
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the relationship between the two superpowers has been transformed.

How has Beijing’s approach to multilateral institutions evolved in the seventy years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China?

Historically, China has forged its own distinctive foreign aid practices. In March 2018, Beijing established the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) to integrate and streamline its development aid programs.

The CIDCA’s highly ambitious agenda is a clear sign that, after years of considerable growth in China’s development finance, the underlying bureaucratic system is now beginning to mature. Yet key questions remain unanswered.

The narrative that China is engaging in problematic debt trap diplomacy has taken off. But for Sri Lanka and most of China’s other Belt and Road Initiative partners, it is important to understand the history and politics of their relations with Beijing and project selection.

In threatening to restrict the export of rare earth metals to the United States, China wants to demonstrate that it has leverage over the United States and an ability to respond with commensurate countermeasures if the need arises.

The China International Development Cooperation Agency has been tasked with lofty goals, but near-term expectations must be tempered by lingering questions about how it fits into the country’s existing foreign aid bureaucracy.

Pitched as a new Silk Road sweeping from Asia to Europe, China’s enormous Belt and Road Initiative is an ambitious, multinational infrastructure project. Experts from four Carnegie global centers explain other countries’ perspectives.

It is far too early to declare the “death” of the Belt and Road Initiative. Such assessments are premature, and fail to recognize the importance of the BRI to the leadership in Beijing.

Despite the established comprehensive strategic partnership between China and the EU, mutual trust is still lacking.

Despite the BRI’s prevalence in discussions of China’s global engagement, many experts are divided on how to interpret it. Is it a global strategy or just an interregional initiative? How can countries and international companies participate in its growth and development?

By establishing structural transformation as the China International Development Cooperation Agency’s core objective, Beijing will have an opportunity to take a leadership role in advancing the international development agenda.

China has been supportive of a united, stable, and prosperous Europe in its effort to promote a multipolar world order. Even during the EU’s most difficult period during the European debt crisis, China stood by and invested in crucial member states.

U.S. President Donald Trump meets North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi this week. What do Washington, Pyongyang, Beijing, and others hope to see accomplished at the summit? Three Carnegie experts weigh in.

President Trump believes he is entering the Hanoi summit having achieved a number of milestones in his “historic push for peace on the Korean Peninsula.” However, this ignores his failure to advance the core issue of denuclearization.

The overall risk of nuclear use is still very low. However, at least two factors are making that risk greater: growing nuclear competition among the United States, Russia, and China, and the risk of nuclear use by nuclear newcomer states.

Beijing has long been concerned about its exposure to Venezuela’s slow-motion descent into crisis. There’s also a broader story about China’s efforts to promote itself as a leader of international development and South-South ties.

January 2019 marks the fortieth anniversary of the normalization of relations between the People’s Republic of China and the United States. Four Carnegie scholars—two American and two Chinese—assess the relationship today.

The China International Development Cooperation Agency could help China coordinate its aid portfolio more efficiently. But it is more difficult to say whether the new agency will make Chinese aid disbursement and procurement decisionmaking more transparent.

The recent expansion of China’s Belt and Road Initiative into Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is unlikely to bring fundamental change to China–LAC economic relations. It may, however, catalyze a more volatile LAC–China–US geopolitical relationship.