A plethora of work on Chinese foreign policy has sought to decipher what China wants, what its strategies are, and how it implements (or fails to implement) its designs. These efforts have produced a number of sophisticated analyses that provide valuable insights into various aspects of Chinese international behaviour. Nonetheless, these advances in our knowledge have taken place against the background of an increasingly fragmented field. Indeed, there seems to be a widening degree of divergence between the conclusions of various analysts and scholars. Some see China pursuing long-term plans with remarkable patience, precision, and cunning. Others view Chinese foreign policy as suffering from myopia and fragmentation. Some describe China as behaving in ways that are not much different from other rising powers of the past. Others claim China is a new form of great power given its culture, form of governance, or economic and technological advances. In this talk, Prof Todd Hall—drawing upon a co-authored paper with Andrea Ghiselli of Fudan University—seeks to make sense of this diversity, arguing that there may be more complementarity among these approaches than may at first seem.
Prof Todd Hall is Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, Tutorial Fellow for Politics at St Anne’s College, and Director of the University of Oxford’s China Centre.
He is an alum of the Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program (2008-2010).
This event is a hybrid with both in-person attendees and an online audience. It is sponsored by the China and the World Program and co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. To register for the online event please register here or https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qz5TDPEaSI6JuqlNm7gXKA. If you are attending in-person, please go to 'INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS BUILDING AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY - 420 W. 118TH ST., NEW YORK, NY 10027 ROOM 918'
