ABSTRACT
For Chinese scholars, the Amsterdam School (AS) has the potential to contribute greatly and comprehensively to International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE) by challenging the intellectual hegemony of realism and liberalism. The author's master's thesis summarized van der Pijl's ideas about transnational classes and used his historical sketch of four comprehensive concepts of control to analyse the capitalist class in the global political economy. Van der Pijl mainly explores the formation of transnational social networks in terms of the dynamics of capital accumulation and the evolution of ideology. Based on a systematic and critical exploration of the AS and its key concepts, Chinese scholars should use its theoretical framework to analyse China's rise, East Asian regionalism and the influence of the US on the development of Asian political economy, particularly China's domestic and international political economy.
