The economic factor in the Sino-Vietnamese split, 1972–75: An analysis of Vietnamese archival sources

Relying on so far untapped Vietnamese archival sources, this article examines the impact of China's gradual curtailment of its economic assistance to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's (DRV) war and economic recovery efforts and its implications for Sino-Vietnamese relations between 1972 and 1975. While Beijing's gradual reduction of aid to the DRV during this period was primarily motivated by the declining importance of North Vietnam to China's strategic security combined with the reality of China's domestic economic hardship which largely resulted from the disastrous Cultural Revolution of 1966–69, Hanoi's reactions and policy responses were driven by their deep-rooted perception of Beijing's insincerity and hidden intention to keep Vietnam weak. The Sino-Vietnamese conflict that ensued after 1975 was not inevitable; Hanoi's leaders launched concerted diplomatic efforts to improve economic relations with Beijing throughout 1975 because they clearly recognised the importance of China's continued economic assistance and preferential trade agreements to its first five year plan (1976–80). However, Beijing's unchanged position and hasty decision to totally cut off aid to Vietnam and additionally take punitive economic measures against Vietnam's first five-year plan in late 1975 while at the same time increasing economic and military aid to the Democratic Kampuchea compelled Hanoi to tilt closer towards Moscow.     

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.     

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.     

Economic statecraft in China's new overseas special economic zones: soft power,business or resource security?

China's rapidly growing economic engagement with other developing countries has aroused intense debates, but these debates have often generated more heat than light. The Chinese government is clearly pushing its companies to move offshore in greater numbers, and state‐owned firms figure prominently in many of the major investments abroad. Yet relatively little research exists on when, how and why the Chinese government intervenes in the overseas economic activities of its firms. China's state‐sponsored economic diplomacy in other developing countries could play three major strategic roles: strengthening resource security, enhancing political relationships and soft power, and boosting commercial opportunities for national firms. This article examines China's programme to establish overseas special economic zones as one tool of Beijing's economic statecraft. It traces the process by which they were established and implemented, and investigates the characteristics of the 19 zones initially selected in a competitive tender process. The article concludes that even in countries rich in natural resources, the overseas zones were overwhelmingly positioned as commercial projects. Particularly in the Asian zones, China is following in the footsteps of Japan. The zone programme, and the Chinese foreign investment it hoped to foster, represents a clear case of the international projection of China's developmental state. However, in Africa (but not generally elsewhere) discourse surrounding the zones publicly positions them as a transfer of China's own development success, thus potentially enhancing China's political relationships and soft power on the continent.     

Framing the “Polar Silk Road” (冰上丝绸之路): Critical geopolitics,Chinese scholars and the (Re)Positionings of China's Arctic interests

China's release of a White Paper to document its Arctic Policy in 2018 has attracted widespread academic and popular commentaries. In particular, Beijing's ambition to build a “Polar Silk Road” (冰上丝绸之路) in the Arctic so as to link Asia and Europe via logistic and transportation networks have garnered intense ‘external’ speculations about whether China is using the initiative to gain geopolitical power and domination in the region. This paper however focuses on the under-researched dimension of how the idea of the Polar Silk Road is understood, debated and portrayed in the Chinese scholarly community. Specifically, by hinging on the conceptual and methodological tenets offered by framing theory, I seek to critically examine the representational themes and tropes that are mobilized by Chinese scholars in their discussions of the Polar Silk Road amidst China's increasing forays into the Arctic. Indeed, I argue that Chinese academic discourses about the Polar Silk Road evoke positive frames broaching a diversity of concerns (economic, environmental, diplomatic and so on) to not only justify but also defend China's ongoing interests and interventions in the Arctic region. By engaging in this study, this paper responds to critical geopolitics' call to pay nuanced attention to under-represented ‘non-Western’ geopolitical ideas, philosophies and traditions. Moreover, given the claim that the academic and foreign policy realms in China are intertwined in intimate and complex ways, the viewpoints of Chinese scholars thus becomes critical and relevant to understand insofar as they help to signal to the possible future developmental trajectories of China's approach in the Arctic (and beyond).     

Projections of China's normative soft power

Fuelled by unparalleled recent development, China has by necessity been reaching outward in search of foreign resources and international recognition. The three books reviewed in this essay all speak to China's spectacular global ascendency of the past two decades—and to the political consequences and international reactions that have followed. What unites these three volumes—Tongdong Bai's China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom (2012), Peter Nolan's Is China Buying the World? (2012) and William Callahan and Elena Barabantseva's edited volume, China Orders the World: Normative Soft Power and Foreign Policy (2011)—is their focus on the uniquely Chinese norms that now underpin China's soft power in the twenty-first century. How will China go about ordering the world and will it succeed? The answers to these questions, as these authors demonstrate, may have less to do with China's present than with its ancient past.     

