Speaker: Maria Adele Carrai, Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations of China, University of Oxford

***PLEASE NOTE THIS CRITICAL ISSUES TALK TAKES PLACE ON A THURSDAY, INSTEAD OF OUR USUAL WEDNESDAY TIME SLOT***

Drawing on the forthcoming book, China’s Normative Power in Cyberspace, this talk examines China’s growing role in shaping the norms, institutions, technologies, and governance practices underpinning the global digital order. Moving beyond the familiar framing of “digital authoritarianism,” it explores how Chinese actors seek to influence debates over cyber sovereignty, data governance, artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, and the role of the state in cyberspace. The talk asks a broader question: to what extent can China actually reshape global digital norms and governance? It distinguishes between China’s capacity to shape international discourse, build coalitions, promote institutional and technical practices, and generate norms that gain acceptance beyond China itself. In doing so, it considers both the reach and the limits of Chinese normative power and what China’s digital engagement reveals about the changing nature of international order.

Maria Adele Carrai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations and the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA) at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St Cross College. She previously served as Assistant Professor of Global China Studies at NYU Shanghai and taught as an adjunct at NYU School of Law. She has been an Associate at the Harvard University Asia Center since 2021 and an Adjunct Associate Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute since 2019.

Her research examines the history of international law in East Asia and investigates how China’s rise as a global power shapes norms and reconfigures the international order, with particular interests in sovereignty, extraterritoriality, and digital governance. She is the author of Sovereignty in China: A Genealogy of a Concept since 1840 (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and the forthcoming China’s Normative Power in Cyberspace (Routledge, 2026). She co-edited The China Questions 2: Critical Insights into US–China Relations (Harvard University Press, 2022) and The Cambridge History of International Law in Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2026). Her work has appeared in leading journals in international law and international relations.

She received her PhD from the University of Hong Kong, was awarded a three-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at KU Leuven, and was a fellow at the Italian Academy at Columbia University, the Princeton–Harvard China and the World Program, the Max Weber Programme at the European University Institute, and a Global Houser Fellow at NYU School of Law.