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Who Writes about Brazil-China?
Epistemic Sovereignty and South-
South Knowledge Asymmetries in
Global International Relations
Quem escreve sobre Brasil-China?
Soberania Epistêmica e Assimetrias
de Conhecimento Sul-Sul nas Relações
Internacionais Globais
¿Quién escribe sobre Brasil-China?
Soberanía Epistémica y Asimetrías de
Conocimiento Sur-Sur en las Relaciones
Internacionales Globales
DOI: 10.21530/ci.v21n1.2026.1661
Mengni XIN
1
Abstract
Debates in Global IR increasingly treat International Relations
scholarship as an object of inquiry, yet little is known about how
two Global South academic communities produce knowledge
about a shared bilateral relationship and what such production
means for epistemic sovereignty. Drawing on peer-reviewed articles
published from 2000 to 2025 in CNKI, CSSCI, SciELO, and six
Brazilian International Relations journals, the study combines
descriptive bibliometric mapping with qualitative discourse analysis
to compare Brazilian and Chinese scholarship on Brazil-China
relations. The article argues that the two literatures diverge in
scale, agendas, citation practices, and narrative framing. Such
1 PhD in Portuguese-speaking Countries Studies from the City University of
Macau. Lecturer in the Portuguese Department at the College of Western
Languages and Cultures, Sichuan International Studies University (SISU).
(xmnnina@sisu.edu.cn). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1968-2951.
Artigo submetido em 19/12/2025 e aprovado em 13/06/2026.
ASSOCIAÇÃO BRASILEIRA DE
RELAÇÕES INTERNACIONAIS
Copyright:
• This is an open-access
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License, which permits
unrestricted use,
distribution, and
reproduction in any
medium, provided that
the original author and
source are credited.
• Este é um artigo
publicado em acesso aberto
e distribuído sob os termos
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Creative Commons,
que permite uso irrestrito,
distribuição e reprodução
em qualquer meio, desde
que o autor e a fonte
originais sejam creditados.
ISSN 2526-9038
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asymmetries complicate the ideal of horizontal South-South cooperation and contribute
to Global IR debates on reciprocal knowledge production.
Keywords: Brazil-China Relations, Epistemic Sovereignty, Global IR, South-South Relations,
Knowledge Production.
Resumo
Os debates em Global IR tratam cada vez mais a produção acadêmica em Relações
Internacionais como objeto de investigação, mas ainda se sabe pouco sobre como duas
comunidades acadêmicas do Sul Global produzem conhecimento sobre uma relação bilateral
compartilhada e o que essa produção significa para a soberania epistêmica. Com base
em artigos revisados por pares publicados entre 2000 e 2025 no CNKI, CSSCI, SciELO e
em seis periódicos brasileiros de Relações Internacionais, o estudo combina mapeamento
bibliométrico descritivo e análise qualitativa do discurso para comparar a produção brasileira
e chinesa sobre as relações Brasil-China. O artigo argumenta que as duas literaturas divergem
em escala, agendas, práticas de citação e enquadramento narrativo. Essas assimetrias
complexificam o ideal de cooperação horizontal Sul-Sul e contribuem para os debates
sobre Global IR sobre produção recíproca de conhecimento.
Palavras-chave: Relações Brasil-China, Soberania Epistêmica, Global IR, Relações Sul-Sul,
Produção de Conhecimento.
Resumen
Los debates en Global IR tratan cada vez más la producción académica en Relaciones
Internacionales como objeto de investigación, pero aún se sabe poco sobre cómo dos
comunidades académicas del Sur Global producen conocimiento sobre una relación bilateral
compartida y qué significa esa producción para la soberanía epistémica. A partir de artículos
revisados por pares publicados entre 2000 y 2025 en CNKI, CSSCI, SciELO y en seis
revistas brasileñas de Relaciones Internacionales, el estudio combina mapeo bibliométrico
descriptivo y análisis cualitativo del discurso para comparar la producción brasileña y china
sobre las relaciones Brasil-China. El artículo sostiene que las dos literaturas divergen en
escala, agendas, prácticas de citación y encuadre narrativo. Estas asimetrías complejizan
el ideal de cooperación horizontal Sur-Sur y contribuyen a los debates de Global IR sobre
producción recíproca de conocimiento.
Palabras clave: Relaciones Brasil-China, Soberanía Epistémica, Global IR, Relaciones Sur-Sur,
Producción de Conocimiento.
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1. Introduction
The 21st century has witnessed an unprecedented reconfiguration of global
power dynamics, with South-South relations emerging as a critical nexus of
geopolitical and economic transformation. Among these relationships, the Brazil-
China partnership offers a revealing site for examining how knowledge about
international relations is produced, circulated, and legitimized across the Global
South. Despite three decades of deepening diplomatic and economic ties, a
fundamental question remains underexplored: who produces knowledge about
Brazil-China relations, through what theoretical lenses, and with what implications
for epistemic sovereignty in Global South partnerships? Addressing the question
requires treating scholarly production as an empirical object of International
Relations inquiry, rather than as a neutral reflection of diplomatic and economic
relations, with particular attention to how Brazilian critical traditions inform
debates on the politics of knowledge.
The Brazil-China relationship has evolved from a cautious diplomatic
engagement in the 1970s to a comprehensive strategic partnership encompassing
trade, investment, diplomacy, and multilateral cooperation. Bilateral trade expanded
from about US$2.43 billion in 2000 to roughly US$158 billion in 2024 (World
Bank 2025), making China Brazil’s largest trading partner and Brazil one of
China’s principal suppliers of soybeans, iron ore, and oil. Economic integration
has been accompanied by diplomatic coordination in forums such as BRICS,
G20, and UN climate negotiations (Doctor 2023). Yet material deepening has
not been matched by equivalent epistemic integration. Scholarly communities in
both countries continue to produce largely parallel literatures that rarely engage
substantively with each other’s theoretical frameworks or empirical findings.
Existing scholarship has predominantly examined the material dimensions
of Brazil-China relations, including trade flows, investment patterns, diplomatic
alignments, and environmental cooperation. Less attention has been paid to how
academic communities themselves construct, frame, and contest the meaning of
the relationship. The gap is particularly significant because Brazilian IR has long
emphasized theoretical autonomy and locally grounded conceptual innovation,
while China’s rapid expansion of area studies and Global South scholarship has
reshaped the institutional conditions under which knowledge about Brazil and
Latin America is produced.
