King's College London

Lau China Institute Affiliate, Jérôme Doyon, Sciences Po and Konstantinos Tsimonis, Senior Lecturer at the Lau China Institute have received funding to examine an under-researched aspect of China's rise: the globalisation of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) organisations and networks in Europe. 

About the project

China’s rise begs the question of the forms taken by its global imprint. Beyond its economic, military, or diplomatic weight, the question of its political influence abroad increasingly attracts attention. To explore the specificity of China’s political presence abroad and beyond the tendency to group under the same category of ‘influence activities’ very different phenomena, ranging from traditional public diplomacy practices to tactics aiming at destabilizing democratic processes, this project focuses on a unique aspect, directly linked to the nature of the Chinese regime: the globalisation of the Chinese Communist Party’s  organisations and networks.

The PIs will bring together a team of European researchers to explore the development of CCP party-building and united front activities in Europe, relying on fieldwork (in the United Kingdom, France and Greece) to shed light on the actual form that the CCP’s strategies take on the ground.

Through the Independent Social Research Foundation's Flexible Grant for Small Groups, Drs Doyon and Tsimonis seek to fund the first phase of this project, including three workshops and exploratory fieldwork to develop a research team and map the research’s empirical landscape.

 The project titled, 'The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) goes Global: Tracing CCP Organisations and Networks in Europe', is funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation as part of their Small Group Project 2024-25. 

Find out more about research at the Lau China Institute.