China's Global Identity

Considering the Responsibilities of Great Power

Hoo Tiang Boon

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781626166141, 9781626166134
• eBook ISBN: 9781626166158
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

China is today regarded as a major player in world politics, with growing expectations for it to do more to address global challenges. Yet relatively little is known about how it sees itself as a great power and understands its obligations to the world.

In China’s Global Identity, Hoo Tiang Boon embarks on the first sustained study of China’s great power identity. Focus is drawn to China’s positioning of itself as a responsible power and the underestimated role played by the United States in shaping this face. In 1995 President Bill Clinton notably called for China to become a responsible great power, one that integrates itself into existing international institutions and becomes a leader in solving global problems. Chinese leaders were at that time already debating their future course and obligations to the world. Hoo examines this ongoing internal debate through Chinese sources and reveals the underestimated role that the United States has in this dialogue. Unraveling the big power politics, history, events, and ideas behind the emergence and evolution of China’s great power identity, the book provides fresh insights into the real-world issues of how China might use its power as it grows. The question of China’s role as a responsible power has real-world implications for its diplomacy and trajectory, as well as the responses of states adjusting to these shifts. The book offers a new lens for scholars, policy professionals, diplomats, and students in the fields of international relations and Asian affairs to make sense of China’s rise and its impact on America and global order.

1

THE ORIGINS OF CHINA’S GREAT-POWER IDENTITY

This chapter sketches the historical antecedents of China’s identity as a responsible great power. The discussion spans the imperial epoch to the end of the Maoist era. It also examines Chinese elites’ perceptions of their nation’s great-power identity and the idea of responsibility, both as separate phenomena and in terms of their potential linkages. I begin with a historical survey of the great-power aspects of the RGP identity, while in the second part I focus on the idea of responsibility.

There are two important caveats to state up front. First, even as this chapter seeks to locate the historical facets of the RGP identity, it does not attempt or pretend to be an in-depth historical review. This is neither the intent nor the scope. As pointed out in the introduction, the main intention here is to provide a contextualization of China’s RGP identity from a historical perspective, which will serve as the basis for a more informed discussion of the RGP identity thereafter. Second, my focus is on the great-power and responsibility elements of China’s identity and not on China’s identity writ large. This is not to suggest the exclusion of potentially contradictory identity discourses (such as a “weak China” complex). To the extent that such discourses are contextually relevant and share linkages with Chinese great power perceptions, they are necessarily discussed.

Imperial China: Great Central Kingdom

For considerable periods in Chinese traditional history, Chinese ruling classes and elites tended to perceive their nation as the “great central kingdom.”¹ This was the so-called Central Kingdom complex, predicated on a sinocentric understanding of China as “all [realms] under heaven” (tianxia).² China, according to this conception, was not just a glorious and powerful civilization—it was essentially the only veritable civilization around, since it was geographically convergent with “heaven,” and it was difficult to think of any civilized equivalents existing outside of this boundary.³ As a corollary, the Chinese emperor was also the “son of Heaven” (tianzi) and had the supposed celestial right to preside over “all of human affairs.”⁴ The Book of Odes would thus write, “Under the wide heaven, there is no land that is not the Emperor’s” (putian zhixia, mofei wangtu).⁵

Imperial China from the Central Kingdom perspective was thus more than just a great power. It was the world’s greatest power, a “world empire”—to borrow the words of Immanuel Wallerstein—in which the sense of the Chinese polity overlapped with the idea of the world.⁶ In other words, in the Central Kingdom outlook China is essentially coterminous with the world. As for peoples who fall outside of this world, they are typically tarred with the inferior civilizational label of “barbarians” (yi). This denigration of foreigners as yi means that in the Chinese imperial order there is little justification or need for an institution that performs a dedicated, interstate-style foreign affairs function.⁷ The authoritative Confucian Book of Rites, in fact, explicitly instructed that “the officials of the Empire shall have no intercourse with foreigners.”⁸

It is important to recognize that the Central Kingdom conception should be understood with a certain degree of abstraction and generalization. For a start, it would be facile to characterize the Central Kingdom outlook as being uniform or prevalent across all dynastic periods. There were various instances in Chinese history when China was less than politically unified and was segmented into various feudal states (e.g., the Warring States period of 476–221 BC or the Three Kingdoms era of AD 220–264). Ironically, the idea of the Central Kingdom was said to have originated during the period of the Zhou dynasty, when China had a nominal central government and was effectively a collection of feudal states along the Yellow River.⁹ Moreover, China, even when politically unified, waxed and waned in territory and power throughout the course of its premodern history: from around its peak, during the Han, Tang, and early Qing dynasties, to approximately its smallest, during the Northern and Southern Song times.¹⁰

