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2. Forecasting Nuclear Escalation Risks: Cloudy With a Chance of Fallout
- Author:
- Jamie Kwong, Anna Bartoux, and James M. Acton
- Publication Date:
- 04-2025
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- Forecasting—that is, estimating the probability of specified events’ occurring—can contribute to efforts to better understand and address the challenge of managing escalation.
- Topic:
- Nuclear Weapons, Forecast, Escalation, and Risk Assessment
- Political Geography:
- Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and United States of America
3. China Decoupling Beyond the United States: Comparing Germany, Japan, and India
- Author:
- Joshua Sullivan and Jon Bateman
- Publication Date:
- 01-2025
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- Key U.S. partners are moving toward less technological integration with China. But their specific paths diverge significantly based on domestic circumstances and varied relationships with Beijing.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Science and Technology, Economy, Regional Integration, and Decoupling
- Political Geography:
- Japan, China, India, Asia, Germany, and United States of America
4. Emerging Powers and the Future of American Statecraft
- Author:
- Christopher S. Chivvis and Beatrix Geaghan-Breiner
- Publication Date:
- 04-2024
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- The structure of international politics is changing in ways that are not fully appreciated in Washington. The United States has paid a great deal of attention to the rise of China in the last decade but much less to emerging powers whose rise will also shape the operating environment for American statecraft. No single emerging power will have an impact tantamount to China’s, but they will have a significant impact collectively due to their geopolitical weight and diplomatic aspirations. America has limited ability to influence the trajectory of these emerging powers, identified in this report as Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, and Türkiye. They have taken stances that contrast or directly clash with U.S. positions on China and on Russia over the past few years. Nearly all have voiced concerns about Washington’s approach to the war in Ukraine, even as they criticized Moscow’s invasion. Almost none would line up with the United States in a confrontation with China. Instead, they are likely to pursue highly self-interested foreign policies. Washington should expect that they will increasingly challenge some of its policies, sustain relationships with its adversaries, and press their own agendas on the global stage. The emerging powers’ statecrafts are shaped in large part by their drive for economic security. But their geographies, different preferences for world order, domestic politics, and defense relationships also play a role. Concerns about the strength of democracy in other countries, which has played an animating role in U.S. foreign policy for decades, are a lower priority for them, no matter how democratic they are. It will be a mistake for the United States to frame its relations with these emerging powers primarily as part of a competition for influence with China and Russia, however tempting it may be to do so. These powers are not swing states that will tilt decisively toward either side in a global great power competition. Most will resist any efforts to bring them into a U.S.-led camp as in the Cold War. Trying to make them do so would also risk strategic overreach by embroiling the United States too deeply in the emerging powers’ domestic politics or by expending its resources in pursuit of building ties that never materialize. A better approach for the United States would be to focus on negotiating interest-based deals with emerging powers while cordoning off areas of disagreement. These might include tailored market access and investment agreements, agreements on technology manufacturing, energy transition initiatives, efforts to combat deforestation, efforts to build public health infrastructure, and infrastructure investments. It would be wasteful of the United States to offer these countries security guarantees, but in some cases providing security assistance can serve its interests. Washington should accept that most of these countries will maintain close diplomatic, economic, and sometimes security relationships with China and probably Russia. Over the longer term, it will serve U.S. interests to strengthen the sovereignty of emerging powers when possible and cost-effective to do so. This will provide a bulwark against the undue expansion of China’s power and influence and help ensure that, even if they do not side with the United States, they are not drawn closely into the orbit of its major geopolitical competitors. Strengthening emerging powers’ sovereignty will also help boost their development as constructive powers with a stake in sustaining a peaceful world order conducive to global economic growth.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Sovereignty, Strategic Competition, and Emerging Powers
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Russia, China, Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and United States of America
5. Tracing the Roots of China’s AI Regulations
- Author:
- Matt Sheehan
- Publication Date:
- 02-2024
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- In 2021 and 2022, China became the first country to implement detailed, binding regulations on some of the most common applications of artificial intelligence (AI). These rules formed the foundation of China’s emerging AI governance regime, an evolving policy architecture that will affect everything from frontier AI research to the functioning of the world’s second-largest economy, from large language models in Africa to autonomous vehicles in Europe. U.S. political leaders often warn against letting China “write the rules of the road” in AI governance. But if the United States is serious about competing for global leadership in AI governance, then it needs to actually understand what it is competing against. That requires examining the nuts and bolts of both China’s AI regulations and the policy process that shaped them. This paper is the second in a series breaking down China’s AI regulations and pulling back the curtain on the policymaking process shaping them. