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      in World Politics

      How China’s Growing Dominance Will Impact Sino-Gulf Relations

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      The COVID-19 pandemic has sent shockwaves through energy markets. Since March 2020, lockdowns around the world have led adults to work remotely and children to learn virtually. Last year, according to estimates, global energy demand and investment fell by 5% and 18%, respectively.

      Yet as restrictions ease and economies pick up pace, the sense of normality that many hope for is one of the few luxuries energy producers cannot afford. In the race to comply with mounting political pressure to reduce carbon emissions while simultaneously securing their energy futures, the Sino-Gulf alliance may become the new center of gravity for global energy markets.

      Young People Are the Key to Reconciling China and Hong Kong

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      The pandemic has undoubtedly cast a dark shadow on energy. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently revealed that energy demand will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2023 in its most optimistic outlook or 2025 in the case of a delayed economic recovery. However, a return to pre-COVID demand does not necessitate a return to pre-crisis growth. Predicted growth in demand between 2019 and 2030 is estimated at 4% in the delayed recovery case, compared to 12% in a COVID-free world.

      Nevertheless, the pandemic has also highlighted the importance of a reliable and accessible electricity supply. The IEA predicts that the electricity sector, whose demand outpaces other fuels, will support economic recovery and account for 21% of global final energy consumption by 2030. This push for electricity is widely driven by the various global emission reduction targets, increased use of electric vehicles and heat sources in advanced economies, and greater consumption from emerging markets.

      Leader of the Pack

      Of the countries driving this growth, China is leading the pack and is predicted to be the main driver of energy demand over the next decade. Following his call for an “energy revolution,” President Xi Jinping has sought to reposition China as a key player in global energy markets. While the Chinese are currently the world’s biggest consumers and producers of coal-fired electricity, Xi’s pledge to make China carbon neutral by 2060 means that energy demands are increasingly being met via renewables.

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      China is predicted to account for 40% of global renewable expansion, leading in the realm of nuclear power, biofuel production and will account for almost half of globally distributed photovoltaic power. In addition to this, Chinese demand is also predicted to account for 40% of global electricity sector growth by 2030, up from 28%. It was as a consequence of East Asia’s growing appetite for clean energy that, in 2016, global electricity investment outpaced that of oil and gas for the first time in history.

      However, as with everything, there will be winners and losers. While electricity is on the up, sluggish global oil demand has led to falling oil prices. With demand predicted to plummet in the 2030s, there is a growing urgency for Gulf Arab states to diversify as oil becomes more of a burden than a blessing. Yet, in their hurry to claim their stake in the new energy world order, Gulf countries may begin to look east rather than west for a friend to rely on.

      China and the Gulf

      Sino-Gulf relations are not a new occurrence. As the world’s largest importer of oil and natural gas, these two commodities dominate Chinese trade relations and have been the basis of the Saudi-led Gulf alliance. The Gulf Cooperation Council supplies over 30% of China’s oil imports, with Saudi Arabia topping the list, accounting for over 16% of the oil import total. Nevertheless, in a world that is increasingly turning its back on oil, GCC states and China may increasingly look to each other to secure their respective energy futures.

      From the establishment of the China–Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF) in 2004 to the China–GCC Strategic Dialogue in 2010, Sino-Gulf relations have grown from strength to strength. As such, it was hardly supplying when China gave the GCC a starring role in its Belt and Road Initiative. Announced in 2013, this global infrastructure project that seeks to boost physical connectivity, financial integration, trade and economic growth has become the core pillar of China’s increasingly active foreign policy approach under Xi.

      During the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the CASCF in 2014, Xi spoke about the Gulf Arab states as “natural cooperative partners in jointly building” the BRI. This set the stage for a flood of multi-billion-dollar investments and agreements between China and the Gulf states, advancing the Belt and Road Initiative in the Arabian Peninsula and deepening economic ties.

