It will be interesting to see how the Chinese government will align its position on the war between Israel and Hamas going forward. Although it has already made its position clear by calling for a two-state solution, the fact that the People’s Republic of China, of all countries, supports this concept raises eyebrows.
Those who wish to follow their reasoning may see reeducation and population control in Xinjiang as necessities in the fight against terrorism. After all, extremists did indeed carry out various attacks in the region. But the reaction was not only grossly excessive, it amounted to crimes against humanity, with many democratic governments and parliaments even labeling it genocide.
If Beijing now wants to grant Hamas terrorists their own state, it sows contradictions in the eyes of those who refuse to distinguish between terrorism in Israel and terrorism in Xinjiang. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk takes a close look at the latest developments on China’s positioning in the Middle East conflict.
Meanwhile, Frank Sieren, who came across the GDP tracker of the Center for Strategic & International Studies, takes a look at the past. The tool tracks in detail how the economic balance of power has developed over the past 500 years and changed to the benefit of a part of the world that increasingly self-confidently seeks to co-determine the course of the world. China, as usual, is right in the middle of it.
Vladimir Putin sends his foreign minister ahead: Shortly before the now very likely participation of the Russian president in the Silk Road Summit, Sergey Lavrov arrived in Beijing with the Russian delegation on Monday. He used the very first day for a discussion between colleagues at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse and spoke with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi about the war between Israel and Hamas. This was announced by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
As on other issues, there is broad consensus on positions between China and Russia. “Big countries” (大国) should play a decisive role in the conflict and bring about negotiations as quickly as possible, Wang Yi said. The United Nations Security Council should play a leading role – a body in which both China and Russia are represented.
The focus must be on “political and diplomatic methods” to resolve the Middle East conflict. “Political and diplomatic” methods is the same phrase that the two foreign ministers used recently in connection with the “military conflict in Ukraine.”
There is not only agreement between China and Russia on possible solutions, but also on the assessment of the causes of the Middle East conflict. On Monday, Vladimir Putin reiterated in Moscow a position that Wang Yi had already voiced to EU foreign affairs envoy Josep Borrell last Friday: “The USA bears the main responsibility for the current crisis in the Middle East.”
There was also much Chinese praise for Russia at the Wang-Lavrov meeting. “China appreciates President Putin’s high regard for and support for the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative, and welcomes the Russian side’s continued active participation.” Furthermore, China supports Russia’s rotating BRICS presidency next year.
The foreign ministers agreed that both sides must deepen their “relationship of trust.” The first tangible result of the declaration of friendship followed only a few minutes later. According to Xinhua, Russia joins the fish boycott against Japan. China imposed the import ban after the neighboring country began releasing slightly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.
This fulfills Beijing’s desire to exert international leverage in the numerous conflicts with its neighbors. However, the actual effect on Japan is small. In 2022, Russia imported only 190 tons of seafood from Japan. That represents only a tiny fraction of Japan’s exports of 634,000 tons. Russia tends to play a supplier role for Japan, not a buyer of seafood products.
On Monday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry also announced that four Chinese citizens had been killed and six injured in the war between Israel and Hamas, with two reported missing. The ministry said that commercial flights between China and Israel are currently still in operation.
The West’s share of the global economy has long since passed its zenith. It has been on a downward course for more than 70 years. Other players have been steadily increasing their share for decades. Above all, China’s share has grown strongly. But the growing importance of other BRICS countries for the global economy is also striking. This is the reason for their newly found self-confidence.
For 20 years, the share of the rest of the world – the part without the major economies of the US and China – has been around 45 percent. And the trend is rising. This represents a shift in a centuries-old balance of power. Between 1500 and 1950, the share of the rest of the world was only 30 to 35 percent. Twenty years after the advent of this development, BRICS now takes the economic relevance of Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa into institutional account.
Between 1500 and 1700, the economic world order measured by purchasing power was very stable: China and India each had shares between 22 and 25 percent, Japan, Germany and Russia were each around four percent. France was slightly stronger (5 percent) and England slightly weaker (3 percent). But then dramatic changes followed when China’s share increased significantly to 33 percent in 1820, a historic high. This development was mainly at India’s expense.
Then came the big crash in 1820: China had reached the peak of its development and started its dramatic decline in favor of the United States and the European nations. China underestimated, even overlooked, the innovation surge of the Industrial Revolution in the first half of the 19th century. The consequences were dramatic: The West partially colonized China in the following decades.
