China has increased its presence in developing countries in the Global South in recent years, offering development institutions and increasing its economic ties with countries across Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These initiatives are particularly important since the retreat of the United States in providing development assistance, although it is not yet clear that China will fill the gap in these programs. At the same time, China and the U.S. are rocketing into what some believe is a new space race, raising questions about the ownership of territory in outer space and the risks of militarizing that landscape.
Carla Freeman is Senior Lecturer for International Affairs and Director of the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Previously she served as a Senior Expert for China at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), a role that followed more than a decade as a member of the faculty and staff of JHU SAIS. She has also been the Library of Congress Kluge Chair for China and a Peace Scholar at USIP. She held previous academic and non-profit positions and was a political risk analyst for several years.
A key experience that encouraged her to pursue a career following international relations and China policy was serving as a “junior Science Officer” at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. She completed her B.A. in Southeast Asia and History at Yale University, a certificate in Chinese language studies at Beijing Language & Culture University, and a certificate in political science from Sciences Po in Paris. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from SAIS, writing her dissertation on the political economy of reform in China and the challenges posed to its heavily industrialized Northeast region. Current projects include a book with a working title China and the Strategic New Frontiers.
Emma Brignall: You come from a legacy of diplomatic figures. How has your background shaped your career path and your interest in China?
Carla Freeman: My experience as the daughter of a Foreign Service officer certainly had a huge influence on my career path, although I didn’t plan it that way. I really wanted to be a ballet dancer, but when that didn’t work out, I started studying international politics.
When I was an older teenager, my family moved to Beijing. I started studying at what is now Beijing Language and Culture University. This was back in 1981, a very exciting time to be in China. We had lived overseas before in India and Taiwan, so I had experience living in Asia already. But being in China at that time was very exciting because the Chinese were just starting their reform and opening policies. There was amazing positive energy in the country and a lot of goodwill toward Americans with normalization of U.S.-China relations, which had happened recently in 1979, associated with reform and opening.
It was a captivating period to be in China. Combine that with the study of the Chinese language, which I began formally at that time. Anyone who studies the Chinese language knows it’s beguiling. You start out thinking this is not so hard, simple grammar, and then you get caught up in it. Studying Chinese more formally led me then to learn more about China, and the rest is history. I still feel like a student as I approach China because it has changed so much over the past 30 years.
EB: How would you compare your early interest in China with that of the younger people you interact with in the field today?
CF: Having worked in this field for quite a while I have seen generational shifts in how people study and approach China. Early in my career, China was a land of opportunity, in some ways a wild west in which young foreigners had tremendous access to the country and it was a place so full of opportunity that foreigners could envisage, if not a lifetime of living in China, at least long periods of time to work and develop professional experiences. There were huge opportunities to build businesses and forge relationships.
Over time, the relationship stabilized and became more institutionalized. There were fewer opportunities for entrepreneurial activities by foreigners, but there was a steady flow of Americans living and working in China. This has changed a lot in more recent years. I’m reminded by my master’s students that the first Trump administration, and the first time the U.S. started to approach China as a strategic competitor was when they were in middle school. Their attitude toward China is quite different—they’re studying China now with equal interest as any generation but as a rival to the United States, and perhaps also a potential partner in some ways. They seem to have the attitude that China will be a country that the United States must work with in the world. They approach China with interest and caution. China is setting the terms nowadays for the way that people interact with it to a degree that is unprecedented. I’m impressed by the language skills of many of the Americans who are approaching China, but they don’t necessarily have the living experience in China that previous generations of China scholars have had.
EB: You’ve written extensively about China’s relations with border regions. Starting with Southeast Asia, how has China’s economic and political involvement in the region changed in recent years?
CF: The trajectory has been one of deepening and broadening engagement with Southeast Asia. China is now a giant economic partner for every country in the region. China is also a security partner—even in some cases an arms supplier and a provider of regional security goods. Economic ties are expanding rapidly—they upgraded the ASEAN-China FTA to boost integration, for example adding to institutional arrangements to deepen ties.
