Affluence Without Influence: The Inducement Dilemma in China’s Economic Statecraft

When can economic inducements—like foreign aid, large-scale investment initiatives, and discounted sales of natural resources—buy influence abroad? Zenobia Chan argues that inducements can be lucrative to not just the recipient but also the sender. This leads to what she calls the inducement dilemma: when a state profits from giving inducements, it will be less likely to cut them off, even when it does not receive any concessions. Consequently, the recipient has less incentive to concede, rendering the inducement ineffective in extracting concessions. How do these dynamics manifest in China’s Belt and Road Initiative? Join Zenobia Chan, Abraham Newman, and Evan Medeiros for a discussion about China’s economic statecraft.

This event is co-sponsored by Georgetown University’s Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues and the Asian Studies Program at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

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Zenobia Chan is an assistant professor of government at Georgetown University. Previously, she was a Prize Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Her substantive research focuses on economic statecraft, with further work on information operations.

Abraham Newman is a professor in the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University and serves as the director of the BMW Center for German and European Studies. His research focuses on the ways in which economic interdependence and globalization have transformed international politics. Newman is the co-author of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (2023).

Evan Medeiros (moderator) is the Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies at the School of Foreign Service and a senior fellow with the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University. Medeiros has in-depth experience in U.S. policy toward the Asia-Pacific from his time on the National Security Council as director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia, and then as special assistant to the president and senior director for Asia under President Barack Obama.