As China and the U.S. increasingly compete for power in key areas of U.S. influence, great power conflict looms. Yet few studies have looked to the Middle East and Africa, regions of major political, economic and military importance for both China and the U.S., to theorize how China competes in a changing world system. In this talk, Dawn Murphy will present findings from her new book “China’s Rise in the Global South: The Middle East, Africa, and Beijing’s Alternative World Order.” Drawing on extensive fieldwork and hundreds of interviews, the book compares and analyzes 30 years of China’s interactions with these regions across a range of functional areas: political, economic, foreign aid and military. Murphy contends that China is constructing an alternate international order to interact with these regions. This talk will discuss two foreign policy tools that illustrate elements of that order and how China competes with the U.S. in these regions.