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This article introduces a special section that explores the international effects of populism, focusing on its impact on foreign policy-making, agenda, and outcomes, as well as states' stances towards international institutions. The authors propose a theoretical framework that considers the diversity among populist governments and how the authoritarian character of populism explains variations in international outcomes. The section includes articles on topics such as the transformation of foreign policy institutions, the response of the foreign policy establishment to populism, and the effects of populist securitization on foreign policy. These articles provide insights into the challenges and prospects of populism in the contemporary international order. Additionally, a policy paper examines the emergence of the American New Right and its visions for US foreign policy. The New Right, consisting of the Claremonters, post-liberals, and national conservatives, is led by figures like Yoram Hazony. The paper discusses the New Right's efforts to establish an alternative ideational infrastructure and its potential impact on US foreign policy, suggesting a shift from Europe to Asia rather than neo-isolationism. [Extracted from the article]

This text discusses the shifting global order and the changing dynamics of international relations, particularly in relation to the conflict in Ukraine. It highlights the tensions between the US and Russia and suggests that Russia is seeking to forge stronger alliances with countries like China and North Korea to challenge the Western-dominated global order. The text also suggests that a multipolar world order is emerging, with power being distributed among various nations and organizations. It emphasizes the need for inclusivity, fair trade practices, and adherence to international law in this new world order, and highlights Japan's role in promoting peace, security, and sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the lack of representation and inclusion of perspectives from the Global South in the field of International Relations (IR). It highlights the dominance of Western perspectives and theories in IR, while marginalizing critical theories and perspectives from the Global South. The article argues for the need to incorporate diverse perspectives and theories from the Global South to create a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of international relations. It also discusses the implications of Western norms and institutions in global governance and the need to challenge colonial/Western narratives in IR. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of evolving IR theory to reflect global changes and the rise of emerging countries in the Global South. [Extracted from the article]

Announcing a 'no limits friendship' on the sidelines of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, Russia and China pledged to establish a close partnership and far-reaching cooperation on the international stage. However, despite these rhetorical commitments, the growing presence of China and Russia in Africa reveals competition rather than robust collaboration. As Russia and China seek to increase their influence on the continent, their partnership is hampered by their respective interests and objectives. Furthermore, their inherently opposing approach to engagement with Africa produces an antagonistic dynamic in which the actions of each undermine the goals pursued by the other. The African scene thus highlights the limits of the Sino-Russian partnership as well as the realities of their national priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the historical conflicts and tensions between Russia and China, focusing on border disputes and the Sino-Soviet Split. The authors argue that climate change has the potential to further strain the Sino-Russian relationship, which could pose a threat to US national and international security. While Russia and China currently have strong trade ties, the authors suggest that their ability to cooperate or find common ground may be limited, potentially leading to deteriorating relations in the long run. The article also discusses the potential impact of climate change on both countries, with Russia potentially benefiting while China faces challenges in food production. Additionally, the document examines the possibility of China expanding into Russian farmland to address its food scarcity concerns, which has already caused tensions due to the movement of Chinese laborers into the Russian Far East. The document explores historical examples of Chinese expansion into Russian territory and considers the potential consequences for Sino-Russian relations. It also offers strategies for the United States to navigate this potential rift between China and Russia. [Extracted from the article]

Recent analyses of the relations between Russia and China over the issue of energy have principally focused on the influence of exogenous forces, but have seldom addressed the intrinsic motivations that have shaped this energy partnership from within. This article argues that this oversight can be remedied through an analysis of the regime that gives prominence to the internal interactions of relevant stakeholders. By examining the three constituent elements of this energy partnership - interest articulation, negotiation mechanisms, and mutual recognition - this article argues that developments of relevant internal factors are generating cohesive forces that strengthen the partnership from within, thereby fleshing out a resilient energy regime that is becoming self-sustaining and even self-reinforcing. In addition to shedding novel light on the nature of the Russia-China energy partnership, a regime analysis provides valuable insights into its future trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the Russo-Chinese relationship within the context of contemporary geopolitical dynamics, emphasizing how both nations manipulate historical narratives to support their political agendas, notably in the wake of the Russo-Ukrainian War. It also discusses the legacy of artistic collaboration between Russia and China, as reflected in Shanshan Xia's documentary "October: The Unrealized Century," which explores shared ideals from the revolutionary periods of both countries.

