Liang Zhiping, "Tianxia and Ideology" Part 2

Liang Zhiping, “Imagining ‘Tianxia’:  Building Ideology in Contemporary China”[1]

Translation by David Ownby


Part 4

Chen Yun’s work is a collection of essays published over the past ten years, one of which is a review of Wang Hui’s 汪晖 (b. 1959) The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought.  Narrowly speaking, Wang Hui does not talk directly about tianxia, but he employs the same intellectual and epistemological discourse as those who do, and even uses arguments drawn from the same intellectual traditions.  Even more important is that Wang’s masterpiece of intellectual history, more than ten years in the making, developed an expansive vision based on a deep grounding in history.  His theoretical inquiries and self-reflexive discussions paved the way, intellectually speaking, for the discussion of certain themes that tianxia theorists had not yet explored,[2] and built the epistemological and intellectual foundation for certain narratives more directly related to contemporary China.[3]  For these reasons, Wang’s work should be discussed here.

Wang Hui addresses two basic questions, the first of which is “What is the meaning of China (and particularly modern China)?  How were modern Chinese concepts of identity, geography, sovereignty shaped by history?”  The second is, “How should we understand Chinese modernity?  What is the nature of the intellectual transition that China itself acknowledges as having occurred?”  Obviously, these are also the questions addressed by those working on tianxia, and even if tianxia thinkers have different theories, in fact they all offer direct or indirect “answers” to Wang’s questions.

Wang begins with a discussion of common narratives of Chinese history, which in his analysis can be reduced to two:  the narrative of the Chinese empire and the narrative of the Chinese nation-state.  Although the two narratives are structured differently, and have evolved in complex and subtle ways, they are nonetheless based on a binary conceptual structure pitting the (traditional and authoritarian) empire against the (modern and nationalist) state.  At the same time, this binary opposition of empire and nation-state that has come to dominate Chinese studies is in fact “rooted in the European intellectual tradition of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,” part of the effort by Westerners at the time to “establish the legitimacy of the European nation-state and the form of its sovereign power.” 

Clearly, Wang argues, this cannot serve as the lens through which to understand China’s modern social evolution, nor can it provide credible answers to the questions raised above.  People long ago noted that, compared to other pre-modern empires, the Chinese empire not only survived for a very long time, but also managed to preserve an incomparable scale and stability.  Moreover, with the advent of the modern era, while other traditional empires quickly dissolved under the crashing waves of nationalism, China was the sole example of a political regime that preserved the territory of its nineteenth-century empire, along with its population and political culture, in a society defined by the categories of sovereignty and the nation-state.  There is no way to explain this from the perspective of the empire/state binary.  Instead, if we want to arrive at a convincing explanation of this phenomenon, we must look within Chinese society, and discover the inner logic of China’s dynamic historical process. 

In this context, Wang points out that modern China is in fact the product of the conscious transformation of empire, and that the national identity that serves as China’s communal ideology is fact rooted in the imperial tradition, rather than being a purely modern creation.  In other words, what was truly new in the political, cultural, and social movements from late Qing times forward, was not the creation of the “national subject,” but instead the “renewal” of a “national subject” that had already existed under the old system, now responding to the pressure of a series of new historical circumstances. 

Wang illustrates the historical evolution of the formation of Chinese “identity” through discussions of the different forms of legitimacy employed by traditional dynasties—particularly of ethnic minority dynasties—and of the relationship between modern movements in support of local dialects and the rise of nationalism in China and elsewhere.  In terms of the first example, Wang argues that orthodox Confucian theory provided a basis for the legitimacy for minority rule by establishing the idea of a “Chinese dynasty” that transcended ethnic, linguistic, and cultural differences, a framework for Chinese identity that transcended ethnic identity.  This was a kind of “egalitarian Chinese identity” that “acknowledged all ethnic groups and their cultural particularities.  Even if dynastic changes were often accompanied by bloody violence, this Chinese identity nonetheless “served as a concept that promoted reconciliation and coexistence among peoples while averting warfare.” 

In terms of the second example, the Chinese regional dialect movement, unlike similar movements elsewhere in the world, did not become a divisive nationalist force, but instead became an expression of increased local diversity within the larger Chinese identity.  As in the case of the first example, modern Chinese national identity “did not dispense with identities based on regionalism, local accents and culture, ethnicity, locality, or religion.” 

Although the object of Wang Hui’s discussion is “China,” readers of the present article will naturally think of our discussion of tianxia:  an open, expansive, inclusive, internally diverse civilizational order that relativizes inner and outer.  This of course relates to our understanding of China.  “Is China an empire or a nation-state, or an empire pretending to be a nation-state?  Is China a political concept, or a civilizational or cultural concept?”  Wang raises these questions in such a way as to interrogate concepts often included in discussions of China and tianxia:  empire, civilization, culture.

