By Eric Vandenbroeck and
co-workers
Recently published by
academic publisher Routledge titled Hegemony with Chinese Characteristics: From
the Tributary System to the Belt and Road Initiative, by Asim Doğan analyzes the Chinese-centered globalization ‘from
below’ brought about by China’s entrepreneurial migrants and conceived of as a
projection of Chinese power in the Belt and Road Initiative partner states. It
identifies the features of this globalization ‘from below,’ scrutinizes its
mutually reinforcing relationship with China’s globalization ‘from above,’ and
shows that these two globalizations are intrinsically related to the
construction of a new international order. It outlines how the actors in China’s
globalization ‘from below’ include Chinese emigrants who are located in
informal transnational economic networks. It reveals that Beijing has enacted
many laws that compel these emigrants to contribute to the development of their
country of origin but also influences them through the successful promotion of
a specific type of deterritorialized nationalism; and
that China is ready to impose harsh punitive actions on political elites in
partner states which fail to protect its migrants or limit their economic
activities. Finally, it argues that China’s globalization ‘from below’ is
fundamentally different from the non-hegemonic globalization ‘from below’
represented by, among others, Lebanese and East Indian traders, and that
China’s globalization ‘from below’ is rather a self-interested national
strategy intended to support the
construction of a Chinese-centered international order.
Although presented as
an entirely new foreign policy gambit, the BRI, in fact, builds on the policies
of Xi's predecessor. With the intent of being a challenge to Pax Americana
that some say emerged primarily due to China's
concern with the Taiwan problem is far more ambitious than its
antecedents. Thus in two 2013 speeches, Xi presented the BRI as a grand
scheme to improve connectivity, trade, and infrastructure from Asia to Europe.
Xi strongly believes
in what he calls “laws of history,” He requires
his diplomats to believe in them. Also, in February 2021, Xi Jinping
again stressed the significance of studying history that "led the people
to create a new Chinese civilization with a long history.”
Starting by referring
to the importance of the “Century of Humiliation” and what we referred to as
China’s National Narratives in our conclusion, of Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided? Doğan postulates that his
findings confirm that, besides divergences, there are many similarities between
the two systems he investigates. China, adjusting some of its imperial policies
and values to the modern age and in some aspects being inevitably transformed by modernization, is still carrying
significant characteristics of its historical political mentality and
strategies. Therefore, Belt and Road Initiative is not a simple economic
cooperation plan but an attempt to construct a regionally intensified but
globally extended, comprehensive Chinese hegemony. This “Hegemony in Chinese
Characteristics” can be named “Neo-Tributary System” due to its similarities
with the historical one. Given this subject has an important history, I first
like to start by taking a closer look at the Chinese tributary system, which
was closely related to what we earlier covered in our 'mandate of heaven' case study as seen
in the context of ancient Rome and early Europe.
This includes a
discussion that started afther historian John King
Fairbank (today honored by the Fairbank
Center) referred to “a set of ideas and practices developed and perpetuated
by the rulers of China over many centuries which to Fairbank was an extension
of the Confucian hierarchic and non-egalitarian social order of China.1
According to Fairbank, the more the culture-based theory of Chinese superiority
was accepted by actors in the periphery, the more likely they were to
participate in the tribute system. Fairbank's culture-based graded
hierarchy model categorizes China’s neighbors into three zones based on the extent
to which they accepted Chinese Confucian culture as well as their geographic
proximity to China. Fairbank here singled out Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and
Ryukyu as having resided in the Chinese cultural area, an area influenced by
the civilization of ancient China. These societies, according to Fairbank,
formed the Sinic zone, followed by the Inner Asian
zone and the Outer zone (the latter eventually comprising japan,
other states in Southeast and South Asia, and Europe). In the Fairbanks model,
it is noteworthy that Japan was categorized as part of the Sinic
zone and was eventually moved to the Outer zone, whereas Korea remained part of
the Sinic zone during the Qing period. Not
surprisingly, this resulted in an at times heated exchange with several
scholars who reconnected with an older tradition of scholarship that identified
itself with Manchu
studies.
