Built on a great civilisation, China deserves respect
Many of us in Africa are fascinated with China. However, our knowledge of things Chinese is tainted by our Western-centric education and English language international media.
Our textbooks hardly mention the opium wars of the mid-19th century, for example, when the British sought to punish the Chinese government for refusing to buy opium. The same Western mainstream media that has written Africa off as the “hopeless continent” also portrays China as the yellow peril”.
In my book Chinese Peace: From Peacekeeper to Peacemaker , published earlier in 2020, I explore if there is a Chinese model for building sustainable peace and how China sees African insecurity.
I accounted for Chinese pragmatism in its security policy over the past 30 years by examining its participation in UN peacekeeping operations across Africa. China participated in its first UN peacekeeping mission as an observer in Namibia in 1989, and by 2019 it was the largest troop contributor of the five UN Security Council permanent members. China’s $7bn contribution in 2019 accounts for 15.22% of the UN peacekeeping budget, making it the second-largest funder after the US.
I wrote in my book that as Chinese international relations academics reflect on its reemergence, and as it prepares to take on leadership roles in the global order, they have begun to look at their philosophical traditions for Chinese norms and values. Casual observers of China are awed by its immense scale and gargantuan industrial base. What they fail to see is that modern China is built on the foundations of a great civilisation.
Philosophical questions Confucius and his students began to discuss 2,000 years ago are relevant today as the ideological foundation for modern Chinese engagement with the global order.
Where the Judeo-Christian West is focused on individual rights, Confucians are concerned about the collective good, where social harmony is the goal — achieved by establishing the right kind of reciprocal relationships between members.
The ideal society as envisioned by Confucius is one where government and citizens respect their position in society and act in the right way when they engage with one another.
There are five kinds of relationships: father-son; emperor-minister; elder brother-younger brother; husband-wife; friend-friend. These relationships are not equal, between rational agents, as in Kantian philosophy; nor are they competitive as in the
Hobbesian jungle. Rather, these relationships are benign. The son owes his father a duty of obedience and the father owes his son concern for his welfare. The husband is to show his wife benevolence and the wife owes her husband respect.
When questioned by Duke Jing on how he could govern to bring about social harmony, Confucius said: “There is government, when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son.”
When each relationship is correct and reciprocal, peace and harmony follow. Like ubuntu, where “I am because we are”, Chinese and Africans understand the importance of relationships for social harmony and how they are the building blocks of peaceful societies.
A harmonious society begins with study and self-cultivation, then strives for harmony of relationships within the family. Only once one’s relationship with one’s parents, spouse and friends are correct can one become a minister who governs. Confucianism’s focus on self-cultivation and quality of relationships differs from Western political philosophies’ focus on the rule of law, rights and the social contract.
Looking through a Confucian lens we see a Beijing that wants to get its relationships right. First, it wants its people to be obedient in return for its care and benevolence, then with the US and Western countries, which refuse to recognise it as an equal. For SA, far away from the Middle Kingdom, Beijing is happy to show largesse and kindness in return for the respect it feels it deserves but can’t get from the West.