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Sino-Australia relations have experienced a rapid deterioration in the past half-decade. From genial ties centred around trade and exchange, the relationship has descended into mutual hostility, prompting the editor of China's Global Times to notoriously liken Australia to a blob of gum on the bottom of a shoe. To explain the deteriorating relationship, scholars have proposed numerous ideas, pointing to factors as wide-ranging as 'Chinese influence', poor diplomacy efforts, and ontological (in)security touched off by neoliberal governmentality. The current paper examines these ideas in a literature review, then synthesises such ideas to provide its own explanation of why things 'went wrong'. It also addresses corollary questions such as why Australia adopted a uniquely assertive China policy, and why this occurred specifically around 2017. We argue that the breakdown in relations can be attributed to the rise of nationalist, sovereignty-oriented movements in the West, and the spillover effect this had on Australian leadership; the profound uncertainty attending the election of Trump and his isolationist tendencies; and the shift to a more rigid, authoritarian approach to foreign affairs under Xi. This perspective adds to the literature by identifying failings on both sides while underscoring significant yet underappreciated global trends, such as nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Philippine foreign policy under the Duterte government (2016–2022). During this period, Philippine foreign policy is widely acknowledged to have undergone dramatic shifts, with the government making friendly overtures towards China at the cost of its traditional alliance with the US. From a foreign policy analysis perspective, this paper explicitly focuses on the role of political leadership in guiding national foreign policy. This paper argues that the Duterte government made strategic use of political marketing in promoting its populist foreign policy. Thus, political marketing is used as an analytical lens with which to examine much of the rhetoric and behaviour of the Duterte government, particularly in regard to its response to the US–China rivalry. By engaging in this supposedly diplomatic game, the Duterte government tried to sell its foreign policy promises and outcomes as products even when its rhetoric was at times disconnected from its actual performance. Overall, this paper develops an alternative perspective from which to add to our understanding of the role of populist foreign policy initiatives in a fragile democratic setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a conceptual and analytical framework of states' legitimacy-seeking to comprehensively investigate the motivation behind China's climate and environment policy. While previous research has largely overlooked political factors that underlie China's climate policy, this paper argues that these factors are crucial in understanding China's policy changes, which are evident at both domestic and international levels. By examining sources such as government documents, leaders' speeches and authoritative literature, this study contends that China's climate change initiatives are part of a broader effort to enhance domestic and international legitimacy. The issue of climate change has become highly politicised in China under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, and it serves as a crucial test of the ruling party and the state's capacity to govern effectively. As such, legitimacy-seeking is the key driver that links China's domestic measures and international commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the underlying meaning of Chinese political ideas as represented in the Belt and Road discourse. It aims to contribute to overcoming the bias towards democratic systems in security studies. It challenges the argument that China's peaceful words can be taken at face value and compared with the ideas of democratic regimes. It delivers insights on new perspectives in the 'political threat versus desecuritization' discussion. This paper applies a qualitative discourse analysis with primary data collection of Chinese governmental and state institutional documents, Chinese think tank papers, and joint statements of EU-Chinese governmental officials. The data was analysed with NVivo Software. The empirical analysis shows that Chinese actors have built up a threat narrative idea which is hidden behind words such as 'trust, harmony, pluralism, community of a shared destiny'. Theoretically, this paper shows that the organizing principle, to apply Buzan's words, needs to be acknowledged when interpreting the way Chinese actors frame ideas in the BRI discourse. It challenges the argument of China as a desecuritization actor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'revisionism' has caught the attention of international relations scholars amid intensifying rivalry between the United States and China. It is a trademark of rising powers, and China was likewise expected to become a revisionist power, intent on changing the status quo. However, history tells us that not all rising powers necessarily become revolutionary states, seeking to overturn the prevailing order and replace it with another through hegemonic wars. This paper presents a novel understanding of revisionism by distinguishing between strategic 'contestation' and 'challenge'. In the context of declining unipolarity, a dissatisfied rising power will contest the rules and principles of issue-specific regimes and demand legitimate adjustments that better reflect the new distribution of power. A challenge emerges when demands are rejected, and a contestation leads to 'deconcentration' and 'delegitimation' of the established order. The establishment of the AIIB can be examined as an example of contested multilateralism that falls short of a challenge. This paper concludes that China is 'contesting', not 'challenging' the liberal international order and suggests a set of countermeasures that the U.S. can think of: selective accommodation, reinforcement of alliances and partnerships, and overcoming domestic challenges such as populism that undermine the liberal values, constitutive of the liberal international order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revises the bellicist theory of state-making by examining the interconnection between state-making and nation-building in the Third World. It argues that nation-building mobilisations for the purposes of self-preservation and aversion of unbalanced wars are equally crucial. By focusing on the People's Republic of China's involvement in the Afro–Asian cultural cooperation in the 1950s, this paper elaborates on how internationalism plays a role in the state-driven mobilisation of the general public for the purpose of nation-building in China. It looks at the role of transnational exchanges of cultural productions and cooperation in spurring social empowerment and nation-building in the post-World War II Afro–Asian world under the framework of the Afro–Asian solidarity movement. The Afro–Asian cultural cooperation was intended to create alternative visions to the West-centric narratives of modernisation among