Building A Common Language in Pluralist International Relations Theories

The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2020, 455–483
doi: 10.1093/cjip/poaa009
Advance Access Publication Date: 15 June 2020
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Article
Building a Common Language in Pluralist

International Relations Theories
Mario Telò*
Mario Telò is member of the Royal Academy of Sciences Belgium, Professor of International
Relations at the LUISS University, Rome, Italy, and Free University of Brussels, Brussels,
Belgium.
*Corresponding author. Email: mtelo@ulb.ac.be
Abstract
This article aims to contribute to the gradual building of a common scientific lan-
guage within the world International Relations (IR) epistemic community. The
author shares the objective, indicated by many leading Chinese scholars, of a plur-
alist IR theory that goes beyond Western-centric mainstream theories to provide a
European continental perspective. Such a perspective takes stock, on the one
hand, of the legacy of Gramsci, Bobbio, and Habermas, and, on the other, of the
theoretical implications of European unity as a sophisticated instance of regional
cooperation. Since the dialogue must be at the highest possible theoretical level,
the author selects as main partners two leading theories from the increasingly rich
and internally various Chinese IR scholarship: the books recently published in
English by Qin Yaqing and Yan Xuetong, who represent—not only in China, but at
world level—two fundamental references in the international theoretical debate.
They lead two innovative approaches: Qin’s relational theory and Yan’s theory of
moral realism. The author discusses their main theses and concepts regarding IRT
and global governance in a free, open, and dialectic way, notably, the balance
between background cultures and multilateral convergence; and the differences
between the crucial concepts of hegemony, domination, and leadership, as well as
alternative perspectives on global governance within a multipolar world—a new
post-hegemonic multilateralism? Or a bipolar global power structure competing
for leadership?
Introduction
During the last decade, international observers have witnessed an upgrading of
the scientific dialogue between Western and Chinese International Relations (IR)
theories. This was possible thanks to several positive conditions, notably the co-
herent opening-up policies of leading scholars like Qin Yaqing and Yan Xuetong,
C The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Institute of International Relations,
V
Tsinghua University. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
456 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2020, Vol. 13, No. 3
whose recent books have strengthened this dialogue.1 These works are highly
relevant to both the Chinese and global IR epistemic communities. Why to
China? For two reasons: first of all, because they provide a further substantial
contribution to the deepening process of critical dialogue with Western research

communities, European and American in particular, a virtuous cycle that started
with the epoch during the 1990s and 2000s of translations from English into
Chinese of many reference books. These allow readers to share the perception of
increasingly common linguistic and scientific concepts, even though the answers
to convergent questions may be different, or even alternative to some extent.
Secondly, both of these recent books constitute evidence that the Chinese scholar-
ly IR community is consolidating itself as internally various and pluralist, from
distinctive versions of realism to idealism, and from constructivism to neo-
institutionalism. For example, if we consider the above-mentioned books, they
represent alternative research strategies within an open internal discussion, inter-
playing in a complex way with the international theoretical debate. Western
observers should consider with more profound interest this internal interdisciplin-
ary debate,2 which conflicts with foreign prejudices with regard to a ‘monolithic’
Chinese IR scholarship.
Beyond China’s borders, these inspiring books also offer relevant contributions
to the crucial and controversial debate, open within the international research
community, about the global order’s current and unpredictable transition by pro-
viding all of us with fresh Chinese analyses and perspectives on the current multi-
polarity’s evolution towards alternative scenarios: a non-polar fragmentation? A
stronger, more innovative, post-hegemonic multilateral cooperation as envisioned
by Qin Yaqing? Or, from Yan’s perspective, an emergent bipolar competition for
1 Yan Xuetong, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2019); Qin Yaqing, A Relational Theory of World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2018). See also Zhao Tingyang, Redefining a Philosophy for World
Governance (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018).
2 Since Zhao Tingyang’s approach belongs rather to political philosophy we will not focus on it
in the present review. The ‘tianxia’ system—a plea for global cooperation and consideration,
based on philosophical passion, is short on IR detail. This article focuses on Yan and Qin’s
books because they are disciplinarily framed by IR theory. However, we do recognise the in-
direct relevance of Zhao Tingyang’s work: its impact on the IR community in China corre-
sponds to the influence that the Kantian philosophical tradition continues to wield in the
European IR community. Through the Tianxia concept Zhao normatively looks to the history
of the Chinese ‘world’ for the inspiration to create a better future for the current global world;
in his view, ‘a community of shared destiny’ is the opposite not only of imperialism but also
of the Western understanding of ‘universalism’, which he accuses of attempting to universal-
ise its particular values unilaterally. According to Zhao, this is a misunderstanding: universal-
ity is a precondition for universalisation, and not the other way around. His idea of a
‘compatible universalism’ that puts ‘relational rationality’ (a concept of Habermas’s not far
from Qin’s relational theory) ahead of individual rationality, however, is extremely relevant to
bridging the European philosophical debate.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2020, Vol. 13, No. 3 457
leadership between China and the United States? More particularly, Yan’s book
represents an authoritative Chinese answer to the American view, notably
Graham Allison’s famous, hyper-mediatised, ‘Thucydides trap’ thesis (inevitabil-
ity of war), and the controversies this book has sparked, albeit mainly due to its

provocative title, ‘Destined for war’,3 rather than to its actual content.
Openness is another feature of Yan Xuetong and Qin Yaqing’s books, and a
particularly positive one, because openness fosters the common crucial attempts
to establish conditions for a shared language in the global epistemic community.
Much to our surprise, any serious Western observer must also recognise that the
intellectual itineraries of Chinese intellectuals like Qin Yaqing and Yan
Xuetong—respectively, the founder of a ‘relational theory of world politics’ and
the leader of the ‘moral realist school’—are challenging and thought-provoking.
Any scholar could not but highly appreciate the exceptional classical culture and
knowledge imbued in this world scholarly literature, as well as the pluralist and
the open way these books promote the international intellectual debate through
the medium of high-level initiatives.4
Both books are a must-read for every international IRT scholar. On the one
hand, Professor Qin’s book draws attention to the concept of relationality as not
only based on the interplay between background knowledge of the Chinese civil-
isation and innovations of a truly global, non-Western-centric IR theory which
deepens the dialogue with constructivism and institutionalism, but also independ-
ent. Yan’s focus, on the other hand, is on the renewal of realist and neorealist
American mainstream IRT. Of course, all internationalist scholars admire the the-
oretical clarity of the Waltz milestone of 1979.5 But since Waltz’s theory of the
eternally anarchical international system (based on a zero-sum game) is, 40 years
later, questioned by several researches analysing evidence of the very existence of
consolidated peace among neighbours who were formerly enemies in Europe,
South America, South East Asia, and other regions where the security dilemma is
diminishing, Professor Yan’s challenge is to innovate.
It is well known that proximity to one of the best Kenneth Waltz pupils, John
Mearsheimer,6 cannot be considered with enthusiasm by truly European
3 Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017); contrary to the title, the author, influenced by his
institutionalist background, focuses more on the cooperative alternatives to war than on the
inevitability of military conflict.
4 Prof Yan is the main intellectual driver of the Tsinghua University World Peace Forum, which
celebrated its 8th edition in 2019; Prof Qin, as President of the CFAU, led in April 2018 a na-
tional conference eminently relevant to fostering a pluralist IR theory beyond the traditional
Western hegemony (the outcomes are forthcoming via Routledge in 2020). I thank the discus-
sants of my presentation for their stimulating input. I also thank Silvia Menegazzi (LUISS
Rome), Zhang Xiaotong (Wuhan University), and Yuan Feng (ULB) for reading and encourag-
ing my publication of this article.
5 Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
6 A dialogue between Yan Xuetong and John Mearsheimer, cit.
continental scholars. As many scholars know, the Chicago University professor is

author of many relevant books, but also of serious misunderstandings and authen-
tic mistakes in analyses of post-Cold War developments, notably in Europe. In this
context, the European unification process has been pessimistically regarded since

19897 as doomed to collapse; as a victim of recurring historical struggles among
conflicting national spheres of influence, primarily of revived German Bismarck-
style imperialism. Well, it is a historical matter of fact that exactly the opposite has
happened, as may be testified by the dynamic process of deepening and widening
the European process through the Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice, and Lisbon trea-
ties towards further monetary and political unification, in spite of the worst eco-
nomic crisis since 1929 (2010–2017). That Professor Yan, like Mearsheimer,
openly underestimates that the dynamics of European Union (EU) unification, past
and present, is clearly manifested in his provocative book, Inertia of History, which
forecasts the EU’s inevitable decline by 2023.8
However, what readers may not recognise is that, to a large extent, Yan’s most
recent book copes with previous concerns in an innovative way. It provides the
international debate with an in-depth analysis of the current global transition,
along with an outstanding theoretical contribution that goes way beyond the limits
of the United States’ neorealist legacy. All in all, the main interest of Yan’s research
endeavour is the author’s will not only to update but also to revise the classical
realist approach to IR, precisely through an emphasis both on morality and focus-
ing on the role of leadership. Yan’s main purpose is: ‘formulating a systematic the-
ory explaining the mechanism for a rising state to replace the leadership of a
dominant state in an interdependent international system, including both the mod-
ern global system and geographically separated ancient state systems’.9
Rarely do we have the opportunity to read books of such rigorous internal struc-
ture and conceptual sophistication as these by Qin and Yan. Building a common
language wording and a shared conceptual framework is indeed a great achieve-
ment. Qin elaborates the concept of multilateralism on the basis of the best litera-
ture, including works by Robert Keohane, Peter Katzenstein, and the English
school. His reference to comparative regionalism is also well grounded through
references to Acharya’s works advancing the constructivist approach. In Yan’s
book, the word ‘system’ is used in two different contexts: one, along with the
Waltzian tradition, is his characterisation of the ‘international’ order whereby inter-
national means inter-state; neither ‘transnational’ nor ‘world politics’ as with Qin
and Keohane. The international system, however, according to Yan, is not only
global but also ‘interdependent’, as per the ‘complex interdependence theory’.10
7 John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War’,
International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1990), pp. 5–56.
8 Yan Xuetong, Inertia of History: China and the World by 2023 (Cambridge: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, 2019).
9 Yan, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers, p. xiii.
10 Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Power and Interdependence: World Politics in
Transition (Boston: Little Brown, 1977).
Both books challenge the European reader both as theoretical frameworks and ana-
lytical hypotheses of the current era of global transition.