Kang Youwei understood China as a civilizational or cultural concept; in his eyes, “China” was “neither a nation-state, nor an empire, but rather a cultural symbol and vehicle.”  At present, this kind of “China” is understood as a “combination of state and civilization” where “the body of the state and the body of the civilization overlap,” which is the same thing as “tianxia.”[4]  Some people come right out and refer to this kind of state as a “civilization-state,” or as “a civilization pretending to be a state.”[5]  All such views of China are based on one particular viewpoint: that modern China is not an ordinary nation-state, a judgement that, either overtly or covertly, is grounded in the empire/state dichotomy discussed by Wang Hui.  Some authors are inspired by this concept, which allows them to keep their understanding of China as unique, and at the same time to transcend notions of orientalism; the idea of a “civilizational-state” can explain China’s rise, the China model, China’s future, and China’s mission in the world.

As Zhang Weiwei 张维为 (b. 1957), the champion of the “civilizational-state” puts it, “China’s rise is the rise of a ‘civilizational-state.’”  What he means by “civilizational-state” is “a state in which an ancient millennial civilization is almost completely replicated in the form of a modern state,” and China is the only example of such a state in the world.[6]  In other words, modern China is neither an extension of the traditional empire, masquerading as a nation-state, nor is it a nation-state as conventionally understood, but rather an amalgam of the two:  “China is first of all a modern state, but the various special characteristics of Chinese civilization make China different from other countries.”[7]  In concrete terms, in comparison with modern nation-states, a civilizational-state not only has “a super-large population, a super-vast territory, super-long traditions, and a super-rich culture,” but also has a “unique language, unique politics, a unique society, and a unique economy,” and “each of these contains a mixture of both traditional ‘civilization’ as well as the modern ‘state.’”  As a consequence, this “civilizational-state” with its “superior historical and cultural heritage” “cannot follow in the footsteps of others, cannot copy the Western model or any other model, but can only continue to develop by following its own particular trajectory and logic.”[8] 

Zhang’s description of the “civilizational-state” develops the image of “tianxia” with which we are already familiar:  the over-sized political body, the “union of one hundred countries” that unites the world’s realms.  We also find the same Chinese/Western, ancient/modern binaries that we see in tianxia arguments:  paternalism 民本 versus democracy 民主, the people’s hearts 民心 versus the will of the people 民意, the family state 家国/tianxia versus the modern nation-state, the kingly Way versus the Way of the hegemon, seeking harmony versus seeking difference, etc.  Zhang’s proposal, based on the argument that China’s rise has been an expression of a “civilizational-state,” that Western discourse must be deconstructed, especially the “’universal values’ to which many Westerners are attached” and replaced by a muscular Chinese discourse, is in fact shared by many proponents of tianxia (not all of them, of course, and the demand is not limited to proponents of tianxia).[9] 

Zhang also argues that, because of its super-particularity, the governance of a civilizational-state must be different, which has led to the formation of China’s “unique perspective on political culture,” which serves as the most important source of legitimacy for Chinese political power.  “The most unique point of this historical legitimacy is the political tradition of ‘meritocracy 选贤任能’ as well as the governing notion of ‘winning the hearts and minds of the people 民心向背.’”  Such traditions and concepts express the political wisdom of the Chinese people, and not only “constitute the main reason that for thousands of years China was considerably ahead of the West,” “but also serve as one of the competitive strengths explaining why the current Chinese model has surpassed the Western model.”

Zhang mentions another unique feature of Chinese politics, which is its “great inclusiveness 包容性.”  “In the past, China had the tribute system 朝贡制度, the vassal state system 藩属制度, the system of border rule by military generals 将军都护府制度, the system of rule by native chieftains 改土归流制度, and the system of local bureaucratic administration 郡县制度,” all of which “naturally found a place for themselves” within a civilizational-state.  Today, China has implemented the rule of “one country-two systems,” and the system of autonomous rule in minority areas, which similarly displays “systemic diversity and flexibility,” all of which is “difficult to imagine in modern Western ‘states.’”

Zhang Weiwei’s style of argument falls somewhere in between mainstream media discourse and political commentary; he takes many positions and offers few proofs.  But on the two points just discussed, other scholars of Zhang’s generation have attempted to arrive at more systematic and more scholarly arguments.  The political scientist Daniel Bell, for example, has sought to develop credible academic arguments concerning China’s meritocracy.  Bell published his arguments first in English, after which they were translated and published in Chinese, and led to great controversy, especially in the English-speaking world of China studies.[10]  As in the case of Zhang Weiwei, Bell presents the concept and implementation of “meritocracy” as part of the “China model” and a possible alternative to democracy.[11]  Bell further argues that “the concepts and practice of political meritocracy are the heart of China’s political culture,” and that a form of state governance that combines base-level democracy, mid-level experimentation, and high-level meritocracy, constituting what Bell considers to be a unique feature of the “China model,” is also a superior feature of this kind of model. 

