Scholarship for Students from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in Durham University, UK : Department of Geography and the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies, Durham University

Interdisciplinary PhD studentship: ‘China and International Responsibility in Africa’

The Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies and the Department of Geography at the University of Durham are pleased to announce an inter-disciplinary PhD studentship funded by the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health to be held from 2010. The project will be co-supervised by David Kerr (School of Government and International Affairs) and Marcus Power (Geography).

About the project: China and International Responsibility in Africa

The project will examine China’s role in the security and development of Africa, an issue which has risen to considerable prominence in recent years. While there have been a number of projects on this role – including that led by Power at Durham – this project differs by bringing interdisciplinary strands together. The first strand is the notion of international responsibility (Kerr). The US and Europe have established a benchmark for China as a ‘responsible international stakeholder’; but this leaves uncertain how China will respond and conform to existing norms of responsibility and institutional structures. China has an established preference in favour of sovereignty-centred norms and against cosmopolitan norms, such as responsibility to protect. This, combined with China’s rising commercial and political influence, makes a study of China’s shifting perceptions of international responsibility a pressing issue. The second disciplinary strand is the study of Africa as a case of China’s approach to governance (Power). China’s intervention in Africa has been quite distinct from that of other international donors and development agencies given the long standing principle of ‘non-interference’. This combined with its drive for natural resources has had negative implications for the prospect of governance reform and is deemed to have extended the life of problematic political regimes (in Zimbabwe, Angola, the DRC or Sudan for example). Much of the discussion of China’s role in African governance has been based on limited knowledge and crude extrapolations and there has been a surfeit of poor and tentative scholarship on this issue. In order to advance the debate on the governance implications of China’s ‘partnership’ with African states more in-depth case studies are required based upon field research in China and Africa and drawing upon a range of qualitative research methods.
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