Abstract This article explores the dichotomous tenor of Chinese digital diplomacy, combining combining confrontational and constructive messaging. Drawing on a Bourdieusian relational framework, we argue that China’s seemingly contradictory discourse strategy represents a unified approach serving a common objective. It embodies the idea of ‘disruption and reconstruction,’ utilizing confrontation to challenge Western-dominated narratives and cooperation to construct alternative relational patterns. Through the frame analysis of 1275 tweets from ten of the most prominent Chinese diplomatic accounts, the study confirms the presence of a dichotomous yet coherent communication strategy, illustrating how Chinese diplomats articulate their dual relational framing strategies on Twitter and what these reveal about China’s broader diplomatic goals and strategies. Theoretically, this study introduces the concept of ‘confrontational social capital’ and clarifies its strategic function in reshaping the global social relational landscape. The article suggests that by systematically challenging dominators, actors may seek to accumulate social capital in the form of oppositional legitimacy.

Abstract This article investigates the expanding and evolving influence of China on the process of Latin America’s energy transition. From the early phase, when Chinese policy banks provided sovereign loans to finance large-scale fossil fuel and hydroelectric projects, to the subsequent decade marked by mergers and acquisitions in the clean energy sector by state-owned enterprises, and most recently, to the wave of greenfield investments in renewable energy and strategic resources led by competitive private firms. This trajectory reflects not only China’s domestic decarbonization priorities but also a broader geopolitical strategy aimed at securing access to strategic resources such as lithium, while vertically integrating value chains from extraction to clean technology manufacturing. Beyond bilateral investments, China has also sought to institutionalize its presence through multilateral platforms, advancing green development narratives and aligning regional governance frameworks with its strategic interests. The article argues that beneath the discourse of sustainable cooperation, a silent monopoly is gradually consolidating, characterized by functional dominance across four interrelated dimensions: resources, technology, governance, and finance. Conceptualized as a form of neo-dependency, this multidimensional configuration risks constraining the strategic autonomy of Latin American states and limiting their capacity to articulate independent models of sustainable development.

Abstract This article explains why the United States–South Korea (US–ROK) alliance endured during Donald Trump’s first presidency, despite unprecedented abandonment threats and widespread predictions of rupture. Drawing on the autonomy-security trade-off (AST) model, it argues that Trump’s coercive bargaining re-activated the alliance’s foundational asymmetry by compelling Seoul to yield partial autonomy across three domains: increased cost-sharing, deferral of wartime operational control (OPCON) transfer, and expanded procurement of US weapons. These outcomes confirm AST’s core prediction that asymmetric alliances persist when weaker states trade sovereignty for protection. Yet the South Korean case also demonstrates that such concessions are conditional: they were strategically framed, temporally deferred, or symbolically performed in order to mitigate nationalist backlash and preserve domestic legitimacy. Methodologically, the article treats cost-sharing negotiations as a least-likely test of AST, showing that even extreme abandonment threats produced measurable compliance rather than rupture. Theoretically, it refines AST by incorporating the mediating role of democratic audience costs, elite discourse, and sovereignty narratives in shaping how autonomy concessions are made. The findings suggest that alliance resilience under coercion rests less on institutional trust or shared norms than on adaptive sovereignty bargains negotiated under external pressure and internal political constraint.