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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