At the same time, as the relationship between China and the region has deepened, you also see China trying to protect its assets and investments and its trade relationships with countries in the region, and that requires a more securitized approach. China is also concerned that some of the pathologies in parts of the region, from drug trafficking to human trafficking, might spill across the border into China.
On the other side of the border and South China Sea, Southeast Asians for the most part are keen to benefit from China’s economic strength, although also wary about having too much Chinese economic weight in their economies. They are also trying to manage their security relationships with China as well. It’s complicated, because some of these countries have territorial disputes with China, especially maritime states, and many of them have very strong economic ties with China, and they have to figure out how to navigate that situation. With the more complex relationship with the United States in recent years, that has been harder for the countries along China’s border in Southeast Asia, and all around the region.
EB: I want to dive into that a bit more. China’s actions in the South China Sea have created divisions among ASEAN member states over maritime territorial disputes. How is the bloc changing under China’s influence, and what are the implications for the security of the region?
CF: There have been some fissures in ASEAN for quite some time. China has used its influence on some ASEAN member states, with Cambodia a key example. Cambodia has often been seen as China’s proxy within ASEAN on the South China Sea question. China has very close economic ties and expanding military relations with Cambodia. China expanded a naval base in Cambodia, with Chinese vessels regularly rotating through the base. Cambodia has often aligned with China’s perspective on South China Sea disputes within ASEAN, thwarting consensus on an ASEAN-wide approach to the South China Sea.
There have been efforts by the region to negotiate with China and develop a binding Code of Conduct or COC on the South China Sea and 2026 is the target date for achieving this. The Philippines, which currently chairs ASEAN, has said it wants to finalize the COC, but it has some of the most intense maritime disputes with China, alongside Vietnam. It seems very unlikely that ASEAN and China will be able to reach a coherent agreement given these frictions. Other ASEAN countries, including Malaysia, and Indonesia, also have disputes over the South China Sea with China. These countries are trying to balance their economic relationships with China with their opposition to China’s maritime claims.
Sovereignty disputes go to the heart of a nation’s identity. Figuring out how to take any steps that could compromise the ability to secure one’s claims is very difficult. China has been a real challenge for ASEAN to manage. It’s quite remarkable that ASEAN has been able to continue to develop its relationship with China on the economic track, despite sovereignty disputes with China.
EB: With the United States withdrawing from certain international commitments, many believe China may gain greater influence in developing countries, particularly in Africa and Latin America. Do you expect institutions and initiatives such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Belt and Road Initiative to expand? How do Chinese-led institutions differ from American ones?
CF: China has laid the groundwork for closer ties to the Global South for many years. These ties date to the earliest years of the People’s Republic of China. The most recent of relations through the Belt and Road Initiative followed a period during Jiang Zemin’s leadership of China, where China encouraged its state-owned enterprises and its provinces, and even citizens to go out and engage in trade and investment with the Global South.
Regarding the implications of the U.S. retreat from the kind of relationships that we tried to build with these countries in the Global South, China has had a special relationship to Africa for decades. Since roughly the early 2000s, and especially since the Belt and Road Initiative launched in 2013, China’s financial commitment to African infrastructure has substantially outpaced that of the United States—including in higher-risk projects that U.S. development finance institutions were reluctant to fund. More recently the United States has woken up to what China figured out years ago: Africa holds a huge share of the critical minerals the world now needs. Some of the relationships China built over decades—often written off at the time as just aid or infrastructure deals—have turned into real strategic advantages. I expect China to keep deepening those ties, both in Africa and across the developing world.
China’s relationship to Latin American countries has narrowed somewhat in recent years. China has mainly been trading and investing in a few countries—Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, I believe. China has not pursued the same region-wide strategy as in Africa where it’s also developing connectivity across the continent and pursuing projects that embed its role in the region more deeply.
