Article on the rethink in UK China policy and the Huawei decision for the Observer Research Foundation August 8, 2020
China’s approach to India’s NSG entry – predicting Beijing’s block
The Middle East is now the region where many of the most significant shifts in China’s global security role are underway
China’s public offer to mediate peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government marks a notable departure in Chinese foreign policy. It is the first time Beijing is taking a genuine leadership role, on its own initiative, on a geopolitical issue both sensitive and significant.
Although the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan and Pakistan looks like a prime candidate for closer cooperation between the United States and China, prospects of pursuing complementary policies will remain limited until China fundamentally reappraises its strategy for dealing with extremism in the region.
The U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue capped off a three-month period that has returned the Sino-U.S. relationship to a state of fragile equilibrium. Strategic mistrust remains pervasive and there are few issues on which the two sides genuinely see eye-to-eye. But the missteps of 2009 provided some important lessons for better management of future differences.
In the run-up to the G-20 summit, China has tried to placate the United States with a revaluation of its currency. But the move is not a real change of course, explains the German Marshall Fund’s Andrew Small in a Spiegel Online interview. He argues that the Chinese leadership is more concerned with deflecting external criticism than with the health of the global economy.
While the U.S. Treasury’s decision on whether to label China a currency manipulator is inevitably political in nature, rarely has it ever been so geopolitically loaded. In previous years, it has mainly been the economic relationship at stake. This time the implications run from Middle Eastern security to nuclear proliferation, and will do much to define the broader shape of the U.S.-China relationship in the coming years.
China is often accused of supporting a string of despots, nuclear proliferators, and genocidal regimes, shielding them from international pressure and thus reversing progress on human rights and humanitarian principles. But over the last two years, Beijing has been quietly overhauling its policies toward pariah states.
Andrew Small is a Berlin-based senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the US. He recently returned to GMF after a period of leave in 2023-2024 to work as the first China fellow at IDEA, the in-house advisory hub for the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen
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