'Professionalization' of Chinese International-Relations Think-Tanks in the 1990s: Content-Analysis Approach

Abstract

Think-tanks have enjoyed increasing attention among scholars of Chinese foreign policy in recent years. But so far, surprisingly little is known about the way these institutions evolved. Many scholars agree that international-relations think-tanks started to play a more important role in foreign-policy decision-making procedures as their work began to be 'professionalized' in the 1990s. They agree on this in spite of having a framework to systematically measure what 'professionalization' actually means. This paper attempts to go a step further to identify, define and characterize this shift towards professionalization. Using content analysis, articles by think-tanks are compared in three different cases since the beginning of the 1990s. A shift in the method of argumentation employed in the articles is revealed as more recent articles provide a less normative and more theory-based interpretation of international events.