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese government started that process with the 2021 rules on recommendation algorithms, an omnipresent use of the technology that is often overlooked in international AI governance discourse. Those rules imposed new obligations on companies to intervene in content recommendations, granted new rights to users being recommended content, and offered protections to gig workers subject to algorithmic scheduling. The Chinese party-state quickly followed up with a new regulation on “deep synthesis,” the use of AI to generate synthetic media such as deepfakes. Those rules required AI providers to watermark AI-generated content and ensure that content does not violate people’s “likeness rights” or harm the “nation’s image.” Together, these two regulations also created and amended China’s algorithm registry, a regulatory tool that would evolve into a cornerstone of the country’s AI governance regime. Contrary to popular conception in the rest of the world, China’s AI governance regime has not been created by top-down edicts from CCP leadership. President Xi Jinping and other top CCP leaders will sometimes give high-level guidance on policy priorities, but they have not been the key players when it comes to shaping China’s AI regulations. Instead, those regulations have been the product of a dynamic and iterative policymaking process driven by a mix of actors from both inside and outside the Chinese party-state. Those actors include mid-level bureaucrats, academics, technologists, journalists, and policy researchers at platform tech companies. Through a mix of public advocacy, intellectual debate, technical workshopping, and bureaucratic wrangling, these actors laid the foundations for China’s present and future AI regulations. This paper traces the progression of these regulations through the “policy funnel” (see figure 1) of Chinese AI governance. For both recommendation algorithms and deep synthesis rules, the initial spark for the regulation came from long-standing CCP concerns about the creation and dissemination of online content. For the former, the rise of the algorithmically driven news app Toutiao threatened the CCP’s ability to set a unified narrative and choose which stories are pushed to readers. In the case of deep synthesis, online face swap videos grabbed the attention of the Chinese public and led government regulators to consider the threat of deepfakes. Over the course of 2017–2020, these concerns made their way through China’s bureaucracy. Regulators took a series of stopgap measures in specific applications, while also tasking policy analysts and government-adjacent technical organizations with exploring different regulatory interventions.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Governance, Regulation, and Artificial Intelligence
- Political Geography:
- China, East Asia, and Asia
6. The Future of K-Power: What South Korea Must Do After Peaking
- Author:
- Chung Min Lee
- Publication Date:
- 08-2024
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- South Korea’s economic growth will almost certainly slow over the coming decades—but writing off the country’s potential would be a mistake.
- Topic:
- Development, Economic Growth, Domestic Politics, and Soft Power
- Political Geography:
- Asia and South Korea
7. Political Drivers of China’s Changing Nuclear Policy: Implications for U.S.-China Nuclear Relations and International Security
- Author:
- Tong Zhao
- Publication Date:
- 07-2024
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- The message from Chinese officials has become increasingly clear: the United States and China should first stabilize their political relationship before taking on nuclear issues.
- Topic:
- Nuclear Weapons, International Security, Bilateral Relations, and Decision-Making
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, and United States of America
8. Transatlantic Policies on China: Is There a Role for Türkiye?
- Author:
- Sinan Ülgen and Temur Umarov
- Publication Date:
- 10-2024
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- Türkiye is an important transatlantic actor in Sino-Western competition. It can add value to Western efforts aimed at synchronizing policies toward a rising China. And yet, at present, Ankara’s policies on China are not harmonized with those of its partners in the West.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Transatlantic Relations, Strategic Competition, and Regional Power
- Political Geography:
- China, Turkey, Middle East, and Asia
9. Japan’s Aging Society as a Technological Opportunity
- Author:
- Ken Kushida
- Publication Date:
- 10-2024
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- Japan’s extreme demographic aging and shrinking is an economic and societal challenge, but also a technological opportunity for global leadership. Technological trajectories of worker automation and worker skill augmentation within Japan are already being shaped by the country’s demographics. Software, robotics, and other technology deployments are transforming the nature of work in a wide range of sectors in Japan’s economy, and across types of work such as blue-collar, white-collar, agriculture, manufacturing, and services. Specific ways in which Japan’s demographics shape technological trajectories include market opportunities, acute labor shortages, and favorable political and regulatory dynamics. The private sector is driving technology deployments in industrial sectors hit hard by Japan’s aging population, ranging from construction and transportation to medical care and finance, with strong government support in each of the domains. Demographically driven technological trajectories play to Japan’s strengths in implementing, deploying, and improving technologies rather than generating breakthrough innovations. Japan’s demographically driven technological trajectory can be an important platform for international technology cooperation, fitting with the top U.S.-Japanese political leadership agreements on fostering strong innovation and technology collaboration ties. Japan’s start-up ecosystem, often in partnership with large incumbent firms, will be critical in deploying new technologies by defining new markets and providing new offerings. An effective analysis goes beyond broad demographic numbers to delve into specific pain points of particular segments of society to better capture their situations and roles in shaping market opportunities that drive technological adoption. This introductory paper: (1) defines key analytical concepts; (2) surveys some of Japan’s key demographic shifts; and (3) highlights cases from agriculture, construction, transportation, healthcare, eldercare, land, and housing ownership.
- Topic:
- Demographics, Science and Technology, Innovation, and Aging
- Political Geography:
- Japan and Asia
10. Negotiating the India-China Standoff: 2020–2024
- Author:
- Saheb Singh Chadha
- Publication Date:
- 12-2024
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- India and China have been engaged in a standoff at their border in eastern Ladakh since April–May 2020. Over 100,000 troops remain deployed on both sides, and rebuilding political trust will take time.
- Topic:
- Security, Bilateral Relations, Territorial Disputes, and Borders
- Political Geography:
- China, South Asia, India, and Asia