      Chinese investment activity in the Gulf has followed the “1+2+3” Sino-Arab cooperation framework. This features energy cooperation as its central axis, investment and infrastructure, and accelerating breakthroughs in three high-tech sectors, namely aviation satellite, nuclear energy and new energy. However, there is no doubt that the BRI aims primarily to strengthen this central pillar of energy cooperation. Aptly described as “oil roads,” the initiative will enable China to establish the necessary infrastructure, transport and refinery facilities needed to secure its energy future and keep GCC coffers full.

      These ambitious plans will be of greater significance in the years to come. Despite the economic and energy market turmoil triggered by the pandemic, Sino-Gulf relations show no signs of slowing. Rather, the pandemic may have made way for a greater mutual dependence between China and the Gulf states. This is particularly true for the GCC, whose economic wellbeing depends heavily on the revival of global oil markets. China may prove to be the answer to Gulf ministers’ prayers, stimulating growth by providing a guaranteed revenue stream for the region’s main export, no doubt stabilizing GCC economies.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Beyond the energy sector, however, the two regions offer a wealth of investment opportunities that will likely deepen relations, particularly as the GCC economies realize their various diversification plans. The synergies between the GCC’s various “vision” agendas and China’s BRI are extensive, thus acting as a major point of collaboration. The two are already in the final stages of concluding the long-awaited China–GCC free trade agreement, a move that would no doubt propel economic cooperation and open the doors to a vast array of trading opportunities. Saudi Arabia has already taken active steps to consolidate this BRI-vision cooperation by signing various agreements and memorandums of understanding with China. Riyadh has since considered the BRI to be “one of the main pillars of the Saudi Vision 2030,” consequently making China “among the Kingdom’s biggest economic partners.” 

      Closer Partners

      It is thus clear that, willingly or unwillingly, recent global events have further pushed China and GCC into each other’s arms. Sino-Gulf relations can be expected to gain serious traction in the next few years, especially in the realm of energy cooperation, which is likely to continue to spearhead this strategic alliance as a sector of great mutual importance. Meanwhile, as China seeks to entrench itself in the Gulf, it may find itself caught in the middle of the regional power struggles that threaten stability, namely the Iran-Saudi rivalry. President Xi, however, shows no intent of mixing business with politics, as seen in his recent regional tour, which saw him visit both Saudi Arabia and Iran among others.

      Nevertheless, if China wishes to grow its presence in the Gulf, ensuring regional peace will undoubtedly become a priority for Beijing. Chinese neutrality may be exactly what is needed to defuse regional tensions and maintain a level of accord that keeps the feud below boiling point. Yet despite Sino-Gulf relations taking center stage in the near future, China will not be replacing the United States as the dominant foreign power in the Middle East any time soon. Beijing’s focus on economic rather than political matters makes China, to use the words of Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, “not necessarily a better friend, but a less complicated friend.”

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      US image rebounds while ‘unfavourable’ views of China remain, global survey finds

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      A new survey has found that since Joe Biden came to power, positive views of the United States have rebounded across 17 advanced economies in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Most continue to see China in an unfavourable light.“Confidence in the US president has shot up precipitously since Joe Biden took office, while confidence in President Xi Jinping remains unchanged and near historic lows,” the survey, conducted by the US-based Pew research centre, found. The survey was conducted between 1 February and 26 May this year across 17 advanced economies as a part of Pew’s 2021 Global Attitudes survey wave. There were 18,850 respondents.Last year the survey found that negative views of both the US and China had reached historic highs in many countries.The pro-America opinion is the highest in South Korea, where 77% have positive views of the country, while around two-thirds or more in the US, Italy, Japan, France and the UK say the same. In every place except New Zealand, around half or more had a favourable opinion of the US.Only two countries – Greece and Singapore – have a more positive view of China compared with last year. Three-quarters or more in Japan (88%), Sweden (80%), Australia (78%), South Korea (77%) and the US (76%) have negative views of China. “In many places, these unfavourable views are at or near historic highs, though they are largely unchanged since last year,” the authors wrote.The large majority of respondents also said that China “does not respect personal freedoms of its people”. In 15 of 17 publics, eight-in-10 have this impression. “This sense is also at or nearly historic highs in nearly every place surveyed, having risen significantly in countries like Italy, South Korea, Greece, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom since 2018,” Pew found.On US-China leadership, when the question was asked last year, few respondents had confidence in either Xi or then-President Donald Trump to do the right thing when it came to world affairs. It found that across much of western Europe, more had confidence in Xi than Trump.Half or more people in almost every place surveyed say it is “more important for their nation to have strong economic ties with the US than with China”. The views were different in Singapore (33%) and New Zealand (45%).But the feelings towards China are not all negative. When it comes to the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, China scored higher than the US. A median of 49% respondents among the 17 publics surveyed say that China has done “a good job” in handling the coronavirus outbreak, whereas a median of 37% regard the US’s response positively. More