Bell also raises the question of national size, and argues that in choosing and judging the appropriateness of a political system, “the size of the national unit is a decisive consideration.”  This is a standpoint based in feasibility, a standpoint deemed to be more appropriate to the pragmatic culture of East Asian societies.  Thus, just as Zhang Weiwei used the dichotomy of good government and bad government instead of the distinction between democratic and authoritarian rule as a basic measure of judgement, Bell uses the idea of “moral government” to oppose dogmatic defenses of democracy.  Finally, even if Bell does not believe that China’s meritocratic system can be readily exported throughout the world, he still thinks that it poses a genuine challenge to Western democratic systems, and hence does not rule out the possibility that one day the meritocratic system may “become the dominant political system throughout the world.”   

The year before Zhang Weiwei published his China Shock, the legal scholar Jiang Shigong 强世功 (b. 1967) published a series of essays on Chinese Hong Kong.  Even if the title of his book was China’s Hong Kong:  A Political and Cultural Perspective 中国香港：政治与文化的视野, the questions to which Jiang hoped to respond are “what does ‘China’ ultimately mean?”  Truly, all it takes is a glance at the key words in the table of contents—empire, sovereignty, the Way of the king and the Way of the hegemon, China, revolution, politics, law—to see what the author’s concerns are. 

So:  What is China?  Jiang makes a distinction between the two English words “country” and “state.”  The first is a political organization linked to a designated area, and Jiang emphasizes the internal relationship between citizens and the natural territory of the country where they live, such natural feelings about the land serving to bind the citizens together.”  The latter “is a political organization that relies on an abstract legal system, in which the emphasis is on internal relationship between the ‘citizen’ and the ‘state polity,’ and in which citizens are bound together by law.”  In the English translation of the “one country-two systems” concept, “country” was chosen over “state.”  Jiang believes that this choice “perfectly captured the essence of ‘one country-two systems’ thought,” because, according to judgements based on the political philosophy of the modern state, arrangements like those of “one country-two systems” are illegitimate, and in practice lead to all sorts of problems when the name does not fit the reality.[12]  In Jiang Shigong’s view, however, this is the very expression of the uniqueness of the Chinese state:  China is a “’civilizational-state’ that took form over the course of history, and not a man-made ‘nation-state.’”  Moreover, “The legitimacy of the return of Hong Kong [to Chinese rule], in terms of political philosophy, has nothing to do with the social contract theory of the modern state, but is instead a legitimacy based on tradition and history…For this reason, the ‘country’ in the context of the ‘one country-two systems’ framework, not only goes against the modern state in terms of institutional structure, its basis in political philosophy also goes against the theory of the modern state, and this highly imaginative structure and theory come straight out of China’s classical political tradition.”  The theory Jiang is referring to is tianxia theory.

As we have seen in the case of other tianxia theorists, Jiang Shigong is defining the special characteristics of “China” on the basis of a comparison with Western thought on law and politics.  For example, he argues that the Chinese feudal system, the Roman Republic, and the British Empire all embraced the principle of difference, but that understandings of this idea in East and West diverged widely. Difference in the West was grounded in ethnicity, while in China it was grounded in civilization and moral cultivation.  Difference in the West was marked by a strong tendency toward division and antagonism, while difference in China was more relative, and mutual transformation was possible.  Resolving the tense relationship of binary antagonism in the Western dynamic required the transformation, assimilation, or destruction of the “other,” while in contrast, the “universal harmony 天下大同” proposed by Confucian culture allowed for differences that could be “harmonized without assimilation 和而不同.” This latter approach, moreover, “placed greater emphasis on the reciprocal relationship of the ‘center’ and the ‘periphery’ within [Fei Xiaotong’s concept of] the differential mode of association 差序格局, as well as the moral responsibility of the ‘center’ toward the ‘periphery.’”[13]  This is also the spiritual sense of the “one country-two systems” concept. 

Discussing the evolution of this concept and its historical heritage, Jiang stresses that one country-two systems was not a temporary strategic consideration of China’s central government, nor was is something that Deng Xiaoping created in the 1980s.  As an institutional arrangement and in terms of principles and basic spirit, “one country-two systems” is of a piece with Ye Jianying’s 1981 Nine Proposals, presented to the Taiwan government by China’s central government, or even the much earlier “Seventeen Point Agreement” which was part of the “Basic Law Concerning the Central Government’s Rule over Tibet.” 

