Book Review - Nadine Godehardt, The Chinese Constitution of Central Asia: Regional and Intertwined Actors in International Relations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

This is an engaging piece of work which takes an innovative approach on Chinese expert discourse on Central Asia – analysing how Chinese define Central Asia. At the same time the author offers an inside perspective on Chinese voices whose meanings are rarely examined in Chinese International Relations (IR) studies. The volume is thus a contribution to theorising the China-Central Asia regional security from IR perspective imbued with recent theories. The author argues there has, as yet, not been a ‘post-regionalist’ movement in IR. According to the author, most regional studies are built upon a similar ontological premise, one which characterises in particular the relationship between researchers and the world, as well as how researchers produce knowledge about the world. In chapter two, the author focuses on two areas: first, regions and regionalism and second, typologies of regional order. The former is clustered along two lines: first, cooperation- comprising the different approach to regionalism and second, security – which refers to approaches such as the Regional Security Complex (RSC) theory.