The main challenges for the post-Cold War world include: Control by and challenges from international capitals, legacies of the Cold War, asymmetrical threats such as terrorism, regional and transnational conflicts. The world must find proper and effective means to cope with such challenges and manage crises in a time when the mobility and interdependence of personnel, capital, goods and ideas are increasingly enhanced.

Pyongyang’s recent missile tests show that becoming a nuclear power is not merely a bargaining chip but a genuine threat. The next US president will take renewed stock of the situation in the DPRK in 2017, and Beijing should start doing that right now. Protecting its own homeland security should and must be the fundamental gauge for China’s policy towards the DPRK.

Chinese initiatives like “One Belt, One Road” are intentionally open and flexible; no uniform rules or norms are set from the beginning. One of the major challenges for the EU and European countries in the cooperation with China stems from this openness or vagueness, and from doubts about rules that might be applied differently in global and regional contexts.