Understand Tianxia; understand China
N a speech before government officials, military officers and guests in the Great Hall of the People, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated Beijing’s call for peaceful unification on a one-country-two-systems basis with Taiwan. However, he also warned t
I“I hear prominent Americans, disappointed that China has not become a democracy, claiming that China poses a threat to the American way of life,” former US President Jimmy Carter wrote on the last day of 2018 in a Washington Post op-ed. That claim, Carter tells us, is a “dangerous notion.”
President Xi understands the concept of “Tianxia”; President Carter does not.
Tianxia dates back some 2,500 years to the Zhou dynasty. The term literally means “heaven under” or “All under Heaven,” denoting either the entire geographical world or the metaphysical realm of humans. It is the idea of “the lands divinely appointed to the Emperor by universal and well-defined principles of order.” This is a view that the world is centered on the Emperor and the Imperial Court, which, in effect, has jurisdiction of “All under Heaven.”
All should be unified under one rule. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu writes that the supreme goal of offensive strategy was to conquer without destroying that which you sought to conquer. Chinese emperors claimed they had the Mandate of Heaven over Tianxia, as they believed they were “predestined and compelled to order and rule the entire world that is known and reachable.”
Therefore, if you conquered a land, you would not destroy its infrastructure or people because all belonged to you in the first place. You do not burn down your own house to remove a rebellious and uncooperative cockroach.
The China and South China Sea experts said that China should—if not would—adhere to the decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the case brought by the Philippines. China, they said, would want to take its place in the family of civilized sovereign nations. From the view of Tianxia, China is the only civilized and sovereign nation.
Xi, embracing this historical root of Chinese foreign policy, may be the reason why he might be president for life. But Xi is not an exception.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey has clearly stated his intent to bring back his country to the golden age when it was the center of the Ottoman Empire, which controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. President Donald J. Trump’s foreign policy clearly echoes what President George Washington said in his Farewell Address. “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world. Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none.”
Shinzō Abe, two-time Prime Minister of Japan, is a strong member of Nippon Kaigi. “We are monarchists. We are for revising the constitution. We are for the glory of the nation.” Fifteen of the 18 of Abe’s Cabinet are also members. Abe is a “special adviser” to the group.
Nations, like people, are the sum of their life experiences and their heritage. For China, President Xi has resurrected the ancient concept of Tianxia and other countries will ignore this fact at their own peril.