Neo‐Colonialism in South–South Relations? The Case of China and North Korea

The past decade has seen the rapid expansion of economic ties between China and North Korea, leading to questions of whether this emerging relationship resembles neo‐colonialism or a more positive form of South–South cooperation. This article argues that China's engagement is driven in the first instance by strategic considerations, namely the maintenance of the geopolitical status quo on the Korean peninsula. However, North Korea has also become increasingly important in terms of Beijing's aims of revitalizing its north‐eastern region, and as such, economic relations are becoming increasingly market‐led. Although this mode of engagement bears similarities with China's engagement elsewhere in the developing world, North Korea's catastrophic economic decline in the 1990s largely preceded the more recent revival of relations with China. We argue therefore that bilateral relations between the two countries cannot usefully be regarded as ‘neo‐colonial’ since North Korea is receiving much needed trade and investment from China within the context of broader international isolation. As such, we suggest that more attention needs to be paid to how geopolitical specificities influence the manner in which South–South cooperation shapes the possibilities of development, and that the dichotomous terrain of the existing debate between optimistic and pessimistic viewpoints is unhelpful.     

China and the emerging regional order in the South Pacific

As China rises, it has become increasingly aggressive in applying its soft power in the Pacific. What does China's arrival mean for the emerging regional order in the Pacific? What is it up to in the strategic backwater of the Pacific, which has traditionally been regarded as an ‘American lake’ and Australia's ‘special patch’? Setting my analysis in the broad context of China's new global diplomacy, I argue that the pattern of China's assertive behaviour in the Pacific is no different from its approach to other regions in the global South. I further argue that with only limited strategic, diplomatic and economic investment in the Pacific, China has become a regional power by default. The arrival of China, therefore, is unlikely to provoke any new round of great power competition. Rather, it offers opportunities for the world's second most formidable development challenge.     

Hong Kong under Chinese Sovereignty: Economic Relations with Mainland China, 1978-2007

A Hong Kong—based economic geographer presents an array of statistical data through 2007 that place Hong Kong among the world's leading financial, foreign trade, and air cargo handling centers. The paper's main focus is the economic relationship with Mainland China, which has grown and expanded since the change of the city's sovereignty in 1997. Included in the presentation is a review of economic integration before and after the handover by the UK to China, the pattern of cross-border investments and foreign trade, the growth of the logistics and tourism industries, and the challenges posed by changing economic relations, partly due to the rapid development of Hong Kong's hinterland. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O16, O18, O20, R11. 2 figures, 5 tables, 64 references.     

Foreign Trade in China's Electronics Industry

Three Taiwan-based economists examine the effects of GDP, per capita GDP, geographic distance, FDI outflows and inflows, openness to trade, bilateral investment treaties, and other factors on the volume of bilateral trade between China and 40 of its trading partners in the up-, mid- and downstream segments of the country's electronics industry. Pooled cross-section and time-series data are employed in an empirical estimation for the period 1995-2005, which indicate that the Chinese electronics sector's import/export volumes have grown substantially alongside China's economy. The authors address a specific set of issues questioning whether FDI inflows have created a trade effect in the electronics industry, whether they have lead to a measure of import substitution in China's electronics industry, and whether the net impact of opening the market has been positive or negative on the sector's foreign trade. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F14, F21, L63, O53, P33. 6 tables, 23 references.     

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.     

A Geospatial Analysis of China's Exports, 1991-2008

Three Taiwan-based economists employ a range of exploratory spatial data analysis tools (e.g., Moran's I and LISA statistics) to investigate trends in the growth of China's exports over the period 1991-2008. A particular focus is on the detection of spatial correlations between China and 40 export destination countries in major world regions. Emphasis in the paper on the key years of 1991, 2001, 2006, and 2008 has enabled the authors to analyze the impacts on China's trade of such major events as the country's accession to the World Trade Organization and the global economic crisis of 2008-2009. The results of the spatial analysis reveal the continuing importance of the U.S. and Asian countries in China's export trade (despite changes in the character of trade relations) and identify the spatial outliers (e.g., in Latin America) that may serve as the basis for new export markets for China in the future.     

Trans-Himalayan power corridors: Infrastructural politics and China's Belt and Road Initiative in Nepal

This article examines the shifting dimensions of Chinese infrastructural aid in Nepal, focusing on the politics of anticipation and enunciation that shape Nepali perceptions of Chinese-facilitated development and negotiations concerning Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Drawing from ethnographic research focused on sites of ongoing and planned infrastructure development in Nepal's two northern districts of Rasuwa and Gorkha, we analyze the uncertain remaking of these areas into trans-Himalayan power corridors. Our examination reveals the gamut of transitions, opportunities, reorientations, and expectations that the BRI and other forms of Chinese investment evoke in Nepal, showing how politics articulate infrastructures, and vice versa. After reviewing the historical context of Nepal-China relations, our empirical analysis begins in late 2014 when China became the single largest source of foreign direct investment in Nepal, continues through several rounds of negotiations about the BRI and other forms of Chinese infrastructural investment and aid, and concludes with a review of significant Nepal-China agreements at the Second Belt and Road Forum, held in Beijing in April 2019. Tacking between remote construction sites, scenes of diplomatic debate, borderland villages, investment summits, and speculative media coverage, we demonstrate how the Belt and Road Initiative is differently enacted and co-constructed by a variety of Nepali and Chinese actors who interpret, reimagine, and rhetorically appropriate the BRI within their own narrations of future possibility.     

