Brookings Foreign Policy’s Post

📍 Interested in the domestic and global dynamics that shape contemporary China? ➥ Join us for the 2024 Olympia Summer Academy cycle on ✦ Global China ✦ 「 Course Description」 The emergence of China as a power with global interests in the 21st century has been interpreted in different ways. Where some see peaceful intentions driven by developmental priorities, others argue that China represents a political and military threat, with each side projecting their own aspirations and insecurities about the future. The course will prompt participants to carefully examine the domestic and global dynamics that shape contemporary China. We will first focus on Chinese domestic politics and political economy to engage with the question “How China was able to achieve high economic growth while maintaining a one-party authoritarian regime”. Moving to the global dimension, participants will examine China’s economic and security interests, as well as its international behaviour. In particular, we will concentrate on the rise of ‘global China’ as a complex, multiscalar phenomenon that includes both state diplomacy as well as the actions of non-state actors. Taking the Belt and Road Initiative as a case study, we will use a mapping platform and other tools to conduct a guided group research project, where each group will produce a profile of a key site of Chinese global activity by the end of the session. 「 Faculty 」 ▸ Xiaobo Lü, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Political Science, Barnard College and Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. ▸Igor Rogelja, Assistant Professor of Global Politics, University College London.. 🔗 More information: https://lnkd.in/dYdAeaKQ

Dalton Lin, Assistant Professor, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology and Executive Editor, Taiwan Security Issues has written a new book. Please see a description of "Geopolitics and China's Patronage Strategy" below. https://lnkd.in/eXMNvYsP China’s pursuit of geopolitical influence through patronage transfers such as the BRI has generated significant academic and policy interest. Geopolitics and China's Patronage Strategy explains China’s patronage strategy using two themes—the limited resources of a great-power patron and the agency of client countries in patron-client relations. In an effective patron-client relationship, the patron must agree to give, but the client also must agree to accept. The book highlights how neighboring countries’ domestic politics play a role in accepting a patron’s patronage, impacting their willingness to exchange geopolitical allegiances for patronage benefits and the costs involved in patronage transfers. Since China does not have complete control over the domestic politics of peripheral countries, the costs and uncertainty of patronage transfers influence Beijing’s decisions. The book debunks the myths construed by China’s rhetoric of benevolence or the West’s accusations of reckless acquisition. Instead, the agency of neighboring regimes and the resource constraints amid geopolitical competition incentivize Beijing to be a wary patron in its periphery! #newbook #CRC #chinaresearchcenter

Read Dr Rohan Mukherjee's new article out in Global Studies Quarterly! 📑 The article discusses why the present sense of crisis in the liberal international order might have more to do with Western anxieties about security competition with China, Russian aggression, and domestic crises of liberalism than the “rise of the rest.” 🌍 https://lnkd.in/eqerqDc9

Does South Korea have a grand strategy? Andrew Yeo, Darcie Draudt-Véjares, PhD, Duyeon Kim, Yves Tiberghien, Lam Peng Er, and Ramon Pacheco Pardo discuss this question, examining the key factors and goals that shape South Korea’s foreign policy and place in the international order. Read the free Asia Policy book review roundtable: https://bit.ly/48LH3s5 #southkorea #ForeignPolicy

Does South Korea have a grand strategy? Andrew Yeo, Darcie Draudt-Véjares, PhD, Duyeon Kim, Yves Tiberghien, Lam Peng Er, and Ramon Pacheco Pardo discuss this question, examining the key factors and goals that shape South Korea’s foreign policy and place in the international order. Read the free Asia Policy book review roundtable: https://bit.ly/48LH3s5 #southkorea #ForeignPolicy

