Unconventional Reading
Western schools of thought cloud the lens of analysis of China
UPDATE: Contemporary IR theory, dominated by Western schools of thought (Muppidi, 2012), clouds the lens of analysis when Chinese foreign economic policy, including the BRI, is the focus of attention.
Contemporary IR theory, dominated by Western schools of thought (Muppidi, 2012), clouds the lens of analysis when Chinese foreign economic policy, including the BRI, is the focus of attention. China’s construction of a worldview, which integrates indigenous philosophy and culture, has its roots in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when China assimilated intellectual ideas from Japan and elsewhere to modify its system of governance while maintaining territorial sovereignty and limiting colonial encroachment (Deng, 1998; Noesselt, 2015). The ideas of non- alignment and non-exclusionary regionalism developed by Nehru and fellow Asian and African leaders in the 1950s differed substantially from the military blocs of the classic European balance of power model (Grabowski, 2019).
