- Brazil’s Lula sees China as he did 20 years ago
- Taiwan: new cabinet with familiar faces
- How the state organizes innovation
- Sinolytics.Radar: Good reputation in developing countries
- Confusion over Xi trip to Moscow
- Beijing criticizes Pavel’s phone call to Taiwan
- First quantum computer shipped
- Huawei faces complete ban in the US
- Heads: expat lawyer Ralph Koppitz
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has traveled to South America. But not only the Ukraine war accompanies him there, but the geopolitical competition with China, too. His interlocutor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former and new president of Brazil, not only pitched himself and China’s President Xi Jinping as peace brokers with Moscow. He also has an almost outdated optimistic view of the People’s Republic, as Amelie Richter analyses. But China has long since been more strategically independent of individual South American states than it was during Lula’s first presidency.
Taiwan has a new cabinet: The new Prime Minister Chen Chien-jen took office on Tuesday, and along with him some new government members, but mostly familiar faces. Central ministers such as Joseph Wu in the foreign office have kept their posts. This means that Chen Chien-jen promises continuity above all, as David Demes analyzes. Chen is also signaling a sign of stability to international allies.
China has been promoting key sectors and innovations for years. A new study by the Berlin-based China Research Institute Merics, which China.Table has obtained in advance, has analyzed exactly how this is done. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk took a closer look at the study. The study shows that China organizes innovation along chains, where ideas, research results and concrete technologies are forwarded. The focus is on application-related projects that, in the best case, yield something useful.
Christiane Kühl
Feature
Brazil: Lula’s old recipe is outdated
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz did not expect this move: Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has proposed a mediation initiative of his country together with China for an end to the Ukraine war. The left-wing politician offered himself as a mediator for talks with the Ukrainian or Russian president. Or even with China. “Our friends, the Chinese play a very important role,” Lula said at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Brasília. “It’s time for China to get involved.”
The fact that Beijing has not displayed any tendencies to take a mediating role in the war against Ukraine, which has been raging for almost a year now, does not seem to bother Lula in his appeal. France’s President Emmanuel Macron also suggested the People’s Republic of China as a mediator after the G20 summit in Bali and received scorn for this. However, France and Brazil have different approaches toward China.
Lula considers China to be the same partner as it was during his first term in office, which began two decades ago. From 2003 to 2011, Lula was head of the Palácio do Planalto in Brasília. At that time, the Workers’ Party icon was still dealing with Hu Jintao as China’s head of state. So if the “BRICS buddy” Lula now calls on Beijing to act as a mediator, this might at first glance seem more pressing than a voice from the West like Macron. However, Lula could be sorely mistaken about Beijing. Times have changed, both in terms of trade policy and diplomacy.
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