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This essay is a preliminary study of the Philippines' foreign policy towards China under President Rodrigo Roa Duterte. It will examine China's economic statecraft as the sender country towards the Philippines as the target country. The ultimate goal of China's economic policies is to foster a submissive response from the Philippines over their territorial disputes in the South China Sea. This paper applies the theoretical model proposed by Jean-Marc F. Blanchard and Norrin M. Ripsman (2008 and 2013) to study the political theory of economic statecraft, as applied by the sender and target countries. Blanchard and Ripsman argue that domestic factors serve as significant intervening variables in the strategy of the target country's leaders towards the sender country. Thus, the target country's leaders will view the sender country's economic sanctions or economic inducements differently, depending on the domestic socioeconomic situation. By looking at the Duterte administration in the Philippines, this paper intends to expand upon the research agenda of the theory on economic statecraft and international relations. It will shine a light on the puzzling flip-flop of the Philippines' foreign policy strategy. It shows that Blanchard and Ripsman's "stateness" conditionalist approach provides a plausible explanation of the Filipino response to China's economic statecraft. Instead of relying on conventional neo-realist, economic liberalist, or regime-type conditionalist arguments, this paper will focus on the control of leaders over the decision-making environment. However, it does acknowledge that stateness does not fully explain the Philippines' strategic adjustment towards China, as international variables could have affected the Philippines' policy response to China's economic statecraft. This paper, therefore, argues that domestic and international factors play vital roles in affecting the dynamics in the target state and the effectiveness of the sender state's economic statecraft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Has China embraced global poverty reduction? To what extent has it done so? China faces three paradoxes in trying to alleviate poverty: first, the country is on the whole getting richer, becoming one of the largest economies in the world, yet huge pockets of extreme poverty exist in the country. Second, it wants to be taken seriously as a responsible member of the international community. It would therefore like to be treated as a normal aid giver helping the poor in the developing world. Yet its own people are crying out loud for better social services at home. Third, while it wants to be respected by others in the world, it has been accused by other countries of ignoring, if not abusing, human rights in the Third World in its relentless search for natural resources, trade and investments. This paper aims to unravel these paradoxes by examining China's foreign aid and its adherence or otherwise to the UN Millennium Development Goals. In so doing, the paper assesses China's unilateral approach as well as its multilateral approach to poverty alleviation. It argues that China's overall approach has become more multilateral in nature but the change has been slow and incremental. Its influence in global poverty reduction, though increasing, is still limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Has China embraced global poverty reduction? To what extent has it done so? China faces three paradoxes in trying to alleviate poverty: first, the country is on the whole getting richer, becoming one of the largest economies in the world, yet huge pockets of extreme poverty exist in the country. Second, it wants to be taken seriously as a responsible member of the international community. It would therefore like to be treated as a normal aid giver helping the poor in the developing world. Yet its own people are crying out loud for better social services at home. Third, while it wants to be respected by others in the world, it has been accused by other countries of ignoring, if not abusing, human rights in the Third World in its relentless search for natural resources, trade and investments. This paper aims to unravel these paradoxes by examining China's foreign aid and its adherence or otherwise to the UN Millennium Development Goals. In so doing, the paper assesses China's unilateral approach as well as its multilateral approach to poverty alleviation. It argues that China's overall approach has become more multilateral in nature but the change has been slow and incremental. Its influence in global poverty reduction, though increasing, is still limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the asymmetric dilemma facing the Philippines and China in the South China Sea tensions. Among American East Asian allies, the Philippines seems to stand on the frontline between two rival powers, the United States and China. Since the US declared its Pivot to Asia policy, the Philippines' foreign policy towards China has become assertive and sometimes appears reckless with some military adventures against Chinese maritime patrols and naval ships, which also further forced China to take a tougher foreign policy against the Philippines. Considering the distinctive asymmetric indicators between China and the Philippines based on military forces, economic capacity, territorial size, and population, the aggressive policy behaviors that the Philippines and China have been displaying against each other cast an inquiry on what drives the two countries into head-to-head collision. While China as the larger power vis-à-vis the Philippines as the smaller power in the relationship has aimed for control and domination of their disputed territory, the Philippines' drastic defiance has also led to China's irritation and possible frustration. Furthermore, the US' renewed attention to Asia has caused shifts of asymmetric bilateral dilemma to triangular entanglement between the US-China-Philippines. It is vital therefore to pay attention to the asymmetric interaction of states and their varying views in order to find possible solutions to the SCS tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The landscape of post-colonial development is marked