the general public. These visions in turn inspired the general public to be involved in nation-building movements in respective Global South nations. This synchronic relationship between national independence and internationalism in China is crucial in understanding the state-making in the Global South as a process of political, economic and, more importantly, cultural decolonisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China remains reluctant in claiming unilateral economic sanctions as a valid form of statecraft. China has consistently withheld official acknowledgment of its use of unilateral sanctions despite using them in different disputes. This has resulted to observations arguing that China is increasingly approaching the use of sanctions in a stealthier, therefore, more aggressive manner. It begs to ask, how does China's reluctant attitude towards its use of unilateral economic sanctions fit into China's overall foreign policy logic? More specifically, how does China's victimhood discourse justify unilateral sanctions and at the same time, promote a positive identity of itself in light of coercion? This paper argues that China's consistent vague acknowledgment and denial in claiming a direct hand on unilateral sanctions comes from its broad foreign policy objective of maintaining a positive identity through its discourse of victimhood. To uncover this understanding, this paper analyzes China's official positions in six bilateral disputes where China has resorted to unilateral sanctions. While existing observations only stop at 'plausible deniability' as primary explanation for China's vague rhetoric, analyzing China's predication strategies provides a necessary nuancing in terms of how this peculiar behavior remains consistent with China's overall foreign policy logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does power shape foreign policy attitudes? Drawing on advances in psychological research on power, I argue that the sense of relative state power explains foreign policy hawkishness. The intuitive sense that "our state" is stronger than "your state" activates militant internationalism, an orientation centered on the efficacy of force and deterrence to achieve state aims. Beyond general orientation towards the world, this sense of power explains discrete attitudes towards pressing security issues, from threat perception in the South China Sea to nuclear weapons use against Iran. Five original surveys across the US, China, and Russia, as well as an experiment fielded on the US public, lend support to these claims. The psychological effects of state power overshadow dispositional traits common in behavioral IR, like individuals' personalities and moral proclivities. More surprisingly, power changes individuals, making hawks of even the most dovish. Taken together, the paper presents a "first image reversed" challenge to standard bottom-up accounts of foreign policy opinion and offers unique explanatory leverage in a potential era of US decline, China's rise, and Russian belligerence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a critical review of Nye's conceptualization of soft power, this paper extends the literature by examining how Chinese diplomatic actors deploy cultural soft-power discursive practices when publishing opinion pieces in the British press to construct the attractiveness of China. It conducts a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis. Findings show that they strategically deploy charm offensive, defensive denial and Othering offensive to construct a distinctively positive Chinese Self and a positive Us as inclusive as possible under the influence of ideological square. The identified major topoi are characterized by imbuing China's foreign policies and its world vision with Chinese traditional cultural and moral values, hopefully to justify China's extensive use of the economic prowess to gain soft power, and justify its ability and incentive to play a more important role in global governance. It sheds some light on understanding Chinese diplomatic actors' distinctive cultural soft-power mediated discursive practices in the general context of a non-Western government communicating and engaging with Western audiences. It also contributes to the understanding of China's strategic thinking and its world vision in the Xi Jinping era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2013, China has undertaken extensive reclamation and construction on several reefs in the Spratly Island chain in the South China Sea. China has since been adding new construction and fortifications to the land features that had undergone reclamation between late 2013 and 2015, but none of the new projects rivalled the large-scale reclamation from 2014–15, and nor has China reclaimed any new land features. Land reclamation has theoretical and empirical implications. The literature regarding maritime disputes in the South China Sea is rich and plenty. Many studies, however, focus on China's bilateral assertive or coercive behaviour as well as China's general strategy in the South China Sea, not land reclamation per se. What explains the timing of China's large-scale land reclamation in the South China Sea? Why did China decide to initiate large-scale land reclamation in the first place? This paper, therefore, conducts a comprehensive case study analysing China's land reclamation decisions. I argue that China's land reclamation is a result of capability, rationale, and opportunities which include a calculation of U.S. resolve. This study has implications for understanding Chinese foreign policy decision-making and contributes to the credibility debate in the coercion literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tensions in the EU-China relationship have hampered cooperation in various sectors, including a set of transnational security issues where engagement with China is unavoidable but nevertheless profoundly challenging. The EU maintains a "tripartite" strategy, originally outlined in its 2019 Strategic Outlook, seeing China as a "partner", but also as an economic "competitor" and a "systemic rival". China's former State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi has described the European approach as suffering from "cognitive dissonance". As a result, and as demonstrated by the failure of the 2022 EU-China Summit, the two parties are now operating within two different frameworks, and constructive cooperation has become increasingly difficult. By working with Qin Yaqing's concept of "relationality", this article aims to contribute to a better conceptualisation of the ways in which the EU and China can work with each other to tackle global issues. Challenging the literature that tries to explain the shift in EU-China relations by focusing on individual actors, this research's approach focuses on the relations between actors. Adopting this ontology of relations, this research paper analyses how, in the EU-China relationship, relations between the two parties contribute to creating their own identities and motivate their actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By conducting discourse analysis on Chinese textual materials around 1962, this paper tries to inductively explore the national