The new Qing scholars
Evelyn Rawski, Mark Elliott, and Pamela Kyle Crossley challenged the widely
accepted idea that the Chinese always assimilated (Sinification) their
conquerors, so the Manchu Qing was also assimilated and adapted into Chinese
culture. Upon the newly opened Qing official documents in Chinese and Manchu
languages, they discovered that Manchus were actually very pragmatic on this
issue. They had developed a sense of Manchu identity by managing the country
in Central Asian style as much as the Confucian style.
It was a
Manchu-centric system in which Han China was an essential part, but still a
part of the vast country, among the others, Mongolia, Manchuria, Central Asia,
and Tibet. The new Qing interpretation has challenged Fairbanks's theory of
the Sinocentric Tributary System, which he claimed was built on the hierarchic
and non-egalitarian Confucian base. The new Qing challenged Fairbank further by
suggesting different ideas on important points. First, the name “China” not
only referred to Chinese Confucian culture or identity, but the “others”
included in it as well. Second, no form of Tributary relations can explain the
complex structure of relations, changing based on time and region. The Qing
emperors did not mold themselves on the typical Confucian “Son of Heaven”
model. They were “Chakravartin” to the Buddhists, and “Khan” to the nomadic
Mongolians, also Son of Heaven to Hans. They hold multiple identities, using
each identity in the relevant region to make the ruling of those societies
possible.
This whereby Chinese
scholars like Joe Tin Yau Lo in The Quest for
Legitimacy in Chinese Politics A New Interpretation (2019) argued that:
"The concept of
the Mandate of Heaven was first used to support founding kings of the Zhou
dynasty {1045-256 BC) and justify their overthrow of the despotic Shang dynasty
(1600-1046 BC). This phrase has since been used to justify the legitimacy of
rulers of the vast Chinese empire, including non-Han ethnic monarchs such as
the Mongolian Yuan dynasty (1271-1368 AD) and the Manchu Qing dynasty
(1644-1911 AD). The Mandate of Heaven has been a well-accepted idea among the
people since it advocates removing despots and compels rulers to rule well and
justly. Scholars in China have frequently invoked the concept as a way to fight
against the abuse of power. Moreover, the Chinese view of history is cyclical
nor linear; Ik nee, it never aims at a predestined
end. With this cyclical view, legitimacy is, in fact, a never-ending process of
moral self-adjustment. The institutional arrangement cannot settle the question
of legitimacy once for all."2
Here then, Chinese
hegemonic authority was seen as an outcome not just of China’s material power
but of a combination of less powerful actors' domestic legitimation strategies
and their resonance with Chinese hegemonic ideology. Among others exemplified
by the fluctuations in Korea’s and Japan’s responses to Chinese hegemonic
authority. Thus, during the Ming, Korea’s responses fluctuated along the
spectrum, moving from compliance to challenge and back to compliance. In
contrast, Japan’s responses, which had begun as defiance, shifted to high
compliance before going back to low compliance and outright challenge. By some
seen as sort of a prelude to what became much later became the idea of a Pan-Asianism, In 1592, with an army of
approximately 158,000 troops, which included a naval campaign, Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched what
would end up being the first of two invasions of Korea, with the intent of
eventually conquering Ming-dynasty China.2
Hence Japan distanced
itself from China and began to act as a new center of a miniature international
order. Korea is seen as forced to willingly accept Qing hegemony after being
invaded twice, in 1627 and 1636. Which according to Korean scholar Ji-young Lee
allows one to presume that the existing American hegemonic order might have to
stay in power despite the rise of Chinese power, depending on responses by
other East Asian powers seeking to attend to their domestic political needs.3
Asim Doğan proceeds with; The Tributary System is not a
definition explaining all relations that China developed with all foreign
states at all times. In theory, it covers a period of more than two thousand
years of the history of relationships. However, its ideal structure is reached
in the historical period of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, specifically matured
between the years 1425 and 1550. Fairbank and Teng named the relationship type
they observed as a system of values and rules that China developed in East
Asia, which deserve attention as one historical solution to problems of the
world organization.- China, being the center of cultural influence in the
region, has intensely influenced Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and the small island
kingdom of Ryukyu by its relatively advanced culture.
