China cannot stop other world leaders visiting Taiwan, says Nancy Pelosi

Chi­na can­not stop oth­er world lead­ers vis­it­ing Tai­wan, says Nan­cy Pelosi US House speak­er leaves island as Chi­na orders live-fire drills off coast 02:13 The US House speak­er, Nan­cy Pelosi, has said Bei­jing can­not pre­vent world lead­ers from trav­el­ling to Tai­wan, as she depart­ed from the island on Wednes­day to con­tin­ue her tour of Asia. In a…

But CAN the United States defend Taiwan?

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has yet again stat­ed that if Chi­na attacked Tai­wan to reuni­fy what Bei­jing sees as a rene­gade province with the main­land, the Unit­ed States would come to Taiwan’s mil­i­tary defense. White House staff has again fol­lowed up these off-the-cuff pres­i­den­tial com­ments with a “clar­i­fi­ca­tion” that in fact, strate­gic ambi­gu­i­ty remains Amer­i­can pol­i­cy. Somewhat…

China Is Doing Biden’s Work for Him

If Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s trip to Asia—marked as it was by his com­ments on the defense of Tai­wan, announce­ments on a pro­posed new region­al trade pact, and meet­ings with lead­ers who exhib­it sim­i­lar lev­els of con­cern about a ris­ing China—has shown the per­sis­tence of Amer­i­can glob­al pow­er, it has also revealed some­thing of equal importance:…

Dawn of a second Cold War and the ‘scramble for Africa’

Abstract Ample empir­i­cal evi­dence shows that the African Con­ti­nen­tal Free Trade Area (AfCF­TA) will boost the com­pet­i­tive­ness of African economies and accel­er­ate the diver­si­fi­ca­tion of sources of growth and trade to deep­en eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion in Africa and enhance the region’s assim­i­la­tion into the world econ­o­my. How­ev­er, real­iz­ing these poten­tials hinges on revers­ing the cur­rent trend…

China’s Costly Exceptionalism

Amer­i­ca has long thought itself excep­tion­al, a blessed place des­tined to bring free­dom to the world. Chi­na has an even longer his­to­ry of self-pro­­claimed excep­tion­al­ism and, spurred by its many mod­ern achieve­ments, is more assertive­ly pro­mot­ing its brand of gov­er­nance as a mod­el for the world. The widen­ing con­fronta­tion between the Unit­ed States and China…