Nearly three decades after its return to Chinese sovereignty, Hong Kong is once again at an important crossroads. The recent decision by the United States not to renew “The President’s Executive Order on Hong Kong Normalization” has once again focused international attention on the city’s future. For some, it represents another chapter in the geopolitical competition between Washington and Beijing. For Hong Kong, however, it should also serve as a reminder that its future cannot be defined...
One morning in February 1784, a converted privateer called the Empress of China sailed out of New York harbour. It was bound for a country almost no one aboard had ever seen – China, then ruled by the Qing dynasty. Six months later, it dropped anchor at Canton, the only port where the Qing government allowed Western maritime trade. At the time, the Declaration of Independence was less than a decade old, and the Treaty of Paris recognising American independence had been signed less than a year...
In an era where short-form videos and viral commentary can dominate public discourse on geopolitics, one Chinese political scientist is on a mission to correct what he calls a “negative one” level of understanding. Yan Xuetong, honorary president of Tsinghua University’s Institute of International Relations in Beijing, is doing this by challenging the public to avoid social media sensationalism and to take a 60-minute closed-book test on their grasp of foreign affairs. The fourth edition of the...
Mid-July should have been a moment of quiet satisfaction in Beijing. Fresh data showed China’s favourability surpassing that of the United States in 25 of 37 nations surveyed by Pew Research Centre, including key European countries. Domestically, the second-quarter gross domestic product growth of 4.3 per cent, while softer than the first financial quarter, kept the annual target within reach. The logic was simple: with the US distracted by Donald Trump’s erratic trade wars and isolationist...
The United States Coast Guard said it closely tracked Chinese polar expedition vessels transiting the Bering Sea on their way to the Arctic Ocean last week, amid unease over Beijing’s geopolitical ambitions in the region. The US Coast Guard Cutter Munro actively monitored the Chinese research ships Xuelong and Xuelong 2 as they passed northbound through the US exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and extended continental shelf in the Bering Sea towards the Arctic, the US Coast Guard said last...
Indonesia’s decision to join a new China-led artificial intelligence body has raised questions about how far Jakarta can push its digital ambitions without complicating its ties with Washington. For Indonesia, membership in the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (Waico) offers a route to training, infrastructure and a bigger role in global AI governance as it seeks to boost technological development. But analysts said the move could also be seen as a political manoeuvre that...
Iran praises Spain's win over Argentina after Spanish government's condemnation of policies on Gaza and war on Iran.
With its vast strategic mineral reserves and land corridors to Southeast Asia, China’s southwestern province of Yunnan is vital to the country’s preparedness to counter geopolitical risks, according to researchers specialising in civil-military fusion. Yunnan’s “nationally leading resource reserves” – including gallium, rare earths and other strategic minerals essential for advanced weapons development – made the province indispensable to China’s push for “defence industry mobilisation”, they...
When devastating floods swept through Assam in northeastern India in 2018, the disaster quickly triggered a troubling question within New Delhi’s security corridors: could control over the weather become a new tool of geopolitical pressure or warfare? As technology advances, could control over the weather become a tool of geopolitical pressure, or even a weapon? Much of the concern centred on neighbouring China. Assam’s then finance minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, publicly warned about Beijing’s...
The historian A.J.P. Taylor wrote one of the most powerful openings of any book. “In the state of nature which Hobbes imagined, violence was the only law, and life was ‘nasty brutish and short’,” he wrote in The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918. “Though individuals never lived in this state of nature, the Great Powers of Europe have always done so. Sovereign states have distinguished European civilisation, at any rate since the end of the fifteenth century. Each individual state in...
After Bashar al-Assad's fall in 2024, Syria cut ties with some former allies but redefined its relationship with Russia.
A decade after Beijing rejected the ruling by The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration on its South China Sea claims, rival nations continue to manoeuvre for control. In the third of our series on the anniversary, Laura Zhou looks at why the gap between international law and geopolitical reality on the water has never been wider. On a scorching morning this summer, more than a hundred Chinese tourists stepped ashore on Tree Island in the hotly contested Paracels. They were greeted not only by...
Connectivity can be an ambiguous term. Different states use it in different ways at different times. In Southeast Asia, as in other regions where regional diplomacy exists in the backdrop of ever-stronger great power disputes, connectivity lies in the conflux of economics, trade necessities and the unyielding pressure of geopolitics. In few countries is this more evident than in Cambodia, where investment in transport logistics has been a political and diplomatic fixture for at least two...
The BBC's Barbara Plett Usher examines the latest tensions over the key international shipping channel.
China has defended its inspections of Panama-flagged ships as routine safety checks, rejecting US and Panamanian accusations that it is weaponising shipping lines for geopolitical leverage. In Beijing on Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said the measures were lawful and aimed at protecting navigation and the marine environment. “At present, port-state control inspections are an important measure for countries to manage the safety of foreign vessels calling at their ports and...
As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, it confronts a new world order dominated by its relationship with China. In this wide-ranging series, we examine the pressure points and possibilities in those ties, from hard tech to soft power. Here, Khushboo Razdan looks at how books shape public perceptions and inspire lifelong connections between the US and China even as their geopolitical rivalry intensifies. Alexander Boyd was 14 when a book about China altered the course...
An “institutionalised” China-US G2 framework could offer a “structural guarantee” for global peace in a world beset by crises, a high-profile adviser to Beijing has said. Zheng Yongnian, a noted Chinese political scientist, said the world was faced with four intertwined challenges – geopolitical conflicts, increasingly “religionised” societies, imbalances in the global economy and the fading of the UN-centred governance system. He characterised this collective breakdown as a “crisis of...
