Abstract
The Chinese government, especially under President Xi Jinping, is willing to propose an alternative to the existing US-led international order. Accordingly, new or alternative understandings of and approaches to the international order that are more finely attuned to China are increasingly sought, and it is therefore not surprising that the Chinese International Relations (IR) community is attempting to establish the conceptual or theoretical sources and normative rationales for an alternative international order by developing indigenous IR theories that reflect “Chinese characteristics”. However, whether China is able to define and actualise a “new normal” in international relations—whether, that is, it can have and exercise “normative power”—is contingent on the recognition of Chinese discourses of that alternative by other actors. A key question, then, is: if and to what extent are Chinese alternatives recognised beyond China? I address this question, with a focus on the issue of knowledge transmission and sharing in three large East Asian IR communities. More specifically, I analyse their conceptual, theoretical, and epistemological orientations. I also compare the orientations with American IR scholarship, using various forms of evidence, including the most recent Teaching, Research, and International Policy survey data.
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Notes
Of course, there are public statements by Chinese leaders that seem to support the post-war ‘liberal’ order; yet this does not indicate that Beijing is a custodian of the existing liberal order. Rather, as Yan Xuetong has pointed out, China views “national sovereignty, rather than international norms, as the fundamental principle on which an international order should rest.” Beijing’s emphasis on globalisation or international free trade does not resonate well with liberal values as such. The liberal world order matters for China to the extent that it is in “the conditions necessary for the country’s continued economic growth” (Yan 2019, 40–44).
Most recently, the China-initiated transnational free trade agreement (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) was signed by 15 Asia–Pacific countries, solidifying China’s growing influence in Asia.
The 2017 TRIP surveyed scholars of international relations in 36 countries and 14 languages to examine teaching and research trends and foreign policy views in the IR discipline. In Unites States, a total of 4,849 individuals (i.e. IR scholars who teach or research international relations at universities in the US) were surveyed; a response rate was 31.71%.
This trend has been criticised by several scholars: for example, in his recent study—which undertakes a topic-modelling algorithm analysis of 11,000 articles published over the past 25 years—Christopher Whyte (2019, 12–14) notes as follows: “factionalism based on paradigmatic training and debate… clearly influences the theoretical construction of much research” in the American IR community… Such works are “less likely to be pathbreaking.
This investigation is based on “data gathered from the databases of two Chinese academic institutions that provide full-text articles published in Chinese social sciences journals (http://www.nssd.org. http://epub.cnki.net/KNS), including these four IR journals: China’s National Social Science Database and China’s National Knowledge Infrastructure.”.
This investigation is based on the data gathered from the DBPIA, which provides full-text Korean scholarly articles published in social sciences journals, including KJIR Available at https://www.dbpia.co.kr/Journal/IssueList/PLCT00001172.
That these countries, especially China, have made substantial efforts to develop indigenous IR theories within the positivist conception of science because an indigenous theorising (i.e. to incorporate a particular culture or the worldview of a particular nation into theory) is deemed to be “unscientific” in positivism.
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This work was supported by the research fund of Hanyang University in 2022.
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Eun, YS. Alternative Order Without Alternative Norms?. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 15, 227–246 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-021-00339-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-021-00339-1