Abstract
AbstractThis article aims to revisit the enterprise of the Chinese School (CS) of IR and discuss how it should be viewed and handled in the discipline, specifically from within the analytical framework of the power/resistance nexus put forward by Foucault, Bhabha, and Spivak. The argument of this article is twofold. Firstly, the CS attempts to reinvigorate traditional Chinese concepts (that is, humane authority, the Tianxia system, and relationality), which mimick Western mainstream IR. These concepts channel the CS into a realist notion of power, a liberal logic of cosmopolitanism, and a constructivist idea of relationality. Thus, the CS uses against the West concepts and themes that the West currently use against the non-Western world. Nevertheless, as the second part of the argument will demonstrate, the enterprise of the CS can still be justified because it can be regarded as a reverse discourse; mimicking yet altering the original meanings of the taken-for-granted concepts, ideas, and principles used by mainstream IR scholars. Moreover, with the judicious use of strategic essentialism, the CS can potentially be one local group in a wider effort to contest diffused and decentred forms of Western domination through linking various struggles to form a unified ‘counter-hegemonic bloc’ of post-Western IR in the discipline.
Highlights
This article aims to revisit the enterprise of the Chinese School (CS) of International Relations (IR) and discuss how it should be viewed and handled in the discipline, from within the analytical framework of the power/resistance nexus put forward by Foucault, Bhabha, and Spivak
As the second part of the argument will demonstrate, the enterprise of the CS can still be justified because it can be regarded as a reverse discourse; mimicking yet altering the original meanings of the taken-for-granted concepts, ideas, and principles used by mainstream IR scholars
As early as 1977, Stanley Hoffmann claimed that International Relations (IR) is an American social science,1 and according to Arlene B
Summary
As early as 1977, Stanley Hoffmann claimed that International Relations (IR) is an American social science, and according to Arlene B. Yan Xuetong’s moral realism, Zhao Tingyang’s conception of the Tianxia system, and Qin Yaqing’s relational theory of world politics are the most representative and influential of this movement. Mimicking Western perspectives in the Chinese School: Yan Xuetong’s moral realism, Zhao Tingyang’s Tianxia system, and Qin Yaqing’s relational theory of world politics. I will briefly explain the theories of the three most representative and influential Chinese scholars in this movement, namely: Yan Xuetong’s moral realism, Zhao Tingyang’s conception of the Tianxia system, and Qin Yaqing’s relational theory of world politics. Like Yan and Zhao, Qin Yaqing of the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing suggests that ancient Chinese political thought offers a different approach to global problems. Social actors actively make use of the relational circles for instrumental purposes, defined in terms of both immediate tangible and material gains, as well as the long-term intangible and nonmaterial, and above all, to maintain a social order in which each different individual actor lives in harmony with every other
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