Inside China’s Foreign Policy Machine

We often hear from Beijing that the world today is undergoing “changes unseen in a century,” and that opportunities and risks coexist. But what does the external environment actually look like from inside the Chinese system? If you were a policymaker or analyst in Beijing, how would you read the balance between threat and opportunity?

In addition, who are the people that influence the thinking about China’s foreign policy? Is it entirely top-down? Or is there room for policy engineers and entrepreneurs to make an impact?

To unpack these questions, in this episode of The Great Power Show, I speak to Sabine Mokry, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, and author of Chinese Scholars and Think Tanks’ Constructions of China’s National Interest.

The conversation focuses on how one can distinguish between signal and noise in terms of China’s external communication. We examine the institutional stakeholders within officialdom. What role does the Ministry of Foreign Affairs play today? How does it compare with the Party’s International Department? And how do different actors coordinate—or compete—in shaping China’s external posture?

Beyond the state, what about scholars, think tanks, and media? Is there a useful way to classify China’s foreign policy research ecosystem? How do debates take place, and how do we assess the influence of someone in a system that is so opaque?

And finally, we discuss how big ideas come to be—the Belt and Road Initiative and the various Global initiatives of the Xi era. Where do these concepts come from? Who helps package them? And what role does ideology actually play in Chinese foreign policy today?

As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe, and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work I do, please feel free to reach out to me.