GIGA China Series

The GIGA China Series aims to foster a community of knowledge seekers interested in unravelling the complexities of China’s politics, society, and global impact. Speakers will present their current research findings on today’s China, ranging from domestic governance and societal trends to geopolitics and international relations.

We strive to present research combining in-depth area expertise with comparative analytical lenses and global perspectives, drawing from the theoretical and methodological resources of diverse fields such as Political Science, Anthropology, Religious Studies, and Philosophy, and hailing from different regional scholarly traditions and communities around the world. During the talks, the speakers will present their research and afterwards the audience can comment on this.

Organisers: Dr. Sebastian Biba Dr. Sinan Chu Dr. Julia Gurol-Haller Dr. Esther Song Askan Weidemann Dr. Lunting Wu

Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities

Tuesday, 14 April 2026 | 6:00–7:15 p.m. (CEST)

Despite being the world’s largest carbon emitter, China has pledged to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Since the early 2010s, Beijing has selected more than one hundred local low-carbon pilots at the township, municipal, and provincial levels to engage in policy experimentation. The goal is to develop policy solutions that decouple local economic growth from increased fossil fuel use.

In Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities (Oxford University Press, 2025), Weila Gong examines why some cities are more successful than others in initiating and implementing low-carbon policy actions within China’s centralized political system. She highlights the central role of entrepreneurial mid-level bureaucrats in mobilizing political support and building implementation alliances to institutionalize low-carbon policy over time.

Drawing on original research including expert interviews, comparative case studies, and process tracing of low-carbon policy experimentation in the pilot cities, Gong’s talk will open the “black box” of subnational climate policymaking in China and examine how mid-level local bureaucrats serve as essential “bridge leaders” in successful policy implementation.

Speaker: Dr. Weila Gong is a non-resident Scholar with the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy's 21st Century China Center. She has over ten years of experience working on climate and environmental politics and policy with a focus on China. She received her PhD in Political Science from the Technical University of Munich's School of Governance and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She was recently a climate policy fellow at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

Moderator: Dr. Sinan Chu is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.

Chinese Experts’ Foreign Policy Influence

Wednesday, 25 March 2026 | 12:30–1.45 p.m. (CET)

From the outside, China’s foreign policy making often seems opaque. Sabine Mokry’s new book Chinese Scholars and Think Tanks’ Influence on the Construction of China’s National Interest (Routledge, 2026) demonstrates that we can understand these processes better by paying attention to what Chinese experts are saying and where they are located in the Chinese system. In her talk, Sabine Mokry will demonstrate how the role of Chinese experts has changed under Xi Jinping. However, despite centralization of political power, Chinese scholars and think tank analysts can still exert influence on foreign policy. Their influence depends not only on their proximity to the party state but also on the state’s signaled demand for expertise. Speaker: Sabine Mokry is a Researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Leiden University (Netherlands). For the 2023-2024 academic year, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program. Before pursuing her PhD, she worked at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) as a Research Associate focusing on China’s foreign and security policy.

Moderator: Dr. Julia Gurol-Haller is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.

China’s International Organizations: Evolution, Influence, and Strategic Purpose

Wednesday, 14 January 2026 | 10.30 a.m.–11.45 a.m. (CET)

How does China use its own international organizations to shape global norms? How have formats such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS evolved since their creation, and what role do they play in China-US global competition? In this talk, Eva Seiwert examines the role of China’s international organizations in Beijing’s foreign policy and presents findings from her new book The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and China’s Vision of International Relations (Bristol University Press, 2025). Speaker: Dr. Eva Seiwert is a Senior Analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), where she focuses on China-Russia relations and China’s role in international organizations. She previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and as managing editor of 9DASHLINE. Eva has been a visiting researcher at King’s College London, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. She holds a PhD in International Relations from Freie Universität Berlin and an MSc in East Asian Relations from the University of Edinburgh. Her book The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and China’s Vision of International Relations was published by Bristol University Press in May 2025.

Moderator: Dr. Julia Gurol-Haller is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.

China’s Blueprint for Global Leadership: GSI, GDI, GCI and Xi Jinping's Vision for the International Order

Monday, 1 December 2025 | 11.00 a.m.–12.15 p.m. (CET) 

China “Three Major Initiatives”, the Global Security Initiative (GSI), the Global Development Initiative (GDI), and the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) represent Beijing’s most recent ad most ambitious attempt to reshape global governance. They advance a vision that is explicitly framed as an alternative to the US-led liberal order, rooted in Chinese principles, leadership, and narratives of civilizational identity.

Drawing from a comprehensive analysis of these initiatives, the seminar situates them within the broader evolution of China’s foreign policy under Xi Jinping. It explores the origins, content, and potential consequences of the initiatives, highlighting their common ambition: to articulate a Chinese-centred vision of international order across the spheres of security, development, and ideology.

