Constructing China's National Interest: Chinese Scholars and Think Tanks' Foreign Policy Influence

Constructing China’s National Interest offers a systematic assessment of when and how Chinese International Relations scholars based at universities in mainland China and analysts working at Chinese foreign policy think tanks influence the construction of China’s national interest and explains variation in experts’ foreign policy influence. In this book, I argue that the state’s signaled demand for expertise and foreign policy experts’ proximity to the state facilitate and constrain Chinese foreign policy experts’ influence on the construction of China’s national interest. Over the first ten years of Xi Jinping’s rule, Chinese scholars and think tank analysts influenced several shifts in the official construction of China’s national interest as laid down in official foreign policy statements, especially regarding China’s role in global governance and the Chinese government’s changing understanding of national security.