The West’s awareness of the challenge that China represented to the international order surged in recent years manifesting in nearly every domain including politics, diplomacy, finance, business, and national security. How this dynamic came about over the last decade, and how the West slowly realized it and what it means is the story of “No Limits” by Andrew Small, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund. Mr. Small joins CSPC on 1 February to discuss his timely new book and the West’s relationship with China in the wake of President Xi Jinping’s extended tenure, the end of Zero Covid, and the recent news about population decline.
To join this event, please email sophie.williams@thepresidency.org with your name and affiliation. We hope you can join us on the 1st.
About the Book:
The riveting and mostly untold story about the battle for financial and technological power and mastery between the West and China over the last decade.
Since China joined the WTO in December 2001, the West has been developing ever closer business and political ties. China’s hosting of the Olympic Games and its economic leadership in 2008 as the world faced recession were signs that China’s new power and wealth would herald greater global prosperity for all. But that era is over.
What was the cause of this rupture, leading China expert Andrew Small asks and what does it mean for the future? Using his deep access to the leading players in the story, Small dramatizes the intense political battles over the introduction of 5G to show how China and the West have spilt and how those abstract geopolitical rivalries translate into our daily lives—the phones we all use, the hidden wiring of the economy, and who controls it.
Written with extraordinary insider access, Small’s story ranges from deep inside the bowels of the Pentagon to Indian Ocean naval bases, and from the boardrooms of the world’s leading technology firms to the Taliban leadership in Kabul. The result is an engaging, lucid and even-handed account of the defining geopolitical issue of our age, and a clarion call for us to recognize the true nature of China’s global ambitions.
About the Author:
Andrew Small is a senior transatlantic fellow with GMF's Asia Program, which he established in 2006. His research focuses on U.S.–China relations, Europe–China relations, Chinese policy in South Asia, and broader developments in China's foreign and economic policy. He was based in GMF’s Brussels office for five years, and worked before that as the director of the Foreign Policy Centre's Beijing office, as a visiting fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and an ESU scholar in the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
His articles and papers have been published in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Quarterly, as well as many other journals, magazines, and newspapers. He is the author of the book The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics published with Hurst / Oxford University Press in 2015. Small was educated at Balliol College, University of Oxford.