China's regional policies: how much hegemony?1

China is commonly assumed to be seeking hegemony in its region. Yet China's region involves it in relationships with major states with their own hegemonic or leadership interests—the US, Russia, Japan and India. This article examines each of China's regional relationships in terms of the prime interests of China's foreign policy framework. It concludes that it is important to distinguish between hegemonic capabilities and intentions: that while China will want to extend its influence as a regional power, its capability to do that will continue to grow in each of its subregions, its ability to exercise that power and influence will be limited. In the past its efforts have been largely to seek secure borders and economic opportunities and that for some years those objectives, together with energy security, are likely to remain the priority.     

Workers,Unions and the State: Migrant Workers in China's Labour‐intensive Foreign Enterprises

Migrant workers present a new challenge both to China's increasingly diversified industrial relations and to its state–society relationship, especially vis‐à‐vis China's developmental state. Through an examination of the situation of migrant workers in the country's labour‐intensive foreign investment enterprises, this article argues that it is difficult to establish tripartite industrial relations in China and that pluralistic labour organizations will not easily develop into civil society type labour entities. China's developmental state is in an ambiguous process in redefining its role. Its ability to micro‐manage society is weakening substantially. However, its developmental character at the macro‐level largely remains strong, allowing it to continue to restrict progress towards civil society. The future will ultimately depend on a collective determination by key players — the workers, unions and the state — to find a compromise.     

The emergence of NGOs in China and their transnational linkages: implications for domestic reform

In addressing the question of how China's rapid socioeconomic transformation is changing the nature of its international engagement we need to move beyond a traditional focus on state-centric analysis. Obviously a major stimulus for China's international engagement over the past 25 years of reform and opening has come from non-state economic activity. Growing economic interdependence, accelerated after China's accession into the World Trade Organization, provides the strongest argument in favour of a peaceful rise of China scenario in which both regional and global security are enhanced rather than threatened. Far less attention, however, has been given to the role and influence of Chinese non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and their transnational linkages. I argue in this article that in order to obtain a more comprehensive picture of China's ongoing process of reform and opening to the outside world we need to incorporate a civil society dimension into our analysis. This is of particular relevance to ongoing foreign policy debates over democracy and human rights promotion in China. Indeed, in the absence of a more detailed understanding of current developments taking place at the grassroots, international support for progressive reform runs the risk of undermining positive change from below.     

A review of China's foreign policy decision‐making during the Cold War

In the past 10 years or so, gradual declassifications of official foreign policy documents in the Soviet Union, in China and in the United States have provided opportunities for research in the various fields concerned. More importantly, in the realm of China's international relations theory this has been a period for “letting a hundred flowers bloom” through translation, study, argument, and reflection. Particularly worth noting is that in recent years, research in China's decision‐making in foreign policy, which had hitherto been off‐limits, has been gradually opening up, resulting in many publications. An example is China's Foreign Policy Decision‐Making during the Cold War written by Professor Niu Jun of The School of International Studies of Peking University, and published by Japan's Chikura Publishing Company in September 2007.     

From Idealism to Pragmatism: An Analysis of China's Policies toward the Middle East

After World War II, the Middle East stage attracted Beijing's attention. While Israel and China proved at that time to be too diverse, through the 1950s China made inroads with Arab countries. Egypt became the first to recognize the P.R.C., which, however, suffered rebuffs as anti-Communist forces generally prevailed in the Middle East. Beijing supported the people of Palestine. After the Soviet Union had become China's enemy, China tried to unite the Third World against the two superpowers. With Deng in 1978, China's Middle Eastern policy became more pragmatic, tilting toward the developed countries and economic cooperation rather than ideology (e.g., with Yemen). China enhanced relations with Gulf states; cooperated with the United States in supporting the Afghan mujahedin; and declared neutrality in the Iran-Iraq War, although economic alliance with Iran grew. The Gulf War affected Beijing's attitudes toward weapons technology and toward the United Nations and China's role in it. Israel is currently viewed as a channel for possible influence with the West. Overall, China's basic policy now is to watch and wait.     

