Embedded in the now dominant US narrative of "Chinese aggression", Sinophobes claim that China is not only a threat to the American way of life, but also an existential threat to the American republic.
It's worth noting, of course, that the American way of life has long ceased to be a model to be emulated all across the Global South, and that the US walks and talks increasingly like an oligarchy.
Underneath it all is a huge divide, in outlook and cultural beliefs, between the two great powers, as some leaders and writers have attempted to explain.
President Xi Jinping's speech last week makes it clear that Beijing is engaged in tweaking the rules of the current Westphalian system to truly reflect its reconquered geopolitical and economic power.
Yet it's hardly a matter of "overthrowing" the system established by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. As much as trade blocks are ruling the new geoeconomic game, nation-states are bound to remain the backbone of the international system.
One of Beijing's key foreign policies is no interference in other nations' internal affairs. In parallel, the historical record since the end of WWII shows that the US has never refrained from interfering in other nations' internal affairs.
What Beijing is really aiming at is what Professor Xiang Lanxin, director of the Centre of One Belt and One Road Studies at the China National Institute for SCO International Exchange and Judicial Cooperation, referred to at a crucial intervention during the June 2016 Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore.
Lanxin defined the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as being an avenue to a 'post-Westphalian world', in the sense of a true 21st century geoeconomic integration of Eurasia acted out by Asian nations. That's the key reason why Washington, which set the current international rules in 1945, fears BRI and now demonizes it 24/7.
Understanding Tianxia
The notion that imperial China, over the centuries, obtained a Mandate of Heaven over Tianxia, or "All under Heaven", and that Tianxia is a "dictatorial system" is absolute nonsense. Once again that reflects the profound ignorance by professional Sinophobes about the deepest strands of classical Chinese culture.
They could do worse than learn about Tianxia from someone like Zhao Tingyang, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and author of an essential book first published by China CITIC Press in 2016, then translated into French last year under the title Tianxia: Tous sous un meme ciel.
Tingyang teaches us that the Tianxia system of the Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BC) is essentially a theory - a concept born in Ancient China but not specific to China - that goes way beyond the country to tackle universal problems in a "process of dynamic formation that refers to globalization."
This introduces us to a fascinating conceptual bridge linking ancient China to 21st-century globalization, arguing that political concepts defined by nation-states, imperialisms and rivalries for hegemony are losing meaning when faced with globalization. The future is symbolized by the new power of all-inclusive global networks - which is at the center of the BRI concept.
Tingyang shows that the Tianxia concept refers to a world system where the true political subject is the world. Under the Western imperialist vision, the world was always an object of conquest, domination and exploitation, and never a political subject per se.
So we need a higher and more comprehensive unifying vision than that of the nation-state - under a Lao Tzu framework: "To see the world from the point of view of the world."
You are not my enemy
Plunging into the deepest roots of Chinese culture, Tingyang shows the idea that there's nothing beyond Tianxia is, in fact, a metaphysical principle, because Tian (heaven) exists globally. So, Tianxia (all under Heaven), as Confucius said, must be the same, in order to be in accordance with heaven.
Thus the Tianxia system is inclusive and not exclusive; it suppresses the idea of enemy and foreigner; no country or culture would be designated as an enemy, and be non-incorporable to the system.
Tingyang's sharpest deconstruction of the Western system is when he shows how the theory of progress, as we know it, clings to the narrative logic of Christianity; then "that becomes a modern superstition. The mélange is neither scientific or theological - it's an ideological superstition."
From the point of view of Chinese intellectual and cultural traditions, Tingyang shows that since Christianity won over pagan Greek civilization, the West has been driven by a logic of combat. The world appears as a bellicose entity, with groups or tribes opposing one another. The (Western) "mission of conquering the world destroyed the a priori integrity of the concept of 'world'. The world lost its sacred character to become a battlefield devoted to the universal accomplishment of Christianity. The world became an object."
Comment: You see this in the fact that the US has been at war for 222 out of 239 years since its birth. Britain, the US' primary progenitor, has fought wars - all of them offensive - continuously since 1914. And that was just while it was the US' junior partner. It fought many many more wars in the preceding century to build the framework of today's empire.
China, in its modern rise to Number 1 (but 'first among equals') has engaged in... no wars.
So we came to a point where a hegemonic system of knowledge, via its mode of diffusion and monopoly of the rules of language, propagates a "monotheist narrative on everything, societies, history, life, values."
This system "interrupted knowledge and the historical thread of other cultures." It dissolved other spiritual worlds into debris without meaning, so they would lose their integrity and sacredness. It debased "the historicity of all other histories in the name of faith in progressivism (a secular version of monotheism)." And it divided the world into center and periphery; an "evolved" world which has a history contraposed to a stagnated world deprived of history.
This hardly differs from other major strands of criticism of Western colonialism to be found all across the Global South.
Yin and yang
Tingyang finally reverts to a Lao Tzu formula. "According to the Way of Heaven, excess is diminished and insufficiencies compensated". And that ties in with Yin and Yang, as referred to in the Book of Mutations of Zhou; "Yin and Yang is a functional metaphor of equilibrium, meaning that the vitality of every existence resides in dynamic equilibrium."
What irks the Sinophobes is that Tianxia, as explained by Tingyang and adopted by the current Beijing leadership, striving towards a real "dynamic equilibrium" in international relations, poses a serious challenge to American leadership in both hard power and soft power.
It's under this framework that Foreign Minister Wang Yi's crucial, wide-ranging commentary on Xi Jinping's diplomatic strategy must be interpreted. Wang stressed how Xi "has made innovations on and transcended the traditional Western theories of international relations for the past 300 years."
