ABSTRACT
We answer the two most familiar critiques we have encountered. Namely, BoR is either challenged for epistemological China-centrism, or biased against China’s multilateral sensibilities. The former critique further incurs the question of the identity of the BoR theory and calls for engagement with post-Western IR, non-Western IR and global IR. The latter is related to an additional question of relationship being just another item of national interest or a kind of soft power calculus. To begin, we argue that improvisation of resemblance in accordance with the conditions of the other side leads to a kind of Chineseness that is epistemologically undefinable and useless. Second, we have not argued that China owns no multilateral sensibilities. We have just argued that tianxia is too thin as a prior relation to coach policy. Thirdly, BoR transcends binaries of East and West, multilateral and bilateral, and great and small nations since subaltern and hegemonic powers are mutually constituted to transcend over-simplified categories embedded in geo-cultural sitedness. Finally, we argue that BoR is not soft power. The ultimate test of Chinese soft power is about practically transcending binary and rendering China’s soft power an obsolete subject.