Not-so-new silk roads: Japan's foreign policies on Asian connectivity infrastructure under the radar

Scholarly narratives concerning China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) tend to contextualise this project within China's rivalry with the United States and Japan. Such interpretations often reduce and misconstrue Japan's initiatives in Asian infrastructure finance as mere reactivity to China's advances. This paper will showcase Japan's own foreign and financial policies regarding infrastructure in Asia and the New Silk Road regions since the end of the Cold War. I argue that Japan's presence in that field is underappreciated and under-researched, as Japan's infrastructural footprint in the New Silk Road significantly pre-dates the BRI. Furthermore, I stress the fact that Japan's foreign policy in Asian infrastructure finance featured important cooperative postures toward China, especially within multilateral development banks. The paper makes a contribution to emerging scholarship on the BRI—often reliant on strategic communications and projections—by highlighting Japan's role in regional infrastructure to show how our understanding of international relations and international political economy in Asia can be better informed by economic history and area studies.     

Global energy governance: do the BRICs have the energy to drive reform?

It is widely accepted that the rising power of the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—has the potential to re‐shape the international system. However, little attention has been given to the BRICs’ role in a growing area of strategic importance: global energy governance. While global governance scholars now argue that the international energy architecture requires substantive reform to keep pace with the rapid transformations in global energy markets, largely driven by the BRICs, it is not clear what role these countries will play in future governance arrangements. Drawing on recent scholarship in global governance and international negotiations, interviews with G20 energy officials, and the observations of the author, a past delegate to G20 negotiations, this article examines whether the BRICs as a coalition have the capacity and willingness to drive substantive global energy governance reform. In doing so, it highlights the problems with the BRICs as a coalition on energy and considers the prospects for energy reform in light of China's increasing engagement with energy governance ahead of it hosting the G20 Summit in 2016.     

China's strategic partnership with Latin America: a fulcrum in China's rise

China has over the last two decades been committed to creating a strategic partnership with Latin American states by persistently extending its economic and political involvement in the continent. China's efforts in this regard reflect not only its desire to intensify its economic cooperation and political relations with nations in Latin America, but also its strategic goals of creating its own sphere of influence in the region and enhancing its ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power in order to elevate China's status at the systemic level. With access to Latin American markets, resources and investment destinations, China may sustain its economic and social progress that bases its long cherished dream of restoring its past glory of fuqiang (wealth and power) and rise as a global power capable of reshaping the current world system. The enormous economic benefits deriving from their economic cooperation and trade may persuade Latin American nations to accept the basic premise of China's economic strategy: that China's rise is not a threat, but an opportunity to gain wealth and prosperity. This will help China gain more ‘soft’ power in and leverage over its economic partners in Latin America, and thereby help it to rise in the global power hierarchy.     

China's Response to Pandemics: From Inaction to Overreaction

Two U.S. specialists (on the governance and foreign policy aspects of China's public health issues as well as its human and medical geography) examine how two different sets of policies implemented by the government of China have affected both the geography and political ecology of pandemic disease outbreaks (HIV/AIDS, SARS, and H1N1) over the past two decades. More specifically, they argue that: (1) broad development and reform policies largely responsible for China's rapid modernization/urbanization and increasingly successful perfomance in the global economic arena have generated unexpected side-effects in terms of the location, incidence, and spread of pandemics as well as the state's capacity to mount an adequate health care response; and (2) politically motivated public health policies implemented in response to the spread of specific pandemics in China have had unanticipated impacts on the progression of disease outbreaks and their outcomes. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H510, H750, I180. 3 figures, 2 tables, 76 references.     

Explaining "Auschwitz" after the End of History: The Case of Italy

Everywhere the 1990s have been characterized by an odd mixture of ideological triumphalism—Fukuyama's “end of history” being only the crassest example—and of ideological uncertainty—can there be, should there be, a “third way”? For all its pretensions to universality, the “New World Order” has never lost a fragility in appearance. Students of historiography can scarcely be surprised to learn that an uneasiness over the present and future has in turn frequently entailed uncertainty about the past and particularly about those parts of the past which had seemed most able to give clear and significant “lessons.” One evident example is the history of what in my Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima (1993) I called the “long” Second World War, that is, that crisis in confidence in the relationship between political and economic liberalism and the nation-state which, by the end of 1938, had left only Britain, France, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia as in any sense preserving those “liberal” freedoms which had spread across Europe since 1789. In this article, I briefly review the most recent difficulties World War II combatant societies have had in locating a usable past in the history of those times. However, my major focus is on the specific case of Italy, very much a border state in the Cold War system, and today the political home of an “Olive Tree” and a “Liberty Pole” whose historical antecedents and whose philosophical base for the future are less than limpid. 1990s Italian historians thus give very mixed messages about the Fascist past; these are the messages I describe and decode.     

