POL 466 - U.S.-China Competition in the Global South

This advanced seminar examines the evolving competition between the United States and China across the Global South, with particular attention to how great-power rivalry shapes development trajectories, political institutions, and everyday governance in low- and middle-income countries. Situating contemporary U.S.-China competition within a longer historical arc, the course begins by exploring the strategic importance of the Global South during the Cold War and its renewed centrality in twenty-first-century geopolitics.

The seminar then turns to the evolution of U.S. and Chinese foreign policy toward the Global South, analyzing how each country has defined its interests, instruments, and narratives across regions such as Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and parts of the Middle East. Students will examine how security concerns, economic statecraft, development finance, diplomatic engagement, and soft power initiatives intersect with local political economies and state capacities.

The latter part of the course focuses on key arenas of U.S.-China competition, including infrastructure and development finance, natural resources and energy, security and peacekeeping, public health, labor and migration, technology and digital governance, trade, and investment. Through in-depth country and sectoral case studies, students will assess how governments, firms, and social actors in the Global South navigate, resist, or leverage great-power competition to advance domestic priorities.

The seminar emphasizes both theoretical and methodological rigor. Students will engage international relations and comparative politics theories while developing applied research skills, including foreign policy analysis, comparative case selection, data collection, and qualitative and quantitative methods. The major assignment is a substantial research paper (approximately 20 pages) in which students analyze U.S.-China competition in a specific country, sector, or region of the Global South, drawing on original data sources and a clearly articulated analytical framework.

By the end of the course, students will be equipped to critically evaluate the implications of U.S.-China competition beyond the traditional great-power lens and to understand how actors in the Global South actively shape, rather than simply receive, global geopolitical pressures.

Satisfies Political Science major requirement.
Satisfies East Asian Studies major requirement.
Satisfies Chinese Studies minor requirement.