China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2019 | Page 27

China Policy Journal
quency of these fluctuations. Actually
the “policymaking pendulum” is driven
by the mentality of China’s top leaders.
4.3 Detailed Analysis on CIIS and
SIIS Meetings’ BRI Policy Influence
within China’s “Field of Power”
Since the emerging of BRI policy in
early 2014, CIIS and SIIS have organized
numerous meetings to discuss
BRI policy issues with elites from the
four subfields of China’s overall “field of
power.” Acting as exchange platforms
and network hubs, these meetings disclose
the closeness and frequencies of
CIIS and SIIS’s connections with different
subfields, and particularly with the
core of political power. To some extent,
they also reveal the exact position of
the long-term pendulum between vertical
and horizontal fragmentation in
the fields related to BRI policymaking.
Therefore, a detailed analysis of their
meetings is meaningful.
A General Picture of Differentiated
Positions of CIIS and SIIS within the
System of BRI Policymaking
After a calculation of the institutional
backgrounds of participants who took
part in CIIS and SIIS’s BRI meetings
and who were from the “political subfield”
of China’s “field of power,” a general
picture of these two think tanks’
differentiated positions within China’s
BRI-related foreign policymaking system
is established. Table 2 clearly describes
this differentiation driven by the
mechanisms of “dual leadership” and
“stove-piping.”
As is shown in Table 2, the contacts
of CIIS to central-level foreign
policymaking authorities mainly depend
on its channels to the MOF, and it
has much fewer channels to contact the
central executive institutions of foreign
economic policymaking, such as MOC,
the Ministry of Treasury (MOT, sometimes
also translated as “Ministry of
Finance”), or the NDRC. This is a typical
sign of “stove-piping.” MOF, MOC,
MOT, and NDRC are separate “stovepipes”
with differentiated competences,
so it is not easy for MOF-affiliated CIIS
to cross inter-ministry boundary and
contact MOC, MOT, or NDRC. On the
other hand, Table 2 also demonstrates
that SIIS has to maintain substantial relations
with both the MOF and the provincial-level
Shanghai leadership concurrently,
a distinct sign of inextricable
“dual leadership.”
Table 2 highlights another interesting
feature: the very weak ties of
CIIS with provincial policymaking institutions.
As a subsidiary of a central
ministry, CIIS is not able to contact
provincial policymakers directly and
intensively due to the vertical hierarchic
compartmentalization of China’s bureaucratic
structure. This may restrain
CIIS’s interactions with provincial-level
institutions to some degree. On the other
hand, this low frequency also means
that provincial-level policymakers are
far less crucial or relevant than central
ministries and institutions of party’s
central committee in the field of foreign
policy. More precisely, resources, information,
and power on foreign policymaking
are largely concentrated within
the central-level policymaking institutions,
particularly the political core of
the party. In March 2018, CCP’s central
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