This means that before Deng Xiaoping took power, Mao Zedong had already laid the intellectual foundation for the one country-two systems arrangement through his handling of the Tibet question.  And this idea, Jiang continues, “in fact traces its origins to the political techniques employed by China’s dynastic rulers to govern the border areas.”  In turn, this means that the way in which the Chinese Communists handled the Hong Kong question (which of course also includes Macao and Taiwan as well as the earlier case of Tibet) “illustrates that at the deepest level, the thinking of the Chinese Communist Party is in fact an extension of the traditional Confucian idea of tianxia.  This notion of tianxia transcends ideas of class or ethnicity, as well as ideas of national sovereignty,” and “only by understanding the uniformity of the theory of the Chinese Communist Party and that of traditional Confucianism can we understand the unique nature of the Chinese revolution.”[14]  

Gan Yang 甘阳 (b. 1952) called this link between Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong, and the Confucian tradition “unifying the three traditions,” in the language of Confucian Gongyang Studies, and, not coincidentally, both Jiang’s book on China’s Hong Kong and Gan’s book on unifying the three systems [通三统] are published in the same collection (“Culture:  China and the World”), the chief editor of which is Gan Yang. 

In the preface explaining why he wrote his book, Gan Yang emphasized the following points:  First, in terms of China’s relationship to the world, “what we call ‘China’ is not simply one ‘country’ among many in the United Nations, but first and foremost is the mother of a great civilization.”  Second, “the rise of a truly great country is necessarily the rise of a country with a great culture; only those states with deep preexisting civilizational strength have the wherewithal to rise up as great countries.”  Naturally, China possesses just such resources and preconditions.  Third, and sadly, the “great cultural capital” accumulated by China’s civilization “has yet to be properly deployed by the modern Chinese people, because for the past century, Chinese people have been looking at the world through the lenses of Western theories and concepts limited in time and space, to the point that it has become natural to think that Western theories and concepts are universal.”  Many of the views of the West that have emerged from this process, as well as many views of China, are in need of critical review.  For this reason, Gan’s fourth point is that we need to “re-understand China, and re-understand the West, re-understand tradition, and re-understand modernity.”  Finally, number five, is that through this effort, “Chinese intellectual and academic culture” will move toward maturity, the sign of which will be the “ever increasing maturity of the independent viewpoint of the agency of Chinese civilization.”[15]

Clearly, Gan Yang’s arguments and judgements are fairly representative of the intellectual discourses discussed in the context of the present article; we might even see them as a sort of consensus expression of those views.  Even if the various authors discussed do not share the same discipline, and even if they structure their arguments differently and rely on different intellectual resources, even if the questions they address are not identical and their starting points are different, nonetheless they all more or less take “China’s rise” as their background and emphasize China’s special nature as a civilizational state, and all argue that this special nature and its great value have not been correctly understood.  Hence they all conclude that we must arrive at a new understanding of China, that we must return to Chineseness, establish the agency of Chinese culture, and understand the world through a perspective that is truly Chinese. 

In this light, they are all critical of the discourse of Western universalism that has dominated Chinese thought and scholarship for the past century, and point out the limitations of political, legal and social theories based on Western experience, as well as the emptiness of the mainstream discourse on universal values.[16]  As the vehicle for these arguments, the tianxia theory is clearly marked by a nativist coloration and a critical dimension, which has prompted any number of criticisms and responses.

Part 5

The responses to the tianxia theories discussed above can be divided into three groups, according to their form.  The first group consists of direct criticisms of tianxia theory; the second consists of theoretical proposals meant to replace theories like tianxia theory; and the third includes other tianxia narratives that differ from those already presented.  The first group can also be subdivided in terms of their concrete discussions into particular criticisms and overall criticisms. 

The many discussions that followed the publication of Zhang Tingyang’s Tianxia System naturally fall into this first category, as do the discussions of Daniel Bell’s work on meritocracy and Jiang Shigong’s work on Hong Kong.  In addition, some commentators raised questions about the familiar idea of tianxia, or pointed out problems with its application, or, by contrast, suggested effective ways to put it into practice.  However, given that the point of the present text is not to explore the original meaning of tianxia, but rather to sort out its place in contemporary discourse, we are most interested in overall critiques of the idea. 

The South Korean scholar Yông-sô Paek 白永瑞 was perhaps the first foreign scholar to offer a comprehensive analysis of tianxia theories in contemporary China.  In an article that he published in Chinese in early 2014, Paek developed his argument around the term “empire” (not the same as “imperialism”), and grouped popular concepts like the tribute system, civilizational states and tianxia theories together as part of the discourse of empire.[17]  In the introduction to Paek’s article, in addition to frequently mentioned arguments like those of Lucien Pye and Martin Jacques, we also encounter the points of view of various Korean and Japanese scholars, such as Yu Yongtae 柳镛泰 and his argument that the “theory of the Chinese people 中华民族论” has “internalized the structure of empire," Kim Yingap’s 全寅甲’s “imperial nation-state 帝国性国民家,” and Shiroi Satoshi’s 白井总 “China as empire.” 

