The problem with the “debt trap” theory is that it too often strips Africans of their agency in the negotiating process. That either they don’t know what they are doing or they’re simply negotiating bad deals. While both of those may be true, in some instances, the reality is far more complex, according to University of Oxford scholar Folashadé Soulé.
Allison says the Thucydides Trap is the best framework to understand why there is potential for conflict between the United States and China. As China grew stronger, the U.S. failed to recognize Beijing would increasingly assert its own vision for the international order, thereby challenging the American-led global system. China now represents both a strategic rival and partner for the United States. The bilateral relationship needs a new framework that accounts for significant areas of competition and cooperation. Allison says the United States and China share vital national interests in ensuring the survival of their respective nations and must work to resolve issues clouding the economic relationship. This includes devising a new set of rules that accounts for China’s unprecedented economic development and status as a global power. For guidance, policymakers should look to John F. Kennedy’s post-Cuban Missile Crisis call for a world “safe for diversity.” This would allow nations with different political systems, economic development models, and ideologies to compete in peaceful coexistence.
Ming-sho Ho is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University. He is the author of Working Class Formation in Taiwan: Fractured Solidarity in State-Owned Enterprises, 1945-2012 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Challenging Beijing’s Mandate of Heaven: Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement and Hong’s Umbrella Movement (Temple University Press, 2019).
Shi points to two important turning points in China’s shift to a more assertive foreign policy: the 2008 global financial crisis, which made it clear that China’s economic development was an important engine for global growth; and Xi Jinping’s rise to power, which signaled China’s more ambitious international approach.
Folashadé Soulé is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, formerly as a Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellow and currently as a Visiting Scholar at the Blavatnik School of Government. She holds a Ph.D. (summa cum laude) in International Relations from Sciences Po Paris.
During and since defending her Ph.D., she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the London School of Economics (LSE) and a part-time Lecturer in International Relations and Political Science (Africa and Global Politics, the Politics of Globalization, International Political Economy). Folashade’s current research investigates the negotiation practices of francophone African governments when dealing with China on infrastructure projects. It aims to challenge the prevailing wisdom in international relations that bureaucracies and governments of “weak” countries exert minimal influence when they negotiate with “strong” countries such as China, and will add precious empirical and theoretical knowledge to a small but growing body of research on small developing countries in asymmetric negotiations.
She has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Global Governance, Afrique contemproaine, Foro Internacional, and Cahiers des Amériques Latines. As a policy-facing academic connecting policy and research, she has been acting as an international strategy consultant for the OECD, the French Development Agency (AFD), the Presidency of Benin, and several consultancy firms, including Oxford Analytica, Ernst&Young, and Deloitte. She has also trained young diplomats and military civil servants in Bamako, Mali in methodology and analytical tools in international relations.
Pretty much every major economic indicator suggests that the Chinese economy will continue its downward momentum in 2019. Industrial production, retail sales, and even the once red-hot property market are all showing real signs of weakness. Some economists even believe that economic growth in China next year will fall below the 6 percent level. This is all potentially very troubling news for Africa, which is becoming increasingly dependent on the Chinese market to buy resources and as the primary source of investment capital.
On January 2, China made history by successfully landing a vehicle on the far side of the moon. What does that milestone mean for China, the United States, and the future of space exploration?
The spirited 2019 New Year’s speeches of Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and China’s President Xi Jinping have just reminded the world that, 40 years after the normalization of relations between the United States and China, the potentially explosive issue of Taiwan’s status that had long delayed normalization has still not been resolved. President Tsai tenaciously reasserted Taiwan’s determination to remain free and to deal with China on an equal basis.
Paulina Garzón currently serves as Director of the China Latin-America Sustainable Investments Initiative, a project hosted by the Bank Information Center in Washington, D.C. She is an Ecuadorian native, with 25 years of experience working on issues relating to business, the environment, and human rights. She was formerly President of Accion Ecológica (Ecuador) and Co‐Founder and President of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CDES‐Ecuador), when she lived in Ecuador. Garzón came to the United Stated in 2001 and served as Policy Director at Amazon Watch and as Latin America Program Director at the Bank Information Center. Over the past five years, Garzón has focused her work on Chinese investments in Latin America, with particular attention to the Chinese regulatory framework for overseas investments.
In March 2014, she published the “Legal Manual on Chinese Environmental and Social Regulations for Lending and Investing Abroad: A Guide for Local Communities.” She has organized and participated in a number of seminars and workshops with NGOs, academic institutions, and government officials in Latin America, China, and the U.S. Garzón has also written extensively on topics related to Chinese investments in Latin America and environmental issues, and serves as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Diálogo Chino. She has a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (2009).
Graham Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught for five decades. Allison is a leading analyst of national security with special interests in nuclear weapons, Russia, China, and decision-making. He was the “Founding Dean” of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and until 2017, served as Director of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, which is ranked the “#1 University Affiliated Think Tank” in the world. As Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Clinton Administration, Allison received the Defense Department’s highest civilian award, the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, for “reshaping relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to reduce the former Soviet nuclear arsenal.” This resulted in the safe return of more than 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons from the former Soviet republics and the complete elimination of more than 4,000 strategic nuclear warheads previously targeted at the United States and left in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus when the Soviet Union disappeared.
