BOOKS
China and Global Security Governance
Courtney J. Fung (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/Cambridge Elements in Global China Series, forthcoming).
What explains China’s response to intervention at the UN Security Council? I argue that status is an overlooked determinant in understanding its decisions, even in the apex cases that are shadowed by a public discourse calling for foreign-imposed regime change in Sudan, Libya, and Syria. The book posits that China reconciles its status dilemma as it weighs decisions to intervene: seeking recognition from both its intervention peer groups of great powers and developing states. Understanding the impact and scope conditions of status answers why China has taken certain positions regarding intervention and how these positions were justified. Foreign policy behavior that complies with status, and related social factors like self-image and identity, means that China can select policy options bearing material costs. China and Intervention at the UN Security Council offers a rich study of Chinese foreign policy, going beyond works available in breadth and in depth. It draws on an extensive collection of data, including over two hundred interviews with UN officials and Chinese foreign policy elites, participant observation at UN Headquarters and a dataset of Chinese-language analysis regarding foreign-imposed regime change and intervention. The book concludes with new perspectives on the malleability of China’s core interests, insights about the application of status for cooperation, and the implications of the status dilemma for rising powers.
PRIZES
2019–2020 HKU Research Output Prize for the Faculty of Social Sciences
Shortlisted for the LHM Ling Outstanding First Book Prize by the British International Studies Association
PODCAST
Interview with Ms. Bonnie Glaser, CSIS ChinaPower Podcast Series, 19 June 2019
ENDORSEMENTS
Thomas J. Christensen, Columbia University
With this very fine book, Courtney Fung has established herself as the leading authority on China’s policies regarding humanitarian intervention by the United Nations. Reconciling Status is essential reading for anyone interested in international humanitarian crises, the United Nations, or the implications of China’s rise for world politics.
Rosemary Foot, University of Oxford
Carefully argued, theoretically astute and empirically rich, this book provides crucial insights into the bounded variation of China’s positions at the UN Security Council on intervention. The author’s contributions are many, including how social influence works to mediate Chinese interests, and how process-tracing can effectively be applied in International Relations scholarship. This book is essential reading for all those interested in China’s UN behaviour.
Steve Chan, University of Colorado, Boulder
China’s attitudes toward United Nations interventions in situations of civil war and mass atrocities have evolved from skeptical opposition to conditional support. Comparing Beijing’s actions in cases involving Sudan, Libya and Syria, Courtney Fung makes a novel contribution to our understanding of Chinese foreign policy. She shows that under certain conditions, Beijing’s position on such interventions with a strong undertone of regime change can be influenced by international political opinion and consideration of China’s international status. This book should be on the shelves of all scholars interested in China’s increasing participation in multilateral diplomacy and its quest for status recognition, which can be a source for international cooperation rather than just competition as usually assumed in the current literature.
REVIEWS
Andrew J. Nathan, Columbia University. Review in Foreign Affairs
Fung makes sense of China’s seemingly confused voting record at the UNSC on issues involving armed interventions and the referral of leaders to the ICC.
Champa Patel, Chatham House. Review in International Affairs
This is an important and timely contribution to the field of China, international peace and security and global governance studies and is essential reading for those seeking to better understand China's actions.
Joel Wuthnow, National Defense University. Review in China Quarterly
She not only draws attention to an underappreciated motive of Chinese foreign policy, but also develops a sophisticated, and largely persuasive, theory of how and when status concerns encourage leaders to do the unexpected.
John Delury, Yonsei University. Review in Global Asia
With theoretical sophistication and detailed case studies, Fung argues that Beijing carefully gauges how two key “peer groups” will judge its position on sensitive cases of potential UN intervention in another state’s domestic affairs, and acts accordingly... her study has important implications for understanding how Beijing approaches international co-operation, particularly intervention.
Jingdong Yuan, University of Sydney, Review in Australian Outlook
Courtney J. Fung’s China and Intervention at the UN Security Council offers a fascinating insight into the rationales, debates, and policy choices of Beijing’s responses to humanitarian interventions. In particular, this new addition to the growing scholarship on Chinese foreign policy seeks to explain an important, but thus far understudied, determinant—status—that increasingly features with increasing prominence in its decisions.
Mauro Barelli, City University Law School, Review in International Community Law Review
This is a very well written and rigorously researched book. One of its principal merits is that it draws extensively on primary resources, including over 200 interviews with UN officials and Chinese foreign policy elites. With this very welcome book, Fung does not only help the reader understand how China approaches the question of non-consensual intervention at the Security Council, but also exposes Beijing’s increasing difficulties in manoeuvering between the often contradictory interests of the two peer groups with which it identifies itself. The way in which China will respond to this challenge will have profound implications because it will not only affect Beijing’s handling of conflict situations but will also define, more broadly, its identity as a new global power.
Marc Lanteigne, Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Review in The China Journal
China and Intervention at the UN Security Council is a timely book, given
emerging dialogues about how Beijing, as its power increases, is seeking to redefine many aspects of the international order...It is essential reading for those interested in studying the course of Chinese foreign policy from regional to international concerns, the country’s widening engagement with the UN system and its security organs, and the kind of great power, with the ability to influence global rules and norms, that China is evolving into.