This book is essentially a conference volume supplemented by papers already published elsewhere and it brings together international relations specialists who publish in English or Chinese. It is focused on internal theoretical debates inside the international relations discipline rather than on China itself.

The first section on traditional Chinese concepts should be the most interesting as it presents articles by three Chinese writers on political science or international relations. Zhao Tingtang examines the contemporary relevance of tianxia (“all under heaven”), the well-known traditional Chinese term for the known world. Although Zhao quotes Xunzi (312–230 BC), the philosopher of the Confucian school who enjoyed a revival in the 19th century, no clear picture emerges of what tianxia actually meant: this reflects a general problem with the way that ancient philosophical concepts are handled throughout the book. The woolly level of Zhao's argument can be seen in the conclusion in which he argues that the “most important political problem today is not the so-called failed states but the failed world, a disordered world of chaos. This is why I maintain that our world is not yet a world, but is still a nonworld … worldness cannot be reduced to internationality” (p. 34). It is difficult to begin to criticize an argument at this level, wordy but meaningless.

Qin Yating examines whether China can “create a Chinese School of international relations theory” (p. 37). This is in fact an argument about the nature of social science which includes a range of fashionable buzz words which probably impressed the editors of the original Chinese article. Qin's conclusion, after a diversion through some of the basic concepts of Confucianism, is that a Chinese school of IR “not only transforms the self and the other but also fuses them together to achieve universality” (p. 50). It is not clear what, if anything, this means.

Yan Xuetong, who has an established reputation, is represented here by a long piece on the implications of the philosophy of Xunzi for international politics but the chapter does not enhance that reputation. It draws on some basic ideas from Xunzi but rapidly proceeds, by way of high concepts, diagrams which are presumably intended to impress and a pseudo-scientific “simplified comprehensive national power formula” to the conclusion – or rather the non-conclusion – that “Exploration of his and other ancients' ideas and thoughts could be of help in both developing and constructing modern IR theory, and providing guidelines for reasonable strategies that promote China's rise.” On the other hand this might not help at all as he goes on to say, “it should be borne in mind that their reasoning and rationale include certain irrational elements that call for prudent judgment” (p. 85).

The articles by some of the Western contributors use little Chinese material. Most of the authors are determined to demonstrate how conceptually and theoretical sound they are and there is little attempt to connect with the reality of history, government or international relations in China. The lead editor has contributed no fewer than three chapters which contain very little substance or new ideas: his chapter in this section deals again with the idea of tianxia as if it were a new discovery. Christopher R. Hughes reprises the well-known “ti-yong dichotomy” by which China has tried since the 19th century to import selectively what it wanted from the West while filtering out anything considered to be undesirable or inimical to the maintenance of an essentially Chinese way of thinking. David Kerr has managed to produce a chapter on China and Islam without consulting any of the serious work that has been carried out on this topic in history, anthropology or political studies, either in connection with Xinjiang or with the Chinese-speaking Hui Muslims. Not surprisingly this leads to basic errors. The Islamic world for China begins much further east than Xinjiang, in the Hui communities of Gansu and Ningxia. The Uyghur language has not reverted to the old Chagatai script since the 1980s (p. 163). Only specialists can read the old script and Uyghur now uses a reformed version of the old Persi-Arabic script redesigned to include vowels.

The book is intended to cover traditional Chinese concepts of relations between China and the rest of the world, the relevance of these concepts for contemporary international relations, and tradition and modernity in popular state discourse, but it does not succeed in this. Much of the text is nebulous to the point of incomprehensibility: it is so detached from the reality of China that there is not the remotest danger that it will be used by anyone involved in the practical management of foreign policy or international relations.