So what about China? As in the case of the United States, Chinese global hegemony will reflect the country’s particular characteristics, both historical and contemporary. The task here is to identify those characteristics and how they might leave their imprint on the future. It should also be borne in mind that forms of hegemony are constantly shifting and mutating in response to wider cultural, technological, military, political and economic changes. In the era of European supremacy, for example, the characteristic form of political domination was colonialism and the key expression of force-projection was the navy, but after 1945 colonialism, for a variety of reasons, became unsustainable. The American era, in contrast, is associated with air power, a global network of military bases, huge military superiority, an informal empire, dominance of the international economic system, and a global media. It is impossible, beyond a point, to anticipate the new forms of modernity with which a future Chinese hegemony might be associated.
THE LONG REACH OF CHINESE HISTORY
Global history has hitherto been essentially a Western history. With the rise of China, however, that will no longer be the case. Chinese history will become familiar not just to the Chinese, or even East Asians, but to the entire world. Just as many around the globe are conversant with major events in American history (the same also being true of decisive episodes in European history — such as the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance — as a consequence of Europe ’s earlier supremacy), so key landmarks in Chinese history will similarly become global property. This process is already under way, as the huge interest that surrounded the Terracotta Army exhibition at the British Museum in 2007-8 illustrated. [1232] Of course, the grandeur and richness of Chinese history means that aspects of it, such as the Great Wall, are already quite well known. But this is minor compared with what lies in the future. As an indication, already in 2005 the Great Wall, one of the defining symbols of the Middle Kingdom, attracted more foreign tourists than Florence, the epicentre of Europe ’s Renaissance. [1233]
Apart from its extraordinary longevity and bursts of efflorescent invention, the most striking feature of Chinese history is the fact that while Europe, following the fall of the Roman Empire, fragmented into many parts, and ultimately into many nations, China was already moving in exactly the opposite direction and starting to coalesce. It is this unity that has ensured the continuity of its civilization and also provided the size which remains so fundamental to China ’s character and impact. Unity is one of the most fundamental propositions concerning Chinese history, if not the most fundamental. If Europe provided the narrative and concepts that have informed not just Western but world history over the past two centuries, so China may do rather similarly for the next century or so, and thereby furnish the world with an entirely different story and set of concepts: namely the idea of unity rather than fragmentation, that of the civilization-state rather than the nation-state, that of the tributary system rather than the Westphalian system, a distinctive Chinese notion of race, and an organizing political dynamic of centralization/decentralization rather than modernization/conservatism. Given the nodal importance of Chinese unity, the year 211 BC — marking the victory of the Qin, the end of the Warring States period (403–221 BC), and the beginning of modern China — will become as familiar to the world as 1776 or 1789. Qin Shihuang, the first Chinese emperor, who not only bequeathed the Terracotta Army but founded a dynastic system which was to survive until 1911, will become as widely known as Thomas Jefferson or Napoleon Bonaparte, if not much more so.
There are many other aspects of Chinese history which will reconfigure the global discourse: the fact, for example, that China has been responsible for so many of the inventions that were subsequently adopted elsewhere, not least in the West, will help to dispel the contemporary myth that the West is history’s most inventive culture. For our purposes here, the voyages of Zheng He, which predated those of Europe ’s great maritime explorers like Christopher Columbus, can serve as an example for this process of reconfiguration. It is widely accepted that, in ships that dwarfed those of Europe at the time, Zheng He embarked on a series of seven voyages that took him to what we now know as Indonesia, the Indian Ocean and the east coast of Africa in the early fifteenth century. The voyages of the great European explorers like Vasco da Gama and Columbus marked the beginning of Europe ’s long-running colonial era. For the Chinese, on the other hand, Zheng’s voyages had no such consequence. There was no institution in Ming China that resembled a Navy Department and therefore, as the historian Edward Dreyer suggests, ‘there was no vested interest to argue the case for sea power or for a blue water strategy, nor did China exercise what later naval theorists would call “control of the seas” even during the period of Zheng He’s voyages.’ [1234] Zheng’s voyages never had a sequel: they proved to be the final curtain in the Ming dynasty’s maritime expeditions as China once again slowly turned inwards. Zheng’s missions were neither colonial nor exploratory in intent: if they had been, they would surely have been repeated. They were influence-maximizing missions designed to carry out the very traditional aim of spreading China ’s authority and prestige in what was its known world. The Chinese had no interest in exploring unknown places, but in making peoples in its known world aware of the presence and greatness of the Chinese empire. Zheng He’s expedition lay firmly within the idiom of the tributary state system, though his journeys took him much further afield than had previously been the case. [1235]
