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Begin New Search Topic International Relations Political Geography China Content Type Policy Brief

1. What now for Australia-China relations?

Author:
The University of Sydney China Studies Centre
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
China Studies Centre, The University of Sydney
Abstract:
After the May Federal Election, Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese was sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Australia. What could this change in government mean for future Australia-China relations? At the China Studies Centre event on 3 June, four experts and practitioners in Australia-China relations discussed the bilateral relations over the past few years and the prospects for future political, social and economic interactions.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, and Conflict
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Australia

2. Ukraine: Toward a Prolonged War of Attrition Fuelling Great Power Competition

Author:
Al Jazeera Center for Studies
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Al Jazeera Center for Studies
Abstract:
Russia and China no longer need to play by the rules of the Euro-American international order. It is therefore likely that in this uncertain period of flux, the major four powers will vie to win friends and allies, giving second-tier powers like Turkey and India more influence if they can ably manage their foreign relations and avoid unnecessary alignment with any of the four major powers.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Power Politics, Strategic Competition, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe

3. Analysis of Chinese Response Patterns to Diplomatic Friction and Its Influencing Factors

Author:
Jai Chul Heo
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP)
Abstract:
As China grows into a global power, it is forming a closer relationship with the international community. In the process, the nation is experiencing increasing levels of diplomatic friction, such as confrontation and conflict with other countries, as well as cooperation. Accordingly, this study analyzes China's response to various forms of diplomatic friction, as Korea seeks an effective response to possible friction with China in the future. More specifically, China's response to diplomatic friction was examined through various cases, with the aim of categorizing China’s response measures based on these examples. In addition, this study aims to prepare for possible friction with China in the future by identifying factors that differ in China's response to diplomatic friction.
Topic:
International Relations, Diplomacy, Sovereignty, Territorial Disputes, and Economy
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and South Korea

4. Lessons for Europe from China’s quest for semiconductor self-reliance

Author:
Alicia Garcia-Herrero and Pauline Weil
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Bruegel
Abstract:
Semiconductors are a critical input to production of information and communication technology and many other goods. The major economies want to be able to produce chips at home to avoid excessive dependence on supply chains in an increasingly unpredictable world, where trade is being compromised because of national security concerns. China was first in terms of timing and scale of funding to support its its semiconductor industry. Since 2015, China has spent $150 billion upgrading its semiconductor industry. Success, however, has been limited. China’s massive industrial policy effort has been most successful in increasing capacity for assembly of chips, though that is also the least value-added part of the semiconductor supply chain. Progress on chip design and fabrication in China remain underwhelming. The United States has also started implementing its $50 billion package to support the production of chips. The European Union, meanwhile, has not yet fully finalised its main semiconductor initiative, the European Chips Act. China’s experience offers a number of lessons. First, chip fabrication requires massive fixed asset investment and, therefore, large subsidies, but with no guarantee of success. Second, one reason for the underwhelming results of China’s semiconductor policy is US containment, through export controls and other measures. In this respect, the EU should find it easier than China to upgrade its chips industry but, given the costs, focusing on the highest-end part of the supply chain would be the best approach. Assembly and production of lower-end semiconductors already face overcapacity, given the financial resources already invested by China.
Topic:
International Relations, European Union, Economy, Trade Policy, and Semiconductors
Political Geography:
China and Europe

5. Answering Beijing’s Growing Assertiveness beyond the Senkakus: Balancing Japan-China Relations

Author:
Valerie Niquet
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Japan Institute Of International Affairs (JIIA)
Abstract:
To Japanese authorities, there is no such thing as the “Senkaku question”. China is pursuing with increased assertiveness a strategy of coercion, using ambiguity and “grey zone” operations to put the onus of potential escalation on Tokyo.1 The vague and ambiguous nature of this strategic power play makes it all the more dangerous and complex. When Tokyo proclaims, with reason, that “the government continues to control and administer the territory by such means as patrolling and law enforcement,” it seeks to answer the permanent pressure that China exerts in the zone.2 However, the maintenance of the status quo, when China exerts an almost continuous pressure in the waters surrounding the Senkaku Islands and Japanese fishermen do not have access to part of Japan’s own national territory, poses other types of problems that the People’s Republic of China tries to exploit at the service of broader ambitions. It also poses a challenge in crisis management: how can the Japanese government be active and in control of situational developments, and not just reactive, without going as far as sparking a major incident in the East China Sea?
Topic:
International Relations, Bilateral Relations, Geopolitics, and Crisis Management
Political Geography:
Japan, China, and Asia