identities of Chinese people during the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict. It finds that China perceived itself as a persistent and resilient nation in the ongoing fight against invasion and oppression. The predominant social discourse around 1962 showed a strong enmity and resistance toward the imperialism which was then imposed on India. These national identities have formed a natural response as maintaining a tough stance toward incursion and repression, and have contributed to China's resolution to defense its territory with resorting to military force, even though it might not be beneficial in terms of diplomatic relations and economic interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has been contributing to new approaches to global governance. The Health Silk Road (HSR), a significant component of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), was proposed by China in 2016. This paper claims that HSR is a new institution introduced alongside the existing WHO-led multilateral health system, and its relationship with the existing system can be described as layering. Having explored the new development of HSR during COVID-19, this paper further argues that while HSR has its unique strength in making contributions to global health governance and economic recovery, it faces a prominent issue of securitisation in the context of China-U.S. strategic competition, suspicion of the quality of medical products and sectoral fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bio-medical model of 'mental health' and 'mental illness' that relates to the relationship between wellbeing and distress informs psychopathology and dominates conceptualisation in many Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic (WEIRD) populations. This paper aims to critique the model, questioning the appropriateness of psychopathology as a conceptual framework when working as a Western trained clinician with populations such as in China, Japan, Asia, the Middle-East and Africa. The paper also considers the cultural appropriateness of western notions of psychopathology when working inter-culturally in relation to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings, and the Review of the Implementation of the IASC Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By conducting discourse analysis on Chinese textual materials around 1962, this paper tries to inductively explore the national identities of Chinese people during the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict. It finds that China perceived itself as a persistent and resilient nation in the ongoing fight against invasion and oppression. The predominant social discourse around 1962 showed a strong enmity and resistance toward the imperialism which was then imposed on India. These national identities have formed a natural response as maintaining a tough stance toward incursion and repression, and have contributed to China's resolution to defense its territory with resorting to military force, even though it might not be beneficial in terms of diplomatic relations and economic interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the strategic partnership between China and the UAE. It begins with an analysis of the concept of strategic partnership, based on the existing literature on the topic in international relations. Since there is no consensus as to the meaning of the term strategic partnership, the paper applies Thomas Wilkins's model or framework to explain the UAE's partnership with China. Wilkins is among the few to develop a conceptual framework or analytical model of the term. The paper then focuses on the foundation of the strategic partnership between the two countries, and goes on to analyze the prospects for the future of this partnership. The paper argues that although this partnership is strong, its future depends on two important factors. The first is UAE's alliance with the United States, and the second, China's relations with Iran. Driven as it is by economic considerations and a mutual desire for closer security and political cooperation, the partnership cannot, however, ignore these two important aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how ideas of "race" and racial identification have, in different ways, been central in the construction of modern nation-states, both in East Asia and in postcolonial Southeast Asia, helping to entrench notions of racial difference as a fundamental element in nation-building. Processes of human racialization – and consequently, the homogenization of racialized identities and essentialization of human inequality – are thus persistent structuring devices that organize the workings of human societies. The paper focuses especially on the complex and contradictory ramifications of the racialization of "the Chinese" inside and outside of China, threatening to take on a perilous turn in the current era of China's rising global power and heightened Sinophobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper maps out contemporary discourses of Chinese diplomacy that have proliferated under the aegis of 'major country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics'. We examine how these narratives are underpinned by webs of relationality that see China promoting equal and win–win partnerships with other state actors, yet are also defined by hierarchical premises for such diplomatic engagements. These relational contradictions are most clearly manifested when we interrogate the spatial dynamics of China's diplomatic endeavours through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). By scrutinising the geopolitical imaginations, sites and scales associated with the BRI, we turn attention to three spatial tensions that are closely bounded up with the relational contradictions of Chinese diplomacy: 'win–win' diplomacy promoting a 'harmonious world' versus territorially based diplomacy; periphery diplomacy versus the global ambitions of BRI; and the centralisation versus decentralisation dimensions of Chinese diplomacy. This allows us to make sense of the multiplicity of descriptors that have been affixed to Chinese diplomacy, in order to underscore the 'work' they perform to bequeath (at times, divergent and contested) meanings to China's new foreign policy approach. Hence, a relational and spatial understanding of Chinese diplomacy, we argue, can reveal a more nuanced picture of the promises, potential and disjunctures of China's rapidly expanding geopolitical and diplomatic actions on the international stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As China grows in international importance and influence, more and more countries worry about how it will behave, and are preoccupied with the hard question of how to tame it. As a middle power Australia has sought ways to influence the thinking and behaviour of Chinese policymakers. The Australian approach to taming China represents an academically puzzling and politically intriguing case, which, unfortunately, has not been studied in detail. The paper has argued that the concept of taming offers significant intellectual advantages in its reconsideration of Australia's China policy and has called for Australian scholars and policymakers, to