Xiang Lanxin, "On Wolf Warrior Diplomacy"

“Interview with Well-Known International Politics Expert, Professor Xiang Lanxin:  His Thoughts on Wolf Warrior Culture,  His Calls for Civilized Communication,” published on the Canshan yeyu 苍山夜语 website, April 30, 2020[1]

Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction

Xiang Lanxin (b. 1956) is a well-known Chinese professor of international relations who has spent virtually his entire career in the West.  After completing his undergraduate studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, he did his M.A. and Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.  He taught at Clemson University until 1996 at which point he moved to the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.  Like many Chinese intellectuals of his generation, he has a foot in many worlds.  Most of Xiang’s scholarly publications appear to have been in English, but he is on the editorial board of Dushu and is well known in China.  Ma Guochuan, the interviewer, is editor-in-chief at the liberal journal Caijing.

The interview is notable mainly for Xiang’s full-throated pushback against “Wolf Warrior diplomacy,” the term used to describe China’s highly pugnacious responses to foreign attacks on China’s management of the coronavirus pandemic.  The term refers to two war-action movies, Wolf Warrior (2015) and Wolf Warrior 2 (2017), which depict battles between an elite PLA unit (named, you guessed it, the Wolf Warriors) and various mercenary groups, among which Americans figure prominently.  The films were hugely popular in China, as are similar cinematic celebrations of war and patriotism in the United States.  Best represented by Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian 赵立坚 (b. 1972), who has gone so far as to speculate that the U.S. army spread the virus in Wuhan, these Wolf Warriors have taken off their diplomatic gloves in response to calls for accountability and even reparations that have come from many quarters over the past few weeks.

Xiang denounces such tactics as both unproductive and ungrounded in fact and logic.  Clearly, from a diplomatic perspective, racheting up the tone rarely works if the goal is to arrive at a solution to a problem.  Many Chinese will argue, of course, that “they started it,” meaning the Americans, the British, the French, the Australians, and they are right.  It is not difficult to see how the Chinese—both the government and the common people—would find US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s accusations, for instance, gallingly insulting, because they are.  That said, beyond the emotional satisfaction of punching back, this “diplomatic race to the bottom” will not be good for the world, or for China, Xiang insists.

Wolf Warrior diplomacy, in Xiang’s view, is contributing to the destabilization of the world order at a time when China has drunk its own koolaid, in other words, when many Chinese have come to believe China’s propaganda claims about the superiority of the “China model.”  Xiang lays much of the blame for this on the left-wing British journalist Martin Jacques, whose 2009 best-seller When China Rules the World thrilled Chinese readers, particularly because it was written by a Westerner.  The blame is shared by the Chinese “scholar” Zhang Weiwei 张维为 (b. 1957), who repackaged Jacques’s idea to sing the virtues of China’s unique “civilizational state.”  Xiang’s disdain for Zhang (whom he does not name in the interview) is palpable, and in my experience is shared by many other Chinese liberals.  In any event, Xiang’s point is that the danger is that China is destroying the very world order that permitted the realization of the “China dream,” apparently without a thought for the consequences, military or economic.

Xiang’s remarks make for good reading because his position as a Chinese working outside China allows him a frankness that his compatriots in China can ill afford.  Otherwise, his opinions largely accord with those of other Chinese liberals of his generation who are proud of China’s rise but continue to embrace many of the universal values of the Enlightenment.  Most of us would like to see such viewpoints regain the upper hand, but the Wolf Warriors surely would not be lashing out as they are without the full support of their superiors in the Foreign Ministry and above.  In the introduction to the interview, Xiang noted that “I left China 37 years ago, and never took a foreign name or acquired a foreign passport.  Aside from scholarship and teaching, I have devoted all of my efforts to improving relations between China and the United States, China and Europe.”  While this statement is surely meant to assert Xiang’s bona fides as a patriotic Chinese, I suspect that Wolf Warriors would find it weak and defensive.
 
Translation   
 
There’s No Need to Fight like a “Wolf Warrior”
 
Ma Guochuan:  The spread of the coronavirus around the world has sparked a lot of thought.  In an article published in early April, Henry Kissinger predicted that the pandemic would permanently change the world order.  As a scholar who has studied international relations for a long time, do you agree with Kissinger’s opinion?

Xiang Lanxin:  I was once the Henry Kissinger Professor at the United States Library of Congress, and have discussed the complex problem of US-China relations with Kissinger on many occasions.  Kissinger is a great strategic thinker, and has unique insights into changes and developing trends in the world system.  I basically agree with him on this point.  But in a nutshell, what I am most worried about is not the institutions of the existing international order, but rather the trend of declining trust between great nations, and particularly between China and the United States, which is reaching a point of non-return.

