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China Just Co-created the World’s Biggest Trade Block. Is China’s World Order Already Here?

China is no longer content to “join” the existing global order but is constructing its own multilateral infrastructure [Photo: Getty Images]
Note: This article was first published on The Loop

RCEP is only the latest of many new multilateral institutions created by China. The alternative to American-led liberal international order looks increasingly viable.

Last week’s signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) brings China’s continued embrace of multilateralism into stark relief. While the United States under President Trump has recoiled from multilateral institutions and jettisoned its much-touted Trans-Pacific Partnership, China and fourteen other Asia-Pacific countries have just created the largest preferential trading zone in history, encompassing 30 percent of the world’s population and around a third of global GDP. While the RCEP is a relatively shallow trade agreement and is less “comprehensive” than it sounds, it is a major symbolic victory in China’s attempt to reorient world order. Continue reading “China Just Co-created the World’s Biggest Trade Block. Is China’s World Order Already Here?”

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Zahnärztliche Therapeut*innen als Beispiel für periphere Innovation

                                                                                                                                                                  [Photo: Nhia Moua/unsplash]

Wo staatliche Gesundheitsversorgung nicht garantiert ist, muss das Bestehen einer Grundabdeckung anderweitig sichergestellt werden. Zahnärztliche Therapeut*innen in entlegenen Gegenden sind das Musterbeispiel für die Bereitstellung solcher Dienstleistungen. Was in den 1920er Jahren in Neuseeland begann, findet sich mittlerweile in über 53 Ländern von Australien bis Simbabwe. Doch nicht nur das – die weltweite Verbreitung dieses Berufsfeldes zeigt überdies die erstaunliche Dynamik peripherer Diffusion in einer globalisierten Welt. In gängigen (Imperialismus-) Theorien wird Diffusion normalerweise als Prozess verstanden, der die globalen Machtzentren miteinander verbindet. Die Bewegung der zahnärztlichen Therapeut*innen zeigt allerdings, dass die Verbreitung von Wissen auch entlang der Ränder geschieht und diese vernetzt. In den USA begannen die ersten sechs Dentaltherapeut*innen ihre Arbeit 2004 in Alaska. Mittlerweile gibt es hierzu Gesetzesinitiativen in 10 weiteren Bundesstaaten, und Praktizierende treffen sich regelmäßig auf Konferenzen, um neue Kooperationsplattformen zu schaffen. Ihre Aktivitäten werden durch zahlreiche Stiftungen gefördert, die sich auf die Finanzierung neuer Modelle der Gesundheitsfürsorge spezialisieren und oftmals für die Ausbildung der Therapeut*innen aufkommen. Warum dies klassischen Zahnarztverbänden ein Dorn im Auge ist und dieses relativ neue Berufsfeld ein zweischneidiges Schwert darstellt, können Sie auf Englisch in unserem neuen Blogpost von Luis Aue und Tine Hanrieder lesen.

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Peripheral innovation – the dental therapist movement in the US

                                                                                                                                                                   [Photo: Nhia Moua/unsplash]

Diffusion is known as a process that ties together the centers of the world ever more closely. Once the privatization of water supply made it on the international agenda, privatization soon became a topic in capitals all over the world. Once it becomes the world standard to have a ministry for digital affairs, governments around the world will establish such an organization. Still, there is another and more hidden network of diffusion: diffusion that connects the world’s peripheries – sites of marginalized populations both in the Global South and the Global North. Here, an innovation does not move between the centers of power; it moves between the peripheries forgotten by the centers.

Dental therapists in the US are a case in point of such peripheral diffusion. They deliver basic dental services to underserved populations in peripheries, services that are normally delivered by dentists. Dental therapists work around the world in sites that are considered underserved. The profession was first established for dental services to schoolchildren in New Zealand in the 1920s, following bad health status of recruits. Now, there are dental therapists in 53 countries, from Australia to Zimbabwe. In the US, they were introduced for the first time in Alaskan Native communities. Currently, the dental therapist movement is introducing this profession in peripheries all over the US.

This movement and the spread of dental therapists in the US draw attention to important features of peripheral diffusion in a globalized world.

Continue reading “Peripheral innovation – the dental therapist movement in the US”

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China wants to live in the house that the US once built

[gmnicholas/gettyimages]

Although the US and China just pledged more cooperation in trade matters, the persistence of today’s global institutional architecture is rather uncertain as a power shift manifests itself ‘from West to East’. While the US withdraws its support from international agreements and institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), China largely continues to support the WTO’s work. So far China’s increasing global influence becomes most apparent in the areas of international trade and development banking. The question arises to what extent China fills the gaps that the US leaves behind as it abandons some of its international institutions – or ‘houses’, if you like – that make up the larger architecture.

Continue reading “China wants to live in the house that the US once built”

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