Tabadlab's Dragon Road

The G7 recently announced the Build Back Better World Partnership (B3W), a commitment to invest up to $40 trillion to plug the infrastructure gap in low- and middle-income countries exacerbated by the Covid-19 crisis. The B3W is pitched as a challenge to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and a key part of the US plan to counter China’s growing global influence. For this week’s episode of Dragon Road we are joined by Jonathan Hillman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Jonathan has also recently authored a book titled “ The Emperor’s New Road, China and the Project of the Century”. The conversation for this week’s edition is centered around a comparison between the US backed B3W and China’s BRI. Our guest Jonathan dissects the merits and demerits of B3W and draws parallels between this project and previous US efforts to counter China, like the Blue Dot Network.

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi recently hosted a delegation of the Taliban, led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Tianjin. The meeting highlighted Beijing’s balancing act — of seeing both an opportunity and a threat in Afghanistan in the backdrop of the withdrawal of US troops. This is not the first time that China has made an outreach to the Taliban. The Afghan militant group has visited China before, and the Chinese maintain regular channels of communication and contact through the Taliban’s Doha office. However, the recent Taliban visit has the markings of one that was put together over a short period. As Chinese skepticism about the U.S’s withdrawal strategy has increased in recent times, the Ministry of Foriegn Affairs in Beijing has also been vary of America supporting military groups in Afghanistan to attack China. This episode of Dragon Road discusses this and more about the future of China in Afghanistan. Raffaello Pantucci an expert on China gives his views in this detailed discussion about China, its relations with the Ghani Government, its dealings with Taliban, its interests in the region and its reservations with the US exit.

Guest: Peter Martin, Defence Policy and Intelligence Reporter at Bloomberg. Revered in China’s diplomatic corps as the founding father of Chinese diplomacy, Zhou Enlai established the militaristic culture within the foreign office in the early days of the People’s Republic. Yet, for decades, China’s low-key and passive approach to its diplomatic relations prevailed. The more combative style of diplomacy exemplified by, for instance, a former Chinese diplomat in Pakistan Zhao Lijian, is a more recent phenomenon shaped by external and internal changes. In this episode of Dragon Road, host Arif Rafiq discusses this “wolf warrior” diplomacy with journalist and author of China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, Peter Martin. Martin explains the reasons behind the transition from Deng Xiaoping’s cautious approach to President Xi Jinping’s muscular direction. He also speaks about how this brand of nationalism is resonating within China and in countries such as Hungary, the Philippines and Russia, even as some in the Chinese foreign policy establishment quietly express their reservations. Speckled with historic anecdotes, the discussion examines the effectiveness of wolf-warrior diplomacy in the context of changing perceptions of global US leadership post-Trump and China’s own economic self-confidence. About the guest: Peter Martin is a political reporter for Bloomberg News. He has written extensively on escalating tensions in the US-China relationship and reported from China's border with North Korea and its far-western region of Xinjiang. His latest book, China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, focuses on those on the front line of China's transformation from an isolated and impoverished communist state to a global superpower: China's diplomats.