China and the New International Order

Wang Gungwu, Zheng Yongnian, Wang Gungwu, Zheng Yongnian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781134069125
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Freedom
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores China's place in the 'new international order', from both the international perspective and from the perspective within China.

It discusses how far the new international order, as outlined by George Bush in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Kuwait in the Gulf War, with its notions of 'international order', as viewed by the United States, and with the United States seeing itself as the single dominant power, applies to China. The contributors offer the implications, both positive and negative, of China's growing economic power, and the possibility that China will increase its military power. They also examine the idea that the Chinese leadership is being carried along itself by events in China, which it does not fully control, and that other growing forces within China, such as nationalism, increasing social grievances, structural instability, and rivalry between the centre and the regions potentially work against China's growing strength in the international arena. Considering traditional Chinese notions of 'international' power, where the world is seen as sino-centric, with neighbouring countries subservient to China in varying degrees, the book argues that this represents a fundamentally different view of the international order, one where the equal sovereignty of every state does not apply, where there is an acknowledged hierarchy of power, and where domestic and international issues are highly interdependent.

Part I
Key issues in conceptualizing Chinese international relations

1 China and the international order

Some historical perspectives

Wang Gungwu

Is there an international order?

There have long been calls that China should play by the rules of the international order. There are still those who believe that “China is failing to meet its full potential as a responsible player on the global stage” although the general impression today is that China is following most of the norms of international practice.¹ What is now open to debate is the reality and the meaning of international order. There have been several reports on United Nations reform, perhaps the most controversial being those concerning the Security Council that could profoundly change the nature of that institution. Also, recent studies on humanitarian interventionism and the advantages and disadvantages of imperial traditions, not least about the United States invasion of Iraq and the speculations about US plans for similar invasion elsewhere, have highlighted some new uncertainties. All the same, in broad terms, there is agreement that the framework of the post-World War II international institutions established by the victors of that war still serves as the basis for international order.²

The Republic of China was part of that new system in 1945 and appreciated its place among the Great Powers. After 1949, however, the People’s Republic of China, which forced the Kuomintang leaders to retreat to Taiwan, was denied a place in that framework. It was not until October 1971 that the United Nations General Assembly finally adopted the resolution “that the representatives of the Government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations.” Until then, the PRC had every reason to criticize the structure that excluded it from participation but, more than that, it spent the 22 years hoping to find something that would replace it.³

After the Beijing government became the only lawful representative of China to the UN in 1971, the situation changed. Teams of mainland Chinese officials and scholars have been operating in all the organizations created within that framework, often with increasing skill and sophistication. But it was not until after the end of the Cultural Revolution that attitudes towards the UN really changed and Chinese diplomats began to engage actively at all levels of that vast organization. In turn, teams from the UN agencies and the World Bank began working in various parts of China as their experts helped the PRC economy change from a centrally planned one to one that adapted itself to the needs and demands of a global market. From the outside looking and working inwards, these teams have systematically introduced new views of what the rest of the world expects and the mechanisms that made China’s economic development possible. Although initially they did meet with inertia, suspicion, and resistance, in many cases they were astonished how willingly and quickly the Chinese mastered what all the agencies had to offer. Many of these experts then reported on their experiences and helped the world understand how China was thus being transformed. In time, large numbers of Chinese officials also got used to looking out from inside with that point of view and learned to master the rhetoric and practices that governed that international system. As they did so, they became increasingly confident that the system could be used to work for them.⁴

It may be said that the Chinese have done more than just keep to the rules governing international relations as they saw them. In some instances, China could even be more purist than some of the older members of the United Nations. One notable example of how this impacts on perceptions about China’s behavior is its stance towards being a status quo power. Unlike the early years from 1949 till the 1990s, when China seemed keen to change any “status quo” position that was not in its favor, China now behaves much more like a status quo power that wants to keep national borders and regimes and all the global structures more or less the way they are. Increasingly, most UN members accept that this is the new norm in Chinese international behavior. In contrast, it is the United States position. that it is ready to intervene unilaterally in other countries’ affairs, that has been subject to critical examination, not least within the US. China has long voiced its opposition to that principle and its views have been echoed by others that share its concerns. This is not to say that China is more trusted than the United States in international affairs, simply that, on this and similar issues, China’s low-key support for national sovereignty has won it many friends.⁵ China now appears to be one of the strongest supporters of the 60-year-old framework that most people still believe should be the foundations of international order.

