MGC Map Logo
HomeMaps & DataResearchLatestLearn & Share

Research

Explore reseach clusters, outputs, case studies, and publications from Mapping Global China. Discover insights into China's global presence.

Research Clusters

Capital and Development

Hasan Karrar
Galen Murton
Andrew Grant
Elisa Gambino
Jing Qian
Giles Mohan
Lorena Lombardozzi
7 members
Meet the team

Soft Power

Charles Chang
Maria Repnikova
Jinghan Zeng
Shaoyu Yuan
Giulia Sciorati
Filippo Boni
Pablo Morales
Rachel Ann Hulvey
8 members
Meet the team

Military and Security

Sheena Chestnut Greitens
Andrea Ghiselli
Andrew Scobell
Andrew Chubb
4 members
Meet the team

International Organizations

Members coming soon

0 members
Meet the team

Central Asia

Members coming soon

0 members
Meet the team

Latin America and the Caribbean

Members coming soon

0 members
Meet the team

Research Briefs

China’s Belt and Road must adapt to survive a hotter world
Research Brief

China’s Belt and Road must adapt to survive a hotter world

February 26, 2026

Originally published at Dialogue Earth https://dialogue.earth/en/climate/chinas-belt-and-road-must-adapt-to-survive-a-hotter-world/ under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence.

Cityzenship: How Are Cities - not Nations - Remapping China’s International Education and Returnees
Research Brief

Cityzenship: How Are Cities - not Nations - Remapping China’s International Education and Returnees

February 20, 2026

Studying abroad is often described as a journey between countries: leaving China, going to a host country, usually a “developed” western country, then returning. This brief argues that, for many Chine...

China’s Digital Diplomacy in Kazakhstan: A Study of Instagram Posts from 2024 to 2025
Research Brief

China’s Digital Diplomacy in Kazakhstan: A Study of Instagram Posts from 2024 to 2025

January 4, 2026

China’s global rise has crossed an inflection point. Where once the People’s Republic sought to create alternative institutions and multilateral alliances (e.g., the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,...

A New World Cop on the Beat? China’s Internal Security Outreach Under the Global Security Initiative
Research Brief

A New World Cop on the Beat? China’s Internal Security Outreach Under the Global Security Initiative

August 6, 2025

Global outreach by China’s internal security agencies is expanding, and now plays an important, yet overlooked role in the overall foreign and security policy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). ...

Is China Really in the Driver’s Seat for BRI Projects in Africa?
Research Brief

Is China Really in the Driver’s Seat for BRI Projects in Africa?

March 19, 2025

The article “Is China Really in the Driver’s Seat for BRI Projects in Africa?” argues that Chinese involvement in Africa’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is often portrayed too simplistically as a top...

Can China Lead Global AI Governance?
Research Brief

Can China Lead Global AI Governance?

January 7, 2025

Why AI Governance? The rapid development of AI has created a series of governance challenges that need to be tackled. To start with, the development of AI is going to transform future employment and w...

China's Foreign Police Training: A Global Footprint
Research Brief

China's Foreign Police Training: A Global Footprint

November 13, 2024

Global outreach by China’s internal security agencies is expanding. As China’s Global Security Initiative externalizes a concept of security focused on domestic stability and regime protection, the Pe...

Knowledge Transfer Synergism between China and Africa: a case study in ethiopia’s manufacturing sector
Research Brief

Knowledge Transfer Synergism between China and Africa: a case study in ethiopia’s manufacturing sector

August 9, 2024

Since 2000, China–Africa relations have expanded beyond trade and finance to include growing emphasis on knowledge sharing and industrial capacity building, particularly through the Forum on China–Afr...

China’s Digital Footprint Grows in the Middle East & North Africa
Research Brief

China’s Digital Footprint Grows in the Middle East & North Africa

June 8, 2023

The article China’s Digital Footprint Grows in the Middle East & North Africa discusses how China’s Digital Silk Road (DSR) — the digital component of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — is expanding...

‘Germany’s China City’: Iron Silk Road Terminal of Duisburg
Research Brief

‘Germany’s China City’: Iron Silk Road Terminal of Duisburg

June 8, 2023

Over the past decade, Duisburg has emerged as a prominent European node in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), despite being a mid-sized, post-industrial city facing structural economic challenges...

