Diffusion of Influence? Detecting China's Footprint in Foreign Policies of Other Countries.

IF 3.4 Q1 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Chinese Political Science Review Pub Date : 2022-05-20 DOI:10.1007/s41111-022-00217-5

Richard Q Turcsanyi, Kamil Liškutin, Michal Mochtak

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

"Chinese influence" has become a hot topic among politicians, media, and pundits. Academic studies dealing with the subject, however, generally take a much more cautious position. This paper suggests an innovative approach of studying political influence using data from the UN General Assembly voting and speech records. Utilizing the latest advancements in natural language processing (NLP), we show how to estimate, quantify, and visualise foreign policy positions using raw textual data. In Europe, it has been argued that China's growing presence and activity in Central and Eastern European states (CEE) undermines "European unity" as the region allegedly starts shifting towards Beijing. We adopt the CEE region as a case study of China's potential influence and highlight the positioning of CEE countries towards China, Germany, and the U.S. by visualizing the proximities among them over time. We find no evidence that the CEE countries are strategically pivoting towards China. We have controlled for known positions and trends of other countries from elsewhere in the world to strengthen the case for our methodological approach.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41111-022-00217-5.

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影响力的扩散？探测中国在其他国家外交政策中的足迹。

“中国影响力”已经成为政治家、媒体和权威人士的热门话题。然而，涉及这一主题的学术研究通常采取更为谨慎的立场。本文提出了一种利用联合国大会投票和演讲记录数据研究政治影响的创新方法。利用自然语言处理（NLP）的最新进展，我们展示了如何使用原始文本数据来估计、量化和可视化外交政策立场。在欧洲，有人认为中国在中欧和东欧国家（CEE）日益增长的存在和活动破坏了“欧洲统一”，因为该地区据称开始转向北京。我们将中东欧地区作为中国潜在影响力的案例研究，并通过可视化它们之间的接近程度，强调中东欧国家对中国、德国和美国的定位。我们没有发现中东欧国家在战略上转向中国的证据。我们控制了世界其他地方其他国家的已知立场和趋势，以加强我们的方法方法。补充信息：在线版本包含补充资料，下载地址：10.1007/s41111-022-00217-5。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Chinese Political Science Review POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

5.20

自引率

14.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： This journal aims to publish original and cutting-edge research in all areas of political science, such as political theory, comparative politics, international relations, public administration, public policy, methodology, and Chinese politics and government. In the meantime it also provides a major and visible platform for the intellectual dialogue between Chinese and international scholars, and disseminate scholarship that can shed light on the ever changing field of Chinese political studies, stimulate reflective discourse as the field continues to develop both within and outside China. All research articles published in this journal have undergone rigorous peer review. In additional original research articles, Chinese Political Science Review also publishes book reviews to disseminate comprehensive reviews of emerging topics in all areas of political science.