China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2019 | Page 37

China Policy Journal
ileged personal connections. The obviously
higher participatory rates of
foreign diplomats and officials in CIIS
meetings in comparison to SIIS meetings
also reveal the relatively more advantageous
position enjoyed by CIIS.
These two tables also expose
other interesting points: First, these
two think tanks’ connections with other
three “subfields” of China’s “field of
power” in the form of meeting are varied.
Through meetings, their relations
with the academia are similarly close,
but CIIS obviously maintains much
tighter relations with the media than
SIIS. On the other hand, SIIS operates
much closer formal links or institutionalized
ties with business interests than
CIIS through formal or professional
meetings of type I (high-level forum),
type III (regular dialogue), and type IV
(symposium on specific issue), while
CIIS may have more intimate interpersonal
ties with business people through
more exclusive meetings of type II
(workshop programs) and type IV
(lecture meetings). The weaker institutionalized
contacts of CIIS with China’s
business community may be attributed
to the heavier restrictions it has to
undergo as MOF’s in-house research
institution. Leaders and executives of
CIIS are usually from MOF with experiences
of working as high-ranking officials
in the past. As former central-level
high-ranking officials, they are inevitably
restricted by more disciplines.
Generally speaking, Chinese business
interests become increasingly active in
think tank events of BRI discussions.
Second, it might be concluded that the
central executive institutions in charge
of foreign economic policy take an increasingly
outstanding role in China’s
overall foreign policymaking regime
and become a part of important targets
of think tanks’ policy influence, at least
on BRI issues. Tables 3 and 4 show that
both CIIS and SIIS invited these foreign
economic policymakers to take part in
a large number of their meetings and
undertook a substantial expense to contact
and host them. These two points
will add new complexity to Chinese
think tanks’ role in policymaking.
5. Conclusion
Generally speaking, there is a
scarcity of literature on China’s
foreign policymaking, which
constrains the analytical depth of the
existing literature of China’s foreign
policy think tanks. Lieberthal’s concept
of “fragmented authoritarianism” and
Mertha’s idea of “fragmented authoritarianism
2.0” may capture some dynamic
characteristics within China’s political
and policymaking structure, but
they derive these two terms from observations
in the domains of economic
and social policymaking, without much
specification on the structural pattern
of the relations between different actors
and the channels of exchange and influence.
On the other side, western and
overseas Chinese scholars have paid
much more attention to China’s foreign
policy think tanks than native Chinese
scholars, but they seldom conduct individualized
case studies on specific policy
issues, perhaps because of the lack of
detailed information, which may lead
to some degree of insufficiency and
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