The interlocutors in this podcast hosted by Eva-Maria Nag are Dr Ferran Perez Mena, Assistant Professor in International Relations at the School of Government and International Affairs (SGIA) at Durham University, Prof. Xi Lin, Assistant Dean of the Fudan Institute of Advanced Study in Social Sciences (IAS-Fudan), and Prof. Anoush Ehteshami, Professor of International Relations at SGIA.
The focus of the discussions was Dr Perez Mena's new book, Contender States and Modern Chinese International Thought: From the Republican era until the ‘Chinese School of International Relations (Palgrave Macmillan 2024). Key questions that were raised were about the historical development of Chinese international thought; the danger that Chinese IR could lead to exceptionalism; who the main contemporary Chinese IR scholars are, their ideas, and the implications for foreign policy; whether there could be feminist IR thinking in China; and how inter-Asian competition might be influencing thinking in Asia about the international system.
This book contends that the development of modern Chinese international thought has been profoundly shaped by the distinctive nature of the Chinese state as a contender state and its global positioning since 1912. The argument posited demonstrates that, notwithstanding the varied perspectives on the 'international' held by Chinese intellectuals throughout the 20th century, there exist commonalities across the periods analyzed in this book. In essence, the book emphasizes that the shared elements influencing the production of modern Chinese international thought do not derive from a unified cultural Chinese identity but rather stem from China's evolving geopolitical position in the modern world.
