How does China think about the world?

We spend a lot of time trying to decode Beijing’s behaviour—its strategy, its ambitions, its moves on the global stage. But we rarely ask a more basic question: where does that thinking come from?

What does it actually mean to study international relations in China?

In this episode, I speak with Yaqi Li, an MSc candidate in International Relations at RSIS in Singapore. Yaqi, who grew up in China’s Hubei province, is someone who studied political science and IR in China; he offers a first-hand view of what the classroom environment is like.

On paper, much of it looks familiar. Students study realism, liberalism, international political economy. But the experience is also very different. There are limits to inquiry. Domestic politics is largely absent. And official ideology sits alongside political theory in ways that shape how students engage with the changing world around them.

So this is a conversation about classrooms. But it’s also about power.

How are ideas produced in China? How do they travel into the policy system? And what happens when a system tries to generate knowledge, but also constrain it?

We explore the gap between theory and practice. The role of think tanks and state institutions. And the internal logic that shapes Chinese statecraft—its strengths, its blind spots, and its limits.

Because if we want to understand what China does, we first need to understand how it thinks.

As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe, and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work I do, please feel free to reach out to me.

Do check out Yaqi’s Substack and podcast: New China Literacy

We are living through a moment of tremendous transformation. The post-Cold War order is over, and what replaces it is not yet clear. What is clear, however, is that the two countries with the most power to shape that answer are the United States and China. How they manage their competition— in fact, whether they can manage it at all—is a defining question of our era.

That question was tested last year, as the two sides skirmished over trade and technology. It will be tested again this year, as their leaders prepare to meet.

A summit between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping is scheduled for April. This, however, is now being delayed by the war in West Asia. Nevertheless, after a year of tariff battles, technology frictions, and an uneasy truce struck in Busan, the two are set to soon meet again.

Both sides want something from this encounter. But do they want the same things? And what does success even look like when the ideological distance between Washington and Beijing may be greater than either side publicly admits?

To explore these questions, in this episode of The Great Power Show, I speak with Ryan Hass, Director of John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, and former Director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the National Security Council under President Barack Obama. He is also the author of Stronger: Adapting America’s China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence.

We discuss the Trump administration’s real objectives on China. Who is driving US policy within the administration? And what Xi Jinping has taken away from a year of dealing with Trump. We also dig into the deeper structural questions: why Beijing treats American decline as an ideological conviction, not just wishful thinking, and why, on both sides of the Pacific, competition has moved beyond politics into something more enduring.

Because this isn’t just about a summit, or a trade truce, or even the bilateral relationship. It’s about whether two powers can build anything durable in the space between rivalry and rupture.

As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe, and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work I do, please feel free to reach out to me.

Over the weekend, renewed conflict in the Middle East was a stark reminder of how fragile the international order has become, and what happens when major powers begin to bend the very rules they helped create. For countries caught in between, the space for strategic comfort is shrinking.

Nowhere is this tension clearer than in Europe’s relationship with China. Beijing’s rise is no longer a projection; it is a structural reality. From advanced manufacturing and green technology to critical minerals and electric mobility, China is shaping the economic terrain on which Europe’s future competitiveness will be decided.

For Germany in particular, the challenge is acute. Its trade imbalance with China has widened, its companies remain deeply embedded in the Chinese market, and yet Berlin is trying to “de-risk” without rupturing ties. So how does Germany see China today? And what, if anything, did Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s recent visit to Beijing reveal about the direction of that relationship?

To unpack these questions, on this episode of The Great Power Show, I speak to Marina Rudyak, Assistant professor for Chinese Studies at Heidelberg University, and currently visiting scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. She’s also one of the founders of The Decoding China Project, a unique initiative to strengthen China literacy.

We discuss Germany’s evolving China strategy, the tensions between business and security thinking, and what managing interdependence really looks like. Because this isn’t just about Germany and China. It’s about how major economies adapt to a world where competition with Beijing is structural, but disengagement is not an option.

As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe, and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work I do, please feel free to reach out to me.