About Grandview Institution

Grandview Institution

The Grandview Institution (GVI, Chinese: 国观智库) is an independent foreign policy think tank headquartered in Haidian District, Beijing, China. Founded in May 2013 by Ren Libo, a former Xinhua News Agency journalist and editor, Grandview provides research support for high-level decision-making by the Chinese government and by enterprises. Its work covers ocean strategy and security, the opportunities and risks of the Belt and Road Initiative, borderland governance, defence security, digital governance and China's relations with the United States, Japan, the European Union, India and Northeast Asia. With an academic team of nearly 100 research fellows, it is one of the most prominent of the private, social think tanks that emerged in China in the 2010s.

Grandview describes its philosophy as "putting knowledge into practice, forging ahead steadily." It influences high-level decision-making through independent research reports and other forms of information provision, and it accepts research commissions on major strategic topics from government decision-making bodies and departments including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Founding in May 2013 and Ren Libo's background

Ren Libo founded the Grandview Institution in May 2013, just weeks after Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping called for building "a new type of think tank with Chinese characteristics." Ren spent the years 2001 to 2011 at Xinhua News Agency. Five of those years were spent at Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound in Beijing, editing classified Internal Reference (neican) reports for Central Committee leaders, and he also served as Xinhua's chief correspondent in Pyongyang, North Korea. That career — writing directly for China's senior leadership and reporting from one of its most sensitive foreign postings — shaped Grandview's model: the institution has built its reputation on channelling research assessments upward to decision-makers, and it has been described as the only private think tank authorised to submit intelligence and policy assessments directly to China's senior leadership through the classified neican system.

Ren remains founder and president of the institution, fronting its most senior external engagements, from meetings with visiting prime ministers to the signing of cooperation agreements with foreign universities.

Research fields and study centres

According to its own introduction, Grandview's areas of study cover ocean strategy and security, Belt and Road opportunities and risks, comprehensive borderland governance and peripheral security, defence security and development, and digital governance and development, as well as China–US relations, China–Japan relations, China–EU relations, China–India relations and Northeast Asia relations, and it has set up several study centres in these fields accordingly. Other directories summarise the same portfolio as marine strategy and the blue economy, border protection and counter-terrorism, and the Belt and Road Initiative and overseas investment, noting that Grandview regards information research as the foundation of its applied research and brings together experts from academia, government, media and business.

Beyond central government work, Grandview extends research services to local governments, conducting research on provincial and municipal strategic positioning and development planning and helping local policy-making and industrial development. The combination — classified-style reporting for central departments, commissioned strategic studies, and consultancy for local governments — is the institution's business and influence model.

The Academic Committee and the five-year plan

On 10 December 2018 Grandview held the founding ceremony of its Academic Committee, described as one of the most significant parts of a new five-year plan and an important achievement of its first five years. As the institution's supreme research leader, the committee exercises rights and responsibilities in five aspects: research planning, research methods, research quality, its experts' network and internal training. Zhang Yunling, a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a professor at Shandong University, was appointed director of the committee for a three-year term.

At the ceremony Ren Libo said that since its inception Grandview had treated itself as a research-type think tank and followed a slow but sure development path, because building a long-lasting think tank requires a strong research foundation; only by consolidating that foundation, improving research quality, exploring research methods and distilling high-end intelligence could it strive for stability and become, in his phrase, a century-old think tank. Zhang Yunling observed that since 2013 Grandview had achieved at least two things: a degree of influence among think tanks at home and abroad that was still expanding, and a clear development orientation, producing large numbers of research products in marine strategy and the marine economy, comprehensive management and development of border areas, Belt and Road strategy and the investment environments of various countries.

Maritime research and the annual think tank views report

Maritime affairs are Grandview's signature field. Since 2015 it has published an annual "Report on International Think Tanks' Views on China's Maritime Affairs," which it describes as representative work in the area of international public opinion. For the series, Grandview built a database of views on China's maritime affairs and systematically studies the output of over a hundred international think tanks. To measure the attitude toward China suggested by each article, it devised what it calls a "Pro-China Index," against which the work of think tanks in different countries and fields can be observed in real time and compared. The reports aim to explain the South China Sea situation objectively and to put forward advantageous South China Sea policy recommendations to the Chinese government. Editions covering 2016 and 2017 followed the inaugural 2015 study.

The institution's maritime work also runs to collaborative analysis with American counterparts. Its 2022 report "Management of the Sino-US Maritime Interests Divergences," written by Liu Xiaobo, Zhang Tuosheng and Shi Xiaoqin of Grandview with Harrison Prétat of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, analysed differences between China and the United States in maritime interests at the political and security levels, explored convergences, and assessed how differences might be managed to avoid confrontation and conflict. Grandview has likewise jointly initiated with experts from the Pacific Forum a report on competition and risk reduction in the South China Sea, presenting parallel Chinese and American analyses of positions, policy logic and competitive dynamics.