The GSI emerges as a manifesto for China’s global security vision, proposing an “indivisible” and sovereignty-based architecture that contests the legitimacy of alliances and interventions. The GDI reframes Beijing’s development diplomacy, positioning China as a reference point for the Global South through an agenda of sustainability, innovation, and multilateral cooperation. Finally, the GCI elevates civilizational diversity and dialogue as normative cornerstones, offering a pluralist, and explicitly post-liberal, framework for global governance.

Taken together, these initiatives reveal both continuities and contradictions: they reaffirm China’s long-standing adherence to sovereignty and non-interference, while simultaneously asserting its great-power prerogatives and leadership ambitions. They resonate strongly with audiences in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, yet raise unresolved tensions between pluralist ideals and hierarchical great-power politics.

By unpacking the GSI, GDI, and GCI as interlinked projects, the seminar sheds light on how China is not simply participating in global governance but actively attempting to redefine its rules, norms, and moral foundations. Whether this project succeeds—or deepens global competition, remains one of the defining questions of our era.

Speakers: Matteo Dian is an Associate Professor of International Relations of East Asia at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna. Previously, he held research and teaching positions at the University of Oxford, London School of Economics and Political Science, and Ca' Foscari University in Venice. His research focuses on international relations theory, East Asia, Chinese and Japanese foreign policy, US-China relations and international security.

Silvia Menegazzi is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Luiss Guido Carli University, where she teaches International Relations and Chinese Studies. Dr. Menegazzi held research and teaching positions at Luiss Guido Carli, Roma Tre University, the China Foreign Affairs University, the University of Warwick (PAIS), the Elliott School of International Affairs (GW), CERI- Sciences Po. She has published in a variety of outlets including East Asia Forum, China Brief, Asia Maior, ChinaFile, The Diplomat. Her research interests focus primarily on China’s foreign policy and diplomacy, rising powers in global governance, EU-Asia relations, think tanks and non-governmental actors of contemporary Asia.

Moderator: Dr. Sebastian Biba is an Associate at the GIGA.

Disappearing Research: Academic Control and Self-Censorship in China  

Monday, 10 November 2025 | 03.30 p.m.–04.45 p.m. (CET) 

How does state censorship contribute to self-censorship in Chinese universities? How does self-censorship in turn affect academic output? This paper addresses these questions by unveiling the mechanisms of self-censorship and investigating their impact on social science research in and about China. Using in-depth interviews and analysis of over 5,000 hand-coded publications of scholars based at US and Chinese universities from 1985 to 2022, this talk addresses the consequences of self-censorship for the production of knowledge. 

Speakers:  Ning Leng is an Assistant Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University. Dr. Leng specializes in the political economy of China and Global China, and the institutional effects of authoritarianism. Her work on domestic China includes publications on the motivations, methods, and outcomes of state control over businesspeople, academics, and government officials. Her first book, "Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made to Serve the Party-State in China," (Cambridge University Press, 2025) reveals how the Chinese state routinely solicits political services from companies and its impact on state-business relations, infrastructure politics and state-society relations. Her works on Global China include public opinion of China in the Global South, the Chinese government’s view of the Global South, and China’s legal influence in South America. Dr. Leng received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is a Wilson China Fellow for the year of 2025-2026. 

Moderator: Dr. Esther Song is a GIGA Associate.

China's Influence in the Global South: Examining Familiarity, Resonance, and Nostalgia

Tuesday, 30 September 2025 | 2.00–3.15 p.m. (CEST) | Online

How can we gain a better understanding of China's influence in the Global South? This talk aims to demonstrate that tapping into emotional resonance and triggers for expanding China’s influence in the Global South based on familiarity and resonance can both grow out of organic affinities (anti-colonial shared history) and also be cultivated by the state through creating memorials, diffusing narratives that aim at activating these shared emotions, and sometimes also constructing new narratives on the back of old histories, nostalgic remembering, and imagined or reimagined pasts. To illustrate this point, Lina Benabdallah will examine the utilization of the Ancient Silk Roads and the fourteenth century encounter between Chinese maritime navigators and Afro-Indian Ocean communities to present the Belt and Road Initiative as the new Silk Road which can revive the commercial prosperity of the Afro-Indian Ocean known to the area prior to the arrival of European imperial and colonial powers. Speaker: Lina Benabdallah, PhD, is McCulloch Family Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University. She is the author of Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge Production and Network-Building in China-Africa Relations (University of Michigan Press, 2020). Her research has appeared in International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Reviews, The Journal of International Relations and Development, Third World Quarterly, African Studies Quarterly, Project on Middle East Political Science, as well as in public facing outlets such as Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage and Foreign Policy. Dr. Benabdallah is on leave in the 2025-2026 academic year serving as a visiting scholar at the Weatherhead Center at Harvard University. She is also serving as a co-editor of PS: Political Science and Politics.

