EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Politics & International Relations 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 162 de Sales Marques José Luís (Institute of European Studies of Macau) The Special Administrative Regions (SARs) of Hong Kong and Macau and their Role in the Chinese OBOR Initiative —A Framework for Analysis Key words: SAR’s, Basic Laws, External Relations, traditional roles, OBOR For the realist state centered tradition states are the only actor in international relations. Under this assumption, there is no room for Special Administrative Regions of China, such as Macau or Hong-Kong, to play any role in the interaction between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the international system. It is, however, a simple but misleading approach, for our case study. It ignores that, both the MSAR and the Hong Kong SAR of the People’s Republic of China (HKMSAR), have legal international personality and, as such, enjoy membership of several international organizations which are not only limited to states. For instance, both are founding members of the World Trade Organization, as separate custom territories. Therefore as units that are an integral part of the political-administrative organization of the Chinese state, they are sub-state actors engaging in international affairs under the principle of “One country, two systems” and the articles enshrined in their respective “Basic Laws” (BL). Although foreign affairs and defense is the realm of the central government, both SAR’s enjoys the privilege of having their own external relations for a significant number of affairs, including economy, finance, transportation, sports and culture etc. For almost two decades after the retrocessions of Hong Kong (1997) and Macau (1999) to the People’s Republic of China, their external engagement went on very much in continuity with well-established international networks of connectivity and comparative advantages existing before their integration into the People’s Republic. In The PRC’s multilevel and multidimensional diplomacy, Macau plays an important role in China’s relations with the Portuguese speaking countries and Hong Kong has been instrumental in the internationalization of the Remimbi. Both SARs are now called by Beijing to actively promote OBOR in tandem with efforts played by central and provincial governments as well as State Own Enterprises (SOE). Ditoiu Bogdan (University of Bucharest) Is There a Chinese Cultural Theory of International Relations? Key words: Chinese school of international relations, China model, international relations theory, Tianxia concept, Chinese international relations theory In recent book reviews and state of the field articles, the appearance or, better said, construction of a Chinese theoretical framework for international relations has been widely described as fulfilling or planning to fulfill the purpose of legitimizing China’s national interests and the current political system’s conduct of foreign affairs. While acknowledging this fact, along with the growing importance that the effort to establish world leading think-tank with Chinese characteristics has in the establishing of such theories and in the exchange that happens between the academic field and the Party working groups at all levels, this paper will examine the strong foundations that some of these theoretical relations for international relations have in Chinese political thought tradition and their appropriateness for judging current international affairs. As most of these frameworks revolve around concepts such as Tianxia 天下 , around new interpretations from the works of the major pre-Qin thinkers, or on refocusing attention to the foreign policy arrangements used by multiple dynasties to deal with foreign states (what has been called Chinese world order, the tributary system), the paper argues that attention should be focused on a comprehensive view that, akin to Lebow’s constructivist theory, takes into account the main drivers of what we recognize today as foreign policy in the Chinese world: the political-ideological regime under which actors existed and the way it influenced views on regional competition, conflict and conflict resolution. In conclusion, research into the interna- tional relations of the Chinese world can provide for interesting theory development, focused on the way pre-modern, pre-national states dealt with cooperation, conflict and supremacy, and while not rich enough to provide for a full framework, it can support the development of a more comprehensive and universally relevant field of non-western IR theory.