This thought-provoking webinar challenges the conventional wisdom in policy and academic circles regarding Chinese foreign policy. China is often perceived as a monolithic, top-down authoritarian juggernaut. However, this perspective is at best incomplete and at worst misleading. In this webinar, Professor Andrew Mertha from the Johns Hopkins University will illuminated how the rough-and-tumble domestic politics of China have become internationalized, deeply complicating foreign policy decisions crafted in the halls of power in Beijing and playing out in aid- and investment-recipient countries.
This is not simply a question of domestic politics constraining international politics but rather of domestic politics competing with, and in some cases supplanting, China’s nationally defined foreign policy goals. Because China’s domestic politics are overwhelmingly fragmented, decentralized, and subnational in character, such a framing is in sharp contrast with and in direct opposition to our most important key assumptions of Chinese governance, domestic and international. Professor Mertha discussed cases across Nicaragua, Myanmar, Ghana, and Cambodia to illustrate this larger trend.
About the Speaker
Andrew Mertha
Andrew Mertha is the George and Sadie Hyman Professor of China Studies, Director of the China Studies Program, and Director of the SAIS China Global Research Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). From 2019 to 2021, Mertha served as the Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs and International Research Cooperation at SAIS. He is formerly a professor of Government at Cornell University and an assistant professor of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis. Mertha specializes in Chinese bureaucratic politics, political institutions, and the domestic and foreign policy process. More recently, he has extended his research interests to include Cambodia. Mertha has written three books, The Politics of Piracy: Intellectual Property in Contemporary China (Cornell University Press, 2005), China’s Water Warriors: Citizen Action and Policy Change (Cornell University Press, 2008), and Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979 (Cornell University Press, 2014). He has articles appearing in The China Quarterly, Comparative Politics, International Organization, Issues & Studies, CrossCurrents, and Orbis. He has also contributed chapters to several edited volumes, including Engaging the Law in China: State, Society and Possibilities for Justice (edited by Neil Diamant, Stanley Lubman, and Kevin O’Brien, Stanford University Press, 2005); China’s Foreign Trade Policy: the New Constituencies (edited by Ka Zeng, Routledge, 2007); and State and Society in 21st Century China, 2nd Edition (edited by Peter Gries and Stanley Rosen, Routledge, 2010). His edited volume, May Ebihara’s Svay: A Cambodian Village, with an Introduction by Judy Ledgerwood (Cornell University Press/Cornell Southeast Asia Program Press) was published in 2018.