Mapping China’s Global Footprint: What Data Can and Can’t Tell Us - Filippo Boni

How can we measure China’s global influence? Are maps, datasets, and indicators enough to capture something as complex as soft power?

In this interview for the Mapping Global China Initiative, Dr. Filippo Boni explores the opportunities and limitations of mapping China’s global footprint. Drawing on extensive research in Pakistan, Europe, and across South Asia, he argues that Chinese influence cannot be understood as a one-way process of projection. Instead, narratives, investments, and partnerships are constantly negotiated, adapted, and contested by local actors.

The conversation examines how China’s engagement is received in different political and social contexts, why domestic politics matter in shaping Belt and Road projects, and what scholars can learn by combining large-scale datasets with qualitative fieldwork.

 

Key topics include:

• Why soft power is not simply projected, but mediated and received by local audiences

• The role of domestic politics in shaping China’s global presence

• How Chinese narratives around the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) are adapted and contested in Pakistan

• Comparing Chinese port investments in Pakistan and Italy

• Strategic geography, infrastructure, and long-term political partnerships

• Misconceptions about Chinese overseas energy investments and coal power projects

• Using large language models (LLMs) and multilingual datasets to study narrative influence

• The strengths and limitations of quantitative data in Global China research

• How visual mapping can help track the evolution of China’s strategic partnerships since the 1990s

• Why Global China should be understood as a network of relationships rather than a top-down project

 

 Throughout the discussion, Boni examined the complex interactions between Chinese actors, local governments, businesses, media institutions, and political elites.

This interview was recorded during a Mapping Global China Initiative workshop at the University of Oxford, bringing together leading scholars to explore new ways of understanding China’s global footprint through data, visualization, and interdisciplinary research.