China's New Leaders: Perspectives on Geographic Trends and Realities

A senior American specialist on the geography of China examines several aspects of China's society, economy, regional organization, and geopolitical position in light of the change in the country's leadership at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012. After a brief comparison of the incoming and retiring leadership groups in terms of backgrounds and past policy pronouncements (as well as discussing the challenge posed by corruption), the author proceeds to discuss a series of key social and regional development policies that may be subject to some degree of change under the new leadership, including hukou and the one-child policy. He then focuses on the 12th Five-Year Plan, which provides a broad outline of the new leadership's goals, and particularly its emphasis on balanced regional development (a commitment to further develop the interior of the country as well as to revitalize the old heavy industrial region, the Northeast). The author then turns to China's growing military (and particularly naval) power in connection with its increasing assertion of territorial claims in the South and East China Seas as well as ability to project naval power across the Taiwan Strait and beyond into the Pacific and Indian Ocean theaters.     

Can Asia lead? Power ambitions and global governance in the twenty‐first century

Is the much hyped ‘rise of Asia’ translating into global public good? The leading Asian powers, China, India and Japan, demand a greater share of the decision‐making and leadership of global institutions. Yet, they seem to have been more preoccupied with enhancing their national power and status than contributing to global governance, including the management of global challenges. This is partly explained by a realpolitik outlook and ideology, and the legacies of India's and China's historical identification with the ‘Third World’ bloc. Another key factor is the continuing regional legitimacy deficit of the Asian powers. This article suggests that the Asian powers should increase their participation in and contribution to regional cooperation as a stepping stone to a more meaningful contribution to global governance.     

Gender,Class, and Patriotism: Women's paramilitary units in first world war britain

Abstract

Scholarly histories of twentieth-century China, commonly identified as an East Asian power, tend to cover only the eastern half of the country. As John King Fairbank suggests, Chinese foreign affairs are considered principally as a matter of East Asian international relations.¹ Yet China is also a Central Asian power: present-day China encompasses large parts of Central Asia — Xinjiang, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet — of which the population is chiefly composed of non-Han ethnic minorities. When the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s removed a major security threat to China, the creation of the Central Asian republics — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan — gave it the opportunity to reassert its historical claims to influence throughout Central Asia.² The launch of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization in 1996, and the annual Shanghai summits that followed, are clear evidence of China's attempts to dominate Central Asian affairs in the post-Soviet era.³     

China's New Generation of Leaders and Regional Challenges in East Asia

A pair of Hong Kong and U.S. specialists on China examines the dynamic international environment China's new leadership now faces, focusing on East Asia. They first examine the complex balance the leadership seeks to strike between: (1) China's projection of increasing economic, military, and political power internationally; (2) the primary domestic goals of economic growth and stability; and (3) rising public awareness, demand for information access, and (in some quarters) nationalism among the Chinese people. The authors then proceed, in successive sections of the paper, to assess in greater detail China's international and regional security environment, Sino-American relations, China's relations with its East Asian neighbors, and the complex interconnections between the country's domestic and foreign policy. They conclude that Sino-American relations will continue to be pivotal to Beijing's foreign relations in general and its relations with countries in the East Asian region more specifically.     

Trajectories for Greening in China: Theory and Practice

This edited volume argues that China's development poses the greatest ever environmental challenge for the modern world in terms of speed, size and scarcity. The volume is organized around the greening of the Chinese state and society: can the inclusion of sustainable development principles into governance, management and daily practices by social actors lead to sustainable development per se? This introduction sketches the different scholarly camps around greening and sustainable development, ranging from sceptical to radical environmentalism. The contributions demonstrate that China is showing clear signs of greening as new institutions and regulations are created, environmental awareness increases and green technologies are implemented. However, the question remains whether this is sufficient to effectuate long‐term sustainable development. The key factors here are the sheer speed of China's economic growth, the size of its population, and the relative scarcity of its natural and mineral resources. Chinese development presents compelling reasons for rethinking the viability of greening. It is necessary to move beyond both alarmist visions of an environmental doomsday, and optimistic notions that incremental changes in technology, institutions and lifestyles are sufficient for sustainability. It might be more fruitful — and not only for China — to consider ‘precautionary’ rather than ‘absolute’ limits to growth.     

