Tag: Great Britain

Your Friday Briefing

Chin@Strategy

Good morning. We’re covering booster shots in France, Peng Shuai’s piercing accusations in China and the Pakistani madrasa that has educated many Taliban leaders. A French rush for boosters Thousands rushed to book appointments for coronavirus booster shots on Thursday after the French government said that health passes would soon no longer be valid without them. Amid a surge in new cases and rising hospitalizations, the government made all adults eligible for booster shots starting this weekend. The health minister, Olivier Véran, said that over 400,000 vaccination appointments had been…

U.K. Moves to Attract Financing for Nuclear Plants

Chin@Strategy

The British government said on Tuesday that it would introduce legislation enabling a form of financing for nuclear power stations that it hopes will attract investors willing to put up billions of pounds to build new facilities. The government’s move, which would require consumers to help pay for these plants as they are being built, is expected to provide a green light for a long-delayed new nuclear station northeast of London, estimated to cost £20 billion ($27.5 billion). The British subsidiary of Électricité de France, the French utility, has done…

Tourists in Asia Navigate a Patchwork of Policies

Chin@Strategy

While fully vaccinated Americans can fly to hundreds of cities and towns across the country and 27 European capitals, border rules across Asia remain far stricter than in any other region in the world. Governments in Asia have promised to reopen their borders because of the improved Covid situation and progress on vaccinations. But they are falling behind the rest of the world. Air travel in August across the region was still 10 percent of what it was two years ago, lagging the rebound in the United States. Travelers must…

What AUKUS Means for U.S.-China Great Power Competition

Chin@Strategy

This is a hallmark of great power competition: Competitive initiatives like AUKUS provide visible ways to counter or balance or complicate China’s military activities but don’t necessarily help allies meet defined objectives. More often, competition becomes an end in itself — an open-ended imperative that assumes everything an opponent dislikes must be good policy. Another common feature of competitive policies is that officials tend to overlook their costs. For one thing, AUKUS carries significant diplomatic costs at a time when the United States is in desperate need of credibility with…

The Secret Talks Behind the U.S. Deal That France Called a ‘Betrayal’

Chin@Strategy

According to French officials, Mr. Blinken also stayed silent on June 25 when his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, welcomed him back to Paris — where Mr. Blinken spent his high school years — and extolled the importance of the French submarine deal. And as recently as Aug. 30, when the French and Australian defense and foreign ministers held their annual “consultation,” they issued a joint communiqué that said the two countries were committed to deepening cooperation in the defense industry and “underlined the importance of the Future Submarine program.”…

In Submarine Deal With Australia, U.S. Counters China but Enrages France

Chin@Strategy

PARIS — President Biden’s announcement of a deal to help Australia deploy nuclear-powered submarines has strained the Western alliance, infuriating France and foreshadowing how the conflicting American and European responses to confrontation with China may redraw the global strategic map. In announcing the deal on Wednesday, Mr. Biden said it was meant to reinforce alliances and update them as strategic priorities shift. But in drawing a Pacific ally closer to meet the China challenge, he appears to have alienated an important European one and aggravated already tense relations with Beijing.…

Why Australia Bet the House on Lasting American Power in Asia

Chin@Strategy

Speaking Thursday, Mr. Morrison said the reinforced security alliance with the United States and Britain, which will include collaborations on artificial intelligence and other emerging technology, reflected the needs of a more dangerous dynamic in the Asia-Pacific region. “The relatively benign environment we’ve enjoyed for many decades in our region is behind us,” he said, without directly mentioning China. “We have entered a new era with new challenges for Australia and our partners.” Some security analysts argued that China’s recent retaliation against Australia over its harder line — slashing imports…

A Century After the Titanic Sank, a Film Tries to Rescue 6 Survivors’ Stories

Chin@Strategy

Much about the Chinese sailors’ lives was influenced by the currents of history, including their presence on the Titanic to begin with. Labor strikes in Britain had left them without work, so their employer reassigned them to a North American route. The Titanic was supposed to take eight sailors as third-class passengers from Southampton, England, to their new ship in New York. When the liner struck an iceberg late on April 14, the eight men acted quickly. Five made it into lifeboats, but the other three fell into the subzero…