The Chinese Emperors
accepted foreign envoys in the same procedures as the ceremonies for domestic
feudal lords, submitting tributes. This was the mentality of ancient Chinese
foreign relations, reflecting the domestic submission structure outward, due
to the Tianxia concept of unity, whose jurisdiction
covered the entire Earth.
Similar to what we
have seen in our earlier study about the relationship between imperial Russia and China, one of the arguments
offered by the Qing where for example (what must have been offensive that
Empress Catherine II if they became known in Europe) were based on the idea
that it was ridiculous for that woman of yours [suweni
emu hehe niyalma] to
compare herself to the Qianlong emperor: We have never heard of the lord of a
foreign kingdom being a woman, not a man we laugh and have no words to continue
such a discussion.
Tianxia
Tianxia (天下) is
a Chinese term for an ancient Chinese cultural concept that denoted either the
entire geographical world or the metaphysical realm’s, and later became
associated with political sovereignty. In ancient China, tianxia
denoted the lands, space, and area divinely appointed to the Emperor by
universal and well-defined principles of order. The center of this land was
directly apportioned to the Imperial court, forming the center of a world view
centered on the Imperial court and went concentrically outward to major and
minor officials and then the common citizens, tributary states, and finally
ending with fringe 'barbarians'. Thus the Chinese Emperors accepted foreign
envoys in the same procedures as the ceremonies for domestic feudal lords,
submitting tributes. This was the mentality of ancient Chinese foreign
relations, reflecting the domestic submission structure outward, due to the Tianxia concept of unity, whose jurisdiction covered the
entire Earth.
On their behalf, the non-Chinese rulers or envoys had to follow some symbolic
rules and rituals with the domestic local rulers if they wanted to join the
Chinese world order of the Tributary System. The performance of rituals was
critical, signifying the Confucian principle of Rites in meeting with the Son
of Heaven. The symbolic ritual was three kneelings
and nine prostrations, “kow-tow.” The practical
outcome of submission would be as follows:
The tributary ruler
would be granted a patent of appointment and an official stamp for use in
correspondence. He would be granted a noble rank in the Chinese state
hierarchy. He would start to use the Chinese calendar and the dynasty’s reign
title. He had to “present a symbolic tribute memorial of various sorts on
appropriate statutory occasions.” He was required to present a symbolic tribute
of local products from their country. His convoys would be accompanied by the
imperial posts to the imperial court. After the kowtow, he would receive
imperial gifts in return. He was granted some rights of trade at the borders
and in the capital city. Any ruler who followed these procedures could take
his place in the Chinese world order.
In the late Ming and
early Qing periods, the Tributary System was a matured foreign policy system
compared to the previous Chinese experience. The earlier Chinese methods of
dealing with the barbarians, as defined in the section on Hua-Yi Distinction,
also known as Sino–barbarian dichotomy, is a Chinese concept that (as we have seen earlier) differentiated a culturally
defined "China" from cultural or ethnic outsiders varied during the
long history of their confrontation.4
According to Doğan, after the “Age of Humiliation” and the Mao time
“Ideological Age,” China has been transformed in many ways. China left its
priority of “Exporting Maoist Ideology” adopted flexible and pragmatic policies
to continue the economic growth, followed a more peaceful and cooperation-based
policy with neighbors and beyond. Transformation in the economy brought a rapid
transformation in society, though the political transformation is not in that
much. Today’s China was quite different from China 40 years ago. Although the
government’s priority is still to keep the party control and authoritarian
regime to continue and legitimize its use of power, it has a lot of advancement
in leaving the wrong ideological policies in the past as well. While spending
many sources abroad like setting up “Confucius Institutes” to develop Chinese
influence, domestically, it promotes the revival of its historical pride. There
is a huge curiosity among Chinese people about Chinese history, old texts,
Confucianism, Taoism, etc. It seems like China once again returning to its
historical values after the devastating turmoil. This is what the “rejuvenation
of China” rhetoric is about. This process repeated itself a lot of time during
the whole of Chinese history.
