The Rise of China’s New-Type Think Tanks and the Internationalization of the State

China’s government is promoting new-type think tanks. These are often treated with scepticism by Western observers, due to their lack of independence from government and operation within a controlled intellectual environment. In this article, I heed recent calls by scholars to analyze think tanks, and how they develop, in their particular national political contexts. In China’s case, this is a powerful one-party state undergoing internationalization: usually understood as increased foreign exchanges, engagement with international institutions, and rising influence globally. In contrast, I view internationalization as the reorganizing of China’s state institutions and social structure in order to integrate with the global capitalist system. Through these processes, China’s policymaking community is converging with a powerful transnational class aligned with global capitalist interests. Think tanks are implicated in these processes, and are therefore involved in shaping capitalist class dynamics within China. This is a cause for concern and debate among policy makers, regarding “civil” think tanks in particular, which are non-governmental and privately funded. Drawing on interviews with Chinese think-tank scholars, and examining policy debates on the development of think tanks in Chinese academic and policy journals, I argue that the sphere of think tanks has become an important site of political contestation concerning China’s internationalization and the impact of class power on national policy making. Western observers, too often viewing independence as the key criterion for evaluating China’s think tanks, miss the significance of these debates. The relations between think tanks and government institutions must be understood in this political context.

中国新型智库的兴起和国家的国际化

关键词: 中国，智库，政策制定，国家的国际化，全球化，技术专家治国。

中国政府致力于推进新型智库发展。然而由于这些智库缺乏与政府关系的独立性，并且在一个受政府控制的智识环境中运作，西方观察家通常对它们持怀疑态度。本篇论文响应了学界近来的呼吁，对智库及它们如何在其国家特定的政治语境中发展做出分析。在中国的个案中，这是一个强大的一党制国家经历国际化的过程，按通常的理解就是对外交流及与国际制度的联系的增强以及上升的全球影响力。相比之下，我认为国际化是中国为与全球资本主义系统进行整合而重新组织国家体制以及社会结构的过程。通过这些过程，中国的政策制定群体正与一个符合全球资本利益的强大的跨国阶级合流。智库参与到了这个过程中，因此也参与塑造了中国国内的资本主义阶级动态。这是引起决策者关注和讨论–特别是围绕着非政府的、私人资助的 “公民” 智库的角色–的一个原因。借助对中国智库学者的访谈，以及对中国学界和政策性杂志中对智库发展的政策讨论的考察，我提出中国的智库领域已经成为围绕着中国的国际化和阶级权力对国家政策制定影响力问题进行政治竞争的重要场地。西方观察家往往将独立性视为评估中国智库的关键标准，因而忽略了这些讨论的重要意义。智库和政府体制之间的关系必须参照这个政治语境来理解。

Translated from English by Li Guo