Frontiers in China’s Foreign Policy: UN PKOs, the Arctic, and the Middle East
August 30, 2019
China’s economic rise has been accompanied by the appearance of new behaviors in its foreign policy. For instance, China has increased its personnel contributions to UN peacekeeping operations, intensified its engagement with the Arctic, and has become more confident in its outreach to the Middle East. Do these new behaviors indicate that China has become a great power? What factors motivate China’s new behaviors in its foreign policy? Scholars have not reached a consensus on these questions. Four papers in this panel engage these debates and provide different perspectives to answer the above questions depending on their area of focus. Min Ye and Quan Li’s paper compares China’s peacekeeping personnel contributions with that of other 21 major countries and argues that China behaves in a manner more similar to that of the middle powers rather than that of the established great powers. In their view, as far as the UN PKO policy is concerned, China is not yet great power. Jing Chen’s paper similarly points out that seeking great power status cannot sufficiently explain the increase in China’s personnel contributions to UN peacekeeping. Other factors play a significant role in motivating China’s new policy towards UN peacekeeping –such as the promotion by Kofi Annan and ICISS of the discourse of Responsibility to Protect, which echoes China’s discourse on being a responsible power. By contrast, Fuzuo Wu’s paper focuses on China’s engagement with the Arctic and argues that China has emulated the established major polar powers such as the US and Russia in its policy towards the Arctic, seeking a higher status and aspiring to be recognized as a responsible major country in global governance. Xi Chen’s paper turns to China’s more confident outreach to the Middle East during the Xi Jinping administration and aims at exploring the driving forces behind China’s policy change towards the Middle East. In sum, papers in this panel will help advance our understanding of the new behaviors in China’s foreign policy.
Chair: Yi Edward Yang, James Madison University
Papers:
Is China Indeed a Great Power? Evidence from China’s Participation in UN PKOs (Min Ye, Coastal Carolina University; Quan Li, Wuhan University)
China, UN Peacekeeping, and Responsibility to Protect: 1990-2015 (Jing Chen, Hartwick College)
China’s Engagement with the Arctic: Seeking Status (Fuzuo Wu, Independent Researcher)
China’s Middle East Policy under Xi Jinping (Xi Chen, University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley)
Discussant: Cathy Xuanxuan Wu, Old Dominion University