Alt: We must reframe our thinking of China’s recent history in terms of a “holographic transition” as opposed to a territorialized construct and view China with the context of mutuality and connectedness to reconsider the facets of international relations.

It seems that most discussions of Beijing’s growing prominence draw on China’s historical experience in order to make inferences about its future directions. Yet, as the contributions to this special issue indicate, while welcome, such analyses are often problematic both because they project a particular territorialized idea of China into the past and treat China as a homogenous and unchanging constant. Consequently, the strategic calculations that such analyses make are suspect as they rest on and reify a stylized and idealized vision of what China is and how it interacts with others. For instance, Shih and Hwang argue that the simplistic framing of China’s rise in terms either of conformism or revisionism overlooks a variety of other possibilities as well as denies the heterogeneity of strategic cultures interacting on the world stage. Instead, meaningful observation needs to heed the nuances of specific space-time dynamics and interactions (Shih and Yu, 2015). With this in mind, Pan proposes a framework for ‘holographic transition’ to articulate the contingency of assemblages such as China and world affairs. For instance, in the case of China, the possible trajectories of its rise are embedded in the plurality of ‘holographic reflections’ of the multiple worlds with which China is inextricably bound up. Thus, China’s rise and its global implications are not linear, but contingent on its dynamic and reciprocal relations with its multiple worlds. And Nordin and Smith remind us, taking mutuality and connectedness as a point of departure for our assessments discloses more relevant depictions of global life than those premised on antagonism and disconnection. The contributions by Kavalski and Nordin and Smith suggest that the direction and future trajectories of China’s rise would be shaped in the context of international interactions – such relations provide a socially organized context within which world political effects emerge. Drawing on insights from Advaita and Daoist teaching, Ling outlines a five-rank protocol for reappraising China’s rise. While these suggestions might not be particularly palatable for the bullet-pointpreferences of foreign policy analysts, the contributions to this Special Issue demonstrate that only by acknowledging the multiple sites, voices, and faces of global affairs can we begin a meaningful conversation not only on the implications of China’s rise, but also a much-needed reconsideration of key concepts of IR (such as power, identity, security, strategy, and history).