China-US relations – Page 2

Southeast Asian diplomacy: consistency is not always a virtue (AIIA)

2 October 2020 Online editor Analysis and comment, Foreign policy, trade and diplomacy

As a contiguous big country, China is always going to enjoy significant influence in Southeast Asia. But for precisely the same reasons, China is also always going to evoke anxieties. Countries on China’s periphery will therefore not allow themselves to be hemmed into an exclusive relationship no matter how dependent they are on China. Having lived in the midst of great power competition for centuries, the strategic instinct of Southeast Asia is not to align with any major power across all domains.

The Trump Administration’s China policy experiment (Brookings)

30 September 2020 Online editor Analysis and comment, Foreign policy, trade and diplomacy

The Trump administration’s China policies are explored clearly and succinctly in this working paper by the Brookings Institution’s Ryan Hass. While Hass describes the approach to China over the past four years as a Trump Administration (failed) experiment, he leaves no doubt that the nature and trajectory of US-China relations has now been reset, irrespective of who is the next president.

China and the US: the 21st century’s ‘Great Game’ (Conn Hallinan)

20 September 2020 Online editor Analysis and comment, Foreign policy, trade and diplomacy

The U.S. has dominated the Pacific Ocean — sometimes called an “American lake” — since the end of World War II. Suddenly Americans have a competitor, although it is a rivalry that routinely gets overblown. China’s major thrust is economic, through its massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), not military.

Is China heading towards revolutionary revisionism? (Michael Clarke)

8 September 2020 Online editor Analysis and comment

Xi Jinping’s Leninist calculus has contributed to China exhibiting both reformist and positionalist forms of revisionism simultaneously, both of which contain pathways toward revolutionary revisionism. The combination of reformist and positionalist forms of revisionism has significant implications for thinking about the future trajectory of Sino-US competition.

Sino-US competition: the importance of disaggregating China’s revisionism

8 September 2020 Online editor Analysis and comment, Foreign policy, trade and diplomacy

Revisionism as a strategy in international politics, and China’s revisionism in particular, however is not the “all-or-nothing” proposition portrayed by US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. A more accurate understanding of the factors that have driven Beijing’s transition between different types of revisionist behaviour suggests that rhetoric such as Pompeo’s will merely reinforce China’s move toward more problematic revisionist behaviours.

Strategic mirror: Pentagon’s China report reveals converging power and strategy

7 September 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton, International relations, Strategy, defence and security

The Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on military and security developments in China describes an already formidable military capability, and China’s intention that its military strength will achieve parity with the US by 2049. Ironically, the report unintentionally reveals that China’s major strategic objectives mirror those of the US, past and present. Additionally, the report provides evidence that Australia’s increasing investment in Defence is no substitute for diplomacy.

Europe’s ‘pushback’ on China: recommendations for EU-China relations (Institut Montaigne)

6 July 2020 Online editor Analysis and comment, Foreign policy, trade and diplomacy

A detailed, informative and comprehensive policy paper covering the span of the current state of EU-China relations as the growing economic power of China, and Europe’s awkward situation in the US-China trade war, puts enormous pressure on the EU to find a way to manage relations with China.

US-China strategic rivalry: causes, trajectories, and implications

7 May 2020 Online editor Foreign policy, trade and diplomacy, Research and reports, Strategy, defence and security

An insightful paper that seeks a strategy for Europe ‘to escape the bipolar logic that demands it choose between the American and Chinese economic/technological spheres’. The recommendations for Europe should resonate equally in Australia – a country already caught up in the global competition for influence, and likely to be subject to ‘increased pressure from Washington on its allies to take a clear position on the sharpening US-China conflict and clearly side with the United States’.

Traps, Trump and Thucydides: challenging Allison’s concept of a ‘Thucydides’ Trap’

14 February 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Global

Harvard academic Graham Allison finds in Thucydides’ ‘The History of the Peloponnesian War’, some near universal law of international relations where war between established and rising great powers is close to inevitable – the ‘Thucydides’ Trap’. But are there different lessons to be drawn from analysis of the Peloponnesian War?