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Copyright of All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy & Peace is the property of Ihsan Dogramaci Peace Foundation, Center for Foreign Policy & Peace Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study looks into one of the most promising low carbon city planning initiatives in China, namely Shenzhen's International Low Carbon City (ILCC). First as a collaborative project between the Dutch and Chinese partners, the ILCC's international partners have expanded to include other countries, such as Germany, Italy, France, Australia and the US. This paper investigates the influence of these international actors in the development process of the ILCC and their benefits in the long run, through knowledge transfer and accumulation of resource. The paper first highlights a broad understanding of ‘low carbon city’ followed by detailed discussions on discourses of ‘low carbon city’, ‘eco-city’, and ‘low carbon eco-city’ in China. Then it provides insights on knowledge transfer in low carbon city development, and particularly the Sino-Foreign cases of China. The authors then introduce the case of study (ILCC) and highlight its visions, project planning, and partnerships. Using primary and secondary data, it then maps the ILCC's international actors and their roles, and then analyses their behaviours and impacts in the project's planning and development process. Next, the paper summarises the research findings with further updates on the case of ILCC. The authors conclude that the engagement between Chinese and international partners differ in three forms and they are (1) the type of involvement; (2) the level and timeframe of involvement; (3) the level of Influence in the project's multiple stages. The paper concludes that the role played by an international partner evolves as the project proceeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When external eyes turned to China 30 years ago (if they did at all), the focus was still on the extent to which it might be breaking away from its socialist economic past. And though we did not know it at the time, intra-elite debates over how far (and to where) reforms should go would eventually play some part in shaping what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989; events that would place China on the verge of international isolation. This paper traces the evolution from isolation to a position where some in China now think it is now second only to the USA in the ranking of world powers. It will focus on how scholarship on China in the journal has changed over the years, but also on some of the constants and recurring questions and issues that have inspired research over the years. In addition, notwithstanding a very real and very large shift in China's global power capabilities, it will suggest that asking if China matters, or more correctly, how China matters in different issue areas, remains a very useful intellectual exercise today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Today the established cooperation between China and Kazakhstan has reached the strategic partnership level. Also, the two neighboring countries are partners in the international large-scale projects as the SCO and the New Silk Road Initiative. This paper claims that these projects are mostly lead by China. Moreover, it is argued that the SCO is aimed to solve the security issues and the New Silk Road Initiative embodies the economic agenda of the bilateral relations. Kazakhstan's role and position is significant due to different reasons, while the Kazakhstani public remains cautious about the Chinese activity in Kazakhstan. The two named mechanisms are eventually focused on economical and cultural leadership of China among the secured multilateral cooperation in the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building upon the conceptual work of Krahmann and Habermas, this study explains how political power and market forces in China combined to create an enormous domestic market for overseas security services and, at the same time, undermined the full development of domestic private security companies (PSCs). The growing responsiveness of the state to the request for protection of Chinese citizens and assets abroad made room for the initial development of Chinese PSCs' overseas operations. However, the policy makers' focus on political loyalty has inhibited the full-fledged maturation of China's private security industry. So far, large foreign PSCs have been the main beneficiaries of this situation. The future development of Chinese PSCs remains possible in a gradual and pragmatic way, but Chinese policy makers will have to deal with important diplomatic and political questions before the development of any "Chinese Blackwater" will be imaginable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has in recent years been actively engaged in multilateral diplomacy. From the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the One Belt, One Road initiative, Beijing is pursuing strategies and promoting norms that are viewed as concerted efforts by China to challenge some of the key institutional arrangements of the existing international order. This article seeks to discuss these contentious issues and assess the rationales, approaches and implications of Chinese diplomacy in initiating and promoting what can be considered as institutional-balancing strategies. The author suggests that the rationales behind these Chinese strategies have as much to do with Beijing’s shifting priorities and the need to address them as with reflecting a degree of dissatisfaction with existing multilateral institutions. And there are more marked differences in Chinese motivations and modalities in security arenas than in economic areas. However, it would be overstating Beijing’s intentions and capabilities if these China-sponsored initiatives are viewed as direct challenges to the existing international and regional orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many analysts argue that public opinion creates pressure on Chinese leaders to act coercively in territorial disputes, and that it also limits their options to de-escalate once crises have broken out. Evidence suggests, however, that Chinese leaders may prefer having more flexibility rather than less in a crisis. Using original data generated by a survey experiment conducted in China in 2015, this article examines several strategies that Chinese leaders could use to reduce public pressure so as to make concessions in a crisis easier. These strategies include pledging to use economic sanctions instead of force; invoking China's "peaceful identity"; citing the costs of conflict to China's development; accepting United Nations mediation; and backing down in the face of U.S. military threats. In all cases except one, approval for the leader increases over a baseline level of support for making concessions. The exception is if the leader backs down in the face of U.S. military threats. Here, approval drops below the baseline level of support, especially for nationalists and hawks. The findings suggest that if one assumes that Chinese leaders are constrained by public opinion, a U.S. cost-imposition strategy to compel China to back down in crises may have the opposite effect--tying Chinese leaders' hands even tighter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social Sciences in China is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Amidst growing protectionist and anti-globalisation sentiments, China has led the call for a free, open and inclusive multilateral order. It supports a multilateral trading regime, a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. It has launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank where it wields significant veto power. China is pushing for a new regional security architecture. While shaping the international order, China is upholding its sovereign claims over the South China Sea and Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tries to bridge the bureaucratic politics model of foreign policy analysis (FPA), which is based on American foreign policy practice, and Chinese foreign policy studies. It traces the development and discusses the Chinese features of the bureaucratic politics model, and analyses the evolving bureaucratic political process of Chinese foreign policy-making. Its conclusion is that the foreign policy-making process of the People's Republic of China (PRC) has progressed from ideology-based 'line battles' to personal relationship (guanxi)-based in-party competition, and from factional competition under one paramount leader to government politics wherein many participants vie for different policies. As China integrates more deeply into the international community, and communist ideology loses its political validity in Chinese politics, bureaucratic politics in China exhibits more prominent Chinese cultural features, and at the same time shares greater similarities with the bureaucratic politics in western democratic countries. Therefore, to avoid rigidity, attention must be paid to variances in bureaucratic politics as applied in the Chinese context. Bridging FPA theory and Chinese foreign studies is hence both viable and beneficial for the construction of FPA theories beyond the United States and for China's foreign policy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the actual short-term effectiveness of China's public diplomacy towards the United States, Germany, the UK, France, Russia, and Japan from 2005 to 2012. The author finds that while China's public diplomacy towards Russia has been effective over the short term, that towards the other five countries is not significant, and in the case of Germany a negative effect is observed. Compared with China's public diplomacy, the growth of China's military power has the greater influence on public opinion towards China. To varying degrees across countries, the rise of China's military might, its increasing international influence, as well as concerns related to a potential military threat from China all exert negative impact on public favourability towards China. At the same time, economic factors are not found to influence public favourability to the extent that might commonly be expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Rising nationalism" has been a major meme in commentary on the development of China's material power since the early 1990s. Analysts often claim that rising nationalism, especially among China's youth, is an important force compelling the Chinese leadership to take a tougher stand on a range of foreign policy issues, particularly maritime disputes in East Asia. The rising nationalism meme is one element in the "newly assertive China" narrative that generalizes from China's coercive diplomacy in these disputes to claim that a dissatisfied China is challenging a U.S.-dominated liberal international order writ large. But is this meme accurate? Generally, research on Chinese nationalism has lacked a baseline against which to measure changing levels of nationalism across time. The data from the Beijing Area Study survey of Beijing residents from 1998 to 2015 suggest that the rising popular nationalism meme is empirically inaccurate. This finding implies that there are other factors that may be more important in explaining China's coercive diplomacy on maritime issues, such as elite opinion, the personal preferences of top leaders, security dilemma dynamics, organizational interests, or some combination thereof. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internal debates continue in China and abroad about the meaning and significance of Chinese President Xi Jinping's position on a new Asian regional security order. Some observers insist that a strongly worded May 2014 speech Xi delivered in Shanghai reflects China's intensified determination to exercise an increasingly assertive posture toward the United States. Others suspect that such rhetoric is largely designed for internal consumption to appeal to nationalist sentiments about the need for China to stand up to the United States and take a leadership role in the region. Such differences in interpretation are extended to discussions about China's attitudes toward the United States' continued strategic presence in Asia and about Washington's maintenance of its long-standing alliance network there. The truth is that a combination of Chinese aspirations for shaping a new regional security architecture tempered by the realities and constraints of what China can actually do at this point in time must be acknowledged by both Chinese policymakers and their foreign counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent years have witnessed a heated debate on China's rise. Using various theoretical arguments, existing research has generated quite divergent conclusions on whether China rises peacefully. Liberals argue that China has significantly benefited from the existing international economic system and therefore China is rising peacefully. On the other hand, realists such as John Mearsheimer argue that because China is likely to challenge the status quo, a rising China poses a threat to international security. Surprisingly, despite the ample scholarship on this topic and the existing divergent conclusions, a large-N empirical evaluation of China's rise is missing in the existing research. This study fills this important gap by providing a large-N empirical investigation of militarized interstate disputes between China and other states from 1979 to 2010. We find that although China's GDP, military spending, and CINC score have increased remarkably since the start of its economic reform, no empirical evidence points to more conflicts between China and other states. Furthermore, trade exerts only a weak effect on China's conflict, a surprising yet interesting finding that revises the conventional wisdom in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China in recent years has been asked by other major powers to take a greater share in international responsibility in response to the rise in China's national capability. Negative perceptions about how China is dodging its international responsibility exist not only among policy makers around the world, but have spread to worldwide mass publics, especially across the American people. In this article, we apply the dataset from the ‘Americans’ Attitudes toward China Survey' (AACS) to investigate what the American public think of China's international responsibility and which factors explain the varying evaluations from different theoretical perspectives. The results indicate that Americans' negative evaluations of China's international responsibility are associated with poor ratings regarding China's fulfillment of its domestic obligations and apprehension regarding China's potential threat, but has little to do with China's international behavior. To reduce these negative evaluations, China needs to improve its human rights conditions, give people more political rights, and convince the American public of the benevolence of its ascending power. In addition, persistent efforts toward soft-power construction are also very important since Americans who are interested in Chinese culture or knowledge tend not to think that China is dodging its international responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]