Exporting the Chinese School: How Convincing is the Relational Theory of World Politics as Formulated by Yaqing Qin?

Does a theory rooted in Confucian thought have intellectual value beyond its cultural origin? A consistent charge advanced by critics to challenge the credibility of Relational Theory (RT), as posited by Qin Yaqing, pertains to its scarce applicability beyond Confucian cultural spaces. This paper defends Qin’s Relational Theory against such charges, proposing that Qin’s Relational Theory of International Relations is convincing insofar as (1) explaining social phenomena beyond its alleged cultural departure point and (2) offering answers to policy questions that dominant theories in the current Western scholarship cannot. By exporting Qin’s relational theory outside of its Confucian cultural birthplace and identifying spaces RT has been engaged with as a viable international relations (IR) theory, this paper finds that RT has the capacity to fill empirical gaps in the explanatory capacity of existing IR theories via their ontological differences—namely, Constructivism (as RT’s Western comparison), English School (as a fellow theory charged with indigenization), and Liberal Feminism (as another relational approach). This paper contributes to the theoretical literature on RT by setting the ontological groundwork for re-evaluating persistent policy problems that mainstream IR has yet to fully account for.