Since the 18th CPC National Congress, China has stepped into a new era characterized by brightness and progress, while the U.S. has moved towards a new era of dark and reactionary nature. In the last few years, the U.S., the UK, and European countries have witnessed a reversal of the domestic and foreign policies, which indicates that the international political landscape has also entered a new era. The keynote of global politics was peace and development, and in the 21st century, it could be labeled with war and peace. The Trump administration has transferred its dependence from petroleum onto military industry in pursuit of dollar appreciation, and the U.S. has unprecedentedly demonstrated its most ferocious, meanwhile the weakest, nature of a paper tiger. Once the war becomes the business of the U.S., peace, as a result, turns the enemy to the U.S. Anti-peace, in the long term, would dominate the nature of U.S. diplomacy. Either War or peace, darkness or brightness, and to confront in a divided and fractured world or to help each other in a community, people around the world should make their own choices. Two world wars in Europe have provided the U.S. military industrial enterprises with a feast, and therefore China has to let go of illusions and must be prepared to carry out a great struggle with many new historical features.

The “developed country” and “underdeveloped country” along with other relevant terms are prevailing concepts used to classify different countries in the field of global governance and international relations, making the base of the existing global discourse system dominated by the western countries. However, little attention has been given to the western ideology or discourse power behind these terms and related theories. Based on the review of related literature, the paper proposes four hypotheses: the relevant terms as “developed country” and “underdeveloped country” (1) reflect an isolated worldview, (2) neglect the responsibilities of “developed countries” in the West to those “underdeveloped” or “less-developed” countries, (3) disguise the fact of inequality among countries, and (4) promote a linear development strategy which propagates the myth of development for “undeveloped” and “less-developed” countries. The paper thus proposes a new research agenda in the perspective of discourse analysis, taking advantage of the linguistic method of discourse analysis to dig into the corpus database including related terms and to explore the underlying western ideology and discourse power. Meanwhile, an example is demonstrated to show the distinctive usefulness of discourse analysis. With all this as the background, there are three choices for other countries when confronted with these basic concepts implying Western hegemony: a radical approach to totally reject these terms, a modest way continuing the use while with prudence, and an eclectic plan. The study would help us better understand the existing Western discourse system and thus contribute to the reconstruction of a new discourse system for global governance.

Securitization is the core theory of the Copenhagen school, of which the main argument is that security is a social construction between “speech act” agents rather than objectively established, and any problem could be subjectively constructed as a security problem. Securitization includes three procedures:discursive salience and securitization initiation, discursive framing and securitization communication, as well as discursive positioning and securitization measure. In recent years, the U.S. has attempted to propose freedom of navigation (FON) in the South China Sea as a security issue. As the securitization agent, the U.S. intends to highlight the threats to FON in the south china sea. At the same time, it takes advantage of the media reports to exaggerate the so⁃called security threats and asserts FON as its national interests. Since then, the U.S. has taken measures to deal with the threats, and FON in the South China Sea has rapidly become the focus of China⁃U.S. relations as well as the international community. The success of the U.S. securitization depends on its strong capabilities of communication and mobilization, as well as its unique domestic institutional advantages, and it takes advantage of concerns of the countries involved in the South China Sea issue confronted with a security dilemma. In view of this, China needs to make efforts in de⁃securitization, rendering the U.S. securitization only a subjective intention.

