order? And if it is, what are the characteristics of that order? How does China portray itself as a great power in these regions? And finally, what do all of these things: China's interests, how it's behaving, how it's portraying itself; what does that indicate about its rise globally? So the findings of the book, what I argue is that although China is not attempting to change the distribution of territory in the Middle East or Africa, as its power grows, it is increasingly competing with the U.S. It's building spheres of influence in these regions and it's challenging the rules of the international system by constructing elements of an alternative order to facilitate its interactions. One of the main findings, and I think part of what's most interesting in looking at these regions, is there are significant differences across functional areas. So in the political and economic realm, China is competing, and often that behavior diverges from the liberal order, but it also sometimes is conducted within the liberal order. But you have this tension on the economic and political, including foreign aid. There's a lot of competitive behavior and divergent behavior. But in the security realm, its behavior is primarily cooperative and mostly converges with the liberal order. Another important finding is as the perception of threat from the U.S. is increasing China's competitiveness and norm, divergent behavior is also becoming amplified. So ultimately, you know, about this, the book argues that although China doesn't seek to exist to replace the existing international order, if the order either collapses or unravels or if China is excluded from the order, it's already built many institutions that serve as the foundation of its economic and political and security relations with these regions, as well as a lot of the rest of the developing world. As I'm sure you're aware. And many of these same mechanisms are in place in other regions outside of the Middle East and Africa. You asked about field research. The field research originally was conducted in Beijing. I was a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, so I conducted a year of interviewing. That was the 2009-2010 timeframe. So even pre-Arab Awakening and my interviews were focused on the U.S. government’s story, Chinese government officials as well as scholars. But I also interviewed a number of embassies representing Middle Eastern and African countries in Beijing. The next phase of the research was in Egypt as a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo. I spent about six months doing similar interviews with Egyptian officials, the African Union, several embassies, scholars, etc. The next phase of research was in Stellenbosch in China. There's a Chinese studies center at Stellenbosch University. So I did some interviewing there. And then after that, I've gone back many times to both China, as well as several Middle Eastern countries, to conduct follow-up interviews and to understand how our relations are changing with the Arab Awakening, and how are they changing with the Belt and Road? How are they changing with increasing tensions in Sino-American relations? So this book is the culmination of almost a decade of work in looking