Chinese Foreign Relations: Reflections on Knowledge Production

With China’s global ascendancy, Chinese foreign policy has become a popular area of studies for scholars around the world. Rather than simply contributing to this subject, this book sets out to reflect on the field itself, using as samples some of the author’s previous work, both published and unpublished, covering different areas of Chinese foreign policy and adopting different approaches. In doing so, it examines how knowledge about Chinese foreign policy has evolved, focusing on areas such as traditions, values, perspectives and regionalism.The field of Chinese foreign policy has evolved along with international relations and foreign policy analysis. The quality of the studies of specific topics has generally been high thanks to the competitive and extensive nature of academic research and exchange, despite a perceived failure to predict Beijing’s current assertive foreign policy orientation. Looking forward, this book reflects on how changing trends in a number of key areas -- a shift in thinking about opposition research, an excessive focus on national security, narrowing of academic exchange, and increasingly limited access between China and the West -- threaten to lower the quality in future Chinese foreign policy studies in Western countries.