Abstract
There is an emerging consensus among global governance scholars that there is a global energy governance gap. The rapid transformation of global energy markets with a new cast of producers and consumers, which now accounts for two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions, has left the existing institutional architecture behind. While there has been some discussion in the emerging literature on the potential role of the Group of 20, there is almost no analysis of what conditions need to be met for the G-20 to act in a significant fashion. This article takes up this task. Drawing on recent scholarship in global governance, environmental politics, and international negotiations, as well as the observations of the author who is a past delegate to G-20 negotiations, it considers the role of the G-20 in global energy governance and identifies the principal conditions that will need to be met if the G-20 is to drive more than piecemeal change.
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Country or Region: China
Dierckx, Sacha
Abstract
This article examines the foundations and evolution of China’s capital controls. It is argued that the continuation of stringent controls in the reality of worldwide liberalisation is the result of the hegemony of a historic bloc, comprising foreign industrial capital, Chinese state-owned industrial and banking capital, and a fraction of the state class that wants to keep control over China’s economy. However, despite the still extensive controls, significant capital account liberalisation has been carried out. The origins can be found in the strategy of a fraction of the state class which wants to transform China’s accumulation regime in order to form a challenge to US power. Support for this strategy is provided by Chinese technocrats, Chinese wealthy individuals and foreign financial capital. At the moment, it seems that these pro-liberalisation social forces are gaining the upper hand. This could ultimately lead to China’s full integration into the Western heartland.
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Copper, John F
Summary
Today, by many accounts, China is the world’s foremost purveyor of foreign aid and foreign investment to developing countries. This is the product of China’s miracle economic growth over a period of more than three decades, together with China’s drive to become a major player in world affairs and accomplish this through economic rather than military means. This three-volume work is the first comprehensive study of China’s aid and investment strategy to trace how it has evolved since Beijing launched its foreign aid diplomacy at the time of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Volume III offers an analysis of China’s foreign aid and investment to countries outside of Asia: in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Oceania. Africa was and is the most important of these regions and it is given special treatment. In the concluding chapter, Copper reviews the findings of previous the volumes, delineates China’s most important victories and setbacks, and notes opposition to and criticism of China’s aid and investment diplomacy. Copper gives evidence that will be shocking to some of the reality that China’s financial help to developing countries is one of the most salient trends in international politics and constitutes a formidable challenge to the United States, Japan, and Europe, as well as international financial institutions.
Chung, Jae Ho
Summary
The topic of China’s rise and what it really means for the global and regional order is the subject of intense debate in scholarly discourse and media around the world. While some are confident that China will rise to the level of an equally powerful competitor to the United States, others are more cautious. Assessing China’s Power engages with this ongoing debate through empirical, sector-based, and systematic assessments of China’s power. Top scholars address China’s power today, compare China’s power with that of the USA, and forecast China’s power in 2025. This volume offers persuasive accounts of where China stands out, where China still has room to improve, and where China’s comprehensive power is and will be situated within the hierarchy of the international system.
Chow, Peter C. Y., ed
Summary
The rise of China as a powerhouse of the world economy not only caused many countries to deepen their economic integration with, but also face the challenge of, increasing assertiveness from China.While most Asian countries want good relations with both the U.S. and China, they need the U.S. to pledge security commitments to check China’s hegemonic expansion. Under such circumstances, the American ‘Pivot to Asia,’ has become an important foreign policy measure to reassure its allies that it will strive to keep peace and stability in the region, crucial elements to economic dynamism.
Brink, Tobias Ten
Abstract
This article analyzes Chinese foreign direct investment. First, recent empirical trends are explicated, showing that Chinese firms ‘going global’ has taken off, with significantly rising investment even in developed economies. Analyzing the specifics of Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) also shows that the motives of Chinese firms going abroad are mostly economic. Second, the role of policy support in Chinese OFDI is elucidated, showing that Chinese style internationalization differs from liberal role models. This is explained by the domestic structure of China’s political economy. However, the prevalent image in the West that the internationalization of Chinese firms is mostly policy-driven is erroneous. Thus, third, the role of fragmentation and competition in China’s ‘going global’ strategy is elucidated. In the outlook, it is exemplified that the growing significance of Chinese firms results in a restructuring of global competitive relations, which some Western governments and firms regard with suspicion.
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Bing, Ngeow Chow
Abstract
Malaysia and China upgraded their relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2013 and signed a Joint Communique in 2014. Although the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership includes a pledge to strengthen cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries, so far, however, Sino–Malaysian defence ties have advanced only incrementally. This article focuses on the development of defence relations between the two countries from 1991 until the first half of 2015. It examines several areas of defence diplomacy, including visits by senior officials, the exchange of military students, arms sales, defence and security consultations and combined military exercises. It concludes that although Malaysia–China defence ties have not developed as quickly as other aspects of the bilateral relationship, this does not mean that the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership lacks depth, or that Kuala Lumpur fundamentally distrusts Beijing because of recent developments in the South China Sea.
