A Search for Causality: China's Non-Traditional Security and State Weakness

This article examines China's non-traditional security (NTS) relations with its neighbouring states through the lens of state weakness. Building on existing Chinese language literature on the NTS situation in China, the article demonstrates how weak institutions, political illegitimacy and poor state-society relations in six of China's periphery states—Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar, and Mongolia—negatively impact China's domestic NTS environment.