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      in Elections

      Behind One New York Times Pulitzer: Hundreds of Journalists

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      When The New York Times was honored with the prestigious prize in the category of public service for its coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, it reflected the contributions of the entire newsroom.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.This month, from a steep red staircase overlooking The New York Times’s newsroom, Dean Baquet, the executive editor, announced that the staff had won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for its coverage of the coronavirus.The Times, which has received 132 Pulitzers since they were first awarded in 1917, has won in the public service category, regarded as the most prestigious of the prizes, six times. Wesley Morris, a Times critic at large, also received a Pulitzer, his second, for criticism for his writing on the intersection of race and culture in America.The Pulitzer board recognized several facets of the coronavirus coverage. The Times reported early on the outbreak in China in January 2020. Tracked cases across the nation and the world through an intensive data project. Relayed developments 24 hours a day. Reported on the race to understand the virus and the failure of governments to respond. Documented racial and social inequities of the pandemic. Provided vivid accounts of suffering worldwide. And observed the monumental death toll.That coverage encompassed not just articles but graphics, video, data journalism, design, photography and podcasting. The effort drew upon the full resources of the newsroom, with many staff members putting themselves at personal risk and others taking on new roles to meet the demands of the coverage or provide support. And all of it was executed with nearly all employees working remotely and as The Times also covered the nation’s racial unrest, the impact of climate change and a tumultuous presidential campaign and election.Speaking to employees, many of whom were watching the livestreamed awards ceremony at home, Mr. Baquet, along with other newsroom leaders, reflected on what it meant to be honored at this time.“I just want to pause for a moment on the full power of these prizes and what they say about what you accomplished in a year when many of you suffered from your own loss and disruption,” he said. “Literally, hundreds of people had a hand in this coverage.”A key component of the coverage was a tracking project that compiled virus data on a variety of measures. The Times released the data, which has been used by medical researchers and government officials.More than 100 people from across the newsroom, as well as 50 freelancers and students, have worked on the tracking effort. Reporters and researchers filed more than 700 public records requests for data on populations like nursing homes and prisons. Engineers created a database to manage hundreds of data sources.The team has now published more than 3,000 daily tracking pages, covering subjects that include country, state and county trends, reopenings and vaccinations.“It was easily the largest and probably the most ambitious data project our newsroom has ever taken on,” Archie Tse, the graphics director, said.At the same time, the National desk helped reveal the disproportionate toll that the virus took on people of color. And when the overall U.S. death toll reached 100,000 people, a team of journalists marked the staggering figure with a front page consisting of victims’ names and biographical details.“We strove every day not to be so focused on the numbers that we forgot the people behind them,” said Marc Lacey, an assistant managing editor and the former National editor.On the Health and Science desk, journalists followed the efforts to explain how the virus spread, its effect on the body and the development of a vaccine. Members of the desk edited more than 1,100 online articles on the virus and assisted other journalists in the newsroom on hundreds more.“We covered Ebola and Zika, but none of us had ever experienced such a ravenous hunger for science news,” said Celia Dugger, the Health and Science editor.Some of the earliest work began with the International desk, which reported from the front lines in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak first emerged, then charted the failures in Italy and later examined the impact of the virus all over the world.The desk also was instrumental in the live briefing on the virus, a constantly updated news feed that would go on to involve multiple departments in the newsroom and that remains a staple of the coverage, more than 500 days later. Chris Buckley, a Times correspondent previously based in China, was on a train on his way to cover the lockdown in Wuhan in January 2020 when his editor called him and asked him to start writing for the live briefing. At the time, Mr. Buckley was skeptical: “Live briefing? About this story? From a train? So, that call was one of those reminders that sometimes our editors are actually right,” he said, joking.“Since then our coverage of Covid has never stopped.”Many of the leaders and staff members who played critical roles in the two Pulitzer Prizes this year gathered for the ceremony.Damon Winter/The New York Times More