From the perspective of foreign water aid, the paper makes an in⁃depth analysis of America’s Asian strategic deployment and foreign policy implementation. Foreign aid is an essential constituent of a country’s foreign policy and an important measure for the implementation of foreign strategies. The U.S. is the world’s largest donor of foreign aid, and it searches for partners at home and abroad to influence the formulation of adaptive national strategies of recipient countries through the following “three pillars”. In terms of the recipient, the U.S. identifies priority countries to provide water aid according to its own strategic needs. As for content, the U.S. efforts in water aid are in line with the domestic development and social governance of Asia⁃Pacific countries. With assistance measure, continuous investment of capital, technology, and human resources are made. The U.S. water aid in the Asia⁃Pacific region is of great significance for China’s foreign water aid in the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1949, the political and diplomatic relations between China and Russia have witnessed continuous development and have gradually become a model for a new type of major⁃country relations. With a complementary relationship, the two countries have carried out many cooperation projects, and have made remarkable achievements in the long history of cooperation. However, examined from the perspective of cooperation theory in a new type of major⁃country relations, it could be found that there are some deficiencies in aspects as capacity, mechanism, and dimension of cooperation.The “Polar Silk Road” jointly built by China and Russia not only expands the space for bilateral cooperation in the field of maritime affairs but also makes up for deficiencies in the current cooperation. In the process of construction, feasible paths can be explored from the perspectives of macro planning, local cooperation, and connectivity. With continuous progress of the blue cooperation, it is imperative to establish the China⁃Russia Blue Partnership with the “Polar Silk Road” as a new starting point. The Blue Partnership concept provides a sustainable driving force for deepening the connotation of the new type of major⁃country relations between China and Russia and building the maritime community with a shared future for the neighboring countries.

EU institutions have exclusive or shared competences in BRI⁃related projects, and thus play an important role in China⁃Europe cooperation on BRI. This paper tries to analyze EU perceptions towards the BRI on the basis of 30 reports or articles by EU institutions and their affiliated think tanks. EU’s overall perceptions are complicated. Specifically, in the economic area, EU institutions attach great importance to BRI⁃related economic opportunities, including trade and investment, but worry about transparency of market rules. Politically, EU perceptions are predominantly characterized by worries about its own solidarity and the decline of its political influence in EU countries. In terms of strategic security, the EU recognizes win⁃win results between Europe and China in energy and non⁃conventional security, but it does worry about BRI’s impact on current international norms and order dominated by western countries. Such perceptions are shaped by EU’s actorness, nature of power and identity in the international system. Considering EU perceptions and competences, China should push forward BRI in Europe through multilevel cooperation, including with EU, EU member countries, local governments and enterprises. Cooperation projects in third markets should also be encouraged and more long⁃term institutionalized educational and cultural cooperation mechanisms be established to promote China⁃Europe Belt and Road cooperation.

China’s participation in global health cooperation in the Mekong region has transcended the traditional type of health diplomacy and created a new model of Chinese global health cooperation and diplomacy. The five Mekong countries (Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam) are important countries along the Belt and Road. Within the framework of the types of the relationship between health and foreign policy, the paper reviews the history of China’s participation in health cooperation and health diplomacy in the Mekong region. China’ s practice of global health cooperation and health diplomacy in the Mekong region has gone beyond the traditional “health in service of foreign policy” type of health diplomacy, demonstrating the development trend and characteristics of global health diplomacy. The diversified and multi-level model of China’s participation in global health cooperation in the Mekong region has a strong replicable significance. Exploring the types and characteristics of China’s participation in global health and diplomacy in the Mekong region will not only shed light on China’s participation in global health diplomacy but also contribute Chinese wisdom and solutions for global health governance.

The maritime resource takes natural resources as its material foundation, which contains the interplay between people. With the advancement of society, both the maritime resource itself and the included social relations have witnessed frequent change. Sea areas indicate not only the horizontal coverage but also the vertical content, which means marine space natural resources demonstrate the characteristic of multi⁃dimensional distribution. The current approach to the management of maritime resources is limited to the horizontal level, and considerations should be made to practical demands and the multi⁃dimensional distribution characteristic. Only in a layered and multi⁃dimensional approach, can marine space resources be used independently as a single resource and be well managed as the capital. Marine space resources, as an important part of the life community for “mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, and grasses”, are essential to the construction of marine ecological civilization. Based on the definition and attributes of governmental capital, the paper defines the concept of marine space natural resources as the capital is defined, and draws up the framework for capitalized management of marine space natural resources and its implementation scheme, aiming to provide references for national marine space natural resources management and maritime ecological civilization construction.