ABSTRACT
Tunisia is a country with limited oil reserves and a country that holds only a limited strategic importance to China. Thus, the hypothesis is that neither strategic importance nor economic interests are the dominant driving forces in Tunisia. The quantitative analysis shows that, overall, economic interests dominated the decade under study (2002–2012). The qualitative analysis shows that both economic and state interests dominated in the key decisions examined (the Sinochem acquisition in 2003, the CNPC acquisition in 2004, and the Tunisian Revolution in 2011). Comparing the results from the two methods, looking at the 2004 CNPC acquisition, the evidence of state and economic interests as coinciding is more credible. As the qualitative and quantitative analyses produce evidence of both state and economic interests, the empirical expectation is supported.