critically rethink unspoken and understudied Australia's taming practices and policies. To this end, this paper has proposed an experience-based theory of taming as a key research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pakistan occupies an elevated role in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and hosts its so-called flagship project, the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Existing literature has often interpreted this project from a geopolitical perspective, as a vehicle through which a rising China projects influence on a peripheral country and advances its own centrality in international affairs. While such motivations certainly played a major role in getting the project off the ground, they are not the sole determinant of its design, or the heated controversies it triggered within Pakistan. This paper seeks to capture both dimensions by analysing the development of CPEC, and the handling of the conflicts it sparked, through a lens of overlapping centre–periphery relations: one between China and Pakistan at the international level, and one between Islamabad and peripheral regions and groups within the country. I argue that this model best captures the pivotal position and resulting agency of national governments in shaping local BRI implementations. It also shows how the BRI is not a straight case of Chinese influence radiating outwards; rather, contestation by local actors in turn forces adaptations in Chinese foreign and security policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When great powers such as the United States and China grow especially hawkish with more uncertainties, how does a smaller state react to such a complex and dangerous territorial conflict? Given the competing frames of influence between China and the United States, what are the underlying reasons for the shift in the Philippines' foreign policy? This paper focuses on the Philippines' changing foreign policy on the South China Sea dispute and examines the main rationale for its shift in strategy towards China. We use the perspective of neoclassical realism to unpack the constraining factors that underlie the Philippines' domestic politics and ongoing global exigencies. With changes in its domestic politics and the security challenges posed by the evolving geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific region, the Philippines is in a difficult situation, having to choose between a territorially hostile trading partner and its historical security guarantor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia is one of the founding members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and, next to China, one of its leaders. While being an active and engaging member of the organization, Russia's strategy towards SCO remains puzzling. Initially, it sought a pragmatic cooperation with China on solving numerous security issues that plagued post-Soviet Central Asia. However, Russia gradually developed alternative regional bodies (viz. Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and Eurasian Economic Union (EEU)) where it is a supreme leader, and which became its preferred tools for interacting with other states in the post-Soviet space. This impacted the place and role of the SCO in Russia's regional and global strategies. Moreover, Russia's growing power asymmetry vis-à-vis China added an additional dimension to its consideration of SCO. Hence, Moscow promoted several policies, especially the enlargement, which seemed to undercut SCO's development. This paper relies on a theoretical framework of the so-called theory of cooperative hegemony, especially the application of one of its main analytical variables – the commitment capacity – to examine Russia's policy towards SCO. Apart from considerable secondary sources, the article draws upon six semi-structured expert interviews, and a number of primary documents including but not limited to foreign policy concepts, declarations, and charters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The China-ROK boundary disputes in the Yellow Sea and the associated fishing conflict are often neglected in the rich body of literature on China's maritime disputes. This article examines the question of why and how China has persistently pursued a de-escalatory posture in the Yellow Sea in the past decade despite having considerably hardened its posture in the East and South China Seas. I argue that the high stakes China has in its bilateral ties with South Korea create strong incentives for Beijing to deescalate maritime controversies whereas the absence of broad-based hawkish pressure at home creates a permissive domestic political climate for Beijing to pursue de-escalation. This paper also evaluates conditions that may facilitate a hardening Chinese position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project in Myanmar, this paper contests the proposition that China's state-coordinated investments are, by nature, more accommodating to local people's demands than Western investments. Tension between Myanmar villagers and the Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) in a copper mine project does not square with Beijing's "inclusive globalization" narrative. Drawing upon extensive semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in a Sino-Myanmar copper mine project, as well as other secondary data, this study finds that the Chinese SOE's operation was reactive to the ebb and flow of social resistance and the government's pressure amid the host country's democratization in the 2010s. Reforms were more likely to occur when the Chinese SOE observed more domestic constraints in its operation environment. It showed less incentive to improve its business practices when societal actors failed to display strong resistance, and the host government did not care about its legitimacy. Despite Beijing's efforts to craft an image of itself as a responsible power, conflicts in the BRI project should not be simplified as the SOE's defiance of the state's regulations. They are rooted in the state-centric foreign policy that systematically overlooks societal actors in state-coordinated investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explore the political implications of China's economic relationship with Africa using the case study of Sino-Nigerian economic relations. China – perhaps the most prominent rising economy of the contemporary era – and Nigeria – one of the Africa's largest economies with a fast-growing consumer population – provide an ideal context to study the economic significance of bilateral ties for the 'Global South.' Nigeria's prospects of sustained economic growth, through Sino diplomatic relations, could appear relatively bleak considering issues involving its growing debt burden, unequal trade composition and deteriorating governance standards, some of which are attributable to China. This paper explores both sides of the argument before concluding that certain political aspects of Sino-Nigerian bilateral relations do indeed undermine sustainable economic development in the long run. It is argued that unequal economic practices, lack of transparency, disregard for environmental concerns, exclusion of civil society and absence of serious