RSIS Seminar by Professor Dominik Mierzejewski

About the Speaker:

Dominik Mierzejewski is an Assistant Professor at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Lodz, Poland.  He studied the Chinese language at the Shanghai International Studies University from 1999 to 2000, and again from 2003 to 2004, and was on internship at the Heritage Foundation in 2003. In 2003, he was awarded the Jan Karski scholarship by the American Center of Polish Culture. From 2010 to 2011, he was a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Science.  He is a member of the Association for Asian Studies, the European International Studies Association, a board member of the European Association for Chinese Studies, and vice editor-in-chief of “Azja-Pacyfik” (yearbook) and “Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia” (Austria/South Korea).  His research focuses on China’s political development, rhetoric of Chinese foreign policy and leadership transition in the Communist Party of China.  He has published one monograph and dozens of articles in Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. He may be contacted at [email protected]

Abstract:

Assuming the constructivist approach, the Author argues that the major policy action taken by the Chinese is based on spreading efforts to promote its ideas and, via this, to construct the identity and further strengthen its soft-influence. As a consequence, the Chinese hope to exercise a soft-influence over other countries and to be different from other actors on the international stage. The Author admits that not only do material issues play an important role in international relations, but so does ideas in shaping the understanding of foreign policy identity and soft-power.

How to evaluate the impact that China’s vast cultural heritage and historical experiences have had upon the China’s international behavior”? Moreover, in the context of today China the question on how far China has been different from the West might be considered as one of the most important. The problem of being self, identity leads to the dilemma of how to transmit and build the platform for understating this values for the foreign audience? Do the principles, that shape the identity, have to serve to maintain and preserve national interest in the “no-China World”?

The major point of the discussion is that the changes in Chinese foreign policy are all resultant of interaction and socialization between traditional Chinese ideas and the Western mindset. As China interaction with other has been growing and during the global financial crisis China will redefine its national interests that will be defined as building its own identity based on own ideas and develop its foreign policy according to China’s own standards.

In the lecture China’s IR identity is debated from three perspectives: China as a nation, second China as an ideology and third China as a cultural construct.

Organised by IDSS China Programme and RSIS Events Unit.