Yongjin Zhang
Biographic Data
| ID | 3696783 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Yongjin Zhang |
| GIVEN NAMES | Yongjin |
| FAMILY NAME | Zhang |
| SIGNATURE | ZHANG Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bristol |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4058-0658 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 106 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 6 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Barbarism and Civilization
The opposition of civilization versus barbarism has long been considered one of the most potent discursive frames of international orders in world history. The ideas of barbarism and civilization carry long and complex historical memories of shifting antithesis, symbiotic existence, and dialectic relationship in intercultural encounters, exchanges, and conflicts. Through explorations of moments of their articulation and invention in a kaleidoscop…
English School Special Section
This is a series of solicited articles requested by the editors of Vol. 51, emerging from a roundtable discussion held at the 2022 International Studies Association Convention. Each short contribution seeks to demonstrate the newest research of the English School of International Relations. These contributions tackle key questions including: the decline of liberal hegemony, the rise of China, the divide between soldaristic and pluralistic ethics,…
Barbarising’ China in American trade war discourse
How is the legitimation of the American trade war with China discursively managed and conferred in recent American political discourse? This paper critically examines this under-explored question in the current literature. Taking cues from critical international theory and its insight on discourse and foreign policy, I start by historicising the discursive practices, which I call ‘barbarising China’, in the construction of civilisation vs barbari…
The Curious Case of ‘Schools’ of IR
This article interrogates the questions evoked by the curious case of ‘schools’ of thought in International Relations (IR) through the twin perspectives of the sociology of knowledge and geopolitics of knowledge. Drawing inspirations from the tradition of the sociology of IR pioneered by E. H. Carr, the paper first explores how geo-epistemic diversity can help understand the sociologically problematic nature of IR knowledge production in the exis…
Constructing a Chinese School of International Relations
Introduction: The Making of International Theory? Yongjin Zhang and Teng-Chi Chang Part I Ongoing Debates 1. What's in a Name? A Critical Interrogation of the Chinese School of L. H. M. Ling 2. The 'Chinese School' Debate: Personal Reflections REN Xiao 3. Why Is There No IR Theory? A Cultural Perspective WANG Yiwei and HAN Xueqing 4. The Rise of China and IR Theories: Practice and Theory- Building Weixing Hu 5. Debating the School of IR: A Reflec…
Ethnic Challenges Beyond Borders
China and liberal hierarchies in global international society
This article investigates the entanglement of the rising Chinese power with the liberal global order in negotiating for normative change. Drawing upon the English School theoretical perspective, it argues that three hierarchical constructs of liberal persuasion co-exist in and cohabit the global international society today. They are, namely, the legalized hegemony as seen in the UN Charter-based liberal pluralism; the changing normative order of …
Introduction
Chinese foreign policy under the presidency of Xi Jinping has been at once dynamic and contentious. Its dynamic character can be seen first in its new and self-assured multidimensional activism in the regional and global political economy. The successful launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the establishment of the New Development Bank (NDB) among the BRICS states; the articulation of what is arguably a global vision with…
Regional international society in East Asia? A critical investigation
This essay conducts a critical investigation of the existence or not of international society at the regional level in East Asia as a critique of the excessive universalism of the existing English School theorization of international society. Through a purposeful engagement with the English School theory, it looks at how primary institutions of the Westphalian society of states such as sovereignty and the imperialism are historically imposed upon…
China and the Struggle for Legitimacy of a Rising Power
This article critically explores the historical transformation of the normative structure of international order brought about by legitimacy contests, and unpacks how power is deeply implicated in legitimacy claims amid the ongoing normative transformation of contemporary international society by virtue of the vanishing American unipolarity. By situating the analytical concept of legitimacy at the centre of this inquiry, it examines China’s attem…
Early Cultural Orientations and Ancient International Thought
A short commentary on Martin Wight’s ‘The Disunity of Mankind’, a short and unfinished piece in which Wight focuses almost exclusively on the Western tradition of thought, from Plato and Aristotle, to the Stoics and to Augustine
