The Ebola Crisis and China’s Search forRole as a Responsible Great Power

As part of our ChinaTalks Lecture Series, we are proud to present Barry Buzan, Professor of International Relations, LSE.

Title of presentation

The Ebola Crisis and China’s Search for a Role as a Responsible Great Power: Human Security and the Merger of Great Power Management and Global Governance

Moderator: Bertel Heurlin, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen

Abstract

This paper makes two arguments, one as background, the other as foreground. The background argument is that the rise to prominence of a non-traditional security agenda, and particularly of human security, has triggered a de facto merger of what in the IR literature are usually treated as separate and often opposed theories: great power management (GPM, from the English School) and global governance (GG, mainly from the liberal and constructivist wings of IR theory). We use the Ebola crisis of 2014-15 to show how a human security issue brought about a multi-actor response that combined the key elements of GPM and GG. Within that story we look at the particular case of China, and its search for status as a responsible great power. China’s role in the Ebola crisis challenges the view that it is mainly alienated from, and unhappy with, a Western-dominated global international society (GIS), and that it is mainly a self-seeking actor looking to avoid great power responsibilities. We show how development-linked human security issues provide common ground amongst a wide range of state and non-state actors, and offer China a third way between having to accept Western norms and trying to promote a Sino-centric world view. We explore the implications of this third way for China’s policy of peaceful rise.

The talk is based on “Great Power Management in International Society”
 by Shunji Cui and Barry Buzan which is published in the Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016, 181–210.

Short bio, Barry Buzan

Barry Buzan is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the LSE (formerly Montague Burton Professor); honorary professor at Copenhagen, Jilin, and China Foreign Affairs Universities; a Senior Fellow at LSE Ideas; and a Fellow of the British Academy. From 1988 to 2002 he was Project Director at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI). From 1995 to 2002 he was research Professor of International Studies at the University of Westminster, and before that Professor of International Studies at the University of Warwick. During 1993 he was visiting professor at the International University of Japan, and in 1997-8 he was Olof Palme Visiting Professor in Sweden.

Buzan has written, co-authored or edited over twenty-five books, written or co-authored nearly one hundred and fifty articles and chapters, and lectured, broadcast or presented papers in over twenty countries. In addition to theory, he has engaged in the public policy debates about security in Europe, South Asia, Southern Africa and East Asia.