80 years later, the world looked different once again. China had lost two-thirds of its share of the world economy and was down to eleven percent. The USA had now overtaken China and was already at 16 percent. India’s share had also more than halved in 200 years – from 24 to 9 percent.
Besides the United States, Germany was the big winner with a share of 8 percent, but so were the Russians with a share of 8 percent and England even with a share of 9 percent. This meant that small England was now almost on a par with big China, closely followed by Germany, which would reach its all-time high in 1913 with a share of nine percent one year before the First World War.
In 1950, the global power USA then reached the height of its development with a 27 percent share of the world economy, almost as much as China in its prime. On the other hand, China reached a temporary low of five percent, the lowest figure in more than 500 years. But India had also shrunk to 4 percent in the meantime. The Soviet Union was at 10 percent. England was the strongest power in Europe with 7 percent.
With the beginning of China’s opening policy around 1980, China’s share had changed little. Japan was now the leading Asian power. The following 40 years, however, would be shaped by the rise of the People’s Republic. The decline of the West accelerated. The United States’ share halved to 15 percent since 1950. Since 1980, faster than in previous decades.
Measured by purchasing power, China’s share of economic output in 2022 was just below 19 percent. The US share was around 15 percent. The Japanese share (3.7 percent) has more than halved in just 40 years. Russia has even lost more than two-thirds of its economic power and is now at 2.7 percent. India’s share of 7.2 percent is now almost on par with Japan’s in the 1980s, making it a relative winner over the past 40 years.
Combined, the BRICS countries have grown strongly. They collectively account for 37 percent of the world economy, while the G7 only have 29 percent. Therefore, their goal is simple: Reshape the rules of the world so that they grow even faster together and pull along those countries that have not yet been able to improve their share of the world economy: This includes South Africa, for example. Its share has declined slightly in recent years to just over 0.5 percent. The same goes for Brazil. On the other hand, all of Africa now has a share of five percent, which is significantly higher than Russia’s.
Consequently, the development of the BRICS countries as a whole is currently stable. The drivers remain, above all, China and India. Even if things go poorly, the People’s Republic will grow more than twice as fast as the United States in 2023, with a gross domestic product that is already higher measured in terms of purchasing power. Even skeptical forecasts still expect 4.5 percent. In contrast, the International Monetary Fund sees US growth at only 1.8 percent. India could even grow three times as fast as the USA. All of Asia is growing at 5.3 percent.
The picture is even clearer for Europe. The IMF expects growth of 0.9 percent for the euro countries. Accordingly, China will grow more than four times as much as Europe, and India six times as much – in line with a historical trend.
Not so long ago, relations between China and the United States were much better. Beijing and Washington even wanted to improve their economic exchange. One person who played a vital role in the success of this endeavor was David Dollar – first as country director for China at the World Bank, later as an official at the US Department of the Treasury, and most recently as a China expert at the Washington-based think tank Brookings.
Dollar’s interest in China came early in his life. Born in 1954 in the US state of Missouri, Dollar discovered his passion for Chinese history and culture at Dartmouth University. It would shape the rest of his life. His outstanding degree earned him a scholarship – and Dollar decided to learn Mandarin in Taiwan and travel all over Southeast Asia. At this point, at the latest, the foundation was laid for his future career in China.
He returned briefly to the United States, where he earned a Ph.D. in economics at New York University and then taught as an assistant professor at the University of California. But in 1986, Dollar returned to China – this time as a visiting professor at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It was during this time that he met his future wife, Paige.
In 1989, Dollar moved to the World Bank. He stayed for 20 years, climbing the ranks to become country director for China and Mongolia. His working thesis was that global trade and investment lead to growth in poor countries; with foreign aid accelerating growth, especially in countries with good governance. Both assumptions are controversial in today’s academia, but had a significant impact on the development of many countries at the time.
After all, Dollar always sought exchange with governments and people on the ground. For example, in the early 1990s, he was involved in Vietnam’s economic renewal with his recommendations. The communist country allowed foreign investment and began to promote private entrepreneurship. Vietnamese economic officials reportedly joked at the time that David was the first Dollar the World Bank had given Vietnam.
