Daniel Large

China & the Contradictions of ‘Non-interference’ in Sudan

The core Chinese foreign policy principle of non-interference has recently come under increasing and more visible strain in Chinas relations with Sudan. Noninterference has been central to Beijings relations with different governments in Khartoum since 1959. From the mid-1990s, however, the Chinese role in Sudan has become more embedded and consequential. Today China faces the challenge of accommodating its established policy of non-interference with the more substantive and growing complexity of Chinese involvement developed over the past decade in Sudan, amidst ongoing conflict in western Darfur and changing politics after the North-South peace agreement of January 2005.

China’s Sudan engagement: changing Northern and Southern political trajectories in peace and war

China has developed a more consequential role in Sudan over the past two decades, during which it has become bound up in the combination of enduring violent internal instability and protracted external adversity that has characterized the politics of the central state since the 1989 Islamist revolution. Two inter-related political trajectories of China’s Sudan engagement are examined here. The first concerns Beijing’s relations with the ruling National Congress party in incorporating China into its domestic politics and foreign relations amidst war in Darfur, to which Beijing has responded through a more engaged political role. The second confronts the practical limitations of China’s sovereignty doctrine and exclusive reliance upon relations with the central state. Following the peace agreement of 2005 that ended the North–South war, and motivated by political imperatives linked to investment protection concerns, China has developed new relations with the semi-autonomous Government of Southern Sudan, thus seeking to position itself to navigate Sudan’s uncertain political future.

China’s exceptionalism and the challenges of delivering difference in Africa

This article explores the notion of ‘Chinas exceptionalism’ in Africa, a prominent feature in Beijings current continental and bilateral engagement. ‘Chinas exceptionalism’ is understood as a normative modality of engagement that seeks to structure relations such that, though they may remain asymmetrical in economic content they are nonetheless characterised as equal in terms of recognition of economic gains and political standing (mutual respect and political equality). This article considers the burden that the central Chinese government has assumed through its self-construction and mobilisation of a position of exceptionalism and, concurrently, the imperatives that flow from such rhetorical claims of distinctiveness in terms of demonstrating and delivering difference as a means to sustain the unity and coherence of these rhetorical commitments.

On Becoming a Norms Maker: Chinese Foreign Policy, Norms Evolution and the Challenges of Security in Africa

This article explores China’s engagement with the development of norms on security in Africa, with particular attention to its changing post-conflict engagement. Applying the gradualism characteristic of its approach to policy formulation and implementation, the Chinese policymaking community is playing a key role in seeking to redefine the contemporary international approach to managing African security dilemmas. By reinterpreting concepts such as liberal peacebuilding, Chinese policymakers have begun a process of reframing established norms on security and development that are more in line with its principles and core interests. This agenda in the making has enabled the Chinese government to move beyond the constraints of a rhetoric rooted in non-interference in domestic affairs that prohibited involvement in African security issues to a set of practices that allows China to play a more substantive role in security on the continent.

Africa’s International China Relations: Contending Imaginaries and Changing Politics

China’s accelerated engagement in Africa is arguably the foremost single factor that has elevated Africa’s position in contemporary international relations. Following decades of comparative obscurity, China’s relations with Africa have become a regular feature of media coverage, academic research, and policy engagement, not to mention burgeoning business connections. Commentators from diverse quarters have ascribed varying perspectives about the nature and significance of the non-Western agency represented by China’s involvement. One widely articulated theme is that the Chinese engagement is transformative not merely in potential but also in concrete actuality. If it maybe premature to assert such grand proclamations as those that contend Africa is “undergoing a transformation as momentous as decolonization,” it can certainly be said that “the Chinese are penetrating the imagination of an entire continent.”1

Sudan and South Sudan: A Testing Ground for Beijing’s Peace and Security Engagement

This chapter takes the case studies of Sudan and South Sudan where China has played a significant if sometimes controversial role. Investigating the shifting policy positions and response to crisis engendered by Chinese multilateral engagement and its commercial interests in the region, the constraints and obstacles to constructive involvement are highlighted through this study.