remain in COVID-19 quarantine. Beijing seems ready to declare victory over its own outbreak soon.
But all is not well for Chinese President Xi Jinping. Although the Beijing and Shanghai outbreaks have been controlled for now, the rapidly spreading omicron variant keeps breaking through the wall of China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy, as officials describe it. With several months left before the 20th Party Congress, the economy…
The impacts of the novel coronavirus (hereafter COVID-19) pose one of the greatest crises of our generation. The policy decisions that the US and Chinese governments take will shape the current order of international relations, the global supply chain of medical supplies, and US–China relations. The COVID-19 crisis leads to the empirical puzzles: how do the two great world powers construct their narratives on the global pandemic and toward each other? What are the meanings, if any, of fear in US–China relations? This study explores the narrative of fear that is constituted in the US and China…
China’s Power Position in Global Ports
In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Isaac B. Kardon, an assistant professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College, to discuss his paper Pier Competitor: China’s Power Position in Global Ports, which is co-authored with Wendy Leutert.
The views expressed by the guest are his own and do not necessarily represent those of the Navy or Department of Defense.
https://www.csis.org/node/65414 - https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article-abstract/46/4/9/111175/Pier-Competitor-China-s-Power-Position-in-Global?redirectedFrom=fulltext…
Is Xi Jinping an ideological person? Not taking ideology seriously in China would be a mistake, but sweeping statements about ideology’s decisive influence can obscure more than they illuminate. Treating the content of ideology as a variable that explains everything fails to appropriately account for politics and contingency. Linking ideology to specific actions faces serious methodological challenges, and outside observers have often gotten the role of ideology wrong in Leninist states. The life of Xi Jinping’s own father Xi Zhongxun suggests the difficulty of placing Chinese leaders clearly…
On May 23, US President Joe Biden announced the establishment of a new economic grouping, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), including 13 inaugural members and accounting for about 40 per cent of the world’s GDP. China has not been invited. Given Biden’s claim that “we’re writing the new rules for the 21st-century economy”, it is clear that China is not only excluded but also targeted.
It looks like a win for the United States in this round of the institutional balancing game against China. Given former president Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific…
China is now the lender of first resort for much of the developing world, but Beijing has fueled speculation among policymakers, scholars, and journalists by shrouding its grant-giving and lending activities in secrecy. Introducing a systematic and transparent method of tracking Chinese development projects around the world, this book explains Beijing's motives and analyzes the intended and unintended effects of its overseas investments. Whereas China almost exclusively provided aid during the twentieth century, its twenty-first century transition from 'benefactor' to 'banker' has had far-reaching…
The South China Sea remains a highly complex and contested maritime domain, with several nations in the region competing to press their territorial claims. To better understand the dynamics of contestation among these states and develop effective policy responses, it is essential to assess the impact of their previous and current behaviors. In this event, Andrew Chubb will discuss the dynamics of state behavior in South China Sea disputes, drawing on findings from the forthcoming NBR Special Report “Dynamics of Assertiveness in the South China Sea: China, the Philippines, and Vietnam, 1970–2015…
Located in the heart of Southeast Asia and linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the South China Sea comprises a varied set of geographic spaces that are subject to multiple layers of dispute. Grasping the dynamics of contestation in the South China Sea, therefore, requires consideration of what types of actions the contestant states have been taking, when, and where. How have states advanced their claims over the vast, resource-laden maritime geographies of the South China Sea? To what extent has contestation over these maritime spaces taken place physically on the water versus actions in the…
China is a leader in the global transportation industry, with an especially significant position in ocean ports. A mapping of every ocean port outside of China reveals that Chinese firms own or operate terminal assets in ninety-six ports in fifty-three countries. An original dataset of Chinese firms' overseas port holdings documents the geographic distribution, ownership, and operational characteristics of these ports. What are the international security implications of China's global port expansion? An investigation of Chinese firms' ties to the Party-state reveals multiple mechanisms by which…
Challenging a popular view that China’s rise will lead the United States and China to fall into the ‘Thucydides trap’—a possible hegemonic war between the two—this paper proposes an ‘institutional peace’ argument, suggesting that the ongoing international order transition will be different from previous order transitions in history. Instead of using military means to change the international order, China and the United States have relied on various institutional balancing strategies to compete with one another for an advantageous position in the future international order. The discussion…