the national bureau of asian research
nbr special report #83 | january 2020
china
’
s vision for
a new world order
By Nadège Rolland
cover 2
NBR Chairman’s Council and Board of Advisors
Michael Armacost
Stanford University
Rodney Bindon
Bindon and Associates
Nicholas Eberstadt
American Enterprise Institute
Karl Eikenberry
Stanford University
Donald Emmerson
Stanford University
Lee Hamilton
Indiana University
Stephen Hanson
College of William and Mary
Harry Harding
University of Virginia
Donald Hellmann
University of Washington
Robert J. Herbold
e Herbold Group, LLC
Carla A. Hills
Hills & Company
Robert D. Hormats
Kissinger Associates, Inc.
David Lampton
Stanford University
Nicholas Lardy
Peterson Institute for International
Economics
Richard Lawless
New Magellan Ventures
Chae-Jin Lee
Claremont McKenna College
Kenneth Lieberthal
Brookings Institution
William J. Lynn, III
DRS Technologies, Inc.
Rajan Menon
City College of New York
Mary Minnick
Lion Capital
Donald P. Nielsen
Lumenal Lighting LLC
Sam Nunn
Nuclear reat Initiative
Joseph S. Nye Jr.
Harvard University
Stanley Palmer
Marvin & Palmer Associates, Inc.
Dwight Perkins
Harvard University
omas Pickering
e Boeing Company (Ret.)
William Rademaker
Flybuy Technologies
Clarine Nardi Riddle
Kasowitz, Benson, Torres LLP
Stanley Roth
e Boeing Company
Sheldon Simon
Arizona State University
NBR Counselors
omas B. Fargo
U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Aaron L. Friedberg
Princeton University
Slade Gorton
U.S. Senate (Ret.)
Charles W. Boustany Jr.
U.S. House of Representatives (Ret.)
Norman D. Dicks
U.S. House of Representatives (Ret.)
Richard J. Ellings
NBR
Jonathan W. Greenert
John M. Shalikashvili Chair in National
Security Studies
Joseph Lieberman
U.S. Senate (Ret.)
Ashley J. Tellis
Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace
NBR Board of Directors
John V. Rindlaub
(Chairman)
Senior Managing Director and
Head of Pacic Northwest Market
East West Bank
omas W. Albrecht
Partner (Ret.)
Sidley Austin LLP
Dennis Blair
Chairman
Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA
U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Maria Livanos Cattaui
Secretary General (Ret.)
International Chamber of Commerce
George Davidson
(Vice Chairman)
Vice Chairman, M&A, Asia-Pacic (Ret.)
HSBC Holdings plc
Norman D. Dicks
Senior Policy Advisor
Van Ness Feldman LLP
Richard J. Ellings
President Emeritus and Counselor
NBR
Kurt Glaubitz
Global Media Relations Manager
Chevron Corporation
Mark Jones
Co-head of Macro, Corporate &
Investment Bank, Wells Fargo Securities
Wells Fargo & Company
Roy D. Kamphausen
President
NBR
Ryo Kubota
Chairman, President, and CEO
Acucela Inc.
Quentin W. Kuhrau
CEO
Unico Properties LLC
Melody Meyer
President
Melody Meyer Energy LLC
Long Nguyen
Chairman, President, and CEO
Pragmatics, Inc.
Kenneth B. Pyle
Professor, University of Washington
Founding President, NBR
Jonathan Roberts
Founder and Partner
Ignition Partners
Tom Robertson
Corporate Vice President and
Deputy General Counsel
Microso Corporation
Matt Salmon
Vice President of Government Aairs
Arizona State University
Scott Stoll
(Treasurer)
Partner (Ret.)
Ernst & Young LLP
Mitchell B. Waldman
Executive Vice President, Government
and Customer Relations
Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc.
Honorary Directors
Lawrence W. Clarkson
Senior Vice President (Ret.)
e Boeing Company
omas E. Fisher
Senior Vice President (Ret.)
Unocal Corporation
Joachim Kempin
Senior Vice President (Ret.)
Microso Corporation
Clark S. Kinlin
President and CEO
Corning Cable Systems
Corning Incorporated
George F. Russell Jr.
(Chairman Emeritus)
Chairman Emeritus
Russell Investments
the national bureau of asian research
nbr special report #83 | january 2020
’
Nadège Rolland
e NBR Special Report provides access to current research on special topics
conducted by the world’s leading experts in Asian aairs. e views expressed in
these reports are those of the authors and do not necessarily reect the views of
other NBR research associates or institutions that support NBR.
e National Bureau of Asian Research is a nonprot, nonpartisan research
institution dedicated to informing and strengthening policy. NBR conducts
advanced independent research on strategic, political, economic, globalization,
health, and energy issues aecting U.S. relations with Asia. Drawing upon an
extensive network of the world’s leading specialists and leveraging the latest
technology, NBR bridges the academic, business, and policy arenas. e
institution disseminates its research through briengs, publications, conferences,
Congressional testimony, and email forums, and by collaborating with leading
institutions worldwide. NBR also provides exceptional internship opportunities
to graduate and undergraduate students for the purpose of attracting and training
the next generation of Asia specialists. NBR was started in 1989 with a major
grant from the Henry M. Jackson Foundation.
Funding for NBR’s research and publications comes from foundations,
corporations, individuals, the U.S. government, and from NBR itself. NBR does
not conduct proprietary or classied research. e organization undertakes
contract work for government and private-sector organizations only when NBR
can maintain the right to publish ndings from such work.
To download issues of the NBR Special Report, please visit the NBR website
http://www.nbr.org.
is report may be reproduced for personal use. Otherwise, the NBR Special
Report may not be reproduced in full without the written permission of NBR.
When information from NBR publications is cited or quoted, please cite the
author and e National Bureau of Asian Research.
is is the eighty-third NBR Special Report.
NBR is a tax-exempt, nonprot corporation under I.R.C. Sec. 501(c)(3), qualied
to receive tax-exempt contributions.
© 2020 by e National Bureau of Asian Research.
Front cover image: Forbidden City bronze lion
© Getty Images
For further information about NBR, contact:
e National Bureau of Asian Research
1414 NE 42nd Street, Suite 300
Seattle, Washington 98105
206-632-7370 Phone
206-632-7487 Fax
nbr@nbr.org E-mail
http://www.nbr.org
of
’
TABLE OF CONTENTS
v
Foreword
2
Executive Summary
3
Introduction
7
Speaking Rights and Discourse Power
13
e Critique of the Existing International Order
17
Ideational Foundations
25
Brewing a Chinese Worldview
35
Altering the World
47
China’s Vision for a New World Order: A Partial, Loose, and Malleable Hegemony
49
Conclusion
52
Appendix
|
v
FOREWORD
L
ike all fast-rising powers, the People’s Republic of China seeks to reshape the international
system in a way that reects both its values and interests, aligning institutions and norms
according to its own worldview and to serve its own purposes. With the generous support of
the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) has
launched a two-year project to assess China’s vision for a new regional and international order and
what it means for the United States.
Most of the current eorts to grasp China’s vision for a future world order tend to infer the
leadership’s ambitions based on observations about the country’s external behavior. is project
instead gives priority to uncovering China’s vision from the “inside out.” To understand Chinese
leaders’ emerging vision for a new order, it is essential not just to look at what China does externally,
or advertises via its ocial pronouncements, but to grasp how the Chinese elites think about the
future system they wish to see emerge on their own terms.
is report constitutes the rst phase of NBR’s two-year project “China’s Vision for a New
Regional and Global Order.” It is based on extensive research that focused on Chinese ocial
statements and scholarly works and private discussions with Chinese experts, in addition
to secondary sources from leading academics in the eld. e second phase of the project will
take a more diversied approach. In addition to Chinese sources, it will include primary and
secondary sources from relevant regional actors in order to understand how China’s vision may
be implemented in practical terms in specic geographic and functional areas. e project’s
research ndings from both phases will serve to generate relevant policy recommendations for
U.S. decision-makers.
Both the author and NBR would like to express their immense gratitude to the Carnegie
Corporation of New York for its inspiring encouragement and unique commitment to support
original research in the eld of international studies. is project could not have materialized
without its generous sponsorship.
e author wishes to thank Jacqueline Deal, Roy Kamphausen, Daniel Markey, William
McCahill, and John S. Van Oudenaren for their helpful comments on the manuscript. She would
also like to thank Rachel Bernstein, Joseph Michaels, and Aimée Tat for their assistance in
compiling research materials and putting together the lexicon included in the appendix to this
report. e author alone is responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation that persist.
NADÈGE ROLLAND is Senior Fellow for Political and Security Aairs at the National
Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). She is the author of China’s Eurasian Century? Political
and Strategic Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative (2017). She can be reached at
<nrolland@nbr.org>.
China’s Vision for a New World Order
Nadège Rolland
of
# |
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
is report lays out the intellectual and ideological underpinnings that inform China’s
vision for a new world order and examines the process of transition from thought into
concrete policymaking.
MAIN ARGUMENT
Under Xi Jinping, China has become more vocal about its dissatisfaction with the
existing international order. Whereas its posture used to be mostly defensive, it has recently
engaged in a more forward-leaning, assertive eort to reshape the system. Xi is condent
in China’s growing material power but is aware that the country still lacks “discourse
power”—the ability to exert inuence over the formulations and ideas that underpin the
international order. Although the Chinese leadership has mobilized intellectual resources
to ll this gap, it has not explicitly laid out an alternative vision of what the world should
look like. However, a close reading of ongoing internal discussions and debates suggests
that China’s vision for a future system under its helm draws inspiration from traditional
Chinese thought and past historical experiences. e collective intellectual eort reects
a yearning for partial hegemony, loosely exercised over large portions of the “global
South”—a space that would be free from Western inuence and purged of liberal ideals.
e contours of this new system would not be traced along precise geographic or ideological
lines but be dened by the degree of deference that those within China’s sphere of inuence
are willing to oer Beijing.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
• e Chinese leadership’s eorts to increase China’s discourse power should not be
dismissed or misconstrued as mere propaganda or empty slogans. Rather, they should
be seen as evidence of the leadership’s determination to alter the norms that underpin
existing institutions and put in place the building blocks of a new international system
coveted by the Chinese Communist Party.
• e Chinese leadership’s critique of the existing international order reveals its
unswerving objection to the values on which this order has been built. At stake is not
only the predominant position of the U.S. in the current system but more importantly
the potential erosion of fundamental human rights, freedom of thought and expression,
and self-government around the world.
• e Chinese Communist Party seems to envision a new world order in which China
enjoys only partial hegemony rather than rules the world. Nonetheless, a dual-centered
system could eventually materialize in which emerging and developing countries may
yet again become the battleground for global inuence among great powers.
3
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
T
here is something inherently problematic about the topic of this study. How is “world order”
dened? What “China” are we discussing? How is it even possible to grasp something as
abstract as a “vision”? e answers are not obvious, and the task is arduous. Yet, it is a
necessary one.
In Xi Jinping’s “new era,” the Chinese leadership’s ambitions to have a greater impact on the
course of international aairs have become clearer and more purposeful. In his remarks at the
19th Party Congress in October 2017, Xi indicated his eagerness to build China into a “global
leader in terms of composite national strength and international inuence.”
1
In practice, that
inuence is already exercised increasingly to shape—and sometimes to challenge—aspects of the
existing international system, a trend that most international observers would see as natural for a
rising power.
What kind of world would the Chinese leadership like to see emerge? China is “harboring
long-term designs to rewrite the existing global order,” declared then U.S. secretary of defense
James Mattis in 2018: “e Ming dynasty appears to be their model, albeit in a more muscular
manner, demanding other nations become tribute states, kowtowing to Beijing.”
2
It is too early
to tell whether this assessment of Beijing’s ambitions is correct. But it would be a mistake to
wait and see whether the future order will be the modern reincarnation of a Sinocentric empire,
albeit one ruled by the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and his cadres
instead of the son of heaven and his mandarins. Given the stakes, waiting for the articulation of
new norms, rules, principles, and values to be fully completed and carved on the UN building
would be unwise. Accurately describing Beijing’s vision for a new world order is complicated by
the fact that, beyond a set of cryptic or bland formulations, the Chinese leadership does not spell
out explicitly what its vision is. For fear of fueling potential counter-responses to its ambitions and
international suspicions about its aspirations—oen shorthanded in Chinese discourse with the
“so-called China threat theory” label (suowei Zhongguo weixielun)—the party-state has for decades
mobilized large-scale propaganda eorts and global inuence campaigns to dispel and discredit
any hint at the possibility that China’s rise might negatively aect the international system.
3
e CCP has not frankly described the world it wants, but it has given clues—small white
pebbles on a sinuous track that domestic audiences and outside observers can identify, decrypt,
and interpret. Taken together, the party’s ocial pronouncements and Chinese intellectuals’
commentaries form a relatively coherent structure that points to the direction Beijing would like to
take and allow outside observers to glimpse a vision that is being carefully craed and constantly
rened. Grasping their meaning is a laborious task, one akin to “interpreting nonexistent
inscriptions in invisible ink on a blank page,” to use Simon Leys’s inimitably witty formulation.
4
e analyst who wishes to gather information through such a process, Leys explained, “must
negotiate three hurdles of thickening thorniness”: rst, understanding the Chinese language;
second, “absorb[ing] industrial quantities” of Communist literature while keeping “his wits sharp
and keen” and being ready to “pounce upon those rare items of signicance that lie buried under
1
“CPC Opens 19th National Congress, Declaring ‘New Era’ of China’s Socialism,” Xinhua, October 18, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/
english/2017-10/18/c_136688806.htm.
2
James N. Mattis (remarks at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, June 15, 2018), https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Transcripts/
Transcript/Article/1551954/remarks-by-secretary-mattis-at-the-us-naval-war-college-commencement-newport-rh.
3
Anne-Marie Brady, Make the Foreign Serve China: Managing Foreigners in the People’s Republic (Lanham: Rowman and Littleeld, 2003).
4
Simon Leys, “e Art of Interpreting Nonexistent Inscriptions Written in Invisible Ink on a Blank Page,” China File, October 11, 1990,
http://www.chinale.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/art-interpreting-nonexistent-inscriptions-written-invisible-ink-blank.
4
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
mountains of clichés”; and third, “crack[ing] the code of the Communist political jargon and
translat[ing] into ordinary speech this secret language full of symbols, riddles, cryptograms, hints,
traps, dark allusions, and red herrings.” Leys was writing in late 1990, and China has undoubtedly
undergone tremendous changes since then. Yet his observations about the excruciating work
needed to read the reality behind the propaganda screen remain strikingly valid today.
is study is an attempt to describe the Chinese leadership’s vision for a new international order.
e nature of the topic under examination inevitably entails a high degree of abstraction. Because
the “vision” is still in the process of being developed and articulated, there are very few tangible
reference points visible to outside observers. In Xi’s China, information ows are monitored and
controlled even more tightly than under his immediate predecessors. It remains impossible to gain
access to the core leadership’s thoughts on major political issues, either through meetings with
top political ocials or via access to internal documents. e domestic political climate has also
considerably reduced the possibility of genuine and open exchanges between Chinese scholars
and their foreign counterparts. Many of these scholars are reluctant to talk on record, or even to
participate in international workshops. Restrictions on academic expression are also noticeable
in Chinese scholars’ published writings, many of which prudently toe the ocial line and oer
little but a clever repetition of the leadership’s talking points. In such a constricted and opaque
environment, assessing the relative authority and inuence of one Chinese scholar’s argument
over another’s is a dicult task.
Some authors cited in this report are well-known in the West and, according to some reports,
well-connected to the Chinese leadership. Others can be categorized as prominent scholars due to
their institutional aliation, their rank or seniority, and the reputation of the outlet where their
papers are published. Finally, some scholars cited may not appear to belong in either of these two
categories but have been awarded research grants by the National Social Science Fund of China.
If the National Planning Oce of Philosophy and Social Sciences deems their work worthy of
nancial support, this fact indicates that their ideas are taken seriously within the system.
ese caveats suggest that there is plenty of room le for interpretation on the part of outside
observers. e account I oer in this report does not pretend to give an absolute and denitive view
of China’s vision of a new world order, but rather attempts to provide a glimpse of the direction
that internal discussions appear to be taking.
China’s re-ascendance to the top of the pyramid of world power seems a more pressing goal
under Xi than ever before. e regime’s growing impatience about the gap between China’s
material power and its authority in and control over international aairs is palpable. Beijing
exudes condence about the material foundations of its power. Yet the party is also aware of its
lack of ideational appeal as it attempts to wrap itself in the aura of Chinese civilizational wisdom
and glory. As Li Yangfan, a specialist of China’s modern diplomatic history in the School of
International Studies at Peking University, observes, no truly global order has been established
since the modern era’s great discoveries, but this does not prevent some “ambitious ancient powers”
from imagining one. Such an imaginative process “usually takes place in a political community
with strong civilization and power condence.”
5
Surprisingly, though, what comes out of China’s current exercise in collective imagination is not
a glittering, positive, forward-looking, enticing vision but mostly a collection of lamentations and
5
Li Yangfan, “ ‘Zhongguo diguo’ de gainian jiqi shijie zhixu: Bei wudu de tianxia zhixu” [e Concept of the “Chinese Empire” and Its
Relation to the World Order: e Misunderstood Tianxia Order], Guoji zhengzhi yanjiu, no. 5 (2015): 28–48.
5
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
grievances about the existing order. In 2002, Jiang Zemin already bemoaned the “old international
political and economic order, which is unfair and has to be changed fundamentally.”
6
China’s
criticism of the U.S.-led world order has only grown stronger and more pointed over the years.
In 2016, for example, senior diplomat Fu Ying compared it to an old suit that no longer ts.
7
e
discontent with the current order, deemed “unfair and unreasonable,” is unambiguous. Less
obvious is exactly how Beijing proposes to redress its wrongs and make the world order more fair
and reasonable. e closer one gets to the inklings of an armative vision, the more elliptical
and deceptive the discourse becomes. One has to weed through a litany of incantatory phrases
such as amity, sincerity, mutual benet, wide consultation, joint contribution, shared benets,
mutual understanding, and a shared future of mankind, as well as the party’s inevitable claims
that peacefulness is in the Chinese DNA, to get a better sense of the message that is implicitly
conveyed. And even then, there is still a lot that cannot be discerned from the outside looking in.
Imagining the future world order is a collective eort undertaken by the CCP and Chinese
intellectuals. Building a new international system with a Chinese perspective is a priority that
the political leadership has assigned to Chinese scholars, political scientists, and philosophers.
eir debates do not exclusively belong to the academic and theoretical realm; they are still guided
and determined by political imperatives and have concrete applications for China’s diplomatic
practice. In no uncertain terms, the party expects them to provide the theoretical foundations
of a new world order, something akin to and as compelling as the theory of democratic peace
that lies at the core of the existing liberal international order—the principles and values of which
the party abhors and dreads. Chinese intellectual and political imaginations converge around the
rejection of Western predominance and are busily seeking a non-Western paradigm, a Sinicized
value system aligned and coherent with the CCP’s identity, ideology, and interests that could also
have some broader applicability. e new “Chinese” paradigm,
8
based on Chinese “wisdom” and
cultural “excellence,” needs to serve the regime domestically, playing to a sense of national pride
and civilizational hubris in order to bolster the leadership’s legitimacy at home and strengthen
its international inuence. Externally, this is done mainly by helping provide a so pulp of
peacefulness and benign intentions relentlessly applied on top of—though barely concealing—a
hard core that is mostly about the party’s unhampered power and aura.
9
Beyond the CCP’s self-strengthening domestically and abroad, what purpose does the vision
serve? To whom is it supposed to appeal? Who would be eager to endorse Beijing’s rejection of what
it describes as “so-called universal values” and become a member of a “community of destiny” that
lets its members choose their development paths without questioning their governance methods?
Who would be content to see Western inuence over international aairs decline? e tunes
Beijing plays on the international stage are broadcast to an audience that it hopes to entice along
the Silk Road corridors with promises of connectivity, prosperity, and progress. As in earlier days
of the global ambitions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Beijing has once again identied
6
“Jiang Zemin Delivers Report to the 16th CPC National Congress,” Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the People’s Republic of China (PRC),
November 8, 2002, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/topics_665678/3698_665962/t18869.shtml.
7
Fu Ying, “e U.S. World Order Is a Suit at No Longer Fits,” Financial Times, January 6, 2016, https://www..com/content/c09cbcb6-
b3cb-11e5-b147-e5e5bba42e51.
8
I put the word Chinese in quotes here because the paradigm is Chinese insofar as the CCP decides it is.
9
I am borrowing Wang Gungwu’s description of the ancient Chinese tributary system, which according to the Singaporean historian, was
composed of a “hardcore of wei (force) surrounded by a so pulp of de (virtue).” Wang Gungwu, “Early Ming Relations with Southeast
Asia: A Background Essay,” in e Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign Relations, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1968), 49.
6
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
the developing world as the forefront of its struggle against the hegemonic forces that stand in the
way of its own accession to the paramount power position.
In the Chinese leadership’s eyes, shaping the world is essentially about making sure that the
international system accommodates the CCP’s ambitions for power as well as its anxieties about
survival. Beijing’s vision for a new international order is an outward extension of what the party
wants to secure (its perpetual rule and unchallenged power) and what it rejects as existential
threats (democratic ideals and universal values). For fear of international counter-responses,
the CCP appears reluctant to publicly acknowledge that its eorts to “move closer to the world’s
center stage” and to “guide the reform” of the international order in a “fairer and more reasonable”
direction are in reality an attempt to preempt and resist the transformative eects of liberalism
and to make the world safer for its authoritarian model.
10
Notwithstanding the sophisticated
intellectual exercise and public campaign that claims that all China has in mind is the future
peace and prosperity of mankind,
11
the party’s existential obligation to perpetuate its rule is what
primarily creates the imperative to alter the world in which it operates.
12
Beyond a defensive move against the prospect of a “peaceful evolution” of the Chinese domestic
political system, the party is also increasingly trying to shi the foundations of the existing
international system toward an armative vision of what the world should look like. Behind
its grandiose rhetoric of a “shared future for mankind” lies an eagerness to assert the CCP’s
unchallenged power. is essentially means weakening and displacing the American hegemon
and ultimately replacing its related values of liberalism and democracy with the CCP’s own version
of hegemony. Does Beijing intend to “overthrow the existing system”? Not exactly. Subverting
portions of it, substituting Chinese concepts
13
such as the “right for development” and “internet
sovereignty” for universal values within existing institutions, and creating parallel institutions
and norms endorsed, reproduced, and followed by emerging countries that represent two-thirds
of the world population may be a satisfactory outcome from the ruling party’s point of view. Does
Beijing intend to “rule the world”? Not entirely. Asserting its dominant position over a world
where the inuence of Western liberal democracies has been reduced to a minimum, and where
a large portion of the globe resembles a Chinese sphere of inuence, will suce. A partial, loose,
and malleable hegemony will do. e salient questions are the degree to which Western inuence
can and should be reduced, and how big the Chinese sphere of inuence must be in order for a
regime that has a stark, zero-sum view of the world to nally feel content and secure.
e rst half of this report lays out the intellectual and ideological underpinnings that inform
the Chinese elite’s worldview, which requires a relatively high level of abstraction. e second
half examines the process of transition from thought into concrete policymaking. e report is
divided into six sections. e rst one underlines the importance of discourse in Beijing’s eyes:
whoever controls the narrative and formulates the norms and concepts, as well as the theoretical
underpinnings of thought, can dene the contours of a new order. e second section then
examines Beijing’s critique of the existing order, and the third section studies the ideational
10
“70 Years On, Once Backward China Moves Closer to the World’s Center Stage,” Xinhua, July 1, 2019, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/
2019-07/01/c_138189467.htm.
11
“Xi’s Diplomacy Provides Solution to Global Challenges,” Xinhua, September 2, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-09/02/
c_136577114.htm.
12
Peter Mattis, “An American Lens on China’s Interference and Inuence-Building Abroad,” Asan Forum, April 30, 2018, http://www.
theasanforum.org/an-american-lens-on-chinas-interference-and-inuence-building-abroad.
13
For a detailed list of the new concepts and phrases introduced by China on the international stage, please refer to the lexicon table in
the appendix.
7
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
foundations within which the CCP is shaping its own image. e idiosyncratic amalgam of Chinese
exceptionalism combined with selected elements of Marxism-Leninism and traditional culture
provides the framework through which the leadership projects its vision for a new order. is is
also the framework that guides Chinese public intellectuals and scholars, who have been asked to
contribute to the craing of the leadership’s vision, as described in section four. e subsequent
section identies and deciphers the elements of ocial discourse and diplomatic practice that have
already emerged and through which Beijing attempts to reshape the world according to its wishes.
e concluding section tentatively describes what Beijing’s desired outcome could look like.
Speaking Rights and Discourse Power
Whoever Rules the Words Rules the World
Over the last decade, one phrase in particular has encapsulated both China’s increased
frustration about its inadequate international status and inuence and its growing desire to
have an impact on the course of international aairs. Huayuquan, sometimes appearing as guoji
huayuquan, which can be translated respectively as “speaking rights” and “international speaking
rights,” reects Beijing’s aspirations not only to have the right to speak on the international stage
but also to be listened to, to inuence others’ perceptions of China, and eventually to shape the
discourse and norms that underpin the international order.
What huayuquan exactly means and encapsulates has evolved over time, but three
characteristics are central to how Chinese intellectuals describe it. First, the concept is rooted in
material power, and a country’s comprehensive national power would be incomplete without it.
Second, Beijing believes that huayuquan has been used by the West to dominate the international
system and the world order. Words are not simply instruments of communication used to facilitate
exchanges and discussions; they convey concepts, ideals, and values that are the foundational basis
for the norms on which the international architecture is built and command how the world order
is run: whoever rules the words rules the world. ird, China’s time has now come. It is China’s
turn, as the ascending great power about to surpass all others in quantiable measures of material
power, to assert authority over the world order using the same instruments that the West has used
to establish and maintain its dominance.