To my mind, Kissinger’s observation is of a piece with his general way of thinking.  His first scholarly work, A World Restored,[2] was about the new peaceful world order constructed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.  Even if the leader of this new international order was not the world superpower, but instead the Austro-Hungarian empire, the arrangement nonetheless lasted a century.  The key factor in this success was the expert design of the order, constructed on the foundation of a balance of power among the great powers, which fostered mutual trust, so that they all desired the maintenance of this order.  This book allows us to see the guiding principles of Kissinger’s thought.

Kissinger has spent half a century trying to build a harmonious relationship between the United States and China.  Since the end of the Korean War, there have basically been no wars between the great powers.  This war against the coronavirus has brought out serious distortions in human nature, and irrational diplomacy between the great powers has become the new normal.  A war of “passing the buck 甩锅战” among the great powers has started even before the end of the pandemic.  Versailles-like discussions of “war guilt” have weakened our focus on the fight against the virus, and ridiculous discussions of “reparations” have even been expressed in diplomatic circles.  As a historian and an insightful thinker, Kissinger must be extremely saddened.  In the absence of trust among the great powers, any peaceful system is very difficult to sustain.  The odds are that the tensions between China and the US will only increase.

Ma:  In fact, at present on the international scence, and especially in the United States, there are people seeking to “hold China accountable” and even to demand that China pay “damages.”  How should we understand this?

Xiang:  From the perspective of international law, holding a sovereign country accountable is meaningless, because such countries have sovereign immunity.  It is true that absence of transparency in the Chinese system led to the suppression of whistle-blowers in the early period, which did indeed slow the fight against the virus.  But all the world has witnessed the enormous effort and sacrifice China made after they shut down Wuhan.  Overall, China’s fight against the virus was successful, and it is also a common political tactic for unsuccessful foreign leaders to look for scapegoats.  We should believe the judgement of most of the world, and not let ourselves fall into debates on the question.

China should take advantage of the period while the pandemic continues to rage to tackle the challenge of summarizing its experience.  Whoever first succeeds in producing a credible, evidence-based White Paper can then offer this experience of fighting the virus to other countries, which will be a great advantage in the international struggle for the right to speak in the post-pandemic world.

Ma:  All sorts of “conspiracy theories” concerning the origin of the virus are closely related to the question of “accountability.”  There are all sorts of discussions about this, and it has become a contentious diplomatic issue.

Xiang:  On the question of the virus’s origin, China does not need to be overly sensitive, because this is a purely scientific issue, and no other point of view has credibility.  No matter how many conspiracy theories there are, none of them has international credibility.  At a point when there is no definitive answer to the question of the virus’s origin, China should be extremely cautious, and there is absolutely no need to fight back from the posture of a “Wolf Warrior.”  As for diplomats, they should understand how to communicate with ordinary people on the international stage, and should know that one cannot seize the international right to speak through tit-for-tat defamation 以谤止谤, and if they waste their time in spittle wars 口水战 on Twitter, then they should lose their jobs.  

Ma:  But in fact, in recent years it seems that it has become normal for diplomats to respond immediately with very strong language, as if the failure to do so is proof of a lack of “patriotism.”  What are your views of this “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy?

Xiang:  Most of China’s diplomats were trained in foreign languages, which gives us this extraordinary image of the Beijing Foreign Language Institute as the cradle of China’s diplomacy.  If we have translators handing our foreign affairs, we are bound to have problems.  Even when the Qing dynasty was at the point of collapse, translators were not allowed to run the Zongli yamen [i.e., the Foreign Ministry].  The skill of a translator is determined by his linguistic knowledge and his quick reactions, while great power diplomacy requires long-term strategic thinking and a head for careful planning.  Correcting the Wolf Warrior culture in diplomacy would be fairly easy.  What will be harder to fix is the Wolf Warrior culture in the field of foreign propaganda.
 
The Origins of Wolf Warrior Culture

Ma:  Ever since 1989 when Deng Xiaoping said we should “keep our light under a bushel 韬光养晦,” Chinese diplomats have struck a posture of equanimity.  In your view, why do we see the emergence of this Wolf Warrior culture?  Where does it come from?