But there are reasons to wonder whether China is really committed to this historic framework. It has often seen the United Nations unable to respond to critical power shifts in various parts of the world, or prevent violations of the sovereignty of weaker countries by their stronger neighbors, or help economic development in poorer societies, or save lives in man-made conflicts and natural disasters. China is therefore not confident that that the system of international law and norms really works. Therefore, China can be seen as being simply realistic, if not cynical, when it uses the dominant framework to protect and advance its own national interest. There may be not much faith in the system, and little readiness to go out its way in its defense. However, from all the evidence so far, the Chinese will support the present system as long as it suits them.

When comparing outside-in and inside-out views about China’s place in that international order, it is pertinent to ask if the two sets of views have converged, and to ask if more predictable attitudes now serve as a functioning guide to China’s thinking and actions. It is not easy to determine the exact relationship between how the Chinese see themselves and how others see their actions. From inside looking out, it does seem that key Chinese leaders and thinkers take as their starting point the deep structure that gave shape to the civilization and state that came to being over 3,500 years ago. They have turned regularly to all the historical experiences that they had in dealing with external powers since the beginning and then to their more recent introduction to a Western-dominated world. It is possible to find some consistent underlying themes in these experiences. As for outside views looking in at China, they would have a more complex pedigree. The pedigree ranges widely. For example, the various tribal federations in the steppes of Mongolia and Xinjiang saw China differently from those who came from the forests of Manchuria, and differently again from those who attacked from the high lands of the Tibetan plateau. These attacks on Chinese civilization from several directions are clearly different from aggressive European trading nations coming by sea since the sixteenth century, and even more so from the modern Japanese and Russian efforts to dismember the Qing empire and the successor Republic of China. Clearly the most important issues here are problems of political power and external relations in the new international order.

What China has been doing in foreign relations cannot be separated from two underlying factors. One is that there has been a long tradition of thinking strategically among both civil and military leaders that still guides the Chinese leaders and is likely to continue to do so for a long while. The other is a fundamental idea in Chinese thinking, the prevalence and inevitability of change, something like, “the only proposition that does not change is that everything else is subject to change.” It stems from the Book of Change, the nearest thing to a universal guide to Chinese thought and action ever since their civilization emerged some 5,000 years ago.⁶ With this long continuous history, there has been ample evidence to support the proposition and enjoin Chinese leaders to be prepared for further changes, although there are many examples where the rulers have failed to be practice the necessary alertness.

The strategic thinking originates from the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, the most creative era in Chinese history. It was during this period of 300 years from the sixth to the third century BC that the leaders of multiple states sought advice from ministers, officials, and philosophers about the secrets of victory, survival, and defeat. The crucial question for each state was: How could each deal with the endless power shifts of that long period? The trend turned out to be in one direction only—the reduction of the number of states over the centuries, from hundreds of them until only seven warring states were left, and then finally there was only one left, the state of Qin. Its ruler claimed to be the Son of Heaven and, as Son of Heaven, he had the sole right to rule over tianxia (All Under Heaven), something like a civilization-based empire. The strategic thinkers of that period worked out all varieties of plots, conspiracies, and planning devices and left behind valuable ideas as well a rich body of data to assist future generations to map out the features for the next stage of strategic thinking.⁷

