Research Focus
China’s rise has elicited envy, admiration, and anxiety among its neighbors and more distant countries. Much of what has been written about the modalities and impact of China’s increased activism on the world stage comes close to depicting what has happened (and what presumably will happen in the future) as determined almost entirely by goals, approaches, and instruments conceived in Beijing and implemented as designed by their Chinese authors. Such descriptions and explanations, however, minimize or ignore the other side of the equation, namely, what individuals, corporate actors, and governments in other countries do to attract, shape, exploit, or deflect Chinese involvement.
The China and the World research project redresses this imbalance by examining the actions of China’s partners and the ways in which initiatives and reactions from partners have shaped Chinese foreign policy and the outcomes of its engagements with other countries. This multi-year study, led by Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar, looks sequentially and systematically at China’s interactions with countries in all regions of Asia and across many issue areas.
The project’s overarching goal is to illuminate and anticipate China’s behavior on the world stage, particularly its objectives and policies to achieve them. But it also aims to identify and explain the goals and policy calculations of other countries that see opportunities and perils associated with China’s greater activism on the world stage.
China’s goals, methods, and impacts vary from one region to another, and differences between regions are as interesting and as important as are practices and patterns common to all parts of the globe. Describing and explaining regional differences (as well as differences among countries in the same region) is therefore a useful, if not necessary, prerequisite for examining behavior and interactions at the global level.
North America, to be sure, is arguably the most important partner and shaper of China’s international behavior in the decades since Deng Xiaoping launched the policy of “reform and opening” that has transformed China. The reason for not focusing specifically on the United States in this study is that U.S.-China relations have been studied more extensively than any other Chinese relationship. Nevertheless, the extent and nature of U.S. relations with countries in all regions make it imperative to consider U.S.-China relations and their role, if any, in shaping China’s relationships with other countries.
The project began in March 2012 with a workshop at the Stanford Center at Peking University that focused on China’s relations in Northeast Asia, particularly its engagement with Japan and the Koreas. A follow-on regional workshop, held in Singapore in November 2012, was dedicated to China's objectives and policies with respect to Southeast Asia, but focused primarily on the ways in which China's approach and actions are perceived by countries in the region and what strategies these countries pursue to advance their own interests and maximize their own freedom of action. The third workshop, held at Stanford in June 2013, examined China’s relationship with South and Central Asia, including interactions in the economic sphere as well as cross-border issues such as migration flows, water, and energy resource development.
An edited volume based on the 2013 Stanford workshop, The New Great Game: China and South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform, was published in 2016. A companion volume based on the 2012 Beijing workshop, Uneasy Partnerships: China’s Engagement with Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform, was published in 2017. The third volume in the series, The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century, based on the 2012 Singapore workshop, was published in July 2020.
The project continues with ongoing scholarly work by APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar. Southeast Asia Program Director Donald Emmerson, and China Program Director Jean Oi.
