China, The Rise of China's New-Type Think Tanks

The Rise of China's New-Type Think Tanks and the Internationalization of the State

https://paca2018.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2019/04/pdfHollandshortlist2018Hayward.pdf

by Jane Hayward Email: [e-mail]

Abstract
China's government is promoting new-type think tanks. These are
often treated with scepticism by Western observers, due to their lack
of independence from government and operation within a controlled
intellectual environment. In this article, I heed recent calls by scholars
to analyze think tanks, and how they develop, in their particular national
political contexts. In China’s case, this is a powerful one-party state
undergoing internationalization: usually understood as increased foreign
exchanges, engagement with international institutions, and rising influence
globally. In contrast, I view internationalization as the reorganizing of China’s
state institutions and social structure in order to integrate with the global
capitalist system. Through these processes, China’s policymaking community
is converging with a powerful transnational class aligned with global capitalist
interests. Think tanks are implicated in these processes, and are therefore
involved in shaping capitalist class dynamics within China. This is a cause for
concern and debate among policy makers, regarding “civil” think tanks in
particular, which are non-governmental and privately funded. Drawing on
interviews with Chinese think-tank scholars, and examining policy debates
on the development of think tanks in Chinese academic and policy journals, I
argue that the sphere of think tanks has become an important site of political
contestation concerning China’s internationalization and the impact of
class power on national policy making. Western observers, too often viewing
independence as the key criterion for evaluating China’s think tanks, miss
the significance of these debates. The relations between think tanks and
government institutions must be understood in this political context.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5509/201891127
_________________
Jane Hayward is a research fellow at the LSE Department of Government, and former postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Contemporary China Studies in the School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University. She works on contemporary and reform-era China—in particular, the processes by which China’s state and society are becoming increasingly integrated into the global capitalist economy. Her work focuses on the politics of China’s peasant question, and related questions
of urbanization. 

* Many thanks to Mark Laffey, Gao Yuning, Wang Qizhen, the special issue guest editors Patrick
Köllner and Zhu Xufeng, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.
Pacific Affairs: Volume 91, No. 1 – March 2018
28
Introduction
China’s think tanks have experienced a boom in recent years. Their
number, organizational types, sources of funds, and overall
prominence in policy making have increased dramatically. The central
government plans to identify and approve fifty to a hundred “new-type”
think tanks by 2020, which will receive special recognition by the Party Central
Committee. Their role is to serve the government by “promoting scientific
and democratic decision making, promoting modernization of the country’s
governing system and ability, as well as strengthening China’s soft power.”1
Many Western observers are sceptical of Chinese think tanks, which are
typically criticized for their lack of independence from government and the
fact that they operate within a controlled intellectual environment. The
assumption underlying such statements is that think tanks which are more
“independent”—usually a reference to private funding—will better be able
to represent the interests of society against the state. In this article, I advocate
that China’s think tanks should be taken seriously on their own terms. I
address the following questions: Why is the Chinese government promoting
new-type think tanks? And how is their development, and the role they play
in policy making, being shaped by the social and political context in which
they are situated?
This is, in part, a response to the need—now well-recognized by think-tank
scholars—to examine the national political cultures within which think tanks
operate. This is not simply to address the fact of China being a one-party
state, the usual starting point for analysis. Perhaps paradoxically, the national
political context is intricately bound up with China’s integration into the
global capitalist system. Thus, the central government’s promotion of think
tanks forms part of the process by which China is becoming increasingly
globally interconnected. Widely referred to by scholars as China’s
“internationalization,” this is usually understood in terms of increased
international exchanges, promoting China’s image on the world stage,
strengthening China’s voice in global policy making, and engagement with
foreign and international institutions.2
 I build on these accounts to examine
the class implications of China’s internationalization. As China’s policy
advisors merge with the transnational class of experts and technocrats by
which the world capitalist order is governed and managed, powerful groups
within China have emerged which are allied to international capital. Chinese
academics and policy makers well recognize the impact of this on the
development of think tanks, and the issue has become a prominent topic of
_________________
1 Xinhua, “Xi calls for new type of think tanks,” Xinhuanet, 27 October 2014, http://news.
xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-10/27/c_133746282.htm.
2 For example, Silvia Menegazzi, Rethinking Think Tanks in Contemporary China (Cham,
Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
29
China’s New-Type Think Tanks
debate. New-type think tanks have thus become, I argue, sites of political
contestation concerning the influence of capital, both domestic and global,
on China’s state apparatus. Their development, including their relationship
to government institutions, is being shaped through these contested
processes.
English-language scholarship on Chinese think tanks has burgeoned in
recent years. Recent studies research think tanks in particular sectors,3
 or
the policy communities which emerged around certain prominent issues or
debates.4
 Other studies examine individual think tanks, documenting their
development over time, or key moments in their history.5
 A growing body
of English-language scholarship by Chinese scholars largely examines
institutional issues, different organizational types and strategies, and the
structural and personnel changes taking place as China’s think tanks rise in
stature and influence.6
Scholars of think tanks, sensitive to their Anglo-American origins while
cognizant of their burgeoning internationally since the 1990s, recognize the
need to analyze their particular national political and cultural contexts.7
 To
this end, recent work has deployed the theoretical perspectives of global
assemblages,8
 and knowledge regimes.9
 This latter approach uses typologies
to identify different types of regime, examining the organizational and
institutional machinery by which ideas are produced, their changes over
time, and how these relate to the respective national political economies
more broadly. The approach has been applied to China to escape the AngloAmerican bias that previously affected much of the scholarship.10 Silvia
Menegazzi’s account, in particular, combines a knowledge regimes perspective
_________________
3 Pascal Abb, “China’s Foreign Policy Think Tanks: Institutional Evolution and Changing Roles,”
Journal of Contemporary China 24, no. 93 (2015): 531–553.
4 Erica S. Downs, “The Chinese Energy Security Debate,” The China Quarterly 177 (2004): 21–41;
Jost Wübbeke, “China’s Climate Change Expert Community—Principles, Mechanisms and Influence,”
Journal of Contemporary China 22, no. 82 (2013): 712–731.
5 Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner, “Regulating Intellectual Life in China: The Case of the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences,” The China Quarterly 189 (2007): 83–99; Ngeow Chow Bing, “From
Translation House to Think Tank: The Changing Role of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central
Compilation and Translation Bureau,” Journal of Contemporary China 24, no. 93 (2015): 554–572.
6 Xufeng Zhu and Xue Lan, “Think Tanks in Transitional China,” Public Administration and
Development 27, no. 5 (2007): 452–464; Xufeng Zhu, The Rise of Think Tanks in China (Oxford:
Routledge, 2013); Cheng Li, The Power of Ideas: The Rising Influence of Thinkers and Think Tanks in
China (New Jersey: World Scientific Publishing, 2017).
