As North Korea’s neighbour, largest trading partner, and most important patron, China is both the country most responsible for facilitating Pyongyang’s provocations and the one with the most to lose should the regime collapse—always a possibility for so shambolic a polity.
Also Read: China may take bigger role as ‘guarantor and mediator’ after Trump-Kim nuclear talks
The world seems to be moving away from multilateralism. The United States has withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris agreement on climate change, attacked the World Trade Organization, and threatened to start several trade wars. The United Kingdom is negotiating a messy exit from the European Union. But one place is bucking the trend. Over the past decade, Africa has moved rapidly toward regional integration.
For the first time since the Cold War ended, air-raid sirens sounded in Hawaii on November 28, 2017. The exercise was part of the revival of the state’s emergency warning system in response to the possible threat of North Korean nuclear missile attack. But the wail of the siren could also symbolize the coming of Cold War II.
China is set to introduce significant changes to its foreign affairs structure with the merger of two ministerial-level organisations under its top diplomat, as it continues to push for greater recognition as a global leader, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Under the plan, the Communist Party department responsible for relations with overseas political parties would be consolidated with the party’s foreign policy coordination office.
One thing seems certain about Xi Jinping’s move to establish himself as China’s dictator for life: The bolder and more openly assertive foreign policy he has pursued since taking power five years ago is here to stay. The conventional wisdom is that the U.S., its Asian allies, and the broader international order are thus in for a rough stretch, as China demands its place in the sun.
Perhaps the clearest indication that the CCP is troubled by a confrontational United States is the imminent appointment of a veteran troubleshooter to a new post. Wang Qishan, the top ally of Chinese President Xi Jinping and former anti-corruption chief, looks set to become China’s next vice president and the point person for Sino-U.S. relations. Wang could also end up as a deputy leader in the CCP’s National Security Commission.
And while external specialists have cleaved to the narrative of China as being on a nonstop trajectory of sensational growth and expanding influence, government and business leaders within the PRC today take a much more sober view, challenging the dominant narrative of China as the ever-rising power. According to them, the end of the rise of China may well be in sight; the most important remaining question is how all of the key players, inside and outside of China, will adapt to this awesome, world-historical change.
Picture a Palestinian leader in the twilight of his reign. Besieged on all sides and challenged by younger upstarts, he lashes out against Israel, his Arab brethren, and the United States. Other Palestinian officials jockey to replace him, convinced he’s past his prime. This is how it ended for Yasser Arafat, whose insistence on waging the second intifada left him isolated in the final years of his rule. It may well be how it ends for Mahmoud Abbas.
As the new year gets underway, and Chinese foreign policy analysts join their counterparts around the world in assessing the events of 2017, the emerging international relations (IR) discourse in Beijing is quite a revelation — at least to the Japanese and Indian strategic affairs community. While most Chinese believe Japan to be the second biggest threat to China’s “peaceful rise,” according to a few Chinese experts, the rising global profile of India, especially under the “right-wing” nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has gone unacknowledged.
The legend of Lawrence of Arabia was concocted single-handedly by the American impresario Lowell Thomas, who in 1919 premiered a lecture and slide show on Col. T.E. Lawrence’s exploits that played to packed houses in New York and London and beyond. The legend of Edward Lansdale — the former ad man-turned-CIA officer who became known as the “American James Bond” and the “T.E. Lawrence of Asia” — had more authors, but perhaps the most important (and inadvertent) was the eminent English writer Graham Greene.
