What is Thematic Research Design

In the new global order foreign policy, bilateral and multilateral cooperation has come to be better understood and practiced through soft power as compared to coercive means (hard power). Many states globally have achieved their foreign policy through soft power diplomacy such as China. In this chapter, the authors aim to examine China's soft power through their infrastructure investment in the Middle East and the African continent. The crux of the study is not to review China's soft power and if their cooperation's yield a win-win outcome for all involved actors. Rather, the study is set to assess the value of China's soft power cooperation. The idea lies in quantifying the true value of China's soft power in a bilateral and multilateral settings and determining how much of a win each actor procures through the cooperation. This research adopts a qualitative method explored in a thematic and comparative research design. The comparative approach applied between the Middle East and Africa enable for China's soft power to be a dependent variable that can be applied in different regions simultaneously. Herein, the comparison enables the authors to compare China's foreign policy behavior in two distinct regions and settings and to further assess how these outcomes either reflect China's soft power or the state behavior in many of the Africa and the Middle East states.