Cooperation and Conflict Studies in Chinese IR

Abstract Although Western security scholarship often focuses disproportionally on conflict, cooperation-oriented research dominates Chinese security studies. To account for this divergence, we draw on Bourdieu’s notion of field as an analytic framework. We argue that a dual power asymmetry—the core–peripheral relations between Western and Chinese international relations (IR) scholars, and the Chinese IR community’s structural dependence on the party-state—profoundly shapes the knowledge production of Chinese security studies and leads to the hegemony of cooperation-centered research. We use a unique combination of empirical materials, including bibliometric data from China’s leading IR journals, content analysis of projects funded by a prestigious Chinese government grant, and qualitative interviews with IR academics at Chinese institutions. We find strong evidence for our theoretical propositions. Our findings shed new light on the global IR debate, national IR parochialism, and the sociology of IR epistemic practice in non-democratic contexts.