Why Is There No Chinese School of International Relations Theory?
In 1987, Huan Xiang, who once served as Zhou Enlai’s secretary of foreign affairs, suggested building a Chinese theory of international relations (IR) during an IR theory conference in Shanghai.1 Since then, Chinese scholars have conducted an internal debate about the necessity and possibility of creating a “Chinese school” of IR theory.2 During the past thirty years, Chinese scholars have developed a variety of views about the establishment of a Chinese school of IR theory but have created nothing that merits such a title. This phenomenon suggests the question of why there is not a single theory or a series of theories under the rubric of “Chinese school,” even though so many Chinese scholars have been advocating one for the past thirty years. This essay attempts to answer this question.
LACK OF A THEORY NAME COINED BY ITS CREATORS
Until now, all known IR theories have been labeled by people other than the creators of the theories themselves. Realism was not named by Hans J. Morgenthau, nor were neo-Marxism by Karl Marx, neorealism by Kenneth Waltz, neoliberalism by Robert Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, constructivism by Alexander Wendt, or the English school by Hedley Bull and Barry Buzan. Waltz mentioned that he hates for others to call his theory neorealism and has tried very hard to replace it with structuralism. Unfortunately, he failed to make the name structuralism more popular than neorealism. In China, most students are often confused by the terms structuralism and functionalism because they are familiar with the term neorealism and hear less about the term structuralism. This phenomenon discourages us from expecting that Chinese IR theorists will be able to popularize theories with self-generated titles within the academic community.
This phenomenon is not limited to modern IR studies. It also is evident with ancient Chinese thinking. None of the best-known Chinese theories possess a name coined by their creators. For instance, Confucianism was not coined by Confucius, nor was Taoism by Laozi, Legalism by Shang Yang, or Mohism by Mozi. In modern Chinese history, Mao Zedong did not coin the term Mao Zedong Thought or Maoism. Instead, Mao Zedong Thought was coined by Liu Shaoqi and Maoism by foreigners.
Thus, it is highly likely that those who are trying to name their own theories under the classification of “Chinese group or school” meet with one of two outcomes: either their theories remain unknown or unrecognized in academic circles or their theories become known by a title that excludes the term Chinese.
COUNTRIES ARE RARELY NAMED IN THEORY TITLES
In most cases, a theory of social science is named after its core arguments, creator, or the institution of the creator. For example, neoconservatism derived its name from its stance and arguments, the Truman doctrine from the U.S. president Harry S. Truman, and the Chicago school from the University of Chicago. It is often the case that an IR theory is named after a city because that city has only one advanced university for IR theories. In many cases, advanced universities are named after the city in which they are located. Thus, it is hard to tell if a theory is named after the university or the city. For instance, the term Florida school refers to the early stages of constructivism developed by scholars at the University of Florida. The Copenhagen school got its name from the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute.
The case of the English school is debatable. According to Barry Buzan, the term English school was not coined in England. The world English does not mean “of the United Kingdom.”3 The term English has several meanings, and at least two when it refers to geographical location—that is, England and the United Kingdom. England is simply a part of the United Kingdom. When English school is translated into Chinese, it becomes yingguo xuepai (school of the United Kingdom). The translation seems to have misled some Chinese scholars into believing that they can develop some IR theories named the “Chinese school.”
It is reasonable to name a theoretical school after the name of a university or a city because there is often only one dominant school of IR thought within a city or a university. It would be difficult, however, to use a town or university to name a school of IR theory when there are two or more dominating schools in that town or university. For instance, there is no IR theory named after Berkeley because Waltz and Ernst Hass developed two influential theories—namely, neorealism and cognitive theory—at the University of California, Berkeley. These two groups possess some fundamental differences, and therefore neither has been named after Berkeley. I give this summary with no intention to imply that IR institutions within the United States are less diversified. Actually, that there are so many different theories, even within one research program, indicates the cultivating and diversifying factors of the U.S. IR academic environment.
