New Here?

International Relations

24
Jul

(Why) Did China Handle the Coronavirus Situation Better Than the West?

Even when it comes to the worst calamities, pandemics included, the dust does eventually settle and once that happens, observers as well as (or especially) decision-makers need to put their rational thinking caps and dissect what happened over the past months in a manner as void of emotion as possible. What went wrong? What was

Read More
21
Jul

Will China Lead or Follow in Terms of Fiscal Stimulus?

Prior to the 2020 developments, many experts were perpetuating a “normalization” narrative, from the normalization in terms of interest rates (which many assumed would continue representing the status quo) to even scenarios which involved at least some kind of a Federal Reserve balance sheet reduction. Needless to say, with the benefit of hindsight of course,

Read More
17
Jul

Trade Relations Between the U.S. and China, Summed Up

The United States and China are the two top players when it comes to global trade. The United States currently sits at #1 in terms of nominal GDP. However, gaining speed behind them at #2 is China. It goes without saying that the trade relationship between these two countries has global repercussions. This is especially

Read More
16
Jul

Globalization and What It Means for Investors

As technology has improved and people are able to communicate more quickly, the world is effectively shrinking. By this, we mean that it’s getting easier and easier to conduct business around the globe. Think about it: ● Taking a trip around the world (something that was almost impossible just a hundred years ago) can now

Read More
16
Jul

The Thucydides Trap: Is China – US Military Escalation Inevitable?

An exclusively history-oriented analytical framework with respect to Sino-American tensions yields “predictions” that seem downright worrisome, for example implications of the “Thucydides Trap” paradigm, a term coined by Graham Allison (Harvard professor/historian) and which refers to the idea that when rivalry between an emerging power (in our case China) and the status quo dominant power

Read More
13
Jul

Sino-American Relations in a Post-Pandemic World: From Solidarity to… the “Chinese” Virus?

As pretty much all loyal ChinaFund.com readers (should) know all too well, Sino-American relations have been tension-laden for trade-related reasons well before the coronavirus (later on COVID-19) became a known threat. It therefore makes perfect sense to see the relationship between the world’s #1 and #2 economic superpowers in nominal GDP terms from the perspective

Read More
10
Jul

China in a Post-Pandemic Geopolitical Framework: Global Solidarity vs. Isolationism

Something as devastating as a pandemic inevitably brings about economic consequences that can be remarkably difficult to identify… at least at the beginning. To make matters worse, the COVID-19 pandemic also made “globalized” supply chain weaknesses as well as over-optimization (for example, business models which revolve around “production on demand” rather than expensive and logistically

Read More
07
Jul

Meaningfully Understanding the China – World Bank Equation

As mentioned in our article about the International Monetary Fund’s relationship with China, the Republic of China joined the IMF in 1945 and in the same year, it joined the World Bank. However, things got quite tricky after the Chinese Civil War ended and the People’s Republic of China emerged, for the simple reason that

Read More
06
Jul

China and the International Monetary Fund: (Oftentimes Incongruent) Regional and Global Dynamics

All the way back in 1945, the Republic of China (not to be confused with the post-1949 People’s Republic of China) was a co-founder of the International Monetary Fund, along with 34 other countries. Moving on to the People’s Republic of China, however, it was only as of 1980 that IMF ties were established, for

Read More
04
Jul

China in an International Border Closure Context

Much has been said about pretty much every facet of the Covid-2019 calamity but in our view, too little attention has been paid to the long-term international relations implications of the aggressive border closure action (to give perhaps the most obvious example) that has been taken worldwide. From Donald Trump who has been continuously bragging

Read More