Taking China Seriously: Relationality, Tianxia , and the “Chinese School” of International Relations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salvatore Babones
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
East Asian ◽  
World System ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
State System ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Central State ◽  
Hub And Spoke ◽  
Chinese School ◽  
Tributary System

China’s economic rise has been accompanied by the maturation and increasing professionalization of academic disciplines in China, including the discipline of international relations. The emergence of an indigenous international relations discipline in China has led to an intense debate about the development of a distinctive “Chinese School” that draws on China’s intellectual traditions and historical record to inspire the development of new international relations theories. While the debate continues, the outlines of a Chinese School are becoming clear. The Chinese School of international relations theory draws on Confucian concepts of relationality and hierarchy to theorize the character of the relations between countries rather than focus on the attributes of countries themselves. It also highlights the historical existence of interstate systems organized in a hub-and-spoke pattern around a single, central state. The premodern East Asian world-system in which China was embedded and classical Chinese scholars developed their ideas was a central state system. Premodern China was always by far the dominant state in East Asia, with the result that international relations in the East Asian world-system exhibited a hub-and-spoke pattern centered on China, as in the tributary system of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Moreover the Confucian worldview that ultimately came to be China’s state ideology served in effect as the governing moral code of the system as a whole. The combination of a central state structure with a universal moral code created what in Chinese is called a tianxia (“all under heaven”), a world-embracing system of governance centered on a particular state, in this case China. In a tianxia system international relations tend to be hierarchical because of the clear power differentials between the central state and other states. They can be either expressive (showing social solidarity) or purely instrumental, depending on the stance taken by the central state. Chinese School international relations theorists tend to assume that the “best” (most stable, most peaceful, most prosperous, etc.) world-system configuration would be a tianxia system dominated by expressive rationality and centered on China, but this is no more self-evident than the widely held Western preference for a liberal, rules-based order. What Chinese School international relations theory really offers the discipline is a new set of concepts that can be applied to the theorization and empirical analysis of today’s millennial world-system. This postmodern interstate system appears to be a central state system with a universal moral code, an American tianxia based on individualism. The historical Confucian Chinese tianxia may be the best precedent for modeling this system.

Geopolitical Economy and the Chimera of Hegemony

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 281-293
Author(s):  
Rowan Lubbock
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
State System ◽  
International Regimes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Discipline ◽  
Capitalist State ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility

Abstract This review critically engages with Radhika Desai’s concept of geopolitical economy as a framework for understanding the evolution of the capitalist state system. While presenting a useful challenge to many of the most deeply-held beliefs in International Relations theory, Desai’s over-reliance on a geopolitical lens produces a relatively one-sided account of the ways in which capitalism forges distinct international regimes and ideological formations under a given set of historical conditions of possibility. Thus, Desai’s somewhat opaque reading of the international relations of capitalism clouds our understanding of what the current conjuncture might entail for any possible future beyond the social discipline of capital.

scholarly journals Contesting the Confucian peace: Civilization, barbarism and international hierarchy in East Asia

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 740-764 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Phillips
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
East Asian ◽  
European History ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Diverse Communities ◽  
Tributary System ◽  
International Systems

International Relations scholars have turned to China’s tributary system to broaden our understanding of international systems beyond the ‘states-under-anarchy’ model derived from European history. This scholarship forms the inspiration and foil for this article, which refines International Relations scholars’ conceptualizations of how international hierarchy arose and endured in East Asia during the Manchu Qing Dynasty — China’s last and most territorially expansive imperial dynasty. I argue that existing conceptions of East Asian hierarchy overstate the importance of mutual identification between the region’s Confucian monarchies in sustaining Chinese hegemony. Instead, we can understand Qing China’s dominance only once we recognize the Manchus as a ‘barbarian’ dynasty, which faced unique challenges legitimating its rule domestically and internationally. As ‘barbarian’ conquerors, Manchus did not secure their rule by simply conforming to pre-existing Sinic cultural norms. Instead, like other contemporary Eurasian empires, they maintained dominance through strategies of heterogeneous contracting. Domestically, they developed customized legitimacy scripts tailored to win the allegiance of the empire’s diverse communities. Internationally, meanwhile, the Manchus strategically appropriated existing Confucian norms and practices of tributary diplomacy in ways that mitigated — but did not eliminate — Confucian vassals’ resentment of ‘barbarian’ domination. East Asian hierarchy may have been more peaceful than Westphalian anarchy, but the absence of war masks a more coercive reality where the appearance of Confucian conformity obscured more fractious relations between Qing China and even its ostensibly most loyal vassals.

scholarly journals Making Process, Not Progress: ASEAN and the Evolving East Asian Regional Order

2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 148-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Martin Jones ◽  
Michael L.R. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
International Relations ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Asian Financial Crisis ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Security Community ◽  
Regional Order

Since the Asian financial crisis of 1998, regional scholars and diplomats have maintained that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) represents an evolving economic and security community. In addition, many contend that what is known as the ASEAN process not only has transformed Southeast Asia's international relations, but has started to build a shared East Asian regional identity. ASEAN's deeper integration into a security, economic, and political community, as well as its extension into the ASEAN Plus Three processes that were begun after the 1997 financial crisis, offers a test case of the dominant assumptions in both ASEAN scholarship and liberal and idealist accounts of international relations theory. Three case studies of ASEAN operating as an economic and security community demonstrate, however, that the norms and practices that ASEAN promotes, rather than creating an integrated community, can only sustain a pattern of limited intergovernmental and bureaucratically rigid interaction.

