China's International Socialization of Political Elites in the Belt and Road Initiative

Theodor Tudoroiu, with Amanda R. Ramlogan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367487317
• eBook ISBN: 9781000177923
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

This book argues that China's international socialization of the political elites of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partner states is an exceptionally effective instrument of China's current foreign policy. It shows how the BRI-related process of socialization generates shared beliefs in the legitimacy and therefore in the acceptability of a Chinese international order among target elites and how in turn the policies and actions of states controlled by these elites tend to become aligned with the norms 'taught' by the Chinese socializer. It goes on to show how this serves the interests of China's government, firms, and citizens at national, regional, and global levels; and how the resulting increased support for Beijing's version of the international order creates a virtuous circle that further enhances China's international position and potential.

1Introduction

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) may well represent the most important geopolitical and geoeconomic enterprise of our times. Accordingly, its various aspects have been analyzed by a large and growing corpus of scholarly works. However, a key topic at the heart of the Chinese construct remains severely undertheorized: the role of the political elites of partner states, which is instrumental in explaining the impressive expansion of the Initiative. Using International Relations (IR) Constructivism and six case studies, this book argues that the international socialization of these elites by ‘normative power China’ represents the central element of the BRI. Moreover, Beijing’s efforts to develop normative power, as well as the use of this power in the socialization process, is part of a strategy intended to bring Global South state-society complexes within an extensive network of close partnerships conducive to the creation of a new, Chinese-centered international order. In the process, significant political and economic benefits are obtained by the Chinese state, companies, and citizens. Yet, Beijing’s offensive is firstly normative and only secondly geopolitical and geoeconomic. In particular, it replaces the classical use of spheres of influence and security-based counter-hegemonic actions with an original approach based on the concept of relationality, i.e. on the belief that cooperation is better served by the level of intimacy and importance placed in the relationship than by overtly stated self-interest calculations (Qin 2016, 2018; Summers 2019: 210; Demir 2017: 98). To socialize political elites in BRI partner states, an elaborate set of norms is used that brings together the harmonious Five Principles, which ensure legitimacy and build confidence; a general norm related to the beneficial nature of the relationship with China; and three highly self-interested political, economic, and social normative subsets. The first can be summarized as ‘no Taiwan, no Tibet, no Tiananmen Square.’ The second protects the activity of Chinese firms and promotes a business pattern that replaces traditional bidding processes with government-to-government agreements. The third prevents partner governments from regulating the inflow or economic activities of Chinese entrepreneurial migrants. These norms influence the national policies of BRI partner states in important fields such as diplomacy, the respect of human rights abroad, development assistance, foreign debt, inward investment, infrastructure, trade, labor, immigration, and governance. While very beneficial to China’s interests, the acceptance of its norms may have severe negative socio-economic consequences for important local social groups. This frequently results in frustration and various forms of protest. However, compliance is ensured due to the socialization of political elites, which changes their cognitive and normative beliefs and understandings, making them redefine their state’s national interest. The Chinese socialization has been very successful in the BRI countries due to the use of a skillfully customized mix of persuasion and material incentives; in almost all cases, the latter prominently include prestige infrastructure projects used to increase the political legitimacy and electoral support of targeted elites. It should be noted that only the elites in power are concerned. They have much to gain, and tend to cooperate; rapid socialization ensues, even if this process normally does not go beyond rather superficial Type I role playing. The problem is that, in order to reduce costs, Beijing does not socialize the political opposition or the society at large. When government or regime change brings new political groups to power, the socialization process needs to be repeated. This may be an issue when important social groups are negatively impacted by the effects of China’s economic and social norms and become hostile to the Chinese presence. An elites-society gap can develop, whose effects may limit or even reverse the socialization of the elites. Yet, each setback is followed by Beijing’s renewed socialization efforts. They are in general successful; significant obstacles are nevertheless represented by voluntaristic leaders, by structural incompatibilities between the BRI features and the target country, and especially by geopolitical factors, i.e. by the actions of rival regional or global powers. Accordingly, the ‘arrangement of soft balancing’ (Lairson 2018: 48–49) currently orchestrated by the United States and other Western and Asian states may seriously threaten China’s socialization process. This would significantly diminish the influence of the Belt and Road Initiative and implicitly reduce Beijing’s chances of constructing a new Chinese-centered international order. For the time being, however, the BRI remains a highly successful socialization-based enterprise.