Where I expected we’d see China moving in to fill the gap left by the U.S. but where we’re not yet seeing China playing a big role is the public health arena. There is some growth in China’s provision of public health groups to the developing world, but it’s just not set up yet, or maybe it never will be, to provide the kind of development aid that USAID provided to many countries. There is a big gap. I imagine in circles in Beijing, there’s debate over the extent to which China should and can help to fill that gap. We may see some new kinds of institutions emerge, perhaps even driven by these regions themselves, looking for ways to fill the gap left by the U.S. retreat in supplying those critical development supports to countries in Africa and other parts of the developing world. That would be a big leap for China. While it has institutions capable of supporting development, it does not have the tradition of providing that kind of support. The Belt and Road Initiative is fundamentally a different model.
As the U.S. retreats, we are indeed seeing more interest in the AIIB. The AIIB is expanding its infrastructure financing, and it now has 111 member countries. Similarly, BRICS has become very attractive to developing and emerging economies. There are now 10 or 11 members from the original Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. We’ve seen more countries added, and there is a lineup of other countries that are interested in joining. There’s a real effort to expand some of these institutional relationships that can help fill gaps left by the United States as it shifts its foreign policy priorities.
We could also discuss the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and other emerging organizations on the global stage. China has been erecting new institutions and mechanisms to augment its own influence and address challenges affecting its interests. Part of this growth reflects competition with the United States, but these developments also reflect China securing its economic interests outside its borders.
EB: I’d like to turn to another region of interest: Northeast Asia. North Korea and Russia are two of China’s strategic partners. North Korea has been on an economic rise since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, while Russia’s capabilities have been strained by it. What do you see for the future of this three-way relationship and how has it changed since the war began?
CF: The partnership that has really changed since the war began is the Russia-North Korea partnership, and that has deepened immensely. It came as a bit of an uncomfortable development for China, which has always, as one of North Korea’s allies, and close neighbors with a long history of support for North Korea. It has been uncomfortable for Beijing that Moscow and Pyongyang are suddenly working together in more areas. China really wants to ensure that it has the most influence over North Korea. China also doesn’t like the idea that the outside world, especially the West, will perceive a China-North Korea-Russia axis. That could help align U.S. allies and partners against China, because this would be three nuclear powers working together in a coherent way, with interests that are very different from the West. At least two of these states are actively involved in the Ukraine war. We know that North Korea has sent troops and munitions to support Russia’s war effort, and China, although it asserts its neutrality, has been a supportive economic partner to Russia and possibly a source of some technologies that have helped sustain the war against Ukraine.
So, China would like to make sure that the Russia-North Korea partnership does not become more than the transactional relationship it is right now—one where Russia has driven that economic boost that you mentioned. North Korea’s economy has reportedly been growing at above 3%, the fastest pace in years, although it’s very hard to get any data. That seems to come mostly from arms shipments to Russia and elsewhere, and also labor exports, particularly to Russia. It’s not an overall economic surge for North Korea, but it could translate into other areas of growth for North Korea—China would welcome that. It is not keen, in my assessment, on an axis forming between it, Russia, and North Korea. China is not even that comfortable with Moscow and Pyongyang deepening their ties much further. Where things are is fine for stability at the moment, but China would not like to see this relationship become anything more active on the world stage.
EB: During your time at the United States Institute of Peace, one of your areas of focus was China and outer space. What are some of the major advances China has made in space recently? How do these compare to American progress?
CF: What we’re seeing today is often described as a new space race between China and the United States. China has committed substantial resources to both its civilian and military space programs. China is very committed to land taikonauts on the Moon by 2030. This year, one of China’s astronauts, or taikonauts, began a full year in China’s space station—that mission started in May.
China is also working with Russia to set up a lunar base, the International Lunar Research Station, on the south pole of the Moon. That region is significant because it contains water, and there is a rush in global interest in access and establishing presence in that part of the Moon because water can fuel activities in space. The International Lunar Research Station is gaining interest around the world, and it now has around 17 member countries and international organizations, alongside an emerging associated organization. Meanwhile, the United States has been trying to boost its own space program, the Artemis program, and we have initiated our own new organization, the Artemis Accords, that we’ve used to encourage more activity around the Moon, including resource extraction.
That’s just the beginning of U.S.-China competition in space. China is also developing military capabilities that can be applied to the space environment. Its satellite networks are vast, and there are now 200 countries and regions using China’s Beidou global position system, which has some capabilities that GPS does not.