7 Diane Stone, Andrew Denham, and Mark Garnett, eds., Think Tanks Across Nations: A Comparative
Approach (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1998).
8 Angel Aedo, “Cultures of Expertise and Technologies of Government: The Emergence of
Think Tanks in Chile,” Critique of Anthropology 36, no. 2 (2016): 145–167.
9 John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen, The National Origins of Policy Ideas: Knowledge Regimes
in the United States, France, Germany, and Denmark (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press,
2014).
10 Karthik Nachiappan, “Think Tanks and the Knowledge-Policy Nexus in China,” Policy and
Society 32 (2013): 255–265; Menegazzi, Rethinking Think Tanks.
Pacific Affairs: Volume 91, No. 1 – March 2018
30
with Diane Stone’s concept of the global agora to analyze how Chinese think
tanks function in the sphere of transnational policy making.11
The account presented here builds on existing scholarship in two ways.
First, rather than providing an institutional or historical analysis, I heed
Diane Stone’s call to examine the “sources of power of these organizations,
and how they garner and wield societal and policy influence.”12 Second, since
I am concerned with the development of think tanks within the context of
China’s integration with global capitalism, I deploy the theoretical perspective
of the internationalization of the state, drawing the analytical focus towards
how China’s new-type think tanks are implicated within emerging
constellations of capitalist class power operating both within and beyond the
nation-state.
While researching this article, I spent three years as a postdoctoral
researcher at a leading think tank in Beijing, where I gained on-the-ground
insights into the world of Chinese policy making. I held numerous discussions
with think-tank scholars and policy makers, both within my home institution,
and in other prominent Chinese research institutions. These discussions
included informal conversations with colleagues, as well as more formal,
semi-structured interviews, which I conducted with scholars at university
think tanks and government research institutions. Some interviewees’ names
and institutions are withheld by mutual agreement to maintain confidentiality.
The article is organized into six parts. First, I discuss how China’s new-type
think tanks are often treated with scepticism in Anglo-American media. This
derives from traditional assumptions about think tanks within liberal
democracies, and simplified conceptions about policy making in China’s
“authoritarian” state. Challenging these underlying assumptions opens up
space for more nuanced analysis of how Chinese think tanks operate. Second,
I discuss how Chinese scholars and policy makers explain the purpose and
role of new-type think tanks, and how traditional conceptions of think tanks
are being re-evaluated for the Chinese context, in particular the notion of
independence. Third, I introduce the theoretical concept of the
internationalization of the state, focusing on issues pertaining to the
restructuring of society and state institutions, and the transformation of class
dynamics, as the nation-state accommodates to the requirements of the world
capitalist economy. This provides important insights into the social and
political environment in which China’s think tanks operate. Fourth, I discuss
how the field of Chinese policy making has been internationalized throughout
the reform period, aligning with the requirements of global capitalism
through both social and discursive transformations. Fifth, rather than
_________________
11 Diane Stone, Knowledge Actors and Transnational Governance: The Private-Public Policy Nexus in
the Global Agora (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
12 Stone, Knowledge Actors, 64.
31
China’s New-Type Think Tanks
focusing on how “internationalized” policy makers are promoting China’s
interests on the world stage, I instead examine how new-type think tanks are
a means for policy makers to further integrate with the transnational
technocratic class, the global technocracy, which oversees how the world
economy is governed and managed. Think tanks are therefore implicated
in the strengthening of capitalist class dynamics within China. Sixth, I
examine how this issue is being debated within China, regarding civil think
tanks in particular, which are privately funded. I argue that the sphere of
think tanks is an important site of political contestation concerning China’s
internationalization and the impact of class power on national policy making.
In a brief conclusion, I raise a number of questions which warrant further
study.
China’s Think-Tank Conundrum
It appears paradoxical that China’s central government is promoting think
tanks while re-exerting ideological discipline within the Party, and within
research institutes.13 This contradicts the principle of free and public
exchange of ideas generally considered necessary for think tanks to flourish.
Unsurprisingly, recent accounts by journalists and pundits are sceptical of
Chinese think tanks. A typical example appeared in The Economist:
[T]ruly independent think-tanks are not something the Communist
Party really wants—they are a feature of civil society as liberal democracies
define it, not as the party defines it ... Those “think-tanks” with the most
influence in China do not write for the public but for a much smaller
audience … They are trusted instruments of the Communist Party and
the state ... The biggest danger of this emperor-advisor relationship is
that it rewards advisors who tell the emperor what they already think[.]14
This account rests on two problematic sets of assumptions. The first is a
traditional understanding of what think tanks should be, derived from their
Anglo-American origins: independent from government, operating within
a free marketplace of ideas, and embedded within civil society.15 The second
is an understanding of the Chinese party-state as a closed, unitary entity from
which policy decisions emanate top-down. China’s think tanks are thus
_________________
13 Shannon Tiezzi, “Top Chinese Think-tank Accused of ‘Collusion’ with ‘Foreign Forces’:
Criticisms of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Are Part of Xi Jinping’s New Emphasis on
Ideological Purity,” The Diplomat, 18 June 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/top-chinese-think
-tank-accused-of-collusion-with-foreign-forces/.
14 The Economist, “The Brains of the Party,” 10 March 2014, http://www.economist.com/blogs/
analects/2014/03/chinese-politics?fsrc=rss.
15 For example, R. Kent Weaver, “The Changing World of Think Tanks,” PS: Political Science and
Politics 22, no. 3 (1989): 563–578; James A. Smith, The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New
Policy Elite (New York: Free Press, 1991).
Pacific Affairs: Volume 91, No. 1 – March 2018
32
portrayed in somewhat orientalist terms as authoritarian, pseudo others against
an ideal type represented by liberal democracies. This obviates rigorous
analysis of how they actually operate.16 Once both sets of assumptions are
critiqued, a more nuanced account becomes possible.
First, according to Thomas Medvetz in his study of think tanks in the US,
think tanks must endeavour to foster political influence, secure funding,
garner publicity, and maintain a creditable scholarly reputation. The
requirement to cater to all four at once “powerfully limit[s] think tanks
capacity to challenge the unspoken premises of the policy debate, to ask
original questions, and to offer policy prescriptions that run counter to the
interests of financial donors, politicians, or media institutions.”17 Indeed,
some think tanks deliberately perpetuate the discourse of independence
while cultivating political connections behind the scenes.18 RAND, for
example, a US government-backed defence think tank, was transformed into
a non-profit corporation to disguise its close connections with the Air Force.19
Ethnographical research on the formation of British healthcare policy shows
how think tanks worked backstage to build ties with government ministers
and corporate donors not only to get their ideas heard, but to establish what
ideas would be palatable to government officials. The healthcare debate thus
took place largely behind closed doors without public consultation.20 Such
studies demonstrate that the supposed free marketplace of ideas is
constrained by the political topography of the day even in Anglo-American
democracies, while the notion of think tanks as located within civil society
and representing the interests of the public, as opposed to the state, is
ambiguous at best.
