From State’s Agency to Essentialism

This paper critically rethinks the unified personhood of the state in traditional constructivist IR through the case of China’s deradicalisation policies. By framing the policies in the ‘Chinese characteristics,’ the Chinese government resists liberal-imperial narratives from the West, particularly with the legal allegation of cultural genocide. However, this assertion of cultural subjectivity has been regarded as the simultaneous reinforcement of the authoritarian control of domestic elite groups over marginal sub-state groups. While traditional constructivism has enabled emancipatory recognition of non-Western agencies, its tendency to depict states as coherent cultural subjects risks cultural essentialism, legitimising domestic control under the guise of relative national particularity and silencing internal diversity. This paper proposes the concept of ‘Third Space’ as an epistemically pluralist and decolonial zone of subjectivity, grounded in a relational position within a global view. It urges state actors to reflect on their ontological existence in relation to sub-state concerns, rather than imposing sovereign narratives in a single dimension. This approach may offer a decolonial interpretation on the Sense of the Community of the Chinese Nation (SCCN) in unity, whitin which facilitate the ethnic sub-state groups to articulate a self-position beyond the binary grand narratives of state personhood, being viewed as either instrumentalised ‘liberal fighters’ by the West or ‘terrorists’ as the name to domestic repression by the state of China.