Dominik Mierzejewski - Böcker

This book discusses the Belt and Road Initiative at the provincial level in China. It analyses the evolution of the role of local governments in Chinese foreign policy since the opening of China’s economy in 1978, showing how the provinces initially competed with each other, and how the central government was forced to react, developing more centralised policies. Unlike other books on the Belt and Road Initiative, which focus on the international aspects of the initiative, this book demonstrates the importance of the Belt and Road in reinforcing China’s unitary status and for managing and coordinating development at the local level as well as centre-province relations and province to province relations inside China.

This book discusses the Belt and Road Initiative at the provincial level in China. It analyses the evolution of the role of local governments in Chinese foreign policy since the opening of China’s economy in 1978, showing how the provinces initially competed with each other, and how the central government was forced to react, developing more centralised policies. Unlike other books on the Belt and Road Initiative, which focus on the international aspects of the initiative, this book demonstrates the importance of the Belt and Road in reinforcing China’s unitary status and for managing and coordinating development at the local level as well as centre-province relations and province to province relations inside China.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of China-led multilateralism and decodes China’s narratives, and political and business practices, both from theoretical and practical dimensions.Introducing the mechanisms that govern China-led multilateral formats in what China sees as the Global South, the study offers a comparative analysis and checks whether China uses a one-size-fits-all strategy towards the selected case study formats and adopts a more differentiated regional approach. The case studies cover the following China-led multilateral formats: China-ASEAN, Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), China-Central and Eastern Europe, and China-CELAC. The authors introduce four primary practices of China’s management of relations within these platforms: executing discursive power, cultivating elite diplomacy, influencing public opinion, and navigating economic interactions to illustrate the bilateral and informal nature of China-led multilateralism practices. They argue that the bilateral approach is driven by China’s will to keep its paramount position within the formats and its pursuit to exploit the divisions among countries in these formats. Moreover, China’s relations with the Global South community are governed by informal networks that give the impression of non-interference and position China as the principal power due to these relationships’ inherent asymmetry. Cognizant of bilateral and informal drivers of China’s multilateral practices, the book compares China’s relations with selected case studies of countries under the multilateral umbrella: Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Kenya, Poland, Serbia, South Africa and Thailand. It considers the growing tensions between China and the West surrounding the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, the centralisation of power in China and the Russian war in Ukraine.Shedding light on China's policies and practices on bilateral and multilateral levels, this book will be of interest to researchers studying International Relations, Asian Politics, the politics of the Global South and Chinese Studies.

This book discusses the role of selective identities in shaping China’s position in regional and global affairs. By adopting different kinds of “self”, China has secured its relatively peaceful transition within the existing system and, in the meantime, strengthened its capacity to place its principles within that system.