China S International Socialization Of Political Elites In The Belt And Road Initiative

This book argues that China’s international socialization of the political elites of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partner states is an exceptionally effective instrument of China’s current foreign policy. It shows how the BRI-related process of socialization generates shared beliefs in the legitimacy and therefore in the acceptability of a Chinese international order among target elites and how in turn the policies and actions of states controlled by these elites tend to become aligned with the norms ‘taught’ by the Chinese socializer. It goes on to show how this serves the interests of China’s government, firms, and citizens at national, regional, and global levels; and how the resulting increased support for Beijing’s version of the international order creates a virtuous circle that further enhances China’s international position and potential.

This book argues that China’s Belt and Road Initiative should be seen more as a geopolitical project and less as a global economic project, with China aiming to bring about a new Chinese-led international order. It contends that China’s international approach has two personas – an aggressive one, focusing on a nineteenth century-style territorial empire, which is applied to Taiwan and the seas adjacent to China; and a new-style persona, based on relationship building with the political elites of countries in the Global South, relying on large scale infrastructure projects to help secure the elites in power, a process often leading to lower democratic participation and weaker governance structures. It also shows how this relationship building with elites leads to an acceptance of Chinese norms and to changes in states’ geopolitical preferences and foreign policies to align them with China’s geopolitical interests, with states thereby joining China’s emerging international order. Overall, the book emphasises that this new-style, non-territorial “empire” building based on relationships is a major new development in international relations, not fully recognised and accounted for by international relations experts and theorists.

This book analyzes the Chinese-centered globalization ‘from below’ brought about by China’s entrepreneurial migrants and conceived of as a projection of Chinese power in the Belt and Road Initiative partner states. It identifies the features of this globalization ‘from below,’ scrutinizes its mutually reinforcing relationship with China’s globalization ‘from above,’ and shows that these two globalizations are intrinsically related to the construction of a new international order. It outlines how the actors in China’s globalization ‘from below’ include Chinese emigrants who are located in informal transnational economic networks. It reveals that Beijing has enacted many laws that compel these emigrants to contribute to the development of their country of origin but also influences them through the successful promotion of a specific type of deterritorialized nationalism; and that China is ready to impose harsh punitive actions on political elites in partner states which fail to protect its migrants or limit their economic activities. Finally, it argues that China’s globalization ‘from below’ is fundamentally different from the non-hegemonic globalization ‘from below’ represented by, among others, Lebanese and East Indian traders, and that China’s globalization ‘from below’ is rather a self-interested national strategy intended to support the construction of a Chinese-centered international order.

This book presents an original explanation of the stark contrast between two very different Chinese foreign policy patterns. On the one hand, there is Beijing’s hard power actorness related, among others, to territorial disputes and ‘wolf warrior’ intimidating maneuvers. On the other hand, there are China’s peaceful and cooperative actions, well-illustrated by the Belt and Road Initiative. This book shows that this situation is best understood as a consequence of the coexistence of two different Chinese identities respectively associated with the concepts of nineteenth-century-style territorial empire, and twenty-first-century-style postmodern global power. The book contends that in China’s case, they form a virtuous circle—characterized by a specific division of labor—as both identities are instrumental to the construction of a new, Chinese-led international order. The book provides a detailed analysis of the genesis, development, features, and interplay of these identities. It is relevant to scholars in China studies, political history, contemporary politics, and foreign policy.

Drawing upon insights from international socialization theory and social psychology, this book examines China’s efforts to multipolarize – and hence potentially de-liberalize – the international system from the local perspective of a non-democratic (yet democratizing) nation and then applies these insights to Beijing’s current global agency in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative. Specifically, the book scrutinizes Beijing’s normative engagement in Kazakhstan, a nation that evolved from an enthusiastic supporter of the West’s normative domination of international affairs into an overt critic – after having institutionalized relations with Beijing through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Tracing and juxtaposing the respective patterns of Kazakhstan’s political identity development before the SCO entered the region and after, this book not only yields unexpected conclusions about the quality of post-Soviet democratization outcomes, but also about Beijing’s local and global influence potentiality for the time to come – and its limits. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of China’s normative power, democratization studies, post-Soviet studies, and International Relations.

Using a Caribbean case study and a Constructivist theoretical approach, The Myth of China’s No Strings Attached Development Assistance shows that the frequently mentioned “no strings attached” nature of China’s development assistance to its partners in the Global South is nothing more than a myth. This claim is supported by empirical data from Trinidad and Tobago and by comparisons with similar situations in Africa and Latin America. On their basis, the authors propose a critical re-reading of a reality that many scholars are accustomed to watch through the reassuring but distorting lens of academic routine. Despite contrary claims in the literature, Beijing’s development assistance to the Commonwealth Caribbean states is accompanied by clear political, economic, and social conditionalities. Through them, China is constructing a cognitive and normative space conducive to a new regional order that should be politically friendly, economically profitable, and socially open to its government, companies, and citizens.

Globalizations from Below uses a Constructivist International Relations approach that emphasizes the centrality of normative power to analyze and compare the four globalizations ‘from below.’ These are: (1) the counter-hegemonic globalization represented by the ‘movement of movements’ of alter-globalization transnational social activists, who try to put an end to the Neoliberal nature of the Western-centered globalization ‘from above’; (2) the non-hegemonic globalization enacted by ‘ant traders’ that are part of the transnational informal economy; (3) the partially similar Chinese-centered globalization, whose entrepreneurial migrants are strongly influenced and instrumentalized by the Chinese state; and (4) the first wave globalization ‘from below’ that paralleled (and outlived) the 1870–1914 globalization ‘from above.’ This book identifies their common features and uses them to define the concept of globalization ‘from below’ as a set of socio-economic or socio-political processes that involve large transnational flows of people, goods, and/or ideas characterized at least in part by informality. They are enacted by entrepreneurial or activistic individuals who either take advantage of the normative power of the hegemon at the origin of an international order and an associated globalization ‘from above,’ or – explicitly or implicitly – transgress, contest, and try to redefine dominant economic, legal, political, and socio-cultural norms, thus challenging the existing international order and globalization ‘from above.’ By constructing a unified theoretical framework, this book attempts to open a new field of interdisciplinary research that should take globalizations ‘from below’ out of their current scholarly marginality. This is one of the first scholarly works to collectively present more than one globalization ‘from below,’ and will be of great interest to students, scholars, and researchers of International Relations, International Political Economy, Development Studies, Economic History, Anthropology, Diaspora Studies, and Chinese Studies.