China Research

A discussion forum on emerging markets, mainly China – from a macro, micro, institutional and corporate angle.

Superpowers focus increasingly on emerging countries

December 4, 2025

China’s increasing efforts in the emerging world have been clearly visible for quite some time, particularly in Africa and more lately also in South America. It seems possible that the U.S., Russia and China will be going to design a new world order without including the EU and the UK. This could be a very uncomfortable trend for Europe – a scenario which should not be ruled out completely by Western politicians and business people.

A new world order may be created

We currently do not know enough about the global ambitions of the U.S., Russia and China. However, certain strategies are about to crystallize. Particularly the predilection of President Trump for political agreements as kinds of business deals makes his future impact on global political developments most uncertain. Obviously, Trump sees a lot of promising commercial deals with Russia. Thus, the following scenarios or future developments do not look unrealistic:

First, there seems to be the common objective of the three superpowers – three if we include the military superpower of Russia – to weaken the EU as much as possible.

Second, the U.S. may be interested in regaining influence and power in its Central and South American backyard. Ongoing military intervention threats in Venezuela may point at such a strategy.

Third, major parts of Asia may in the future mainly – but not only – belong to China’s political priority. APEC ambitions may be still in place.

Fourth, Africa could become a strategic part of both Chinese and Russian foreign policy even more clearly than today, trying to crowd out the EU from this commodity-rich part of the world.

Fifth, Russia will probably try to maintain or enlarge its influence in what it considers being natural parts of their hemisphere in Europe and Asia.

Future FDI in emerging countries will need more political consideration

The idea of presenting the alternatives above is not about making a forecast. I am talking about scenarios which must not be equalized with forecasts. Instead, I want to take up a kind of possible outlook that the world may be about to change its political shape and distribution of power. A new world order may be created. If this is going to happen, many emerging markets may be highly affected. This would mean that future Western investments in emerging markets will need much deeper analysis than we have become used to in recent decades.

PS: Best seasonal greetings to all the readers and welcome back in January!

Hubert Fromlet
Affiliate Professor at the School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University

CO2 pollution in emerging countries

November 20, 2025

Currently, the climate conference of the UN is taking place in Brazil, unfortunately with limited involvement of several leading advanced countries. Particularly President Donald Trump has been stepping beside or even behind. Still, China, the U.S. and India are the main global CO2 polluters. Without strong commitment from these three countries, decisive global progress in the fight for a better environment cannot be achieved. However, this should mean all the same that better environmental conditions should be created in all emerging markets.

Many emerging countries among the top 30 polluters

According to global statistics, one still can find China clearly in the global lead of CO2 pollution in percent before the United States, India, Russia, Japan and Iran. Despite quite some progress in recent years, China’s CO2 pollution remains almost three times higher than the correspondent number for the United States and more than four times higher than India’s ratio (see https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/co2-emissions-by-country).

CO2 pollution by country, global share in % in 2023  (and share of pollution per capita)

 1      China                    33.98           (9.2)

 2       U.S.                       12.00           (13.8)

 3       India                        7.57           (2.1)

 4      Russia                     5.30            (14.4)

 5      Japan                       2.42            (7.5)

 6      Iran                           2               (9.1)

 7      Indonesia              1.73             (2.4)

 8      Saudi Arabia        1.60             (17.1)

 9      Germany               1.49            (7.1)

10     Korea                      1.47           (11.0)

11     Canada

12     Mexico 

13     Brazil

14     Turkey

15     South Africa

16     Vietnam 

21     Malaysia

24     Thailand

25     Egypt

26     Kazakhstan

27     UAE

28     Pakistan

29     Iraq

30     Argentina  

When it comes to CO2 pollution per capita, the picture looks more favorable for China compared to the U.S. I could hear this as a strongly positive argument on many occasions when I still visited China very frequently. However, my conclusion was from the very beginning that pollution per capita had to be regarded as a bumpy measurement since pollution never has national borders. I could hear this point of view with obviously strong passion during my visits on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa which had been – and still is – particularly affected by Chinese pollution.

Hubert Fromlet
Affiliate Professor at the School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University

Trump does not understand China

November 4, 2025

Many analysts seemed to be relieved after the recent APEC summit in Korea. The meeting between the American and Chinese presidents, Trump and Xi Jinping turned out to be polite with some concrete results – at least on the surface. President Trump gave his meeting with Xi the grading “fantastic” and the score ”12 out of 10”. This strong statement certainly does not point at a good American understanding of Chinese culture, politics and strategies.

Different time horizons – short-term versus long term

I have described many times before in different articles that President Trump and China’s leadership – personified by President Xi Jinping – often use to apply different time horizons in their policy measures or strategies. Trump usually acts short-term oriented and may be open for sudden policy changes whereas Chinese decision makers can be both short-term and long-term oriented simultaneously, even the same person or institution. Obviously, Donald Trump does not look very familiar with this distinct Chinese attitude. 

Trump’s tariffs against the rest of the world favor without doubt China’s long-term ambitions to dominate the global trade system at some point. When Xi in Korea pleaded for the protection of multilateral trade, he certainly mainly had in mind China’s strategically strived future pole position in international trade influence (see also my previous comments on this topic in some of my blogs: https://blogg.lnu.se/china-research/?p=3702, https://blogg.lnu.se/china-research/?p=3693; https://blogg.lnu.se/china-research/?paged=17).

The strategic trade message to the rest of the world: China first instead of America first! It can be recognized that President Trump does not (want to?) understand that his tariffs are the best instrument to support China’s long-term objective to become the leading power in global trade policy, preferably via the WTO. Long-term trade objectives are   considered to be more important than short-term frictions with the U.S.!

China applies also short-term trade policy

We can conclude by now that China’s current political leadership has learned to live with Trump’s erratic trade policy – from month to month or even from year to year. In the nearer future, China knows about the power of its rare earths in forthcoming trade negotiations with the U.S. Trump’s recent sensitive deal with China to secure U.S. production of high-tech products may receive again a new pattern or content one year from now at the latest – originated by China or the U.S. Who knows? Unfortunately, uncertainty will remain in place for the EU as well. And in the background, the risk of a bursting AI bubble still exists.

Hubert Fromlet
Affiliate Professor at the School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University