engagement with wider social actors and other checks and balances could indeed nurture elements of rentierism across Africa – particularly in resource-rich countries like Nigeria leaving significant detrimental effects that could well outweigh short-term gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the introduction to the special issue on 'Contesting liberal internationalism: China's renegotiation of world order', this paper outlines the theoretical framework of the special issue, namely international order and order contestation, and the main arguments of the four papers included in this special issue. Recently, a, albeit not the, key challenge to the liberal international order stems from the leadership aspirations of non-Western, non-liberal states, and their increasing demand for a greater voice, most notably China under the leadership of Xi Jinping. This special issue is constructed as a debate concerning the alleged challenges posed by China to both the political and economic spheres of the liberal international order. The four case studies and papers are grouped into two core themes: the impact of China's state-capitalist development model and practices on the liberal economic order, and China's attempts to transform norms and rules in security-related matters. The four papers aim to appraise Chinese discursive narratives and practices that would collectively challenge American liberal hegemony. Altogether they argue that a hybrid of order-building norms and practices is likely to co-exist alongside the prevailing liberal international order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonial and postcolonial relations have always constituted sites of knowledge production in the Global South. This is particularly noticeable when it comes to the production of knowledge of a Global South self vis-à-vis the West. However, the literature has not seriously attended self-knowledge production in the Global South with regard to non-Western others. The paper compares South and Southeast Asian think tanks to reflect upon a common identity strategy of small nations to become a civilizational bridge between competing major neighbours. Specifically, China experts in these areas host more or less a common wish or even a desire to be a bridge over the difference of China and its potential rival in India, the West, or both. The bridge role is a rare sensibility in the postcolonial critique of the West. Watching China from its Southern Third World neighbourhood incurs such an agenda. Relying on interviews of retired diplomats and think tank experts, the paper also discusses how the above mentioned methodological characteristics affect the enactment of the bridge role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparing China's 2006 and 2015 Africa policies, this article reveals how China's political discourse has become more confident, practical, and depoliticised. In particular, this paper shows how education is allocated, promised, and embedded in China's 'shared' agenda, which is centred on development co-operation and mutual learning. It then reflects on the extent to which China may move towards traditional donors. This paper concludes that, despite fragmented convergences in the discourse and an increased recognition of a Chinese model, China maintains its distinctive role and position in the post-2015 era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) announced in 2015, is a $60 billion package of Chinese-led investment in roads, railways, energy, and industry. It is part of China's new Eurasia-wide Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The likely impact of CPEC is controversial. Some scholars argue that CPEC will generate prosperity, regional equality and rapid economic growth in Pakistan. Other scholars argue, however, that CPEC will lead to debt and to the economic and political subordination of Pakistan to China. The existing discussion of CPEC has a near exclusive inward-looking focus on Pakistan. Some scholars, mainly from outside of Pakistan, have looked in more detail at China, but principally from an international relations perspective. Missing from all of this discussion is how economic change in China, particularly in western China, will influence the likely economic outcome of the CPEC. This paper makes an effort to begin to fill this gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the extent to which the official Chinese discourse of Ecological Civilisation (shengtai wenming) is adhered to in practise. Ecological Civilisation (or Eco-Civilisation) is presented as a Chinese vision of human progress which purports to de-couple economic development from environmental degradation. Underpinning the idea are five overlapping pillars (environment, economy, society, culture and governance) which, it is claimed, provide a theoretical framework to promote harmony between humanity and nature. Advocates see the concept as an example of a new Chinese modernity based on socialist values and President Xi Jinping has declared China a torchbearer of the global endeavour for Eco-Civilisation. However, our paper casts doubt over this assertion when applied specifically to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Although there is some evidence of a commitment to the principles of Eco-Civilisation, we identify a number of substantial and interlinking practical shortfalls relating to three core themes: inclusion, enforcement and transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition away from post-Cold War unipolarity has repercussions for regional orders that have been shaped and sustained by US preponderance. Small states like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), traditionally reliant upon extra-regional powers to balance against more powerful neighbours, are adopting an increasingly muscular foreign policy to hedge against a possible reduced US regional role. Consequently, there is an opening for non-traditional powers to adopt larger roles. Primarily using an outside-in approach, this paper explores the nature of China and Russia's more active bilateral engagement with the UAE. It finds that in an environment where political instability within the larger Middle East combines with uncertainty about US intentions, regional leaders and leaders of extra-regional powers with interests in the Persian Gulf have to adjust accordingly, either to protect those interests or to take advantage of the opportunity to expand their presence in a strategically and economically important theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a new theoretical framework to explain China's strategic behaviour along with its rise and in doing so engages with the debate on strategic culture between Colin Gray and Alastair Johnston. We suggest that China's behaviour is shaped by two variables: realpolitik realist threat perceptions on the strategic level and Confucian moralist cultural norms on the ideational level. In the case of a high strategic threat, China's behaviour will be heavily influenced by the realpolitik variable in Chinese culture and become offensive in nature. Under low strategic threat, China's policy will follow the Confucian tradition and thereby emphasize the non-use of force and resort to defensive