Mainstream IR Theoretical Perspectives and Rising China Vis-À-Vis the West: The Logic of Conquest, Conversion and Socialisation

• Published in: Chinese journal of political science Vol. 25; no. 2; pp. 175 - 198
• Main Authors: Cho, Young Chul, Hwang, Yih-Jye
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.06.2020; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Conversion; Hegemony; International relations; Orientalism; Otherness; Political Science; Political Science and International Relations; Political Science and International Studies; Problem solving; Research Article; Scientific knowledge; Socialization; United States > US; China; Self/Other; East Asia; IR theoretical perspectives; International relations; Rising China
• ISSN: 1080-6954; 1874-6357
• DOI: 10.1007/s11366-019-09620-3

The aim of this article is to critically examine how the mainstream International Relations (IR) theoretical perspectives — realist, liberalist, and constructivist — make sense of the relationships between Self and Others in explaining the rise of China in IR. Our argument is two-fold. First, although mainstream IR perspectives are believed to produce objective, neutral, scientific, and universal knowledge about reality and how the world works, they are not value-free explanations but normative approaches that serve the US/West hegemony, and Orientalism appears to constitute the hidden normative underpinning of those perspectives. Second, considering mainstream IR perspectives as problem-solving approaches for the hegemonic US/West reveals that the hegemonic Self uses the logic of conquest, conversion, and socialisation to deal with the Other, rising China.