Yan’s Moral Realism
We start our review with Yan’s book. His conceptualisation aims at an innovative
synthesis that transcends past cleavages. The main focus is on leadership as the in-
dependent variable. This is also an innovative step, because leadership is (i) a sub-
jective factor independent of the ‘system’; and (ii) conditioned by domestic
factors (regime change, internal political struggles, and elections), whereas it is
well known that, in the realist tradition, domestic factors matter neither in foreign
policy nor IR. Chapter 1 is extremely interesting in highlighting the theoretical
deficits of traditional realism with regard to morality. His critiques of
Morghenthau and Waltz’s theories are that they are limited, due either to
‘expunging’ (in Waltz’s case) morality from their theory or ignoring it.11 He fur-
thermore draws attention to the fact that ‘Mearsheimer argues against the incorp-
oration of morality into theoretical models’.12 Yan’s theory of leadership, on the
contrary, encompasses, as Yan defines in his concise language, both ‘capacity’
and ‘authority’ within a comprehensive and complex notion of power. The refer-
ences to Nannerl Keohane’s book, as well as to Joseph Nye, are highly relevant to
intercultural interaction.13
However, I would say, though, that including Machiavelli and Hegel in the
long list of outstanding classical Western authors he analyses would have been
most useful. If Chinese scholars were, in general, less fixated on the Anglo-
American literature, they would gain a more realistic picture of the variety and
pluralism within Western thought. Why? Because Machiavelli, for example,
(i) takes morality, and even religion seriously, as a necessary instrument of power
politics (‘religion is instrumentum regni’, a tool of power); and (ii) Machiavelli is
famous for focusing precisely on the concept that Yan does: the notion of leader-
ship. The title of Machiavelli’s masterpiece of 1513 is, ‘The Prince’, meaning the
leader, whose moral qualities (‘virtus’) are conceptualised as prudence, intelli-
gence, flexibility, and the ability to adjust to adverse circumstances. Italian intel-
lectual Antonio Gramsci, one of the most noted Machiavelli experts of the 20th
century, and a main point of reference for the Canadian school of IR (Robert
Cox14 and Stephen Hill15), focused precisely on this essential aspect of
11 Yan, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers, p. 25.

12 Ibid., p. 5.
13 Nannerl O. Keohane, Thinking about Leadership (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2010).
14 Robert W. Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations
Theory’, in Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1986), pp. 204–53.
15 Stephen Gill, ed., Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Machiavelli’s thought, both at the domestic and international level, in his re-
search for ‘The Modern Prince’.16 Gramsci combines Machiavelli with the Hegel-
inspired approach to the ideational basis of international leadership in a way that
is similar, to some extent, to Yan’s theory: ‘The changing Zeitgeist [spirit of the

times] is the moral and cultural factor leading international relations history.’17
Along the same line, Yan writes: ‘universal morality also changes through the
course of history’. Fifty years before Paul Kennedy’s masterpiece,18 and following
Hegel, Gramsci wrote that ‘the history of international relations is the history of
great powers, and explains the reasons for the rise and fall of leading powers’.19
This convergence is relevant. However, Yan’s theory of moral realism as ‘the
approach of understanding a major power’s behaviour when morality is a contri-
buting factor to its leadership’s strategic preferences’20 provides methodological
progress to the extent that its focus is on leadership preferences, which explains
the analysis of the components and levels of morality, loyalty, and authority.
Yan’s concept of ‘universally accepted codes’ offers an original contribution to a
highly controversial issue in the dialogue between China and the EU. In the
Yan—and Qin—understanding, this concept, contrary to the Western reference
to universal values rooted in the 17th-century Renaissance era and 18th-century
Age of Enlightenment, and enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights [1948, United Nations (UN)], must be balanced by attention to cultural
diversities. Furthermore, according to Yan, universal morality is rather composed
of five more ‘neutral’ pre-Renaissance foundations: those of ‘care/harm, fairness/
cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation’.21
However, there can be no doubt that Yan’s contribution nevertheless upgrades
the level of the East–West debate on universal values, since international public
opinion urgently needs shared concepts to cope with the common challenges that
humankind now faces.
Qin’s Relational Theory

Qin Yaqing’s sophisticated theoretical research focuses on the construction of a
relational theory of world politics. In addition to the influence of Western-centric
16 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince: With Related Documents, 2nd edition (Boston: Bedford
and St. Martin’s , 2015). See comments by Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2011), p. 13.
18 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military
Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987).
19 Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks. 2 volumes, edited and with Preface by J. Buttigieg
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
21 Ibid., p. 10 and footnote 30 in chapter 1 that provides the reader with a detailed cultural,
philosophical, psychological explanation: it should perhaps have quoted also Aristotle as
more relevant a reference than Peter H. Ditto!
hegemony on the discipline, its main point also emphasises the primacy of ‘struc-
tural realism’, wherein use of the ‘world politics’ concept is clearly more compre-
hensive and encompassing than that of ‘international politics’. It recalls Keohane
and Nye’s famous book of 1970,22 which first opposed the traditional realist con-

cept of ‘international politics’ as no longer fit to cope with the enhanced complex-
ity of interdependence and multiplicity and widening the scope of transnational
relations, societal networks, and intergovernmental regimes. The two US hetero-
dox scholars paved the way to non-American research—European, Asian, Latin
American, and African studies on the features of a post-hegemonic world order.
Qin’s critiques address the legacy of the ‘Waltzisation of IRT’ as the mainstream
in US universities and beyond the United States. Is an ambitious project of theor-
etical pluralism realistic? It is too early to say. However, while it is true that no-
alternative theory (no extra-Western theory) was born during the one hundred
years of IR as an independent discipline that appeared in 1919, within the current
new multipolar, multi-actor, multicultural, post-hegemonic world of the 21st cen-
tury the historical conditions for such US theoretical hegemony have, to a large
extent, disappeared. The Chinese new literature, notably books by Qin, Yan, and
Zhao, stands as evidence of an emergent theoretical pluralism as far as IRT is
concerned.
Drawing on Chinese cultural and philosophical traditions, Qin’s book offers a
groundbreaking reinterpretation of world politics. Qin has both pioneered the
study of constructivism in China and further developed this approach by arguing
that culture defined in terms of ‘background knowledge’ nurtures social theory
and IR, thus enabling theoretical innovation. Building upon this constructivist ar-
gument, his book presents the concept of ‘relationality’, shifting the focus from
individual actors to relations among actors. This ontology of relations examines
the unfolding processes whereby relations create the identities of actors and pro-
vide motivations for their actions. Appealing to scholars of IR theory, social the-
ory, and Chinese political thought, this exciting new concept is of particular
interest to those seeking to bridge the Chinese and European approaches towards
a truly pluralist IR project.
However, contrary to my approach of emphasising their differences, Qin
underlines what Waltz and Keohane have in common, a kind of ‘tacit know-
ledge’: the method of ‘individualistic rationality’, a rationalist hardcore based on
the ‘ontology of individualism’. His relational approach, based on his interpret-
ation of ancient Chinese thought, opposes the Western tradition. Different cul-
tures are the outcome of different cultural communities. If we share the need to
progress towards a post-hegemonic pluralism, there is a need to stress a
22 Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and Robert O. Keohane, eds., Transnational Relations and World Politics
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972). In Europe, this path-breaking innovation was
followed by several English and continental scholars. See Brian Hocking and Michael
Smith, World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (New York: Harvester-
Wheatsheaf, 1990); John Baylis and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World politics
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
metaphysical component of background knowledge and basic paradigms. Qin

mentions the ‘Confucian cosmos’: ‘A world of relatedness among people and
things . . . but humans are always key factors, creative and full of agency.’23 The
priority of ‘liberty’ is thus opposed to the priority of ‘harmony’, and that of the

‘ontology of existence’ to the ‘ontology of co-existence’24 in shaping the identity
of actors, including those in the world political arena.
This research strategy looks extremely interesting because it keeps its distance
from the Huntington idea of irreconcilable regions, each one considered a fortress
defending alternative civilisations. It is an outstanding contribution to a deeper
dialogue with both the Peter Katzenstein research agenda and with the Multiple
Modernities literature.25 Also relevant to IR is the question: why do states cooper-
ate? And the reply: interdependence theory, in ‘cases of common interests’.
According to Qin, common interests always exist in a relational world. This is
very interesting, but somewhat normative. The stage of conflict is inevitable by
virtue of building peace and partnerships as an intermediary step to seeking out a
true and more advanced synthesis between opposed actors: a long-term partner-
ship for peace through multilateral cooperation.
According to Qin, partnership requires that every participant in the new plur-
alist global governance goes beyond the concept of ‘stakeholder’ and gives equal,
or even more consideration to the interest of others and of the commons. Partners
do have their own interests, but at the same time recognise and respect the interest
of others. As friends, partners follow the principle of ‘Confucian improvement’,
that is, ‘establish if let establish’, meaning that improvement of self-interest is
realised if, and only if, other-interest is simultaneously improved. Partnership also
places special emphasis on the global commons. Mencius’s optimality provides,
according to Qin, another important principle, which holds that self-interest is
best realised if, and only if, society maintains harmonious relations among its
members. Here we define ‘harmonious relations’ with regard to cooperation, or
the maximum cooperative relationship among societal members. Simply put, it is
harmonious human relations that provide the best possible situation for one to
realise his self-interest. Good and effective governance requires this kind of part-
nership—partners who share and care and partners who are friends. This idea is
explicitly expressed when Confucius says, ‘Now the man of perfect virtue,
23 Qin, A Relational Theory of World Politics, pp. 112–3.

