China Debates Its Global Role

Chinese Scholars on Chinese Scholarship

Shaun Breslin, Ren Xiao

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000461701
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What do China's scholars make of the nature of China's global rise? And what is the significance of academic debates for Chinese policy goals and preferences?

In this book, leading Chinese specialists outline how their colleagues are studying and interpreting different dimensions of China's evolving global role, opening these Chinese language debates to a new audience. Collectively they show that while some ideas and ways of thinking are more prominent than others, there is no homogeneity of scholarship and no single conception of what China thinks and wants. Not only has the range of issue areas under discussion actually increased as China's global role and impact has changed, but there also remains considerable diversity when it comes to thinking on what China can, might, and should try to do as a global power, and how China's global role should be studied and theorized.

The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, The Pacific Review.

The study of Chinese scholars in foreign policy analysis: An emerging research program

Huiyun Feng and Kai He

ABSTRACT

A review of studies of China’s foreign policy reveals three dominant methods: the area studies approach, the IR theory method, and the integrated approach. We suggest that it is time to pay close attention to an emerging research program focusing on the study of Chinese international relations (IR) scholars, especially their internal debates, as a new venue to understand China’s foreign policy. Although Chinese IR scholars are normally quoted as valuable sources in the study of Chinese foreign policy in general, there is no systematic study of China’s IR scholars per se. In order to transform the study of Chinese IR scholars to a full-fledged research program, researchers need to pursue theoretical innovations on the relationship between different types of IR scholars and foreign policy inquiries, advance multi-method research designs across the different methods of field interviews, textual analysis, and opinion surveys, as well as encourage international collaboration between Chinese scholars and non-Chinese scholars.

Introduction

The rise of China and its profound implications for world politics have turned Chinese foreign policy into a fascinating field of study for scholars and policy makers alike. The study of Chinese foreign policy, however, is a tough enterprise. Due to its unique one-party political system, China’s policy making, especially on foreign policy, is a mystery in the eyes of outsiders. On the one hand, China’s foreign policy is clear and simple to understand because almost all Chinese officials and public media seem to follow the same official line on major foreign policies and present one voice predetermined by the central government. As China’s first Premier Zhou Enlai famously put it, ‘there is no small thing in foreign affairs’ (外事无小事). It means that the government is extremely sensitive to anything related to foreign policy, including the articulation and interpretation of China’s foreign policy to the outside world. Therefore, it is easy to discern what China’s foreign policies are because of the high-level control of the subject matter by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

On the other hand, it is quite difficult to analyze the sources of Chinese foreign policy, especially regarding how and why China has made a particular policy decision at a certain time as well as when and under what conditions China will change its foreign policy behavior in the future. The reason is also simple, because scholars and policy analysts have limited access and resources to investigate the decision-making process of Chinese foreign policy. For example, the famous bureaucratic politics model in the study of foreign policy has some inherent difficulties to be well operationalized because scholars have limited evidence about bureaucratic infighting in China.¹ There is no public policy debate among officials or different bureaucratic units on foreign policy. This hierarchical, top-down, decision-making system makes China’s foreign policy more than a monolith. It is clear and simple outside, but opaque and complicated inside.

Through examining three dominant methods in the study of Chinese foreign policy—the area studies approach, the IR-theory method, and the integrated approach—in this essay we suggest that it is time to pay close attention to an emerging research program on the study of Chinese international relations (IR) scholars, especially their internal debates, as a new venue to understand China’s foreign policy. We suggest that this emerging research program should be taken seriously, because it will complement and enrich the existing three approaches in the study of China’s foreign policy behavior.

The following paper has four sections. First, we briefly review the strengths and weaknesses of the three dominant research traditions in the study of China’s foreign policy. We argue that although Chinese IR scholars are normally quoted as valuable sources in the study of Chinese foreign policy, there is no systematic study of Chinese IR scholars per se. In the second section, we discuss the fourth research approach, which treats Chinese IR scholars as a subject of inquiry in studying Chinese foreign policy. There have been two waves or directions of scholarship in the study of Chinese IR scholars in foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. The first wave focuses more on exploring dominant views or the consensus among Chinese scholars, especially the America Watchers—scholars specializing on US-China relations, so that reliable inferences can be drawn from what America Watchers have perceived regarding what Chinese leaders believed in guiding China’s foreign policy toward the United States. The second wave, however, places more emphasis on the divergent views of Chinese IR scholars on broader issues beyond US-Chinese relations, and this perspective opens a new window for the outside world to understand the dynamics of Chinese ideas and perceptions of international relations.