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      in US Politics

      China’s ambassador to the US to leave after eight years

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      China’s ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai, has announced he will leave Washington after eight years, saying US-China relations are at a “crossroads” as the US recalibrates its engagement policies.Cui, whose departure has been the subject of speculation for months, wrote a farewell statement calling on Chinese people in the US to defend their right to be there, and to “shoulder a great responsibility and mission” in furthering the bilateral relationship.“Sino-US relations are at a critical crossroads, and the US’s China policy is undergoing a new round of restructure, facing a choice between dialogue and cooperation, or confrontation and conflict,” he said in his letter.“At this moment, overseas Chinese in the United States shoulder a greater responsibility and mission. I hope you will continue to be a firm promoter and positive contributor to the healthy and stable development of Sino-US relations, and defend your right to be in the US … and safeguard the fundamental interests of the Chinese and American people to promote world peace, stability and prosperity.”Cui is China’s longest-serving ambassador to the US, and was there during a period of upheaval in relations between the two countries under the leadership of Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, including a trade war, tit-for-tat closures of consulates and restrictions on respective foreign journalists, criticism over China’s human rights abuses, worsening tensions over Taiwan, and hostility about the origins and handling of the pandemic.The Biden administration has committed to continue some of Trump’s trade policies towards China, but has sought further cooperation on issues such as climate change, and has courted international alliances in other areas of dispute, in contrast to Trump’s unilateral stance.Amid increasingly public hostility from China’s “wolf warrior” diplomats, Cui was considered a far more measured and moderate voice, including publicly resisting attempts by diplomatic colleagues to push conspiracy theories that the coronavirus began in the US military. However, Cui has pushed back against criticism of China’s hostile actions, and blamed “fake news” for reports on crackdowns in Hong Kong and abuses in Xinjiang.Reporting in recent months suggested the 68-year-old had been deliberately kept in the post to manage relations during the transition into the Biden administration.“Cui was getting very tired and had been wanting to leave for some years,” J Michael Cole said, citing diplomatic sources in Washington.“He leaves at a time when US-China relations are at their lowest point in several years, if not decades. The principal reason for this is not his doing, as he was, by current standards, a rather mild-tempered representative of China abroad.”Qin Gang, the vice-minister of foreign affairs under the foreign minister Wang Yi, is widely tipped to replace Cui. Cole said the appointment was interesting in that Qin has no direct experience in dealing with the US, but added that under the level of control by the Chinese regime there is likely little room for diplomats to manoeuvre.“You could send the most experienced diplomat to Washington and still the relationship would continue to worsen,” he said.Cole said recent remarks by China’s ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, publicly insulting French legislators and academics, suggest that most public moves by diplomats are aimed at domestic Chinese audiences more than where they are posted.“If that is the case, and if Qin, should he be appointed, fits that mould, then we could see more rhetorical sparks in Washington than we did during Cui.” More