Moderator: Dr. Julia Gurol-Haller is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.

Facing a Balancing Coalition? Chinese Views of the Indo-Pacific Strategy(ies)

Thursday, 24 July 2025 | 11.00 a.m.–12.15 p.m. (CEST) | Online

What does the Indo-Pacific mean for China? This talk seeks to answer this question by delving into recent analyses from Chinese experts. While China is undeniably a major stakeholder in the region, the perspectives of its experts on the Indo-Pacific have received little attention in English-language publications, often dismissed as mere echoes of official rhetoric. However, a closer examination reveals a more nuanced debate within Chinese policy circles about a construct widely viewed as an effort to contain China’s rise. A dominant perspective among Chinese analysts characterizes the Indo-Pacific as the “Nato-ization of the Asia-Pacific”. However, some experts emphasize the diversity in Indo-Pacific strategies adopted by various countries, from Asia to Europe, suggesting that these variations must be acknowledged when assessing the region’s dynamics and China’s policy options. The talk reviews Chinese experts’ proposed responses to the array of Indo-Pacific strategies and the visions of regional order they imply, ranging from attempts to shape the concept to deploying wedge tactics against these alliances. Speakers: Dr. Jérôme Doyon is a Junior Professor at the Centre for International Relations (CERI) at Sciences Po Paris, and an affiliate at the Oxford China Centre as well as at King’s College London’s Lau China Institute. He received a dual Ph.D. from Columbia University and Sciences Po. Prior to joining Sciences Po’s faculty, he held fellowships and positions at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Oxford School for Global and Area Studies, the University of Edinburgh, and the SOAS China Institute. His work on Chinese domestic politics, including youth politics, the inner workings of the Party-State apparatus, as well as issues related to religious and ethnic minorities, has been published in various journals, such as Political Studies or The China Quarterly. His recent books include Rejuvenating Communism: Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China (University of Michigan Press, 2023) and The Chinese Communist Party: a 100-year Trajectory (co-edited with Chloé Froissart, Australian National University Press, 2024).

Dr. Mathieu Duchâtel is Resident Senior Fellow for Asia and Director of International Studies at Institut Montaigne. He joined the Institute in January 2019 as Director of the Asia Program. He was previously Senior Policy Fellow and Deputy Director of the Asia and China Program at the European Council of Foreign Relations (2015-2018), Senior Researcher and the Representative in Beijing of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (2011-2015), Research Fellow with Asia Centre in Paris (2007-2011) and Associate Researcher based in Taipei with Asia Centre (2004-2007). He has spent a total of ten years in Shanghai (Fudan University), Taipei (National Chengchi University) and Beijing, and has been visiting scholar at the School of International Studies of Peking University in 2011/2012 and the Japan Institute of International Affairs in 2015, and the Institute of National Defense and Security Research in Taipei in September 2020. He holds a Ph.D in political science from the Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Paris).

Moderator: Dr. Sinan Chu is Research Fellow at the GIGA.

The Time Inheritors: How Time Inequalities Shape Higher Education Mobility in China

Wednesday, 2 July 2025 | 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m. (CEST) | Online

Can a student inherit time? What difference does time make to their educational journeys and outcomes? In this lecture, Dr. Cora Xu discusses her new book, The Time Inheritors, which draws on nearly a decade of field research with more than one hundred youth in China to argue that intergenerational transfers of privilege or deprivation are manifested in and through time. Comparing experiences of rural-to-urban, cross-border, and transnational education, Cora Lingling Xu shows how inequalities in time inheritance help drive deeply unequal mobility. With its unique focus on time, nuanced comparative analysis, and sensitive ethnographic engagement, The Time Inheritors opens new avenues for understanding the social mechanisms shaping the future of China and the world. Speaker: Dr. Cora Lingling Xu is Associate Professor at Durham University, UK. She is a sociologist interested in education mobilities and social inequalities. Her research examines how the intersection of class, gender, ethnicity, rural-urban divides, time, and geopolitics can shape social agents’ educational and life trajectories. She is an executive editor of the British Journal of Sociology of Education. Her research on Chinese international students has been featured in BBC Radio 4's documentary 'Chinese on Campus' and on BBC News. Cora was a visiting scholar at the Centre for International Higher Education (CIHE), Boston College, USA in Spring 2025.

Moderator: Dr. Julia Gurol-Haller is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.

