| Immediately post-9/11,scholars and politicians from China and the United States began discussing how the issue of security in Afghanistan could play a role in enhancing security cooperation between the two countries.Since China and the United States are the world's rising and leading powers respectively,many assume that both countries should be playing an active role in improving Afghanistan's stability and security.While the United States' role in Afghanistan is a well-researched topic,what kind of impact has China had on Afghanistan's political and security issues?This thesis primarily seeks to address this topic.Until now,most scholars and analysts have studied China-Afghanistan relations through the lens of China's relationship with Afghanistan as part of China's larger goal of improved neighborhood diplomacy in South and Central Asia.Additionally,most existing literature looking at the bilateral relationship is mainly concerned with discussing China-Afghanistan relations up through 2014.However,studying China-Afghanistan relations between 2001 and 2018 as a single case study can provide a more in-depth analysis as to China's specific role in Afghanistan's political and security issues,as well as China's changing role as a rising power.China's participation in Afghanistan's political and security affairs can be divided into two stages:the f-irst is from 2001 to 2013,and the second is from 2014 up to the present day.In 2014,China's participation in Afghanistan's political and security affairs underwent a major transformation.In order to assess specifically how and why this change occurred,I provide a comprehensive study of the major events defining the two countries' political and security relations since 2001,and analyze which factors contributed to China's shift from primarily focusing on its own domestic interests in Afghanistan to taking on more responsibility for the international security issues linked to Afghanistan.At the same time,another important topic within academic literature is China's changing role as a rising power.As will be described in the theoretical framework and literature review section of this thesis,classifying China simply as a "rising power" is oversimplified,as rising powers can take on very different characteristics.Thus,the purpose of this thesis is to look at Afghanistan as a specific case in understanding more about China's behavior as a rising power,specifically its role in creating and shaping international norms.Analyzing this topic requires China's actions and effect on international norms to be contrasted with the behavior of other great powers in the international society.As the United States plays the biggest and most influential role in the security and stability of Afghanistan,it provides the obvious country for comparison.I briefly discuss the United States' Afghan policy after 9/11 in order to provide analysis and conclusions on the international norms that the United States has tried to promote in Afghanistan.These conclusions are used to analyze the role of China as a rising power during its two stages of involvement in Afghanistan.In the first stage,since China was not actively seeking to revise or challenge the international norms promoted by the United States,China played the role of a "compliant" rising power.However,in the second stage China is acting more like a "reformist revisionist" rising power.Specifically,although during the second phase China is still being socialized into the international community,it has also begun to play a more active leadership role in promoting and revising norms.In general,a rising power will begin to exercise this type of influence in its home and surrounding region.China's expanding role in Afghanistan is a primary example of this phenomenon. |
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