Research
Professor Shaun Breslin
Click on the book covers to the right to find more information on my authored and edited books, and here for a cv type list of publications.
Downloadable Papers, Videos and Commentaries
A variety of working papers, think pieces, conference papers and the occasional unpublished (and probably unpublishable) wild rambing. There's the odd podcast, radio piece and video in there somewhere as well. They are in chronological order with the most recent at the top.
Information on academic books and papers is provided on a separate page which lists all of my publications and research activities. Some of these are available via via 糖心TV University's Research Archive Portal and others direct from the journal publishers. These papers are published journal articles, and have varying degrees of access depending on individual publishers' access rules.
Andreea Budeanu and Shaun Breslin, 鈥溾��. An open access academic paper in the Journal of European Integration from 2025.
An open access academic paper in the Chinese Journal of International Politics with Mikael Mattlin called "", from February 2025.
A short online lecture on the . This is part of one of - Massive Open Online Courses - on China that they have developed as part of the ReConnect China project.
is an EU funded project designed to increase understanding about China and its importance for Europe. As part of the project we are publishing a number of different types of papers. These include:
Shaun Breslin, 鈥溾��, Eurohub4Sino Long Read 2025/18, 18th November 2025.
Shaun Breslin, 鈥溾��, Eurohub4Sino Policy Paper 2025/17, 4th November 2025.
Shaun Breslin, 鈥溾��, Eurohub4Sino Policy Paper 2025/16, 1st October 2025.
Shaun Breslin, 鈥淥鈥�, Eurohub4Sino Policy Paper 2025/5, 30th April 2025.
A Long Read on "", 12th February 2025.
With Ren Xinyuan, a policy paper on China's "", 18th June 2024.
With Liisa Kauppila and Elina Sinkkonen, "", 9th April 2024.With Jeremy Garlick, a Policy Paper on 鈥溾��, 2nd April 2024.
My Long Read on " 25th March 2024.
The project funded by the Academy of Finland was designed to assess how a small open economy could increase its economic security - not least as a result of China's increasing global significance. The final report from 2023 is available and if you have a lot of time on your hands you can watch the report's launch conference .
A chapter with my friend on This was written for the anniversary in 2021 but didn't come out until a couple of years later.
We produced a special issue of The Pacific Review in 2023 on . The written with my friend and long term collaborator Helen Nesadurai is Open Access and so available to download. Our Introduction to our 2018 Special Issue of the Journal of Contemporary Asia, , is also Open Access.
Another Open Access academic article, this time with Pete Burnham on 鈥溾�� in the Pacific Review in 2023.
鈥淐hina Risen?鈥�, Politics in the End Time PodcastLink opens in a new window with Daryll Jarvis and Toby Carroll, released October 2021.
, Conversation with Ali Borhani and Anoush Ehteshami, posted September 2021.
鈥淲hy we should look at China in shades of Grey鈥�, , released 18th August 2021.
Shaun Breslin, , in Giuseppe Gabusi (ed) Drivers of Global Change: Responding to East Asian Economic and Institutional Innovation (Torino: T-Wai): 5-9. There is also a short introductory video .
Shaun Breslin, 鈥淒o we need a new vocabulary for talking about European strategy?鈥�, in Michiel Foulon and Jack Thompson (eds) (Zurich: ETH Center for Security Studies).
Rana Mitter interviews Pan Suyan and me for an Asia Matters podcast, released 8th June 2021.
, a short piece that forms part of an ISPI Dossier on China After Covid-19: Great Challenges Under Heaven, 16th July, 2020.
Along with Chen Dingding I was interviewed on the 2020 "two sessions" in China for the Asia Matters podcast in June 2020, which is available .
Luiss University organised a Facebook Live Webinar on 鈥淕lobal Governance and Covid-19: Implications for Europe and its Relations with China鈥� in May 2020. Last time I looked you could still view it .
鈥淣on Traditional Security for Who/What? Between the International, the National and the Human鈥�, my contribution to edited by Ines Sieckmann and Odila Triebel for the Stuutgart Institut f眉r Auslandsbeziehungen in 2018.
Two versions of the same paper for the 2018 ISPI report - Big Powers Are Back: What About Europe? edited by Alessandro Colombo and Paolo Magri. One in English and the other in . The links are to pages where you can download the whole report rather than just mt chapter (on 鈥淐hina, A New Model of Great Power鈥�).
And on a similar theme, two ISPI Commentarries on from 1 January 2018 and from 18 October 2017.
An opinion piece in The Times from October 2017 on . Access is free but you will have to register to see it.