CHINA’S DIVERSITY IS TOO GREAT FOR A SINGLE IR THEORY
Like the United States, China is rich in both population diversity and philosophical thought. Therefore, it is impossible that a single school of thought or theory can represent the entirety of Chinese thinking. In the last three thousand years, no school of thought has been more powerful than Confucianism. Even Confucianism, however, cannot represent all of Chinese thought. As a result, there is no school of thought within China that has been labeled the “Chinese school.” In modern Chinese history, Mao Zedong Thought could be viewed as the most influential school of political theory. Yet, even this school did not gain the name Chinese school.
The term Chinese seems too broad to fit any theories developed by Chinese scholars. The size of the Chinese population and the length of Chinese history make it very difficult for any school of theory to represent all of this diversity. The title Chinese is so massive that no school of theory is able to bear its weight.
We may find some schools of thought or theories have Chinese at the beginning of their names, but this was always added as an adjective modifying the original name. “Chinese Socialism” or “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” remains the best-known of these schools of thought. In this case, Chinese is just a modification of the given school of theory rather than a reference to a particular school of thought. Some foreign scholars have named my own theories “Chinese neo-communism” or “Chinese neoconservatism.”4 (I prefer to have my theories labeled “Chinese realism,” because the basic assumptions of neo-comm or neocon are fundamentally different from my basic arguments.) No matter what the label, however, Chinese in these terms means only a branch of that school rather than an independent school.
Currently, those ideas on IR theories developed by scholars at our institute (the Institute of International Studies, Tsinghua University) are referred to as the “Tsinghua school” among the Chinese academic community. The diversity of ideas and thought in Beijing makes it impossible for the Tsinghua school to adopt the name Beijing school. It is similar to the situation in Washington, DC, as the city’s name is rarely used as a label for any one school of thought. The name of a capital is often used for a governmental political stance or ideology—such as the Washington Consensus and the Beijing Consensus—rather than for an academic theory.
GIVING BIRTH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN GIVING A NAME
It is understandable that Chinese scholars are uneasy that no influential IR theories have been developed by Chinese scholars. The positive side of this situation is that Chinese scholars have realized their weakness in theoretical studies, while the negative side is that most Chinese scholars do not understand why they have been unable to create theoretical achievements like those of their American colleagues. Every IR theory should be considered like a baby. Before we give birth, we cannot be sure of the name we should give the baby. In my opinion, what Chinese scholars should worry about most is not the name but rather giving birth to the baby.
Why have Chinese scholars not given birth to an IR theory? I suggest three possible academic reasons and one political reason. First, Chinese scholars lack basic methodological training and they have yet to develop systematic explanations for international phenomena. Second, Chinese IR scholars, at least in some cases, lack training in traditional Chinese political thought. As a result, they are unable to master Western or Chinese political theories as Western scholars do with their own traditional political thought. Third, there are too few theoretical debates among Chinese scholars; thus they cannot improve theories by learning from critiques. The political reason remains that China is not as strong as the United States. Thus, Chinese IR concepts and ideas are unable to garner the same attention from the rest of the world.
The hope of Chinese IR theoretical study lies in rediscovering traditional Chinese IR thought. Chinese scholars have an advantage in reading Chinese ancient writings and, thus, are able to have a more nuanced and perhaps better understanding than their Western colleagues. Recently, more and more Chinese scholars have developed an interest in rediscovering ancient Chinese IR concepts, with an increasing number of journals publishing articles under the title “Ancient Chinese IR Thought.” It is my hope that Chinese scholars will develop strong IR theories in the next five years. This being said, however, even if Chinese scholars achieve this goal in the future, it is not to be expected that these new theories will fall under the name Chinese school.
REVOLUTION VERSUS MODIFICATION OF IR THEORY
In the past thirty years, we have witnessed Chinese scholars advocating a Chinese school of IR, but few of them have created any new theories. Some Chinese scholars have their own names attached to an original theoretical argument, such as Zhao Tingyang to “Tianxia” and Zheng Bijian to “Peaceful Rise,” but they are not affiliated with the group advocating a “Chinese school.” Building a new school of thought in IR requires hard work to deepen our understanding of international reality. Rather than pursuing a national school of thought in IR, Chinese scholars should focus on investigating theoretical and empirical puzzles in existing IR literature and, hopefully, contributing to the theory building of IR scholarship in the future.
