The global geopolitical landscape is undergoing profound shifts, marked by the intensifying challenges to the US-led international liberal order by competing visions from rising powers. As the liberal order faces mounting pressure from non-Western ideologies and power structures, it becomes increasingly important to understand and analyze the contrasting models that might emerge as viable alternatives in a post-Westphalian global order. This edited volume aims to critically examine the competing visions for global governance and their implications for the future of international relations.

We invite scholars to contribute chapters to this interdisciplinary project, which will analyze these competing visions through two main lenses: the US-led liberal international order, and the Chinese alternative as articulated by leading Chinese International Relations (IR) theorists. Each section will explore the philosophical underpinnings, strategic objectives, and practical implications of these visions for global governance, security, and economic systems.

Objectives of the Volume

The current volume will be groundbreaking it that it will present the unfiltered views of Chinese thinkers, philosophers, and international political theorists, and provide a venue for them to describe the current state of IR thought in China to the wider academic world.

Much Western scholarship on international politics, security, and economics makes assumptions about the rise of China, and about that country’s growing global influence, based largely on the dangerous tendency toward mirroring  and an insufficient effort to understand Chinese culture and its contribution to grand strategy and policymaking. This volume attempts to remedy that problem, and in so doing will become a valuable  sourcebook for students, academics, and practitioners around the globe.

Further objectives include: 

• To provide a comprehensive analysis of the decline of the US-led international liberal order and its foundational principles.
• To examine Chinese alternatives, including a sovereignty-centric approach, hierarchical global structure, and development-first strategy.
• To critically evaluate how these competing visions could reshape international institutions, economic systems, and global security in the medium- to long-term.

Proposed Structure of the Book

The volume will be divided into two main sections:

1. The US-Led Liberal International Order

Suggested Chapter themes:

1. • Foundations and principles of the post-World War II global order.
   • The role of liberal democracy, human rights, and free-market capitalism.
   • Hegemonic Decline and the Illusion of Rules-Based Order: How global power centers are shifting away from US-led institutions.
   • A CRT Perspective on the Liberal Order: How racial inequalities were embedded in the Bretton Woods system and capitalist global financial institutions.
   • Intersectionality and Global Governance: How intersecting oppressions—race, gender, class—are perpetuated within international institutions.
   • A Postcolonial Critique of US Foreign Policy: How US military interventions and foreign aid reinforce global hierarchies.
   • The Failure of American Soft Power: Hollywood, Tech, and the New Cultural Revolt, and why the global South is rejecting US cultural influence.
   • Alternative Visions from the Global Left: How socialist and leftist movements worldwide imagine a new international order.

Key contributions are sought from Western scholars specializing in liberal internationalism, democracy promotion, and multilateralism.

1. China’s Rising Alternative Global Order

Suggested Chapter themes:

1. • Wangdao (王道) as a Model for Global Governance: How the Kingly Way has been reinterpreted from its classical roots to serve China’s modern foreign policy and global leadership future.
   • The emergence of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a daobi (倒逼) response to Western economic dominance in global infrastructure.
   • How does discourse on New Tianxia-ism (新天下主义) shape China’s diplomatic rhetoric and policies in global governance institutions?
   • To what extent does China promote Socialism with Chinese characteristics (中国特色社会主义) as an alternative to Western liberal democracy in the Global South?
   • Chinese Civilization (中华文明) as an alternative to Western universalism.
   • How do Chinese IR scholars, policy elites, and state institutions operationalize Tianxia in narratives of multipolarity, sovereignty, and non-intervention?
   • The role of Opening Up 2.0 (开放升级) and its emphasis on dual circulation (双循环) – balancing domestic economic strength with selective global engagement.
   • Building a Community of Common Destiny (人类命运共同体): alignment with Chinese governance, infrastructure, and trade as a pathway to modernization and development of the Global South.
   • The New Era (新时代) effort towards a Global Security Initiative (全球安全倡议), and the need for new global security norms, emphasizing state sovereignty and rejecting Western interventionism.

Other topics worthy of their own chapters include the following: cultural self-confidence (文化自信); New Confucianism (新儒家); heaven-human harmony (天人合一); The importance of depoliticization (去政治化); The party-state (党国).