The last years have brought about a global shift in China policy. From Washington to Brussels, Berlin to New Delhi, political leaders have begun to adjust how they engage China on a range of policy issues, including technology, trade, and security. Many have come to see China as a systemic rival and competitor, while others continue to balance their relationship with Beijing and Washington in the context of deepening Sino-US competition. How has this shift in China policy come about? Why have so many Western politicians, thinkers and business leaders once close to China become Beijing’s sharpest critics? What was the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in this regard and how central is technology competition to policy towards China in the future?
On the occasion of the publication of Andrew Small’s recent book, The Rupture: China and the Global Race for the Future, LSE IDEAS China Foresight hosts a panel discussion focusing on the drivers of China policy across Europe and beyond. The discussion traces US efforts to recast relations with old allies, charts Europe’s role in the technological and economic contest, and examines Beijing’s attempts to build a coalition of its own, from Moscow to Taliban-run Kabul.
Meet the speakers and chair
Andrew Small is a senior transatlantic fellow with the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. His research focuses on U.S.-China relations, Europe-China relations, and broader developments in Chinese foreign and economic policy. He previously worked as a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as the director of the Foreign Policy Centre's Beijing office, and was an ESU scholar in the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. He is the author of The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics, published by Hurst / Oxford University Press. His new book, The Rupture: China and the Global Race for the Future was named one of the politics books of the year by the Financial Times.
Elizabeth Ingleson is an assistant professor in the International History department at the London School of Economics. Prior to her appointment, she was a Henry Chauncey Jr. ’57 Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University’s International Security Studies. She has held fellowships at the University of Virginia and Southern Methodist University and earnt her Ph.D. in history from the University of Sydney. Her first book, Making Made in China: The Transformation of U.S.-China Trade in the 1970s (under contract with Harvard University Press), explores how the United States and China rebuilt trade ties in the 1970s after over twenty years of isolation – and in the process unwittingly reshaped global capitalism. She has written a number of articles and chapters on various aspects of U.S.-China relations and U.S. capitalism and is additionally writing a book under contract with Bloomsbury Academic, China and the United States since 1949: An International History.
Chris Alden is Director of LSE IDEAS and Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
More information about the event
This event is hosted by LSE IDEAS
Event hashtags: #LSEChinaForesight
LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is LSE's foreign policy think tank. Through sustained engagement with policymakers and opinion-formers, IDEAS provides a forum that informs policy debate and connects academic research with the practice of diplomacy and strategy.