Second, the sinocentricity implied in the Central Kingdom perspective was, on numerous occasions, more form than substance. As Rana Mitter writes, “There is a great deal of evidence which shows that pre-modern Chinese in reality regarded themselves as being part of a much flatter hierarchical system than their own rhetoric suggests.”¹¹ Tang China, for example, pursued considerable trading relations with foreigners, while during this period Chinese external trade extended across the Indian Ocean to as far as the African coast.¹² Early Qing China also did not hesitate to sign the Treaty of Nerchinsk with the Russians in 1689, a diplomatic démarche that basically denotes tacit recognition of Russian equality.¹³ These two historical exemplars are even more striking if one considers that Tang and early Qing China represent arguably the height of Chinese prestige and power when, presumably, sinocentrism was at its corresponding acme. Meanwhile, during periods when Chinese power declined or when strategic priorities shifted, it was also not uncommon to find the imperial government initiating a policy of “matrimonial alliances and sending of gifts” to appease truculent foreign tribes along its northern and western fronts.¹⁴ The historical account of the “political bride” Wang Zhaojun marrying a tribal warlord in 33 BC in order to secure peace along the Han borders is one classical case.¹⁵ Lastly, even the tributary system—frequently cited as evidence of a sinocentric Chinese worldview—was in reality more symbolic and titular than commonly assumed.¹⁶ This is not to imply that tributary relations did not represent a sense of Chinese civilizational superiority; they certainly did and, as Samuel Kim points out, such tributary relations were often maintained at some financial cost to the imperial court in order to burnish a Chinese image of preeminence.¹⁷ Rather, the point is that the Chinese suzerain-vassal dynamic was underpinned by much ritualism and symbolism and that beneath the euphemistic veneer of tributary relations, the substantive arrangement that existed was one that served mainly to regulate trading relationships. To a considerable extent, therefore, the tributary practice was essentially an indirect mode by which the imperial court imposed tariffs on foreigners keen on trading with and in China.¹⁸ Indeed, many of these so-called vassals maintained de facto political autonomy vis-à-vis the Central Kingdom, even if some of them had been ostensibly “subjugated” in the first instance by Chinese military power.¹⁹

The third point relates to the fact that there were periods during which Imperial China was in effect governed by “barbarians” from the north, notably the Mongols during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1367) and the Manchus during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). Given the sinocentricism and the “othering” of foreign peoples as inferiors, “alien” rule of China suggested potential complications for the Central Kingdom perception. Yet, this was hardly the case. Not only did the Central Kingdom outlook continue to persist, it was in fact reinforced and perpetuated during the Mongol and Manchu reigns.²⁰ Especially for the latter, the embrace of the Central Kingdom narrative was not difficult. In the course of Manchu rule over China, described by John Fairbank as a “synarchic” regime, the Manchus had become strongly sinicized, to the extent that they became “staunch champions” of Chinese cultural heritage and political tradition.²¹ In that sense the Manchus, in ruling the Central Kingdom, essentially came to be included within the Chinese civilizational world.²²

What were some of the factors that helped engender the Central Kingdom outlook? For one, the material power (both economic might and military strength) wielded by the Chinese empire fostered a strong endogenous sense of self-primacy and preeminence.²³ Certainly, Chinese power declined and rose at various points, but there were significant periods when Imperial China’s power was prominent and sustained, such as during the Han, Tang, Ming, and early Qing eras. According to Yan Xuetong, China enjoyed “superpower” status during these phases of Chinese “high noon.”²⁴ The material power retained by the Chinese empire for considerable parts of its history made it natural for ruling elites to conceive of or assume China as the most significant political force.

Yet, this impression of the centrality and universality of the Chinese state would not have prospered without a “missing” peer other—or, more precisely, the perceived lack of a civilizational equivalent that could rival China. This is not to suggest that the Chinese were unaware of other centers of civilization, such as the Byzantine and Persian empires. There was certainly some level of awareness. But, constrained by geographical barriers, such cross-civilizational contacts were usually limited or irregular.²⁵ In any event, when such contacts did take place, they seemed to the Chinese only to affirm the superiority of their sinocentric model. As Kim argues, “The absence of a rival civilization became a potent factor in the development of the Chinese image of world order.”²⁶ Finally, although the tributary system characterized in many ways the Chinese approach toward commercial relations with neighboring states, the symbolism of creating prima facie appearance of Chinese superiority was at least helpful for sustaining the psychology of Imperial China’s preeminent position.²⁷

In sum, the Central Kingdom complex was the e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Origins of China’s Great-Power Identity
• 2 Incipient Identification as a Responsible Great Power, 1978 to 1996
• 3 Expansion of the RGP Narrative and US Influence, 1997 to 2004
• 4 America’s “Responsible Stakeholder” Call and the Sharpening of Debate, 2005 to 2012
• 5 Xi’s China: Post-Responsibility since 2013?
• Conclusion
• A Note on Sources
• Index
• About the Author