For Chinese
bureaucrats, politicians, scholars, and the public in the grassroots, “Zhongguo” (China) carrying much more meaning than a
nation-state. Chinese people do not just have language, territorial, cultural
and historical ties with their countries. China is at the center of the
philosophy of life and the source of aspects of cultural, social, and religious
existence for Chinese people.
The potential weaponization of BRI
Yet also what began
as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road has expanded into
space, cyberspace, and global health. BRI now includes multiple deep-sea ports
in strategic proximity to vital sea lanes and maritime chokepoints in the
terrestrial and maritime domains. Several BRI port projects in the Indo-Pacific
do not appear commercially viable, raises questions about Beijing’s motives for
investing in these infrastructure assets.
The Chinese
government’s steadfast insistence that the BRI is purely peaceful, “win-win”
development initiative has been met with skepticism in many quarters. The rapid
pace of China’s military modernization, its program of civil-military fusion,
and its increasingly assertive posture throughout the Indo-Pacific have fueled
suspicion about BRI and its strategic utility to China. Some critics warn that
projects like Hambantota port in Sri Lanka or Gwadar port in Pakistan are part
of a “String of Pearls” network of potential naval bases along the shores of
the Indian Ocean.
It is certainly true
that the maritime domain is critical to China’s economic development and
security. Since 40 percent of China’s gross domestic product is derived from
foreign trade. More than 60 percent of trade and 80 percent of China’s imported
oil moves by sea, it’s no surprise that the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s
(PLAN’s) budget has grown significantly, or that its strategy has shifted
beyond China’s coastal waters toward the protection of vital sea lanes and its
overseas interests. The PLAN’s area of operations has now expanded beyond the
so-called “second island chain,” which stretches from Japan to Guam and
Indonesia. It's first – and thus far only – overseas base in Djibouti is
located at the entrance to the Bab-el-Mandeb strait
leading to the Suez Canal and European markets.
Along the Maritime
Silk Road, BRI port projects bolster the PLAN’s ability to operate further
afield. BRI ports in the Indo-Pacific are not naval bases per se, but they
often have dual-use commercial and military functionality. Beijing calls
“civil-military fusion” as now codified in-laws and regulations requiring
overseas infrastructure projects to be built to PLA military specifications and
mandate that Chinese-owned businesses support PLA operations. Labeled
“strategic strongpoints” by Chinese planners, these ports incorporate features
that boost their potential military utility and expand the PLA’s logistics
network to facilitate power projection further from China’s shores.
But to look at these
“strategic strongpoints” in isolation is to miss the real danger: they are
components of a suite of infrastructure, economic and other assets being
assembled by Beijing that serve as platforms for influence and leverage in BRI
host states. That includes the Digital Silk Road, with Huawei networks and
“Smart Cities” surveillance technologies. It also includes the “BRI Space
Information Corridor,” with the Beidou satellite
system. And the BRI’s terrestrial, maritime, digital, and space elements are
combined with financial and trade ties, active diplomacy, and rapidly expanding
Chinese military engagement and arms sales throughout the Indo-Pacific region.
As “Weaponizing the Belt and Road Initiative,” a September 2020 Asia
Society report by one of the authors, points out, these trends
are contributing to the emergence of a Sinocentric ecosystem that will do far
more to hamper the United States’ ability to operate effectively in the region
than Chinese military bases ever would and is reminiscent of a map we published in an earlier article.
