About the Occasional Paper

This paper examines how China’s Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) serves as a vehicle for advancing its Human Intelligence (HUMINT) strategy across the world. Introduced by President Xi Jinping in 2023, the GCI complements earlier initiatives like the Global Development Initiative and Global Security Initiative to shape an alternative to the Western-led international order. While presented as a framework for cultural dialogue, diversity, and shared values, the GCI enables China to build long-term influence networks rooted in ideology, soft power, and strategic positioning. The paper argues that China’s HUMINT strategy is distinctive for its scale, decentralisation, and integration with cultural diplomacy, diaspora mobilisation, party-to-party engagement, and multilateral institutions such as the United Nations. Beijing leverages educational exchanges, tourism, Confucius Institutes, sister-city partnerships, Buddhist diplomacy, and youth organisations to cultivate access, shape narratives, and collect information. The International Department of the Chinese Communist Party and front entities such as the Chinese International Education Foundation and Chinese Students and Scholars Associations play a key role in outreach and covert influence. By embedding its personnel, funding, platforms, and values within global systems, China blends soft power with clandestine intelligence collection. The paper concludes that the GCI represents an evolving and under-recognised tool for long-term ideological, cultural, and strategic penetration.