China and the World

Complex national and economic security imperatives drive American China policy. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) heightens the tension between national and economic security requirements and between different levels of economic security. This renders the established American policy approach, which centers around pursuing national and economic security as separate policy tracks, difficult to sustain. The threat posed by the Initiative to the national security of the United States encourages a focus on it in these terms. Such a focus is all the more likely under President Donald Trump, who is not predisposed to consider the BRI an economic security threat.

In earlier centuries kings and governments employed astrologists to help them take the best decisions. Present-day governments no longer employ astrologists but still have no clear analytical tool to replace them. Over the past two decades we have developed a methodology for the scientific investigation of recurrent historical events. It consists in two steps. (i) Identification and comparison of historical episodes driven by a common mechanism. (ii) Under the reasonable assumption that what has happened several times in the past is likely to happen again, one then derives testable predictions. This of course is nothing other than the protocol used in experimental science when exploring new phenomena. We believe such a tool can give decision makers much better insight.

In the present paper we illustrate this analysis by considering challenges, that span more than a century, to US hegemony in the Pacific. The outcomes suggest that it is only through the side-lining of one of the contenders that the confrontation will end. At the time of writing (early 2019) early evidence of this confrontation is already visible at three levels. (i) Growing US concerns for domestic security that are leading to a new form of McCarthyism. (ii) Political instability due to China–US polarization in several Asian countries as well as in the countries participating in the “Belt and Road Initiative.” (iii) Tension and sanctions in procurement and trade.

This paper focuses on an aspect of Sino-European relations that is at once topical and intellectually underexplored, i.e. the developing rail connections between China and Europe. It argues that the existing scholarship on transcontinental rail is dominated by two competing narratives advanced by the logistics management and geostrategic literatures. The paper proposes an alternative way of looking at Eurasian overland transport by focusing on the infrastructure where the phenomenon takes place. Drawing on the theoretical insights of New Materialism and the ethnography of infrastructure, the paper attempts to recover the political force of materiality lost in the dominant narratives and show some of the effects, dynamics and conflicts this force can generate. The paper demonstrates how a new materialist approach can expand the ways in which we think about the Eurasian overland transport phenomenon and thereby enrich the study of this latest phase of globalization.

China itself is vulnerable to environmental threats. With its sheer size and population, China faces immense potential threats from global warming and uneven access to natural resources. At the same time, the legitimacy of the central government heavily relies on the country’s economic performance which in turn relies on the exploitation of natural resources. China is faced with growing pressure as to how it effectively manages natural resources on an international scale.

This paper examines a dilemmatic situation that great powers are faced with the participation in international environmental cooperation. The formation of multi-lateral environmental agreements requires that nation states comply with environmental responsibilities when exercising sovereign rights over environmental resources. Great powers confront more pressure as they are expected to commit to greater responsibilities in international affairs. Adopting the sharing of the Mekong river basin as a case study, this paper examines the role China plays as a great power when exercising its right to appropriate natural resources. Changes are found in China’s international water policy including the establishment of the multi-lateral mechanism. This paper concludes that China’s policy developments in resource governance facilitate China to promote coordinated actions over the shared water resources. At the same time, such balancing acts serve to legitimize China’s dominance over the management of the Mekong river basin, which is embedded in the country’s Belt and Road Strategy.

Over the last three and half decades, China’s rapid advancement in development efforts has been accompanied by a conscious effort in projecting itself as a major frontrunner in the economy. Despite being a developing country (Huang, 2015), Chinese President Xi Jinping’s announcement in World Economic Forum (WEF) (Bruce-Lockhart, 2017) had hinted China’s growing interest in the development of trade and network among countries. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is also one such development put forward to institutionalize China’s soft power presence in the world and create harmony with rest of the world. The Initiative has been placed as synonymous to a way of friendly cooperation signaling the project as “Road for Peace” (Kasturi, 2017). China has placed a tremendous amount of effort for its “charm offensive” approach with an estimated US$10 billion spending every year on its global soft power presence (Kurlantzick, 2017). Under the project, China has placed initiatives in approaching for regional connectivity in the South Asia region with China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) being regarded as its flagship program. As it goes, of all the projects China has undertaken in the BRI, its ventures in South Asia are considered challenging and need strong cooperation (Stratfor Enterprises, 2017). The unstable geo-politics and security threats in the region pose Beijing with a lot to consider before it can preach about the peaceful connectivity. Most significant of all, the problems in the region will be with India as it has openly expressed its dissatisfaction towards BRI. India not only observes the initiative as a security threat with CPEC corridor passing through the controversial Kashmir area, but also sees it as an initiative to undermine its traditional influence in the region. As such, this paper tries to provide an analytical view of BRI with China’s soft power presence in the South Asia region.

Sociocultural development and international relation are virtually incessant interconnectivities at different levels of human society which lead to the creation of different civilizations and its interactions. Therefore, the so-called “PAH-BRI” is believed to be a possible new form of socioeconomic cooperation. If so, the current trade disputes and future Sino-American relationship could be reconstructed effectively within the “‘$f$-shaped’ PAH-BRI” formula. Furthermore, entering the “#3.0”, it is expected that any form of the “PAH-BRI”-like projects is not easy for any single power or its bloc to manipulate mainly for its own interests, ethno-centrism and egoism. Any promising arrangement between any two parties should always leave a room for the third party to come or to drop out.