It seems that the discussion, explanation and understanding of China's growing prominence in international life has been attracting sustained and increasing attention from global publics, policymakers and scholars alike. Such interest towards China's roles and attitudes on the world stage has grown exponentially in the context of the deepening concomitant economic, social and political crises across Europe and North America – which, until very recently, have been considered the traditional locales of powers and influence in international affairs. Indicative of the emergent weight and significance of non-Western actors on the global stage, the trend set by China seems to challenge the conventional frameworks of both the study and practice of International Relations (IR).
In this respect, the study of how China thinks and in what ways its hoary history and traditions inform the idiosyncrasies of Beijing's international outlook have grown into a veritable cottage industry, both in the study of world politics and across the full spectrum of the humanities and social sciences. More often than not, such accounts present the country's outreach as a hybrid of ancient civilizations and modern curiosities; yet, very few have sought to engage meaningfully with the content, context and ideas that backstop the ratiocination of China's homegrown IR scholarship. This succinct book by Adam Grydehøj and Ping Su seeks to redress this gap in current debates. It needs to be stated at the outset that some might find the authors’ interdisciplinary background an uncomfortable fit for the intellectual ambit of their book's endeavour. Grydehøj is an ethnologist and human geographer with extensive expertise in island studies, while Su is a literary scholar and an expert on urban migration.
Yet, it is probably their very positioning outside the established castles of IR that makes Grydehøj's and Su's efforts both unique and valuable. The book offers a meaningful engagement with the cultural foundations of key concepts from China's international outlook. Bearing in mind the interdisciplinary background of the authors, the investigation's point of departure is the recognition that the explanation and understanding of the world is invariably, and probably inevitably, rooted in metaphors. Grydehøj and Su assert that metaphors not only impact “how we see the world [and] how we act in the world,” but also illustrate “the relationship between theorists, the world of theory, and the world itself” (p. 1). Such acknowledgement sets the study into a unique journey through the “Chinese garden” (p. 2) of IR theory.
The book offers a prescient account of the dynamic inter-relationship between national and international considerations in the conceptualization of China's global agenda. Pivoted on the idea of harmony, the analysis does not suggest or promote a distinct “Chinese” outlook or school(s) of IR; instead, it explores the ways in which the concept of harmony and its attendant epistemology “plays out in theory-making and theory's relationship with wider society” (p. 17). Such analysis conveys the complex interaction between local and global considerations in the underlying conception and formation of Chinese IR scholarship. Thus, in the process of their exploration of the Chinese garden of IR, Grydehøj and Su uncover that the conceptual seeds of harmony have led the study of world politics in the country to blossom into more than a “hundred flowers,” if we are to paraphrase Chairman Mao's well-known adage.
In their pioneering parallel assessment of the concept of harmony, Grydehøj and Su suggest that it has led to the development of three main strands in Chinese IR scholarship. One strand is associated with the theorization of tianxia (all-under-heaven). Best exemplified by the work of Zhao Tingyang, it develops an IR perspective that sees “the whole world at once, but as a result, it is lacking detail” (p. 31). The other stand is associated with the theorizing of guanxi (relationality). Associated with the trailblazing endeavours of Qin Yaqing, it promotes attentiveness to the “details of world politics as they relate to specific social actors and the other social actors with which they relate” (p. 35). The third strand is gongsheng (symbiosis) theory. This mode of IR knowledge-production appears to be bifurcated between those seeking to combine classical Marxist thought with traditional Chinese discourses and those pursuing an alternative to Western IR theory. The gongsheng perspective on IR “seeks detailed understandings of particular sets of processes among a large number of particular social actors” (p. 40).
In this way, Grydehøj and Su develop an innovative and meaningful account of Chinese IR scholarship through the prism provided by the concept of harmony. Their book also offers an original application of the three strands of IR theorizing in China by applying them to the experience of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While such reading of the BRI is neither a justification, nor an apology for China's global outreach, its framework for explanation and understanding calls for nuanced understanding and engagement with the “underlying culturally contingent ideas about how world politics works” (p. 68). Such assertion reflects the persistence of a strong philosophical tradition of systemic and holistic thinking in China. In this way, the excellent book by Grydehøj and Su provides a sophisticated, timely and much-needed account of the ideas backstopping the evolution of the study of world politics in China.
At the same time, such analysis suggests the value of broadening the disciplinary inquiry of IR, by engaging with perspectives and frameworks beyond the conventional repertoire of world affairs. In particular, Grydehøj and Su's book positions the centrality of the concept of harmony as a condition of intelligibility for the sense-making processes of Chinese IR scholarship. Such an endeavour would benefit immensely all those interested in the decentring and globalization of IR. Their book will also be invaluable for the purposes of teaching and theorizing the ongoing transformations in global life as a result of China's increasing centrality in the patterns and practices of world affairs.