History is always subject to interpretation and reinterpretation, constantly reworked in the light of a contemporary context. Given their extraordinary nature, and bearing in mind subsequent European exploits, it is not surprising that both the purpose and reach of Zheng’s expeditions has been the subject of much conjecture. As China again seeks a closer relationship with South-East Asia, the fact that China has recently sponsored several commemorative exhibitions of Zheng He’s expeditions in various ASEAN countries is predictable: [1236] as it turns outwards once more, it remembers and reminds the world of the last such great occasion. The British historian Gavin Menzies has taken the process several steps further by arguing that the Chinese were the first to discover the Americas in 1421 and also discovered Australia. [1237] While there has been much interest in, though little support for, the idea that the Chinese discovered America, when President Hu Jintao visited Australia in 2003 he gave implicit endorsement to the idea that China discovered Australia when, in an address to a joint meeting of the Australian parliament, he declared: ‘Back in the 1420s, the expeditionary fleets of China’s Ming dynasty reached Australian shores.’ [1238] These kinds of claims are likely to increase as Western-written history is contested by the growth in Chinese-written history and as China seeks to burnish its contemporary image not only by promoting its own past but also, no doubt, aggrandizing and embellishing it. The Chinese ambassador to South Africa suggested to Africans in 2007 that:
Zheng took to the places he visited [in Africa] tea, chinaware, silk and technology. He did not occupy an inch of foreign land, nor did he take a single slave. What he brought to the outside world was peace and civilization. This fully reflects the good faith of the ancient Chinese people in strengthening exchanges with relevant countries and their people. This peace-loving culture has taken deep root in the minds and hearts of Chinese people of all generations. [1239]
On a light-hearted note, there is evidence to suggest that the game of golf originated in China. A Ming scroll entitled The Autumn Banquet, dating back to 1368, shows a member of the imperial court swinging what resembles a golf club at a small ball, with the aim of sinking it in a round hole. In Chinese the game was known as chuiwan, or ‘hit ball’. [1240] It is reasonable to surmise that many of the sports that have previously been regarded as European inventions, and especially British, actually had their origins in other parts of the world: the British, after all, had plenty of opportunity to borrow and assimilate games from their far-flung empire and then
codify the rules. As we move beyond a Western-dominated world, these kinds of discoveries and assertions will become more common, with some, perhaps many, destined to gain widespread acceptance.
BEIJING AS THE NEW GLOBAL CAPITAL
At the turn of the century, New York was the de facto capital of the world. Nothing more clearly illustrated this than the global reaction to 9/11. If the same fate had befallen the far more splendid Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the disaster would have been fortunate to have commanded global headlines for twelve hours, let alone months on end. New York ’s prominence owes everything to the fact that it is the financial capital of the world, the home of Wall Street, as well as a great melting pot and the original centre of European immigration. New York ’s global status is, however, largely a post-1945 phenomenon. In 1900, during the first wave of globalization, the world’s capital was London. And in 1500, arguably Florence was the most important city in the world (though in that era it could hardly have been described as the global capital). In 1000 perhaps Kaifeng in China enjoyed a similar status, albeit unknown to most of the world, while in AD 1 it was probably Rome. [1241] Looking forward once again, it seems quite likely that in fifty years’ time — and certainly by the end of this century — Beijing will have assumed the status of de facto global capital. It will face competition from other Chinese cities like Shanghai, but as China ’s capital, the centre of the Middle Kingdom and the home of the Forbidden City, Beijing ’s candidature will be assured, assuming China becomes the world’s leading power.
But this is not simply a matter of Beijing ’s status. We can assume that Chinese hegemony will involve at least four fundamental geopolitical shifts: first, that Beijing will emerge as the global capital; second, that China will become the world’s leading power; third, that East Asia will become the world’s most important region; and fourth, that Asia will assume the role of the world’s most important continent, a process that will also be enhanced by the rise of India. These multiple changes will, figuratively at least, amount to a shift in the earth’s axis. The world has become accustomed to looking west, towards Europe and more recently the United States: that era is now coming to an end. London might still represent zero when it comes to time zones, a legacy of its once-dominant status in the world, [1242] but the global community will increasingly set its watches to Beijing time.
THE RISE OF THE CIVILIZATION-STATE
The world has become accustomed to thinking in terms of the nation-state. It is one of the great legacies of the era of European domination. Nations that are not yet nation-states aspire to become one. The nation-state enjoys universal acceptance as the primary unit and agency of the international system. Since the 1911 Revolution, even China has sought to define itself as a nation-state. But, as we have seen, China is only latterly, and still only partially, a nation-state: for the most part, it is something very different, a civilization-state. As Lucian Pye argued:
China is not just another nation-state in the family of nations. China is a civilization pretending to be a state. The story of modern China could be described as the effort by both Chinese and foreigners to squeeze a civilization into the arbitrary and constraining framework of a modern state, an institutional invention that came out of the fragmentation of Western civilization. [1243]
It is this civilizational dimension which gives China its special and unique character. Most of China ’s main characteristics pre-date its attempts to become a nation-state and are a product of its existence as a civilization-state: the overriding importance of unity, the power and role of the state, its centripetal quality, the notion of Greater China, the Middle Kingdom mentality, the idea of race, the family and familial discourse, even traditional Chinese medicine.
