Abstract This study examines how China employs high-level people-to-people dialogues (PPDs) with European counterparts as institutionalised mechanisms of societal diplomacy. It addresses the question of how China uses these dialogues to advance its foreign policy objectives within the liberal international order (LIO). Whilst often regarded as peripheral cultural exchanges, PPDs function as structured platforms through which China embeds cooperation, manages international identity, and projects normative narratives. The analysis covers 19 PPD rounds with the European Union, United Kingdom, France, and Germany between 2012 and 2025. Using grounded theory coding and abductive reasoning, it identifies outcomes across four dimensions: tangible (projects and exchanges), formalised (institutional procedures and continuity), symbolic (rituals and representational practises), and normative (discursive reframing of values). Findings show that the PPDs advance China’s dual posture as a strategist-reformist actor. As a strategist, China stabilises cooperation and consolidates legitimacy through institutional embedding. As a reformist, it incrementally recalibrates liberal vocabularies, layering emphases on civilisation, pluralism, and development within shared principles of peace, inclusivity, and sustainability. The study contributes to scholarship on rising powers and global order by conceptualising institutionalised societal diplomacy as a model through which China pursues continuity with recalibration, reforming elements of the LIO from within through structured, low-politics diplomacy.

Abstract Conventional international political economy treats U.S. hegemony as a provider of global public goods, with preferential trade and security commitments fostering stability through open access. This view, we argue, violates the definition of a public good and obscures the club-like nature of the American-led order. This paper develops a Schmittian club-goods framework in which tariffs, dues, and exclusion are instruments of sovereign pricing, and stability emerges endogenously from the elimination of free-riding. In this model, members pay for access through market concessions, defense contributions, and strategic alignment, while non-members face higher tariffs or exclusion. We demonstrate that the Trump administration’s trade policy—characterized by tariffs on allies, higher duties on rivals, and the frequent invocation of sovereign exceptions—is internally coherent within this logic. We formalize the hegemon’s objective as a dynamic pricing problem to balance rent extraction, expense control, and rule-setting advantage. Calibrations for U.S. relations with the European Union, India, and China illustrate how tariff bands, dues thresholds, and repricing events sustain a hierarchical order. This analysis challenges the public-goods myth and reframes stability as a byproduct of enforced hierarchy rather than systemic openness.

Abstract The People’s Republic of China and its aspirations to shape the global maritime order have drawn significant attention. This study conducts a discourse analysis of 230 articles by Chinese academics, exploring Chinese scholarly perspectives on ocean governance. The findings reveal that Chinese scholars have adopted a multidisciplinary and relatively comprehensive approach to analysing existing ocean governance mechanisms, extending beyond a narrow focus on seapower. They have predominantly framed existing maritime order as inadequate and unfavourable to China’s maritime interests. This narrative serves to bolster China’s role in pursuing a leadership position in ocean governance, proposing initiatives that align with the Party’s broader ideological struggle against Western liberalism. The rhetoric surrounding the “maritime community with a shared future” is understood as part of this effort to advance such objectives. This research contributes to understanding China’s stance on global governance and implications for maritime security.

Abstract The Global Justice Index is a multiyear research project of Fudan Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences that assesses the contributions made by each country to achieving greater global justice. We have published results for 2010 to 2021 data in Global Justice Index Report (Gu et al., 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024) and are now presenting our sixth-year of results, covering from 2022 in Global Justice Index Report 2024, which is an updated version of previous years’ reports. But, we have been improving our index year by year with changes that have taken place globally. We have also refined our imputation methodology to better address the challenge of missing data. The report consists of four sections: introduction, findings, main results, and conclusion. We discuss the development of the conceptual framework and evaluative principles to justify our selection of the dimensions and indicators for measurement. We report the data, indicators, and our results for each country for each of the 10 issues under study, and rank each country’s contributions to global justice across the 10 issue areas for 2022. We also incorporate regional comparisons across the globe, in-depth policy analyses, and visualization tools for the enhancement of our understanding of each country’s role in advancing global justice.

Abstract This paper presents a forensic analysis of a dataset used by Boix to argue that imperial legal emancipation contributed to the spread of Jewish national identity by establishing Zionist and Hebrew institutions. We demonstrate that, although the dataset is extensive, it is logically inconsistent, fragmented over time, and geographically incoherent. Despite claims of establishing cause-and-effect, the data’s structure prevents such conclusions. Using only the most organized variables in a simulation, we demonstrate that even sophisticated machine learning models cannot accurately find the pattern without creating false signals. The main point of this paper is simple: messy historical data that is layered, repetitive, and poorly organized cannot produce clear empirical results. This work adds to the growing field of quantitative history by providing both a critique and a practical guide for maintaining data quality in historical social science.