China is one of the 21st century's most consequential nations. It has never been more important to understand how the country is governed and what its leaders and its people actually want and believe. Welcome to Pekingology, the podcast that unpacks China's evolving political system and the trajectory of China's domestic and foreign policy. I'm your host, Henrietta Levin, Senior Fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS. This is Pekingology. I am so pleased to be joined today by Sabina Mokri, a researcher with the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy in Hamburg and author of the new book, Chinese Scholars and Thinktanks Construction of China's National Interest. Sabina has spent the past few years researching the process through which outside expertise influences Chinese national security policy and conceptualization. And her takeaways, I think, are very powerful in helping China watchers read the tea leaves of China's public-facing national security discourse and I think develop a more nuanced understanding of how the CCP builds its policies and builds its ideas. So this may be a somewhat wonky episode, but I think it's an important one in understanding how the CCP foreign policy apparatus really works. So Sabina, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. I'm happy to be on. So we like to start all of our episodes with a question about how our guest first became interested in China. So how did you get to the point where writing a book about the construction of China's national interest seemed like the obvious way to spend your time? So when I started university, I wanted to learn a new language. And I chose Mandarin pretty much because it's so difficult for a European to learn. And then taking Mandarin once a week didn't do much. So after I got my bachelor's, I decided to go to China for an entire year. I had a great time there. I learned Chinese, experienced a lot on the ground. And then after returning to Germany, I wanted to understand what I had experienced there from a more academic perspective. So I did a master's program in China studies and also kept my original substantive focus on international relations. And that gave me a foundation for examining China's foreign and security policy with this domestic angle. And I've been doing that ever since. And I think the 18-year-old that tried to study Chinese in a Bavarian town, I don't know if she thought about writing a book about this somewhat opaque topic, but I think she would be pleased about it. We all want our 18-year-old selves to be proud of our work. So diving into the work itself, when it comes to the development of foreign policy in China, you describe in the book an inner circle of CCP policymakers and an outer circle of institutions intended to provide expertise to policymakers and also explain or less charitably propagandize government decisions to the public. So let's start with the inner circle. How does it operate in the foreign policy space and who are the key players? So there is the Politburo Standing Committee that takes strategic directions, strategic decisions. Then we've got the Central Foreign Affairs Commission that is shared by Xi Jinping, also supported by its office. And that kind of tries to integrate inputs from many different sources within the government. So the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Central Military Commission, State Council, and many, many others. And as I'm sure listeners are aware in recent years, Xi Jinping's leadership over a lot of central commissions has kind of reduced bureaucratic fragmentation, and he has concentrated authority at the top. So that's kind of what a lot of emphasis, a lot of focus has been in the field. So this centralization of power and implications for foreign policy. And to me, that's all very interesting. But for me, it was much more interesting to kind of leave this inner circle and go into the broader foreign policy ecosystem. And that's kind of how I ended up studying think tanks and scholars. Diving into that outer circle, can you talk about the think tank ecosystem in China and give us a primer on the most important institutions in that space? Yeah, so there are about 25 Chinese foreign policy think tanks. And I would say that the field is very dynamic. Since 2015, the Chinese government has put a lot of emphasis on think tanks and kind of on integrating their input into policymaking in all fields, including foreign policy. So there's a big emphasis on these institutions. Some of them are very, very established and have been kind of modeled based on the Soviet system. So we've got different institutions within the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences, Institute for World Economics and Politics, Institute for National Strategy. So that's kind of very established. Who on the government or the party side are those institutions attached to? So like for CAS, it's the State Council. Is that right? Yes. And I think that's very important and very interesting. There are different institutional affiliations. So some institutions are affiliated with the central government agencies, CIIS, for example, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kikir with the Ministry for State Security. Those are like very prominent examples. And then there are others that are affiliated with municipal and provincial governments. That's the case for Shanghai Institute for International Studies, Guangdong Institute for International Strategy. And it really makes a difference for these institutions and kind of how the system works. But at the same time, what I found out in my research is that it's not just the institutional affiliation. In the end, I call it their proximity to the party state. And that kind of depends on a variety of factors. And institutional affiliation is only one of those factors. And what are the other factors that determine a think tank's influence? Well, not a think tank's influence, but how close they are to the state. On one side, it's formal ties. So that's the institutional affiliation. It's also research funding that they get, like how many projects are they really implementing for the government? And then also how much recognition do they receive? So given that the Chinese government puts so much emphasis on think tanks, there are also some that they highlight as exemplary think tanks. And the other is like, how much interaction do people who work at these institutions really have with government officials? And I looked at this for the top leadership people, but also on the working level. So how frequently do they actually interact? And there's some of