International and Area Studies Commons^™

Reconfiguring Dependency: China's Belt And Road Initiative And Development In Ethiopia And Nigeria, Alexander Freund

University Honors Theses

This thesis examines China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Africa through the frameworks of dependency theory, postcolonial theory, and neo-colonialism. As China's global economic influence has expanded throughout the twenty-first century, the BRI has emerged as a major source of infrastructure financing and development across the Global South, particularly in Africa. While critics frequently portray the initiative as a form of "debt-trap diplomacy," supporters argue that Chinese investment offers an alternative to the neoliberal conditionality historically associated with Western-led International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. This study addresses two central research questions: …

How Ai Governance Differs Between Regime Type, Jackson T. Guillou

Honors Theses

This thesis will examine how artificial intelligence (AI) regulation and development differ across political regime types, arguing that governance outcomes are fundamentally shaped by institutional political structures. This thesis will draw on comparative frameworks analyzing democratic and authoritarian systems. This thesis will also include case studies of the European Union, the United States of America, China, and Russia. The study finds that democratic regimes tend to emphasize transparency, accountability, and rights-based regulation of AI. This often results in slow regulation of AI, but it is more ethically legitimate and constrained. In contrast, authoritarian regimes prioritize centralized control, strategic coordination, and …

Infrastructures Of Control: The Prc Party-State And The Diffusion Of Surveillance Technology To The Global South, Lincoln Bartelt

International and Global Studies Undergraduate Honors Theses

This investigation examines the relationship between Chinese surveillance technology exports and the rise of digital authoritarianism in Ecuador and Zimbabwe from 2007 to 2024. Using a mixed-methods correlational case study design, it constructs a five-dimensional Surveillance Export Intensity Index (SEII) from United Nations Comtrade data under HS codes 8525 and 8517 and compares it against ten indicators of digital repression drawn from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset. Qualitative analysis from Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, and primary source documents provides depth and mechanism to the quantitative findings.

Results indicate that spikes in Chinese surveillance exports correlate most strongly with …

The Smallholder’S Dilemma In Agroecological Transitions: The Diseconomy Of Agroecology For Small Farmers In Industrial Agriculture, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A scalar contradiction exists between agroecology's three goals: while ecological sustainability is best pursued at the landscape scale, social equity and livelihood goals often require organizing production at the small scale of family farms. In China's ‘industrial agriculture of small farmers’, ecological farming practices became economically unviable at small farmers' minuscule scales. Agroecological transitions almost always first go through a scale expansion, a process fraught with tension. The empirical analysis focuses on three ‘ecological farms’ that enjoyed favorable conditions unattainable to smallholders. Yet, lock-ins across five dimensions have either made their operations economically unsustainable or forced compromises in agroecological principles.

A National Security Strategy For The Middle East, Vanessa Rice, Rudy Torres, Addy Horgan, Joy Omosa, Mark Westfall

School of Public Policy Capstones

This National Security Strategy addresses the persistent national security challenges the United States faces in the Middle East, a region vital for global energy supply, economic connectivity, and a source of anti-American extremism. Recognizing the failures of past "haphazard experimentation," the strategy proposes a thoughtful, pragmatic plan prioritizing five distinct and congruent interest areas: Maintaining Regional Access, Supporting Regional Stability, Ensuring Energy Security, Defending American Citizens and Personnel, and Preserving and Protecting Western Ideals. The strategy outlines actions such as: countering Chinese and Russian influence through intelligence sharing and defense incentives; containing Iran via a new, permanent nuclear deal and …

How The Korean War Has Affected Security In The Korean Peninsula: Ideological Separations And Lasting Military Alliances In This Region, Teagan Mcsherry

Posters - 2026

Although the Korean War ended in 1953, its effects continue to shape security on the Korean Peninsula today. This paper examines how the war created long-lasting ideological divisions and military alliances, particularly through the involvement of the United States and China. These alliances have helped maintain stability through deterrence but have also prevented meaningful reconciliation between North and South Korea. I argue that these dynamics reinforce a security dilemma, where efforts to increase security also deepen division and mistrust. As a result, the peninsula remains in a prolonged state of tension, demonstrating how unresolved conflicts can continue to influence global …

