<<Taikichiro Mori Memorial Research Fund>>

Graduate Student Researcher Development Grant Report

(Academic Year 2011)

Name of the Research Project	Chinese Foreign Policy toward Transboundary Resource Development
Name of the Researcher	Vida MACIKENAITE
Affiliation	Graduate School of Media and Governance, Doctoral Program
Student Year	Year 1

Fieldwork contents. The fieldwork conducted was a part of a broader research of Chinese foreign policy toward transboundary resource development in a number of selected cases. The purpose of this fieldwork was to collect data and previous scholarly work on China’s gas and oil development in the East China Sea since 1970, also including China-Japan joint gas field development efforts to overcome border dispute between the two countries. Later the research expanded to include China’s transboundary pipeline projects with the countries in Central Asia, that is oil pipeline from Kazakhstan and gas pipeline from Turkmenistan.

During the fieldwork materials were collected in different institutions in Beijing and Shanghai: the National Library of China (Beijing), the Library of Beijing University (Main Library), the Shanghai Library, the Library of the University of Fudan (Shanghai). At the same time a number of interviews with the specialists in China studies from Fudan University were conducted. During the fieldwork a significant amount of data about China’s resource development was gathered. This is mainly statistical data publishes in Chinese language sources, which is not always published abroad. At the same time there this fieldwork provided original sources about the negotiations and Chinese policies – government papers, published my ministries, politicians commentaries. Further a significant amount of Chinese scholarly works on the topic analyzed was gathered which provided a wider all-sided understanding of the issues in question. Finally interviews provided a different perspective, more of an insider view into the problems that before in this study were analyzed only referring to the studies conducted ‘from the outside’.

Main Research. This fieldwork was conducted as a part of a wider research, which analyzed China’s policies related to resource development. This research aimed at explaining what factors shaped China’s policy towards these issues. It examined how the government set its preferences in different cases. Thus it sought to answer the main research question what factors influenced Chinese foreign policy decisions in regards to resource development and this fieldwork enabled the student to collect most of the data and previous research in China on these issues.