China
What’s behind the popularity of President Trump in China?
It is said that no one can fully understand China. Lately, that oft-repeated axiom has seen a new iteration: no one can fully understand the affection and admiration that so many…
China’s Digital Silk Road and stopping divergent technology standards
China’s Belt and Road Initiative is best known for big infrastructure projects such as train lines and ports, but in this age of omnipresence online, there is a communications…
Peeling back the label in Australia’s America and China relationships
For American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, the test of a great intellect was the ability to “hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.” By this measure, Australian…
The Sino-Russian relationship is being misunderstood
Too often, the past is mistaken as a guide for the future, rather than as lesson from which to avoid making the same mistakes. Take the relationship between China and Russia as an…
Hun Sen’s natural bilateral “bestie”
On the sidelines of the second Belt and Road Forum in China last month, Cambodia’s Hun Sen was busy. He secured a further $90 million defence grant from Beijing, adding to the …
Trump’s tariff tussle
As predictable as Big Ben striking the hour, as subtle as a battering ram, the final stages of the US-China trade negotiations involve upping the ante with a further tariff…
Belt and Road: colonialism with Chinese characteristics
Although China’s top-ranking diplomat Yang Jiechi has repeatedly assured the world that his country’s supreme foreign policy project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), “does not…
Huawei reaches into Britain
Whatever the true situation behind the sacking of Gavin Williamson as British defence secretary over claims (which he strenuously denies) that he leaked information to the Daily…
Seeing what you want in Belt and Road
China’s Xi Jinping recently completed a high-profile trip to Europe. In Italy, Xi and his Italian counterpart Giuseppe Conte last month signed a non-binding memorandum…
The souring mood towards Beijing from Berlin
Until recently, Germany was one of the few major Western countries that China had consistently amicable relations with in an increasingly hostile international environment for…