24 Ibid., p. 137.
25 Schmuel Einsestadt, Multiple Modernities (New York: Routledge, 2002); Thomas Meyer and
José Luı́s de Sales Marques, eds., Multiple Modernities and Good Governance (New York:
Routledge, 2018); José Luı́s de Sales Marques, Thomas Meyer, and Mario Telò, eds.,
Cultures, Nationalism and Populism: New Challenges to Multilateralism (New York:
Routledge, 2019); José Luı́s de Sales Marques, Thomas Meyer, and Mario Telò, eds.,
Regionalism and Multilateralism: Politics Economics and Culture (New York: Routledge,
2020), respectively, with contributions by Qin Yaqing, ‘Populism, Globalization and the Future
World Order’, pp. 149–63.
wishing to be established himself, seeks also to establish others; wishing to be

enlarged himself, seeks to enlarge others.’26 Mencius says, when discussing the
conditions for one’s success, ‘Good timing is important; even more so is geo-
graphical convenience, but the most important of all is harmonious human

relations.’27
However, while the large part of his book criticises the Waltzisation of IR, in
other parts Qin also opposes European Hegelian dialectics as a dialectics of oppos-
ition, as compared to the ‘Zhongyong dialectics’ based on harmony and human
relations: the Greek independent man versus the Chinese interdependent social life.
Is unity of the West a perennial feature? The transatlantic rapprochement empha-
sising the concept of the eternal unity of the West looks similarly unilateral to me,
and is rejected by many Europeans, notably Jürgen Habermas, Europe’s most im-
portant philosopher. In my opinion, the critiques of binary logics addressing
Hegelian dialectics28 would be more appropriate in the case of the Kantian concept
of opposition. Kant shares with Hobbes the concept of the state of nature and of
the opposition of interests, while his understanding of peacebuilding is normative.
By contrast, Hegel’s concept of ‘inter-subjectivity’ is crucial to the dialectic process.
It starts with radical opposition to thesis and antithesis as preconditions for the
third moment—the synthesis, which is supposedly overcome (‘Aufhebung’ in
German), by an immanent historical process—both the thesis and antithesis. For
example, in the context of State Theory, the family is the thesis (as early commu-
nity), civil society’s individualism is the antithesis, and the state as a new commu-
nity represents the synthesis.29 Harmony, therefore, is the outcome of a process
that inevitably includes the stage of antithesis and conflict. However, each synthe-
sis becomes a new thesis and restarts the dialectical process. Hegel, therefore, is far
from a binary logic. At the international level, the hegemonic state, representing
the Zeitgeist [spirit of the times], provides, at least for a certain historical era, a
synthesis—stability that overcomes inter-state conflicts. Among others, this dialect-
ic understanding of the historical process explains the Hegelian influence on Marx,
Gramsci and, via Gramsci, on the Canadian school of IR.
All in all, even though far from the Huntington approach, the concept of a sin-
gle and united ‘background culture’ with regard to ‘the West’ looks just as poten-
tially misleading for two reasons: on the one hand, it risks underestimating the
internal pluralism of each civilisation, the tensions, and the disagreements, not-
ably, as far as the West is concerned, those between dialectic and non-dialectic
political cultures; those between Christianity and the secularized world; and even
those within Christianity—between fundamentalists (Hungarian, Polish, and
other far-right parties) and open visions (Pope Francis), as well as the emergent
diversities between the Anglo-Saxon world and Continental Europe. We should
26 Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean (Shanghai: Shanghai
sanlian shudian, 2014), p. 60.
27 Cited in Qin, A Relational Theory of World Politics, p. 311.
28 Ibid., p. 186.
29 G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2001).
better talk about background cultures in plural, with diverse implications with re-
gard to foreign policy and IR theory; this, on the other hand, emphasises diver-
sities across continents, for example, between the European and Chinese concepts
of dialectics, whereas the good news for us all is that relevant similarities exist,

paving the way to an even deeper dialogue.
Two Scenarios of Global Order

As in the United States and in Europe, the epistemic community has opened a de-
bate regarding the implications of the controversial globalisation and post-Cold
war shifts of power for future world politics and the world order. While they con-
verge by excluding extreme scenarios like a new US unipolar world or an a-polar
(or non-polar) world,30 the research agendas of Qin and Yan contribute to this
open debate by defining two original alternative scenarios.
Qin Yaqing: A New Multilateral Scenario

Qin does not believe in the advent of a new hegemonic system which will succeed
the one led by United States, United Kingdom, etc. In spite of the challenge of
populist realism, a new multilateral scenario is possible, but under five condi-
tions: new multilateralism must be characterised by a pluralist, participant,
partnership-based, post-hegemonic, multilayered governance.
‘Pluralism’ is an anti-hegemonic concept in Qin’s thought. Multilateral cooper-
ation was revived in 1944–1945 under US hegemony, in the form of the UN and
Bretton Woods institutions. Since the end of the Cold War, as globalisation has
developed, the world has become a genuinely plural and pluralistic stage with
ever more participants, including emergent economies, regional organisations,
and various state or non-state actors.31 The enhanced relevance of multiple back-
ground cultures, instead of a ‘single modernisation model’, influence the theory
and practice of diverse multilateralism. It is important to recognise that members
of international society differ as regards economic development, religious beliefs,
social systems, etc., and accordingly have different priorities. Developed and
developing countries, for example, have different opinions and positions on many
global issues. Forcing uniformity through imposition, therefore, often leads to
failures of governance. In other words, global governance is also a process of
‘sharing’—various participants share their experiences, interests, and concerns,
and through this sharing practice they can expand their common interests and en-
hance their cooperation.
Secondly, the emphasis on ‘participation’ means to realise that, beyond the
mere intergovernmental dimension of IR, the role within complex world politics
30 Richard N. Haass, ‘The Age of Nonpolarity: What Will Follow U.S. Dominance’, Foreign
Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 3 (2008), pp. 44–56.
31 Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘A World of Plural and Pluralist Civilizations: Multiple Actors,
Traditions, and Practices’, in Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., Civilizations in World Politics: Plural
and Pluralist Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 1–40.
of civil society networks will increasingly matter. Participation thus reflects what
a genuine pluralism would expect. Pluralism encourages general participation
and upholds the principle of democratic deliberation and negotiation on an equal
footing whereby agreements can be reached with regard to shares in rights and

responsibilities.
Thirdly, ‘partnership’, rather than hierarchy, implies the new identity of partic-
ipants in the new multilateralism. Partners are, first and foremost, friends.
Mainstream IR literature tends to stress the antagonism and enmity of world pol-
itics, and the revival of pop-realpolitik sees the world as a gladiatorial court
wherein a hostile other is necessary to identify oneself. However, world politics
does not consist solely of animosity. Recent IR literature seeks to reintroduce
‘friendship’ to IR,32 rightly stressing that friendship is always with us and plays a
significant role in global affairs. It is precisely friendship that defines partnership
and cooperation. Furthermore, according to Qin, friendship describes China’s
relations with the world throughout the course of history. However, the world is
two-fold: Professor Qin proposes the new concept of ‘populist realism’ as a chal-
lenging and diffuse tendency that focuses on a centralised state and ‘back to the
future’, as John Mearsheimer defined it.33 The emergence of ‘populist realism’ is
the outcome of cynical political manipulation of Western peoples that has ren-
dered them victims of global shifts of economic power and of the ‘globalisation
malaise’ that strengthens protectionism, micro-identity needs, inward-looking na-
tionalism, and anti-liberal trends: the manipulation of national and regional val-
ues against multilateral cooperation and against the gradual institutionalisation
of international life.
Fourthly, defining the current transition as a ‘post-hegemonic’ era means that
the decline of the United States’ moral and political authority is irreversible, and
that no replacement is on the horizon. For example, the Trump ‘America first’
rhetoric and the Brexit discourse about ‘taking back border control’ are in line
with this inward-looking tendency that ignores 50 years of multilateral cooper-
ation and the large international literature on the ‘organised hypocrisy of sover-
eignty’.34 Populist realism goes against the needed common struggle for ‘global
commons’ (international common goods). Only revised multilateralisms may ad-
dress the inadequacy and ineffectiveness of existing multilateral institutions in
order to make them work better.
And fifthly, regionalism matters. New multilateralism is ‘multilayered’,
according to Qin: regional organisations and interregional partnerships frame
global governance as well as global institutions. However, their paths are diverse,
according to the variety of regional background cultures and modes of
32 Astrid H. M. Nordin and Graham M. Smith, ‘Reintroducing Friendship to International

