"Explaining China's International Behaviour" by CWP alum Todd Hall

August 30, 2026
Explaining China's International Behaviour Expected online publication date: 30 August 2026

As the People's Republic of China (PRC) has become an increasingly significant global power, understanding its international behaviour has become a central question for scholars, analysts, and policymakers worldwide. This growing attention has not, however, resulted in anything resembling a consensus. Out of this profusion of competing perspectives, the authors identify four distinct ideal-typical approaches employed to explain the PRC's international behaviour: universalist, exceptionalist, political-institutionalist, and particularist. At their core, the fundamental issues of disagreement between these approaches concern the degree to which they conceptualise the PRC as a unitary and/or distinctive actor. Crucially, these are not fixed attributes; they vary over time and across policy domains. Based on this, they make the case for a contextualised approach that adjusts its analysis to such variation. The authors illustrate their approach by examining PRC behaviour in the South China Sea and in relation to its Belt and Road Initiative. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

1. Ghiselli A, Hall TH. Explaining China’s International Behaviour. Cambridge University Press; 2026.

Professor Hall earned his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2008 and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton and Harvard, as well as visiting scholar appointments at the Free University of Berlin, Tsinghua University in Beijing, and the University of Tokyo. Prior to joining the University of Oxford, Professor Hall held the position of Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Toronto (2010-2013). Professor Hall has published widely on the topics of Chinese foreign policy, the international relations of East Asia, and the various ways emotion and affective dynamics intersect with the practice of international politics.

Photo Credit: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/explaining-chinas-international-behaviour/927A2CFE1112CF22DCEBF03CBCD91D32

Professor Hall earned his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2008 and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton and Harvard, as well as visiting scholar appointments at the Free University of Berlin, Tsinghua University in Beijing, and the University of Tokyo. Prior to joining the University of Oxford, Professor Hall held the position of Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Toronto (2010-2013). Professor Hall has published widely on the topics of Chinese foreign policy, the