Wang Fan, vice president of China Foreign Affairs University

Keyword about Year of the Mouse: Turbulent
Keyword about Year of the Ox: Recovery

The world security landscape in 2020 was rather bad. In the non-traditional sector, the US as the world's only superpower acted so nastily in the fight against COVID-19 that the world's major economies all had to face the challenge of the pandemic.

The worsening situation of the pandemic in the US had affected world security in at least two aspects. First, in order to lessen their own pressure and prevent voters from paying attention to their failures, US politicians shifted blame to China; When that attempt failed, they hyped up threats from Iran as if it posed a grave challenge.

Second, it distracted the world's major powers from governing world affairs, and in turn caused a major deficit in world governance. As a result, some traditional security problems emerged due to a lack of major powers controlling situations. The armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is a good example of this, as it did not end until Russian forces maintained peace there.

Therefore, the situation in 2020 was untraditional challenges to security causing traditional challenges to security. The keyword for the year, "turbulent", contains more meanings than its initial meaning of "disorder": It contains fear, conflict, even despair.

Hopefully, with the vaccine being introduced, the US will begin to control the COVID-19 pandemic. But we can only say "hopefully" because no one knows whether the vaccine will be effective in doing so.

If the COVID-19 pandemic, which is especially grave in the US, can be effectively put under control, then its destructive effects to world governance mechanisms can be neutralized a little and the world will see hope of recovery. It might not be as good as it was before the pandemic, but hopefully much better than the worst days.

US President Joe Biden said the US would rejoin some multilateral mechanisms and agreements former president Donald Trump exited in his four-year term. But this can be a double-edged sword, too, because the US and other countries have different definitions of the term "multilateral agreement". For the US, it means they have dominance and absolute say; For other countries, it means discussion.

We can hope for good changes in the Year of the Ox, and let's strive together for that.