By: Yu Huang, Ning An and Yuejing GE
Article Title, Issue and Volume:
Reading China’s self-definition of international politics from intergovernmental conferences
What is the main purpose of your study?
The main purpose of this study is to discuss how China constructs its positions in the world through intergovernmental conferences.
What are the practical, day to day, implications of your study?
This paper helps to understand how China constructs a Chinese-styled geopolitical view that can further the understanding of international politics.
How does your study relate to other work on the subject?
This article focuses on China’s international standing, theorizes our research on critical geopolitics and based on the relevant researches on intergovernmental conferences and their geopolitical issues.
What are two or three interesting findings that come from your study?
First, in today’s world, intergovernmental conferences are important platforms for the construction and practice of national discourse and geopolitical imagination, especially for emerging countries; Second, the main goal of China’s hosting and participation in intergovernmental conferences is to balance delicate relations with the United States and Russia, build its image as a responsible regional power, and
convey China’s non-threatening development model.
Figure 1 Drone aerial photography of Yanqi Lake. By Xin li from Xinhua news agency
What might be some of the theoretical implications of this study?
This study emphasizes the need to focus on the discourse presented by emerging countries (such as China) through intergovernmental conferences. Because intergovernmental conferences have become an important platform for the construction of national discourse and the practice of international
relations.
How does your research help us think about Geography?
Geography, to a certain extent, is both a spatial fact and a place of human subjective construction. For a country, discourse construction and power are the key to its geospatial imagination.
Figure 2 Yanqi tower. By Xin li from Xinhua news agency
Figure 3 Yanqi tower. By Yu Huang
Figure 4 Stone marker of Yanqi Lake. By Yu Huang
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