The Construction of the Chinese School of International Relations (conversation by writing)

Ren Xiao combs through the development history and controversy process of symbiosis theory in China, and believes that it has common core concepts, academic interests, and shows the growth of academic schools. Meanwhile, symbiosis theory has also attracted the attention of the international academic community. According to Ji Ling, relationalist research has shifted to an entityist way of thinking, and a new form of global international relations knowledge production with relationalist thinking has emerged. Entityist epistemology takes entities as the basic unit of analysis and looks for linear causality from the categories of dichotomies. Relationalist epistemology, on the other hand, transcends dichotomies through the development of various concepts and methods. The ‘middle ground’ and ‘dialectic’ in traditional Chinese culture provide important resources for global relational studies, which have become more diversified under the influence of different relationalist traditions. Based on the perspective of Kuhn's paradigm revolution, Peng Chengyi argues that the current Chinese international relations theory has entered a stage where conventional research and paradigm shift go hand in hand, and that there are not only the results of the mainstream theoretical paradigm research on western international relations, but also the exploration of the Chinese school of thought. Taking the ISA2023 Annual Conference as an example, Lu Peng introduces Western scholars' Chinese feedback on the school in terms of both the whole and specific branches: the former includes understanding the Chinese school as a whole in terms of its branches, and lacks a holistic grasp of the Chinese school's goals, feasibility, and other elements; the latter, on the basis of its affirmation of the academic contributions of the theory of relations, is also critical of the inconsistency between its two self-positions and the mismatch between its description of the network of relations and its conception of the international order. The latter, while affirming the academic contributions of the theory of relations, also criticised the inconsistency between its two self-orientations and the mismatch between its description of the network of relations and its conception of international order. The Chinese school responded to these criticisms, making the conference an equal and constructive dialogue between the two sides.