China's Foreign Relations and the Survival of Autocracies

This book investigates the rise of China as an emerging major power and seeks to answer the question whether China’s rise stabilises other non-democratic leaders in the world. By comparing China’s bilateral relations to three Asian developing countries – Cambodia, Burma and Mongolia - with varying political types of regime, the book illustrates that the Chinese government has indeed profited from exploiting secretive decision making in autocracies to realise its own external interests such as achieving access to natural resources. However, only some forms of bilateral interaction, such as high trade dependence on China, effectively do increase the prospect of survival for autocratic leaders while others, such as diplomatic relations or economic cooperation do not have such an effect.

The Chinese government has frequently been criticized for propping up anti-democratic governments. This book investigates the rise of China as an emerging authoritarian power. By comparing China’s bilateral relations to three Asian developing countries – Burma, Cambodia and Mongolia – it examines how China targets specific groups of actors in autocracies versus non-autocracies. It illustrates how the Chinese non-interference policy translates into support for incumbent leaders in autocratic countries and how the Chinese government has thereby profited from exploiting secretive decision making in autocracies to realize its own external interests such as achieving access to natural resources. In a statistical analysis of the patterns of Chinese external cooperation and their impact on the survival of autocratic leaders, the book finds some evidence that China is more likely to target autocracies with economic cooperation. However, only some forms of bilateral interaction are found to increase the prospect of survival for autocratic leaders.

This important contribution to the understanding of both external factors of authoritarian endurance and China’s foreign relations, a field of study still lacking systematic investigation, will be of great interest to students and researchers in Development Studies, Asian Studies, International Relations, and International Political Economy.