Second, while this account implies a unitary state with decisions emanating
from above, studies of the mechanisms of Chinese policy making demonstrate
that, in fact, it involves processes of contestation taking place both inside
and outside the state apparatus. The fragmented authoritarianism model,
for example, emphasizes the importance of negotiations and bargaining
between competing bureaucracies and localities within the government
structure. This is to achieve a centralized set of policy guidelines which are
then implemented in various ways by different branches and regions.21 Zhu
_________________
16 Wang Shaoguang makes a similar point, see “Changing Models of China’s Policy Agenda
Setting,” Modern China 34, no. 1 (2008): 81–82.
17 Thomas Medvetz, Think Tanks in America (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,
2012), 7.
18 Diane Stone, “Recycling Bins, Garbage Cans or Think Tanks? Three Myths Regarding Policy
Analysis Institutes,” Public Administration 85, no. 2 (2007): 260–261.
19 Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason: The Rand Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (Boston
and New York: Mariner Books, 2009), 31.
20 Sara E. Shaw et al., “The View From Nowhere? How Think Tanks Work to Shape Health Policy,”
Critical Policy Studies 9, no. 1 (2015): 58–77.
21 Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, and
Processes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Andrew Mertha, “‘Fragmented 
33
China’s New-Type Think Tanks
Xufeng’s work demonstrates how regional government think tanks and
private policy entrepreneurs, both of which have limited access to the central
institutions of power, have managed to influence national policy making at
the highest levels by capturing media attention and mobilizing public
support.22 Jessica Teets’ model of consultative authoritarianism shows how
state institutions strategically collaborate with civil society organizations,
often able to deploy their own sources of funding, in order to solve various
social problems.23 These analyses demonstrate that there is scope for think
tanks to have a meaningful role in policy making, both inside and outside
government institutions. Why, then, are China’s leaders promoting think
tanks now, and what role will they play?
China’s New-Type Think Tanks
Scholars within regular government research institutions are skilled at
gathering data and drafting political speeches, but not trained at sophisticated
interpretation or proposing new strategies.24 Instead, the bureaucracy was
designed with conformity in mind. Government researchers are unwilling
to risk losing promotion opportunities by suggesting unconventional ideas,
while rigid controls on staff numbers obstruct efforts to bring in new recruits
with fresh ideas.25 New ideas are “stovepiped,” passed upwards to superiors
within institutions, rather than exchanged for debate with scholars outside.26
This insularity is conducive to institutional conflict, with different ministries
competing for influence and central budget funds instead of offering
disinterested policy advice.27 With China’s growing role in world affairs, and
the blurring of domestic and international policy boundaries requiring more
complex forms of analysis, this system is no longer considered adequate.28
Officials have expressed frustration that in international deliberations,
particularly with the US, Chinese negotiators are repeatedly outwitted by
their counterparts with better trained advisers.29
_________________
Authoritarianism 2.0’: Political Pluralization in the Chinese Policy Process,” The China Quarterly
200 (2009): 995–1012.
22 Xufeng Zhu, “Strategy of Chinese Policy Entrepreneurs in the Third Sector: Challenges of
‘Technical Infeasibility,’” Policy Sciences 41 (2008): 315–334; “Government Advisors or Public Advocates?
Roles of Think Tanks in China from the Perspective of Regional Variations,” The China Quarterly 207
(2011): 668–686.
23 Jessica C. Teets, “Let Many Civil Societies Bloom: The Rise of Consultative Authoritarianism
in China,” The China Quarterly 213 (2013): 19–38.
24 Think-tank scholar B, interview by author, Beijing, September 2015.
25 Official in government research institute, interview by author, Beijing, April 2016.
26 Xin Hua, Center for EU Studies at the Shanghai International Studies University, interview
by author, 9 May 2016.
27 Think-tank scholar B, interview by author, Beijing, January 2015.
28 Xin, interview by author, Shanghai, 9 May 2016.
29 Think-tank scholar D, interview by author, Beijing, May 2016.
Pacific Affairs: Volume 91, No. 1 – March 2018
34
China’s new-type think tanks are to consist of full-time, professional,
specialized researchers, in order to provide a more sophisticated community
of experts. Broadly speaking, there are three main types. Official think tanks
are government institutions, semi-official think tanks are set up by government
institutions and managed by state-approved personnel, while civil thinks
tanks are non-governmental and mostly privately funded.30 There is no fixed
model, however. University think tanks, for example, are sometimes called
“civil” despite being housed within larger official institutions, and are funded
by a mixture of private endowments, government funds, and contributions
from the host university’s foundation. The list of the first twenty-five nationally
approved new-type think tanks was released in December 2015.31 These are
to be affiliated to the Central Propaganda Department, through which their
uncensored reports will be transmitted directly to the top leadership,
receiving special priority within the relevant bureaus. This is designed to
diversify and accelerate the channels of expertise into central policy making.
Such think tanks cannot be dismissed due to their institutional connections
to government. As James McGann and Kent Weaver acknowledge, “in
countries where sponsorship by a government ministry is a legal necessity
for a think tank to exist, excluding organizations with an organizational link
to government would convey the misleading impression that those regions
host no think tanks at all.”32 Indeed, the growing importance of Chinese
think tanks is internationally recognized, with China listed as having 435
think tanks—the second-highest number in the world—in the reputable
Global Go To Think Tank Index.33 As such, China’s think-tank scholars have
been making efforts to re-evaluate the term “independence.” Zhu Xufeng
argues that think tanks should be regarded as independent if they constitute
an “independent legal personality” which determines that they work to serve
the public interest, rather than a parent company—whether a government
institution or a private corporation.34 Hu Angang, head of the Institute for
Contemporary China Studies (ICCS) at Tsinghua University, one of the first
twenty-five national new-type think tanks, proposes that independence be
determined by three criteria: autonomy in selecting topics of research,
_________________
30 I include official think tanks since the national new-type think tanks recognized by the Party
Central Committee include government research institutions. Zhu Xufeng recognizes only semiofficial and non-governmental types, see The Rise, 6.
31 China Development Institute, “National High-Level Think-Tank Pilot Project,” accessed 16
March 2016, http://en.cdi.org.cn/component/k2/item/143-national-high-level-think-tank-pilot
-project.
32 James G. McGann and R. Kent Weaver, “Think Tanks and Civil Societies in a Time of Change,”
in Think Tanks and Civil Societies: Catalysts for Ideas and Action, eds. McGann and Weaver (New Brunswick
and London: Transaction Publishers, 2009), 4.
