Andrew Mertha is a leading scholar of Chinese politics and the George and Sadie Hyman Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Known for his deep understanding of China’s bureaucratic machinery and its global reach, Mertha has spent decades examining how local politics and institutions shape national and international outcomes. In his public talk on “Beyond the Water’s Edge,” he challenges the conventional image of China as a unified, top-down power—arguing instead that its fragmented domestic system often extends beyond its borders, reshaping the way the world understands Chinese foreign policy.
What first led you to study how China’s domestic politics shape its foreign policy? Do you think it’s an overlooked topic?
I got interested in Chinese politics as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student. My focus was on domestic politics, specifically China’s institutions and bureaucracy. People used to look at China’s top leadership — the whims or interests of those at the top — as the key to understanding Chinese behavior. That might have worked during the Mao era, but the real forces shaping leaders’ abilities to implement and enforce policy come from China’s institutional and bureaucratic apparatus. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand a big part of China.
When you go down to the provincial and local levels, you start to see how intentions from the top are refracted and reshaped. Over time, you pick up systematic patterns of behavior. What’s counterintuitive to many is just how decentralized the Chinese government is. The party helps centralize it, and during the Mao era, the plan helped centralize it, but in practice, most of the government is decentralized. Local governments know how to prioritize their own issues better than Beijing does, and that creates a fragmented but adaptive system.
I realized this dynamic extended internationally when I studied China’s foreign aid to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during the 1970s. Despite being a continental power, China couldn’t get its way — Cambodia was calling the shots. That experience made me think about how domestic bureaucratic structures might be “exported” abroad, shaping China’s foreign behavior as well.
You often describe in your work that China’s foreign policy is “fragmented.” Is that equivalent to “decentralized”?
I’m standing on the shoulders of giants here — the term fragmented authoritarianism was coined by Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg in the 1980s. Because of decentralization and the inevitability of bureaucratic bargaining, it’s difficult to understand China’s policy outcomes.
Policies in China emerge through bargains made between various entities at multiple administrative levels. Everyone has veto power, so you have to give a little to everyone — that’s how policies move forward. The result is slow, uneven, and sometimes contradictory implementation. That’s fragmented authoritarianism.
While this framework was developed for domestic politics, I’ve tried to extend it to foreign policy. Much of China’s overseas behavior reflects how subnational governments, with different priorities and time horizons, pursue their own interests abroad. Since over 85% of China’s overseas investment comes from the subnational level, understanding local politics is key to understanding China’s foreign policy. Fragmentation doesn’t stop at China’s borders anymore — it plays out overseas.
In your opinion, how does the Belt and Road Initiative reflect the mix of local interests and national goals within China’s political system?
One would expect the Belt and Road Initiative to be cast in a positive light in China — and it should be. It’s enormous in scope, bringing both economic and strategic benefits. It also resonates historically as a symbol of China’s return to global prominence.
However, plans don’t last past the first punch in the face. Once they hit the real world, they have to adapt to unanticipated challenges. On the ground, local Chinese actors are often very good at understanding and adjusting to conditions in partner countries. Sometimes this leads to success and cooperation; in other cases, it leads to conflict or misalignment with Beijing’s intentions.
These outcomes show the interplay of China’s domestic politics — the “top has its policies, the bottom has its countermeasures” dynamic — playing out internationally. To fully understand BRI, you have to look at both the central goals and the local adaptations.
What lessons can policymakers or scholars learn from understanding China’s internal politics before making assumptions about its global strategy?
I’d hope they’d think, “This foreign analyst seems to get it.” But that would be the wrong assumption, because most people in Washington, D.C. don’t think about China beyond Beijing. They say “the Chinese government” as if it were one entity, when in fact there are dozens of provincial governments, hundreds of municipal and county governments, and thousands of township governments. Once you disaggregate that, the picture changes completely.
The other problem is that both the U.S. and China attach too much intentionality to each other’s actions. Each side assumes the other acts with deliberate strategy, when sometimes it’s just bureaucratic inertia or error. Policymakers need to test the hypothesis that some things are unintentional — that’s the scientific method. But policy often doesn’t work that way.
Looking ahead, what questions or areas of research are you most interested in exploring about China’s evolving role in the world?
I just had a book come out in May, so I’m at the beginning stages of my next project. It’s still on China but not on U.S.–China relations. More broadly, I think we’re moving into an era where institutions will matter less, and strongman politics — “big man politics” — will matter more.
In the bilateral relationship, Xi Jinping is better at playing that game than most. Trump, for example, thinks he can, but the dynamic is different. With Biden, policy was reactive and inert. With Trump, it’s dynamic — for better or worse. The Chinese leadership dislikes surprises but understands how to handle them. I wouldn’t bet on it, but there’s a chance U.S.–China relations could thaw somewhat under the right conditions.