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      in US Politics

      The US’s greatest danger isn’t China, it’s much closer to home

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      China’s increasingly aggressive geopolitical and economic stance in the world is unleashing a fierce bipartisan backlash in America. That’s fine if it leads to more public investment in basic research, education, and infrastructure – as did the Sputnik shock of the late 1950s. But it poses dangers as well.More than 60 years ago, the sudden and palpable fear that the Soviet Union was lurching ahead of us shook America out of a postwar complacency and caused the nation to do what it should have been doing for many years. Even though we did it under the pretext of national defense – we called it the National Defense Education Act and the National Defense Highway Act and relied on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration for basic research leading to semiconductors, satellite technology, and the Internet – the result was to boost US productivity and American wages for a generation.When the Soviet Union began to implode, America found its next foil in Japan. Japanese-made cars were taking market share away from the Big Three automakers. Meanwhile, Mitsubishi bought a substantial interest in the Rockefeller Center, Sony purchased Columbia Pictures, and Nintendo considered buying the Seattle Mariners. By the late 1980s and start of the 1990s, countless congressional hearings were held on the Japanese “challenge” to American competitiveness and the Japanese “threat” to American jobs.A tide of books demonized Japan – Pat Choate’s Agents of Influence alleged Tokyo’s alleged payoffs to influential Americans were designed to achieve “effective political domination over the United States”. Clyde Prestowitz’s Trading Places argued that because of our failure to respond adequately to the Japanese challenge “the power of the United States and the quality of American life is diminishing rapidly in every respect”. William S Dietrich’s In the Shadow of the Rising Sun claimed Japan “threatens our way of life and ultimately our freedoms as much as past dangers from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union”.Robert Zielinski and Nigel Holloway’s Unequal Equities argued that Japan rigged its capital markets to undermine American corporations. Daniel Burstein’s Yen! Japan’s New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America asserted that Japan’s growing power put the United States at risk of falling prey to a “hostile Japanese … world order”.And on it went: The Japanese Power Game,The Coming War with Japan, Zaibatsu America: How Japanese Firms are Colonizing Vital US Industries, The Silent War, Trade Wars.But there was no vicious plot. We failed to notice that Japan had invested heavily in its own education and infrastructure – which enabled it to make high-quality products that American consumers wanted to buy. We didn’t see that our own financial system resembled a casino and demanded immediate profits. We overlooked that our educational system left almost 80% of our young people unable to comprehend a news magazine and many others unprepared for work. And our infrastructure of unsafe bridges and potholed roads were draining our productivity.In the present case of China, the geopolitical rivalry is palpable. Yet at the same time, American corporations and investors are quietly making bundles by running low-wage factories there and selling technology to their Chinese “partners”. And American banks and venture capitalists are busily underwriting deals in China.I don’t mean to downplay the challenge China represents to the United States. But throughout America’s postwar history it has been easier to blame others than to blame ourselves.The greatest danger we face today is not coming from China. It is our drift toward proto-fascism. We must be careful not to demonize China so much that we encourage a new paranoia that further distorts our priorities, encourages nativism and xenophobia, and leads to larger military outlays rather than public investments in education, infrastructure, and basic research on which America’s future prosperity and security critically depend.The central question for America – an ever more diverse America, whose economy and culture are rapidly fusing with the economies and cultures of the rest of the globe – is whether it is possible to rediscover our identity and our mutual responsibility without creating another enemy. More

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      in World Politics

      NATO’s New Challenge in East Asia

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      US President Joe Biden used the occasion of his trip to Europe for the G7 summit to attend his first NATO meeting. His influence on the meeting appeared unambiguously when a communiqué by the NATO alliance designated China’s influence on the world stage as a military challenge. 

      NATO was born in the aftermath of the Second World War as the West’s response to the ambitions of the Soviet Union, which controlled large portions of Eastern Europe and represented an ideology considered inimical to Western political and economic culture. This gave rise to the Cold War, framed as the rivalry between two systems of social and economic organization: capitalism (supported by democracy) and communism (the dictatorship of the proletariat).

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      Because humanity had entered the nuclear age, the Cold War cultivated a permanent and universal feeling of potential terror, unlike tensions and wars of the historical past. Its name, “Cold War,” has been attributed to George Orwell, who didn’t live long enough to see how it would develop. The author of “1984” imagined “two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds.” In the end, there were only two major players. The laws of hyperreality, just like the laws of conventional information technology, require reducing the governing logic to a binary opposition. The age of quantum logic, which humanity is only just now discovering, had not yet begun.

