On June 7 Susann Handke will give a lecture entitled ‘From Oil Interests to Multilateral Activism: China’s Role in Africa’s Security Order’ within Leiden University's Diplomacy and Global Affairs (DGA) Research Seminar Series.

This lecture will assess China’s increasing engagement in Africa’s security architecture. Recent developments in South Sudan are central to this process. The political economy of Chinese oil interests in Sudan/South Sudan resulted in a gradual reconstruction of the Chinese foreign policy principle of non-interference in domestic affairs, both in the Chinese scholarly discourse and in practice. The new reading permits military involvement abroad. The lecture discusses how these developments are related to the institutionalisation of China’s security relations with Africa. Three issues will be highlighted. First, the lecture will show how domestic political interests are interwoven with China’s actions abroad. Second, it will provide an overview of the Chinese scholarly discourse on the non-interference principle. Third, by summarising China’s security-related activities in Africa the lecture will introduce to some practical consequences of the reconstructed non-interference principle. The findings that are presented in this lecture will be particularly relevant for understanding China’s evolving approach to international conflict situations.

The DGA Research Seminar is a series launched by the Research Group on Diplomacy and Global Affairs at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs. The seminars of internationally acknowledged guest researchers and faculty members deal with current research topics in diplomacy, international relations, global affairs, and political economy broadly conceived and target a broad audience through their interdisciplinary focus.