Joshua Cooper Ramo

Supported by Hill & Knowlton

February 2007

Download Brand China (260 kilobyte PDF)

In this new report, from the author of the widely discussed paper 'The Beijing Consensus', Ramo argues that China's national image, and the misalignment between China's image of itself and how it is viewed by the rest of the world, may be its greatest strategic threat. It argues that alongside its other reforms, China needs a 'fifth transition' if the trust and understanding necessary for the next stage of its development are to be achieved.

This paper has been kindly supported by Hill & Knowlton.

Christopher J Forster

April 2006

Download China's Secret Weapon (320 kilobyte PDF)

Preface by Lord Charles Powell of Bayswater

The Wall Street Journal reported recently how foreign-invested R&D centres in China have almost quadrupled to 750 over the last four years. The Foreign Policy Centre report bears this out with statistics showing that China is now ranked third in the world for total R&D spending. It estimates that by 2010 China will have the same number of science and engineering graduates as the United States. The idea that China is a sweat-shop economy is very dated. Instead it is a growing challenge to the previously comfortable technological lead of the Western countries.

Further information 

Seema Desai

January 2006

Download the report (250 kilobyte PDF)

As the centre of gravity in the world's economy continues to move east, it appears increasingly anachronistic that the only Asian country represented at the G8 table is Japan, by all accounts a stagnating economic and political power in the world. The time is approaching for China to be invited to be a full member of the G8, and for the new G9 or G10 (if India is included) to focus on its central objective: to preside over and guide the world's economy.

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Andrew Small

November 2005

Download Preventing the Next Cold War (360 kilobyte PDF)

2005 has seen the emergence of political dynamics and shifts in thinking in both Washington and Beijing that risk tipping US-China relations over into a state of open geopolitical rivalry unless there are concerted attempts at conflict prevention.

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Yongjin Zhang

April 2005

Download China Goes Global (310 kilobyte PDF)

In China Goes Global, Yongjin Zhang looks at how engagement with globalisation is changing the Chinese state – and how China in turn is affecting the global economy. He argues that China's astronomical growth figures have obscured its transformative effects.

Accession to the WTO has led to a massive increase in trade – but also to a growing commitment to free trade and the global economic system

Chinese companies are 'going global', acquiring energy assets, listing in international stock markets and becoming serious global investors

As 'the world's factory', China is now shaping the changing dynamics of global supply and demand; and leading the wider shift towards a truly globalised economy.

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Angie Austin

April 2005

Download Energy and Power in China (310 kilobyte PDF)

The USA, EU and Britain have all recognised that domestic regulation of China's growing energy use and power industries constitute a 'global good', but the EU and Britain only recently instituted bilateral programs for promoting more efficient energy use by China through support of better domestic regularoty regimes.

This pamphlet urges the EU and Britain to urgently adjust their priorities for development cooperation with China in order to devote significantly more resources to the promotion of more effective regulation in China's energy sector.

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Dr Greg Austin

April 2005 Hard copy: £2.95, plus £1 p+p. Buy it on CentralBooks.co.uk

Download China Arms Ban (260 kilobyte PDF)

The European decision to lift the 1989 arms embargo targeted exclusively against China has encountered strong resistance from the US, particularly the Congress, and other allies including Japan. This new report from the Foreign Policy Centre argues that the dispute is damaging and unnecessary, and the result of a failure in European public diplomacy rather than a serious transatlantic policy disagreement. The lifting of the embargo will not change the military balance in East Asia nor affect the Chinese calculus of risk over the use of force against Taiwan; it is also ineffective as a mechanism to compel China's leadership to improve its domestic human rights policies.

As a result, the move has emerged as a test of Europe's new security policy, and of its ability to communicate decisions to key allies and stakeholders. European leaders must take their case to US Congress leaders through a vigorous public diplomacy campaign, to convince them that the EU will continue to restrict arms to China effectively even after the 1989 ban is lifted.

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