China

Development and Security Perceptions Along the Belt and Road

Introduction The idea of the Silk Road to China has been intriguing humanity for more than 2000 years. The routes and roots of silk, one of China’s most important exports historically, has not only connected China to Central Asia and the Arab world but has defined China’s destiny. Today, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), announced in 2013, represents a way to create a “community of shared destiny” by (re)connecting trade and infrastructure of...

30 Jan 2019

“To Provide for the Common Defense”: The US National Defense Strategy

The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) is the latest in a series of periodic documents issued by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) as a guide to how the department will respond to military expectations set by the President of the United States and broad U.S. foreign policy interests. While the NDS is classified, an unclassified summary was released January 2018. As part of an effort to provide an independent critique and audit of...

15 Jan 2019

Eurasia on the Edge and its Global Meaning: The What, Why, and How of Eurasian Security

Eurasia is a paradox. Although it contains a myriad of landlocked borderlands, the region is becoming a hub for international transactions. Seemingly trapped by its geographic location, it is becoming central to the world’s connectivity projects, with China’s New Silk Road (the Belt and Road Initiative) and Russia’s project of Greater Eurasia being the dominant ones. Classical geopolitics has considered Eurasia the “pivot of history” and its Heartland the key region to...

02 Jan 2019

Mapping the Belt and Road Initiative: Geography and Architecture

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a large-scale international cooperation project which was announced by the Chinese government in 2013. This grand project aims to improve international cooperation across regions and continents, linking together more than 60 countries and (re)creating both maritime (the “belt”) and terrestrial (“the road”) routes of trade, finance, infrastructure, energy, communication, and investment. Previously referred to as “One Road One Belt” (OBOR), the BRI project comprises the Silk Road...

06 Sep 2018

Strategic Competition for Bases in Djibouti

The small country of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa made the headlines in May 2018 due to claims that soldiers on the new Chinese base were pointing lasers at U.S. aircraft landing at the American base. Djibouti is the only “official,” permanent American base in Africa, and the first, and for the moment, only Chinese overseas military base. The close proximity of two major powers, along with provocative actions, easily leads to conclusions...

16 Aug 2018

A Review of China-UAE Relations in the Context of Xi Jinping’s Visit to the UAE

Starting on July 19, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a state visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This was the first visit of the Head of State of China to the UAE in the past 29 years. It was also the first visit by Chinese Communist party and state leaders to the Middle East since the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2017. This visit is of great significance...

24 Jul 2018

The China Model and the New World Order

As a contrast to Brexit, the election of Trump and the rise of anti-globalization populism and protectionism, Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the 19th CPC Party Congress declared that China will continue to work for a new type of globalization and a new community of shared human destiny. Since 2012 when Xi came to power, China has gradually changed the “keeping a low profile” strategy set by Deng Xiaoping and exercised over the past...

27 Dec 2017

Russia, China & US Geopolitics: Cooperation & Competition

Internationally, geostrategic shifts are occurring that Russia, the US and China are forging, contesting and benefiting from – almost all at once. This triad, as a new lens to interpret drivers in today’s international relations, reflects bilateral and multilateral cooperation and competition. Indeed, a new geopolitical landscape has emerged out of the increased multipolarity created by the so-called post-world WWII order global environment. Within the triangular paradigm, there are a series of ‘push-pull’ factors...

12 Apr 2017

Local difficulties? – The G20 confronts de-globalisation

Earlier this month the world’s leading politicians and their entourages descended on the eastern Chinese of city of Hangzhou for the G20 Summit. Looming large in the background was a series of events, not least the British referendum result in favour of exiting the European Union, symptomatic of a growing backlash against globalisation. The vision of an “open world economy based on market principles” repeatedly extolled in official G20 pronouncements appeared under siege from...

20 Sep 2016

Chinese Foreign Policy and Domestic Factors

Chinese foreign policy under the presidency of Xi Jinping has been increasingly controversial, confident and engaged in both the regional and global trends in security and political economy. At a 2014 foreign affairs conference, Xi emphasized that Chinese diplomacy should be conducted “with a salient Chinese feature and a Chinese vision” to safeguard China’s core national interests, while carrying out “‘a distinctive diplomatic approach befitting its role of a major country.” This marks a...

24 Aug 2016

The Global Financial Stability Review

Overview The outlook for the global economy has deteriorated causing an increase in financial market volatility this year. More uncertain global growth prospects and declines in inflation expectations could produce sustained economic and financial weakness as well as intensified concerns about global financial stability. The IMF pointed out in its latest Global Financial Stability Report in April 2016 that the world economy will grow 3.4% this year, up from 3.1% in 2015. But, there are...

28 Jun 2016

The AIIB: A multilateral development bank with Chinese characteristics?

On 29 June, the plenipotentiaries of 57 states attended a signing ceremony in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People for the inauguration of the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). This occasion, at which 50 countries signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Establishing the AIIB (the seven remaining prospective founders were yet to receive domestic approval), followed intense and sometimes fractious negotiations over the bank’s Articles of Agreement. Perhaps inevitably the nascent organisation is...

08 Jul 2015