WORLD ROUNDUPHere’s How Scared of China You Should Be | The Islamist Roots of French Disorder | Chinese Academics for Good Governance, and more
· Here’s How Scared of China You Should Be
It all depends on the answers to these five questions
· Ukraine Has a Breakthrough Problem
Military history suggests Ukraine’s current campaign is far more daunting than the public understands
· Chinese Academics Are Becoming a Force for Good Governance
China’s scientific community shaping policy for responsible research
· U.S. Warns China Over Atoll Dispute with Philippinesin South China Sea
U.S. warns Beijing that it is obliged to come to the defense of the Philippines if it is attacked by China
· Xi Rebuilt the Military to His Liking. Now a Shake-up Threatens Its Image
Xi Jinping, China’s leader, set out to clean up the military a decade ago. But now his crown jewel, the missile force, is under a shadow
· The Mystery of Chernobyl’s Post-Invasion Radiation Spikes
Spikes were likely the result of data manipulation, raising worries about hackers or others altering data to trigger public alarm before proper verification can occur
· The Islamist Roots of French Disorder
The country’s riots cannot be explained away by socio-economic woes alone
· It Should Not Have Been a Surprise: The Threat from Putin’s Russia
The Russians have kept key aspects of their society psychologically in a near-war and now, a war footing
Here’s How Scared of China You Should Be (Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy)
A critical issue in current debates on U.S. grand strategy is the priority the country should place on competing with China. How many resources (money, people, time, attention, etc.) should the United States devote to this problem? Is China the greatest geopolitical challenge the United States has ever faced, or a colossus with feet of clay? Should countering China take precedence over all other problems (Ukraine, climate change, migration, Iran, etc.), or is it just one issue among many and not necessarily the most important?
The answers to these five questions would tell you a lot about how worried you should be: No. 1: Is China’s economic future bright, dark, or somewhere in between?; No. 2: Will U.S. export controls work?; No. 3: Is Xi Jinping another Mao Zedong or another Lee Kuan Yew?; No. 4: Will Asia balance effectively?; No. 5: What will the rest of the world do?
So how scared should you be? I don’t know. If history is any guide, the United States is more likely to overreact to a possible China challenge than to under-respond, and the current bipartisan enthusiasm for confronting China on multiple fronts supports that prediction. But whether you think we are doing too much or too little depends to a considerable extent on how you answer the five questions listed above. I’d be ever so grateful if some smart China experts put their heads together and tried to narrow the range of disagreement. It would be even better if they did so publicly and laid out their sources and reasoning in as much detail as possible so that those of us who care about these questions could have better-informed debates on this vital strategic question.
