China's Energy Relations with the Developing World

Will fill in gap in the literature on China by looking at a topic of growing importance in geopolitics and international relations.

Carrie Liu Currier is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of Asian Studies at Texas Christian University. Her research interests are focused on China's economic reform policies to understand how developing countries are adapting to the demands of globalization. Her publications include several articles in the American Journal of Chinese Studies, Journal of Chinese Political Science, Politics and Policy.
Manochehr Dorraj is Professor of Political Science at Texas Christian University where he teaches courses on International Relations, Globalization, Politics of Developing Nations, and the Politics of the Middle East and North Africa. He has published extensively on Third World and Middle East development issues and their foreign relations.

Part I. Theoretical and Historical Overview
1. The Strategic Implications of China's Energy Engagement with the Developing World
Carrie Liu Currier and Manochehr Dorraj

2. The Evolution of China's Grand Strategy with the Developing World
Lui Hebron

3. The Domestic Political Context for China's Quest for Energy Security
Jean A. Garrison

Part II. Regional Case Studies
4. China's Quest for Energy Security in the Middle East: Strategic Implications
Manochehr Dorraj and Carrie Liu Currier

5. China, Russia, and Central Asia: Triangular Energy Politics
Gregory Gleason

6. China's Energy Relations with Africa
ZHAO Hong

7. China, Latin America, and the United States:  The Political Economy of Energy Policy in the Americas
Gregg B. Johnson and Jesse T. Wasson

8. A Strategic Game: China's Energy Relations with Japan and India
Jian Yang

Part III. Challenges for the Future
9.  Pipelines versus Sea Lanes: Challenges and Opportunities for Securing Energy Resources
Andrew S. Erickson and Gabriel B. Collins

10. China's Energy Relations with the Global South: Potential for Great Power Realignment
Charles E. Ziegler

Index

"This book offers a variety of excellent essays that cover many new developments in China's quest for energy security, its energy strategies, and its interactions abroad in the developing world, with regional coverage of Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America as playing fields, and country coverage of China, Russia, the United States, Japan, and India as key players in those regions. This book is a must for energy policy analysts and scholars dealing with China's foreign policy behavior in the developing world. The insights offered by the authors would be invaluable for understanding China's quest for energy security abroad."-Sujian Guo, Professor of Political Science and Director of Center for US-China Policy Studies at San Francisco State University
Many commentators have grappled with the strategic implications of China's resource drive in the developing world. Few however have done this as eloquently and thoughtfully as the contributors to the volume edited by Currier and Dorraj. It offers a wealth of solid knowledge and sharp insights into the evolution, patterns, and practices of China's pursuit of energy security. Apart from examining rigorously the history, regional contexts, and prospective trajectories of Beijing's global outlook, the collection provides a revealing and pioneering engagement with China's own unique juncture between the developing and developed worlds. In this setting, while provocatively contending that energy security is an ongoing quest rather than an attainable end-state, the volume offers a much-needed reconsideration of the conceptual and policy outlines of China's emerging international agency. The analysis of Beijing's increasing interest and investment in the developing world demonstrates that the dominant Western view of China as either a friend or a foe obscures the nuances of what is ultimately a much more complex Chinese involvement in the dynamics of global politics. Thus, to the buffs of Chinese foreign policy, the volume edited by Currier and Dorraj offers a superbly researched account of both the analytical and empirical engagement with Beijing's international agency. To the neophytes, it makes available a rarely comprehensive glimpse into China's energy relations with the developing world. It is expected therefore that the scope and depth of the volume will be invaluable for the purposes of both teaching and further analysis of the ongoing transformations in global life as a result of increasing prominence of China's external outreach. - Emilian Kavalski - Lecturer in Politics and International Relations School of Humanities and Languages/ Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy University of Western Sydney
"The book impresses by its breadth of regional coverage and wealth of details on foreign relations centered on China's energy policy and oil and gas investments abroad. Informed by theories of international relations and energy economics, the chapter contributors provide interpretative overviews of the recent diplomatic entanglements of insatiable Chinese energy demand and foreign oil producers who are more than willing to feed it.The chapters focusing on growing Chinese economic relations in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa make a particularly strong impact, in carefully qualifying the conventional state-centric perspective on energy security with considerations of market trends, technological shocks, linkages to environmental and trade issues, and interstate dynamics that define the window of opportunity for China's shifting international energy supply and asset portfolios. The authors provide a useful reminder that China's economic relationships with India, Japan, and Russia cannot be reduced to a simple characterization of competition or cooperation. Elsewhere in developing countries where Chinese leaders have cultivated tremendous goodwill, aid and foreign direct investment, we need to be keenly aware of the hidden risks and fluidity in these contingent partnerships.More generally, policymakers should be advised to consider the question of whether the interests of various domestic and international stakeholders in China's economic expansionism could be brought into alignment through a carefully crafted series of mutually beneficial home-host country relations. Scholars wishing to contribute to an important and underdeveloped research agenda and business persons seeking to deepen their global vision of China's energy needs will be well served by this volume." - Dr Kun-Chin Lin, Lecturer, King's China Institute, King's College London
[the book is] highly accessible while remaining informative as well as nuanced in [its] analysis.
... this work is a valuable addition to the literature on China's energy problems and those of developing countries, and therefore will be of great interest to those who are involved in China's energy relations with developing countries. Overall this book can be considered a useful source for professors, students and researchers of international relations, specifically in the field of the energy issues of China and developing countries.