China in the Middle East: Strengthening Ties and Avoiding Entanglement in an Age of Great Power Competition

Friday, 20 June 2025 | 3:00–4:15 p.m. (CEST) | Online

What are China's interests in the Middle East? What is China's strategy for achieving its goals in the region? What role might China play in resolving or exacerbating ongoing conflicts and disputes? In this talk he will address these questions and argue that China's engagement in the Middle East going forward will largely be a function of American policy--whether and to what extent the United States attempts to limit China's influence and rally regional powers against China.

Speaker: Dr. Aaron Glasserman is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania and a non-resident fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Institute for Global Affairs. His research interests include Chinese politics, ethnic policy, and foreign relations with a focus on the Middle East, as well as the history of Islam in China. His research and commentary have been published in The China Quarterly, The Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, as well as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and ChinaFile, among other outlets. He was previously an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and a postdoctoral fellow at the Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China at Princeton University. He received a PhD in History from Columbia University in 2021 and a BA in Near Eastern Studies with certificates in Chinese and Arabic from Princeton University in 2013.

Moderator: Dr. Sinan Chu is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.

From Tweets to Tactics: Unpacking State-Sponsored Propaganda Campaigns on Twitter  

Friday, 30 May 2025 | 11.00 a.m. – 12.15 p.m. (CEST) | Online

Digital technologies have posed significant challenges to democratic systems, particularly through the dissemination of propaganda by authoritarian regimes. This study investigates the complex dynamics and tactics of authoritarian regimes in social media propaganda, focusing on how China and Russia leverage state-backed X (formerly Twitter) accounts for this purpose. Analysing over 2.8 million posts – often still called “tweets” – from 744 Chinese accounts linked to Hong Kong and 411 Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) accounts, we find that Chinese accounts proactively shape narratives to reinforce internal stability, whereas Russian accounts exhibit reactive spikes during critical events, utilising divisive narratives to exacerbate polarisation in Western democracies. This dual strategy underscores how state-sponsored propaganda tactics and strategies by authoritarian regimes adeptly employ inward-focused tactics to maintain control and outward-facing approaches that destabilise adversaries. Ultimately, our research illuminates the evolving landscape of propaganda in the digital age, emphasising the role of social media in legitimising authoritarian regimes, co-opting dissent, and shaping global public opinion. Speakers: Dr. Dechun Zhang is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research interests are political communication, media and politics, digital politics, digital propaganda, online participation and digital nationalism. He is now the Managing Editor of the Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia, Editor of the Asia Pacific Viewpoint, and Social Media Editor of the Journal of Visual Political Communication. Dr. Jun Liu (corresponding author) is an Associate Professor at the Center for Tracking and Society and the Department of Communication at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is Vice Chair of the European Communication Research and Education Association’s Communication and Democracy Section and a research affiliate at the Center on Digital Culture and Society, University of Pennsylvania. His research areas cover political communication, political sociology, and comparative and computational social science, with publications on digital technologies and activism in the fields of communication, sociology, political science, and computer science.

Moderator: Dr. Sinan Chu is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.

The Politics of Football in China: Institutional Change and Political Steering under Xi Jinping 

Friday, 11 April 2025 | 11.00 a.m.–12.15 p.m. (CET) | Online

In recent years, football has become an important field for institutional change and political steering in China. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party has placed football at the centre of its national rejuvenation agenda, seeking to transform the country into a powerful sports nation. However, this ambitious plan has triggered a series of contentious interactions between party-state actors, international and local socio-economic actors, who often have to strike a delicate balance between political expectations, market dynamics and human rights.

This talk delves into the intricate world of Chinese football politics and offers a comprehensive analysis of how the sport has become a locus for achieving broader social, economic and political goals. It examines the implications of the Chinese party-state's institutional transformation efforts towards 'top-level design' in this policy field, which aims to centralise and hierarchise policy-making authorities. It also uses detailed case studies to investigate the Chinese party-state's attempts at political steering, including international sport diplomatic interactions as well as interactions with Chinese social and economic actors.

Speaker: Dr. Ilker Gündoğan is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU). He's also a Fellow at the EU*Asia Institute of the ESSCA School of Management, France, and an Affiliate Researcher at the Centre for EU-Asia Connectivity at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.

Moderator: Dr. Sinan Chu is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.

