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During the past two decades, there have been growing calls for broadening the discipline of international relations (IR) by giving due recognition to the history, culture, ideas, and agency of non-Western states and societies. Several aspects of this trend are noteworthy. First, it originated from the growing dissatisfaction by non-Western scholars with the Western (US and European) dominance of the IR field, a dominance that obscures and marginalizes the past and recent contributions of other societies. As such, the primary voices challenging this dominance have been non-Western scholars, sometimes in collaboration with a few Western counterparts. These include not just scholars of postcolonialism and race, but also some working in the English School and constructivist and non-Western/post-Western traditions.

"Civilization" is back at the forefront of global policy debates. The leaders of rising powers such as China, India, Turkey, and Russia have stressed their civilizational identity in framing their domestic and foreign policy platforms. An emphasis on civilizational identity is also evident in U.S. president Donald Trump's domestic and foreign policy. Some analysts argue that the twenty-first century might belong to the civilization state, just as the past few centuries were dominated by the nation-state. But is the rise of civilization state inevitable? Will it further undermine the liberal international order and fuel a clash of civilizations, as predicted by the late Samuel Huntington? Or might ideas from East Asian and other non-Western civilizations contribute to greater pluralism in our thinking about world order and the study of international relations?

Abstract
The discipline of International Relations (IR) is increasingly being criticized for ignoring and marginalizing states and societies outside of the core countries of the West. The idea of a 'Global IR' has been proposed since 2014 a pathway toward a bridging the 'West and the Rest' divide and thus develop a more inclusive discipline, recognizing its multiple and diverse foundations. At the same time, there is a trend toward developing theories, or 'schools', on a national or regional basis, the leading examples of which come from China. This article examines some theoretical constructs emerging in China, such as the 'Relational Theory' of Qin Yaqing, who is the foundational scholar in the 'Chinese School of IR', the Tianxia ('all under Heaven') concept as applied to IR and world order by Zhao Tingyang, and 'Moral Realism' of Yan Xuetong, who is the leading figure of the 'Tsinghua School'. To many scholars, both inside and outside China, the relationship among the various Chinese approaches and their overall contribution to the IR field remain unclear. Without claiming to capture all their nuances and complexity, this article hopes to stimulate a conversation among scholars, Chinese and foreign, with a view to generate greater clarity and highlight their importance to the study of IR. I argue that while making important contributions, the Chinese approaches to International Relations Theory (IRT) also face a number of challenges. This includes the need for them to offer more convincing proof that the concepts and explanations they propose can apply to other societies and to IR more generally. Moreover, there is the need for these approaches to attract a critical mass of followers worldwide, stimulate a research agenda for other, especially younger scholars, and distance themselves from the official Chinese policy framings. The Global IR approach offers a helpful framework for highlighting and perhaps addressing these challenges, especially in avoiding cultural exceptionalism and ensuring their wider relevance beyond China.

Despite paying attention to a growing number of actors and agents, the literature on global governance remain remarkably traditional and Western-centric. Much of it still revolves around the existing multilateral system created under U.S. hegemony after World War II. In this paper, I propose a new understanding of studying global governance that reflects recent and ongoing global economic and political shifts. To this end, in the place of the traditional conception of a liberal world order within which the mainstream literature on global governance has been anchored, this paper employs the idea of a 'Multiplex World'. Unlike the former, the idea of a Multiplex World envisions a more pluralistic and diversified architecture of global governance shaped by a proliferation of transnational challenges, diffusion of new ideas, and expansion of actors and processes that lie at the center of global governance. A Multiplex World better captures the ongoing fragmentation of global governance, which in turn reflects a growing demand for new principles and approaches that cannot be accommodated by a simple extension of the existing but fading international order dominated by the US or the multilateral institutions it created. The concept of global governance, argues this paper, must come to terms with an emerging realities of the Multiplex World.

The study of international relations in or of Asia is no longer atheoretical, as was the case only three decades ago, when the Pacific Review was founded. But how serious are the efforts to study the international relations of Asia theoretically? Some Western scholars argue that writings on Asian International Relations (IR) are still peripheral to the major concerns and debates among IR theories such as realism, liberalism, and constructivism. The 'indigenization' of Asian IR theory remains limited by, among other factors, a tendency among local scholars to rely heavily on Western theories, and the close academia-officialdom nexus in the region that inhibits theoretical work. But this essay argues that Asia offers an opportunity to IR theory for broadening itself and shed its hitherto Westerncentrism, especially at a time of a 'global' turn in IR (global IR). Theoretical writings on Asian IR are already making a difference by exposing the limitations of mainstream IR theories in the regional context. And they have the potential to offer new and alternative concepts that are more contextually grounded and relevant for Global IR. At the same time, there remain some important conditions that must be met before theoretical writings on Asian IR can make further progress and realize their full potential. (Pac Rev/GIGA)