Conclusion
Introduction
Power and Responsibility in Chinese Foreign Policy
The People’s Republic of China is now over fifty years old. Long considered an outsider, or a club of one, in international relations, China has recently become more active in international institutions. Is China becoming a responsible power in global and regional international relations? How accurate is the traditional perception of China? What factors may be motivating the
Contesting International Society in East Asia
Bringing together some of the most innovative scholars in both the English School of international relations and East Asian studies, this volume investigates whether or not significant and distinct international social structures exist at the regional level represented by 'East Asia', and what this can tell us about international society both regionally and globally. The book's main finding is that the regional dispute over how its states and peo…
The Standard of ‘Civilisation’ Redux
This article interrogates the recent return of the discourse of the standard of ‘civilisation’ in international relations. Looking at the expansion of international society as an ongoing civilising project, it examines three important macro societal transformations of the international from a grand historical perspective. The classical civilising project, it argues, gives a particularistic interpretation and a truncated meaning to civilisation in…
The idea of order in ancient Chinese political thought
Journal Article The idea of order in ancient Chinese political thought: a Wightian exploration Get access YONGJIN ZHANG YONGJIN ZHANG 1Professor of International Politics at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 90, Issue 1, January 2014, Pages 167–183, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12101 Publishe…
International Orders in the Early Modern World
This chapter asks to what extent the English School concept of the ‘expansion of an European society of states’ helps us to understand early encounters between Europeans and non-Europeans on the Indian sub-continent. The chapter tests this framework through an in-depth analysis of official correspondence amongst members of the British East India Company at the founding moment of British sovereign authority on the Indian coast in the middle of the…
China Anxiety
This article discusses what the author refers to as 'China anxiety', manifest in the current Anglo-American discourse on the rise of China. It is argued that beneath the hype and hyperbole, anxieties can be detected that are no longer only about the prospect, but increasingly about the purpose, of China's rise to power. The author suggests that there is a particular and deeper 'cauldron of anxiety' which causes, and is caused by, a certain intell…
China and the emerging regional order in the South Pacific
As China rises, it has become increasingly aggressive in applying its soft power in the Pacific. What does China’s arrival mean for the emerging regional order in the Pacific? What is it up to in the strategic backwater of the Pacific, which has traditionally been regarded as an ‘American lake’ and Australia’s ‘special patch’? Setting my analysis in the broad context of China’s new global diplomacy, I argue that the pattern of China’s assertive b…
In the Eyes of the Dragon
Chinese Foreign Policy
Soft Power
China and international relations
China Stands Up
International Orders in the Early Modern World
This chapter asks to what extent the English School concept of the ‘expansion of an European society of states’ helps us to understand early encounters between Europeans and non-Europeans on the Indian sub-continent. The chapter tests this framework through an in-depth analysis of official correspondence amongst members of the British East India Company at the founding moment of British sovereign authority on the Indian coast in the middle of the…
System, empire and state in Chinese international relations
Two criticisms have long been directed at the theorization of international relations (IR): ahistoricism and Eurocentrism. Westphalia, it is argued, has been so stigmatized that it has become synonymous with the beginning as well as the end of what we understand as international relations. Rationalist theorizing in general, of both the neorealist and neoliberal persuasions, has produced a set of deductive theories that aim and claim to transcend …
China's Entry into International Society
One of the major themes explored by the late Hedley Bull and others in their studies of the expansion of the European society of states across the globe is the entry of extra-European states into that society. It has given rise to two challenging and inescapable questions: when was each extra-European state drawn and accepted into the expanding European international society, and how? The answers to these questions are central to understanding wh…
The Standard of ‘Civilisation’ Redux
This article interrogates the recent return of the discourse of the standard of ‘civilisation’ in international relations. Looking at the expansion of international society as an ongoing civilising project, it examines three important macro societal transformations of the international from a grand historical perspective. The classical civilising project, it argues, gives a particularistic interpretation and a truncated meaning to civilisation in…