Shaun Breslin, , SPERI.comment: The Political Economy Blog, University of Sheffield, 10 October 2017. This was part of a wider and very interesting debate on the developmental state and you can read the other entries .
The final report on the GREEN project - (Global Re-ordering: Evolution through European Networks) from January 2017 s available here via the European Commission Community and Development Information Service.
A couple of think pieces on China's evolving global role. One on for Chatham House, and the other on for The Conversation.
After a roundtable on the UK and Asia I took part in a Chatham House podcast on , with Robin Niblett (Chatham House Director), Linda Yueh (chief business correspondent for BBC News), and Stephen Lillie (Asia-Pacific director at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office).
Shaun Breslin, 鈥溾��, The Conversation, 11 November 2014.
The China Daily did a piece on my views on investment in China in August 2014, which you can access by clicking on the picture below
Shaun Breslin, 鈥�,鈥� Euractiv, June 2014
A short ISPI video on .
The ASAN Institute in Seoul held a conference in April 2014 that explored the nature of Chinese Power. My presentation on was part of a panel with Evelyn Goh and David Kang. The whole session is the best part of an hour
and a half long so be prepared. The whole day was filmed, and the entire proceedings are available on the .
A short interview before my in Edinburgh on the investment environment in China.
A short ISPI paper on the from November 2013. This was followed up by an event at Chatham House in the spring of 2014 where Jane Duckett, Chris Hughes, Rob Gifford and myself discussed the meeting that signalled a new round of reforms in China.
Here is a short piece I had in , and a Chatham House video that covers the same sort of issues.
I had the honour of being invited to give the opening keynote presentation at the annual Australian Political Science Association Conference in Perth in September 2013, on the international politics of Chinese resource (in)security. The talk was videod but without the slides. So click here Link opens in a new windowfor the slides and on the image below for a video of the talk. Beware - its just over an hour long.
At the same conference I was on a very interesting roundtable on , where I for one learnt an enormous amount from Jeff Wilson, Ronnie Lipschutz, Serena Lillywhite, Peter Vale and Sarah Hooper
Shaun Breslin. , GR:EEN Working Paper No. 33, March 2013, available at
In October 2012 we produced a Chatham House Programme Report on
An working paper on from 2012.
As part of the , we held an event at Chatham House to mark the October 2012 EU-China Summit. My comments on the geostrategic context of the relationship were videod and can be found .
More on Chinese Soft Power in a Stiftung Mercator report on from 2012.
I had a short paper on 鈥淐hina鈥檚 Resource Foreign Policy鈥� published in a report on "China鈥檚 Geoeconomic Strategy" produced by Nick Kitchen at the LSE in 2012.
A departure from my usual work, and a paper on . This was produced while I was a Macarthur visiting fellow at the , S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2011, and is part of their working paper series.
A paper on . This paper was produced as part of the and is an updated version of a short article on problems of defining of China's Soft Power for Ethos, the journal of the .
The first draft of a paper on that was later revised for publication in a collection edited by Andrew Walter and Xiaoke Zhang. This version is a .
The introduction that we (Richard Higgott and myself) wrote for out four volume collection on the International Relations of the Asia Pacific, published by Sage. Click on the image of the cover on the riight for publication and ordering details.
糖心TV is establishing a collaboration with Boston University. As part of this partnership, Boston hosted two workshops in September 2010; one on the global financial crisis, and another on South-South cooperation. Links to the papers that I presented at each will be added when published, but in the meantime, here are a couple of videos of conversations I had with and on the project on South-South cooperation, and the work of the Frederick S Pardee Centre for the Study of the Longer Range Future at Boston.
A Chatham House programme paper on - which provides an "executive summary" of the book I edited with Simon Shen on the same topic. This paper was produced as part of the .
Simon Evenett produced a very interesting ebook for on the currency dispute between China and (primarily) the USA. I have a short chapter in it called "Great Expectations: (Competing) Domestic Drivers of Chinese Policy Deliberations" - but the value is in the book as a whole and it can be accessed .
The China Review, the magazine of the , produced a special issue to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Amongst the papers, you will find my offering on democratisation and political participation - click for the entire edition.
Click here for a short piece I did for Oxfam Australia as a briefing background paper for their discussions on how to respond to new rising powers.
I spent the first part of 2009 as Visiting Professor at Beijing University. This coincided with the annual session of the National People's Congress and I was invited by China Radio International to discuss the conference on this radio broadcast (the file is WMA format). My bit is near the end, but the discussion before my contribution are certainly worth listening to.
