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In this article, we provide a theoretical and empirical evaluation of the argument that China is becoming a hegemonic challenge in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). We argue that, while there is a trend that China has become increasingly dominant in the economic affairs of LAC, the perceived strength of China as a challenger to the U.S. hegemony is shaped by different strategies of Chinese involvement. Focusing on the financing arrangement for infrastructure projects, our case study of the Nicaragua Interoceanic Canal project shows that the challenge that China has posed to the U.S. hegemony might not be as strong as expected. We analyze the controversies revolving around the Canal project and examine how local communities have responded to the project. We conclude that, while the Nicaragua Interoceanic Canal project is ambitious, its success depends on how much support the PRC government and Chinese banks provide and how well the Nicaraguan government addresses the various concerns of the local communities.

This paper analyzes the new triangle of relations between the United States, the European Union, and China through the concept of trilateralism from polarity theory. Following this model, we examine the three bilateral relationships of US-China, US–EU, and EU–China that make up this global triangle. Economic relations between the United States and China provide the operational framework for this triangle and should currently be viewed as a cooperative rivalry rather than a traditionally hostile one like that seen in the Cold War. The EU also plays a key role in the triangle due to its strategic autonomy and significance to the other two. We argue that relations in the global US–EU–China triangle can be characterized in terms of cooperation but do not exclude rivalry. These global trilateral relations are marked by flexibility and openness that encourage the development of relations with third countries.

In recent years, World Trade Web (WTW), also known as international trade network (ITN) was expressed by different models, including binary undirected network (BUN), weighted undirected network (WUN), binary directed network (BDN) and weighted directed network (WDN), etc. Making use of the models, scholars have analyzed topological properties (e.g., node's degree and strength), clustering (e.g., clustering coefficient) and dynamics, etc. In this paper, we express the strength of trade relations of China and the United States (or other bilateral or multilateral trade) by number or weight of subgraphs or subdigraphs in WTW instead of node's degree and strength, we also propose patterns of subgraphs or subdigraphs including only 3 nodes C (China), A (the United States) and i (a 3rd country or district) in BUN, WUN, BDN and WDN. These indexes not only overcome the limitation of node's degree or strength in WTW, but also express bilateral or multilateral trade status. In WDN, we particularly propose 16 patterns of subdigraphs in place of the traditional patterns (e.g., export, import, import and export) of trade status of a country or district, which gives a better description of trade status of China and the United States.

The United States and China have common but differentiated climate mitigation responses. Most studies so far have sought to explain this divergence with a focus on energy resources, technology, economic, or social factors. These studies ignore the role of strategy and institutions, and thus appear incomplete. In this paper, the author investigates the climate mitigation responses of the United States and China from a strategic and institutional perspective, explores how their climate responses are shaped, and identifies possible weaknesses hidden in their climate approaches. The paper finds that the United States and China have distinct national climate positions due to their diverse strategies and institutions. However, they have chosen similar policy tools and have achieved fairly comparable emission reductions thus far. In the long run, the effectiveness and efficiency of the low-carbon transformation will possibly be hindered by weaker policy innovation capability at sub-national levels in China and the operationally volatile energy strategy in the United States.

Since the mid-2010s, global economic integration, as measured by world trade, investment and migration, has come to a standstill. During the global crisis of 2008–2009, the negative demand shock in the advanced West and the drastic trade plunge in the emerging East highlighted the increasing inter-dependency in the global economy. Nevertheless, in the past few years, world trade has been falling; world investment continues to stagnate while slower migration has given rise to elevated global displacement and refugee crises, despite peace time conditions. In the Trump era, the eclipse of the U.S. postwar trading regime is accompanied with the rise of new protectionism that has a historical precedent. While China seeks to promote globalization, the White House is moving from multilateral free trade toward bilateral deficit targeting, despite its ongoing secular rebalancing and associated cyclical fluctuations. Although the first Trump-Xi Summit suggests that there may be more room for policy compromises than initially anticipated, the eclipse of U.S. globalism will make any reconciliation difficult. Nevertheless, the global economy is now amid a secular transition that is characterized by increasing South-to-South trade, investment and migration. In this new era, globalization, responsibility and accountability in the international community can no longer be subject mainly to the interests of major advanced economies. While global economic integration was initiated by advanced economies in the 20th century, it will be completed by emerging economies in the 21st century. The drivers of globalization are moving from the transatlantic axis to China and emerging Asia.