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Bennett, Mia M
Abstract
In May 2013, China gained observer status in the Arctic Council, exemplifying its growing legitimacy as a regional actor in the eyes of the eight countries with territory north of the Arctic Circle. Yet since China remains an extraregional state without territory in the Arctic, Chinese officials continue to bolster their state’s legitimacy as an Arctic stakeholder through two spatially inconsistent but mutually reinforcing grand regional narratives. On the one hand, Chinese officials recognize the salience of territory and presence in the Arctic, underscoring their country’s “near-Arctic” location and polar scientific expeditions. On the other hand, officials depict the Arctic as a maritime, global space where climate change has potential ramifications for the entire planet. Significantly, these reframings are affecting intraregional states’ perceptions of the Arctic, demonstrating how a region’s territorial extent, symbolic meaning, and institutional form emerge through the ongoing conversation between extraregional and intraregional narratives.
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Atanassova-Cornelis, Elena, and Frans-Paul van der Putten
Summary
There is a significant uncertainty around US security commitment to East Asia over the next 15-20 years, underpinned by China’s economic and military rise. This new collection investigates how and whether this affects the present-day strategic perceptions and behaviour of East Asian nations, and of the US itself. By exploring how regional actors deal with uncertainties that are inherent to the current geopolitical situation in East Asia, the contributors demonstrate that strategic uncertainty has become a major factor in the shaping of the security order in East Asia, which has resulted in the emergence of alternative models of order that do not necessarily exclude America.
Zhang, Xiaoming
Abstract
Over the past two years since Xi Jinping and Abe Shinzo came to power, the bilateral relationship between China and Japan has been deteriorating steadily. China’s perception of Abe’s foreign policy orientation has been very negative. At the same time, China’s response to it has also been very tough and assertive. At least four factors may account for China’s attitude and behavior: China’s rise, domestic politics, historical memory, and leadership personality.
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Williams, Brad
Abstract
This paper sheds light on a relatively underexplored aspect of Japan’s recent security changes by examining the subnational level where the impact has been far-reaching. It focuses on Japan’s maritime frontier zone: the Yaeyama Islands located at the southwestern end of the Japanese archipelago and administered as part of Okinawa Prefecture. It argues that while Yaeyama militarization has been primarily a national response to China’s portrayed assertiveness in the East China Sea, it has also been facilitated by the strategic actions of local political elites, in cooperation with sympathetic extra-local forces. Political elites from two islands, Yonaguni and Ishigaki, have been motivated primarily by diverging material and ideational factors. Yonaguni elites have viewed militarization largely through the prism of “compensation politics.” Their counterparts in Ishigaki have been driven by more ideological objectives, seeking militarization for deterrence purposes and otherwise transforming the island into a rightist breeding ground in defence of Japanese territory. Yaeyama militarization has not only diminished enthusiasm for seeking autonomy and enhancing economic security through microregional cooperation, but has also enhanced local-level insecurities while creating and exacerbating divisions.
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Wesley, Michael
Abstract
The Asia Pacific is currently beset by two contradictory trends: growing economic interdependence and deepening strategic rivalry. Amidst these trends, new sets of regional trade agreements are being negotiated, primarily the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This article argues that these proposals represent a third phase of competitive regionalism in the Asia Pacific, which will be more complex than the previous two rounds. This complexity is driven by two factors: this time, rivalry is not over scope or leadership but regional order; and this time there is a greater number of leading players in the rivalry.
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Weissmann, Mikael
Abstract
Using a conflict transformation framework, this article demonstrates that positive transformations have taken place in the South China Sea between 1991 and 2007. Even though these transformations have been weakened in recent years, particularly regarding the actor aspect, it is concluded that a major armed conflict is still highly unlikely.
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Wang, Zheng
Abstract
This article surveys the discussion and debate in China over the nine-dashed line in recent years, with special focus on the efforts of scholars and think-tank experts to legitimize the nine-dashed line and their interactions with the Chinese public and policymakers through public media.
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Wang, Yu
Abstract
This study offers an investigation of the relationship between defense and social spending in the People’s Republic of China. In particular, three consecutive questions are answered here. Does a warfare–welfare tradeoff exist in China’s budgetary allocation? Is it positive or negative? What is the causal direction involved? By applying a vector autoregression analysis for the period of 1952–2006, this study finds a unidirectional crowd-out effect going from defense to social spending.
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