Bob Savic
Bob Savic writes on how power is shifting through trade, sanctions and supply chains, with a focus on China’s changing place in global politics. He tracks the way economic security tools, resource control and legal rules are used as political leverage between major powers and their regional partners. His work links high-level geopolitical rivalry to the practical risks facing governments, corporations and financial actors.
Geopolitics of trade and economic security
Savic centers much of his coverage on trade measures and economic security frameworks as instruments of statecraft. In Asia Times he follows new tariff rounds and regulatory rules between China and Western economies, showing how “Sino-West trade strains deepen on new tariffs and rules” and how a “New China-EU trade mechanism puts talks over tariffs.”
He explains how these arrangements alter negotiating power, supply routes and industrial planning across sectors. His reporting on “Belgrade bets on Beijing as Budapest pivots to Brussels” uses a specific Central European case to show how smaller states navigate competing offers from China and the European Union. He also highlights joint efforts like “EU and Japan align on economic security against China,” tracking how alliances build shared tools to manage strategic dependencies and protect key industries.
Across these pieces he treats trade and economic security not as technical issues but as core political questions about alignment, autonomy and influence.
US–China rivalry through resources and sanctions
Another strand of his work examines the rivalry between the United States and China through the lens of commodities, critical minerals and sanctions. In “Resource dominance reshaping Trump’s rivalry with China” he describes how US competition now treats resource dependency as vulnerability and resource dominance as geopolitical power, drawing on White House commitments around agricultural exports, energy supplies and rare earths.
He traces how these deals and threats feed into broader sanction regimes and bargaining positions in Washington and Beijing. His coverage in the US–China section of Asia Times follows new sanction packages on Chinese firms and their use as leverage on Chinese leadership. He consistently links these moves to knock-on effects for allies and partners, from Indonesia facing tariff offensives to Southeast Asian states adjusting to shifting commodity flows.
The focus is on how material resources and legal restrictions become the tools through which political rivalry is expressed and managed.
China’s industrial and supply chain security
Savic writes in detail about China’s internal legal and regulatory response to foreign pressure, especially around industrial and supply chain policy. In “Decouple from China?
Beijing now has a law against it” he analyzes China’s new Industrial and Supply Chain Security law, explaining how it extends scrutiny to decisions on sourcing, production allocation, technology transfer and partnerships with Chinese firms.
He shows how the ambiguous notion of “supply chain stability” gives regulators broad discretion, creating legal uncertainty for multinationals seeking to diversify or relocate operations. In related work on China’s post-COVID rebuild and efforts to work around US chip restrictions, he follows how industrial policy, semiconductor strategy and digital infrastructure are being used to harden China against future shocks and external controls.
Asia Times notes that he advises on sanctions, supply chains and geopolitical risk, and his journalism reflects that advisory focus by foregrounding regulatory detail, business impacts and compliance risk alongside the political context.
Multipolar order and China’s wider partnerships
Beyond the US–China dyad, Savic covers how other regions respond to a more multipolar world shaped by China’s rise.
In “ASEAN engages Russia while G7 isolates it” he uses the ASEAN–Russia summit in Kazan to show how Southeast Asian states pursue pragmatic engagement with Moscow even as Western powers tighten isolation measures. His piece “ASEAN navigates multipolar world with pragmatic engagement” continues this theme, portraying regional governments balancing security ties, energy needs and investment flows among several major powers.
He has written on “Behind China and Russia’s special relationship,” unpacking the strategic logic and historical roots of close cooperation between Beijing and Moscow. In “China’s Vision 2035: From Beijing’s Forbidden City to interconnected Eurasian megacity” he explores long-term plans for Eurasian connectivity and urban development, tying domestic planning to cross-border infrastructure and trade corridors. Earlier work on whether the US is losing East Asia to China and on China’s digital industrial transformation during the COVID-19 era extends this frame, showing how governance models, technology and regional diplomacy fit into an evolving order where no single power is dominant.
Across these threads, Savic’s coverage is defined by a close reading of legal texts, trade mechanisms and resource flows, and by an insistence on their political meaning.
He writes for Asia Times on global politics as expressed through economic and technological competition, and has also contributed analysis on China–Russia relations and China’s long-term development vision to other international affairs and business publications. His work is useful for understanding not only what governments are doing, but how those decisions translate into concrete risks and choices for companies, investors and regional partners embedded in shifting global power structures.
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