33 James G. McGann, “2016 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report,” CSP Global Go To Think
Tank Index Reports, 12, (2017), http://repository.upenn.edu/think_tanks/12, 27.
34 Zhu, The Rise, 5, 17–18.
35
China’s New-Type Think Tanks
autonomy in conducting research, and the ability to publish independently.35
Under the current system, a list of over one hundred “commissioned topics”
(weituo keti) is compiled from various government bureaus which think tanks
have discretion to choose from. Research on commissioned topics cannot
be published openly without permission, but think tanks can pursue their
own research separately.36
Hu argues that within Chinese political culture the interests of the
government and the public are not considered separate as in liberal
democracies, therefore the conceptual problem of think tanks serving the
government rather than civil society does not arise.37 A number of think-tank
scholars I interviewed stated that the confidentiality of exchanges between
scholars and officials enables criticisms to be made freely. According to one
interviewee, Chinese leaders have privately urged think tanks to be forthright
in their criticisms for the good of the Party—criticisms that could not be
made openly.38 Another high-profile scholar told of how he had entreated
top leaders to rein in corruption within the Politburo. While subsequent
events appear to show these recommendations were heeded, had they been
made openly they would have been regarded as a personal attack on the
leadership, and publicly discredited.39
The Internationalization of the State
Analyzing think tanks in their national context is therefore necessary. Yet,
in today’s integrated world it no longer makes sense to analyze policy making
as contained within national borders.40 Scholars have long examined how
policies are transferred, or diffused, between nation-states, through processes
of convergence or learning, for example.41 Many such studies, however, are
vulnerable to the critique of “methodological nationalism,” comparing
nation-states as bounded, sovereign units.42 Other analyses examine how
_________________
35 Hu Angang, interview by author, Beijing, 30 April 2016.
36 The ICCS accepted commissioned topics from the National Development and Reform
Commission for their work on the Twelfth and Thirteenth Five-Year Plans, see Hu Angang, Jiang
Jiaying, and Yan Yilong, “Guojia wunian guihua juece zhong de zhiku juese yanjiu – yi Tsinghua Daxue
Guoqing Yanjiuyuan canyu guojia wunian guihua bianzhi weili” [Think tanks and China’s five-year
plans: a case study of the Institute for Contemporary China Studies at Tsinghua University], Jingji
shehui tizhi bijiao 6, no. 188 (2016): 65.
37 Hu, interview by author, Beijing, 30 April 2016.
38 Think-tank scholar B, interview by author, Beijing, September 2015.
39 Think-tank scholar A, interview by author, Beijing, April 2016.
40 John Agnew, “The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations
Theory,” Review of International Political Economy 1, no. 1 (1994): 3–80.
41 For an overview, see Diane Stone, “Transfer and Translation of Policy,” Policy Studies 33, no. 6
(2012): 483–499. On China specifically, see Yanzhe Zhang and David Marsh, “Learning By Doing:
The Case of Administrative Policy Transfer in China,” Policy Studies 37, no. 1 (2016): 35–52.
42 Stone, “Transfer,” 490.
Pacific Affairs: Volume 91, No. 1 – March 2018
36
multiple institutions, at both national and international levels, operate across
borders to form epistemic communities, or knowledge networks, to influence
global policy.43 Think tanks are adept operators in this respect, with “their
multiplicity of tailored narratives and capacity to adapt quickly in different
argumentative and institutional fields.”44 China’s leaders’ promotion of think
tanks as part of their international strategy is therefore unsurprising.
The field of transnational policy making is not neutral, however. As
institutions ally and compete to determine which kinds of knowledge become
hegemonic, “ideas backed with power … are most likely to be influential.”45
In a capitalist world economy, policy ideas which achieve dominance tend
to reflect the requirements of global capital.46 A body of scholarship of
particular insight here highlights how “globalization” is constituted not just
at the global, or transnational level, but also by multiple processes “oriented
towards global systems and agendas” occurring deep within nation-states
themselves.47 This includes forms of institutional, social, and spatial
restructuring as the state, “at once the subject and the object of the
globalization process,” transforms to accommodate to the requirements of
international capital.48
As recounted by Robert Cox, first, a consensus is formed between nationstates concerning the requirements of the world economy. This takes place
“within a common ideological framework (i.e., common criteria of
interpretation of economic events and common goals anchored in the idea
of an open world economy).”49 Participation is hierarchically structured, with
the US dominating in recent decades by the successful promotion of an
ideology grounded in neoclassical economics.50 In the under-represented
nations, implementation is made possible “by people who have been
socialized to the norms of the consensus”—that is, by local staff who likely
graduated from the universities of advanced capitalist countries, or held
_________________
43 Peter M. Haas, “Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” International
Organization 46, no. 1 (1992): 1–35; Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller, “Political Power Beyond the State:
Problematics of Government,” The British Journal of Sociology 43, no. 2 (1992): 173–205.
44 Stone, Knowledge Actors, 63.
45 Thomas J. Biersteker, “The “Triumph” of Liberal Economic Ideas in the Developing World,”
in Global Change, Regional Response: The New International Context of Development, ed. Barbara Stallings
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 186.
46 Timothy J. Sinclair, “Reinventing Authority: Embedded Knowledge Networks and the New
Global Finance,” Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 18 (2000): 487–502.
47 Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 2006), 3.
48 Neil Brenner, “Global, Fragmented, Hierarchical: Henri Lefebvre’s Geographies of
Globalization,” Public Culture 10, no. 1 (1997): 156. See also P.G. Cerny, “Paradoxes of the Competition
State: The Dynamics of Political Globalization,” Government and Opposition 32 (1997): 251–274.
49 Robert W. Cox, Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 260.
50 Inderjeet Parmar, “American Foundations and the Development of International Knowledge
Networks,” Global Networks 2, no. 1 (2002): 13–30.
37
China’s New-Type Think Tanks
posts at major international financial institutions.51 This international cohort,
while containing many internal conflicts—not least differing national
loyalties—is allied in its commitment to securing the needs of international
capital.52 This amounts to a global technocracy: a powerful class of managers
and experts whose role is to negotiate and facilitate the policies of the global
ideological consensus. This technocracy, significantly, is not subject to
democratic accountability. Rather, these “[l]ocal technocratic elites … bypass
the formal channels of government and other social institutions subject to
popular influence.”53
At the national level, the state itself, consisting of an ensemble of
institutions, is conceived as a structural apparatus which mediates how social
forces within the nation-state interact and compete for control of government
institutions. As such, it is “shot through with many class antagonisms and
struggles.”54 A state which is internationalizing, in this perspective, is one
where those class forces aligned with the interests of international capital
have achieved dominance. The internal structures and institutions of states
are then adjusted “so that each can best transform the global consensus into
national policy and practice.”55 Authority is delegated to both subnational
and supranational levels for the purposes of promoting processes of capital
accumulation.56
The internationalization of the Chinese state thus concerns the
transformation of China’s institutional, spatial, and social structure to
accommodate the needs of the global capitalist economy. This includes
regulating finance and taxation, determining property rights, producing a
land market and an army of mobile, low-cost workers, and inculcating an
ideology conducive to maintaining a stable, compliant population while
these social upheavals take place.57 These processes, always resisted, are
shaped by ongoing contestations within state institutions, and through
alliances with—or opposition from—social forces outside the state apparatus.
