East Asia

Le 22-24 août 2023, à Johannesburg, en Afrique du Sud, se réunit le 15ème sommet des BRICS. Ce sommet est particulièrement intéressant pour deux raisons : il est, d’abord, le premier sommet en présentiel depuis la pandémie de la Covid, et en pleine guerre russo-ukrainienne qui perdure, et il l’est, ensuite, du fait de son ordre du jour consacré en partie à l’adhésion de nouveaux pays et à l’instauration d’une éventuelle monnaie commune. L’objet de cette étude lui est consacré. Rappe ...

Chinese economic figures released since August’s beginning have shown a slowdown in its growth. New Omicron coronavirus outbreaks in the context of the Covid-zero policy, the housing slump and heat waves have been, decelerating the economy’s pace. China’s current growth slowdown is an additional step in the trajectory of gradually declining rates that has accompanied the “great rebalancing” since the beginning of the 2010s. One significant difference now is the perception of exhaust ...

The “middle income trap” may well characterize the experience of Brazil and most of Latin America since the 1980s. Conversely, South Korea maintained its pace of evolution, reaching a high-income status. Such divergence of economic growth can be related to their distinctive performances of domestic accumulation of technological and organizational capabilities. Their different approaches to global value chains and trade globalization reinforced such discrepancy in domestic accumulati ...

En dépit d’une diminution du contrôle des changes, le cours d’une devise continue de se jouer, jusqu’ici encore, en fonction de l’importance du poids considérable des relations financières qu’elle permet et facilite. Autant la monnaie américaine demeurait la devise-clé, en raison de la puissance tant économique que sécuritaire qu’elle reflète, autant l’Euro et le Yen n’en sont pas moins bien présents, également, sur les marchés que dans les réserves monétaires des divers pays. Certe ...

South Korea’s history of rapid industrialization and its long-standing alliance with the United States have shaped national state logic to a large extent around a desire to strictly comply with the common norms for aid in the international community, and to affirm itself as a large conventional donor, often at odds with attempts to introduce a more innovative image of South Korea by designing unique Official Development Assistance (ODA) models to be implemented in developing countri ...

Héros méconnus de la lutte contre le Covid-19, les professionnels du secteur de la santé publique ont assuré leurs charges avec des ressources qui se sont avérées insuffisantes : le déficit de personnels spécialisés, amplifié par des problèmes de logistique, ont fortement porté préjudice à l’efficacité de leurs actions. Face à cette situation contraignante, nombreux sont les Etats qui ont appelé leurs armées en renfort, eu égard à leur expertise en matière de gestion des risques, me ...

Les tensions dans les relations entre les Etats-Unis et la Chine sont un sujet de préoccupation pour le monde. En dépit des quelques ouvertures éphémères, qui donnent parfois espoir à la détente, la tendance de ces derniers temps est plutôt vers l’escalade. Il ne se passe pas un mois, voire une semaine sans qu’actions, déclarations ou positions de l’un des deux pays contre l’autre ne fasse la Une de l’actualité. Des incidents les plus dangereux en Mer de Chine méridionale, aux mesur ...

Les rumeurs autour de la pandémie Covid-19, partie de la Chine centrale en minovembre 2019, alimentent plusieurs fantasmes conspirationnistes. Il s’agit, notamment, d’hypothèse d’attaque biologique sur fond d’une guerre commerciale ou d’une fuite du pathogène SARS Co-V2 d’un programme biologique chinois. En marge de cette spirale, au demeurant spéculative, se réactualise le débat sur l’emploi des armes biologiques. En fait, plusieurs germes pathogènes d’origine naturelle, génétique ...

We are entering an economic cycle with a changing nature of consumption focusing on necessities. It seems like the times of luxury, entertainment and vacations are over, at least until the discovery of a vaccine for COVID-19. The unfolding of the health crisis that we have been witnessing in Italy, Spain and other advanced economies will not be as severe as the economic crisis that the Coronavirus will unleash. The International Monetary Fund has been warning us that the financial ...

Our Senior Fellow, Len Ishmael has contributed to the Quarterly Journal by Beyond the Horizon ISSG (Volume 3 Issue 1), under the theme « Influencing and Promoting Global Peace and Security Horizon Insights », with a Policy Paper where she addresses China’s use of crises to « deepen and extend power and influence in Europe and the world ». Standing in solidarity with countries in Europe and elsewhere in the fight against COVID-19, China scores a diplomatic coup and extends its claim ...

Les investissements japonais en Afrique sont en plein essor. Ils sont passés de 758 millions de dollars, en 2000, à 7,8 milliards en 2017, fruit de la présence sur le continent de près de 796 entreprises nippones. Troisième puissance économique et deuxième puissance industrielle mondiale, après la Chine et les Etats-Unis, le Japon est le cinquième donateur mondial en matière d’aide bilatérale à l’Afrique. Malgré sa discrétion et la compétition des autres puissances étrangères présen ...

Decades of rapid economic growth have dramatically expanded China’s energy needs. The magnitudes are impressive. China is now the world’s largest consumer of energy, the largest producer and consumer of coal, and the largest emitter of carbon dioxide. It is increasingly looking toward securing its future energy needs with sustainable alternatives. China has also become the world’s largest producer, exporter and installer of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles, ...

Les relations du Japon avec le Maghreb sont alimentées par des éléments de projection très diversifiés, inégaux, vers des pays et des sociétés qui intéressent le Japon par eux-mêmes, mais dont l’importance est renforcée par leurs articulations avec les maillages, africain et moyen oriental. La décennie actuelle ne constitue pas le moment le plus fort de ces relations. La coopération entre le Japon et les pays du Maghreb reste significative, cependant. Les possibilités de développeme ...

