China
Monkey shortage + Fiji's flirt + Chips Act
Dear reader,
When looking at the picture of our first Feature, the first thing that comes to mind is animal welfare. Why is our closest conspecific suffering behind bars? In fact, from a medical point of view, experimental monkeys are needed for the approval of some important drugs – and many of these experimental animals came from Chinese breeding stations until recently. Since the beginning of the pandemic, however, China has no longer exported any experimental monkeys. And promptly, the Chinese once again realized how difficult it is to replace them as suppliers, as Amelie Richter explains. China sees the bottleneck in Europe as an opportunity to become the leader in primate research. From a German research perspective, these are not good prospects.
The West apparently miscalculated in the Pacific region, as Frank Sieren writes in his Feature. After the Solomon Islands, Fiji now has a prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, who allowed himself to be lulled by China. For a long time, these island states were seen by many as exotic South Sea islands at best but otherwise largely irrelevant. But now Beijing's growing influence in the region is becoming a problem for Australia, New Zealand, and above all for the United States – and thus for the West as a whole. The Pacific has long since ceased to be the "Quiet Ocean," as it was still referred to in my school atlas from the 1980s, and is now a focal point of global political importance.
Your
Felix Lee
