Bringing China into the Foreign Intervention Discourse

Abstract

This chapter discusses the global discourse on intervention in foreign intrastate armed conflicts by China and other non-Western rising powers. It assesses the prevailing discourse on the topic and the emerging gaps. The main argument advanced in the chapter is that the major gap in existing scholarship is the lack of systematic theoretical and empirical study of intervention in foreign conflicts by rising powers, particularly China. The chapter advances the argument that in external intervention studies, practice has preceded theory. The focus of IR theorists has remained on ``states-that-matter'' such that the theories do not explain the behaviour of small or rising states. It therefore makes an argument for the use of neoclassical realism as a theoretical framework able to explain the foreign policy behaviour of rising powers.