China, With or Against Russia?

(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) Russia’s attack on Ukraine on 24 February 2022 is profoundly changing the international order. The shock is notably hard for countries such as the members of the European Union, who thought they would be at peace for ever. Suddenly, these countries, their economic actors and their citizens rediscover war and the …

Resources to Follow the War in Ukraine

(Last updated 28 Feb 22 20:50 CET: added access to UN General Assembly Live) At 3:00 GMT Russia launched an attack on Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin dubbed it a “special military operation”. Immediately, part of the international community condemned this attack. What is happening on the ground? How are events unfolding? How is the …

Long COVID and the Fifth Wave – Three Scenarios

(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) Long COVID could be the next battle we have to fight and win in our struggle against the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, in this article, we seek to assess Long COVID in the framework of the fifth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. This will also give us possible indications regarding how Long …

China’s Perception of U.S. International Politics

(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) The relationships between the two superpowers, the U.S. and China, dominate the international world. Here, we look at the way China perceives American foreign relations. How the U.S. perceives China and how much the former sees the latter as a threat, what this will entail in terms of future American actions …

Antarctic China (2) – China’s Planetary Game

(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) A planetary Go game: Most Western geopolitical observers seem to be unable to see the planetary scale strategy that China deploys in the Antarctic (Alexander B. Gray, “China’s Next Geopolitical Goal: Dominate Antarctica”, The National Interest, 20 March 2021). The roots of this “very Great Game” run deep in Chinese history and …

The Chinese Fishing Fleet, Influence and Hunger Wars

(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) The Chinese fishing fleet is a gigantic organisation. It is composed of a mind-numbing number of ships, “somewhere” between 2.600 and 17.000 distant-water fishing ships (M. Guttierez, A. Daniels, G. Jobbins, G. Guttierez Almazor, C. Montengro, China’s Distant Water Fleet, Scale, Impact and Governance, ODI, 2020). These myriads of ships operate …

China, the “Health Silk Road” of Vaccines, and Security

Beyond the proliferation of the Chinese vaccine Enters Sinopharm On 14 January, Hungary’s government signed an agreement with the giant company Sinopharm in order to purchase millions of doses of the Chinese CoronaVac (CCV) (“In EU first, Sinopharm Coronavirus vaccine approved by Hungary”, Nikkei Asia, 31 January, 2021). One week before, it had made a …

How China Could Win the War against the Covid-19 Pandemic

(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) As 2021 starts, Europe struggles again against a COVID-19 new wave and the spread of new SARS-CoV-2 variants. Japan strengthens its state of emergency against the COVID-19. The U.S. reports 4.462 deaths on 12 January 2021, i.e. almost precisely 1,5 time 9/11. Meanwhile, China also fights a rise in new symptomatic …

Is the COVID-19 Second Wave coming to China?

The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping through the world. It reached first the U.S., Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By mid-November 2020 it started being visible in Eastern Asia (e.g. Reuters Covid-19 Global Tracker: World and Asia and the Middle East). By the end of November 2020, South Korea and …

Chimerica 3: The geopolitics of the U.S.-China turbo-recession

The American consumer is turning into a self-conscious, active, geopolitical and strategic actor on the world stage. This appears through its new and very negative attitude towards purchasing “made in China” goods (Brendan Murray, “Americans give the Made-in-China the cold shoulder”, Bloomberg, 17 May 2020). Towards the great decoupling? As it happens, for the last …

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