Abstract
This thesis evaluates China’s use of neomercantilism as a geoeconomic strategy aimed at the ‘rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’. It seeks to provide a detailed empirical account of what geoeconomic strategy the CCP has sought to employ to achieve its rejuvenation while also evaluating the success and limits of this strategy. The central premise is that China has used neomercantilism to achieve two overarching rejuvenation goals: (1) establishing China’s global pre-eminence and (2) doing so under CCP rule. Using an embedded mixed-method design, it is demonstrated that China’s neomercantilist geoeconomic strategy has developed in two phases, that being: the “bringing-in phase” (1978-2012) and the “going-out phase” (2000-hitherto).
Emphasis is placed on China’s introduction of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, representing the hallmark of its going-out phase and arrival as a great power. Nigeria and Indonesia and their economic relationship with China between 2000 and 2021 are used as case studies to demonstrate the neomercantilist nature of China’s going-out phase within a real-world context.
The thesis shows that China’s emphasis on win-win economic cooperation is driven by its quest to achieve a predominant hub-and-spoke system of ‘beneficial dependency’. This is intended to strengthen its structural and relational power and to establish a sphere of influence centred around China’s economic superiority. However, while China’s neomercantilist strategy has successfully enhanced the country’s economic wealth and power, the strategy is context-dependent, and its success is determined by several contingencies. These are (a) the ability of the Chinese Communist Party to maintain its monopoly on power domestically; (b) the balance of power globally; (c) the specifics of the region in which China chooses to operate; and (d) on the degree to which the targets of Chinese neomercantilism resist or accommodate China’s neomercantilist strategy.