ISDP Voices

The Chinese government has launched an intensified crackdown on the entertainment industry as part of a larger effort to tighten control over young minds and ensure ideological security. The industry is portrayed as creating chaos and promoting degenerate morals, ultimately posing a serious health risk to its audience. In response, weekly time limits have been […]

The formation of the trilateral security partnership AUKUS and the subsequent cancellation of a billion-dollar submarine deal – also described as the “contract of the century” – has changed the dynamics of France’s relations with Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US). The situation, described as a betrayal and a “stab in […]

Since the release of the Integrated Review in March 2021 outlining the United Kingdom’s strategy with regards to the shifting centre of geo-political tensions – the ‘tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific – London has ramped up defence cooperation with like-minded partners. Strengthening the UK’s outreach through security and defence planning, particularly by deepening engagement with regional […]

Digital currencies, such as central bank digital currency (CBDC), electronic money, and cryptocurrency, have strategic implications for Japan’s economic security which could be inevitably influenced and conditioned by the changing global security environment. In this globalized world, a regional conflict that has occurred in a country in Europe could eventually affect the world economy as […]

The Chinese authorities are worried that young men in China are becoming effeminate and that this threatens to Xi Jinping’s grand project of national rejuvenation. In September last year television regulators decreed that broadcasters must “resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal esthetics”. Since then, we have witnessed a veritable campaign against […]

As the Russian military build-up along the borders with Ukraine has yielded to a full-scale military invasion, media coverage has soared and unverified frontline information has proliferated. After weeks and months of speculation, claims and counterclaims of escalation, and shuttle diplomacy, the news of troops deployments and the beginning of combat operations was severely distressing […]

The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games have now opened, fourteen years after China arranged the Olympic Games for the first time in the summer of 2008. On both occasions the games have been fraught with controversy, although the Olympic spirit stands for promoting such lofty values as solidarity and mutual understanding. The decision to let […]

When Xi Jinping became the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2012, observers both in and outside China thought of him as a moderate politician well qualified to pursue a political course acceptable to different factions within the Party. He seemed to belong neither to the group with a background in the […]

The ongoing crisis between the European Union (EU) and Belarus is often examined through the lens of EU member states’ relations with Minsk, or how Brussels should respond to Belarusian President Lukashenko’s so-called “hybrid attacks”, where migrants are used as political instruments. However, somewhat overlooked is one crucial actor, the third party whose citizens have […]

South Korea-Japan diplomatic relations have been worsening throughout the last few years, especially after Seoul decided to walk away from its agreement with Tokyo on the issue of comfort women and South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled against Mitsubishi and Nippon Steel Corporation in 2018. Trapped in the logic of the 1965 bilateral treaty wherein Tokyo […]