6. A Rising or Ebbing Tide: Do Chinese Students Still Want to Study in the U.S.?

Author:
Peggy Blumenthal
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Institute of International Education (IIE)
Abstract:
Many U.S. colleges and universities are anxiously wondering if newly admitted Chinese students will accept their admission offers and return to American campuses in fall 2021. Needing to balance a host of issues, will Chinese students decide to remain at home or study in a different host country? This IIENetwork Briefing paper assesses the current situation, explores possible outcomes for fall 2021 enrollments from China’s mainland and Hong Kong, and presents some ways that U.S. campuses are responding to these recruiting challenges during a changing political and health environment in both the host and home countries.
Topic:
International Relations, Higher Education, COVID-19, and Study Abroad
Political Geography:
China and United States of America

7. Xi Jinping’s Evergrande Dilemma

Author:
John Lee
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Evergrande is one of the top-two real estate developers in a still highly fragmented Chinese sector. Its main strategy is to achieve ever-increasing scale (rather than profitability) in order to move ahead of and crowd out commercial competitors. It has also amassed the largest land reserves of all Chinese developers, which were financed through massive borrowings. By 2018, Evergrande held 822 pieces of undeveloped land in 228 cities, with a planned gross floor area of 3.28 billion square feet of new homes—the equivalent of 10 percent of Germany’s entire housing stock. It paid $75 billion just for this undeveloped land. Although Evergrande’s market share is only around 4 percent, its borrowings stand out. Its current balance sheet liabilities amount to an estimated 2 percent of China’s gross domestic product (GDP), while its off-balance-sheet liabilities could be another 1 percent of China’s GDP. This makes Evergrande the most indebted property developer in the world. Burdened by this debt, struggling to meet its debt interest and repayment obligations, and viable only if property asset values and sales continue to increase, Evergrande faces possible financial collapse—an event bound to have flow-on effects for the Chinese economy. However, the unusually high global interest in Evergrande has arisen because its woes are increasingly seen as symptomatic of those faced by the broader Chinese economy, which is struggling with enormous levels of indebtedness and overreliance on the real estate sector. Debt held by nonfinancial institutions in China increased from about 115 percent of GDP in 2010 to around 160 percent of GDP currently. This is the most rapid and largest increase in a 10-year period for any major economy and makes the level of debt held by Chinese nonfinancial institutions one of the highest in the world. The real estate sector accounts for around 15 percent of GDP, while property services account for another 14 percent—the highest in any developing economy. The share of the real estate sector as a proportion of GDP was only about 4 percent in 1997 and 9 percent in 2008. Since 2008, up to a third of all domestic fixed investment has gone into real estate, and up to half of total national debt is linked to the real estate sector.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Debt, Economics, Markets, and Business
Political Geography:
China and Asia

