Nis Grünberg, Grzegorz Stec
INTRODUCTION
The latest Global Go To Think Tank Report (2021)1 identifies a worldwide total of 11,175 think tanks, suggesting that China-based organizations make up nearly 17 percent of them. The China Think Tank Directory 2022 (中国智库名录) lists 1,928 active ones.2 However, numbers are not everything. More important is to understand the regulatory conditions and degree of political integration that China’s think tanks operate under in order to assess their value as interlocutors and the context shaping their research.
Think tanks play an increasingly important role in official policy formulation. The output of official think tanks contributes to party-state deliberations on domestic and global policy issues.
Equally significant is the role of think thanks in communicating policy. The CCP leadership has an intense focus on controlling political debate at home, which is now matched by determination to build “discourse power” abroad, meaning China’s capacity to set the norms, topics and language of the international debates.
The think tanks also play an important role as a channel for unofficial exchanges with foreign partners. For instance, before the pandemic, a delegation of Chinese think tankers would visit Brussels for exchanges around every two months. After the pandemic, similar exchanges have resumed with visits from representatives of the Center for China and Globalization, the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, the China Institute of International Studies or the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
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