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China's rapid economic growth over the past three decades has endowed it with enormous power. Chinese leaders now want to harness this power to become the world's dominant country, replacing the US as the global superpower. In How China Loses, Luke Patey argues that despite all its strengths, China cannot simply get what it wants. The ambitiousness of China's global economic agenda and pursuit of military expansion are undermining its ability to realize its geopolitical plans; other countries are beginning to resist. Weaving together on-the-ground reportage and analysis from Africa to Latin America, East Asia to Europe, Patey explores how the world is responding to China's rise and what this means for everyone.

China's rapid economic growth over the past three decades has endowed it with enormous power. Chinese leaders now want to harness this power to become the world's dominant country, replacing the US as the global superpower. In 'How China Loses', Luke Patey argues that despite all its strengths, China cannot simply get what it wants. The ambitiousness of China's global economic agenda and pursuit of military expansion are undermining its ability to realize its geopolitical plans; other countries are beginning to resist. Weaving together on-the-ground reportage and analysis from Africa to Latin America, East Asia to Europe, Patey explores how the world is responding to China's rise and what this means for everyone.

Abstract
China shows a growing commitment to peacemaking and peacekeeping overseas. Yet Chinese peace efforts have met considerable challenges across multiple conflict settings. This article seeks to understand the difficulties facing Chinese peacemaking and peacekeeping and asks how these experiences influence the future behaviour of Chinese actors towards peace and conflict issues. Previous scholarship has largely taken a state-centric perspective to explain China's engagement in peacemaking and peacekeeping. In contrast, this article harnesses an assemblage approach to reveal the diversity of Chinese actors and the significant role local actors and normative forms of power play in influencing China's broader peace efforts. In South Sudan, it finds that the political ideas advanced by warring factions and the legitimacy they placed on United Nations peacekeeping intervention, both undermined Chinese peacemaking and peacekeeping and held far-reaching effects for Chinese actors beyond the conflict. Consequently, these challenges in South Sudan pushed China's national oil company to adopt new risk management policies throughout its investments in conflict settings. The South Sudan experience also influenced China's foreign ministry by tempering its proactive approach to conflict resolution in other conflict-affected countries and to promote peacekeeper safety and support peacekeeping intelligence at the United Nations.

East Africa has followed a long road of highs and lows in developing its oil resources. On the back of high global oil prices between 2004 and 2014, a rush of new exploration put the region on the map as a new frontier for African oil. But it did not take long for the momentum of East Africa's oil rush to lose steam. Long regulatory delays, security risks, and the fall of global oil prices, all served to deflate expectations for the region's potential. This paper examines the development, potential, and main risks facing oil industries in Uganda, Kenya, and South Sudan, as well as plans for regional pipelines in East Africa. It finds that beyond the impact of domestic political and security conditions, what defines the emergence of East Africa as a new African energy centre is the growing influence of regional politics.

In the past two decades, China's national oil companies have become new players in the international oil industry. When they first entered the global scene in the 1990s, Chinese NOCs held few competitive advantages over international oil companies. They lacked the organizational capabilities and expertise to manage large projects overseas and had little experience with political and security risk. This article argues that political, social and security dynamics in the host countries of Chinese NOCs can play a transformative role in shaping their competitiveness and global strategy. It demonstrates how experiences in Sudan and South Sudan were instrumental in leveraging the competitiveness of the China National Petroleum Corporation, China's largest oil company, particularly through developing its risk management capabilities, and steering its global strategy towards a more diverse and balanced investment portfolio. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

ABSTRACTThe efforts of American activists to pressure Asian corporations in Sudan have to date resembled a struggle to find the light switch in the dark, or swimming against a strong current. While the impact of the divestment campaign in the United States has been increasingly evident, its effectiveness in producing actual results in Sudan remains suspect. Thanks to China and a trio of Asian national oil companies, oil still flows in Sudan. The campaign's activities have failed to incorporate Sudan's wider international political and economic relations into its strategy. It has rather paradoxically sought to pressure state-owned corporations through financial market divestment. The nature of its Asian targets, reluctant Western investors and a distracted American government have obstructed the campaign from having a resounding impact in Sudan.

