CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Marinkovic, Dragana |
|---|---|
| Title | China and the West in Peacebuilding and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Towards Political Stability and Economic Growth |
| Summary | The thesis examines why is there a convergence between China and the West in peacebuilding interventions, towards a focus on economic growth and political stability. With the disillusionment in the idea of liberal peace, most of the Western actors have slowly been distancing themselves from the emphasis on building democratic institutions and neoliberal market economies, towards state led economic growth, private sector development and stable political institutions in their peacebuilding interventions. China’s recent more proactive engagement in peacebuilding has had a very similar focus. China has officially tried to distance itself from the Western approach to peacebuilding and make non-interference, economic cooperation and win-win rhetoric the center of its official policy towards conflict-affected states. However, there is a growing engagement from the Chinese side with issues of political stability as well as China’s participation in United Nations’ (UN) peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions. This is counterintuitive for China who, in its rhetoric has shown ambition to change the current principles of peacebuilding and make its own approach significantly different from the West. This thesis argues that China and the West are converging around political stability and economic growth in peacebuilding interventions because of their different economic interests, geopolitical interests, previous failures of peacebuilding interventions, and the new emphasis on development effectiveness. Post-conflict engagement of both China and the West in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) illustrates how this convergence is happening. In DRC, the UN, World Bank as well as bilateral donors, are focusing heavily on stabilization and supporting the government with infrastructure and private sector development interventions aiming to make DRC an investment friendly environment. China, while engaged in infrastructure and investment in DRC, has also taken part in more politically sensitive interventions both as part of the UN peacebuidling as well as bilaterally. This shows that while the two have different reasons for their shifting approaches to peacebuilding, the outcome is convergence around the two main principles of stability and growth. |
| Supervisor | Daniel Large |
| Department | School of Public Policy MPA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/marinkovic_dragana.pdf |
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