News and views from the Blavatnik School of Government community 
The strategic rivalry between the United States and China poses a sharp challenge to international organisations, which are now at risk of becoming mere pawns of either power. Whether multilateral institutions can retain a role in facilitating desperately needed international cooperation remains to be seen. The Sino-American conflict is already […]
At the beginning of Chinese Lunar New Year of the Pig, a purely “made-in-China” domestic science fiction film ‘The Wandering Earth’ rocked the global box office igniting people’s imagination and passion. This hardcore style sci-fi film quickly topped global box office and received praise at home and abroad. It also […]
It is often said that the US and China – superpowers at economic, geopolitical, and ideological loggerheads – are heading toward a new cold war. And the rhetoric – at least from one side – has come to resemble that of Winston Churchill’s 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech, one of the inaugural events of […]
Given the escalating trade war between the United States and China, countries around the world are rushing to consolidate their trade relations and preserve existing supply chains. Not so the UK, which is now in the final stages of negotiations to withdraw from the European Union – a move that […]
Between escalating trade disputes and the divisions at the G7’s summit this month, the breakdown of global governance has become starkly apparent. The United States can no longer be counted on to uphold, much less enforce, existing rules, and countries more broadly cannot be assumed to agree on, much less […]
On March 23, a U.S. representative raised concerns at the World Trade Organization, claiming that “China’s import restrictions on recycled commodities have caused a fundamental disruption in global supply chains for scrap materials.” His concern related to China’s decision in mid-2017 to impose a ban on the importation of 24 […]
Dr Yajun Bao was a visiting fellow at the Blavatnik School from Feb 2017 to Feb 2018. Here, in conversation with his mentor at the Blavatnik School, Dr Ruth Dixon, he discusses his new paper ‘The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps: An Insider’s Perspective.’ RD: Yajun, in your paper you […]
In the recent “Dance of the Lions and Dragons” report issued by McKinsey, the story of the infrastructure gap is raised: whilst Africa’s spending on infrastructure has fuelled an infrastructure building boom supported largely by government debt, it still falls short of the $150 billion dollars per annum required. To […]