principles. When external threats change from high to low, Chinese behaviour will feature a combination of 'realpolitik' and 'Confucianism,' that is, a self-constrained offensive policy. China's foreign policy in the South China Sea after the Cold War is a case study that illustrates the utility of this new strategic culture framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the incipient tensions over the Brahmaputra between India and China has become a considerable threat and cause for concern to the downstream dwellers of India's North East Region (NER), especially Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. It enlarges the term 'Brahma-hypothesis' and considers Chinese 'hydro-hegemony' over the Brahmaputra as a 'national security' threat to India. It also argues that apart from having the occasional Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China, India should seek to develop with China and other countries a multilateral diplomatic agreement regarding the management of the Brahmaputra River to secure India's vital interests at national and regional levels. This is also necessary to minimise the sense of insecurity continuously growing in the minds of the people of the NER. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the international relations (IR) 'polarity' concept as a lens to view the shifting great power dynamics in artificial intelligence (AI) and related enabling technologies. The article describes how and why great power competition is mounting in within several interrelated dual-use technological fields; why these innovations are considered by Washington to be strategically vital, and how (and to what end) the United States is responding to the perceived challenge posed by China to its technological hegemony. The following questions addressed in this paper fill a gap in the existing literature: Will the increasingly competitive U.S.-China relationship dominate world politics creating a new bipolar world order, as opposed to a multipolar one? Why does the U.S. view China's progress in dual-use AI as a threat to its first-mover advantage? How might the U.S. respond to this perceived threat? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the impact of China’s aid, trade and investments on the development trajectories in postcolonial Africa, focussed on Rwanda. The analytical framework of this study is informed by Helen Milner’s observation that ‘International political economy is a growth industry’. Furthermore, the study deploys dependency theory and world systems theory to examine how the global economic configuration operates though the hierarchy of core, semi-periphery and periphery among the states. Our focus on Rwanda is based on our observation that this small, landlocked, natural resources-deficient, aid-dependent country is an atypical destination for Chinese patronage and investments. We argue that as a non-resource rich country, Rwanda presents an anomaly, thus, underlining the gap in the existing knowledge on China–Africa engagements. We discuss the inherent dependency in the neoliberal economic structure and present a case for using dependency theory to understand and explain the contemporary globalised economy and emerging South–South cooperation. We conclude with a call for more in-depth cross-comparative research on China–Africa relations to grasp the magnitude of dependencies and economic transformations within postcolonial African states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining the territorial and logistical factors surrounding the leasing of the Greek port of Piraeus to a subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned enterprise COSCO, this paper responds to calls to investigate variations in experiences of precarity. The article is based on research conducted in 2014 when the container processing area at Piraeus was divided between two terminals: the first run by the Piraeus Port Authority (OLP) and the second run by COSCO's subsidiary Piraeus Container Terminals (PCT). By contrasting the threatened unionized labour regime at OLP with the highly precarious labour conditions at PCT, the paper asks how the operative dimensions of capital condition precarity's intensification and spread. In this light, precarity emerges not simply as a form of labour insecurity or an unevenly shared condition of human vulnerability but as a relational nexus that links questions of political economy to matters of subjectivity, space, power, and governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) has developed a series of 'strategic partnerships' with a range of great power states. These partnerships reflect the emergence of an actor that seeks to establish foreign policy goals with an attendant institutional architecture and political commitment. This paper examines two of these partnerships with the United States and China to illustrate the manner in which the EU has constructed a collective identity for itself via discursive association with great power states, while claiming a normative character as an actor of a different kind, with the ability to act strategically with great power states via temporal and ethical forms of social distancing from these same actors. This paper consults recent survey research and policy developments to assess the success of these EU discursive strategies. It is concluded that these partnerships play a somewhat useful role in establishing the EU as an actor of global significance, whilst the EU is less successful in its inherent claims of normative superiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the application of the non-interference principle in the context of China’s security policy in Africa, to determine the extent to which we are witnessing an evolution in the application of this principle. Indeed, as seen with the recent opening of the military base in Djibouti or with China’s contribution to peace talks in South Sudan, it would appear that the non-intervention principle is undergoing a course reversal. This paper will argue that, in spite of these apparent shifts, there has been no fundamental change to the application of this principle. To make this point, this article applies Ren’s typology, which characterises three levels of nuance in the forms that the application of non-interference has taken in practice. This typology is then applied in a comparative manner across the four following components of China’s security policy in Africa: peacekeeping operations; military cooperation; naval power projection; and crisis management mediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pakistan's closeness to China is mainly to balance a 'perpetual threat' from India that the Pakistani establishment has successfully instituted in the country over the years. To support Pakistan, China has been taking up a large number of projects in Pakistan that also strengthens its own political, economic and military position in South Asia. One such important project is a port at Gwadar in Pakistan's restive province of Balochistan. Although it is mainly projected as a commercial port, various reports in the international media claim that military facilities have been built at Jiwani, near Gwadar. This is, however, refuted by Pakistan and China. This