Translation Category: Foreign Policy
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.
In this contribution to a bi-annual review of the international strategic landscape published by Peking University, a top security analyst argues that strengthening crisis management is now a “primary and strategic task” for China’s security relations with the United States and Japan. He soberly assesses each relationship’s existing crisis management mechanisms, and makes recommendations for leaders in all three countries.
This 2001 analysis by political scientist Tang Shiping is a follow-up to a lengthy exposition on China’s ideal grands strategy that he penned the year prior. In this piece, he argues that China should “have its own global economic interests, to have a pivotal position in regional security affairs, and to have a political voice in global affairs.”
This lengthy analysis of China’s grand strategy was written at the turn of the millennia by Tang Shiping, a highly regarded political scientist and international relations scholar at Fudan University. The piece makes for interesting context on a host of issues that are currently front-of-mind, including cross-Strait relations, the China-US relationship, as well as China’s relationship with Russia.
Liu Jieyi, the former director of Taiwan Affairs Office who led the office at the time of this speech, spoke at a seminar on cross-Strait relations held in the wake of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. He emphatically recounts Beijing’s efforts towards “reunification” over the last decade and reaffirms the official Party line that “reunification” is integral to China’s goal of achieving “national rejuvenation.”
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.
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.”
This excerpt from a report issued by the State Council’s Development Research Center outlines the main principles and goals of the Global Development Initiative, arguing that it “tackles pressing development challenges such as poverty reduction, food security, pandemic control and vaccines, and creates the preconditions for a smooth post-pandemic recovery.”
A prominent Russia scholar at Fudan University argues that the Russia-Ukraine war has accelerated disruptions to global supply chains, reevaluation of global trade and investment rules, and efforts to reform and reshape security architecture both globally and regionally. However, he sees these trends as best characterized as a “small divergence” in the international order, rather than a move toward a Cold War-style confrontation between two hostile camps. Notably, Feng makes a point to distance China from Russia’s war. He argues that given meaningful differences in U.S. assessments of Russia and China, Beijing can play an important role in reducing the risk of what he terms global “re-campification” (再阵营化).