Raoul Bunskoek heads the Clingendael China Centre and is Senior Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael. He conducts research on China’s foreign policy and diplomacy, Chinese roles in international organisations (BRICS, SCO), China’s (international) political economy, and Chinese development thinking and practices abroad, particularly on the African continent. Raoul previously was Senior Research Fellow at the European Research Council’s ‘Africa’s Infrastructure Globalities’ (INFRAGLOB) project, located at the University of Bayreuth, Germany.
His recent publications focus on the BRICS (2025) and how new BRICS countries such as the UAE (2025) and Indonesia (forthcoming, 2026) motivate their BRICS memberships, the lifeworlds and career trajectories of Chinese transnational professionals in Africa, understanding Chinese development practices in Africa (2024), China’s Community of Common Destiny and the Belt and Road Initiative (2021) and the nature of China’s foreign policy (2019).
Raoul also frequently appears in the media, such as in Nieuwsuur, the NRC, NU.nl, and the Reformatorisch Dagblad.
Raoul holds PhD and MA degrees in Political Science and International Relations from National Taiwan University, and a BA in Chinese Studies from Leiden University. During his PhD, he worked for the Hu Fu Center in East Asia Democratic Studies and the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica (IPSAS) in Taipei, Taiwan (R.O.C.).
Raoul speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese and has extensive fieldwork experience. He recently spent time in the Caribbean Parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (January 2026), Shanghai (December 2025), Malaysia and Indonesia (July 2025), Qatar and the UAE (May 2025), investigated the nature and training of Chinese transnational professionals and cadres in Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen, and Hong Kong (July-August 2024, and November-December 2023), Washington, D.C. (March 2023), Singapore (June 2022), and Taipei (April-May 2022), and observed and participated in the daily lives of Chinese mining, construction, and transportation professionals in Copperbelt Province and Lusaka, Zambia (June-July 2023).
For an extensive list of Raoul’s policy reports and academic articles, see his Google Scholar profile here.
