In the lead up to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, there have been many predictions about who’s in and who’s out of the Politburo Standing Committee, fueled by observers’ fascination about political struggles, cliques, successor regime, etc.
Lawfare is “a form of asymmetric warfare, consisting of using the legal system against an enemy, such as by damaging or delegitimizing them, tying up their time or winning a public relations victory.” China and the US both use it with regard to the South China Sea.
As of July 2017, China has allocated more than USD 100 billion to pay for Belt and Road Initiaitve projects, including the massive USD 46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and a pan-Asian high-speed railway.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s bonhomie towards India at the 9th BRICS Summit ran contrary to his earlier hardline rhetoric during the two-month long Doklam stand-off. It can be rightly argued that BRICS acted as a coolant for Sino-Indian tension.
China followed the Soviet socialist model of development in 1949, which was economically characterized by public ownership of resources. The housing model acknowledged the general logic and ideological features of state socialism.
China is rapidly ageing as Chinese people marry later and have fewer children. This is leading to the perpetuation of the “4-2-1” family structure in China, in which four grandparents and two parents all compete to share the affection of just one grandchild.
All eyes in the next few months will be on how former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will play his cards vis-à-vis the Pakistan army. If one were to look beyond the domestic ramifications, the first point which needs to be closely examined is how China has reacted to the instability.
In early August 2017, Japan lodged a protest with China over its gas exploration in a disputed area of the East China Sea. Confirming the presence of a Chinese drillship close to Tokyo’s proposed median line, Japan accused China of conducting “unilateral development.”
US President Donald Trump wrote: “China is our enemy.” He said China was an enemy because of weak and incompetent US officials that were taken to the cleaners by smart and seasoned Chinese negotiators, and he would fix that and turn China into a friend.
One of the arguments for a coming war is the Thucydides Trap theory. It goes that the situation of a status quo power (Sparta in ancient Greece) and a fast rising power that challenges the former (Athens) creates a condition wherein neither can tolerate the other.
