China Global

China’s ties with Southeast Asia states are increasingly consequential for regional stability and global geopolitics. Over the past two decades, China has become the region’s largest trading partner and a major source of investment and infrastructure financing. At the same time, China growing military presence and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea have caused anxiety and have prompted a n...

In mid-September, while many China watchers were focused on the Xiangshan Forum, the Chinese military’s annual high-level security and defense convening in Beijing, another major annual meeting was being held by the Ministry of Public Security in the Chinese city of Lianyungang (2-2-3). The Lianyungang Forum dates to 2015 but was upgraded and renamed the Global Public Security Cooperation Forum in...

Since 1951, when Tibet was formally annexed into the People’s Republic of China, Tibet has been a battleground between China’s efforts to assert control and the Tibetan people’s struggle to preserve their cultural and religious identity. This past August, Xi Jinping made a surprise visit to Tibet, his second since becoming China’s top leader in 2012. Less than two months earlier, the Dalai Lama, n...

The United States and China are locked in a race for dominance in artificial intelligence, including its applications and diffusion. American and Chinese AI firms like OpenAI and DeepSeek respectively have captured global attention and major companies like Google and Microsoft have been actively investing in AI development. While the US currently boasts world-leading AI models, China is ahead in s...

The United States and China wrapped up the third round of high-level trade negotiations earlier this week. American and Chinese negotiators met in Stockholm on July 28 and 29. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the talks as constructive and wide ranging. He acknowledged that an extension of the 90-day tariff pause was discussed but said that the final decision was up to President Trump....

South Korea and China have a complex relationship characterized by economic interdependence, strategic competition, and regional security concerns. Navigating this delicate balance has been a defining challenge for every South Korean president. Newly elected President Lee Jae Myung has assumed power at a time of increasing US-China strategic competition as well as uncertain global supply chains an...

On June 13th, Israel launched attacks on several military and nuclear facilities in Iran, marking the beginning of a 12-day war between the two countries. The United States followed with targeted strikes on Iranian nuclear sites to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power and posing a threat to regional and global stability. China’s involvement in the conflict was limited to condemning the Israe...

In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. China has never condemned the invasion, and its government and media have carefully avoided using term “Ukraine War,” opting instead to refer to the war as the “Ukraine crisis,” the “Russia-Ukraine conflict,” or the “special military operation,” a term that echoes Moscow’s language.  Beijing’s approach to the Ukraine War has inclu...

On April 22, 2025, gunmen in the town of Pahalgam, located in the disputed region of Kashmir, killed 26 people—mostly Indian tourists. A four-day military clash between India and Pakistan ensued, bringing both countries to the brink of a full-blown war, before a ceasefire was reached on May 10, 2025.  During the India-Pakistan clashes, Beijing urged both sides to deescalate and called for a “polit...

The United States and China reached a 90-day truce in the trade war when their representatives met in Geneva in early May. Both sides agreed to temporarily roll back tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers. President Trump announced that a “total reset” in US-China relations had been achieved. Beyond the hyperbole, the two sides agreed to establish a mechanism on economics and trade and launch negot...

Critical minerals are required for the manufacturing of electronics, aerospace equipment, medical devices, and renewable energy technologies, making them essential for a country’s economic and national security. These materials have been at the center of China’s domestic and foreign policy for many decades, and China’s ability to integrate internal industrial policies with foreign trade and invest...

This episode of the China Global podcast discusses evolving disputes between China and South Korea, specifically regarding their unresolved maritime boundary in the Yellow Sea. There is a long history of fishing disputes between the two countries in the Provisional Measures Zone (or PMZ) of the Yellow Sea, which is where their exclusive economic zones overlap. Although China and South Korea have e...

As China’s military capabilities expand, US-China frictions intensify, and regional tensions increase, concern is on the rise that a potential crisis, either accidental or deliberate, could take place that could spiral out of control.  If a crisis arises with China, leaders may want to de-escalate and prevent a wider conflict. To do so, they will need to understand how China thinks about crisis ma...

The year 2025 marks the 10th anniversary of China’s Digital Silk Road, which has become an increasingly crucial component of Xi Jinping’s flagship foreign policy project: the Belt and Road Initiative. Over the past decade, China has massively expanded its digital infrastructure investment across the globe. Accompanying the investment has been the diffusion of China’s digital governance norms and s...

Nuclear weapons have changed the nature of modern warfare and exerted a profound impact on international politics. The Cold War logic of nuclear deterrence maintains that nuclear-armed states will not attack one another because of fear of massive retaliation, or mutually assured destruction. By this logic, nuclear weapons promote stability and can prevent war. At the same time, however, nuclear we...

In the past decade, China has ramped up its engagement in the Middle East, a region which is far from China geographically, but carries growing importance in China’s foreign policy. Economically, China is the biggest importer of the Middle East oil, particularly from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Chinese state-owned enterprises have invested heavily in the region under the Belt and Road Initiative with a...

The Global South is a term that covers a broad swath of developing countries and emerging economies in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. It is a grouping of over 130 heterogenous countries that is pushing to enhance its voice in global decision making.  China, which self-identifies as a leader of the developing world, has a long history of engaging with the developing world. Under Xi Jinpi...

Space, once a distant destination, has become yet another battleground for great power competition.  Since the early days of the People’s Republic of China, the country has been pursuing a series of ambitious space programs aimed to build up its space capacity as an essential element of its comprehensive national power.  In recent years, under the Xi Jinping regime, Beijing has significantly incre...

When this episode goes live four days from now, Donald Trump will have been sworn in as the 47th president of the United States, after having served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021. Many countries around the world are closely watching to identify changes in US policy and assess their impact. China is one of those countries. As presidential candidate Donald Trump threatened to impose 60% ta...

In June 2020, Indian and Chinese forces engaged in a deadly clash along their disputed border in the Ladakh region. It was the deadliest confrontation since the 1962 war. Subsequently, bilateral ties between India and China deteriorated to their lowest level in decades. In recent months, however, China-India ties have begun to thaw. Last October, India and China struck a border patrol deal. Indian...

In China’s 14th Five-Year Plan that spans from 2021 to 2025, priority was assigned to development of emerging technologies that could be both disruptive and foundational for the future. China is now a global leader in AI technology and is poised to overtake the West and become the world leader in AI in the years ahead. Importantly, there is growing evidence that AI-enabled military capabilities ar...

China’s push to revise the international security order entered a new phase with the launch of the Global Security Initiative ( GSI ) in April 2022. A few months after Xi Jinping proposed GSI, host Bonnie Glaser did a podcast episode with Manoj Kewalramani to discuss the drivers behind GSI and analyze the initial statements outlining its content.  More than 2 ½ years have elapsed since then, and s...

The BRICS+ summit was held in the Russian city of Kazan this past October. The original BRICS comprised four countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The first meeting that they held was in 2009. South Africa joined in 2011. BRICS has now grown to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. The recent summit also invited 13 countries to the group as partner states. Countries t...

China is the world’s largest energy consumer and carbon emitter, accounting for one-third of global CO2 emissions. One of its biggest sources of emissions is coal, which plays a central role in China’s economy. At the same time, however, China is the world’s leading supplier of renewable energy, largely due to significant government investments in green technologies, including solar manufacturing,...

For many years, China’s nuclear doctrine was widely described as “minimum nuclear deterrence,” which essentially means that it relied on a limited number of nuclear weapons to deter an adversary from attacking. China’s authoritative defense white papers asserted that China sought to maintain a lean, effective and credible deterrent force, was committed to the policy of no first use of nuclear weap...