International systems of three great powers, tripolar systems, remain an understudied topic. In this article, I make three claims about tripolarity. First, it is more warlike than either bipolarity or multipolarity. Second, the two weaker poles of a tripolar system usually ally against the most powerful one. Third, when a pole abruptly declines, the two others have a strong incentive to race to prey on it. To demonstrate this, I develop three cases of past tripolar systems rarely discussed: the Epigoni period during the third century B.C. (Eastern Mediterranean system), the period of the Three Kingdoms during the third century A.D. and the period of the late Northern and Southern Dynasties during the sixth century (East Asian system). This study is thus of importance not only for international relations theory but also for understanding current great power relations since today's world also consists of three poles: China, Russia and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This historiographical study examines the Russian Orthodox Mission in Beijing from 1715 to 1956, revealing its historical impact on Christianity in China and Sino–Russian cultural exchanges. The research explores how the Mission functioned not only as a religious entity but also influenced diplomatic ties and scholarly pursuits, as documented in both Chinese and Russian historiographies. This study utilizes contemporary sources, exploring Chinese narratives to re-evaluate historical perspectives, and portrays the Mission as a critical mediator in Sino–Russian relations. An examination of the historical context shows that the Mission has undergone a transformation over time. It has evolved from an influential ecclesiastical presence to a cultural and diplomatic agency unobtrusively entered into Chinese society. From the mid-18th to the early 20th century, the Mission adapted to the local environment by combining the transmission of religious doctrine with engagement in China's political and cultural contexts. The article proposes a holistic interpretation of the Mission's function, encompassing not only evangelism but also diplomatic engagements, and adding to the multifaceted discourse within Chinese cultural heritage. In summary, the article recommends exploring the enduring impact and historical complexities of the Russian Orthodox Mission as it is grounded in a broader framework of global movements. The research suggests that it may be beneficial to broaden the scope of historiographic narratives to encompass a diverse range of interdisciplinary studies that reflect the complexity of the Mission's enduring impact and its role in shaping a shared global history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategic narratives have become an important tool with which states define their geopolitical reality and shape the types of foreign policy decisions that emerge. In order to build a more favourable international environment, China has deployed substantial resources to disseminate its strategic narratives and communicate its role, identity and vision and legitimise Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule. Despite the obvious importance of narratives on conflict and global security, remarkably few studies have examined China's strategic narratives on security-related issues. This article marks the first systematic effort to map out China's strategic narratives in the context of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Based on a corpus linguistics approach and qualitative content analysis, the findings reveal that China does not project itself as a neutral player and that its strategic narratives often echo Russia's portrayal of the Ukrainian war. However, the analysis also highlights China's efforts to maintain its distance from Russia while presenting itself against the backdrop of the US/West-Russian rivalry as an equidistant player belonging to the wider international community as well as the most suitable actor to manage a peaceful global order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crisis today in Ukraine between Russia and the West has uncanny parallels to an often-overlooked Cold War conflict between China, the Soviet Union, and the United States known as "The Taiwan Straits Crisis of 1958" or "The Second Taiwan Straits Crisis" – which some analysts have referred to as the first serious nuclear crisis. In addition to worries about nuclear escalation, there are other similarities: Russia and China viewed themselves, then and now, as exceptional nations, superior to a decadent, materialist America thought to be in decline – but still carrying dangerous military clout. Faced with a strong West, the leaders of China and Russia in the 1950s tried to present a united, Sino-Russian public front, even if their two countries were fundamentally split over the issues that led to the Taiwan Straits Crisis. If the past is any guide, then despite economic pressure from the United States and the loss of international reputation, China is unlikely to ever join the US-led sanctions against Russia. As the conflict deepens, both dictators' assessments of the strength and intentions of the United States might begin to diverge, opening a way for their rivals to drive a wedge between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the post-Cold War era, China has committed to creating a strategic partnership with Russia. Doing so is a key part of China's foreign strategy of restoring its past glory as a great power, with this partnership as the strategic fulcrum for its "peaceful" rise at the systemic or global level. It also reflects China's desire to intensify cooperation with its largest neighbour to sustain economic growth. By formulating a strategic partnership, China wishes to re-shape the current global order and counterattack its perceived containment of its rise by the US. By intensifying cooperation, particularly around the economy and resource development, China hopes to sustain the growth that its political leaders have long considered as underlying China's "hard" power and rejuvenation. By expanding their military collaboration, China aspires to accelerate the PLA's modernization and work with Russia to contain US military unilateralism and hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights the significant advancements in China's international relations in 2023, led by President Xi Jinping's successful diplomatic engagements, which strengthened global cooperation and showcased China's achievements. Topics include the success of head-of-state diplomacy, progress in building a community with a shared future for mankind, and the successful Belt and Road Forum, emphasizing China's commitment to inclusive globalization and cooperation for a brighter future.

