China's Foreign Relations and the Survival of Autocracies

This book investigates the rise of China as an emerging major power and seeks to answer the question whether China’s rise stabilises other non-democratic leaders in the world. By comparing China’s bilateral relations to three Asian developing countries – Cambodia, Burma and Mongolia - with varying political types of regime, the book illustrates that the Chinese government has indeed profited from exploiting secretive decision making in autocracies to realise its own external interests such as achieving access to natural resources. However, only some forms of bilateral interaction, such as high trade dependence on China, effectively do increase the prospect of survival for autocratic leaders while others, such as diplomatic relations or economic cooperation do not have such an effect.