https://www.scmp.com/rss/501705/feed Professor Shirley Ze Yu is a political economist, a nonresident senior practitioner fellow with the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia at Harvard Kennedy School, director of the China-Africa Initiative at the London School of Economics, an adjunct professor at the IE Business School, and an honorary distinguished foreign faculty professor at the National Defence University, Islamabad. She serves as a non-executive director at global companies and university advisory boards. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com In China’s annual parliamentary meetings, developing “new quality productive forces” topped the agenda. A twist on Marxist theorisation, new quality productive forces simply mean new drivers of economic – and defence – growth, powered by frontier technologies. Such new forces can span from infotech, biotech, artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, new energy and new materials, to deep space, deep ocean and deep mind. The strategy appears to have three objectives: foreign technology... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/asia/article/3255248/why-chinas-plan-new-productive-forces-should-make-west-sit?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/asia/article/3255248/why-chinas-plan-new-productive-forces-should-make-west-sit?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 16 Mar 2024 01:30:10 +0000 China may have reopened but relations with the United States remain bleak as minds on both sides still appear to be firmly closed. After the spy balloon incident, Americans feel that China has violated US sovereignty and that China poses the greatest existential threat to their country today. Under US economic sanctions, corporate blacklisting and military encirclement, Chinese people believe they are being deprived of the right to equal global citizenship and a prosperous life. Despite the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3219302/world-can-live-us-china-competition-stays-clear-violence?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3219302/world-can-live-us-china-competition-stays-clear-violence?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 08 May 2023 01:15:15 +0000 Unable to articulate a strategy on China in the league of coherent grand strategies such as “containtment”, “detente”, or his predecessors’ “responsible stakeholder” and “pivot to Asia”, US President Joe Biden’s China strategy is a bewildering utility cupboard – the US sometimes competes with China, sometimes cooperates with it, and at other times confronts it. Conveniently, Chinese policymakers have organised Biden’s China strategy into what they call the “five noes”: the US seeks no cold war,... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3214177/fog-strategic-mistrust-stopping-us-and-china-seeing-eye-eye?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3214177/fog-strategic-mistrust-stopping-us-and-china-seeing-eye-eye?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 21 Mar 2023 17:00:14 +0000 The first week of Xi Jinping’s third term speaks volumes about his vision for China’s next five years. The new standing committee visited Yanan city, the Communist Party’s revolutionary cradle. There, Xi proclaimed that “China’s socialism is won by hard work, struggles and even sacrifice of lives. This was not only true in the past but also true in the new era”. The squad visited the Hongqi Canal, also known as the Red Flag Canal, where Xi paid tribute to the heroic spirit of those “who dare to... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3198053/xi-jinping-serious-about-securing-tech-talent-and-modern-military-china-next-five-years?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3198053/xi-jinping-serious-about-securing-tech-talent-and-modern-military-china-next-five-years?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 04 Nov 2022 17:00:12 +0000 US President Joe Biden signed into law this month the Chips and Science Act that provides US$52.7 billion in subsidies aimed at outcompeting China in semiconductor production – part of a US$280 billion bipartisan industrial policy to boost semiconductor manufacturing. Days later, the US government placed four more critical technologies on an export control list, choking off Chinese access to them. Moving at warp speed, however, China’s largest chip manufacturer, Semiconductor Manufacturing... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3189837/us-china-tech-race-really-chip-talent-war-and-america-isnt-winning?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3189837/us-china-tech-race-really-chip-talent-war-and-america-isnt-winning?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 23 Aug 2022 17:30:25 +0000 Last year was the fin de siècle for the Communist Party. The party proclaimed it had achieved the first 100-year plan and eradicated absolute poverty. China delivered GDP per capita of close to US$10,500 with some 400 million people now middle class. Beyond being the world’s largest trading nation, China is now the largest recipient of foreign direct investment. President Xi Jinping announced his ambitious drive to double the economy again between 2020 and 2035, and at the same time he has taken... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3162489/china-needs-middle-class-growth-and-consumption-sustain-economic?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3162489/china-needs-middle-class-growth-and-consumption-sustain-economic?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Jan 2022 17:30:11 +0000 Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai’s recent appearances will not convince some that she is safe and free. She showed up at a tennis event, held a Zoom call with the International Olympic Committee chairman and was featured in a restaurant rendezvous. All this led to more questions over whether she did so freely. Let’s imagine for a moment that Peng is happy and free. How could she express it so the rest of the world would believe it? She could set up a Twitter account and tweet “Hey, I am safe and... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3158601/how-peng-shuais-fate-underscores-chinas-global-legitimacy-challenge?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3158601/how-peng-shuais-fate-underscores-chinas-global-legitimacy-challenge?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 06 Dec 2021 19:30:23 +0000 “Every civilisation sees itself as the centre of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.” So wrote Samuel Huntington in his seminal The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order. Hard power begets soft power. Without the economic prosperity of Athens, Greek philosophy would not have taken root. Without the later Roman empire, Christianity would have remained a cult. The steam engine powered the universality of Western values. When the West was doing... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3136889/china-seeking-promote-its-world-view-and-roll-back-westernisation?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3136889/china-seeking-promote-its-world-view-and-roll-back-westernisation?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 11 Jun 2021 17:30:00 +0000 Amid rising tensions in Anchorage, Alaska, last month, top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the two countries should mind their own business. Within days, this tension had spilled over into the business lane. The collateral damage? Sweden’s H&M. Last September, H&M said it had stopped using Xinjiang cotton following the advice of the Better Cotton Initiative in March. This went unnoticed until March 24 this year, when a short Weibo post by the Chinese... