Watching the ‘China Watchers’: Decoding European Think Tanks Discourses on China

In the multi-level governance of European foreign policy, knowledge is not merely a resource but a site of intense political contestation. This paper investigates the ‘China Watchers’ landscape – an epistemic community within the European think tank scene – to examine how these actors produce, disseminate, and institutionalize knowledge about China and Sino-European relations. While think tanks frequently achieve far greater public reach with their analyses and policy recommendations than traditional academia, scholarship remains remarkably state-centric and has neglected the systematic study of these organizations. Existing research on European think tank perceptions of China is also fragmented, relying on small, purposive samples that fail to capture long-term thematic trajectories or the networked nature of this intellectual ecosystem. Furthermore, the causal mechanisms through which think tank research translates into official EU policy remain a ‘black box,’ even as these institutions are well-positioned to influence decision-makers’ thinking. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis project is to disaggregate the discourses within these China-focused networks, uncovering how thematic focuses have shifted over time and identifying the factors that drive these variations. Adopting a Constructivist framework integrated with Neo-Gramscian discourse approaches, I conceptualize think tanks as pivotal ‘knowledge brokers’ operating at the intersection of academia and policymaking. Regarding the methodology, this study employs an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. In the first stage, I utilize Computational Text Analysis to process a comprehensive corpus of digitally available English-language publications from European think tanks up to 2026. Using supervised machine learning, I construct ‘ideology scores’ for each publication to map discourse trends. These scores serve as dependent variables in a linear regression to identify micro-level (author) and meso-level (institutional) drivers of thematic output. Additionally, I utilize network analysis to visualize ideological clustering and transnational collaborations. The second stage involves qualitative content analysis and expert interviews with EU officials and think tank researchers to trace the transmission of these ideas into the policymaking processes. These results make important contributions to the governance of knowledge. Theoretically, it challenges Eurocentric assumptions by applying a critical lens to Western knowledge production, rather than treating it as a privileged source of information. Practically, it highlights the importance of ‘opinion leaders’ for understanding the mediated lenses through which China is viewed. Overall, this research facilitates a more transparent dialogue in Sino-European relations and provides essential checks on the nexus of knowledge and power that will influence the future trajectory of European-Chinese relations.