The Making of China's Strategic Thinkers

How does China think about the world?

We spend a lot of time trying to decode Beijing’s behaviour—its strategy, its ambitions, its moves on the global stage. But we rarely ask a more basic question: where does that thinking come from?

What does it actually mean to study international relations in China?

In this episode, I speak with Yaqi Li, an MSc candidate in International Relations at RSIS in Singapore. Yaqi, who grew up in China’s Hubei province, is someone who studied political science and IR in China; he offers a first-hand view of what the classroom environment is like.

On paper, much of it looks familiar. Students study realism, liberalism, international political economy. But the experience is also very different. There are limits to inquiry. Domestic politics is largely absent. And official ideology sits alongside political theory in ways that shape how students engage with the changing world around them.

So this is a conversation about classrooms. But it’s also about power.

How are ideas produced in China? How do they travel into the policy system? And what happens when a system tries to generate knowledge, but also constrain it?

We explore the gap between theory and practice. The role of think tanks and state institutions. And the internal logic that shapes Chinese statecraft—its strengths, its blind spots, and its limits.

Because if we want to understand what China does, we first need to understand how it thinks.

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.

Do check out Yaqi’s Substack and podcast: New China Literacy