Relations: Relational Ontologies from China to the West’, International Relations of the Asia-
Pacific, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2018), pp. 369–96.
33 Mearsheimer, ‘Back to the Future’, pp. 5–56.
34 Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1999).
cooperation. Consistent with the above theoretical framework, Association of

East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is not an underdeveloped copy of the EU model, but
rather an alternative model. Contrary to the highly institutionalised EU model,
ASEAN is that for an informal/consensual way. The tributary system is a historic-

al reference for ASEAN–China relations,35 not as a multilateral legacy, but as a
historically relevant reference that Thai scholars also accept. This avenue should
be explored, because its roots and perspectives, as has emerged in the recent de-
bate, are contrary to the interpretation of Chinese regionalism as merely
instrumental.
In conclusion, new multilateralism emerges as an excellent bridging concept,
or better still, a potentially shared research agenda, within the global epistemic
community. The Qin approach is extremely original in stressing, on the one hand,
the inevitable break with the hegemonic type of the past multilateral system and,
on the other, the need for comparative analyses of diverse multilateral ways and
modes, in plural.
Yan Xuetong: A Bipolar Scenario

The ‘moral realism’ of Professor Yan constitutes evidence of its eminent appropri-
ateness in light of the urgent need to frame empirical research on the current tran-
sition. Yan’s English language books and articles are innovative in focusing on a
crucial two-fold question. The first question (i) is an interpretation of the conse-
quences of the parallel processes of a rising China and a declining United States.
Yan’s interpretation of the inevitable change in the current multipolarity (China,
United States, India, EU, Japan, Brazil, and Russia) focuses on the emergence of a
new bipolar world, including a new kind of Cold War. Consistent with his realist
approach, Professor Yan is far more optimistic about the survival of the US super-
power than about a future EU civilian power. Moreover, Europe’s expected de-
cline, as discussed in Yan’s, Inertia of History,36 another relevant book, will
occur simultaneously with the decadence of Brazil, India, Japan, and Russia. The
second question (ii) concerns the unprecedented features of the new US–China bi-
polarity expected to emerge within the next decade, described as a different bipo-
larity ‘in form and content’ from that of the first one (1947–1991, opposing the
United States and the USSR).
The reader is thus challenged to resolve the puzzle: the mutual threat of the use
of nuclear weapon capabilities, the growing primacy of China in economic glo-
balisation, and the struggle for technological leadership in the digital economy
will interplay in a context wherein ideological confrontation matters far less than
it did in the previous bipolarity, making possible the hope of coexistence without
downgrading bipolar rivalry to military conflict. The Yan theses are well pre-
sented and sometimes provocative: however, his forecast of a coming bipolarity
addresses four controversial issues.
35 Qin, A Relational Theory of World Politics, p. 186.

36 Yan, Inertia of History.
First, does his bipolar scenario underestimate the United States? Yan is right
about the United States’ hegemonic decline; however, in military terms, the multi-
polar world is still markedly asymmetrical in favour of the United States, at least
for several decades to come. The gap between China and America remains consid-

erable (6000 n.-heads : 300, according to the annual SIPRI Report statistical data
on capabilities). The main problem for America is not that of China’s military
competition, but rather that its unique military capacity grows increasingly unfit
to cope with the nature of the most relevant global and regional challenges,
including security challenges, namely, Venezuela, Iran, Libya, Syria, terrorism,
immigration, climate change, etc.
Secondly, is the forecast of a fatal decline in the relative power of India, Japan,
Brazil, Russia, and the EU by 2023 exaggerated, notwithstanding its many im-
pressive supporting data? A large part of IR research shares the opposite foresight
that the world is, and will remain, multipolar as far as the power structure is con-
cerned,37 even though many concede that a bipolar tendency has been making
progress over the last decade or more.
Thirdly, would the formation of opposed alliances be in the interest of China and
of peace? In Yan’s view, bipolarity means constructing balanced alliances. In English
School founder Hedley Bull’s Grotian understanding, alliances may provide a first
degree of institutionalisation beyond anarchy.38 However, a China–Russia alliance
is the forecast not only of realists, but also of US conservative right-wing circles.
Robert Kagan, and Steven Bannon, support an ‘out of area’ NATO (North-Atlantic
Treaty Organization) engagement, notably in the Middle East and to contain China.
Yan is correct with regard to the relevance of this tendency. However, an alliance be-
tween China and Russia would inevitably strengthen the opposing battle in favour
of a ‘democratic alliance against dictatorships’. Currently, however, this tendency is
one apparently disliked not only by China’s leadership, which is prudent, in spite of
its energy needs, about being tied too closely to a declining Russia, but also by the
EU. Moreover, Canada and Japan, like the EU, are also opposed both to a China–
US diarchy (a ‘G2’ as envisioned by superficial journalists in 2014), and bipolarity,
as this would force them to take a stance with the United States, so prompting rele-
vantly negative economic, cultural, and political consequences. India’s illiberal Modi
leadership, which is nationalist, would also strongly oppose bipolarity.
Lastly, to what extent does international political economy matter? As
Professor Yan also recognises, economic interdependence between China and the
West is more relevant now than ever before (financial, production chains, techno-
logical ties, etc.). International political economists argue that, in spite of trade
wars, enhanced competition, recurrent tensions, international trade, and invest-
ment interconnectivity make a win-win game (as opposed to a zero-sum game)
achievable in the long run. China is about to consolidate her path towards global
37 Charles A. Kupchan, No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global
Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
38 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1977).
economy primacy, but this is happening within an interdependent world economy

(contrary to that of the first bipolar world), which has political implications. In
this context of interdependence, the institutionalisation of international life con-
tinues in spite of regional tensions; thousands of international regimes, civil soci-

ety networks, and arrangements at the bilateral, regional, interregional, and
global levels are growing upwards in number and scope.
Crisis of Liberalism, or the US Version of Liberalism?

Both Yan and Qin indeed address crucial questions, and discussing their theses is
a highly stimulating academic exercise. However, both Qin and Yan underesti-
mate the internal controversies within the West, which is divided, particularly
since the George W. Bush era—according to the main European philosopher
Jürgen Habermas,39 and even more so since Donald Trump’s election.40 Yan and
Qin are absolutely right in underlining both the internal and international chal-
lenges that liberalism faces. Professor Yan highlights the risk of a historically
retrogressive trend towards ‘one-man authoritarian regimes’ and non-rule-based
governance. Professor Qin focuses on the nationalist challenge of populist real-
ism. The internal challenge of right-wing populism is indeed strong enough to
have influenced decisively the Brexit outcome and Donald Trump’s election in the
United States (as well as other elections in Hungary, Poland, and Italy, so far).
The main objection of Chinese scholars is that NATO is still emblematic of the
Western alliance’s unity. The Atlantic alliance was, without doubt, essential dur-
ing the Cold War and, based on shared values, critical to containing the Soviet
Union through until 1991. However, since the collapse of the USSR and the end
of the nuclear threat, Europe is much less in need of the United States’ nuclear
umbrella, and the United States looks less interested in the European partnership.
Like it or not, NATO is undergoing an ‘identity crisis’, and fast becoming hier-
archical rather than multilateral. The 2019 NATO summit declaration reveals
mention by some of a prospective new Cold war against China as a reviving fac-
tor for NATO, something which explains the Chinese leadership’s prudence.
However, NATO kept its distance from the US policy in Iran in January 2019,
and was considered by Emmanuel Macron in 2019 as fast-becoming ‘brain
dead’.41 NATO is the victim of profound historical tendencies: the deepening
transatlantic rift, distinct strategic interests, diverse threat perceptions, and alter-
native understandings of current and future multilateral cooperation.
Is the crisis of the West—as regards its strategic and cultural unity—a crisis of
liberal values (rule of law, transparency, human rights, and minority rights)? A
39 Jürgen Habermas, The Divided West (Malden: Polity Press, 2006).

40 Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, ‘Liberal World: The Resilient Order’, Foreign Affairs,
Vol. 94, No. 4 (2018), pp. 1–15.
41 ‘Emmanuel Macron Warns Europe: NATO Is Becoming Brain-dead’, The Economist, 7
November, 2019, https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/11/07/emmanuel-macron-warns-
europe-nato-is-becoming-brain-dead.
large academic discussion is in progress about the ‘crisis of liberalism’ and/or ‘the
US version of liberalism’.42 Few concepts are more controversial than that of lib-
eralism. However, Yan’s interpretation of liberalism is two-fold: on the one hand,
he is aware of the theoretical dimension of this concept; but on the other, he iden-