All this is supported by the findings of six case studies that were chosen in order to cover as much as possible of the BRI’s diversity. Two – Tanzania and Sri Lanka – are less developed states. A third one, Trinidad and Tobago, is significantly richer but shares their assistentialist mentality. Argentina, despite being poor, lacks it and perceives itself as a regional power. It should be mentioned that this South American country is not – yet – a BRI member, but supports the Initiative, takes part in its meetings, and has BRI-branded projects on its territory; in practical terms, it is difficult to differentiate it from genuine members. Finally, New Zealand and Greece are developed Western states; but they are relatively small and pertain, geographically and economically, to the periphery of the West. These six very different countries provide excellent opportunities for the study of the way China customizes its socialization efforts in order to cover a wide range of local conditions and developments.

Also in terms of methodology, the chapter on Trinidad and Tobago – which is co-authored by Amanda R. Ramlogan – makes use of 30 interviews made between 2017 and 2018 with Trinidadian members of the public, journalists, scholars, businessmen, public servants, and politicians involved or interested in China-related issues. Interviews lasted 40 to 90 minutes and used a structured questionnaire with 40 questions; 35 were multiple-choice closed-ended and five open-ended. Many respondents made extensive written or oral comments that revealed interesting aspects of their perception of China and its presence in the Caribbean.

The book is structured as follows: Chapter 2 introduces the theoretical apparatus, which is based on International Relations Constructivism and uses Jeffrey Checkel’s definition of Type I and Type II socialization. Chapter 3 provides an in-depth analysis of China’s rise as a global power and of relevant aspects of the Belt and Road Initiative. Chapters 4 to 9 present the six case studies. Finally, Chapter 10 analyzes the findings of the case studies and draws conclusions on China’s socialization of BRI elites and on the prospects of its normative and geopolitical enterprise.

References

Demir, Emre (2017) ‘The Chinese School of International Relations: Myth or Reality?’ All Azimuth, 6(2), pp. 95–104.

Lairson, Thomas D. (2018) ‘The Global Strategic Environment of the BRI: Deep Interdependence and Structural Power,’ in Wenxian Zhang, Ilan Alon, and Christoph Lattemann (eds.) China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Changing the Rules of Globalization, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 35–53.

Qin, Yaqing (2016) ‘A Relational Theory of World Politics,’ International Studies Review, 18(1), pp. 33–47.

Qin, Yaqing (2018) A Relational Theory of World Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Summers, Tim (2019) ‘A Relational Theory of World Politics. By Yaqing Qin,’ Book review, International Affairs, 95(1), pp. 210–211.

2The international socialization of elites

A theoretical framework

The earliest literature on the socialization of political elites is no less than 24 centuries old. Indeed, as noted five decades ago by one of the major modern scholars of the field, Donald Searing, Plato set up ‘a rigorous program for molding his Guardians’ characters through controlled social conditions.’ For his part, Aristotle identified the social background of political actors as ‘a central factor in their aggregate political behavior’ (Searing 1969: 472). However, these classical authors, as well as most of their numerous modern followers, have never turned their attention to international socialization. Their concerns have been related to interactions within the polity; they have simply analyzed domestic elites from a domestic perspective. To quote Donald Searing once more, this kind of socialization helps political collectivities – i.e. political systems, parliaments, or political parties – ‘to protect their established procedures and outlooks by teaching them to those who become involved in their affairs’ (Searing 1986: 342). Ultimately, this is not different from the process enacted by an external socializer that tries to involve the political elites of client or partner states in its own bilateral, regional, or global enterprises, which should preserve their ‘established procedures and outlooks.’ Still, the literature on the domestic socialization of elites focuses on topics such as primary socialization in the family, selective education and recruitment, training, institutional/intra-organizational socialization, and political socialization in public office (see Hartmann 2006; Genieys 2011: 182; Apple et al. 2010; Mangset et al. 2017; Best and Higley 2018). Probably the only subfield that includes an international dimension is that concerning the socialization of local elites in the colonies, which impacted in a certain measure the pattern of decolonization as well as post-colonial politics (Chafer 2007: 437). Overall, differences are important enough to make the many findings related to the domestic socialization of political elites totally irrelevant for the study of China’s socialization of political elites in partner states. Yet, this does not mean that there is absolutely no literature on the international socialization of political elites. Useful if limited research comes from a field very different from that studied by Searing and his colleagues: International Relations (IR). In fact, even within IR, there are very few theoretical approaches interested in and fully compatible with the concept of international socialization. By far the most important is Constructivism, even if it normally scrutinizes the socialization of states, not of social groups such as the elites. The latter are mainly studied in their capacity as norms entrepreneurs, i.e. as transmission belts conveying norms learned from the external socializer to the local society. This ancillary role hardly qualifies them as fully-fledged international actors. Fortunately, some Constructivist scholars have taken as their unit of analysis the state-society complex, which does allow for the study of national political elites as an autonomous (but not independent) international actor. This explains my choice of IR Constructivism as the theoretical framework of this book and of the state-society complex as its unit of analysis.