But what does Beijing have to oer for the future of mankind? e party-state has exhorted
China’s intellectual elites to help manufacture and mold a set of ideas and concepts that reect its
vision for what a future world order should look like. As outside observers examine the work of the
intellectuals who are responsible for carrying out this mission, they can glimpse a picture that is
still incomplete, but whose contours are slowly emerging.
In the context of Chinese politics, words are of profound importance. e CCP’s jargon, what
Perry Link describes as a “ritualized language,” has long been deliberately developed as a means
to control discourse within China itself.
14
It is a tool “used by the Party, its propaganda organs, the
media and educators to shape (and circumscribe) the way people express themselves in the public
(and eventually private) sphere.”
15
“By proscribing some formulations and prescribing others,”
CCP ocials “set out to regulate what is being said and what is being written—and by extension
14
Perry Link, An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphors, Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 274–76.
15
Geremie R. Barmé, “New China Newspeak,” China Heritage, http://chinaheritage.net/archive/academician-archive/geremie-barme/grb-
essays/china-story/new-china-newspeak-新华文体.
8
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
what is being done.”
16
e lexicon of catchphrases used by the party-state (see the Appendix) may
sometimes sound ungainly to the foreign ear, but they are neither static nor meaningless—even
if their actual content may occasionally evolve over time. Nor are these words irrelevant. Instead,
they are “intimately connected with politics, ideas, and the projection of power.”
17
Vocabularies
and catchphrases “can be seen as political signals or signposts,” and even the “subtlest of changes
to the lexicon” can indicate signicant shis within China’s politics.
18
e same applies to the formulations that Beijing increasingly uses to assert its guiding role on
the international stage, shape the conversation, and eventually reform the system of governance
by reframing prevailing norms. As is true at home, the concepts put forward by the party-state
for foreign consumption contribute to dening the “conceptual horizon of the people who
adopt them.”
19
Ever-Changing Connotations
Before the early 1990s, “huayuquan” never appeared in Chinese publications. e meteoric rise
in the use of the phrase since then illustrates its contemporary importance.
20
Chinese scholars’
interest in the concept increased especially aer 2008, but its connotation has evolved drastically
since 2013.
21
Around 2008, Chinese authors started to describe huayuquan in the context of international
“distorted reports” related to the March 2008 Tibetan uprising and the incidents during the
Olympic torch relay.
22
At this time, the phrase clearly belonged to the realm of propaganda work. It
was sometimes used to describe foreign political inuence and subversion or other countries’ ability
to “inltrate the international community” through ocial diplomacy and “other channels” such
as people-to-people contacts, cultural exchanges, and media communication, with the objective
of “making others voluntarily accept and identify with certain concepts, values, and ideologies.”
23
For Zhang Guozuo, director of the National Planning Oce for Philosophy and Social Sciences,
the concept has a clear ideological component. Aer 1945, the “struggle between the East and the
West for huayuquan mainly manifested itself as a struggle for ideological dominance.” e West’s
“ ‘peaceful evolution’ strategic planners” went on a “discourse oensive,” setting up transmission
mechanisms to “suppress or subvert the political power of socialist and developing countries” by
“broadcasting continuously” Western values, political opinions, and lifestyles to local audiences.
24
According to Zhang, this Western discourse oensive, together with Moscow’s abandonment of
16
Michael Schoenhals, Doing ings with Words in Chinese Politics (Berkley: University of California, 1992), 3. In a sense, the CCP follows
Confucius’s prescription about the rectication of names: “If names are incorrect, then what is said cannot be followed. If what is said
cannot be followed, then tasks cannot be accomplished.”
17
Barmé, “New China Newspeak.”
18
Qian Gang, “Watchwords: e Life of the Party,” China Media Project, September 10, 2012, https://chinamediaproject.org/2012/09/10/
watchwords-the-life-of-the-party.
19
Link, An Anatomy of Chinese.
20
Victor Mair, “Freedom of Speech vs. Speaking Rights,” Language Log, July 14, 2016, https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=26731.
21
According to the China Academic Journals database CKNI, the term “huayuquan” appeared in the title of over eight hundred papers in
2008–18.
22
Sun Jisheng, “Zhongguo guoji huayuquan de suzao yu tisheng lujing—Yi chang de shiba da yilai de Zhongguo waijiao shijian weili”
[Shaping and Promoting China’s International Discourse Power Path—China’s Diplomatic Practice since the 18th National Congress of the
Communist Party of China as Example], Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of World Economics and Politics, April 10, 2019,
http://www.iwep.org.cn/cbw/cbw_wzxd/201904/t20190410_4862717.shtml.
23
Ibid.
24
Zhang Guozuo, “Guanyu ‘huayuquan’ de jidian sikao” [Reections on “Discourse Power”], Qiushi Journal, June 26, 2009, http://www.
qstheory.cn/zxdk/2009/200909/200906/t20090609_1829.htm.
9
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
its “dominant ideological position,” helps explain the Soviet Union’s disintegration and the drastic
subsequent changes in Eastern Europe:
Aer the regime lost its huayuquan, no one spoke for it and no one defended it.
It inevitably lost the support of its people. Disintegration became an irreversible
trend. Such facts tell us that in its modern sense, huayuquan not only emphasizes
the ability to speak, but refers to the ideological dominance related to the
survival of the country.
25
e CCP leadership was initially on the defensive, trying to reduce the potential inltration
of foreign ideological discourse within China. Yet it also increasingly set about using its own
huayuquan to inuence foreign perceptions of China’s rise in an attempt to counter the “so-called
China threat theory”; to push back against foreign attempts to “contain, vilify, beat down, defame,
and demonize China, thus hurting its international image”; and to deect criticism of its model,
ideology, and value system.
26
“Instead of having to deal with an inux of ideas from other countries
into China,” notes Mareike Ohlberg, “the Party wants to fundamentally change the conversation
at the global level so as to defend China’s interests abroad and reinforce the ideological consensus
at home.”
27
As China’s material strength and condence grew, CCP leaders became increasingly
interested in reversing the balance of power in the ideational realm. Instead of being the victim of a
system in which “the West is strong while China is weak” (xi qiang wo ruo), Xi Jinping announced
at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017 that the CCP would continue to strive for China’s
“tremendous transformation” into a strong country, one that is not only internationally accepted
but also respected and ultimately in a position of international inuence commensurate with its
economic and military might.
28
Initial eorts to disarm and neutralize others’ harmful huayuquan
pointing at China “like swords”
29
thus evolved into a recognition that China too could use this
powerful instrument, shape its own discourse, formulate its own concepts, and then push them
on the international stage. In the process, the country could introduce the building blocks of what
could eventually become an alternative system, reecting a vision for the world order that would
better accommodate the regime’s views and asserting without any doubt China's arrival at the
pinnacle of power.
e year 2013 marks a turning point in this direction. According to Sun Jisheng, the leadership
at this time clearly indicated its willingness to elevate huayuquan to the level of “a national strategy
and a comprehensive foreign policy.”
30
A series of important party conferences emphasized the
necessity of enhancing and promoting China’s huayuquan. At the National Propaganda and
25
Zhang, “Guanyu ‘huayuquan’ de jidian sikao.” Hu Rongtao agrees that Western discourse contributed to the ideological erosion that
eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. For more information, see Hu Rongtao, “Xi Jinping xin shidai guoji huayuquan jianshe
de jiegou fenxi” [Structural Analysis of Xi Jinping’s International Discourse Power Construction in the New Era], Journal of Anhui Normal
University 47, no. 1 (2019): 8–15.
26
National Oce for Philosophy and Social Sciences (PRC), “Dazao juyou Zhongguo tese, Zhongguo fengge, Zhongguo qipai lilun xueshu
huayu tixi” [Constructing an Academic Discourse System with Chinese Characteristics, Flair, and Style], ed. Qin Hua and Zhang Xiangyi,
June 11, 2012, http://www.npopss-cn.gov.cn/GB/219470/18137050.html. See also Peter Mattis, “China’s International Right to Speak,”
Jamestown Foundation, China Brief, October 19, 2012.
27
Mareike Ohlberg, “Boosting the Party’s Voice: China’s Quest for Ideological Dominance,” MERICS China Monitor, July 21, 2016, 3.
28
“Full Text of Xi Jinping’s Report at 19th CPC National Congress,” China Daily, November 4, 2017, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/19t
hcpcnationalcongress/2017-11/04/content_34115212.htm. See also Elsa Kania, “e Right to Speak: Discourse and Chinese Power,” Center
for Advanced China Research, November 27, 2018, https://www.ccpwatch.org/single-post/2018/11/27/e-Right-to-Speak-Discourse-and-
Chinese-Power.
29
Chen Shuguang, “Zhongguo shidai yu Zhongguo huayu” [Chinese Era and Chinese Discourse], Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
February 24, 2018, http://www.cssn.cn/zzx/201802/t20180224_3855531.shtml.
30
In 2013, 51 papers examining huayuquan were published; in 2014, 86 were published; and over one hundred have been published each year
since 2015. For context, see Sun, “Zhongguo guoji huayuquan de suzao yu tisheng lujing”; and Mattis, “China’s International Right to Speak.”
10
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
Ideology Work Conference in August 2013, Xi underlined that the “propaganda, ideological and
cultural front” should “grasp the right to speak,” tell China’s stories, and spread China’s voice.
31
In September 2013, the third plenary session of the 18th Party Congress adopted a “decision on
several major issues concerning the comprehensive deepening of reform,” which underlined the
need for China to strengthen its international communication capacity, to promote its culture
throughout the world, and to build a “system of discourse for the outside world.”
32
Finally, in
December 2013 the twelh Politburo collective study on “improving the nation’s culture and so
power” again stressed the necessity of enhancing China’s huayuquan along with the construction
of an externally directed “discourse system.”
33
Right to Have a Say or Embodiment of Power?
In Chinese, the phrase huayuquan is inherently ambiguous: quan (权) can be understood
as referring to quanli (权利), which means rights or privilege, as well as to quanli (权力), which
means power or authority. Huayuquan can therefore be understood either as “discourse rights”
or “discourse power.” e phrase conveniently conveys both meanings, but ultimately the latter
sense prevails. As Zhang Zhizhou notes, some authors believe that huayuquan is “equivalent to
the English ‘have a voice’ or ‘have a say’, which is obviously inaccurate. e essence of huayuquan
is not ‘权利’ (right) but ‘权力’ (power). In other words, huayuquan does not refer to whether one
has the right to speak, but to the use and embodiment of power through language.”
34
A country’s
huayuquan is essentially a form of power equivalent to military power and economic power,
“with discourse as its carrier.”
35
Discourse power is therefore the ability to voice ideas, concepts,
propositions, and claims that are “respected and recognized by others” and, by doing so, to generate
the power needed to “change the thoughts and behaviors of others in a nonviolent and noncoercive
way.”
36
A country’s ability to make other international actors accept—or at a minimum, not
oppose—its own ideology, values, and objectives, as well as its capacity to control the international
rules and shape the international agenda, is the ultimate embodiment of discourse power.
37
It is
“a crucial aspect of the competition between great powers” and a manifestation of a country’s
comprehensive national power.
38
In a globalized world, the competition between countries “not
only centers on economic, military power and other hard power elds, but also on so power elds
such as social systems, values, ideology, and culture.”
39
31
“Xi Jinping: Xionghuai daju bawo dashi zhuoyan dashi nuli ba xuanchuan sixiang gongzuo zuo de geng hao” [Xi Jinping: Keep in Mind the
Present Conditions, Grasp the General Trends, Keep an Eye on Major Events, and Work Diligently to Improve Propaganda and Ideological
Work], People’s D aily, August 21, 2013, http://cpc.people.com.cn/n/2013/0821/c64094-22636876.html.
32
ese recommendations were made under the heading of “heighten cultural openness.” For details, see Naoko Eto, “China’s Quest for Huayu
Quan: Can Xi Jinping Change the Terms of International Discourse?” Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research, October 4, 2017, https://www.
tkfd.or.jp/en/research/detail.php?id=663.
33
Sun, “Zhongguo guoji huayuquan de suzao yu tisheng lujing.”
34
Portions of the original text are in English, leaving no ambiguity about Zhang’s exact meaning. Zhang Zhizhou, “Zhongguo guoji huayuquan
de kunju yu chulu” [Diculties and Opportunities for Advancement in China’s International Discourse Power], Green Leaf, no. 5 (2009).
35
Zhang Zhizhou, “Guoji huayuquan jianshe zhong ji da jichu xing lilun wenti” [Some Basic eoretical Issues in the Building of International
Discourse Power], Study Times, February 2, 2017, http://inews.ifeng.com/50734440/news.shtml?&back.
36
Zhang Zhongjun, “Zengqiang Zhongguo guoji huayuquan de sikao” [Reection on Strengthening China’s International Discourse Power],
eoretical Horizon, April 2012, 56–59, http://niis.cssn.cn/webpic/web/niis/upload/2012/12/d20121208005201326.pdf.
37
Wang Jiangyu, “Di yuan zhengzhi, guoji huayuquan yu guojifa shang de guize zhiding quan” [Geopolitics, Discursive Power and
International Law-Making behind the One Belt, One Road Initiative], China Law Review, no. 2 (2016): 39–45, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/
papers.cfm?abstract_id=2970391.
38
Sun, “Zhongguo guoji huayuquan de suzao yu tisheng lujing”; and Hu “Xi Jinping xin shidai guoji huayuquan jianshe de jiegou fenxi.”
39
Zhang, “Zengqiang Zhongguo guoji huayuquan de sikao.”
11
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
Today, the West still dominates the game. Chinese scholars look to the West’s discourse power
with both envy and revulsion—as a model to emulate and a success story to replicate, but also as
a nemesis to defang. In this view, since the end of World War II, the West has gradually brought
its own discourse power to the center of the international stage. By providing content, setting
standards and rules, and leading the agenda of international institutions, the West has ultimately
gained total control over the denition and interpretation of norms and values and has ensconced
itself as the arbiter of rights and wrongs.
40
According to Renmin University professor Wang Yiwei,
the West, “represented by the United States, monopolized the discourse power in the name of
the international community, and the model became American ‘liberal capitalism’ as the ‘end of
histor y.’ ”
41
e West has created a series of economic and political concepts, such as “market plus
democracy as the highest form of human social development” or the “democratic peace theory.”
ese ideas are now widely accepted by the international community, but they are nothing but
misleading “myths.”
42
In this view, behind discourse resides hard power. e reason for the dominance of
Western discourse is “not its truth” but the “absolute” political, economic, cultural, military,
and diplomatic power supporting it.
43
Discourse power presupposes and is derived from
material power. But being economically strong does not necessarily result in a spontaneous
and commensurate increase in discourse power. According to Sun Jisheng, the U.S. economy
overtook Britain’s economy in 1894, but it still took the United States over half a century to
become a country with strong discourse power.
44
During that time, the United States used all
of its advantages to roll out a global strategy. In the security arena, the United States created a
system of military alliances. In the economic domain, it established the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Taris and Trade (GATT) as
preludes to the creation of a Western economic order with the United States at the core. In
the ideological realm, the United States created Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and the
Peace Corps to promote American values and gradually disseminate U.S. discourse power in
various other areas.
45
In short, the discourse power of the United States, in combination with its
material strength, provided the basis for the construction of institutions and rules reecting and
propagating American values—an international order in which the United States is dominant.
China’s own “discourse decit,” however, puts it in a weak position because the country still
lags behind and is “insuciently prepared to break the monopoly of Western discourse.”
46
is
situation, writes Central Party School professor Chen Shuguang, feels like “a Damocles sword
hanging over our head.”
Although China’s economy and hard power are growing, the gap between its own discourse
power and that of the West is still wide. For a long time, China was isolated from the international
40
Chen, “Zhongguo shidai yu Zhongguo huayu,” http://www.cssn.cn/zzx/201802/t20180224_3855531.shtml; and Sun, “Zhongguo guoji
huayuquan de suzao yu tisheng lujing.”
41
Wang Yiwei, “Wang Hailou: Zhongguo moshi zhengzai dapo ‘pu shi jiazhi’ baquan” [Wang Hailou: China Model Breaks Hegemony of
“Universal Values”], People’s Daily, January 11, 2013, http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2013/0111/c40531-20166235.html.
42
Ding Yifan, “Goujian Zhongguo huayuquan tixi you duo zhongyao? Meiguo ren zao jiu yong xingdong zhengming le” [How Important Is
It to Construct a Chinese Discourse System? Americans Have Long Proved It with Actions], Guancha, December 27, 2017, https://www.
guancha.cn/DingYiFan/2017_12_27_440745_6.shtml.
43
Chen, “Zhongguo shidai yu Zhongguo huayu.”
44
Sun, “Zhongguo guoji huayuquan de suzao yu tisheng lujing.”
45
Ibid.
46
Chen, “Zhongguo shidai yu Zhongguo huayu.”
12
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
system, was not represented in international institutions, and thus had little discourse power. Yet,
even in times of material weakness, especially during the 1950s, China attempted to enhance its
discourse power and consolidate its international inuence with concepts that wooed African,
Latin American, and Asian countries, such as Mao Zedong’s theory of the three worlds and Zhou
Enlai’s ve principles of peaceful coexistence.
47
Later, Deng Xiaoping reckoned that conditions
were still not ripe for China to take the initiative, and he instead advised the country to “hide
its light” for a few more years. Eventually, China could “become a larger political force, and the
weight of its voice on the international stage will then be dierent.”
48
A Priority for Xi Jinping
For some Chinese observers, the trend toward a shi in the center of gravity of world power is
ongoing, and China and the United States have already started to switch positions. Of course, this
kind of switching is “not as simple as switching TV channels,” explains Chen Shuguang, but rather
is a protracted process. According to Chen, China and the United States entered the switching
cycle in 2008, and the nal completion of the process will occur in the mid-21st century:
e 21st century is the century of China’s revival, and it should also be the century
of the rise of China’s discourse. e switching cycle between Washington and
Beijing has begun and it is an irreversible process. e era of the U.S. hegemony
will come to an end, and the era of multipolarity led by China will begin.
49
As part of this process, Chen believes that China must break the West’s discourse hegemony
by creating its own “system of discourse” and oering its own thoughts about how to solve the
problems collectively faced by humanity.
50
Mastering discourse power is a necessary step for China
to “reconstruct a just and fair order in the international community and to bring about a fair
adjustment of the relations between developed and developing countries.”
51
Toward this end, Xi has underlined on multiple occasions the necessity for China to enhance
its discourse power internationally and build an external system of discourse.
52
His repeated
guidance conveys the idea that such power, rather than gradually emerging organically, can be
manufactured. Discourse power is a form of “national heavy machinery”
53
that is “not innate,
self-appointed, or bestowed by others. It is acquired only through self-struggle.”
54
According to
one Chinese scholar, the “CCP, with Xi Jinping at its core, is the main force in the construction
of China’s international discourse power.”
55
e promotion of such power requires both a
47
Sun, “Zhongguo guoji huayuquan de suzao yu tisheng lujing.”
48
Ibid.
49
Chen, “Zhongguo shidai yu Zhongguo huayu.”
50
Chen Shuguang, “Zhongguo de fazhan youshi ruhe zhuanhua wei huayu youshi?” [How Do China’s Development Advantages Become
Discourse Advantages?], People’s D aily, February 17, 2014, http://politics.people.com.cn/n/2014/0217/c30178-24376986.html.
51
Hu, “Xi Jinping xin shidai guoji huayuquan jianshe de jiegou fenxi.”
52
For example, the need to “improve China’s institutional discourse power in global economic governance” was underlined at the h plenary
session of the 18th Party Congress in October 2015. See “Xi Jinping: Zai zhongyang he guojia jiguan dang de jianshe gongzuo huiyi shang de
jianghua” [Xi Jinping: Speech at the Plenary Session of the 18th Party Congress], Chinese Central Party History and Documents Research
Institute, October 2015, http://www.dswxyjy.org.cn; Li Zhongfa et al., “Mianxiang shijie xin geju-jinian jiandang 95 zhounian shuping”
[Facing a New World Order: Commentary on the 95th Anniversary of the Party’s Founding], Xinhua, July 4, 2016, available at http://www.
gapp.gov.cn/ztzzd/rdztl/xddxljh/contents/9837/300270.shtml; and Han Qingxiang and Chen Yuanzhang, “Jianggou dangdai Zhongguo
huayu tixi hexin yaoyi” [e Core Importance of Establishing a Modern Chinese Discourse System], Xinhua, May 16, 2017, http://www.
xinhuanet.com/politics/2017-05/16/c_1120977542.htm.
53
Chen, “Zhongguo shidai yu Zhongguo huayu.”
54
Zhang, “Guanyu ‘huayuquan’ de jidian sikao.”
55
Hu, “Xi Jinping xin shidai guoji huayuquan jianshe de jiegou fenxi.”
13
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
conscious eort and a multidimensional strategic design, including a stronger representation in
international institutions, innovative diplomatic practices, eective communication tools, and
persuasive narratives and content.
56
Xi has called on the party’s intellectual workers—historians,
political scientists, philosophers, scientists, economists, propagandists, and journalists—to join
the fray and contribute to the creation of “new concepts, new categories, and a new language that
international society can easily understand and accept so as to guide the direction of research and
debate in the international academic community.”
57
Xi’s formulations bear a striking resemblance to Politburo member and propaganda czar Li
Changchun’s call at a 2012 meeting on theoretical research and the development of Marxism:
It is a signicant and pressing task in theoretical scientic circles to interpret
China’s course of development and practices using a theoretical language system
that China itself has developed; to continue to come up with innovative and
practical scientic concepts, new areas, and new expressions; and to create an
academic language system of philosophy and social sciences that has Chinese
characteristics and a Chinese style.
58
More recently, Ding Yifan, the deputy director of the World Development Institute at the
State Council’s Development Research Center, stated that Chinese intellectuals are “facing a very
important task, that is, to build a persuasive, causal, and internally consistent discourse system
that can make others understand why China is on the right path and is developing better.”
59
In
doing so, they need to make sure that the new concepts they put forward to help enhance China’s
discourse power are well craed so as to inuence and guide discussions, “dene the criteria for
right and wrong, true and false, good and evil, beautiful and ugly,” and determine which topics
will be discussed and how they will be discussed.
60
The Critique of the Existing International Order
Over the last decade, ocial speeches have increasingly indicated Beijing’s dissatisfaction with
the current global governance system. e complaint is not new. What has mostly changed is the
leadership’s self-condence that conditions are now ripe for China not only to be a critic and a
dissenter within the existing framework of international order
61
but also to push more proactively
for its own alternative vision.
56
Sun, “Zhongguo guoji huayuquan de suzao yu tisheng lujing”; and Zhang Zhizhou, “Qieshi gaibian guoji huayuquan ‘xiqiang woruo’ geju”
[Eectively Change the Pattern of “West Strong, China Weak” in the International Discourse Power], People’s D aily, September 20, 2016,
http://theory.people.com.cn/n1/2016/0920/c40531-28725837.html.
57
“Xi Jinping zongshuji zai dang de xinwen yulun gongzuo zuotan hui shang de zhongyao jianghua yinqi qianglie fanxiang” [Xi Jinping’s
Important Speech at the Party News and Public Opinion Symposium Invoked a Strong Reaction], Xinhua, February 23, 2016, http://www.
xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-02/23/c_1118135177.htm; “Xi Jinping: Zai zhixue shehui kexue gongzuo zuotanhui shang de jianghua” [Xi
Jinping’s Speech at the Philosophy and Social Sciences Symposium], Xinhua, May 17, 2016, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-
05/18/c_1118891128.htm; and Huo Xianguang, “Xi Jinping: Baochi zhanlue ding li zengqiang fazhan zixin jianchi bian zhong qiu xin bian
zhong qiu jin bian zhong tupo” [Xi Jinping: Maintain the Strong Strategy, Develop Self-Condence, Persist in Becoming New, Advanced,
and Breaking rough], Xinhua, July 19, 2015, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-05/18/c_1118891128.htm.
58
“Li Changchun zai Makesi zhuyi lilun yanjiu he jianshe gongcheng gongzuo huiyi shang de jiang hua” [Li Changchun’s Speech at the
eoretical Research and Development of Marxism Conference], National Oce for Philosophy and Social Sciences (PRC), June 2,
2012, http://www.npopss-cn.gov.cn/GB/219468/18060505.html. Excerpt translated in English can be found at http://chinascope.org/
archives/6422/92.
59
Ding, “Goujian Zhongguo huayuquan tixi you duo zhongyao?”
60
Zhang, “Guanyu ‘huayuquan’ de jidian sikao.”
61
Randall L. Schweller and Pu Xiaoyu, “Aer Unipolarity: China’s Visions of International Order in an Era of U.S. Decline,” International
Security 36, no.1 (2011): 41–43.
14
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
In his discussion with Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in December 1988, Deng Xiaoping
noted that it was time to think about “appropriate new policies to establish a new international
order” and suggested the ve principles of peaceful coexistence as norms for international
relations (IR) as an alternative to “hegemonism, bloc politics and treaty organizations” that “no
longer work.”
62
In 1988, Deng was referring to hegemonism as both Soviet and American. Aer
the collapse of the Soviet Union, his successors have argued that the existing international order is
founded on the hegemony of the United States and has been designed and sustained by the West to
secure its interests and exploit developing countries (including China).
63
The Existing World Order According to Beijing: “Unfair and Unreasonable”
A similar theme can be found in the more recent ocial critique of the existing world order as
“unfair and unreasonable” (bu gongzheng, bu heli). e trope, repeated time aer time in almost
every ocial speech and document related to global governance, sounds rather inconsequential.
Most of the time, the ocial rhetoric stops short of fully explaining what it really means. But a
closer study gives important indications not only about Chinese leaders’ deep concerns with the
world order as it stands but also about what they would really want to see emerge instead. It is
therefore worth spending some time trying to dissect it.