China’s 16+1 Format in Crisis – Not Yet an Obituary
Research Brief

China’s 16+1 Format in Crisis – Not Yet an Obituary

September 5, 2022

The article “China’s 16+1 Format in Crisis – Not Yet an Obituary” analyzes the current state and challenges of the 16+1 cooperation format, a diplomatic and economic initiative launched by China to de...

Browse Research

Filters

39 research items

Explore by Region & Country
Click highlighted countries to filter (24 with research)

China’s Belt and Road must adapt to survive a hotter world

Jiayong Liang, Maria Adele Carrai, Xiaojiao Wang

Read

Cityzenship: How Are Cities - not Nations - Remapping China’s International Education and Returnees

Zhe Wang

Read

China’s Digital Diplomacy in Kazakhstan: A Study of Instagram Posts from 2024 to 2025

Assel G. Bitabar, Felix Chang, Sunnie Rucker-Chang

Read

1 / 13

Featured Research

Article

Feb 2019

China’s double body: infrastructure routes and the mapping of China’s nation-state and civilization-state

Andrew Grant

In contemporary China, there are two cartographies that underlie geographical imaginations of China’s political, economic, and cultural nature. The first is the geobody, a bordered notion of the state that stresses national territorial integrity and ...

China
East Asia
Soft Power

Eurasian Geography and Economics Volume 59, 2018 - Issue 3-4

Read
Research Brief

Feb 2026

China’s Belt and Road must adapt to survive a hotter world

Jiayong Liang, Maria Adele Carrai, Xiaojiao Wang

Originally published at Dialogue Earth https://dialogue.earth/en/climate/chinas-belt-and-road-must-adapt-to-survive-a-hotter-world/ under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence.

MENA
Qatar
Energy
Governance and Law

Dialogue Earth (February 18, 2026)

Read
Research Brief

Nov 2024

China's Foreign Police Training: A Global Footprint

Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Isaac B. Kardon, Cameron Waltz

Global outreach by China’s internal security agencies is expanding. As China’s Global Security Initiative externalizes a concept of security focused on domestic stability and regime protection, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has increased its e...

Asia
Africa
Security and Military
Geopolitics

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Read
Article

Jan 2021

Adaptive governance along Chinese-financed BRI railroad megaprojects in East Africa

Maria Adele Carrai

As part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China is increasingly investing abroad and has become an important country for development financing. Many commentators have expressed concern that the country is defying the Western path of sustainable ...

Eastern Africa
Africa
Investment
Trade

World Development

Read
Article

Nov 2018

Market Opportunities and Political Responsibilities: The Difficult Development of Chinese Private Security Companies Abroad

Andrea Ghiselli

Building upon the conceptual work of Krahmann and Habermas, this study explains how political power and market forces in China combined to create an enormous domestic market for overseas security services and, at the same time, undermined the full de...

USA
Northern America
Security and Military

Armed Forces & Society, Volume 46, Issue 1

Read
Research Brief

Feb 2026

Cityzenship: How Are Cities - not Nations - Remapping China’s International Education and Returnees

Zhe Wang

Studying abroad is often described as a journey between countries: leaving China, going to a host country, usually a “developed” western country, then returning. This brief argues that, for many Chinese graduates who studied overseas, the key questio...

East Asia
China
People
migration
Read
Research Brief

Jan 2026

China’s Digital Diplomacy in Kazakhstan: A Study of Instagram Posts from 2024 to 2025

Assel G. Bitabar, Felix Chang, Sunnie Rucker-Chang

China’s global rise has crossed an inflection point. Where once the People’s Republic sought to create alternative institutions and multilateral alliances (e.g., the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), it no...

Asia
China
Soft Power
Investment
Read
Article

Dec 2025

Symbolic power and the reception of Chinese narratives on the China–Pakistan economic corridor: adaptation and contestation

Filippo Boni

The emphasis on “discourse power” and “telling the China story” has been central to China’s international engagement over the past decade. While existing scholarship has critically examined the projection of China’s narratives, scant attention has be...