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The article makes three contributions to Global IR scholarship. First, it
reconceptualizes bilateral relations research as a site of knowledge politics in
which academic communities actively construct the realities they study. Second, it
shows that epistemic asymmetries operate not only along North-South divides but
also within Global South partnerships, complicating idealized understandings of
South-South cooperation and resonating with Brazilian concerns about theoretical
dependency. Third, it provides a methodologically transparent comparison of
Brazilian and Chinese academic production, linking bibliometric patterns with
discourse analysis to show how scale, agendas, citation practices, and narrative
frames shape knowledge about Brazil-China relations.
By foregrounding the epistemic conditions of Brazil-China scholarship,
the analysis advances debates on academic cooperation and the institutional
design of South-South research networks. Durable cooperation depends not only
on diplomatic and economic ties, but also on reciprocal forms of knowledge
production capable of connecting Brazilian and Chinese scholarly communities.
2. Literature and Theoretical Framework
2.1 Brazilian IR Theory and the Quest for Epistemic Sovereignty
Since the 1970s, Brazilian International Relations has critically engaged with
dependency theory, advocating for autonomous perspectives that reflect Latin
American geopolitical and historical realities. Oliveira’s (1977) seminal critique
positions Brazil as a key center for critical IR thought, emphasizing the need
for peripheral countries to develop their own analytical frameworks rather than
relying on Northern paradigms that obscure structural inequalities.
This tradition of critical engagement persisted through Brazil’s democratization
in the 1980s and 1990s. Building on national-developmentalist debates, Jaguaribe
(1986) linked foreign-policy autonomy to domestic developmental capacities and
structural power asymmetries in the international system. In parallel, autonomy
and autonomous reflection became organizing terms in Brazilian IR, sustaining
a critique of theoretical deference to the Global North and legitimizing locally
grounded innovation (Muñoz 2023).
The Brazilian Association of International Relations (ABRI) has institutionalized
this commitment to epistemic sovereignty, creating spaces for theoretical debate
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that center Southern experiences and challenge Northern hegemony in knowledge
production. As Milani (2021) argues, Brazilian IR has moved beyond criticism
of Northern hegemony and has begun constructing alternatives rooted in Latin
American historical experiences. This tradition is key to examining Brazil-China
knowledge production as a contested site of epistemic sovereignty.
Recent developments in Brazilian IR scholarship have further refined this
tradition. Some scholars contend that epistemic sovereignty depends not only
on theoretical innovation but also on institutional infrastructure for autonomous
knowledge production. Key elements include locally oriented funding, Southern-
facing publication venues, and curricula centered on Latin American experiences
(Novelli 2022; Oliveira and Mendes Pinto 2024). Belli (2024) extends the analysis
by examining how digital technologies and open-access publishing can either
enhance or undermine epistemic sovereignty, depending on their governance
structures and access patterns.
2.2 Global IR and the Limits of Horizontal Cooperation
Global IR scholarship has challenged the discipline’s Western-centric
foundations by calling for greater recognition of non-Western ideas, histories,
and forms of agency. Acharya and Buzan (2007) argue that IR must move
beyond treating the non-West mainly as empirical material and incorporate
non-Western concepts into core theoretical debates. Yet much of the literature
remains programmatic, with fewer empirical studies showing how knowledge
hierarchies operate within Global South academic communities themselves.
Barnett and Zarakol (2023) further caution that “add-and-stir” approaches may
expand representation without transforming the discipline’s deeper ontological
assumptions, an argument particularly relevant to whether South-South academic
exchanges generate conceptual reciprocity or reproduce asymmetrical forms of
recognition.
Recent studies of disciplinary formation across the BRICS and other non-
Western contexts provide a closer empirical basis for the present analysis. Kristensen
(2021) shows that IR scholarship in Brazil, Russia, India, and China develops
through a tension between global disciplinary standards and local intellectual
traditions, rather than being either simply derivative of Western paradigms or
fully autonomous. Loke and Owen (2024) similarly highlight the importance
of contextual approaches to decolonizing IR knowledge production. However,
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existing work has not systematically examined how two Global South academic
communities construct knowledge about each other within a specific bilateral
relationship.
Chinese IR debates also provide important resources for understanding
knowledge production beyond Western theoretical templates. Qin (2018) argues
that IR theorizing is shaped by cultural communities and background knowledge.
Wang (2021) further shows that Chinese IR scholarship has moved from defensive
engagement with Western theories toward a more confident, though still contested,
articulation of alternative perspectives. Similarly, Araujo and Ferreira (2025)
examine how Brazilian IR scholarship navigates the tension between global
theoretical standards and local relevance, finding that Brazilian scholars increasingly
assert their theoretical autonomy while maintaining engagement with global
debates.
2.3 South-South Knowledge Production Beyond Rhetoric
South-South cooperation has emerged as a powerful diplomatic framework,
promising more equitable partnerships based on shared postcolonial experiences
and development challenges. The Bandung Conference of 1955 established
the principles of South-South cooperation, emphasizing mutual respect, non-
interference, and equality. These principles were further institutionalized through
the Non-Aligned Movement and later through BRICS and other Global South
forums.
However, scholarly analysis increasingly questions whether these partnerships
genuinely transcend traditional power asymmetries. As Milani, Mariano, and
Soares (2024) note in examining Brazil-China relations, the new geography of
development creates complex dependencies that may replicate rather than resolve
historical inequalities. The analysis of Brazilian exports to China reveals persistent
patterns of commodity dependence that undermine Brazil’s industrial development
and technological autonomy. This critique extends to knowledge production,
where linguistic barriers, publication hierarchies, and research infrastructure
disparities continue to shape whose knowledge counts as legitimate (Palacios-
Cívico, Maestro-Yarza, and Martí-González 2023).
Silva, Berta, and Nunes (2024) trace the evolution of Brazil’s approach
to China from President Lula’s proactive “policy ambassadorship” to more
neutral “international promotion”, identifying academic exchanges as diplomatic
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instruments. Barkawi, Murray, and Zarakol’s (2023) critique of power, knowledge,
and empire in Global IR similarly cautions that expanded representation does
not necessarily transform hierarchies of recognition. Read together, these works
suggest that South-South academic exchange is politically embedded rather than
inherently reciprocal.