The United States, after enjoying relative command of the space environment, suddenly has to reenvision its role as one of a number of powerful space actors, including China as a peer competitor in space, even leading in some technologies. It can be a very exciting time because it presents opportunities for a lot more space science and exploration—it’s not all grim competition. There’s also a potentially exciting and positive story here. The U.S. is quite constrained to cooperate with China on space right now due to longstanding legislation restricting NASA collaboration with China. But, perhaps, we will figure out a way to manage our relationship in space that we can work together on the parts of space cooperation that help humanity while protecting our national interests.
EB: Speaking of cooperation, the Wolf Amendment currently places heavy restrictions on the ability of NASA to collaborate with Chinese counterparts. Do you see the potential for collaboration in the near future and what would be the benefits of cooperation in space?
CF: I believe the benefits of cooperation in space are enormous. Scientists think cooperatively with the idea that the goal is to create more knowledge by having more smart people working together with people with different perspectives approaching challenges from a variety of angles. Scientists generally would like to see more space cooperation—and cooperation in science is a positive factor in keeping the space environment relatively peaceful.
The Outer Space Treaty established in the 1960s has been effective in keeping a focus on the peaceful use of outer space. Although space is key in modern warfare, we haven’t yet put weapons in orbit. We need to continue to uphold the commitments to a peaceful and sustainable use of space made during the Cold War during the first space race between the United States and the Soviet Union.
As two space leaders, the United States and China have significant stakes in space. Space has infinite potential—there is so much we don’t know about it to discover and so many potential ways to use it for greater prosperity. At the same time, it is a fragile environment—if we don’t manage space traffic well, for example there could be a collision that causes catastrophic debris. It is also fragile because if you put weapons in space, it complicates an environment we are just beginning to explore, increasing the risk of such devastating consequences as irreversible environmental damage to nuclear war, and more. There is so much at stake, and it is extremely important that the United States sits down with China and works on how to work together in space for the benefit of humankind.
EB: Space is often thought of as a global commons. How might that framework be challenged as space exploration takes off in more countries and how can peace in space be preserved?
CF: There is significant debate today about whether outer space should still be understood as a global commons. During the first Trump administration, President Trump declared that space is not a global commons. One reason for that position is that viewing space as a commons can be seen as constraining the use of space for both economic and military purposes. Since the United States has labeled it a fighting domain, China likewise sees space as a key arena for military competition. And, as I discussed, the U.S. also has a strong commercial interest in expanding activity in space. Congress passed the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act back in 2015—making the U.S. the first country to recognize the right of its citizens to own and sell resources they extract in space. I see that commercial push plus a later executive order declaring space isn’t a global commons as part of the same story.
At the same time, again, the Outer Space Treaty does designate outer space as the province of humankind and as such a “global commons” that should be used for the benefit of all humanity. The treaty itself suggests that space remains a global commons, but what is complicated is that we are now able as countries and individual companies to access specific resources in space, such as lunar resources. There we are getting into questions of physical control. Both the Artemis Accords and the International Lunar Research Station say that their purpose in enabling the use of lunar resources aligns with the principles of the Outer Space Treaty. However, they also say that it is consistent to establish bases on the lunar surface to do that.
This gets to a particularly controversial feature of the Artemis Accords which is the idea that in order to protect the resources that you are extracting from the Moon, the signatory state can establish a “safety zone” to preserve the investments made to do that. What a safety zone means and how it would be implemented has not yet been decided but that they are a provision of the Accords raises the question of whether safety zones will become a form of territorial appropriation or extension of sovereign jurisdiction to the lunar surface. If that occurs, then you’ve moved away from the global commons concept. For that reason, the Moon may become the first test of the global commons concept with collective action needed to preserve the Moon as part of the outer space commons.
Notably, China has begun using the term “global commons” in relation to outer space. However, I think it means something quite different from the traditional use of the term—more aligned with Xi Jinping’s “province of mankind” concept. For what that concept means for space governance remains to be seen.