Edited by Luca Bortolotti and Marta Marson , University of Turin and OEET
OEET has organized its 8th Workshop on the 1st and 2nd December 2022 at Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin, titled “A fragmenting global economy: Economic and geo-political shocks and international / regional trade and investment agreements among advanced and emerging countries”.
The Workshop aimed at examining the economic and geopolitical shocks that have affected the global community since 2008, and their impact on the relations among advanced and emerging economies. The Workshop also aimed at exploring how Global (and Regional) Value Chains were reshaped by those shocks. Indeed, shocks as the Global Financial Crisis and the ensuing Great Recession, the US-China trade war, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict have severely damaged the world economy. Moreover, relevant consequences of this fragmentation have emerged in the fields of global action on climate change and on international trade agreements.
This issue of the OEET newsletter collects contributions based on three lectures given at the Workshop, which provide a brief but detailed picture of the current challenges faced by the global community disentangling the different and sometimes opposite interests of different countries, therefore linking the field of economic and technological development with those of geopolitics and international relations. A special focus is reserved to the largest players in the global arena, including of course China.
Newsletter n. 24 | February 2023 - Download PDF
The first article, Changes in global economic power and the main emerging countries in the XXI Century, by Vittorio Valli, is the one with the broadest scope, as it reviews the main factors that triggered a change in the global power balances in the last two decades, through an analysis of the main economic, political and social variables describing the dynamic of the main countries.
The second article, China in energy geopolitics, by Ignazio Musu, shifts the attention on the role played by China in the fight against climate change. This topic is strictly connected with the Belt and Road Initiative, which in turn has an impact on international relations. The article also reviews the main announcements in terms of goals and commitments stated by president Xi Jinping, acknowledging that their realization depends upon the international situation.
The third and last article, The US-China trade war and technological race, by Giovanni Graziani, goes into details of an issue that already appeared in the two preceding articles, being a crucial aspect of the geopolitics of this millennium: the US-China trade relations. The article reviews the trade strategy adopted by these two countries and the costs generated by their decisions, observing these phenomena through the lens of the fight for technological leadership.
Abstracts in Italian are also available for this issue.
