Dominik Mierzejewski is an Associate Professor at the University of Łódź, where he leads the Department of Asian Studies and the Centre for Asian Affairs (think-tank), specializing in China’s political discourse, local China and China’s international behaviour. Mierzejewski studied at Shanghai International Studies University and was a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He is the author of ‘China’s Provinces and the Belt and Road Initiative’ (Routledge, 2021) and has published in journals such as Asian Affairs and the Journal of Contemporary China and co-authored ‘China’s Vertical Multilateralism and the Global South Narratives, Networks, and Money’ (Routledge, 2025). He serves as a principal investigator in grants supported by the Polish National Science Centre and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Poland.