The Rise of China and Chinese International Relations.

• Author: Kavalski, Emilian
• Position: Book review

The Rise of China and Chinese International Relations

By Hung-Jen Wang

Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013, viii + 196 pages, ISBN 9780739178508.

THE DISCUSSION of China's growing prominence in international life has attracted the increasing attention of policy-makers, the public and scholars alike. Usually sidelined by the mainstream, such interest in China's role and position in global politics has grown exponentially in the context of the deepening concomitant economic, social and political crises across Europe and North America--which, until very recently, were considered the traditional locales of power and influence in world politics. Indicative of the emerging weight and significance of non-Western actors on the global stage, the trend set by China seems to challenge the conventional framework of the study and practice of International Relations (IR).

In this setting, most commentators suggest a nascent "Sinicization" of global politics--seemingly confirmed by China's extensive involvement not just in the developing world, but also its palpable outreach to all regions around the globe. According to a number of commentators, supporting such a drive are the perceived and actual aspirations of Beijing's external outlook. Thus, more often than not, the contention in the literature is that regardless of whether China chooses to develop a cooperative or conflictual stance, it will nevertheless have an important bearing on the patterns and practices of world affairs. Hung-Jen Wang's book goes to the heart of this conversation. It suggests that the nascent Chinese schools of IR explain the transformative potential of a changing Chinese foreign policy through the interplay between three dominant features: identity, appropriation and adaptation.

In this respect, the emergence of "IR theory with Chinese characteristics" (p. 3) presents an intriguing intersection of the discursive memory of the past with the dynamic contexts of the present and the anticipated tasks of the future. What distinguishes Wang's analysis is reliance on Chinese-language sources, which he contextualizes within the existing Western literature on both IR and China's rise. As a result of such a perceptive parallel assessment, Wang manages to construct a thoughtful and extremely vivid picture of the complexity and diversity that marks Chinese IR scholarship. In fact, many readers would perhaps be surprised by the lack of a uniform and centralized IR discourse in China. As...