Beijing's March West: Opportunities and Challenges for China's Eurasian Pivot

China's Eurasian frontiers have emerged as a major factor in Beijing's foreign policy through President Xi Jinping's “One Belt, One Road” strategy. The article argues that this strategy has been given impetus by the shifting geopolitical landscape in Central Asia resulting from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia's relative decline, and Beijing's quest for stability in its restive province of Xinjiang.     

China's expanding influence in Africa: projection,perception and prospects in Southern African countries

China's multi-faceted endeavour to expand its influence in Africa has attracted worldwide scholarly and media attention. This article examines the different moments of China's soft power endeavour, from projection through its state media to representation and lived experiences in South Africa and Zimbabwe, two African countries which receive a significant level of attention in China's policymaking. Through interdisciplinary methodologies such as content analysis, online questionnaires and in-depth interviews conducted in China, South Africa and Zimbabwe, the authors found that China's state-engineered soft power initiatives have resulted in partial success in the two countries. The conclusions indicate that China faces many challenges in fully accomplishing its intended goal. The findings provide new insight into China's political impact in Africa within the context of Beijing's growing influence on Africa's political and economic future.     

How to Tame Your Dragon: An Evaluation of India's Foreign Policy Toward China

In the past 60 years, India-China relations have oscillated between friendship, hostility and indifference. In recent times, both countries have started competing for global economic gains and political status. In light of these events, the objective of this article is to analyze various strategies used by China against India, and India's policy response to these strategies. The article evaluates the process of foreign policy decision making in India, and traces the historical evolution of India's foreign policy towards China. It then deconstructs China's foreign policy towards India, and provides the rationale behind its strategies. The article suggests that after initial engagement with India on the question of boundary disputes, Chinese foreign policy has undergone a dramatic shift since 2007. It specifically evaluates the twin Chinese tactics of military incursions and denial of legitimacy to the Indian territories of Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. Based on an analysis of China's previous boundary disputes resolution record with neighbors, these tactics are identified as an extension of China's new strategy for resolving such disputes. The article concludes by suggesting various policy options available to India to counter China's new strategy on the Sino-Indian border.     

The Rise of China and the Future of the Atlantic Alliance

The consequences and implications of China's rise have been analyzed and discussed from a number of perspectives. There has been little analysis that specifically evaluates the implications for the Atlantic Alliance, however, and whether an international system defined by U.S.-China bi-polarity would lead to a strengthening or a weakening of the transatlantic relationship. This article argues that China's rise will create security dynamics that likely will lead to a weakening of the Atlantic Alliance. It is unlikely that China's rise will provide NATO with a renewed purpose or give a convincing rationale for alliance cohesion the way the Soviet Union once did. Instead, China's rise will reveal divergent strategic interests and priorities among the members of the Atlantic Alliance, with a real possibility that America's rebalancing toward the Asia-Pacific could intensify perceptions on both sides of the Atlantic of NATO's declining geopolitical value and relevance.     

Troubled Waters: China's Claims and the South China Sea

Among China's unresolved frontier questions, the South China Sea has become the most complex and troubled, and arguably the most significant and disconcerting. The economic and security stakes are high and the stake-holding states numerous and diverse. The claims that China (and others) make about the region reflect such interests but they are, ultimately, legal claims. Beijing's assertions of rights to the disputed areas have rested on three conceptually distinct grounds. Each presents a different mix of challenge and accommodation to international legal norms and the interests of other states, including China's neighbors, near-neighbors and the United States.while China's behavior (as well as that of other interested states) has been more and less assertive at various times, China's three basic arguments claiming rights to the region have been comparatively stable. Both China's pattern of multiple legal arguments and fluctuating actions and rhetoric do little to resolve the debate over whether a rising China will be deeply disruptive of the regional and international order or whether it can—with sufficient skill and tolerable adjustments—be accommodated and integrated. Although China's stance on rights in the South China Sea may be partly the accidental product of conflicting agendas and shifting assessments, Beijing's embrace of three distinct lines of legal argument arguably constitutes a strategy that serves China's interests given the factual, legal and strategic environment that China faces.     