      The Cold War was cold in relative terms, simply because the heat that a real nuclear war might produce would have dwarfed anything humanity had ever experienced. As soon as a nuclear war started it would be over, as no one would be left standing. This too reflected the binary logic of the time. There were exactly two choices: hot war or cold war. There could be no warm war between the two proud rivals. A cold war was clearly preferable in the eyes of anyone who wielded power. The leaders in the US understood how to profit from that preference. It justified the creation and rapid growth of a powerful military-industrial complex at the core of the American empire.

      The Cold War marked a moment of history in which military technology was undergoing its most radical paradigm change, thanks to the invention of nuclear weapons in the US and their capacity for devastation demonstrated by their operational deployment in Japan that put an exclamation point on the end of the World War. The entire world became gripped in a state of permanent fear, attenuated only by the sense that because no leader would likely be suicidal enough to engage in open conflict, the actors of the economy were free to realize their boldest ambitions.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In the West, the Cold War produced an odd cultural effect of “carpe diem,” the feeling that it was necessary to “seize the day” and have fun, because there may be no tomorrow. This feeling drove both the rapid growth of the consumer society and the cultural liberation movements we associate with beatniks and hippies. It also proved fatal for the Soviet Union’s false utopia of worker solidarity that depended on accepting austerity for the good of the collectivity.

      NATO should have become obsolete after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. But the camp built around the clout of the US military-industrial complex could not simply be dismantled and put to pasture. Two presidents, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, had little choice but to maintain NATO because the entire US economy now revolved around the logic of the military-industrial complex.

      That militarized economy had become the key to installing a global, neocolonial system capable of replacing Europe’s colonial system that was in the decades following World War II. Because it was industrial as well as military, it spawned the technologies that began to dominate the global economy. These new technologies conveniently straddled the pragmatic (civil applications) and the political (military applications), providing a new motor for the late 20th economy that we all live under today.

      Though NATO had lost its initial geopolitical justification, it continued to operate as a pillar of the new military-economic system. It influenced the evolution of the formerly isolated regime of communist China, destined to become a major actor in the global economy. There was only one model for any large nation that wished to participate effectively in the global economy. It had to encourage capitalism and have its own military-industrial logic. China has succeeded, thanks to the global consumer market spearheaded by the US. For various reasons, India, which might have moved in that direction, failed.

      NATO now finds itself in an odd position. Contested by the mercurial Donald Trump, its members greeted with a sigh of relief the electoral victory of a conventional Cold War establishment politician, Joe Biden. For the past five years, Biden’s Democratic Party has sought to revive the ambience and ethos of the Cold War, focusing on Russia. But Russia simply isn’t a serious rival of the US. Both major US parties have designated China as the bugbear to focus on. But China falls way outside NATO’s “North Atlantic” purview.

      Nevertheless, Biden appears to have persuaded NATO to include China in its official discourse. The communiqué from this week’s meeting makes the case: “China’s stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to Alliance security.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Systemic challenge:

      A politically correct euphemism for “serious threat,” applied to anything that calls into question the weaknesses and vices of an existing system, especially when that system’s weaknesses and vices have become dramatically visible

      Contextual Note

      The unresolved pandemic that has been raging for nearly a year and a half and the growing crisis of climate change have created a situation in which the system now being challenged has been found seriously wanting. Defending the status quo has become an ungratifying task. All lucid observers agree that the political and economic system inherited from the 20th century needs either to evolve radically or be replaced by something new. 

      It is equally clear that Beijing has no alternative system to propose. This is partly because China’s success is due largely to its adaptation to and integration within the system being challenged, but equally because the Chinese system of autocratic communism is a failed model itself and the Chinese themselves know it.

      NATO worries about China’s “stated ambitions and assertive behaviour.” But in reality, its ambitions appear modest and the behavior, while certainly assertive, cannot compare with the historically aggressive behavior of the US, so clearly demonstrated in Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East.

      Historical Note

      As for the “systemic challenges to the rules-based international order,” the rules that existed at the time of the creation of the United Nations and the establishment of the Bretton Woods system have long been challenged by the Western powers, to the point of being distorted beyond recognition.