One of the most candid accounts of what this expression actually means was oered by Fu
Ying, the chairperson of the Foreign Aairs Committee of the National People’s Congress, in
a speech delivered in London in July 2016.
64
She describes the existing world order, built and
led by the United States, as akin to a Pax Americana. As it stands, this order comprises three
layers: “American or Western values,” the “U.S.-led military alignment,” and the “UN and its
institutions.” Fu draws a distinction between the world order and the international order,
which she denes more narrowly as “the UN and its institutions, including the principles of
international law” for which China “has a strong sense of belonging.” Beijing has no intention of
unraveling the international order or of resetting it because China is “one of its founders and a
beneciary, a contributor, as well as part of its reform eorts.” However, China objects to what Fu
calls elsewhere the “western-centered world order dominated by the U.S.”
65
She explains why in
no uncertain terms.
First, the existing order is unfair. It perpetuates Western dominance while keeping China’s
inuence down in spite of the country’s growing power: China has “long been alienated
politically by the western world” despite its “tremendous progress.” e United States continues
to deny China’s security concerns through its military alliance system and to reap “great
benets from its leadership role” at a time when both the economic and power centers of gravity
have started to shi in the direction of the “newly rising developing countries.” In other words,
Fu suggests that the West and the United States, as leader of the West, have had an enduring
disproportionate say over the world order because of their power, and that this should change
to better reect the shi of the balance of power in favor of emerging countries. Implicit in
62
Deng Xiaoping, “A New International Order Should Be Established with the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence as Norms,” in Selected
Works of Deng Xiaoping, vol. 3, 1982–1992 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1994), available at https://cpcchina.chinadaily.com.cn/2010-
10/26/content_13918469.htm.
63
Shinji Yamaguchi, “e Continuity and Changes in China’s Perception of the International Order,” NIDS Security Studies 18, no. 2 (2016):
63–81, http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/publication/kiyo/pdf/2016/bulletin_e2016_5.pdf.
64
Fu Ying, “China and the Future of the International Order” (speech delivered at Chatham House, London, July 6, 2016), https://www.
chathamhouse.org/sites/default/les/events/special/2016-07-08-China-International-Order_0.pdf.
65
Fu, “e U.S. World Order.”
15
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
her critique is the idea that China, as the most powerful and inuential of the newly rising
developing countries, should have a greater role, while the role of the West—and in particular,
that of the United States—should decline.
Second, the current world order is unreasonable because it is incapable of solving, and
sometimes even adds to, the world’s most serious problems. As an illustration, Fu points to
the alleged failure of the “global promotion of Western values.”
66
In countries where original
governing structures were dismantled to be replaced by new ones, chaos and negative aershocks
have occurred: the Arab Spring revolutions in 2011 led to disorder, a massive refugee crisis, and
the rise of a terrorist “semi-state.” In other words, Fu suggests that eorts to promote Western
values have fomented regime change, which has led to conict and chaos instead of peace and
stability. Implicit in her critique is the view that any attempt to spread liberal democratic values on
a global scale, including in China, is dangerous and destabilizing.
China Taking the Lead
e world order therefore needs to be “fairer and more reasonable,” and the Chinese leadership
is becoming less timorous about expressing its willingness to strive for this goal.
67
In March 2013,
then foreign minister Yang Jiechi stated:
We believe that the international multilateral system of the 21st century should
expand its representativeness, improve its fairness and enhance its eectiveness.
China is a participant, builder and contributor to the international system. We
will participate more proactively in international aairs and play our due role in
developing a fairer and more reasonable international system.
68
is objective was reiterated by Xi Jinping during a major internal meeting on China’s foreign
aairs in November 2014.
69
He took an additional step at the National Security Work Conference
in February 2017, arming this time that China should “guide” the international community
to “jointly shape a more just and reasonable new international order” and “jointly safeguard
international security.”
70
In June 2018, Xi listed “leading the reform of the global governance system
with the concept of fairness and justice” as one of the ten priorities for China’s diplomacy “in the
new era,” neatly indicating his intention for China to take an active role in guiding eorts to reform
the international system, instead of merely taking part in the reform process.
71
66
Zhao Xiaochun echoes Fu Ying’s point: “Governance failures, especially in the West, have undermined the world’s condence in the
Washington Consensus, making more imperative the search for an alternative model that is more just, equitable and representative.” Zhao
Xiaochun, “In Pursuit of a Community of Shared Future: China’s Global Activism in Perspective,” China Quarterly of International Strategic
Studies 4, no. 1 (2018): 23–37, https://www.worldscientic.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S2377740018500082.
67
Whereas Deng’s foreign policy dictum was for China to “hide its strength and bide its time” (taoguang yanghui), in January 2014 Xi
announced that China should be “striving for achievement” (fenfa you wei). For further discussion, see Anne-Marie Brady, “Chinese Foreign
Policy: A New Era Dawns,” Diplomat, March 17, 2014, https://thediplomat.com/2014/03/chinese-foreign-policy-a-new-era-dawns.
68
“Yang Jiechi: Zhongguo jiang yi geng jiji de zitai canyu guoji shiwu” [Yang Jiechi: China Will More Energetically Participate in International
Aairs], China Daily, March 9, 2019, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/dfpd2013qglianghui/2013-03/09/content_16293777.htm.
69
“Xi Jinping zhuxi zhongyang waishi gongzuo huiyi bing fabiao zhongyao jianghua” [Xi Jinping Attended the Central Foreign Aairs
Working Conference and Delivered an Important Speech], Xinhua, November 29, 2014, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2014-
11/29/c_1113457723.htm.
70
e injunction quickly became known as the “two guides” (liang ge yindao). For reference, see “Xi Jinping shou ti ‘liang ge yindao’ you
shenyi” [Xi Jinping’s First Mention of “Two Guides” Has Profound Meaning], Sina News Center, February 20, 2017, http://news.sina.com.
cn/china/xlxw/2017-02-20/doc-ifyarrcf5036533.shtml.
71
“Xi Urges Breaking New Ground in Major Country Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics,” Xinhua, June 24, 2018, http://www.xinhuanet.
com/english/2018-06/24/c_137276269.htm; and “China as a Selective Revisionist Power in the International Order,” Institute of Southeast
Asian Studies, Report, no. 21, April 2019, https://www.iseas.edu.sg/images/pdf/ISEAS_Perspective_2019_21.pdf.
16
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
Melanie Hart and Blaine Johnson attribute this latest move to the Trump administration’s
withdrawal from the international stage, which created “a shortfall in global governance, making
it harder to address common challenges and generating rising demand for China to step up and
ll the gap.”
72
But China’s more assertive posturing has also been informed by the perception
of an irreversible change in the international balance of power due to a general decline of the
West’s power, at least since the 2008 global nancial crisis.
73
At a Politburo study session on global
governance reform held in early September 2016, Xi noted that the global governance structure
“depends on the international balance of power and reforms hinge on a change in the balance.”
74
Transforming the global governance system in the direction of a “more equitable, just and eective
architecture” is therefore presented as a natural evolution in keeping with China’s power status,
75
and as nothing akin to “dismantling the existing system and creating a new one to replace it.
Rather, it aims to improve the global governance system in an innovative way.”
76
In an attempt to alleviate the perception that its eorts to transform the world order are
nothing but a powerplay, Beijing also systematically claims that it is asserting its position on behalf
of the entire developing world or even as a reection of a deep yearning for changes shared by the
broader international community because of increasingly blatant “governance decits.”
77
Although
Fu Ying concedes that the world order, “dominated by the U.S., has made great contributions to
human progress and economic growth,” she argues that “those contributions lie in the past. Now
that same order is like an adult in children’s clothes. It is failing to adjust.”
78
In response to such
pressing demands, China will not stay idle. According to Xi, it is China’s responsibility as a great
power to play its part: “e world is so big and there are so many problems. e international
community expects to hear China’s voice and see China’s proposals. China cannot be absent.”
79
Yet
the “weight of international responsibilities is falling on Chinese shoulders” earlier than Beijing
had expected, notes Fu.
80
Expressing dissatisfaction and criticism is one thing, but there is “no
clear answer” about which specic ideas and ways to “reassure others and advance our common
interests” should be brought to the fore. Xi is therefore setting his country on a “moral mission to
72
Melanie Hart and Blaine Johnson, “Mapping China’s Global Governance Ambitions,” Center for American Progress, February 28, 2019, 4,
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2019/02/28/466768/mapping-chinas-global-governance-ambitions.
73
“Xi Jinping shou ti ‘liang ge yindao’ you shenyi”; and Le Yucheng, “Wei quanqiu zhili tixi gaige he jianshe buduan gongxian Zhongguo
zhihui he liliang” [Continuously Contribute Chinese Wisdom and Strength to the Development of the Global Governance System],
Guangming, November 22, 2017, http://epaper.gmw.cn/gmrb/html/2017-11/22/nw.D110000gmrb_20171122_4-02.htm.
74
“Xi Calls for Reforms on Global Governance,” Xinhua, September 29, 2016, available at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-09/29/
content_26931697.htm.
75
e exact expression typically used by Chinese ocial representatives is “conform to the trend of human development progress”
(shunying renlei fazhan jinbu de qushi).
76
“Full Transcript: Interview with Chinese President Xi Jinping,” Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2015, https://www.wsj.com/articles/full-
transcript-interview-with-chinese-president-xi-jinping-1442894700.
77
“Full Transcript: Interview with Chinese President Xi Jinping”; Wang Jiquan, “Wei quanqiu renquan zhili tigong Zhongguo fangan” [China’s
Program for Global Human Rights Governance], People’s Daily, June 24, 2017, http://world.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0624/c1002-29359802.
html; Le, “Wei quanqiu zhili tixi gaige he jianshe buduan gongxian Zhongguo zhihui he liliang”; “Xi Jinping: Wei gaige he youhua qiu zhili
zhuru Zhongguo liliang” [Xi Jinping: Injecting Chinese Capabilities into Global Reform and Optimization], China Daily, June 25, 2018,
http://china.chinadaily.com.cn/2018-06/25/content_36446394.htm; Feng Zhongping, “Zhongguo jinpo xuyao guoji huayuquan” [China
Urgently Needs International Discourse Power], World Knowledge, 2014, http://www.cqvip.com/QK/80780X/201418/662563631.html;
and Pang Zhongying, “What Is China’s Role in Global Governance?” China Daily, December 21, 2016, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/
opinion/2016-12/21/content_27728534.htm.
78
Fu, “e U.S. World Order.” Fu echoes Yang Jiechi, who writes that the model of “Western centralism” has failed to adapt to the “trend of the
times.” Yang Jiechi, “Promoting the Building of a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind,” People’s Daily , December 12, 2017, http://
en.theorychina.org/xsqy_2477/201712/t20171212_360713.shtml.
79
Le, “Wei quanqiu zhili tixi gaige he jianshe buduan gongxian Zhongguo zhihui he liliang.”
80
Fu, “e U.S. World Order.”
17
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
improve the world through its ideas, aspirations, and norms.”
81
But the precise content of those
ideas and aspirations is only now starting to take shape and remains, as yet, rather unformed.
Beyond its calls for a reform of the current system in a fairer and more reasonable direction,
the Chinese leadership has not yet openly expressed a positive vision of what it wants the world to
look like, nor has it publicly oered a clear set of ideas to support such a vision. Some leitmotifs
and themes have appeared in the ocial diplomatic rhetoric, but they oen ring hollow: amity,
sincerity, mutual benet, and inclusiveness; good-neighborly friendliness, joint contribution,
shared benets, and extensive consultation; and the now inescapable win-win cooperation.
82
ese
all sound like they have been extracted from a thesaurus of synonyms for “nice” that have been
randomly stitched together, and their exact applicability to the reform of the world order is unclear
at best.
It may be the case that the CCP elites themselves do not have a fully formed view of the world
that they would like to see emerge in lieu of the Western-centered world order dominated by the
United States that is underpinned by liberal norms and values. It is equally possible that, shaped
by China’s deep strategic culture, Beijing’s political leadership has not designed a detailed plan
complete with concrete measures and steps, preferring instead to follow the propensity of things
and to leave the possibility for adjustments and evolution along the way.
83
It may be the case
that there is, in fact, a clearly eshed-out vision, but that the CCP elites prefer not to expose it in
broad daylight because they are aware that it would not be easily accepted by the rest of the world.
Whatever the exact reason, the leadership seems to have chosen to err on the side of caution
for now. It prudently ne-tunes and experiments with new concepts and ideas that it hopes will
be accepted eventually as replacements for the ones it dismisses as wrong and obsolete, while
trying to persuade the international community that China’s intentions are totally benign and its
actions justied.
Ideational Foundations
Any attempt to understand how Beijing sees the world and what kind of world order the
leadership would like to see emerge should start by looking at the party’s identity. How the CCP is
trying to construct and modify its identity domestically also informs its worldview and permeates
the image that it seeks to present to the outside world. Notwithstanding the above-mentioned
diculties of accurately grasping the leadership’s vision, one element on which it bases its
narrative, both internally and externally, appears very prominently: Chinese exceptionalism.
e promotion of a hierarchical, virtuous, harmonious domestic order on the basis of Chinese
exceptionalism helps the CCP bolster its legitimacy at home and justify its absolute hold on power.
e party aims to establish itself as the direct heir of a long and glorious historical and cultural
tradition, hoping to appeal to a sense of national pride and civilizational hubris. Externally,
Chinese exceptionalism supports the claim of inherent peacefulness. Cognizant of its external
audience, the CCP wants to portray itself and its actions to the world in an appealing, benign
81
William A. Callahan, “China’s Asia Dream: e Belt and Road Initiative and the New Regional Order,” Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 1,
no. 3 (2016): 226–43.
82
Liu Zhenmin, “Forging Sound Relations through the Principle of Amity, Sincerity, Mutual Benet and Inclusiveness, Add New Chapters
in Neighborhood Diplomacy,” Ministry of Foreign Aairs (PRC), January 10, 2017, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/
zyjh_665391/t1429989.shtml.
83
François Jullien, e Propensity of ings: Toward a History of Ecacy in China (New York: Zone Books, 1995).
18
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
way in order to defuse threat perceptions. Chinese exceptionalism is also increasingly infusing
China’s outward-facing discourse for the purpose of consolidating the country’s position on the
global stage. By claiming that everyone is exceptional—a paradoxical universal exceptionalism
of sorts—Beijing challenges the claimed universality of certain values, downgrading them to
concepts only applicable to the West, from where they emerged. e hierarchical order promoted
domestically also appears to be the preferred model for the new international order envisaged by
Beijing. But, as will be discussed at greater length in the following sections, for various reasons
this desired outcome cannot yet be openly stated.
Reclaiming China’s Cultural and Historical Heritage
e claim of exceptionalism and its particular emphasis on Chinese cultural and historical
uniqueness serve important political and ideological functions and have been useful domestically
as the CCP has tried to reassert its legitimacy aer the Tiananmen crisis and the Soviet collapse.
84
In particular, the progressive reintegration of elements of Confucianism within Chinese political
and intellectual culture stands out as a crucial feature of the past two decades.
85
Even if the
re-emergence of traditional culture around the turn of the century emanates to a large extent
from the grassroots of Chinese society,
86
this revival has also been actively encouraged and
reappropriated by the leadership for political purposes. T.H. Jiang and Shaun O’Dwyer argue that
a strand of “authoritarian” Confucianism has slowly marginalized the ideas of an earlier school
of “liberal” Confucian scholars who argued that ethical values can better ourish in a liberal
democratic regime. Instead, the authoritarian Confucians believe that
Confucianism…with its emphasis on the sacred “heavenly mandate,” the idea
of harmony, the use of rituals to regulate personal desires and interpersonal
relationships, and the respect for the educated elite, is better at “settling down
the restless mind of the modern people,” pursuing moral excellence, and
achieving good governance. ese values, they envision, are universal despite
being “Confucian,” and China can set an example for the rest of the world to
show that these Confucians ideals are able to compete with the liberal values of
human rights, political equality, and democracy originated from the West.
87
Various Chinese leaders have made references to classical thought in the context of
contemporary politics, including Jiang Zemin, who declared in November 2002 that China had
reached the level of a “society of moderate prosperity” (xiaokang shehui). John Delury notes:
In the Classic of Rites, one of the canonical texts all educated gentlemen were
once expected to study, “moderate prosperity” describes the unjust, imperfect
world Confucius saw around him in the sixth century BC. Confucius contrasted
the fallen condition of “moderate prosperity,” where coercive rulers barely
contained the eects of people’s unbridled pursuit of their own self-interest, with
84
Heike Holbig and Bruce Gilley, “In Search of Legitimacy in Post-Revolutionary China: Bringing Ideology and Governance Back In,” German
Institute of Global and Area Studies, Working Paper, no. 127, 2010, https://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/publication/in-search-of-legitimacy-
in-post-revolutionary-china-bringing-ideology-and-governance.
85
Jun Deng and Craig A. Smith, “e Rise of New Confucianism and the Return of Spirituality to Politics in Mainland China,” China
Information 32, no. 2 (2018): 294–314.
86
Billioud and oraval identify the emergence in the 2000s of a “popular Confucianism” distinct from initiatives dictated by the state.
Sébastien Billioud and Joël oraval, Le sage et le peuple: le renouveau confucéen en chine [e Wise Man and the People: Confucian
Renewal in China] (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2014).
87
T.H. Jiang and Shaun O’Dwyer, “e Universal Ambitions of China’s Illiberal Confucian Scholars,” Palladium, September 26, 2019, https://
palladiummag.com/2019/09/26/the-universal-ambitions-of-chinas-illiberal-confucian-scholars/?clid=IwAR2QAV6VVFX2rqa-KSyzH1-lc
Rm9P5w3z8dUi5vF34cp8ylxF2HOn9pqg3U.
19
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
the utopian vision of “great unity” (datong), in which rulers and ruled worked
together to achieve a shared concept of the common good.
88
But it was mostly under Hu Jintao that government propaganda narratives reappropriated
elements of Confucian iconography, with the notable integration of “harmony” in the leadership’s
vision both for the Chinese society and for the world.
89
Tradition, long considered by the CCP as
an ideological foe and lambasted as a source of Chinese backwardness and weakness, has further
been celebrated by Xi Jinping, who poses as an ardent admirer of Chinese classics.
90
Beyond his supposed personal intellectual interest, Xi has described Chinese culture as being
of strategic importance, especially in the context of party building.
91
In a February 2014 address
at the Politburo’s collective study session on governance, he underscored the necessity of blending
contemporary and historical Chinese political culture through “creative transformation and
innovative development.”
92
While the CCP is rmly Marxist and guided by Mao Zedong ought
and “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” he said, “we are not historical nihilists and are
not cultural nihilists. We cannot be ignorant of the history of our own country, and we cannot
belittle ourselves.”
93
In this endeavor, the party should “make the past serve the present and
bring forth the new from the old”; it should “retain the essence and discard the dross” to adapt
for the contemporary needs of a country facing the world.
94
References to traditional heritage,
clearly identiable for their “Chineseness” and carefully selected for their conformity with the
party line,
95
have increasingly been included in the ocial discourse alongside Marxist-Leninist
principles as means to enhance the nation’s cohesion around the party, as well as the unity within
the party.
96
e promotion of China’s exceptional historical and cultural heritage is supposed to
not only induce a sense of pride and distinctiveness in the population but also—especially since
88
John Delury, “ ‘Harmonious’ in China,” Hoover Institution, Policy Review, March 31, 2008, https://www.hoover.org/research/harmonious-
china.
89
John Dotson, “e Confucian Revival in the Propaganda Narratives of the Chinese Government,” U.S.-China Economic and Security
Review Commission, July 20, 2011, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/les/Research/Confucian_Revival_Paper.pdf; Hu Jintao, “Build
towards a Harmonious World of Lasting Peace and Common Prosperity” (statement delivered at the United Nations, New York, September
15, 2005), https://www.un.org/webcast/summit2005/statements15/china050915eng.pdf; and Jesús Solé-Farràs, “Harmony in Contemporary
New Confucianism and in Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” China Media Research 4, no. 4 (2008): 14–24.
90
In 2015, People’s Daily Press compiled a volume of Xi’s 274 classic quotes used in 70 of his speeches since 2012. For reference, see Delia Lin,
“e CCP’s Exploitation of Confucianism and Legalism,” in e Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Communist Party, ed. Willy Wo-Lap
Lam (New York: Routledge, 2018); and “Ye Zicheng: Chuantong wenhua jinghua yu Xi Jinping zhiguo linian” [Ye Zicheng: e Essence
of Traditional Culture and Xi Jinping’s Ruling Philosophy], People’s Tribune, February 7, 2014, http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2014/0207/
c112851-24291830.html.
91
Aleksandra Kubat, “Morality as Legitimacy under Xi Jinping: e Political Functionality of Traditional Culture for the Chinese Communist
Pa r t y,” Journal of Current Chinese Aairs 47, no. 3 (2018): 62–63. During his August 2013 speech at the National Propaganda and Ideological
Work Conference, Xi called China’s excellent culture the country’s “deepest cultural so power.” He also called the absorption of China’s
excellent culture a “strategic task” in the eort to attune Chinese transformation and the country’s developmental path.
92
Liu, “Rearming Cultural Condence and Imparting the Chinese Cultural Legacy,” Qiushi Journal 9, no. 3 (2017), http://english.qstheory.
cn/2017-09/01/c_1121522580.htm.
93
Didi Kirsten Tatlow, “Xi Jinping on Exceptionalism with Chinese Characteristics,” New York Times, October 14, 2014, https://sinosphere.
blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/xi-jinping-on-exceptionalism-with-chinese-characteristics; and Nathan Gardels, “Xi Launches Cultural
Counter-Revolution to Restore Confucianism as China’s Ideology,” Hungton Post, September 29, 2014, https://www.hupost.com/entry/
xi-jinping-confucianism_b_5897680.
94
Liu, “Rearming Cultural Condence”; and Xi Jinping, “Xi Jinping tan guojia wenhua ruan shili: Zengqiang zuo Zhongguo ren de guqi he
diqi” [Xi Jinping Talks about the National Culture’s So Power: Enhancing the Bones and Vital Energy of the Chinese] (speech delivered at
the 12th Collective Study of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on December 30, 2013), available at CPC News, June 25,
2015, http://cpc.people.com.cn/xuexi/n/2015/0625/c385474-27204268.html.
95
Christopher Ford refers to the cherry-picking of Confucianism for political purpose as “quasi-Confucian.” For more details, see Christopher
A. Ford, “e Party and the Sage: Communist China’s Use of Quasi-Confucian Rationalizations for One-Party Dictatorship and Imperial
Ambition,” Journal of Contemporary China 24, no. 96 (2015): 1032–47.
96
Laura-Anca Parepa, “Rebuilding National Unity through Discourse in China: Strategic Narrative and Concordance,” Travaux Interdisciplinaires
sur la Parole et le Langage, no. 33 (2017), https://journals.openedition.org/tipa/1871; and Carl Minzner, “Old Wine in an Ancient Bottle:
Changes in Chinese State Ideology,” Jamestown Foundation, China Brief, March 20, 2014, https://jamestown.org/program/old-wine-in-an-
ancient-bottle-changes-in-chinese-state-ideology.
20
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
Xi’s accession to power—instill morality within the party cadres and the society writ large.
97
As Xi
underscored at a 2017 session of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection:
Chinese excellent culture has become the gene of the Chinese nation, rooted in
the hearts of the Chinese people, subtly aecting the thought and behavior of the
Chinese people. e CCP is made up of outstanding sons and daughters of the
Chinese nation. e blood of the CCP is imbued with the ne genes of Chinese
traditional culture. e CCP political culture is therefore deeply inuenced by
our excellent traditional culture.
98
e training of party ocials now includes lectures on classical Chinese thinkers who insist on
traditional values such as benevolence, sincerity, and righteousness.
99
Students are taught from
a young age that CCP leaders are diligently upholding a model of governance inherited from the
most honorable Chinese historical gures.
100
Selected elements of tradition and philosophical
thought also provide a convenient rationale for the party’s continued and unchallenged grip
on power. Laura-Anca Parepa identies in particular that the Confucian “hierarchical and
virtue-based model—in which harmony is the key element for the relationship between rulers and
ruled, and the loyalty to the rulers is an indispensable condition—is seen as appropriate by the
Chinese leadership because it facilitates the maintenance of its authoritarian rule.”
101
Together with a renewed emphasis on the greatness of China’s tradition, the CCP’s domestic
narrative has blurred historical and civilizational demarcations, creating the illusion that party
rule is the “realization of the natural order of the Chinese cultural and social universe.”
102
In a
twist to the tradition of Marxist historical materialism, this narrative portrays the party’s rule
as preordained and inevitable by placing it in an uninterrupted, almost deterministic, historical
continuum. is account presents the CCP as the only rightful depository of China’s exceptional
cultural heritage, thus justifying its exclusive grip on domestic political power.
103
Elizabeth Perry
argues that the party wants to establish itself as the “acknowledged leader of a national revival that
lays claim not only to the legacy of modern revolution but also to much older symbols of cultural
splendor and power.”
104
At the same time as the party reminisces about the past and positions
itself as the rightful inheritor or successor of past traditions, it also consolidates its role as a willing
carrier or promoter of tradition into the future:
97
Under Hu Jintao, the CCP already saw the promotion of “China’s rened and excellent tradition” as a political tactic meant to enhance civic
morality. For further discussion of this tactic, see John Makeham, Lost Soul: Confucianism in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse
(Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008). For an in-depth discussion of what this tactic looks like under Xi, see Kubat, “Morality
as Legitimacy under Xi Jinping.”
98
Wang Zhengdong, “Jianshe dang nei zhengzhi wenhua ying huashi youxiu chuantong wenhua jichu” [Party’s Internal Political Cultural
Should Be Based on China’s Excellent Traditional Culture Foundations], PLA Daily, June 21, 2017, http://theory.gmw.cn/2017-06/21/
content_24845744.htm.
