Search

Against the conventional wisdom that Chinese involvement cannot transform Africa’s economy for the better so as to end much of the poverty and also to spark high speed growth, this paper finds that China is already in the process of transforming Africa. While the conventional wisdom sees corrupt regimes and weak state capacity in Africa frittering away Africa’s opportunity to rise by plugging into Chinese dynamism, China is found in this paper already to be exporting entrepreneurial talent to Africa and to be dynamizing the African economy through East Asian practices. Chinese can bring industry to Africa much as Japan brought it to Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. Africa could therefore be incorporated into Asian economic dynamism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western legitimacy theories have mostly focused on the nation-state and the domestic aspects of political legitimacy. However, with the acceleration of globalization, a dimension of legitimacy has come into view that has previously been largely neglected in political science: the international dimension. While the interdependence of nation-states at the global level might put some constraints on the (re)production of legitimacy domestically, it simultaneously allows them to leverage their global standing to gain legitimacy abroad and at home. China is the most prominent example of the growing importance of this dynamic link between internal and external legitimacy. The paper starts with a critical reflection on the prevalent Western legitimacy theories. Based on these reflections, it introduces a new approach which aims to differentiate analytically between internal and external legitimation strategies and to examine the two-level logic linking the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the Chinese quest for energy resources in Latin America, arguing that the strengthening of relations in this sector can only be explained by a conjunction of interests on both sides. Looking at the presence of Chinese national oil companies in the regional energy sector, we show that China’s incursion has allowed the region to shift its traditional energy partners, introducing a factor of change into economic and political relations with geopolitical implications for the regional arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China, as host of the six-party talks first convened in August 2003, has been one of the major players in dealing with the North Korean nuclear crisis that began in October 2002. China's role in the talks has helped to start shaping a stable regional security architecture in Northeast Asia. Beijing's leadership in building a new security regime in the region suggests a change on Chinese perspectives regarding its role within the broader East Asia's regional security architecture. After years of passiveness with regards to involvement in security regime building in the region, China has evolved into an active leader seeking to shape a more institutionalized security. Despite the obstacles to building a functioning regime in Northeast Asia, China seems poised to continue working towards creation of a more stable and institutionalized security architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last century there has been a huge number of Western intellectuals visiting China and their Chinese counterparts visiting the West, the Westerners coming here to teach whereas the Chinese going there to learn. The asymmetry in cultural exchange has been caused by their conception of each other’s scholarship: the Western learning has been regarded as universal whereas the Chinese specific. This imbalance has resulted in a strange situation: the Chinese specialists of the West are the cream of the Chinese intelligentsia while the Western sinologists on the margin of the Western academia, and, therefore, the Chinese understanding of the West has to be as accurate as possible while the few cases of Western receptions Chinese influence have all been based on gross misinterpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]