by deepening dependency of the developing states on the core states consisted mainly of western developed countries. The continuous widening of the north-south divide is not surprising given that the discourse on international relations has been dominated by western ideologies of realism, liberalism and constructivism, resulting in an insufficient attempt to examine international relations from a non-Westphalian perspective. Through the implementation of the Washington Consensus, developing countries are being forced to follow the development model of liberal democracy designed by the West, for the benefit of the West. This paper attempts to investigate an alternative approach from a Chinese historical structural perspective. By highlighting the key tenets of Confucianism, this paper aims to contribute towards a non-Western international relations discourse that is based on moral values. Attempts by China to provide assistance to the "poor south" are marred by accusations of neo-colonialism. In order to fulfil its great power responsibility, China needs to incorporate these Confucian values into its Beijing Consensus so that the global south can abandon their dependency on the West and truly set the stage for south-south cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's trade with Ethiopia currently at 1.3 billion USD annually is expected to rise to US$3 billion by 2015. This not only informs the level of bilateral trade ties that Ethiopia has had with China as compared to any other country in the region but also signifies the highest and the closest level of bilateral relations that Ethiopia has built upwith China over the past decade since the new government under Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) took over power in 1991. There have been extensive debates on China's role in Africa - whether it could be viewed as a constructive partner or otherwise. This essay puts forward the argument that while trade ties as one important channel of bilateral relations that China has embarked with the outside world and particularly with Africa is uneven and lop-sided. This is true of the Ethiopian context as well particularly when we look at the economic capacity, balance of trade and at the two countries relations with international trade regimes. While China is a full member of WTO for over a decade Ethiopia on the other hand has been aspiring to become a member for some time now and hence one of the important aspect of Ethio-China trade relations is the heavy reliance on bilateral/international trade regimes. Therefore, this research is aimed at unraveling the dynamics in Sino-Ethiopia trade relations with emphasis on the economic capacity of the two countries, balance of trade and explore whether Ethiopia's attempts to join WTO would lead to a more predictable trade relations between the two countries. In this attempt the research would largely rely on the analysis of relevant archival resources and literatures directly relating to the themes in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's rise as a 'world factory' since the late 1970s has been attributed to the strategic coupling of local assets in the coastal regions, viz. Pearl River Delta (PRD) and Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in the global production networks (GPNs) driven by transnational corporations (TNCs). Since 2000, these export-led regions have encountered unprecedented challenges, particularly the rising cost of labour, which have engendered spatial relocation of labour-intensive manufacturing firms from coastal China to lower-cost locations such as inland China and neighbouring Southeast Asian countries. A rich body of literature has examined the internal relocation of TNCs from coastal to inland China, relatively little has been conducted on cross-border industrial relocation out of China to Southeast Asian countries. Drawing upon the global production networks (GPNs) perspective, this study attempts to examine the relocation of TNCs from China's coastal regions, e.g. the Pearl River Delta (PRD) to Southeast Asian countries, e.g. Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia. Particular attention is paid to the rise of Global South and its subsequent implications for the restructuring of global manufacturing in the increasingly globalizing economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Piracy off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden in the Indian Ocean region has become a significant non-traditional security challenge to many nations. The increasing number of such attacks as a result of failure of Somali government to tackle its internal problem drew the attention of international community who lent a drastic response thereby curtailing the number of such incidents significantly now. The intensity of the attacks had its implications on international shipping and maritime security of near and distant countries like China, which has of late become assertive. This article aims to analyze the inter-connection between failed states and piracy and the consequent maritime security implications for China. The article adopts qualitative approach using descriptive and analytical methods depending primarily on secondary sources such as published literatures and archival and internet sources. The article concludes that the implications of Somalia piracy to China's maritime security was so grave that China was compelled to join the international community by taking part in the multinational naval task force to combating piracy signifying a cooperative role and at the same time utilizing the opportunity to come closer to Somalia by way of reopening its embassy and engaging in bilateral economic ties. This article is divided into seven broad sections. Besides the introduction, the second section provides the conceptual note on piracy and maritime security. The third section highlights the methodology while the fourth section discusses the background on Somalia and its failed status while the fifth section brings out a short glimpse of Somalia piracy and its method of operation. The sixth section analyzes the role of China and its maritime security implications and the last section provides the concluding remarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]