Abstract
‘International Responsibility’ has become one of the most significant topics in Chinese International Relations studies over the last decade. Although growing numbers of scholars have focused on this issue, there remains a low awareness of the need to explore its roots in China’s academia, and to investigate the internal debates that display the different Chinese perceptions of international responsibility. This article provides a discourse-activation framework to explain why Robert B. Zoellick’s speech polarized China’s attention on international responsibility. It moreover constructs a typological framework based on dimensions that include the nationalism–internationalism orientation and degree of fulfilling international responsibility. It singles out three camps of scholars and their respective viewpoints on international responsibility and China’s relevant policies in this regard, and demonstrates the ‘divergent convergence’ feature that characterizes the debate on the topic. In addition to this structural analysis, the article also summarizes the overall trend from 1950 to 2015 of the preventative to projecting preferences apparent in China’s academic studies and political discourses on international responsibility. Subsequently, the article briefly investigates the possible factors affecting convergence and divergence of perceptions of international responsibility, which imply that fulfilling international responsibility is crucial to China’s growing presence on the global stage, and that Chinese academics’ attention to international responsibility should focus on collaboration towards improving the effectiveness of China’s assertive behaviour in international affairs.
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