CHINAwatch

Taiwan Detains China-linked Cargo Ship After Undersea Cable Disruption in Taiwan

Live TV interview on News X, India's fastest-growing English-language global news channel with some 100 milliopn viewers. 

Rising Tensions in Taiwan Strait: Implication of China’s Military Actions

Live TV discussion  on NewsX, India'\s fastest-growing English-language internatiopnal news networrk with over 100 million viewers. 

Broader Total Quality lessons for China's Belt and Road Initiative

PowerPoint presentation on 7 Februaery 2025 at the 24-ICIT internattional conference in Hong Kong.
Download Broader Total Quality lessons for China's Belt and Road Initiative - 24-ICIT 4-6 February 2025 (Revised)
Download 24-ICIT=Programme-Draft-3

 

 

Trump's obsession with tariffs in a shifting world order

Izvestia TV interview (pre-recorded) dated 1 February 2025 on Trump's tariff obsession.
Original more wide-ranging interview in English 
Izvestia is Russia's state television broadcast in Russian.

China's Ultimate Power Move: Why They're Flexing Hard in 2024, according to Elon Musk

Elon Musk on YouTube dated 31 January 2025 explains succinctly why China has chosen to flex its muscles now. 

Musk's insightful account harks back to the oft-quoted 2016 tome The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower by Michael Pillsbury, renowned author and foreign policy strategist, said to be an "architect'' of Trump's China strategy. 

China's Rise has indeed long been coming, but it is by no means "secret". Indeed, its ambitions are enshrined in Beijing's long-declared Two Centenary Goals :

(a) To realize a ''moderately well-off" society by the centenary (2021) of the Communist Party of China;
(b) To develop China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful by the centenary (2049) of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

The first Goal has been achieved. The second Goal remains on track. 

What is behind these Goals is to purge the nation's "Century of Humiliation" under the thumb of foreign powers which invaded, partitioned, and plundered China towards the tail-end of the Qing Dynasty and beyond. 

Chairman Mao represended "China 1.0", when China "stood up" as a unified nation. Deng Xiaoping represented "China 2.0", when  China became richer by opening-up and letting some people "get rich first". Now is "China 3.0", under President Xi, setting great strore on "Common Prosperity" and ecological sustainability. 

Behind these devlopment Goals is the desire to restore the nation to its status during millennia of world pre-eminence.

According to Prof. Angus Maddison's Contours of the World Economy, 1-2030 A.D., (Oxford University Press, 2007), for thousands of years, China had been an oversized leviaton in the world ecconomy:

Han dynasty 汉朝 206 BC–220 AD -  26% of global GDP; economic centre of eastern world v Roman Empire in western world;
Tang Dynasty 唐朝 618 – 907 AD -  58% of world GDP v 2nd Eastern Roman Empire 9%; 3rd Arab Empire 7%; 4th Ancient India 7%;
Song Dynasty 宋朝  960-1279 AD - at its height 80% of world’s GDP but quickly declined midway; 
Yuan Dynasty 元朝 1271-1368 AD -  30% -35% of world GDP;
Ming Dynasty 明朝 1368–1644 AD -  45- 55% of world GDP but late Ming Dynasty rapidly declined with famine and war;
Qing Dynasty 清朝 1644-1912 AD - 35% , declining to 10% of World GDP.

Afterwards, China suffered foreign invasions, civil war, and World War II, declining to to 5% by 1950 at the start of the PRC. 

Except during the Yuan Dynasty established by the Mongols, the Middle Kingdom never invaded or occupied foreign lands or established colonies.  While globally influential, the Middle Kingdom had never wanted to be a colonial empire. 

China has benefitted hugely from being economically integrated with the "liberal world order" established by the United States. It has no desire, or military/financial abillity to replicate America's world dominance. All it wants is to restore its historically rightful place in the sun.