Peter Kien-hong Yu, ed., Reinventing the Methodology of Studying Contemporary China

Joshua Eisenman and Eric Heginbotham, eds., China Steps Out: Beijing’s Major Power Engagement with the Developing World

Introduction to China’s Economic Statecraft: Rising Influences, Mixed Results Abstract China’s embrace of a comprehensive and aggressive economic statecraft as part of its grand strategy indicates a paradigm change in its foreign policy. This change has captured scholarly attention – a growing body of research on China’s economic statecraft has emerged in recent years. This special topic presents a fresh selection of four research essays examining China’s economic statecraft practiced in a wide range of countries and regions in the world, including Latin America, Africa, Europe, Canada, and New Zealand. Collectively, these essays explore two important questions: (1) How successful has China’s economic statecraft been? (2) How do domestic variables (e.g., domestic politics, political institutions, interests, and public opinion) of the target states (in which China practices economic statecraft) affect the outcome of the Chinese strategies?

Han Rongbin, Contesting Cyberspace in China: Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience

Scott L. Kastner, Margaret M. Pearson, and Chad Rector. China’s Strategic Multilateralism: Investing in Global Governance

Nicholas R. Lardy, ed., The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China

Joshua Eisenman, ed., Red China’s Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune

Jean-Marc F. Blanchard and Kun-Chin Lin, eds., Governance, Domestic Change, and Social Policy in China: 100 Years After the Xinhai Revolution

Making the Social Work: toward a Functionalist View of Social Governance Abstract This paper is situated in the normative discourse on the society building in China, seeks to go beyond the various ideological discourses, such as the liberal, the socialist, and neo-Confucian approaches, and develops a functionalist view of social governance. The functionalist approach maintains that the political vision is to build a Chinese-style “active society” that rises above the “under-organized society” of traditional China and the “over-organized society” of contemporary China simultaneously. An active society has three principal sociopolitical functions: inhibiting “state fetishism,” and defending the public sphere to promote the legitimation of state power; resisting “market society,” creating a market (re-)embedded in society and ensuring nonmarket supply of public goods; and rising above “the differential mode of association” (chaxu geju), accumulating social capital and nurturing civil virtues.

Blackening Skies for Chinese Investment in the EU? Abstract Chinese Outward Foreign Direct Investment (COFDI) in the European Union (EU) has recently increasingly drawn attention because of the opacity of state-sponsored Chinese firms, COFDI targeting of sectors including technology and infrastructure, the suddenness of COFDI, and sensitivity in the EU to China’s continuing political rise. This article focuses on how China uses OFDI as a tool of economic statecraft, and how the fact that OFDI is a tool of economic statecraft influences the reception of Chinese investment in European host countries. Proceeding through case studies of the high profile KUKA and Aixtron cases, it analyzes the conditions in the host country under which economic statecraft facilitates or complicates the completion of an acquisition, and demonstrates the challenges that Chinese firms are facing when investing in the EU due to their inseparable or suspected connections with the Chinese party-state. It finds that besides political or private party and stakeholder support, the sector and the lack of reciprocity, there is a critical role for legal frameworks, which is reflected in various calls for legal bases and screening mechanisms to block state-backed moves on strategic industries.