China matches economic power with political action

The Financial Times recently quotedan academic article published by DIIS Senior Researcher Luke Patey in the Journal of Contemporary China. The Financial Times article explores how China is engaging politically in Africa to protect and sustain its growing economic investments on the continent. This position is a divergence from China’s traditional foreign policy agenda, a non-interference policy, which states that Beijing will not intervene in the domestic affairs of foreign countries.

Patey argues in the Financial Times that following the non-interference policy resulted in China dealing exclusively with central government of African countries, neglecting other important political and civil society actors. In Sudan, this limited China’s ability to manage political and security risk facing its oil investments. Ultimately, China’s experience in Sudan played a large role in changing how Beijing interprets its non-interference policy. China has begun to look beyond engagement with central government in foreign countries, and is enhancing its relations with a wider set of political actors and playing a growing role in regional peacekeeping and crisis diplomacy.

In the Journal of Contemporary China article, Patey shows how political, social and security dynamics in the host countries of large Chinese investments can play a transformative role in shaping the competitiveness and strategy of these new and large corporations in the global economy.