Professor Amitav Acharya shared his views of how China perceives regional order. Prof. Acharya believes that even though there are many scholars on China, but China is too important an issue to be left to these China scholars only. To understand China’s view, it is not enough to just look at what the Chinese government is saying, but also what the men on the street and the academic community are saying.
One very interesting fact that Prof. Acharya discovered about the Chinese IR community is that, there are just too many people studying the US. One reason for this phenomenon is that, most of the funding go to researches on US-China relationships, but the more important reason is that, the Chinese IR community is just more fascinated by the US than by any other country. Study and research on the US policies span from external policies such as the Monroe Doctrine all the way to American agricultural policies. Secondly, there has been a growing interest in global governance among the Chinese academic community over the last four to five years. The increasing interest in this field is contributed by the realization that China is becoming more powerful and is thus more capable in playing a leadership role, therefore the think tanks and universities are following up on these new premises in studying and researching on how could or how should China make use of its power in contributing to global governance.
The third interesting trend in China is that in the Chinese academic community, there is a huge interest in IR theories, which is not seen in anywhere else in the world. Realism and Marxism are always the most popular schools of thoughts, but the study of constructivism is also gaining popularity. Even though liberalism is not gaining as much popularity, but they are paying much attention to the liberal order.
Recently, there have also been attempts to bring traditional Chinese thoughts to the IR theories, and these can be shown from the recent works by Qin Yaqing and Yan Xuetong, which are very comprehensive and sophisticated that seek to bring all different schools of thought in Chinese universities together. The final interesting trend that Prof. Acharya observed is the enthusiasm for the BRI-related studies. Even though this is more a government policy than a school of thought, but the academic community in China has given it an academic spin. Also, much funding has been poured into the study of this area.
The more critical side of the BRI has also been discussed by the Chinese academic community, and the question of whether the BRI is a new form of globalization is also being discussed. Globalization is not over yet, but it will be of a different form, such as South-South Cooperation, and the BRI could be Globalization 2.0. There is, however, little interest in Southeast Asia from the Chinese academic community. On top of that, ASEAN is seen more as an adversary than a partner in the eyes of Chinese policy makers as they deem that ASEAN has been standing too close to the US, which is trying to contain China’s rise.
Even though the Chinese academic community refrained from calling China a hegemon and asserted that China is unlike the US, but the ideals of global governance proposed by the Chinese IR theorists are somehow very similar to the American Liberal World Order. While China is still committing its diplomacy in ASEAN institutions, but today China is also focusing more on its own institutions that could shape and redefine the region according to China’s way. Even though many Chinese have multilateral tendencies, but just like many other countries in the world, China wants to be the No. 1 country in the world.