CHINA’S ATTEMPT TO BECOME THE REGIONAL HEGEMON IN CENTRAL ASIA: AN ALTERNATIVE NEO-GRAMSCIAN ANALYSIS TO THE NEW GREAT GAME

2022-8-31
Ergun, Safiye
This thesis seeks to examine China’s attempt to become the new regional hegemon in Central Asia. It provides an up-to-date alternative analysis to the New Great Game literature by criticizing its academic inadequacy. Instead of an analysis taking the Great Powers and their interests in its focus, the thesis offers a neo-Gramscian theory to explain today’s relations and concentrates on the mutual relations between the actors. This research deals with China’s attempt to establish a regional hegemonic structure over Central Asia by discussing the consent of the elite and local people in the region, and evaluates the intergovernmental formations such as SCO, BRI and AIIB as potential mechanisms of China’s potential hegemony. It contains three major sections: the literature review on the New Great Game in Central Asia, the theoretical framework of neo-Gramscian perspective, and an empirical implementation of the theory to the relations of China and Central Asia.

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Citation Formats
S. Ergun, “CHINA’S ATTEMPT TO BECOME THE REGIONAL HEGEMON IN CENTRAL ASIA: AN ALTERNATIVE NEO-GRAMSCIAN ANALYSIS TO THE NEW GREAT GAME,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2022.