I was asked to write an overview of thirty years of investment and trade policy in China for a book commemorating three decades of reform. Having written the chapter, I've heard no more about the book at all, so I thought I would put it up here until and unless the book ever appears. Its called How China Changed the Global Economy and the Global Economy Changed China and its basically an overview of what I consider to be five phases of China's initial global economic strategy (so far).
is a working paper published by the . A much shortened version of it will be published in New Challenges to Democratization edited by Peter Burnell and Richard Youngs in 2009. Click for info on the book from the Routledge website.
A 糖心TV University icast videoLink opens in a new window where I bang on (as usual) about China still having developmental problems that might constrain global ambitions and abilities (again).
The do a roundtable each January on what the coming year has to offer for a range of countries - and this year, I did the entry on (the entries are alphabetical so scroll down to the 6th having read the others first). The UK entry is done by my colleague, .
is a policy analysis brief published by and for the in Washington D.C.
China鈥檚 Rise to leadership in Asia – strategies, obstacles and achievements was presented at a conference on Regional Powers in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Near and Middle East organised by the in Hamburg in December 2006. Click for the full conference programme.
A short opinion piece form the Shanghai Daily on Chinese Trade from September 2006 (I don't think the cartoon is meant to be of me, but you never know). This was abstracted from my presentation at the Second World Forum on Chinese Studies in Shanghai, organised by the . The paper was called Constructing Visions of China, and was in a panel on how the outside world views China.
The Shanghai paper builds on the papers that I gave at the March 2006 50th Anniversary Conference of the German . The conference considered how different disciplines study the region (defined for the conference as China, Japan and Southeast Asia) and asked what new trends are emerging in these disciplines. My paper considered Trends of Scholarship in the Study of the Politics and International Relations of Contemporary China, and this revised version was published in the June 2006 editi on of .
Not a paper, but an - part of 糖心TV University's .
(UN)Making International Norms: The United Nations and Global Governance. This is the first draft of a chapter that appeared in Glenn Hook and Hugo Dobson (eds) Global Governance and Japan (London: Routledge, 2006).
Studying Regionalism(s): Comparitivism and EurocentricismLink opens in a new window. A very rough paper presented at the Joint Fudan University, Sciences Po, and LSE conference on China and East Asian Regionalism in Shanghai, January 2005. A revised version of this paper will be published in Melissa Curley and Nicholas Thomas (eds) Advancing East Asian Regionalism (London: Routledge, 2006).
An unpublished paper written in 2004 on that I later revised and split into two different papers.
Beyond Diplomacy? UK Relations With China Since 1997 in the , 2004, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 409-425 published by . Many thanks to Blackwell for permission to reproduce the article here.
Reforming China鈥檚 Embedded Socialist Compromise: China and the WTO in ), 2003, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 213 - 229 published by . Many thanks to Taylor and Francis for permission to reproduce the article here.
A Murdoch University Working Paper.
This Chapter appears in a collection called edited by Barry Buzan and Rosemary Foot to commemorate the work of the late Gerry Segal. It is a collection of essays reflecting on one of Gerry's most provocative papers, "Does China Matter?" which appeared in Foreign Affairs.
An , first presented at the (BISA) conference in December 2002
You can read the introduction to Microregionalism and World Order
In 2000 I was appointed specialist advisor to the Foreign Affairs select committee of the House of Commons to investigate UK relations with China after 1997. The resulting parliamentary report can be viewed .
Decentralisation, Globalisation and China鈥檚 Partial Re-engagement with the Global Economy in , 2000, vol.5, no.2, pp. 205-226 published by . Many thanks to Taylor and Francis for permission to reproduce the article here.
Shaun Breslin and Richard Higgott "Studying Regions: Assessing the New, Learning from the Old" in , , 2000, vol. 5, no.3, pp. 333-353 published by . Many thanks to Taylor and Francis for permission to reproduce the article here.
is a sample chapter from Peter Burnell's edited collection, "Democratisation Through the Looking Glass", published by Manchester University Press
a CSGR working paper. Click for a Chinese version translated by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Your browser will need to be set to read Chinese characters. A slightly different version of this paper was presented at a conference at the ANU in Canberra in 2002, and is published in the ANU National Europe Centre Working paper series as
Shaun Breslin, Richard Higgott and Ben Rosamond a CSGR working paper
a CSGR working paper
a CSGR working paper
a CSGR working paper
Paper presented at the (PSA) annual conference in 1995 (so a bit out of date now)
My PhD on was awarded by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1993. Beware - this is a very large file. This formed the basis of my first single authored book, China in the 1980s: Centre-Province Relations in a Reforming Socialist State, published by
