Solar toilets, cashew trees, and a volleyball court – these were the things that we, the “decision-makers” in a simulation exercise at King’s summer school, decided to bring to an economically deprived village called Odisha in India. But I was confused: Why didn’t the villagers, the target population of our plans, have the freedom to choose what they truly desire? My question seemed to be more critical in the Public Policy Analysis course that I took at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) this term: The pathway to address a public concern is generally chosen by a few elites, and thus the public’s freedom of choice may inevitably be weakened. To think a step further, we may ask, “In the governance of a country, are individual interests always fully considered? If the public’s voice is fully heard, would it be easier to improve our societies?” Knowing that King’s holds the vision of making the world a better place, I decided to pursue my further education at this prestigious university as we share the same vision.

I chose this programme mainly because my research interests and academic strengths fit in well with it. Delving into international relations at BFSU not only gave me an opportunity to study the public policy making processes of various countries from a comparative perspective, but also equipped me with a strong foundation in qualitative and quantitative research skills. For example, in the Survey and Research of Foreign Affairs course, I collected a large amount of statistical data from NPOs such as Open Secrets and international organisations such as the World Bank, as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an epistemic community. My analysis found the political involvement of the US interest groups in the oil and gas industries would eventually impose heavier pressure on China to facilitate its governance capacity building in the clean energy field by influencing the policy formulation process within the U.S. Thus, putting myself in real national governors’ shoes, I referred to the European Union’s practices in Carbon Emission Trading System and suggested China put forward a set of similar policies. Later on, this piece of advice was proved to be in line with China’s blueprint of the 14th Five Year Plan made by real decision-makers.

Besides, I am also adept in the use of quantitative tools to evaluate and optimise public policies. In the course Big Data Analysis, I used Python to test whether Chinese mainlanders’ and oversea citizens’ attitudes towards National Security Law (NSL) were actually different. Acquiring more than 50,000 comments using the keywords “National Security Law/国安法”, I bridged people’s literal expressions and their psychological representations by using SnowNLP and TextBlob models to create calculable scores. It turned out that the perceptions of most people in Chinese Mainland were positive because they believed the NSL safeguarded sovereignty, however, people in Hong Kong SAR and overseas regarded it as an infringement on individual liberty. In order to better apply this set of policies to maintaining social stability, I wrote some recommendations on shifting China’s public diplomacy focus. My report on this topic resulted in a grade of 97/100 – the highest in my school, and it deepened my enthusiasm for interdisciplinary research.

Apart from academic explorations, I also tried to discover and solve real-life social problems by applying public policy theories and research methodologies. So, I attended the 2020 Tsinghua International Case Analysis Competition of Public Policy on SDGs, analysing the education policies from a relatively micro perspective. By conducting semi-structured in-depth interviews among several rural teachers in Zhenyuan County (Gansu Province), I discovered that the policy-making process presented a top-down order, which meant the local government and rural teachers merely had the right to implement the policies, rather than being involved in the policy-making mechanism. In such case, individual interests, including the freedom to provide feedback and pursue personal growth, were largely ignored for the collective interests such as development and poverty alleviation. This experience encourages me to probe the causes of existing flaws in contemporary public sectors and find the ways to improve governance capacity.

After graduation, I would like to be a public policy researcher at a think tank in China, such as the Development Research Centre of the State Council. The curriculum offered by the Public Policy programme at King’s can help me a lot in my career. Firstly, the Comparative Public Policy course will teach me to investigate how various countries deal with similar problems on an assortment of key policy issues. Especially after reading Comparative Public Policy by Anneliese Dodds, a book which examined key determinants of public policy change within and across countries, I am craving for a chance to explore whether the national “policy styles” really exist and how, if so, they can make the governments draw on different policy instruments. Born and raised in Beijing, I am confident that I can contribute a lot to King’s community by sharing my unique insights about China with fellow students from other political systems. Taking this course will also help me produce more convincing reports adapting to China’s local conditions. More attractively, the Public Policy Internship course will sharpen my pragmatic skills through placements of working in public sectors including think tanks. This practical experience will equip me with a better idea of the policy actors and the approaches that they adopt. Therefore, I believe this programme will be a springboard to achieve my ambitions.

Words: 904