China's Security Cooperation: A Hidden Policy Dimension of the Belt and Road Initiative?
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The modernization and increasing employment of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) around the world lead many scholars to generate assumptions on the nature of the security policy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This thesis analyzes the historical development of PRC security concerns and their resultant security cooperation activities from. It explores the relationship between China’s security cooperation policies and the development of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Central Asia. In its early history, PRC security cooperation reflected the greater dynamics of the Cold War. The PRC conducted security cooperation and entered into conflict to support its ideological allies and balance against regional or global threats. Changing assessments of China’s security environment by Deng Xiaoping and subsequent leaders allowed the PRC to shift the focus of its security cooperation from preparation for imminent great-power conflict to supporting and enabling economic development and modernization. These new outlooks prompted evolution in PRC security cooperation activity. In some instances, PRC security considerations drove other policy priorities; security cooperation activity pioneered diplomatic or economic relationships. In other settings however, security cooperation quickly became an integral part, or even a consequence, of China’s greater development and engagement strategy. In the case of BRI development in Central and South Asian countries, PRC security cooperation addresses long-term, security-oriented relationship, fails to correlate with China’s investment activity, or is essentially non-existent. This thesis refutes monocausal characterizations of PRC security cooperation and finds a wide variance in its nature, motivation and conduct. This thesis also identifies a general trend of secular commercialization within PRC security cooperation that will aid in understanding China’s future security cooperation activity.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | August 2018 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Murrell, Jonathan |
|---|---|
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Stanford Global Studies, Center for East Asian Studies |
| Primary advisor | Fingar, Thomas |
Subjects
| Subject | Stanford Global Studies |
|---|---|
| Subject | East Asian Studies |
| Subject | China |
| Subject | Central Asia |
| Subject | Security |
| Subject | Belt and Road Initiative |
| Subject | Security Cooperation |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Murrell, Jonathan. (2018). China's Security Cooperation: A Hidden Policy Dimension of the Belt and Road Initiative?. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/jh990dc9099
Collection
Stanford Center for East Asian Studies Thesis Collection
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- Contact
- jmurrell@stanford.edu
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