Chinas Unique International Relations Theory - Essay Example

15 May China’s Unique International Relations Theory China is one of the most powerful countries in the world today with respect to almostany aspect of growth, development and its people. The country has made various amendments in its strategic thinking and requirements in order to deem fit with the rest of the world and emerge on top. All this has also helped the country to become an independent power in the eyes of the rest of the world with time as well. The foreign or international policy of this country is the policy or theory by way of which it interacts with other nations and also the outlook that it has towards other nations around the world. According to many sources the international theory and policy of China has been said to be ‘highly influential’. The main objectives for the reason for the unique policy that it upholds with pride are to bring about independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. 1. International Relations as a sub field of political science came into existence in China much later than in the West. It underwent periods of twists and turns before the 1980s. In the early 1950s, only the People’s University of China (or Renmin University of China or Renda for short) had a Department of Foreign Affairs, which was enlarged to form the Foreign Affairs College in 1955. 2. Entering into the 1960s, Chinese leaders began to pay more attention to international studies due to the Sino–Soviet convicts. In 1963 Peking University, Fudan University, and Renda each set up a Department of International Politics. At the same time, 10 research institutes were established under the control of various government agencies such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the New China [Xinhua] News Agency. 3. The start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 put an end to IR teaching and research throughout the country. After the Cultural Revolution, IR studies in China entered into a new period of development. Institutions of IR studies were restored and enlarged. More textbooks and academic journals were published. Western IR theories were introduced into China. Many Chinese students and scholars went abroad to study and hundreds of Western scholars came to teach IR in Chinese universities. Since the late 1980s, Chinese scholars began to think about theoretical studies of IR, and some of them emphasized the construction of an IR theory with Chinese characteristics. Recent Chinese foreign policy makers may be seen to adhere to the realist rather than the liberal school of international relations theory. Thus, in sharp contrast to the Soviet Union and the United States, China has not been given off to advancing any higher international ideological interests such as world communism or world democracy since the Cold War; or in other words, its ideology appears to be secondary to advancing its national interest. China is also a vital member of many international organizations; with itself holding key positions like the permanent member on the UN Security Council and is also a leader in many areas such as non-proliferation, peacekeeping and resolving regional conflicts. Since 1978 the international relations theory in China has developed to a great extent and the entire theory is based on the works of two parallel processes that are simultaneously trying to establish their superiority within the country, the two of them being; (Yaqing, Qin) 1. A tenacious learning process aimed at trying to acquire knowledge and along with it, generation. a) Learning and acquiring knowledge from countries situated in the West like the US, through which the international relations theory has slowly and gradually developed as an independent discipline within the country of China. b) Furthermore as discussed above, the result of this learning has led to the formation of different schools of thought which have given rise to thinking of Realism, Liberalism and Constructivism. c) All these different thought processes have also helped and led to the rise and growth in the national and international integrity of the country. 2. Process of developing a Chinese school of thought of international relations theory. According to a paper on the international relations theory of China, James C Hsiung writes that for more than approximately a thousand years until the West came in the 19th century, China was the world’s largest economy and was at the centre of an Asian system of international relations. ‘Existing IR theory, however, is extrapolated from empirical referents in the Western history of international relations since Westphalia. It draws heavily from the experience of the first-time upstarts after the Industrial Revolution, beginning with Britain, Napoleonic France, and post-Meiji Japan, and ending with Hitlerite Germany and Stalinist Russia. All of them used their new-found power in expansionism at other nations’ expense.’ Thus, the theory sees every rising power as a potential threat. It is disadvantaged by the lack of a precedent of a similar former hegemony that arose a second time following a long decline. Hence, the second rise of China requires rethinking of our theory. When looking at the mainstream international theories that other countries have been following for a long time all around the world, the field of international relations on China seems to be thus far and very much still dominated by neorealism, or structural realism, an updated form of the realist theory that has wielded overwhelming influence over the field for over half a century. While the pedigree of realism goes back to Thucydides, and Hobbes, among others, modern realism’s popularity surged in the wake of the ugly legacy of World War II. Nazi pursuit of brutal hegemony and world conquest had put into question the efficacy of international law and institutions, and had thus driven home to many IR students the absolute supremacy of power in world politics. This historical background seems to have frozen theory in time. With its added concern for structure, or how power distributes across the system, neorealism sees in the Westphalian system the defining attribute of anarchy, or lack of a supra-national authority such as a world government would embody. From the central premise of anarchy comes a derived imperative, self-help of states, which reconfirms the cardinal tenet of classicalrealism—i.e., quest for power as a sine qua non of statecraft—to the exclusion of normative desiderata such as values, order, and international law. A full review of the main IR theory is beyond the ken of this paper. However the focus here is to zero in on the theory’s inability to explain the international behaviour of the rising China and to venture into the underlining reasons for this failure. Where possible, I shall attempt to suggest how the weakness of the existing IR theory may be remedied, in view of what we learn from the reasons for China’s behavioural deviation from the usual mean. According to traditional Chinese thinking, theory is the systematic understanding of the laws of nature and human society. For most senior Chinese scholars, there are two schools of IR theories: the Western bourgeois IR theory and Marxist–Leninist or socialist IR theory. The senior scholar who made the distinction was Huan Xiang, when he said that ‘socialists have their own theoretical framework of International Relations. So do the bourgeoisie. There is a profound difference between the two’. During the Shanghai conference on IR theory in 1987, Hu Menghao emphatically stated that ‘there are many different kinds of IR theories in the world. But in the Z nal analysis there are only two. One is Marxist IR theory and the other is the bourgeois IR theory. It is impossible to have any IR theory that can transcend the ideologies of the two classes’. To these scholars, what separate one kind of theory from another is the interest of the class it serves. A bourgeois theory is ‘to safeguard the imperialist foreign policy and the imperialists’ interests’, while the socialist IR theory is ‘to serve to the victory of socialism’. Works Cited Yaqing, Qin. "Development of International Relations Theory in China." Sage: International Studies46.1-2 (2009): 185-201. Print. Xinning, Song. “Building International Relations Theory with Chinese Charatceristics.” Journal of Contemporary China 26.61-74 (2001). Print Yongjin Zhang. Reviewed work(s): Xin shiqi Zhongguo guoji guanxi lilun yanjiu (Research on International Relations Theories in China's New Era) by Lu Yi; Gu Guanfu; Yu Zhengliang; Fu Yaozu Guoji zhengzhi lilun tansuo zai Zhongguo (Explorations of Theories of International Politics in China) by Zi Zhongyun Xifang guoji zhengshixue: lishi yu lilun (The Discipline of International Politics in the West: History and Theory) by Wang Yizhou The China Journal No. 47 (Jan., 2002), pp. 101-108  Read More