Where is China going? What does its alternative global order look like? We often hear about expansive initiatives like the Belt and Road, but how are these grand visions actually experienced on the ground—in Africa, South America, and Asia?
The Chinese Global Orders project brought together twenty-two scholars from five continents to explore precisely these questions. As the first four commentaries in the series demonstrate, the project set out to pluralise the conversation by rethinking "Chinese" beyond the PRC nation-state, "Global" beyond conventional interstate frameworks, and "Orders" as a multiplicity of coexisting norms and structures.
Rather than simply documenting Global China’s material reach, the project introduced a new set of conceptual tools to theorise Chinese interactions across local, national, regional, and global scales. It highlighted not a singular Chinese strategy, but instead a complex and often contradictory set of relationships and perceptions.
The four initial essays engaged with the concepts of (in)visibility (Karrar), hypervisibility (Callahan), (il)legibility (Morris), and a return to (in)visibility with a new inflection (Whiteman), each offering a distinct lens through which to understand the presence—and absence—of Chinese influence across diverse settings.
Since the publication of those initial essays, the China Dialogues team at China Foresight has continued to invite authors to expand this exploration. Subsequent contributions have further examined the idea of (in)visible China from a range of disciplinary and geographic perspectives, continuing the project’s commitment to nuanced, grounded engagement with China's global presence.
China’s influence over global governance and security, as well as its exercise of soft power, all reference geopolitics on a planetary level. But what happens when we scale down the conversation about global orders to the places where Chinese power is deployed? How visible—or not—is Chinese authority in such places?
This article discusses Pakistan’s experience with China’s growing influence, illustrating the complex dynamics of China's visibility and invisibility in the country.
William Callahan's article argues that rather than just focusing on visible and invisible, it’s helpful to think about how China is either invisible or hypervisible, especially in the Global South. This is important because it means that China is not visible in a normal and accessible way to non-elite "people-on-the-street."
China in Pakistan: hypervisible yet invisible. From Lahore's "other" Orange Line to critiques of CPEC as a "colonial project," how do local actors navigate China's legibility—and its limits? Explore the paradoxes of global China: everywhere, nowhere, and vulnerable.
Shaping Visible and Invisible Space through Everyday Surveillance in China. This article explores how surveillance and state control are embedded in both visible and invisible architectural and infrastructural spaces in China. Whiteman examines how architecture and surveillance structures order society. While monumental state buildings are physically visible expressions of authority, much of the state's power operates in less conspicuous, hidden forms, such as surveillance systems.
This series is co-hosted by China Foresight and the International Orders Research Unit.
How can we make sense of the strange, dreamlike textures of modern Chinese life? This piece explores mythorealism—a concept coined by novelist Yan Lianke—as a lens for understanding the eerie, surreal, and liminal dimensions of contemporary Chinese auteur cinema.
Across Africa, new parliament buildings funded and built by China are rising as impressive landmarks — but for many citizens, they symbolise something far more complex. In Lesotho, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, these structures have become potent reminders of geopolitical entanglements and domestic tensions.