But Dollar’s main interest remained China, where he also lived for nearly a decade from 2004 to 2013. For five years, as country director of the World Bank, he was in close exchange with Chinese economic officials there, primarily at the provincial level. Through his close contacts and language proficiency, Dollar was able to build trust. Dollar’s recommendations were particularly heard by cadres who wanted to experiment with market reforms and had an influence on regional decisions – even if not always in a direct way.
Thus, for example, a study of environmental crimes in China was conducted under Dollar’s leadership. The painful conclusion was that devastating pollution was causing some 750,000 premature deaths a year in the country at the time. The reaction in Beijing was predictable. Opposition and rejection, as a consequence, the World Bank study was never published. The death estimate became public nonetheless. And, “It helped convince the authorities to take the problem more seriously,” recalls Bert Hofman, who later succeeded Dollar as World Bank country director.
In 2009, Dollar moved to the US Department of the Treasury, where he worked from then on as an economic and financial envoy in Beijing. His expert knowledge, but above all, his excellent connections, made him particularly valuable to the Obama administration.
In 2013, he finally returned home, where he remained closely connected to China. In Washington, he joined the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center as a senior fellow, where, among other things, he was the first Brookings fellow to host his own podcast, Dollar & Sense.
The political climate had changed in the meantime, and the Zeitgeist was now trade conflict and decoupling. Still, Dollar remained in demand as an expert on US-China economic relations. Time and again, he spoke out with commentaries and research reports.
Dollar argued that Washington’s trade dispute with China was “bad” and “failed.” He believed the trade war with China would neither reduce the US trade deficit nor bring manufacturing jobs back to the US.
On October 6, 2023, Dollar passed away at the age of 68 from complications of a bone marrow transplant. He leaves behind a wife and two children. Michael Radunski
Momo was actually just the name of a default setting for newly created accounts on the Chinese social media platforms Douban and Xiaohongshu. But then users discovered that they could express their opinions largely undetected under the pseudonym and the accompanying pink emoji profile picture. There are now thousands of Momos sharing gossip on China’s strictly censored Internet, but they also discuss serious topics such as women’s rights and youth unemployment. The masses offer protection from quick detection. But not completely: In China, every social media account must be verified with a cell phone number, each of which is registered with an ID.
It will be interesting to see how the Chinese government will align its position on the war between Israel and Hamas going forward. Although it has already made its position clear by calling for a two-state solution, the fact that the People’s Republic of China, of all countries, supports this concept raises eyebrows.
Those who wish to follow their reasoning may see reeducation and population control in Xinjiang as necessities in the fight against terrorism. After all, extremists did indeed carry out various attacks in the region. But the reaction was not only grossly excessive, it amounted to crimes against humanity, with many democratic governments and parliaments even labeling it genocide.
If Beijing now wants to grant Hamas terrorists their own state, it sows contradictions in the eyes of those who refuse to distinguish between terrorism in Israel and terrorism in Xinjiang. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk takes a close look at the latest developments on China’s positioning in the Middle East conflict.
Meanwhile, Frank Sieren, who came across the GDP tracker of the Center for Strategic & International Studies, takes a look at the past. The tool tracks in detail how the economic balance of power has developed over the past 500 years and changed to the benefit of a part of the world that increasingly self-confidently seeks to co-determine the course of the world. China, as usual, is right in the middle of it.
Vladimir Putin sends his foreign minister ahead: Shortly before the now very likely participation of the Russian president in the Silk Road Summit, Sergey Lavrov arrived in Beijing with the Russian delegation on Monday. He used the very first day for a discussion between colleagues at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse and spoke with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi about the war between Israel and Hamas. This was announced by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
As on other issues, there is broad consensus on positions between China and Russia. “Big countries” (大国) should play a decisive role in the conflict and bring about negotiations as quickly as possible, Wang Yi said. The United Nations Security Council should play a leading role – a body in which both China and Russia are represented.
The focus must be on “political and diplomatic methods” to resolve the Middle East conflict. “Political and diplomatic” methods is the same phrase that the two foreign ministers used recently in connection with the “military conflict in Ukraine.”
There is not only agreement between China and Russia on possible solutions, but also on the assessment of the causes of the Middle East conflict. On Monday, Vladimir Putin reiterated in Moscow a position that Wang Yi had already voiced to EU foreign affairs envoy Josep Borrell last Friday: “The USA bears the main responsibility for the current crisis in the Middle East.”
