This scholarly book provides a timely examination of China’s growing influence in the Mediterranean region. It offers a comparative and theoretical perspective underpinned by an up-to-date empirical analysis. The book uses role theory as the theoretical framework throughout, exploring the escalating tensions in the Mediterranean, where a complex triangular relationship seems to have emerged, largely due to China’s expanding presence on both the Southern and Northern shores. Beijing’s sustained engagement and increasing influence have significantly affected the perceptions of France, the region’s former colonial power, and Spain, as well as global competitors such as Russia, Turkey, Israel, and the Gulf states. From a security standpoint, China’s engagement in the Mediterranean has also raised concerns in the United States. Within this multifaceted context, the chapters in this volume scrutinize how the evolving interactions between China and the Mediterranean states elucidate the progression of Sino-Southern Mediterranean relations and Sino-Northern Mediterranean relations. Moreover, the current conflict in Gaza has heightened interest in China’s role in the Mediterranean and the broader Middle East. This volume is undoubtedly a valuable resource for academics, policymakers, and students at both undergraduate and graduate levels with an interest in strategic studies, politics, diplomacy and international relations. The chapters in this book were initially published as a special issue of Mediterranean Politics.

This intensive monograph, The Asian Mediterranean, is a great synthesis of east west maritime worlds under an emerging global world. Professor Gipouloux has combined historical studies on global maritime seas with regional economic studies on Asia. He also integrates historical interaction between maritime seas and coastal port cities by creating the imaginative geo-economical concept of the East Asian economic corridor , running between Vladivostok and Singapore and locating China, Japan and Southeast Asia into this maritime area. To attain this goal, Professor Gipouloux globalises China through north south, east west and past present combinations, using cross-disciplinary approaches political economy, geography and international relations under wide historical perspectives. The Asian Mediterranean opens a new horizon to look into Asia from a global perspective and at the same time reminds us of the connection beyond contrast between East and West. Takeshi Hamashita, Tokyo University, Japan and Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China A fascinating analysis of the proposition that the start of the 21st century is witnessing the rapid rise in South East Asia of a new and powerful transnational economic zone, the Asian Mediterranean. It uses a wide range of historical and contemporary multidisciplinary sources to systematically explore how, why, and in what ways we can better interpret and understand this contemporary version of economic globalisation by looking back to the equivalent processes centred on the ports around the Mediterranean and the Baltic seas during the late 16th century. Peter Daniels, University of Birmingham, UK François Gipouloux has written a vast and comprehensive history of the Asian economic system. In the tradition of Braudel, he paints a picture that is detailed, full of insight, and essentially very long term. On the basis of an analysis of the old Mediterranean and Hanseatic economic networks, he surveys the pre-modern Asian system, bringing it up to date with studies of Yokohama, Hong Kong, Singapore and other Asian hubs. The culmination of many years work, Gipouloux throws light on a new China a China no longer land based and inward looking but dependent on, and a power in, a maritime world. Christopher Howe, University of London, UK Gipouloux s ground-breaking study based on a long career as a scholar of Asia s past is a most original contribution to the study of globalization. Connecting past and present, the author has further developed the somewhat vague metaphor of an Asian Mediterranean into a well-defined concept that can also be applied to analyzing contemporary affairs. While in the past the traditional Chinese and Japanese state systems were failing to formulate adequate answers, on a more informal level the port cities were able to meet with the maritime challenges of the emerging modern world system. The author convincingly shows how also in the age of globalization, a string of coastal metropolises continues to be instrumental in opening up the Far Eastern economy to the global economy. Leonard Blusse, Leiden University, The Netherlands This insightful book draws upon a wide range of disciplines political economy, geography and international relations to examine how Asia has returned to its central position in the world economy. As in the case of the hosting of the Olympic games, it is cities rather than states which compete, whether as financial centres, logistical hubs or platforms for coordinating international subcontracting. Analysing the historical precedents of the Mediterranean maritime republics, the Baltic Sea Hanseatic League and the South China Sea mercantile kingdoms, the book delineates the way stable economic and legal institutions were developed largely beyond the purview of, and at times in conflict with, the State. Discussing the strong link between history and contemporary economic situation, The Asian Mediterranean will appeal to academics, includin

The global implications of China's rise as a global actor In 2005, a senior official in the George W. Bush administration expressed the hope that China would emerge as a “responsible stakeholder” on the world stage. A dozen years later, the Trump administration dramatically shifted course, instead calling China a “strategic competitor” whose actions routinely threaten U.S. interests. Both assessments reflected an underlying truth: China is no longer just a “rising” power. It has emerged as a truly global actor, both economically and militarily. Every day its actions affect nearly every region and every major issue, from climate change to trade, from conflict in troubled lands to competition over rules that will govern the uses of emerging technologies. To better address the implications of China's new status, both for American policy and for the broader international order, Brookings scholars conducted research over the past two years, culminating in a project: Global China: Assessing China's Growing Role in the World. The project is intended to furnish policy makers and the public with hard facts and deep insights for understanding China's regional and global ambitions. The initiative draws not only on Brookings's deep bench of China and East Asia experts, but also on the tremendous breadth of the institution's security, strategy, regional studies, technological, and economic development experts. Areas of focus include the evolution of China's domestic institutions; great power relations; the emergence of critical technologies; Asian security; China's influence in key regions beyond Asia; and China's impact on global governance and norms. Global China: Assessing China's Growing Role in the World provides the most current, broad-scope, and fact-based assessment of the implications of China's rise for the United States and the rest of the world.

A collection of papers on the history of Christianity along the Silk Road and in pre-modern China, pushing back the frontier of knowledge in a fast developing new area of research.00The diffusion of Christianity along the Silk Road from Iraq and Iran to China in the pre-modern era has attracted scholarly attention in the West since the discovery of the famous Xi?an (Nestorian) Monument c. 1623. This initial discovery was dismissed as a?Jesuit forgery? by Voltaire, Edward Gibbon and many other scholars of the Enlightenment. However, its authenticity has been more than vindicated by the discovery of genuine (Nestorian / Jingjiao) Christian texts in Chinese from Dunhuang and in Syriac, Sogdian and Old Turkish from Turfan (Bulayïq) at the beginning of the last century. The discovery of a second major inscription which included part of a Chinese Christian (Jingjiao) text already known to scholars from Dunhuang, and the recent re-discovery of several Dunhuang Christian texts in a Japanese library, has removed any lingering doubts about the authenticity of the texts recovered from Dunhuang. The surviving material spans almost a millennium from the introduction of Christianity along the Silk Road in the sixth and seventh centuries through the Mongol period and beyond.