Abstract: Asia’s share of global demand for natural gas has increased from 12 to 21 per cent since the turn of the century, and the overall consumption has more than doubled. At the same time, there is a widening gap between regional natural gas demand and supply, with increasing reliance on imports. In 2017, Asian importers absorbed 72 per cent of globally traded liquefied natural gas (LNG). Their LNG import dependence is forecast to grow significantly over the coming decades. This paper explores major Asian importers’ approaches to LNG import diversification between 2001 and 2017 and explains why patterns of LNG imports differ across countries and over time. The focus of the paper is on five largest LNG importers in the region: China, India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The paper utilises the Herfindahl-Hirschmann index (HHI) of market concentration to evaluate LNG import diversification across the five countries. The analysis contributes to a growing body of literature that evaluates various aspects of energy import diversification in the context of broader energy security strategies. Findings suggest that all countries have improved their LNG import portfolios, although there is significant temporal variation across countries. Reflecting on the relationship between energy security and growth, the paper concludes by outlining policy implications for regional energy policymakers. Full text available here.
Country or Region: China
Ji, Qiang, Hai–Ying Zhang, and Dayong Zhang
Abstract: East Asian countries, such as China, Japan and South Korea, are major importers in the international oil market. Therefore, oil import security is critical to sustainable economic development in these countries. This paper uses a modified two-stage DEA-like model to investigate the impact of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on oil import security in the East Asian region over time. Specifically, three dimensional variables were introduced to the model: the OPEC internal dimension, the OPEC and Asian country interaction dimension, and the international external dimension. The empirical results show a substantial difference between China and the other two countries in terms of these dimensions. Although the impact of OPEC on China’s oil security has increased over time, its impact on Japan has declined. Political uncertainty in OPEC countries and oil price volatility are the major issues for China, whereas cost is the key area of concern for Japan. South Korea’s concerns are less clear. The results of this study lay an important foundation for discussing policy issues involved in regional cooperation, integration and sustainable growth in the East Asian region. Full text available here.
Wang, Shanyong, Jing Wang, Shoufu Lin, and Jun Li
Abstract: Nuclear energy has been regarded as a controversial energy option to reduce carbon emissions, alleviate global warming and transition to a low-carbon society. Understanding public perceptions and acceptance of nuclear energy and identifying the determinants of acceptance are vital to make nuclear energy policy and establish nuclear energy program. Based on a questionnaire survey conducted in China (N = 719), this study aims to examine public perceptions and acceptance of nuclear energy, and explore the effects of public knowledge about nuclear energy, perceived benefit, perceived risk and public engagement on public acceptance. This study indicated that public knowledge is positively and significantly related to perceived benefit and public acceptance, but not significantly related to perceived risk. Perceived benefit and perceived risk are all positively and significantly associated with public acceptance. Meanwhile, this study also demonstrated the positive effect of public engagement on public acceptance. In addition, this study also revealed that public knowledge, perceived benefit and public engagement in China are at a lower level, and public acceptance of nuclear energy is at a moderate level. However, the level of perceived risk is higher. Based on the results, implications and suggestions are presented. Full text available here.
Thomas, Steve
Abstract: In the late 1990s, a new generation of reactor designs evolved from existing designs was touted as solving the economic problems that led to the collapse of reactor ordering after the Chernobyl disaster. It was claimed these designs would be cheap and easy to build because they would be simpler and use passive safety, modular construction and standardisation. The US and UK governments were convinced by this and launched reactor construction programmes. However, 20 years on, the claims have proved false and the US and UK programmes are in disarray. The last hope for the nuclear industry appears to be that Chinese and Russian reactor vendors, with powerful support from their governments, will take over, providing reactors that are cheap but meet the safety standards required in Europe and North America. However, these vendors and their designs are largely unproven in open markets. There is also little evidence that their reactors will be cheap, there are concerns about quality and safety culture and there are national security concerns that may deter customers. New technologies, such as radical new ones, Generation IV, and Small Modular Reactors are unproven and, at best, a long way from commercial deployment. Full text available here.
Cong, Kangyin, Renjin Sun, Jin Wu, and Gal Hochman
Abstract: This paper compares growth and development of natural gas markets in the United States and in China between 2000 and 2015. The results demonstrate that, for both countries, the level of development of the natural gas supply chain improved over time, although in recent years, growth in these markets has slowed down. The analysis also shows that while the focus in terms of development and growth for China is the downstream natural gas market, it is the upstream markets for the United States. The paper’s analysis suggests that for China to improve growth and development of its natural gas industry, the country’s policy should incentivize the development of production and transportation; the US, on the other hand, should allocate resources to the development of its pipeline distribution system. Full text available here.