Chinese academic engagement with Brazil has historically been fragmented
across different disciplines and institutions, with area studies only recently gaining
institutional support through initiatives like the Belt and Road Academic Network
(Li 2023). The rapid institutionalization raises important questions about whether
Chinese scholarship can engage meaningfully with Brazilian critical traditions
or will reproduce patterns of theoretical dependency. The Brazilian experience
offers valuable lessons about maintaining epistemic sovereignty while engaging
with major powers, a concern that resonates across the Global South (Gonzalez
Jauregui et al. 2022).
Recent studies identify persistent challenges in building genuine epistemic
communities between Brazil and China, including language barriers, divergent
research priorities, and institutional asymmetries (Xu and Nascimento 2024;
Frogeri, Leandro, and Li 2025). Their analysis suggests that building equitable
knowledge partnerships requires deliberate institutional design rather than emerging
naturally from diplomatic cooperation. Similarly, Guo (2019) examines how
institutional contexts shape Chinese scholarship on Brazil, finding that Chinese
academic engagement remains heavily influenced by state priorities and lacks
the critical autonomy characteristic of Brazilian IR scholarship.
2.4 Theoretical Framework Epistemic Sovereignty in South-South
Partnerships
Brazil-China knowledge production is viewed through epistemic sovereignty,
which encompasses the right of communities to define their own intellectual
traditions, methods, and theoretical frameworks. This concept draws on Quijano’s
(2000) coloniality of knowledge, which argues that colonial power structures
persist in contemporary knowledge systems through epistemic hierarchies that
privilege European ways of knowing. Bhambra’s (2014) connected sociologies
further elaborates this framework by showing how knowledge production is
embedded in global power structures that shape what questions get asked, which
methods are valued, and whose voices are amplified.
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Santos (2014) develops the analysis through his concept of epistemicide,
the systematic destruction of non-Western knowledge systems through colonial
and neocolonial processes. He argues that building truly global knowledge
requires recognizing the validity of diverse epistemic traditions and creating
spaces for dialogue between them. This framework helps explain why South-
South academic partnerships often reproduce rather than transcend traditional
hierarchies. Language asymmetries, publication infrastructures, and research
funding disparities create structural conditions that favor certain knowledge
forms over others.
Mignolo (2011) extends this analysis through his concept of the “geopolitics
of knowledge”, which examines how location shapes knowledge production and
circulation. He argues that knowledge is always situated within specific geopolitical
contexts that influence its content, form, and reception. This perspective helps
explain why Brazilian and Chinese scholars produce such different accounts of
their bilateral relationship despite shared material realities.
These studies and theoretical frameworks provide a foundation for analyzing
Brazil-China knowledge production as a site of epistemic contestation rather
than neutral academic exchange. They help explain how power asymmetries
operate within South-South partnerships and why maintaining epistemic
sovereignty requires deliberate institutional and theoretical work. The analysis
specifically focuses on four dimensions of epistemic asymmetry: scale and growth
trajectories of scholarly output; agenda divergence in research priorities; patterns
of knowledge circulation and citation practices; and transnational co-production
networks. Together, these dimensions reveal how the politics of knowledge
shapes understandings of Brazil-China relations, with profound implications for
Brazilian efforts to maintain theoretical autonomy while engaging with China.
3. Data and Methods
3.1 Corpus Construction and Sampling Strategy
The study employs a mixed-methods design combining descriptive bibliometric
mapping with qualitative discourse analysis to capture both structural patterns
and interpretive frameworks in Brazil-China scholarship. Two comparable corpora
are constructed following PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic
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Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines to ensure methodological transparency
and reproducibility (Page et al. 2021). This design addresses a limitation in
existing research, which often relies either on quantitative mapping of publication
trends or on qualitative readings of selected texts without systematic sampling.
For the Chinese corpus, peer-reviewed journal articles from CNKI (China
National Knowledge Infrastructure) and CSSCI (Chinese Social Sciences Citation
Index) were selected for the period 2000-2025, using Chinese and English search
terms to cover topics related to Brazil-China relations. The initial search yielded
1,247 records. The timeframe captures the period after China’s accession to the
WTO and Brazil’s renewed South-South foreign-policy agenda under democratic
governments, extending through the current period of multipolar global order.
For the Brazilian corpus, SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) and
six core Brazilian IR journals (Carta Internacional, Revista Brasileira de Política
Internacional, Contexto Internacional, Monções, Oikos, and Austral) are searched
using Portuguese and English terms. The initial search yielded 500 records.
These journals are selected for their role in Brazilian IR scholarship and for
their capacity to capture theoretically innovative work not fully represented in
SciELO. The search strategy prioritized relational and IR-oriented descriptors,
while issue-specific topics were addressed through post-retrieval thematic coding
when they appeared substantively in the corpus.
Figure 1 reports the PRISMA-informed corpus construction process from
identification and screening to eligibility assessment and final inclusion.
Inclusion criteria specified publication years, document type, subject focus,
languages, and minimum length, while exclusion criteria eliminated non-peer-
reviewed content, short non-research formats, articles without substantive
Brazil-China focus, purely technical or economic analyses without International
Relations or foreign-policy relevance, and duplicate or non-academic records.
After 92 duplicate records were removed, 1,655 records were retained for title
and abstract screening.
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Figure 1 – PRISMA-informed corpus construction flow diagram
Source: Author’s elaboration based on the PRISMA 2020.
During title and abstract screening, 305 records were excluded because they
failed the article-type, thematic-scope, International Relations or foreign-policy
relevance, year, or language criteria. Full texts were sought for the remaining
1,350 reports, of which 24 could not be retrieved after database, journal-site,
and institutional-library checks. The remaining 1,326 reports were assessed for
full-text eligibility.
At the full-text stage, 133 reports were excluded because they lacked
substantive engagement with Brazil-China relations, clear International Relations
or foreign-policy framing, sufficient length, argument, or method, or because they
were short commentaries, non-research formats, duplicates, or translated versions.
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The final corpus comprised 1,193 peer-reviewed journal articles, including 873
Chinese articles and 320 Brazilian articles. From this corpus, 80 articles were
selected for in-depth discourse analysis through stratified sampling, including 42
Chinese articles and 38 Brazilian articles. Source-specific search strings, filters,
search dates, and initial records are reported in Supplementary Table S1.2
3.2 Descriptive Bibliometric Analysis Protocol
Descriptive and relational bibliometric mapping was conducted to examine
how scholarship on Brazil-China relations is organized across the two corpora.