99
Jeremy Page, “Why China Is Turning Back to Confucius,” Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2015, https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-china-
is-turning-back-to-confucius-1442754000.
100
Amy Qin, “China Weighing More Emphasis on Traditional Culture in Textbooks,” New York Times, November 4, 2014, https://sinosphere.
blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/04/china-weighing-more-emphasis-on-traditional-culture-in-textbooks; and Robert Weatherley and Coirle
Magee, “Using the Past to Legitimise the Present: e Portrayal of Good Governance in Chinese History Textbooks,” Journal of Current
Chinese Aairs 47, no. 1 (2018): 41–69.
101
Parepa, “Rebuilding National Unity through Discourse in China.”
102
Kubat, “Morality as Legitimacy under Xi Jinping.”
103
Ondřej Klimeš, “China’s Cultural So Power: e Central Concept in the Early Xi Jinping Era (2012–2017),” Acta Universitatis Carolinae:
Philologica 2017, no. 4 (2018): 127–50.
104
Elizabeth J. Perry, “Cultural Governance in Contemporary China: ‘Re-orienting’ Party Propaganda,” Harvard-Yenching Institute, Working
Paper, 2013.
21
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
Such projection is paired with the elevation of the CCP to the role of an exclusive
enactor of traditional culture. e Party assigns itself the status of a natural,
default inheritor of Chinese civilizational heritage while at the same time
claiming the role of being its only legitimate carrier in the future. is new-found
role entwines the CCP with the narratives about the past and projections of the
future. As a result, the CCP places itself at the center of China’s civilizational
narrative—thereby becoming inseparable from discussions on the country’s
national development.
105
e CCP’s eorts to legitimize its absolute rule rest on an attempt to blur the demarcations
that would otherwise estrange the party from China’s broader historical and cultural tradition.
Its identity is increasingly based on an idiosyncratic amalgamation of Marxist-Leninist principles
mixed with cherry-picked Confucian elements and implicit references to glorious dynasties of
the past, something that may be called Sino-socialism.
106
Situating itself as the natural heir of an
inexorable process, the CCP can claim that it represents and embodies the “legacy of the cultural
tradition(s) of society and, with it, its cultural identity, nationalism and culturalism.”
107
e party
can thus assert itself as the only legitimate ruler on the basis that others would not have the same
ability to grasp China’s unique conditions.
Asserting a Condent Chinese Model
Insisting on China’s exceptionalism also helps the party assert its “right to determine and pursue
its own style of governance specic to its unique historical and cultural experience,” while refuting
all social and political models other than its own.
108
As the party monopolizes domestic visions of
national culture and history, it is “simultaneously suppressing alternative interpretations.”
109
Xi
Jinping noted in 2014 that “several thousand years ago, the Chinese nation trod a path that was
dierent from other nations’ culture and development.” He argued that the unique ability to start
up socialism with Chinese characteristics was enabled “by our country’s historical inheritance
and cultural traditions.”
110
Alternative governance models not only would be inappropriate; they
would be dangerous. In a speech at the College of Europe, Xi explained that China “cannot copy
the political system or development model of other countries because it would not t us and it
might even lead to catastrophic consequences.”
111
Chen Shuguang argues more explicitly that
China cannot conform to Western practices because “Western discourse is only the expression of
Western experience and its own version of modernity. For China’s historical and cultural tradition,
for China’s special national conditions, and for China’s historical practice, Western discourse can
only be something to be observed from a distance.” China has always found its path independently
and has “never simply copied the development model of the West, never followed the historical
105
Kubat, “Morality as Legitimacy under Xi Jinping,” 78.
106
Didi Kirsten Tatlow names it “China’s Cosmological Communism.” For more information, see Didi Kirsten Tatlow, “China’s Cosmological
Communism: A Challenge to Liberal Democracies,” MERICS China Monitor, July 18, 2018, https://www.merics.org/en/china-monitor/
cosmological-communism; and Kubat, “Morality as Legitimacy under Xi Jinping,” 71.
107
Holbig and Gilley, “In Search of Legitimacy in Post-Revolutionary China.”
108
Kubat, “Morality as Legitimacy under Xi Jinping,” 69.
109
Klimeš, “China’s Cultural So Power,” 138.
110
Tatlow, “Xi Jinping on Exceptionalism with Chinese Characteristics.”
111
John Ruwitch and Ben Blanchard, “Xi Says Multi-Party System Didn’t Work for China,” Reuters, April 1, 2014, https://www.reuters.com/
article/us-china-politics-xi/xi-says-multi-party-system-didnt-work-for-china-idUSBREA3107S20140402.
22
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
path of the West, nor has it simply applied the development logic of the West.”
112
Or as Xi told
Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras in 2014, “your ‘democracy’ is the democracy of ancient
Greece and Rome and it is your tradition. We have our tradition.”
113
Deng Xiaoping similarly rejected other sociopolitical systems 30 years earlier, arguing in
particular that capitalism “would get China nowhere.” Even Marxism should be adapted to better
t China’s specic situation, while socialism should be “tailored to Chinese conditions” and have
“a specically Chinese character”—in other words, it should become socialism with Chinese
characteristics.
114
Xi remains true to Deng’s heritage, albeit with an increased emphasis on the
Chineseness of the model.
115
is shi is attested by his addition in 2014 of “cultural self-condence”
(wenhua zixin) to the three other political self-condences dened in the November 2012 18th
Party Congress report: the country’s socialist path with Chinese characteristics (daolu zixin), its
guiding theory (lilun zixin), and its political system or institutions (zhidu zixin).
116
According
to Xi, cultural self-condence represents the “unique spiritual identity of the Chinese nation”
and encompasses not only China’s “excellent traditional culture” (Zhonghua youxiu chuantong
wenhua) but also its “revolutionary culture” and “socialist culture.”
117
It is considered as an integral
and indispensable component of the overall system: whereas the “economy is the esh and blood”
of the country and the nation, politics is its “skeleton” and culture is its “soul.”
118
If a country or a
nation “does not cherish its own ideology and culture, it will lose its ideological and cultural soul
(linghun) and will not be able to stand up.”
119
In other words, culture is utterly political, and in
ocial parlance it has become indistinguishable from ideology.
120
Portraying China as Inherently Peaceful
Aer the Tiananmen crisis and the collapse of the Soviet Union, as China’s rapid economic
growth and military modernization started to attract worldwide attention, Beijing’s elites began to
realize that they needed to alleviate mounting foreign anxieties about “the myth of [the] so-called
‘China t hreat.’ ”
121
What the Chinese literature also frequently refers to as the “so-called China
112
Chen, “Zhongguo shidai yu Zhongguo huayu.”
113
“Xi Jinping zhuxi Qufu jianghua: Shijie ruxue chuanbo, Zhongguo yao baochi chon fen huayuquan” [Xi Jinping’s Qufu Speech: To
Disseminate Confucian ought Worldwide, China Must Preserve Discourse Power], Guancha, September 29, 2019, https://www.guancha.
cn/XiJinPing/2014_09_29_271934.shtml.
114
Deng Xiaoping, “Building Socialism with a Specically Chinese Character,” People’s Daily, 1984, available at http://newlearningonline.
com/new-learning/chapter-4/deng-xiaoping-socialism-with-chinese-characteristics. Mao already adapted Marxist theories to the concrete
realities of modern China, including by replacing the absent large urban proletariat with the peasant rural masses to lead the revolution.
During the Sino-Soviet split, the Sinication of Marxism was a way to dierentiate China’s path from the Soviet Union’s in the competition
for leadership over the international Communist movement. See Delury, “ ‘Harmonious’ in China.”
115
“Xi Jinping: Zai jinian Kongzi danchen 2565 zhounian guoji xueshu yantaohui ji guoji ruxue lianhehui di wu jie huiyuan dahui kaimu
hui shang de jianghua” [Xi Jinping: Speech at the International Symposium to Commemorate Confucius’s 2565th Birthday and the
Commencement of the 5th General Body Meeting of the International Confucius Association], Xinhua, September 24, 2014, http://www.
xinhuanet.com/politics/2014-09/24/c_1112612018.htm.
116
Su Jiangyuan, “Xi Jinping guanzhu Guiyang Kongzi xuetang Hongyang chuantong wenhua zengqiang wenhua zixin” [Xi Jinping Pays Close
Attention to Guiyang’s Confucius School Promotion of Traditional Culture and Strengthening Cultural Self-Condence], China Daily,
March 7, 2014, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/hqzx/2014qglianghui/2014-03/07/content_17331643.htm; and “Xi Jinping de ‘di si ge zixin’ ”
[Xi Jinping’s “Four Self-Condences”], People’s D aily, December 26, 2014, http://cpc.people.com.cn/n/2014/1226/c64094-26280109.html.
117
“Zai qingzhu Zhongguo Gongchandang chengli 95 zhounian dahui shang de jianghua” [Speech at the 95th Anniversary of the Founding of
the Chinese Communist Party Celebration], Xinhua, July 1, 2016, http://www.xinhuanet.com//politics/2016-07/01/c_1119150660.htm.
118
Klimeš, “China’s Cultural So Power”; and “Xi Jinping de ‘di si ge zixin.’ ”
119
Zhao Yinping, “Wenhua zixin: Xi Jinping tichu de shidai keti” [Cultural Condence: Xi Jinping Raises a Timely Topic], Xinhua, August 5,
2016, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-08/05/c_1119330939.htm.
120
“Xi Jinping tan guojia wenhua ruanshili: Zengqiang zuo Zhongguoren de guqi he diqi” [Xi Jinping Discusses National Culture, So
Power: Enhancing the Moral Backbone and Condence of the Chinese People], People’s D aily, June 25, 2015, http://cpc.people.com.cn/
xuexi/n/2015/0625/c385474-27204268.html.
121
Yan Xuetong, “China’s Post–Cold War Security Strategy,” Contemporary International Relations 5, no. 5 (1995).
23
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
threat theory” mainly derives from the realist assumption that, as a rising power, China must
sooner or later challenge American hegemony and the existing international order, possibly
through war. Chinese intellectuals have played an important role in trying to steer the debate in
a more positive direction, providing a rationale for China’s claimed nonconfrontational rise as a
valid possibility. e invention of the peaceful rise (heping jueqi) concept in 2003 by Zheng Bijian,
then vice president of the Central Party School, is the rst example of deliberate eorts to mitigate
foreign anxieties about the country’s intentions as its material power grew. Zheng introduced the
term in a speech at the Boao Forum for Asia that year as follows:
e rise of a major power oen results in drastic change in international
conguration and world order, even triggers a world war. An important reason
behind this is [that] these major powers followed a path of aggressive war and
external expansion. Such a path is doomed to failure. In today’s world, how can we
follow such a totally erroneous path that is injurious to all, China included? China’s
only choice is to strive for rise, more importantly strive for a peaceful rise.
122
In a television interview a few months later, Zheng explained that presenting China’s rise as
essentially peaceful was nothing but a tactic to advance the country’s interests in a competitive
international environment: “Working in this way has its advantages—in obtaining greater
understanding, sympathy and support, in winning discourse power on the question of China’s
development path, in winning discourse power in the international sphere.”
123
e peaceful rise concept is a deliberate response to the China threat theory, presented,
as William Callahan notes, as a mirror image that “only makes sense when contrasted with its
opposite.”
124
It is an attempt to refute the image of China as a revisionist power that threatens the
peace and stability of the existing order by asserting the following instead:
Rather than a bellicose great power, China is a developing country with a long
history as a peace-loving nation. Rather than using Western international
relations theory to understand China’s rise in terms of the violent rise and fall of
great powers in Europe, we are told that China’s success needs to be understood
in the context of the peace and stability of the East Asian world order.
125
Zhang Feng concurs that China’s emphasis on pacist discourse is an attempt to mitigate
external suspicions about China’s rise and to create instead a friendly international environment
for its re-emergence while elevating China to the moral high ground.
126
e notion of peaceful rise
lingered within Chinese intellectual debates long aer Hu Jintao adopted instead the “peaceful
development” formulation in April 2004 on the grounds that “rise” sounded too provocative.
127
122
Zheng Bijian, “A New Path for China’s Peaceful Rise and the Future of Asia,” Brookings Institution, November 3, 2003, https://www.
brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/20050616bijianlunch.pdf; and Zheng Bijian, “China’s ‘Peaceful Rise’ to Great-Power Status,”
Foreign Aairs, September/October 2005, https://www.foreignaairs.com/articles/asia/2005-09-01/chinas-peaceful-rise-great-power-status.
123
Daniel Lynch, “Chinese inking on the Future of International Relations: Realism as the Ti or Rationalism as the Yong?” China Quarterly,
no. 197 (2009): 88.
124
William A. Callahan, “How to Understand China: e Dangers and Opportunities of Being a Rising Power,” Review of International Studies 31,
no. 4 (2005): 709.
125
Ibid.
126
See, for example, Zhang Feng, “e Rise of Chinese Exceptionalism in International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations 19,
no. 2 (2011): 305–28, http://fengzhang.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/e-Rise-of-Chinese-Exceptionalism-in-International-Relations.pdf.
127
See, for example, Qin Yaqing, “International Society as a Process: Institutions, Identities and China’s Peaceful Rise,” Chinese Journal of
International Politics 3, no. 2 (2010): 129–53; Elizabeth Economy, “e End of the ‘Peaceful Rise?’ ” Foreign Policy, November 28, 2010,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/11/28/the-end-of-the-peaceful-rise; Robert L. Suettinger, “e Rise and Descent of ‘Peaceful Rise,’ ” Hoover
Institution, China Leadership Monitor, October 30, 2004; and Barry Buzan, “e Logic and Contradictions of ‘Peaceful Rise/Development’
as China’s Grand Strategy,” Chinese Journal of International Politics 7, no. 4 (2014): 381–420.
24
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
Both formulations tried to convey the same idea, namely, that China wants to pursue its own
development and rise peacefully within the existing international order and therefore does not
represent any challenge whatsoever. As a 2008 essay by Chinese scholars explains: “China’s
peaceful development neither competes with the existing order, nor creates a separate order;
China’s rise merges with the existing international order and plays an active role in improving the
international order.”
128
Chinese spokespersons portray their country as inherently peaceful and benevolent in contrast
with an irrepressibly aggressive and conict-prone West.
129
ey claim that, as a result of its
unique historical experiences and cultural traditions, China’s own ascendancy will be dierent
from the Western hegemons of the past. In the same vein, over the years, Xi Jinping and other
leaders have insisted on China’s inherently peaceful nature: “in China’s blood, there is no DNA
for aggression.”
130
Rather, “for several millennia, peace has been in the blood of us Chinese and
a part of our DNA.”
131
When “seeking harmony and coexistence” has been “in the genes of the
Chinese nation throughout history,” when China needs peace “as much as human beings need air
and plants need sunshine,” how could China ever pursue hegemony or militarism?
132
Toward an Alternative Model for the World
e insistence on China’s unique characteristics and conditions seems at odds with the CCP’s
desire to construct a viable alternative vision for a new world order. If China’s conditions are so
unique, how could the Chinese model be replicated elsewhere? How could it wield any appeal
beyond China’s borders? e underlying assumption that the Chinese leadership attempts to
validate through its example is that, because countries dier in their historical conditions, cultural
heritage, and national conditions, there cannot be a universal model that ts all. Each country is
therefore entitled to choose its unique path of development.
133
e quest for a re-Sinication of the party’s ideology and identity goes in parallel with the search
for a non-Western value system and, by extension, a de-Westernization of the global system. In
particular, the rejection of the universality of liberal democratic values, as envisioned and enacted
by the current international order, has become the key element of China’s discourse power under
Xi Jinping. e instrumentalization of Chinese cultural and historical traditions for political
purposes is concomitant with a refutation of the West, which is portrayed as failing, dangerous,
and chaotic. China’s achievements are presented as a validation that the development path chosen
by the leadership is correct, viable, and ecient. Xi believes that in contrast to the “miraculous”
128
Li Jiehao and Yan Zhiqiang, “Lun Zhongguo heping fazhan jiqi dui guoji zhixu de yingxiang” [On China’s Peaceful Development and Its
Inuence on the World Order], Hunan University of Science and Technology Journal 11, no. 5 (2008): 50–51.
129
Christopher A. Ford, “Behind the Ocial Narrative: China’s Strategic Culture in Perspective,” interview by Mengjia Wan, National Bureau of
Asian Research (NBR), November 1, 2016, https://www.nbr.org/publication/behind-the-ocial-narrative-chinas-strategic-culture-in-perspective.
130
Minnie Chan, “President Xi Jinping Vows Peace, As PLA Top Brass Talks Tough and with Vietnam Ablaze,” South China Morning Post, May
18, 2014, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1514570/president-xi-jinping-vows-peace-pla-top-brass-talks-tough-and-vietnam; and
Wen Jiabao, “Turning Your Eyes to China” (speech delivered at Harvard University, Cambridge, December 10, 2003), https://www.fmprc.
gov.cn/ce/ceun/eng/zt/wfm/t56090.htm.
131
“Chinese President Eyes Shared, Win-Win Development for Mankind’s Future,” Xinhua, January 19, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com//
english/2017-01/19/c_135996080.htm; and “Xi Jinping Delivers Important Speech in City of London,” Ministry of Foreign Aairs (PRC),
Press Release, October 22, 2015, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/topics_665678/xjpdygjxgsfw/t1309012.shtml.
132
“Keynote Speech by H.E. Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, at the Opening Ceremony of the B20 Summit,” Ministry
of Foreign Aairs (PRC), September 3, 2016, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1396112.shtml; “Five Years
On, Xi’s Vision of Civilization More Revealing in an Uncertain World,” Xinhua, March 26, 2019, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-
03/26/c_137925322.htm; and “Xi Jinping Assures China Will Never Seek Hegemony,” GB Times, June 30, 2014, https://gbtimes.com/xi-
jinping-assures-china-will-never-seek-hegemony.
133
Klimeš, “China’s Cultural So Power.”
25
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
development brought about by socialism, “Western capitalism has suered defeats (nancial
crisis, debt crisis, trust crisis) and its condence has been shaken.”
134
State councilor Yang Jiechi
broadened this criticism to the Western-centric international system as a whole, underpinned by
Western values, that made it “increasingly dicult for Western governance concepts, systems,
and models to grasp the new international situation and keep up with the times,” to the point
of utter failure.
135
For Han Zhen, a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, the current
“systemic crisis” has proved the inferiority of the capitalist system, whereas the success of China’s
approach to development and its “outstanding economic performance” present “West-centrism
with a real challenge of historic signicance.”
136
e contest between the two models, including at
the ideological level, is “self-evident.”
137
Mainly used for domestic political legitimation purposes, Chinese exceptionalism provides a
framework for a revamped identity for the CCP and for the representation of its relation to Chinese
society. Chinese exceptionalism is also used as a propaganda tool to project the party-state’s image
abroad as infused with traditional Chinese wisdom and love for peace. e narrative helps present
the model chosen and embodied by the party and its accompanying values as distinct from, if not
superior to, those of the West. Finally, this narrative delineates the contours of the CCP’s vision
for the world, which needs to be coherent and compatible with the party’s overall projection of
identity. It provides the ideational framework within which Chinese intellectual elites must
work as they help conceptualize the leadership’s vision for what the world should look like under
China’s helm.
Brewing a Chinese Worldview
Karl Marx believed that the role of philosophy was not only to understand the world but also
to transform it. In a similar fashion, the CCP corrals Chinese experts in the humanities and social
sciences and seeks to point them in a direction that is in line with its own political principles,
thereby inuencing the formulation of China’s foreign discourse power and vision for the world.
As intellectual workers of the party-state, Chinese scholars are called to play a critical role in
support of the party’s endeavor. Guided to a large extent by the political leadership that allows or
prohibits the use of selected elements of Sinicized Marxism, Western theories, and repurposed
Chinese philosophical and historical traditions, these scholars need both to provide ideas and to
elaborate proposals that t with the CCP’s ideological underpinnings. ey also are called on to
“develop visionary interpretations of a future world order” that not only are compatible with the
ocial foreign policy strategy but also justify the leadership’s actions.
138
Chinese analyses identify
narratives such as the end of history, the clash of civilizations, and the paradigm of democratic
peace as “elements of foreign strategy that help to cement and stabilize the predominant position
134
“Xi Jinping zhuxi Qufu jianghua: Shijie ruxue chuanbo, Zhongguo yao baochi chongen huayuquan.”
135
Yang Jiechi, “Tuidong goujian renlei mingyun gongtongti” [Promoting Construction of the Community of Common Destiny], People’s
Daily, November 19, 2017, http://opinion.people.com.cn/n1/2017/1119/c1003-29654654.html.
136
Han Zhen, “Ziben zhuyi zhidu lie zhi hua de biran jieguo” [e Inevitable Result Outcome of the Capitalist System’s Inferiority], People’s
Daily, January 22, 2017, https://opinion.huanqiu.com/article/9CaKrnJZXsY; and Han Zhen, “On the ree Foundations of China’s Cultural
Self-Condence,” Qiushi Journal 9, no. 3 (2017), http://english.qstheory.cn/2017-09/01/c_1121528607.htm.
137
Zhang Guozuo “Tan tan ruan shili zai Zhongguo de fazhan” [Discussing the Development of So Power in China], Journal of Ideological
and Political Work, June 5, 2014, http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2014/0605/c168825-25109895.html.
138
Nele Noesselt, “Revisiting the Debate on Constructing a eory of International Relations with Chinese Characteristics,” China Quarterly,
no. 222 (2015): 445.
26
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
of the U.S. on the global stage.”
139
eories of international relations are generally understood as
a tool of power politics and as a crucial element of international discourse power. In this context,
the theories elaborated by Chinese scholars should not be misread as purportedly objective
frameworks for analysis but rather understood as strategically motivated constructs that align with
China’s national interests. Rather than a spontaneous phenomenon arising from open discussion
and debate, Beijing’s vision for a new world order is the result of an orchestrated eort meant to
support the CCP’s needs.
140
Scholars in a Gilded Cage
Although some scholars are adamant in presenting their work as entirely independent, purely
academic, and disconnected from politics,
141
their academic disciplines remain guided by political
directives.
142
However, Chinese scholarly voices and perspectives are not uniform: along with older
generations of Marxist scholars who were trained to apply historical and dialectic materialism,
there are younger intellectuals who have studied Western theories abroad as well as a rising group
of researchers who are now trying to dene an essentially Chinese paradigm.
143
Notwithstanding
this diversity, when it comes to strategic messaging, “the leadership still wields the conductor’s
baton over the ensemble of voices to ensure adherence to the main melody.”
144
In addition, the
party-state has traditionally put the work of “thinking circles, theoretical circles, and knowledge
circles” under political tutelage, constraining their thoughts and expression in a variety of ways.
145
Ideological control has markedly increased in recent years.
146
When they do not conform to party
orthodoxy, academics may nd themselves banned from publishing, teaching, or promotion.
147
Some might even get dismissed from their jobs, as was the case in March 2019 for law professor
Xu Zhangrun, a proponent of liberal Confucianism who was suspended from Tsinghua University
and put under investigation for his public critique of the party’s policies.
148
e CCP is in complete
control of research funding. Every year the National Planning Oce of Philosophy and Social
Science, a direct subordinate of the Central Leading Group for Propaganda and Ideological Work,
distributes research grants for projects that the party deems worthy through the National Social
139
Noesselt, “Revisiting the Debate,” 438–39.
140
Jyrki Kallio, Towards China’s Strategic Narrative (Rovaniemi: Lapland University Press, 2016), 214, https://lauda.ulapland./bitstream/
handle/10024/62614/Kallio_Jyrki_ActaE_207_pdfA.pdf.
141
Comments from Chinese scholars participating in the workshop “China’s Vision for a New World Order” convened by NBR and the
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Singapore, September 18, 2019.
142
Nele Noesselt, “Relations internationales et ordre global: une perspective chinoise” [International Relations and Global Order: A Chinese
Perspective] (presentation at the Institut des Amériques, Paris, February 2015), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TKBQc5h0VI.
143
Ibid.
144
Lutgard Lams, “Examining Strategic Narratives in Chinese Ocial Discourse under Xi Jinping,” Journal of Chinese Political Science 23, no. 3
(2018): 387–411.
145
Xi Jinping (speech delivered at the National Propaganda and Ideology Work Conference, Beijing, August 19, 2013), https://
chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/xi-jinpings-19-august-speech-revealed-translation.
146
Chloé Froissart, “Changing Pattern of Chinese Civil Society: Comparing the Hu-Wen and Xi Jinping Eras,” in Lam, e Routledge Handbook
of the Chinese Communist Party, 352–71.
147
Chloé Froissart, “Issues in Social Science Debate in Xi Jinping’s China,” China Perspectives, no. 4 (2018): 3–9.
148
Echo Xie and Su Xinqi, “Tsinghua University Suspends Xu Zhangrun, Chinese Law Professor Who Criticised Xi Jinping,” South China
Morning Post, March 27, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3003397/tsinghua-university-suspends-chinese-law-
professor-who; and Chris Buckley, “A Chinese Law Professor Criticized Xi. Now He’s Been Suspended,” New York Times, March 26, 2019,
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/world/asia/chinese-law-professor-xi.html.
27
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
Science Fund of China.
149
Research projects outside the party’s interests will not get nancial
support. is “steering of research by the authorities through funding is not unique to China,”
notes Chloé Froissart. As occurs elsewhere, “Chinese social scientists are now familiar with the
art of ‘packaging’ their research projects in the Newspeak of the Party in order to obtain the funds
they need to conduct research over which they still retain partial control.”
150
Some of them will
choose to closely toe the party line, sometimes to the point that their publications are almost
indistinguishable from propaganda pieces. Others are able to skillfully bring original ideas and
perspectives to the discussion, always aware that the invisible boundaries delineated by the party
cannot be crossed without the risk of paying a personal price.
