Chinese Concepts and Relational International Politics

Year 2018, Volume: 7 Issue: 1, 87 - 102, 03.07.2017

Emilian Kavalski

https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.325784

Cited By: 1

Abstract

The rise of China troubles the taken-for-granted epistemological and ontological

constitution of International Relations (IR) theory. The Greek term ‘theoria’

implied travelling to foreign locales with the aim of gaining illumination that

can then simultaneously inform and transform the ‘home’ of the traveler. Yet,

instead of travelling, IR theory engages in silencing. This paper undertakes

an interpretative journey of China’s IR concepts. In particular, it looks at the

notion of guanxi – one of the two terms that goes into the Chinese phrase for

International Relations (guoji guanxi). The contention is that ‘relationality’

renders a more accurate translation of guanxi in English. In the process, the

paper uncovers the practices of ‘international relationality’ as an opportunity

to redefine the ‘international’ as a co-dependent space where two or more

actors (despite their divergences) can interface into a dialogical community.

Keywords

Guanxi, relationality, post-Western International Relations, Chinese International Relations, relational International Relations

References

• Acharya, Amitav. “Ethnocentrism and Emanipatory IR Theory.” In (Dis)Placing Security: Critical Re-evaluations of the Boundaries of Security Studies, edited by S. Arnold and J.M. Beier, 1-18. Toronto, ON: Centre for International and Security Studies, 2000.
• Alston, Jon P. “Wa, Guanxi, and Inhwa: Managerial Principles in Japan, China, and Korea.” Business Horizons 32, no. 2 (1989): 26-31.
• Avelino, Flor, and Jan Rotmans. “Power in Transition: An Interdisciplinary Frameowrk to Study Power in Relation to Structural Change.” European Journal of Social Theory 12, no. 4 (2009): 543-69.
• Barbalet, Jack. “Guanxi, Tie Strength, and Network Attributes.” American Behavioural Scientist 59, no. 8 (2015): 1038-50.
• ———. “Market Relations as wuwei: Traditional Concepts in the Analysis of China’s Post-1978 Economy.” Asian Studies Review 35, no. 3 (2011): 335-54.
• Barkin, J. Samuel. Realist Constructivism: Rethinking International Relations Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
• Bell, Duran. “Guanxi: A Nesting of Groups.” Current Anthropology 41, no. 1 (2000): 132-8.
• Bilgin, Pinar. “Thinking Past Western IR.” Third World Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2008): 5-23.
• Bin, Yu. “China and Russia: Normalizing Their Relationship.” In Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics, edited by David Shambaugh, 228-47. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005.
• Carlson, Allen. “Moving Beyond Sovereignty? A Brief Consideration of Recent Changes in China’s Approach to International Order and the Emergence of the Tianxia Concept.” Journal of Contemporary China 20, no. 68 (2010): 89-102.
• Chang, Hui-Ching, and G. Richard Holt. “The Concept of Yuan and Chinese Interpersonal Relationships.” In Cross-Cultural Interpersonal Communication, edited by Stella Ting-Toomey and Felipe Corzenny, 28-57. London:Sage, 1991.
• Chen, Ching-Chang. “The Absence of Non-Western IR Theory in Asia Reconsidered.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 11, no. 1 (2011): 1-23.
• Chong, Melody P.M., Ping Ping Fu, and Yu Fan Shang. “Relational Power and Influence Strategies: A Step Further in Understanding Power Dynamics.” Chinese Management Studies 7, no. 1 (2013): 53-73.
• Chow, Rey. “Violence in the Other Country: China as Crisis, Spectacle, and Woman.” In Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, edited by Ann Russo, Lourdes Torres, and Chandra Talpade Monaty, 80-100. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991.
• Chowdhry, C. and S.M. Rai. “The Geographies of Exclusion and the Politics of Exclusion: Race-based Exclusions in the Teaching of International Relations.” International Studies Perspectives 10, no. 1 (2009): 84-91.
• Coles, Romand. Visionary Pragmatism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.
• Contessi, Nicola P. “Foreign and Security Policy Diversification in Eurasia: Issue Splitting, Co-alignment, and Relational Power.” Problems of Post-Communism 62, no. 5 (2015): 299-315.
• DeGlopper, Donald R. Lukang: Commerce and Community in a Chinese City. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995.
• Farh, Jiing-Lih, Anne S. Tsui, Katherine Xin, and Bor-Shiuan Cheng. “The Influence of Relational Demography and Guanxi: The Chinese Case.” Organization Science 9, no. 4 (1998): 471-88.
• Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge, 2002.
• Gao, Yanli. “China’s World View and World Historical Studies.” Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica 20, no. 1(2008): 255-68.
• Gilpin, Robert. War and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
• Gold, Thomas, Dong Ghine, and David L. Wank. Social Connections in China: Institutions, Culture, and the Nature of Guanxi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Hammond, Scott C., and Lowell M. Glenn. “The Ancient Practice of Chinese Social Networking: Guanxi and Social Network Theory.” E:CO 6, no. 1/2 (2004): 24-31.
• Heffner, Lanette. Inside the Dragon’s Briefcase: China’s Emergent Economy. San Antonio, TX: University of Texas,2008.
