Teacher responsible: Prof J. Christopher Alden, Dr Álvaro Méndez and Dr Yixiao Zheng.
The course: This course focuses on China’s Belt Road Initiative (BRI) and how Beijing is leveraging its preponderance of material power in pursuit of global leadership through the implementation of ‘development as grand strategy’ that places special focus on developing regions.
China's economic position, coupled to an astute use of finances flowing from its neo-mercantilist policies, has enabled it to become the leading trading partner and a significant investor in the developing world (or Global South). Moreover, through the onset of the BRI, the Global South is increasingly figuring in Beijing's expanding security interests and soft power provisions.
Understanding how dynamics in this relationship are impacting upon a host of global and contemporary issues (BRICs, multilateralism, peacekeeping, the environment) is crucial to the shape of the 21st century.
Students will acquire a deeper appreciation of the concept of agency linked to the varied response of countries and regional organizations to the BRI from policy elites to local communities in the rest of the world, to China’s growing structural power, as well as placing Chinese engagement within the context of other ‘traditional’ and emerging powers.
More information here