Constructivism and the study of international political economy in China

ABSTRACT

This paper surveys constructivist scholarship in the study of international political economy (IPE) in China. Chinese scholars in the field of IPE have until recently rarely used constructivism as an approach to study IPE for two reasons. The first, like Western IPE, is the short history of constructivism as a theoretical perspective. The second, unlike Western IPE, stems from the long-standing dominance of Marxism, China's official state ideology, in the academic field. In China, Marxism's materialist core shapes the basic research questions of IPE. Unsurprisingly then, constructivist analysis is quite alien to the dominant intellectual discourse in China. Nonetheless, of late, more Chinese scholars have begun to apply constructivist analysis. This paper surveys these developments and is divided into three sections. The first section provides an overview of how Chinese Marxist scholars approach the major issues of IPE as they relate to China. The second section provides an overview of the work of liberal-minded Chinese scholars who work on major IPE issues, another counterpoint to the Marxist school. The third section, which is the major focus of this paper, examines how Chinese scholars have applied the constructivist concepts to study major IPE issues in the Chinese context.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• constructivism
• IPE
• Marxism
• American IPE
• Chinese IPE

Notes

¹This paper is written based on a survey of articles and books published by Chinese scholars in the fields of international relations, international political economy and foreign policy studies. Most of the articles and books were published in China, with some of the articles published in related Western academic journals. The relevant major Chinese academic journals include Shijie Jingji yu Zhengzhi (World Economy and Politics), Waijiao Pinglun (Review of Foreign Affairs) and Guoji Wenti Yanjiu (Studies of International Issues). What follows is not intended to be an exhaustive categorization of all Chinese work on these topics. That would be impossible in an article. Rather, the intention is to give the reader a useful overview of the major contending approaches.

²Also see Wang Yong, The China Business Review, July/August 1999.

³Similarly, another liberal-minded scholar, Qin Hui, Professor at Tsinghua University, argued that the success of the China model is predicated on the exploitation of Chinese cheap labour, which is not protected with even the minimum level of labour rights. Such a model cannot be appealing to other third world countries, which have democratic polities.

⁴Also see Qin Yaqin (2009) ‘Rationality and Processual Construction: Bringing Chinese Ideas into International Relations Theory’, Social Sciences in China, 6(3) (August): 5–20.

⁵Alexander Wendt (1994) ‘Collective Identity Formation and the International State’, American Political Science Review, 88(2) (June), pp. 384–96.

⁶Ibid.; Thomas U. Berger (1993) ‘From Sword to Chrysanthemum’, International Security, 17(4) (Spring), pp. 119–150; Thomas Berger (1996) ‘Collective Identity in a Democratic Community: The Case of NATO’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.) The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 317–356.

⁷Wang Qingxin Ken (2000) Hegemonic Cooperation and Conflict: Postwar Japan's China Policy and the United States, Westport, CT: Praeger.

⁸John Ikenberry and Charles Kupchan (1990) ‘Socialization and Hegemonic Power’, International Organization, 44(3) (June): 283–315; Alexander Wendt and Daniel Friedheim (1995) ‘Hierarchy under Anarchy: Informal Empire and the East German State’, International Organization, 49(4) (Autumn), pp. 695–706.

⁹Wang Qingxin Ken (2003) ‘Hegemony and Socialisation of the Mass Public: The Case of Postwar Japan's Cooperation with the United States on China Policy’, Review of International Studies, 29(1) (January), pp. 99–119.

¹⁰Susan Shirk (1996) ‘Internationalization and China's Economic Reforms’, in Robert Keohane and Helen V. Milner (eds) Internationalization and Domestic Politics, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 186–206.

¹¹Qingxin K. Wang (2011) ‘The Rise of Neoclassical Economics and China's WTO Accession’, Journal of Contemporary China, (June): 449–57.

¹²Ibid., 457–65.

¹³Also see Qingxin Ken Wang (2001) ‘Cultural Idealism and Chinese Foreign Policy’, Asian Culture and Society, 77 (May–August): 126–47.

¹⁴Ibid.

¹⁵Qingxin Wang (2001) ‘Cultural Norms and the Conduct of Chinese Foreign Policy’, in Richard Hu, Gerald Chan and Zha Daojiong (eds) China's International Relations in the 21st Century: Dynamics of Paradigm Shifts, Washington, DC: The University Press of America, pp.

¹⁶Yan Xuetong (2011) Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 100.

¹⁷Ibid., 100, 104–6.

¹⁸Daniel Maliniak and Michael J. Tierney (2009) ‘The American School of IPE’, The Review of International Political Economy, 16(1): 6–33.

¹⁹Ibid., 15. Later work by Abdelal et al. stress the insurgent nature of constructivism in the last part of the 2000s in the US, while Weaver and Phillips stress the dominance of the constructivist and post-structuralist approaches in European IPE, but in Maliniak and Tierney's data, China appears as a picture of pluralism in comparison to the US’ liberal hegemony.

²⁰Kenneth Lieberthal and Wang Jisi (2012) Assessing US–China Strategic Distrust, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

²¹http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/China-2030-complete.pdf (accessed October 2012).