From 2010 onwards, China has become a relevant foreign investor in Brazil, mainly through State-owned companies investing in infrastructure – particularly in the energy sector. In the first years of the current decade, Chinese investment has been widely welcomed in an environment characterized by declining investment rates and low economic growth. However, more recently, some concerns have been raised of an “excessive” dependence of China state companies in sectors perceived as stra ...

There is no doubt that the ascension of China, which is at the centre of the global debate, is the most relevant fact of the 21st century. A rising power with many vulnerabilities, yet a clear understanding of what they are and with the willingness to actively reduce them to a minimum, manageable level. China has managed to become, after all, the second largest economy in the world, with outstanding economic performance. Globalisation has brought China from the periphery into the co ...

Reform and Opening-up profoundly altered the face of China. From an agricultural backwards country, which had suffered humiliation by Western powers and Japan in the 19thand early 20th century, to the largest economy in the world in Purchasing Power Parity terms, the Chinese saga for reinsertion into the global scene is not a miracle. It is the result of hard work, visionary leadership and the wise use of its most widely available commodity: its hard-working people. Of course, there ...

China’s economic growth has been in a downslide trend since 2011, while its economic structure has gradually rebalanced toward lower dependence on investments and current-account surpluses. Steadiness in that trajectory has been accompanied by rising levels of domestic private debt, as well as slow progress in rebalancing private and public sector roles. As the ongoing trade war with the US continues to unfold, it remains unclear at which growth pace China’s rebalancing will tend to ...

The African arena is but an episode in the China-USA soap opera. Nevertheless, given the continent's significance in terms of opportunities for major powers, it is also a space where their rivalry comes to the fore. This is the lens through which the beginning of Africa's return to the American agenda can be seen. ...

The Beijing Declaration “Toward and Even Stronger China-Africa Community with a Shared Future” - and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Beijing Action Plan (2019-2021), resulting from the last FOCAC held on September the 3rd and 4th 2018, in Beijing, showed the China-Africa cooperation will increase deeper in the near future, clearly demonstrating a new era for both China and Africa. FOCAC currently comprises China and 53 African countries.  China, slowly but surely, is ...

“A WAKE UP CALL FOR THE WORLD” For Simon Elin, chief executive of the British Recycling Association, it’s “a tough time” his industry and country are facing just now. He does not think about Brexit, Britain trying to leave the E.U., dreaming to return to glorious times as a world power, one day soon. His colleague Arnaud Brunet, head of the Bureau of International Recycling, predicted “catastrophic environmental problems.” An assessment the London Times shared: “The world is drowni ...

Historians often offer different interpretations of the events that have shaped our destiny, yet, with respect to World War 2, the bloodiest conflict in history, they seem to concur on two points. First, that those yearning for peace underestimated the National Socialists’ determination to wage a war of conquest until it was far too late to deter them, and, second, that Nazi Germany failed to anticipate that Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union – each of which it provok ...

Over the past decade, an increasing number of emerging markets has joined the liquefied natural gas (LNG) import club. From 7 countries in 2010, they were 17 in 2017: from traditionally export-oriented regions (such as the Middle East and North Africa) facing burgeoning gas and electricity demand, from emerging economies with growing energy needs (Southeast Asia), from countries facing severe energy and gas shortages and willing to replace imported oil in power generation (South Asi ...

Donald Trump, a golf addict with a self-declared handicap of 3, is not noted for any chess enthusiasm, although the game is a simulation of a battle, and filled with military terminology such as double attack, demolition, breakthrough, decoying, interception, blockade, and x-ray attack among others. The historic game is intellectual, structured, and logic. The object is to maneuver the antagonist’s king into a position from which escape is impossible. The two contenders - at times - ...

La conférence organisée par l'Institut Montaigne et l'OCP Policy Center à Paris le 12 avril a abordé la question de l'investissement étranger dans une Afrique perçue à la fois comme une menace et un nouvel eldorado en Europe. "L’Afrique et l’Europe sont dans une même voiture, à  l’avenir elles peuvent aller très haut et très vite ou se fracasser contre un mur", a affirmé Jean-Michel Huet, consutant pour Bearing Point. Son regret : que l'Afrique soit un sujet encore très peu perçu pa ...

The launch of an oil futures contract on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) cannot be merely seen as a “technical” or secondary event, as it foreshadows what global commodities markets will become in a few years. The Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) and the Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) have, indeed, seen their trading volumes increase significantly over the past decade thanks to steel and iron ore, which could suggest that the move is, in fact, not that unprecedente ...

Le lancement d’un contrat à terme pétrolier sur le Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) ne saurait être vu comme un évènement « technique » ou secondaire tant il préfigure ce que seront dans quelques années les marchés mondiaux de matières premières. Le Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) et le Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) ont certes vu leurs volumes de trading augmenter considérablement sur la dernière décennie grâce à l’acier et au minerai de fer, ce qui pourrait laisser à ...

The young women sitting in the Olympic ice hockey stadium of Kwandong, South Korea, were dressed like a group of gorgeous stewardesses on an outing after graduating from flight school, or as if they were celebrating the survival of an emergency landing. They applauded in a very methodical fashion, a well-studied rhythm that their eternal Supreme leader Kim Jong-Un certainly did not learn at his Swiss boarding school “Liebefeld Steinhoelzi” near Bern, Switzerland. Who dares to confir ...