China has long adhered to a principle of 'non-interference' in other states' affairs. However, as more of its companies have been investing in projects overseas, and millions of its nationals are travelling abroad, Beijing is finding itself progressively involved in other countries - through the need to protect these interests and citizens. During the turmoil of the Arab Spring in 2011, China was compelled to evacuate more than 35,000 Chinese workers and expatriates from Libya, and later it led the hunt for the killers of 13 Chinese sailors in the Golden Triangle region of the Mekong River. In 2015, Beijing sent a combat battalion to join the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, where it has huge oil ventures. Its plans to construct a New Silk Road will mean new commercial endeavours to protect in Pakistan. The shift in Chinese foreign policy towards a more interventionist approach in protecting nationals abroad has not been the result of grand strategy, but an adjustment to unfolding events. The large risk appetite of state-owned Chinese business is inexorably drawing the Chinese state into security hotspots, and as China becomes a great power its people are openly calling on their government to protect compatriots caught in crises overseas, including via military means. While much attention has focused on Beijing's increasingly assertive behaviour in disputed Asian seas, this book highlights another equally important area of change, with potentially far-reaching consequences for international security.

Chinese security has become a key focus after the Cold War. In just a few decades, China has gone from an obscure position as a closed communist developing country with little integration into international institutions over being designated a prospective strategic partner of the United States to being seen as Washington's principal strategic opponent. Despite these vast changes in perspective on China's international role and interests, China is still seen as an enigmatic security actor with hidden agendas and a vast chasm between Beijing's official policies and strategic practices. The great interest in Chinese security is reflected in the fact that it is hard to find a university program across the world which does not have this topic as part of their teaching and research agenda. Similarly, there is a vast literature on the topic that addresses Chinese security from a great variety of theoretical and empirical angles - including all schools of international relations, foreign policy analysis, strategic studies and also think-tank literature. This large body of academic research has not yet been compiled and analysed with the aim to identify the major works that have generated key debates in this young field of scholarly work on China security studies. A major works collection would make a significant contribution to shaping this young and growing field. The existing literature, in its ambition to make sense of Chinese security strategic thinking and behaviour, focuses on understanding Chinese strategic intentions, power tools, instruments of influence and threat perceptions and which interests and world views they are based on. We include a diverse range of contributions from America, Australia, Europe and Japan to cover all major regional perspectives. We also include major theoretical approaches, such as realist and liberal approaches to Chinese security, English school contributions and constructivist analyses. Each volume will also include work written by Chinese scholars, including analysts in a policy-making role to cover the Chinese perspectives on Chinese security. The scholarly debates that help clarify and understand Chinese security strategies focus first on conceptual debates about similarities and differences between Chinese security strategic thinking compared to the thinking dominating Western tradition and practice. A second theme is China's national security priorities in Asia and the nexus between China's homeland security (terrorism and separatism) and international relations. A third theme is China's approach to the management of international security affairs in the political, economic and military sector, as an emerging great power with increasingly global security interests. Finally, a fourth theme is the making of China's national security policy, which involves analyses of the main institutions and actors and how they interact in a complex political system characterized by a relative lack of transparency.