China and the emerging regional order in the South Pacific
As China rises, it has become increasingly aggressive in applying its soft power in the Pacific. What does China’s arrival mean for the emerging regional order in the Pacific? What is it up to in the strategic backwater of the Pacific, which has traditionally been regarded as an ‘American lake’ and Australia’s ‘special patch’? Setting my analysis in the broad context of China’s new global diplomacy, I argue that the pattern of China’s assertive b…
The `English School' in China
Why does International Relations (IR) still remain `a not so international discipline'? What promotes/constrains the diffusion of non-American ideas to national IR epistemic communities beyond the trans-Atlantic community as well as Europe? In this article, I tell the story of how the English School (ES) as a non-mainstream approach to theorizing about IR has travelled to China. I examine the way in which the transmission of ideas associated with…
International Relations Theory in China Today
The Curious Case of ‘Schools’ of IR
This article interrogates the questions evoked by the curious case of ‘schools’ of thought in International Relations (IR) through the twin perspectives of the sociology of knowledge and geopolitics of knowledge. Drawing inspirations from the tradition of the sociology of IR pioneered by E. H. Carr, the paper first explores how geo-epistemic diversity can help understand the sociologically problematic nature of IR knowledge production in the exis…
China and liberal hierarchies in global international society
This article investigates the entanglement of the rising Chinese power with the liberal global order in negotiating for normative change. Drawing upon the English School theoretical perspective, it argues that three hierarchical constructs of liberal persuasion co-exist in and cohabit the global international society today. They are, namely, the legalized hegemony as seen in the UN Charter-based liberal pluralism; the changing normative order of …
Introduction
Chinese foreign policy under the presidency of Xi Jinping has been at once dynamic and contentious. Its dynamic character can be seen first in its new and self-assured multidimensional activism in the regional and global political economy. The successful launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the establishment of the New Development Bank (NDB) among the BRICS states; the articulation of what is arguably a global vision with…
Regional international society in East Asia? A critical investigation
This essay conducts a critical investigation of the existence or not of international society at the regional level in East Asia as a critique of the excessive universalism of the existing English School theorization of international society. Through a purposeful engagement with the English School theory, it looks at how primary institutions of the Westphalian society of states such as sovereignty and the imperialism are historically imposed upon…
China and UN peacekeeping
China's position on UN peacekeeping has seen fundamental changes in the last 45 years. Bitter condemnation in the 1950s and the 1960s has evolved into active participation in the 1980s and the 1990s. This article examines the process of evolution and its limitations. It argues that China has eventually opted to accept peacekeeping as a function of the universal values inherent in the UN. China's acceptance of such values best illustrates its perc…
Barbarising’ China in American trade war discourse
How is the legitimation of the American trade war with China discursively managed and conferred in recent American political discourse? This paper critically examines this under-explored question in the current literature. Taking cues from critical international theory and its insight on discourse and foreign policy, I start by historicising the discursive practices, which I call ‘barbarising China’, in the construction of civilisation vs barbari…
China and the Struggle for Legitimacy of a Rising Power
This article critically explores the historical transformation of the normative structure of international order brought about by legitimacy contests, and unpacks how power is deeply implicated in legitimacy claims amid the ongoing normative transformation of contemporary international society by virtue of the vanishing American unipolarity. By situating the analytical concept of legitimacy at the centre of this inquiry, it examines China’s attem…
Reconsidering the economic internationalization of China
Internationalization is a contested concept. Economic internationalization of China does not only refer to increased cross-border flows of capital, technology and goods and services, as is conventionally argued. From a critical perspective, internalizing principles, rules and norms embedded in the world economy which define ‘correct’ and ‘acceptable’ economic behavior of the state constitute a more dynamic and revolutionary process of China’s eco…
