Electric-field regulated crystallization process for enhanced performance of perovskite solar cells

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have received tremendous attention because of their advantages of low fabrication cost and rising power conversion efficiency (PCE). However, the poor crystalline quality of perovskite materials...

Why Thucydides’ Trap Misinforms Sino-American Relations

Thucydides Trap has become a familiar term in scholarly and even popular discourse on Sino-American relations. It points to the ancient rivalry between Athens and Sparta as an analogy for contemporary relations between China and the United States. This analogy warns about the increased danger of war when a rising power catches up to an established power. This essay raises concerns about (mis)application of historical analogy, selection bias, measurement problems, underspecified causal mechanisms, and so on that undermine the validity of the diagnosis and prognosis inspired by this analogy and other similar works. My objection to this genre of scholarship does not exclude the possibility that China and the U.S. can have a serious conflict. I only argue that this conflict can stem from sources other than any power shift between them or in addition to such a shift. By overlooking other plausible factors that can contribute to war occurrence, a monocausal explanation such as Thucydides Trap obscures rather than clarifies this phenomenon. Because it lends itself to a sensationalist, even alarmist, characterization of a rising China and a declining U.S. (when the latter in fact continues to enjoy important enduring advantages over the former), this perspective can abet views and feelings that engender self-fulfilling prophecy. Finally, as with other structural theories of interstate relations, Thucydides Trap and other similar formulations like power-transition theory tend to give short shrift to human agency, including peoples ability to learn from the past and therefore to escape from the mistakes of their predecessors.

Whose Knowledge? Whose Influence? Changing Dynamics of China’s Development Cooperation Policy and Practice

This article aims to investigate the recent evolution of China’s development policy and practice. More precisely, how do China’s policymakers and practitioners understand and debate China’s role in international development, specifically in the context of the global Covid-19 pandemic? China’s growing development activities overseas, particularly in the African continent, have spurred intense debate over its role as a rising power in international development. China is viewed in the West both as a threat and as a valuable potential partner in development cooperation. However, differences between Western and Chinese conceptions of development have complicated cooperation and understanding of China’s development policy. Further understanding of these differences is needed, in order to evaluate their implications for low-income countries, and for potential trilateral cooperation.

China's Technological Leapfrogging and Economic Catch-up

After a miraculous economic growth, spurred by the Beijing Consensus, China is now facing a slowdown. This book deals with the interesting issue of the middle-income trap—the phenomenon of the rapidly growing economy of a country stagnating at the middle-income level—in the context of China. It also discusses China’s limitations and future prospects, especially after the onset of a new “cold war” between China and the US, and in particular whether it would fall into the “Thucydides trap,” the conflict between a rising power and the existing hegemon. This book plays around three key terms, the Beijing Consensus, the middle-income trap, and the Thucydides trap, and applies a Schumpeterian approach to these concepts. It also conducts a comparative analysis examining China from an “economic catch-up” perspective. Economic catch-up starts with learning from and imitating a forerunner, but a successful catch-up requires leapfrogging, which implies a latecomer doing something different from, and often ahead of, a forerunner. Technological leapfrogging may lead to technological catch-up, which means reducing the technological gap, and then to economic catch-up in living standards and economic size. This linkage between technological and economic catch-up corresponds exactly with a similar linkage between the Beijing Consensus and escaping (or not) the middle-income and Thucydides traps. The book concludes that China’s successful rise as a global industrial power has been due to its strategy of technological leapfrogging, which has enabled it to move beyond the middle-income trap and possibly the Thucydides trap, although at a slower speed.