Rankings and recognition

Grandview's standing is recorded in the main Chinese and international think tank rankings. In the China Think Tank Index (CTTI) Think Tank Report released in 2018 — CTTI being jointly developed by Nanjing University and Guangming Daily — Grandview was ranked sixth on the list of China's social think tanks. In January 2021 it was included for the first time in the University of Pennsylvania's Global Go To Think Tank Index, ranking 70th on the list of think tanks with the most policy influence in the 2020 report, alongside Chinese institutions such as the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Unirule Institute, Our Hong Kong Foundation, the Center for China and Globalization and the Chongyang Institute. The Pennsylvania programme, led by James G. McGann, has published its global rankings annually since 2006; its 2020 data counted 1,413 think tanks in China, second only to the United States.

International cooperation network

Grandview states that it has established close cooperation with nearly 20 global think tanks, including the Carter Center, the Quincy Institute, the US Naval War College, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London, the French Center for International Relations and Strategy and the Sejong Institute of Korea. It says it has planned and organised large-scale international conferences and smaller international dialogues in Beijing and several other localities, promoting cooperation in ocean studies, the Belt and Road and defence studies, and that it sustains multidisciplinary dialogues through joint activities, joint studies and joint publications.

Individual episodes illustrate the network in action. In February 2018 Taiwanese scholars from the Chinese Youth Development Union visited Grandview for discussion of cross-strait relations and trade, the Belt and Road Initiative and Taiwan's New Southbound Policy; Ren Libo introduced the institution's research achievements in promoting cross-strait marine cooperation since 2017 and a new project on how Taiwanese industry could grasp Belt and Road opportunities, expected to be released in June 2018. In December 2022 Grandview organised an online ASEAN think tank dialogue on Asia-Pacific geopolitics and the South China Sea, chaired by its senior researcher Li Mingjiang of Nanyang Technological University's Rajaratnam School, with participants from Nanjing University, the University of New South Wales, the Maritime Institute of Malaysia and the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research.

The Islamabad Center and Pakistan work

South Asia, and Pakistan in particular, became a visible extension of Grandview's work in 2023, the institution's tenth anniversary year. In July 2023 it set up an Islamabad Center. Its executive director, Naseem Khan Achakzai, was invited to speak at the Pakistan Governance Forum, organised by Pakistan's Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives in Islamabad on 25–26 July 2023, addressing a session on catalysing growth through the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) alongside planning minister Ahsan Iqbal and minister of state for foreign affairs Hina Rabbani Khar; the forum brought together more than 500 participants across 26 keynote sessions and 100 invited speakers.

On 20 September 2023 a memorandum of understanding between Grandview and Pakistan's National Defence University (NDU) was signed at the institution in Beijing, by Ren Libo and Pakistan's ambassador to China, Moin ul Haque, to enhance academic and research collaboration; Pakistan's federal cabinet had approved the agreement with the support of the education ministry, the Higher Education Commission and the law ministry. On 17 October 2023 Pakistani prime minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar met Ren in Beijing; Ren told him that in ten years Grandview had done extensive research on China–Pakistan relations and CPEC and put forward policy recommendations on the corridor from three perspectives — strategic significance, space for economic development and international third-party cooperation. Cooperation continued into 2024, when an NDU delegation visited Grandview on 14 May for detailed discussion of Pakistan's security and counter-terrorism situation, China–Pakistan counter-terrorism cooperation and jointly safeguarding the achievements of the Belt and Road.

China–US work and the road to 2035 report

In January 2024 Grandview launched, at its Beijing headquarters, a collaborative publication titled "US-China Relations and Their Impact on the Global Order to 2035," produced with PAX sapiens, a philanthropic foundation focused on preventing predictable and preventable catastrophic risks. The project grew out of a workshop held in Bangkok from 16 to 20 July 2023, where 25 former political figures, retired military officers, think tank experts and university scholars from China and the United States worked on the probable future of the relationship in 2035; the twelve-month collaboration was facilitated by Reos Partners, an international consulting firm specialising in multi-stakeholder processes. At the courtyard launch in Beijing on 5 January 2024, attended by former officials, experts and students from top Chinese universities, Ren Libo argued that the two sides needed to pay attention to divergences but put more effort into seeking common interests, setting common goals and taking common actions. Zhang Tuosheng, a chief research fellow at Grandview, was among the experts presenting the work.

The following month, on 1 February 2024, a Grandview delegation led by Ren called on Ouyang Yujing, China's ambassador to Malaysia, sharing the institution's latest research results in maritime security, South China Sea issues and China–US relations. Taken together — the Bangkok scenario exercise, the maritime divergence studies and the Southeast Asian dialogues — these activities show Grandview operating as a convenor of Track Two diplomacy as well as a supplier of reports, which is the dual role on which its influence rests.