Xiang:  What gave rise to Wolf Warrior culture was the “theory of the superiority of the China model.”  This theory did not originate in China, but was instead copied from a “foreign Wolf Warrior,” the notorious left-wing British journalist Martin Jacques (b. 1945).  Ten years ago, Jacques published a book entitled When China Rules the World, which is the origin of the over-weening pride some Chinese people now display.  At the time, China was still in the “hide your light under a bushel” phase, but since China’s economic growth exceeded that in the West, Chinese confidence began to grow.

Ma:  Jacques is a media figure and self-proclaimed scholar.  Many people in China thinks he understands us, and the Chinese translation of When China Rules the World became a bestseller.

Xiang:  This book received a lot of high-level attention, but its theoretical basis is wrong.  His idea of “China ruling the world” was actually copied from other people.  It’s a version of the “rise and fall of great powers” theory or the “changing hegemonies” theory that has been around for a long time in England and the US.

On the surface, many of the points Jacques makes resemble those made by the Jesuit missionaries who came to China a long time ago.  For example, Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) sang the praises of Chinese government and culture under the Ming, saying that China “is not merely a kingdom, but instead an entire world unto itself.”  But Matteo Ricci emphasized that Chinese and Western cultures could understand one another and coexist, and from the day he arrived in China he worked hard to learn the Chinese language and Chinese traditions.  Martin Jacques, by contrast, doesn’t speak Chinese, and knows little about Chinese history and tradition, and in his book he sets up a good versus bad dualism in which China is held out as a model for the West.  

Ma:  So Jacques’s praise of China and the China model is based on attacks on the Western system.

Xiang:  In the course of the 18th century European Enlightenment, there appeared a new theory based on an absolute antagonism between good and bad, black and white.  This theory, with its deeply theological overtones, rejected any political system that differed from the one they were championing, and made the legitimacy of one system contingent on overturning the legitimacy of another.  Jacques’s argument comes out of the same logical framework.

The Chinese tradition did not reject other cultural traditions and systems, but instead emphasized the importance of local conditions, as in the saying “oranges grow to the south of the Hui, and tangerines to the north橘生淮南则为橘, 生于淮北则为枳.”  Chinese tradition did not distinguish between high and low cultures, nor was there any idea of “denigrating the West to promote China 抑西扬中.”  This is why, throughout Chinese history, Confucians, Buddhists and Daoists lived together peacefully for long periods, and there were basically no religious wars. 

As for today’s China, still in an ascending phase, the most important thing to cultivate is an international image of tolerance.  However, inside China there are politically astute opportunists who saw in Jacques’s “theory of China’s rule” a new way to get famous.  In their view, since China is destined to replace the US as world hegemon, then the best way to protect the country’s interests is to resist the West from the posture of a Wolf Warrior, and trumpet the superiority of the China model to “denigrate the West and promote China.”  They fail to realize that this way of thinking has nothing to do with reality, and at the same time betrays Chinese tradition.      

Ma:  Jacques came up with a “theory of a civilizational country,” and divided today’s sovereign nations into two camps of “civilized” and “national.”  He argued that the issues facing these two types of countries are fundamentally different.

Xiang:  The “theory of the civilizational state” is utter fiction, and does not stand up at all in scholarly terms.  Jacques says that China is the only existing civilizational state, and hence in international society should enjoy special cultural treatment.  In fact, in today’s world, dividing countries into “civilized” and “national” is impossible.  No matter how you look at it, China is a combination of the two.  Moreover, this theory distorts the basic spirit of the Chinese tradition.  There were no “universal values” in the Chinese tradition, nor did this tradition make distinctions between higher and lower cultures.

Over the past decade, certain government offices have actively promoted a full-throated Wolf Warrior culture in dealings with foreigners, and have trained a body of professional “Wolf Warrior propagandists.”  The basis of the theory of the superiority of the China model that they are promoting is the same nonsense as the idea of a “civilizational country.”  Since they say straight out that China is the only civilizational country, this means that Western countries can only be mere “nations.”  In fact, the richness of human civilization benefits from exchange and dialogue between cultures.  If the entire West turns out to be without “civilization,” then logic would tell us everything outside of China is barbarian territory, and dialogue between civilizations is a needless waste of time.

Beware of Destroying Your Enemy Publicly 棒杀, But Even More of Destroying Yourself through Excess Praise 捧杀

Ma:  Martin Jacques praises the China model, and also tries to define it, saying that it rose against the backdrop of the world financial crisis of 2008.

Xiang:  In terms of method, this argument is the exact opposite of the way of thinking behind China’s reform and opening, which is to adhere to tradition and seek truth from facts, as in sayings like “crossing the river by feeling the stones” and Deng Xiaoping’s “cat” argument.  This argument makes Chinese into the same kind of ontologists as Westerners.