151
It is impossible to assess the full impact of the work of these scholars on the leadership’s
thinking and decisions. But there is undoubtedly a conversation going on between Chinese
intellectual workers and CCP ocials. Regular study sessions organized on campus by the
political commissars embedded in their respective institutions, or outside their working units,
are opportunities to remind scholars of the more or less explicit boundaries within which they
are supposed to cogitate.
152
Conversely, some scholars are also regularly invited to meetings
with high-ranking Chinese leaders. For example, Qin Yaqing and Gao Fei gave lectures at the
Politburo sessions on global governance,
153
and a dozen scholars representing a variety of
academic institutions were invited to make presentations to Xi Jinping at a May 2016 symposium
on philosophy and the social sciences.
154
And there are undoubtedly more opportunities for direct
interactions between the political authorities and the intellectual elites that are not being reported
in the Chinese media.
Creating Theories That Reect “China’s Distinct Characteristics”
e top leadership issues general instructions to the intellectual elites, usually leaving the
responsibility of their interpretation to the scholars themselves, who then go on to develop
concrete ideas and “try to further esh out the contents of these political labels.”
155
e vagueness
149
Heike Holbig, “Shiing Ideologies of Research Funding: e CPC’s National Planning Oce for Philosophy and Social Sciences,” Journal
of Current Chinese Aairs 43, no. 2 (2014): 18. e list of project topics, principal investigators, and the institutions to which they belong
is published every year in June. In 2019, over 3,100 projects were funded. See “Zhong bang! 2019 nian Guojia Shehui Kexue jijin lixiang
mingdan gongshi (xibu xiangmu)” [Important! 2019 National Social Sciences Foundation Projects Were Made Public (Western Projects)],
Green Tower, June 25, 2019, https://www.cingta.com/detail/11791.
150
Froissart, “Issues in Social Science Debate in Xi Jinping’s China.”
151
Perry Link, “China: e Anaconda in the Chandelier,” China File, April 11, 2002, http://www.chinale.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/
china-anaconda-chandelier.
152
As Froissart aptly notes, “the irony is that in Chinese, to study (xuexi/xue Xi/学习) is pronounced the exact same way as ‘studying Xi’s
thought’ thus it seems that the only thing to really study is indeed the thought of the new helmsman. A new App, called ‘xuexi qiangguo’
which can be understood as ‘studying to strengthen the nation’ (xuexi qiangguo), but also as ‘studying Xi’s thought to strengthen the
country’ appeared in 2018. Professors and researchers are supposed to spend at least two hours per day on it in order to read articles about
Xi’s thought and to watch propaganda videos.” For more information, see Filip Noubel, “China’s Xi Jinping Has Muzzled Social Sciences,
Says French Sinologist Chloé Froissart,” Global Voices, July 13, 2019, https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/07/13/chinese-xi-jinping-muzzled-
social-sciences-says-french-sinologist-chloe-froissart.
153
Xiaoyu Pu and Chengli Wang, “Rethinking China’s Rise: Chinese Scholars Debate Strategic Overstretch,” International Aairs 94, no. 5
(2018): 1025.
154
e list of scholars includes Ru Xin, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Lin Yifu, a professor at the National
Development Research Institute of Peking University; Zhong Jun, a researcher at the Marxist Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences; Fan Jinshi, a researcher at the Dunhuang Research Academy; Zhang Weiwei, a professor at the Chinese Institute of Fudan
University; Kang Zhen, a professor at the Faculty of Literature of Beijing Normal University; Ma Huaide, a professor at the Chinese University
of Political Science and Law; Shen Zhuanghai, a professor at the Marxist School of Wuhan University; Jin Yinan, a professor at the Strategic
Research Institute of National Defense University; and Wang Wen, a researcher at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies of Renmin
University. For context, see “Xi Jinping zhuchi zhaokai zhexue shehui kexue gongzuo zuotanhui” [Xi Jinping Presided over the Convening of
the Philosophy and Social Sciences Symposium], Xinhua, May 17, 2016, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-05/17/c_1118882832.htm.
155
Nadine Godehardt, “No End of History: A Chinese Alternative Concept of International Order?” Stiung Wissenscha und Politik (SWP)
German Institute for International and Security Aairs, SWP Research Paper, January 2016, https://www.swp-berlin.org/leadmin/
contents/products/research_papers/2016RP02_gdh.pdf.
28
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
of the center’s instructions sometimes provokes intense debates among experts. In a speech
at a conference on Marxist theoretical research held in June 2012, Li Changchun, the Politburo
member in charge of propaganda under Hu Jintao, expressed for the rst time the need for China
to create an academic discourse system that would reect its “distinct characteristics, style, and
imposing manner” (Zhongguo tese, Zhongguo fengge, Zhongguo qipai) and take inspiration not
only from China’s history, traditions, and culture but also from the remarkable success of the
country’s “practice and path” under the CCP leadership: “Once China’s development path is
recognized worldwide, it will certainly produce a tremendous shock, an attraction eect and an
inspiration force.”
156
During a May 2016 symposium on philosophy and social science, Xi Jinping repeated most of
Li’s ideas. Xi emphasized the political and strategic role “of the highest importance” that scholars
have to play, noting that the purpose of their work as “advocates of advanced ideas, pioneers of
academic research, leaders of social conduct, and staunch supporters of the party’s ruling” is to
place China at the “leading edge of the world.”
157
At a time when China is experiencing tremendous
changes, scholars are expected not only to oer their expertise to inform and support CCP
policymakers but also to contribute to theoretical innovations that build on China’s own practice
and help attract global attention. Xi reminded scholars that “Marxism must always occupy the
guiding position” in their deliberations, as it emphasizes “not only explaining the world but also
changing it.” At the same time, he called them to accelerate the construction of a disciplinary
eld with “Chinese characteristics, style, and air and of universal signicance” that incorporates
China’s “excellent culture,” “the most basic, profound, and lasting force.” Developing a Chinese
system of social science discourse is necessary to “achieve the goal of a struggle that has lasted for
two centuries and achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
158
e development of distinctively Chinese social science theories is seen as integral to the
party’s ideological and propaganda work and its so appeal to the rest of the world.
159
According
to Xi, philosophy and social science are the “foundations that support the discourse system.
Without our own philosophy and social science system, there will be no discourse power.”
160
In this particular context, “theory” is understood as normative rather than scientic. Chinese
scholars are not called to provide empirical, predictive, value-free theories but are asked to
156
“Li Changchun chu Makesi zhuyi lilun yanjiu jianshe gongcheng gongzuo huiyi” [Li Changchun’s Speech at the Marxist eory Research
Working Conference], Xinhua, June 2, 2012, http://www.gov.cn/ldhd/2012-06/02/content_2151697.htm; Wu Jieming, “Dazao juyou
Zhongguo tese, Zhongguo fengge, Zhongguo qipai lilun xueshu huayu tixi” [Constructing an Academic Discourse System with Chinese
Characteristics, Style, and Flair], National Oce for Philosophy and Social Sciences (PRC), June 11, 2012, http://www.npopss-cn.gov.
cn/GB/219470/18137050.html; Li Peilin, “Dazao juyou Zhongguo tese, Zhongguo fengge, Zhongguo qipai de duiwai huayuquan tixi”
[Building a Foreign Discourse Power System with Chinese Characteristics, Style, and Flair], Marxism and Reality, no. 4 (2014); and Xie
Fuzhan, “Jianshe juyou Zhongguo tese Zhongguo fengge Zhongguo qipai de zhexue shehui kexue” [Building Philosophy with Chinese
Characteristics, Style, and Flair], Qiushi Journal, October 15, 2018, http://www.qstheory.cn/dukan/qs/2018-10/15/c_1123554669.htm.
157
“Xi Jinping zhuchi zhaokai zhexue shehui kexue gongzuo zuotanhui” [Xi Jinping Presided over the Convening of the Philosophy and Social
Sciences Symposium], Xinhua, May 17, 2016, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-05/17/c_1118882832.htm.
158
“Xi Jinping zhuchi zhaokai zhexue shehui kexue gongzuo zuotanhui”; Han Zhen, “Jiakuai goujian Zhongguo tese zhexue shehui kexue de
yiyi” [e Signicance of Accelerating the Construction of Philosophy and Social Sciences with Chinese Characteristics], National Oce
for Philosophy and Social Sciences (PRC), May 17, 2017, http://www.npopss-cn.gov.cn/n1/2017/0517/c219468-29280510.html; “Xi Jinping
zhuchi zhaokai zhexue shehui kexue gongzuo zuotan hui” [Xi Jinping Presided over the Symposium on Philosophy and Social Science
Work], Xinhua, May 17, 2016, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-057/c_1118882832.htm; and Xie Changli, “Chinese President Xi
Jinping Addresses a Forum on Philosophy and Social Sciences,” Peking University, May 30, 2016, http://newsen.pku.edu.cn/news_events/
news/focus/4784.htm.
159
“Xi Jinping chuxi quanguo xuanchuan sixiang gongzuo huiyi bing fabiao jianghua” [Xi Jinping Delivered a Speech at the National
Propaganda ought Conference], Xinhua, August 23, 2018, http://www.xinhuanet.com/2018-08/23/c_129938245.htm.
160
Xi Jinping, “Zai quanguo dang xiao gongzuo huiyi shang de jianghua” [Speech at the National Party School Conference], Qiushi Journal,
April 30, 2016, http://www.qstheory.cn/dukan/qs/2016-04/30/c_1118772415.htm.
29
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
describe how the world system should be organized as a critique of the prevailing system’s faults
and a validation of the party’s view.
Based on Xi’s guidance, the Central Leading Group for Comprehensive Deepening Reform
adopted a document charting the future development of the eld, which was publicly released in
May 2017.
161
e document mostly reiterates Xi’s points and highlights in particular the need to
use “Chinese theories to interpret Chinese practice, use Chinese practice to sublimate Chinese
theories, innovate in foreign discourse expressions, and enhance [China’s] international discourse
power.”
162
In other words, as Froissart notes, the CCP leadership assigned a very specic mission
to Chinese scholars: to contribute to the “development of the regime’s ideology and of a model
of social, economic, political and environmental modernity that can be exported abroad.”
163
is
model will be capable of “competing with the Euro-American conception of modernity, of liberal
and capitalist inspiration. us, the renaissance of the great Chinese nation will be completed by
its ability to theorize and export this alternative model of modernity and ‘civilization.’ ”
164
eorized by Chinese scholars, the contours of this newly created exportable model of modernity
should naturally mirror what makes China unique and display what makes it successful. It cannot
include any Western concepts, ideals, or values. “Document 9,” widely circulated internally by the
CCP General Oce in April 2013, made clear that such “false ideological trends, positions, and
activities” gravely endanger the prospects of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. “Western
constitutional democracy” and its appended principles of multiparty elections, the separation of
powers, and an independent judiciary, among others, are essentially at odds with China’s system of
government in which the party’s leadership is placed above everything else. e promotion of civil
society (based on the idea that individual rights are paramount) and economic liberalism (relying
on private property and markets to guide economic activity) contradicts the CCP’s dogma of tight
socioeconomic control. From the party’s perspective, universal values are a threatening concept,
“using the West’s value system to supplant the core values of Socialism.” e idea of universal
values is “confusing and deceptive” because it amounts to claiming that “the West’s value system
dees time and space, transcends nation and class, and applies to all humanity.”
165
Zhang Zhizhou, a professor at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, notes that a country’s
foreign discourse power must reect “many factors such as its national ideology, values, cultural
traditions, interest concerns, foreign strategies, and so on.…A strong international discourse
power is conducive to maintaining or promoting national concepts, values, and cultural traditions,
and then guides the mainstream of international discourse.” In this national eort to counter
“discursive attacks from the West,” the signicance of China’s academic discourse power “cannot
be ignored.”
166
Ondřej Klimeš observes that the CCP’s eorts to tightly weave China’s cultural
and philosophical traditions into its ideology are not only meant for domestic audiences but also
part and parcel of a foreign propaganda strategy intended to “solicit international understanding
and acceptance” and to “project the values of the PRC.” For the party, the display of China’s
161
“Zhonggong zhongyang yinfa ‘guanyu jiakuai goujian Zhongguo tese zhexue shehui kexue de yijian’ ” [Issued by the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of China: Concerning Acceleration of the Construction of Philosophy and Social Sciences with Chinese
Characteristics], Xinhua, May 16, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2017-05/16/c_1120982602.htm.
162
Ibid.
163
Quoted in Noubel, “China’s Xi Jinping Has Muzzled Social Sciences.”
164
Froissart, “Issues in Social Science Debate in Xi Jinping’s China.”
165
“Document 9: A ChinaFile Translation,” ChinaFile, November 8, 2013, http://www.chinale.com/document-9-chinale-translation.
166
Zhang Zhizhou “Guoji huayuquan jianshe zhong ji da jichu xing lilun wenti” [Some Basic eoretical Issues in the Building of International
Discourse Power], Study Times, February 2, 2017, http://inews.ifeng.com/50734440/news.shtml?&back.
30
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
culture is nothing but a “suitable communication channel for ‘explaining China’s story’ (or
stories). Glorious, ancient Chinese culture should be presented to the world in order to explain
China’s civilized progress and peaceful development and to elucidate the plentiful meanings of the
China Dream.”
167
China’s outstanding culture, noble past, and splendid civilization are therefore
considered as nothing less than convenient instruments that Chinese intellectuals are allowed
to choose from in order to create a countervailing point to the Western monopoly of discourse
power. From the large toolbox now at their disposal, Chinese scholars can pick whatever they nd
valuable and leave what they do not, meticulously selecting and repurposing specic elements that
justify the end, “keeping fully in mind the experiences, lessons and warnings of history.”
168
At the core of Chinese scholars’ reections on alternative world systems lies an attempt to
challenge the universal applicability of Western theories, a trend that has noticeably accelerated
since the 2008 global nancial crisis. As Zhang Xiping writes, “the theory that Western economic
progress proves the superiority of its culture does not correspond to historical facts. We must
consider Western culture as a regional culture, so that we can end the myth of an equivalence
between Western culture and modernity.”
169
Chen Shuguang explains that the Western discourse,
which has matured over hundreds of years and is shaping the global order and world system, is
“only the expression of a Western experience and a Western version of modernity.” In contrast,
China’s discourse is the “theoretical expression of China’s path, the theoretical promotion of
China’s experience.” It ultimately reects China’s own vision of modernity. Modernization cannot
be avoided, but the road to modernization does not necessarily have to follow the Western model:
“Western modernity is only a version of modernity, not the only version.”
170
Motivated by their mission to serve their country’s future role and fulll its responsibilities in
the world, Chinese thinkers have increasingly turned to China’s history and cultural traditions for
inspiration to bring about indigenous IR theories.
171
Already in 2001, Zhang Yongjin was writing
that “no credible IR theory can be built upon the narrow connes of the European historical
experience.…China’s rich and deep history is an important avenue for exploring other world
orders.”
172
Similarly, in a 2005 lecture at Tsinghua University, Gan Yang called for “uniting the
three traditions” (those of the Qing dynasty, Maoist socialism, and Dengist reform and opening)
in order to reimagine the narrative of Chinese modernity.
173
Despite the modernization of IR
research in China, the introduction of Western methods, and the recent eorts to create Chinese
concepts and theories, Marxism is still omnipresent in Chinese IR debates. Nele Noesselt notes
that “even though the younger generation of Chinese IR scholars now oen looks at the world
through neo-realist glasses, their research is at the same time deeply inuenced by the remnants of
Maoist-Marxist concepts.”
174
ese remnants can be found in their terminology (such as references
167
Klimeš, “China’s Cultural So Power.”
168
Tatlow, “Xi Jinping on Exceptionalism with Chinese Characteristics.”
169
Zhang Xiping, “Pochu xifang zhongxin zhuyi shi wenhua zixin de qianti” [Breaking the Doctrine of Western Centrality Is the Premise of
Cultural Condence], XuanJiangJia, January 26, 2018, http://www.71.cn/2018/0126/984048.shtml.
170
Chen, “Zhongguo shidai yu Zhongguo huayu.”
171
Ren Xiao, “e International Relations eoretical Discourse in China: One World, Dierent Explanations,” Journal of Chinese Political
Science 15, no. 1 (2010): 99–116.
172
Zhang Yongjin, “System, Empire and State in Chinese International Relations,” Review of International Studies 27, no. 5 (2001): 43–63.
173
David Ownby and Timothy Cheek, “Jiang Shigong on Philosophy and History: Interpreting the ‘Xi Jinping Era’ through Xi’s Report to the
Nineteenth National Congress of the CCP,’ ” China Story, May 11, 2018, https://www.thechinastory.org/cot/jiang-shigong-on-philosophy-
and-history-interpreting-the-xi-jinping-era-through-xis-report-to-the-nineteenth-national-congress-of-the-ccp.
174
Noesselt, “Revisiting the Debate.”
31
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
to “contradictions” or “historical and dialectical materialism”) as well as in their critiques of
hegemony and the inequalities of global power distribution.
175
Chinese Schools of International Relations
According to Ren Xiao, a professor of international relations at Fudan University, there are
four main Chinese schools currently discussing indigenous approaches to IR theory.
176
eir work
reects on principles of interaction, power distribution, and the overall structure of the world
system as seen from an essentially Chinese perspective.
First is the Tsinghua school, led by Tsinghua University professor Yan Xuetong, which focuses
on the pre–Spring and Autumn (770–476 BCE) and Warring States (475–221 BCE) periods to study
interactions between independent kingdoms in a context not dominated by the West. Yan has
elaborated a theory of moral realism that combines material power with an enlightened political
leadership and argues that “true kingship” or “humane authority” over a hierarchically organized
international system is the only way to maintain a long-lasting and stable order.
177
Tsinghua was
one of the rst academic centers to research the applicability of ancient Chinese theories and
stratagems to contemporary and future international relations.
178
e second school is led by Qin Yaqing, a professor at China Foreign Aairs University who
was one of the early proponents of a Chinese school of international relations.
179
He mostly
explores international relations through a Confucian prism, contrasting “relationality” based on
interactions and “relatedness” with the Western emphasis on individualistic rationality. Instead
of institutions, rules, and norms as enforcers of cooperation and governance, Qin believes that
a country’s interests can be realized through a process of managing relations with other states.
Interactions are akin to a parent-child rather than a brother-sister relationship: the strong have the
responsibility to protect the weak, and the weak must obey the desires of the strong.
ird, Zhao Tingyang, a professor of philosophy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
spent the rst decade of the 21st century revisiting the traditional concept of tianxia (everything
under heaven) as a utopian future alternative to the anarchic, violent, and zero-sum Westphalian
order. Zhao’s version of tianxia is of a hierarchical “world society” that transcends borders and
whose ruling center is not democratically elected but legitimated through its compliance with
moral and ethical values.
180
Finally, a group of international relations scholars at Fudan University in Shanghai has focused
on developing a symbiotic theory that underlines the importance of harmony with dierences and
in which diverse cultures and civilizations coexist on the basis of equality.
It is not yet clear whether one of these schools of thought predominantly inuences the
discourse within the Chinese political elite, but at least three of them call for the creation of a
hierarchical system justied by the moral authority of the ruling power. Cognizant of the fact that
175
Li Bin, “Shenme shi Makesi zhuyi de guoji guanxi lilun?” [What Is Marxist IR eory?], Shijie Jingji yu Zhengzhi 5 (2005): 37–44.
176
e following discussion is based on Ren Xiao’s presentation at the NBR-RSIS workshop, Singapore, September 18, 2019.
177
Yan Xuetong, “Xun Zi’s ought on International Politics and eir Implications,” Chinese Journal of International Politics 2, no. 1 (2008):
135–65; and Yan Xuetong, “A Comparative Study of Pre-Qin Interstate Political Philosophy,” in Ancient ought, Modern Chinese Power, ed.
Daniel Bell and Zhe Sun (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 21–69.
178
Noesselt, “Relations internationales et ordre global.”
179
Qin Yaqing, “Guoji guanxi lilun de hexin wenti yu Zhongguo xuepai de shengcheng” [Core Issues of International Relations eory and the
Construction of a Chinese School], Zhongguo shehui kexue 26, no. 3 (2005): 165–76.
180
Zhao Tingyang, “Tianxia tixi: Diguo yu shijie zhidu” [e Tianxia System: Empire and World Institutions], Shijie Zhexue 5 (2003): 2–33;
and Tianxia tixi: Shijie zhidu zhexue daolun [e Tianxia System: An Introduction to the Philosophy of a World Institution] (Nanjing:
Jiangsu Education Press, 2005). For more information, see Godehardt, “No End of History.”
32
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
the ancient form of tianxia and its suzerainty-vassalage relations may be dicult to sell in a world
where the idea of sovereign equality is an accepted norm, Chinese scholars are trying to adapt and
tone down this concept’s most problematic characteristics. But the concept is helpful in dening a
new world order along the lines desired by the Chinese leadership.
Exploring Everything Under the Heavens
e concept of tianxia is highly debated within and outside China and can have several meanings:
a geographic entity, a political system, a cultural unit, a worldview, or even a moral aspiration.
181
It
can be described as a borderless order with China at its center; a benign hierarchical order guided
by morality and administered for the benet of all, whose attractiveness to surrounding regions is
not coercive, and where the center protects the periphery while the periphery is subordinated to
the center. is concept is also informed by a sense of the superiority of the Chinese civilization
(huaxia) over that of surrounding states, which were “expected to ‘come and be transformed’ by
the superior culture of the central polity.”
182
Finally, it is associated with the tributary system that
prevailed in East Asia until the nineteenth century in which Chinese emperors expected their
vassals to acknowledge their superiority in exchange for the son of heaven’s permission to engage
in trade and promise of military protection.
Yuen Foong Khong argues that American hegemony is a contemporary form of tianxia: as
the epicenter of a network of alliances, the United States oers its allies and partners (similar to
tributaries) protection and access to its markets in return for their recognition of the United States
as the hegemon and their emulation of its political ideas and norms.
183
Wang Gungwu asserts that
tianxia is more an imaginative vision than an exact equivalent of world order. Over the centuries,
many forms of tianxia have existed, sometimes threatening China’s own tianxia and sometimes
coexisting peacefully, such as India’s Buddhism, the Mediterranean monotheist religions, and the
Turco-Mongol, Persian, and Roman empires.
184
Modern Chinese intellectuals have turned to the tianxia concept, albeit dierently at dierent
times, to help dene and articulate their worldview. Kang Youwei, the leader of the reform
movement of 1898 and a Confucian scholar, wove the tianxia idea into his vision of a united
world community (datong, meaning “great unity”). is community, “with strong socialist
overtones, transcends the state, ethnicity, class, gender and other relations of hierarchy and
domination” and leads to global peace, in which “people are freed from particular attachments
and all goals are shared in common.”
185
Lei Zhang and Zhengrong Hu see in the tianxia utopia
strong commonalities with another utopia, Communism. ey note that Mao Zedong believed
that Kang Youwei “had failed to nd the real path to great unity, which was only possible ‘through
181
For further discussion of this concept, see Fairbank, ed., e Chinese World Order; Yuri Pines, “Changing View of Tianxia in Pre-imperial
Discourse,” OE 43 (2002): 101–16, http://yuri-pines-sinology.com/les/tianxia-oe.pdf; William A. Callahan, “Chinese Visions of World
Order: Post-Hegemonic or a New Hegemony?” International Studies Review 10, no. 4 (2008): 749–61; June Teufel Dreyer, “e ‘Tianxia
Trope’: Will China Change the International System?” Journal of Contemporary China 24, no. 96 (2015): 1015–31; Allen Carlson, “Moving
Beyond Sovereignty?” Journal of Contemporary China 20, no. 68 (2011): 89–102; “Xin Tianxia zhuyi sanren tan: Junzi heerbutong de shijie
yuanjing” [ree People Discuss New Tianxia’ism: A World Vision of Noblemen and Harmony with Diversity], Paper (China), March 22,
2015, https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1313275; Chang Chi-hsiung, “Jindai Dongya guoji tixi de benjie yu zaisheng” [e
Disintegration and Rebirth of Modern East Asia’s International System], Jiangsu Planning Oce of Philosophy and Social Science (PRC),
June 27, 2014, http://jspopss.jschina.com.cn/shekedongtai/201406/t20140627_1503591.shtml; and Zhao Suisheng, “Rethinking the Chinese
World Order: e Imperial Cycle and the Rise of China,” Journal of Contemporary China 24, no. 96 (2015): 961–82.
182
Frank Dikötter, e Discourse of Race in Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 2.
183
Yuen Foong Khong, “e American Tributary System,” Chinese Journal of International Politics 6, no. 1 (2013): 1–47.
184
Based on Wang Gungwu’s remarks at the NBR-RSIS workshop, Singapore, September 18, 2019.
185
Ban Wang, ed., Chinese Visions of World Order (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 60.
33
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
the people’s republic that reaches socialism and communism to achieve the annihilation of social
class and the great unity of Tianxia.’ ” Following the founding of the PRC in October 1949, “the
slogans on Tian’anmen Gatetower was [sic] nalized as ‘Long Live People’s Republic of China’
and ‘Long Live the Great Unity of Tianxia People’ which reects the international order view of a
socialist country.”
186
Contemporary discussions about Chinese visions for a future world order oen include
the tianxia concept, useful not only because of its cultural signicance and implicit reference
to a historical past in which China was dominant, but also for its vagueness. When applied to
contemporary worldviews for a future order, the concept’s ambiguity allows for interpreters to
elide its most problematic imperialistic undertones. Instead of proposing a plain tianxia redux,
Chinese scholars are trying to think about modern, soened versions of the system that would be
more appropriate for a 21st-century international order based on sovereign equality and preclude
potential suspicions about Beijing’s views of a future world order.
