China, Development and International Order Seminar Series

In this In Conversation seminar, Associate Professors Amy King and Maria Repnikova (Georgia State University) will discuss their respective approaches to studying Chinese foreign policy ideas, visions, narratives, and forms of strategic communication. The seminar will draw on Repnikova’s forthcoming book, Competing for Soft Power: China’s Image-Making in Africa, which theorizes a new approach to China’s practice of soft power through extensive fieldwork in Ethiopia. The book identifies China’s core soft-power mechanisms as tangible enticement through material and experiential offerings, ideational promotion of values, visions, and governance practices, and censorial power over the production and dissemination of China narratives. Contrary to popular claims that China is replacing the West in the Global South, this innovative research reveals the successes, inconsistencies, and limitations of Chinese influence, as well as the ever-present shadow of the West in mediating soft-power encounters.

Speakers
Associate Professor Maria Repnikova is an expert on Chinese political communication, an Associate Professor in Global Communication, and the inaugural William C. Pate Chair in Strategic Communication at Georgia State University. Associate Professor Repnikova is the author of the award-winning book, Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism (Cambridge 2017), as well as the recent, Chinese Soft Power (Cambridge Global China Element Series) and the forthcoming, Competing for Soft Power: China’s Image-Making in Africa (CUP). Her public writings have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Atlantic, as well as in many academic journals. Other than working on China, Associate Professor Repnikova does comparative work on information politics in China and Russia. She holds a doctorate in politics from Oxford University where she was a Rhodes Scholar. In the past, she was a Wilson Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center (2020-2021), a visiting fellow at the African Studies Center at Beijing University (2019), and a post-doctoral fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication (2014-2016).

Associate Professor Amy King is Head of the Coral Bell School's Strategic & Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University. She has published widely on China-Japan relations, the economics-security nexus in Asia, and the role of ideas in International Relations, and currently leads a team researching China's historical and contemporary role in shaping the international economic order.

Note: This is a hybrid seminar and Zoom details will be sent upon registration.

Additional information:
Registration is required for this event. If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email bell.marketing@anu.edu.au. Accessible parking spaces are available around campus should you require them.

TEQSA Provider ID: PRV12002 (Australian University) | CRICOS Provider Code: 00120C

View more of our upcoming events here, or sign up for our monthly mailing list to stay connected. Facebook | Bluesky | Instagram | YouTube

Contact the host of In conversation: Maria Repnikova and Amy King