Eurasian Geography and Economics

Read
Article

Nov 2025

Beyond trade? Chinese private capital under the African Continental Free Trade Area

Elisa Gambino

Since the early 2000s, imports from China have largely substituted imports from Europe; since the 2010s, Chinese firms are also localizing production activities in African economies. Increasing Chinese investment raises the question of whether the l...

International Affairs, Volume 101, Issue 6, November 2025, Pages 2253–2264

Read
Article

Sep 2025

Conceptualising autocracy promotion as commercialisation: marketising narratives and Chinese responses to central Asian protests

Giulia Sciorati

In recent decades, the global rise of autocracies has spurred scholarly investigations into why and how these regimes support one another. This article advances these debates by addressing the undertheorised question of what states promote in autocra...

Central Asia
Asia
Governance and Law
Geopolitics
Read
Book

Aug 2025

Memoirs of a Confucius Institute Director, Volume 1

Jinghan Zeng

As China’s flagship platform for cultural diplomacy and international engagement, the global expansion of Confucius Institutes has been accompanied by growing controversy—particularly in the West. This book—and the volumes that follow—is the first of...

Read
Article

Aug 2025

Flexible embeddedness: how Chinese lead firms internationalise in Africa

Elisa Gambino

The ‘rise of the South’, and particularly that of China, has promoted lively debates around the centrality of Southern firms in shaping the contours of twenty first century economic globalisation. This paper contributes to these debates by examining ...

Review of International Political Economy

Read
Research Brief

Aug 2025

A New World Cop on the Beat? China’s Internal Security Outreach Under the Global Security Initiative

Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Isaac B. Kardon, Cameron Waltz

Global outreach by China’s internal security agencies is expanding, and now plays an important, yet overlooked role in the overall foreign and security policy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nonmilitary security cooperation is emerging as th...

Asia
South Asia
Security and Military
Governance and Law

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Read
Research Brief

Mar 2025

Is China Really in the Driver’s Seat for BRI Projects in Africa?

Julie Yu Wen Chen

The article “Is China Really in the Driver’s Seat for BRI Projects in Africa?” argues that Chinese involvement in Africa’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is often portrayed too simplistically as a top-down, Beijing-led geopolitical strategy. In reali...

Africa
Ethiopia
Investment
Development
Read
Article

Feb 2025

Security without Exclusivity: Hybrid Alignment under U.S.-China Competition

Sheena Chestnut Greitens

This article explores an emerging dynamic in the international system: Countries across the world are engaged in simultaneous security cooperation with both China and the United States. China and the United States, however, do not provide the same ty...

China
East Asia
Security and Military
Soft Power

International Security Volume 49, Issue 3

Read
Article

Feb 2025

Security without Exclusivity: Hybrid Alignment under U.S.-China Competition

Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Isaac B. Kardon

This article explores an emerging dynamic in the international system: Countries across the world are engaged in simultaneous security cooperation with both China and the United States. China and the United States, however, do not provide the same ty...

International Security (2025) 49 (3): 122–163.

Read
Research Brief

Jan 2025

Can China Lead Global AI Governance?

Jing Cheng, Jinghan Zeng

Why AI Governance? The rapid development of AI has created a series of governance challenges that need to be tackled. To start with, the development of AI is going to transform future employment and workforce. It is estimated that up to 100 million C...

USA
Northern America
Soft Power
Governance and Law
Read
Article

Nov 2024

From play to power: china’s video games as instruments of soft power

Shaoyu Yuan

This paper investigates the burgeoning role of video games as a strategic instrument of soft power, with a particular focus on China’s utilization of the gaming industry to extend its cultural and political influence on a global scale. Through a comp...

China
East Asia
Soft Power
Technology

The Pacific Review, 38(4), 728–749

Read
Article

Nov 2024

Closing the sub-frontier: corridorising Tibet and the social life of pervasive security

Andrew Grant

Western China’s border provinces’ domestic economic corridors are positive spaces that erase the negative spaces of the frontier. Frontiers, understood as spaces of incomplete sovereign control, threaten Chinese governance and the success of the Belt...

Territory, Politics, Governance Volume 13, 2025

Read
Article

Nov 2024

A tale of two ports: relational power in COSCO’s European port investments

Giles Mohan

China’s increasing presence in international port ownership and management has excited political anxieties among Western commentators based on a geopolitical framing that equates this internationalisation with military ambitions. While not denying th...

