Implications of China’s Pacific Dream for the United States, Australia, and Allies

Posted on June 2, 2022 by Assistant Editor

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 10, No. 6, June 2022

Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, and Solomons Islands Minister of Foreign Affairs and External Trade. The Solomons Islands and and Chinese flags feature in the background while each minister holds up a red document.

Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, and Solomons Islands Minister of Foreign Affairs and External Trade, Jeremiah Manele, 2019. Source: cnsphoto

Yan C. Bennett
Princeton University

John Garrick
Charles Darwin University

It is apparent that Xi Jinping’s Chinese Dream now includes the Pacific Ocean where his Foreign Minister Wang Yi has undertaken a Pacific Islands tour of broad scope and ambition. While China’s economy is stagnating, it nevertheless continues to drive for increasing its world power as Minister Wang aims to finalise the China-Solomons Security agreement and has hosted a Pacific Island Foreign Ministers meeting whilst in Fiji. Wang’s proposals have prompted strong responses from the United States and its allies in the Indo-Pacific, in particular Australia and New Zealand.

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Politics in the De-politicised: TikTok as a Source of China’s Soft Power

Posted on December 2, 2021 by Assistant Editor

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 9, No. 11, November 2021

TikTok logo. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Zuza Nazaruk

Last year’s “TikTok war” revealed unprecedented hostility of the US government towards the Chinese tech newcomer. The seemingly innocuous software was developed by ByteDance, a Chinese unicorn company. TikTok is a sister app of Douyin, created for the Chinese market. Both apps allow users to share and watch short videos. In July 2020, then-President Donald Trump accused TikTok of a series of breaches, the most serious of which was sharing user data with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (Levine, 2020). Yet, some experts, including Adam Segal from the Council of Foreign Relations, considered the near-ban a smokescreen to hinder the growth of the most globally successful Chinese app to date (Campbell, 2020). In 2020, TikTok was the most downloaded app globally, with 89 million new users just in the US (Geyser, 2021). To date, 23% of Americans use or have watched TikTok, with an average American user having spent 14.3 hours monthly on the app in 2020 (Tankovska, 2021).

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Schumer’s No-Good, Weak-Kneed, Sold-Out, Sorry Excuse For a China Bill

Posted on May 27, 2021 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 9, No. 5, May 2021

The senator is depicted leaning on a marble banister wearing a blue shirt with black blazer and yellow tie.

U.S. Senate Photographic Studio/Jeff McEvoy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

There’s a dump truck of a China bill coming your direction from Congress, and it’s chock-full of cotton balls. Not a pretty sight. Conservatives and some tough-on-China Democrats are not happy.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the symphony conductor driving this cacophonous beast towards a vote in the next few days or weeks, is in bed with big money. Since 2015, he garnered over $14 million from large individual contributors and over $4 million from PACs (including other candidate committees) for his campaigns. Lawyers have given over $1 million, and lobbyists over $600,000.

Universities spend big on lobbyists, and can have cash-cow satellite campuses in China that they seek to protect. U.S. Education lobbying sometimes reaches over $100 million per year in aggregate. As far back as 2020, companies effectively lobbied against new laws to limit forced Uyghur labor from China in the American supply chains of companies like Nike, Coca Cola, Adidas, Calvin Klein, Costco, H&M, Campbell Soup, Patagonia, and Tommy Hilfiger.

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Chinese Communist Party Cooperation with Gangs and Politicians in Canada: Book Review

Posted on May 23, 2021 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 9, No. 5, May 2021

The book cover depicts the words "Wilful blindness" in white against a red backdrop and a world map in black.

The book cover of Wilful Blindness, by Sam Cooper.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.

Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

Wilful Blindness How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP agents Infiltrated the West, by Sam Cooper, Optimum Publishing International, 2021, $28.95 CAD.

An investigative reporter in Canada, Sam Cooper, is at the tip of the spear, where China injects money, drugs, spies, and underage prostitutes into all of North America. Cooper provides us with a front-row seat of China’s espionage, drug supercartels, support to terrorism, money laundering, and, for a pledge of support to Beijing, campaign donations to the politicians who lurk around China’s United Front groups in Vancouver, Toronto, and Ottawa. Add to that investigations of trafficking in weapons. Heads of state, including Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau, are linked by the author to the nefarious characters from China who are doing this dirty business.

It sounds too crazy to be true.

But Cooper’s new book, Wilful Blindness, is nonfiction, and based on five years of his investigative reporting on the topic, and confidential sources in Canadian intelligence and police agencies. It vindicates, and brings up to date, a joint Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) report that in 1997 made many of the same claims. That report, called “Sidewinder”, was suppressed by Ottawa, which at time was trying to ink new trade deals with Beijing.

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Myanmar: A Fight For Democracy Against the February 1 Coup

Posted on March 18, 2021 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 9, No. 3, March 2021

This article is by an anonymous university student in Myanmar (Burma) who is currently supporting the pro-democracy social movements there against the February 1 coup. Anonymity has been granted to the author due to the threat against his person that might result from a byline.

Protestors hold signs with #Say no to Dictatorship, #Save Myanmar, #Reject Military Coup, #We want Democracy, written on them.

Pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar (Burma) following the February 1, 2021 coup.

On March 15th, the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) announced that they moved Myanmar (Burma) to the “Current Crisis” category, as populations here face crimes against humanity perpetrated by military coup leaders, known as the Junta. That followed the the March 2 announcement by civil society groups of the Myanmar Military as a terrorist group. Their legitimacy and tactics are, in fact, those of terrorists rather than a government, as they have attacked democratically-elected government officials, and shot randomly into people’s homes in an attempt to quell a rising social movement in defense of President U Win Myint, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, other government officials, and civil society leaders. Continue reading →