Yan Xuetong warns of insulation of International Relations discipline in China
Leading IR scholar in China urges for more foreign faculty and students, greater focus on translating international theories into Chinese, and stronger efforts by Chinese scholars to reach out, etc.
Yan Xuetong (阎学通), Director of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University and a leading figure in China's international relations (IR) field, has expressed concern over the trend away from opening up within the IR discipline in China.
Sounding nostalgic about China's significant efforts to open up the IR field since reform and opening up, Yan regrets to observe a deviation from these practices in recent years, noting fewer foreign faculty and students in China, a decline in international academic conferences hosted within the country, diminished participation of Chinese scholars in global IR communities, reduced contributions from international authors in Chinese IR journals, limited coverage of global IR developments, and a slowdown in the translation of international scholarly works, etc.
Yan advocates for a renewed commitment to opening up as a critical step towards advancing China's IR scholarship to global prominence.
The following article was originally published in Issue 1, 2024 of the Quarterly Journal of International Politics, and is also available on the WeChat blog 国关新青年 La Jeunesse de IR.
Opening up is Essential for the Development of the IR Discipline in China
Since China started its reform and opening up journey in 1978, opening up has played a huge role in pushing forward the International Relations (IR) field within the country. While the focus on internationalization has shifted over time, each phase has brought about significant and positive results. Considering IR's inherently global nature, achieving world-class status in this field in any country requires a solid commitment to internationalization as a central guiding principle.
The field of IR in China only began to see substantial progress after the reform and opening up. Before this, from the time the People's Republic of China was founded, IR research was mostly inward-looking, missing out on engaging with international scholars, sharing findings globally, and being exposed to international critiques of research methods and academic viewpoints. The discipline of IR wasn't formally established due to the lack of systematic academic effort.
After the reform and opening-up, Chinese researchers started to notice the gap between China's IR education and research and the global standards. This realization led the Chinese academic community to collectively aim for the opening up of IR in China, with the goal of bringing it up to world-class standards.
From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, the main goal of opening up the field of IR in China was to incorporate advanced foreign knowledge and educational practices. During this time, China's IR discipline significantly lagged in expertise, comparable to the difference between the Chinese Super League and the FIFA World Cup in men's football today.
Bringing in advanced foreign knowledge and teaching methods became the key strategy to bridge this gap. To do this, China started sending scholars abroad for visits, encouraged students to study overseas, invited foreign scholars to lecture in China, and translated foreign works and articles.
Meanwhile, China aligned with international standards by setting up specialized journals in the field, introducing dedicated IR majors, and developing IR textbooks. This approach to educational opening up led to major advancements across various aspects of China's IR discipline right from the start. This period saw several key milestones, like the first enrollment of graduate students majoring in IR in 1978, the first publication of works introducing foreign IR theories in 1984, and the introduction of IR textbooks written by Chinese scholars in 1989.
From the early 1990s to the early 2000s, the core goal of opening up IR in China remained focused on learning from foreign practices, but now with an added emphasis on disciplinary standardization. In the 1990s, Chinese students who studied abroad returned with more systematic knowledge and standardized concepts in the field of IR. Consequently, the focus on opening up in China began to include standardization.
In 1994, the first issue of the "Social Science Journal" stated its mission to "standardize academic research in Chinese social sciences." Among various aspects of standardization, one key issue was annotations. Previously, domestic IR journals and works only used annotations to cite the works of communist leaders. Editors, believing annotations to be a waste of paper, deleted them without author consultation, leading to conflicts. This absence of annotations encouraged plagiarism. After more than a decade of efforts toward standardization, Chinese IR journals have adopted standardized annotation formats, works are systematically indexed, and higher education institutions have set detailed guidelines for citing and referencing in academic papers. Entering the 21st century, IR textbooks started to include style guides.
From 2003 to 2019, over a decade, two new aspects were added to the opening up of IR in China: spreading scientific research methods and promoting Chinese theoretical contributions globally. The former continued the work started in the 1980s, focusing on adopting and spreading advanced research techniques. The latter took an outward-looking approach to opening up, aiming to share China's academic innovations with the world. In 2002, China's policy shifted from mainly importing to a balanced approach of importing and exporting, fueling the international exposure of Chinese IR scholarship.
On the first aspect, efforts to spread scientific research methods have been successful. Since 2003, faculty from various Chinese universities have set up workshops on IR research methods, some ongoing. In 2008, faculty from 12 universities founded the "Chinese Community of Political Science and International Studies". This Community holds non-hierarchical conferences where faculty and students alike present and discuss IR research methods. Many universities have also made research methods courses mandatory for IR majors and included the demonstration of research methods as criteria for doctoral theses.
