The goals and reality of the water–food–energy security nexus: the case of China and its southern neighbours

The so-called ‘nexus’ approach has recently been promoted as addressing externalities across the water, food and energy sectors, thus helping to achieve ‘water/energy/food security for all’, ‘equitable and sustainable growth’ and a ‘resilient and productive environment’. While these are noble goals, this article argues that the reality on the ground appears to be taking a different direction, at least when it comes to China and its neighbours in South and Southeast Asia. There, a new era of large-scale water infrastructure development is creating several security-related problems, which represent serious challenges to the nexus goals. These challenges include food–energy tensions, human security threats and ecological risks. These challenges can also be linked to rising friction surrounding the management of water, food and energy resources in the region. The article argues that, in order for the nexus goals to be achieved in China and the countries on its southern periphery, there must first be increased awareness of this nexus among policy-making elites.     

Turkey and Russia in a shifting global order: cooperation,conflict and asymmetric interdependence in a turbulent region

The current global political economy is characterised by the intensifying economic interaction of BRICS and ‘near BRICS’ economies, with emerging powers increasing their influence in neighbouring regions. The growing partnership between Turkey and Russia constitutes a useful case study for examining this transformation, in which Western supremacy and US hegemony are under increasing challenge. Turkish–Russian relations shed light on broader themes in global political economy. First, significant economic interdependence may be generated among states with different political outlooks, in the form of loose regional integration schemes driven by bilateral relations between key states and supporting private actors or interests. Second, growing economic interdependence may coexist with continued political conflict and geopolitical rivalry, as indicated by the Syrian and Ukrainian crises. An important strategy that emerges is the tendency to compartmentalise economic issues and geopolitical rivalries in order to avoid negative spill-over effects. This facilitates the coexistence of extensive competition with deepening cooperation, as reflected in relations in the field of energy.     

China’s ‘New Silk Roads’: sub-national regions and networks of global political economy

This paper argues that the Chinese government’s ‘belt and road’ initiative – the Silk Roads vision of land and maritime logistics and communications networks connecting Asia, Europe and Africa – has its roots in sub-national ideas and practices, and that it reflects their elevation to the national level more than the creation of substantially new policy content. Further, the spatial paradigms inherent in the Silk Roads vision reveal the reproduction of capitalist developmental ideas expressed particularly in the form of networks, which themselves have become a feature of contemporary global political economy. In other words, the Silk Roads vision is more of a ‘spatial fix’ than a geopolitical manoeuvre.     

The European Union and its energy security challenges: engagement through and with networks

Energy security remains a vital issue for the European Union (EU), even more so in the wake of the events that unfolded in early 2014 in Ukraine. The EU's already fragile position in the international energy arena in terms of security of supply appears to be more uncertain than ever after its umpteenth fallout with its historic energy supplier, Russia. This situation is untenable and calls for swift and decisive action to adequately tackle the issue once and for all. The article looks at the creation of a single EU energy market through the integration of energy networks in the EU. This article then examines various ways to diversify its energy supply, whether through increasing the import of liquefied natural gas or through its relations with the Eurasian Union. It then explores the International Energy Charter as an example of the EU's engagement with transnational policy networks. It concludes that from energy transit, to technology transfer, to investment protection, energy and trade present interplays across various fields. Improvements can be made to the EU trading system to ensure greater energy security and more efficient energy markets.     

市场经济中的行政监管责任研究——以欧典地板事件为例

"欧典事件"暴露出行政监管部门的失职问题,有效的解决方法就是使权力由单向形式改为双向形式,即使"权力与责任相统一",使"有权力者必有责任".     

小农经济的特质及我国农地关系法制化的基本方向

在我国农地制度的变迁中,中国共产党始终把农地关系法制化放在调整社会经济关系、促进中国社会进步的重要地位.我国现行农地集体所有,家庭经营的农地制度仍具备小农经济的特质.通观世界,小农经济在欧美较早得到改造,在西方社会改造小农经济的现代化过程中,法制化成为农地制度变迁的最直接最明显的推动力量.我国农地法制化的基本方向是落实科学发展观,进一步完善现行农地法规;保障农地资源与农民的安全,明确界定农地的权利主体.     

少数民族地区经济开发应走循环经济之路

我国少数民族地区的生态环境非常脆弱,且已遭到严重破坏,尽管少数民族地区走循环经济之路存在着许多困难,但是国内外的压力、少数民族地区的现实状况和缩小地区差距等要求,使得少数民族地区开发只有走循环经济之路,才能实现少数民族地区的可持续发展。     

提升中俄经贸关系需要媒体助阵

从新闻传播的真实性与公正性原则出发,探讨媒体在中俄战略伙伴关系中发挥的三种作用:“尊重事实避免虚假新闻”、“摒弃炒作负面新闻”和“引导沟通充当经贸桥梁”。目的在于从大众传媒领域找到推进中俄战略伙伴关系的新动力。     

Taxing Digital Economy: A Critical View around the GloBE (Pillar Two)

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) proposal for taxation of digital economy constitutes one of the most ambitious projects in the field of taxation and may lead to the most significant reform to international tax rules in the 20th century. Based on a two-pillar approach, Pillar Two of the proposal suggests the adoption of Global Anti-Base Erosion (GloBE) provisions that are aimed at introducing a worldwide minimum tax. In this article, a critical analysis is based that the GloBE proposal suggests that it represents a shift in the OECD policy. As compared to base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), it jeopardizes the tax sovereignty of jurisdictions and it raises fundamental challenges of implementation, both in terms of amendments to domestic law and conflicts with tax treaties.     

The Capitalocene Part II: accumulation by appropriation and the centrality of unpaid work/energy

This essay – Part II – reconceptualizes the past five centuries as the Capitalocene, the ‘age of capital’. The essay advances two interconnected arguments. First, the exploitation of labor-power depends on a more expansive process: the appropriation of unpaid work/energy delivered by ‘women, nature, and colonies’ (Mies). Second, accumulation by appropriation turns on the capacity of state–capital–science complexes to make nature legible. If the substance of abstract social labor is time, the substance of abstract social nature is space. While managerial procedures within commodity production aim to maximize productivity per quantum of labor-time, the geo-managerial capacities of states and empires identify and seek to maximize unpaid work/energy per ‘unit’ of abstract nature. Historically, successive state–capital–science complexes co-produce Cheap Natures that are located, or reproduce themselves, largely outside the cash nexus. Geo-managerialism’s preliminary forms emerged rapidly during the rise of capitalism. Its chief historical expressions comprise those processes through which capitalists and state-machineries map, identify, quantify and otherwise make natures legible to capital. A radical politics of sustainability must recognize – and seek to mobilize through – a tripartite division of work under capitalism: labor-power, unpaid human work and the work of nature as a whole.