China’s Ideational Binding Practices in Global Governance

Project leader: Matthew D. Stephen, Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg

Co-investigator: Steven Langendonk, Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg

This project examines the ideological aspect of China’s evolution as a ‘learning empire’. It asks to what extent China’s advancement of ideas about global governance and international politics in the Xi-era constitute a novel imperial ideology. It does so via an emphasis on “ideational binding”, one of the five imperial practices at the centre of the overall project.

The project investigates ideational binding across a variety of international settings to investigate the emergence of an imperial ideology. Specifically, the project investigates the evolution, promotion and reception of Chinese efforts to reshape the ideational environment of global governance at three levels. At the intergovernmental level it examines developments in new and establishes international organisations that point to the appeal of concepts and norms that are propagated or supported by China. At the transnational level it examines how China-orchestrated policy forms and other track II settings shape policy debates. At the societal level it examines the spread and appeal of China’s preferred ideas via analysis of trends in mass media.

The project relies on a range of methods including systematic literature reviews, interviews and fieldwork in China and other locales, historical analysis, content analysis, automated content and semantic analysis, network analysis, and sustained comparison with the other projects in the research unit.

The project will contribute to four existing literatures:

• complement the literature on China’s external propaganda and influence with an analysis of the effectiveness of the party-state’s efforts.
• add to the state of the art on Chinese international institution building, extending the longstanding focus on formal high-profile IO’s into less visible informal settings and networks.
• offer new insights into the prospects of a Sinocentric order, by adding an empirically focused account to a theory-heavy literature.
• The project will contribute to the broader literature on the legitimation of international hierarchies.