tifies it with the liberal ideology of the 1990s. In fact, Yan considers liberalism as
an ‘ideology’ influencing ‘the international value system to the extent that the
post-Cold war era is known as the liberal order’. But this definition looks to me
like a narrow historicisation of a political theory whose roots are in the three
Western revolutions (English, American, and French) and, as Professor Yan rec-
ognises, in Locke, Montesquieu, and Kant (European) political thought. This
double definition affects the conceptualisation of the current transition as ‘the de-
cline of liberalism’, and deserves attention.
The Chinese perception of the scope and depth of the current crisis is particular-
ly relevant. Professor Yan argues that liberalism, ‘in China refers politically to
Western democracy and economically to a market economy’; on the other hand, it
also includes: ‘freedom, democracy, civil rights, secular government, international
cooperation and the resultant programmes in support thereof’.43 Yan is correct to
emphasise the leading role that the United States took in liberalism after WWII,
including its founding of the UN; however, his brilliant analysis is disappointing in
welcoming the transformation of liberalism into something else, by way of the
acritical citing of F. Fukuyama’s famous ‘end of history’ ideology. Many confuse
liberalism as political theory with liberalism as US ideology—transformed into
neoliberalism by US influence on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and on
the global economy. Whatever the United States’ instrumentalisation, the true es-
sence of liberalism in IR remains: rule-based governance, transparency (since Kant:
beyond secrecy), and multilateral institutionalisation (shared rules and procedures)
framing the two general principles of conduct and reciprocity. Here the discussion
with Professor Yan becomes problematic, since he considers this principle as linked
to US dominance, and not as humankind’s neutral and common achievements.
The second part of this controversy deals with the alternative to liberalism.
Will the new global order be based on new norms and a new centre? Is a historical
change similar to that from Pax Romana, to medieval Europe, to Pax Espagnola,
to Pax Britannica, and onward to Pax Americana? Is a Pax Sinica the world per-
spective? If not, is the true issue in global politics that of the construction of a
world centre, in charge of the formation of norms, or of a new multilateral leader-
ship (Qin)? Or is it possible to modernise liberalism by making it more inclusive:
‘justice fairness and civility’ (Yan)? Or will the bipolar confrontation lead to a
new Chinese hegemony? And what is the meaning of the concept of hegemony?
42 Amitav Acharya, The End of American World Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018).
The Conceptualisation of Hegemony and Leadership: Divergences and

Convergences
One of the main conceptual challenges in the disciplinary field of IR theory is the

precise and correct translation of the concept of ‘hegemony’, which is crucial to
the large literature focusing on international leadership, including Yan and Qin’s
recent books. However, there is an urgent need for a deeper dialogue on the con-
ceptualisation of ‘hegemony’. Based on the ancient authority of the Confucian
philosopher Xunzi (or Xun Kuang 313-328 BCE)44 and Prime Minister Guanzi
(or Guan Zhong, 723-645 BCE), Yan Xuetong translates hegemony as a style of
leadership ‘opposed to wise power’, while within Western political science, it
means almost the opposite: hegemony is precisely a form of wise power that is
opposed to mere domination, brute force, and naked power. Xunzi, however,
opposes ‘sage kings’ to ‘hegemony’, and Guanzi confirms this bipolar opposition
through the Chinese character ‘ba’, as opposed to ‘wang’, on the premise that
‘human authority understands morality while a hegemon knows how to win
wars’.45 Hegemony is thus opposed to a benevolent foreign policy, whereas in
Western thought it is identical with a benevolent foreign policy. Let’s take the op-
portunity of the discussions raised in Yan and Qin’s books to move towards deep-
ening this difference through a possibly shared research agenda.
Multiple Definitions of Hegemony

If ‘ba’ is the correct translation of hegemonic power, we must confront the chal-
lenge of dealing with opposing conceptualisations. This is no minor issue, espe-
cially for a high-level theoretical dialogue that inevitably includes controversies.
Influenced by superficial journalistic identifications of hegemony with domin-
ation, there are within the Western epistemic community many students whose
use of the concept sophisticated European scholars consider to be confused or
vague. Within the international Western epistemic community, three outstanding
schools of thought address this conceptualisation; they are the Canadian School,
44 Information provided by Yan’s extremely useful book Leadership . . . and its Appendix on
‘Ancient Chinese Figures’. Professor Yan also published in 2011: Ancient Chinese Thought,
Modern Chinese Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). For a highly critical
approach to sinicisation of the current research (as a mere legitimation function), see
Anne-Marie Brady, ‘State Confucianism, Chineseness, and Tradition in CCP Propaganda’, in
Anne-Marie Brady, ed., China’s Thought Management (Oxford: Routledge, 2012), pp. 57–9.
Of course, this ‘instrumental’ interpretation also has applications in Western societies.
However, we must recognise that the comparative reference to classical Chinese thought
also allows advancements of knowledge. For this open debate, see also Daniel A. Bell,
China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 5, 8, and 9; Valérie Niquet, ‘“Confu-talk”: The Use of
Confucian Concepts in Contemporary Chinese Foreign policy’, in Brady, ed., China’s Thought
Management, pp. 76–7.
45 Yan, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers, pp. 27, 39, and 49.
the Institutionalist school,46 and Robert Gilpin’s revision of the neo-realist

approach.
The Canadian school of IR, founded by Robert Cox, has revived Antonio
Gramsci thought, taking stock of the Notebooks written in fascist prisons be-

tween 1929 and 1935. Let’s start by underlining convergences. As earlier stated,
Gramsci’s theory of ‘hegemony’ is a theory of leadership, including what Yan
defines as both ‘capacity’ and ‘authority’. Yan also focuses on the ‘mechanisms’
of the rise and fall of hegemonic powers. Quoting E. H. Carr, Yan agrees with
Gramsci’s theory that ‘mankind in the long run will always revolt against naked
power’.
However, the Gramsci research strategy is about deepening conceptual oppos-
ition between domination and hegemony at both the domestic and international
levels. Hegemony combines force (military and economic might) and consensus-
building. Of course, hegemony needs the background of might (capacities in
Yan’s language) but does not exist without the complementary moral and intel-
lectual influences of culture, the support of intellectuals, and the conquest of civil
society and of the people’s minds as a common sense, all of which are crucial
both before taking over power and afterwards, to maintain it. In the international
arena, it is the comprehensive hegemony of the internationally leading power that
makes possible allies and various partners’ acceptance of its leadership. The con-
cept’s origins are in Greek; the word hegemonia comes from the Greek verb
hegeomai, which means to take the lead (books.google.com/). This leadership can
be political, cultural, and commercial. The main examples are taken from Greek
history (Herodotus, Xenophon, Thucydides, Plutarch), and relate to the long con-
flicts between two opposing leagues, the first led by Athens (Delos), and the se-
cond by Sparta (Peloponnesus).
On the one hand, the aim of this theory is to explain international and domes-
tic hegemonic stability. On the other, Gramsci’s theory focuses also on the condi-
tions for progressive change, whereby the socialist revolution takes the form of
construction of a ‘counter-hegemony’ (whether at the national or international
level) that is beyond Lenin’s idea in 1917 of a violent uprising to conquer the
Winter Palace in St Petersburg, and beyond that of international conquest or inva-
sion. In this context of universal ‘intersubjectivity’, political hegemony must be
acquired before taking national or international power.47 It is a radical turning
point, not only against economic Marxist determinism, but also of the Soviet
‘war of movement’, based on revolutionary instrumental alliances. Gramsci
argues that his theory applies to every social class and every state along with the
dialectic of history. Coming back to similarities with Professor Yan, Gramsci
describes hegemonic crises as ‘authority crises’. The same opposition between
force (domination) and consensus-building (hegemony) applies at the
46 For a deeper presentation of these differences, see Mario Telò, International Relations: A
European Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2009).
47 See the gradualist and reformist concept of ‘Warfare of trenches’ in Gramsci, Prison
Notebooks, p. 15.
international level. Whereas the Communist International under Stalin’s leader-

ship defended the rhetoric of the ‘general crisis of capitalism’, Gramsci focused on
emerging economic and cultural US hegemony through the rationalisation and
modernisation of production and consumption, including the private lives of

workers48 (as the true strategic challenge for the progressive movement).
Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is part of a profound revision of both traditional
Marxist traditions—Kautsky’s economist determinism and the Leninist/Stalinist
orthodoxy.
While Yan is interested in Gramsci’s revision of Marxism, Qin indirectly
addresses his cultural hegemony theory, albeit associating it, much to the reader’s
surprise, with Wallerstein’s orthodox Marxist world-system theory.49 However,
accepting Canadian S.T. Gill’s interpretation, in which the ‘structure of ideas
which become dominant though the forced consensus of the ruled and domi-
nated’, stands in contradiction to Gramsci’s conceptual opposition of hegemony
to domination. If Qin is correct in associating Gramsci with the constructivist em-
phasis on ideational structure, he is vague in including Gramsci among the main-
stream theories underlining the Waltzian systemic level of power. Identifying the
focus on the global system with K. Waltz is highly controversial; I would like to
draw attention to the fact that the Waltz’s milestone book ‘Theory of internation-
al politics’, was published in 1979, but the Morton Kaplan’s book, which was the
first to apply the concept of ‘system’ to IR, was published in 1965. It was, more-
over, influenced by the systems theory of Talcott Parsons and David Easton,50
and not at all by Waltzian systemic neo-realism. Keohane also uses the concept of
global system without sharing K. Waltz’s neo-realism (see later). In any event, the
Gramsci notion of power is far from that of European realist theories.
The second Western theory of hegemony has been elaborated by the neo-
institutionalist school of thought, most notably by its main representative, Robert
Keohane.51 A State can establish and consolidate its international hegemonic sta-
bility provided only that it can offer the world ‘international common goods’.
This signifies much more than simply reducing transaction costs, which is one of
the main outcomes of regime-building.52 Military might and economic interests
are not sufficient for either hegemonic stability or regime-building. In accordance
with this relevant—post-realist—school of thought, the world entered a post-
hegemonic era, precisely because, since President Nixon’s decision of Summer
48 ‘Americanism and Fordism’ in Gramsci, Ibid., p. 15.

