Imperialism and Modern China: A Conceptual History With a Case Study of the Rare Earth Metals Industry

Abstract

This thesis aims to identify modern trends in China’s foreign policy and to determine the extent to which China’s modern foreign policy is imperialist. While modern Chinese political scientists are entrenched in the belief that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) conducts foreign policy on the basis of “good-neighborliness,” Western scholars claim that China’s economic initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative, Made in China 2025, and the Maritime Silk Road are examples of China’s increasingly aggressive and expansionist economic foreign policies. To approach the issue free of bias, this thesis first analyzes the historiography of the term “imperialism,” as well as the West’s history of imperialism in China, to derive a definition of the term that synthesizes Chinese and Western perspectives. Using this shared definition, I conclude that China’s modern foreign policy is heavily imperialist because of China’s use of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) abroad and the conjoined use of the military to expand Chinese economic and political power. This thesis then conducts a case study of the rare earth metals industry to demonstrate how China employs their SOEs and military to solidify China’s monopoly over the rare earth metals economy and uses this monopoly as political leverage in diplomacy.