The Russian army is withdrawing from Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and other major cities, and is concentrating its forces in the eastern part of the country, intensifying its attacks on the Donbas region. Some experts believe that the war between Russia and Ukraine has come to an end and that Russia’s aim now is to achieve de facto control of the eastern part of the country to use as a bargaining chip on the negotiation table.
Since the war began, the United States and the West have imposed unprecedented sanctions on the Russian government, businesses, officials, and individuals, including a ban on the purchase of Russian energy products; confiscation of capital, banking, and financial assets; and kicking Russia out of SWIFT transactions. One of Russia’s countermeasures was to require businesses that buy Russian natural gas to use rubles for transactions. To make the sanctions more effective, the Biden administration is also threatening to impose secondary sanctions on China if it helps Russia bypass them.
According to some experts, the war is ending the global division of labor established over the past twenty-plus years, and a new pattern is forming. In a recent article in The Epoch Times, scholar Qinglian He said that the Russia-Ukraine war has forced a reorganization of the global division of labor. Ms. He said that globalization was initially limited to the economic sector, but, under the influence of the American left, two demands of the Western world were added: pacifism and green energy policy based on climate change. Moreover, the more serious impact of the Russia-Ukraine war is that the two cornerstones of globalization—the international division of labor based on comparative cost advantages and the global flow of capital—will have to undergo a major restructuring. The West will build a wall around the countries and economies associated with Russia, but, according to Ms. He, the presence of China will be a neutralizing factor making the wall more of a fence. Globalization, which began after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is now split into two major types of economies separated by a fence.
Shi Shan, senior editor and lead writer at The Epoch Times, recently said that most turning points in human history are marked by a war, and the war in Ukraine is such a marker, changing the direction of the entire world. Shi believes this war will mark a turning point for globalization. Globalization will become hemispheric, and the rules of the market economy may only operate in the Western bloc, he said.
Chinese analyst and economics professor Antonio Graceffo told Pinnacle View that we are returning to a world of U.S. hegemony and U.S. dollar hegemony, as it was 20 years ago, and that the relative influence of the United States and the U.S. dollar is increasing as a result of this conflict. Graceffo believes we will definitely see the formation of two blocs. On one side will be the free world, including the EU, the United States, and NATO. On the other side will be Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea. China, says Graceffo, will attempt to maneuver between the two.
Ming-Fang Tsai, associate professor of the Department of Economics at Zhanjiang University, Taiwan, said that after the Russia-Ukraine War, the divergence between the democratic bloc and the non-democratic bloc is becoming more and more obvious and clear. The war has shown Taiwan and the world that they should not depend solely on the unreliable Chinese market. In the long run, Tsai asserts, communist countries will be the losers of the Russia-Ukraine war, while democratic countries will win in the end.
Pinnacle View, a new TV program launched at the end of 2021 by New Tang Dynasty and The Epoch Times, is a high-end TV forum based on events surrounding China. The program gathers elites from around the world and from all walks of life, focuses on hot issues, analyzes the world’s major trends, and provides viewers with in-depth observations on current events and historical facts.
This edition of Pinnacle View focuses on the impact of the war in Ukraine on post-Cold War globalization and explores the new global order and the role of China within it.
Pinnacle View production team