The strategic behaviour of international oil companies in war-torn Sudan was overwhelmingly driven by political pressure from governments. After almost 20 years of operating in Sudan, the US giant Chevron was pushed to withdraw as a result of deteriorating relations between Washington and Khartoum. The Canadian flagship oil company, Talisman, which helped kick-start oil development after Chevron's exit also fell victim to Washington's ire. On the other hand, the European junior oil companies, Lundin and omv, protected by the European Union's political standpoint of 'constructive engagement' in Sudan, were free to profit. Finally, the eastern parastatals, led by a surging China, eager to capture international energy resources to fuel their budding economies and supported by the plural relationships fostered between their respective governments and the ruling, riverine elite in Khartoum, tactfully established a dominating presence. While fervent international human rights advocacy alone seemingly drove susceptible Western firms out of Sudan, the real power behind corporate movements came from the rules dictated by states. Adapted from the source document.

By successfully turning to China, Malaysia and India from the mid-1990s, amidst civil war and political isolation, Khartoum's 'Look East' policy transformed Sudan's economy and foreign relations. Sudan, in turn, has been a key theatre of Chinese, Indian and Malaysian overseas energy investment. What began as economic engagements born of pragmatic necessity later became politicized within Sudan and without, resulting in global attention. Despite its importance, widespread sustained interest and continuing political controversy, there is no single volume publication examining the rise and nature of Chinese, Malaysian and Indian interests in Sudan, their economic and political consequences, and role in Sudan's foreign relations. Addressing this gap, this book provides a groundbreaking analysis of Sudan's 'Look East' policy. It offers the first substantive treatment of a subject of fundamental significance within Sudan that, additionally, has become a globally prominent dimension of its changing international politics. Daniel Large is research director of the Africa Asia Centre, Royal African Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and founding director of the Rift Valley Institute's digital Sudan Open Archive. Luke A. Patey is a Research Fellow at the Danish Institute for International Studies

Sudan is at an important, historic moment. The upcoming referendum vote may very likely result in the South becoming an independent state. Since the landmark signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, China, and to a lesser extent India, have become even more important political and economic partners of the ruling National Congress Party in Khartoum. Generally, commentaries and studies covering China and India's relations with Sudan focus on their interactions with the central government in Khartoum. However, this paper finds that both have also followed a necessary hedging strategy by establishing quasi-diplomatic relations with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-run Government of Southern Sudan in Juba. Both have expanded economic and political relations beyond investment in Sudan's oil sector and beyond merely engaging Khartoum. Chinese and Indian engagement with the GOSS in Juba marks a major shift in policy from dealing exclusively with the central government. The adaptation of both to political developments, however, does not leave them invulnerable to present uncertainties revolving around Sudan's potential split. Due to its economic role in Sudan, China in particular is in a unique position to promote a peaceful transition.

Abstract
How does the experience of peacekeeping shape the countries that contribute troops and the troops themselves, individually and collectively? Most of the peacekeeping literature's focus has traditionally been on field missions, the countries that host them and the challenges of attracting sufficient and appropriately trained troops. We suggest that more emphasis should be put not only on the locations where missions deploy, but also on the individuals, countries and institutions that make up the missions. To analytically capture this more comprehensive understanding of what peacekeeping is—its multiple effects across space—we suggest drawing on the concept of assemblages to make an analytical shift from peacekeeping missions to global peacekeeping assemblages. First, this approach abandons the prior analytical separation of field mission, host country and contributing state/organization as discrete or isolated analytical focus points. Second, it encourages a detailed empirical methodology that focuses on how multiplicities of different actors, knowledges, technologies, norms and values through power struggles and negotiations constitute assemblages in geographically dispersed locations. Third, we suggest treating peacekeeping as flexible social facts, as outcomes of the co-functioning of heterogenous actors with diverse motivations and objectives that cannot be traced back to a single, but rather multiple point(s) of origin(s).