China Public Administration Review

2026, v.8;No.26(01) 147-173

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Steadying Expectations and Guiding Direction: The Thematic Evolution and Interagency Networks in China's Policy Briefings

LING Jiaheng;WENG Zongyuan;LIU Lun;

Abstract：

In a context of rising uncertainties, management of policy expectations has become a central task in state governance. This study examines the State Council's regular policy briefings as an important instrument for communicating policy expectations in China. Policy briefings are organized events at which senior officials explain major policies, respond to questions from domestic and foreign media, and provide information about future policy direction. They are designed to reduce policy ambiguities, narrow information and expectation asymmetries, and compensate for a decision-making process that often compresses formal deliberations and shifts some of the coordination to the implementation stage. This analysis, using the full transcripts of 365 regular policy briefings held between 2015 and 2023, builds an integrated research framework that combines text and network analysis. First, it applies neural topic modeling and class-based TF-IDF methods to identify the main themes in each briefing and to construct topic representations over time. Second, it uses a semantic matching procedure based on a Chinese Sentence BERT model to measure how strongly each briefing relates to four key governance relationships, namely center-local, government-business, government-citizen, and domestic-international relations. A dynamic topic analysis and a simple smoothing of the time series are then used to trace how the salience of themes and relationship scores change across different policy cycles and social contexts. Third, a social network analysis of co-participation is conducted to map the structure of interagency collaboration, whereby the nodes represent ministries, commissions, and other organizations, and the links are weighted by the number of joint appearances in the same briefing. The empirical results show that the relative salience of the four governance relationships varies over time. Center-local relations remain highly salient throughout the period and reach local peaks around the time of the launch and implementation of successive five-year plans, suggesting that policy briefings play an important role in vertical coordination. Government-business communications are strong during the early years and thereafter on average decline, though they still rise during specific reform periods related to the business environment. Government-citizen communications became more prominent during the COVID-19 period, especially when public health measures and social protection policies faced frequent adjustments. Domestic-international relations are less salient on average, reflecting the predominantly domestic orientation of the policy briefings. The analysis of keywords and media questions shows that briefings consistently highlight issues related to market actors and the business environment, science and technology innovation, industrial development, risk prevention, and social security, while also responding to short-term concerns. The study of media participation indicates a clear hierarchical division among domestic outlets, with central state media focusing on macroeconomic and core livelihood issues and specialized outlets covering their professional fields. This reveals a regional and functional differentiation among foreign outlets. The network of interagency cooperation displays a small-world pattern with a high clustering coefficient, whereby core economic agencies, such as the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Commerce, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, occupy central and bridging positions, while the line ministries with specialized mandates tend to cooperate repeatedly with a smaller set of partners. Overall, the study conceptualizes the State Council policy briefings as a useful instrument for managing policy expectations in China, extends the focus of expected communication research beyond monetary and fiscal policy to a broader range of policy domains and government actors, and documents how the briefing agendas, the media channels, and interagency cooperation combine to guide expectations in a setting of increasing uncertainty.

Key Words： policy briefing;policy expectations;expected communication;topic modeling;interagency cooperation

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Authors: LING Jiaheng;WENG Zongyuan;LIU Lun;

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