Yang Han explores the nature of Chinese International Relations Scholarship in new article

DPIR DPhil in International Relations student Yang Han has had an article published in Millennium: Journal of International Studies in which she explores Chinese International Relations (IR) Scholarship. 

In Is Chinese IR Scholarship White? A Non-Dichotomous Critique of ‘The International as Singular, Enlightened and Sanitised’ (free access available) Yang aims to put together a framework for postcolonial critiques of non-Western IR knowledge, moving away from a non-White/White conceptual dichotomy. 

She explores the notion of “epistemic whiteness” – how a “White-centric” and Eurocentric imaginations about how the modern world exists and develops, and who gets to be defined as the drivers (as opposed to “objects) of the modern world – through the case of Chinese IR scholarship. She challenges the applicability of epistemic whiteness as an adequate framework for critiquing non-Western IR knowledge production. Building on postcolonial and Marxist scholarship—particularly the works of Hobson, Sabaratnam, and Rosenberg—as well as research on relationality, she proposes an alternative framework: “the international as singular, enlightened, and sanitized.” The international as singular and enlightened refers to an imagination of the development of the modern world being driven by a singular origin, who in turn needs to enlighten and ignite the development of other entities that are lagging on the unilinear trajectory of progression. The international as sanitized refers to the marginalization of the racialized injustice implicated in development and IR theorization.

She said: 

“This non-dichotomous approach aims to deepen critiques of global IR knowledge production. 

“I am deeply grateful for the support I’ve received (especially from Professor Todd Hall and my friends from AMES, History and DPIR) in refining this article and hope it inspires further discussion. I am also very grateful for the Department of Politics and International Relations in supporting me to present this paper idea at conferences and making this article open access.”

Yang is currently examining how modernity (especially, the criteria of what it means to be modern, and the desire to be modern among postcolonial countries) should be (re-)centred in critiques of the global racial hierarchy (and the critiques of hierarchy construction more broadly). The empirical case for her work is China’s 21st-century discourses on Africa, i.e., how varied actors within China understand Africa, its role in relation to the People’s Republic of China, as well as its own understanding of international hierarchies. 

More broadly, Yang’s work shifts the analytical focus back to uncovering how racialisation and the racial hierarchy are formulated in non-Eurocentric contexts in the first place (as opposed to the critiques of racism and the racial hierarchy underlying Eurocentric practices). Through them, she aims to revisit existing understandings of how international hierarchies exist. Aside from her empirically-driven monograph, she is also working towards a conceptual paper addressing the limitations of existing critiques of race and racism when applied to global IR practices (epistemic and practical ones alike).