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      Even the reference to “areas relevant to Alliance security” needs to be put in historical perspective. NATO is nominally focused on one area in the world: the North Atlantic. But for the past two decades, it has ventured further and further, not only into Eastern Europe, but also Afghanistan, presumably turning Central Asia into an area of “Alliance security.” With the political turmoil that emerged in 2016 in both the US (Donald Trump) and Europe (Brexit), there should be enough to feel insecure about within NATO’s traditional sector of the North Atlantic. Reaching out to China’s area of influence would be a real stretch.

      It’s true that China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) seeks to extend its influence across both Asia and Europe. This could be interpreted as potentially encroaching on the North Atlantic military fiefdom. But the BRI’s character is economic and clearly not military. It is soft power rather than hard power.

      Most lucid observers in the West, conscious of the current system’s growing incapacity to deal with any global problem — whether it’s a pandemic, war, migration, domestic tranquility or climate change — find themselves looking for something that could be called a “systemic challenge” to the current unproductive and often unjust system of doing things. At the end of the day, the systemic challenge at home will likely have more impact than China’s.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Guardian view on Biden, China and Europe: the US is back – for now | Editorial

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      It is 50 years next month since Henry Kissinger embarked on the secret mission to Beijing that led to a rapprochement: “It is the conviction of President Nixon that a strong and developing People’s Republic of China poses no threat to any essential US interest,” the national security adviser assured leaders there. Half a century on, the thaw is over. The thread running through Joe Biden’s first foreign trip as president is the need for democratic alliances against growing authoritarian might, and though attention now turns to his meeting with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, the administration’s real focus has been on China. While Beijing’s record on the pandemic, trade, human rights and other specific areas has rightly raised deep concern internationally, the underlying issue is its rise, and the decline of US power.“The US is ill and very ill indeed,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian declared in Beijing on Tuesday. Washington’s waning power was exemplified by Donald Trump, with his erratic pronouncements and conduct, veneration of autocrats and contempt for allies. Yet if Mr Biden has largely defined himself in opposition to his predecessor, he often sounds strikingly similar on China. His approach too is shaped by domestic politics: talking tough on Beijing offers some prospect of political unity in a deeply divided country, should help to ward off Republican attacks on that front, and recognises that the business world is shifting.The US knows it must work with China on the climate crisis – with the critical Cop26 talks due this autumn – and says it does not want a cold war. Mr Biden has shunned his predecessor’s racism. But the overall hawkish tone struck on China, including briefings around the “lab leak” pandemic theory, has a cold war feel and broader repercussions – with people of east Asian descent, who have nothing to do with decisions in Beijing, facing hostility and attacks.In Europe, as elsewhere, Mr Biden has an opportunity created by the backlash against Chinese policies and “wolf warrior” diplomacy. There are signs that China’s push for influence is faltering: the European parliament froze an investment deal following tit-for-tat sanctions over Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghurs; Lithuania quit the “17+1” mechanism for dialogue with central and eastern Europe last month; and plans for a Chinese university campus in Hungary are on hold.Nato leaders this week declared China a security risk, “present[ing] systemic challenges to the rules-based international order”. But the ongoing differences on handling Beijing are evident. Emmanuel Macron was swift to add that “China has little to do with the North Atlantic” and that it was important “we don’t bias our relationship”. Similarly, Angela Merkel reportedly expressed concern that the G7 is “not about being against something, but for something”. Strategic instincts as well as commercial interests work against buying into the US agenda wholesale.Many anticipate that a new German chancellor will turn the country’s China policy in a more critical direction. But while the US is right that democratic countries must pull together on important issues, decisions cannot and should not be by American diktat. European countries are right to be wary of dancing to the US tune – not least because they wonder what kind of leader could be in charge four years from now.As Mr Biden has recognised, the US-China competition will be shaped in large part by the performance of the US: how it looks at home, as well as whether projects such as the G7 infrastructure initiative materialise in any significant way. (The G7’s failure to reach a better deal on vaccine-sharing does not bode well.) While favourable perceptions of the US and confidence in its president soared after he took office, only 17% of those surveyed in 12 countries saw American democracy as a good example for other countries to follow. America is back, we were told this week. But we are in a multilateral world now, and its position will depend not only on pursuing economic and technical superiority, but healing its politics and society too. More