Lu, Hongfang, FengYing Xu, Hongxiao Liu, Jun Wang, Daniel E. Campell, and Hai Ren
Abstract: An emergy-based index system was proposed to handle the incomparability problem that occurs when quantities of different kinds must be compared in decision-making. Our results indicate that China’s energy security improved over the last five decades from resource availability, resource affordability, economic efficiency, and environmental impacts perspectives. After quality adjusting of the energy it consumes, China was not yet the largest energy consumer in the world before 2016, with the emergy of its primary energy consumption increased to 99.68% that of the U.S. in 2015. The emissions of CH4 had the largest environmental impact, followed by SO2 and N2O, while the CO2 emissions is one order of magnitude lower. Speeding up the development and utilization of domestic coal bed methane (CBM) as an energy source will improve the quality and diversity of China’s primary energy mix, as well as reduce CH4 emissions. China benefited from its energy imports, which accounted for about 5% of GDP over the past two decades. Increasing the fraction and diversity of coal imports can further improve the benefit ratio of energy imports to China. The emergy indices proposed here are general and can be applied to evaluate the energy security of other national systems. Full text available here.
Ponížilová, Martina
Abstract: The strategic map of the Middle East is slowly changing, with traditional powers retreating from the regional management and with the expanding power vacuum in the region. Lately, growing attention is focused on emerging powers such as China that have capabilities and potential to increase their engagement in regional politics and conflict management. However, the question is if China as the most powerful of contemporary emerging powers and an important trade and energy partner of Middle Eastern countries is willing and able to take on the role of an extra-regional leader that will stabilize the regional order. This article explains motivations behind Chinaʼs Mid-East policy and shows that although China is increasing its presence in the region, it is not yet ready to become a major force in shaping regional politics. Full text available here.
Yeo, Andrew
Description: During the Cold War, the U.S. built a series of alliances with Asian nations to erect a bulwark against the spread of communism and provide security to the region. Despite pressure to end bilateral alliances in the post-Cold War world, they persist to this day, even as new multilateral institutions have sprung up around them. The resulting architecture may aggravate rivalries as the U.S., China, and others compete for influence. However, Andrew Yeo demonstrates how Asia’s complex array of bilateral and multilateral agreements may ultimately bring greater stability and order to a region fraught with underlying tensions.
Asia’s Regional Architecture transcends traditional international relations models. It investigates change and continuity in Asia through the lens of historical institutionalism. Refuting claims regarding the demise of the liberal international order, Yeo reveals how overlapping institutions can promote regional governance and reduce uncertainty in a global context. In addition to considering established institutions such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, he discusses newer regional arrangements including the East Asia Summit, Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Belt and Road Initiative. This book has important implications for how policymakers think about institutional design and regionalism in Asia and beyond.
Smith, Jeff M., ed.
Description: In recent years the narrative surrounding China’s “peaceful rise” has given way to a more ominous story of friction, ambition, and great-power rivalry. As Chinese foreign policy has grown more nationalist and assertive, its intensifying competition with the U.S. has assumed center stage. The impact on China’s neighbors, by contrast, and their evolving responses, have received comparatively less attention.
The Realist theory of international relations suggests the rapid accumulation of power by one nation-state will prompt its neighbors and peers to adopt Balancing strategies. They will strive to enhance their internal defense capabilities and forge new external security partnerships to hedge against this potential new threat. Have these predictions rung true? Are key Indo-Pacific capitals Balancing, and drawing closer to the U.S. as insurance against Chinese aggression? Or is China a new breed of rising power, challenging traditional theories of international relations in a newly-globalized, economically interdependent world?
Description: In the sphere of future global politics, no region will be as hotly contested as the Asia-Pacific, where great power interests collide amid the mistrust of unresolved conflicts and disputed territory. This is where authoritarian China is trying to rewrite international law and challenge the democratic values of the United States and its allies. The lightning rods of conflict are remote reefs and islands from which China has created military bases in the 1.5-million-square-mile expanse of the South China Sea, a crucial world trading route that this rising world power now claims as its own. No other Asian country can take on China alone. They look for protection from the United States, although it, too, may be ill-equipped for the job at hand. If China does get away with seizing and militarizing waters here, what will it do elsewhere in the world, and who will be able to stop it? In Asian Waters, award-winning foreign correspondent Humphrey Hawksley breaks down the politics—and tensions—that he has followed through this region for years. Reporting on decades of political developments, he has witnessed China’s rise to become one of the world’s most wealthy and militarized countries, and delivers in Asian Waters the compelling narrative of this most volatile region. Can the United States and China handle the changing balance of power peacefully? Do Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan share enough common purpose to create a NATO-esque multilateral alliance? Does China think it can even become a superpower while making an enemy of America? If so, how does it plan to achieve it? Asian Waters delves into these topics and more as Hawksley presents the most comprehensive and accessible analysis ever of this region.
Yan, Xuetong
Description: While work in international relations has closely examined the decline of great powers, not much attention has been paid to the question of their rise. The upward trajectory of China is a particularly puzzling case. How has it grown increasingly important in the world arena while lagging behind the United States and its allies across certain sectors? Borrowing ideas of political determinism from ancient Chinese philosophers, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers explains China’s expanding influence by presenting a moral-realist theory that attributes the rise and fall of nations to political leadership. Yan Xuetong shows that the stronger a rising state’s political leadership, the more likely it is to displace a prevailing state in the international system.
