OOIR: Observatory of International Research

Papers

(The median citation count of Journal of Contemporary China is 2. The table below lists those papers that are above that threshold based on CrossRef citation counts [max. 250 papers]. The publications cover those that have been published in the past four years, i.e., from 2021-06-01 to 2025-06-01.)

Article	Citations
Reforms and Inequality: Examining the Impact of China’s Primary Distribution System Reforms on Wage Inequality (1989–2015)	47
China’s Promotion of Knowledge Diffusion in Africa - a Case Study on Ethiopia’s Manufacturing Sector	40
Tracing the Path of Sino-Ukrainian Relations: From the Post-Soviet Era to the Russo-Ukrainian War	35
From Defensive toward Offensive Realism: Strategic Competition and Continuities in the United States’ China Policy	26
A Cultural Theory of Chinese Foreign Policy	24
Is China Truly the Spokesperson for Developing Countries? An Examination of China’s Voting Position with Africa in the United Nations Security Council	22
Explaining ‘Grey Capital’: The Sociology of Transnational Chinese Companies and Crime in Thailand	20
Reassessing Seoul’s “One China” Policy: South Korea-Taiwan “Unofficial” Relations after 30 Years (1992-2022)	18
The Sino-American Struggle for Normative Security: The Strategic Framing and Shaping of Alignment of Belief in the Human Rights Council During the COVID-19 Pandemic	17
Navigating Through The Fog: Reflexive Accounts on Researching China’s Digital Surveillance, Censorship, and Other Sensitive Topics	15
Political Events and Cultural Othering: Impact of Protests and Elections on Identities in Post-Handover Hong Kong, 1997–2021	13
New Clientelism in Urban China: Broker-Based Evasions in Residential Property Market	13
China-India Face-offs: How Does Reputation Matter in Crisis Management?	13
The Scholar and the Ghost: Thucydides, China’s Rise, and Major Power War	13
International Dispute Resolution of BRI-Related Cases: Changes and Challenges	12
Elite Networks and the Transregional Dimension of Authoritarianism: Sino-Emirati Relations in Times of a Global Pandemic	12
Public Opinion on Chinese Foreign Aid Policy: Calculated Opposition or General Discontent?	12
China’s Interventions in ‘Gray Special Economic Zones’ in Southeast Asia’s Borderlands	12
Policy Feedback Loop: Central-Local Interactions in China’s International Economic Policy	12
Development of New Generation of Artificial Intelligence in China: When Beijing’s Global Ambitions Meet Local Realities	12
Sino-phobia in Russia and Kyrgyzstan	11
The Dynamics of Anti-Corruption Campaigns in China: An Empirical Study of the Official Rank-Punishment Nexus in the Context of Political and Legal Changes	11
Chinese Re-Examinations of Russia? The Strategic Partnership in the Wake of Russia’s War Against Ukraine	11
China, Africa, and the Market for Donkeys: Why Did the African Union Ban the Ejiao -Linked Donkey Hide Trade?	10
Identity Negotiation and Segregated Integration of African-Chinese Mixed-race Children in Guangzhou, China	10