• Heng, Yee-Kuang. “Ghosts in the Machine: Is IR Eternally Haunted by the Spectre of Old Concepts.” International Relations 47, no. 5 (2010): 535-56.
• Ho, David Y.F. “On the Concept of Face.” American Journal of Sociology 81, no. 4 (1976): 867-84.
• ———. “Selfhood and Identity in Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism: Contrasts with the West.”Journal of the Theory of Social Behaviour 25, no. 2 (1995): 115-39.
• Hückel, Bettina. “Theory of International Relations with Chinese Characteristics: The Tianxia System from a Metatheoretical Perspective.” Diskurs 8, no. 2 (2012): 34-64.
• Hwang, Kwang-kuo. “Face and Favour: The Chinese Power Game.” American Journal of Sociology 92, no. 4 (1987): 944-74.
• Jia, Wenshan. “An Intercultural Communication Model of International Relations: The Case of China.” In Challenges to Chinese Foreign Policy: Diplomacy, Globalization, and the Next World Power, edited by Yufan Hao, C.X. George Wei, and Lowell Dittmer, 319-34. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2009.
• ———. “The Wei (Positioning)–Ming (Naming)–Lianmian (Face)–Guanxi (Relationship)–Renqing (Humanized Feelings)–Complex in Contemporary Chinese Culture.” In Confucian Cultures of Authority, edited by Peter H.Hershock and Roger T. Ames, 49-64. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2006.
• Kavalski, Emilian. Central Asia and the Rise of Normative Powers: Contextualzing the Security Governance of the European Union, China, and India. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012.
• ———. The Guanxi of Relational International Theory. London: Routledge, 2017.
• ———. “More of the Same: An Unpredictable Trump Foreign Policy in an Unpredictable Central Asia.” Monde Chinois 4, no. 48 (2016): 112-17.
• Qin, Yaqing. “Relationality and Processual Construction: Bringing Chinese Ideas into International Relations Theory.” Social Sciences in China 30, no. 3 (2009): 5-20.
• ———. “Why Is There No Chinese International Theory.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 7, no. 3 (2007): 313-40.
• Risse, Thomas. “‘Let’s Argue’: Communicative Action in World Politics.” International Organization 54, no. 1 (2000): 1-39.
• Rosemont, Henry. “Two Loci of Authority: Autonomous Individuals and Related Persons.” In Confucian Cultures of Authority, edited by P.H. Hershock and R.T. Ames, 1-20. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2006.
• Russell, Roberto, and Juan Gabriel Tokatlian. “From Antagonistic Autonomy to Relational Autonomy: A Theoretical Reflection from the Southern Cone.” Latin American Politics and Society 45, no. 1 (2003): 1-24.
• Schwartz, Benjamin I. “The Maoist Image of World Order.” Journal of International Affairs 21, no. 1 (1967): 92- 102.
• Shih, Chih-yu. “Transcending Hegemonic International Relations Theorization: Nothingness, Re-Worlding, and Balance of Relationship.” All Azimuth 6, no. 2 (2017): 19-42.
• Shimizu, Kosuke. “Materializing the Non-Western.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 28, no. 1 (2015): 3-20.
• Swain, Margaret Byrne. Chinese Cosmopolitanism [Tianxia He Shijiie Zhuyi]. In Cultural Heritage Politics in China, edited by Tami Blumenfield and Helaine Silverman, 33-50. New York: Springer, 2013.
• Tong, Shijun. “Chinese Thought and Dialogical Universalism.” In Europe and Asia beyond East and West, edited by Gerard Delanty, 305-15. London: Routledge, 2006.
• Tsui, Anne S., and Jiing-Lih Larry Farh. “Where Guanxi Matters: Relational Demography and Guanxi in the Chinese Context.” Work and Occupations 24, no. 1 (1997): 56-79.
• Tu, Wei-ming. Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1985.
• Uemura, Takeshi. “Understanding Chinese Foreign Relations: A Cultural Constructivist Approach.” International Studies Perspectives 16, no. 3 (2015): 345-65.
• Vucetic, Srdjan. The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of Racialized Identity in International Relations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.
• Wen, Haiming, and Wang Hang. “Confucian Cultural Psychology and Its Contextually Creative Intentionality.” Culture & Psychology 19, no. 2 (2013): 184-202.
• Wolfers, Arnold. Discord and Collaboration. Baltimore, NJ: The John Hopkins University Press, 1962.
• Womack, Brantly. “China as a Normative Foreign Policy Actor.” In Who is a Normative Foreign Policy Actor?, edited by Nathalie Tocci, 265-98. Brussels: Center for European Policy Studies, 2008.
• Yang, K.S., and David Y.F. Ho. “The Role of Yuan in Chinese Social Life: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis.” In Asian Contributions to Psychology, edited by Anand C. Paranjpe, David Y.F. Ho, and Robert W. Rieber, 263-81. New York: Praeger, 1988.
• Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui. Gifts, Favors, and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.
• ———. “The Resilience of Guanxi and New Deployments: A Critique of Sone New Guanxi Scholarship.” The China Quarterly 42, no. 170 (2002): 459-76.
• Yeung, Irene Y.M., and Rosalie L. Tung. “Achieving Success in Confucian Societies: The Importance of Guanxi (Connections).” Organizational Dynamics 25, no. 2 (1996): 54-65.
• Yue, Ricky Wai-kay. “Beyond Dependency: The Promise of Confucianism in Post-Westphalia International Relations.” Bandung: Journal of the Global South 2, no. 4 (2015): 1-17.
• Zhang, Feng. “Confucian Foreign Policy Traditions in Chinese History.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 8, no. 2 (2015): 197-218.