This has been witnessed in China through the many cases of activism and
protest around workers’ rights and rural land expropriations, for example.58
_________________
51 Cox, Production, 260.
52 Jim Glassman, “State Power Beyond the ‘Territorial Trap’: The Internationalization of the
State,” Political Geography 18 (1999): 669–696.
53 Sol Picciotto, “International Transformation of the Capitalist State,” Antipode 43, no. 1 (2011): 89.
54 Bob Jessop, “Globalization and the National State,” in Paradigm Lost: State Theory Reconsidered,
eds. Stanley Aronowitz and Peter Bratsis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 193.
55 Cox, Production, 254.
56 Leo Panitch, “Rethinking the Role of the State,” in Globalization: Critical Reflections, ed. James
H. Mittelman (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1996), 83–113; Paul Cammack, “What the World Bank Means
By Poverty Reduction, and Why It Matters,” New Political Economy 9, no. 2 (2004): 189–211.
57 Robin Murray, “The Internationalization of Capital and the Nation State,” New Left Review 67
(1971): 88–92.
58 Zhongjin Li, Eli Friedman, and Hao Ren, eds. China’s Workers on Strike: Narratives of Worker
Resistance (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016); Kathy Le Mons Walker, “‘Gangster Capitalism’ and
Peasant Protest in China: The Last Twenty Years,” Journal of Peasant Studies 33, no. 1 (2006): 1–33. 
Pacific Affairs: Volume 91, No. 1 – March 2018
38
It is also evident in disagreements over policy making, such as the debates
concerning the privatization of rural land, which remains under collective
ownership.59 This issue is highly controversial in China, where privatization
is viewed by many as a licence for corporations to ride roughshod over peasant
property rights. Importantly, these contestations are not nationally contained,
the designs of global capital on China’s rural land being a case in point.60
The second half of this article examines how China’s internationalization is
shaping the development of think tanks.
The Internationalization of Chinese Policy Making
Chinese policy making has been internationalizing throughout the reform
period via a set of distinct, mutually reinforcing social and political
transformations. These occurred in part due to influence and funding—
encouraged by Zhao Ziyang and other reformist leaders—from the IMF and
the World Bank, as well as other overseas organizations such as the Ford
Foundation and various American universities, which provided training
programs, workshops and seminars, joint research projects with foreign
economists, and trips overseas, including for the undertaking of PhDs at
Western universities.61
First, the number of scholars studying abroad, particularly in the US, rose
dramatically. The Chinese government expended efforts to encourage their
return following their studies.62 Overseas PhDs were considered preferable
by many employers, and scholars were attracted back by the greater prestige
and higher salaries. According to the Ministry of Education, from 1978 to
2007, 1.21 million students and scholars studied abroad, of whom 319,700
returned.63 They were posted to top institutions, including leading universities
in Beijing, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Rural Policy Research
Office, the Ministry of Finance, and the Bank of China. Zhao Ziyang and
others drew on these communities of Westernized experts to promote China’s
opening to the global economy, overcoming voices of opposition within the
state bureaucracy.64 While the thinking among these returnee academics was
_________________
59 Jane Hayward, “Beyond the Ownership Question: Who Will Till the Land? The New Debate
on China’s Agricultural Production,” Critical Asian Studies 49, no. 4 (2017): 523–545.
60 Hayward, “Beyond,” 529.
61 Harold K. Jacobson and Michel Oksenberg, China’s Participation in the IMF, The World Bank,
and GATT: Toward A Global Economic Order (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 150–151.
On the role of Western economists in China’s reforms, see Julian Gewirtz, Unlikely Partners: Chinese
Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 2017).
62 David Zweig, Chen Changgui, and Stanley Rosen, “Globalization and Transnational Human
Capital: Overseas and Returnee Scholars to China,” The China Quarterly 179 (2004): 735–757.
63 Huiyao Wang, David Zweig, and Xiaohua Lin, “Returnee Entrepreneurs: Impact on China’s
Globalization Process,” Journal of Contemporary China 20, no. 70 (2011): 414.
64 Jacobson and Oksenberg, China’s Participation, 150–151.
39
China’s New-Type Think Tanks
not monolithic, one significant development was an intellectual uncoupling
of foreign trade from the concept of exploitation, and a positive reassessment
of Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage compatible with the ideologies
underpinning globalization.65
Second, fundamental changes occurred in official state policy discourse,
such that it became compatible with the neoclassical or neoliberal discourses
characteristic of the global ideological consensus. This included a rejection
since the 1980s not just of the Marxist theories of class struggle, but of the
language of “class” itself, in favour of the Weberian discourse of “social
strata.” This was a strategy to inoculate against fledgling working-class
movements just as an army of migrant workers was emerging. Reminiscent
of the disappearance of class analysis from academia in 1980s Britain and
America, China’s working class was rendered “inarticulate,” facilitating the
political conditions for its subordination to the interests of global capital,
which increasingly dominated the landscape.66
Third, the Chinese government embraced scientific expertise and sought
to recruit technocrats into the bureaucracy at all levels.67 This was a deliberate
strategy following the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution to produce
a politically stable environment of managers and problem solvers conducive
to economic development. It was accompanied by a turn towards scientific
analysis in policy making, presaged by Deng Xiaoping’s emphasis on “seeking
truth from facts” and later enshrined in the “scientific development concept”
under Hu Jintao. Along with the expulsion of class, this operated to
depoliticize—and remove all traces of Marxism from—Chinese policy
discourse. The parallels with the turn to scientific expertise in the US from
the 1950s are striking.68 Those efforts were led by the RAND Corporation,
which was established in the US during the Cold War to produce theories
and ideas to combat, and undermine, Marxism and socialist politics more
generally.69
Fourth, a close alliance formed between this new technocratic class and
an emerging entrepreneurial class,70 forming “a crooked fusion of
marketization and bureaucratization” oriented towards capital, particularly
international capital.71 These entrepreneurs, many of whom are also overseas-
_________________
65 Shu-yun Ma, “Recent Changes in China’s Pure Trade Theory,” The China Quarterly 106 (1986):
291–305.