paper discusses the trajectory of China-Pakistan relationships, looks at the nature of the Chinese engagements with Pakistan, examines the significance of Gwadar port for China and Pakistan, and analyses India's concerns and policy measures it has taken to address such concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how Chinese elites understand the proper role of their nation vis-à-vis its 'periphery' and how this self-understanding shapes Chinese strategic policy toward neighboring states. It makes two specific arguments. First, after 2012 China began to understand itself as responsible for actively managing and shaping its periphery. Xi Jinping has overseen an evolution in China's neighborhood strategy that has changed from mere engagement to proactive efforts to shape regional order. Efforts to achieve this goal have come primarily through: institution-building and regional integration via the 'Belt and Road Initiative', strategic partnerships, normative binding, and developmental statecraft. Second, managing newly emerged power asymmetries between China and its neighbors is now a crucial task of Beijing's peripheral policy. The emerging China-led regional order relies on norms that are hierarchical, transactional, and reflect status distinctions. Xi Jinping's neighborhood strategy rests on an asymmetric bargain: respect China's core interests in exchange for benevolence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevailing narratives in the discourse on China-Africa engagement are that China is developing Africa. This paper departs from those narratives because they disregard the agency of Africa's political elite. Basing its argument on the nature of the African political elite, the paper analyses their role in determining the impact of China's economic and trade engagement on economic development in their respective countries. To do that, it first discusses the nature and identity of African political elites, and examines how they control their states and scarce resources. Having done that, the paper then analyses their role in determining the nature and extent of development emanating from their countries’ economic engagement with China. It then concludes that it is not how much foreign states invest in African countries that determines Africa's rise, but rather political elites who influence the direction of their states’ development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical and conventional international relations (IR) frameworks describe the Belt Road Initiative (BRI) as representing a newly ambitious Chinese drive into global politics that positions China as moving away from its long-time reticence towards foreign entanglements. This raises a contradiction of China being at one and the same time both a defender of its own territorial sovereignty while also being engaged in various projects, particularly the BRI and the associated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), that point in completely different directions. This paper seeks to build upon and move beyond conventional framings to understand how the BRI represents a conflict over the workings of state sovereignty that such frameworks have trouble addressing. We argue that the absence of an official Chinese government BRI map promotes a 'useful fuzziness' with regards to China being open to crafting a new as of yet undefined geopolitical identity. In light of the absence of such a map, this work considers key ideas relating to China's geopolitical expansion via the BRI in terms of so-called sovereignty regimes – the idea that various practices of authority and control emanating originally from states take different geographical shapes. Conflicts arise when a state, such as China, finds itself caught between the operational imperatives of multiple regimes. By identifying the current sovereignty dynamics raised by the BRI in light of the relevant, yet distinctive historical experience of the Marshall Plan, this work can be used as a model for understanding how China's current leadership is managing the debate of simultaneously protecting 'strong borders' yet also promoting a policy of 'going out'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competition is a natural byproduct of major powers navigating an anarchic world. Small states operating in such a milieu however, face a dilemma when strategizing their foreign policy. At present, two regional behemoths – India and China – remain locked in a Realpolitik affray as they vie for influence by enticing and attracting South Asian states through economic, security and diplomatic initiatives. How do these structural dynamics impact Sri Lanka's policymaking process? Moreover, has the island been able to mount a timely and appropriate response to structural dictates? In what way has domestic variables influenced and channeled policy preferences in Sri Lanka since 2015? By adopting a Neoclassical Realist frame of analysis, this paper appraises the impact made by the external environment and domestic intervening variables on the island's foreign policy trajectory. It concludes that domestic intervening variables drew the island away from optimal choices in its relations with India and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the doctrine of 'keeping a low profile (KLP), attaining some achievement (ASA)' was developed, there has been much attention and study of the KLP, but little discussion of the ASA. However, it is exactly how the ASA has been observed that can well reflect Chinese perception of its global role. In the paper, the ASA is treated as a continuum or a fluid concept with changing values. There have been significant adjustments in the official expression of the ASA doctrine since the 2008 global financial crisis, from the original 'attaining some achievement' to 'proactively attaining achievement' around 2011, 'striving for achievement' in 2013, and 'striving for achievement in a new era' in 2017. Along with these changes, there have been roughly three rounds of debates on the ASA among Chinese scholars. While they generally agree on more proactive diplomacy in attaining achievement, scholars have debated on what achievements to attain and how to attain these achievements. While the ultimate goal is defined officially as Chinese rejuvenation, specific and interim goals of 'striving for achievement' in scholarly debates have targeted mainly China's strategic capability, institutional power and normative power. Chinese scholars have also debated on the general principles, diplomatic style and tactics that China should follow by focusing on three relationships: the relationship between the KLP and the ASA, the Sino-US relationship, and the relationship between China and the international system. The author provides an analytical framework and thorough examination of the development of the ASA doctrine, and presents the scholarly debates along its development path, in the hope that this study may facilitate the understanding of the outside world on how China perceives its global role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to present an explanation of why the Muslim governments largely abstained from even bringing up the Uyghur case with China, while the Rohingya issue provoked