English School Special Section
This is a series of solicited articles requested by the editors of Vol. 51, emerging from a roundtable discussion held at the 2022 International Studies Association Convention. Each short contribution seeks to demonstrate the newest research of the English School of International Relations. These contributions tackle key questions including: the decline of liberal hegemony, the rise of China, the divide between soldaristic and pluralistic ethics,…
Early Cultural Orientations and Ancient International Thought
A short commentary on Martin Wight’s ‘The Disunity of Mankind’, a short and unfinished piece in which Wight focuses almost exclusively on the Western tradition of thought, from Plato and Aristotle, to the Stoics and to Augustine
The idea of order in ancient Chinese political thought
Journal Article The idea of order in ancient Chinese political thought: a Wightian exploration Get access YONGJIN ZHANG YONGJIN ZHANG 1Professor of International Politics at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 90, Issue 1, January 2014, Pages 167–183, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12101 Publishe…
China Anxiety
This article discusses what the author refers to as 'China anxiety', manifest in the current Anglo-American discourse on the rise of China. It is argued that beneath the hype and hyperbole, anxieties can be detected that are no longer only about the prospect, but increasingly about the purpose, of China's rise to power. The author suggests that there is a particular and deeper 'cauldron of anxiety' which causes, and is caused by, a certain intell…
China's Entry into International Society
One of the major themes explored by the late Hedley Bull and others in their studies of the expansion of the European society of states across the globe is the entry of extra-European states into that society. It has given rise to two challenging and inescapable questions: when was each extra-European state drawn and accepted into the expanding European international society, and how? The answers to these questions are central to understanding wh…
China and UN peacekeeping
China's position on UN peacekeeping has seen fundamental changes in the last 45 years. Bitter condemnation in the 1950s and the 1960s has evolved into active participation in the 1980s and the 1990s. This article examines the process of evolution and its limitations. It argues that China has eventually opted to accept peacekeeping as a function of the universal values inherent in the UN. China's acceptance of such values best illustrates its perc…
Ethnic Challenges beyond Borders
A rare collection of essays by leading Chinese and Russian Central Asian specialists. The contributors address the problems and challenges posed by the resurgence of Central Asia to China and Russia.
System, empire and state in Chinese international relations
Two criticisms have long been directed at the theorization of international relations (IR): ahistoricism and Eurocentrism. Westphalia, it is argued, has been so stigmatized that it has become synonymous with the beginning as well as the end of what we understand as international relations. Rationalist theorizing in general, of both the neorealist and neoliberal persuasions, has produced a set of deductive theories that aim and claim to transcend …
Economic Cold War
Reviewed by: Economic Cold War: America's Embargo against China and the Sino-Soviet Alliance 1949-1963 Yongjin Zhang (bio) Shu Guang Zhang . Economic Cold War: America's Embargo against China and the Sino-Soviet Alliance 1949-19763. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. 375 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 0-8047-3930-7. In Economic Cold War, Shu Guang Zhang has set out to write a definitive history of a lar…
International Relations Theory in China Today
Reconsidering the economic internationalization of China
Internationalization is a contested concept. Economic internationalization of China does not only refer to increased cross-border flows of capital, technology and goods and services, as is conventionally argued. From a critical perspective, internalizing principles, rules and norms embedded in the world economy which define ‘correct’ and ‘acceptable’ economic behavior of the state constitute a more dynamic and revolutionary process of China’s eco…
The `English School' in China
Why does International Relations (IR) still remain `a not so international discipline'? What promotes/constrains the diffusion of non-American ideas to national IR epistemic communities beyond the trans-Atlantic community as well as Europe? In this article, I tell the story of how the English School (ES) as a non-mainstream approach to theorizing about IR has travelled to China. I examine the way in which the transmission of ideas associated with…
Chinese Foreign Policy
China's International Relations in the 21st Century
In the Eyes of the Dragon
China and the emerging regional order in the South Pacific