An integrated assessment of China's South—North Water Transfer Project

China's South–North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP) is a vast and still expanding network of infrastructure and institutions that moves water from the Yangtze River and its tributaries to cities in North China. This article aims to assess the SNWTP's impacts by beginning to answer seven questions about the project: How is the management of the SNWTP evolving? What are the problems to be resolved when managing SNWTP water within jurisdictions? What are the status and management of water quality in the SNWTP? What are the consequences of resettlements caused by the SNWTP? How is increased water supply affecting regional development? Is the SNWTP achieving its stated environmental goals? What are the sustainability credentials of the SNWTP? Drawing on primary and secondary data, the article demonstrates both that the opportunities and burdens characterising the project are highly uneven and that management systems are evolving rapidly in an attempt to enforce strict water quality targets. Furthermore, while the SNWTP may be helping to resolve groundwater overexploitation in Beijing, it is highly energy intensive, raising questions about its sustainability. Our analysis highlights the need to continue to interrogate the socio‐economic, environmental, and political implications of such schemes long after they are officially completed.     

Electronic Decentralisation in China: A Critical Analysis of Internet Filtering Policies in the People's Republic of China

China is in the midst of an Internet revolution that appears to be accelerating. Despite Beijing's desperate attempts to control Web content, the flow of 'illegal' and 'undesirable' information continues to bypass the state's primitive regulatory system. This study examines the administrative and technical difficulties involved in Internet regulation in China, and concludes that digital censorship is unworkable. Not only are China's surveillance and bureaucratic arrangements inadequate, counter-filtering technologies have been implemented both in and out of China to ensure a relatively free flow of information. Anti-blocking software, mirror sites, remailers, secret Usenet groups, and anonymous e-mail services have all contributed to a noticeable breakdown in Beijing's enforcement mechanisms.     

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.     

Feeding fears: competing discourses of interdependency,sovereignty, and China's food security

Following the release of the 1994 report ‘Who will feed China?’ by the Worldwatch Institute, there has been much debate over the implications of China's growing demand for grain. The question of China's food production has elicited a variety of responses. While for some it raises the specter of regional and global instability as China becomes an environmental threat, for others the entrance of China into the world market promises increased trade and profits. In this paper I explore the responses in China and the US to the different notions of interdependence which have shaped the debate. I first turn to how concerns over China's food supply have, despite appeals to the concepts of global environmental and economic interdependence, become linked to classical state-centered geopolitical concerns such as ‘sovereignty’ and ‘containment.’ I then look at how the debate has also been actively distanced from national security concerns through the invocation of an alternative interdependence founded on the logic of commerce. I conclude by arguing for the need within critical geopolitics to further examine the circulation of strategic texts between and within states, particularly in the analysis of texts that map worlds beyond the boundaries of North America and Europe.     

The sustainability and some consequences of Chinese economic growth

During the past 27 years, China's economy and relationship with the outside world has been transformed. The magnitude of annual economic growth and rapid increase in the volume of output of goods and services raise unsettling questions about potential threats to the sustainability of current growth levels and implications for economic and political stability. This paper examines the sources of economic growth and concludes the strong state system, high rates of saving and investment and demographic structure will sustain growth. Chinese authorities must be aware that a failure to maintain the process of financial and political institutional reform or to address the widening regional income inequalities poses potential domestic threats to sustainable growth. Tensions remain in China's international relationships, forcing China to consider further adjustment and accommodation in its regional security and economic relationships.     

Foreign Banking in China: A Study of 279 Branch Units in 32 Cities

Two China-based geographers examine the gradual relaxation of restrictions on the activity of foreign banks in China as a prelude to a more focused investigation of the concentrated locational pattern of foreign banking in that country. The study, which embraces 32 Chinese cities, emphasizes the factors that have attracted foreign banks to particular cities and regions of China, including the existence of special banking opportunities, the so-called "follow-the customer" strategy, externalities associated with major financial centers such as Beijing and Shanghai, relaxed banking regimes in particular urban centers and special economic zones, and exposure to international trade and to a variety of foreign business enterprises. The locational preferences of foreign banks in relation to their countries of origin are addressed in some detail.