official condemnations by the governments in many Muslim countries. Although economic factors are most often consulted internationally, this article puts forward political factors as sufficient to explain the Muslim governments' responses to the Xinjiang issue – primarily the domestic politics, and secondarily seeking of strategic alternatives to balance the West. In the context of hybrid political regimes in many Muslim countries, the domestic public opinion played an important role in deciding whether the government would address the issue. Effectively only Turkey presents the case where the public pays attention to the Uyghurs, and the government felt obliged to raise the issue at least to some extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International cooperation on peacekeeping operations, and on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) operations, is important in tackling global non-traditional security threats. It also helps China address its 'trust deficit' problem. While both operations seem 'low hanging fruit' for international cooperation, the ways in which China undertakes peacekeeping and HADR cooperation differ – the former encompasses not only cooperation for technical and capacity development but also cooperation for policy harmonisation, while China's HADR cooperation is limited to technical and capacity development. This paper asks, 'why the difference?', despite the fact that they both address similar policy problems. It argues that the difference corresponds to the level of holisticity/fragmentation of China's decision-making process. The more holistic China's decision-making process, the deeper the international cooperation. The nature of China's decision-making processes has international policy implications, because the fragmented nature of those processes maintains cooperation at a functional level only, and hinders the deeper development of cooperation into policy harmonisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates on China's engagement with international institutions centre on a (false) dichotomy that China is either a status-quo or revisionist power. Both sides of this debate have ample empirical evidence to support their arguments and they tend towards conclusions that China's behaviour and preferences lie in the space in between these two positions. It is important to consider how China presents a contest to international order from with international institutions. This article examines the question: What is China being socialised into? Drawing on the international practices literature, this paper unpacks the types of norms that China may be being socialised into. It makes the argument that China has been successfully socialised into the practices of international institutions – the ways the bureaucracies work and can be used to achieve political goals – and pluralist-liberal global norms, but incompletely into solidarist liberal norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to describe an international project aimed at building a knowledge base between Canada and China and beyond for cross-cultural educational understanding and harmonious relationships. The overall purpose of this work is to move beyond cross-cultural comparison and competition to collaborative reciprocity. Reciprocal learning is the guiding term for the Canada–China Partnership Project. The term is relatively commonplace and its deceptive simplicity veils important research and public discourse consequences. The Partnership Project, though not explicitly comparative in nature, draws heavily on the literature of comparative education, particularly with respect to methodology and understandings of Chinese and Canadian education. We describe four comparative education approaches which we think of as models of reciprocal learning across cultures. In the following remarks, we unpack these ideas of reciprocal learning as they apply to collaborative studies of Chinese and Canadian education. The models are assessed for their potential to generate collaborative teaching and learning situations with associated reciprocal learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Preservice Teacher Education Reciprocal Learning Programme has been developed on a vision of bridging the East and West dichotomy by harmonising Eastern learning with Western knowledge. This programme is one of the two foundations for Xu and Connelly's 7-year Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership in teacher education and school education in 2013-2020. The Programme, 'provide[s] an exceptional cross-cultural experience with international engagement ... to broaden teacher candidates' horizons for a society of increasing diversity in today's globalized world'. This article's purposes are to discuss how reciprocal learning is both a concept and an approach for international and cross-cultural teacher education and school education and to present the learning outcomes and educational significance of the East-West reciprocal learning programme in teacher education. The Programme has created opportunities for both pre-service and in-service teachers to understand and appreciate a culture and educational system different from their own, thereby reciprocally contributing to educational opportunities for those they teach. The research theory and method utilised in this work are found in a companion paper in this special series and are briefly discussed below in the project overview and later in a discussion of student outcomes. This work has implications for other school settings where increasing immigrant student population and cultural diversity have become the norm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the imperial socialisation of young consular officials and how they were prepared for their role as intermediaries between Britain and China. Drawing on private papers and public archives, it uses the career of one such official to analyse the processes which took place when they joined the China Consular Service and how their evolving mentality reflected and further shaped its collective mind. It argues that such officials learned to develop a cultural sensitivity towards China which would be key to their ability to forge the collaborative relationships that underpinned the British presence. Whilst it is generally acknowledged that that presence was marked by an unquestioning belief in the imperial mission, there has been less focus on how that sensitivity enabled Britain to maintain its dominant position in China until the outbreak of the First World War. The article argues that, although that sensitivity was self-serving, and notwithstanding the unequal treaties, it derived from a genuine interest in and sympathy for the country which was instilled into officials from the outset of their careers. However, those elements also helped perpetuate the degradation of China's sovereignty during this period. To understand how this took place and why China continues to characterise the period as 'the century of humiliation', we need first to explore how that sensitivity, with its underlying ambiguities and tensions, was forged and sustained as part of the mind-set of the consular service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]