2.1 Political elites and the state-society complex

The unit of analysis issue is perhaps the most important. Various International Relations theories do acknowledge the role played by political elites in specific situations. Still, they seldom recognize the elites’ fully-fledged actorness on the international arena. Approaches based on the state level of analysis tend to identify political elites with the state they control. Approaches that choose the individual level of analysis prefer to focus on the individuals who make up those elites. A more balanced view nevertheless exists that places itself between these two groups. It was first introduced by Robert Cox, whose neo-Gramscian perspective emphasized the contemporary interpenetration of the concepts of state and civil society. The Canadian author noted that the separation between their respective spheres of activity has become vague and imprecise (Cox 1981/1986: 205), which imposes their merger into one concept he called state-society complex. The latter has the advantage of addressing certain critical ontological aspects. In particular, unlike the ahistorical determinism of Neorealism, it makes possible the study of the way social forces and processes have led to the creation and development of various configurations of state-society complexes, which are responsible for the specific development of both states and world orders. This is to say that, in fact, the relevant actors of international politics are social forces, not states (Ibid.; Overbeek 2004: 127). Cox’s ontology replaces the Neorealist claim that states are essentially alike with the acknowledgment of the existence of a plurality of forms of state. This more complex view of International Relations emphasizes the importance of change, thus rejecting Waltz’s ‘reif[ication of] a world system’ (Sinclair 2016: 511). It also creates a unit of analysis far more versatile than those proposed by previous IR theories (Tudoroiu and Ramlogan 2019: 158).

Indeed, the state-society complex was abundantly used in various sub-fields of International Relations. It was instrumental in the construction of a critical perspective on global governance and global civil society (Massicotte 1999: 139–140). In security studies, the current major military transformation in the organization for and conduct of war is attributed to social, economic, and deep technological forces that have been analyzed using the concept of state-society complex (Latham and Sethi 2012: 175). In International Political Economy, in the framework of the ‘Amsterdam Project’ – which expanded Cox’s historical materialism into ‘transnational historical materialism’ (Van Apeldoorn 2004: 142) – Kees van der Pijl even studied the transnationalization of the state-society complex. This process gave birth to the ‘Lockean heartland’ of the global political economy that brings together the present-day English-speaking countries and is characterized by its industrial and commercial centrality and predominance (Fichtner 2016: 6). Finally, John Hobson made a call for the development of a ‘second wave’ Weberian historical sociology approach that should put an end to the Neorealist conceptions of ‘the state and the international’ (Hobson 2002a: 21) through the use of a ‘thick’ conception of the state-society complex. As the latter both constitutes and is constituted by socio-domestic and international/global structures, the conclusion can be drawn that domestic and international structures ‘are co-constituted and are fundamentally embedded within a series of social relationships’ (Ibid.; Hobson 2002b: 66, 75; Bhambra 2010: 132).

Alexander Wendt and, more generally, IR Constructivism share a very similar view of Cox’s concept. Wendt emphasized the fact that ‘not only is the state constituted by its relationship to society, but so is society constituted by the state’ (Wendt 1999/2003: 210). In his study of the essential properties of the state, he identified, first, an institutional-legal order; second, an organization claiming a monopoly on the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The international socialization of elites: a theoretical framework
• 3 China and the Belt and Road Initiative
• 4 The voluntaristic leader: China and the elites of Tanzania
• 5 Prestige projects: China and the elites of Trinidad and Tobago
• 6 Debt trapped: China and the elites of Sri Lanka
• 7 Leftists and profiteers: China and the elites of Argentina
• 8 The unexpected importance of values: China and the elites of New Zealand
• 9 A savior with an interest in ports: China and the elites of Greece
• 10 Analysis and conclusion
• Index