Özkan Gökcan

China’s economic rise in the 21st century has prompted analyses of how this ascent will be reflected in the political sphere. Analyses in Western-centric media outlets and academia have predominantly focused on the notion that China will seek hegemony and an alternative international order in parallel with its economic rise. The central claim of this study is that these analyses, primarily based on realist and liberal assumptions, are incompatible with Xi Jinping’s foreign policy discourse. Therefore, Chinese foreign policy should be analyzed from an alternative theoretical perspective. Building on this claim, this study first analyses the general framework of the discourse on which Chinese foreign policy was built during the Xi Jinping era. Subsequently, this discourse is examined in Tianxia, a China-centered non-Western theory. This analysis, supported by examples of concrete foreign policy steps in the concluding section of the study, aims to provide a non-Western perspective on Chinese foreign policy.