Politics in Asia Series, 99. London; New York: Routledge [2015] c2016. xxiii, 283 pp. (Illustrations.) US$160.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-77808-5.
David Zweig and Yufan Hao’s edited volume provides a rich combination of depth and scope. The volume examines ten resource-rich states in which China has made significant investment in energy, and in each case, explores the extent to which Chinese investment does or does not change the existing relationship the resource-rich country has with the United States. Finding little evidence to suggest the US has tried to use China’s need for energy resources to slow its rise, they seek to explain how these triangular relationships unfold and with what significance for international relations.
The editors group the states into three categories, based on the resource-rich states’ relationship with the US. They examine three “allies” (Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Australia); four “neutrals” (Angola, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, and Brazil); and three “pariahs” (Iran, Sudan, and Venezuela), positing that US response to China’s engagement will depend on its previously existing relationship with each state.
What makes the volume so successful is the enlisting of scholars with deep country-specific energy expertise to examine the research question, and combining their expertise with familiar experts in China energy, including the editors, Philip Andrews-Speed and Mikkal Herberg. Due to this combined expertise, the book highlights the agency of resource-rich states that are allegedly caught in this circumstance of “triangularity.” Nicholas Thomas shows that Australia is able to pursue its own interests amid pressure from both sides. Wenran, Zweig, and Siqin demonstrate that Canadian domestic concerns about China’s investment limit that activity more than does US intervention. In Ian Taylor’s chapter on Nigeria, China finds the ruling elites no easier to manage than have investors before them, and Watson and Zweig show that Venezuela pursued China’s investment in a deliberate act of provocation which raised little response from the US. For each case, the Sino-American competition is background context rather than the primary focus of the narrative. Zweig and Hao’s research model is unusually robust for an edited volume, and many of the authors take issue with the triangulation model as provided, arguing for its limited applicability to their country case, or interpreting it differently from their fellow authors. Even so, the model yields some useful comparisons across cases even as the chapter authors provide unusual levels of country-specific energy expertise.
The in-depth comparison of cases provides new insight into several trends. The first is the dazzling scope of China’s efforts in energy. These cases show Chinese companies moving rapidly on many geographical fronts from Brazil (where they startle the government with a $10 billion investment offer) to Saudi Arabia and Iran (rivals which received investment at roughly the same time). China also displays a range of skills in these cases – from working in the face of Canadian domestic opposition to acquire desired companies, to mastering the technology for processing (notoriously difficult) Venezuelan crude.
In the face of fundamental energy-related shifts in trade and investment, another trend that emerges among many of the “allies” and “neutrals” case studies is a progressive delinking of their economic and security interests. This is particularly striking in Nicholas Thomas’ Australia case and Yitzhak Shichor’s Saudi Arabia case, and in Sebastien Peyrouse’s Kazakhstan case (although Peyrouse makes clear that the triangulation of interests in that country is Russia-China-Kazakstan, with the US in a distant fourth position). A third trend that emerges is that the United States has effectively used sanctions against resource-rich states as a weapon in pursuit of non-energy goals. John Garver’s Iran chapter and Sonja Regler’s Sudan chapter colourfully recount how the US applied enough pressure to change China’s calculus of the risks it was taking by pursuing energy development in resource-rich states targeted by the US for exclusion from the world community. Based on the cases offered, the effectiveness with which the US uses sanctions is not reflected in US pursuit of other energy goals.
The case-by-case examination in this volume is mostly a strength, but it does pose one notable weakness: the interaction of China and international energy institutions is underexplored. Five OPEC states are included among its cases, but in none of them is the issue of China-OPEC relations examined. Angola’s decision to join OPEC, for example, which took place in 2006 much to the surprise of the US, happened after significant Chinese investment in the oil sector; however, Alex Vines’ chapter on Angola does not address this at all. What role China’s preferences had in Angola’s decision—and what approach China takes towards OPEC given its relations with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, and Venezuela—matters for future markets. Similarly, China opted to become an Associated Member of the International Energy Agency in 2015, rather than pursue full membership. What shaped this decision, and what was the interplay of members’ reluctance and Chinese interest, is another important question.
The chapters that frame this volume make clear the different approaches that China and the United States have towards energy security. Ideologically, US and Chinese pursuit of energy security reflect radically differing embedded assumptions. As the authors note, while the US has long advocated markets over mercantilism and institutions that help avoid zero-sum approaches in crisis, China has emphasized securing external supply and developing long-term state-to-state relationships. The cases presented here suggest that the US has not used energy to constrain China’s rise, but neither has it focused on safeguarding the US market vision for energy. This volume strongly illustrates China’s long-term commitment to ensuring its access to adequate energy for the future. Meanwhile, the United States, through the development of its resources at home (and radical shifts in price), has become less engaged in energy development and in the concerns of resource-rich states. How China’s participation will change markets and relations in the long term remains to be seen, but this volume offers rare insight into how China’s participation is progressing to date.
Theresa Sabonis-Helf
National War College/National Defense University, Washington, DC, USA
Views expressed in this review are solely the author’s and do not represent the official position of the US Government, Department of Defense, or the National Defense University.
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