Chinese Economic Statecraft

In Chinese Economic Statecraft, William J. Norris introduces an innovative theory that pinpoints how states employ economic tools of national power to pursue their strategic objectives. Norris shows what Chinese economic statecraft is, how it works, and why it is more or less effective. Norris provides an accessible tool kit to help us better understand important economic developments in the People’s Republic of China. He links domestic Chinese political economy with the international ramifications of China’s economic power as a tool for realizing China’s strategic foreign policy interests. He presents a novel approach to studying economic statecraft that calls attention to the central challenge of how the state is (or is not) able to control and direct the behavior of economic actors. Norris identifies key causes of Chinese state control through tightly structured, substate and crossnational comparisons of business-government relations. These cases range across three important arenas of China’s grand strategy that prominently feature a strategic role for economics: China’s efforts to secure access to vital raw materials located abroad, Mainland relations toward Taiwan, and China’s sovereign wealth funds. Norris spent more than two years conducting field research in China and Taiwan during which he interviewed current and former government officials, academics, bankers, journalists, advisors, lawyers, and businesspeople. The ideas in this book are applicable beyond China and help us to understand how states exercise international economic power in the twenty-first century.

Fueled by its surging economic strength, China has been increasingly utilizing economic tools such as trade, foreign aid, foreign direct investment, and sanctions to pursue strategic and security interests on the world stage. This approach, known as economic statecraft, has thus far received mixed policy results and ambivalent reactions from the international community. This book presents a collection of global assessment of China's economic statecraft. The contributors to this volume answer three key questions: What are the challenges faced by China’s economic statecraft? Why is China sometimes able to achieve its foreign policy objectives via economic statecraft and sometimes not? How do foreign countries, particularly the targets of China’s economic statecraft, respond to China's strategies? This comprehensive study examines economic statecraft in the context of more than a dozen nations and international organizations across four continents, thus providing a truly global perspective.

Learning China's history lessons -- Orchestrating China's economic statecraft -- Never let a crisis go to waste : Beijing's economic statecraft across Western Europe -- Creating a region : China's economic statecraft in Central and Eastern Europe -- Engaging North Korea -- Crossing lines : China's economic statecraft in Myanmar.

This book aims to study China's economic statecraft in the contemporary era in a comprehensive manner. It attempts to explore China's approaches to using its economic, trade, investment, and financial power for the pursuit of its political, security, and strategic interests at the regional and global levels. The volume addresses three major issue areas in particular. The first issue pertains to how Beijing has used its economic clout to protect what it perceives as its "core interests" in its external relations. Three cases are included: the Taiwan issue, human rights, and territorial dispute in the South China Sea. The second major area of inquiry focuses on how China has employed its economic power in its key bilateral relations, including relations with Japan, North Korea, the United States, and other states in the East Asian region. The third issue concerns China's economic statecraft in the global context. It addresses the impacts of China's economic power and policy on the transformation of the global financial structure, developments in Africa, the international intellectual property rights regime, and China's food security relations with the outside world.

The global implications of China's rise as a global actor In 2005, a senior official in the George W. Bush administration expressed the hope that China would emerge as a “responsible stakeholder” on the world stage. A dozen years later, the Trump administration dramatically shifted course, instead calling China a “strategic competitor” whose actions routinely threaten U.S. interests. Both assessments reflected an underlying truth: China is no longer just a “rising” power. It has emerged as a truly global actor, both economically and militarily. Every day its actions affect nearly every region and every major issue, from climate change to trade, from conflict in troubled lands to competition over rules that will govern the uses of emerging technologies. To better address the implications of China's new status, both for American policy and for the broader international order, Brookings scholars conducted research over the past two years, culminating in a project: Global China: Assessing China's Growing Role in the World. The project is intended to furnish policy makers and the public with hard facts and deep insights for understanding China's regional and global ambitions. The initiative draws not only on Brookings's deep bench of China and East Asia experts, but also on the tremendous breadth of the institution's security, strategy, regional studies, technological, and economic development experts. Areas of focus include the evolution of China's domestic institutions; great power relations; the emergence of critical technologies; Asian security; China's influence in key regions beyond Asia; and China's impact on global governance and norms. Global China: Assessing China's Growing Role in the World provides the most current, broad-scope, and fact-based assessment of the implications of China's rise for the United States and the rest of the world.

Nations carry out geopolitical combat through economic means. Yet America often reaches for the gun over the purse to advance its interests abroad. Robert Blackwill and Jennifer Harris show that if U.S. policies are left uncorrected, the price in blood and treasure will only grow. Geoeconomic warfare requires a new vision of U.S. statecraft.

Introduction -- Techniques of statecraft -- What is economic statecraft? -- Thinking about economic statecraft -- Economic statecraft in international thought -- Bargaining with economic statecraft -- National power and economic statecraft -- "Classic cases" reconsidered -- Foreign trade -- Foreign aid -- The legality and morality of economic statecraft -- Conclusion -- Afterword : economic statecraft : continuity and change / Ethan B. Kapstein.