This research examines the Russia-China alliance after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, which impacted the world and led to polarity in international politics. The United States and its western allies have tried to weaken Russia's dominance economically and politically. At the same time, China has supported and strengthened cooperation with Russia. This study uses a qualitative method by analyzing and critically reading the data collected through literature study. The result found that the expansion of NATO membership triggers Russia to act because of external threats. The West agreed to embargoes and sanctions against Russia, affecting 90% of Russian oil and gas markets. However, Russia showed its strength and warned of nuclear threats. This study also contends that amid the US pressure that caused Russia to lose its Western buyers, China backed Russia and became its potential oil buyer. The US pressure on Russia has brought Russia-China even closer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sino-Russian relations have thrived in the post–Cold War era. While the relationship has attracted ample academic attention, many of the underlying factors contributing to the bilateral rapprochement over the past three decades remain un(der)explored. This article examines the role played by one of the factors involved in this process: the development of institutional links between the two states. Bilateral institutions, which were largely absent until the mid-1990s, have rapidly proliferated into a dense network of commissions and subcommissions, working groups, and other institutionalised exchanges, encompassing virtually all sectors of interaction between China and Russia. The article employs analytical concepts borrowed from Institutionalist theory and develops criteria of analysis to assess the extent to which the process of bilateral institution-building has contributed to promoting and perpetuating Sino-Russian rapprochement, enabling the two states to forge a closer working relationship with each other. The article also examines what the limits of this process have been. It concludes that the practical impact of bilateral institution-building on policy-making has been modest; however, the institutions have come to constitute important forums to secure a regular exchange and familiarisation between senior decision-makers and stakeholders, allowing for an active communication of important information and mutual assurances regarding each country's policy choices, intentions, and concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews Mr. Chen Jianhua's academic activities from two aspects. One is Mr. Chen Jianhua's academic pursuits, mainly introducing Mr. Chen Jianhua's achievements in the study of Russian literature, the study of Sino-Russian literary relations and the academic history of Chinese foreign literature. The other is Mr. Chen Jianhua and the construction of Russian literature discipline at East China Normal University, mainly introducing: (1) Mr. Chen Jianhua's teaching activities and discipline team building; (2) Mr. Chen Jianhua's research on the history of discipline of Russian literature at East China Normal University; (3) How Mr. Chen Jianhua inherits the disciplinary tradition of Russian literature research at ECNU in foreign exchanges. Mr. Chen Jianhua's academic activities and rigorous academic style have made outstanding contributions to the academic history of foreign literature and the construction of foreign literature disciplines in contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ten Lectures on Chinese-Russian Literary Relations is a new important book by famous Chinese scholar of Russian literature Professor Chen Jianhua. The monograph is valuable not only for deep analysis, thorough fact-checking and massive data, but also for navigation instructions to all scholars, who are involved in the study of Russian-Chinese literary communication. This paper tries to mirror the analysis by Chen Jianhua of the perception of Russian literature in China in order to discuss the translations and study of Chinese literature in Russia. It has been discovered that though two countries strive to achieve certain balance in literary exchange, each of them not only demonstrates common tendencies, but also retains important differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a Chinese scholar of the academic circle Leo Tolstoy studies after the reform and opening up, Chen Jianhua has made significant achievements both in the study of Tolstoy's creative works and in that of Tolstoy's life in the perspective of comparative literature and academic history. His concepts of Tolstoy's novels, such as "antipodes" and "the unity of subject participation and aesthetic distance," have renovated the domestic academic circle's understanding of Tolstoy's novels in terms of the art of creative writing and characterization techniques. In the field of Sino-Russian literary relations, Chen Jianhua, with his broad vision and dialectical historical outlook, has sorted out the historical context of Tolstoy's acceptance in our academic circles, comprehensively studied Tolstoy's thought and aesthetics from the Chinese perspective, insightfully pointed out Tolstoy's influence on the construction and development of Chinese culture, and constructed the image of this great