them information that is obviously public and available, but there's also a lot that we judge now. You mentioned also that 2015 was an important turning point for like the real institutionalization of expertise in this way And of course that towards the beginning of Xi Jinping first term To what degree is this think tankization of expertise a function of the Xi era? And I ask in part because I think we tend to picture the Xi Jinping era as the opposite of that, of maybe a more ideological era where expertise, especially in national security, is seen as less relevant, as more political factors. So how does all of that fit together? I think it's definitely a story about Xi Jinping's influence here. And one element here is that I see very different tendencies for think tanks and for scholars. So for think tanks, we have this emphasis from the government and this kind of, we need you, we need your expertise. And at the same time for scholars, I observed that since after 2016, there was a lot more emphasis on ideology and less emphasis on expertise. That kind of fits the picture. And at the same time, I think we also need to see that all these institutions are linked to the state in some way, and they have more or less influence in certain points of time, but they are also never independent from the state. So it's a very complex and complicated relationship that kind of changes all the time. And it's really important to have a close look at that. Am I hearing you right that at least on average across these communities in the Xi era, scholars at universities have faced maybe more pressure to have an ideological bent to their work in contrast to think tanks, which have seen more space to write in accordance with their expertise, provide policy recommendations, couched in expertise. Is that right? Yes, I would see that. And that's something that I've, for example, I had a very close look at how the research funding from the government for research in international relations developed. And there we see a very clear emphasis on, on the one hand, more ideologically driven fields, and also on if we look at kind of the topics they want research on, there's a big increase in all those concepts that are propagated by Xi Jinping. Great. And so before we get into the beautiful theoretical work that you do in this book, I want to just spend one more minute being ruthlessly practical about just understanding how all of this works in Beijing. So could you walk us through kind of in concrete terms, how these different parameters play out, how you would assess their closeness to the party state, these other elements of influence and expertise that you've described? So for me, it was very important to map all the institutions that I look at and how close or how distant they are to the state. So I had these different categories and kind of tried to find as much data as I could. And I think what is important is that I did it for think tanks, but I also did it for individual scholars. So I looked at how many research projects they've received funding from the Chinese government, but also factors like, have they been invited to a Politburo study session? So that would be like a very important factor. But also for scholars, for example, are they part of organizations whose mission it is to facilitate exchanges between policymakers and scholars? So I try to collect as much information as possible on each scholar, but also on the think tanks. So my interest was more academic and kind of more on how do the structural conditions work, less on this focus on individuals. And that was also the motivation for the book, because I mean, how much influence do Chinese scholars have on foreign policy? That's not a new question. But for me, it was always the same people and always the same examples coming up. And I was like, hmm, I was wondering what the structures behind that are. So that's kind of more what this book is about. Getting more into the theoretical work, the book is ultimately about the construction of China's national interest and how these experts play into that process. And you argue that in recent years, the most important component of Beijing's idea of its own national interest has become this idea of leading global governance. So how did you reach that conclusion? Because I think that on its own is an interesting finding and a controversial one. And then how did outside experts influence the development of this goal? Glad to hear that that's interesting. I looked through or closely read about 150 official foreign policy statements, that work was at times very tedious. So yeah, I had this kind of concept of construction of the national interest and developed different components to it. And when I applied this to all these primary sources, so from the obviously report to party congress down to statements of the Chinese foreign minister. So when I applied that to that, the most substance kind of fell on global governance. And what was really interesting here was also that not only this kind of quantitative emphasis, where this was clearly a focus, a focus on economic development or on national security or on the region much as prominent, there was also kind of a qualitative shift over time. And that was from, oh, yes, we should participate in global governance to really taking on this leadership role. So I thought that was really interesting and important. And then to how experts played into this, what I saw was that the Chinese government kind of put forward wake slogans for we should take more initiative, we should do more. And then think tanks kind of took this up and made concrete suggestions for what this could look like. Also kind of bringing in examples and how the U.S. is taking on a leadership role and kind of going through this saying, oh, this would not work for us. We should do something else instead. So here I would say this is an example of experts feeling what is coming from the Chinese government, what is often quite weak with with more substance and concrete ideas. How do you assess when you're looking at how experts engage with these ideas? Like, how do you assess whether you're looking at a scholar publish an idea that then gets integrated into policy or whether you're looking at the party having reached out to a scholar and say like, hey, it'd be really helpful if you could like test out this idea. Like, how do you assess directionality here? Yeah, so that's a very good question. And here there's like a part of it that we cannot know and a part of which we can know. So my work is based on openly available resources. And there's a reason behind that. And that is for this topic, when