The analysis uses bibliometric indicators not as purely quantitative measures,
but as entry points for comparing agenda formation, institutional visibility, and
knowledge circulation across Chinese and Brazilian academic communities. This
design is consistent with the article’s broader concern with epistemic sovereignty,
since asymmetries in knowledge production appear not only in publication
volume, but also in the concepts, institutions, and citation practices through
which the bilateral relationship is interpreted.
The mapping focuses on four dimensions. Annual publication trends are used
to identify changes in scholarly attention over time and to relate them to major
diplomatic and institutional turning points. Institutional output distributions indicate
the relative concentration or fragmentation of scholarship across universities,
research institutes, and policy-oriented institutions. Normalized keyword co-
occurrence captures the thematic organization of each corpus. Knowledge-
circulation indicators, including cross-national co-authorship, citation orientation,
and linguistic diversity, assess the degree of reciprocal engagement between the
two scholarly communities.
2 Supplementary Table S1 is available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20813514.
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Figure 2 – Annual Publication Counts on Brazil-China Relations (2000-2025)
Source: Author’s elaboration.
Publication trends are examined through annual counts, with period averages
used to identify phases of growth and their relationship to major diplomatic,
economic, and institutional turning points in Brazil-China relations. Figure 2
reports annual publication counts in the final corpus from 2000 to 2025 and
provides the basis for comparing the scale and timing of scholarly attention in
the Chinese and Brazilian corpora.
Keyword co-occurrence networks are constructed from normalized author
keywords and indexed keywords. Synonymous terms, language variants, and
closely related expressions are harmonized before analysis to reduce lexical
fragmentation across Chinese, Portuguese, and English materials. Minimum
occurrence thresholds are calibrated through pilot inspection to retain interpretable
network structures while limiting excessive noise. In the network maps, node
size indicates keyword frequency, link strength indicates co-occurrence intensity,
and colors identify thematic clusters.
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Figure 3 – Keyword Co-occurrence Network (China Corpus)
Source: Author’s elaboration.
Figure 4 – Keyword Co-occurrence Network (Brazil Corpus)
Source: Author’s elaboration.
Figures 3 and 4 present the keyword co-occurrence networks for the
Chinese and Brazilian corpora. In the Chinese corpus, terms such as “economic
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cooperation”, “global governance”, and “BRICS” occupy more prominent
positions, indicating a stronger orientation toward complementarity, multilateral
coordination, and development partnership. In the Brazilian corpus, terms such
as “sovereignty”, “environmental governance”, and “strategic autonomy” are
more visible, reflecting the influence of Brazilian critical traditions, dependency-
oriented concerns, and debates over policy space.
Knowledge circulation is assessed through cross-corpus indicators rather
than full citation-network modeling. These indicators capture whether articles
include partner-country co-authors, how frequently they cite own-country, partner-
country, and English-language scholarship, and the extent to which scholarship
appears in non-native languages. The mapping results are then interpreted in
conjunction with the qualitative discourse analysis, allowing structural patterns
of production and circulation to be connected to deeper questions of theoretical
autonomy, agenda-setting power, and epistemic asymmetry within South-South
cooperation.
3.3 Discourse Analysis Protocol
Articles for in-depth discourse analysis were selected from each corpus
through stratified sampling. The 80-article discourse sample comprises 42 Chinese
articles and 38 Brazilian or English-language articles. Across the three periods, the
Chinese sample includes 8 articles from 2000 to 2009, 16 from 2010 to 2018, and
18 from 2019 to 2025, while the Brazilian or English-language sample includes
5, 14, and 19 articles respectively. Sampling was stratified by publication period,
thematic cluster, and institutional origin. The thematic allocation covers six
strata: economic and trade relations; investment and finance; global governance
and BRICS; environment, energy and climate; security, defense and strategy;
and cultural, educational and knowledge issues. The three periods were defined
ex ante, before discourse coding, and correspond to major phases in Brazil-
China relations and Global South politics. The years 2000 to 2009 capture the
initial expansion of bilateral scholarship after China’s accession to the WTO and
Brazil’s renewed South-South agenda. The years 2010 to 2018 correspond to the
institutionalization of BRICS and China’s growing economic presence in Latin
America. The years 2019 to 2025 capture the Bolsonaro-Lula transition, intensified
climate and sovereignty debates, and renewed contestation over Global South
cooperation. The full list of the 80 articles, including corpus, period, thematic
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stratum, bibliographic information, source database or journal, and DOI or stable
URL where available, is provided in Supplementary Table S23.
The coding scheme combined deductive and inductive procedures. Deductive
codes were derived from the theoretical framework, especially Global IR,
dependency theory, postcolonial and decolonial approaches, and standard
classifications of International Relations theories and methods. Inductive refinement
was based on pilot reading of articles from both corpora, allowing recurrent issue
areas and narrative patterns to be incorporated when they appeared consistently
across the material. Four coding dimensions were applied: substantive issue area,
theoretical orientation, narrative frame, and methodological approach. Narrative
frames were treated not as policy sectors, but as interpretive positions through
which the relationship is given meaning. Developmental complementarity refers to
accounts that present Brazil-China relations as mutually beneficial and structurally
compatible. Critical asymmetry refers to accounts emphasizing dependency,
vulnerability, unequal exchange, or constrained autonomy. Environmental
stewardship captures framings centered on environmental responsibility, Amazon
protection, climate justice, or sustainability standards. Multilateral leadership
refers to accounts that present Brazil and China as actors shaping BRICS, South-
South cooperation, or global-governance reform.
Coding was conducted by the author in the source languages of the articles,
including Chinese, Portuguese, and English. To improve consistency in a single-
coder design, a pilot coding round was first conducted on articles from both
corpora. Category definitions were then refined, and ambiguous cases were
revisited against the full texts. The discourse analysis examines how authors
construct, justify, and contest interpretations of Brazil-China relations, with
particular attention to conceptual tensions and competing frameworks.
Bibliometric mapping and discourse analysis were integrated through
triangulation. Mapping identified major thematic clusters for closer qualitative
examination, while discourse analysis interpreted the structural patterns identified
in the mapping stage. Sensitivity checks across coding decisions and sampling
strata assessed whether the findings reflected consistent tendencies rather than
artifacts of a single methodological choice. The narrative frames are therefore
treated as recurrent interpretive positions derived from the theoretical framework
and refined through pilot reading. The search strategy, screening records, discourse-
3 Supplementary Table S2 is available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20813514.
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sample metadata, processed figure data, and coding scheme are provided in the
Supplementary Materials4.