Dear colleagues and friends, I am delighted to share with you that my latest book on #US 🇺🇲 #China 🇨🇳 relations has just been published by Bristol University Press and Policy Press. This one in particular, seeks to contribute to the emerging academic debate on the #NewColdWar. The book takes a middle ground position and it argues that the US and China are locked in a relationship of forced coexistence, which has resulted into the start of a "new type of cold war". This has been the case, increasingly, over the last decade - roughly since the US launched its "pivot to Asia" policy. This is a new type of cold war – rather than a Second Cold War – because in it factors for competition and restraint coexist on multiple levels, and some are different from those of the Cold War. On the one hand, from a military viewpoint, the US-China relationship is tense as the two largest military powers are competing, although this has fallen short of direct confrontation since competition has become more explicit. To be precise, chances of traditional war are considerable, but the security dilemma that has come to characterize US–China relations is highly uneven from a geographical viewpoint, depending on where one looks at it – the South China Sea or the Middle East, for example. On the other hand, the relationship between these two great powers benefits from important dynamics that encourage restraint as opposed to fighting – such as economic interdependence – and that are unprecedented in history. Yet, such economic integration has at times been a major source of tension between the two countries, and, if one considers the Trump era, it has probably been the most tangible manifestation of deterioration between Washington and Beijing. The book is organised in six chapters, in addition to intro and conclusion: Ch. 1) It Deconstructs the meaning of cold war Ch. 2) It develops an IR theoretical approach to explain restraint in light of competition Ch. 3) It explores the history of US-China relations after 1972 Ch. 4) It unpacks the problematic economic interdependence between the US and China Ch. 5) It provides a picture of the global balance of power Ch 6) It oulines how the international order is splitting again into geopolitical blocs. Defence Studies Department School Security Studies ITSS Verona Lau China Institute, King's College London https://lnkd.in/e6bWpmw6

Does South Korea have a grand strategy? Andrew Yeo (The Catholic University of America), Darcie Draudt-Véjares, PhD, Duyeon Kim, Yves Tiberghien, Lam Peng Er (East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore), and Ramon Pacheco Pardo discuss this question, examining the key factors and goals that shape South Korea’s foreign policy and place in the international order. Read this free Asia Policy book review roundtable: https://bit.ly/48LH3s5 #southkorea #ForeignPolicy

"Revolutionary Taiwan" is a top notch exploration of #Taiwan's revolutionary #history across centuries, and is essential for any analyst, scholar, or practitioner examining Taiwan, China, and cross-strait relations. Too often, observers initiate framing of Taiwanese history and the heart of cross-strait tensions at 1949, when the #KMT fled across the strait at the end of the Chinese Civil War. In this framing, the historical struggle between Taiwan and China is seen as one between the #KMT and the #CCP, and continued as only a Cold War struggle between Free China and Communist China, at least until 1979, with the US cutting off official diplomatic ties with the Republic of China to establish them instead with the People's Republic of China. But the history of this island nation, and the root of its political tensions and aspirations are far deeper and more complex than that. The above framing completely discounts the history and struggles of those Taiwanese who lived on the island prior to the arrival of the KMT, their suffering under martial law, and the quest for democracy undertaken by the Taiwanese people which came to fruition with free and fair elections in the early 1990's. To quote from the book, the fixation of the problem on 1949 is often "... a shorthand explainer for why there is tension in the Taiwan Strait, focusing the reader's attention on the moment of disjunction rather than the brevity and terror of the union preceding it. The result is a public discourse in the West that often looks toward unification of Taiwan and China as a resolution rather than an accelerant of one of the major geopolitical difficulties in East Asia today...". Without this awareness, analysts will miss that, "... unification can never bring epistemic closure, but only mortal danger for the Taiwanese and the beginnings of yet another drive for self-governance...". If your work is related to Taiwan or its security, and you want to ensure your analysis is sound regarding where Taiwan is and where it is going - give this book a read:

#internationalrelations #worldpoliticalcommentary #usachinarelations #chinausarelations #usa #unitedstates #china #foreignrelations #sciencecollaboration #USChinaScienceandTechnologyCooperationAgreement #STA - Why US–China relations are too important to be left to politicians - In an age of geopolitical tensions, researchers need to be realistic and think beyond fundamental science to chart a safe path for collaboration. https://lnkd.in/gxv7jEAi?

🔖 New article | China's current foreign policy emphasizes regime security over economic growth but it will eventually shift back towards prioritizing economic growth and more openness, predict Shorenstein APARC Fellow Tom Fingar and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Professor Emeritus of Chinese Studies David Lampton. In their article for East Asia Forum, Fingar and Lampton argue that the US should remain open to this shift while restoring credibility to its One China Policy and making it clear that its foreign policy goals are not antithetical to the legitimate aspirations of the Chinese people. Read more > https://lnkd.in/gnBUFBed