US said to be pushing for public statement that Iran will not fire at commercial ships passing through Strait of Hormuz
Wu Shicun is the founding president of China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies and chairman of the Huayang Centre for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance. In this interview he discusses ways Beijing can respond to rival claimants in the disputed waters. SCMP Plus readers get early access to articles in the Open Questions series. With Manila intensifying its “transparency” campaign, how does China view the current situation and what challenges does it face? Manila’s so-called...
The US-Israeli military campaign against Iran was more than another Middle Eastern conflict. It became a defining stress test for the expanded Brics (Brics+), the grouping that is frequently portrayed as the flagship political platform of the Global South and a cornerstone of an emerging multipolar order. The war showed that the grouping – which has grown beyond its founding members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – is neither a military alliance nor an ideological bloc. Rather, it...
The US-Israel war on Iran is forcing African governments to rethink their security and economic priorities.
The Iran battlefield might be quieter and diplomacy might have resumed, but the main contest has shifted to the architecture of the Middle East. The question is no longer whether Iran can be contained, the Strait of Hormuz can remain open or another round of escalation can be avoided. The larger issue is who will write the rules after the shock. Three tracks are taking shape. The first is led by the United States and built around the expansion of the Abraham Accords, the integration of Israel...
The legal norm has been manipulated and forgotten. But today it is needed more than ever
Al Jazeera’s James Bays explains why NATO’s Ankara summit is high stakes.
Although the US is in decline, underestimating the country could still prove a “fatal mistake”, according to a prominent Chinese commentator. “The United States is still a hegemony in decline. Even with its relative decline, it remains a hegemony because no nation or force is currently capable of truly taking its place,” Zheng Yongnian, dean of the school of public policy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, said. In a recent interview with the Greater Bay Area Review, which is...
Mehbooba Mufti attending supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s final rites is bound to change the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president’s status in politics now onwards
Australia signed a new defence alliance with Fiji on Monday, bolstering ties with its South Pacific island neighbour as it seeks to outmanoeuvre China in the region. The Ocean of Peace alliance elevates Fiji to one of Australia’s few treaty allies and binds each nation to come to the other’s “mutual defence”. China sent waves through the region in 2022 when it signed a secretive security pact with the Solomon Islands, stoking fears it could one day lead to a permanent military...
If one word could capture the essence of Hong Kong, it would be resilience. Just two years ago, much of the international community had written off Hong Kong. A widely circulated newspaper commentary carried the headline: “It pains me to say Hong Kong is over”. Though the writer later changed his opinion, the piece captured the pessimism about the city’s future as a global hub. Hong Kong’s dramatic comeback is well documented. According to Boston Consulting Group, the city has overtaken...
US influence challenged by changing global order: Paolo von Schirach
Beijing on Saturday rotated a new coastguard task force into waters east of Taiwan. The second such deployment in about a month came days after China’s top diplomat urged Washington to exercise “utmost prudence” on the self-governed island. The move also comes close on the heels of high-level talks with the Philippines, where Beijing pressed Manila to match words with deeds and stabilise bilateral relations amid persistent South China Sea tensions. The Chinese coastguard said on Saturday that...
Middle powers would be better off hedging their bets rather than picking sides between countries such as the United States or China, a forum in Beijing heard on Friday. This view echoed the comments made by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at Davos earlier this year when he said such countries should unite in the face of a “rupture in the world order”. Speakers at Tsinghua University’s World Peace Forum agreed that these nations should band together to seek more diversified partnerships. “So...
Washington has started dealing with regional players without regard for Indian interests.
China is such a giant player in the global economy that understanding how the US-China contest of the century for international primacy will evolve has become crucial. Some Westerners, especially those in the United States, feel so threatened that they have resorted to protectionism, with global fragmentation and perhaps even preparations for a third world war already in the cards. Kishore Mahbubani’s book Has China Won? highlighted deep misunderstandings and structural tensions between China...
The world’s largest hydroelectric project in Medog continues, imperilling India’s water security in relation to the Brahmaputra, says Jairam Ramesh
As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, it confronts a new world order dominated by its relationship with China. In this wide-ranging series, we examine the pressure points and possibilities in those ties, from hard tech to soft power. Here, Teresa Elena Frontado and Igor Patrick look at how Beijing is testing long-standing US influence in the western hemisphere. Asked during the 2024 presidential campaign whether he was concerned about Brazil and Mexico drifting...
Qatar says the next meeting will take place after funeral processions for Iran's former supreme leader.
When people speak of the Great Game, they usually mean the 19th-century rivalry between the British and Russian empires for influence over Central Asia. It conjures up images of spies crossing deserts, mountain fortresses and imperial intrigue – an era vividly brought to life in Peter Hopkirk’s books, which first awakened my fascination with the region. A century and a half after the Great Game, another contest is unfolding across the same region. To the north is Russia, the region’s traditional...
Beijing’s move this week to add 20 more Japanese entities to its export-control list is the latest chapter in a complex US-Japan-China geopolitical triangle. Over the past seven months, an angry China has punished Tokyo repeatedly. A miffed Japan is left feeling betrayed. And a war-distracted Washington has struggled to navigate between the two, adding further tension in a region already on tenterhooks, according to analysts and former US government officials. The gnawing unease was sparked in...
Analysts say both sides want the MOU to succeed but Israel's actions in Lebanon will prove a formidable obstacle.
And the agreement has ensured that Lebanon will be blamed for it.