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Abstract
What does the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) tell us about China’s perceptions of the international order? This paper takes an inductive approach by examining the BRI for a two-pronged purpose: first, to understand China’s perception of the international order by examining Beijing’s official discourse around its intentions and vision for the initiative; and, second, to examine the mechanisms through which Chinese norms are diffused and normalised in Global South states. I find that Chinese policy navigates a dialectical interchange between upholding the existing international order while simultaneously promoting alternative norms and practices to reform parts of the order that are unsatisfactory to Chinese interests. To answer the second part of the puzzle, the paper finds that a central socialisation mechanism in China’s foreign policy for Global South states occurs through professionalisation training programmes. These programmes allow for Chinese expert knowledge and technical know-how to be shared with and mimicked by elites and civil servants across many Global South states.
Notes
1 Pan, Knowledge, Desire, and Power in Global Politics; Goldstein, “First Things First”; Jacques, When China Rules the World; Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
2 Johnston, “Is China a Status Quo Power?”; Barry Buzan, “China in International Society.”
3 Jeffrey Legro, “What Will China Want”; William Callahan, “Chinese Visions of World Order.”
4 Qin, “Continuity through Change,” 285, argues that ‘continuity through change is a realistic description of China’s present international strategy’.
5 Johnston, “Social States”; Thies, “The United States and China”; Thies, “China’s Rise and the Socialization of Rising Powers”; Pang, “China as a Normal State?”
6 For more on this see Pu, “Socialization as a Two-Way Process”; Jacques, When China Rules the World; Abdenur, “Emerging Powers as Normative Agents”; Alden and Large, “On Becoming a Norm Maker”; Kavalski, “Struggle for Recognition of Normative Powers”; Clark, “International Society and China.”
7 Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, “Vision and Actions on Jointly Building.”
8 For more on how states depend on peers to be recognised as possessing certain rights, privileges and status see Bull, Anarchical Society.
9 Ibid., 196.
10 I refer to Global South or South–South relations to talk about the cluster of postcolonial states in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
11 For a study on China’s voting patterns at the UNGA, see Pang, Liu, and Ma, “China’s Network Strategy for Seeking Great Power Status,” 9–21.
12 Feld, Jordan, and Hurwitz, International Organizations.
13 Johnston, Social States.
14 Thies, “China’s Rise and the Socialization of Rising Powers.”
15 Moravcsik, “Origins of Human Rights Regimes.”
16 Suzuki, “Journey to the West”; C.-H. Huang, “From Strategic Adjustment to Normative Learning?”
17 Hollyer and Rosendorff, “Why Do Authoritarian Regimes Sign the Convention.”
18 Large, “Sudan and South Sudan: A Testing Ground for Beijing’s Peace and Security Engagement.”
19 UN peacekeeping troop contributors.
20 Ibid., 60.
21 Alden, “Seeking Security in Africa: China’s Evolving Approach to the African Peace and Security Architecture,” 4.
22 Fung, “What Explains China’s Deployment.”
23 Bull, Anarchical Society.
24 Johnston, “Conclusions and Extensions.”
25 Xinhua News, “UN Says China Peacekeepers Make Crucial Contribution”; Campbell-Mohn, “China: The World’s New Peacekeeper?”
26 For a discussion on China’s goal ‘to restore its greatness’, see C.-C. Huang and Shih, “China’s Quest for Grand Strategy.”
27 Many scholars of IR view institutions as places where standard operating procedures create certain expected behaviours and act as norms entrepreneurs; eg Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change”; Strange, “Cave! Hic Dragones.”
28 Thies, “China’s Rise and the Socialization of Rising Powers,” 292.
29 Ibid., 298.
30 Nederveen Pieterse, Multipolar Globalization, 71.
31 Tang, “China and the Future International Order(s),” 34.
32 Alden and Large, “On Becoming a Norm Maker,” portend that Chinese foreign policymakers have started re-interpreting existing norms on security and liberal peacebuilding.
33 Interview by the author with a Chinese scholar from the China Institute for Contemporary International Relations, Beijing, May 8, 2014.
34 For more on China’s duality and its implications for foreign policy, see Xinbo Wu, “Four Contradictions.”
35 Acharya, “Idea-Shift.”
36 BRI was announced during Xi’s keynote speech in Astana; President Xi Jinping, “Keynote Speech at Nazarbayev University in Astana.”
37 Godehardt, “No End of History,” 20.
38 F. Zhang, “China as a Global Force,” 123.
39 President Xi Jinping’s speech at the Belt and Road Forum in May 2017.
40 Ibid.
41 Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, “Vision and Actions on Jointly Building.
42 Benabdallah, “Explaining Attractiveness.”
44 Interview by the author with a Chinese diplomat, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Beijing, May 27, 2014.
45 Hackenesch, “Not as Bad as It Seems.”
46 Ibid.
47 Alden and Large, “On Becoming a Norm Maker,” 135; Hackenesch, “Not as Bad as It Seems.”
48 Brautigam, Dragon’s Gift; Taylor, Forum on China–Africa Cooperation; Large, “China’s Sudan Engagement.”
49 President Xi Jinping’s speech at the Belt and Road Forum in May 2017.
50 Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, “Vision and Actions on Jointly Building.”
51 Ibid.
52 Benabdallah, “Explaining Attractiveness.”
53 President Xi Jinping’s speech at the Belt and Road Forum in May 2017.
54 Xi Jinping’s statement at the opening ceremony of the China–Africa Summit (FOCAC).
55 Alden and Large, “On Becoming a Norm Maker,” 125.
56 Ibid.
57 For discussions on Pre-Westphalian China, its diplomatic relations, Confucian thought and its role in ancient China’s perception of international order, see Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong.”
58 Y. Zhang and Buzan, “Tributary System as International Society,” 17.
59 Ibid, 19.
60 President Xi Jinping’s speech at the Belt and Road Forum in May 2017.
61 http://china-aibo.cn/ – the webpage is in Mandarin Chinese. Accessed August 2016.
62 King, China’s Aid and Soft Power in Africa.
63 PRC Premier Li Keqiang, “Speech at the African Union.”
64 Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.”
65 See Benabdallah, ‘China’s Peace and Security Strategies in Africa.”
66 Atkinson, “Constructivist Implications of Material Power,” 509.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Lina Benabdallah
Lina Benabdallah is an assistant professor of politics and international relations at Wake Forest University. She earned her PhD in political science from the University of Florida. Her work on theorising IR from the Global South appeared in a textbook published by E-IR, and her research on China’s norm diffusion to Africa appeared in the Journal of International Relations and Development, African Studies Quarterly, and Rising Powers Quarterly. She won the Best Student Paper of APSA’s Foreign Policy Section (2015). She is currently working on a project examining Chinese training academies for African peacekeepers and aiming to understand China’s so-called developmental peace model and how it differs, in practice through trainings, from the western liberal peace model.