In fact, Chinese laws
mandate that even overseas infrastructure be designed to meet military
standards. These laws authorize the military to commandeer ships, facilities,
and other assets of Chinese-owned companies. China’s push for civil-military
integration builds in dual-use commercial and military functionality in BRI
infrastructure and associated technologies.
Thus it could be that
Beijing’s approach seeks to lay the groundwork for military utilization without
raising red flags. Many BRI ports are built along with a “port-parks-city”
development model that integrates the port with industrial parks and support
industries like shipbuilding and resupply services that enhance the port’s
capacity to support Chinese vessels, including navy ships. The presence of
Chinese state-owned and private enterprises, often with operational control of
port management, augment the potential military utility of the port.
Thus as an example of
weaponizing
its BRI, China is not just building overseas naval bases; it is developing ports
with dual-use functionality from the South China Sea into the Indian Ocean
and the Middle East. These ports are “Strategic Strongpoints” close to maritime
chokepoints and critical sea lanes. They are designed to support the Chinese
military’s logistics network and improve its ability to operate further from
home.
In the case of the
Philippine-controlled area of the South China Sea, two recent commentators
cited rare earth minerals crucial to China’s
tech ambitions as another motive.
Adding up the above
it can be argued that the levers of influence that accrue from the BRI network
enable Beijing to exercise persuasion or coercion, to operate in a more
compliant and advantageous environment. This dovetails with China’s systematic
push to expand its influence in multilateral rule-setting institutions and some
cases to create new ones. BRI’s many belts and roads seem to lead toward a
regional (or even more extensive) ecosystem that structurally favors China’s
interests.
One of Doğan's hypotheses is that historical Chinese pride is one of
the decisive factors in Chinese conduct of foreign relations. Is China going to
be an aggressive and offensive hegemon? The main reason would be its pride,
derived from the mentality of the Civilization State. And this directly leads
into the topic of a second book I like to discuss here, and that apparently was
published at the time Doğan's went through its
editing process, hence both books appear to be written parallel to each other
and where Doğan's book focuses on the historical
background leading up to addressing the relation of “One Belt and One Road” and
educational development by China as covered in Higher Education and China’s
Global Rise: A Neo-tributary Perspective by Su-Yan
Pan and Joe Tin Yau Lo.
The legacy of Sino-centrism and the mentality of
Chinese greatness in academia
Using a neo-tributary
perspective like Doğan does Su-Yan
Pan and Joe Tin Yau Lo, two specialists in their field,
identify the diplomatic role of higher education in the People's Republic of
China (PRC) politico-economic development and how China’s self-identity has
shaped the role as a great power in the world.
The authors propose
an explanatory framework in ‘neo-tributary' terms and identifies four analytic
categories for conceptualizing China’s power strategy: Chinese exceptionalism,
trade and diplomatic linkages, cultural assimilation, and image building. This
analytical framework goes beyond hard/soft power categories and considers the
relations between the past and present, re-contextualized in the conditions
surrounding China's claim to global power status. It sheds light on the
influence of traditional mentality in shaping the nation’s contemporary diplomacy.
It considers the operational mechanisms that allow state-sponsored
organizations (c.g., Chinese universities and
research institutes) to act as network weavers and cultural diplomats, armed
by formally or informally regulated institutions and conventions, to build up
and expand the international network needed by a nation-state to diffuse its
economic and cultural influences.
The neo-tributary
framework here thus advances an understanding of how the PRC state adjusts its
higher education policies to realize renewed international prestige, while at
the same time coping with external and internal challenges to its legitimacy
due to changing international and domestic circumstances. China's educational
paradigm mirrors the state’s power strategy in world politics. By serving the
state's diplomatic relations and national image building, Chinese universities
have increased their international profiles. Still, they have remained
continuously dependent on foreign-trained personnel for cutting-edge research
and scientific publications, rather than cultivating innovation from indigenous
knowledge and domestically trained personnel. Moreover, China has reasons to
celebrate its ‘brain gain’ successes - i.e., the ability to import highly
educated international human capital possessing the knowledge, skills, and/or
potentials on which China relies tor economic growth, political stability, and
global competitiveness.