scholarly journals Revenge of Geopolitics: Rise of China and the Confines of Asian Econophoria

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-175
Author(s):  
Richard Javad Heydarian
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
East Asia ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
East Asian ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Regional Security ◽  
Security Architecture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rise Of China

The paper examines the evolution of the Asian regional security architecture in the past three decades, evaluating relations between China and its neighbors, and considering various approaches in International Relations theory. First, the paper examines the assumptions of liberal institutionalism in the context of “econophoria,” assessing its merits in East Asia. Second, the paper addresses China and its relations with the East Asian neighborhood in the latter decades of the 20th century. Third, the paper examines growing territorial tensions between China and its neighbors in the past decade -- and how this undermines regional security and regional integration. Lastly, the paper evaluates the contributions of alternative IR theories such as realism and constructivism in providing a better understanding of China’s new assertiveness.

South Korea’s Strategy toward a Rising China, Security Dynamics in East Asia, and International Relations Theory

Asian Survey ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 707-730 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min-hyung Kim
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
East Asia ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Leadership Change ◽  
Hub And Spoke ◽  
The North ◽  
Perception Of Threat ◽  
The Us ◽  
Structural Variables ◽  
Rising China

This article contends that South Korea’s behaviors toward China since 1992 can be fully understood when the structural variables of the strategic environment—i.e., economic interdependence, the US-centered hub-and-spoke system, and the North Korean threat—are combined with the domestic variable of Seoul’s leadership change and its perception of threat.

American Tianxia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salvatore Babones
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
World View ◽  
World System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Homogeneous State ◽  
Central State ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Incentive Structures

The United States has become the central state of a global world-system. Analogous in structure to China's historical Ming Dynasty tianxia ("all under heaven"), the American Tianxia is centered on the United States but incorporates other countries in proportion to their acceptance of individualistic world-society principles like human rights, democracy, and rule of law. Contrary to declinist narratives, the prominence of the United States in global distinction hierarchies is solidifying, because the externalities generated by membership in global networks ensure that people value access to these networks even when the interests of their countries clash with US interests. In the state-centric world-view of international relations scholars, China is a potential challenger to US unipolarity, but by 2010 the five Anglo-Saxon countries are likely to reach population parity with China, while over the same period hundreds of thousands of elite Chinese are likely to move their families to the United States, primarily through birth tourism. Continued US dominance is based on the incentive structures faced by these and other individuals, not on the vagaries of international relations. The American Tianxia is thus the Hegelian universal and homogeneous state that Francis Fukuyama was looking for but did not find at the end of history. It constitutes a new, millennial world-system that is very stable and likely to last for several centuries.

Sinophone and Japanese International Relations Theory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ching-Chang Chen
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Epistemic Communities ◽  
Shared Resources ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Ethnic Chinese ◽  
Local Resources ◽  
Chinese School

By “Sinophone and Japanese International Relations Theory,” this article means nascent theoretical constructs about the “international” in Sinophone and Japanese International Relations (IR) epistemic communities that draw mainly on their local ideas, experiences, and practices. “Sinophone IR” here is not limited to the community of IR researchers in the People’s Republic of China (PRC); it also includes that of Taiwan and other overseas Chinese-speaking researchers, including non-ethnic-Chinese academics who substantially engage with “Chinese” thought and traditions in their own right, i.e., not for testing established, mainstream IR theories. Similarly, “Japanese IR” is not narrowly defined as a group of IR scholars with Japanese citizenship. Rather, it includes IR researchers based in Japan and their overseas colleagues who take “Japanese” ideas and history seriously. It is thus possible to research and write from these two epistemic communities simultaneously; so to speak, their boundaries are neither fixed nor immutable. The majority of the IR academics in these communities are not concerned with, or involved in, homegrown theorizing, and scholars associated with the “Chinese School of IR” have not engaged with ostensibly Japanese resources for inspiration. However, some homegrown theorists have started drawing on ideas and practices from the other side or shared resources, e.g., Buddhism. Such theorizing synergy and cross-fertilization are likely to continue, especially over such notions as ontology and relationality. This article maps out the literature on homegrown knowledge production in Japanese and Sinophone IR communities and their theorizing endeavors. It will assist readers in comparing and evaluating the originality and contribution of Sinophone and Japanese IR scholarship to global IR knowledge, as well as their shortcomings. Following this introduction, the second section locates the interests of constructing alternative theories in Japanese and Sinophone IR in the wider context of ongoing debates on how to make the theory and practice of global politics more diverse and equitable. The third section introduces key journals and reference resources, followed by the fourth covering the state of the field in Japanese and Sinophone IR. The fifth reviews the debates over the creation of a “national school of IR” in their respective epistemic communities. The last four sections focus on theorizing efforts in Japanese and Sinophone IR as well as their uses of local resources in academic and policy discourses. For the sake of stylistic clarity, surname precedes given name for all East Asian individuals mentioned in the following commentary paragraphs and annotations.

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