Hitherto, the political traffic has all been in one direction, the desire of Chinese and Westerners alike to conform to the established Western template of the international system, namely the nation-state. This idea has played a fundamental role in China ’s attempts to modernize over the last 150 years from a beleaguered position of backwardness. But what happens when China no longer feels that its relationship with the West should be unidirectional, when it begins to believe in itself and its history and culture with a new sense of confidence, not as some great treasure trove, but as of direct and operational relevance to the present? That process is well under way [1244] and can only get stronger with time. This will inexorably lead to a shift in the terms of China ’s relationship with the international system: in effect, China will increasingly think of itself, and be treated by others, as a civilization-state as well as a nation-state. As we saw in Chapter 9, this has already begun to happen in East Asia and in due course it is likely to have wider global ramifications. Instead of the world thinking exclusively in terms of nation-states, as has been the case since the end of colonialism, the lexicon of international relations will become more diverse, demanding room be made for competing concepts, different histories and varying sizes.
THE RETURN OF THE TRIBUTARY SYSTEM
The Westphalian system has dominated international relations ever since the emergence of the modern European nation-state. It has become the universal conceptual language of the international system. As we have seen, however, the Westphalian system has itself metamorphosed over time and enjoyed several different iterations. Even so, it remains what it was, an essentially European-derived concept designed to make the world conform to its imperatives and modalities. As a consequence, different parts of the world approximate in differing degrees to the Westphalian norm. Arguably this congruence has been least true in East Asia, where the legacy of the tributary state system, and the presence of China, mean that the Westphalian system exists in combination with, and on top of, pre-existing structures and attitudes. The specificity of the East Asian reality is illustrated by the fact that most Western predictions about the likely path of interstate relations in the region since the end of the Cold War and the rise of China have not been borne out: namely, that there would be growing instability, tension and even war and that the rise of China would persuade other nations to balance and hedge against it. In the event, neither has happened. There have been fewer wars since 1989 than was the case during the Cold War, and there is little evidence of countries seeking to balance against China: on the contrary, most countries would appear to be attempting to move closer to China. [1245] This suggests that the modus operandi of East Asia is rather different to elsewhere and contrasts with Western expectations formed on the basis of its own history and experience. A fundamental feature of the tributary state system was the enormous inequality between China and all other nations in its orbit, and this inequality was intrinsic to the stability that characterized the system for so long. It may well be that the new East Asian order, now being configured around an increasingly dominant China, will prove similarly stable: in other words, as with the tributary system, overweening inequality breeds underlying stability, which is the opposite to the European experience, where roughly equal nation-states were almost constantly at war with each other over many centuries until 1945, when, emerging exhausted from the war, they discovered the world was no longer Eurocentric. [1246]
The idea that East Asia in future will owe as much to the tributary system as the Westphalian system will inevitably influence how China views the wider international system. Moreover if East Asia, as the most important region in the world, operates according to different criteria to other parts of the global system, then this is bound to colour behaviour and norms elsewhere. In other words, the tributary state system will not only shape China ’s outlook but, in the context of its global hegemony, also serve to influence the international system more widely. As the writer David Kang suggests, the modalities of East Asia in terms of interstate relations, from being ignored or marginalized until the end of the Cold War, will increasingly assume the role of one of the world’s major templates. [1247]
Two key characteristics of the tributary system were the overwhelming size of China in comparison wi
th its neighbours and a mutual acceptance of and acquiescence in Chinese superiority. In the era of globalization, these characteristics, certainly the first, might be transferred on to a wider canvas. Such will be the relative economic size and power of China that it is likely to find itself in relationships of profound inequality with many countries outside, as well as within, East Asia; as a result, they are likely to find themselves highly dependent on China. The most obvious example of this is Africa and to a lesser extent various Latin American countries like Peru and Bolivia; in other words, developing countries which are predominantly commodity-producers. [1248] As China ’s voracious appetite for raw materials grows apace, more and more such countries are likely to enter into its orbit. It has even been mooted that China might lease, or even buy, overseas farmland in Latin America and Australia in order to boost its supply of food. [1249] There is an understandable tendency to see China ’s emergent relationship with these countries in the same terms as those of the West, past and present. This, however, is to underestimate the difference between China and the West, and therefore the novelty of the situation. Given the huge disparity in size, rather than seeing it in basically colonial or neocolo nial terms, perhaps it would be more appropriate to think of this relationship in neo-tributary terms. To what extent the other characteristic of the tributary system — an acceptance of China ’s cultural superiority — might also become a factor is more difficult to judge, although, in light of the Chinese mentality, there will certainly be powerful elements of this. It is important, however, to place these points in a broader context. China ’s rise will be accompanied by that of other major developing countries, such as India and Brazil, and these are likely to act in some degree as a constraint on China ’s power and behaviour.
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