From China's Urban Social Space to Social and Environmental Justice

A senior American specialist on China and noted geographer argues that the preoccupation of China geographers' with empirical analyses of that country's dramatic economic, social, and urban transformation over the last two decades—usually explained in terms of the now familiar quadruple forces of globalization, marketization, deregulation, and decentralization—should be broadened to reflect a concern for the problems of disadvantaged groups impacted negatively in dynamic urban and environmental settings. The methodology of reflexive activism is proposed as affording a framework for a more relevant geography focused on the study of China, with the potential to bring about positive and constructive change on behalf of China's disadvantaged population and its natural environment, and (as a possible side benefit) generate local epistemologies enriching the study of geography more broadly. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: P30. 68 references.     

China's Exports and Imports of Agricultural Products under the WTO

An American economic geographer specializing in the agricultural sector of China's economy presents a study of that country's trade in agricultural products. The paper is focused on patterns of change in the regional distribution of agricultural and aquacultural exports and imports before and after China's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. Drawing on research during the course of a field trip in July 2008 and utilizing data compiled by China's Customs Bureau, the author provides a comprehensive assessment of the country's trade with 10 major world regions through the year 2007. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F14, F40, O13, Q17. 1 figure, 4 tables, 32 references.     

Has the Cold War returned to East Asia?

The rise of a non-democratic China as the world ‘s second largest economy, still officially subscribing to Communism or ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ as its ideology1^?1 In Xi Jinping's first speech as the new Chinese leader, after assuming his position as Party Secretary at the 18^th Party Congress in November 2012, he declared that, “we will ensure that our Party will remain at the core of leadership in advancing the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Xinhua report on 19 November 2012. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012cpc/2012-11/19/content_15939817.htm. By adopting the term “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” – zhongguo tese de shehui zhuyi, the Chinese Communist Party has argued that it has not abandoned socialism by introducing foreign capital and the opening up the Chinese economy to market forces. See for example a report on Deng Xiaoping's remarks to visiting Japanese delegation in 1984, “Build Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” People's Daily, 30 June 1984. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/dengxp/vol3/text/c1220.html., has raised the spectre of the return of the Cold War to Asia with the United States and China on opposing sides, with China backed by Russia, its former Cold War ally. But to what extent are there historical parallels between the Cold War and the current East Asian international relations system?     

