China Policy Institute

The Chinese Policy Institute (CPI) is a think tank embedded at the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. It also functions as the research arm of the School. The Institute consists of an international network of academics and other highly knowledgeable people from a wide range of fields with a common focus on the People’s Republic of China. This includes economics, finance, business and management, political economy, international relations, national security, politics, culture, society, science and technology, history and law. Among the many programmes at the CPI are a EU funded EU-China Civil Society Dialogue; a separate EU funded programme to study Chinese perceptions of the EU, and a special Chevening Programme for the training of high flying middle ranking Chinese officials. It also hosts a well respected Taiwan Studies Programme. The impact and significance of research carried out within the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies are delivered by way of the CPI.

As a think tank the CPI takes no political stance and promotes collaborative research. According to the website ^[1] of the institute, the research encouraged by the CPI “tests or challenges stereotypes and conventional wisdom on contemporary China.”

The CPI publishes policy papers and working papers. It also maintains a vibrant blog^[2] on which academics from PhD candidate level upwards may write about extant issues within or about China and East Asia.More recently, the CPI has invited world leading academics to submit daily Party Congress Blog posts on issues surrounding the forthcoming change in the Chinese leadership.

Its Director is Steve Tsang, Professor of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham and an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford University, known for summing up the nature of the political system in the PRC as a ‘consultative Leninist’ system, and for his works on Taiwan’s democratization and the history of Hong Kong. Its Senior Fellows include most China experts at the University of Nottingham, as well as scholars and former policy makers from Europe, the USA and Asia. It is also the home of several Marie Curie Research Fellows and academic visitors from different countries.