Thread by @ajwsmall

. @d_jaishankar and I have a piece up for @WarOnTheRocks today. As others have also noted, even though Chinese foreign policy has been “assertive” for some time, what’s going on at the moment looks qualitatively different: warontherocks.com/2020/07/for-ou… 1/4

In discussions with experts (international and Chinese) in recent months there have been differing interpretations as to why China has opened up so many fronts at once - we lay them out in the piece (see Dhruva’s thread for a summary too):

https://twitter.com/d_jaishankar/status/1285182075591692288

There is a fair degree of convergence in the debates in many capitals on what a response to this latest variant of Chinese ”assertiveness” (even some European officials now just call it “aggressiveness”) should look like, regardless of how one interprets Beijing’s approach.

But there is certainly a difference in the likelihood of a course correction on Beijing’s part if the pushback/coordination /coalition on China becomes more serious (which evidently cannot be taken for granted) and whether Beijing will cool things down of its own volition anyway.