Ancestral Rites And Tablets As A Site Of Contestation Between Confucian Filial Piety And Catholicism: The Cases Of Chinese Confucian Yan Mo And Korean Catholic Yun Ji-Chung, Mideum Hong

Journal of Global Catholicism

This essay examines how the Confucian practice of filial piety, particularly as expressed through ancestral rites and tablets, became a focal point of contention in the encounters between Confucianism and Catholicism. Focusing on the cases of the Chinese Catholic Yan Mo and the Korean Catholic martyr Yun Ji-chung, I argue that the different historical and cultural contexts in China and Korea significantly shaped how each figure understood and responded to the practice of ancestral rites. While Catholicism spread globally, local converts developed distinct theological interpretations rooted in their respective cultural traditions. Although Yan Mo and Yun Ji-chung reached divergent conclusions …

Evolving U.S. And Chinese International Development Policy: Institutions, Strategies, And Global Impact, Julian Kai Lehto

Social Sciences

This paper is inspired by, and meant to understand, recent changes in global policy towards foreign aid and international development. 2025 saw one of the biggest changes to international development in decades, when President Donald Trump’s new administration made the decision to effectively shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). At the same time, China has been taking on a growing role in foreign aid and development over the last decade. Chinese projects like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have become globally significant. This paper will explore the changing impacts and influence of both the U.S. …

China’S Health Diplomacy To Asean Through Asean-China Comprehensive Strategic Partnership 2021-2025, Zahra Shaffa Kamila, Deasy Silvya Sari

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

The world always faces limitations in dealing with the pandemic. China had emerged as an active actor in health diplomacy to address this. China was the first country to send vaccines and health aid to Southeast Asia through ASEAN. However, the relationship between China and ASEAN did not begin with the pandemic. Both countries have a long history and recently renewed their plan of action (POA), which serves as evidence of their relationship namely the ASEAN-China Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) 2021-2025. The POA includes a sub-chapter on health that navigates China's health diplomacy towards ASEAN. Therefore, this research aimed to …

Egypt’S Strategic Hedging In Economics With The United States And China From 2014-2024, Abigail Flynn

Theses and Dissertations

This research aims to explain how Egypt is able to engage economically with two internationally competitive powers, the United States and China, using the theoretical framework of strategic hedging in the period of 2014-2024. While existing literature on strategic hedging is primarily focused on Southeast Asia and broadly deals with political hedging, this study applies the framework specifically to Egypt and is limited to economic relations. This research is significant because it identifies how Egypt is able to increase its economic engagement with the U.S. and China despite their competitive status and offers a novel argument which can be tested …

Western Mansions In The Gardens Of Perfect Brightness, Another History Of High Qing Sino-European Exchanges, Nicolas Woreth

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

The Gardens of Perfect Brightness, the favorite residence of Chinese Emperors in the High Qing era (1683-1799), held mysteries that will remain forever concealed from the public eye after French and British imperialist forces looted it and burned it beyond repair during the Second Opium War (1856-1860). Behind the doors of the secret garden, scarcely open to anyone but the emperor, his wives, and servants, worked European artists and scientists. Most of them were Jesuit missionaries who served the emperor in the hope of gaining his favor and support for the spread of Christianity in China.

This paper aims to …

The 2024 Carlisle Conference On The Pla: Protracted War Against The Prc, Joshua Arostegui

Books, Monographs & Collaborative Studies

The US Army War College’s 2024 Carlisle Conference on the People’s Liberation Army was held on October 16 and 17 at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. The conference featured keynote speakers from the US Department of Defense and the think-tank community, and panels focused on assessing the People’s Republic of China’s understanding of and capability to carry out a protracted war in the Indo-Pacific. The conference brought together over 100 participants from government, military, US Intelligence Community, academic, and think-tank organizations.

