China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2019 | Page 15

China Policy Journal
tion. (1) In 1980s, when China began
to push forward reform and opening,
western scholars already noticed Chinese
think tanks, particularly foreign
policy think tanks (Halpern 1988; Oksenberg
1982; Shambaugh 1987; Weaver
1989). (2) During the 1990s and
2000s, as China became increasingly
integrated into globalization through its
dramatic acceleration of market-oriented
reform since 1992 and its entry into
the World Trade Organization (WTO)
in 2001, think tanks began to emerge
as a unique force shaping China’s policymaking
process. Western scholars
intensified their research in this field
substantially. Their enormous interests
and efforts were exemplified by the
No. 171 issue of the China Quarterly in
2002, which was completely occupied
by western scholars’ articles of Chinese
think tank studies (Glaser et al. 2002;
Faulkner 2007). (3) Since the 2008
world financial crisis, as China’s external
environment became unprecedentedly
complex and fluid, China’s political
leadership inevitably created an even
more urgent demand for high-quality
policy advice. Therefore, think tanks’
role appears more crucial, and western
scholars, especially experts of elite
think tanks, come to be more absorbed
to this field (Jakobson and Knox 2010;
Li 2017; Menegazzi 2018; Paltiel 2010;
Abb 2012, 2013).
While Chinese scholars are more
skillful at technical analysis, western
scholars mostly embed their research
into macro-level analytical frameworks
on China’s political regime. Based on
this distinctiveness, western scholars
proposed several acute and enlightening
perspectives, which are seldom
mentioned by Chinese scholars. (1)
They emphasized the outstanding significance
of a “small leading group” in
China’s foreign policymaking and took
an attempt to clarify its connections
with think tanks (Glaser 2012; Glaser
and Saunders 2002; Jeremy 2010;
Shambaugh 2002). (2) They regard
“stove-piping” 2 as a permanent feature
of Chinese policymaking system and
use this concept to sketch the contours
of the mechanism within which think
tanks may bring influence (Glaser 2012;
Glaser and Saunders 2002; Shambaugh
2002; Tanner 2002; Gill and Mulvenon,
2002). (3) They give high credit to personal
connections (guanxi) in assessments
of Chinese think tanks’ foreign
policy relevance. Some scholars analyzed
think tanks’ channels of patronage
from Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang and
Zhu Rongji in 1980s and 1990s (Halpern
1988; Lampton 2002; Naughton
2 “Stove-Piping” is a special term referring to the strong vertical control in China’s executive system.
Usually, China’s ministries in the State Council possess enormous resources. They take direct
control and have assertive commands over provincial-level ministries of the same field, while the
provincial ministries can directly command the city-level functional government institutions of
the same field. This kind of vertical top-to-bottom command chain is an outstanding feature of
Chinese policymaking system, just like the pipes of stove that extend from top to bottom in vertical
lines. U.S. experts of Chines studies already noticed this feature as early as late 1960s and early
1970s. They lent the term “stove-piping” from the discipline of intelligence analysis to mention this
feature. The earliest description of this vertical control can be found in Barnett (1967, 72).
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