China: On the Road to Perdition?
New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast
11/11/21
•37m
About
Comments
Featured In
Under President Xi Jinping, China has shown a growing willingness to act outside the accepted geopolitical, economic and even diplomatic global framework and practices. Indeed, Beijing’s actions suggest a rejection of the post war system in favor of one that is not just rejiggered to accommodate China’s growing superpowers, but that is dominated by it.
The latest data points? President Xi did not show up at COP 26; reports from Glasgow suggest the Chinese have been playing a spoiling role in the climate talks; tensions over Taiwan continue to rise; Chinese rhetoric aimed at the United States, Australia, and Europe is increasingly harsh. Not a day goes by without new reports of China asserting what it sees as its prerogatives as the soon-to-be largest economy in the world.
What’s going on? Is China’s leadership acting out of strength or weakness? Is Xi merely probing the West’s weaknesses or has he decided the time is ripe to push hard? Is war possible? Is war avoidable?
Australian Kevin Rudd has spent a considerable part of his life thinking about, working on, and negotiating with China — as a diplomat, twice as his country's prime minister, and currently as president of the Asia Society. Arguably no other western leader knows China better. Listen as he assesses where China is today, and where it wants to be tomorrow.
Previous Episode
Electrify Everything!
November 4, 2021
•39m
Politicians from around the world are in Glasgow for the 26th United Nations Conference on Climate Change. That the disastrous impacts of climate change are increasingly evident is testimony to many things, not least the practical shortcomings of the first 25 UN meetings. Why are we where we are? The science is clear; politics, much less so.
But do we know what to do? Do we have the technologies in hand to decarbonize economies in ways that are compatible with how people want to live? Can we do this?
Saul Griffith, Australian inventor and engineer—and a past winner of the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize—insists that the answer is emphatically yes. We don’t need technological miracles, he says; we have all the technology we need to transform the United States from laggard to leader in the effort to change the arc of the warming climate. And, if the United States can do it, everyone can.
Next Episode
Worth Repeating: Can We Unearth Solutions to the Climate Challenge?
November 18, 2021
•36m
Rapidly accelerating climate change is uniquely modern — but climate change is not. The planet has warmed and cooled in the past, even during mankind’s time. What can we learn from those events that might help us cope with the extremes that are our present and future? Can indigenous people who understand nature differently than most of us teach us how to cope with today’s terrifying challenges?
Our guest on this week’s New Thinking for a New World podcast, Tero Mustonen, is a climate scholar who combines indigenous knowledge with academic research. He is also a leader of the SnowChange Cooperative that works with indigenous people and climate issues throughout the Arctic, and currently the head of his town of Selkie in North Karelia, Finland.
Listen to his insights on how to promote positive change on a damaged planet.
If you like this episode you’ll love
Promoted