Tournament Style Bargaining within Boundaries: Setting Targets in China’s Cadre Evaluation System	10
Efficacy of China’s Soft Power in Nigeria: Impact of Personal Engagement and Media Exposure on Lagos Residents’ Attitude Towards China	10
Differential Coalescing: Re-Building the Coalition for ‘Single Women’s’ Reproductive Rights in China	10
Confrontation versus Coexistence: The Dynamics of Australia-China Ideological Relations 1996-2022	10
China’s Artificial Intelligence Ethics: Policy Development in an Emergent Community of Practice	10
‘Hold on to the Green Horse’: Popular Imaginations of the Health Code and the Cultivation of Algocratic Attunement in China in the COVID Era	10
Zero-COVID or Coexistence? It is a Question: Examining Ideological Factors Underlying the Chinese Public’s Attitude to Health Policies	9
The Anti-Corruption Campaign, Luxury Consumption, and Regime Trust in China: Changing Patterns of Perceived Political Risk and Their Consequences	9
From Epidemic to Pandemic: Social Identity Salience and Regime Legitimacy in China	9
China’s Health Silk Road in the Middle East and North Africa amidst COVID-19 and a Contested World Order	8
The Rising China is Not a ‘Sick Man’ Anymore: Cultural Nationalism in the Xi Jinping Era	8
The Multilevel Politics of County-to-District Mergers in China	8
Explaining Chinese Military Coercion in Sino-Indian Border Disputes	8
Judicial Transparency as Judicial Centralization: Mass Publicity of Court Decisions in China	8
What Do We See When Looking at China’s Engagements in Africa? An Analysis of Mainstream Academic Perspectives	7
Empathetic Solidarity: How Chinese English-Language Media Portrays Urban Community Participation	7
Conditioning China’s Influence: Intentionality, Intermediaries, and Institutions	7
How Politics ‘Messed up with’ Institutionalization: A Case Study of the Investigation into the Death of Li Wenliang during the Initial Months of COVID-19	7
Butter or Guns: Taiwan’s Economic Policy Toward China	7
Stability Maintenance and the ‘Three Evils’: Framing China’s Role in Central Asia	7
Bereaved Single-Child Parents as the Focus of Family Planning Officials: State Support, Social Stability, and the Unresolved Consequences of China’s One-Child Policy	7
Understanding Environmental Governance in China Through the Green Shield Action Campaign	6
Measuring and Forecasting the Rise of China: Reality over Image	6
The Domestic Mechanisms of China’s Vertical Multilateralism: The FOCAC and the 16+1 Format Case Studies	6
Urban Management in Authoritarian China: How the Smart City is Used to Enhance Comprehensive Law Enforcement	6
Rising Powers and Normative Resistance: China, India, and the Responsibility to Protect	6
China’s Ideational Influence in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE): A Comparative Analysis of Chinese and European Scholars’ Interpretations of China-CEE Cooperation	6
Repenetrating the Rural Periphery: Party Building Under China’s Anti-Poverty Campaign	6
Impact of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor on Nation-Building in Pakistan: A Case Study of Balochistan	6
Attitudes Toward Income Inequality in China: Revisiting the Concern About Inequality from a Comparative Perspective	5
The Rise of Pro-Regime Intellectuals and Their Mass Persuasion Strategies on China’s Internet	5
What Makes a COVID Hero in China? - A Glimpse of Heroism in Xi Jinping’s New Era	5
Social Resources Transfer Program under China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation Strategy: Rural Social Structure and Local Politics	5
Limited Power-Sharing in a Personalized Regime: Xi Jinping’s Strategic Retreat from Local Politics	5
Constructing Chinese Firms as Development Catalysts: State-Firm Public Diplomacy Collaboration in Kenya	5
The Impact of China’s Dams on the Mekong River Basin: Governance, Sustainable Development, and the Energy-Water Nexus	5
From Hu’s Outward-Looking Pragmatism to Xi’s Ambitious Nationalist Leninism: Contrasting Agendas in Politburo Collective Study Sessions	5
When Rubber Bullets Fly, Family Comes First: How Fathers in Hong Kong Reconciled with Their Activist Children	5
Collusive Infrapolitics: The Hidden Gay Worlds of HIV Community Based Organizations in Kunming, China	5
Innovation Network Formation and the Catalyzing State: A Study of Two Innovative Industry Clusters in China	4
National Identity and the Limits of Chinese Public Diplomacy in the Philippines	4
After the Dust Settled: Online Participation and Adaptation in Hong Kong	4
A Unique Path of Political Development: The Confucian Dialectic of Domestic and International Interaction in the History of the Communist Party of China	4
Changing Strategies and Mixed Agendas: Contradiction and Fragmentation within China’s External Propaganda	4
China’s Twitter Diplomacy in Germany: Practices, Reactions, and Discrepancies	4
Correction	4
Critical Nationalists: A Discourse Analysis of Quotidian Nationalist Expression Among Chinese Elite Urbanites	4
Chinese Coercion, Wedge Strategies, and the U.S.-Philippine Alliance	4
Censorship in the Semi-private Domain: A Theory of Cross-domain Variation and Evidence from WeChat	4
Securing Legitimacy Through Poverty Alleviation: How China’s Communist Party Strengthens Grassroots Control	4