China has no ontological tradition; Descartes’s ontological exploration of “what is this?” is not how Chinese thought about things.  A classic Chinese formulation would be rather “where does the Way reside?” and “what should I do next?”  The point of Jacques’s game in portraying China as a “civilizational country,” is in fact to bring discussions about China into the dead end of Western ontology.  Once Chinese begin thinking in this ontological fashion, discussing “what is the China model,” then they have already lost their way.  Because once a “model” has a definition, then you have to sustain the model, which necessarily leads to self-promotion.

Ma:  But what can’t be ignored is that Jacques’s theory was very popular in China, and has been honored by many government offices and universities.

Xiang:  For Chinese people, Jacques’s “novelty” was that the idea of “China’s rule” was coming from the Western-centric West, which made them feel good, but this is still a style of analysis that depicts the West and China as antagonistic.  The fact that Jacques, from the extreme left, sounds the idea that “China is challenging the world order” will do endless damage.

There a tradition in the West of pillorying China in public.  This continues today despite China’s power.  US neo-conservatives have never abandoned the idea of the “China threat.”  But from another perspective, what is harder to deal with is the fact that China is now injuring itself through excessive self-praise.  Being trashed in public is no big deal, because everything is in the open, and truth will out.  But indulging in fantasies of self-glory is not the same, because those who are being praised easily forget themselves or even lose themselves in delusion.  At present, there are a number of Chinese who are ardently “rereading” Chinese culture, or in other words concocting the “China model.”  These are all manipulative mind games, but there’s quite a market for them in China, which illustrates the danger of believing your own propaganda.

Ma:  From the looks of things, there are not only “foreign Wolf Warriors.”  We’ve got our own home-made brand.

Xiang:  Wolf Warriors at home and abroad share one thing:  they’re all technique and no knowledge.  By “technique” I mean they specialize in opportunism, always know which way the wind is blowing, and have eyes only for their superiors.  When talking about the outside world they attack foreign cultures, and when talking about domestic matters they use extreme nationalism to swindle the grassroots masses.  But despite all the noise they make, they are basically all one-trick ponies.  There’s no “novelty” about them, there’s no place for them internationally, and mainstream scholars detest them at home.  This is because they have no scholarly foundation, morality, or background.

For example, the Chinese official world mistook Martin Jacques for someone with a lot of international influence, while in fact he’s just a marginal character who wrote a best-seller and has no home in the academic world.  When newspapers in China publicly called him a Cambridge professor of political science, I think probably even Jacques himself was embarassed.  There’s another [Chinese] guy who for a long time was an interpreter for the United Nations in Geneva, and was the first to copy Jacques’s theory about civilization, which he used to praise China’s superiority to the skies, and tried to prove it with tales of foreign travels that no one could verify.[3]  Such a person, whose resumé includes a part-time position in a foreign school not recognized by the higher-education system (called a “wild chicken school”)[4], nonetheless became a famous professor in a well-known university in China![5]
 
Ma:  Then what’s your view of this “destroying yourself through excessive praise?”

Xiang:  Whether looked at from the perspective of methodology or of international public opinion, “killing yourself through excessive praise” is high-level stupidity 高级黑.  It damages China’s international image, and Chinese people must maintain a high degree of vigilence against it.  It should be known that in the Chinese tradition, political legitimacy was a dynamic concept, always developing, a process of continuous movement, and was nothing like any Western ontological definition.  In today’s context, the legitimacy of the CCP is defined by its political achievements, and has nothing to do with any model. 

The attempt to build a so-called “China model” and to promote theories of the uniqueness of China’s culture or the superiority of the system among the people, goes against tradition and does not conform to facts.  To take the fight against the coronavirus as an example, no one can deny the stirring feat achieved by the Chinese people in defeating the virus, but the words and behavior of China’s diplomats and propagandists have earned the scorn of world opinion.  For one thing, these Wolf Warriors used the occasion to trumpet the “China model” to the entire world, publicly promoting its superiority, and insisting that the governing model of Western countries is on its last legs and will soon be overthrown, and that the true nature of the United States, the world’s superpower, will be revealed. 

This kind of arrogance has no basis in fact and lacks humanity; it seriously damages China’s international image.  For another, they are using social media and press conferences to engage in spittle wars, indiscriminate attacks, and criticism of the outside world, and even [government] websites publicly spread conspiracy theories.  The third problem is boastful words and behavior, and disagreeing with the anti-virus measures taken by other countries.  When diplomats constantly, either directly or indirectly, ask the rest of the world to thank China, this creates a bad impression. 

