(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) A planetary Go game: Most Western geopolitical observers seem to be unable to see the planetary scale strategy that China deploys in the Antarctic (Alexander B. Gray, “China’s Next Geopolitical Goal: Dominate Antarctica”, The National Interest, 20 March 2021). The roots of this “very Great Game” run deep in Chinese history and …
Continue reading “Antarctic China (2) – China’s Planetary Game”
This third article is the last part of our “equation” to identify the key technologies of the future. We started, with the first article, in establishing that solely making laundry lists of new technologies was insufficient to identify the key technologies of the future. We needed more: a system explaining the logic behind the success …
Continue reading “The Ultimate Key Technologies of the Future (3) – Extreme Environments”
Going South While being under the increasing pressure of climate change, the Antarctic is attracting the strategic attention of China. Since 1983, China is a member of the 1959 international Antarctic treaty. This international treaty defines Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans all military activity on the continent (The Antarctic Treaty). …
Continue reading “Antarctic China (1): Strategies for a Very Cold Place”
(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) The Chinese fishing fleet is a gigantic organisation. It is composed of a mind-numbing number of ships, “somewhere” between 2.600 and 17.000 distant-water fishing ships (M. Guttierez, A. Daniels, G. Jobbins, G. Guttierez Almazor, C. Montengro, China’s Distant Water Fleet, Scale, Impact and Governance, ODI, 2020). These myriads of ships operate …
Continue reading “The Chinese Fishing Fleet, Influence and Hunger Wars”
(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) From Texas with Cold In February 2021, a “polar vortex ” swept through the U.S. and triggered a “perfect (winter) storm” that ravaged Texas (Johny Diaz, Guilia Mc Donnell, Nieto del Rio, Richar Faussett, “ Texas extreme cold snap has killed residents in their homes, cars and backyards”, SBS News, 20 …
Continue reading “Losing Texas to Climate Change and the COVID-19?”
Beyond the proliferation of the Chinese vaccine Enters Sinopharm On 14 January, Hungary’s government signed an agreement with the giant company Sinopharm in order to purchase millions of doses of the Chinese CoronaVac (CCV) (“In EU first, Sinopharm Coronavirus vaccine approved by Hungary”, Nikkei Asia, 31 January, 2021). One week before, it had made a …
Continue reading “China, the “Health Silk Road” of Vaccines, and Security”
(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) As 2021 starts, Europe struggles again against a COVID-19 new wave and the spread of new SARS-CoV-2 variants. Japan strengthens its state of emergency against the COVID-19. The U.S. reports 4.462 deaths on 12 January 2021, i.e. almost precisely 1,5 time 9/11. Meanwhile, China also fights a rise in new symptomatic …
Continue reading “How China Could Win the War against the Covid-19 Pandemic”
Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli The militarization of the Arctic – So what? Over the last few years, NATO, the U.S. and Scandinavian militaries have been multiplying national and regional manoeuvres in the Arctic. This is especially true in Norway and the Barents Sea, very close to the Norwegian and Russian land, air and sea frontiers. …
The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping through the world. It reached first the U.S., Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By mid-November 2020 it started being visible in Eastern Asia (e.g. Reuters Covid-19 Global Tracker: World and Asia and the Middle East). By the end of November 2020, South Korea and …
Continue reading “Is the COVID-19 Second Wave coming to China?”
Design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli Eleven months into the COVID-19 pandemic the second wave spreads. More than 50 million people were contaminated globally by 9 November 2020 (COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University). More than 1.25 million people had died by then (ibid.). On 10 November, Europe crossed …
Continue reading “France and 3 Scenarios for the COVID-19 Second Wave”