Territory, Politics, Governance

Read
Article

Sep 2024

Goodbye, Wolf Warrior: charting China's transition to a more accommodating diplomacy

Shaoyu Yuan

- China has abolished its previous wolf-warrior diplomacy and is increasingly adopting a softer diplomatic tone, primarily driven by internal economic challenges such as a slowing economy and the need for global economic stability to sustain its grow...

China
East Asia
Governance and Law
Geopolitics

International Affairs, Volume 100, Issue 5, September 2024, Pages 2217–2232

Read
Article

Aug 2024

De-risking, re-balancing and recentralising: Intra-state relations in Chinese-backed transport infrastructure projects in Europe

Giles Mohan

China's Belt and Road Initiative is the most visible manifestation of the country's wider internationalisation efforts in which infrastructure connectivity projects are central. Existing spatialised narratives of these projects have usefully focused ...

Political Geography Volume 113, August 2024, 103152

Read
Research Brief

Aug 2024

Knowledge Transfer Synergism between China and Africa: a case study in ethiopia’s manufacturing sector

Tang Xiaoyang

Since 2000, China–Africa relations have expanded beyond trade and finance to include growing emphasis on knowledge sharing and industrial capacity building, particularly through the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). This study examines the e...

Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
Investment
Geopolitics
Read
Article

Mar 2024

Corridors, chokepoints and the contradictions of the Belt and Road Initiative

Galen Murton

In popular, scholarly, business and governmental conceptualisations, ‘corridors’ are identified as fundamental components of connectivity and central to the China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). However, given how the BRI has challenged socio-spa...

China
East Asia
Geopolitics
Soft Power

Area Development and Policy

Read
Article

Nov 2023

Tracing China’s diplomatic transition to wolf warrior diplomacy and its implications

Shaoyu Yuan

This study investigates the evolution of China’s diplomacy, specifically its transition from a peaceful and low-profile approach to the assertive and confrontational wolf warrior style, and its implications for international relations, regional polit...

China
East Asia
Geopolitics
Governance and Law

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 10, Article number: 837 (2023)

Read
Research Brief

Jun 2023

China’s Digital Footprint Grows in the Middle East & North Africa

Dale Aluf

The article China’s Digital Footprint Grows in the Middle East & North Africa discusses how China’s Digital Silk Road (DSR) — the digital component of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — is expanding technological influence across the Middle East an...

MENA
Egypt
Soft Power
Energy
Read
Article

Jun 2023

China Planet: Ecological Civilization and Global Climate Governance

Judith Shapiro, Yifei Li

This article critically examines China’s concept of “ecological civilization” and its growing influence in global climate governance. While praised by some Western environmentalists as a decisive alternative to ineffective democratic climate action, ...

China
East Asia
Soft Power
Investment
Read
Research Brief

Jun 2023

‘Germany’s China City’: Iron Silk Road Terminal of Duisburg

Giulia Romano, Markus Taube

Over the past decade, Duisburg has emerged as a prominent European node in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), despite being a mid-sized, post-industrial city facing structural economic challenges. Its unexpected visibility—symbolized by its incl...

Germany
Europe
Soft Power
Investment
Read
Article

Mar 2023

Beyond the BRI: the volumetric presence of China in Nepal

Galen Murton

This paper conceptualizes ‘presence’ to analyse the volumetric growth of Chinese investment and development in Nepal from 2014 to 2021 in material, territorial and discursive terms. From physical experiences with earthquake disaster to the symbolic p...

Nepal
China
Soft Power
Investment

Territory, Politics, Governance Volume 12, 2024 - Issue 1

Read
Article

Feb 2023

China’s Minimalist Global Military Posture: Great Power Lite?

Andrew Scobell

What explains the mismatch between China’s vast economic presence, significant diplomatic engagement around the world, and its miniscule global military posture? China’s global defense footprint – as measured by overseas deployments and basing – is e...

China
East Asia
Security and Military
Geopolitics

Asian Security Volume 19, 2023 - Issue 1

Read
Article

Jan 2023

The Impact of China's AIIB on the World Bank

Jing Qian

The World Bank, under the stewardship of the United States, stands out as the global leader among international development organizations. Does China's establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) undermine this status? Examining ...