The “Theory of the Peaceful Rise” is Hard to Sustain

Ma:  Outside of the government, there are many people interested in diplomatic questions.  But others feel like these questions should be left to specialists.  What is your view?

Xiang:  In the past, we deferred to “public opinion 舆论” on such matters; the people did not make outrageous comments about international affairs because such issues are not “trivial,” and this was even more the case for diplomacy and important military matters.  Society has moved forward, and over the past few years, China’s power and international position have rapidly increased, and the degree of transparency concerning international politics is no longer the same.  At a certain point, commentators on international affairs began to grow like bamboo shoots after a spring rain.  Over the past 20 years, “international commentary” in China has become a popular exercise in which everyone participates. 

Of course it is a good thing for everyone to be interested in international issues, but elevating “international commentary” above something like “picking stocks” seems quite difficult.  In China, mass “international commentary” is led chiefly by a sensationalist journal called Global Times.  Unfortunately, I used to write for that paper, but at that time there were debates and academic discussions, while now it is a completely populist publication.  This newspaper has been leading popular mood in a nationalist direction for a long time, and the consequences of this are not to be taken lightly. 

Ma:  While “international commentary” has been heating up, the academic field of international relations has also been transformed, suddenly becoming a popular subject.

Xiang:  We should admit that the field of “international relations” in China, much like political science or economics, are “trees without roots, water without a source.”  They had no theoretical basis and thus no way to distinguish themselves.  And when this field, which had always eked out a miserable existence somewhere between journalism and the humanities, suddenly became a “popular field of study,” this was purely because of the word “international.” 

As a matter of fact, the field of international relations remains somewhat awkward, because the specialists’ source of information is much inferior to that of front-line diplomats, and within the Ivory Tower, international relations lacks the scholarly norms of other disciplines.  Thus academically is has a hard time finding a place, and internationally it has little influence—it’s just a rehash of other Western academic work.  In the historical moment of China’s rise, international relations have become very important in China.  However, it has remained at the level of recycling things from Western theories of international relations, copying concepts and discourse from the West, and its general prospects seem poor.   

Ma:  Against the backdrop of China’s rapid rise, there are those in the field of international studies who argue that Chinese diplomacy should be more hard-edged, while others advocate Deng Xiaoping’s policy of “hiding our light under a bushel.”  Debates on this question in Chinese society are quite heated.  How do you view this debate?

Xiang:  Actually, at present, the point is not whether or not be hard-edged, but instead to present China’s arguments well.  Everyone knows China’s story since the implementation of the policy of reform and opening, we don’t have to dress it up.  But China’s knowledge of the outside world remains muddled, and we wind up provoking doubts abroad.

For example, government ministries actively promoted the theory of the “China shock,” which caused a worldwide surprise.[6]  What shock?  This is nothing other than playing with the rules of the current world system.  Whether the “shock” was a natural occurrence or an active attempt at subversion, we must realize that China’s rise was the result of the collective effort of the Chinese people that relied on several decades of a peaceful exterior environment.  There is absolutely no need to shock the world system.  Even from the perspective of national policy, such words are extremely dangerous.  We have only just achieved national strength and nonetheless we publicly abandon our posture of hiding our light under a bushel.  Our military is not prepared, yet we present ourselves as the dominant power.  How will the rest of the world not be afraid?

Ma:  Maybe the “peaceful rise” theory is better than the “China shock” theory.

Xiang:  When we discuss great power competition, our focus should not be on exchanging and debating from within the theoretical framework of others. Our concern should not be the "Thucydius trap", but instead the "concept trap", and the "peaceful rise theory" is one of these.  When the “peaceful rise” theory was all the rage, I accepted an invitation from the Washington Post and wrote a long editorial pointing out the fatal flaws in the theory.

From a scholarly perspective, "peaceful" is an adverb that modifies the action of "rising", yet the word "rise" in Chinese stands in contradiction to “peace” and has the meaning of "breaking through the existing system," like the rise of bamboo shoots after the rain,or the rise of a mountain after an earthquake.  In other words, “peace” and “rise” contradict one another.  This theory reflects the psychology of a small country, that mistakenly imagines that a big country independently shapes its foreign policy, illustrating the lack of a fundamental understanding of the logic of international geopolitics.

Ma:  Strategically, the idea of a peaceful rise might be useful, no?

