ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the Chinese perspectives on the content and practices of world affairs by undertaking a parallel assessment of Beijing's agency in Africa and Central Asia. The contention of such exploration is that the external agency of China attests to its distinct normative power. The lodestone for China's normative power is its idiosyncratic "logic of relationships". The insistence on non-interference in the domestic affairs of states underwrites the emphasis on "strategic sovereignty". Historically, this stance reflects a policy pattern that has seen decision-makers in Beijing "willing to behave in ways that jeopardized China's security in order to preserve China's autonomy and independence". Yongjin Zhang explains such insistence through the contextual restraints that it is supposed to impose on the aggressive traits of human nature. Translated into the language of world affairs the notion of deliberate practice suggests that normative powers deliberately seek to construct learning situations through which they can socialize target states.
