https://www.scmp.com/rss/326791/feed Vasilis Trigkas is a Postdoctoral fellow at the Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com It has been 50 years since the American polymath Buckminster Fuller wrote his masterpiece Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth and 30 years since Nasa’s Voyager image of Earth from space, which inspired Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. As the coronavirus epidemic has swiftly spread across every continent but Antarctica, the metaphor of Earth as a pale blue dot floating in space becomes more captivating. In 2017, the US’ national security strategy framed our... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3064577/coronavirus-must-push-us-and-china-pause-strategic-competition?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3064577/coronavirus-must-push-us-and-china-pause-strategic-competition?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 02 Mar 2020 17:30:15 +0000 When investment guru Ray Dalio and leading economist Jeffrey Sachs both warn of the coming unravelling of US monetary hegemony, the world listens. But are we really only a few years from the US dollar’s requiem?  America’s current fiscal position, Dalio argues, is unsustainable and a looming entitlement crisis (health care and pension liabilities) could trigger a “flight to gold”. Rational investors, the argument goes, will soon realise that the only way for America not to default on its... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3041428/us-dollar-hegemony-will-endure-long-americas-institutional-strength?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3041428/us-dollar-hegemony-will-endure-long-americas-institutional-strength?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 11 Dec 2019 17:00:20 +0000 At the 2010 Asean ministerial conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, Yang Jiechi, then China’s foreign minister, rebuffed Hillary Clinton’s calls to prioritise sovereignty as “virtually an attack on China”, adding later that, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact.” Sovereign equality was subdued to imperial primacy. Clinton, then secretary of state, was probably content with Yang’s emotional burst and the summit’s outcome. China’s assertive behaviour and... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3035587/how-no-show-trump-allows-china-advance-its-influence-asia-pacific?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3035587/how-no-show-trump-allows-china-advance-its-influence-asia-pacific?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 01 Nov 2019 17:00:06 +0000 Lord Palmerston best described Britain’s grand strategy when he declared that the country has no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies: “Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” And one perpetual British interest is that no state in continental Europe should ever be allowed to establish continental hegemony. So Britain has acted as an offshore balancer, pivoting to the weaker continental coalition and allying with almost every single major power... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3022617/china-or-america-boris-johnsons-brexit-britain-seeks-new-strategy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3022617/china-or-america-boris-johnsons-brexit-britain-seeks-new-strategy?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 14 Aug 2019 13:00:11 +0000 During my early graduate years at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, a Chinese professor castigated America as having the memory of a goldfish which, consequently, handicapped its strategic community with historic myopia. The professor argued that Chinese strategists, drawing on five millennia of civilisational continuity, see international politics in the longue durée., or long term. An astute American student objected, arguing that the US, as the natural heir to Greece and Rome, also enjoys a... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3009676/how-talk-clash-civilisations-china-serves-americas-purpose?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3009676/how-talk-clash-civilisations-china-serves-americas-purpose?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 12 May 2019 17:00:07 +0000 Unlike the Soviet Union, China is not exporting politburos, red guards and millenarian communism to the world, proclaimed Thomas Christensen, a former US deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, at a recent discussion on the “Belt and Road Initiative” at Columbia University in New York. The moment China begins to actively export authoritarianism, Christensen said, confrontation would become inevitable and he, a pragmatic advocate of strategic restraint, would turn... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3005752/how-china-took-made-america-entrepreneurship-and-re?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3005752/how-china-took-made-america-entrepreneurship-and-re?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 12 Apr 2019 17:30:07 +0000 “The centre cannot hold”, a line from the W.B. Yeats poem, The Second Coming, has become a classic op-ed aphorism in an epoch of ascending demagogy. To extend it beyond domestic politics, the line could be used on the European Union. Indeed, in 2019, the EU may not hold.  Possible future scenarios about the EU abound, yet it will hardly take a Cassandra to call out the ominous omens. By mid-spring, Brexit – orderly or disorderly – will shave 15 per cent off the EU’s gross domestic product. If... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/world/article/2183246/why-brexit-may-be-least-eus-worries?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/world/article/2183246/why-brexit-may-be-least-eus-worries?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 23 Jan 2019 12:00:45 +0000 A radio broadcast of Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds in 1938 provoked panic across the United States about an imminent Martian invasion. “The war of the worlds” could be the subtitle for a plethora of alarming policy reports and statements coming from Washington DC, referring to a Chinese “invasion”, not a Martian one, in US politics and its technological ecosystem.  Yet, apart from China’s alleged tactical and operational offensives against the US – which could be addressed by targeted... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2180743/america-should-worry-about-existential-threat?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2180743/america-should-worry-about-existential-threat?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 06 Jan 2019 17:00:00 +0000 The recent war of words between China and the US at the Apec summit in Papua New Guinea stunned geopolitical pundits around the world and attests to the ominous dynamics in the Asia-Pacific. As the two nations increasingly see issues in terms of security, there is a real danger of matters escalating into a strategic competition for regional alliances.  Just two days before the opening of the summit, an informal meeting took place in Singapore. There, US Vice-President Mike Pence met the leaders... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/asia/article/2174610/reaching-out-japan-and-reassuring-india-china-can-stop?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/asia/article/2174610/reaching-out-japan-and-reassuring-india-china-can-stop?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 23 Nov 2018 08:15:30 +0000 China’s strategic community has been intensely contesting the direction of their country’s foreign policy amid US President Donald Trump’s unyielding determination to escalate the trade war. When Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, agreed in principle on an EU-US trade rapprochement, there was pessimism among Chinese strategists. At the epicentre of public criticism has been China’s proactive foreign policy, crystallised in the Belt and Road Initiative and... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2158578/beijing-right-see-opportunity-chinas-rise-so?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2158578/beijing-right-see-opportunity-chinas-rise-so?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 07 Aug 2018 18:00:30 +0000 July 2018 could be a consequential month for global geopolitics. On July 11, Nato allies will gather in Brussels to discuss the future of the free world amid United States retrenchment and US President Donald Trump’s polemics against the alliance and the “freeriding” Europeans. Then, on July 15, European Union leaders will head to Beijing to attend the 20th China-EU summit with the global commercial order at stake. For the first time since its geopolitical suicide in the first world war, Europe... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2153948/nato-and-china-summits-give-europe-chance?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2153948/nato-and-china-summits-give-europe-chance?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 06 Jul 2018 09:00:45 +0000 Beijing and Washington have, in recent weeks, engaged in commercial skirmishes, but the wrangling over the trade deficit is only a secondary effect of an emerging rivalry over technological primacy between China and the United States. The Chinese products the US has targeted with a 25 per cent tariff are mostly related to “Made in China 2025” – China’s effort to leapfrog the US and lead in technologies that will shape the economic infrastructure of the 21st century. So pivotal has this... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2143277/china-turning-its-back-reform-and-opening-would-be-real?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2143277/china-turning-its-back-reform-and-opening-would-be-real?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 25 Apr 2018 08:23:39 +0000 Almost half a century after the “Nixon shock”, when US President Nixon unilaterally declared that the United States would abandon the dollar’s convertibility to gold and impose a 10 per cent import surcharge, the world is now being shaken by the “Trump shock”. While Nixon targeted the European and Japanese trade surpluses, this time, the epicentre of the president’s rage is China’s strategic protectionism, which compels US corporations to transfer technology in return for access to the world’s... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2139245/america-first-shouldnt-stop-us-welcoming-chinese-students?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2139245/america-first-shouldnt-stop-us-welcoming-chinese-students?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 28 Mar 2018 09:30:45 +0000