There was also much Chinese praise for Russia at the Wang-Lavrov meeting. “China appreciates President Putin’s high regard for and support for the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative, and welcomes the Russian side’s continued active participation.” Furthermore, China supports Russia’s rotating BRICS presidency next year.
The foreign ministers agreed that both sides must deepen their “relationship of trust.” The first tangible result of the declaration of friendship followed only a few minutes later. According to Xinhua, Russia joins the fish boycott against Japan. China imposed the import ban after the neighboring country began releasing slightly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.
This fulfills Beijing’s desire to exert international leverage in the numerous conflicts with its neighbors. However, the actual effect on Japan is small. In 2022, Russia imported only 190 tons of seafood from Japan. That represents only a tiny fraction of Japan’s exports of 634,000 tons. Russia tends to play a supplier role for Japan, not a buyer of seafood products.
On Monday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry also announced that four Chinese citizens had been killed and six injured in the war between Israel and Hamas, with two reported missing. The ministry said that commercial flights between China and Israel are currently still in operation.
The West’s share of the global economy has long since passed its zenith. It has been on a downward course for more than 70 years. Other players have been steadily increasing their share for decades. Above all, China’s share has grown strongly. But the growing importance of other BRICS countries for the global economy is also striking. This is the reason for their newly found self-confidence.
For 20 years, the share of the rest of the world – the part without the major economies of the US and China – has been around 45 percent. And the trend is rising. This represents a shift in a centuries-old balance of power. Between 1500 and 1950, the share of the rest of the world was only 30 to 35 percent. Twenty years after the advent of this development, BRICS now takes the economic relevance of Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa into institutional account.
Between 1500 and 1700, the economic world order measured by purchasing power was very stable: China and India each had shares between 22 and 25 percent, Japan, Germany and Russia were each around four percent. France was slightly stronger (5 percent) and England slightly weaker (3 percent). But then dramatic changes followed when China’s share increased significantly to 33 percent in 1820, a historic high. This development was mainly at India’s expense.
Then came the big crash in 1820: China had reached the peak of its development and started its dramatic decline in favor of the United States and the European nations. China underestimated, even overlooked, the innovation surge of the Industrial Revolution in the first half of the 19th century. The consequences were dramatic: The West partially colonized China in the following decades.
80 years later, the world looked different once again. China had lost two-thirds of its share of the world economy and was down to eleven percent. The USA had now overtaken China and was already at 16 percent. India’s share had also more than halved in 200 years – from 24 to 9 percent.
Besides the United States, Germany was the big winner with a share of 8 percent, but so were the Russians with a share of 8 percent and England even with a share of 9 percent. This meant that small England was now almost on a par with big China, closely followed by Germany, which would reach its all-time high in 1913 with a share of nine percent one year before the First World War.
In 1950, the global power USA then reached the height of its development with a 27 percent share of the world economy, almost as much as China in its prime. On the other hand, China reached a temporary low of five percent, the lowest figure in more than 500 years. But India had also shrunk to 4 percent in the meantime. The Soviet Union was at 10 percent. England was the strongest power in Europe with 7 percent.
With the beginning of China’s opening policy around 1980, China’s share had changed little. Japan was now the leading Asian power. The following 40 years, however, would be shaped by the rise of the People’s Republic. The decline of the West accelerated. The United States’ share halved to 15 percent since 1950. Since 1980, faster than in previous decades.
Measured by purchasing power, China’s share of economic output in 2022 was just below 19 percent. The US share was around 15 percent. The Japanese share (3.7 percent) has more than halved in just 40 years. Russia has even lost more than two-thirds of its economic power and is now at 2.7 percent. India’s share of 7.2 percent is now almost on par with Japan’s in the 1980s, making it a relative winner over the past 40 years.
Combined, the BRICS countries have grown strongly. They collectively account for 37 percent of the world economy, while the G7 only have 29 percent. Therefore, their goal is simple: Reshape the rules of the world so that they grow even faster together and pull along those countries that have not yet been able to improve their share of the world economy: This includes South Africa, for example. Its share has declined slightly in recent years to just over 0.5 percent. The same goes for Brazil. On the other hand, all of Africa now has a share of five percent, which is significantly higher than Russia’s.