writer as a whole in China. He is a scholar who has made significant contributions to the systematic study of Leo Tolstoy in China from these two aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among analysts of China-Russia relations, it has been common to assume that bilateral rapprochement has primarily been rooted in geopolitical, security, and balance-of-power considerations. This article argues that the corresponding Realist theoretical approaches can explain some important incentives for Sino-Russian rapprochement, but struggle to account for how substantive bilateral alignment has actually become. The article posits that a particularly useful theoretical approach for examining the motives underlying Sino-Russian strategic alignment is "Omnibalancing" – a variation of balance-of-power theory that combines considerations of system-level balancing with a simultaneous focus on both leaderships' prioritization of domestic threats and regime security. Due to the increasing convergence of their authoritarian regime types, a major factor accounting for the dynamism of China-Russia strategic cooperation has been both governments' shared concern for regime survival/legitimacy, and their concrete policy cooperation in recent years has reflected their preoccupation with shoring up regime security against domestic challenges to authoritarian rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the post-Cold War era, the transformation of relations between Russia and China is inseparable from the reinvention of Eurasia, which is at the heart of the new alliance between the two major continental powers. The revisionist strategies of Putin's Russia and Xi Jinping's China depend on Sino-Russian convergence. Moscow and Beijing have begun to build an alternative order based on the multilateral organization of the Eurasian space, whose counterpoint is the United States' strategy in the Indo-Pacific. This process paves the way for China's emergence as the leading Eurasian power for the first time in international history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Russia has gradually lost influence in peripheral states that traditionally used to gravitate around Moscow. China's significant investments in infrastructure development and trade with Central Asian states have isolated Russia, causing it to lose its importance and guiding role in the region. At the same time, Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine has led to a complete breakdown in Russian-European relations and increased cohesion among Western nations. Although Russia has lost its role as the world's second-largest power to China, Sino-Russian relations remain a vital issue in regional and international dynamics due to the conjunctural alliance designed to shake the leading role of the US in the global security architecture. The struggle between the West and Russia creates imbalances throughout the international system, and the current World Order seems more disrupted than ever in the last 30 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I conceive four counterfactuals – three miracle and one plausible world counterfactuals – to probe the causes and contingency of Chinese policy toward the Russia-Ukraine conflict before and after the 2022 invasion. The first two miracle counterfactuals – criticizing the 2014 Crimea annexation and warning against the 2022 invasion – would not have changed Putin's mind. The third miracle counterfactual of Chinese opposition to the invasion would have hastened the end of the war. The fourth, plausible world counterfactual requires China to reduce material support for Russia and would have made Putin realize the desirability of a peaceful settlement. China's influence on Putin was limited, and it could not have prevented the war. I nevertheless use counterfactuals to highlight possible alternative worlds of Chinese policy and suggest potential roles China could have played in the Ukraine war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Russian Orthodox Community in Hong Kong: Religion, Ethnicity, and Intercultural Relations" by Loretta E. Kim and Chengyi Zhou is a well-researched study that explores the presence and impact of the Russian Orthodox community in Hong Kong. The authors argue that despite its small size, the community plays a significant role in Sino-Russian relations, Christianity in China, and the religious and ethnic minority landscape in Hong Kong. The book examines the community's history, demographics, religious practices, outreach mechanisms, and intercultural interactions, shedding light on its importance in the city. While the book provides valuable insights, some limitations are acknowledged, such as a limited coverage of the early phase of Russian presence and a lack of analysis of recent developments. Overall, the book offers an engaging and informative perspective on the Russian Orthodox community in Hong Kong and its impact on intercultural dynamics in China. [Extracted from the article]