This change began with a different premise, that is, to avoid invading and swallowing up any more neighboring states beyond the edges of the realm but to ensure that the tianxia-state (or civilization-based empire) could be kept intact as long as possible, and possibly grow on the margins. For the Qin-Han and successor dynasties, this was neither an international order nor even an imperial order that their mandarins and generals were asked to establish and protect. The focus shifted among them to the values that centuries of interactions among the states had molded together into an integrated whole, something recognized by the political elites as greater and more precious than the fates of kings, emperors, and even dynasties. Thus the Son of Heaven was not merely a king or emperor but also the symbol of the system of values that made the Chinese what they were. When they compared the Son of Heaven to the one and only sun in the sky, they were using the most powerful man and his dynasty to symbolize that civilization. This resulted in the concentration of power in the hands of a dynastic head and the oligarchy that supported him and has led to fateful and disastrous results for the Chinese people.⁸ Nevertheless, the Confucian mandarins, who believed that only this kind of order and authority could embody their faith in China’s civilizational core, accepted that it was the price that had to be paid.

For the Chinese, the principle of always being ready for change did not mean that things changed frequently, and certainly not that things changed rapidly. It was primarily an expectation that things will change and can change unexpectedly, even with values and institutions that people might have assumed would be absolute and unchanging. Flowing from this came the injunction that no one should expect anything to remain permanent, and this served as a deep structure in Chinese attitudes towards life and applied no less to the idea of an international order.

The Chinese have never viewed any political order as permanent, least of all that it could be equally good over time for the polities that the order embraced. Everything in their history has taught them that a good institution or a good idea was something they should make use of as best they could while it lasted. At most, if what was there suited their interests, Chinese leaders would work to prolong its existence as long as possible and even help make improvements so that they could continue to benefit from it. But they would expect it to change and, not being progress-minded throughout their history, the changes need not necessarily be for the better. In that context, what China sees today is not an international order at all, least of all the international order, but merely the product of the struggles among the Great Powers of half a century ago. In confirming the principle of the equality of sovereign states as well as the ideal of universally applied international laws and norms, this is a distinct improvement on the previous experiment with the League of Nations. But the reality was that Great Powers were always more equal and would continue to prevail. Such a system is necessarily imperfect because the power relationships after 1945 were based on the patchy decolonization of former empires that was quickly followed by the Cold War and the “central balance” of two ideological superpowers that dominated the world for the next forty years. That has further changed so that there is now only one super-superpower, and the Chinese are unlikely to see this as something unchanging forever.

The system devised in 1945 obviously cannot be the same for the rest of the twenty-first century. Therefore, China expects there to be reforms but it also knows that the efforts to reform will be arduous and that the results cannot always be satisfactory. Any reform is likely to be encouraging to some and despairing to others. The Chinese will work hard to ensure that, when the reform takes place, it will be to enhance and not weaken China’s place in the world. In the meantime, the status quo is of value and, if they learn to use it even more fully than they already do, they will try hard to defend it. One in-built feature of the system that fits their present “grand strategy” is the structure of the Security Council itself, with five permanent members who have veto powers. It lays the foundation for the multipolar world that they believe would ultimately be more stable than a unipolar one. That would have the added advantage of making China’s place in the world more secure.⁹

It is, of course, not clear that these aspects of China’s cultural heritage are viable when the whole world has fundamentally changed. But many features in China’s recent history confirm the wisdom of the ancients even as the ground rules of globalization have taken the Chinese far from their historical roots of focusing their power concerns merely within their region. A brief survey of their experiences this past century lends support to the strategic thinking they inherited and even more to their realistic expectations of change and their reasonable hope that future change from any source and direction could bring them new advantages.

What the idea of international order means for China

Four stages in China’s gradual enlightenment about a new world order can be discerned. Each could have threatened the complete destruction of their previous assumptions about the world but each seems also to have led the Chinese to adapt themselves better to changing pressures and challenging ne...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Key issues in conceptualizing Chinese international relations
• PART II China and globalization
• PART III China and regionalism
• PART IV China and international relations studies