187
In order to assuage the potential fear born of history that China’s neighbors may feel, Chinese
historian Xu Jilin describes a “tianxia 2.0” that is very dierent from the old Asian order. It would
essentially be “de-centered and non-hierarchical”:
In the new tianxia order, there is no center, there are only independent and peaceful
peoples and states who respect one another. Nor will there be a hierarchical
arrangement of power in terms of domination and enslavement, protection and
submission; instead it will be a peaceful order of egalitarian co-existence, one
that spurns authority and domination.…And in the international, external
order, China’s relations with its neighbors and indeed every nation in the world,
regardless of whether they are great or small nations, will be dened by the
principles of respect for each other’s sovereign independence, equality in their
treatment of each other, and peaceful co-existence.
188
Evidently concerned that references to the re-establishment of a Chinese order would arouse
international suspicion about China’s hegemonic ambitions, Jian Junbo, from the Institute of
International Studies of Fudan University, likewise has attempted to adapt the tianxia concept
for contemporary needs. Instead of one “core country,” he proposes creating the modern version
of tianxia around a group of countries that together could eliminate the hegemon’s dominance.
However, Jian concedes that it would be impossible to completely erase the concept’s hierarchical
structure because “in any given order, there exists an uneven distribution of power.” In the
new tianxia order that he envisages, the most powerful countries might enjoy special privileges
corresponding to their might, but they will also bear the greatest international obligations.
189
Other scholars insist on tianxia’s benevolent nature. In a detailed essay written in 2015, Li
Yangfan from Peking University’s School of International Studies describes tianxia as a public
good provided by the ancient Chinese dynasties to their neighbors. In exchange, these countries
obtained material and cultural benets as well as enhanced domestic political legitimacy.
186
Lei Zhang and Zhengrong Hu, “Empire, Tianxia and Great Unity: A Historical Examination and Future Vision of China’s International
Communication,” Global Media and China 2, no. 2 (2017): 197–207; and Bart Dessein, “Yearning for the Lost Paradise: e ‘Great Unity’
(datong) and Its Philosophical Interpretations,” Asijke Studike 5, no. 1 (2017): 83–102.
187
Wang Gungwu, Renewal: e Chinese State and the New Global History (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2013), available at https://
www.thechinastory.org/2013/08/wang-gungwu-王庚武-on-tianxia-天下.
188
Xu Jilin, “e New Tianxia: Rebuilding China’s Internal and External Order,” trans. Mark McConaghy, Tang Xiaobing, and David Ownby,
Reading the China Dream, 2018, https://www.readingthechinadream.com/xu-jilin-the-new-tianxia.html.
189
Jian Junbo, “Cong ‘minzu guojia tixi’ dao ‘tianxia tixi’: Keneng de guoji zhixu?” [From “National System” to “Tianxia System”: A Possible
International Order?], International Relations Research, no.1 (2015).
34
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
China was the originator and maintainer of a system that other free-riding members wanted to
maintain in order to perpetuate the rewards that came with it. Most importantly, the Chinese
emperor’s support helped local rulers maintain their hold on power in the vassal states. In an
interesting thought exercise, Li describes tianxia as a proto-version of the Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI).
190
Jiang Shigong, a legal scholar and professor at Peking University Law School, insists on
tianxia’s universalism, in part because it helps justify China’s development model and political
system as equally legitimate to other (Western) ones: “a truly universal tianxia theory can
contain within it varied developmental models.” is interpretation also reinforces the claim
of China’s inherent peacefulness and respect for other cultures: “China respected the culture of
neighboring countries and was good at adopting the positive points of those cultures for her own
continual improvement, in such a manner providing a model posture and attracting the study
and emulation of neighboring countries and regions.” China, therefore, will absolutely “never
force its development model on other countries as the West has done.”
191
New Paradigm or Old Realpolitik?
e construction of a Chinese paradigm rooted in Chinese tradition does not aim at dening
abstract theories that explain patterns of international behavior. Instead, this aims at providing
a discursive framework that helps the party-state justify its ambitions while defusing external
threat perceptions. Eorts to deny the applicability of concepts that are labeled as Western—and
therefore as fundamentally alien to Chinese culture—are meant to obscure the reality of China’s
assertiveness. rough the eyes of Chinese scholars (and, by extension, of the Chinese leaders), the
use of force may well be interpreted as an attempt to restore harmony and to abide by Confucian
ideals of order and stability. It remains an expression of power politics and reects rational
cost-benet calculations.
192
Tianxia thus may be used as a euphemism for Chinese hegemony.
193
Although soened by adjectives such as benevolent or humane or described as the result of a
revered ancient virtue called the “kingly way,” it remains associated with imperial expansionism
and rooted in hard power. As Callahan concludes, attempts to dene an alternative to Western
hegemony do not lead to “a post-hegemonic international society that is more uid and open, but
a dierent hegemony that is centered on the dynamic relationship of civil and military values
in China.”
194
As they wrestle with the elaboration of a vision for a new world order, Chinese elites usually
refer back to tianxia, even if they may have dierent interpretations for what it precisely means and
entails. eir idea is not to slavishly re-enact an ancient system but to use a Chinese framework to
think about the world. e problem is that tianxia, just like “empire,” conjures up negative images
of hierarchy, domination, and submission. Its usefulness as a public label for Beijing’s vision for
a new world order is thus very limited. Nonetheless, the concept infuses academic discussions
and may even already inform China’s external behavior. Even if Chinese intellectuals have not yet
completed the task that was assigned to them, the leadership is already shaping the international
190
Li Yangfan, “ ‘Zhonghua diguo’ de gainian ji qi shijie zhizu: Bei wudu de tianxia zhixu” [e Concept of “Chinese Empire” and Its World
Order: e Misunderstood Tianxia Order], Guoji Zhengzhi Yanjiu, no. 5 (2015): 28–48, 37.
191
Ownby and Cheek, “Interpreting the ‘Xi Jinping Era.’ ”
192
Peter C. Perdue notes, for example, that the PRC’s rhetoric on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea “expresses ‘hard realism’ much more
forcefully than Confucian harmony.” Peter C. Perdue, “e Tenacious Tributary System,” Journal of Contemporary China 24, no. 96 (2015): 1003.
193
Dreyer, “Will China Change the International System?” 71.
194
William A. Callahan, “Sino-Speak: Chinese Exceptionalism and the Politics of History,” Journal of Asian Studies 71, no. 1 (2012): 33–55.
35
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
environment in a way that better ts its views and interests. In a sense, Xi Jinping has outrun
the intellectual discussion and made foreign policy decisions, the details of which are now being
worked out in both theory and practice.
Altering the World
During his 2015 visit to the United States, Xi Jinping indicated that China is “participant,
builder, contributor, and beneciary of the current international system. Reforming and improving
the current international system does not mean starting from scratch but rather promoting its
development in a more just and reasonable direction.”
195
International concerns about China
challenging the existing order are totally “unnecessary,” contends Deng Qingke from the Party
eory Research Center in Hunan Province, because China’s willingness to promote mutual trust,
mutual benet, and mutual learning “has transcended the old pattern of international political
thinking” and shows that “China does not seek hegemony…and will not follow the old path of
‘domination by the strongest.’ ”
196
However, under Xi’s leadership, China’s diplomatic practice has
entered a period of major transformation. For Li Ziguo, an expert at the Eurasia Institute of the
China Institute of International Studies, China’s position in the international system has evolved
from that of a “detached spectator” who used to “accept and learn” the international rules to an
active participant in the development of new rules that will “break the Western moral advantage”
and focus on “development rights” instead of “good and bad” political systems.
197
Qualied to Guide a World in Need
Chinese commentary praises Xi for “standing on the commanding heights of the historical
development process of mankind” and devising “far-reaching” answers to the world’s most
pressing conundrums, led by a “powerful sense of mission.”
198
For Chinese commentators, the
leadership not only “conform[s] to the trend of times” but also seizes an opportunity at a historical
“turning point.”
199
is moment is dened by the conjunction of the current model’s many failures
(such as democratic decits, governance decits, income gaps, populism, terrorism, and climate
change) and the “unsustainability” of the United States’ “hegemonic game.”
200
e remedy for the failures of Western civilization that the Chinese leadership would like to
promote as the basis for reforming the international system draws on China’s own experience.
201
“Every problem China has faced is a world-class problem,” and, therefore, every solution chosen
195
“Xi Jinping: Zhongguo shi xianxing guoji tixi de canyu zhe jianshe zhe gongxian zhe ye shi shouyi zhe” [Xi Jinping: China Is a Participant,
Builder and Contributor to the Current International System], Xinhua, September 25, 2015, https://www.yicai.com/news/4691521.html.
196
Deng Qingke, “Wei tuidong jianli guoji xin zhixu jiji zhuru ‘Zhongguo liliang’ ” [Actively Promote China’s Power in the
Establishment of a New International Order], Guangming, November 13, 2015, http://epaper.gmw.cn/gmrb/html/2015-11/13/
nw.D110000gmrb_20151113_2-10.htm?div=-1.
197
Li Ziguo, “ ‘Yidai Yilu:’ Xin shidai, xin tiaozhan, xin renwu” [“Belt and Road”: New Era, New Challenge, New Mission], China Institute of
International Studies, May 31, 2017, http://www.ciis.org.cn/chinese/2017-05/31/content_9502473.htm.
198
Yang Jiechi, “Promoting the Building of a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind,” People’s Daily, December 12, 2017, http://
en.theorychina.org/xsqy_2477/201712/t20171212_360713.shtml; “Xi Jinping shou ti ‘liang ge yindao’ you shenyi”; and Gao Jianhua,
“Zhonghua wenming yu renlei gongtong jiazhi” [Chinese Civilization and Common Values of Humankind], Central Institute of Socialism,
May 14, 2018, http://www.zysy.org.cn/a1/a-XCXP1U886D922B527643A9.
199
Yan Zongze, “Gong xiang goujian renlei mingyun gongtongti weiye” [Assist in the Great Cause of Building the Community with a Shared
Future for Mankind], Qiushi Journal, December 24, 2018, http://www.qstheory.cn/2018-12/24/c_1123896816.htm.
200
Yang Guangbin, “Zhongguo ‘tianxia guan’ jiang chongsu shijie zhixu” [China’s “Tianxia” Worldview Will Reconstruct the World Order],
Global View, March 29, 2019, http://www.globalview.cn/html/global/info_30767.html.
201
Gao, “Zhonghua wenming yu renlei gongtong jiazhi.”
36
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
by the Chinese government can become an inspiration for others.
202
e “China solution” adopted
for its own purpose “resolves the tension between uniqueness and universal relevance”; it is a
“path to peace, prosperity and modernity that others can follow.”
203
Hu Rongtao believes that the
dissemination of China’s development paradigm will help dene a positive brand, promote China’s
international image, and ultimately “break the Western discourse monopoly.”
204
For Chinese
analysts and commentators, this does not mean that China is proselytizing or willfully pressing
its model onto other countries to serve its own interests. Rather, Beijing is answering the call of a
world embroiled in great turmoil. Countries are looking for ideas that can be used to solve their
own governance problems while delivering “fairness and justice” and “peace and development,”
which are the “common aspirations of all mankind.”
205
Zhao Yongshuai and Qin Long depict the
world as “needing” and “expecting” China to fulll its responsibilities.
206
And because China has
“always stood at the moral summit,” no other country is better qualied for becoming such a role
model. Xi stated the following during a February 2017 National Security Work Conference: “e
glorious 5,000-year history of the Chinese nation, the 95-year historical struggle of the CCP, and
the 38-year development miracle of reform and opening up have already declared to the world with
indisputable facts that we are qualied to be a leader” that can guide the international community
to build a new order.
207
Calling for the Creation of a Community of Common Destiny
Xi Jinping has come close to candidly framing his vision for a new world order under China’s
helm as a 21st-century version of the tianxia model. On multiple occasions, he has repeated his
wish to see the world come together in harmony as one family under the same heaven (shijie datong
tianxia yijia).
208
Xi usually associates this imagery with his vision for the building of a community
of common destiny (renlei mingyun gongtongti), now translated in ocial Chinese documents as a
“community with a shared future for mankind” (or for humanity).
209
He mentioned this concept
for the rst time in March 2013 at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations while
describing to his audience the “kaleidoscopic changes that make the world constantly dierent.” In
a world increasingly interlinked and interdependent, people, “by living in the same global village
within the same time and space where history and reality meet, have increasingly emerged as a
community of common destiny in which everyone has in himself a little bit of others.”
210
By the time
Xi appeared at the UN General Assembly lectern on September 28, 2015, the community’s “destiny”
202
“Xi Jinping shou ti ‘liang ge yindao’ you shenyi”; and Zheng Yongniang, Jiang Yong, and Ma Weijiang, “Suzao gengjia gongzheng heli de
guoji xin zhixu” [Create a More Rational and Just International System], People’s Daily, May 4, 2017, http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/
page/2017-05/04/23/rmrb2017050423.pdf.
203
“Xi Jinping shou ti ‘liang ge yindao’ you shenyi.”
204
Hu, “Xi Jinping xin shidai guoji huayuquan jianshe de jiegou fenxi.”
205
“Xi Jinping shou ti ‘liang ge yindao’ you shenyi.”
206
Zhao Yongshuai and Qin Long, “Renlei mingyun gongtongti de wenhua zizhi, wenhua zixin yu wenhua ziwei” [Cultural Self-Awareness, Cultural
Self-Condence, and Cultural Self-Action of the Community of Common Destiny], Journal of Jiangxi Normal University 52, no. 1 (2019).
207
“Xi Jinping shou ti ‘liang ge yindao’ you shenyi”; and Wang Honggang, “Xiandai guoji zhixu de yanjin yu Zhongguo de shidai furen” [e
Evolution of Modern International Order and China’s Responsibilities of the Times], Xiandai Guoji Guanxi 12 (2016).
208
“Xi Jinping: Tianxia yijia” [Xi Jinping: Under Heavens as One Family], China Daily, May 19, 2018, https://china.chinadaily.com.cn/2018-
05/19/content_36233269.htm.
209
Wang Yi, “Building a Community with a Shared Future,” China Daily, https://partners.wsj.com/chinadaily/chinawatch/building-
community-shared-future; and “Zhe qige zi, Xi Jinping weihe yizai qiangdiao?” [Why Does Xi Jinping Repeatedly Emphasize ese Seven
Words?], Xinhua, October 6, 2019, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/xxjxs/2019-10/06/c_1125073786.htm.
210
Xi Jinping, “Follow the Trend of Times and Promote Peace and Development in the World” (speech delivered at Moscow State Institute of
International Relations, Moscow, March 23, 2013), https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1033246.shtml.
37
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
had mutated into a “shared future,” and its components were more explicit.
211
Xi expounded on the
same themes during his speech at the UN Oce in Geneva on January 18, 2017.
212
In a 2017 op-ed, the Xinhua editors depict the leader’s vision as a game changer of the
magnitude of the Enlightenment ideas or the theories of Marx. Whenever “world history enters a
critical juncture,” they contend, intellectual visions are always crucial “driving forces for human
progress.” e community of common destiny, which oers the world “Chinese wisdom” and
a “Chinese solution,” “draws new blueprints for the advancement of human society.”
213
For Hu
Rongtao, a researcher at Xiamen University, this concept represents the “commanding point in
the construction of [China’s] international discourse power.”
214
Reecting its importance for the
leadership, the concept was mentioned half a dozen times in the 19th Party Congress report, and
the PRC constitution was amended to include it in March 2018.
215
A compilation of Xi’s speeches
on the community of common destiny was subsequently published in October 2018,
216
and since
its rst articulation, Chinese scholars have been busily writing exegeses of the leader’s vision.
217
Xi’s vision for the community of common destiny is not modest.
218
Its goal is nothing less
than building an “open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal
security, and common prosperity.”
219
is holistic concept rests on political, security, economic,
cultural, and environmental pillars. ese are the same ve pillars that Hu Jintao identied in
May 2003 when he delivered a speech at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations
(an interesting coincidence of locations). Hu articulated his vision for building a “harmonious
world” with the same hope of bringing about “lasting peace and universal prosperity,” which he
considered “the inevitable request of human society development.” In Chinese politics, if history
does not repeat itself, it certainly oen rhymes. According to Hu, full collaboration in ve areas
would help construct a harmonious world:
211
Xi Jinping, “Working Together to Forge a New Partnership of Win-Win Cooperation and Create a Community of Shared Future
for Mankind” (speech at the UN General Assembly, New York, September 28, 2015), https://gadebate.un.org/sites/default/les/
gastatements/70/70_ZH_en.pdf.
212
Xi Jinping, “Work Together to Build a Community of Shared Future for Mankind” (speech at the UN Oce, Geneva, January 18, 2017),
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-01/19/c_135994707.htm.
213
“Shijie datong, tianxia yijia: Lun dazao renlei minuin gongtongti” [A World of Great Harmony as One Family Under Heavens: Building a
Community of Common Human Destiny], Xinhua, January 15, 2017, http://xinhuanet.com//politics/2017-01/15/c_1120313455.htm.
214
Hu, “Xi Jinping xin shidai guoji huayuquan jianshe de jiegou fenxi.”
215
“Community with Shared Future for Humanity Written into China’s Constitution,” Xinhua, March 11, 2018, http://www.xinhuanet.com/
english/2018-03/11/c_137031732.htm.
216
“Xi Jinping tongzhi lun jianchi tuidong goujian renlei mingyun gongtongti zhuyao pianmu jieshao” [Introduction to Comrade Xi Jinping’s
Main Points about Building a Community of Human Destiny], Xinhua, October 14, 2018, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2018-10/14/
c_1123556798.htm.
217
See, for example, Chen Xulong, “Wei goujian renlei mingyun gongtongti zuochu xin gongxian” [Making New Contributions to Building a
Community of Human Destiny], People’s Daily, December 1, 2017, http://opinion.people.com.cn/n1/2017/1201/c1003-29678646.html; Lu
Jing, “Zhongguo tese daguo waijiao huayu tixi de jiben tezheng” [Basic Characteristics of the Diplomatic Discourse System of Great Power
with Chinese Characteristics], Aisixiang, April 18, 2019, http://www.aisixiang.com/data/115975.html; Gao, “Zhonghua wenming yu renlei
gongtong jiazhi”; Zhao and Qin, “Renlei mingyun gongtongti de wenhua zizhi, wenhua zixin yu wenhua ziwei”; and Wu Zhicheng and Wu
Yu, “Renlei mingyun gongtongti sixiang lunxi” [An Analysis of the Community of Human Destiny ought], Aisixiang, November 30, 2018,
http://www.aisixiang.com/data/113742.html.
218
For an in-depth examinations of the community of destiny concept and its hidden meaning, see Nadège Rolland, “Eurasian Integration
‘a la Chinese’: Deciphering Beijing’s Vision for the Region as a ‘Community of Common Destiny,’ ” Asan Forum, June 5, 2017, http://
www.theasanforum.org/eurasian-integration-a-la-chinese-deciphering-beijings-vision-for-the-region-as-a-community-of-common-
destiny; Nadège Rolland, “Examining China’s ‘Community of Common Destiny,’ ” Power 3.0, January 2018, https://www.power3point0.
org/2018/01/23/examining-chinas-community-of-destiny; Nadège Rolland, “Beijing’s Vision for a Reshaped International Order,”
Jamestown Foundation, China Brief, February 26, 2018, https://jamestown.org/program/beijings-vision-reshaped-international-order; and
Liza Tobin, “Xi’s Vision for Transforming Global Governance: A Strategic Challenge for Washington and Its Allies,” Texas National Security
Review 2, no. 1 (2018): 154–66.
219
“China Keywords: Community with Shared Future for Mankind,” Xinhua, January 24, 2018, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-
01/24/c_136921370.htm.
38
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
Politically, all countries should respect each other and conduct consultations on
an equal footing in a common endeavor to promote democracy in international
relations; economically, they should cooperate with each other, draw on each
other’s strengths and work together to advance economic globalization in the
direction of balanced development, shared benets and win-win progress;
culturally, they should learn from each other in the spirit of seeking common
ground while shelving dierences, respect the diversity of the world, and
make joint eorts to advance human civilization; in the area of security, they
should trust each other, strengthen cooperation, settle international disputes by
peaceful means rather than by war and work together to safeguard peace and
stability in the world; on environmental issues, they should assist and cooperate
with each other in conservation eorts to take good care of the earth, the only
home for human beings.
220
e transmutation of Hu’s concept of a harmonious world into Xi’s community of common
destiny comes with some degree of renement. For each of the ve pillars, signposts or keywords
indicate an attempt to dene values or norms underpinning each domain. However, these
keywords sound more like incantations chosen to generate positive responses from the rest of
the world than heartfelt principles on which to build a new international order. Although ocial
Chinese media has praised Xi’s vision as trailblazing,
221
it looks more like a list of what Beijing
advocates for its own needs, security, and position than an innovative contribution for the future
of the world:
222
• In the political arena, Xi advocates fostering “dialogue and consultation” rather than
confrontation and building “partnerships” rather than alliances. All countries should have the
“right to independently choose social systems and development paths.” ese themes reect
the CCP’s deepest insecurity about its survival, which the leadership believes is threatened both
by the U.S. military power and alliances and by the Western global promotion of democracy
and universal values.
• In the security domain, Xi proposes building a “common, comprehensive, cooperative and
sustainable” security that abandons the “Cold War mentality,” takes a “holistic approach
to addressing traditional and non-traditional security threats,” and is based on “resolving
disputes through dialogue and consultation.” Xi put forward the holistic security concept
during the rst meeting of China’s National Security Commission in April 2014, requesting
the CCP to address both internal and external threats to its political security.
223
“Cold War
mentality” is a refrain that Beijing uses to criticize any outside eort perceived as preventing,
undermining, or containing China’s rise. Xi put forward the “common, comprehensive,
cooperative, and sustainable” security concept at the May 2014 Conference on Interaction and
Condence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit when he called for “Asian people to
220
“President Hu Elaborates the eory of Harmonious World,” People’s Daily, November 26, 2009, http://en.people.cn/90001/90780/91342/
6824821.html.
221
“Xi’s World Vision: A Community of Common Destiny, a Shared Home for Humanity,” Xinhua, January 15, 2017, http://english.cctv.
com/2017/01/15/ARTIjfECMGRxn4TrlI0UqAcl170115.shtml.
222
Xi, “Working Together to Forge a New Partnership of Win-Win Cooperation.”
223
“Xi Jinping: Jianchi zongti guojia anquan guan zou Zhongguo tese guojia anquan daolu” [Xi Jinping: Adhere to the Holistic National
Security Concept and Take the National Security Road with Chinese Characteristics], Xinhua, April 15, 2014, http://www.xinhuanet.com//
politics/2014-04/15/c_1110253910.htm; and Peter Wood, “China’s Holistic Security Concept Explained,” OE Watch Commentary, July 2018,
https://community.apan.org/wg/tradoc-g2/fmso/m/oe-watch-articles-singular-format/275650.
39
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
uphold Asia’s security.” is is one of his clearest hints at his willingness to counter the United
States’ regional military primacy.
224
• In the economic domain, Xi promotes a prosperous world based on an open and inclusive
global economy and win-win cooperation. Drawing lessons from the 2008 nancial crisis,
he emphasizes forming “synergies between market forces and government function.”
225
is
reects China’s desire to keep foreign markets open to its products and investments and satisfy
its need for raw materials, technology, and intellectual property, while retaining the right to
restrict access to its own market and preserve its own state-led model.
• In the cultural sphere, Xi advocates respecting “cultural diversity” and “accepting dierences”
based on “mutual learning, mutual respect, and harmonious coexistence.” ere is “no such
thing as a superior and inferior civilization,” and dierent civilizations should “have dialogue
and exchanges instead of trying to exclude or replace each other.” As seen in section three of this
report, in CCP ocial parlance, allusions to culture or civilization should be read as references
to sociopolitical models.
226
In the community of destiny context, “trying to exclude or replace
civilizations that are dierent” amounts to rejecting the transformation of nondemocratic
political regimes, which again goes back to the CCP’s primary fear for its own survival.
• Finally, as far as the environment is concerned, Beijing strives to “make our world clean and
beautiful” by putting “mother nature and green development rst” and pursuing “harmony
between man and nature.” is reects Beijing’s own domestic approach to ecology:
environmental protection and green development are meant to serve the country’s economic
development goals, not the other way around.
227
Absent from the ocial description of the community of common destiny is any discussion
about the invisible bonds, or shared values, that tie the community together. Gao Jianhua, a
researcher from the Central Institute of Socialism (also known as China’s Cultural Institute),
explains that the “common values of mankind” are not the “so-called universal values of the
West.” Gao argues that the latter have no universal applicability because they originate from a
narrow Western experience and do not take into account the diversity of national characteristics,
historical development, natural conditions, and development processes among countries.
According to Gao, the promotion of those “so-called universal values” is nothing other than a
tool used by the West to support and sustain its hegemony. To the contrary, the common values
of mankind are based on the “full respect of each country’s special values” and the search for
the greatest common denominator shared by all. Chen Lai, president of the Tsinghua University
Institute of Chinese Studies, also denies the universality of values such as democracy, freedom,
and justice as promoted during the twentieth century. For Chen, these are the United States’ and
other Western countries’ domestic political values but not the values of the world. In addition,
in world aairs the West has “never adhered” to them, preferring instead to “advocate power,
224
Xi Jinping (speech at the 4th Conference on Interaction and Condence Building Measures in Asia, Shanghai, May 21, 2014), https://www.
fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/topics_665678/yzxhxzyxrcshydsc/t1162057.shtml.
225
Xi, “Working Together to Forge a New Partnership of Win-Win Cooperation.”
226
For an excellent discussion of the multiple meanings of “civilization” in Chinese discourse, see Alison Kaufman, “China’s Discourse of
‘Civilization’: Visions of Past, Present, and Future,” Asan Forum, February 19, 2018, http://www.theasanforum.org/chinas-discourse-of-
civilization-visions-of-past-present-and-future.
227
Xi Jinping, “A New Starting Point for China’s Development: A New Blueprint for Global Growth” (keynote speech delivered at the G-20
Summit, Hangzhou, September 3, 2016), http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/ zyjh_665391/t1396112.shtml.
40
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
hegemony and unilateralism.”