China became financially dependent on the European powers after its defeat in the war with Japan (1894-1895). These were mainly Russia, Great Britain, France, and Germany, which began to seek economic concessions and define their spheres of influence in China. Russia took the first steps in this direction. The event that accelerated the process was the German occupation of the area around Jiaozhou Bay in Shandong Province in November 1897. Russia placed increased pressure on China. The entire region north of the Great Wall was recognized as its sphere of influence. Russia also leased the ports of Port Arthur and Dalian. Until then, Britain had been opposed to defining spheres of influence, as the British assumed that their economic power would give them dominance in China. However, under the pressure of new circumstances, London changed its mind and joined the struggle for concessions and the establishing spheres of influence. Britain leased the port of Weihaiwei, and the rich Yangtze valley was recognized as its sphere of influence. Around the same time, French interest in southern China prevailed, resulting in the lease of Guangzhouwan. Although it seemed to contemporaries that this development could eventually lead to the division of China among the great powers, their rivalry was one of the main reasons why it did not happen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As far as space technology cooperation is concerned, China and Russia took the Ukraine crisis in 2014 as the dividing line. The content and methods of cooperation between the two countries have undergone significant changes, making the cooperation from simple to complicated. Meanwhile, the space technology cooperation between China and Russia will definitely shape the structure of power in space geopolitics among China and Russia and US, which helps to create a balance of power and prevent the emergence of a Kindleberger trap in space geopolitics, but to a certain extent, will in turn restrict China-Russia space technology cooperation and have an important impact on China-Russia strategic partnership of coordination. The deepening of space technology cooperation between China and Russia may increasingly show the nature of power competition in space geopolitics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine how mutual perception and role expectation evolve over time between China and Russia on each other's position in the international system and on bilateral relations in the context of shifting perceptions of the "Big Triangle" between the United States, Russia, and China since the late 1990s. Building on Role Theory in international relations, I use official texts, and experts' opinions during a series of key policy episodes to demonstrate that constantly adjusting role expectations and role enactment has become an important part of official Sino-Russian inter-state relations. Such relations have evolved from a more conservative, mutual role expectation of "do-no-harm" to more proactive expectations of joint efforts and policy coordination. This changing role expectation comes along with mutual reassurance against role mismanagement when both seek to substantiate the role of "significant others" beyond traditional military allies. During the 2010s, Sino-Russian bilateral relations started to be increasingly shaped by a discussion about the salience of US-China-Russia "Big Triangle." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russian and Soviet governments believed the border to be a social and political construct. They often described and considered it as a foreign policy issue and a point of military vulnerability. In the course of 70 years of Sino-Russian relations since 1949, the border turned from a porous imperial fringe to a line of defense, a zone of economic growth, and a zone of economic anxiety. Throughout this evolution process, the Russian central government failed to grant agency to the local authorities and indigenous communities. The article argues that the current Russian federal government entrusts the local government with two conflicting goals in the borderlands: building strong cross-border ties and maintaining a "strong vertical of power" with top-down management and absolute supremacy of national security matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As two influential countries in the global grain production and marketing system, China and Russia have increasingly strengthened their agricultural, economic, and trade cooperation. There are few papers that have considered trade relations from the perspective of the growth effect of grain exports, and it is necessary to fill this gap by systematically sorting the grain trade between the two countries and clarifying the growth effect and influencing factors in this paper. By comparing and analyzing the quantitative and structural characteristics of grain trade between China and Russia between 1996 and 2020, this study used the H–K marginal analysis method to explore the growth path and influencing factors of the export trade of grain products between China and Russia. The results show that the main driving force of the export growth of Russian and Chinese grain products is the price margin, which presents a growth pattern dominated by price and complemented by type and quantity. The empirical analysis of the gravity model shows that the size of the agricultural economy, grain productivity, trade cost, and economic shocks have significant impacts on bilateral trade. In view of this, the status of international agricultural cooperation between China and Russia will be further optimized if they can optimize trade policies to improve the quality of trade development, build cross-border cooperation parks to construct the layout of the whole industrial chain, strengthen infrastructure construction, and deepen and expand interconnectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The presidential administration, arguably the most powerful and least transparent part of the Russian government, is the control center for influence operations, as documented by researcher Mark Galeotti.