China's evolving role in African conflict involvement: a balance of national interests, international expectations, and host-country receptiveness

Thesis

Why has China exhibited seemingly inconsistent or even contradictory positions in its contributions to conflict involvement in different African crises? For example, why did China actively engage in the counter-piracy campaign in the Gulf of Aden but exhibited an indifferent position regarding the Darfur crisis before 2006?

This thesis investigates the determinants and logical flow behind China’s level of engagement in African conflict involvement. I argue that China’s foreign policy is a “two-step” mechanism involving both international and domestic factors, and that Chinese elites perceive external signals and translate them to the policy outcome. Endogenous threats to China’s economic interests, international expectations about China’s engagements, and the host country’s receptiveness to external intervention are China’s major considerations in African context. They then interact dynamically to jointly determine China’s level of participation.

I employ a small-N qualitative approach with controlled comparisons across small-N cases and within-case process tracing. I use existing literature, archival materials, and elite interviews across the Chinese government to test a series of hypothesized contextual relationships. A comparison between controlled pairs across five case studies – the Darfur crisis before and after 2006, the Gulf of Aden counter-piracy campaign before and after the hijacking of the Chinese vessel De Xin Hai, and the South Sudan civil war – allows tracing the mechanism by which the determinants interact with each other and demonstrating the causal relationships between the determinants and the policy outcome. In so doing, this thesis offers a systematic and comprehensive theory to explain how motivations influence China’s engagement in African peace and security, contributing to a better understanding of China’s foreign policy decision-making process in the African context.

Authors: Wu, H

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: security; conflict; China; Africa; foreign policy
• Subjects: China--Foreign relations--21st century