4. Structural Patterns of Knowledge Production
4.1 Scale Asymmetries and Institutional Dynamics
Descriptive bibliometric mapping analysis indicates significant asymmetries in
the scale and institutional organization of scholarly production. Chinese academic
output on Brazil-China relations increased unevenly across the period, with the most
pronounced expansion after 2019, rising from an average of 15 articles annually
in 2000-2009 to 78 articles annually in 2019-2025. This late-period expansion
corresponds with China’s institutionalization of Global South scholarship and
the expansion of Brazil-focused research centers within Chinese academia. The
establishment of dedicated research institutes, increased government funding for
area studies, and the integration of Global South research into national strategic
priorities have all contributed to this rapid expansion. As Table 1 shows, the
largest contributions come from institutions like Fudan University, China Foreign
Affairs University, and Peking University, which dominate the Chinese scholarly
landscape on this topic.
Brazilian scholarly production, while showing steady growth, remains
significantly smaller in scale, averaging 8 articles annually (2000-2009) and 24
articles annually (2019-2025), with greater volatility corresponding to diplomatic
events. The period surrounding BRICS institutionalization was associated with
greater Brazilian scholarly attention, as was the 2019-2025 period marked by the
Bolsonaro-Lula transition and intensified debate over Brazil-China relations. This
volatility reflects the more reactive nature of Brazilian scholarship, which responds
to political developments rather than following a sustained institutional agenda.
Brazilian academic production is also more constrained by funding limitations and
institutional fragmentation compared to the centralized Chinese system. Brazilian
research concentrates in fewer institutions, with dominant contributions from
Universidade de Brasília (UnB), Instituto Rio Branco, and Universidade de São
Paulo (USP), as shown in Table 1, reflecting the more fragmented organization
between university-based research and diplomatic training institutions.
4 The supplementary materials are available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20813514.
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The institutional landscape reflects these disparities. Chinese research is
distributed across 127 institutions with major clusters at Fudan University (14.2%),
China Foreign Affairs University (11.8%), and Peking University (9.3%), suggesting
a high degree of vertical integration between research centers, government think
tanks, and party schools. This integration creates cohesive research agendas
aligned with diplomatic priorities but may limit theoretical diversity and critical
perspectives. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) plays a particularly
important role as a bridge between academic research and policymaking, ensuring
that scholarly production serves national strategic interests.
This fragmentation creates tensions between academic autonomy and policy
relevance, with university researchers often maintaining greater critical distance
from government positions, while diplomatic training institutions tend to produce
more policy-oriented analysis.
Table 1 – Top 10 Institutions by Publication Output (2000-2025)
Rank Chinese
Institutions Articles % Brazilian Institutions Articles %
1 Fudan University 124 14.2% UnB 68 21.3%
2China Foreign
Affairs University 103 11.8% Instituto Rio Branco 48 15%
3 Peking University 81 9.3% USP 42 13.1%
4 Renmin University 67 7.7% UFMG 29 9.1%
5
Shanghai
International
Studies University
59 6.8% UERJ 25 7.8%
6Tsinghua
University 52 6.0% PUC-Rio 20 6.3%
7 CASS 48 5.5% UFSC 16 5%
8Zhejiang
University 41 4.7% UNESP 14 4.4%
9 Nankai University 37 4.2% UFPE 12 3.8%
10 Sun Yat-sen
University 35 4.0% UFPR 10 3.1%
Source: Author’s elaboration.
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4.2 Thematic Divergence and Knowledge Circulation
Keyword co-occurrence analysis points to important differences in research
agendas. The Chinese corpus clusters around four dominant themes: economic
complementarity, featuring terms such as trade structure optimization, industrial
complementarity, mutual benefit, and comprehensive strategic partnership; global
governance, emphasizing BRICS cooperation, multilateralism, Global South
solidarity, and reform of international institutions; development cooperation,
focusing on infrastructure connectivity, capacity building, technology transfer, and
poverty-reduction experience; and strategic coordination, including geopolitical
coordination, international security cooperation, and strategic mutual trust.
The Brazilian corpus presents a contrasting thematic landscape. Its main
clusters include structural asymmetries, with terms such as commodity dependence,
technological gap, unequal exchange, and vulnerability; sovereignty and autonomy,
featuring strategic autonomy, foreign-policy independence, negotiating power,
and policy-space preservation; environmental governance, focusing on Amazon
protection, climate justice, sustainable development, and environmental standards;
and multilateral engagement, emphasizing BRICS institutionalization, UN reform,
WTO modernization, and South-South coordination.
The thematic divergence reflects deeper epistemological differences in how
each scholarly community conceptualizes the bilateral relationship. Chinese
scholarship tends to emphasize positive-sum outcomes and mutual benefits,
framing Brazil-China relations through development partnership and global-
governance reform. Brazilian scholarship, influenced by dependency theory and
critical IR traditions, pays greater attention to power asymmetries, structural
constraints, and the question of whether the relationship serves Brazil’s long-
term developmental and strategic interests.
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Table 2 – Thematic Distribution by Corpus
Theme Chinese Corpus Brazilian Corpus Difference
Economic/Trade Relations 42.3% 28.8% +13.5%
Investment/Finance 21.5% 15.9% +5.6%
Global Governance/BRICS 24.9% 22.5% +2.4%
Environmental Issues 8.1% 26.3% -18.2%
Security/Defense 6.7% 11.3% -4.5%
Source: Author’s elaboration.
Table 2 indicates the results of manual thematic coding. The distribution
confirms the contrast suggested by the keyword networks: Chinese scholarship
gives greater weight to economic exchange, investment, and global-governance
cooperation, while Brazilian scholarship attaches more importance to environmental
issues, security concerns, and questions of autonomy. The difference does not
simply reflect variation in empirical interests; it also points to distinct ways
of defining what is politically significant in the Brazil-China relationship. For
Chinese authors, the relationship is more often framed through cooperation,
complementarity, and institutional coordination. For Brazilian authors, the
same relationship is more frequently read through the lenses of vulnerability,
environmental pressure, and strategic constraint.
When citation practices, co-authorship, language, and publication patterns
are considered together, the separation between the two scholarly communities
becomes clearer. As shown in Table 3, cross-national engagement remains limited
in both corpora. Chinese articles rarely include Brazilian co-authors and cite
Brazilian scholarship only marginally, while Brazilian articles show only slightly
higher engagement with Chinese scholarship. The predominance of domestic
citation circuits and the low proportion of partner-country references suggest
that academic production on Brazil-China relations continues to develop largely
within separate intellectual spaces.