How the Social Credit System Strengthens, Weakens, and Transforms Law in China

Thursday, 6 March 2025 | 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m. (CET) | At the GIGA in Hamburg and online

China's Social Credit System (SCS) is regularly portrayed in media reports as a "total surveillance" dystopia. These narratives not only dangerously veil the real risks posed by surveillance technologies but also ignore the crucial innovation that the SCS brings to economic governance: The creation and use of trustworthiness assessments by regulators to inform administrative decisions and steer industries through reputational-management measures. To this end, a wide range of pilot projects are underway, including municipal social credit scores for residents and disciplinary measures for entities deemed untrustworthy. Amid official claims that social credit reinforces the law and scholarly criticism that it violates legal rights, this investigation draws on more than 650 central- and local-government policies and regulations, court decisions, standards, as well as interviews with SCS founders, implementers, and judges to explore the relationship between it and the older system of behavioral regulation and public law. The findings point to a complex construct that is conducive to realising the vision of socialist legality with the Communist Party of China at its centre: On the one hand, the SCS strengthens the law by solving long-standing enforcement problems and improving the transparency of corporate and government information. On the other, the SCS's mechanisms also violate fundamental principles of Chinese public law and blur the boundaries between it and private law in the country. Finally, the SCS is transforming the current legal order by politicising spaces of administrative and judicial discretion, systematically using the private sector for enforcement, and automating law through the project of a "new type of regulation based on credibility."

Speaker: Marianne von Blomberg is a Research Fellow and PhD candidate at the Chair of Chinese Legal Culture, University of Cologne. She explores public law, assessment-based public regulation, regulatory evolution, and technical standardisation in China. Her dissertation addresses the relationship between law and social credit, investigating how evolving social credit systems strengthen, weaken, and transform traditional legality. She edits the ECLR Hub blog on latest research and events in the field of Chinese law studies. Marianne holds an LL.M degree from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, a BA in Communication and Cultural Studies from Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, and was a visiting scholar at City University of Hong Kong School of Law.

Moderator: Askan Weidemann is a Doctoral Researcher at the GIGA.

Unpacking Power Shifts: China at the United Nations 

Thursday, 23 January 2025 | 11:00–12:15 a.m. (CET) | Online

The People's Republic of China is central to current debates about power shifts in international organizations. While pundits – particularly in the West – argue that China has been taking over the United Nations (UN), a systematic assessment of China’s engagement with the UN system has been missing. This talk presents and discusses findings from a recent Global Policy Special Issue on whether and how China-related power shifts have unfolded at the UN over the last two decades. The analysis focuses on empirical insights from the UN's three main pillars: peace and security, development, and human rights. It also covers UN relations with China’s Belt and Road Initiative as well as more recent Chinese attempts to promote the Global Development Initiative.

Speaker: Dr. Sebastian Haug is a Senior Researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS). He is the Lead Editor of "Power Shifts in International Organisations: China at the United Nations" (Global Policy 2024) and "The Global South in the Study of World Politics" (Third World Quarterly 2021). His latest research has been published by outlets such as International Affairs, the Review of International Studies, and International Studies Perspectives. Prior to IDOS, Sebastian worked for the UN in Beijing and Mexico City and did stints at the Istanbul Policy Center, the College of Mexico, and New York University. He holds a Master of Science from the University of Oxford and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. 

Moderator: Dr. Sinan Chu is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.

China’s Foreign Ministry and Assertive Diplomacy

Thursday, 5 December 2024 | 10:00–11:15 a.m. (CET) | Online

China's rise and importance in international relations as a discipline-defining phenomenon are well recognized. Yet, when scholars analyze China's foreign relations, they typically focus on Beijing's military power, economic might, or political leaders. As a result, most traditional assessments miss a crucial factor: China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). In this online talk, Dylan Loh discusses how MOFA became the primary vehicle through which the idea of 'China' is produced, articulated, and represented on the world stage. Arguing that MOFA has increased in importance and influence, he offers an original reading of Chinese foreign policy with wide-ranging implications for international relations. Shedding light on the dynamics of diplomatic assertiveness, Loh gives a comprehensive reappraisal of China's foreign ministry and the role it performs in China's re-emergence.

Speaker: Dr. Dylan M.H Loh is an Assistant Professor in the Public Policy & Global Affairs program at Nanyang Technological University. His research interests include Chinese foreign policy, international diplomacy, and conceptions of international orders. He received his PhD from Cambridge University, and his articles have appeared in China Quarterly, Cooperation & Conflict, International Studies Review, Global Studies Quarterly, The Pacific Review, and International Relations of Asia-Pacific, among others. Dylan is the author of China’s Rising Foreign Ministry (2024), published by Stanford University Press. He is working on his second monograph on Chinese discourse power.

Moderator: Dr. Sebastian Biba is an Associate at the GIGA and Research Fellow at the Professorship for Political Science with the Focus on Area Studies China/East Asia at the Goethe-University.