you ask people about how much influence they have, it's really difficult to kind of get a close assessment. So if you interview people, they might not know that they had influence or they may just overplay their influence. So I was like, okay, no, I want to do a different approach. So I only looked at publicly available statements and data. So I first had a look at these 150 official foreign policy statements identified very granular changes in these documents As the example that I just mentioned from like participating global governments to lead global governance, like such very small, and there were like 200 or so, such tiny shifts. And then I tried to kind of trace these changes in expert articles, publications, whatever they put out, and then looked closely at the ones where this shift first appeared in an expert publication and then was taken up by their governments. And this is kind of one approach of looking at this. There are many, many other approaches that one can consider, but I think for what I was interested in, that's kind of the way of looking at that. I can never be 100% certain about the directionality because it could, of course, be the government calling upon this call and be like, you should do that. And that's something that I don't cover, this kind of going the other way around. Yeah, I need to be very open about that, that it's also like this influence really goes in both directions. So the government's putting out, you know, these ideas or like sloganized ideas related to global governance. And then you've mentioned that it's really the outside experts who are coming up with these ideas for what it could actually mean, what does implementation look like? How does this fit into the real world? So could you share any examples of those implementation models or ideas or initiatives that you saw emerge from the public discourse and then get integrated into Chinese policy? Yeah, so I think a good example would be the idea of or the field of global security governance. It's not a major focus, but it's a good example of where experts who are actually close to the state alerted the government to this issue. So here already in 2013, researchers at the Institute of World Economics and Politics at Cass were writing about China's role in the field. And I'm pretty sure that at that time, the Chinese government wasn't really aware of that. So what these researchers did, they compared security governments to other areas of global governance and then explicitly highlighted the fact that China had a very weak position and called the government to do more. So these experts were pretty close to the state. The state had no demand for expertise in that area, but these ideas circulated and they helped kind of put the issue on the agenda. And now it seems like, of course, the Chinese government is interested in that and it's making suggestions here. But that kind of goes back to experts' ideas, I would say. And you mentioned the government wasn't particularly interested, in your view, in this input on international security governance at the time this discourse was being promoted by scholars at Cass and elsewhere. So I guess, are you saying that despite themselves, the party ended up integrating these ideas or that their appetite for input on security governance shifted over time of its own volition? Yeah, I think it shifted. And there was then a time where they were like actively looking for fields in which they could take on a more prominent role. And there was then one of those fields. And this is kind of how expert influence works. So in an authoritarian system like the Chinese system, experts can't exert influence if the government doesn't want it at all. So if we had those like ideas in 2013 discussed, there was like emerging debate on that. And if they hadn't had this interest later on, like this debate would just have gone nowhere. And I'm sure there are many, many academic debates in China where those suggestions are not being taken up by the government. But I would say this is an incentive for those who are taken up. So if we're trying to, from the outside, understand the significance of the public national security discourse in China, it seems really important to know on what issues the party actually wants input. Because if they do want input on a topic, then maybe we see this public facing conversation become transformed into policy implementation or at least a chance that that could occur. So how can we get a sense of what topics or sectors the party actually wants input on? So for this, I think it's really critical to closely read the documents that the party puts out and to have a close look at small changes over time. So there is, and rightly so, a lot of emphasis on the report to party Congress every five years. But once a topic makes it into this very, very important document, it's obvious for everybody that it's a priority. There are other statements, documents that are worth having a close look at. So I would always encourage people to kind of compare it to previous versions. And then this kind of gives it significance. And then going more into the wonky aspects of that is I think that following the money is a good idea. And it's very, very difficult to get financial information on Chinese think tanks. It's just very difficult. But there is research funding that goes to the social sciences, which of course covers international issues. And some of this also goes to think tanks. And there actually the data is really accessible. So there is a database with all of project funding that the Chinese state administers. And they also issue yearly funding calls on topics they want research on. It's a kind of a proxy. But I think you can make some inferences on trends and what they're interested in. So it might seem like a very opaque source, but I think it gives interesting insights. Yeah, it's interesting that enough of those requests for proposals or funding opportunities are actually made public to make some of those conclusions. In the book, you also talk about how scholars and think tanks influenced China's re-energized engagements with its neighbors, or as the government talks about it, China's periphery. And this does seem to have become a really significant area of national security emphasis. I mean, even looking to last year when President Xi addressed the first ever Central War Conference on periphery and really elevating that regional lens in an unusual way. And so would be really interested in what you learned in your research about the process through which the party landed on this idea of the periphery being, ironically so, central to China's concept