Post-Chineseness

<p><b>Analyzes international and cultural relationships informed by China a category that is becoming ever more indispensable and yet unstable in everyday narratives.</b></p><p>There have been few efforts to overcome the binary of China versus the West. The recent global political environment with a deepening confrontation between China and the West strengthens this binary image. <i>Post-Chineseness</i> boldly challenges the essentialized notion of Chineseness in existing scholarship through the revelation of the multiplicity and complexity of the uses of Chineseness by strategically conceived insiders outsiders and those in-between. Combining the fields of international relations cultural politics and intellectual history Chih-yu Shih investigates how the global audience perceives (and essentializes) Chineseness. Shih engages with major Chinese international relations theories investigates the works of sinologists in Hong Kong Singapore Pakistan Taiwan Vietnam and other academics in East Asia and explores individual scholars' life stories and academic careers to delineate how Chineseness is constantly negotiated and reproduced. Shih's theory of the balance of relationships expands the concept of Chineseness and effectively challenges existing theories of realism liberalism and conventional constructivism in international relations. The highly original delineation of multiple layers and diverse dimensions of Chineseness opens an intellectual channel between the social sciences and humanities in China studies.</p>