https://www.scmp.com/rss/506615/feed Sam Olsen is the co-founder of the strategic consultancy MetisAsia and the author of What China Wants. A former managing director at Kroll, he first visited China in 1996 and has lived in both Hong Kong and Singapore. He has also contributed to UK policy on foreign and trade affairs. Twitter: @samolsenx en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Given China’s long history of invasion and civil strife, it is no coincidence that weiqi, or Go, is considered by some to be the country’s national board game. Stemming from an era when the country was riven by fracture and war, the game’s aim – to encircle your opponent while avoiding encirclement in return – is reflective of the traditional fears within China’s foreign policy. For some in Beijing, it might look like these fears are being realised. To China’s southwest, India is drifting... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3142072/china-or-us-why-southeast-asia-cannot-stay-neutral-forever?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3142072/china-or-us-why-southeast-asia-cannot-stay-neutral-forever?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 23 Jul 2021 01:15:14 +0000 It is often said that Beijing political elites are encouraged to read the works of the great thinkers of the West. The theory is that reading Alexis de Tocqueville and Thucydides will allow an insight into the Western mind that will be useful in replicating the West’s global success. One slightly less highbrow tome they might want to put on the reading list is Dale Carnegie’s 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. The original self-help book has some advice for countries wanting... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3114654/lead-china-must-learn-how-win-friends-and-stop-coming-across-bully?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3114654/lead-china-must-learn-how-win-friends-and-stop-coming-across-bully?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 21 Dec 2020 17:30:10 +0000 Chinese President Xi Jinping announced to a virtual gathering of the World Health Assembly in May that his country was working hard on a vaccine for the Covid-19 pandemic. Once it was ready, he declared, the vaccine would be “made a global public good”. He looks to be keeping his word. Beijing has now publicly pledged that an effective coronavirus vaccine will be available by the end of 2020; it has also committed to providing the vaccine first to more than a dozen countries, particularly... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3107368/us-retreats-coronavirus-ravaged-world-china-increasing-its?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3107368/us-retreats-coronavirus-ravaged-world-china-increasing-its?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 28 Oct 2020 21:45:08 +0000 Amid the US-led Western clampdown on Chinese technology firms like Huawei and ByteDance, which owns the TikTok app so popular with teenagers, it is easy to overlook the fact that Chinese technological ambitions abroad aren’t limited to the exploits of a handful of companies. Instead, they are part of a wider programme dubbed the “digital silk road”, a subset of the more widely known Belt and Road Initiative. Launched in 2015, the digital silk road is a mainly private-sector-driven programme,... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3101549/instead-targeting-tiktok-and-wechat-us-should-work-alternative?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3101549/instead-targeting-tiktok-and-wechat-us-should-work-alternative?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 15 Sep 2020 13:45:17 +0000 While the British government’s decision to scrap Huawei’s role in the country’s 5G infrastructure has dominated Sino-British relations in the past week, it is the news of the upcoming deployment of the Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth to East Asia that perhaps matters most in terms of Britain’s future in the region. Britain has repeatedly emphasised the importance of the Asia-Pacific to its plans for trade following Brexit. It is no coincidence that the region is home to three... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3093810/maths-behind-britains-huawei-u-turn-and-pivot-indo-pacific?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3093810/maths-behind-britains-huawei-u-turn-and-pivot-indo-pacific?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 21 Jul 2020 01:00:16 +0000