of its own national security. Well, interestingly enough, in the documents that I looked at, so I started in 2013 and then in 2024, I think, yes, there was really not a lot of emphasis on the region. And I found this very striking. There was this policy conference on the neighborhood in 2013. But after that there was like really not much emphasis So when I step a bit out of my research I think what I see is that in the timeframe that my book looks at there was this big emphasis on global affairs and taking initiative there. And I think that recently this has kind of died down a bit. And I think there are very good reasons for that. And I think that from the party's perspective, more emphasis on the neighborhood or the region and more emphasis on global South countries would just pay off and leave all the mess of the United States and what is happening in Europe behind. So yeah, that's my interpretation of what's going on. So maybe taking a step back to look at this bigger picture that you've painted of how these outside organizations engage with an increasingly authoritarian policy making process. So you mentioned, you know, all of your research is based on open source information. This is publicly available stuff. So for all of us struggling China watchers out here trying to make sense of an increasingly opaque information environment and parse out, you know, the directionality of China's foreign policy, the directionality of its ideas of what elements of its own national security are most important. What advice would you give for just trying to understand all of that with the limited information that the party is willing to have in the public domain? Yes, I think it's important to, as a first starting point, take all the information, all the documents, all what they do put out. So that is kind of the first step. And then what is equally important though is understand where institutions and also individuals are positioned within the system and also how the state views them and bear in mind that their position might change and that their influence is very conditional and depends on what I would say how close or how distant they are to the state, how much the state is interested in their input and this is like how much interest there is, this is very volatile. This can change very fast and understand the structures. I've been talking a lot about research funding, for example, like understanding where this is located in the system and that there is actually information that we can access through an openly available database. So I think what we need to do is use every bit of information that we can get our hands on and also put it together like a puzzle and where the different pieces fit. Yeah. I mean, it seems like the pieces you've been able to put together through this research is an analysis of what's actually being said on Chinese national security, but then also the domestic conditions that shape the way in which that discourse will or will not interact with the actual inner circle policymaking process. Is that fair? Yeah, yeah, that is definitely fair. I mean, I was always interested in China's foreign policy, but I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to grasp it and how to trace experts' influence on it. Because if you want to trace influence, you have to understand what is changing. And foreign policy is just such an abstract kind of thing that that's how I ended up with construction of the national interest, mainly to have those different components and being able to break it down into different parts. Well, we're almost out of time, but I want to end actually where your book starts. You open with a great anecdote of how China came to see itself as a near-Arctic state, which is kind of a, I mean, I don't want to say absurd, but maybe a conclusion one would not draw from a straight reading of a map. And you look at the map, China appears to be a little far away from either pole. And so could you tell us how this idea of a near polar China came to take on such mainstream purchase in Chinese national security thinking? Yes, I found this very interesting. And at some point, I found myself kind of measuring the distance between the Chinese mainland and the Arctic, which is about 5000 kilometers, which is far. It's substantial. Yeah, I found this to be such an intriguing example, because the term near Arctic, near polar state is something that came out first in an academic publication in early 2010, I think. A researcher at the Polar Institute, which is not one of the think tanks I looked at. It's not very like national security or foreign policy centered. It's more like they support missions to the Arctic. So it's very scientific. So it came up in a book, actually, Chinese academic book in 2010 and kind of percolated in Chinese academic discussions. It came up every once in a while. And then in 2018, the Chinese government issued its Arctic policy and there it kind of used this term. So I found this very interesting as like it is this very kind of weird term being taken up by the government. So I think it's also a good example for what influence is in the system and how it works, because it's not this scholar at the Polar Institute explaining the Chinese government that they should have an Arctic strategy. This has emerged somewhere else, and I'm sure there is a lot of scholarship on how, why, when the Chinese government decided to put more emphasis on the Arctic. But when they did, they kind of used this terminology and used input from experts to kind of shorten their strategy, but also kind of publicize it and legitimize it. And I think for this term, a friend in the Arctic state is a good example. Yeah, it's also an interesting example of how ideas can reverberate chaotically across time. time to see this idea being picked up by policymakers, you know, almost a decade after it was initially published is a good reminder to think broadly about how influence can unfold over time. Well, I think that's all the time we have. Sabina, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure. To learn more about how Chinese national security policy really gets made and conceptualized, you can check out Sabina's new book, Chinese Scholars and Think Tank's Construction of China's National Interest. And as always, we'd love to hear what you thought of today's conversation and what issues you would like to see Pekingology unpack in the future. You can send your ideas to peckingology at csis.org. We really appreciate the feedback and we will be back in your feed in two weeks with a really interesting conversation on Chinese influence in Latin America. Thanks again. you
