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141. The China Trade Challenge: Phase II

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
China’s fast-paced economic rise and defiance of globally accepted market rules—along with the growing and yet unknown economic impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19)—are driving the next phase of US-China trade negations to the top of the nation’s post-election agenda. While the Phase I US-China trade deal has eased tension, it also set the stage for discussions on other important economic disputes, including forced technology transfer, cyber theft of intellectual property (IP), industrial policies, state subsidies, and new technology, according to a new Solutions Brief, The China Trade Challenge: Phase II, by the Committee for Economic Development of The Conference Board (CED).
Topic:
Bilateral Relations, Global Markets, Economy, Global Political Economy, and Trade
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

142. The Avoidable War: The Case for Managed Strategic Competition

Author:
Kevin Rudd
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Asia Society Policy Institute
Abstract:
Throughout the recent 18 months of the U.S.-China trade war, which has landed in a “phase one” deal, and awaits the tackling of more difficult economic elements in phase two negotiations, there has been a slow and steady structural shift in the U.S.-China relationship as it continues to head in a more adversarial direction. Against the backdrop of this drift toward confrontation occurring in the absence of any common strategic understanding or high-level diplomatic mechanism to manage the mounting economic, security, and technological tensions into the future, Asia Society Policy Institute President the Hon. Kevin Rudd brings together a series of speeches delivered during 2019 in the collection, The Avoidable War: The Case for Managed Strategic Competition. This volume works to help make sense of where the U.S.-China relationship is heading in the current period of strategic competition, and follows on from Rudd’s 2018 collection, The Avoidable War: Reflections on U.S.-China Relations and the End of Strategic Engagement. In this new volume, Rudd focuses not only on the bilateral relationship, but also on China's domestic politics, economics, and its strategic vision. But on the bilateral relationship, Rudd writes that while there may be a truce of sorts on the trade front during 2020, that will not be the case across the rest of the economic, political, and security relationship. Challenges will continue in areas such as the future of 5G mobile telecommunications infrastructure, the Belt and Road Initiative, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, allegations of Chinese political influence and interference in foreign countries’ internal democratic processes, and China’s increasingly close strategic collaboration with Russia. Militarily, tensions will continue in the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the wider Indo-Pacific, together with confrontations less visible to the public eye in espionage, cyber, and space. Against this backdrop, and the steady erosion of diplomatic and political capital in the overall relationship, Rudd asserts that the “2020s loom as a decade of living dangerously in the U.S.-China relationship.” The Avoidable War: The Case for Managed Strategic Competition includes six speeches from 2019 covering a range of critical challenges in the U.S.-China relationship, as well as a December 2019 conversation at the Harvard Kennedy School which begins to outline an approach to managing the growing tinderbox of tensions across the spectrum of the bilateral relationship.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, Trade, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

143. Staring Into the Abyss of US-China Decoupling

Author:
James M Dorsey
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
Israel resides at the cusp of the widening US-Chinese divide, as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent visit to Israel attests. Pompeo’s visit was for the express purpose of reminding Jerusalem that its dealings with Beijing jeopardize its relationship with Washington.
Topic:
International Relations, Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, Arms Trade, and Trade
Political Geography:
China, Middle East, Israel, Asia, Palestine, North America, and United States of America

144. Gulf Security: The Arab Gulf States Have No Good Options

Author:
James M Dorsey
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
The coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout may rewrite the security as well as the political and economic map of the Middle East. The crisis will probably color Gulf attitudes towards the region’s major external players: the US, China, and Russia. Yet the Gulf States are likely to discover that their ability to shape the region’s map has significantly diminished.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, International Relations, Security, and Trade
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Middle East, United States of America, and Gulf Nations

145. What US strategy gets wrong about China in Africa

Author:
Cullen S. Hendrix
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
Abstract:
The Trump administration’s Africa strategy is rooted in three misconceptions about China’s African footprint—and a fourth about US-Africa economic relations—that are either factually incorrect or overstated in terms of the broader strategic challenges they pose to US interests: (1) Chinese engagement in Africa crowds out opportunities for trade and investment with and from the United States; (2) Chinese engagement in Africa is resource-seeking—to the detriment of US interests; (3) Chinese engagement in Africa is designed to foster debt-based coercive diplomacy; and (4) US-Africa economic linkages are all one-way and concessionary (i.e., aid-based). Hendrix finds little evidence to suggest Chinese trade and investment ties crowd out US trade and investment opportunities. China’s resource-seeking bent is evident in investment patterns, but it is more a function of Africa’s having comparatively large, undercapitalized resource endowments than China’s attempt to corner commodity markets. Chinese infrastructural development—particularly large projects associated with the Belt and Road Initiative—may result in increased African indebtedness to the Chinese, but there is little reason to think debt per se will vastly expand Chinese military capacity in the region. And finally, US-Africa economic relations are much less one-sided and concessionary (i.e., aid-based) than conventional wisdom suggests.
Topic:
Bilateral Relations, Infrastructure, Economy, Trade, and Donald Trump
Political Geography:
Africa, China, North America, and United States of America