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Table 3 – Knowledge Circulation and Linguistic Indicators
Indicator Chinese Corpus Brazilian Corpus Difference
Articles with partner-country co-authors 7.3% 12.8% -5.5%
Citations to own country’s scholarship 83.7% 61.4% +22.3%
Citations to partner country’s scholarship 2.1% 4.8% -2.7%
Citations to English-language scholarship 76.3% 84.2% -7.9%
Linguistic diversity
(non-native language articles) 10.7% 37.5% -26.8%
Source: Author’s elaboration.
The publication patterns further reveal how knowledge infrastructure
shapes epistemic sovereignty. Chinese scholarship benefits from strong domestic
circulation and institutional concentration, but its reliance on Chinese-language
publication limits broader transnational visibility. Brazilian scholarship shows
greater linguistic diversity and wider international reach through Portuguese-
and English-language publication, yet it has limited influence within Chinese
academic debates and policy-oriented research communities. The result is not
a shared epistemic field, but two partially connected knowledge systems whose
interaction remains thinner than the diplomatic and economic depth of the
bilateral relationship would suggest.
These structural patterns are relevant to the broader analysis of epistemic
sovereignty. The Chinese system’s centralized infrastructure enables rapid scaling
of research output but tends to reinforce policy-oriented agendas and constrain
theoretical diversity. The Brazilian system’s more fragmented infrastructure
supports critical perspectives and theoretical plurality, but limits research scale
and policy impact. Both systems therefore face difficulties in building genuinely
transnational epistemic communities capable of bridging linguistic, theoretical,
and institutional divides.
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5. Discursive Frameworks and Theoretical Orientations
5.1 Brazil-China Narratives of Complementarity and Asymmetry
Discourse analysis of the 80 stratified sample articles identifies recurring
differences in the narrative frameworks used to interpret Brazil-China relations.
In the Chinese sample, developmental complementarity is the most frequently
coded frame, characterizing the relationship through metaphors of mutual benefit,
natural partnership, and win-win cooperation. This frame draws on Chinese
developmental discourse and emphasizes the complementary nature of China’s
manufacturing capacity and Brazil’s natural resources.
Representative formulations present China-Brazil ties as structurally
complementary and normatively cooperative. Zhang and Jin (2020) depict the
two economies as mutually reinforcing, with China’s industrial capabilities
aligning with Brazil’s resource and agricultural endowments. In a similar vein,
Xu and Shen (2023) situate China-Brazil cooperation within broader Global South
narratives that emphasize shared development agendas and collective agency.
These narratives often employ developmental metaphors that position China
as a successful developmental model that can offer valuable lessons for Brazil,
resonating with Chinese scholarship that counters dependency-oriented or threat-
based interpretations of China’s role in Latin America by emphasizing reciprocity,
development, and South-South cooperation (Jiang 2023). The “China model”
is presented as an alternative to Western development paradigms, emphasizing
state-led development, infrastructure investment, and poverty reduction. Such a
narrative frame serves multiple functions: it legitimizes China’s growing influence
in Brazil, positions China as a benevolent partner rather than a hegemonic power,
and challenges Western dominance in development discourse.
In the Brazilian sample, critical asymmetry appears more frequently as a
narrative frame, emphasizing power differentials, structural vulnerabilities, and
sovereignty concerns. The frame draws on Brazil’s rich tradition of dependency
theory and critical IR scholarship, questioning whether the relationship truly
serves Brazil’s long-term interests.
Representative formulations present Brazil-China ties as rhetorically strategic
yet materially asymmetric across trade and environmental arenas. Berringer
and Belasques (2020) read Brazil-China relations under the Lula and Dilma
governments through the lens of internal bourgeois interests and conflicted
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subordination. Busilli and Jaime (2021) examine Chinese investments in Brazil
as a form of economic diplomacy embedded in bilateral power relations. Milani
(2024) connects the climate emergency and the right to development to tensions
within Brazil-China relations.
The critical asymmetry frame often employs terms like “primary-export
dependency”, “technological subordination” and “environmental sovereignty”
to highlight structural inequalities in the relationship. This narrative challenges
the official discourse of strategic partnership by revealing the underlying power
dynamics that shape economic and political interactions. Brazilian scholars
frequently reference historical patterns of dependency to contextualize contemporary
China-Brazil relations, drawing parallels with earlier periods of economic
subordination to European and North American powers.
Table 4 – Narrative Frames in the Discourse Sample by Corpus (% of Sample Articles)
Frame Chinese Corpus (n=42) Brazilian Corpus (n=38)
Developmental
complementarity 78.6% 15.8%
Critical asymmetry 4.8% 68.4%
Strategic partnership 14.3% 10.5%
Environmental stewardship 2.4% 26.3%
Multilateral leadership 26.2% 15.8%
Technological cooperation 19.0% 7.9%
Cultural exchange 11.9% 5.3%
Note: Percentages do not add up to 100 because frames are not mutually exclusive.
Source: Author’s elaboration.
Table 4 summarizes the prevalence of the main narrative frames identified in
the 80-article discourse sample. These frames do not refer to mutually exclusive
issue areas, but to recurring interpretive positions through which authors
assign meaning to Brazil-China relations. In the coded sample, developmental
complementarity is more frequently associated with the Chinese corpus, while
critical asymmetry is more frequently associated with the Brazilian/English-
language corpus.
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5.2 Theoretical Traditions and Methodological Divides
As shown in Table 5, Chinese scholarship is more policy-oriented and
quantitative, while Brazilian scholarship exhibits greater theoretical diversity
and a stronger preference for qualitative and interpretive methodologies.
Table 5 – Theoretical Frameworks and Methods by Corpus (% of Sample Articles)
Dimension Chinese Corpus Brazilian Corpus
Theoretical Frameworks
Policy-oriented/Developmental 64.3% 18.4%
Liberal institutionalism 19.0% 26.3%
Realism/geopolitics 9.5% 15.8%
Dependency theory 0.0% 28.9%
Constructivism 14.3% 13.2%
Postcolonial/decolonial 2.4% 15.8%
Global IR/pluralistic universalism 4.8% 10.5%
Methodological Approaches
Quantitative analysis 52.4% 23.7%
Qualitative case studies 21.4% 44.7%
Policy analysis 33.3% 18.4%
Discourse analysis 4.8% 26.3%
Historical analysis 7.1% 15.8%
Mixed methods 9.5% 21.1%
Note: Percentages do not add up to 100 because theories and methods may be multiply coded.