228
By contrast, both Gao and Chen believe that traditional Chinese
philosophical concepts are truly universal and can become sources for the common human
values underpinning the community that Xi hopes to see emerge.
229
To alter the existing world order, Beijing is taking concrete steps, working concomitantly and
with utmost determination at three main levels: rst, since 2013, it has been promoting BRI;
second, in parallel, it is trying to establish a network of partnerships to advance its vision; nally,
it is working on expanding its international institutional power, both within existing institutions
and through the creation of China-led platforms. Taken together, these three initiatives form the
backbone, sinews, and tendons of the new order that Beijing would like to create. It is less clear
what vital breath would animate the new body, but the CCP would undoubtedly not bring Western
conceptions of universal values and human rights into the mix.
The Belt and Road Initiative: The New Order’s Backbone
Since its launch in 2013, BRI has become the most prominent feature of China’s foreign
policy. More than just an infrastructure-building project, the initiative is considered by party
ocials as well as scholars as the backbone of an emerging order in which China has become the
preponderant power.
230
BRI is intimately intertwined with Xi’s vision for a future community of
common destiny and is oen touted as a means to transform the global governance system.
231
For Fu Ying, the initiative is “complementary to the existing international system” but, at the
same time, will help “its gradual evolution into a fairer and more inclusive structure.”
232
During
a 2016 seminar co-organized by the CCP Central Committee’s Foreign Aairs Department and
the Contemporary World magazine, Chinese participants described the community of common
destiny as the “ultimate goal of human society’s development” and as still in its infancy, just as
China is still in the “primary stage of socialism” looking forward to Communism.
233
BRI will help
the young community develop and grow. If the community of common destiny is an abstract
vision or theory, BRI is the practice or path, providing concrete means to knit the community
together.
234
Zhao Yongshuai and Qin Long describe BRI as the “solid material foundation”: as it
“eectively meets the interests of all countries,” the initiative has become an “important starting
point” for the community.
235
Peng Guangqian, a retired major general, prominent PLA strategist,
228
Chen Lai, “Zhonghua wenming yu renlei gongtong jiazhi” [Chinese Civilization and Humanity’s Common Values], Aisixiang, October 1,
2017, http://www.aisixiang.com/data/106281.html.
229
“ ‘Zhonghua wenming yu renlei gongtong jiazhi’ guoji xueshu yantao hui zai Shandong juxing laiyuan” [International Symposium on “Chinese
Civilization and Humankind Common Values” Held in Shandong], Central Institute of Socialism, December 20, 2016, http://www.zysy.
org.cn/a1/a-XCC9LI0A737C7C52598B50; Gao, “Zhonghua wenming yu renlei gongtong jiazhi”; and Chen, “Zhonghua wenming yu renlei
gongtong jiazhi.”
230
Nadège Rolland, “China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Five Years Later,” testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review
Commission, Washington, D.C., January 25, 2018, https://www.nbr.org/publication/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-ve-years-later; and
Nadège Rolland, China’s Eurasian Century? Political and Strategic Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative (Washington, D.C.: NBR, 2017).
231
Fan Hengshan, “Tuidong gong jian Yidai Yilu xiang gao zhiliang fazhan zhuanbian” [Promoting the Transformation of the Belt
and Road to High-Quality Development], People’s Daily, October 29, 2018, http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2018-10/29/
nw.D110000renmrb_20181029_1-07.htm.
232
Fu Ying, “Is China’s Choice to Submit to the U.S. or Challenge It?” Hungton Post, May 26, 2015, https://www.hupost.com/entry/china-
us-challenge-fu-ying_b_7437846?; and Fu Ying, “Putting the Order(s) Shi in Perspective,” China-US Focus, February 15, 2016, https://
www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/putting-the-orders-shi-in-perspective.
233
“Renlei mingyun gongtongti ‘Yidai Yilu’ silu huiyi zongshu” [Summary of the Community of Common Destiny’s Belt and Road Initiative
Conference], Contemporary World 4, no. 413 (2016).
234
“Renlei mingyun gongtongti ‘Yidai Yilu’ silu huiyi zongshu”; Lin Yueqin, “Yidai Yilu yu renlei mingyun gongtongti: Zhongguo changyi yu
quanqiu xindong” [Belt and Road Initiative and Concept of a Community with Shared Future for Mankind: Chinese Proposals and Global
Actions], Zhongguo yu Guoji Guanxi Xuekan 16, no. 2 (2018); and Hu, “Xi Jinping xin shidai guoji huayuquan jianshe de jiegou fenxi.”
235
Zhao and Qin, “Renlei mingyun gongtongti de wenhua zizhi, wenhua zixin yu wenhua ziwei.”
41
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
and adviser to the National Security Commission, thinks that BRI is gradually “getting rid of the
shackles of the postwar U.S.-dominated international nancial and monetary system” and that the
“community of interests” based on equality and mutual benet, together with the “community of
destiny” based on common development, will “help break the old unequal international political
and economic order.” BRI is giving rise to a world diametrically opposed to the existing one: it
“does not limit the nature of a given country’s political system, is not underlined by ideology, does
not create tiny circles of friends, does not set up trade protectionism, does not set up economic
blockades, does not exercise control of other countries’ economic lifelines or change other
countries’ political systems.”
236
As he depicts what the initiative is not, General Peng oers the
most genuine description of the world order that Beijing calls for.
BRI is obviously a key component of Beijing’s eort to create deeper connections with countries
beyond its traditionally preferred sphere of inuence in its immediate periphery, along multiple
economic corridors radiating over land and sea from China outward to Europe, the Arctic, the
Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Oceania. e promise of infrastructure investments is
the hook. Material and economic incentives, especially when they are oered without immediate
conditions or political demands, can be an appealing proposition for countries that are facing
economic diculties; have a real need for and see the benets of building reliable, ecient, and
modern infrastructure; and can foresee the potential economic benets that such infrastructure
projects could bring. But they are only a rst step. Once countries have expressed an interest
in infrastructure projects and the accompanying Chinese loans, investments, or aid packages,
then several other connectivities that are an integral part of the BRI bundle are also oered
and deployed. ese include free trade agreement negotiations; nancial and currency-swap
agreements; industrial standards expansion across transportation, energy, and digital networks;
intensied security cooperation justied by the need to protect Chinese workers employed on
the projects;
237
smart- or safe-city programs;
238
student scholarships and academic exchanges;
scientic joint research centers and cooperation programs; and professional training sessions for
media. Cooperation undertaken under the BRI umbrella thus takes multiple forms. As Beijing
knits formal and informal networks with local governments, business communities, academics,
journalists, and other active members of local civil society, it hopes to create deeper bonds that
will eventually draw regional countries into its orbit.
Global Network of Partnerships: The New Order’s Sinews
Whereas BRI is the backbone of the community of common destiny, the global network of
partnerships, ocially based on “dialogue, non-confrontation, and non-alliance,” constitutes
236
Peng Guangqian, “ ‘Yidai Yilu’ zhanlüe gouxiang yu guoji zhixu zhonggou” [“Belt and Road” Strategic Conception and the Reconstruction
of International Order], People’s Daily, January 9, 2015, http://world.people.com.cn/n/2015/0109/c157278-26358575.html. Examined in
close detail, General Peng’s remarks can be interpreted as follows: the new world order to which BRI will give rise will not require any
commitment to enforce principles such as transparency, rule of law, human rights, or accountability; it will not promote democracy nor
spurn authoritarian regimes; it will not be based on military alliances nor on coalitions of politically like-minded countries; it will not allow
Western countries to use economic sanctions such as the ones imposed on China aer the Tiananmen crisis; and it will not seek to assert
control over the oceans such as the United States does through its military presence in the Indian and Pacic Oceans or its control over
international sea lanes of communication.
237
Nadège Rolland, ed., “Securing the Belt and Road Initiative: China’s Evolving Military Engagement along the Silk Roads,” NBR, NBR
Special Report, no. 80, September 3, 2019, https://www.nbr.org/publication/securing-the-belt-and-road-initiative-chinas-evolving-military-
engagement-along-the-silk-roads.
238
Paul Mozur, Jonah M. Kessel, and Melissa Chan, “Made in China, Exported to the World: e Surveillance State,” New York Times, April 24,
2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/technology/ecuador-surveillance-cameras-police-government.html.
42
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
its sinews.
239
Xi Jinping rst aired the idea in November 2014 at the Central Conference on
Work Relating to Foreign Aairs, underlying the need for China to make “more friends while
abiding by the principle of nonalignment.”
240
Zhou Fangyin, a researcher at the Guangdong
Institute for International Strategies, explains that China’s partnership diplomacy is not meant
to lock countries into military or security alliances, but that it seeks “all-around cooperation
in such areas as economy, politics, diplomacy and security,” underpinned by China’s values of
“mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation.”
241
Two researchers from the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences, Xu Jin and Guo Chu, describe these partnerships as essential to
the emergence of the community of common destiny. Countries will join initially because they
recognize the economic benets that they can reap from their relationship to China. In time,
they will become amenable to broadening and deepening political and security cooperation.
Increased interactions will help shape the views of the members of the nascent community
and foster a feeling of togetherness among them. Xu and Guo believe that, aer a while, not
only will people come to feel that being part of the community of common destiny is necessary
for pragmatic reasons, but it will also appear “inevitable and the right thing to do.” Increased
interactions will allow trust building and enhance friendship until the community members
“become accustomed” to China playing the role of a regional and global leader.
242
Beijing has traditionally sought to expand the country’s circle of friends as a base to support
its interests and to create a “favorable environment” for China’s rise.
243
e concept of a network
of partners gives a stronger sense of purpose to China’s diplomatic practice. State councilor Wang
Yi considers these partnerships as “rming up” the foundation of the community of common
destiny.
244
As is oen the case in party verbiage, the concept of partnerships is malleable and
ill-dened. It could refer to a collection of bilateral or multilateral relationships that are dened
by convergent interests and, as Timothy Heath notes, serve as “channels to build consensus on
norms and values favorable to Chinese international leadership” in an eort to “guide the policies
of other governments, promote norms favored by China, and encourage pro-China popular
sentiment in other countries.”
245
e statement supporting China’s “deradicalization measures”
in Xinjiang presented on behalf of 54 countries at the October 2019 UN General Assembly session
can be considered as an example of the benets to be derived from the kind of network of global
partnerships that Beijing would like to foster.
246
In some cases, Beijing does not need a large group
239
“Full Text of President Xi’s Speech at Opening of Belt and Road Forum,” Xinhua, May 14, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-
05/14/c_136282982.htm; and Gao Fei and Xiao Wei, “Zhongguo waijiao zheng yunyu yi chang zhongda zhuanxing” [China’s Diplomacy Is
Gestating a Major Transformation], Csnet, November 10, 2015, http://comment.csnet.com/2015/1110/1303046.html.
240
“e Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Aairs Was Held in Beijing,” Ministry of Foreign Aairs (PRC), Press Release,
November 29, 2014, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1215680.shtml.
241
Cao Desheng, “Xi Calls for Expansion of Global Partnerships,” China Daily, September 9, 2019, https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201909/09/
WS5d754883a310cf3e3556a5bd.html.
242
Xu Jin and Guo Chu, “Mingyun gongtongti gainian bianxi” [Analysis of Community with a Shared Future for Mankind Concept],
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of World Economics and Politics, 1–14, http://www.iwep.org.cn/xscg/xscg_lwybg/201705/
W020170512528629555087.pdf.
243
“Xi Jinping: Let the Sense of Community of Common Destiny Take Deep Root in Neighboring Countries,” Ministry of Foreign Aairs
(PRC), October 25, 2013, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjb_663304/wjbz_663308/activities_663312/t1093870.shtml.
244
Wang Yi, “Creating New Prospects for Advancing China’s Major-Country Diplomacy under the Guidance of Xi Jinping ought on
Diplomacy,” Qiushi Journal 11, no. 1 (2019).
245
Timothy R. Heath, “China Prepares for an International Order aer U.S. Leadership,” Lawfare, August 1, 2018, https://www.lawfareblog.
com/china-prepares-international-order-aer-us-leadership.
246
A representative of the United Kingdom issued a statement on behalf of 23 countries raising concerns over alleged human rights abuses
in Xinjiang. Shortly aer the UK’s statement, Belarus made its own statement on behalf of 54 countries voicing approval of China’s
“counterterrorism program.” Ben Wescott and Richard Roth, “UN Members Issue Dueling Statements over China’s Treatment of Uyghurs in
Xinjiang,” CNN, October 29, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/29/asia/china-xinjiang-united-nations-intl-hnk/index.html.
43
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
of partners to weigh in on issues that are considered its core national interests. In 2017, it only
took Greece, for example, to block a European Union statement at the United Nations criticizing
China’s human rights record.
247
China’s network of partners is not limited to authoritarian regimes. Cooperative democracies
perhaps play the most signicant role in legitimizing an agenda that undermines the very
foundation of the global normative order. Katrin Kinzelbach observes, for example, that it would
be possible for democracies, which hold a clear majority among the 47 members of the UN
Human Rights Council, to jointly defend the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But the
concepts pushed forward by Chinese representatives, such as the notion that economic growth is
paramount and that the “right to develop” is the most important human right, appeal “not only to
authoritarian states but also to some democratically governed countries.”
248
In order to strengthen its position on the international stage and expand its network of
friends, China since 2013 has focused its diplomatic eorts on relationships with countries in
its periphery, broadly dened. Here, Beijing is pursuing a multipronged approach that includes
strengthened political relations, economic bonds, security cooperation, and people-to-people
contacts, which overlap with BRI’s designated main areas of cooperation.
249
Many of these
relationships are now fostered under the BRI umbrella, as discussed in the previous section, via
the usual diplomatic channels and interactions. But Xi also noted in June 2018 that diplomacy is
a “systematic project” involving “political parties, the government, the people’s congresses, the
Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the military, local authorities, and the public,”
all of which need to “make their own contributions” to the country’s “external work” under the
party’s leadership.
250
In particular, the CCP’s traditional United Front work has been revitalized
and expanded since 2015.
251
e sprawling United Front system and tactics aim at rallying and
co-opting individuals and groups that are not the party’s natural allies into supporting the CCP’s
objectives while neutralizing sources of potential opposition to its policies. Under Xi, this work
has been encouraged not only within Chinese overseas communities, as was traditionally the case,
but also increasingly in the form of inuence operations targeting foreign actors and states.
252
A
myriad of newly created entities that act as proxies for the party-state as part of the United Front
are specically working to support the consolidation of friendly partnerships with individuals and
groups in BRI countries, targeting local media as well as academic and business communities.
253
Alongside the renewed diplomatic priority given to its extended neighborhood, China has
identied the developing world as a fertile ground for expanding its network of global partners.
During the 2014 Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Aairs, Xi declared that China
247
Robin Emmott and Angeliki Koutantou, “Greece Blocks EU Statement on China Human Rights at UN,” Reuters, June 18, 2017, https://www.
reuters.com/article/us-eu-un-rights/greece-blocks-eu-statement-on-china-human-rights-at-u-n-idUSKBN1990FP.
248
Katrin Kinzelbach, “Will China Dare Challenge the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?” Global Public Policy Institute, December 10,
2018, https://www.gppi.net/2018/12/10/will-china-dare-challenge-the-universal-declaration-of-human-rights.
249
Gao Cheng, “Zhoubian huanjing biandong dui Zhongguo jueqi de tiaozhan” [Challenges to China’s Rise of a Changing Peripheral Environment],
Guoji Wenti Yanjiu 5 (2013): 33–45.
250
“Xi Jinping Urges Breaking New Ground in Major Country Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics,” PRC Permanent Mission to the UN,
Press Release, June 23, 2018, http://www.china-un.org/eng/zgyw/t1571296.htm.
251
Gerry Groot, “e Expansion of the United Front under Xi Jinping,” in China Story Yearbook 2015: Pollution, ed. Gloria Davies, Jeremy
Goldkorn, and Luigi Tomba (Acton: ANU Press, 2016).
252
Alexander Bowe, “China’s Overseas United Front Work: Background and Implications for the United States,” U.S.-China Economic and
Security Review Commission, Report, August 24, 2018, https://www.uscc.gov/research/chinas-overseas-united-front-work-background-
and-implications-united-states.
253
Nadège Rolland, “Mapping the Footprint of Belt and Road Inuence Operations,” Sinopsis, August 12, 2019, https://sinopsis.cz/en/rolland-
bri-inuence-operations.
44
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
should “strengthen unity and cooperation with developing countries and closely integrate our
own development with the common development of all developing countries.”
254
Although it is
becoming more dicult for China to continue to portray itself as part of the developing world
as its own power grows, the Chinese leadership wants to nurture its image as the representative
of the “rest.” In a September 2013 meeting of the G-77 (the 135 developing nations in the United
Nations), Wang Yi declared:
Even when China becomes stronger and more prosperous, it will remain a
staunch member of the developing world because China and fellow developing
countries have similar past, common development tasks and ever-expanding
shared strategic interests. e developing countries are always the basis of
China’s diplomacy. We will continue to enhance our cooperation with the
other developing countries, rmly uphold the legitimate rights and interests
of the developing countries at the UN, G20, APEC and other platforms, speak
for the developing countries, and support greater representation and say of the
developing countries in international aairs.
255
Li Kaisheng, a senior fellow from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, considers this
self-appointed task as “not only necessitated by the need for China’s own development” but also a
“moral responsibility delegated to China by the international community.”
256
Cooperation among
developing countries and the reinforcement of South-South alliances will play a key role in helping
China promote the establishment of a new international economic order along the BRI corridors,
argue Shandong University’s Liu Wen and Liu Jie.
257
e Chinese political elites have unilaterally
assigned themselves the mission to speak up on behalf of the developing world and perhaps even
to cultivate the dream of becoming the guiding light of the non-Western, undeveloped world. Su
Ge, the chairperson of the China Pacic Economic Cooperation National Committee, believes, for
example, that developing countries and emerging economies are materializing as a coherent group,
with China as the “dazzling star” among them.
258
e developing world has a crucial role to play in
helping China strengthen a discourse power that contests Western dominance.
259
For this reason,
the “cluster eect of developing countries” aligning with China’s position should be “brought into
full play,” claims Sun Jisheng, vice president of the China Foreign Aairs University.
260
Institutional Power: The New Order’s Tendons
Deciding in which direction the world will head is essentially about “laying down rules for
the international order and international mechanisms,” declared Xi Jinping during the h
254
“e Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Aairs.”
255
Wang Yi, “As a Member of the Developing World, China Will Always Speak Up for Developing Countries” (remarks delivered at Foreign
Ministers’ Meeting of G-77, New York, September 27, 2013), https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjb_663304/wjbz_663308/2461_663310/
t1081897.shtml.
256
Li Kaisheng, “China Should Speak for the Developing World,” Global Times, September 25, 2017, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/
1068150.shtml.
257
Liu Wen and Liu Jie, “Yidai Yilu zhanlüe yu guoji jingji xin zhixu goujian” [Belt and Road Strategy and the Construction of a New
International Economic Order], Chinese Humanities and Social Sciences Network, 2015, https://www.sinoss.net/uploadle/2015/1227/
20151227105458893.pdf.
258
“Zhuanjia: Dianzan 2018 Zhongguo waijiao, 2019 ruhe zai fali?” [Expert: Praise China’s Diplomacy 2018, How to Reinforce It in 2019?],
Xinhua, January 23, 2019, https://wb.fujian.gov.cn/ztzl/ktx/llxx/wjzc/201902/t20190227_4767572.htm.
259
Feng, “Zhongguo jinpo xuyao guoji huayuquan.”
260
Sun Jisheng, “Zhongguo guoji huayuquan de suzao yu tisheng lujing” [Shaping and Promoting China’s International Discourse Power
Path], Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of World Economics and Politics, April 10, 2019, http://www.iwep.org.cn/cbw/cbw_
wzxd/201904/t20190410_4862717.shtml.
45
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
plenary session of the 18th Party Congress in October 2015.
261
He added that “unjust and improper
arrangements in the global governance system” need to be reformed and that “new mechanisms
and rules for international economic and nancial cooperation and regional cooperation” need
to be established. ese tasks are crucial to assert “what roles and functions nations will play in
the long-term systemic arrangement of the international order.” Xi advocated the emergence of
a global governance system that “represents the will and interests of a majority of countries in a
more balanced manner,” in addition to the transformation of existing international organizations
to better “reect changes in the international landscape” and enhance the representation of
the “voices of emerging and developing countries.”
262
China’s attempt to gain greater control
over international institutions and norms is described as striving for greater “institutional
power” (zhiduxing quanli). According to Chen Xiangyang, an analyst at the China Institutes of
Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), institutional power is concerned with setting
the rules and the long-term institutional arrangements, increasing the representation and power
of emerging countries within existing institutions, and pushing forward innovative governance
concepts that reect China’s views.
263
Sun Jisheng writes that expanding the country’s institutional power means “inuencing and
shaping others’ behaviors, while safeguarding our own interests through rules, procedures,
systems, and norms.” China’s journey of learning and integration has been slow, and its
inuence in operating international organizations, formulating international rules, and setting
international agendas has been weak. According to Sun, China can gain more institutional power
by implementing a two-pronged strategy. e rst prong is transforming and reforming existing
international mechanisms to “increase the institutional discourse power of developing countries
represented by China” in order to “break the monopoly position of developed countries.” For Sun,
the expansion of China’s voting rights shares within the IMF and the World Bank is an example
of its growing inuence within existing institutions. She also believes that China’s ability to “block
actions and take the initiative” has developed. Second, Beijing is also improving its institutional
power by creating international institutions and organizations that China can “inuence from
the beginning.” Sun lists the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road Fund, the New
Development Bank, the 16+1 platform, and the China–Latin America Forum as examples of this
newfound ability to create institutions that will follow rules and agendas determined by Beijing.
264
China is also incrementally moving from an outsider and a reformer of the existing rules to
becoming a leader that takes the initiative, controls the agenda, and sets its own rules and norms.
Beijing is notably pushing in this direction in areas where international law is still malleable—in
particular in what the CCP refers to as the “strategic new frontiers” (deep sea, polar regions,
cyberspace, and outer space)—with the introduction of concepts such as “internet sovereignty”
or the creation of a “community of destiny in cyberspace.”
265
e party-state is also trying to
261
“Xi Stresses Urgency of Reforming Global Governance,” China Daily, October 10, 2015, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-10/14/
content_22182736.htm; and “Zhonggong shiba jie wu zhong quanhui gongbao” [Communiqué of the Fih Plenary Session of the 18th CCP
Central Committee], Caixin, October 29, 2015, http://www.caixin.com/2015-10-29/100867990_all.html#page2.
262
“Xi Stresses Urgency of Reforming Global Governance.”
263
Chen Xiangyang, “Xi Jinping zongshuji de quanqiu zhili sixiang” [General Secretary Xi Jinping’s oughts on Global Governance], CCP
News, August 17, 2017, http://theory.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0817/c83859-29476848.html.
264
Sun, “Zhongguo guoji huayuquan de suzao yu tisheng lujing.”
265
“Xi Calls for Reforms on Global Governance,” China Daily, September 29, 2016, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-09/29/
content_26931697.htm; Li Zheng, “Why Is a Cyber Community of Shared Destiny Important?” China-US Focus, November 23, 2016,
https://www.chinausfocus.com/peace-security/why-is-a-cyber-community-of-shared-destiny-important; and “Xi’s Initiatives on Cyberspace
Governance Highlight Chinese Wisdom,” People’s Daily, November 18, 2016, http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/1118/c90000-9143447.html.
46
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
“integrate the Chinese diplomatic discourse with the existing political consensus and common
values generally recognized by the international community”
266
or, as Sun Jisheng writes, to “turn
China’s words into global words.”
267
For this purpose, China has been expending considerable
eort to ensure that its key concepts are included in UN resolutions, favorably discussed in
multilateral preparatory meetings, and endorsed in expert reports.
268
Since March 2017, for
example, the community of destiny phrase has been incorporated into ve resolutions voted on by
the UN Economic and Social Council, the UN Security Council (on Afghanistan), the UN General
Assembly (on the prevention of an arms race in outer space), and the UN Human Rights Council
(on economic, social and cultural rights, and rights to food).
269
In parallel, Chinese diplomats
are trying to ensconce BRI into the work of the Human Rights Council as well as into the United
Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
270
ese various UN endorsements have
been relayed by Chinese media as signs of the “global recognition of China’s great contribution to
global governance.”
271
In addition to economic and political governance, Beijing has become more proactive
in dening new norms for international security and in trying to shape a regional security
environment that counters the “negative role” played by the U.S. alliance network in Asia.
272
China has increased its presence and clout in regional security mechanisms where the United
States is absent, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and CICA, and has
created regional dialogue platforms such as the Beijing Xiangshan Forum on international
security issues as a counterweight to the Singapore-based Shangri-La Dialogue.
273
At the CICA
meeting in May 2014, Xi laid the foundation for his vision of a region free of U.S. alliances and
military presence. His Asian security concept dened security as common, which means that no
country alone can deal with security challenges, especially nontraditional ones; comprehensive,
meaning that traditional and nontraditional security challenges are intertwined; cooperative,
which means that all parties must be constructive and nd solutions through dialogue; and
sustainable, which means that equal importance should be given to development and security. Xi
stated that “development is the foundation for security, security is the condition of development,
266
Li Zhidan, “Shi tan waijiao huayu tixi jianshe” [Trying to Talk about the Construction of a Diplomatic Discourse System], Zhongguo shehui
kexue bao (2019).
267
Sun, “Zhongguo guoji huayuquan de suzao yu tisheng lujing.”