​All of these concepts were viewed as being helpful in understanding modern China.  But Paek noted that more recently, when certain Chinese intellectuals began taking up the concept of the civilizational-state, they were doing so as part of “an expression of self-confidence following China's non-Western modernization, and as an affirmation of Chinese civilization.  The representative figure in this is Gan Yang.”  Moreover, “there is no way to ignore the Chinese nationalist aspirations in these proposals.”  And outside of the “civilizational-state,” Paek continues, there is also the “’tianxia’ concept, which is broadly used to spread the discourse of empire.”  Here, Paek is basically discussing Zhao Tingyang’s Tianxia System, although he also brings up “new tianxia-ism”[18] which I will discuss below. 

Paek’s doubts and concerns regarding the discourse of empire surrounding the idea of tianxia seem to focus on one particular point, which is that tianxia ignores the voices and propositions from surrounding countries, in the absence of which it would never achieve the universality it claims to pursue, or, to put it more bluntly, it would become a new hegemonic power.  In addition, in Paek’s view, despite the tendency to explain China’s discourse of empire using something other than the Western concept of sovereignty by emphasizing continuities with history and tradition, this may not in fact accord with historical realities, given that it is of a piece with the idea of “rethinking China, remaking China” (Paek cites Zhao Tingyang here).  To Paek’s mind, “the discourse of empire should be replaced by ‘empire as a project.’”  For the same reason, Paek argues that the academic world should adopt an active viewpoint in engaging in this discourse, but Paek’s means of engagement is to propose a view from the “front lines 核心现场” of China’s “peripheries.”  Examples of these “front lines” include Taiwan, Okinawa and the Korean peninsula.  Paek’s voice thus comes from one of these “front lines.”[19]

Another voice from the front lines (what Jiang Shigong calls the “margins”) is the culturally powerful voice of Chan Koonchong (Chen Guanzhong 陈冠中, b. 1952), who speaks from Hong Kong.  After the publication of Jiang’s China’s Hong Kong, Chen published a long article entitled “Chinese Celestialism and Hong Kong 中国天朝注意与香港” in which he was critical of Jiang’s views.  Before engaging Jiang directly, Chen first discusses “a certain political ideology” which in Chen’s view contains three basic elements:  “First, the idea that China is not a nation-state or an empire in the modern (Western) sense; second, that that the contemporary system of party rule in China is…a product of ‘the heritage of traditional Chinese politics;’ third, that the Great Qing Empire was the ultimate expression of the political perspective of the traditional Chinese tribute system, and also serves as the model for the present and future China political imagination.”  Chen calls this discourse “Chinese celestialism 中国天朝主义意.”  Chen believes that this is similar to buzzwords like the “China model” or the “Beijing Consensus,” and that “Chinese celestialism” is a description of the current state of China, especially in the sense that despite various problems with the economic system, in a political sense, it is a “leading ideology in terms of norms and structures.” 

More than other buzzwords, “Chinese celestialism” possesses an “even stronger claim to traditional culture and a more conflictual stance in terms of politics at the margins, as well as great ambitions based in a ‘great’ or ‘lengthy history.’”  In addition, because “Chinese celestialism” contains many “historicist readings and future demands” regarding the present system, it “increases the future unpredictability of China’s political and economic system.”  From his position at the “margins,” Chen Guanzhong has two points to make concerning Jiang Shigong’s arguments concerning China and Hong Kong:  first, a centralized regime which claims to have inherited the political principles of a traditional empire, and which poses as civilizational-state and a “celestial country” that transcends modern notions of sovereignty, cannot but provoke reactions of fear and suspicion in smaller surrounding countries, especially those that have not been independent for very long.  Chen questions whether this is truly in modern China’s interest. 

Second, and concretely related to Hong Kong:  even if “in terms of its orientation, celestialism maintains the ‘pluralism’ of the ‘one country-two systems’ formula, the tendency is nonetheless to see China’s rule of Hong Kong as “an extension of central rule, a technique of the center’s adapting to local conditions,” rather than a system in which “local people exercise their rights to self-governance,” and will reduce the weight of constitutional rule in the special administrative territories and increase mutual suspicions between the center and the peripheries.”  From another perspective, “the structure of the argument for celestialism will tend to ‘depoliticize’ the special administrative areas, and will view the special regions as passive objects of central control.”  Developments in this direction “will be relatively unable to deal with the sense of agency which has long since developed in the regions,” and will not only produce a cognitive gap with current conditions in the special administrative regions, but also weaken the center’s ability to understand and develop Hong Kong, and perhaps even create misjudgments in terms of governing strategies.”

At was at this moment, and in agreement with the criticisms raised by Paek and Chen, that the historian Ge Zhaoguang 葛兆光 (b. 1950) published his article entitled “The Imagination of ‘Tianxia:’ The Politics, Thought, and Scholarship behind a Utopian Imagination 对‘天下’的想象: 一个乌托邦想象背后的政治，思想和学术,”[20] which carried out a systematic sorting out and criticism of all of the tianxia arguments.  Ge’s article is exhaustive in its research, with abundant citations concerning the main figures, arguments and discussions surrounding tianxia, which makes it clear that Ge’s text was not composed impulsively, but was instead the result of extensive reading and reflection. 

