Global Governance and China: The Dragon’s Learning Curve

by Scott Kennedy (Editor)

This volume offers systematic analysis of China’s growing engagement in global governance institutions over the past three decades. During this period, China has gone from outsider to observer to insider. The volume is based on studies of Chinese involvement in a wide cross section of regimes, including trade, finance, intellectual property rights, foreign aid, and climate change.

The contributions show that China’s participation in global governance reflects the mutually interactive processes of China’s own socialization into the global community and the simultaneous adaptation of global institutions and actors to China’s growing activism. Both China and the international system are internally complex. Hence, Chinese engagement varies across economic regimes, yielding different results in terms of Chinese compliance, its influence on regimes, and the extent of cooperation and conflict in addressing challenges in international society. The chapters reveal that China is neither purely a savior nor scofflaw of the global economic system, and while China is a defender of the status quo in some areas, it is a reformer in others, and occasionally a revisionist in still other spheres.

A detailed analysis of many areas of global governance, this volume will be essential reading for students and scholars of international relations, Chinese studies and global governance.