China’s Non-Intervention in Sudan and South Sudan: Finding Traces of Remote Warfare

Abstract

Remote Warfare facilitates the minimisation of risks when intervening in complex conflict theatres through intricate and liquid warfare tactics. The emergence of new military strategies constantly alters the way in which remote warfare is employed. Therefore, contemporary scholarship still seeks to grasp the functions of these warfare strategies. This thesis develops a hybrid framework based on the alliance theory and the political economy of conflict to identify the strategies and functions of non-Western approaches to remote warfare. By applying this framework to the case of China’s remote intervention in Sudan and South Sudan from 2005 to 2018, Chinese remote intervention strategies and their inherent functions are discovered. The study investigates Sino-Sudanese interactions in empirical reports to uncover their underlying dynamics. The findings demonstrate that China innovatively learned to adapt its remote strategy for realising its changing ambitions in the shifting conflicts in the Sudans. Moreover, this strategy is determined to function for securing China’s oil investments, while diminishing its footprint in the Sudans to not contradict the Chinese non-intervention policy. Finally, China’s strategy is revealed to deliberately support human rights abuses to create a hostile investment environment for the West. After first providing massive armaments to the Sudans, China later placed substantial investments to monopolise themselves as the primary customer of the Sudanese oil production. Consequently, this thesis explains how and why China procedurally developed its own approach for non-direct intervention to secure its access to oil in Sudan and South Sudan.