This book offers a systematic assessment of how International Relations scholars in mainland China and analysts at Chinese foreign policy think tanks influence the construction of China’s national interest. The detailed analysis shows how proximity to the state and the state’s signaled demand for expertise facilitate and constrain influence and puts forward a new approach for identifying influence by applying frame analysis to 150 foreign policy statements and combining it with quantitative content analysis of 4000 expert publications. Offering a new way of assessing and explaining Chinese foreign policy experts’ influence, understanding the environment in which they operate, and providing suggestions on how to analyze official foreign policy statements, this volume will be of interest to scholars of Chinese foreign policy and anyone working on expert influence in non-democratic regimes.