In the context of the accelerated reconfiguration of the global knowledge system and the continuous evolution of governance paradigms, the internationalization process of China's public administration research has shown a more stable and diversified expansion trend. Chinese scholars not only continuously export their indigenous governance experiences, but also demonstrate a more diverse exploration orientation in theoretical construction and method application, actively participating and promoting the diversified development of the global public administration research.

Since 2019, this research team has been continuously tracking the public administration research papers related to Chinese themes published by Chinese mainland scholars in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) journals. Continuing with this research tradition, this study further analyzed the public administration research on Chinese themes published by Chinese mainland scholars in SSCI journals in 2025. Through coding and analysis of dimensions such as the author information, collaboration, research topics, and research methods, this study presents the phased features of research in this field, continues its evolutionary trajectory, and provides supplementary evidence for understanding Chinese public administration research from the perspective of international publication.

In 2025, Chinese public administration research continued to maintain a steady development trend on the international academic stage. The influence of Chinese public administration research in the international academic community continued to increase. It is worth noting that in terms of methodology, quantitative methods remain the dominant research orientation for international publications, contrasting with the growing emphasis on case studies in the domestic academic context, highlighting the differences in the preference for knowledge production logic across different academic fields.

This year's research topics continue the structural characteristics of recent years and also bring attention to emerging issues. The key research topics this year are environmental policies, governance and collaboration, e-government, motivation and human resource management, and government relationships. Among them, environmental policies have the largest number of publications, and e-government has seen the most significant growth. As an important part of international public administration research, Chinese public administration research is currently in a critical stage of transitioning from scale expansion to quality improvement. Currently, the core issue of disciplinary development is to strengthen theoretical originality and form a distinctive Chinese perspective.

Against the dual background of profound changes in the global governance system and the continuing advances in the modernization of Chinese national governance, research on public administration in China is increasingly shifting from local practices to international dialogues. As the number of articles published by Chinese scholars in international academic journals has significantly increased, research on Chinese public administration has become an important component of the global knowledge production system, providing a distinctive window for the international academic community to understand China's governance experience.

Since 2019, this team has continuously tracked Chinese-themed papers published by China's mainland scholars in Social Science Citation Index(SSCI)-source journals within the field of public administration, systematically analyzing their research characteristics and trends. Building on this research tradition, this study provides a systematic analysis of research conducted by China's mainland scholars in Chinese contexts published throughout 2023 in SSCI journals in the field of international public administration. By exploring key dimensions, such as publication sources, the authors' educational backgrounds, professional positions and collaborative networks, research themes, research methods, analytical techniques, and data sources, this research tracks the latest developments in Chinese public administration research and evaluates its emerging trends within the global discourse.

The results reveal that the internationalization of public administration research in China continued to deepen in 2023. While the authors' profiles exhibit increased diversity and generational shifts, their cooperation patterns demonstrate a growing trend toward strengthening local cooperation. Methodologically, quantitative research remains dominant, with experimental methods gradually emerging. The research subjects are closely aligned within the context of China's governance practices, focusing on topics such as collaboration in governance, green development policy practices, economic policy logic, intergovernmental relations, and incentive mechanisms in the public sector.

As scholars from China's mainland are increasingly playing a leading role in international academic discourse, the internationalization of public administration research in China has continued to deepen, substantially contributing to the establishment of a global discursive framework that incorporates insights from Chinese governance. This series of studies continues to focus on tracking the latest advancements in international academic publications in the field of public administration, aiming to provide valuable references for promoting the internationalization process of the public administration discipline within China.

With the ongoing advances in constructing an indigenous public administration knowledge system, scholars from the Chinese mainland have increasingly explored public management issues, seeking to interpret and explain public administration phenomena within the context of Chinese modernization. In doing so, they contribute a distinctive “Chinese voice” to the international academic community, presenting “Chinese stories” and striving to establish systematic Chinese perspectives within the universal patterns of global public administration.

Since 2019, this research team has continuously tracked China-themed studies published by China's mainland scholars in public administration journals in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), systematically analyzing their characteristics and trends. Building on this tradition, this research conducted a comprehensive analysis of China-themed articles published in 2024 by China's mainland scholars in SSCI-indexed journals in the field of public administration. Through an exploration of the outlets, author profiles, institutional positions, collaboration networks, and the thematic and methodological orientations of the studies, this research highlights the latest trajectories in Chinese public administration research and considers the implications for global scholarly debates.

In 2024, the internationalization of Chinese public administration research continued to deepen. The number of China-themed articles published by China's mainland scholars in SSCI-indexed journals continued to grow, with journal coverage remaining stable. However, there were fluctuations in publications in certain high-impact journals. The influence of domestically trained and early-career scholars increased, and small-scale research teams and collaborations among mainland institutions became more prominent. Methodologically, quantitative approaches remained dominant, with notable increases in survey, experimental, and quasi-experimental studies, as well as in the use of first-hand data.

The focus of this year's research converged around five areas: interactions among multiple actors in governance, the institutional logic and practical challenges of environmental governance, human resource management in the public sector, the incentive structure and bureaucratic behavioral dynamics under institutional constraints, and the application of e-government and digital technologies. These trends reflect the field's academic orientation in its active response to the demands of national governance modernization and the need to address pressing real-world challenges. As an essential component of the global knowledge system in public administration, research on Chinese public administration offers the international academic and practitioner communities a distinctive lens through which to understand China's governance experience, as reflected in the shared debates in international academic journals