China in International Relations from a Constructivist Perspective

The rise of China in the last twenty years has been met with various reactions from the international community, which is left to ponder what the Chinese objectives are. The election of Xi Jinping as Chinese president and Secretary of the Communist Party of China in 2013 introduced many changes in Chinese politics, as China became more active at the international level. Combined with the isolationism pursued by the United States following the election of Donald J. Trump as US President which has in some ways also been continued by new US President Joe Biden, preoccupations of the international community over a possible clash between both powers in the international system increased. While much has been written about the objectives of the US vis-à-vis a rising China, the purpose of the present thesis is to examine the Chinese approach to the international system, and what it can tell us about the Chinese ambitions in and objectives for the global community. The research question that will lead the present thesis is whether China aims to make drastic reforms of the international system, if it is a revisionist country, and if so what are its means and ideals guiding these reforms?
This research question will be answered mainly under the lens of constructivist theory. Constructivism is the only IR theory to consider and analyze the identity of international actors and so helps us to shed light on these dynamics. In contrast, realism states that states act based solely on their own quest for power and related national interests, whereas liberalism opens up the black box of the state to assess state preferences. Central to the analysis that will be conducted is the concept of identity, which in IR theory: «[identity] has usually been conceptualized as role identity to account for social interaction among states. The paradigmatic definition of Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein, for example, maintains that identity ‘comes from social psychology, where it refers to the images of individuality and distinctiveness (“selfhood”) held and projected by an actor and formed (and modified over time) through relations with significant “others”. Thus the term (by convention) references mutually constructed and evolving images of self and other.» In fact, in constructivist theory identity is central, as constructivism underscores this social factor rather than focusing over on an analysis of material factors. To be more precise, constructivists believe that the State’s social identity directly affects its actions and interests, and thus, through an analysis of the State identity, the objectives of said actors can be identified, and its actions better explained. Identity also affects the interaction between different actors, and as such it can explain the interactions between international actors better than an analysis centered on empirical factors. To investigate into the evolving Chinese identity, this thesis investigates Chinese foreign policy practices and the doctrines it employs in order to justify them. As we will see, changes in identity can have medium to long term effects, which further justify the employment of constructivist theory in contrast to realist theory which is generally more focused on the short term or over the analysis of peculiar events in the “now”. In fact, as we will see throughout the thesis, the rise of China in the international system has caused changes in its identity, which has set a context for its policies and choices in foreign policy.
Regarding the literature employed for the present thesis, it should be noted that at present there is no single source the author has encountered that analyzes Chinese foreign policy through a comprehensive approach as pursued in this thesis which focuses on three case studies. Thus, this thesis has employed a rather extensive and diversified literature.
Some of the sources used, such as Tingyang Zhao’s Redefining A Philosophy for World Governance, or Peter Ferdinand’s “Westward ho—the China dream and ‘one belt, one road’: Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping”, have been quoted extensively throughout the thesis because of their importance in further defining the relation between identity and Chinese foreign policy.