DATE: 23 - 24 SEPTEMBER 2025 | VENUE: INDIA INTERNATIONAL CENTER (IIC), NEW DELHI
Theme: China’s ‘Dream’ for a New Mandate of Power
The 21st century is witnessing a profound transformation in the architecture of global power, marked by the rise of China and challenges to the post-Cold War liberal order. China’s strategic trajectory is no longer confined to material advancement alone but also reflects a concerted attempt to manifest an alternative vision of international order.
The theme of this year’s conference, China’s ‘Dream’ for a New Mandate of Power, invites critical engagement with the evolving ideological, economic and geopolitical foundations of China’s contemporary statecraft. The phrase deliberately echoes the ancient Confucian principle of the Mandate of Heaven (天命), which conferred legitimacy upon rulers contingent on their ability to sustain order and deliver prosperity. In the modern context, this moral-political logic is being reconstituted and internationalized by exporting a model of governance and development rooted in its own strategic culture.
President Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” (中国梦) is not merely a nationalist project or a narrative of rejuvenation, but also a conceptual umbrella that asserts China’s right to reshape the norms, hierarchies, and rules of the international system. This includes efforts to reconfigure regional orders around the world and offer a putative alternative to the liberal-democratic consensus through initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Global Security Initiative (GSI), and Global Civilization Initiative (GCI).
The theme of this year’s conference encapsulates this substantive and normative pivot. China’s approach foregrounds transactional diplomacy, economic interdependence, and shifting security architectures. This pursuit, however, is neither linear nor unchallenged.
China’s external projection faces growing pushback across multiple frontiers: strategic contestation in the Indo-Pacific, ideological resistance from liberal democracies, structural vulnerabilities within its own economy, and increasing scrutiny from Global South actors wary of dependency and political leverage. In this contested landscape, there are other great powers emerging as strategic balancers with their own normative vision of order, development, and global engagement.
Against this backdrop, the 2025 Global Conference on New Sinology (GCNS) aims to explore whether China’s global posture constitutes a new kind of mandate and what this approach means for the world.
This year’s GCNS 2025 will follow ORCA’s distinctive structure, combining Thematic Panels, Roundtables, Keynote Addresses, Expert Speaks and Closed door Roundtables. This amalgamated format is ideated with the vision of promoting cross-disciplinary dialogue and enabling policy-academic synergy—hallmarks of the GCNS tradition.
GCNS 2024
GCNS 2023
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