The University of Texas at Austin will establish a new interdisciplinary China Policy Center, with a charge to make enduring contributions to the study of China-related policy topics while advancing U.S.-China relations and Texas-China relations.

Zhou Enlai was foreign minister of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 until 1958 and its first premier. He defined diplomacy as a continuation of warfare by other means. In the contemporary world, that definition includes an understanding of the concepts of hard and soft power. Joseph Nye developed the idea of soft power as the ability to attract and persuade rather than applying economic, military and political hard power.

A strategic approach which protects the Gambia interests must be the ultimate goal of the government. Although reciprocity and sovereign equality is the basis on which states interrelate to each other, hegemonic powers tend to use their superior economic capabilities as bargaining leverages to attain better deals at the expense of developing economies. This starkly reminds us that international politics is a deadly complex business which requires a clear-cut thinking strategy to mitigate the brute forces of material power.