China-watching is not just the work of intelligence agencies. Diplomats, journalists, scholars, and diaspora communities all shape how China is understood — yet almost no one has asked who does this work, why, from where, and what shapes their views. This matters most in the Indo-Pacific, where the risk of great-power conflict may now exceed that in Ukraine or the Middle East.

Drawing on a global oral history project covering Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and West Asia, this talk traces China-watching from its roots in missionary sinology and Cold War intelligence to today's more securitized landscape. It looks at how individual China watchers exercise agency in their work, and how state interests, funding, and security concerns limit that agency. Regional differences are stark: Southeast Asia draws on a large, active diaspora, while Central Asian sinology still carries the imprint of Soviet-era scholarship. As access to mainland China grows more restricted, the talk asks what it takes to keep China studies genuinely global — including more voices from the Global South and alternative vantage points such as Taiwan.

Speaker:

Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Master's Programme in Area and Cultural Studies at the University of Helsinki. Trained as a political scientist, she studies China's global role — how China projects power through initiatives, institutions, and infrastructure, and how states, societies, and diasporas, particularly small and middle powers, perceive, negotiate, and at times resist that power. Her research spans the Belt and Road Initiative and China's other global initiatives, great-power competition and hybrid threats, ethnopolitics and transnational mobilization, the Taiwan question, and the global production of knowledge about China. Grounded in political science and international relations, her work draws on area studies, sociology, and cultural studies through long-standing interdisciplinary collaborations.

Moderator:

Dr. Esther Song is an Associate at the GIGA.

The event is free of charge. It will take place online and registration is required.