Media Type: Article
The vice president of CICIR, a Ministry of State Security-affiliated IR think tank, argues that Beijing’s introduction of the Global Security Initiative (GSI) is timely amid “turmoil” in the international system. He identifies three strategies China should follow as it promotes the principles of the GSI, which Xi Jinping laid out at the 2022 Bo’ao Forum for Asia in April.
Two executives and Party committee leaders at State Grid Corporation of China, the country’s largest state-owned electricity utility company, discuss the interplay between business considerations and national policy goals in international investment decisions.
This 2019 analysis by Zheng Yongnian, a highly influential political scientist, argues that China is at risk of falling into a “middle-income trap” domestically and a “Thucydides trap” in its relations with the United States. He maintains that, “once a cold war begins, security considerations will dominate the United States’ relationship with China, and the United States will have to abandon the Chinese market for the sake of security.”
An unnamed researcher at the National Development and Reform Commission’s Academy of Macroeconomic Research lays out six areas where China must find “key breakthroughs” to become a high-income country. In addition to domestic reforms, the author calls for the creation of an international environment “conducive to crossing over the middle-income stage.”
How can China overcome the middle-income trap? In this 2016 speech, Yao Yang, Dean of the National School of Development of Peking University, identifies what he sees as critical ingredients for avoiding this trap, and argues China should understand these as it aims to become a “high-income country by the centennial of the country’s founding.” He also seeks to dispel what he sees as several widely-held misunderstandings about China’s economic growth challenges.
Liu Zhaojia, the vice president of the National Association for Hong Kong and Macau Studies argues that Beijing has moved towards its own position of “strategic clarity” on Taiwan policy following the publication of a dedicated white paper in August 2022 and the performance of a large-scale military exercise around the island following U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit. These developments, according to the author, make clear that Beijing “will not wait indefinitely for Taiwan’s return to China.” This departure from a “passive” stance by Beijing, Liu holds, will render the U.S. position of “strategic ambiguity” to be “no longer tenable” and force the U.S. to “clarify its intentions and plans” regarding Taiwan.
This is translation of a section of a Q&A series explaining theories from Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, published in the People’s Daily. This section deals with the concept that political security is inseparable from national security, explaining that “political security is directly connected to the life and death of the Party and country”.
Chen Yixin, a high-ranking official at the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission and a possible candidate to take the top spot at the commission at the 20th Party Congress, penned a long, and often hagiographic, analysis of Xi Jinping in a July edition of Study Times, a daily newspaper run by the Central Party School.
When Xi Jinping announced the Global Development Initiative (GDI) in late 2021, important questions were raised about the future of the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). Here, two scholars from Renmin University argue that the GDI is an addition to, not a replacement of, the BRI. They tout the GDI and BRI as the “main drivers of global South-South cooperation” and useful tools to address the North-South gap and promote the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
A researcher from the School of Marxism at Southwest Jiaotong University argues that China demonstrates a willingness to invest in global development cooperation, whereas the West demonstrates what he terms an attitude of “unilateralism, protectionism and egoism.”