Ideas and Influence: Scholarship as a Harbinger of Counterterrorism Institutions,Policies, and Laws in the People's Republic of China

This article demonstrates how scholarship on terrorism in China has provided the intellectual backdrop against which China's leadership has developed the country's counterterrorism institutions, policies, and laws. Building on the linkages between scholarship and policy-making, the article suggests potential avenues for policy reform in China's current counterterrorism architecture.     

Rising China in India's vicinity: a rivalry takes shape in Asia

New Delhi has been grappling with the challenge of China's rapid rise for some time now. Even as they sign loftily worded documents year after year, the distrust between China and India is actually growing at an alarming rate. True, economic cooperation and bilateral political as well as socio-cultural exchanges are at an all time high; China is India's largest trading partner. Yet this cooperation has done little to assuage each country's concerns about the other's intentions. The two sides are locked in a classic security dilemma, where any action taken by one is immediately interpreted by the other as a threat to its interests. This article examines the trajectory of contemporary Sino-Indian relations from India's perspective and argues that a troubled history coupled with the structural uncertainties engendered by their simultaneous rise is propelling the two Asian giants into a trajectory that they might find rather difficult to navigate in the coming years. This is an empirical analysis of India's changing approach towards China in the context of China's recent rise, not a theoretical exposition of the issue.     

How Could China Bargain for a Peaceful Accommodation?

China's rise is a bargaining process between China and the outside world—especially with the United States. This article suggests two strategies, “socialization” and “legitimation,” which a rising power can use to seek “accommodation for identity” with the hegemon. Using China's peaceful rise after the Cold War as a case study, the essay then examines how China employed these two strategies to reach bargaining deals on the arms control regimes and anti-separatist movements in Xinjiang with the outside world. It concludes that the United States needs to take China's bargaining efforts seriously and consider possible peaceful accommodation with China.     

Command,Strategic Contest,and Confidence-building in the South China Sea

Wealth and power have steered global prestige from East to West and back again. History's serial relocations of economic growth and corollary power changed the character of the South China Sea into a conflictual conduit for Eastern and then Western colonialism, a strategic sea space in world war, and now a cockpit of contest to maintain or revise the rules-based international order. For the first time in several centuries, a Chinese blue water navy is projecting power across the Indo-Pacific and prosecuting a national maritime security strategy to transform the South China Sea into China's sovereign territory. In large part, the winner of the Sino-American struggle for preponderance in the South China Sea will steer the course of the twenty-first century in the Indo-Pacific.     

Reflections on Producing Security

Whether China's strategic culture is offensive or defensive in nature is an interesting question in understanding Chinese foreign policy behavior. Alastair Johnston argues for a parabellum culture of offensive realism that leads to a pattern of Chinese aggressive behavior. But China's behavior in the Korean War, the Sino-Indian War, and the Sino-Vietnam War shows a defensive pattern that Johnston's analysis cannot fully explain. By analyzing the operational code of Mao Zedong's public foreign policy speeches, using the automated Verbs in Context System (VICS) of content analysis, this article attempts to determine whether Mao's belief system reflected the influence of a defensive or an offensive strategic culture, and compares the results to Johnston's analysis. The results indicate that Johnston's cultural realist argument is only partially correct and needs to be qualified in important respects. The operational-code analysis of Mao Zedong reveals a more complex reality than did Johnston's analysis. The results partly support Johnston's claim about Mao as an offensive realist, but this result cannot be generalized across situations, as the operational code analysis shows that strategic beliefs are not static. Mao's beliefs were also the product of his personality and of the international historical setting.     

