Role of Chinese Universities in China’s Foreign Policy Making

There are many scholarly works dedicated to China’s foreign policy, on the one hand, and evolution of China’s system of higher education, on the other. There are also articles that speak of Chinese universities as think tanks whose advice is sometimes operationalized by the policy makers. However, there is a gap when it comes to the description of the most developed mechanisms that allow academia influence foreign policy making, and there are very few – if any – books or articles seeking to trace and assess universities’ impact on foreign policy making over time, since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. I argue that over the last thirty years there have been important changes in interaction between the state and academia regarding foreign policy formulation, which has resulted in the emergence of a group of most prestigious universities as sources of expertise that, via a number of China-specific channels, impact country’s foreign policy decision making significantly. I also argue that in some cases it is possible to trace and evaluate universities’ involvement in the foreign policy development at various levels, and, to prove that, I have analyzed extensive literature by Chinese and foreign experts and scholars, conducted some interviews and made case studies. The work has been done within the frameworks of bureaucratic policy model and domestic structure approach to foreign policy analysis, as these are the most appropriate theoretical models so far enabling one to more or less accurately describe the many channels through which domestic institutions and societal forces impact foreign policy.