66 Pun Ngai and Chris King-Chi Chan, “The Subsumption of Class Discourse in China,” Boundary
235, no. 2 (2008): 75–91.
67 Hong Yung Lee, From Revolutionary Cadres to Party Technocrats in Socialist China (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991).
68 Robert E. Lane, “The Decline of Politics and Ideology in a Knowledgeable Society,” American
Sociological Review 31, no. 5 (1966): 649–662.
69 Abella, Soldiers, 49.
70 Joel Andreas, Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China’s New
Class (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 248–259.
71 Lin Chun, “The Language of Class in China,” Socialist Register 51 (2015): 32.
Pacific Affairs: Volume 91, No. 1 – March 2018
40
trained returnees,72 have been asserting their political interests by funding
think tanks, and taking managerial roles within them. The China Center for
International Economic Exchanges (CCIEE), for example, another of the
first twenty-five national new-type think tanks, is a membership organization
counting many leading entrepreneurs among its members, including from
multinational companies, and has several top CEOs as vice chairs.73 It is
funded largely from their membership fees and donations.74
China Joins the Global Technocracy
The new-type think tanks which have emerged in this internationalized
policymaking field play an important role in transmitting the global
ideological consensus into Chinese policy circles, aligning China’s internal
policy making with its requirements, while adapting it for China’s national
conditions. The work undertaken by Hu Angang and scholars at the ICCS,
for example, contribute to these processes. Hu conducted postdoctoral
research at the Department of Economics at Yale in 1991, and at the Centre
for International Studies at MIT in 1998. He regularly recruits scholars for
the ICCS with graduate training from leading UK or US institutions. These
scholars produce reports for China’s top leaders summarizing and explaining
the publications of major international institutions such as the World Bank
and the UNPD, and interpreting their significance for China. As high-level
consultants in the drafting of China’s national Five-Year Plans, they then seek
to incorporate and adapt the principles contained in these international
publications into working policies within China.75
Hu regards promoting internationally recognized development standards
within China as part of his role. In 2009, the ICCS teamed up with Brookings
to push for an agreement between US and Chinese leaders on climate change
at the Copenhagen summit. The ICCS compiled an internal report
attempting to persuade China’s leaders that the new Obama administration
was sincere in its intentions to cooperate, and calling on them to heed their
recent Olympic slogan, “one world, one dream,” but the endeavour was not
successful.76 More recent work has involved transmitting to China’s leadership
the significance of the core criteria of the Human Development Index.
Although the ICCS does not directly seek funding from international
_________________
72 Wang, Zweig, Lin, “Returnee Entrepreneurs,” 413–431.
73 Li, “China’s New Think Tanks: Where Officials, Entrepreneurs, and Scholars Interact,” in The
Power, 195–231.
74 Zhu, The Rise, 72–73.
75 Hu, Jiang and Yan, “Guojia,” 62–71.
76 Hu Angang, “Zhongmei xuyao lüse fazhan, lüse hezuo, lüse geming” [China and the US need
green development, green cooperation, green revolution], Guoqing baogao, Institute for Contemporary
China Studies, 5, no. 825, 5 March 2009.
41
China’s New-Type Think Tanks
organizations, Hu believes his institute benefits both through working
with them on collaborative projects, and from having access to their databases
and reports free of charge, particularly those of the World Bank, the WTO,
and the WHO, which the ICCS draws on regularly in producing its own
reports. Hu also routinely gives reports and presentations on Chinese policy
matters to conferences and high-level meetings at international institutions,
and understands his think tank as a two-way “bridge” between China and
those involved in global policy making.77
Another prominent example of how Chinese policy makers are joining
the global technocracy is the career trajectory of economist Justin Yifu
Lin. Lin is a professor at Peking University, and one of the vice chairs of the
CCIEE. He received his PhD from University of Chicago, renowned for its
promotion of neoclassical economics. He played an important role in the
WTO debates, persuading more conservative leaders of the benefits of
opening China’s domestic economy to international market competition.78
He was chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank from
2008 to 2011. He was a founding faculty member in 1994 of the influential
think tank China Center for Economic Research (CCER) at Peking University,
where he helped to redesign the economics curriculum to be “more in line
with the American model, particularly the ‘Chicago model.’”79 In 2008 the
CCER became the National School of Development (NSD). In 2013 it was
listed in the top five think tanks in the category of “highest professional
influence” in the national rankings compiled by the Think Tank Research
Center of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, the first of its kind in China.80
In 2015, the NSD was named one of China’s national new-type think tanks.
According to the NSD’s website, it seeks to provide research for “China’s
national development and [the] new global order.”81 Within the NSD, Lin
heads the Center for New Structural Economics (CNSE). This promotes a
new framework for economic development rooted in neoclassical economics
and centred on market-led growth.82 The center works in cooperation with
several major international institutions, including the World Bank and Asian
_________________
77 Hu, interview by author, Beijing, 30 April 2016.
78 Qingxin K. Wang, “The Rise of Neoclassical Economics and China’s WTO Agreement with
the United States in 1999,” Journal of Contemporary China 20, no. 70 (2011): 456.
79 Li, “China’s New,” 222.
80 National School of Development (NSD), “2013 China Think Tank Ranking: National School
of Development at Peking University Ranks in Top Five Think Tanks for Highest Professional Influence
(27 February 2014) [news report],” accessed 24 May 2016, http://en.nsd.edu.cn/article.asp?
articleid=7325.
81 NSD, “National School of Development at Peking University (NSD) (2 September 2010)
[About Us],” accessed 24 May 2016, http://en.nsd.edu.cn/article.asp?articleid=7004.
82 Justin Yifu Lin, New Structural Economics: A Framework for Rethinking Development (Washington:
The World Bank, 2012), http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/84797-1104785060319/
598886-1104951889260/NSE-Book.pdf. 
Pacific Affairs: Volume 91, No. 1 – March 2018
42
Infrastructure Investment Bank. Its aims include the formulation of policies
for China’s Silk Road strategy, and the promotion of China’s entrepreneurial
activities in Africa.83 When asked why the Chinese government was putting
such effort into promoting new-type think tanks, Xu Jiajun, the CNSE’s
executive deputy director, responded that China “really wants to be perceived
on the international stage as a stakeholder in this international system and
they want to be a positive force behind the reforming of the current
international financial institutions and any other kinds of global governance
issues.”84
Rising Alliances of Capital
Brookings Institute scholar Cheng Li has pointed to an emerging “tripartite
elite” of overseas trained scholars, internationally connected entrepreneurs,
and technocratic officials which is coalescing within China’s think tanks,
citing the CCIEE, where Justin Lin is a vice chair, as one key location where
this occurs.85 This powerful cohort may begin to act in its own interests,
argues Li. He mentions a well-known case where officials, property developers,
bankers, and public intellectuals cooperated to further their interests in the
real estate market. “Only time will tell,” he warns, “whether these fascinating
changes in the composition of Chinese think tanks will contribute to
profound and positive developments in decision-making and elite politics—or
whether this new confluence of political, economic, and academic elites will
spell trouble for China’s near-term future.”86 What Li is pointing to is an
emerging capitalist class—merged with the global technocracy and having
policy influence domestically—with a set of interests which, while by no
means monolithic, is collectively oriented towards promoting forms of capital
accumulation.
