Introduction

This chapter analyses the development of narratives surrounding the term ‘dual circulation’ (双循环 shuangxunhuan), often qualified as ‘domestic and international dual circulation’ (国内国际双循环 guonei guoji shuangxunhuan), which became an important element in China's policy making in 2020, and following its first mention by Xi Jinping in May 2020 has become central to the framework of China's 14th Five Year Plan, promulgated in March 2021. Dual circulation was written into the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Constitution, which serves as the party's basic programme, after Xi Jinping referred to it in his report to the Party Congress in 2022 (Chinese Communist Party, 2022). This has led to discussion of dual circulation outside China, which can also be framed in terms of narratives. The chapter analyses the genesis and development of the dual circulation narrative in China, its transmission and reception outside China, and narratives of dual circulation developed in Europe in response.

Narrative has become a widely accepted tool of analysis in the social sciences, including in the field of International Relations (IR). According to Roberts, ‘Narratives help to construct personal and social identity, provide sense and order to experience, and frame and structure action. In other words, the ontology of the human world is defined by the existence and ubiquity of private and public narratives …’ (Roberts, 2006: 710). Although, as will be described later in the chapter, the policy content of dual circulation as used in China is largely economic, focusing as it does on the relationship between two ‘circuits’, one within China's domestic economy and the second in the external economy, this does not make narrative irrelevant to the analysis of its development either in China or abroad.