“…These findings are consistent with prior research across other HSS fields, including economics (Piracha et al, 2022), public administration (Kim et al, 2019), and archelogy (Wei et al, 2023), all of which have noted an increasing presence and influence of Chinese scholars in international journals, even those with high impact factors. These outcomes underscore the agency of Chinese actors to participate actively in international publishing and reflect the success of the policies and reforms implemented by the Chinese government and universities aimed at build world-class universities, such as the talent programs to attract and recruit overseas Chinese academics, the introduction of tenure-track systems that provide faculty with more resources but also great publication pressure, and incentive schemes to boost international publications (Lu, 2022;Poole & Xu, 2022). However, the agency of Chinese actors is constrained by the center-periphery structure, which is first manifested in the prevalence of international collaborative articles among the Chinese-affiliated international publications.…”