Ge begins with history, less because he is himself a historian, and more because he feels that most tianxia arguments have ignored existing historical research on tianxia and hence are nothing more than “ahistorical histories,” or even “imagined histories that go against history itself, which at best merely express a sort of romantic yearning or lofty ideal,” a parody of wishful thinking.  These arguments can also be seen as historical issues caught up in the rapid rise in recent years of the Kang Youwei craze, which has accompanied the development of tianxia arguments, or as part of the rediscovery of the Gongyang tradition carried forward by Kang Youwei.  Because this school of Gongyang thought is “most capable of stimulating the imagination of a modern tianxia,” as well as an important intellectual source for the reconstruction of tianxia, Ge devotes two parts of his article to a careful analysis of it. 

In Ge’s view, certain contemporary scholars (mainly Jiang Qing and Wang Hui, as well as the many scholars involved in “returning to Kang Youwei”) endorse an overly modern interpretation of the Gongyang tradition, and especially of the Gongyang tradition of the mid- to late Qing.  This interpretation has been removed from its historical context, to the point of distorting its original meaning in order to fit preconceived ideas, so that “certain idealistic arguments found in traditional Confucian texts on tianxia have bit by bit come to be interpreted as a modern version of ‘tianxia-ism.’”

Outside of the academic world, Ge also discusses the political and intellectual background to the rise of tianxia theories.  He notes in his article that at the outset “tianxia-ism” appeared as a counterpart to “nationalism,” in a manner similar to that of “internationalism,” but was very quickly transformed into a “nationalism masquerading as internationalism.”  The simple reason for this was “the excitement and stimulation of what we call ‘China’s rise,” but equally important were “changes in mainstream political ideology on the Chinese mainland over the past few decades… China gradually abandoned its stance of ‘hiding its light under a bushel,’ or its strategy of “not arguing [about whether China’s path was socialist or capitalist]” associated with the early period of reform and opening, and began to pursue the ‘China dream’ of becoming a ‘superpower.’” 

Against this backdrop, certain critical theories originating in the West, such as Said’s theory of Orientalism or Hart and Negry’s theory of imperialism, came to be widely accepted in China, and, according to Ge, “set in motion the rise of nationalism and statism, which had long lay just beneath the surface of Chinese intellectual life.”  The same forces fed “the urge to purge the feeling of ‘a century of humiliation,’ thoughts of criticizing ‘modernity’ and the ambition of reviving the ‘tianxia’ system.”  Consequently, with the help of poorly defined or even specious concepts like “empire,” “tianxia,” and “civilizational-state,” many tianxia theorists “made historical China out to be something unique, on the one hand in the hope of dressing up China’s ancient tribute system as something very civilized, and on the other allowing modern China to circumvent the constraints of the modern system.” 

As a historian, Ge Zhaoguang argues that he “truly cannot approve of this clumsy overinterpretation, nor this process of imagination that requires removing a concept from its historical context.”  And Ge’s greatest fear is that “from the outset, concealed within ancient China’s ‘tianxia’ order were notions concerning the distinction between Chinese and barbarian, between inside and outside, between superior and inferior, and that the strategy of ‘returning to the king of tianxia,’ achieved through much blood and fire, might, under the pretext of ‘purging the century of humiliation,’ and ‘promoting Chinese civilization,’ turn ‘tianxia-ism’ into a nationalism camouflaged by the flag of internationalism, a means of achieving the ‘great dream’ of contemporary China’s domination of the world against the backdrop of China’s rise.” 

​Ge Zhaoguang states that he is incapable of offering a final judgement of “tianxia-ism,” but expresses deep reserves concerning the superiority of the notion of “tianxia.”  His final question is:  Why is it that the solution proposed by China’s tradition Confucians is the “kingly Way,” while that of modern Western thought is the “Way of the hegemon?”  “This inevitably brings us back to the origin of the question:  Who is the author of the world system?  Who decides the legitimacy of this system?”

In fact, Ge the historian was not without an answer to his own question.  In an article published two years later on the “political demands of Mainland New Confucians,”[21] Ge makes clear the political standpoint that had remained obscure in his article on tianxia.  In his article on the Mainland New Confucians, a more direct challenge to those he was discussing, the previously mentioned volume of “contemporary Confucians on universal values,” became an object of overt criticism by Ge because of its “reckless language” and “outspoken claims.”  In the face of Mainland New Confucians’ decision to fashion a political Confucianism, to “move from cultural engagement to political participation,” Ge felt “stunned,” and their “shocking political plans” left him “amazed.”  That Mainland New Confucians had drawn a line in the sand between “modern Western values” such as liberty, democracy, and human rights, once embraced by Chinese thought, meant that they had started down a road to “extremism.”  And as an answer to the question, based in the idea of “returning to Kang Youwei,” of “How to protect this multi-ethnic state carried over from the Qing empire?” Ge’s reply is that “maintaining a unified China, reducing conflicts among the ethnicities, and establishing a modern national identity, should be accomplished on the basis of justice, freedom and democracy.  What other path is possible to promote identification with the system, to honor the ‘citizen’ status of all individuals, to provide all citizens with safety, happiness and self-respect, leading them in turn to self-consciously assume their status as citizen and identify with the country?”