With Australia and Russia increasingly seeing their future in the Asia-Pacific, neither can reach its full economic potential except under the guidance of Beijing’s control of ports on its “Maritime Silk Road.” Cold War clichés of the “Yankee lapdog” and the big bad “Russian bear” continue to dominate how Canberra and Moscow view each other. Yet when it comes to the future of Australia-Russia-China relations, one must look beyond Moscow, Beijing, and Canberra, but rather at Vladivostok and Darwin, symbols of an as-yet unrealized goal to shift emphasis onto each country’s sparsely-populated regions bordering the Asia-Pacific. With the dawning of the “Asian Century,” how does the United States change the geopolitical dynamics of the region, and how do China, Russia, and Australia react to “America’s Pacific Century”? Rather than a capitulation to America’s aggressive posture in the Asia-Pacific, China and Russia have consolidated the integration of their economies and militaries to counter such penetration. This emerging rivalry creates a challenge for Australia to balance its military alliance with the United States and its economic reliance on China. The necessity of finetuning this balance should be Canberra’s primary foreign policy issue.

Throughout history, major powers have been playing significant roles in leading the development of globalization. There have been three waves of globalization since the age of the Great Voyage, and the latest American-style globalization featuring neo-liberalism has suffered from its own institutional constraints as a result of imbalanced global economy and social-economic dynamics, which contributed to the election of President Trump and the ensuing protectionism of the United States. With the rise of emerging economies, the new round of globalization will no longer be dominated by a single major power. Given the scale of outbound investment and agenda-setting capabilities, emerging powers represented by BRICS countries are increasingly proactive in promoting industrialization and post-industrialization worldwide. China, in particular, with its institutional advantages, is endowed with far-reaching capabilities in pushing forward the new round of globalization.

This paper categorizes intervention activities into two types, namely, coercive and supportive ones. Both means are usually applied together in resolving internal conflicts of a fragile country, yet Western powers tend to employ coercive intervention more frequently, while developing countries prefer supportive intervention. By comparing the roles that the United States and China played in the Darfur crisis as a case study, this paper explores how different means of intervention interact and how the means adopted by one party influence the other’s policy orientation. The mutual construction of national interests, national capacity and international values of different intervening powers constitute the analytical framework of this paper. In the case of Darfur, coercive intervention was found to impose more influence on the supportive one, while the latter played an indispensable role in facilitating the peace process in Darfur. As a leading power in favor of supportive engagement, China should learn to better deal with the coercive means of Western powers while working with all parties concerned to resolve internal conflicts of the target country by a pragmatic approach.

Dissatisfaction is a major concept in power transition theory, which postulates that a rapidly rising power tends to be dissatisfied with the international system and would thus attempt to reform or replace it, whereas the hegemonic power would, by default, be satisfied with and work to maintain the status quo. This paper, however, offers an alternative outlook on the reigning-rising power dynamics by examining the conditions for and implications of hegemonic dissatisfaction and rising power satisfaction. It argues that although China, as a potential systemic challenger harboring grievances against the existing global regimes, has been a recurrent subject for studies, it is the United States, the established hegemon, that appears increasingly dissatisfied with the status quo. The U.S. dissatisfaction is informed by a set of internal and external factors often justified with a reference to China as a challenger, and is manifested in a number of anti-system strategies, including unconventional diplomatic rhetoric, as well as withdrawal from various international institutions or attempts to undermine them. The U.S. discontent, as contrasted with China’s satisfaction as a rising power, has a number of potential geopolitical and economic implications at the bilateral, regional, and global levels, endangering the viability and sustainability of the universally accepted political and economic regimes.

Due to the serious perverse actions of the Trump administration in the fields of strategic rivalry, political/ideological confrontation, diplomatic exchanges and trade war between China and the United States as well as in that of global governance, Biden’s new administration is bound to make revisions somewhat and somehow. However, the current posture of the United States toward China is not only strong and enduring international structural dynamics in many aspects, but also multilateral strong and enduring domestic political and social ones. Therefore, its revision is to be necessarily quite partial and limited, and the confrontation and competition with China in some other areas will probably intensify. To a large extent, the trend of China–US relations after the US election could be influenced or even shaped by China, so China’s strategy and policy and appropriate adjustment are of great importance. China needs to take the initiative to avoid military conflicts with the United States, treating it as the essential highest common interest and the vital “common denominator” and to strive for a sort of pragmatic, focused and concrete dialogue or negotiation with the Biden administration as soon as possible after it took office.