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      Nato summit: leaders declare China presents security risk

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      Nato leaders have declared China presents a security risk at their annual summit in Brussels, the first time the traditionally Russia-focused military alliance has asserted it needs to respond to Beijing’s growing power.The final communique, signed off by leaders of the 30-member alliance at the urging of the new US administration, said China’s “stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order”.After the summit, Joe Biden said that the US had a “sacred commitment” to come to the defence of its Nato allies in an effort to soothe residual nervousness in the wake of Donald Trump’s hostility. Biden said that his fellow leaders at the summit knew most Americans were committed to democracy and that the US was a “decent, honourable nation”.On the question of potential Ukrainian membership of Nato, Biden said the Russian occupation of Crimea would not be an impediment, but that Ukraine still had work to do on corruption before it could join a membership action plan.“It depends on whether they meet the criteria. The fact is, they still have to clean up corruption,” Biden said.The Nato leaders declared their concern about China’s “coercive policies” – an apparent reference to the repression of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang – the expansion of its nuclear arsenal and its “frequent lack of transparency and use of disinformation”.The language, notably stronger than the China remarks contained in the G7 statement agreed on Sunday, follows lobbying and pressure by the Biden administration, seeking to create a counterweight of democratic nations in response to Beijing’s growing economic and military might.However, Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, insisted China was “not an adversary”, saying instead the emerging strategy was to address “the challenges” posed by Beijing, which will “soon be the biggest economy in the world” and “already has the second-largest defence budget, the biggest navy”.At the beginning of the summit, Biden said there was a growing recognition that Nato faced new challenges. “We have Russia, which is acting in a way that is not consistent with what we had hoped, and we have China.”Nato, founded in 1949 at the start of the cold war, was created to respond to the Soviet Union and more recently Russia, while Beijing rarely posed a serious security concern for its members.China had never previously been mentioned in a Nato summit declaration, apart from a brief reference in 2019 to the “opportunities and challenges” the country posed for members of the western alliance – a time when Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, was president.On Sunday night, Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, promised Nato would increase its focus on Beijing, saying that China “will feature in the communique in a more robust way than we’ve ever seen before”.Other countries have highlighted the importance of striking a balance. Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, said as he arrived at the gathering: “I think when it comes to China, I don’t think anybody around the table today wants to descend into a new cold war.”G7 leaders criticised Beijing over human rights in its Xinjiang region, called for Hong Kong to keep a high degree of autonomy and demanded a full investigation of the origins of the coronavirus in China.China’s embassy in London said such mentions of Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan distorted the facts and exposed the “sinister intentions of a few countries such as the United States”. It added: “China’s reputation must not be slandered.”Stoltenberg also said the alliance’s relationship with Russia was at “its lowest point since the end of the cold war”. He blamed Russia’s “aggressive actions” for the deterioration in relations at the start of a one-day summit attended by Biden for the first time since he took office.Alliance members had hoped for a strong statement of support for Nato from Biden after several years in which Donald Trump dominated the summits, threatening to pull out of Nato in 2018 and storming home early in 2019.“Nato is critically important for US interests in and of itself,” Biden said as he met Stoltenberg. The president described Nato’s article 5, under which an armed attack against one member is deemed an attack against them all, as “a sacred obligation”.He added: “I want Nato to know America is there.”The allies denounced Moscow’s “hybrid actions”, “widespread disinformation campaigns”, “malicious cyber activities”, and election interference directed against Nato members. “Until Russia demonstrates compliance with international law and its international obligations and responsibilities, there can be no return to ‘business as usual’,” the statement said. “We will continue to respond to the deteriorating security environment by enhancing our deterrence and defence posture.”Alliance members agreed a new cybersecurity strategy in response, and will for the first time help each other out in the case of “cyber-attacks of significance”, mirroring Nato’s obligation of collective defence in the traditional military sphere, enshrined in article 5. More