Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

Conventional realist expectations on great power behaviour in a perceived threatening security environment calls on these nations to balance against the threats in the form of military alliances with other states. China is perceiving security policies by USA and its allies to constitute threats to its national sovereignty, yet has chosen to adhere to a policy of nonalignment, making it an outlier among other great powers and calling into question positivist inspired inferences on Chinese security cooperation. This posture calls for an attempt at reaching a contextual understanding of China’s negative view of alliances, rather than assuming pregiven intentions of state behaviour. Against this background and within an epistemological and ontological framework of constructivism, I have applied an intertextual discourse analysis between the works of Chinese international relations theorist Qin Yaqing, and official policy discourse on alliances from the Chinese political leadership. By this method and theoretical framework, I have explored the possibility of Chinese cultural and philosophical ideas, as interpreted by Qin, correlating with and influencing the official policy discourse, which in turn reflects the view of alliances. The results show that there is a meaning-making within the official Chinese discourse that is drawing on concepts and ideas derived from Qin Yaqing’s presented concept of Confucian relationality. Together they serve to construct an ideational structure and corresponding Chinese identity that precludes military alliances as an option for Chinese security policy making. This in turn reveals the need to move away from realist and positivist assumptions of inherent state reasoning, and instead pay greater attention to contextual and ideational factors when analysing the Chinese nonalignment policy, with implications for how we understand China and Chinese security policy making in general.