The conference papers were authored by expert speakers and panelists and were designed to provide insight into key People’s Republic of …

Vacuum Wars: The Belt & Road Initiative’S Rise In The Arab League, Corabeth R. Pierce

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The world has shifted and changed in the last decade, resulting in a new world order. The Middle East and North Africa region houses the Arab League, which has drawn the attention of several states throughout the world. China has shown particular interest in the region since its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was first created in 2013. The BRI demonstrates how China has become more involved in the region and that these Arab states are more interested in what China has to offer compared to other countries. With the United States developing more nationalist policies, the European Union facing …

News Media Sentiment Toward Chinese Ai: A Comparative Analysis With Belt And Road Initiative Involvement And Public Opinion On China, Asya Vaisberg

Pomona Senior Theses

This study evaluates different countries' news media’s sentiment towards Chinese AI, between May 2023 and May 2024, by using Microsoft Azure NLP Sentiment Analysis. The results are then compared with the country’s public opinion on China and its involvement in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). For this study 12 countries have been selected which are USA, Australia, Pakistan, Peru, Russia, Romania, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Philippines, Brazil, and Egypt. For each one, GNews Application Programming Interface (API), which has access to more than 60,000 global news sources, was used to aggregate relevant news articles based on queried keywords. The collected …

Confucian Thought As A Strategic Veil: How Western Strategy Should Correctly Compete With China, Owen Miller

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The rise of the People's Republic of China as a peer competitor to the United States constitutes the defining geopolitical challenge of the twenty-first century, but even so, Western strategic analysis has consistently failed to engage China on its own terms. The recurrent pattern of Western misinterpretation results from projecting Western assumptions onto a state whose institutional and cultural drivers operate under fundamentally different premises, where key elements of Chinese strategic culture and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) instrumentalization of Confucianism as a moral veil are instruments of domestic legitimacy and external strategic narrative. The United States must recognize that …

The Evolving Beijing Consensus: Chinese Communist Party Political Control And Economic Trade Offs, Ian Murphy

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

China’s rapid economic rise and unique development trajectory have long been the subject of scholarly debate, often framed through the concept of the “Beijing Consensus” as an alternative to the Washington Consensus. While initial conceptualizations highlight innovation, sustainability, and national sovereignty, later analyses highlighted elements like state capitalism and authoritarianism, particularly in the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. This paper argues that the Beijing Consensus is undergoing a significant evolution under Chairman Xi Jinping, increasingly prioritizing the Chinese Communist Party’s political security, regime stability, and ideological control at the expense of economic growth. This marks a notable departure …

Revisiting Dependency In The Twenty-First Century: A Critical Analysis Of Africa-China Relations, Chick Edmond

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

This research assesses the characteristics of today’s Africa–China relations using dependency theory, world systems theory, neocolonialism, and South-South cooperation, using comparisons between historical African dependence on European colonial powers and recent reliance on China in terms of trade, infrastructure, debt, and technology. This research identifies how contemporary cooperations either continue previous patterns of economic and political subordination or create a transformation of those relationships or provide a challenge to them. Using qualitative comparative historical analysis, along with specific case studies and secondary sources (academic journals, speeches, government publications, etc.), the research demonstrates that while Africa-China relations exhibit fewer structural features …

Growing Up Under Mao And Deng: On Politician Ideology And Corporate Policies, Hao Liang, Rong Wang, Haikun Zhu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We provide firm-level evidence on how politicians’ ideologies shape economic outcomes, using a unique setting of ideological discontinuity in China, transitioning from Maoism to Dengism around 1978. We find that ideological exposure during a politician’s early adulthood has a lasting impact on contemporary firm policies in their city. Firms governed by “Maoist mayors” show greater stakeholder spending, lower pay inequality, and less internationalization compared with those governed by “Dengist mayors.” Further evidence suggests that politicians’ ideologies influence corporate behaviors through nonpolicy channels, and these results cannot be fully explained by selection bias, endogenous matching, or the age of the mayor.

