The BRICS group wrapped up its two-day leaders’ summit in Rio de Janeiro on Monday. The summit’s final communique is a 16,000-word doorstop that covers numerous issues from economics to education.
The communique avoids any direct mention of the United States, and references to “unilateralism” and other coded criticism are also relatively scarce. Rather, the communique keeps the focus on the BRICS’ vision of the strengthening and reform of the global multilateral system ...
Category: Books
Trade Wars and Active Non-Alignment
“I don’t recall any U.S. company visiting me during my two-and-a-half years of government”, former president Guillermo Lasso of Ecuador recently told the Financial Times, adding, “Meanwhile, Chinese companies were visiting me almost on a daily basis”. Lasso, a conservative millionaire businessman who ruled Ecuador from 2021 ...
Why the U.S. is Struggling to Compete in the Global Competition for Critical Resources
U.S. officials have spoken at length about the urgent need to end their country's dependency on China for the critical resources needed to power next-generation mobility and technology. Part of the solution, they say, is ...
Westlessness: A New Era Where the West Still Matters, Just Not as Much
Chinese President Xi Jinping has long touted the East's rise and the West's decline, the kind of thinking that's triggered his supporters to fantasize about a post-Western geopolitical order. While it's indisputable that U.S. and European countries, which ...
Author Jeremy Garlick on China’s Strategic Advantage in the Global South
U.S. and European officials often lament that they've fallen behind China when it comes to engaging Africa, Asia, the Americas, and other developing regions. Western governments aren't set up to rapidly deploy the kind of money and resources that Beijing's done ...
Noo Saro-Wiwa on “Black Ghosts” in China and the Complex Lives of the African Diaspora
Author Noo Saro-Wiwa had not spent much time in China when she heard that cities like Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Yiwu, among others, were home to large, vibrant African migrant communities. But other than some of the headlines about the diaspora ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
The Case for More U.S. Soft Power to Counter China in the Global South
China is one of the very few truly bipartisan issues in Washington today where there is near unanimous consensus that the U.S. must work to counter Beijing's growing influence around the world, especially in developing countries.
What China’s Past Tells Us About the Future of its Foreign Policy in Asia
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim both wrapped up state visits to China last week and their discussions with President Xi Jinping revealed some fascinating linkages between contemporary Chinese foreign policy objectives and Beijing's historical ...
Latin America Was Once an Afterthought for China… Not Anymore
In just the past twenty years, China's trade with countries in Latin America and the Caribbean surged 26-fold to almost half-a-trillion dollars. The region is also now a major destination for Chinese foreign investment and becoming a critically important new front ...
China, Latin America, and the Rise of a New Non-Aligned Movement
During the first Cold War, a large group of developing countries sought to distance themselves from the ideological battle between the United States and the Soviet Union to create a Non-Aligned Movement. Today, three decades ...
Can China’s Surveillance State Governance Model Be Exported Abroad?
China has built the world's largest and most intrusive surveillance system to monitor the behavior of its people. Millions of cameras, vast databases, and sophisticated online filters work together to form a seemingly omnipresent matrix that overwatches every aspect of daily ...
Africa in the New Era of U.S.-China Great Power Competition
Chinese President Xi Jinping is widely expected to soon re-emerge on the global stage after a nearly three-year absence. Where is still unknown, but when it does happen it's going to create a much tenser, more confrontational atmosphere at upcoming summits ...
A Discussion With Elizabeth Economy About the World According to China
Acclaimed China scholar Elizabeth Economy join Eric & Cobus this week to discuss her new book for 2022 "The World According to China." It's important to note the interview with Elizabeth was recorded before Russia's invasion of ...