Book reviews

Books reviewed in this issue International Relations theory Just war and international order: the uncivil condition in world politics. By Nicholas Rengger. Dilemmas of decline: British intellectuals and world politics, 1945–1975. By Ian Hall. Thucydides and the modern world: reception, reinterpretation and influence from the Renaissance to the present. Edited by Katherine Harloe and Neville Morley. The silence of animals: on progress and other modern myths. By John Gray. International organization, law and ethics Exit strategies and state building. Edited by Richard Caplan. Statebuilding. By Timothy Sisk. Conflict, security and defence In defence of war. By Nigel Biggar. British generals in Blair's wars. Edited by Jonathan Bailey, Richard Iron and Hew Strachan. The strategy bridge: theory for practice. By Colin S. Gray. Perspectives on strategy. By Colin S. Gray. Governance, civil society and cultural politics The Oxford Handbook of the history of nationalism. Edited by John Breuilly. The naked communist: Cold War modernism and the politics of popular culture. By Roland Végsö. Political economy, economics and development The global economic crisis: a chronology. By Larry Allen. Constructing capitalisms: transforming business systems in Central and Eastern Europe. By Roderick Martin. The rise of the People's Bank of China: the politics of institutional change in China's monetary and financial system. By Stephen Bell and Hui Feng. Energy, environment and global health South African AIDS activism and global health politics. By Mandisa Mbali. International history 1 1 See also Michael Brett, Approaching African history, pp. 1524–25.
Europe: the struggle for supremacy, 1453 to the present. By Brendan Simms. Unfinished empire: the global expansion of Britain. By John Darwin. China's war with Japan, 1937–1945: the struggle for survival. By Rana Mitter. The Punjab bloodied, partitioned and cleansed: unravelling the 1947 tragedy through secret British reports and first‐person accounts. By Ishtiaq Ahmed. From Lenin to Castro, 1917–1959: early encounters between Moscow and Havana. By Mervyn J. Bain. Europe The passage to Europe: how a continent became a union. By Luuk van Middelaar. Translated by Liz Waters. Why Europe matters: the case for the European Union. By John McCormick. Europe, strategy and armed forces: the making of a distinctive power. By Sven Biscop and Jo Coelmont. NATO's European allies: military capability and political will. Edited by Janne Haaland Matlary and Magnus Petersson. Transformations in Central Europe between 1989 and 2012: geopolitical, cultural, and socioeconomic shifts. By Tomas Kavaliauskas. Democratic institutions and authoritarian rule in Southeast Europe. By Danijela Dolenec. Russia and Eurasia Hard diplomacy and soft coercion: Russia's influence abroad. By James Sherr. Russia, the West, and military intervention. By Roy Allison. Sovereignty after empire: comparing the Middle East and Central Asia. Edited by Sally N. Cummings and Raymond Hinnebusch. Middle East and North Africa 2 2 See also Sally Cummings and Raymond Hinnebusch, eds, Sovereignty after empire: comparing the Middle East and Central Asia, pp. 1515–16.
The power and the people: paths of resistance in the Middle East. By Charles Tripp. Israel has moved. By Diana Pinto. Identity and nation in Iraq. By Sherko Kirmanj. Sub‐Saharan Africa Business, politics, and the state in Africa: challenging the orthodoxies on growth and transformation. By Tim Kelsall and others. Al‐Shabaab in Somalia: the history and ideology of a militant Islamist group, 2005–2012. By Stig Jarle Hansen. Approaching African history. By Michael Brett. Routledge handbook of African politics. Edited by Nic Cheeseman, David M. Anderson and Andrea Scheibler. African agency in international politics. Edited by William Brown and Sophie Harman. South Asia 3 3 See also Ishtiaq Ahmed, The Punjab bloodied, partitioned and cleansed: unravelling the 1947 tragedy through secret British reports and first‐person accounts, pp. 1504–05.
Shooting for a century: the India‐Pakistan conundrum. By Stephen Cohen. Righteous republic: the political foundations of modern India. By Ananya Vajpeyi. Why growth matters: how economic growth in India reduced poverty and the lessons for other developing countries. By Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya. An uncertain glory: India and its contradictions. By Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen. East Asia and Pacific Will this be China's century? A skeptic's view. By Mel Gurtov. China goes global: the partial power. By David Shambaugh. The China choice: why we should share power. By Hugh White. Shooting star: China's military machine in the 21st century. By Mikhail Barabanov, Vasiliy Kashin and Konstantin Makienko. North America Empire of ideas: the origins of public diplomacy and the transformation of U.S. foreign policy. By Justin Hart. Confront and conceal: Obama's secret wars and surprising use of American power. By David E. Sanger. Latin America and Caribbean Enabling peace in Guatemala: the story of MINUGUA. By William Stanley. Breves narrativas diplomáticas. By Celso Amorim.     

Comments on M. Kuhle and S. Kuhle (2012): ‘Hannibal Gone Astray? A Critical Comment on W. C. Mahaney et al., “The Traversette (Italia) Rockfall: Geomorphological Indicator of the Hannibalic Invasion Route” (Archaeometry, 52, 1 [2010] 156–72)’

The title of Kuhle and Kuhle's (2012) (hereafter K&K 2012) paper in Archaeometry appears to be mostly a tirade against the Traversette Route of Hannibal's Army, as originally favoured by Sir Gavin de Beer—a man possessed of singular scientific experience and near‐singular interest in Carthaginian history—in the mid‐part of the last century. The mere fact that Mahaney et al. (2010a,c) added to de Beer's corpus of evidence that Hannibal followed the southern route appears to have brought K&K (2012) to lodge not only a protest, but one of accusatory tone, stating that Mahaney et al. (2010c) had erroneously misinterpreted historical texts to prove the Col de la Traversette as the Punic Army col of passage into Italia. Aside from the fact that the tone of these allegations rises to a curious level, it is the intention of this discussion to put facts where they belong, rooted in what is known of the Hannibalic Invasion and what is inferred by the prevailing scientific evidence. It is important to note that there is not one preferred route as stated by K&K (2012), but three in fact (see Fig. 1 (a) in Mahaney et al. 2010c), and all have been discussed by a legion of historians (see, e.g., Freshfield 1886, 1899; de Beer 1969; Proctor 1971; Prevas 1998; Mahaney 2008).