Existing scholarship on the international relations (IR) of historical East Asia remains dominated by the stereotype of Sino-centric hierarchy, which obscures its real diversity and complexity. We address these limitations by introducing the concept of "kinship institutions." Through developing an interdisciplinary two-model framework and applying it to cases from the Western Zhou to the Qing, we uncover diverse kinship institutions ranging from hierarchy to equality, built on real and fictive ties. The architecture of these institutions was shaped by the prevailing power structure and the available kinship form, while their dynamics were driven by the degree of (mis)match between shifting material power and the sticky kinship ethic. Our study transcends Eurocentrism and potential Sino-centrism and advances kinship studies in IR toward generalizable explanation. It enriches our understanding of East Asia and contributes to the Global IR agenda for a Multiplex World.
The existing literature has long debated China's active engagement in global human rights institutions. Some studies argue that China bears a greater moral responsibility to align with internationally accepted standards, while others criticize its tactics as primarily aimed at defending national interests. However, the exact patterns and strategies of China's engagement remain underexplored. This article presents a novel and comprehensive database of China's voting records in the United Nations Human Rights Council from 2006 to 2024. It argues that China supports universally accepted moral principles to enhance its international reputation but resorts to pragmatic calculations when resolutions involve bloc-level conflicts. Building on the concept of moral realism, the findings indicate that: (1) China supports universal human rights principles; (2) China defends countries with poor human rights records; and (3) China criticizes Israel, a close ally of the United States, for its human rights violations. The conclusion suggests that countries with higher levels of democracy tend to vote differently from China, while countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative tend to align with it. Overall, China's human rights engagement appears designed to enhance its global recognition, but in the face of bloc confrontations, it defends its allies while criticizing its rivals.
Which countries are rising, which are declining, and how can we measure these trends? To address these questions, we developed the Comprehensive National Power Index (CNPI), which systematically quantifies power based on three equally weighted components: military capabilities, economic strength, and soft power. Spanning 186 countries from 2011 to 2023, the CNPI offers a transparent, theory-driven methodology that improves upon existing measures by balancing aggregate and net indicators while capturing both elements of soft power-persuasiveness and attractiveness-and accounting for the contributions of both the state and society. Operationalizing these elements as a readily updatable and easily adaptable statistical model enables the CNPI to identify trends in the global distribution of power. Our analysis reveals that while the United States retained primacy across all three components, China, South Korea, and India rose rapidly. Despite China's substantial gains, as of 2023, it had yet to attain peer-competitor status with the United States. Conversely, Japan, Russia, the UK, France, and Canada all experienced contractions in their national power. These trajectories reflect the fundamental reorientation of global power over the study period. By replacing impressionistic assumptions with systematic data, the CNPI offers a rigorous empirical methodology for quantifying structural shifts in the international system.
A rising power's perception of a hegemon's potential alignment formation shapes the rising power's strategies, which begs the question: under what circumstances does a rising power correctly perceive the possibility of a hegemon's alignment formation? The power transition theory, the misperception theory, and the alignment theory provide key insights when addressing this question. Based upon these theories, this article proposes an ideological matching theory, arguing that the ideological configurations of a rising power, a hegemon, and a third party (the hegemon's potential ally) explain the rising power's perception of the possibility of alignment formation between the hegemon and the third party. This article uses three historical cases of China's perception in early Cold War Asia to evaluate the validity of the theory: an overestimation of United States-Soviet Union relations in 1959-60, an underestimation of United States-UK relations during the formation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) in 1954-5, and a correct perception of the United States-Cambodia relations in 1954-5. The ideological matching among the rising power, the hegemon, and the third power serves as a baseline for the rising power to judge the prospect of the hegemon's alignment behavior.
Since its opening up in the late 1970s, China has gradually become an important stakeholder in international relations, and it has become involved in the establishment and leadership of more than 20 international institutions. Some of these international institutions follow Western templates of international cooperation, while others seem to have a distinct Chinese signature. To better understand China's increasing role with regard to international institutions, this article focuses on their institutional design through qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). We find that the institutional design of China-led institutions is influenced by both the policy type of the institution and the composition of the rest of the membership. When other major powers and democratic states are included as members, such institutions tend to have higher levels of institutionalization but also Chinese control. We furthermore find that the design of China-led institutions is more consistent for those established during Xi's presidency since 2013. These findings are important because they provide new interpretations of China's uniqueness in institutional design while resonating with previous research findings on Western institutions.