268
Andrea Worden, “China Pushes ‘Human Rights with Chinese Characteristics’ at the UN,” Hong Kong Free Press, China Change, October
14, 2017, https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/10/14/china-pushes-human-rights-chinese-characteristics-un; Andrea Worden, “e Human
Rights Council Advisory Committee: A New Tool on China’s Anti-Human Rights Strategy,” Sinopsis, August 6, 2019, https://sinopsis.cz/en/
worden-human-rights-council-advisory-committee; David Lawder, “World Bank: China’s Belt and Road Can Speed Development, Needs
Transparency,” Reuters, June 18, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-worldbank-china-belt/world-bank-chinas-belt-and-road-can-
speed-development-needs-transparency-idUSKCN1TJ2IX; and Ted Piccone, “China’s Long Game on Human Rights at the United Nations,”
Brookings Institution, 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/FP_20181009_china_human_rights.pdf.
269
“Social Dimensions of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development,” UN Economic and Social Council, June 8, 2017, https://www.
un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=E/RES/2017/11; “Resolution 2344,” UN Security Council, March 17, 2017, http://unscr.com/
les/2017/02344.pdf; and “Promoting Mutually Benecial Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights,” UN Human Rights Council, March
19, 2018, https://undocs.org/A/HRC/37/L.36.
270
Andrea Worden, “e Human Rights Council Advisory Committee: A New Tool on China’s Anti–Human Rights Strategy,” Sinopsis,
August 6, 2019.
271
“A Community of Shared Future for All Humankind: A Chinese Concept Winning UN Recognition,” Xinhua, March 20, 2017, http://www.
xinhuanet.com/english/2017-03/20/c_136142216.htm.
272
Zhou Fangyin, “Meiguo de Yatai tongmeng tixi yu Zhongguo de yingdui” [e U.S. Asia-Pacic Alliance System and China’s Response],
Shijie jingji yu zhengzhi 11 (2013), http://www.sias.org.cn/gqnrMH/info_54.aspx?itemid=738.
273
Alice Ekman, “China’s ‘New Type of Security Partnership’ in Asia and Beyond: A Challenge to the Alliance System and the ‘Indo-Pacic’ Strategy,”
Elcano Royal Institute, March 26, 2019, http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/wps/wcm/connect/50299081-61-41a8-9e1e-f344bda80ac3/ARI35-
2019-Ekman-China-security-partnership-Asia-and-beyond-challenge-aliance-system.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID=50299081-61-41a8-
9e1e-f344bda80ac3.
47
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
and only development is the overall key to solve regional problems.”
274
Wang Qingzhong and
Zhang Ronghua oer a caveat to Beijing’s apparent cooperative stance by noting that, although
China adheres to the path of peaceful development, “foreign countries should not expect us to
trade our core interests, nor should they expect us to swallow the bitter fruit of damage to our
sovereignty, security, and development interests.”
275
In other words, China’s security interests,
dened most broadly, overrule and take precedence over those of any other country.
In addition to using existing institutions and organizations and creating its own platforms
to support its views, China is incrementally shaping the international agenda in the direction
it prefers by conducting what Sun Jisheng describes as “home-based diplomacy.” When China
convenes international forums on its territory, it has more control over participating foreign
countries’ willingness to endorse and sign on to Chinese ideas and norms. Sun mentions the
rst South-South Human Rights Forum as a successful example of such home-based diplomacy.
Organized in Beijing in December 2017 in response to recurrent Western “attacks” against
China, the forum was meant to “unite developing countries around a common language,”
emphasizing the “right to subsistence and development as fundamental human rights.”
276
Over
three hundred representatives from 70 countries and international organizations attended the
forum, which concluded with the adoption of the Beijing Declaration that stresses the possibility
for each country to foster human rights based on national conditions.
277
e CCP in Dialogue
with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting, which convened in Beijing in December 2017,
is another example of home-based diplomacy that is meant to inuence and shape participants’
views so that they will endorse the CCP’s agenda. e meeting was attended by over six hundred
representatives of three hundred political parties and organizations from 120 countries. e
representatives visited the Central Party School, viewed an exhibition on China’s achievements
under Xi’s helm, and participated in seminars related to the community of destiny and BRI.
278
e
Beijing Initiative, issued at the end of the gathering, underlines China’s “historic transformations”
and “new and greater contributions to the world” and highlights the responsibility of the political
parties that participated in the event in steering the world in the direction of the community of
destiny’s ocial goals.
279
China’s Vision for a New World Order: A Partial, Loose, and
Malleable Hegemony
China’s attempts to alter the existing world order are very ambitious in terms of the scope and
scale of eorts deployed. Beijing’s diplomacy is pushing omnidirectionally to rally supporting
partners among its Asian neighbors, emerging and developing countries, and nations along the
BRI corridors. At the same time, it is working from within old and newly created international
274
Wang Qingzhong and Zhang Ronghua, “Xi Jinping zhoubian waijiaoguan de neihan ji fangfa lunyiyi” [Implications and Methodology of Xi
Jinping’s Neighborhood Diplomacy], Journal of the Party School of CPC Ningbo, no. 2 (2018).
275
Ibid.
276
Sun, “Zhongguo guoji huayuquan de suzao yu tisheng lujing.”
277
“Full Text of Beijing Declaration Adopted by the First South-South Human Rights Forum,” Xinhua, December 8, 2017, http://www.
xinhuanet.com//english/2017-12/08/c_136811775.htm.
278
“Xi Calls on World Political Parties to Build Community with Shared Future for Mankind,” Xinhua, December 2, 2017, http://www.
xinhuanet.com//english/2017-12/02/c_136794028.htm.
279
“World Political Parties Dialogue Concludes with ‘Beijing Initiative,’ ” CGTN, December 3, 2017, https://america.cgtn.com/2017/12/03/
world-political-parties-dialogue-beijing-initiative.
48
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
organizations, institutions, and platforms to promote its own worldview and concepts while
sidelining the existing governance norms and values. When stripped of all the grandiloquent
ocial rhetoric about historical trends and contributions to the future of mankind, however,
Beijing’s vision for a new world order appears strikingly narrow and parochial. It is mostly about
inveighing against a Western-dominated liberal order that is deemed threatening to the CCP’s
survival and about altering the world to make it safer for China’s unimpeded rise under the party’s
continuous rule. For Wang Honggang, the director of CICIR’s Institute of World Politics, shaping
a new international order boils down to breaking the Western discourse monopoly on human
rights issues. China, he contends, should relentlessly promote its own interpretation of human
rights, “subtly leading other countries” to make similar changes, promoting the evolution of the
international order “in a quiet manner,” carefully “cultivating strategic support points,” helping
“backward countries oppose foreign interference and inltration,” and eectively preventing
“color changes”—an allusion to the color revolutions that led to democratization eorts in various
countries aer the end of the Cold War.
280
Beyond indications of what is loathed, feared, and unwanted, there is no explicitly elucidated
vision about how world aairs would be managed and organized in the “new era,” according
to which norms and values they would be managed and organized, and via which kinds of
institutional arrangements they would operate. e only certainty that emerges is that, in this
vision, the regnant power is China. Under the surface, the Chinese elites’ impatience is tangible:
the “East is rising, and the West is subsiding; the New is rising while the Old is declining”; Western
dominance is “unsustainable,” and the United States “cannot aord” to maintain its hegemony.
281
Meanwhile, a “revolutionary change is brewing, profoundly reshaping the face of the world,” but
the adjustments of the world order will bring “struggles” and “uncertainties.”
282
Western countries,
“accustomed to controlling the international discourse power will not only be unwilling to share
with other countries but…also do their utmost to oppose and obstruct” the changes.
283
Evidently,
the “unprecedented changes” that are coming will bring China to the top of the world. Yet
ambitions of power and domination cannot be publicly avowed. If the Chinese leadership wants to
rally international support, it cannot come out and straightforwardly acknowledge that its main
priority is to erode and replace the liberal norms and democratic governance rules that the CCP
considers as threatening to its unrelenting rule and legitimacy. e leadership cannot blatantly
assert that it envisions a world in which Western inuence, so and hard power, military presence,
and moral authority have been pushed away and reduced to the margins. It cannot publicly
describe what a world in which China has “moved closer to the center stage” exactly means.
Instead, with the help of scholars and public intellectuals, the party-state is carefully honing
its discourse power by craing concepts and proposals that sound benign and potentially
appealing to a greater international audience. Who, indeed, would refuse to endorse the noble
idea of building a common future for mankind? Or who would reject the prospect of global
everlasting peace, prosperity, and security? ere is only one catch: in Beijing’s world, perpetual
280
Wang, “Xiandai guoji zhixu de yanjin yu Zhongguo de shidai furen.”
281
Chen Xiangyang, “Shijie da bianju yu Zhongguo de yingdui sikao” [Great Global Changes and China’s Countermeasures], Xiandai guoji
guanxi 11 (2018), http://www.sohu.com/a/296186126_662057.
282
“Wei shijie mou datong (xin Zhongguo fazhan mianduimian): Zhongguo shi zenyang zou jin shijie wutai zhongyang de?” [Seeking Common
Ground for the World (the New China Development Face to Face): How Did China Get Closer to the Center of the World Stage?], People’s
Daily, August 13, 2019, http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2019-08/13/nw.D110000renmrb_20190813_1-07.htm.
283
Feng, “Zhongguo jinpo xuyao guoji huayuquan.”
49
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
peace will not, as in the democratic peace theory that lies at the heart of the prevailing liberal
concept of international order, be born out of a belief in the primacy of individual freedom or the
spread of liberal democratic principles and universal values. According to the party’s theorists,
this order will be born out of a “new type of international relations,” with “win-win cooperation”
and the concepts of “justice and benet” as the core and based on the construction of a “network
of partnerships” that can ultimately form a “community of common destiny.” If these terms
ring hollow, it is probably because, as Xu Zhangrun writes, since the collapse of Communist
ideology, the CCP has found itself with no real belief system, bere of ideals and reduced to
using threadbare formulations.
284
But even if, as the Tsinghua University professor believes, the
regime’s ideological heart is dead, its avid thirst for power provides enough vitality to make it
pulse and want the rest of the world to beat in unison. Instead of leadership and hegemony, the
CCP’s outward-facing discourse focuses on themes such as harmony and community. ese are
clearly discursive stratagems meant to avoid suspicion about the party’s ambitions, but they are
not completely devoid of substance. One participant at the workshop on China’s vision for a new
world order noted that Beijing’s choice of words reects actual aspirations. e words and themes
carefully selected by the ocial rhetoric draw a virtual map of the world as seen by Chinese elites.
Instead of the liberal uniformity sought by the United States—individual liberty, free expression,
economic liberalism, and democracy—the Chinese elites envisage a world where authoritarian
regimes and the prominent role of the state are not stigmatized. To invalidate the assumption
that prosperity can only be achieved with a democratic system of government, the CCP only
needs to point to its own achievements.
e “China solution” can become an appealing example
for developing countries.
285
e new international order that the Chinese political elites seem to have in mind may be
dened as a partial, loose, and malleable hegemony. It is partial because the vision seems to imply
the existence of a sphere of inuence, as opposed to an ambition to “rule the world.” Le unclear is
the size and extent of the sphere of inuence on which China would exert its power. is order is
loose because the vision does not seem to imply direct or absolute control over foreign territories or
governments. And it is malleable because the countries included under China’s hegemony do not
seem to be strictly dened along geographic, cultural, or ideological lines. Immediate neighbors
and far-ung countries, Asian and non-Asian powers, and democracies and autocracies could all
be included, as long as they recognize and respect the primacy of Beijing’s authority and interests.
Conclusion
Xi Jinping has dened the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation as the “China dream.” Does this
mean that he considers China’s imperial past as a model for China’s future as a global power?
Vivienne Shue speculates that
when Xi Jinping and other Party leaders today call for the “rejuvenation of the
nation,” what they plainly seem to want to bring to mind is a time, before the
Party had been born and before the nation had been built, a time of empire:
when China stood as an economic, technological, and cultural colossus, at the
284
Geremie Barmé, “China’s Red Empire: To Be or Not to Be?” China Heritage, January 27, 2018, http://chinaheritage.net/journal/chinas-red-
empire-to-be-or-not-to-be.
285
Comments at the NBR-RSIS workshop, Singapore, September 18, 2019.
50
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
cosmopolitan core of immense networks of production and trade, skills and
learning—admired, envied, deferred to—and governing within its own realm,
entirely according to its own lights.
286
e prospect of a full return of the tianxia system of yore in the form of a 21st-century China-led
world order is as far-fetched as imagining the return of feudalism from the Middle Ages as
a model for European integration. Yet the concept provides a useful organizing framework for
Chinese intellectuals and ocials who wish to propose a worldview and a vision of international
relations that are distinct from what they perceive as an adverse Western-led liberal international
order. It is a subtly aimed keyword that sometimes appears under the bland form of “world” in
ocial Chinese translations into English, and whose connotation can easily be misunderstood or
overlooked by those who are not thoroughly immersed in the Chinese culture. However, it conjures
up a specic frame of reference immediately identiable to those who are more China-versed.
287
In addition, the contemporary reappropriation by the party-state of the tianxia imagery and
of its selectively associated themes of harmony, virtue, and benevolence serves the leadership’s
attempts to forge a benign image projectable to the outside world and help portray China’s global
expansion as peaceful rather than revisionist or aggressive. Beyond these utilitarian aspects, it is
also possible to see in the power conguration that Beijing today is gradually bringing about a
modern metamorphosis of the ancient system that prevailed in East Asia for centuries.
Historically, tianxia extended over three loosely dened concentric circles: the core, under
the direct control of the emperor and his bureaucracy; the border regions, composed of settled
kingdoms and vassal states under the emperor’s indirect rule that acknowledged his superiority,
engaged in commercial activities, and were “content to exchange ritual deference to China for
China’s assurance of autonomy”;
288
and the outer connes, in which lived nomadic barbarians
too uncivilized to arouse genuine imperial interest other than the need for defense because their
repeated military raids posed the greatest security threat to the dynasty’s survival. Under modern
conditions, one could loosely apply the same scheme and identify three circles, distinguishable
by the degree of actual control or power of attraction wielded by Beijing (or degree of deference
granted to Beijing): the core is the party-state and mainland China, where the CCP exerts the
greatest control over politics, society, economy, and security; the border regions could include
China’s immediate and broader neighborhood, extending, for example, along the Silk Road
Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road, which outline a geographic space where Beijing wishes
to increase its strategic inuence;
289
and the outermost ring encompasses the great powers (mainly
the United States), the advanced liberal democracies, and the institutions that embody the liberal
international order, which the CCP believes ultimately constitute the greatest threat to its survival.
Ocial protestations notwithstanding, it seems rather clear that the CCP would like to be
recognized as the center of this ring structure on the basis of China’s comprehensive national
power. Not unlike emperors of past centuries, the leadership would prefer others to look up to and
acknowledge both its material and ideational superiority. If China’s past dominance over East Asia
was born out of its civilizational grandeur, economic power is what today constitutes the country’s
286
Barmé, “China’s Red Empire.”
287
Richard Rigby, “Tianxia,” in China Story Yearbook 2013: Civilising China, ed. Geremie R. Barmé and Jeremy Goldkorn (Canberra: Australian
National University, 2013), 74–79, https://www.thechinastory.org/yearbooks/yearbook-2013/forum-politics-and-society/tianxia-天下.
288
Brantly Womack, “Asymmetry and China’s Tributary System,” Chinese Journal of International Politics 5, no. 1 (2012): 48.
289
Rolland, China’s Eurasian Century?
51
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
main attraction and instrument of inuence over the outside world. But the increased eorts to
develop China’s discourse power also reveal an ideational aspiration, a desire to be acknowledged
not only for wealth and the material power that grows out of it, but also as a guiding polestar that
others can look up to, learn from, and eventually assimilate or follow for their own sake. Technical
innovations, language, philosophy, literature and arts, and the sophisticated administrative system
of ancient Chinese dynasties used to be admired, disseminated, and replicated throughout Asia.
Today, the Chinese leadership would like its algorithmic surveillance system, industrial standards,
and governance model to have a similar inuence over the non-Western world. Finally, the party’s
diplomatic practices, especially the high-level summits and dialogues regularly organized in
China, reveal a taste for decorum and rituals shared by ancient emperors.
290
Given the controversy attached to the term and its overuse to describe dierent realities,
applying the tianxia label to Beijing’s vision for a future world order would probably obscure
more than it illuminates. Whatever word is used to describe it, however, the CCP’s vision of a
21st-century world in which China has risen as the preponderant power has already started to
emerge in practice. Taken together, the various components of China’s diplomacy under Xi—the
priority given to the creation of a foreign discourse power system, the community of common
destiny, BRI, the global network of partnerships, and the quest for institutional power—point to
a vision in which China’s leadership is exercised over large portions of the “global South,” a space
that would be free from Western inuence and largely purged of the core liberal democratic beliefs
supported by the West. e new hierarchical system, in which China would be akin to a massive,
dazzling star pulling smaller planets into its orbit without necessarily exerting direct control over
them, would not be traced along precise geographic or ideological lines. Rather, it would be dened
by the degree of deference and respect that those within China’s sphere would be willing to oer
Beijing. To some extent, China’s assertion of its position as the center of this parallel system is
already underway.
290
For further discussion, see Womak, “China’s Tributary System,” 49.
52
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
APPENDIX
Domestic lexicon (formulations that are signicant for foreign policy guidance, mainly found in internal party pronouncements)
Concept/term
First known use in
an ocial context
Chinese (pinyin), translation Primary context
Chinese spirit 2013 中国精神 (Zhongguo jingshen), China’s spirit
In a 2013 speech, this term was mentioned in tandem
with Xi’s China dream and national rejuvenation.
China path 2014 中国道路 (Zhongguo daolu), China’s path
In October 2014, Xi pointed out in “Several Issues
Needing Attention in Current Work” that the CCP led
the people of all nationalities in China to create a
socialist road (or path) with Chinese characteristics.
Chinese wisdom 2014 中国的智慧 (Zhongguo de zhihui), China’s wisdom
Originally used (per Baidu) by Xi in the context of one
country, two systems, this concept has been stretched
to denote China’s proposed solutions to transnational
or global governance problems.
Cultural self-
condence/
Four condences
2014
文化自信 (wenhua zixin) / 四个自信 (si ge zixin),
cultural self-condence/four self-condences
In 2014, Xi added “cultural self-condence” to the
three other political “self-condences” (dened in the
November 2012 18th Party Congress report as the
country’s socialist path with Chinese characteristics, its
guiding theory, and its political system or institutions).
According to Xi, “cultural condence” represents the
“unique spiritual identity of the Chinese nation” and
encompasses not only China’s “excellent traditional
culture” but also its “revolutionary culture” and
“socialist culture.”
n o t e : A more comprehensive version of this table, including sources, is available at https://www.nbr.org/publication/china-foreign-policy-lexicon-tracker.
53
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
Concept/term
First known use in
an ocial context
Chinese (pinyin), translation Primary context
Two guides 2015 两个引导 (liang ge yindao), two guides
At the February 2017 National Security Work
Conference, Xi armed that China should “guide” the
international community to “jointly shape a more just
and reasonable new international order” and “jointly
safeguard international security.” In June 2018, he
listed “leading the reform of the global governance
system with the concept of fairness and justice” as
one of the ten priorities for China’s diplomacy “in the
new era.”
Lexicon of terms that are part of China’s eorts to build its “international discourse power” (see pp. 7–13)
Concept/term
First known use in
an ocial context
Chinese (pinyin), translation Primary context
Good
neighborliness
c. 1989 睦邻友好 (mulin youhao), amicable neighborly relations
First use is unclear, but the concept is linked with
the foreign policy of Jiang Zemin as part of an eort
to reassure China’s neighbors and break out of
international isolation after the Tiananmen crisis and
the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Discourse power/
International
discourse power
c. 1992, 2008
(ocial)
话语权 (huayuquan) / 国际话语权 (guoji huayuquan),
discourse power/international discourse power
Although the term appeared in the early 1990s,
scholarly interest in it increased around 2008. Chinese
authors started to describe huayuquan in the context
of international “distorted reports” related to the
March 2008 Tibet uprising and the Olympic torch relay
incidents. It was also used to describe foreign political
inuence and subversion of other countries’ ability
to “inltrate the international community” through
ocial diplomacy and “other channels.”
54
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
Concept/term
First known use in
an ocial context
Chinese (pinyin), translation Primary context
Win-win
cooperation
2005
合作共赢 (hezuo gongying), mutually benecial
cooperation; 互利合作 (huli hezuo), work together
for mutual benet; 共赢 (gong ying), shared wins
or win-win; 双赢 (shuangying), win-win (colloquial,
mainly used as an adjective)
The “win-win cooperation” concept was advanced
in the 11th Five-Year Plan on National Economy and
Social Development passed in the fth plenary session
of the 16th CCP Central Committee.
Common interests 2007 共同利益 (gongtong liyi), common interests
This concept is introduced in Hu Jintao’s October
2007 report to the 17th Party Congress, which also
introduced the “harmonious world” concept.
China’s story/
China’s voice
2012
中国故事 (Zhongguo gushi) / 中国话语 (Zhongguo
huayu), China’s story/China’s discourse
The concept aims to promote Chinese views and
expressions to inuence world public opinion.
Amity, sincerity,
mutual benet, and
inclusiveness
2013
亲、诚、惠、容 (qin, cheng, hui, rong), amity, sincerity,
mutual benet, and inclusiveness
At the October 2013 Forum on Diplomatic Work
toward China’s Periphery, Xi and other senior leaders
identied a four-part approach to guide diplomacy
toward small and medium powers centering on
eorts to convey amity, sincerity, mutual benet, and
inclusiveness.
Community of
common destiny /
Community of
shared future for
mankind
2013
人类命运共同体 (renlei mingyun gongtongti),
community of common destiny
Xi used this phrase in his March 2013 speech at the
Moscow State Institute of International Relations:
“Mankind, by living in the same global village within
the same time and space where history and reality
meet, have [sic] increasingly emerged as a community
of common destiny in which everyone has in himself a
little bit of others.”
55
CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
•
ROLLAND
Concept/term
First known use in
an ocial context
Chinese (pinyin), translation Primary context
Four
righteousnesses
(speak in good
faith, value
comradeship, raise
justice, cultivate
righteousness)
2013
四义: 讲信义、重情义、扬正义、树道义 (si yi:
jiang xinyi, zhong qingyi, yang zhengyi, shu daoyi),
four righteousnesses: speak in good faith, value
comradeship, raise justice, cultivate morality
Adhering to the “correct view of righteousness and
interests” was rst proposed by Xi during his visit to
three African countries in March 2013. In October of
the same year, he stated at the Forum on Diplomatic
Work toward China’s Periphery that, to deal with
foreign relations, China must “nd the common
points and intersections of interests and adhere to
the correct view of justice and interests.” At the end
of 2014, Xi re-emphasized this principle at the Central
Conference on Work Related to Foreign Aairs.
Wide consultation,
joint contribution,
and shared benets
2013
共商、共建、共享 (gongshang, gongjian, gongxiang),
joint discussion, cooperation, and sharing
Although China often invoked principles of mutuality
prior to BRI (e.g., the SCO’s founding charter describes
the “Shanghai spirit” as “mutual trust, mutual benet,
equality, joint consultations, respect for cultural
diversity, and aspiration for collective development”),
this specic formula emerges and enters China’s
foreign policy lexicon with the initiative’s launch
in 2013.
Common,
comprehensive,
cooperative,
sustainable
2014
共同、综合、合作、可持续 (gongtong, zonghe,
hezuo, kechixu), common, comprehensive, cooperative,
sustainable
This phrase is generally attached to Xi's new security
concept. At the 2014 summit of CICA, Xi said that China
should “actively advocate a common, comprehensive,
cooperative, and sustainable Asia security concept,
innovate safety concepts, and build a new regional
security and cooperation framework.”
Innovation,
coordination, green
development,
openness, and
sharing
2015
创新、协调、绿色、开放、共享 (chuangxin, xietiao,
luse, kaifang, gongxiang), innovation, coordination,
green, openness, and sharing
This concept is introduced in the 13th Five-Year Plan
for National Economic and Social Development
adopted by the fth plenary session of the 18th CCP
Central Committee in October 2015.
56
NBR SPECIAL REPORT
•
JANUARY 2020
Concept/term
First known use in
an ocial context
Chinese (pinyin), translation Primary context
Builder of world
peace, contributor
to global
development,
protector of
international order
2017
世界和平的建设者、 全球发展的贡献者、 国际
秩序的维护者 (shijie heping de jianshezhe, quanqiu
fazhan de gongxianzhe, guoji zhixu de weihuzhe),
builder of world peace, contributor of global
development, upholder of the international order
The concept appears in Xi’s October 2017 report to the
19th Party Congress. It is used to denote the Chinese
contribution (Zhongguo gongxian) to international
security and development. For example, a National
People’s Congress statement on “Advancing the
International Order through China’s Contribution”
asserts that “China has throughout time been a builder
of world peace, promoter of global development, and
defender of international order.”
Equality, mutual
understanding,
dialogue, and
tolerance
2018
平等、互鉴、对话、包容 (pingdeng, hu jian, duihua,
baorong), equality, mutual reection, dialogue,
tolerance
The rst use is unclear, but this phrase is employed in
the context of dialogue among civilizations.
Frank consultation,
sincere
communication,
in-depth exchange,
mutual learning
2019
坦诚协商、真诚沟通、深入交流、互学互鉴
(tancheng xieshang, zhengcheng goutong, shenru
jiaoliu, hu xue hu jian), frank consultation, sincere
communication, in-depth exchange, mutual learning
The concept appears to have been used for the
rst time in its entirety in 2019. For example, at
the opening ceremony of the China-France Global
Governance Forum in March 2019, Wang Yi said that
“frank consultation, sincere communication, in-depth
exchange, mutual learning” is the rst step in the
process of reforming global governance institutions.
cover 3
Seattle and Washington, D.C.
1414 ne 42nd street, suite 300
seattle, washington 98105 usa
phone 206-632-7370, fax 206-632-7487
1819 l street nw, ninth floor
washington, d.c. 20036 usa
phone 202-347-9767, fax 202-347-9766
nbr@nbr.org, www.nbr.org