Yan defines political leadership through the lens of morality, specifically the ability of a government to fulfill its domestic responsibility and maintain international strategic credibility. Examining leadership at the personal, national, and international levels, Yan shows how rising states like China transform the international order by reshaping power distribution and norms. Yan also considers the reasons for America’s diminishing international stature even as its economy, education system, military, political institutions, and technology hold steady. The polarization of China and the United States will not result in another Cold War scenario, but their mutual distrust will ultimately drive the world center from Europe to East Asia.
Using the lens of classical Chinese political theory, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers offers a provocative, alternative perspective on the changing dominance of nations on the global stage.
Gong, Xue
Abstract: The growing pluralization of Chinese society has made China’s foreign policy decision-making more complicated. As a result, traditional state-centric approaches to analysing China’s foreign relations may no longer be adequate. A nuanced understanding requires attention to new actors in the formulation and conduct of the country’s foreign affairs, including central state-owned enterprises (CSOEs). This article explores the increasingly important role played by Chinese CSOEs in Beijing’s policy towards the South China Sea. It hypothesizes that although CSOEs are employed by the state as policy tools, they fulfil different roles in Beijing’s South China Sea policy. Some CSOEs mobilize resources to influence state policy; some CSOEs proactively take advantage of state policy when opportunities arise; while other CSOEs are mostly policy takers. In the case of the last category, it is interesting to note that their activities are not just a demonstration of political subjugation to the state; they also combine state-directed political tasks with efforts to seek market opportunities. This article employs three case studies—tourism, energy extraction and infrastructure—to demonstrate how the roles of Chinese business actors vary in China’s South China Sea policy. Full text available here.
Xue, Song
Abstract: Although nearly twenty joint development agreements have been signed since the 1950s, only a few have been implemented and even fewer have achieved successful commercialization. This article discusses the conditions leading to the implementation failures of joint development agreements. Applying the Crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis method to nineteen joint development agreements between 1958 and 2008, this article argues that the only causally-related condition associated with the failed implementation of joint development agreements is the deterioration of bilateral relations, often arising from the maritime boundary dispute that the joint development agreement was supposed to resolve. Other possible hypotheses, such as lack of economic incentives, energy independence, domestic opposition, third-party intervention and disagreements over the details of the project, do not show any correlated pattern with the failure to implement such agreements. The finding provides policy implications for the current boundary disputes in the South China Sea: improved bilateral relations is the prerequisite for the effective implementation of joint development ventures, and not the other way around. Littoral states should also not pursue joint development agreements as a false pretext to secretly consolidate their maritime boundary claims, or to confirm the status of a “dispute”. Furthermore, successful negotiations for a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea may help to create a conducive atmosphere for claimant states to agree on the joint development of offshore hydrocarbon resources. Full text available here.
Ha, Hoang Thi
Abstract: This article examines the rationales and manifestations of China’s vision for an ASEAN-China Community of Common Destiny (CCD). It argues that the ASEAN-China CCD proposal signals the crystallization of a deliberative and invested Chinese strategy for the future of ASEAN-China relations. This strategy aims to reinforce the ongoing power shift in Southeast Asia and engineer a smooth transition to a China-centred regional order against the backdrop of a perceived decline in US influence in the region. In this process, some predilections towards the pre-modern Sino-centric hierarchical regional system have resurfaced as China seeks to renegotiate the normative content of the regional order, and condition ASEAN member states into “good behaviours” accordingly. The article also examines the limits of the CCD concept in ASEAN-China relations as manifested by ASEAN’s ambivalent and selective responses. The ASEAN-China CCD vision injects a sense of determinism about the inevitability of the intertwined destiny between China and ASEAN member states, using geography, history and Chinese economic power as its basis. However, these push factors could also be burdens in an asymmetrical relationship which structurally induces ASEAN member states’ constant fear of over-dependency and loss of autonomy. The article therefore argues that the ASEAN-China CCD will not be a linear trajectory as ASEAN and most of its member states, while continuing to deepen cooperation and engagement with China, will persistently pursue open regionalism and perpetuate multi-polarity in Southeast Asia. Full text available here.
Verma, Raj
Abstract: The article asserts that China’s NOCs [national oil companies] have trumped Indian oil companies in four ways. First, Chinese NOCs have more oil blocks in Angola and Nigeria relative to Indian oil companies. Second, NOCs from China are able to outbid Indian oil companies if and when they directly compete for the same oil blocks. Third, Chinese NOCs have better quality oil blocks compared to Indian oil companies. Fourth, Chinese NOCs are preferred as partners by African NOCs and international oil companies. It provides a more comprehensive explanation of the above observations by examining macro level factors such as difference in the economic, political and diplomatic support received by the Chinese and Indian oil companies from their respective governments and foreign exchange reserves and micro level factors such as access to capital, rate of return on investment, pricing of oil and risk aversion. Full text available here.
