Empire Competition examines Southeast Asia and its continuously shifting power dynamics with other countries (China in particular). CASPEGS’s Romi Jain has contributed her paper “Exploring China’s Geointellectual Footprint in Southeast Asia” (pp. 84- 108). The South China Sea issue figures in this critical examination. Below is an excerpt from her chapter.
Geointellect is an unfolding characteristic of China’s global influence. I coined this term to denote a country’s dominance in higher education, research, and innovation paradigms across geographies. As it is well known,
President Xi Jinping’s China Dream of national rejuvenation has manifested in many ambitious undertakings. The leadership has embarked on building a China-centric economic order through such mega initiatives as the Belt
and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). In the glare of these palpable moves, what is often overlooked is China’s endeavor to build its “middle kingdom” of knowledge. This attempt
mainly entails supplanting Western hegemony with Chinese hegemony, supported by what Xi calls “theoretical innovations” and other levers of intellectual preeminence. The geointellect model, explained subsequently,
captures modalities of this enterprise.
Available at https://press.pace.edu/conference-proceedings/