Securitizing Kinmen: China’S Gray Zone Strategy And The Evolution Of The Kinmen Model, Ian Murphy

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

This paper examines the evolving dynamics of cross-strait relations through the lens of securitization theory, focusing on China’s strategic deployment of what it calls the Kinmen Model and its implications for regional security. While existing discourse predominantly concentrates on a potential full-scale invasion of Taiwan, this study shifts attention to the strategic significance of the outlying islands and the nuanced employment of securitization to exert indirect control. Utilizing Vuori’s (2008) framework for analyzing securitization in non-democratic contexts, this research conducts a discourse analysis of nineteen Chinese language media sources to dissect the speech acts employed by Chinese media and their …

Nationalism And Anglo-American Neo-Colonialism In Southeast Asia, 1945-1965, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

It is tempting to treat the United States’ ill-fated military intervention in Vietnam in the 1960s as the desperate final gasp of a moribund Western imperial system. Certainly, scholars have described Washington’s military debacle in Vietnam as the end of America’s “short-lived empire” in Southeast Asia, emblematic of the broader, decisive triumph of Southeast Asian nationalism over western colonialism. This reading of Southeast Asian countries attaining formal independence after 1945, with tacit assumptions that colonialism and nationalism exist in binary opposition, tends to ossify when the region’s history is viewed through the lens of U.S. defeat in Vietnam.

In contrast, …

Disruptions And Continuity In The Singaporean Chinese Community: Social Networks, Collaborationists, And The Black Market Under The British And Japanese Administrations, 1819-1960, Alison Fong

The Ozark Historical Review

This paper focuses on the Chinese community of Singapore and their experiences under the British colonial administration and the Japanese military administration from 1819 to 1960. It argues that the Chinese community utilized and transformed social networks formed during the British colonial era (1819-1942) to adapt to the upheavals that the Japanese Occupation of Singapore (1942-1945) and the return of the British administration (1945-1960) introduced. These social networks shifted to meet the needs of the Chinese community in response to changing social hierarchies and status quos. Some were based on traditional kinship systems, and others were based on mercantile and …

Interservice Rivalry: Examining The Relationships Between The Intelligence Organizations Of The Navy, The Army And The Oss In China 1939-1943, Samuel G. Peterson

The Ozark Historical Review

Intelligence gathering had a profound impact on WWII. In war-torn China, the US Navy, the Army, and the fledgling OSS contested with each other during the Chinese Nationalists’ fight against the Japanese Empire. The stories of the OSS, the Navy and the Army in China have all, until now, been told from three distinct but interrelated points of view. With each study solely based on a particular organization, bias toward others is inevitable. By synthesizing the sources together and weaving the different interpretations of events simultaneously, a clearer picture of the interdepartmental struggles can be seen. The primary goal of …

The Political Framing Of The 2024 China-Indonesia Joint Statement, Mahbi Maulaya

Global: Jurnal Politik Internasional

Political leaders always carefully choose what to say and how to state it, as all words count for influencing the public, explicitly or implicitly. Eventually, the ideas framed in a political statement are best understood contextually rather than merely textually. After Prabowo Subianto, the president of Indonesia, visited China in November 2024, both countries released a controversial joint statement. This article aims to analyse the political frames observable in the 2024 China-Indonesia joint statement with a discourse analysis method. The article found five political frames in the statement: 1) Indonesia agrees to China’s vision of global order; 2) China has …

Contested Development: China’S Influence, Authoritarian Agency, And Ngo Resistance In Uganda, Saara E. Leppanen

Global Governance Theses and Dissertations

In 2021, the Ugandan government suspended the operations of 54 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), citing a range of administrative and legal justifications. This crackdown reflects a broader pattern emerging across the African continent, where over the past twenty years, more than twenty-four states have introduced restrictions on NGOs, particularly those engaged in human rights advocacy and governance. At the same time, the continent has witnessed a marked increase in Chinese investment, most notably through Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013 as a global infrastructure and development project. While scholarship on the BRI has increased, limited attention has been …