From an international
relations (IR) perspective, not all games are zero-sum, and nations might employ
hard and soft resources to achieve their goals. As indicated by Doğan's recent approach, it has become fashionable to view
China as developing significant soft power capabilities. Originally,
"soft power’ referred to one's ability to affect other countries'
behaviors by persuading them to adopt one’s goals or perspectives; it is thus
inherently consensual. Hard power, in contrast, is exercised mainly through
actual or threatened military force or institutional pressure, payments, or
bribes and is fundamentally coercive. ‘[Culture], political values (and]
foreign policies’ arc a country’s primary soft power resources, and their
attractiveness enable actors to realize favorable outcomes ‘because others
want what [those actors] want.' The term excludes financial incentives,
diplomatic pressure, and other hard forms of influence favoring
non-commercial, non-financial (and of course non-military) elements that might
make one population sympathetic to another.
China conceptualizes
soft power more broadly, to include "not only popular culture and public
diplomacy but also more coercive economic and diplomatic levers like aid and
investment and participation in the multilateral organizations'. The term is
used in multiple ways and has multiple interpretations. At the policy level,
‘soft power’ refers to actively promoted national building projects. In 2007,
then-president Hu Jintao asserted that China must use both hard and soft power
to demonstrate its increased international status and influence. Improving China’s
soft power through cultural development was a major practical issue facing
China. Since then, there have been widely varying assessments of China’s soft
power capabilities and how they can and should be expanded. Chinese scholars
and society both acknowledge the uncertainty of many sources of Chinese soft
power, pending the ultimate transformation of China’s state, society, culture,
economy, and politics; to improve China's global position, economic support
should be the ‘hard’ basis on which ‘soft’ power is built.
Analyzing China’s
rise from a soft power perspective may be conceptually misleading. China’s
concept of soft power includes both coercive and consensual elements and often
takes the form of a cultural, economic, or national imagebuilding
project, rather than simply being attractive. Moreover, China’s tendency to see
economic incentive as soft power is problematic, as an economic power is often
considered coercive, regardless of how benign the underlying intent; providing
financial aid, donations and services to developing countries can create
dependencies that allow tor gross manipulation, albeit monetary rather than
military (Hunter, 2009), and funding conditions or limitations can turn
‘carrots' (attractive power) into ‘sticks’ (coercive power). Such tensions and
paradoxes can be observed in China’s soft power projection which ‘relics more
on (nonmilitary) coercion and inducement than on attraction’ and ‘tends to use
utilitarian soft power resources in a coercive and rigid way.’
The tributary system,
most often associated with imperial China s foreign relations, began to
develop during the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) and remained the primary
institution regulating Chinese foreign relations until dying mid-nineteenth
century. Its mechanisms, institutions, and ways of governance evolved. It
recognized and reinforced China’s East Asian hegemony by conceptualizing China
as the Middle Kingdom (below heaven but above the world); lesser (tributary)
states were required and expected to acknowledge China s superiority by paying
tribute to its emperor and adopting Chinese diplomatic etiquette and practices,
in exchange for permission to trade in designated markets for a specific
period. Trade followed diplomacy and, to Chinese thinking, subdued foreigners
and ‘barbarians’ through cultural assimilation.
The term
neo-tributary identifies and interprets the legacy of the tributary mentality
and strategies, as manifested in China’s contemporary international
engagements. Four analytic categories comprise the neo-tributary framework:
1. The perception
of Chinese greatness as a motive
2. Trade and
diplomatic linkages as economic means
3. Cultural
assimilation as a political strategy
4. Image building
as legitimacy defense
Thus categories are drawn
by analogy from the imperial tribute system and how the analogy between past
and present is re-contextualized in conditions surrounding China's nascent
global power status.
