Tianxia: China’s Concept of International Order

few Westerners understand how this ancient concept informs Beijing’s approach to contemporary challenges.

Behind the rivalry between China and the United States — and other Western powers — are deep, historical and significant differences over the very nature of China’s evolving conception of world order.

Few Westerners — scholars or politicians — appreciate the Chinese notion of tianxia, ‘everything under heaven,’ or understand how this ancient concept informs Beijing’s approach to contemporary challenges, writes Shiu Sin Por.

REAL Politics, geopolitics or power politics — these traditional and dominating theories of international relations are still the norm within diplomatic and academic circles worldwide. But we are having a hard time using these theories to explain what is happening in the world today. some find it difficult to fit china’s behavior into a simple geo-political narrative. Nevertheless, many are still seeing and explaining china’s foreign policy in this framework.

china, as a rising power, is the second largest economy in the world and will soon be the largest. the country has inevitably become the focus of this discussion, and as expected, has been repeatedly asked about its views on international relations and the current world order. suspicions and doubts about Beijing’s intentions and ambitions are unavoidable. china is trying hard to explain its positions, so far with limited success. It needs a new narrative for its view of the world and its international relations.

china asserts that it is not an imperialist power and has no hegemonic intentions. But its expansive “Belt and Road Initiative” invited strong opposition from the us and suspicions from many corners of the world. the south china sea disputes also make her neighbors nervous and the us agitated. the us has called china a “revisionist” power that tries to upend the existing order and replace the us as the dominant world power. All this is happening while china openly declares that it does not even want to be the world’s second power. Being third place is a lot better because you will not have the top guy watching over you.1 How to square china’s expanding international

activities and influence with its assertion of nonhegemonic intention? What is china’s concept of the world and nation-to-nation relations?

China’s approach to international relations

the contemporary basis of china’s international relations can be summed up in five building blocks. they have all been created since the founding of the People’s Republic of china (PRC) in 1949. some are old, emerging in the early 1950s, most of them are quite new, formulated just in the last few years, since Xi Jinping came to power. to my knowledge, these five elements were never grouped together and presented as one comprehensive theory. As china’s approach to international relations is still in its formative stage, these five elements might not be the final blueprint. But they are sufficient to give a full and fundamental picture of china’s concept of world order. I group these elements under the ancient chinese concept of tianxia “everything under heaven,” an old world view with contemporary applications.

these five elements of china’s conception of international relations are as follows.

(天下), 1) the Nation state

the basis of china’s international relations is the affirmation of the nation state. the concept was once new to china and the chinese. Before the 20th century, china’s conception of itself was very different from the concept of a nation state developed in the West since the mid-1600s. Many Western scholars have asserted that china is more a civilization than a modern state. lucian Pye claimed that “china is a civilization that ‘pretends’ to be a nation state.” this is basically wrong. china no doubt is a civilization and chinese civilization is no doubt an important basis for the modern chinese state. But this Western concept of the nation state, an entity with a clearly defined territory, citizenship and a government recognized by others as legitimate, was alien to old china. these three criteria were forced upon china by contemporary nation-to-nation interactions. china in the old days had no concept of a welldefined boundary. A marker stone would be used to define a region, not a border. china’s definition of citizenship was not by race or religion. Anyone who accepted and acquired chinese culture was considered a subject, not so much a citizen in the modern sense. It had the concept of legitimacy of government, but not in international relations. the chinese emperor never required recognition from other nations.

china, since the mid-19th century, was forced to deal with a world it barely knew. After many painful lessons, it tried hard to reconcile its understanding of the world and itself with the reality of modern international relations. china is not “pretending” to be a nation state. china has been “struggling” in the last hundred years to be a nation state. the PRC laid out its modern definition of citizenship in the 1950s, replacing the definition used by the Nationalist chinese (Kuomintang), which is by blood. the PRC is still struggling to define its land and sea borders. Not many are aware that it was not until recently — certainly not at the time the new republic was formed in 1949 — that china had clearly defined land borders, with the exception of that between china and India. As for sea boundaries, they are still in formation because of disputes with china’s many neighbors, which are also undergoing the same process of nation building. the south china sea disputes are the living examples of this.

china has now fully accepted the modern concept of the nation state, either willingly or without a choice. But it is still struggling to construct its modern statehood. One of the complications is that china is not a uni-ethnic country. After great difficulties, it consolidated its many minor