China: There is a Dragon in the World System
THE leading Asian scholar and Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani remarked in 2005 that: “China today is like a Dragon that, waking up after centuries of slumber, suddenly realises many nations have been trampling on its trail. With all that has happened to it over the past 200 years, China could be forgiven for awakening as an angry nation, and yet Beijing has declared that it will rise peacefully.” I read this to mean that China is a ferocious Dragon that is smiling at rather than roaring at the world. For its economic power and political position in the World System and its many Orders, China can only be ignored at the dear price of ignorance and negligence of critical world realities. Decolonial scholars, the historians, political scientists and philosophers in particular, must ponder China in the world. Philosophically, China is a symbol and metaphor of the order of things in the world. Otherwise, China is real. In the World System China is taking economic positions and making political propositions that are importantly alternative to the hegemonic postures of the Euro-American Empire. China is advancing another model of world history and world progress that is not Euro-American. It is in that monumental way that China and some of its Asian neighbours are providing another centre of power in the world. And so must we ponder China, the Dragon of the World System, as it is metaphorically referred to by celebrants and critics alike. For 200 years, as Mahbubani opines, China has been enduring the conditions of a fallen Empire. The rise of China to world economic power and political prosperity that presently scares the Euro-American Empire is therefore a moment to ponder for decolonists of the world. For the countries of the Global South that are fallen and trodden with coloniality China provides, perhaps, a template of how to fall and also rise again, in a dark and bloody world such as our own.
China in the Year of the Rat
The Rat is the first of the 12 animals that occupy the Chinese Zodiac. 2020 is the Year of the Rat in Chinese cosmology. I was one of the invited guests of His Excellency the Ambassador of China to South Africa, Lin Songtian and Madame Ni Lingling at the Chinese Embassy on 18 January 2020. The event was a celebration of the Chinese Spring Festival or, by another name, the Lunar New Year. It was a crowd of 200 guests that mixed scholars, diplomats, journalists, cultural enthusiasts and politicians of South Africa, Africa, Asia and the larger world. Embassies are true pieces of their countries in other countries; we were in China. It was a festival of culture, food and above all thought. It was a time to celebrate but also ponder the Dragon itself and the world where it is unfolding and practicing its dragoness. For me it was a thoroughly decolonial moment to experience a cultural and social presentation and reality that is different and also alternative to the hegemonic Euro-American historical and political sensibility. For that reason I was all eyes and ears as H.E Songtian spoke to us in the festival of culture, food and ideas to which we were invited. And there were books and other paraphernalia that excite the daily philosopher. The random socialite could also relish the carnival atmosphere and convivial climate of human electricity and happiness. The Chinese kick with Kung Fu and care with kindness, the Chinese smile is a true sunrise. On a good day I am both a brooding philosopher and revelling socialite, I think, so I was at home in the piece of China in Mzansi.
The Smiling Dragon and Willing Companion
True to Mahbubani’s observation, H.E Songtian spoke as a diplomat of China that is not angry or hateful. In these days of Trump where super-powers speak in fire, threats and anger, it is refreshing to hear a representative of a powerful country propose peace and companionship in the world. The Ambassador pledged to provide “a true and authentic picture of China” that is not the image of the Dragon as rendered in Euro-American propaganda and stereotypes. He noted the smear-campaign against China in the global media and academy. “China has changed! The world has changed! Africa has changed!” he noted. He summarised the hegemonic climate of hatred against China in the words that “some western countries even fabricate fake news about and smear China because they are afraid of and reluctant to see China’s rise.” Some scholars have called the Euro-American sponsored fear and hatred of China in the world “sinophobia.” From that conceptualisation we can read and understand the love and appreciation of China in some parts of the world as sinophilia. Decolonial scholars, in particular, must fly above sinophobia and sinophilia and ponder how China can use itself and be used by the world for liberation and counter-systemic progress that, as the Ambassador suggested, must be a win-win” approach to progress in the planet.
The demonisation and angelisation of China are both post-political positions that do not reveal but hide the truth about our difficult, conflictual and otherwise dark world. We must, perhaps, make a pragmatic pondering of China’s liberatory potential without being overwhelmed by the love or fear of China. Decolonial and critical cosmopolitanism, that is common belonging to and ownership of the world must be a matter that is above love and hate. We must imagine a beautiful, truthful and also just world. China, for instance, must share with Africa what H.E called its rise from a “poor and dirty” part of the world in the “1990s to a now bustling and modern” province of the world. Africa needs that recipe. African scholars and political leaders need the gravitas of China in their imagination of and construction of another Africa. China has known how to fall and how to rise in the world and therefore it can willingly become a needed companion to African and Latin American countries that are determined to rise from their present fall. The Ambassador clearly announced China’s willingness for “exchange” and “sharing” common human goods and services. What decolonial scholars such as Boaventura de Soussa Santos call “the sociology of translation” is the political and intellectual habit of learning from each other’s experiences and sharing secrets of success in a world defined by fear, failure and falls. From persons to countries, learning how others have fallen and risen is a sign of basic intelligence.