[42] It sets priorities and controls the various arms of government. On March 18, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin strode into the Kremlin's gold-drenched Georgievsky reception hall to announce the annexation of Crimea. Gates notes that "[a]side from some covert propaganda infiltrated into Central Asia in the mid-1980s highlighting Soviet repression of Islam and Central Asian culture, CIA did not stir up trouble for the central government."[13] A 1989 study of US government decision-making noted that "covert actions aimed directly at the Soviet Bloc have been limited ... "[14] Overt US Information Efforts The US Information Agency (USIA) was the visible counterpart to the CIA's invisible hand. Hardly any of this had existed during the Cold War, when the US government's only real mechanism for supporting nongovernmental partners was the intelligence community, a bureaucratic practicality that dovetailed with the conviction, going back to the Eisenhower administration, that overt ties to the United States must be kept to a minimum for messages to be effective.[32] A paucity of media mentions of comparable CIA programs in the 2000s does not constitute proof of their absence, but in light of the extensive coverage that other CIA programs received in the same period, it suggests less action in the shadows than in the light. [Extracted from the article]

Using the case of a 1962 incident involving Hungarian railway experts in China, this article examines the relationship between political disputes and economic cooperation. It seeks to answer the questions of why, how and for how long could economic, and scientific and technological cooperation be maintained between Hungary, a country belonging to the Soviet sphere of interest, and China, which increasingly regarded the Soviet Union as an enemy, in a period of political disputes and deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations. Relying mainly on Hungarian archival documents, including minutes of HSWP Central Committee and Politburo meetings, Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports and analyses, and Ganz-MÁVAG files, the article argues that while the deterioration of Sino-Hungarian political relations went hand in hand with the worsening of Sino-Soviet relations, the break in trade, and scientific and technological cooperation, happened slower. Although, as political disputes escalated, the Chinese made interstate relations with the Soviet bloc countries increasingly difficult, the Beijing leadership sought to maintain partnerships in areas that it found beneficial for China's economy. As the Sino-Hungarian economic and technological disputes fit into a larger Sino-Soviet political conflict, the article puts the case of Ganz-MÁVAG Locomotive and Railway Carriage Manufacturers and Mechanical Engineers Hungary in context by reviewing the process of deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations and its influence on Sino-Hungarian relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the Sino–Soviet Alliance of the 1950s and the subsequent split have received increasing attention in research. Most studies, however, focus on (geo)political questions, with the economic side of alliance and split regarded as an appendix. Thus, this special issue turns to the economic dimensions of the Sino–Soviet Alliance and split. The introduction puts the topics of the special issue into the larger context of global post-war economic expansion and the moving international order. It highlights how the contributions to the special issue show that economic dimensions of East–East interactions are misunderstood if seen only through a narrative of failure or as secondary to Cold War geopolitics. Sino–Soviet exchanges were part of global circulations of knowledge, commodities and resources. The economic residues of the Sino–Soviet Alliance lasted longer than the dozen years before the split. The participation of the Eastern European countries in the technology transfer was considerable, as were the repercussions of these transfers on the Eastern European societies. The different economic bureaucracies' varying reactions to the Sino–Soviet split are also an important point in the contributions. These actors' rationales went beyond geopolitics, security and autarky, and did include economic considerations, blurring the clarity of a socialist, Stalinist or Soviet development model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828–89) is best known for his utopian realist novel What Is to Be Done? (1863). However, he was perhaps most celebrated as a literary thinker in China as a result of the Soviet canonization of the nineteenth-century "democratic critics." This essay discusses two Chinese critics' engagement with Chernyshevsky's treatise The Aesthetic Relation of Art to Reality (1853). Here Chernyshevsky advanced the proposition "Beauty is life." In the 1930s and 1940s the literary theorist Zhou Yang read Chernyshevsky