Seven individuals smashed up a Brighton factory owned by ITT of the US, at a cost of £187 000 and were recently found not guilty. In 2008, six Greenpeace members were acquitted of causing £30 000 damage to a power station owned by the German Eon energy group.  In 2000, 28 Greenpeace members were found [...]

The following article was published in New Europe on 12 July: China is rightly proud of its achievements – particularly the way it came through the global and financial crisis – and also in its successful organizing of the Olympic Games and Shanghai Expo.  But China faces the danger of the growth of protectionism.  Protectionism [...]

The German Marshall Fund of the US and The Centre Asie Ifri, held a joint seminar on 15 June on “Responding to China’s Rise: Balancing Hard and Soft Power”.  The presentation by Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute was very disturbing.  Although The AEI is ‘neocon’ in philosophy, I fear that much of what [...]

BICCS (Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies invited 30 participants from 15 European institutes to participate in an intensive workshop, on 17-19 May, about China’s response to security challenges in Africa. The aim of this meeting was to examine the new security threats with which China has been confronted, the way China perceives these challenges [...]

The China-EU Strategic and Economic Dialogue (SED), held in Beijing on 24-25 May, brought a pack of high-ranking officials on both sides. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, accompanied by 16 cabinet secretaries or agency heads, led a group of 200 Americans, while State Councilor Dai Bingguo and Vice Premier [...]

These terms are frequently used and often appear interchangeable.  But what do they mean?  Is there any common understandable.  Multipolarity is a system of power distribution in which several countries have very substantial influence.  Our deepest challenge,” US national security advisor Henry Kissinger wrote in 1969, will be “to base order on political multipolarity even [...]

The UK House of Lords EU Committee published on 23 March an extremely thorough report of the state of the EU-China relationship.  The following are its key conclusions and recommendations, and some comments on them: A strategic relationship The role which China and the EU can play in shaping 21st century global affairs will be [...]

The seventh session of the Informal European Parliament Dialogue on China took place at the European Parliament on 13c April and was organised by the Brussels Institute of China Contemporary Studies (BICCS).  The Dialogue was attended by some 60 MEPs, European and Chinese diplomats, think tank analysts, academics and others.  Elmar Brok MEP and Reinhard [...]

Feng Zhongping*, a politically influential scholar, gave an interesting perspective on the EU-China relationship.  He insisted that Europe was important to China.   However, it came third behind the US, and the neighbourhood countries of Russia and Japan.  The EU is China’s number 1 trade partner and a valuable supplier of technology.  But the EU’s political [...]

A lecture by Professor Li Jinshan of Zhejiang University on 27 April surprised the BICCS (Brussels Institute for Contemporary China Studies) with the complexity of the Chinese governing structure.  This illustrates why the enforcement of laws passed by the Central Government is not easy, as foreign companies have found to their disadvantage.  China has five [...]