China Watchers

Wednesday, 30 October 2024 | 2:00–3:15 p.m. (CET) | Online

When Western audiences try to understand politics in the People’s Republic of China, they often turn to China specialists to help them understand a regime that appears increasingly opaque and inaccessible. But just who are those “China Watchers”? How do they arrive at their conclusions, and should we be worried about biases in this community? We establish a global list of experts on contemporary Chinese politics through a snowballing nomination process. Examining the over 2,200 China Watchers nominated so far, we find that they tend to nominate experts living in the same country and thus form local sub-communities based on geographic location, but that there are nevertheless enough connections across countries and continents that one can call this a global expert community. We also find that US-based and -educated male academics still form the core of this community, but that younger cohorts are more diverse in terms of educational background, gender, and geographic work location. Examining the China-related conversations of those experts on Twitter, we find that they influence each other’s assessments and topics of interest, but the path of influence varies.

Speaker: Franziska Barbara Keller is a Political Scientist interested in social networks and authoritarian regimes, particularly the People’s Republic of China. She received her PhD from New York University, was an assistant professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and is now an advanced PostDoc at the Institute of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Bern (icmb). She has studied patronage networks among Chinese political elites and hidden influence campaigns on X/Twitter. In her current research, she examines how our knowledge of authoritarian regimes is generated, and what role the social networks of China and Russia experts play in that process.

Moderator: Dr. Esther Song is an Associate Professor at the Department of Government at the University of Bergen and an Associate at the GIGA Institute for Asian Studies.

Redefining Hong Kong Identity: The Impact of the National Security Law from Governmental and Grassroots Perspectives

Tuesday, 1 October 2024 | 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m. (CEST) | Online

Since its introduction in June 2020, the National Security Law (NSL) has attracted considerable attention from scholars studying law, human rights, education, media, and the political and judiciary systems in Hong Kong. However, the question of how the NSL affects Hong Kong identity remains largely unexplored. This talk aims to address this research gap by discussing how the NSL has affected Hong Kong identity and how it can be defined and practiced in today’s Hong Kong. The talk is based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2021-2023 in Hong Kong. It draws on over 60 interviews with Hongkongers in Hong Kong and Taiwan, participant observation research, and photo voice exercises.  

The talk is divided into three parts. It will firstly discuss the strategies employed by the Hong Kong government to formulate a specific vision of Hong Kong identity in the post-colonial era from 1997 to 2020, and how these strategies have changed since the introduction of the NSL. Secondly, it will examine how ordinary Hongkongers are navigating these socio-political transformations and whether and how they can continue to define and foster Hong Kong identity on their own. Finally, the presentation will address the apparent schism between top-down institutional and bottom-up grassroots identity formation processes. In doing so, a tentative new conceptualization will be proposed of Hong Kong identity as ‘just another Chinese city’ with its implications for Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area and China discussed. 

Speaker:  Mariusz Bogacki is a PhD candidate at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. In his doctoral thesis, he is investigating the effect of the National Security Law on Hong Kong identity. His broader research interests span identity politics, Hong Kong studies, international relations, and qualitative methodologies. He has held Visiting Researcher positions at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of California, Berkeley, and Goethe University Frankfurt. Prior to his PhD, he was a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow, studying the identity formation of European Union migrants in post-Brexit Scotland. 

Moderator:  Askan Weidemann is a Doctoral Researcher at the GIGA.

Navigating Post-Pandemic Fieldwork in China: Challenges, Adaptations, and Insights

Monday, 22 July 2024 | 11.00 a.m.–12.15 p.m. (CEST) | At the GIGA, Neuer Jungfernstieg 21 in Hamburg, Room 531 and online

Following an extended period of closure due to COVID-19 restrictions, the opportunity to conduct fieldwork in China has been reinstated. However, this reopening has been met with a degree of apprehension within the realm of Chinese Studies, as researchers are questioning the scope and nature of viable research. This presentation, predicated on fieldwork on social governance discourses in China conducted in Beijing from November 2023 to February 2024, offers an exploration of the potential dynamics of fieldwork in Beijing's academia in the post-pandemic context. Key questions to be addressed include the transformation in the perceived sensitivity surrounding research topics, the implications of one’s status as a foreign researcher on fieldwork execution in China, and the challenges encountered during the research process. Furthermore, the presentation will offer some preliminary strategies to navigate these obstacles. The insights gleaned from this experience aim to provide guidance and preparation for scholars embarking on future fieldwork endeavors in China.

Speaker: Philipp C. D. Immel is a Research Assistant with teaching responsibilities at the Chair of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Würzburg. His doctoral thesis focuses on the social governance discourses in China, examining how power relations are shifted between the overseeing agent and subjects of the system, how they are shifted between the subjects themselves, and how localities interpret and implement the top-level directives in concrete terms.

He has a Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies and Chinese from the University of Bonn and a Master of Arts in Chinese Studies (Distinction) from the University of Würzburg. From 2014 to 2015, he studied at Jilin University in Changchun and during the winter semester 2017/18 at Peking University. After graduating, he spent the summer semester of 2019 at Sophia University in Tokyo. From November 2023 to February 2024, he stayed at Peking University's Law School as an International Visiting Scholar under the guidance of Prof. DAI Xin.

