China is slowly losing Europe. This is happening even though transatlantic relations are at a low point and right when the European Union is finally aiming to become a global geopolitical player. Ursula von der Leyen, the new president of the European Commission, has made it clear over the past months that she wants [...]
Many observers believe China is building up its military, especially its navy, to break through the first and second island chains and push the United States out of the Asia-Pacific. China’s military expansion in the region is thus seen as a major threat against U.S. interests and security. But there’s a big problem with the language [...]
When the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949, almost 40 years had passed since China’s territory had last been administered by a functional central government, the Qing Dynasty. This period of chaos and war affected hundreds of millions of lives. In 1949, life expectancy at birth in China was only somewhere between [...]
On September 1st, the world commemorated 80 years since Germany’s invasion of Poland, which marked the start of the Second World War. Over the next 5 years, German troops went on fighting all over Europe. The war eventually ended, not with the surrender, but the destruction and partition of Germany. It was the second [...]
The latest confrontation between the United States and China officially started with the trade war in 2018. The time since then has reminded us just how different the two countries are and how difficult it has become to reach a compromise. While the West would like to preserve the current world order and strengthen [...]
As even Chinese President Xi Jinping has realized, the Belt and Road Initiative has to find a new groove. The BRI has come under harsh criticism over the past year, amid the heat of national election campaigns in countries such as Malaysia and the Maldives and accusations of China pushing states into excessive borrowing. [...]
Seven years ago, in 2012, when China announced it wanted to build an ecological civilisation, it was hard to take it seriously. The concept sounded good, but it was too much to hope for from the world’s biggest polluter. A year later, China launched the “Belt and Road Initiative” and, ever since, all [...]
When it was launched by China and 16 countries from Central and Eastern Europe in 2012, the 16+1 mechanism sparked hope throughout the region that it could close the investment gap. The figures being bandied about were huge in 2012. Then-Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao announced a $10 billion credit line for Chinese investments in Central and [...]
A route that spans around Eurasia, an infrastructure project that encompasses over 70 countries, a branding strategy, are just some of the ways in which the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been described until now. But the narrative has begun to change lately. From a beneficial strategy, the BRI has become a bogeyman [...]
“For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.” – John Greenleaf Whittier *** On the first day of January 2039, in Washington, the presidents of China and the United States stood on the South Lawn, for a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the establishment [...]