146. How Can Global Governance Be Fixed in an Age of Upheaval?

Author:
Thierry de Montbrial, Robin Niblett, Ed Feulner, and Feng Zhu
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI)
Abstract:
Ifri’s Executive Chairman Thierry de Montbrial spoke at the 20th World Knowledge Forum in Seoul on September 25, 2019 with Robin Niblett, Chatham House's director, Ed Feulner, The Heritage Foundation's Founder and Former President and Feng Zhu, Director of the Institute of International Studies at Nanjing University about the major governance issues of our time. The global geopolitical situation is caught in a maelstrom. The conflict between the United States and China is getting worse and subsequent negative effects are rising. In Europe, Brexit is making the continent more divisive than harmonious. The instability in Middle East is not solved. In addition, the North Korea’s nuclear weapons are an endless source of problem that defies a quick solution, which made the politics surrounding the Korean Peninsula more complex. The problem is that the currently weak global governance may lead the global political landscape into a serious crisis. To give an answer to these problems, heads of top think tanks share their prospect and the future of the global governance, giving a guideline for each country to listen for a better direction.
Topic:
Governance, Geopolitics, Think Tanks, and Trade
Political Geography:
China, Europe, Middle East, North Korea, Global Focus, and United States of America

147. Asian Production Chains and Technological Decoupling: Trends, Uncertainties and Opportunities for Brazil

Author:
Tatiana Rosito, Gabriel de Barros Torres, Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, and Xu Sitao
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI)
Abstract:
How have multinational companies responded to growing tensions in the trade environment? CEBRI’s China Analysis Group reviews the trends related to global and regional value chains in the context of policy responses to Covid-19, as well as the impacts on Brazil. The panelists emphasized that "Global supply chains face new challenges related to their dependence on China: not only did the initial interruptions prove the need to ensure more resilience, but the spread of the epidemic across the world has raised political and strategic concerns about industrial production being highly concentrated in China, especially pharmaceutical products".
Topic:
Science and Technology, Trade, Resilience, Global Value Chains, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
China, Asia, Brazil, and South America

148. The Berlin Pulse 2020/21 (full issue)

Author:
Gro Harlem Brundtland, Paolo Gentiloni, Peter Altmaier, and H.R. McMaster
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Körber-Stiftung
Abstract:
In last year’s edition, we called 2020 an ‘eventful year’ with Germany’s presidency of the European Council and the US presidential election. But no one would have thought that a pandemic might be added to the list of major events affecting German foreign policy and political priorities around the globe. One year – and a COVID-19 special edition of The Berlin Pulse in between – later, international policy-making is slowly adjusting to the new level of uncertainty the pandemic brought into our lives. Despite these uncertain times, German public opinion on involvement or restraint in international crises remains solid as a rock: 44 percent of respondents say that Germany should get more strongly involved while 49 percent still prefer restraint. Since Körber-Stiftung posed this question for the first time in 2014, the public’s perspective has barely changed. In spite of this continuity, the present issue is also full of surprises and novelties. The idea of The Berlin Pulse is to identify potential gaps between German public opinion and expectations of international policy-makers. In 2020, another gap becomes an eye-catcher – the one between German and US public perceptions of the transatlantic partnership. A wide majority of US respondents considers Germany as a partner when tackling issues, such as protecting human rights and democracy (75 percent) or the environment (76 percent). By contrast, German respondents hardly reciprocate this feeling. With the US presidential election just behind us, an increasing US-Chinese rivalry in which Europe risks becoming – as Pauline Neville-Jones puts it – ‘the pig in the middle’ and crises beyond COVID-19 on the horizon, the present issue dedicates one chapter to each of these three developments to which German foreign policy needs to respond.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, NATO, Public Opinion, European Union, Multilateralism, Trade, Transatlantic Relations, and WTO
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, India, Germany, Syria, and United States of America

149. Stronger Together: A Strategy to Revitalize Transatlantic Power

Author:
Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Daniela Schwarzer, Christian Mölling, and Sophia Becker
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)
Abstract:
The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) convened a strategy group of experts and former government officials from the United States and Europe over the past year to discuss the crisis in the transatlantic relationship and to propose a strategy to revive and strengthen it.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Economics, Energy Policy, Government, Science and Technology, Partnerships, Democracy, Trade, and Transatlantic Relations
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Middle East, North Africa, North America, and United States of America

150. A Search for Independence in President Duterte’s Foreign Policy

Author:
Denise Layla P. Miram
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The Duterte administraƟon’s move toward favoring non‐tradiƟonal partners above other equally valuable— and perhaps more beneficial—trade and development partners, such as the United States and the European Union, has significantly changed the direcƟon of the country’s foreign policy and impacted its naƟonal security. While the government maintains that it is pursuing an “independent foreign policy”, many experts have criƟcized the administraƟon’s supposed strategy for its lack of clarity and posiƟon. In the absence of clear guidelines and a well‐defined vision, the administraƟon has merely pivoted away from one superpower, its treaty ally in the US, to global superpowers China and Russia.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Foreign Direct Investment, European Union, Trade, and Rodrigo Duterte
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Philippines, Asia-Pacific, and United States of America