49 Qin, A Relational Theory of World Politics, p. 257.
50 Morton Kaplan, System and Process in International Politics (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 1957); Talcott Parsons, The Social System (London: Routledge, 1951); David Easton, The
Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science (New York: Knopf, 1953).
51 Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in World Political Economy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
52 The classical definition of transaction costs has been provided by Douglas North in
‘Transaction Costs, Institutions and Economic History’, Journal of Institutional and
Theoretical Economics, Vol. 140 (1984), pp. 7–17.
1971 (following the consequences of the Vietnam war), America was, and is no
longer able to provide the common goods that it did from 1944 (the Bretton
Woods monetary system based on the US dollar as a pillar of international stabil-
ity) to 1971. What is the definition of an international ‘common good’? The con-

cept deserves a deepened dialogue due to the different sensibilities in the West
and in China. My definition is: a good that benefits everybody and every country,
including the enemies of the leading country, like the dollar did for the entire
world, including the United States’ main rival, the Soviet Union, during three dec-
ades.53 The title ‘After hegemony’ expresses well Keohane’s theory about the de-
cline in the United States’ international authority and role, which indeed presages
the end of US domination and military primacy. The previous work of historian
Charles Kindleberger54 was a coherent background for the Keohane theory.
Yan disagrees with this concept of ‘public good’: he looks to distinguish alli-
ances from those of the ‘Cold war mentality’, considering alliances as ‘an effective
moral strategy through which leading states may win international support and
also establish their authority’. However, alliances are by definition exclusive in
being against certain foreign threats and against other states. If we accept alli-
ances as a public good, then the public good for one group of states is not that for
the rival group. It is hence about power redistribution, and not about providing
humankind with common goods. The instrumental side of realism so reappears:
alliances are a step towards changing ‘the international norms, the normative
order and even the entire international system’.55
Qin Yaqing’s interpretation of Keohane’s institutionalism is admirable56; the
reader could seldom find such a clear presentation of this relevant and distinctive
theory that makes possible the understanding that international regimes and insti-
tutions, born under the umbrella and values of a hegemonic power, gradually
gain autonomy from it. Theoretically, Qin describes it as a ‘transformation of the
institutions from dependent variable to independent variable’: ‘they acquire an in-
dependent existence by having their own life and being able to influence the be-
haviour of states. They constitute an international space where the actor’s
behaviour is regulated by the structure of international institutions.’ However,
what is difficult to share with Qin is that the differences between Keohane and
Wendt are seen through the eyes of Wendt’s partially constructivist, anti-
positivist vision, and that all these various thinkers merge within the general con-
cept of ‘theories based on structural systemic force’; meanwhile, the pluralism
within Western thought is underestimated.
The Yan and Qin analyses and their controversial definitions are stimulating
for analyses of the current transition, as the following two examples clearly show.
53 Telò, International Relations, pp. 87–9.

54 Charles Kindleberger, The World in Depression: 1929-1939 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1973); Charles Kindleberger, World Economic Primacy: 1500-1990 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996).
56 Qin, A Relational Theory of World Politics, pp. 353–4.
First, between 2013 and 2017, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Treaty
(TTIP, negotiated but never signed by the United States and EU) and the Trans-
Pacific Partnership (TPP) signed by the United States and 12 Asia-Pacific (in
2015) partners (before the Trump’s decision to withdraw in 2017) were the

Obama administration’s two relevant ways of alliance-rebuilding for purposes of
setting international trade norms first and foremost with friends (transatlantic
and transpacific friends, respectively). The objective of containing China may
cause Yan to classify this as an attempt towards exclusive and ‘conservative lead-
ership’, while others, following Ikenberry, could emphasise the dynamic and po-
tentially inclusive dimensions of these projects. In my opinion, far from exclusive
alliances, to reach a true hegemonic leadership—in the Western understanding,
one that is close to Yan’s concept of human leadership—these two projects should
be explicitly transformed into building stones for a new multilateralism that
includes China and other emergent economies. In this case, however, according
to my approach, the new trade standards (including environment protection, so-
cial rights, public procurement, public conflict setting mechanisms, and other
innovations) could qualify as ‘public goods’, rather than the first alliance
scenario.
These inclusive ideas of stepping-stone trade arrangements are practised
through the EU strategy of avoiding ‘alliances’ and simultaneously conducting
high-level and comprehensive trade and/or investment arrangements with Korea,
Japan, Vietnam, China (Bilateral Investment Treaty negotiation), Australia,
New Zealand, and ASEAN.
The second example is that of the balance between the military and civilian
dimensions of international power. According to Professor Yan and the realist
tradition, the indiscriminate refusal to use coercion by military force is not only
‘antithetical to the behaviour of human authority leadership’, but also signifies
that a state or global actor ‘refuses to maintain international order’,57 thus pro-
voking chaos. However, we may agree that both the US and Russia’s interven-
tions in the Middle East (2002–2019), far from maintaining order, instead
destabilised the entire region, in their own national interest. We might also note
that, by contrast, the EU’s pressure on Brazil to remain in the COP 21 Paris
Treaty substantively changed President Bolsonaro’s previous decision to with-
draw, yet involved no military threat, instead offering a trade arrangement. This
EU market- and trade-power (linked to the Paris COP 21 treaty and other stand-
ards) could be strictly applied to all trade arrangements. Perhaps the international
political economy and its hierarchy of tools can explain more than classical real-
ism can with regard to the capacity to change another’s behaviour against its will.
The international implications of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)58 and the ‘EU

58 On the BRI, see Mario Telò and Yuan Feng, eds., China and the EU in the Era of Regional
and Interregional Cooperation: The Belt and Road Initiative in a Comparative Perspective
(Brussels and London: Peter Lang, 2020).
Green deal’59 offer two further examples of international politics through IPE
tools.
The third elaboration of the concept of hegemony comes from a completely
different school of thought. It is by Robert Gilpin, one of K. Waltz’s best pupils, a

remarkable political economist with a neo-realist background, who recently
passed away. He addressed diffuse critiques of structural realism (the eternally
anarchical international order) by deepening an issue which his master had not
considered at all: that of the global system’s historical changes. Gilpin answers
this crucial question, which looks just as interesting to Professor Yan, by focusing
on the changes of global hegemony within an international order. He accordingly
elaborates and shares the concept of ‘hegemonic cycles’ over four successive peri-
ods: emergence, consolidation, challenge, and decline.60 This thesis is shared to a
large extent by another realist political economist, Immanuel Wallerstein, who
combined his Marxist background with the findings of French historian
F. Braudel in drawing attention to the ideals and cultural dimensions of the cycles
of international hegemony: the ideas at the centre of the world capitalist system
shaping the education, values, and behaviour of the majority of intellectuals and
leaders which flow from the periphery.61 The successive Spanish, Dutch, and
English hegemonies confirmed, during the five-century history of the transform-
ation of Western capitalism into a global system, the theory of hegemonic cycles.
Will the United States also experience such a cyclical decline? Contrary to Yan’s
conceptualisation, is it about to build up a new hegemonic cycle? Professor Qin
rightly criticises Wallerstein’s structural determinism.
These three Western schools of thought—neo-institutionalism, neo-realism, and
Italian Marxism—are as diverse as their backgrounds and aims. However, for all
such scholars, hegemony is not only distinct from mere domination, but also more
comprehensive, inclusive, and multidimensional. It would make no sense to pro-
pose a new concept that is synonymous with another (that of domination). Yan
Xuetong’s book, through his sophisticated conceptualisation, eventually makes the
opposite understandings of this crucial concept clear to every reader, and the inter-
national epistemic community should hence be thankful for it.
Nonetheless, there are some misunderstandings, as I suspected was possible
after my first dialogues with Chinese scholars in the 1980s and 1990s, when the
legacy of Mao Zedong was still relevant. In the early 1960s, Mao accused the
Soviet Union of behaving like a ‘hegemonic’ power towards China (which in his
understanding meant dominant, in the manner of a ‘social imperialist’, towards
China in light of the withdrawal of Soviet experts and the Ussuri border incidents
of 1969). In the understandings of these three Western scholars, meanwhile, the
Soviet Union was an arrogant and dominant superpower that humiliated China
59 European Commission, The EU Green Deal, December 2019.