Marketization,Class Structure,and Democracy in China: Contrasting Regional Experiences

After two and half decades of market reforms in China, the question of whether reforms have created favourable social conditions for democracy and whether the country's emerging entrepreneurial class will serve as the democratic social base have become hotly debated issues in both academic and policy circles. Based upon an analysis of two regions – Sunan and Wenzhou, the two prototypical local development patterns in China – the article argues that different patterns of economic development have produced distinct local level social and political configurations, only one of which is likely to foster the growth of democratic practices. It suggests that China's political future is largely dependent upon the emerging class structure and class relations that reform and development have produced. If the market reforms and economic development only enrich a few (like the Sunan case), then the possibility of democratic transition will likely be very bleak. Nonetheless, the possibility of a brighter alternative exists, as demonstrated by the Wenzhou case. These arguments thus link China's political transition to critical social conditions, echoing Barrington Moore's influential work on the social origins of democracy and dictatorship.     

China as a ‘net donor’: tracking dollars and sense

The article examines China's emergence over the past decade as a net donor, and the implications of this status in global development. The analysis begins by outlining China's rise as a net donor, drawing comparisons in two-way aid flows with the other rising states, specifically Brazil, South Africa and India, and then turns to the implications of China's rise as an aid sender. The central argument is that conceptualizing China's rise as a ‘net donor’ is crucial for understanding the hybrid position that China has come to occupy in the global aid system, and the consequences of this positioning. Although China has achieved remarkable success with its own development, rather than join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) regime of traditional donors, the Chinese Communist Party and government leadership has chosen instead to continue to self-identify with the countries of the South, and to construct ties of South–South cooperation outside of DAC arrangements. The Chinese leadership is trying to stake out an unprecedented position in the global aid system, traversing the North–South divide, despite the fact that China has already joined the ranks of world economic powers.     

The “Japan Card” in the United States Rapprochement with China, 1969–1972

United States rapprochement with China should be re-examined by taking into consideration the American negotiating approach towards Beijing regarding the role of Japan, the United States' major Asian ally and China's long-term rival in East Asia. Whilst announcing the Nixon Doctrine, which increased pressure on Japan to strengthen its defense and regional responsibilities, Nixon and Kissinger used the so-called “Japan Card,” Japan's possible military resurgence and China's long-term fear of it, as a tacit negotiating tool to justify to Chinese leaders the continued United States military presence in East Asia. This article examines the impact of the United States rapprochement with China on the American negotiating process with Chinese leaders for the continuation of the United States–Japan Security Treaty and to what extent it changed China's policy toward American relations with Japan.     

China's Naval Rise and the South China Sea: An Operational Assessment

Over the last fifteen years, the steady rise of China's naval capabilities has received a level of attention unmatched since the Soviet navy's expansion following the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet much of that attention has focused on what that rise has meant for Taiwan's security or a possible contest with the United States.¹ But Beijing's seaward territorial concerns also reach far into the South China Sea. And it is there that the military balance has most swiftly swung in China's favor as a result of its modernization program. This article will examine not only how the military balance has shifted, but also what Southeast Asian countries, particularly Vietnam and the Philippines, could do to best preserve their territorial interests in response to that shift.     

Elitist democracy and China's democratization: A gradualist approach towards democratic transition by a group of Chinese intellectuals

This article examines how a group of Chinese intellectuals experimented with the western concept of elitist democracy in a Chinese context in the late 1980s. Drawing insights from western theories on political development and political culture, they argued that China's lack of a civic culture meant an elitist democracy would be an historically necessary and inevitable stage during the process of democratization. To implement elitist democracy in China, the existing political institutions should be made more open to experts, technocrats and intellectuals. This political proposal was advanced, involuntarily, during the Tiananmen Movement of Spring 1989, but eventually suffered a great setback. Nevertheless, the article maintains that elitist democracy remains relevant to China's democratization in the future.     

