Special Issues and Books:

Anna L. Ahlers & Trym Eiterjord (forthcoming) Science and Foreign Policy in China’s Global Engagement. Minerva.

Peer-reviewed articles:

Wiebke Rabe (2023) China’s Outward Investment under “Hierarchical Steering” and “Grassroots Internationalisation”. Journal of Contemporary Asia.

The debate on China’s outward investment largely focuses on its determinants: enterprises’ interests and the role of the Chinese state. However, what these approaches often tend to ignore is that China is not a unitary outward-investing country. Instead, some Chinese provinces have been able to become the major drivers of China’s outward investment and the investment outflows of these provinces emerge out of locality-unique contexts. This research looks at path-dependencies and encapsulates different provincial internationalisation trajectories to advance our understanding of China’s overseas engagement. In investigating two “success stories” of provinces with high investment outflows, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, two different forms of provincial internationalisation based on locality-unique political, economic, and social conditions are detailed. While investment outflows from both provinces were facilitated by cultures of local manufacturing industries, their internationalisation paths are conceptualised as either “hierarchical steering” or “grassroots internationalisation.”

Matthew D. Stephen (2024) China and the Limits of Hypothetical Hegemony. Security Studies.

How is China’s rise leaving its mark on the practices, norms and institutions of international politics? In their article, “China and the Logic of Illiberal Hegemony”, Darren J. Lim and G. John Ikenberry offer a provocative answer to this question. Lim and Ikenberry set out to identify “the logic and practices of an ideal-type order that most closely suits China’s preferences.”Footnote1 They distil three organizational principles or logics that could characterize a potential Chinese model of international order: the logic of difference, the logic of win-win, and the logic of partnerships. The authors argue that while such logics may not be illiberal per se, by attracting autocratic state followers and being based on pragmatic interstate bargaining rather than formal institutions, they may generate illiberal outcomes over time. If this argumentation holds, it raises considerable doubt about the sustainability of liberal international order in the face of China’s continued rise.

Schubert, Gunter (2025) China’s Failed Imperial Outreach to Taiwan. Issues & Studies.

This paper examines China’s imperial outreach to Taiwan. It first traces a set of imperial practices being pursued under Xi Jinping, which aim to establish dependencies in Taiwan and other areas in China’s near and far peripheries. It then examines how these practices impact Taiwan specifically, their effectiveness in establishing Chinese control over the island, and how they create a Taiwanese dependence on China. As the analysis shows, Taiwan poses a serious challenge to China’s quest for imperial centrality in Asia and beyond, as it continues to resist dependence with remarkable success. In turn, this resistance helps to explain why the Xi regime has become increasingly uncompromising and coercive in its efforts to incorporate Taiwan, increasing the risk of imperial failure and dwindling regime legitimacy in China.

Petry, Johannes (2025) China’s quest for pricing power: financial hierarchy, autonomy and commodity futures markets. International Affairs.

Commodities are crucial for understanding China’s economic rise, but the financial aspects of commodity markets are often neglected in existing debates. However, commodity prices are increasingly determined through trading in futures markets. Historically, most commodity benchmarks were traded on futures exchanges in New York, Chicago and London (the infrastructural component of commodity pricing), dominated by Anglo-American financial institutions (investors), denominated in US dollars (currency), and supervised by regulators in the United States or United Kingdom (regulatory). The article develops the concept of (commodity) pricing power as resulting from a combination of these four different sources of power that further solidifies US financial hegemony, while putting China into a subordinate position. It provides a novel perspective for understanding the politics of commodities, as well as global finance and China’s role therein. Based on policy documents, financial data and more than 200 expert interviews, the article explores China’s efforts towards establishing its own commodity benchmarks, tracing how (a lack of) commodity pricing power emerged as a problem for Chinese authorities and was subsequently pursued as a national development strategy for gaining more autonomy from US-dominated markets. While we often perceive China as a powerful actor, the article illustrates how the market-based, financialized set-up of international economic affairs can fundamentally constrain China’s global influence, even placing it in a position of profound vulnerability.

Maximilian Mayer & Yen-Chi Lu (2025) Global structures of digital dependence and the rise of technopoles. New Political Economy.

What are the global structures of digital dependency, and to what extent do the US and China dominate them? How can patterns of digital dependency be understood theoretically and measured empirically? These questions are crucial for both policymakers and academics. Our paper contributes to ongoing debates on the implications of increasing asymmetries and power concentrations driven by digital transformation and the rise of platforms. Building on insights from international relations (IR), international political economy (IPE), and scholarship on (infra)structural dependencies and the weaponisation of interdependence, this article draws on a comprehensive dataset from the Digital Dependence Index (DDI) to offer a framework for mapping and theorising the global structures of digital dependency. Across three dimensions – hardware, platforms and patents – we show that high and increasing levels of digital dependence have emerged, and that the US and China can be characterised as technopoles with significant technological autonomy and great potential to weaponise infrastructure and technologies. Such a structural perspective can be used to further explore and conceptualise the nexus between digital infrastructures, dependency and autonomy on the one hand, and the emergence of a new techno-geopolitical world order on the other.

Book chapters:

Policy relevant publications:

ten Brink, Tobias & Wiebke Rabe (2025) Imperiale Modernisierung: Der Wandel des chinesischen Entwicklungsmodells. Politikum.

Ahlers, Anna L. (2025). Balancing Research Security and Openness (Letter). Issues in Science and Technology.

Godehardt, Nadine & Mayer Maximilian (2025) China’s Claim to a New World Order. German Institute for International and Security Affairs, SWP Comment 2025/C 42.

Anna L. Ahlers (2024) The Communist Party’s Steering of China’s Science, Technology, and Innovation System: Aspirations and Reality. University of California IGCC and MERICS Policy Brief.