Routledge Handbook on Global China

by Maximilian Mayer (Editor), Emilian Kavalski (Editor), Marina Rudyak (Editor), Xin Zhang (Editor)

Overview

This innovative Routledge Handbook sheds light on the complex and transformative nature of Global China, prompting a re- evaluation of existing theories on global and regional dynamics. It encourages theoretical innovation, methodological reflection and analytical transformation, providing new avenues for critical engagement with China’s global interactions. The chapters propose three key commitments for the study of Global China: Advocating for diverse viewpoints and non- binary frameworks, employing nuanced analysis to understand Beijing’s transnational relations and utilizing alternative methodological approaches to explore different trajectories for China in international affairs.

The Handbook also identifies and avoids epistemic traps that hinder the understanding of Global China, such as othering and strategic narcissism. It suggests five analytical frameworks related to relationality, global capitalist processes, language and discourse power, planetary- scale modernization and experimentalism to guide future research. By adopting these frameworks, researchers can gain a deeper understanding of the multifaceted factors shaping Global China within the broader global context of cooperation, competition and crisis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367491314
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/22/2024
Pages:	540
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Maximilian Mayer, Assistant Professor of International Relations and the Global Politics of Technology at the University of Bonn, Germany.

Emilian Kavalski, NAWA Chair Professor at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

Marina Rudyak, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Chinese Studies at Heidelberg University, Germany.

Xin Zhang, Associate Professor, School of Politics and International Relations, East China Normal University, China.

Table of Contents

List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors

Introduction: Global China: New Approaches to Research on China and the World
Maximilian Mayer, Emilian Kavalski, Marina Rudyak and Xin Zhang

I. Framing Global China

1. Global China, Sinology, and Chinese Studies
Bart Dessein
/2. China’s Questions in Geography
Ingo Liefner
/3. China’s Traditional, Modern, and Neo–Socialist World Orders
William A. Callahan
/4. Americans’s Reactions to Global China’s Rise: Power Shift, Problem Shift, and Policy Shift
Steve Chan
/5. China as a Driver of a Post–Western Global Imaginary
Yih-Jye Hwang
/6. The China Challenge? A Holographic Global China Perspective
Chengxin Pan and Wanyi Zhao

II. Actors and Agencies of Global China

7. Great Power Relationships or Common Destiny? Chinese Government and Private Actors’s Long and Winding Road to Find a Place in Global Cyberspace
Rogier Creemers
/8. International Actorness of the Chinese Local Governments
Dominik Mierzejewski and Anna Rudakowska
/9. The Party–State’s Global Transgressive Political Activities and Influence Work
Ralph Weber
/10. Chinese Rationality and the Design of Diplomatic Initiatives
Chiung-Chiu Huang
/11. Exporting Chinese Digital Authoritarianism
Martin K. Dimitrov
/12. From the Oriental to the Global City: China’s Urban Rise
Ryanne Flock and Elena Meyer-Clement
/13. The State of the American and Chinese Technological Competition
Czaba Moldicz

III. Global China and International Organizations

14. Alternative Leadership: China and Global Finance
Jörn-Carsten Gottwald and Niall Duggan
/15. Global China in Health Governance: Inherent Conflicts in Governance Norms
Lai-Ha Chan
/16. Global Climate Governance in Transition and China’s Contribution
Hongyuan Yu, Bo Yu and Yunhan Yu
/17. China in Global Cultural Governance: Crafting a Culture of Dialogue and Cooperation through UNESCO
Tiewa Liu and Huawei Zong
/18. China, Catalyst of Change: Altering the Dynamics of Development in the Global South
Jeremy Garlick
/19. Decoding China's Reading of Global Development and Cooperation Norms
Marina Rudyak

IV. Global China’s Responses to Global Challenges

20. China and Sustainable Transition—Chairman Coal vs. Green Cyber–Dragon
David Tyfield
/21. Meating Global China at Home
Tracey Fallon
/22. Global China in the Age of Algorithms
Séverine Arsène
/23. China and Modernity
Josef Gregory Mahoney
/24. From “Debt Diplomacy” to Donorship: China’s Changing Role in Global Development
Pádraig Carmody, Tim Zajontz, and Ricardo Reboredo

V. Entangled Encounters: Internalizing Global China at Home and Localizing Global China Abroad

25. Innovation in China: Indigenous Efforts and Global Integration
Cong Cao and Yutao Sun
/26. China’s Subnational Foreign Policymaking
Nicholas Thomas
/27. Chinese Indonesian Intellectuals’s Quest for Post–Chineseness: Introduction of an Intellectual History Agenda
Harryanto Aryodiguno and Chih-yu Shih
/28. Nationalism with Chinese Characteristics: Xinjiang and the Politics of (In)Security
David O’Brien and Melissa Shani Brown
/29. Regionalizing Global China: Institutions, Competitions and Reactions
Tony Tai-Ting Liu
/30. Limits of Chinese Infrastructure Power and the Local Political Economy in Developing Countries: Evidence from Pakistan
Muhammad Tayyab Safdar
/31. Globalising China and Peripheral Urbanisation
Xiangming Chen

Epilogue: Epistemic Traps and Analytical Registers
Maximilian Mayer, Emilian Kavalski, Marina Rudyak, and Xin Zhang

Index

Editorial Reviews

"In midst of populist bestsellers, nuanced analysis of China's rapidly transforming relations with the rest of world have received but limited attention. This explains the USP of this handbook that outlines a novel framework to study China devoid of conventional conceptual stereotypes and biases.

The book aptly sheds light on China in a world growing ever more complex; shaping and being shaped by multiple novel actors and agencies, becoming less and less understandable through the prism of Western-centric perspectives.

Students, academics, experts and practitioners studying the influence of actors especially from the Global South will appreciate the depth and sophistication of the analytical tools and theoretical lenses of research that Global China showcases in various chapters of this path-breaking study."

Swaran Singh, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

"The Routledge Handbook on Global China charts a refreshingly new course in China studies that is both audacious and solidly grounded in academic research. Departing from the ontological and epistemological traps where China is often treated as a monolithic other and the study of China increasingly framed in great-power competition, this pathbreaking volume seeks to unpack the complexity of China as it engages the outside world both globally and regionally, affecting the latter's diplomatic, economic, and security dynamics as much as being affected by external opportunities and constraints. It calls for a non-binary, nuanced, and comprehensive understanding of China that is at once global in its reach and impact, and local in its perspectives steeped in history, culture and a sense of exceptionalism. The complexity of Global China defies simplicity in its characterization and interpretation. Indeed, the China scholarship can be advanced only if current debates and analyses go beyond conventional frameworks of great-power rivalry, peak China, or China to be socialized, to engage in ontological and epistemological conversations that explore, test, compete, and generate knowledge of Global China and its impacts at the systemic and local levels. The handbook will be timely addition to the existing literature and an important guide for both scholars and analysts at a time of transformational changes in international relations."

Jingdong Yuan, Senior Researcher and Director of the SIPRI China and Asia Security Programme, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

"I have rarely felt inspired to read, let alone use, an academic Handbook on anything - this volume on Global China is the one exception. The approach, to explicitly build non-binary frameworks in order to envision different future trajectories for China in international affairs, is inspired. Whether readers are seeking something thoughtful, something useful, something visionary, or something applicable, they will find inspiration in these pages. Ten out of ten, will read again."

Astrid H. M. Nordin, Chair of Chinese International Relations, Lau China Institute, King’s College London

From the Publisher