1.1 Introduction
How is China behaving as its relative economic power increases? Is it expanding its economic interests abroad? And is it increasing its intervention in foreign intrastate armed conflicts which threaten those interests? Conventional arguments in international relations (IR) suggest that generally as statesâ economic power rise they follow the same pattern of behaviour. âThey expand. They send their soldiers, ships, and public and private agents abroadâŠ, [and] they exert influence on foreigners in a variety of waysâ (Mandelbaum 1988, p. 134). However, although in principle they follow the same pattern of behaviour, they express their expansionist projects in varied ways. âSome emerging powers in modern history have plundered other countriesâ resources through invasion, colonization, expansion, or even large-scale wars of aggressionâ (Zheng 2005, p. 20). Others are more covert, employing ânon-threateningâ strategies to take over sector by sector of another state without soldiers being involved until their economic and political interests prevail. China is a case in point. As put by Janice Gross Stein, âIn Americaâs backyard, in Africa, in the Gulf and on its southern and western peripheries, China is making deals for resources with no strings attached. Its overseas investments are growing as its trade surplus is mounting. And tens of thousands of Chinese aid workers and dam builders are found in virtually every corner of the globeâand all this without firing a shotâ (2010, p. 12).
The overall common denominator between China and other non-Western rising powers such as Brazil and India is that expansion of their interests and foreign policy abroad is often preceded by high levels of domestic economic growth, which if sustained over a protracted period of time will result in rise of the stateâs relative economic power vis-Ă -vis other existing global powers. In turn, this enables increases in the rising powersâ other material capabilities such as military, diplomatic and political, such that the combined growth of the economy and other material capabilities endows upon them ânewly acquired power into greater authority in the global system to reshape the rules and institutions in accordance with their own interestsâ1 and, more importantly, intervene in the internal affairs of other states in order to protect and safeguard their interests there. In March 2016, Wang Yi, Chinaâs minister of foreign affairs, captured the linkage between the rise in a stateâs relative economic power, expansion of its economic interests abroad and the need to protect those interests when he said:
Like any major country that is growing, Chinaâs overseas interests are expanding. At present, there are 30,000 Chinese businesses all over the world and several million Chinese are working and living in all corners of the worldâŠ, Chinaâs non-financial outbound direct investment reached 118 billion dollars and the stock of Chinaâs overseas assets reached several trillion dollars. So, it has become a pressing task for Chinaâs diplomacy to better protect our ever-growing overseas interests.2
This is because âover the course of history, states that have experienced significant growth in their material resources have relatively soon redefined and expanded their political [economic and security] interests abroadâ (Zakaria 1998, p. 3). And, in order to systematically give effect to their expansionist endeavours, they incrementally revise and expand their foreign policy within the constraints of their domestic and international capabilities.
It is therefore not automatic that once a stateâs relative material capabilities increase it can revise international rules and institutions to its tasteâstates do not rise and expand their interests abroad in a vacuum. Instead, they rise in an anarchic systemic order already dominated by other global powers; and how they express their emergent power is reliant not just on their relative capabilities but also on how other states, particularly existing global powers, perceive of, and respond to, their rise. For instance, âthe growth of Athenian power led Sparta to conclude that there was no recourse but to fight,â3 while the rise of expansionist Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler led to a global war. On the other hand, the rise of the United States at the twilight of Britainâs imperial power was largely peaceful4 because Britain, âwhile still enjoying preponderant strength, looked over the horizonâŠ, [and] was able to successfully adapt its grand strategy to a changing distribution of powerâ (Kupchan 2012). But, in all this, the rising powersâ upturn in the international system and their ability to withstand competition and pressure from existing global powers is dependent on their ability to sustain high levels of domestic economic growth; because upward mobility in the international system is not for states with low relative economic power.
An additional factor that determines how a rising power articulates its foreign behaviour as it expands abroad is political dynamics in countries that it expands into. By expanding its economic interests into a foreign country, a rising power effectively entangles itself with the political, social and economic dynamics of that particular country. Unlike the United States and West European powers, China and the other non-Western rising powers still do not give adequate consideration to internal dynamics in countries they expand into, particularly if those countries are considered to be of no global consequence, the majority of which are in Africa, where most lack essential elements of a state and can best be described as âquasi-states.â5 Typically, when rising powers expand their economic interests into such âquasi-statesâ their preoccupation is on warding off competition from other global and rising powers that have rival interests there, yet it is from the âquasi-statesâ themselves that major challenges to their foreign interests emanate from. The reason being that âsince the end of the Cold War, weak and failing states have arguably become the single most important problem for international orderâ (Fukuyama 2004, p. 92).
Intrastate armed conflicts6 are the dominant7 challenge in some countries that rising powers expand their economic interests into. What makes the intrastate armed conflicts in those countries challenging for rising powers is that they pose âuncontemplated consequences.â The consequences are uncontemplated because the conflicts are usually fought over issues local to the developing country and often have little to do with the rising power, or its interests in that country. Yet, the effects, albeit unintended by the warring parties, are indiscriminately felt by rising powers with interests there. Examples aboundâin the armed conflict between the National Transitional Council (NTC) and Muammar Gaddafiâs government in Libya, US$18â20 billion worth of investments owned by Chinese private and public enterprises were either destroyed or suspended. In Sudan , China invested approximately US$20 billion mostly in the oil industry before the country split after a protracted armed conflict. Two-thirds of its investments ended up in the new state of South Sudan, which in 2013 descended into a civil war resulting in major losses to Chinese companies.8 Chinese nationals working abroad were also affected. For example, in 2011, the Chinese government evacuated more than 35,000 Chinese citizens working in Libya9 due to the armed conflict. In Sudan,10 Mali,11 and the Central African Republic12 Chinese workers were kidnapped or otherwise killed by rebels; and in 2014, Chinese companies had to evacuate Chinese nationals and scale down operations due to the armed conflict in South Sudan.13
The dilemma for rising powers, China in particular, is that the biggest concentration of energy and other strategic natural resources needed to sustain their domestic economic growth, which is critical to maintaining their relative economic power and global power status, lie in countries at risk of both political instability and intrastate armed conflicts. As noted by Michael Klare, the high concentration of energy resources in countries such as Iraq, Nigeria, South Sudan and Sudan means that access to such resources is âclosely tied to political and socio-economic conditions within a relatively small group of countriesâ14 at risk of instability and armed conflicts. Without the military power of the United States or socio-economic and political ties that Europe has with developing countries, especially in Africa due to their colonial heritage, non-Western rising powers are compelled to engage even more unstable countries like Libya and South Sudan for their raw material and energy needs, which plunges them into intrastate armed conflicts that they neither contemplated nor possess enough experience to handle.
What it means is that when the relative economic power of rising powers increases and they expand their economic interests abroad in search of markets and sources of raw materials to keep their economies growing, they become even more dependent on foreign sources of raw materials for their economic growth, thus compelling them to align access to such primary commodities with their national interest and security considerations.15 How then do they respond to foreign intrastate armed conflicts that threaten those economic interests? In other words, do they increase their intervention in foreign intrastate armed conflicts as their interests expand abroad? What form do their interventions in those intrastate armed conflicts take, and are the methods of their interv...