60 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981).
61 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System (New York: Academic Press, 1974, 1980,
1989).
(as it did Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968) after renouncing every
ambition to be a hegemonic and progressive power (in Gramsci, Keohane, or
Wallerstein’s understanding). After reading Yan’s book, every scholar may now
realise that this different conceptualisation is based not only on Mao Zedong but

also on the interpretation of ancient background cultures: on deep cultural differ-
ences based, respectively, on Greek ancient history on the one hand, and on
Xunzi and Guanzi on the other. Only by identifying such initial distances can a
constructive dialogue be possible.
Is this issue nothing more merely than a dry academic question? We think not.
When defining the current international disorder, or transitional system, we pro-
pose, in accordance with R. O. Keohane, R. Gilpin, and A. Gramsci, the concept
of a ‘post-hegemonic system’, because the United States is no longer either willing
or able to spread the cultural and ideational dimension of its international power,
or to offer international common goods as it did in the period 1944–1971.
Why cannot the EU replace the United States as the Western hegemonic power
in spite of the deepening transatlantic rift? And why do European innovative
thinkers understand excessive emphasis on national sovereignty as a risk and po-
tential threat to peace? For two reasons: first, because for the EU, multilateralism
and cooperative governance beyond the nation state are a ‘way of life’, the regular
internal practice for 70 years of sharing and pooling national sovereignties. They
revive an ancient tradition by strengthening the supranational dimension of multi-
lateralism. The first steps, in the form of national sovereignty-civilising, towards
multilateralism were accomplished in the context of the Concert of Europe during
the entire 19th century, after Napoleon’s defeat.62 The alternative, tragic, nation-
alist model provoked two world wars.
The second reason is that the EU has again been internally challenged for a
decade by new nationalist, populist, and far-right parties that radically oppose
not only the EU but also immigration and peaceful cooperation, notably with
China. This is a serious challenge that can be met only through successful global
and regional multilateralism, not least through successful cooperation with
China. Why is this challenge serious? Continental Europe’s dilemmas are expres-
sions of the internal conflictual co-existence of two logics. On the one hand, we
have the EU’s institutional paradigm of reconciliation among erstwhile enemies,
designed to put an end to ‘security dilemmas’ and foster cooperation through
strong governance beyond the state. On the other, we are witnessing the neo-
nationalist trend, animated by ‘populist realism’. Even though they performed
poorly in the 2019 European Parliament elections and have been chastened by the
new EU leadership, nationalism and populist far-right parties, oscillating between
radical followers of Brexit and opportunistic fighters for a weaker and more con-
federal EU, namely, Kacynski, Orban, Salvini, and Le Pen, nevertheless remain a
long-term challenge. These big troubles also affect the cultural arena.
62 Mario Telò, ‘The Three Historical Epochs of Multilateralism’, in Mario Telò, ed.,
Globalization, Europe, Multilateralism: Towards a Better Global Governance? (London:
Ashgate, 2014), pp. 33–73.
For example, the Déclaration de Paris63 in France has revived the Catholic
anti-Pope Francis and reactionary nationalist associations once deemed out-
moded. Consider the line-up of those advocating neo-nationalist paradigms:
Alain de Benoist,64 and, within a different cultural context, Michel Onfray on the

one hand, and Alain Finkielkraut,65 and even Regis Debray,66 on the other. All
contest the previously dominant paradigm of post-sovereignism championed by
scholars like Bertrand Badie,67 Pierre Bourdieu,68 and Pierre Hassner.69 In Italy,
extreme right nationalism is culturally weak since WWII. However, the comeback
of the old ‘geopolitics’ has been accompanied by the revival of national fascist
thought, while extreme right-wing populists are inspired not only by Mussolini
but also by Ezra Pound and the Russian Alexander Dugin. The Europeanist per-
spective articulated by the three largest cultural streams, Christian, liberal, and
left, was, and is still hegemonic in the intellectual arena, thanks to the influence
of Norberto Bobbio,70 Altiero Spinelli,71 Umberto Eco,72 and many others. Even
in Germany, by far most representative of the thought of J. Habermas and his
post-national ideas of a European public sphere and European constitutional pat-
riotism, based on the reconciliation of previous enemies and the construction of
supranational democratic governance, has been challenged increasingly not only
63 Philippe Bénéton, Rémi Brague, and Chantal Delsol, La déclaration de Paris: Une Europe en
laquelle nous pouvions croire (Paris Declaration: A Europe We Can Believe, A Manifesto)
(Paris: Cerf, 2018).
64 Alain de Benoist, Contre le libéralisms (Against Liberalism)(Monaco: Le Rochee, 2019).
65 Alain Finkielkraut, ‘Nul n’est Prèt à Mourir pour l’Europe’ (‘Nobody Is Ready to Die for
Europe’), Le Point, 30 June, 2016, https://www.lepoint.fr/europe/alain-finkielkraut-nul-n-est-
pret-a-mourir-pour-l-europe-30-06-2016-2050917_2626.php.
66 Regis Debray, L’Europe Phantôme (Europe as a Phantom)(Paris: Gallimard, 2019).
67 Bertrand Badie, Un Monde sans Souveraineté (A World without Sovereignties)(Paris:
Fayard, 1999).
68 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Pour un Movement Social Européen’ (‘For a European Social Movement’),
Le Monde Diplomatique, 1999, pp. 1–16.
69 Pierre Hassner, ‘L’Europe et le Spectre des Nationalismes’ (‘Europe and the Specter of
Nationalisms’), Esprit, 1991, pp. 5–20.
70 Norberto Bobbio, ‘Etat et Démocratie Internationale’ (‘State and International Democracy’),
in Mario Telò, ed., Démocratie et Relations Internationals (Democracy and International
Relations)(Bruxelles: Complexe, 1999), pp. 143–58.
71 Andrew Glencross and Alexander Trechsel, eds., EU Federalism and Constitutionalism: The
Legacy of Spinelli (London: Lexington, 2010).
72 Umberto Eco, ‘It’s Culture, Not War, That Cements European Identity’, The Guardian, 26
January, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/26/umberto-eco-culture-war-
europa.
by the reemerging legacy of the sovereignist far-right tradition championed by

Carl Schmitt but also by various neo-nationalist approaches, including the ‘social
Welfare nationalism’ of Fritz Scharpf73 and Wolfgang Streeck.74
The victory of Nationalism would bring new wars, as in the past. While

Europeans are mainly concerned about nationalism as a tendency that goes
against internal peace and external multilateral cooperation, including with
China, the Chinese are focusing on their history of developing the country and
freeing themselves from colonialism through the concepts of national sovereignty
and non-interference. This difference explains to a large extent the different
accents in European and Chinese IR theories.
The Nexus of Hegemony and Leadership

Professor Yan’s recent book allows some progress with regard to the intercul-
tural dialogue towards a common language. Should one adopt the Chinese con-
ceptualisation, revived by Yan, of how to define the current US global role,
symbolised by Donald Trump’s global ‘America first’-based policy, and his reck-
less, protectionist, and unilateral will to dominance? Yan suggests a relevant nu-
ance that distinguishes the Trump leadership from the worst ideal type
leadership, that of Hitler’s Nazi world-domination design (as well as the
Japanese militarist government of 1935–1945) and its immoral, illegal, and to-
tally arbitrary practice (qualified as ‘tyrannical leadership’). Secondly, Yan pro-
poses, in the case of Trump, the new concept of ‘Anemocratic75 leadership’
(untrustworthy, irresponsible, unpredictable, double standard-oriented),76 simi-
lar to that of King You, last ruler of the Zhou Dynasty, and quotes G. John
Ikenberry and Joseph Stiglitz in support of his critiques of Donald Trump. All in
all, his innovative conceptualisation concedes to the three above-mentioned
Western schools the existence of two harder alternatives to hegemonic leader-
ship: the Tyrannical and Anemocratic leaderships can be considered not as var-
iations of hegemonic leadership but as alternative ideal types. This is a step in
the right direction towards a compromise with the Western schools’ opposition
to the hegemonic leadership of domination.
According to Yan, hegemonic leadership is, on the contrary, trustworthy, in
accordance with a clear distinction between allies and rivals: credible with
friends, and adopting the law of the jungle with enemies, which makes peace pos-
sible but unstable. In my opinion, this definition could apply to the United States
73 Wolfgang Streeck, Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (London and
New York: Verso, 2013).
74 Fritz W. Scharpf, ‘After the Crash: A Perspective on Multilevel European Democracy’,
European Law Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2015), pp. 384–405.
75 The neo-logism proposed by Yan ‘anemocratic’ comes from the Greek kraros ¼ power, and
anemos, translated into English as ‘wind’ and into French as ‘tourbillon’ (strong wind):
Anemocratic ¼ Power of the wind, or a storm, that is, a power characterised by turbulence
and storms.
76 Yan, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers, pp. 45–6.
during the Cold War decades. However, there is a relevant difference that calls
for deeper discussion: Yan includes in the same definition of hegemonic leader-
ship both the United States and Soviet governments during the Cold War era.77
This evaluation of the Soviet Union’s international role during the Cold War is

consistent with Mao’s definition of the USSR as ‘hegemonic’, but it conflicts not
only with the Western schools mentioned above but also with Yan’s distinctions
of hegemonic and ‘anemocratic’ leadership.
Moreover, hegemonic leadership, in following double standards (see above), is
opposed not only to the ‘anemocratic’ and ‘tyrannical’ kinds of leaderships but
also to the main features of ‘human authority’, which is trustworthy and consist-
ent with international norms. What looks difficult to accept is that the single ex-
ample Yan mentions is Franklin D. Roosevelt,78 with whom the US and
European literature identify their notion of US hegemony.79 Was, then, the turn-
ing point of 1947 and the beginning of the Cold war such a dramatic change? A
part of the Western literature agrees with Yan that the Truman presidency framed
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s grand universalist design of 1944–1945 (see the Bretton
Woods conference of 1944 and Dumberton Oaks conference of 1943, paving the
way to the UN Charter of 1945)80 in the hard security context and imperatives of
the bipolar confrontation. However, the multilateral process that the Bretton
Woods started is kept alive, not only by the Keynes-inspired institutions of the
IMF and World Bank (WB), but also with the creation of General Agreement on
Tariff and Trade (GATT), father of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which
has included China since 2001. Moreover, the Eastern European countries
(Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia), which did not receive benefits from the
Marshall Plan (1947–1957), decided to reject it and to defect under the orders of
Stalin. The United States continued to provide the world with international com-
mon goods and with cultural hegemony through the rationalisation of production
and consumption, cinema, music, and promotion of the ‘American way of life’
for almost three decades.
Many Western academic experts analysed the dark side of US hegemony dur-
ing the Cold War,81 evident in domestic McCarthyism and witch hunts, and
77 Ibid., p. 49.
78 Ibid., p. 44.
79 See not only the Keohane definition mentioned above, but also G. John Ikenberry, The
Liberal Leviathan (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 2001); John Gerard Ruggie, ed.,
Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of An Institutional Form (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993); Stewart M. Patrick, The Best Laid Plans: The Origins of
American Multilateralism and the Dawn of the Cold War (New York: Rowman and Littlefield,
2009).
80 Telò, ‘The Three Historical Epochs of Multilateralism’, pp. 33–73.
81 John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (London: Penguin Books, 2006); Tony
Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (London: Penguin books, 2005); Odd Arne
Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
imperialist policies in regions of the third world such as South America and South
East Asia. But hegemony means precisely that: domination and consensus-
building. Comparative research needs to be conducted on the evolution of
China’s leadership within multilateral (or ‘counter-multilateral’, according to