His research is funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) and the Marianne Plehn Program (Elite Network of Bavaria). Since 2021, he serves as an elected board member of the German Association for Asian Studies (DGA) and has been a member of the Association for Social Science Research on China (ASC) within the DGA since 2019. Additionally, he is a member of the DLR_Graduate_Program at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

Moderator: Askan Weidemann is a Doctoral Researcher at the GIGA.

The Paradigm Shift in EU-China Relations: Understanding the EU’s Current Strategy Towards China

Thursday, 11 July 2024 | 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m. (CEST) | Online

This session explores the ‘paradigm-shift’ in EU-China relations, focusing on the 'de-risking' strategy in response to China's growing influence and changing global dynamics. The session examines how the EU has navigated deteriorating US-China relations over the past decade, highlighting the evolution from economic collaboration in the 1990s to the current tensions driven by China's assertive foreign policy under Xi Jinping. The session delves into the roots of this paradigm shift, tracing China's evolving self-perception and its implications for global power dynamics. The EU maintains a “tripartite” strategy, originally outlined in its 2019 Strategic Outlook, seeing China as a “partner”, but also as an economic “competitor” and a “systemic rival”. China’s former State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi has described the European approach as suffering from “cognitive dissonance”. As a result, and as demonstrated by the failure of the 2022 EU-China Summit, the two parties are now operating within two different frameworks, and constructive cooperation has become increasingly difficult. This session aims to contribute to a functional conceptualisation of the shift in the relationship and on ways in which the EU and China can work with each other to tackle global issues.

Speaker: Alice Politi is a PhD Candidate in International Relations at King’s College London. She is also an Eisenhower Defense Fellow at the NATO Defense College and a Policy Advisor at the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Her doctoral research focuses on EU-China relations during the presidency of Xi Jinping, with a focus on China’s Belt and Road Initiative. More broadly, her research concentrates on China’s geopolitical behavior and foreign policy under Xi Jinping. Alice has previously collaborated as a Policy Consultant with the UK FCDO and participated in projects with the European Commission and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

Moderation: Dr. Sebastian Biba is Research Fellow at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt.

Australia-China Relations after the Economic Coercion Campaign

Thursday, 13 June 2024 | 2:30–3:45 p.m. (CEST)

With diplomatic contact between Australia and China returning to its regular rhythm, Beijing is also dismantling the last of its politically motivated trade restrictions. How did the Australian government and the country’s exporters navigate this four-year-long campaign of economic coercion? What, if anything, can other countries learn from the Australian experience? And what’s the outlook for Australia-China relations? This presentation will also explore how deep economic interdependence between Australia and China has created sources of leverage and vulnerability for both countries, while also considering how these sources of leverage and vulnerability might be weaponised in conflict scenarios, including Taiwan Strait contingencies.

Speaker Dr. Benjamin Herscovitch is a Research Fellow in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University (ANU). His primary areas of research are Australia–China relations and China’s statecraft. He is the author of Beijing to Canberra and Back, a fortnightly newsletter chronicling Australia–China relations. Prior to joining the ANU, he was an analyst and policy officer in the Department of Defence, specialising in China’s external policy and Australia’s defence diplomacy. He was previously a researcher for Beijing-based think tanks and consultancies.

Moderation: Dr. Sebastian Biba is Research Fellow at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt.

Meanings of Zero: China’s Zero-COVID Policy

Friday, 31 May 2024 | 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m. (CEST)

China’s “zero-COVID policy” (qingling zhengce), the most radical public health measure during the COVID pandemic, has been the focal point of public debates but surprisingly understudied. How did the policy start? What exactly did “zero-COVID” ("qingling”) mean? When did the policy acquire the name “qingling”? What were the political and symbolic implications of the word “zero”? Why did the Chinese state choose it over other options? How did the policy change during the pandemic? Why did the state stubbornly insist on the zero goal in 2022 when it became unpopular among experts and the public and even endangered the state’s legitimacy due to its economic and social impacts? Xu’s research answers these questions by examining the state’s schema, policy paradigm, and frame and how these cultural/ideational factors are intertwined with the autocratic institution in policy processes.

Speaker: Bin Xu, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Emory University and a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2023–2024. His research interests are the intersection between politics and culture, including civil society, collective memory, symbolic politics, and disaster. He is the author of The Culture of Democracy: A Sociological Approach to Civil Society (Polity 2022), Chairman Mao’s Children: Generation and the Politics of Memory in China (Cambridge 2021), and The Politics of Compassion: the Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China (Stanford 2017). His articles have appeared in leading journals in sociology and China studies. He is currently working on two book projects: one is about mourning and memorialization of the COVID pandemic, and the other about disaster politics in China.

