Why cooperate with others? Demystifying China's trilateral aid cooperation

This article examines China's motivations for trilateral aid cooperation in the context of its seemingly assertive diplomacy in recent years. Previously known for its preference for bilateral aid delivery, China, however, is increasingly conducting trilateral cooperation with western donor states and UN agencies. By employing constructivism and cognitive learning theories, this paper focuses on two perspectives: China's calculation of national interests and international engagement, and is structured around two case studies: UNDP's advisory role for China on development cooperation, and China–US trilateral aid cooperation. It argues that strategically, China is putting growing emphasis on its identity as a growing great power in the development sector, using trilateral cooperation to build its global image. Technically, China's four-decade long external engagement has promoted changes in its ideas about aid cooperation, thus reinforcing its desire for cognitive learning to improve its aid performance.     

Transforming (but not transcending) the state system? On statist cosmopolitanism

Can states become committed and competent agents of cosmopolitan justice? The theory of ‘statist cosmopolitanism’ argues that they can: their citizens can be turned towards a commitment to cosmopolitan principles and actions by moral entrepreneurs constituting a ‘cosmopolitan avant-garde’, and can be sustained in their commitment to those principles by their pre-existing attachment to the state as a political community. Taking cosmopolitan principles as axiomatic, this paper subjects statist cosmopolitanism to critique. First, I question the scale of the transformation that a cosmopolitan avant-garde can engender given the complexity of the causal chains the avant-garde seek to elucidate, as well as the countervailing potency of the state itself which reinforces particularistic attitudes in its citizens. Second, I argue that even if, contra my preceding argument, the cosmopolitan avant-garde were to be successful, states would find it desirable to federally integrate in order to be better able to realise their cosmopolitan commitments. Such integration is compatible with statist cosmopolitanism’s motivational theory, even if not its institutional vision. Finally, I re-characterise the cosmopolitan avant-garde as agitators for the transcendence, rather than just transformation, of the state system.     

金砖国家经贸安全合作:挑战与对策

新兴经济体的崛起导致国际格局发生重大变化,全球治理体系却未很好地反映这种变化趋势,以金砖国家为首的新兴变革力量开始登上国际安全治理的舞台。然而,贸易保护主义抬头和逆全球化的盛行使金砖国家内部的贸易势头减弱;美联储加息、投资干预政策以及政局动荡和经济疲弱等因素使金砖国家面临外国直接投资净流入减少的压力;大宗商品价格剧烈波动给金砖国家能源安全合作带来困扰;金融安全合作进展缓慢。基于此,金砖国家应继续深化各领域的改革,加快经济结构的调整,为金砖国家的安全合作夯实基础;加快相互之间的发展战略对接,以提升金砖国家的安全合作水平;通过加强沟通与协调,积极参与全球治理,丰富金砖国家安全合作的内涵。     

Psy-expertise,therapeutic culture and the politics of the personal in development

Expertise stemming from the psy disciplines is increasingly and explicitly shaping international development policy and practice. Whilst some policy makers see the use of psy expertise as a new way to reduce poverty, increase economic efficiency, and promote wellbeing, others raise concerns that psychocentric development promotes individual over structural change, pathologises poverty, and depoliticises development. This paper specifically analyses four aspects of psy knowledge used in contemporary development policy: child development/developmental psychology, behavioural economics, positive psychology, and global mental health. This analysis illuminates the co-constitutive intellectual and colonial histories of development and psy-expertise: a connection that complicates claims that development has been psychologized; the uses and coloniality of both within a neoliberal project; and the potential for psychopolitics to inform development.     

Norm-making,norm-taking or norm-shifting? A case study of Sino–Japanese competition in the Jakarta–Bandung high-speed rail project

This paper’s main aim is to contribute to the debate on the impact of China’s rise on the established norms and practices in the field of international development. To do so, it zooms in on a single infrastructure project, the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail line, which involved intense competition between China and Japan. Specifically, it examines how competition between China, a non-Western emerging power, and Japan, an OECD member, led to a recalibration of both China and Japan’s approaches to infrastructure financing in the region. The findings suggest that rather than straight convergence or competition between diverging models, there is an ongoing process of two-way adjustment between China, and representatives of the dominant global norms and practices. We also argue that to understand the implications of China’s participation in the field of international development, and its impact on the ‘rules of the game’ of global governance, researchers should avoid positioning inquiries within the premises of China’s one-directional impact on the development assistance regime. Rather, it is necessary to take into account a complex set of relationships including China, host countries and other ‘socialised’ actors, and the process of negotiation between them.     

