China Studies

Excerpt from HANDBOOK ON CHINA AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, edited by Carla P. Freeman, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015; 2016.  Examines the environmental dimension of China's interactions with developing countries through the lens of the role China is playing in deforestation.

There are vast spaces of the earth that lie outside the sovereign jurisdiction of any
single sovereign state, including much of the world’s oceans, the atmosphere, outer
space, and the continent of Antarctica. Accessible to all, these “global commons” serve
as vital zones for global connectivity, as well as a critical source for military power and environmental resources. Yet, they lack strong global institutions to govern them. This discussion considers how changes to the international order, driven by the rise of new actors, new technologies, and new tests to human and environmental security, pose risks to the future of global spaces shared by all.

For six decades, China’s central authorities have promoted
development in ethnic regions through special fiscal allocations with the
idea that economic development is the key to national integration and
inter-ethnic harmony. Yet, inter-ethnic tensions and violence persist in
China. Focusing on historical changes to fiscal allocations as the principal policy instrument used by Beijing to promote development in ethnic areas, this analysis finds these changes mirror broad shifts in the country’s national development strategy. As the study argues, this pattern reflects an approach to development policy in ethnic regions whereby policies serve central objectives consistent with a policy process for determining
the fiscal allocations to ethnic regions that has been both centrally
concentrated and non-participatory. With evidence that this “nonengaging” approach may be exacerbating ethnic tensions, Beijing has made efforts to introduce more “inclusive” approaches to determining policies for ethnic regions; however, whether these approaches will be institutionalized remains unclear.

China has recently begun promoting market-oriented policy instruments to reduce carbon emissions as part of its domestic climate strategy. A centerpiece of this new policy approach has been the launch of pilot carbon markets in seven distinct regions. Based on extensive field visits to all pilot markets under development, this analysis assesses the implications of this “bottom-up” approach to carbon market development for the prospects for nationwide carbon trading in China. It concludes that initiating carbon trading in the seven regions across China with insufficient capacity building, an extremely compressed time frame, and little bureaucratic coordination has engendered challenges for the development of a national carbon market. Nevertheless, these pilots have advanced the prospects for sustained climate action in China at the local level through their contribution to indigenous technical and human capacity as well as through engaging new stakeholders, including domestic and international actors, supportive of the development of an eventual national trading scheme.

Considerable analysis has focused on regions in which a fragile state or states interact with neighboring states to incubate widening, regional conflict; however, work addressing the impact of fragile states on the countries with which they share an international border from a subregional or subnational perspective has been more limited. This chapter seeks to contribute to filling this gap by looking at the particular vulnerabilities to human security experienced by the subregions along borders of fragile states. Focusing on China's border with North Korea, this chapter examines the dimensions of fragility in China's border areas to formulate some preliminary conclusions about the dynamics of subregional fragility.

Introductory Chapter to China and North Korea: Strategic and Policy Perspectives from a Changing China,  C. Freeman (ed.), 2015, 978-1-137-45565-9
At a time when Chinese policy makers appear to be rethinking China's historically close alliance relationship with North Korea, this volume gathers a diverse collection of original essays by some of China's leading experts on North Korea and China's North Korea policy.

This paper explores the prospects for greater regional cooperation in the neighborhood zone shared by China and India. As China and India have grown in international power and influence, their strategic rivalry has intensified. At the same time, the two states recognize that there are substantial potential gains to be made from cooperation between their two highly complementary economies. Moreover, broadening cooperation beyond the bilateral to the regional level could increase and enlarge opportunities for both economic development and the management of many common challenges facing the two countries and their still developing regional neighbors. This analysis takes as its starting point the understanding that many points of bilateral friction between China and India are linked to the geographic proximity of the two states.

“Flood Across the Border: China’s Disaster Relief Operations and Potential Response to a North Korean Refugee Crisis" considers the planning, capacities and mechanisms for addressing natural disasters and domestic crises in the People’s Republic of China and the implications for Chinese management of a potential crisis involving a rapid and unexpected increase in the volume of North Korean refugees fleeing to Chinese territory. Its focus is on structures and organizations in Jilin Province and its subordinate Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.