Author: Christine Schier

First was decoupling, then de-risking, now it is “overcapacity”: U.S. and EU leaders have no trouble in finding narratives to justify geopolitical hostility to China. During U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent visit to China, he pointed to the “unfair trade practices” and the potential consequences of “industrial overcapacity” for global and U.S. markets. In China a few days […]

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has done it again. During her just-concluded trip to Australia and New Zealand, she again talked up the importance of economic warfare against China, while announcing an increased military presence of the German Navy in the Pacific and the Taiwan Strait. In this context, the table.media China newsletter published an interview May 6, with a […]

On April 30, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) voted 15-1 to reject Nicaragua’s case calling for a provisional order to be issued for Germany to stop arming Israel, and to renew funding for UNRWA (which the government actually did at the end of April). However, the court rejected Germany’s application to throw the case out, and will continue the […]

The World Bank’s International Development Association was hit with more criticism than it reckoned at the forum for African heads of state it organized April 29 in Nairobi, Kenya. The announced focus was on favorable lending terms and strategies to bolster sustainable development and promote foreign investment, but a number of participants disagree with the approach imposed by the West. […]

After decades of discussion and planning, a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) is now being built in South Korea. Such reactors, in the range of 50 to 300 megawatts, could be built with components mass produced in factories at far lower costs than the 1,000 megawatt and larger nuclear power plants (NPP). They would also be ideal for the establishment of […]

On May 3, China launched one of the most complicated space missions yet endeavored, which aims to retrieve samples from the far side of the Moon, for the first time ever. The Chang’e-6 mission involves four separate vehicles—an orbiter, a lander, an ascender and a re-entry module. Unlike most other missions, there will be no “direct” contact with the vehicles, […]

With no end in sight to Israel’s killings of Palestinians in Gaza, and with the U.S. Congress voting for another $15 billion aid package for Israel, protests have erupted on college campuses throughout the United States, leading to panicked calls from pro-war officials for a harsh crackdown on demonstrators. The protesters’ demands include an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, humanitarian aid […]

The visit of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing April 23-26 was part of the high-level exchanges that had been decided on by Presidents Xi and Biden last November at their summit in San Francisco. The primary purpose was to keep the all-important U.S.-China relationship on an even keel. The task assigned to Blinken by his boss Joe […]

Once rubber-stamped by the European Parliament on April 23, the new version of the so-called “Stability Pact,” which disciplines fiscal policies of EU member states, was approved on April 29 by the European Council of heads of government. Thus, after four years of the suspension decided at the onset of the Covid pandemic, fiscal austerity is once again to rule […]

It has been revealed that officials in the Green Party-led German Economy Ministry intentionally ignored and falsified expert opinions to suppress the support for extending the lifetime of the last three nuclear power plants (NPP) operating in Germany. At the time, faced with the prospect of severe power shortages after the German government abruptly decreed an end to imports of […]