Notes

[1] 梁治平, “想象’天下’：当代中国的意识形态建构,” 思想 36 (Dec. 2018):  71-177.

[2] The question addressed by Wang’s book is “What is China?” which is the same core concern of those working on tianxia. 

[3] Wang’s is a work of intellectual history, yet is full of contemporary concerns.  In a review of Wang’s work, Huang Zongzhi 黄宗智 pointed out that:  “In other words, ‘imperial’ China is really not that much like an empire, and the Chinese ‘nation-state’ is not that much like a nation-state.  This is the core of Wang Hui’s retelling of the history of China’s political regimes, as well as an important part of the conceptual space that he has sought out for China’s present and future in terms of an alternative political perspective.”  See 读书, 2008.8.

[4] 吴稼祥，公天下：多中心治理与双主体法权 (桂林：广西师范大学出版社, 2013).

[5] Lucien W. Pye, The Spirit of Chinese Politics (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1992). 

[6] 张维为，中国超越：一个“文明型国家”的光荣与梦想 (上海：上海人民出版社, 2014), 252-53.  Translator’s note:  Two volumes of Zhang’s trilogy, The China Horizon and The China Wave, are available in English.

[7] 张维为，中国震撼：一个“文明型国家”的崛起 (上海：上海人民出版社, 2011), p. 64.

[8] 张维为，中国超越：一个“文明型国家”的光荣与梦想, p. 253.  Zhang basically copied his ideas about the civilizational state from Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (New York:  Penguin, 2009), and the major changes Zhang made were to convert an outside description and analysis of China into an internal narrative and proposal.

[9] See 张维为，中国超越：一个“文明型国家”的光荣与梦想, pp. 131, 148.  Zhang believes that the “three represents” and the ideas concerning scientific development proposed by the ruling party represent important organized aspects of this discourse system, but this discourse remains insufficient.  “We still need to renew the content and form of this discourse, building a great discourse system including popular discourse, academic discourse, and international discourse, a larger discursive system that will be in touch with the people, possess academic heft, and facilitate international communication.” 

[10] Translator’s note:  At this point, Liang adds a very long footnote, which I will paraphrase:  Bell’s work was ranked number seven on the list of “the ten most important academic themes in the humanities and social sciences in 2016” jointly compiled by 文史哲 and by 中华读书报, because it contributed to understanding of China’s rise and the West’s decline in the period since China’s rise.  Two other themes listed—academic “indigenization 本土化” and “liberalism’s difficulties”—are also related to Bell’s theme, as well as to the topics under discussion in the present article.    

[11] Translator’s note:  Liang points out here that the title of Bell’s work in English--The China Model:  Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy—had different connotations from the title of the Chinese translation--贤能政治：为什么尚贤制比选举民主制更适合中国?  The English-language title cast doubt on the virtues of democracy, while the Chinese-language title [Political Meritocracy:  Why Meritocracy is Better than Elections for China] championed the virtues of the China model.

[12] Some specialists in international law argue that the modern concept of sovereignty cannot adequately describe the existing practice of international relations, and one example they cite is China’s exercise of sovereignty in the case of Hong Kong.  According to this viewpoint, the relationship between Hong Kong as a part of China and China’s central government is similar to the power relationship that existed in the traditional tribute system.  Wang Hui makes this argument in his Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, as does Martin Jacques.

[13] Translator’s note:  In his From the Soil, Fei Xiaotong contrasted the Western, individualistic mode of social life in which all people are viewed as equals, with the more group-centered social life characteristic of the Chinese, in which groups functioned as concentric circles, facilitating and shaping social interactions.  Jiang Shigong has adapted this notion to international relations.  

[14] Chapter 5 of Jiang’s book focuses on the tianxia mentality and strategic thought of Mao Zedong and of the Communist Party under his leadership.  Even if tianxia is not in accord with Marxism, and although, with the exception of the past few decades, the CCP’s efforts to build the party and the country have consistently been anti-tradition, Jiang nonetheless underscores the CCP’s inheritance of China’s tradition, a point shared by all tianxia theorists discussed here.  Some argue that “the ruling party in China is at essence a continuation of the Confucian ruling body from Chinese tradition, and not a Western political party the represents interest groups in competition with others,” see Zhang Weiwei, The China Shock.  Another asserted that Western political parties are “representative parties,” while the Chinese Communist Party is a “leading party,” whose responsibility is to “inform the body politic where China has come from, where it is at present, and where it is going in the future,” and hence to “lead us there.”  See 曹锦清，“百年复兴：中国共产党的时代叙事与历史使命,” in 玛雅， 道路自信：中国为什么能 (Beijing: 2014).

