Chih-yu Shih’s Relations and Roles in China’s Internationalism is an ambitious contribution to debates in international relations, China studies and global IR. It places Confucian philosophy in conversation with interactionist role theory and critiques of what may be considered Western epistemology, in order to reframe international politics as a fundamentally relational and ethical enterprise. Rather than focusing on interests or institutions, Shih foregrounds the dynamics of recognition, ritual and affect in shaping how international actors relate to one another. In doing so, the book challenges both the presumption of rationalist universals and the exceptionalist gaze often cast upon China’s foreign relations.
The book is structured around three interconnected themes – cosmology, relation and identity – which together articulate a theory of pluriversal relationality. The first section makes a case for tianxia (often translated as “all under heaven”) not as a blueprint for hegemony, but as a relational cosmology in which all actors are understood to be situated within networks of mutual, though unequal, obligation. The second section develops a Confucian-inflected theory of international roles, drawing on empirical illustrations to demonstrate how global actors perform and negotiate identities through role expectation and interaction. The final section turns to the securitization of Chineseness in contested settings such as the author’s native Taiwan and the South China Sea, asking how identity is co-constituted through both affirmation and threat.
Among the book’s most distinctive arguments is its theorization of emotion – particularly anger – as a legitimate and instructive feature of international life. In chapter four, “Performing anger,” Shih rejects the liberal-realist assumption that emotion undermines diplomatic reason. Instead, he argues that anger can serve as a structured communicative act, performed by states to signal the violation of a prior role expectation. Drawing on Confucian ethics and symbolic interactionism, Shih interprets anger not as a breakdown of diplomacy but as a call for its restoration: an attempt to re-establish normative congruence by reminding the counterpart of the relational obligations that have been breached.
To support this claim, Shih introduces a typology of relational anger. “Audience-role anger” is performed for domestic legitimacy; “self-role anger” asserts a disrupted role identity; “alter-role anger” condemns the counterpart’s role performance; and “collective-role anger” speaks on behalf of broader moral communities. Each of these modes, he argues, arises from different configurations of recognition and trust and carries distinct implications for whether relations can be repaired or will fracture further.
This argument opens up an important set of questions for scholars of China’s foreign policy and IR more broadly. If emotion is treated not as epiphenomenal but as central to diplomatic practice, what conceptual tools do we need to interpret the signals it sends? Can anger function as a form of ethical altercasting, aimed at guiding rather than punishing the other? And how might a Confucian ethic of emotion depart from liberal or realist assumptions about appropriate state conduct?
At the same time, the argument generates tensions that are not fully resolved in the text. First, there is a tendency to idealize the relational ethic of anger. While Shih’s typology accounts for multiple modalities, it does not fully address the asymmetries that shape who is permitted to express anger, how it is interpreted and when it is dismissed as illegitimate (and who decides on the difference). In cases where China engages smaller or less powerful states – such as the Philippines, Vietnam or Taiwan – the performance of anger may serve not as moral pedagogy but as “soft” coercion. Framing such gestures as ethical appeals risks obscuring the material and discursive hierarchies that underlie them.
Second, the framework assumes that anger is typically directed toward the restoration of relations. But in some instances, anger may surely signal efforts at rupture, threat or domination. For example, interpreting Chinese anger over US arms sales to Taiwan as “audience-role anger” may offer analytical clarity, but risks underestimating the coercive dimensions of such expressions. Similarly, the claim that relational anger embraces ambiguity and patience may hold in abstract terms but demands closer scrutiny when applied to situations involving hard-power competition or nationalist mobilization.
Nonetheless, these critiques reflect the generative potential of the framework rather than its failure. Shih’s analysis invites readers to rethink the foundations of international relations, particularly the tendency to treat emotion, identity and ethics as outside the bounds of strategic calculation. By relocating relationality to the heart of international engagement, the book joins broader efforts in and beyond global IR to provincialize Europe and theorize a pluriversal relationality. But Shih goes further: rather than simply adding Confucianism and stirring, he calls for a methodological reorientation in which the terms of critique – rationality, sovereignty, intention – are subject to decolonial scrutiny.
The writing is dense, conceptually layered and at times challenging, particularly perhaps for readers less familiar with either Confucian thought or role theory. Shih assumes a high level of theoretical literacy and makes little effort to domesticate his concepts into the idioms of mainstream IR. Yet this is arguably part of the book’s method and its virtue: it does not translate Confucianism into dominant paradigms but asks IR scholars to grapple with the implications of engaging a different ontological and ethical tradition on its own terms.
Relations and Roles in China’s Internationalism is not a work of Chinese foreign policy in the conventional sense, nor a treatise on cultural exceptionalism. It is a philosophical provocation – one that challenges scholars to reconsider how roles are assigned, how emotions are performed, and how international order is imagined in a pluriversal world. The questions it raises – about ethics, recognition and the limits of relational repair – are unlikely to fade anytime soon.
