China Global

On May 26, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken delivered a long-awaited speech on the Biden Administration’s approach to the People’s Republic of China. Separate from the speech itself, there is a China strategy document that remains classified. Blinken’s speech, which did not contain any surprises, introduced a new catchphrase for the Biden administration’s strategy toward China, the only country...

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol formally began his five-year term on May 10, 2022. His predecessor, former president Moon Jae-in, attempted to strike a balance between ties with China and the United States during his term, but whether he was able to successfully advance South Korean interests is unclear. Concurrently, public attitude in South Korea toward China has continued to harden, as Yo...

On April 19, the PRC signed an agreement with the Solomon Islands that has prompted concerns in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia about growing Chinese influence that some worry could lead to a Chinese military presence in the Solomons. The Pacific Islands countries are scattered over a broad expanse of ocean and are widely seen as strategically significant. Yet, the region only receiv...

In this episode, Bonnie Glaser hosts Singapore’s Ambassador Bilahari Kausikan to discuss several international trends and their strategic significances. They discuss the implications of the war in Ukraine for the global order, particularly the Indo-Pacific, the consequences of growing strategic alignment between China and Russia, the possible endgame of the US-China strategic competition, and Sout...

Europe’s relations with China have been on a downward trajectory the past few years. The list for this decline is long: Europe’s concerns about human rights violations in Xinjiang, Chinese sanctions on EU parliamentarians, European uneasiness about PRC plans to dominate key strategic technologies, Chinese rebuff to international law in the South China Sea and its military pressure on Taiwan. Russi...

On March 25, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited India and met with India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, marking the first high-level visit by a Chinese official to India since the 2020 Galwan Valley incident in which both Chinese and Indian soldiers were killed. Since the 2020 incident, both militaries have ramped up troops, weapons deplo...

On the orders of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, the Russians invaded Ukraine just after the close of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and a few weeks after Putin and Xi Jinping inked a sweeping joint statement that challenged the United States as a global power, opposed NATO enlargement, and condemned liberal democracy as a model for the world. To investigate China’s stance on the conflict...

Link to the Arctic development white paper: 中国的北极政策-新华网 (xinhuanet.com)

Foreign press correspondents reporting in China experience a host of challenges—and not just because of the Covid-19 pandemic and China’s rigorous “zero COVID” policy. As the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China’s recently released annual report on media freedom  details , foreign journalists in China are encountering increasingly stringent visa restrictions, harassment, surveillance, and risk of...

The post-World War II international system was created primarily by liberal democracies committed to the rule of law, free markets, and universal human rights. They launched multilateral institutions to advance their shared values and norms. China has long said that it views the international system as unjust and unfair, but for a long time, it had little ability to change it. Today, China not onl...

The Beijing Olympics will be held next month, and China faces both the challenge of Covid-19 spreading to several Chinese cities and growing criticism of its policy in Xinjiang, which has led some countries—including the United States—to declare diplomatic boycotts. Taking place in March, the National People’s Congress will have important implications for China’s economic policy, among other issue...

China’s engagement with countries in Latin America and the Caribbean has grown significantly in the past decade. The Chinese government describes its cooperation with the region as focused on numerous areas: trade and investment, agriculture, energy, infrastructure, manufacturing, and technological innovation. Nineteen governments across Latin America and the Caribbean have joined Xi Jinping’s sig...

Next February, the 2022 Winter Olympics are scheduled to be held in Beijing, the venue of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Preparation for the Games is well underway and China has said that it looks forward to welcoming the athletes; but due to the coronavirus pandemic, Beijing has banned foreign spectators, as did Japan when it hosted the 2020 Summer Olympics. As the 2022 Olympics near, several countrie...

The U.S.-China relationship is in unchartered waters. The bilateral frameworks and mechanisms that existed in the past are now widely seen as inadequate to address the current complex and contentious relationship. The Biden administration put forth a three-pronged approach to the bilateral relationship: being competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must...

Nearly six decades ago, China became the world’s fifth nuclear weapons state, joining the United States, France, the U.K., and the Soviet Union. China’s nuclear warheads stockpile was estimated last year to be in the low 200s. By comparison, the U.S. stockpile of nuclear warheads was at 3,750 as of September 2020. But recent developments suggest that Beijing is now engaged in a significant expansi...

After the Trump administration pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017, the trade agreement’s future was uncertain. Fortunately, Japan grabbed the baton and took it across the finish line in a slightly revised form and renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The agreement was signed in 2018 by the remaining 11 countries in the Indo-Pacific and the A...

In 1990, China’s greenhouse gas emissions were less than a quarter of developing country emissions. In 2019, almost 3 decades later, China’s annual emissions exceeded those of all developed countries combined. In per capita terms, however, China’s carbon emissions are considerably less than the US and other developed countries. China is under growing global pressure to take steps to reduce its emi...

In a decades-long effort to expand its international “circle of friends,” the PRC has persisted in supplementing its national-level diplomacy with local exchanges. Over the past four decades, the PRC has forged more than 2000 sister-city relationships worldwide, including over 200 in the United States and over 350 in the EU. China forms these ties across the world through the Chinese People’s Asso...

Eight years since the introduction of the Belt and Road Initiative, President Xi Jinping’s hallmark foreign policy has gone global, making significant inroads into the developing world. Of the 140 bilateral BRI MoU’s signed between the People’s Republic of China and its partners, 85 of them have been with countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and...

Ties between Moscow and Beijing continue their upward trajectory, with their bilateral cooperation expanding across a broad range of areas. In the wake of the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan, Russia and China are coordinating their policies. This past June, NATO expressed concern about Chinese-Russian military cooperation and their joint exercises in the Euro-Atlantic area. While...

In 2014, Xi Jinping established the China National Security Commission (CNSC) and was appointed its head by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo. A year later, Xi stated that China “should attach equal importance to internal and external security.” Under his direction, the CCP has created a unified national security system based on Xi’s concept of comprehensive national security. That conce...

On August 10th, the People’s Republic of China recalled its ambassador to Lithuania and demanded Vilnius recall its representative to Beijing. The reason? Lithuania’s decision to allow Taipei to open a representative office in Vilnius under the name "Taiwanese Representative Office." Sino-Lithuanian relations started deteriorating in 2019. That year, Vilnius identified Chinese espionage as a threa...

After two decades of military involvement in Afghanistan, the United States and NATO are withdrawing their forces, with potential implications for regional security and thus for Chinese interests. Some observers have suggested the U.S. withdrawal will create opportunities for China to fill the void, but in fact, Beijing is worried about the potential negative security and economic impact of the U....

Chinese companies are investing in ports that are strategically located along sea lanes of communication, connecting China to resources and markets that are vital for China’s economy. These ports, called “strategic strongpoints” by Chinese military writers, can be found all over the world—in Europe, the Americas, and countries situated adjacent to the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Persian...

A few months ago, China became the second country to successfully land on Mars. Since then, its Zhurong rover has sent back captivating panoramic images of the red planet. Meanwhile, China is building its own space station, which will rival the International Space Station (which Beijing was barred from in 2011) once completed next year. Last month, three Chinese astronauts arrived at the Tiangong...