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Anchored in President Xi Jinping’s vision of a ‘global community of shared future’, Beijing’s evolving approach to global order-building reflects both an outward-looking commitment to international cooperation and a strategic effort to reshape norms and influence worldwide. Increasingly, China is also presenting its own developmental experience as a universal model and positioning ‘Chinese solutions’ as viable responses to global challenges. This shift marks a significant departure from earlier, more inward-focused narratives, signalling China’s growing confidence in projecting its ideas onto the international stage.

What does this transformation mean in an era marked by geopolitical fragmentation, contested governance and shifting centres of power? Bringing together leading scholars of Chinese foreign policy, this roundtable critically examines the drivers, intentions and consequences of China’s global order-building initiatives. It also interrogates the tensions, contestations and contradictions embedded within China’s order-building ideas, narratives and practices.
 

Agenda
5-6pm - Reception in Atrium
6-7.30pm - Roundtable in Lecture Theatre 1 (in-person only)


Panel
Beverley Loke (Chair)

Dr Beverley Loke is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, �������� (ANU). She is also a Visiting Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, and an affiliate with the ��������Australian Centre on China in the World. Her research interests include the politics of great power responsibility and hegemonic ordering, China’s foreign policy, global knowledge production practices, and the international relations of the Indo-Pacific. She has published in journals such as the European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, Australian Journal of International Affairs, China Quarterly and International Studies Review. She is also co-editor of the Routledge Book Series ‘Identity, Worldviews and Ideology in Global Politics’.

Xiaoyu Pu

Xiaoyu Pu is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is the author of Rebranding China: Contested Status Signaling in the Changing Global Order (Stanford University Press, 2019) and has published widely in leading journals, including International Security,International Affairs, and The Chinese Journal of International Politics. He was a Fellow with the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.–China Relations and a Public Intellectuals Program Fellow with the National Committee on U.S.–China Relations. He has held visiting fellowships at the Australian National University and the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. He received his PhD from The Ohio State University and completed postdoctoral training at Princeton University.
 

Astrid Nordin

Professor Astrid Nordin is the Lau Chair of Chinese International Relations in the Lau China Institute, before which she was professor of World Politics and Founding Director of Lancaster University China Centre. Her research develops critical conceptual tools that draw on Chinese and other global traditions of thought, and uses these to understand global challenges as they relate to China’s growing global role. She has lived in China for several years, and has significant experience collaborating with colleagues in the creative arts, media, and policy.
 

Wenting Meng

Dr Wenting Meng is an Assistant Professor in International Relations in the School of Politics and International Relations at East China Normal University. Her research interests include international peacebuilding, global governance, and international organizations, with a special focus on China’s engagement with the United Nations. She is the author of Developmental Peace: Theorizing China’s Approach to International Peacebuilding (Ibidem-Verlag, 2023) and My Six Years with the United Nations (Current Affairs Press, 2018). Her work has appeared in Global Policy, Journal of International Studies, among others. She was awarded the Peace Fellowship by the Social Science Research Council (U.S.) and has conducted field research on peacebuilding projects in South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya. She holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from Peking University and previously worked at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris and the United Nations University in Macau.


William Callahan

William A. Callahan is professor of Political Science at Singapore Management University. Previously, he was professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research examines the interplay of theory, culture and politics in China, and visual global politics more generally. Callahan’s  (OUP, 2020) won the Best Book Award from the International Studies Association, IPS. Callahan’s recent film, “The Nose Knows: Foreignness and Fortune in China” (23min, 2024), has won Best Documentary Film at six film festivals in Asia and Europe, and will be screened at the British Academy’s Ideas Festival in June 2026.

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