Konstantinos Tsimonis

Konstantinos Tsimonis is a Lecturer in Chinese Society at the Lau China Institute, King’s College London. He has a PhD and an MSc from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, with an Onassis Foundation and an A. G. Leventis Foundation scholarship respectively). He previously taught courses on Chinese, East Asian and comparative politics at SOAS. He is a member of the editorial board of the People's Map of Global China, and of the Advisory Editorial Board of the Journal of the European Association for Chinese Studies.

Kostas is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations (IIR), Athens and a Fellow of the Mediterranean Programme for International Environmental Law and Negotiation (MEPIELAN), Athens. His books include a monograph titled "The Chinese Communist Youth League: Juniority and Responsiveness in a Party Youth Organization" by Amsterdam University Press (Amsterdam: 2021); and "Belt and Road: The First Decade" by Agenda Publishing (London: 2022), co-authored with Dr Igor Rogelja (UCL). He is currently working with Dr Fernanda Odilla (Bologna & KCL) on an edited volume titled "Corruption and Anti-Corruption Upside Down: New Perspectives from the Global South" for the Political Corruption and Governance Series, Palgrave Macmillan.

His articles have appeared in Modern China, Europe-Asia Studies, the Chinese Journal of International Politics, the Chinese Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Youth Studies, among others. His research has been funded by the British Academy and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, among other organisations.

Research
Konstantinos’ work concentrates on the ways institutional actors in China’s authoritarian polity (partially) adapt in order to perform new roles in the context of marketization and globalization, and their impact on policy-making, state-society relations and governance in China and abroad.

Under this broad theme, he has explored:

1) The efforts by state youth and feminist organisations in China to promote social policies on youth and women.

2) The evolution of China’s anticorruption efforts domestically and internationally.

3) The global footprint of Chinese SOEs on industrial relations and environmental standards in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Apart from his academic research, Konstantinos has also collaborated with civil society organisations and the private sector on various consultancy projects in the fields of Chinese politics, labour rights and corruption. He comments regularly on Chinese affairs in international media.

Teaching