This research reviews and delineates the status quo and dynamics of studies on the international influence and the power of academic discourse. It develops an integrated theoretical framework on evaluating the global impact and contribution of social science and applies it to the field of China’s political science research. Based on about two million of global bibliometric information, the research reveals that China is still not yet a major player in the arena of political sciences, but the impact and contribution of Chinese political scientists have increasingly dramatically over the period of 2001 and 2020 with highly unbalanced power at different themes. The study contributes to a dialogue between normative research and empirical investigations on the global power of academic discourse of social science research. Policy implications on research assessment are also discussed in the end.