The Political Economy of Developing Country Antidumping Investigations against China

This article draws on industry-level data to analyze the political economy of the use of the antidumping statute by 10 less developed countries (LDCs) against China. Test results suggest that Chinese import competition is an important factor explaining the pattern of LDC antidumping initiation against China. Macroeconomic factors such as gross domestic product growth rate also play some role in influencing the pattern of LDC antidumping determination against China. Importantly, statistical analyses did not yield any evidence suggesting that China's membership in the World Trade Organization has disciplined developing countries' use of the antidumping policy. The paper conjectures that China's Most-Favored-Nation status under the World Trade Organization, the designation of China as a nonmarket economy in antidumping investigations until 2016, and the retaliatory incentives generated by the growing deflection of Chinese exports to developing country markets may have overwhelmed the institutional effect of the trade organization in shaping the pattern of LDC antidumping decision making toward China.     

Defending the Nation: The Role of Nationalism in Chinese Thinking on Human Rights

This article examines the symbiotic relationship between Chinese thinking on human rights and Chinese nationalism. It analyses the three key periods in the Chinese discourse on human rights: late Qing, Republican, and post-Mao. In each case, discussions of rights have often (but not always) taken place within a wider debate about the protection of China's national interests from foreign infringement, although the nature of the foreign infringement has changed over time. During the late Qing debate, with China increasingly threatened by foreign military imperialism, scholars argued enthusiastically for the introduction of a new system of democratic rights as a vital tool of national resistance. During the Republican era that followed, the threat from outside remained the same. However by now many theorists had grown disillusioned with democracy and rights, believing that the only way China could withstand further foreign encroachments was to withhold rights from its people. In the post-Mao debate on rights, the interests of the nation are again at the fore. But with China now an emerging rather than a collapsing power, rights are often analysed – at least from an official perspective – within the context of cultural rather than military imperialism, the new ‘threat’ from abroad. The article then examines the views of China's ‘non-official’ rights thinkers, most of whom tend to be much less affected by nationalist concerns and ends with an assessment of the prospects for democracy and rights in China.     

The Role of Safe Havens in Islamist Terrorism

This article will develop an explanatory theory on terrorist safe havens. Focusing on Islamist Terrorist networks, this article argues that four specific conditions are necessary for the establishment of a safe haven for Islamist terrorist networks: geographic features, weak governance, history of corruption and violence, and poverty. At the conclusion of the article, the developed theory is applied to the Tri-Border Area of South America (TBA), where the frontiers of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet, an area overlooked by the 9/11 National Commission Report's list of Islamist terrorists' safe havens.     

Celebrity Activism in International Relations: In Search of a Framework for Analysis

The article examines the growing celebrity activism in world politics and attempts to develop a framework for analysis. It briefly reviews the relevant literature on the emergence of influential individuals as transnational activists. Then, it analyses the factors that account for the specific growth of celebrity activism and evaluates its impact on public awareness, the mobilisation of resources and government decisions. Finally, the article tests this framework by focusing on two case studies: Princess Diana's contribution to the campaign to ban anti-personnel landmines and Mia Farrow's activism in respect to China's policy towards Sudan.     

A question of sovereignty?

Taiwan's efforts to take part in international organisations (IOs) have received little backing from the international community owing to Taiwan's contested sovereignty. This article investigates under what circumstances and how the European Union (EU) supported Taiwan's participation in IOs and agreements by examining the role of the EU in three success stories: the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). The analysis of six factors that shaped the EU's approach shows that a strong EU interest in Taiwan's IO participation was a precondition for its support and that once this precondition was met, applicable membership/participation criteria and opportunities for circumventing or neutralising China's opposition then gained in importance. A supportive United States (US) stance could function as a trigger for EU support. Two counterintuitive findings are that the radicalisation of Taiwan's own strategy fostered increased EU activity in brokering compromises between Taiwan and China and that the EU's decision-making mechanisms did not play a decisive role in the formulation of its support policies.