This issue has been recognized and debated within China for some time.
At stake is the potential role of think tanks in either exacerbating, or
ameliorating, class divisions which have emerged during the reforms. With
the language of “class” no longer politically acceptable, the debate is usually
couched in terms of whether think tanks will be co-opted by “powerful
interest groups” (qiangshi liyi tuanti), often with reference to the real estate
industry, or whether they will, on the contrary, speak for the interests of
“weak groups” (ruoshi qunti) such as peasants and migrant workers. In 2009,
for example, Xue Lan and Zhu Xufeng identified a shift occurring in China’s
political structure from a monopolization of policy making by administrative
_________________
83 Center for New Structural Economics, “Introduction to the Center for NSE [About Us]”,
accessed 22 April 2017, http://www.nse.pku.edu.cn/en/about/index.aspx?nodeid=62.
84 Xu, interview by author, Beijing, 24 May 2016.
85 Li, “China’s New,” 195–231.
86 Li, “China’s New,” 227.
43
China’s New-Type Think Tanks
elites, to its monopolization by an alliance of political and corporate elites.87
If unchecked, they argued, think tanks would be absorbed into this alliance,
impeding their purpose of representing marginalized groups.
Of particular concern are China’s civil think tanks, over which the
government has less control. With no official restrictions on their private
funding allowance, a few civil think tanks have attracted large amounts of
corporate and foreign funds and, according to one interviewee, are
outcompeting official think tanks in attracting the best scholars—particularly
those trained overseas—by offering higher salaries.88 Generally speaking,
however, the development of civil think tanks is restricted, with statistics from
2013 showing that only 5 percent of Chinese think tanks are civil.89 This is
in part due to a law passed in 2005 that required civil think tanks to register
with the Civil Affairs Bureau and find local affiliation with an official
institution, a hurdle that many failed to overcome. Many also have difficulty
attracting funds, excluded from the government funding afforded to official
think tanks in a culture which, in fact, does not commonly practice corporate
or social donations. It has been claimed that, for this reason, civil think tanks
are more susceptible to being influenced by funders, particularly foreign
foundations and transnational corporations.90 According to Chen Kaimin,
for example, in 2008 the well-known liberal think tank the Unirule Institute
of Economics accepted over two million renminbi from overseas sources.
This carries the risk, argues Chen, that these think tanks may adopt a
“Westernized” (xihua) outlook. “Some think tanks in China,” Chen observes,
“have even completely adopted Western economic theories for studying
China’s socialist market economy, this should not be ignored.”91
The debate over civil think tanks is complex, but falls broadly into two
camps. Those in the first camp argue for cultivating a donor culture to
diversify think tanks’ funding sources. Those adopting this position are more
likely to view the US think tanks system as a model worth emulating, pointing,
for example, to the established system of regulations and practices in place
there to prevent monopolization by a particular funding source.92 Ren Yuling,
a member of the Counsellor Office of the State Council, argues that the
_________________
87 Xue Lan and Zhu Xufeng, “Zhongguo sixiangku de shehui zhineng—yi zhengce guocheng
wei zhongxin de gaige zhilu” [The social function of China’s think tanks—a policy-centred path to
reform], Guanli shijie 4 (2009): 55–65, 82.
88 Think-tank scholar C, interview by author, Beijing, May 2016.
89 Liu Qiao, “Tansuo wanshan Zhongguo zhiku jianshe daolu” [Exploring improvements to the
construction of China’s think tanks], Shanhaijing 15 (2015): 68.
90 Liu “Tansuo,” 68; Chen Kaimin, “Zhongguo zhiku guojihua zhuanxing de kunjing yu chulu”
[Predicaments and prospects of the internationalization of China’s think tanks], Xiandai Guoji Guanxi
3 (2014): 34.
91 Chen, “Zhongguo zhiku,” 34.
92 Miao Lu and Wang Huiyao, “Zhongguo zhiku zijin laiyuan duoyuanhua chushen” [Diversifying
the sources of funding for China’s think tanks], Kexue yu guanli 37, no. 4 (2017): 14.
Pacific Affairs: Volume 91, No. 1 – March 2018
44
reliance of most think tanks on government funding stifles their
independence, and calls for tax incentives to encourage more corporate
donations.93 Indeed, according to one interviewee, as the government makes
efforts to stamp out corruption as a channel of policy influence, a formalized
corporate lobby system may emerge as the preferred alternative.94 Liu Qiao
advocates the development of a broad donor culture across the whole of
society, including public interest organizations and individuals, to keep in
check the influence of government, corporations, and foreign interests, and
ensure that less powerful groups will always be represented.95
Those in the second camp are more sceptical about the “free marketplace
of ideas,” and more likely to be critical of the US think-tank system in
particular. For example, an article in the Chinese military journal Conmilit
warned against the impact of corporate interests on government policy
making via the funding of think tanks.96 The article draws heavily on an
investigative piece in the New York Times on the influence of corporations on
America’s high-profile think tanks, in particular the connections between
Brookings and the real estate industry.97 Other scholars argue that China’s
think-tanks system should be contained within the state apparatus to prevent
an imbalance of power in favour of any particular interest group. Wang
Shaoguang and Fan Peng, for example, argue for a model of “centralized
ideas and broad interests” (jisi guangyi) in which think tanks remain
connected to government institutions, while their dispersal across different
bureaucracies, regions, and levels of government allows for a plurality of
concerns to be transmitted upwards to the centre through multiple internal
channels.98 This would allow, they argue, for overall coordination and more
equal representation between divergent interests. Zheng Yongnian, a Chinese
scholar based in Singapore, similarly advocates for a competitive “internal
ideas market” (neibu sixiang shichang) contained within state institutions to
maintain an equal playing field. He regards civil think tanks as a necessary
supplement since, distant from political power centres, they are better
able to reflect the concerns of society. However, he argues, as long as they
lack the institutional and financial advantages of think tanks within the
_________________
93 Ren Yuling, “Zhongguo zhiku yao bimian wei jide liyizhe daiyan” [Chinese think tanks must
avoid becoming spokespersons for vested interests], Zhongguo jingji zhoukan 1 (2013): 49–50.