Xiang:  Strategically, any great power experiencing important changes in its international standing should abstain from talking about a “rise.”  From a historical perspective, no great power made a big deal in discussing the means by which it was rising during the period of its rise.  First, if you prattle on about the means by which you are “rising,” you will inevitably face questions about the policies you will employ when you are in decline.  Next, unilaterally proclaiming that you will never use military force to resolve any international dispute not only is unconvincing to outsiders, it also creates dilemmas for yourself. 

The reason I said that the “peaceful rise” theory reflects the mentality of a small country is because it presupposes that there is a diplomatic solution to any international conflict.  This is truly the highest ideal of the worldview [expressed by Laozi in The Classic of the Way and the Power], to the effect that “though the sounds of the cocks and dogs heard from one [village] to the other, the people of one will never visit the other, even as they grow old and die.”[7]  Such a standpoint ties vital national interests to an unrealistic hope, and damages the nation and the people.  The idea of a “peaceful rise” is not sustainable, neither now or in the future, and China cannot cannot avoid reality or persuade the world with "peaceful" arguments regarding methods in international relations.

Ma:  How do you view the debate about the clash of civilizations in the context of Sino-American relations.  Is this conflict necessary?

Xiang:  A few years ago, Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” had no place in the mainstream world of US foreign relations.  That some Americans have been talking about it again is in fact a strong response to arguments like China’s concerning “greater and lesser civilizations.”

Debate is not a bad thing.  Because this is not just an academic debate, and rather has more to do with ideas of global governance.  What should be made clear is that Chinese and foreign ideas about domestic and international governance are truly different, but this need not give rise to conflict.  If we want to make clear the Chinese vision of world governance, the key question is the difference in Chinese and foreign understandings of world “order.” 

In the Anglo-Saxon world (currently led by the United States), discussions of world order always come back to theories of the “rise and fall of great powers,” which originated in the 19th century with the historian Edward Gibbons and his The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.  He emphasized that the distribution of power was based on national strength, meaning that what determines whether the world order is stable or not is mechanical and unchanging.  This has had an enormous impact on American foreign policy.  After WWII, Americans embraced the theory of “stable hegemony” and promoted the “American peace.”  The “Thucydydes trap” is a more recent version of this.

Ma:  What is the traditional Chinese version of governance.

Xiang:  If we say that the Western view of world order is based on the distribtion of national power, and that what the Westphalian system calls “order” is the opposite of “disorder,” meaning either one or the other, then the traditional Chinese vision of governance is based on a logic in which “order” and “chaos” exist in a mutual relationship of exchange.  Take water control as an example.  There are basically two ways to control water.  The first is to keep building higher dams to keep the water from spilling over, which is the basic idea of Cold War American policy [i.e., containment].  The second is changing the direction of the current.  Dams ultimately have a limit, so working with the direction of the flow is the best long-term strategy.

So, China’s traditional strategy of governance is at odds with the theory of the “rise and fall of great powers” and that of “stable hegemony.”  China needs to systematically deploy its own views of world governance.  China’s most important mission as it peacefully integrates the current world order is to provide a positive explanation of its basic mode of thinking.  From a long-term perspective, the main theme of China’s foreign relations should be cultural understanding and civilizational communication.

Translator’s notes

 [1] 相蓝欣, interviewed by 马国川, “著名国际政治专家 相蓝欣教授：反思战狼文化，呼唤文明沟通”, April 30, 2020.
 
[2] A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22, 1957.

[3] Xiang is referring to Zhang Weiwei, who began his career as an interpreter before becoming a serious scholar in the 1990s.  Since China’s rise, Zhang has become less a scholar and more a major cheerleader for the China model, publishing a “trilogy” of works on China’s rise (the first two volumes have been translated into English), in which he borrows freely from Martin Jacques.  Zhang also travels the world defending the China model; many of his talks and debates are available in English on Youtube.

[4] Xiang is referring to the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations (https://genevadiplomacy.ch/ ), a poor cousin of the Graduate Institute of Geneva (https://graduateinstitute.ch/ ) where Xiang teaches.  “Wild chicken 野鸡” is a term widely used to refer to something that is unlicensed.

[5] Zhang has a position at Fudan University in Shanghai, Xiang’s alma mater, although I am able to locate him on what should be his department’s web page.

[6]  This is another reference to Zhang Weiwei.  The title of the second volume of his trilogy is The China Shock 中国震撼.

[7] Translation taken from http://www.fang.ece.ufl.edu/daodejing.pdf , text number 80.