Asia
USA
Soft Power
Investment

Cambridge University Press

Read
Article

Jan 2023

‘Constructing’ heritage diplomacy in Central Asia: China’s Sinocentric historicisation of transnational World Heritage Sites

As the ancient Silk Road began acquiring new centrality in China’s soft power strategy in the mid-2000s, so did heritage diplomacy, which developed as an engagement tool for fostering relations with Central Asia. The paper examines China’s heritage c...

Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

Read
Research Brief

Sep 2022

China’s 16+1 Format in Crisis – Not Yet an Obituary

Alfred Gerstl

The article “China’s 16+1 Format in Crisis – Not Yet an Obituary” analyzes the current state and challenges of the 16+1 cooperation format, a diplomatic and economic initiative launched by China to deepen engagement with Central and Eastern European ...

Europe
China
Soft Power
Geopolitics
Read
Article

Feb 2022

Chinese Soft Power

Maria Repnikova

This Element presents an overarching analysis of Chinese visions and practices of soft power. Maria Repnikova's analysis introduces the Chinese theorization of the idea of soft power, as well as its practical implementation across global contexts. Th...

Cambridge University Press

Read
Article

Oct 2021

Power of blank spaces: A critical cartography of China's Belt and Road Initiative

Galen Murton

A variety of maps depict a usefully approximate but inexact network of roads, rails, sea lanes and other infrastructures to represent something called China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). And yet, for a global programme that reflects and advances ...

Asia
Pakistan
Soft Power
Geopolitics

Asia Pacific Viewpoint

Read
Article

Aug 2020

Below the Belt? Territory and Development in China's International Rise

Giles Mohan

China's internationalization has been heralded by some as a new era of South–South cooperation. Yet such framings of development are pitched at an abstract space of the ‘global South’ which conceals more than it reveals. With some theory moving towar...

Development and Change

Read
Article

Mar 2020

Trans-Himalayan power corridors: Infrastructural politics and China's Belt and Road Initiative in Nepal

Galen Murton

This article examines the shifting dimensions of Chinese infrastructural aid in Nepal, focusing on the politics of anticipation and enunciation that shape Nepali perceptions of Chinese-facilitated development and negotiations concerning Beijing's Bel...

Nepal
Investment
Trade

Political Geography Volume 77, March 2020, 102100

Read
Article

Jan 2020

Crossing Khorgos: Soft power, security, and suspect loyalties at the Sino-Kazakh boundary

Andrew Grant

As China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) development projects deepen connections across Eurasia, the Sino-Kazakh border has been rematerialized in a manner that complicates the exercise of Chinese BRI soft power. On the one hand, the border city of ...

China
East Asia

Political Geography Volume 76, January 2020, 102070

Read
Book

Jul 2019

Sovereignty in China: A Genealogy of a Concept since 1840

Maria Adele Carrai

This book provides a comprehensive history of the emergence and the formation of the concept of sovereignty in China from the year 1840 to the present. It contributes to broadening the history of modern China by looking at the way the notion of sover...

China
East Asia
Law
History

Cambridge University Press

Read
Article

Feb 2019

China’s double body: infrastructure routes and the mapping of China’s nation-state and civilization-state

Andrew Grant

In contemporary China, there are two cartographies that underlie geographical imaginations of China’s political, economic, and cultural nature. The first is the geobody, a bordered notion of the state that stresses national territorial integrity and ...

China
East Asia
Soft Power

Eurasian Geography and Economics Volume 59, 2018 - Issue 3-4

Read
Research Brief

Feb 2026

China’s Belt and Road must adapt to survive a hotter world

Jiayong Liang, Maria Adele Carrai, Xiaojiao Wang

Originally published at Dialogue Earth https://dialogue.earth/en/climate/chinas-belt-and-road-must-adapt-to-survive-a-hotter-world/ under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence.

MENA
Qatar
Energy
Governance and Law

Dialogue Earth (February 18, 2026)

Read

Contribute

Share your research with Mapping Global China by submitting a research brief,
contributing to our database, or partnering to visualize your work on our platform.

Submit ResearchSubscribe