Source: Author’s elaboration.
In the Chinese corpus, policy-oriented and developmental frameworks appear
more frequently than explicitly critical approaches, often combining elements
of liberal institutional cooperation and constructivist identity-building. This
orientation can be read in relation to China’s strategic priorities and to an
institutional context in which policy relevance and state-defined agendas carry
considerable weight. Explicit engagement with critical theories is limited in the
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Chinese corpus, and dependency theory appears only marginally in the sampled
articles on Brazil-China relations.
Chinese theoretical frameworks often draw on concepts including “peaceful
development”, “harmonious world” and “community with shared future
for mankind” to frame the bilateral relationship. These concepts emphasize
cooperation, mutual benefit, and win-win outcomes while avoiding explicit
power analysis or structural critique. The limited presence of dependency theory
and other critical vocabularies in the Chinese corpus can be read in relation to
theoretical preferences and institutional conditions that privilege policy relevance
and alignment with official diplomatic vocabularies.
In methods, Chinese scholarship favors quantitative analysis using trade
statistics, investment flows, and economic modeling, supplemented by policy
analysis drawing on official documents and diplomatic statements. The preference
for statistical and policy-oriented analysis reflects the dominance of economics
and policy studies in Chinese IR scholarship, as well as the availability of
quantitative data and institutional support for policy-relevant research. Qualitative
approaches, case studies and discourse analysis, are less common, reflecting
limited engagement with interpretive approaches in Chinese IR.
Brazilian scholarship displays theoretical diversity, with dependency theory
remaining influential alongside liberal institutionalism and growing engagement
with postcolonial/decolonial frameworks. Such diversity reflects Brazil’s rich
tradition of critical IR scholarship and the greater institutional autonomy of
Brazilian universities. Brazilian scholars engage with global theoretical debates
while adapting them to Latin American contexts, creating hybrid theoretical
frameworks that combine global concepts with local insights.
By contrast, the Brazilian corpus favors qualitative approaches, particularly
case studies and discourse analysis, with quantitative methods playing a secondary
role. This pattern reflects the influence of critical theory and interpretive approaches
in Brazilian IR scholarship, as well as the emphasis on contextual analysis and
power dynamics. Brazilian scholars often combine multiple methods to provide
nuanced analysis of complex political and economic relationships.
The methodological divergence should therefore be read not as a simple
contrast between Chinese pragmatism and Brazilian critique, but as the outcome
of different institutional and political conditions of knowledge production. In the
Chinese corpus, policy relevance, quantitative evidence, and alignment with official
diplomatic vocabularies are reinforced by a state-centered research environment
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in which social-science scholarship operates within more explicit political and
institutional boundaries. This does not imply the absence of intellectual agency
among Chinese researchers, but it helps explain why critical vocabularies such
as dependency, asymmetry, and epistemic autonomy appear less frequently than
concepts associated with development cooperation, strategic partnership, and
global-governance reform. In the Brazilian corpus, greater university autonomy
and the longer presence of dependency and critical IR traditions provide a more
established vocabulary for framing Brazil-China relations through vulnerability,
sovereignty, and structural constraint.
5.3 Environmental Governance Competing Normative Visions
Environmental issues provide a useful site for observing divergent normative
frameworks in the coded discourse sample. Chinese scholarship on environmental
aspects of Brazil-China relations primarily frames environmental cooperation
as a technical and developmental partnership focused on capacity building,
policy coordination, renewable energy, and technology-oriented problem solving.
This frame emphasizes practical solutions and mutual benefits, while giving
less centrality to normative debates about environmental standards, territorial
governance, or sovereignty. Rather than treating environmental questions as a
field of distributive conflict, the Chinese-language sample generally incorporates
them into a broader vocabulary of development cooperation and South-South
partnership.
The Chinese environmental narrative draws on the idea that environmental
protection can be reconciled with economic development through technological
innovation and state-led planning. In this framing, environmental governance
is associated with policy learning, technical exchange, and the extension of
development cooperation into sustainability-related fields. The emphasis falls
on compatibility between growth and environmental protection, rather than on
the social or territorial conflicts that may accompany trade, infrastructure, or
investment flows. This does not mean that environmental questions are absent
from Chinese scholarship, but that they are more often interpreted through a
developmental and cooperative register.
Brazilian scholarship on environmental issues frames the relationship
through sovereignty protection and environmental justice lenses. In the Brazilian/
English-language sample, the Amazon, climate governance, agribusiness,
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infrastructure, and sustainability standards appear not only as sectoral policy
concerns, but also as sites through which asymmetries in Brazil-China relations
become politically visible. This frame emphasizes Brazil’s policy space, territorial
authority, environmental regulation, and the protection of affected populations.
Environmental governance is therefore less often treated as a purely technical
arena of cooperation and more often as a domain in which autonomy, dependence,
and distributive conflict are negotiated.
The Brazilian environmental narrative draws on concepts of environmental
sovereignty and climate justice, emphasizing the need to protect Brazil’s natural
resources and vulnerable populations from external pressures. This narrative
challenges the assumption that economic development and environmental
protection are automatically compatible, especially when trade, infrastructure,
and investment flows intensify pressure on sensitive territories. In contrast
with the Chinese-language corpus, where environmental cooperation is more
readily absorbed into developmental and diplomatic narratives, the Brazilian/
English-language corpus more often uses environmental governance as a critical
lens for evaluating the costs, limits, and political implications of South-South
partnership. Environmental governance thus illustrates how the same bilateral
relationship is made intelligible through different epistemic priorities: cooperation
and development on one side, vulnerability, autonomy, and contested development
on the other.
5.4 Temporal Evolution of Discourses
Discourse analysis across the three ex ante periods defined in Section 3.3
identifies evolving narrative patterns. In the early period, Chinese scholarship
emphasized economic opportunity, market potential, and practical trade relations,
with limited engagement with theoretical frameworks or critical perspectives.
Brazilian scholarship was more diverse from the outset, combining optimism
about South-South cooperation under Lula’s foreign policy with emerging concerns
over commodity dependence and the sustainability of export-led growth.
