ABSTRACT
Introduction Some 50 years ago, Martin Wight (1966: 37-38) asked ‘why is there no international theory’ in his thought-provoking essay, attributing the ‘scattered, unsystematic, and mostly inaccessible of IR theory’ to ‘the intellectual prejudice imposed by the sovereign State, and the belief in progress’. More recently, Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan (2007: 292, 297), clearly inspired by Wight, considered a more specific question ‘why is there no non-Western IR theory?’, claiming that IR theory has to be either a ‘systematic attempt to abstract or generalize about the subject matter of IR’ or ‘self-identified by its creators or widely acknowledged by the mainstreams in the IR academic community’. They also asserted that the most significant reason for non-Western IR theory’s absence was that Western IR theories have followed the ‘right route’ to an understanding of IR issues, while the non-Western ones are still constrained by local conditions, unable to enter the IR discourse realm constructed by the West, leading to the awkward situation that ‘non-Western IR theories do exist, but are hidden’. Later, Acharya (2011: 619-637) placed further emphasis on voices and experiences beyond the West that have long been neglected, suggesting that scholars should pay more attention to the genealogy of the international system, the diversity of regionalism and regional worlds. Inspired by Wight, Acharya and Buzan, this chapter asks ‘why is there no Chinese IR theory?’. The chapter starts with the premise that there is not yet a single theory or a series of theories that deserve the title a ‘Chinese School of IR’. The analytical discussion proceeds as follows: The existing debates and claims regarding the question ‘why is there no Chinese IR theory?’ are summarized in the chapter’s first section. In the second section, five explanations are put forward to answer the question from a cultural perspective. The third section identifies how Chinese culture could offer something that goes beyond Western IR theory. Finally, the chapter tries to demonstrate that there is great potential for a Chinese IR theory to emerge and evolve, and the ‘Chinese dream’ of IR theory is in shaping.