Robert O. Keohane82) organisations (the AIIB83 and, even more so, the New
Development Bank) and with regard to interregional policies (BRI) from a period
of cooperation towards a period of quasi-Cold war with the United States.
When discussing the Post-Cold War era, Yan adds the new criterion of distin-
guishing hegemonic from human hegemony; that of: ‘supporting secessionism in
authoritarian regimes but not in democratic countries’. One should argue that
Putin’s Russia is supporting European secessionism in Georgia, Ukraine, and
Moldova. And that both Putin and Trump are supporting secessionism and frag-
mentation of the EU and of regional organisations elsewhere. Donald Trump is
indeed supporting secessionism in Hong Kong, Tibet, Taiwan, and Xinjiang.
These policies look to many observers like violations of international law/norms
and, hence, far from hegemonic according to the above-explained meanings.
Furthermore, after reading Yan’s book, what might further be explored is
whether and to what extent this conceptualisation of historical and long-term he-
gemony also affects the notion of short-term leadership. In the Western under-
standing (with the single exception of R. Kagan84), the United States’ authority
and international strategic credibility are undergoing an inevitable decline. In the
perception of the majority of observers, the United States’ recent oscillations
(Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump) are structural, or limited to conjunctural
shifts within a post-hegemonic era characterised by the relative decline of the
United States’ capacities and authority.
In conclusion, if we accept the four sophisticated ideal types that Yan pro-
poses85 with regard to the notion of leadership, our conclusions are to some ex-
tent both convergent and divergent. They are divergent as regards the United
States’ hegemonic leadership, notably before and during the Cold War. In the
Western, largely shared, perception, the international leadership of Franklin D.
Roosevelt—‘hegemonic’ in the Western understanding; ‘human’ in Yan’s concep-
tualization—did not end with Roosevelt’s death in 1945. The multilateralism
option as a mode of hegemonic leadership, combining domination and consensus-
building policies, continued in the difficult context of the Cold War, albeit, of
course, with oscillations and contradictions. However, both the UN and the
Bretton Woods institutions continued to frame the West’s spectacular economic
82 Robert O. Keohane and Julia C. Morse, ‘Counter-multilateralism’, in Jean-Frederic Morin

et al., eds., The Politics of Transatlantic Trade Negotiations: TTIP in a Globalized World
(New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 17–26.
83 Matthew D. Stephen and David Skidmore, ‘The AIIB in the Liberal International Order’,
Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2019), pp. 61–91.
84 Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World (New York: Knopf
Doubleday Publishing Group, 2019).
85 Yan, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers, pp. 33–46.
boom and common security. In my humble opinion, Yan underestimates the

strengths of institutional rules and procedures, among others, in enabling the
European Community (EC)/EU to gradually develop and create an inclusive
framework for China and emergent economies to join the WTO, IMF, WB, and

other UN institutions [World Health Organization (WHO)], the Olympic com-
mittee, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), United Nations International Children’ Emergency Fund (UNICEF),
Programme Nations Unies pour le Développement (PNUD), after the end of the
Cold war and the bipolar order.
However, according to Yan, 1945–1947 is the turning point between US
‘human leadership’ and ‘hegemonic leadership’ (when considered as mutually
opposed concepts, see above); the definition of hegemonic leadership thus applies
to both the United States and the USSR: respect for commitment to allies within
each camp, while applying double standards to rivals. When comparing the hier-
archical Warsaw Pact (the invasion of Budapest in 1956, of Prague in 1968, and
the threat to Poland in 1980) and the Sino-Soviet alliance (the break with China
and conflict in the late 1960s), with the asymmetrical yet multilateral controver-
sial history of NATO (including tensions with De Gaulle and Willy Brandt/Olof
Palme over dialogue policies, and European critics of the US Pershing Euro-
missiles), we must still conclude that there was a substantial difference.
Furthermore, in the economic realm, a comparison of the authoritarian Council
for Common Economic Assistance (COMECON) with the transatlantic market
during the 30 golden years of ‘embedded and interdependent capitalism’, com-
bining free trade and Keynesian national policies, stands as evidence of a histor-
ical difference, and explains the reasons for the victory in the Cold War as well
as the collapse of the USSR system (more so than does underlining the role of
Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ missile shield). Finally, the two conditions of hegemony—
cultural influence and authority (Gramsci) and international common goods
that the hegemonic power offered were declining, or even absent in the case of
the Soviet bloc, whereas we repeat that even the USSR could benefit from the
long-lasting role of the US dollar in trade stability as an international currency.
Qin, for his part, masters perfectly the theoretical developments of Keohane
and Gramsci, but is so critical of their power theory that he fails to appreciate
their potential input with regard to the construction of a post-hegemonic order.
We see that, on the one hand, the different conceptualisations of hegemony
matter when analysing the concrete hegemonic leadership in the period 1945–
1989/1991; but on the other, that Yan’s sophisticated elaboration makes the
dialogue possible, and deeper.
Convergence is indeed enhanced when it comes to defining the distinctive na-
ture of the Trump leadership in the context of a post-hegemonic order, a defin-
ition largely shared in both Yan and Qin’s books. According to Yan, the US
leadership changed from that of George Bush Senior—who implemented a ‘con-
servative’ type of leadership, to Clinton’s ‘proactive’ type, and then to George W.
Bush’s ‘aggressive’ type; and in 2009 reverted to a ‘conservative’ leadership under
Obama. But, ‘when Trump took office in the White House, he established an
aggressive economic-political leadership—a hybrid of the conservative and ag-

gressive types’.86 How does he radically undermine the United States’ internation-
al leadership? Well, it might be said that neglecting to give international support
to its economic camp and its allies’ economic and security interests is a key index

when distinguishing the difference between a hegemonic and non-hegemonic
power. Neither Clinton (‘emerging markets’) nor Obama (TPP and TTIP) was
markedly ‘conservative’ with regard to prospective enlarged alliances, whereas
Trump is for the first time provoking the collapse of reliance on allies, as well as
their shift towards more political autonomy. Abe, for instance, is proceeding with
the TPP in spite of the United States’ withdrawal; Merkel pronounced the famous
‘declaration of independence’ of 201787; and the EU is more proactive than ever
in setting up independent trade arrangements in the Asia Pacific and South
America (in Yan’s understated language, ‘conservative leadership’ via economic
expansion). We and other Western scholars, like G. John Ikenberry, share Yan’s
attempt to seek out new concepts more appropriate for defining the Trump’s
‘sabotage of the order to whose creation the USA contributed’; elaboration of the
notion of the ‘anemocratic leadership’ concept, moreover, is an innovative contri-
bution to this research. We have also analysed the features of the normative con-
cept of ‘new post-hegemonic multilateralism’ in Qin’s vision and its numerous
bridges with European approaches.
Conclusion
Improving communication between the Western, notably European, and Chinese
epistemic communities is a valuable and shared aim. Constructing a scientific lan-
guage from such convergence, in particular, the main concepts of political science
and IR, is in the interest of progress in knowledge and of the gradual construc-
tion, as Qin cogently argues, of a pluralist theory of IR, so opening windows of
opportunity for Chinese, Indian, South-American, African, and European
approaches, among others, beyond the overwhelming and long-standing domin-
ation of US mainstream theory. Yan’s recent book is also both clear and innov-
atory in providing readers with detailed information about the deep roots of
current conceptualisations in ancient Chinese thought. In general, Chinese
authors like Qin and Yan provide highly relevant contributions to the challenge
of transposing traditional Chinese references into contemporary conceptualisa-
tion, and opening the dialogue with foreign languages. Translating them into for-
eign languages is indeed not just a linguistic exercise. According to philosopher,
semiotician, and novel-writer Umberto Eco, ‘translating is cheating’. Why?
86 Ibid, p. 37.
87 Quoted in Ibid, p. 42.
Because languages carry the issues not only of various disciplines but also of vari-
ous ‘background cultures’,88 or ‘tacit knowledge’,89 as well as of different histor-
ical experiences.
These huge progresses in common language-building that the works of out-

standing Chinese scholars allow should correspond to an upgraded endeavour on
the European part. We discussed in this article crucial concepts such as dialectics,
hegemony, multipolarity, bipolarity, regionalism, multilateralism, and liberalism.
Diversities remain relevant, but convergences through the building of a common
scientific language are increasing. Promoting and deepening this scientific
dialogue is the single way out: an essential element of the academic side of
people-to-people bilateral and interregional communication.
88 Qin Yaqing, ‘A Multiverse of Knowledge: Cultures and IR Theories’, Chinese Journal of

International Politics, Vol. 11, No. 4 (2018), pp. 415–34.
89 Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘The Second Coming? Reflections on a Global Theory of International
Relations’, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 11, No. 4 (2018), pp. 373–90.

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