China’s Domestic Politics Beyond Water’s Edge: BRI and China’s Fragmented Foreign Policy
Monday, October 13, 2025 | 2:00PM-4:50PM | ASC 207 | RSVP

EASC Guest Speaker Series: Talk by Prof. Andrew Mertha (Johns Hopkins University) with Faculty Moderator Prof. Stanley Rosen (POSC 469: Soft Power in Political Science and International Relations) 
 

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is often seen as a unified strategy to expand the country’s global influence. In this talk, Prof. Mertha challenges that view by showing how China’s fragmented and decentralized domestic politics shape, and at times complicate, its foreign policy and soft power ambitions. Using case studies from Nicaragua, Myanmar, Ghana, and Cambodia, he highlights how local political dynamics within China spill across borders, reshaping the impact of the BRI and raising new questions about the nature of China’s rise.

This event is co-sponsored by the USC U.S.-China Institute, Center on Public Diplomacy, and Center for International Studies.