The Chinese Restrictive Approach to the Law on the Use of Force and Its Application in Cyberspace	4
The Enduring Sino–Russian Strategic Relations of Mutual Dependence—The Attribute of Military Cooperation	4
China and Western Aid Norms in the Belt and Road: Normative Clash or Convergence? A Case Study on Ethiopia	4
Hoping for the Best, Preparing for the Worst: China’s Varied Responses to US Strategic Competition	4
Chinese Data Governance and Trade Policy: From Cyber Sovereignty to the Quest for Digital Hegemony?	4
How COVID-19 has Impacted American Attitudes Toward China: A Study on Twitter	4
Why Did China’s Zero-COVID Policy Persist? Decision Urgency, Regime Type, and Political Opportunity Structures	4
When Independence Meets Reality: Symbolic and Pragmatic Politics in Taiwan	3
Between Centralism and Localism: Dual Mobility Regimes in the Chinese Bureaucracy	3
Searching for the Rainbow Connection: Regional Development and LGBT Communities in China	3
The Chinese Conception of Cybersecurity: A Conceptual, Institutional, and Regulatory Genealogy	3
The Welfare Is Ours: Rural-to-Urban Migration and Domestic Welfare Chauvinism in Urban China	3
From Corruption Control to Everything Control: The Widening Use of Inspections in Xi’s China	3
What Shapes Taiwan-related Legislation in U.S. Congress?	3
Governing the Future through ‘Ecological civilization’: Anticipatory Politics and China’s Great Yangtze River Protection Programme	3
Politicized Adjudication Vis-à-vis Petitioners in Chinese Criminal Justice	3
Diverse Patterns of Paradiplomacy by Chinese Local Governments: A Comparative Case Study of Zhejiang and Yunnan Provinces	3
The Evolution of American Contemporary China Studies: Coming Full Circle?	3
International Cinema’s Shifting Image of China: From the Barbarian to the Schemer, and to the Civilized Great Power	3
Flexible Organizational Weapon of the Party: The New Presence of Women’s Federations in Women’s NGOs in China	3
The Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia: A Mixed Methods Examination	3
The Crackdown on Rights-advocacy NGOs in Xi’s China: Politicizing the Law and Legalizing the Repression	3
The World Is Grateful to China: Chinese Government Discourse During COVID-19	3
Reforming the Chinese State Sector: Mixed Ownership Reforms and State-Business Relations	3
The Ramifications of China’s Maritime Equipment Industry Policies for the EU	3
The Securitization of ‘Chinese Influence’ in Australia	2
Infrastructural Imaginaries of Region and Nation in the Pearl River Delta’s Express Railway Link	2
Assessing Public Support for (Non)Peaceful Unification with Taiwan: Evidence from a Nationwide Survey in China	2
Courting a Blue Sky? Understanding the Constrained Judicialization of Environmental Governance in China	2
Triadic Interaction and Collective Bargaining of Autoworkers in South China	2
Queering Migrant Integration in Contemporary China: A Multi-dimensional Analysis of Chinese Migrant Young Gay Men’s Urban Integration	2
Correction	2
How Policy Shapes Politics: Uneven Environmental Policy Implementation in China	2
The Chinese Public’s Perceptions of the European Union: Changes and Stability Revealed by 2010 and 2020 Surveys	2
Is Beijing’s Long Game on Taiwan About to End? Peaceful Unification, Brinkmanship, and Military Takeover	2
Administration-Led Carbon Markets and China’s Green Transition: Efficiency, Fairness and Rent-Seeking	2
Politicization as a Policy Instrument: China’s Politicized Policy Narrative of Environmental Protection and Control of Its Social Resonance	2
Lips and Teeth: China’s Buffer Thinking Toward North Korea	2
The Nexus Between China’s Global Image and Attitudes Toward Diasporic Chinese: A Comparison of Australia and the United States	2
Controlling Civil Society from the Bottomup: China’s Strategic Arrangement of the State-CSO-Individual Trialism in Managing State-society Relations	2
Remaking China’s Global Image with the Belt and Road Initiative: Is the Jury Out?	2
The Construction and Performance of Citizenship in Contemporary China	2
Threat Perception, Otherness and Hate Speech in China’s Cyberspace	2
The Quad, AUKUS and Australian Security Minilateralism: China’s Rise and New Approaches to Security Cooperation	2
Designated Accountability: Pair-Making Mechanisms and Evolving Central-Local Relations in China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation	2
Top-Level Design and Enlarged Diplomacy: Foreign and Security Policymaking in Xi Jinping’s China	2
Brazilian Perception of the China-Led Belt and Road Initiative	2
In the Eyes of the Beholder: How China and the US See Each Other	2
Provinces in Command: Changes in Prefectural Appointments from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping (2003-2020)	2
Governance Challenge and Tiered State Assistance: The Fiscal Gap in the Chinese Ethnic Tibetan Autonomous Areas	2
China’s Growing Power Makes Its Youth Hawkish? Evidence from the Chinese Youth’s Attitudes toward the US and Japan	2
“Digital Silk Road” as a Slogan Instead of a Grand Strategy	2
Constructed Community: Rise and Engines of Chinese Nationalism Under Xi Jinping	2
Old Wine in New Bottles: Discourse Articulation and China’s Ideological Adaptation in the Time of Transition	2
Breaking the Cycle? China’s Attempt to Institutionalize Center-local Relations	2
China’s Digital Yuan: Motivations of the Chinese Government and Potential Global Effects	2
Promoting Authoritarianism? Continuity and Change in China’s Policy Towards Myanmar (1990–2023)	2
The Rule of Discourse: How Ideas and Institutions Shape China’s COVID Policy	2