Australia’s 5G network is critical national infrastructure and this was one of the most important policy decisions the government had to make this year.

As it is doing with Saudi Arabia, and in keeping with President Xi Jinping’s political dictum of demonstrating to the world that China’s great rejuvenation has begun and that it is prepared to take its rightful place at or near the very top of the international order, China is moving beyond a mere transactional relationship...

Even though China did not have a diplomatic relationship with Saudi Arabia until 1990, ties between the two countries have expanded rapidly since then. Energy products have formed the basis of a bilateral relationship that has, by and large, been of mutual benefit to both sides.

The Sino-Indonesian relationship is complicated. While there is a mutual economic requirement to maintain bilateral relations, China’s geopolitical imperatives and Indonesia’s suspicions, coupled with its underlying ethnic tensions, combine to constrain it.

This report identifies the management of one conundrum above all else as the key to the BRI’s fortunes from a Chinese perspective: the ability to retain sufficient support from the world’s governments and institutions as a means of both underpinning its business case and heading off the possibility of geo-economic and geostrategic competition.