There are three metatheoretical perspectives in appraising scientific progress. Thomas Kuhn believes that the great leaps of progress made by science are not cumulative and continuous but rather revolutionary, in that an old paradigm is overthrown by a new one.5 Some Chinese scholars hold the Kuhnian view of science and hope that the Chinese school of IR can somehow replace Western IR theory as a new paradigm of IR. This revolutionary view of scientific progress in IR has two problems, however.
First, the prerequisite for the Kuhnian paradigm shift is that the existing dominant paradigm shows unfixable flaws. It is still too early to proclaim the death of Western IR theory, though it faces many empirical and theoretical puzzles. Second, the application of Kuhn’s metatheory within IR has been criticized extensively because of Kuhn’s problematic claim of “incommensurability” between paradigms.6
In appraising IR theory, Lakatos’s methodology of scientific research programs (MSRP) and Laudan’s puzzle-solving research tradition are two prevailing metatheories. Lakatos defines a series of theories as a research program, which consists of an irrefutable “hard core,” negative heuristics, positive heuristics, and a protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses.7 Instead of arguing for one dominant paradigm in the scientific community, as Kuhn does, Lakatos believes that there may be many coexisting research programs in the scientific field.
In IR, we see the coexistence of three dominant research programs: realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Lakatos argues that the difference between two research programs lies in their different irrefutable “hard cores,” that is, key assumptions protected by the rules of negative heuristics. If Chinese scholars intend to develop their own research program, different from existing ones, they should first develop a different hard core for their theory. Here, traditional Chinese thought may be of assistance to Chinese scholars in developing a different research program in IR.
Some scholars criticize Lakatos’s MSRP in the application of social sciences such as IR. For example, the method of defining a hard core for social science theory remains a debated question. In IR, as Elman and Elman point out, even for the most widely accepted research program, such as neorealism, scholars could not achieve consensus on what the hard core is.8 Therefore, some scholars, such as Waltz, question the applicability of Lakatos’s MSRP to IR research and advocate Laudan’s metatheory of research traditions.9
Laudan criticizes Lakatos’s MSRP as too strict and argues that theories should be loosely grouped into different research traditions, according to shared key assumptions and methods.10 Research traditions are neither explanatory nor predictive, nor directly testable. Although not falsifiable, a research tradition can be assessed by its fruitfulness, that is, whether theories of a research tradition can solve more empirical and theoretical puzzles. The problem-solving criterion is more liberal than Lakatos’s MSRP. Still, some scholars criticize Laudan’s criterion as too permissive to be used in appraising and guiding the development of IR theory.
Chinese scholars, I argue, should rely on both Lakatos’s MSRP and Laudan’s problem-solving criterion to guide their research. The final goal of Chinese scholars is to develop a new research program, that is, a series of theories with a shared hard core, as Lakatos’s MSRP suggests. The first step for Chinese scholars, however, is to follow Laudan’s suggestion that they focus on solving existing theoretical and empirical puzzles by wisely using traditional Chinese thought and literature. For example, traditional Chinese thinking offers a different understanding of hegemony than mainstream IR theory does. Different typologies of hegemony within traditional Chinese thought may shed some light on our understanding of the rise and the fall of U.S. hegemony within the system. If Chinese scholars can successfully solve existing research puzzles in IR from a similar perspective, then this shared view has the potential to develop into a new hard core for a new research program.
Although I am not sure whether it will be named the “Chinese school” of IR, the contribution of traditional Chinese thought to IR should and will be recognized. The positive trend is that more and more Chinese scholars are devoting their energies to studying traditional Chinese thought on IR. They are working to enrich modern IR theories with traditional Chinese thought, using modern methodology.
In fact, the Chinese Journal of International Politics and Guoji Zhengzhi Kexue (Scientific studies of international politics) are two IR journals within China that consistently publish papers using this modern methodology. During 2007–2009, they published several articles on traditional Chinese IR thinking. If we envision IR as a scientific inquiry, then IR theory should be universally applied. If we do not need a Chinese school of physics or chemistry, why should we need a Chinese school of IR theory?