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3128504/xinjiang-cotton-hm-and-nikes-differing-fates-hold-lessons-global?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3128504/xinjiang-cotton-hm-and-nikes-differing-fates-hold-lessons-global?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 07 Apr 2021 14:30:16 +0000 Where there is strength, fragility arises. The Chinese economy appears invincible following a pandemic that has destroyed the global economy. It grew 2.3 per cent in 2020, beating Beijing’s own expectations. Aided by an appreciating yuan, the Chinese economy nearly surpassed that of the entire European Union in 2020 and reached almost 75 per cent of the United States’. The last nation to come this close to the US’ economic might was Japan. China has devised a strategy to double the size of its... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3121116/three-reasons-chinas-economy-strong-not-invincible?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3121116/three-reasons-chinas-economy-strong-not-invincible?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 09 Feb 2021 19:30:08 +0000 “Competition without catastrophe” is how then national security adviser nominee Jake Sullivan defined the US-China strategic landscape. Kurt Campbell, US President Joe Biden’s “Asia Tsar” nominee, paralleled the 19th-century world order to illuminate 21st-century US foreign policy for the Indo-Pacific. Both represent the ideal of Pax Americana elitism: cultured, restrained and alliance-minded. Both are Kissingerian pundits of balance of power. One precondition predicates a Kissingerian world –... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3119252/19th-century-us-world-view-has-no-place-asias-vibrant-china-led?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3119252/19th-century-us-world-view-has-no-place-asias-vibrant-china-led?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 27 Jan 2021 01:15:15 +0000 “The most important issue for our nation and the world in the 21st century is the United States’ response to the global ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party.” US Attorney General William Barr unlocked a defining code to the current state of the world on July 17. The United States wants to defeat the Chinese economy. It is up to China to rise above it. Judging from Barr’s message, if China wasn’t globally ambitious, the US would have lost the basis for such a response. To be clear, China is... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3096939/us-china-relations-trump-attacking-chinese-tech-firms-preserve?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3096939/us-china-relations-trump-attacking-chinese-tech-firms-preserve?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 12 Aug 2020 17:30:20 +0000 The “street vendor economy”, the latest economic policy from Premier Li Keqiang, has spread across China’s city streets in the past two weeks. It may seem alluring at first, but it’s far from a prescription for economic prosperity. A street vendor economy cannot save China. During his visit to Yantai, Shandong province, on May 31, Li said: “Street vendors and small shops are important sources of employment. This is the ordinary people’s way of living. Just like those advanced and hi-tech... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3089463/why-technology-not-street-vendors-will-save-chinas-economy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3089463/why-technology-not-street-vendors-will-save-chinas-economy?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 18 Jun 2020 19:00:06 +0000 Most of Europe had fallen. Britain was barely holding its own. A great number of Americans remained committed to isolationism. This was the situation in late 1941, before Franklin D. Roosevelt took the United States to war in defence of freedom. In 2020, it is déjà vu. At this hour of crisis, there is no doubt what humanity is fighting against – a virus, a lower species that has no capacity for reasoning, and therefore knows no fear and bears no shame. But what is humanity fighting for today?... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3082938/chinas-coronavirus-soft-power-push-will-fail-if-it-cannot-defend?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3082938/chinas-coronavirus-soft-power-push-will-fail-if-it-cannot-defend?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 06 May 2020 19:00:12 +0000 As the Chinese military classic The Art of War says: “All warfare is based on deception.” Thus, the US-China phase one trade deal will prove to be just a cosmetic act by Beijing. China is feigning trade appeasement to give itself time for structural economic adjustments – its goal is to seize global economic primacy. At a Peking University forum in November, Justin Yifu Lin, former World Bank chief economist and one of China’s key economic advisers, said: “When will the US concede to China’s... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3046307/will-china-stick-phase-one-trade-deal-depends-whether-it-fosters?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3046307/will-china-stick-phase-one-trade-deal-depends-whether-it-fosters?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 16 Jan 2020 17:00:08 +0000 “The only force that can defeat China is from within. No exterior force can.” On October 2 this year, the Communist Party’s leading journal of political theory, Qiushi, published in full a 2018 speech by President Xi Jinping, highlighting in stark language China’s coming challenges as the People’s Republic enters its 71st year. Indeed, in 2020, China’s primary economic risk is most likely to come not from the trade war, but from its inflated property market. “Black swans” and “grey rhinos”... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3038460/forget-trade-war-beijings-worst-nightmare-property-market-collapse?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3038460/forget-trade-war-beijings-worst-nightmare-property-market-collapse?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 22 Nov 2019 04:00:14 +0000 China’s ambassador to Britain, Liu Xiaoming, faced off with BBC Newsnight a few hours after the face-mask ban was declared in Hong Kong. He repeated that Hong Kong’s situation is “under control”. And, contrary to the anarchy and chaos the rest of the world observes, he is correct.  Hong Kong has been under China’s control, territorially and administratively. In fact, Hong Kong has also increasingly fallen into China’s economic orbit. It is only a matter of time before Hong Kong’s political... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3032733/china-would-rather-see-hong-kong-lose-its-role-financial-gateway?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3032733/china-would-rather-see-hong-kong-lose-its-role-financial-gateway?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 15 Oct 2019 01:00:10 +0000 It would seem logical for the world’s largest debtor to name the world’s largest lender as one of the “world’s richest countries”. Last week, the Trump administration demanded that the World Trade Organisation update its definition of a “developing country” and remove the favourable treatment the designation confers on nations like China. US President Donald Trump tweeted that “the WTO is broken when the world’s richest countries claim to be developing countries to avoid WTO rules and get... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3021667/trumps-wto-move-feeble-answer-china-challenge?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3021667/trumps-wto-move-feeble-answer-china-challenge?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 07 Aug 2019 19:00:07 +0000