The attempt to
synthesize official Marxism, Xi Jinping thought, and Confucianism was reflected
in June 2019, when the organ of the CCP Central Committee, Qiushi, posted an
article asking people
to be confident in “the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
According to its definition, this culture is “an organic whole composed of
outstanding Chinese traditional culture, the revolutionary culture, and
advanced socialist culture.” This statement vindicates the longstanding observation
that the CCP has been increasingly interested in using “traditional culture” to
strengthen its legitimacy since the 1990s, even though the Party authority
seldom mentions Confucianism in its official documents.
This revival of
Confucianism has become part of the Zeitgeist of contemporary China.
At the core of this project, what lies at the core of this project is to
redefine the relationship between the Communist Party, the Confucian tradition,
and Chinese history, as Gan has done in his syncretism. Liu Xiaofeng,
a professor of classics at Renmin University, promotes the idea that the CCP is the modern incarnation
of premodern Confucian literati-bureaucrats superior intellectual and moral
virtues entitle them to function as the grand tutor of the people. In
contemporary China, argues Liu, the task of the CCP is to uphold lofty moral
ideals (moral politics or “the Kingly Way”) to resist the nihilism and relativism
of liberal modernity, exemplified by way of life and normative political ideals
of the United States.
The underpinning
rationale for the tributary system was Sino-centrism, which led China to demand
foreign acknowledgment of its superior place globally and pursue prestige and
legitimation, which informed its non-coercive diplomatic approach. Although
Sino-centrism no longer informs China’s sense of superiority, an underlying
belief in Chinese greatness continues to shape its thoughts, as manifested in
China’s self-identification as a great power (daguo).
In November 2006,
China’s primary state-owned television broadcaster, CCTV, ran a 12-part
documentary, The Rise of the Great Powers, which examined how nine nations
(Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and
the US) became great powers. The series aired domestically and internationally
and voiced the state’s determination to study ‘'the experiences of nations and
empires it once condemned as aggressors bent on exploitation, and its ambition
to be again recognized as a great power.
The idea of China as
a multifaceted and/or comprehensive great power was stressed by the Hu Jintao
government (2003-2013) in its pursuit of scientific development’ and
‘harmonious society. Two possible factors affected this development; First,
after the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the socialist bloc, the PRC
state sought to escape the same late and reposition China's international
standing as a great power. Former President Jiang Zemin (2002) outlined a
vision of enhancing China's comprehensive national power (zongheguoli)
the combined weight of the country’s economic, diplomatic, military, cultural,
natural, and human capital resources) to survive international competition.
Second, in a timely fashion, Nye's concept of soft power was introduced into
China and found a receptive audience. Scholarly discussions expanded the
original Conceptual framework to formulate the domestic and foreign policies
necessary to reposition China's international standing.
For the PRC state,
soft power is a component of its national defense against domestic and
international challenges, not simply an appeal to the attractiveness of its
values/ideas. Chinese scholars suggested that the former Soviet Union, which
had been as powerful as the US for a time, lost its status due to its flawed
soft power, a lesson China should not neglect. The discussions captured the
attention of Hu’s think tank. Hu’s administration accepted Chinese
intellectuals’ warning that to achieve great-power status, China needed to
build both its hard power, as an effective means of securing national
interests, and its soft power, to refine the ‘China threat’ theory and secure a
stable and peaceful international environment for China’s rise.
Contradicting books
and opinions about 'the rise of the West' I will next present a case study
showing that including during the 19th century China and Europe were basically
similar in nearly all significant economic indices, including standard of
living, market development, agrarian productivity, and institutional structures
that affected growth.
1) Asim Doğan, Chinese Characteristics: From the Tributary
System to the Belt and Road Initiative, 2021, 52.
2) Joe Tin Yau Lo in The Quest for Legitimacy in Chinese Politics A
New Interpretation, 2019, p.3 ff.
3) On this, see
Ji-young Lee China's Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination,
2016.
4) Idem, Doğan, 53.
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