94 Think-tank scholar B, interview by author, Beijing, September 2015.
95 Liu, “Tansuo,” 68.
96 Wu Wei, “Yi ‘duli’ de mingyi ‘zhuli’—qiye juankuan luanxiang xia de Meiguo zhiku” [“Pursuing
profit” in the name of “independence”—American think tanks in the maelstrom of corporate
donations], Xiandai junshi 11 (2016): 92–99.
97 Eric Lipton and Brooke Williams, “How Think Tanks Amplify Corporate America’s Influence,”
The New York Times, 7 August 2016, https://nyti.ms/2aLAQ2q.
98 Wang Shaoguang and Fan Peng “‘Jisi guangyixing’ juece: bijiao shiye xia de Zhongguo zhiku”
[The “centralized ideas and broad interests” model of decision making: Chinese think tanks in
comparative perspective], Zhongguo tushu pinglun 8 (2012): 12–22.
45
China’s New-Type Think Tanks
government system, there is no danger of them becoming the instruments
of powerful lobby groups, as witnessed in America.99
The Chinese government’s recent moves to hamper the activities of
Unirule are reported in Anglo-American media accounts as censorship of
free speech.100 This is true, yet to understand the issue only in such terms is
to miss the broader context and significance of China’s evolving class politics
as the state internationalizes—in particular, the genuine concerns among
progressive scholars and policy makers about the rising power of global
corporate interests within China, which major civil think tanks such as Unirule
represent. Unirule’s close relationship with the Cato Institute, for example,
a Washington-based pro-free market think tank well known as a vocal advocate
for privatizing China’s rural land, is significant in this respect.101
Conclusion
In this article, I began by advocating that China’s think tanks be taken
seriously on their own terms, and analyzed within their particular national
political context. This is characterized by China’s integration into the global
capitalist system, a factor of crucial importance for analyzing think tanks,
their development, and their role in policy making. Since the 1980s, through
increased exposure to overseas educational establishments, international
institutions, and funding sources, particularly those directly engaged with
the production and maintenance of the global ideological consensus, China’s
technocratic policy makers have come to adopt discourses, ideas, and ways
of thinking compatible with that consensus. In so doing, and through
commensurate reforms to its economic system and institutions, China has
been highly successful at integrating into the global capitalist system,
manifested by its spectacular economic growth.
Through promoting think tanks, China’s leaders are embarking on the
next stage in this process. They seek to produce a community of highly
trained, internationally oriented, globally competitive experts and
technocrats capable of providing timely and sophisticated analysis and advice
to relevant government bureaus, and of manoeuvring between the state and
_________________
99 Zheng Yongnian, “Zhongguo zhiku bu neng wanquan shichanghua” [China’s think tanks
cannot be completely marketized], Sike, 10 August 2016, http://sike.news.cn/statics/sike/posts/
2016/08/219503928.html.
100 The Economist, “An Illiberal Dose: Officials in China are Stifling Debate about Reform,” 18
February 2017, https://www.economist.com/news/china/21717103-why-so-nervous-officials-china-are
-stifling-debate-about-reform.
101 The Guardian, “Free Market Thinktank’s Website Shut Down in China,” 2 May 2012, https://
www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/02/free-market-thinktank-website-shut-china. For Unirule’s
position on rural land privatization, see the article by its founder, Mao Yushi, “Huifu nongmin dui
tudi caichan de suoyouquan” [Recover peasants’ private land rights], Zhongguo xiangcun faxian, 26
December 2010, accessed 23 November 2017, www.zgxcfx.com/Article/24038.html.
Pacific Affairs: Volume 91, No. 1 – March 2018
46
international institutions to impact policy making at the transnational level.
They seek a more powerful voice in deliberations about how this global
capitalist system is organized, with a view to shaping the global ideological
consensus and, indeed, a new global order. Yet, at the same time, they
endeavour to transform China’s institutions and social structure to become
compatible with the requirements of global capital—thus to internationalize
the Chinese state.
As these processes take place, the cohering of an internationally oriented
alliance of wealth, knowledge, and political power constituting a powerful
emerging capitalist class raises a number of issues. First, as think tanks, even
under government supervision, become accustomed to receiving more of
their funding from non-government sources, this will have implications for
which interests they serve. Funders may not be able to influence think-tank
reports directly, but corporations are unlikely to fund think tanks whose
research record contradicts their interests. As is the case elsewhere in the
world, it is hard to see how think tanks promoting workers’ rights, for
example, or the rights of peasants to their land in the face of incoming
agribusinesses, are going to receive the same levels of corporate funding as
those which promote perspectives considered more compatible with the
interests of business and the free market. This issue is widely recognized in
China as a cause for concern and is subject to ongoing contestation in policy
circles. Scholars and journalists in the West, meanwhile, even despite
admirable attempts to escape Anglo-American bias, too often continue to
view independence as the key criterion for evaluating China’s think tanks,
missing the significance of these Chinese debates. At stake is how
independence—regarded in the traditional sense as externality from
government and privately funded—may lead to the co-optation of think
tanks by the forces of capital, both within and outside China, and the resulting
social consequences.
That said, think tanks specializing in different areas will reflect different
views. Those affiliated to state-owned enterprises will likely advocate
differently from those funded by international capital, while many think-tank
scholars understand their role specifically as speaking for the weak and
underrepresented. Meanwhile, the debate concerning overseas funding, and
what conditions are to be attached, is continuing behind the scenes in highlevel policy discussions. Some departments, such as the Ministry of Defence,
are likely to come out against all foreign funding, while civil and university
think tanks are more likely to be in favour; one interviewee suggested that
a block on foreign funding would give the misleading impression to outsiders
that think tanks were government-controlled.102 The question has arisen,
moreover, as to what counts as foreign funding, with some proposing that
_________________
102 Think-tank scholar C, interview with author, Beijing, May 2016.
47
China’s New-Type Think Tanks
donations from foreign corporations owned by overseas Chinese should have
less restrictions attached.103 Indeed, there is much optimism regarding these
organizations as a future source of endowments, since they are considered
both culturally Chinese, and familiar with a practice of philanthropy to which
mainland enterprises are not yet accustomed.104
Going forward, a number of questions warrant further study. What will
be the social consequences of increased commercial funding into policy
making? Are we witnessing the beginnings of a mass corporate lobbying
culture in China of the kind that exists in the US? Will the establishment of
a system of think tanks under government supervision, on the contrary,
succeed in reining in such vested interests? What are the possibilities for
political debate within a think-tanks system largely internal to the state
apparatus? Or is this system best understood as a form of social and political
surveillance, which will help to maintain social stability while deferring more
democratic forms of policymaking? We cannot fully understand the
development trajectory of China’s new-type think tanks without paying
attention to these contested issues.
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China,
London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK, January 2018
_________________
103 Think-tank scholar B, interview by author, Beijing, September 2015.