Public lecture – China’s Strategic Concerns: from Regional to Global
On 13 October 2025, Dr. Chen Gang will deliver a public lecture on the shift in China’s strategic concerns, covering geoeconomics, geopolitics, green energy, and the Arctic.
October 13, 2025 14:15-15:45 (EEST, UTC+03:00)
University of Tartu, Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, Lossi 36-214, Tartu, Estonia
Zoom link (meeting ID: 912 9749 2585, passcode: 639528)
China has been adjusting its foreign policy to face quickly-expanding overseas presence and higher expectation from the international community for more responsibilities. Together with the expansion of its economic scale, China’s political status in the international arena has got uplifted with increasingly noteworthy role in critical global security issues ranging from North Korea, Middle East and Ukraine to global warming, international financial stability and energy shortage. Its global interest is growing rapidly due to the heavy dependence upon overseas market, energy and raw materials. Although China now still orients itself as a regional power rather than a global power, more and more of its strategic concerns go beyond the periphery of East Asia.
Dr. Chen Gang is Assistant Director and Senior Research Fellow of the East Asian Institute (EAI), National University of Singapore. Since he joined the EAI in 2007, he has been tracing China’s politics, foreign policy, environmental and energy policies and publishing extensively on these issues. He is the single author of The Politics of Disaster Management in China: Institutions, Interest Groups, and Social Participation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), China’s Climate Policy (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), Politics of China’s Environmental Protection: Problems and Progress (Singapore: World Scientific, 2009) and The Kyoto Protocol and International Cooperation against Climate Change (in Chinese) (Beijing: Xinhua Press, 2008). His research papers have appeared in internationally refereed journals, and he regularly provides consultancy for the Singapore government on environmental and energy issues in East Asia. His research interests include China’s political economy, environmental governance, international relations, and transnational cooperation on climate change. Dr. Gang’s full biography is available here.
Thomas Linsenmaier, Analyst in Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies will moderate the lecture.
