Vol.:(0123456789) International Politics https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-024-00593-6 ORIGINAL ARTICLE The mission of relational IR and the translation of the Chinese relational school Chih‑Yu Shih 1,2 Accepted: 14 June 2024 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2024 Keywords Chinese international relations · Relational school · Critical translation · Pluriversalism Amidst the quest for non-Western and post-Western theories of international rela- tions (Acharya & Buzan 2007; 2017; Tickner & Blaney 2013; Owen et al. 2018), the recent literature on pluriversal international relations brings forth the cosmological, ontological, and epistemological discussions informed by cultural resources outside the European traditions (Kurki 2020; de Koeijer & Shilliam 2021; Tickner & Smith 2020; Hutchings 2019; Levine & McCourt 2018), which are usually silent and inex- pressible. In the variety of perspectives of this literature is registered a shared criti- cal sensibility that is informed by two themes, which complement each other in the pursuit of emancipation from Eurocentric theorization without generating new bina- ries or standards of exclusion: 1) a difference/variety theme that stresses how there can be no single way to produce or understand international relations (Trownsell et al. 2019, 2021; Bilgin 2021; Eun 2019); and 2) a relational theme that evokes the mutual constitution of all, in one way or another (Kurki 2021; Tickner & Querejazu 2021; Shih 2020). Against this background, this essay interrogates the irony that the- ories of Chinese international relations, which likewise stress both relation and dif- ference (Ren 2020; Pan & Kavalski 2018; Qin 2016a; Zhao 2006), have had limited interaction with the pluriversal literature thus far (Girard 2021; Shih 2021; Nordin et al 2019; Kavalski 2018a; 2018b; Zhang & Chang 2016). Whether “Chinese” or “relational” is more important in the label “Chinese rela- tional IR” is an important question in the Chinese literature, in which attempts to transcend China-centrism have been emerging in recent years. 1 However, these * Chih-Yu Shih cyshih@ntu.edu.tw 1 School of Political Science and International Relations, Tongji University, Shanghai, China 2 Emeritus Professor, Department of Political Science, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan 1 I would mention at least Zhao Tingyang (趙汀陽), Xu Jilin (許紀霖), Liu Qin (劉擎), Bai Tongdong (白彤東), and Zhao He (趙赫). For further details, see an exemplary review by Zhao (2021).