SEAN MARCEL RYAN

When did you write the piece that you submitted? What drove you to write this piece?

I wrote this Spring 2022 for a class called Africa and the World. The focus of this class was trying to better understand Africa in general, and the end of the course was to write an anthropological research paper. In anthropology, you’re focusing more on a microcosm example and then getting to the greater impact. So I decided to select China, specifically the Belt and Road Initiative, because especially one with all the Brics Coalitions and the Afro-nationalism movements and China’s actions moving towards better relations with Africa in general and the closer ties with Africa, I mean depending on how you look at it, in a geopolitical sense you should not think about Africa without thinking about China. Obviously, you don’t want to think about Africa without thinking of its history in general, but now it’s important to try and understand the relationship Africa has with China versus the one they have with the West and even internally, so… yes that’s why I selected [this topic], I felt it was very important and also, there’s just a lot of misconceptions about the Belt and Road Initiative and no one, at least of major basic opinions, I think are not very rigorous analytically, so I wanted to see what I could find to improve that.

I don’t want to say you can’t think about Africa without thinking about China… because there are so many internal African issues that are not even kind of related to China, there are just so many countries that aren’t even related to ‘Africa’ [as a continent] and there are honestly so many people that think of Africa as a unit when they probably shouldn’t think of Africa as a unit, but when you’re thinking about geopolitics, unless you’re thinking about just internal African relations… you should be thinking of China because China is… they have 300 Belt and Road Initiative projects in Africa. Xi and [other diplomats], they’re going to Africa to try and have better relations, so there’s just a lot of connections there and you’re not gonna get a good understanding of it unless you’re also thinking about what the African countries are doing to advance in the world from their own perspectives, and that involves China.

Drawing from what you wrote in your article and what general knowledge you have on the topic, what do you believe is one of the most important issues in U.S.-China affairs? How does what your article discusses (China’s investment in Africa) impact U.S.-China affairs?

For sure. This is just my opinion, and I’m going to give a more practical answer for this [first] one and a more theoretical answer for the next one. Basically, I think one of the most important things to do right now before anything else is to avoid a military conflict and, in my opinion, the only way to do that is to ensure we can have the best diplomacy possible and the best geopolitical maneuvering possible. You can avoid wars by doing diplomacy and geopolitical maneuvering, probably somewhere inevitable, obviously, I mean… it’s hard to talk about these things as a student because, you know, I’m not working in IR or anything even now, but in my opinion, the first thing to avoid is a war because a war between the U.S. and China would be catastrophically bad, not only for relations but just for every person who would be afflicted by that, affected by that, and… the whole point of this journal’s volume is about the relations between the U.S. and China deteriorating, so we want to get away from that. I think that’s the number one thing: try better relations, try to become more friendly with China, and vice versa; have China become more friendly to the U.S. for the purpose of avoiding military conflicts, and thus diplomacy and geopolitics and all the international relationships we have are probably some of the most important things for the U.S.-China affairs as a whole right now.

Now relating directly to your research with this article, if you were to use 1-2 sentences to explain the significance of what your article discusses as it relates to the future of U.S.-China relations, what would you say?

Relating to the Chinese investment in Africa, there have been a huge number of misconceptions that lead to dangerous opinions about China and vice versa. What we should do is have as much open knowledge and an open understanding as possible about what’s going on.

Why did you decided to submit to IUCJ? What was it specifically about us, and how did you hear about us?

I didn’t know anything about IUCJ, to be honest, but I got the email from the International Studies major faculty, and they said they [editors at IUCJ] were holding this contest [i.e., accepting submissions for consideration in Volume 3]. So I felt that I actually had a good article, so I submitted it and I was just hoping that it would be accepted, and yeah. I didn’t know anything about it [the Journal] to be honest with you.

Given that you had no idea who we were before, what were your thoughts and opinions about IUCJ when you first heard about us and first started working with us?

There were two angles to this. The first angle is: the more I learned about the IUCJ the more excited I was to have my work in the IUCJ volume and also to work with it. The mission, especially as the IUCJ [is] under the same umbrella as the U.S.-China Better Relation Coalition… I mean, look. Even before the IUCJ, for the past two years, my number one thing has been to increase and improve U.S.-China relations. Obviously, I’m a student now, but I’m doing the best I can for myself for the future, so to be involved with a journal whose mission expressly aligned with my own is… that’s exactly what I want to do. Even beyond my own opinions of it, it’s just good to have better relations. I don’t know– why would you want to have conflicts with China? Why would you want to have two big superpowers but have… they’re having a conflict? Obviously, that’s just the way it is, a lot of times [historically], but that’s not how it has to be. We could have good relations. I like that.

And then the second angle is that it was just a pleasure to work with the staff at the IUCJ. For a student-run journal, everyone did such a good job communicating, it was so professional, I felt like the process of submitting to this journal was gonna be better than the process of submitting to a mid-level standard research journal. Even just this interview– I feel like this is such a professional interview. I’ve given interviews, because I write at the [my university’s] paper, and I didn’t even think to do some of the things you’ve done in preparation for speaking with me. Working with IUCJ, I had a tendency to overcomplicate notes [received from editors], to get something done exactly in a perfect way, but I didn’t need to do that. Honestly, there’s no bad process with it, I don’t think the Journal should change anything. It’s nice to be treated very… treated like you are a good writer, and not be patronized by them.

You said before that improving U.S.-China relations was a huge passion of yours, which is great to hear. If you could give our future authors any words of encouragement, or any honest takes that might draw them into working with IUCJ, please share. Consider what you would have wanted to hear.

Like I said earlier, I did initially submit just for the contest [i.e., a chance to be considered and selected for Volume 3]. But basically now I think the main thing is that it’s great to be a part of a community of good strong writers and good strong researchers, so for any students considering submitting to the IUCJ, you will be able to enjoy having your work adjacent to other great work and being a part of a bigger whole, which is very useful to have. You’re going to be part of an organization that’s going to grow over time, that’s the goal, and is going to produce an important volume with important information and which someday might be extremely critical for U.S.-China relations, so get in on that now.