8. Winning the Geo-Tech Battle and Building the Quad Alliance in the Indo-Pacific

Author:
Eric B. Brown, John Lee, and Thomas J. Duesterberg
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Under Xi Jinping, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has established as its paramount geopolitical objective the replacement of the free and open, rules-based order in Asia with an alternative world order, one that is to be dominated by the interests and values of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This decision presents a danger to the entire world, not just to any one state or group of states. For, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at the March 2021 US-PRC meeting in Alaska, the alternative to a rules-based order “is a world in which might makes right and winners take all, and that would be a far more violent and unstable world for all of us.” In furtherance of its objectives, the PRC is in the midst of a large military build-up, but there is much more. For today’s CCP, political power grows not only from the “barrel of the gun,” as Mao Zedong once put it, but also from cutting-edge technologies. Thus, while Beijing pours billions into artificial intelligence and surveillance tech to impose its new “digital totalitarianism” inside the PRC, from Hong Kong to Xinjiang, it is also using its growing technological prowess to press its larger geopolitical agenda in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. It is weaponizing technology and connectivity, along with trade, finance, and other policy instruments to try to rule the key technologies and industries of the future, as well as to improve its strategic positioning and acquire political power over other countries—for instance, through its bid to dominate other nations’ most sensitive data networks, or via the export of its suite of “social stability” technologies, i.e., the “techno-tyrant’s toolkit.” In all this, the CCP’s intent is to entrench its power and Leninist norms and practices to the extent it can do so beyond the PRC’s borders, and to make other nations, or at the least their ruling elites, beholden to it. So in addition to the PRC’s militarily destabilizing activities in the West Pacific and incursions into India’s Himalayas, there is also a “geo-technological front.” If Xi’s CCP succeeds at enmeshing other countries in its expanding “PRC sphere of technological influence,” it could unlock and be able to exploit decisive military, economic, diplomatic, and ideological advantages.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Economics, and Alliance
Political Geography:
China, South Asia, East Asia, and Asia-Pacific

9. Europe's China Chimera

Author:
Peter Rough
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
When Xi Jinping, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), dreams of global domination, he worries about one thing above all else: a hostile United States backed by its allies—and on the Eurasian landmass, the US has no more important ally than Europe. As a result, Xi has worked to weaken the transatlantic alliance through a two-pronged economic stratagem. First, under the guise of globalization, China has insinuated itself into the European economy, creating dependencies. Second, Beijing is manipulating those dependencies to hollow out and supplant Europe’s advanced economies. To give this deception cover, China has built a vast political network across Europe, from basic sympathizers to outright spies. Until recently, barely anyone took notice, but the financial crisis and forever wars of the past two decades, culminating in the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, lured the self-confident Xi out into the open. During the coronavirus pandemic, China revealed an aggressive attitude toward Great Britain’s former colonies that shocked the United Kingdom. In the span of mere months, London shifted from cooperation to confrontation. In July, it became the first country in Europe to block the Chinese telecommunications giant, Huawei, from its next-generation networks. Germany, the continent’s most important country, still sees China as key to post-pandemic recovery and economic growth, however. Xi has exploited this attitude to strike an investment agreement with the European Union (EU), the chief purpose of which is to forestall a transatlantic approach under the new US president, Joe Biden. Together, the United States and Europe have unparalleled advantages against any competitor. Now is the time for cooperation, before Xi’s dreams become our collective nightmare.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Political Geography:
China, Europe, and Asia

10. A US-India Trade Agenda for the Biden Administration

Author:
Aparna Pande and Husain Haqqani
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The US ought to counteract the influence of Chinese authoritarianism early and often. One relatively low-cost way is to encourage India to engage more deeply as a competitor with China in the global economy. A democracy since its independence in 1947, with a population about the same as that of China, India is that country’s natural rival in Asia. Beginning with India’s decision in 1990-91 to liberalize its economy, the nation has gradually opened its vast market to global trade. Fueled by fresh access to foreign capital and technology, India’s economy grew over six percent during the first decade of the 21st century. In May 2014, this progress was further advanced by the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. For the first time in India’s history, a conservative administration had a clear parliamentary majority, making it possible to legislate foundational, market-positive reform. India has adopted a new insolvency and bankruptcy code and replaced multiple taxation regimes across its states with a federal goods and services tax, which is welcome. But India has done little to end its excessive protectionism. Its distrust of foreign corporations, a legacy of colonial rule, endures. Indian policy makers may believe that the US is so eager for Indian competition with China that Washington will grant them a pass on restrictive trade and investment policies. But there is a better choice. India is nowhere near its full economic potential, and the fix isn’t complicated. The Biden agenda for India should encourage India to lower tariffs, to remove barriers to foreign retail, to roll back unnecessarily restrictive data privacy rules, and to provide economic incentives for foreign investment.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, and Trade
Political Geography:
China, South Asia, India, and United States of America