and produced a Chinese translation in 1942. In 1963 the philosopher Zhu Guangqian published the History of Western Aesthetics, in which he devoted a chapter to Chernyshevsky. This article explores how both Zhou and Zhu responded to Chernyshevsky's proposition on beauty and life, with particular attention to all three thinkers' engagement with Ludwig Feuerbach's "transformative method" in his critique of Christianity, which sought to invert the relation between subject and predicate. Both Zhou and Zhu alighted on how Chernyshevsky's reliance on Feuerbach led to a one-sided interpretation that needed further articulation; they marshaled the insights of Marx and Hegel to reinterpret Chernyshevsky. Finally, the essay considers the issue of transnational Bildung between Russia and China and the teacher-student relation as expressions of totality along the lines of both Feuerbachian transformative critique and Hegelian speculative retrieval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission concluded, "Despite ongoing political frictions and concerns about discriminatory treatment, many U.S. companies remain committed to the Chinese market."[296] Indeed, one estimate concludes that the level of U.S. investment in China likely exceeds $1 trillion.[297] Consequently, alternative approaches must be developed to satisfy U.S. importers and manufacturers so that the impact on U.S. industries from the prospective loss of China's market can be minimized to the greatest extent possible. Neither variations in the repeated U.S. affirmations of the U.S. commitment to Taiwan - including more or less ambiguity - nor new labels for U.S. deterrence strategies can address the structural challenge to U.S. deterrence goals posed by the shifting correlation of forces and the political background of the Taiwan Question. This deterrence threat must be credible or, as Herman Kahn said, at least "not incredible", i.e. it must not entail likely costs to the United States that are so great that the U.S. deterrence position itself lacks sufficient credibility.[133] The political aims of U.S. Strategy What then are the U.S. political goals relative to the Taiwan Question? The fundamental deterrence questions that must be addressed by the United States are: is there space for deterrence to operate in principle and, if so, what deterrence posture might the United States preserve, or more likely regain, to support the credible deterrence strategy needed to uphold the U.S. position expressed in the 1979 TRA? At a time of considerable U.S. strategic nuclear advantage, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev raised the fundamental question about U.S. will and deterrence credibility when the potential U.S. suffering for carrying out its deterrent threat could easily have been intolerable for the United States. [Extracted from the article]

In the 21st century, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are increasingly transforming the instruments of power and contributing to intensifying rivalry on the dynamics of balance of power. In the context of the Central Asian geopolitics, China's expanding AI technologies do not only serve for its economic growth and national power, but embody future areas of uncertainty in the Sino-Russian relations. Despite the current state of a kind of 'entente cordiale' over their role in the Central Asia, the future developments in the AI technologies can reinforce far-reaching repercussions in their relations. In this vein, this study analyzes the implications of AI technologies in terms of power politics and discusses the future of Sino-Russian relations in the Central Asian context. It addresses the possible utilization of AI technologies under the context of military, economic, and political areas and discusses possible consequences on the future of regional systemic dynamics. Consequently, the study argues that despite ongoing harmonious relations between the two power, the development and utilization of AI as a strategic asset in the Central Asian landscape can generate new areas of strategic competition and challenges for the future of Sino-Russian relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's space program has made significant advancements, positioning it as a competitor to the United States. It has achieved milestones such as stationing components of a permanent space station, sending taikonauts to the station, and landing a robotic lander on Mars. The Chinese government has made space a priority, revising its National Defense Law and increasing its space budget. China's space program is driven by a desire for global dominance, national security, technological advancement, and economic integration. However, the implications of China's presence in space are complex and may divert attention from global cooperation. China's space program involves both civil and military sectors, with support for a growing private space industry. The government has established innovation hubs and incubators to support space-related start-ups. China aims to establish a favorable geopolitical order and has formed partnerships with countries like Russia and European states to enhance international collaboration. China's rise as a space power has already impacted the global space order, and it seeks to achieve parity with the United States in the future. [Extracted from the article]