ABSTRACT
Constructivism is a very novel theory of international relations from a Chinese perspective. Constructivism first came to China a decade ago through the writings of Chinese scholars who had studied overseas and especially through the Chinese translation of Alexander Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics (1999) by Qin Yaqing, an American-trained Chinese international relations (IR) scholar (Qin, 2001). Since that opening, there have been increasing numbers of articles in both security studies and IPE authored from a constructivist perspective by Chinese IR specialists. Gradually, as more and more Western constructivist literature has been introduced into China, graduate students in international relations have been exposed to constructivism in addition to themore traditionalMarxist, neo-Marxist and neoliberal theories. Similar to what has been occurring in Western scholarship, construc-
tivist analysts have gradually started to move their analyses from security studies to the area of international political economy, an area traditionally
dominated by Marxism and liberalism. As we detail below, most Chinese IPE constructivist scholars have focused their analyses on explaining Chinese foreign policy and the associated changes in China’s international identity in the past decades – areas that straddle the borders of security and international political economy. Some of these scholars have analysed the interaction between the international system and China’s domestic political economy. Others have studied the internalization of international ideas and norms and their impact on Chinese foreign policy. Influenced byWestern constructivist scholars, Chinese IPE analysts rely
on constructivist concepts such as identity, norms, cognition, images and beliefs to study Chinese foreign policy changes. What might be regarded as the framing question that separates their research from Marxist, realist and liberal scholars is why China has, over the past several decades, changed so dramatically from being a radically revisionist critic to being a (qualified) supporter of that order. Given this macro question, Chinese constructivists have sought great specificity by investigating the mechanisms through which international ideas and norms have been internalized by Chinese scholars and policy-makers. How do the processes and mechanisms of international socialization vary over time? And how have these socialization processes shaped Chinese foreign policy-making? We examine each of these areas in turn.