Towards All-Under-Heaven: China’S Geoeconomic Strategy In The Asia-Pacific Region, Alfariza Dika Azzani

Global: Jurnal Politik Internasional

This research aims to understand China’s geoeconomic strategy in reshaping the alternative international order in the Asia-Pacific region. China’s economic rise increased its geopolitical influence and significance as a global great power. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government, under Xi Jinping, has adopted classical ideas in its foreign policymaking, including tianxia. Tianxia is a classical concept of a hierarchical Sinocentric international order. An empirical study was conducted on several cases of China’s economic policy and analysed with the congruence method to determine the correlation between the tianxia concept and China’s economic policy. Tianxia served as a paradigm and justification for …

Anatomy Of An Ai Arms Race: U.S. And China Technological Dispute For Ai Leadership, Denisse I. Rojas Maldonado

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The history of societies and the emergence of powerful states have been marked by cycles of conflict and war, followed by periods of cooperation that foster international stability. Similarly, the Cold War era saw a significant rise in military and economic capabilities, which highlighted a security dilemma as the former USSR and the United States sought to protect their national interests. Currently, artificial intelligence has expanded the scope of invisible warfare beyond the atomic bomb. Some scholars like Paul Scharre advocate that there is no arms race in place, and others support the idea of a healthy competition and collaboration …

Intergenerational Family Dynamics Among Caregivers And Children’S Social-Emotional Development In China, Weiman Xu

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

The early years of a child’s life are pivotal for social-emotional development. While extensive research has explored the role of family settings in fostering children's social-emotional development (Bornstein, 2005), the impact of grandparental involvement, particularly the caregiving dynamics between generations, remains less well understood. This study aims to fill this gap by examining two critical aspects of intergenerational dynamics among caregivers (i.e. parent-grandparent coparenting and parent-grandparent relationship quality) and their associations with children’s social-emotional development (i.e. social skills and problem behaviors). Two specific aims were delineated: 1) examine the unique contribution of parent-grandparent coparenting, especially the power and authority domain …

Diaspora By Another Name: The Making Of Refugees In Cold War China, Jiaqi M. Liu, Clare Xiaoqian Wan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

By examining China’s refugee policies from 1949 to 1982, this article demonstrates how the Chinese state redefined “return” and “refugee” to serve shifting political objectives. While China is often perceived as a source, rather than a host, of asylum seekers, it hosted over 320,000 displaced migrants—primarily ethnic Chinese from Southeast Asia—during the Cold War. Through a systematic discourse analysis of 382 People’s Daily articles, we identify four state narratives—diaspora, diplomatic tool, ideological sanctuary, and legal duty—that structured how China labeled displaced migrants, interpreted their sentiments, and determined their settlement. These models evolved dynamically: from the 1950s to the late 1970s, …

A New City For A New Era: Xiong'an As Showcase Of China's Evolving Urban Ideology, Andrew Stokols

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Cities have long been expressions of political ideology in China and elsewhere. During China’s rapid urbanization over the past few decades, “new areas” became popular strategies to promote urban growth, following the success of Shenzhen, widely regarded as China’s first special economic zone. Today under Xi, Xiong’an New Area has become the latest “new area of national significance.” But unlike previous new areas in China, Xiong’an has become wedded to a distinct vision of the urban in Xi Jinping’s China, one in which the excesses of reform-era urbanization are controlled through new forms of affordable housing and finance, new ecological …

Navigating Tensions: Security And Political Implications Of The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Chris J. Ortiz-Gonzalez

Honors College Theses

Initiated in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a broad foreign policy strategy designed to foster regional and global development through infrastructure investments. The initiative aims to integrate China’s growing economy with the rest of the world via land and maritime networks. A key element of the BRI is the 3,000 km China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which includes highways, railways, oil and gas pipelines, and a fiber optic network connecting Kashgar in China’s southern Xinjiang to Gwadar in Pakistan’s Balochistan. However, numerous regional and global leaders remain wary of China’s intentions, believing that the …