On the second aspect, Chinese contributions to IR theory have started to be recognized internationally. Starting in 2007, the innovative theories proposed by Chinese scholars began to catch the international academic community's attention. Many international scholars have joined discussions on developing a unique Chinese School of IR. Recently, within the broader Global IR dialogues, some international scholars consider the contributions from Chinese scholars as the most impactful non-Western IR theories.
Additionally, more IR departments in China have started publishing journals in English, with some indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) since 2013. Chinese IR scholars are publishing more in international journals, including prestigious ones, and there's been an increase in the publication of academic works by Chinese scholars with leading global university presses. Moreover, the citation frequency of works by Chinese IR scholars in international academic circles has steadily increased. Since 2014, an increasing list of Chinese IR scholars has been recognized in the Highly Cited Chinese Researchers list published by Elsevier and the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy.
However, in recent years, the push for opening up China's IR discipline has slowed down, noticeably affecting its development. On the import side, the presence of foreign IR faculty in Chinese universities has decreased, along with a significant drop in the number of international students studying IR in China. Few academic conferences on IR are held in China, with limited participation from foreign scholars. Moreover, contributions from foreign authors in Chinese IR journals have been minimized, and coverage of recent international IR developments in these publications is limited. There has also been a significant decline in the translation of foreign IR literature into Chinese.
From an export perspective, most universities have stopped encouraging submissions to international academic journals, with dwindling enthusiasm for publishing internationally. Attendance at overseas academic conferences has decreased, and fewer students are choosing IR as their field of study abroad. Collaborative programs in IR between Chinese and foreign universities have also declined. With opening up no longer the primary focus for advancing the IR discipline in China, progress has slowed down, resulting in a considerable decrease in the annual output of IR academic publications compared to levels before 2020.
The field of IR has unique characteristics. Ignoring opening up would pose significant challenges to the discipline's advancement. IR research examines various international actors, including states, international organizations, and multinational corporations, and aims to understand international phenomena like wars, conflicts, cooperation, and peace. It explores the principles behind international behaviors and events, such as the persistence and transfer of international dominance, the role and transformation of international norms, the formation and dissolution of international orders, the types and changes of international systems, and the emergence and impact of international leadership.
Ignoring opening up in IR studies would limit the scope of the discipline, confining research questions to a narrow range focusing only on domestic matters, thus hindering the field's progress. For instance, IR research in many small countries concentrates solely on issues of immediate national importance, leading to little advancement in these nations' IR fields.
Neglecting opening up in IR studies risks falling into a situation like the blind men and the elephant story. In the post-Cold War era of globalization, the increased interconnectedness of the international system requires that IR scholars adopt a comprehensive understanding of the field to accurately grasp objective realities. Conversely, limiting the study and analysis of IR to the perspective of a single country will inevitably lead to misinterpretations, where local situations are mistakenly seen as reflective of global trends.
Embracing opening up offers IR scholars the chance to access a variety of perspectives on global affairs. By reading the research of foreign scholars, engaging in exchanges with international colleagues, undertaking field visits abroad, and collaborating with scholars from around the world, IR professionals can broaden their understanding and analysis of the international realm. This is why institutions that promote broader international exchanges often outperform those with fewer international interactions in developing their IR disciplines.
Embracing opening up is essential for elevating China's IR discipline to global prominence. To enhance China's academic influence in IR on the global stage, it's crucial for international scholars to become familiar with the work of Chinese scholars. Interaction with Chinese scholars and access to their publications are common ways for international peers to learn about China's academic contributions. Given the limited global understanding of Chinese and the rarity of international counterparts who read or speak Chinese, communication and publication in foreign languages emerge as the most effective strategies. Therefore, proficiency in foreign languages is vital for the development of the IR discipline in China. Whether aiming to expand Chinese scholars' understanding of the international landscape or ensure a precise representation of China globally, the commitment to opening up is indispensable. While opening up alone doesn't guarantee achieving world-class status, it is a fundamental step towards such distinction. Abandoning opening up would undoubtedly eliminate the possibility of achieving global excellence.
China's development of the IR discipline has long embraced opening up, gaining significant experience in this area. Thus, the current challenges faced by the IR discipline in China are not about how to pursue opening up but whether to continue this path. Despite a COVID policy shift at the end of 2022 by the Chinese government to encourage higher education institutions to re-engage with international exchanges, progress has been slow due to various factors. Specifically, moving away from opening up has become the main barrier to the IR discipline's development in China, driven by a decreasing recognition of the critical importance of opening up. Therefore, in my view, it's crucial for the Chinese academic community to think about re-emphasizing opening up in the development of the IR discipline. Although history shows that paths to development are rarely straightforward, and the IR discipline in China is no exception, I believe the intrinsic dynamics of the IR discipline will steer it back towards a path of opening up.
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