[15] In Gan Yang’s own words, his choice to use the concept of “unifying the three traditions” from the classical Chinese intellectual tradition was in order to “discuss a number of questions concerning the agency of Chinese civilization in the era of globalization.”  At this point I should mention Gan Yang’s fellow traveler 同道 and collaborator Liu Xiaofeng 刘小枫 (b. 1956).  Even if Liu has not been mentioned in the present text as an example of a tianxia theorist, his intellectual concerns have nonetheless developed around the core themes of these theories.  Moreover, as a productive scholar and an organizer of many academic projects, he also plays a role as someone who guides the direction of academic thought.  At first glance, one might think that the studies of Western antiquity into which he has poured so much effort are very far from the concerns of contemporary China, but in fact, his work has considerable contemporary importance.  In his “editor’s remarks” found in a collection of translations entitled From Universal History to Historicism 从普遍历史到历史主义 (Beijing, 2017), he explains his editorial choices:  “In the current world political situation, China’s strategic position is continually ascending, and how to understand world history from the perspective of Chinese civilization is become a pressing theoretical issue.” Elsewhere in the same volume, Liu makes the same point even more clearly:  “Are China’s political and civilizational positions in the world rising in the wake of China’s rise?”  The answer is obvious.  For this reason, Chinese intellectuals must engage in intellectual and cultural efforts, efforts that may well begin with “understanding the world.”  “During a prosperous age, the reigning dynasty needs all the more to understand world affairs, and what is important about world affairs are not petty international matters, but instead understanding the world itself.”  Translation has the same significance:  “In our efforts to establish China’s rightful place 立足华夏大地, translating the various histories of the world as written and rewritten in the United States and Europe is absolutely not a simple matter of understanding the customs of various countries, but is rather to understand how the present world has come to be.  The point is to look at ourselves squarely, in a sort of mise en abyme, at a point when Chinese civilization has entered yet another new age.  The historical mission of protecting of our nation, our race and our teachings must and can only be accomplished through a world narrative.”  Here, Liu insists that the purpose of knowledge is political.  Elsewhere, in a general preface to a collection on political philosophy, 政治哲学文库, of which Liu and Gan Yang were joint editors, the two defined political philosophy as “knowledge that transcends disciplines,” because:  “Political philosophy is a concentrated expression of  the self-knowledge and self-reflection of a political community, and moreover, the rise of political philosophy generally occurs when there are great debates within a political community, debates which often relate to basic beliefs and values held by the political community, basic lifestyle questions, and basic institutional justifications.  At this point, these become the common concern of all humanistic disciplines.”  See Gan Yang and Liu Xiaofeng, eds., 政治哲学文库, preface to the collection.  Liu’s most recent work on political philosophy, 以美为鉴：注意美国立国原则的是非未定之争 (Beijing, 2017), expresses doubts about the superiority of the American political system through an examination of the debates between the Straussian and Cambridge schools of intellectual history in England and the United States.  I might add in passing that familiarity with Schmidt and Strauss in the Chinese thought world is largely the work of the efforts of Gan and Liu, but, like Gan and Liu themselves, Strauss and Schmidt are figures of controversy within the Chinese world of discourse.  For a criticism of Jiang Shigong’s legal views of Schmitt, see 陈冠中, 中国天朝注意与香港 (Hong Kong, 2012).  For an analysis and criticism of the “Schmitt-Strauss school” in China, see 王炜，“从布鲁姆对罗尔斯的误解看施特劳斯学派政治哲学及其中国变体,” in 天府新论, 2017.6. 

​[16] The very title of a book on the subject makes this abundantly clear; see 曾亦，郭晓冬，eds.，何为普世？谁之价值？ [What is Universal?  Whose Values?] (Shanghai, 2014).  I will have much to say about this book below.

[17] 白永瑞, “中华帝国论在东亚的意义－－探索批评性的中国研究,” 开放时代 2014.1, available online at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/72241-6.html .

[18] Translator’s note:  Tianxia-ism 天下主义 is a term used by those who are critical of the ideas Liang is exploring in this text.  By adding “ism” they “denaturalize” the concept and underscore its ideological dimensions.

[19] Paek concludes that “In the context of China’s rise, which is a global problem, the discourse of empire contains an expectation, which is that ‘China as empire’ will become an empire that is not only good for China, but also a ‘good empire’ that will be good for the entire world.  But for this ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ to come to fruition, it will not be enough to simply understand the history and current reality of China’s ‘imperial nature.’”

[20] 思想, 29.9.

[21] Translator’s note :  See https://www.readingthechinadream.com/ge-zhaoguang-if-horses-had-wings.html .