The Chinese challenge is unprecedented - and no wonder Washington, in tandem with other Western elites - is stunned. In the end, it's a matter of positioning Tianxia as a superior promoter of "dynamic equilibrium" in international relations in comparison with the Westphalian system.
As a result, immense political and cultural repercussions may be lost in translation, and China needs some serious soft power to get its point across.
Yet instead of producing reductionist diatribes, this process should galvanize a serious global debate in the years to come.
Reader Comments
this is total BS, China was a bellicose entity hellbent on conquering the known world before even Christianity existed. China certainly never treated other nations or peoples as belonging to a "sacred character". This article is the same subterfuge and propaganda that China uses to disallow any religious activity or differences in political philosophy, right now. Look up the quotes from the Communist Party papers the last few years where they reassert their belief that China will some day again rule the world, and glorifying their predecessors for passing down to them atheism. China is putting Christians in prison right now. Will you not speak up for Christians? Who will be left to speak for you when they come to imprison the believers in democratic republics? Because they want to run the world as a technocracy, a dictatorship of Party apparatchiks, who will deliver whatever they determine you personally "deserve". And if they think you are a useless eater, they will stop feeding you. In prison you will starve so you will not be seen on the streets. Or maybe just a bullet, it's cheaper, and it's what they do right now with people they determined to have committed a crime, even political ones.
Whether or not Edgar Cayce is right, we may never know. As Allister Sparks, author of the fabulous book "The Mind of South Africa" entitled his later sequel: "Tomorrow is Another Country," which is a marvelous concept - those being born today will know a world - good or bad - that we will never know. It is a foreign country - the future - that we will never visit.
As for the future of China, we need only look at Russia. Who in their right mind in 1985 could have imagined that between 1991 and 2018, Russia would have built or re-built 29,000 churches and cathedrals? An average of three per day! For 28 years straight! There is even a new cathedral in Ekaterinburg, built over the site of the house where the Tsar and his family - since canonized by the Orthodox Church - were assassinated. Annually, there are numerous religious processions in Russia with literally tens to hundreds of thousands of participants, who walk up to 60 miles barefoot to visit holy sites. Incredible. And Putin himself every year even takes a bath in a hole cut in the ice on some river, to celebrate the feast of Epiphany. Would you see Trump, May, Macron, or Merkel dipping themselves in a frozen river for Christ? The day one of them does so I will eat my shoes. I do not think Putin is putting it on - there would be absolutely no need for him to go to such uncomfortable lengths just to demonstrate religious faith, unless it was sincere.
So, China..... As others observed above, for thousands of years the Chinese have been extremely warlike. There was even a "dynastic period" in China known as The Warring States Period. (475 BC to 221 BC,) after which time the first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di, unified China with such immense brutality and bloodshed that his "dynasty," known as the Qin Dynasty, (pronounced "Chin," 221 BC to 206 BC, from which we get the name China,) ended with his death.
No, ask any Tibetan. In 1950 there were 16,000 monasteries in Tibet, and today there are six, which are kept open for the tourists, and the "monks" are taught their choreography of their dances, and are on the State payroll. The vast and brutal destruction of priceless ancient thousand-year-old art and artifacts, books, and holy texts, was so immense it boggles the mind. These were not the actions of a peaceful, gentle and compassionate race of people, (the Han Chinese).
Pepe Escobar is full of shit, and probably wrote this article so he can have continued access to China and information emanating therefrom. It's no different than the White House Press Corps, who never write anything too critical of the Government, so as not to lose access to the White House, which no doubt results in much higher salaries for them than their fellow non-accredited journalists.
Regards,
-LG.
PS: Edgar Cayce may or may not have been right. I have studied many, many prophecies from various saints, mystics and seers, many of which have turned out uncannily right (you should read some of the prophecies by Russian monks and mystics long before the Revolution - amazingly accurate) but some of which have not. My own hypothesis to explain this is that we live on different timelines in parallel universes - somewhere out there in a different universe there is a Niall who is a teetotaling vegan - and so some of these prophecies come to pass in a parallel universe, not in this one. Does this make sense as a working hypothesis?
Invasion of Tibet:1950
Korean War: 1950-1953
Two aggressive acts against Taiwan between: 1954 and 1958
Reassertion over Tibet: 1959
Burma: 1960-1961
Xinjiang: 1960-present (Uyghurs)
India: 1962
India: 1967
Soviet Union: 1969
Vietnam: 1965-1969
Vietnam: 1974
Vietnam: 1979:1991
Intimidation of Taiwan: 1996 (Not really a war, I know)
Current operations in Syria and Northern Mali.
They fought each other and they fight others. They practice an under the radar warfare infused with cash currently. Be careful, China is not the utopian state that many would have us believe. It is very oppressive if one is outside of the communist ideology. Really, a point system for their citizens? The closest point system in the U.S. and the majority of the world is a credit score. But for the most part, that is determined by the individuals fiscal responsibility.
China utilizes a point system to keep control of their people (i.e. did you ever visit youtube, facebook, foreign news outlets, say red is not your favorite color.) What you're a Christian, Muslim, Falun Gong, oh my, major deductions! We have deemed you an unfit citizen therefore you can not use an airplane, train, or bus. Stay in your city and use a bike or walk until you get more points!
Not saying America is a better country, because it's not. But don't be so naïve as to think that China has global interest at heart and wants to make it a better place. They want to make it a better place for them, just as the U.S. and many European nations have in the past. Most of the people are awesome and come under the oppressive thumb of an oppressive regime. Even those with cash have basic freedom limitations placed on their life.
But hey, not everyone in the world is destined to enjoy basic freedoms.
But the points tho!
Sorry, monosodium glutamate originated in Japan...not China. But the humor is appreciated.