In Figure 5, the 2010-2018 period saw a clearer differentiation between the
two corpora. Chinese scholarship increasingly incorporated global governance,
BRICS cooperation, and concepts such as “community with shared future for
mankind”, presenting Brazil-China relations as part of a broader project of
multilateral reform and South-South coordination. Brazilian scholarship, by
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contrast, developed stronger critiques of reprimarization, structural asymmetry,
and environmental risk, especially regarding the long-term effects of China’s
demand for commodities and investments in environmentally sensitive sectors.
By 2019-2025, this divergence had become more visible in the coded sample.
Chinese scholarship continued to emphasize partnership continuity, multilateral
leadership, and global-governance reform, even during moments of diplomatic
friction. Brazilian scholarship gave greater weight to sovereignty, climate governance,
Amazon-related concerns, and the domestic political implications of dependence
on China, especially in light of the politicization of China under the Bolsonaro
government (Bessimo and Amorim Neto 2024). Periods of diplomatic tension,
especially 2016-2018 and 2019-2022, accentuated this contrast: Chinese discourse
remained closer to official diplomatic narratives, while Brazilian discourse showed
greater responsiveness to domestic political shifts and environmental controversies.
Figure 5 – Thematic Evolution of Discourse Over Time (2000-2025)
Source: Author’s elaboration.
These temporal patterns point to the co-evolution of scholarly discourse,
domestic political change, and international developments. They also suggest that
the two academic communities do not merely study the same bilateral relationship
from different national locations; they periodically redefine its meaning through
distinct institutional, theoretical, and political conditions.
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6. Epistemic Sovereignty in South-South Knowledge Production
The findings point to significant epistemic asymmetries in Brazil-China
knowledge production, but the claim about epistemic sovereignty does not rest on
a single indicator. It emerges from the convergence of four observable dimensions:
who produces knowledge, which agendas become central, whose scholarship
is cited, and how the bilateral relationship is narratively framed. Institutional
concentration and publication scale indicate the material infrastructure of
knowledge production; thematic distribution and narrative frames capture agenda-
setting and interpretive authority; citation-orientation and co-authorship indicators
show the degree of reciprocal engagement between scholarly communities.
Read together, these dimensions make the Brazil-China case a useful site for
assessing whether theoretical autonomy can be maintained within South-South
partnerships.
Three interrelated processes shape epistemic sovereignty. First, institutional
infrastructures create the material conditions of knowledge production. China’s
centralized and state-centered academic system facilitates rapid output scaling
through dedicated funding, state-aligned research centers, and integrated policy
connections, but also channels scholarly agendas toward officially recognized
strategic priorities. Brazil’s more fragmented system supports university autonomy
and theoretical diversity, yet limits research scale, funding continuity, and policy
influence. The contrast suggests that scale and autonomy do not necessarily
advance together: centralized coordination can expand output while narrowing
the range of legitimate frames, whereas institutional pluralism can sustain critical
perspectives while weakening cumulative capacity.
Second, theoretical genealogies shape bilateral interpretation. Brazilian
scholarship draws on dependency theory, postcolonial thought, and critical
IR to examine vulnerability, sovereignty, and unequal exchange. The Chinese
corpus more often privileges developmental and policy-oriented vocabularies,
leaving fewer explicit conceptual resources for self-critical analysis of asymmetry
within South-South partnerships. This does not imply the absence of intellectual
agency among Chinese researchers. Rather, it indicates that different political
and institutional conditions make certain vocabularies more available, legitimate,
and recurrent than others. The result is not merely a difference in topic selection,
but a divergence in the conceptual tools through which the bilateral relationship
becomes intelligible.
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Third, linguistic practices structure knowledge circulation. Chinese-language
publication creates domestic cohesion but limits international visibility, while
Brazil’s greater linguistic diversity facilitates external circulation without necessarily
translating into influence within Chinese academic debates. Minimal cross-citation
and weak transnational co-authorship reinforce this separation, making language
both a medium of communication and a boundary of epistemic exchange. The
result is a form of South-South knowledge production in which diplomatic
proximity coexists with limited conceptual reciprocity.
These patterns complicate the assumption that South-South cooperation is
inherently more horizontal than North-South relations. Epistemic sovereignty
requires active construction rather than passive expectation. The thin layer of
transnational co-production despite decades of diplomatic engagement suggests that
political partnership alone is insufficient to generate shared epistemic frameworks.
More equitable epistemic communities require institutional infrastructure that
supports both scale and diversity, theoretical dialogue grounded in Southern
traditions, and communicative practices that reduce linguistic barriers while
preserving epistemic plurality. For Brazilian IR scholarship, the central challenge
is to maintain critical theoretical autonomy while engaging China’s expanding
academic influence; for South-South cooperation more broadly, the case underscores
the need for more reciprocal forms of research governance and knowledge
circulation.
7. Conclusion
The study identifies epistemic asymmetries in Brazil-China knowledge
production across scale, agendas, circulation, and collaboration. These asymmetries
complicate the assumption that South-South cooperation is inherently horizontal,
indicating that uneven forms of recognition may persist even within partnerships
among Global South countries.
The findings contribute to Global International Relations by clarifying that
epistemic sovereignty remains contested within South-South partnerships. The
Brazil-China case highlights how material asymmetries, linguistic barriers,
institutional structures, and theoretical traditions shape the production and
circulation of knowledge about bilateral relations in ways that cannot be reduced
to traditional North-South binaries.
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The analysis further indicates that Brazilian and Chinese academic communities
have not yet formed a shared epistemic field. China’s centralized academic
infrastructure supports rapid research output and policy visibility, while Brazil’s
more plural academic landscape sustains critical theoretical vocabularies and
locally grounded debates. The divergence helps explain why the same bilateral
relationship is often interpreted through partially disconnected conceptual frames
and citation circuits.
Limited cross-citation and collaboration between Chinese and Brazilian
scholars suggest that sustained diplomatic engagement has not automatically
generated reciprocal knowledge production. More balanced South-South academic
exchange therefore requires deliberate efforts to bridge linguistic, institutional,
and theoretical divides.
For Brazilian International Relations, the analysis underscores the importance
of preserving critical theoretical autonomy while engaging China’s expanding
academic and policy-oriented research infrastructure. More broadly, the article
argues that plural forms of Global International Relations depend not only on who
participates in knowledge production, but also on how knowledge is produced,
cited, translated, and recognized across unequal academic spaces.
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