Chinese views of global economic governance

China’s rise and America’s global retreat have made China’s role in global governance more important than ever before. By analysing Chinese (mainly academic) literature, this article studies contemporary Chinese views of global economic governance. It finds that the 2008 financial crisis is a notable point of the Chinese discourse. In addition, dialogue platforms – the G20 in particular – rather than key institutions of global economic governance such as International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and Word Trade Organization (WTO) win overwhelming attention in the Chinese discourse. Chinese views of global economic governance also highly value the role of the state, while paying less attention to Non Governmental Organisations (NGO) and civil society. Overall, this article highlights a diverse, shifting and sometimes contradictory Chinese discourse on global economic governance, which helps to develop a more accurate understanding of China’s ambition in global economic governance.     

The rise of the Global South,the IMF and the future of Law and Development

Following the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis the world has witnessed a re-accommodation of the global financial system. In the particular case of middle-income countries they have disentangled themselves from the conditionality of the IMF and grown into more assertive actors in international forums, proposing new alternative mechanisms to become more financially independent and for the provision of development assistance. This article critically reviews the new reality by assessing the strategies deployed by developing countries to reduce the IMF’s influence, and explores the potential consequences of the rise of middle-income nations for Law and Development.     

‘Control Grabbing’ and small-scale agricultural intensification: emerging patterns of state-facilitated ‘agricultural investment’ in Rwanda

The Rwandan government's ongoing reconfiguration of the agricultural sector seeks to facilitate increased penetration of smallholder farming systems by domestic and international capital, which may include some land acquisition (‘land grabbing’) as well as contract farming arrangements. Such contracts are arranged by the state, which sometimes uses coercive mechanisms and interventionist strategies to encourage agricultural investment. The Rwandan government has adapted neo-liberal tools, such as ‘performance management contracts’, which make local public administrators accountable for agricultural development targets (often explicitly linked to corporate interests). Activities of international development agencies are becoming intertwined with those of the state and foreign capital, so that a variety of actors and objectives are starting to collaboratively change the relations between land and labour. The global ‘land grab’ is only one aspect of broader patterns of reconfiguration of control over land, labour and markets in the Global South. This paper demonstrates the ways in which the state is orienting public resources towards private interests in Rwanda, through processes that have elsewhere been termed ‘control grabbing’ [Borras et al. 2012 Borras, S.M., et al. 2012. Land grabbing and global capitalist accumulation: key features in Latin America. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 33(4), 402–416. doi: 10.1080/02255189.2012.745394[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 402–416].     

全球化下的普遍人权批判:基于欧洲的视角——评Global Law:A Triple Challenge

直面经济全球化,马蒂基于欧洲的视角,一方面反对美国式的独白式普遍主义的霸权性的解决方案,另一方面也反对四分五裂的消解普遍主义人权的努力,而给出了一种欧洲式的共同体下的世界法.这种世界法预设了一种普遍人权,这种普遍人权既有其自身难以克服的预设与论述之间的内在紧张,更为重要的是其预设本身就缺乏一种正当的对人之为人的生活样态的关注的理据.因之,在全球化下,对普遍人权的基础与正当性需要作出一种新的检讨.     

The Banking Crisis: Grid,Group and the State of the Debate

The banking crisis and the recession it induced provide a salient backdrop to domestic and international politics. ² The International Monetary Fund (IMF 2010) estimates that total banking losses between 2008 and 2010 exceeded US$2.3 trillion. This article uses grid‐group theory to review the existing literature on the causes of the banking crisis and, in doing so, distinguishes between hierarchical, individualist, egalitarian and fatalist accounts of what went wrong and of what needs to be done to prevent another crisis from occurring. It is argued that the existing reform agenda is underpinned by a hierarchical analysis of the causes of the crisis and that this risks narrowing the support base for the reform process.