In the third section, we discuss how to move this scholar-focused research approach forward. We argue that more attention should be paid to theoretical innovations regarding the relationships between different types of IR scholars and foreign policy inquiries, the conduct of multi-method research designs across the different methods of interview, textual analysis, and opinion surveys, and the emerging international collaboration between Chinese scholars and non-Chinese scholars. In conclusion, we argue that this new research program—the study of Chinese IR scholars in the area of foreign policy analysis—will not only deepen the world’s understanding of China’s rise but also bring prominent Chinese IR scholars to the world stage.

Three approaches and the role of Chinese IR scholars

There are three research traditions in the study of Chinese foreign policy.² One is the traditional area studies approach, which emphasizes the idiosyncratic features of Chinese foreign policy. China experts in this research tradition are normally equipped with Chinese language skills and familiarity with Chinese culture and history. Their research is mainly based on extensive field work in China, gathering original materials and conducting interviews with Chinese policy elites, normally in Chinese. More importantly, the success of this approach depends highly on personal networks between outside researchers and the different levels of Chinese society from government officials to the scholarly community.

For example, David Lampton, a leading scholar of China’s foreign policy and US-China relations, states that his book Same bed different dreams: Managing US-China relations (2001) ‘reflects his unique opportunity to interact with Chinese people and leaders from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong, and Taiwan for nearly thirty years as a scholar, as the head of a policy-oriented exchange organization, and as director of Washington think-tank research programs dealing with China.’ The Chinese leaders with whom Lampton interacted as the president of the National Committee on US-China Relations for his book include Zhu Rongji—later Chinese Premier, Wang Daohan—Jiang Zemin’s close friend, as well as a member of Deng Xiaoping’s family. These kinds of personal interactions and interview experiences make Lampton’s book one of the most authoritative sources in the study of China’s foreign policy, because no other scholars have had similar access to such high-level policy makers or politicians in China.

Similarly, David Shambaugh, another prominent China scholar from the United States, spent one year as a Fulbright senior visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to conduct field research and interviews in China during 2009–2010 for his book China goes global (2013). His interview list is also impressive in that he interviewed a politburo Central Committee member, State Councilor Dai Bingguo, Executive Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun, Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai, and a dozen other high-level officials as well as leading policy analysts and IR scholars in China. Consequently, it is not a surprise that one of the reasons that his book was selected as a best book of 2013 by The Economist and Foreign Affairs was its ‘masterful survey’ of China’s foreign policy. Again, the privileged access to Chinese officials is one key factor for the success of Shambaugh’s work. However, it is clear that not all researchers can get such high-level access to Chinese officials when studying China’s foreign policy.³

One criticism of the area studies approach is that area-specific knowledge and findings are hard to generalize and apply to other cases due to their limitations on theoretical contributions. To a certain extent, this research tradition is closer to the disciplines of the humanities than to the social sciences. Consequently area studies have declined in the United States and other countries after the Cold War, especially in the context of the scientific and behavioral movement in the field of comparative politics in particular and political science in general.⁴ The study of Chinese foreign policy, as Johnston (2006) points out, is also marginalized within the academic field in the United States as we can see from the declining number of university faculty positions on China’s foreign policy in American universities.

The second approach in the study of China’s foreign policy is to explicitly apply IR theory to examine China’s foreign policy behavior. This is deductive modelling from theory to fact rather than inductive reasoning from fact to theory. For example, John Mearsheimer (2001) applies his offensive realism theory to explain and predict China’s foreign policy behavior after the rapid rise in its economic and military capabilities. His famous analogy is to compare China with the United States in the 19th century by suggesting that China will model the American Monroe doctrine to pursue regional hegemony. In other words, China is not a unique country in its foreign policy behavior compared to other major powers in the eyes of Mearsheimer or other IR scholars. Instead, it is a normal state that intends to maximize its interests in terms of power or security within an anarchical international system.

One advantage of this IR approach is that researchers do not need any China-specific knowledge to analyze Chinese foreign policy behavior. By treating China as a rising power in the international system like other states, IR scholars can apply different theoretical frameworks, such as realism, liberalism, and constructivism, to shed light on China’s foreign policy behavior. Realism, especially Mearsheimer’s offensive realism, seems useful to explain China’s assertive turn in diplomacy after 2010, because the more power China has, the more assertive its policy will be (Mearsheimer, 2010). China is a revisionist...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: China debates its global role
• 1 The study of Chinese scholars in foreign policy analysis: an emerging research program
• 2 Grown from within: Building a Chinese School of International Relations
• 3 Striving for achievement in a new era: China debates its global role
• 4 Chinese conception of the world order in a turbulent Trump era
• 5 Chinese perception of China’s engagement in multilateralism and global governance
• 6 China debating the regional order
• 7 Foreign aid study: Chinese schools and Chinese points
• 8 International law debates in China: traditional issues and emerging fields
• Index