Moderator: Dr. Sinan Chu is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.

External Support, Internal Strength, and the Strategy of Minority Repression in Mao's China

Friday, 22 March 2024 | 11:00 a.m.‒12:15 noon (CET)

Why do states, when facing ethnic separatist threats, sometimes opt for settler colonization while other times use extreme violence like genocide? Existing theories offer limited insights into variations in repressive choices. We propose that external support and a minority’s separation potential influence state choices. If external powers support a domestic minority group with weak insurgency capabilities, states favor a gradual approach, like internal colonization, to solidify control over minority-concentrated territories. However, when a minority group has strong insurgent capabilities and receives external support, the secession threat intensifies. This urgency pushes states towards immediate, drastic measures like genocide for territorial control. We examine our theory using original county-level personnel and demographic data of China's minority-concentrated regions. Findings based on an analysis of China’s settler colonization and state violence from 1964 to 1982 support our theoretical arguments. Our findings shed new light on China's nation-building, state repression, and ethnic politics of the Mao era.

Speaker: Dr. Chuyu Liu is an assistant professor in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Pennsylvania State University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on ethnic conflict, the political economy of development, and East Asian security. His current research examines the political economy of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. His work has appeared in Energy Policy, Environmental Politics, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Comparative Economics, the Journal of East Asian Studies, Security Studies, and The China Review.

Moderation: Dr. Sinan Chu is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.

Xinjiang in Central Asia: Trade, Refugees, Loans, and Propaganda Across the Former Sino-Soviet Border

Tuesday, 30 January 2024 | 11:00 a.m.‒12:15 p.m. (CET)

The rising influence of China on Central Asia has long been recognized. But in the last years the impact of Chinese policies in the region directly bordering Central Asia, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, has become particularly significant in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Based on fieldwork in Central Asia 2021-2023, this talk traces these cross-border connections including shifts in trade patterns, the impact of testimonies of survivors from Xinjiang’s re-education camps, propaganda efforts, state violence against activists, and the recent agreements on visa-free travel between China and Central Asia.

Speaker: Dr. Rune Steenberg is a Senior Researcher at Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic. As an anthropologist, Dr. Steenberg specializes in Xinjiang and the Uyghurs, and has researched and published extensively on kinship, economy, narratives, and mass incarceration. His works can be found in journals such as Critical Asian Studies, Central Asian Survey, and Asian Ethnicity, as well as edited volumes such as Routledge Handbook of Asian Borderlands and Xinjiang in the Context of Central Eurasian Transformations. In recent years, he has also worked as a Uyghur interpreter for asylum seekers, activists, journalists, and human rights organizations. He is currently a principal investigator of the EU-funded project "Remote Ethnography of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region".

Moderation: Dr. Sinan Chu is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.

Cultivating a Good Muslim: Islamic Education, State-Building, and the Making of Chinese Muslims

Monday, 18 December 2023 | 3:00‒4:15 p.m. (CET)

This talk explores the multifaceted role of Islamic education as a tool for collective-identity construction within the context of China’s nation-building efforts, with a specific focus on the Hui Muslim community. Recognising the imperative of a shared national identity, the talk presents the ways in which the Chinese state strategically employs Islamic education to shape and mould its “good citizens” among the Hui Muslims. The investigation begins with a concise historical overview, unravelling the circumstances that gave rise to Islamic education in China and its initial trajectory. The talk then traces the evolution of Islamic education from its inception to contemporary times in China, detailing the historical and sociopolitical factors that influenced its growth there. Through a nuanced analysis, the study scrutinises how the Chinese state leverages Islamic education to align religious teachings with the overarching objectives of nation-building. This involves an examination of educational policies, curriculum structures, and institutional frameworks designed to nurture the harmonious co-existence of Islamic values with the broader narrative of Chinese identity. Furthermore, the talk focuses on the transformative phase of modern reforms in Islamic education, exploring the ways in which these reforms align with the broader goals of the Chinese state in shaping a cohesive national identity. It investigates the interplay between tradition and modernity in the context of Islamic education, shedding light on how the state navigates the preservation of cultural and religious heritage while fostering a sense of allegiance to the Chinese nation.

By adopting an interdisciplinary approach that combines historical analysis, educational policy studies, and sociological perspectives, the talk contributes to a nuanced understanding of the dynamic relationship between Islamic education, state-building, and the construction of a distinct Chinese Muslim identity. It provides insight into the complexities of cultural and religious integration within the fabric of a rapidly evolving Chinese society.

Speaker: Dr. Gang Li is a Research Associate at the Erlangen Centre for Islam and Law in Europe (EZIRE), FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Moderation: Dr. Sinan Chu is a Research Fellow at the GIGA.