China has become a key player in peacebuilding, both supporting and sometimes obstructing international cooperation. It appears to adhere to certain established norms in global peace governance while simultaneously resisting and contesting others. For example, while China has supported the Women, Peace, and Security agenda, it has also backed actions and resolutions that challenge this. This leads to the research problem: How can we make sense of China’s seemingly contradictory behavior in global peace governance?

This compilation thesis argues that existing International Relations (IR) literature struggles to capture China’s complex and contradictory engagement in global peace governance. First, much of the literature relies on dichotomies to understand this behavior. It tries to categorize China’s behavior as driven by either material interests or by norms. It views China as a non-Western, non-liberal, and non-traditional actor that is the opposite of Western, liberal, and traditional actors. It also seeks to categorize China as either a status-quo actor or a challenger to the liberal international order.

Second, this literature on China’s engagement in peace governance predominantly draws on conventional IR approaches. This means it offers insufficient analysis of power asymmetries. The IR discipline’s established scholarly convention of adhering to paradigm-bound theories with rigid epistemic commitments also contributes to this limitation.

This thesis addresses these limitations by asking how we can challenge dichotomous and conventional IR perspectives to advance our understanding of China’s engagement. I argue that two moves can advance our understanding. The first is to employ analytic eclecticism which goes beyond fixed analytical boundaries. The second is to adopt different analytical lenses that allow for analysis of various power asymmetries. These moves are key to the methodological approach I adopt. Guided by analytic eclecticism, the thesis exercises methodological pluralism. The four articles employ different analytical lenses including a critical conceptualization of peace, insights from feminist IR, and ideas about norm contestation.

The thesis demonstrates the complex dynamics at work in China’s peace engagement and behavior in global peace governance. It develops three main arguments. First, it argues that China’s contradictory behavior can be explained as part of its broader contestation strategy, which it carries out primarily in the form of economic instrumentalism. Second, it argues that variations in China’s practices of norm contestation and compliance are linked to the institutional environment in which it is participating. Third, it argues that the dominant view, which portrays China’s approach and behavior as distinctively oppositional and problematic, can be misleading.

This thesis contributes to two main IR literatures: the literature about China’s engagement with peacebuilding and that about China’s norm contestation in global (peace) governance. It makes theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to these literatures. Its primary contribution is in challenging the dichotomous understandings adopted by existing research on China in global governance. It demonstrates how we can use analytic eclecticism and the integration of power dynamics to go beyond these dichotomies and provide greater understanding. The thesis offers a deeper understanding of China’s behavior in global peace governance.