On the evening of March 21, 2021,the 32nd "Duyan" workshop of the School of Politics and International Relations of Lanzhou University was held. 24 teachers and students from the School of Politics and International Relations and the School of Marxism of Lanzhou University attended. The reading materials this time are Alexander Wendt's “ Why a World State is Inevitable” and Zeng Xianghong and Xin Wanxiang's “Is the Emergence of World State Inevitable? ——An Investigation from the Perspective of Recognition Theory”.

First of all, Chen Mingxia briefly summarized the contents of the two articles. The article " Why a World State is Inevitable " mainly answers and demonstrates a question: what will be the ultimate state of the world system? Wendt further pointed out that the final formation of the world state is a long process, which will successively go through five stages: international system, international society, world society, collective security and world state. Each stage has stronger stability and less war threat than the previous, and the world state in the final stage is most stable.

Zeng Xianghong and Xin Wanxiang's “Is the Emergence of World Countries Inevitable? ——An Investigation from the Perspective of Recognition Theory” is an article to discuss with Wendt's World-State view, which aims to investigate and demonstrate whether World-State view is tenable.

Then, the participants exchanged and discussed their inspiration and puzzles. On the one hand, students generally agree that the two articles have high theoretical level and academic value, and are worthy of learning and reference. On the other hand, students also have some doubts. For example, should "world state" be defined more clearly? Does recognition constitute the most important motivation? Is a super multinational a different version of world state? Is the world state an expanded version of "Theory of Social Contract "?Does the world view of state embody the western centralism?

Finally, Zeng Xianghong pointed out that through the comparison of the two articles, we should realize the many differences between Chinese and Western cultures and the challenges they pose to academic research. Then, Zeng Xianghong put forward several questions that we should pay attention to in daily learning and academic writing: first, can scientific researchers be completely value neutral in carrying out scientific research? Second, the arduous task faced by Chinese scholars in the process of constructing our own discourse system; Third, the importance of interdisciplinary research.