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<p>This article examines how a segment of Beijing’s middle class interpreted China’s international role amid geopolitical shifts. Drawing on interview-based fieldwork in Beijing, it argues that respondents’ accounts can be understood through a <i>tianxia–suzhi</i> nexus linking moralized visions of order with ideas of self-cultivation, social distinction, and national development. The interviews suggest that respondents combined pride in China’s rise with critical reflection on inequality, censorship, and foreign misrecognition, often seeking a balance between national confidence and self-critique. Shaped by education, class position, transnational experience, and selective media exposure, these narratives point to a form of pragmatic developmentalism rather than simple nationalism. Combining interpretive and discourse-analytic approaches, the article shows how middle-class respondents receive and reinterpret internationally relevant state narratives in everyday life. In doing so, it contributes to IR debates on legitimacy, nationalism, and non-Western conceptions of world order by showing how such narratives acquire social meaning beyond Party-state discourse.</p>

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China’s global role and its domestic reception: the tianxia–suzhi nexus among Beijing’s middle class

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月19日

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  • Alfonso Sánchez-Romera

摘要

This article examines how a segment of Beijing’s middle class interpreted China’s international role amid geopolitical shifts. Drawing on interview-based fieldwork in Beijing, it argues that respondents’ accounts can be understood through a tianxia–suzhi nexus linking moralized visions of order with ideas of self-cultivation, social distinction, and national development. The interviews suggest that respondents combined pride in China’s rise with critical reflection on inequality, censorship, and foreign misrecognition, often seeking a balance between national confidence and self-critique. Shaped by education, class position, transnational experience, and selective media exposure, these narratives point to a form of pragmatic developmentalism rather than simple nationalism. Combining interpretive and discourse-analytic approaches, the article shows how middle-class respondents receive and reinterpret internationally relevant state narratives in everyday life. In doing so, it contributes to IR debates on legitimacy, nationalism, and non-Western conceptions of world order by showing how such narratives acquire social meaning beyond Party-state discourse.