After a long hiatus, the China-MENA Bookshelf is back! I spoke today with Andrea Ghiselli, a Lecturer in International Politics at University of Exeter and Research Director at the ChinaMED Project (which has a Substack that you absolutely should be subscribing to). Andrea published a fantastic book in 2021, Protecting China's Interests Overseas: Securitization and Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press). From the book’s landing page:
This is the first scholarly book-sized study that explores and pinpoints in a systematic way the origin and evolution of China's approach to defending its interests overseas, and the use of its military to do so
Provides a uniquely comprehensive and in-depth analysis of how China makes and carries out its foreign and security policy
Provides new critical insights into drivers of Chinese foreign and security policymaking, and allows the reader to reflect on how we study Chinese foreign policy and the need to find new ways to do so
For those of us thinking about China in the Middle East, Andrea starts with the premise that “if one looks at where major incidents involving the security of Chinese nationals and where the main ongoing Chinese military operations are taking place, it is clear that the geographical focus of the analysis must be the Middle East–North Africa”. It’s a really useful book for Middle East specialists who want to understand how China’s foreign and security policy is made, and it’s also useful for China specialists who want to understand how the Middle East features in China’s larger global ambitions.
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