As China rises, it has become increasingly aggressive in applying its soft power in the Pacific. What does China’s arrival mean for the emerging regional order in the Pacific? What is it up to in the strategic backwater of the Pacific, which has traditionally been regarded as an ‘American lake’ and Australia’s ‘special patch’? Setting my analysis in the broad context of China’s new global diplomacy, I argue that the pattern of China’s assertive b…
International Orders in the Early Modern World
This chapter asks to what extent the English School concept of the ‘expansion of an European society of states’ helps us to understand early encounters between Europeans and non-Europeans on the Indian sub-continent. The chapter tests this framework through an in-depth analysis of official correspondence amongst members of the British East India Company at the founding moment of British sovereign authority on the Indian coast in the middle of the…
China Anxiety
This article discusses what the author refers to as 'China anxiety', manifest in the current Anglo-American discourse on the rise of China. It is argued that beneath the hype and hyperbole, anxieties can be detected that are no longer only about the prospect, but increasingly about the purpose, of China's rise to power. The author suggests that there is a particular and deeper 'cauldron of anxiety' which causes, and is caused by, a certain intell…
Conclusion
Introduction
Power and Responsibility in Chinese Foreign Policy
The People’s Republic of China is now over fifty years old. Long considered an outsider, or a club of one, in international relations, China has recently become more active in international institutions. Is China becoming a responsible power in global and regional international relations? How accurate is the traditional perception of China? What factors may be motivating the
Contesting International Society in East Asia
Bringing together some of the most innovative scholars in both the English School of international relations and East Asian studies, this volume investigates whether or not significant and distinct international social structures exist at the regional level represented by 'East Asia', and what this can tell us about international society both regionally and globally. The book's main finding is that the regional dispute over how its states and peo…
The Standard of ‘Civilisation’ Redux
This article interrogates the recent return of the discourse of the standard of ‘civilisation’ in international relations. Looking at the expansion of international society as an ongoing civilising project, it examines three important macro societal transformations of the international from a grand historical perspective. The classical civilising project, it argues, gives a particularistic interpretation and a truncated meaning to civilisation in…
The idea of order in ancient Chinese political thought
Journal Article The idea of order in ancient Chinese political thought: a Wightian exploration Get access YONGJIN ZHANG YONGJIN ZHANG 1Professor of International Politics at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 90, Issue 1, January 2014, Pages 167–183, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12101 Publishe…
Regional international society in East Asia? A critical investigation
This essay conducts a critical investigation of the existence or not of international society at the regional level in East Asia as a critique of the excessive universalism of the existing English School theorization of international society. Through a purposeful engagement with the English School theory, it looks at how primary institutions of the Westphalian society of states such as sovereignty and the imperialism are historically imposed upon…
China and the Struggle for Legitimacy of a Rising Power
This article critically explores the historical transformation of the normative structure of international order brought about by legitimacy contests, and unpacks how power is deeply implicated in legitimacy claims amid the ongoing normative transformation of contemporary international society by virtue of the vanishing American unipolarity. By situating the analytical concept of legitimacy at the centre of this inquiry, it examines China’s attem…
Early Cultural Orientations and Ancient International Thought
A short commentary on Martin Wight’s ‘The Disunity of Mankind’, a short and unfinished piece in which Wight focuses almost exclusively on the Western tradition of thought, from Plato and Aristotle, to the Stoics and to Augustine
Constructing a Chinese School of International Relations
Introduction: The Making of International Theory? Yongjin Zhang and Teng-Chi Chang Part I Ongoing Debates 1. What's in a Name? A Critical Interrogation of the Chinese School of L. H. M. Ling 2. The 'Chinese School' Debate: Personal Reflections REN Xiao 3. Why Is There No IR Theory? A Cultural Perspective WANG Yiwei and HAN Xueqing 4. The Rise of China and IR Theories: Practice and Theory- Building Weixing Hu 5. Debating the School of IR: A Reflec…
Ethnic Challenges Beyond Borders
Political science (30 works) · Law (29 works) · China (27 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Politics (19 works) · International relations (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Political economy (13 works) · Economics (12 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (12 works)