Received 9 August 2018 / Revised 28 March 2019 / Accepted in final form 4 May 2019 / Publish Online 7 June 2019

Abstract

Paper presents International Relations theory (IR) development in China as the quest of examining whether why, so far, there is no Chinese IR theory emerging from Chinese IR community. The central argument of this paper is to break down the conception of knowledge in IR theory. The main objective is to define and explore a puzzle of how knowledge has been conceived in mainstream IR theory. The paper draws international relations (IR) theory development in China as the quest of examining whether why, so far, there is no Chinese IR theory emerging from Chinese IR community. In conclusion, paper argues that the question is best answered by the positivism marks on the IR knowledge generation. The paper lays a conclusion of the main question by taking account of Acharya and Buzan (2010) in terms of the analysis of knowledge claims in mainstream IR.