Consequently, the development of the BRICS countries as a whole is currently stable. The drivers remain, above all, China and India. Even if things go poorly, the People’s Republic will grow more than twice as fast as the United States in 2023, with a gross domestic product that is already higher measured in terms of purchasing power. Even skeptical forecasts still expect 4.5 percent. In contrast, the International Monetary Fund sees US growth at only 1.8 percent. India could even grow three times as fast as the USA. All of Asia is growing at 5.3 percent.
The picture is even clearer for Europe. The IMF expects growth of 0.9 percent for the euro countries. Accordingly, China will grow more than four times as much as Europe, and India six times as much – in line with a historical trend.
Not so long ago, relations between China and the United States were much better. Beijing and Washington even wanted to improve their economic exchange. One person who played a vital role in the success of this endeavor was David Dollar – first as country director for China at the World Bank, later as an official at the US Department of the Treasury, and most recently as a China expert at the Washington-based think tank Brookings.
Dollar’s interest in China came early in his life. Born in 1954 in the US state of Missouri, Dollar discovered his passion for Chinese history and culture at Dartmouth University. It would shape the rest of his life. His outstanding degree earned him a scholarship – and Dollar decided to learn Mandarin in Taiwan and travel all over Southeast Asia. At this point, at the latest, the foundation was laid for his future career in China.
He returned briefly to the United States, where he earned a Ph.D. in economics at New York University and then taught as an assistant professor at the University of California. But in 1986, Dollar returned to China – this time as a visiting professor at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It was during this time that he met his future wife, Paige.
In 1989, Dollar moved to the World Bank. He stayed for 20 years, climbing the ranks to become country director for China and Mongolia. His working thesis was that global trade and investment lead to growth in poor countries; with foreign aid accelerating growth, especially in countries with good governance. Both assumptions are controversial in today’s academia, but had a significant impact on the development of many countries at the time.
After all, Dollar always sought exchange with governments and people on the ground. For example, in the early 1990s, he was involved in Vietnam’s economic renewal with his recommendations. The communist country allowed foreign investment and began to promote private entrepreneurship. Vietnamese economic officials reportedly joked at the time that David was the first Dollar the World Bank had given Vietnam.
But Dollar’s main interest remained China, where he also lived for nearly a decade from 2004 to 2013. For five years, as country director of the World Bank, he was in close exchange with Chinese economic officials there, primarily at the provincial level. Through his close contacts and language proficiency, Dollar was able to build trust. Dollar’s recommendations were particularly heard by cadres who wanted to experiment with market reforms and had an influence on regional decisions – even if not always in a direct way.
Thus, for example, a study of environmental crimes in China was conducted under Dollar’s leadership. The painful conclusion was that devastating pollution was causing some 750,000 premature deaths a year in the country at the time. The reaction in Beijing was predictable. Opposition and rejection, as a consequence, the World Bank study was never published. The death estimate became public nonetheless. And, “It helped convince the authorities to take the problem more seriously,” recalls Bert Hofman, who later succeeded Dollar as World Bank country director.
In 2009, Dollar moved to the US Department of the Treasury, where he worked from then on as an economic and financial envoy in Beijing. His expert knowledge, but above all, his excellent connections, made him particularly valuable to the Obama administration.
In 2013, he finally returned home, where he remained closely connected to China. In Washington, he joined the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center as a senior fellow, where, among other things, he was the first Brookings fellow to host his own podcast, Dollar & Sense.
The political climate had changed in the meantime, and the Zeitgeist was now trade conflict and decoupling. Still, Dollar remained in demand as an expert on US-China economic relations. Time and again, he spoke out with commentaries and research reports.
Dollar argued that Washington’s trade dispute with China was “bad” and “failed.” He believed the trade war with China would neither reduce the US trade deficit nor bring manufacturing jobs back to the US.
On October 6, 2023, Dollar passed away at the age of 68 from complications of a bone marrow transplant. He leaves behind a wife and two children. Michael Radunski
Momo was actually just the name of a default setting for newly created accounts on the Chinese social media platforms Douban and Xiaohongshu. But then users discovered that they could express their opinions largely undetected under the pseudonym and the accompanying pink emoji profile picture. There are now thousands of Momos sharing gossip on China’s strictly censored Internet, but they also discuss serious topics such as women’s rights and youth unemployment. The masses offer protection from quick detection. But not completely: In China, every social media account must be verified with a cell phone number, each of which is registered with an ID.
