On the afternoon of June 15, 2018, the Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IISS), Peking University (PKU) held the 24th session of the “North Pavilion Seminar” series. Yu Bin, Professor at the Department of Political Science, Wittenberg University and Special Research Fellow on China/Russia/Central Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), gave a keynote lecture on the China and Russia “Issues” of the U.S. The lecture was hosted by the Associate Prof. Guan Guihai, Executive Vice President of the IISS.

Starting from the phenomenon of “temperature difference between China and Russia” under the Trump administration, Prof. Yu introduced the U.S.-Russia relations and the China-U.S. relations under the specific political environment of the U.S. He also compared the subtle differences between the “China issue” and the “Russia issue” of the U.S.

Prof. Yu held that realists generally believe that the huge differences between China and Russia in the size of nuclear arsenals and the threshold of nuclear strategy are the main reasons for the arrogance in the U.S.’s strategy towards China. In addition to the factor of military power, factors of history, conceptualization and ideology should also be considered.

Prof. Yu finally proposed an explanation of this phenomenon from the perspective of civilization and racial concepts . It is worth studying whether the “Russia issue” and the “China issue” in the political ecology of the U.S. are an extension of realism or the “civilizational” issue in the 21st century.

In the comments and question-and-answer session, Prof. Yu exchanged views with teachers and students present at the seminar on the “New Washington Consensus” and issues of ideology, civilization and race in the U.S. (Contributed by Huang Xiaoting)