摘要
In recent years,the Chinese leadership has openly argued that the inter- national community has to exceed the dominance of the Western-based rules in international relations,since in the last two centuries these rules have become globally accepted,China's claim seems to be a hardly imaginable vision.However, according to some scholars'view,there is a possible historical alternative for the international order,the so-called Chinese Tributary System,which once bounded the East and Southeast Asian states together.The present study examines whether the mainstream schools of the International Relations Theory provide an appropriate tool to understand the characteristics of this system.The study argues that the culturally based "guanxi model"can supply a better explanatory framework to understand the inner logic and the working mechanism of the Tributary System.
