Reviewing AUKUS: From Nuclear Submarines to Alliance-Building

Xu Shaomin

AUKUS is a pioneering trilateral initiative integrating security strategy and industrial policy against China. Demonstrating resilience across successive administrations, it leverages a “military-industrial-academic complex” to implement “militarized neoliberalism.” This article examines AUKUS’s evolution and alliance foundations, revealing how it forces a U.S.-Australia structural upgrade to consolidate collective deterrence. Ultimately, the momentum of AUKUS expansion—across both Pillar I and II—poses increasingly complex security challenges for China.

Divergent Perceptions of the Global South and Obstacles to Sino-Indian Cooperation

Ye Hailin & Zhang Zhanyu

The “Global South” has emerged as a pivotal framework for international coordination, with China and India as historically central actors since the Bandung era. However, contemporary approaches reveal a “confrontational” narrative logic, diverging significantly in cooperation paths and global governance reform. By comparing their perceptions of subjects, objects, and relationships, this analysis explains the roots of their current collaborative dilemmas and provides a trend assessment for future interactions.

Pathways, Motivations, and Implications of the EU’s Accelerated Reconstruction of Its Defense Industry

Gu Su

Driven by the Ukraine crisis and intensifying global competition, the EU is accelerating defense industrial reconstruction to bolster strategic autonomy and re-industrialization. This substantive shift integrates institutional coordination, increased domestic investment, and cross-border cooperation. While constrained by structural limitations, this revitalization reshapes the European security architecture and transatlantic dynamics, ultimately impacting Sino-European economic and technological engagement through a recalibrated logic of security interaction.

Macron’s “Third Way” Theory: Seeking a Strategic Breakthrough in the Indo-Pacific Region

Fang Jiongsheng & Zhang Ji

President Macron’s “Third Way” strategy, formalized in France’s updated Indo-Pacific report, offers an alternative to bloc confrontation by championing strategic autonomy and multilateralism. Driven by efforts to overcome geopolitical marginalization, this initiative provides a soft balance to U.S. strategy while complicating Sino-French relations. Despite constraints like resource dispersion, it introduces new governance variables, allowing China to pursue cooperation and address regional governance deficits.

Security, Market, and Power: The Institutional Logic of the European Union’s Critical Minerals Strategy

Yu Hongyuan

Amidst green and digital transitions, the EU prioritizes critical minerals for strategic autonomy and climate neutrality. Facing structural vulnerabilities and geopolitical supply risks, the EU has introduced the Critical Raw Materials Act to institutionalize its strategy, balancing internal capacity with external partnerships. Despite internal tensions between security and market logics, this shift forces China to consolidate midstream advantages and deepen multilateral cooperation to navigate evolving mineral competition.