Category Archives: SOCIAL-POLITIC

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Civilization state versus nation-state

China confronts Europe with an enormous problem: we do not understand it

China confronts Europe with an enormous problem: we do not understand it. Worse, we are not even conscious of the fact. We insist on seeing the world through our Western prism. No other tradition or history or culture can compare. Ours is superior to all and others, in deviating from ours, are diminished as a consequence. This speaks not of our wisdom but our ignorance, an expression not of our cosmopolitanism but our insularity and provincialism. It is a consequence of being in the ascendant for at least two centuries, if not rather longer. Eurocentrism – or perhaps we should say western-centrism – has become our universal yardstick against which, in varying degrees, all others fail.

This mindset threatens to become our greatest handicap as we enter an era in which Europe will be progressively marginalised, the United States will experience irreversible decline, the emergent nations will become major actors and China will replace the United States as the dominant power. In other words, those countries and cultures that we now look down upon will increasingly become the arbiters of the future. How will we ever make sense of them if we refuse to understand them in anything other than our own Western terms? How will they view us if we continue to look down upon their culture and polities as inferior to our own?

Which brings us to China. We choose to see China overwhelmingly in a context calibrated according to Western values: what overwhelmingly preoccupies us is the absence of a Western-style democracy, a lack of human rights, the plight of the Tibetans, and the country’s poor environmental record. No doubt you could add a few more to that list. I am not arguing that such issues do not matter – they do – but our insistence on judging China in our own terms diverts us from a far more important task: understanding China in its own terms. If we fail to do that then, quite simply, we will never understand it. That is why mainstream Western commentary on China over the last three or more decades has singularly failed to get China right, from predicting the imminent downfall of the regime after Tiananmen Square and the likely break-up of the country, to the constant insistence ever since that the economic growth could not possibly last and that the regime would be unable to sustain itself. Virtually no-one predicted what has happened; phenomenal economic growth for over thirty years and a regime that has been hugely successful and which now enjoys greater legitimacy and prestige than at any time since the reform period began in 1978.

Our western-centric value-judgements about China must no longer be allowed to act as a substitute for understanding the country in its own terms. This is no easy task. China is profoundly different from the West in the most basic of ways. Perhaps the most basic difference is that it is not a nation-state in the European sense of the term. Indeed, it has only described itself as such since around 1900. Anyone who knows anything about China is aware that it is a lot older than that. China, as we know it today, dates back to 221BC, in some respects much earlier. That date marked the end of the Warring States period, the victory of the Qin, and the birth of the Qin Empire whose borders embraced a considerable slice of what is today the eastern half of China and by far its most populous part.

For over two millennia, the Chinese thought of themselves as a civilization rather than a nation. The most fundamental defining features of China today, and which give the Chinese their sense of identity, emanate not from the last century when China has called itself a nation-state but from the previous two millennia when it can be best described as a civilization-state: the relationship between the state and society, a very distinctive notion of the family, ancestral worship, Confucian values, the network of personal relationships that we call guanxi, Chinese food and the traditions that surround it, and, of course, the Chinese language with its unusual relationship between the written and spoken form. The implications are profound: whereas national identity in Europe is overwhelmingly a product of the era of the nation-state – in the United States almost exclusively so – in China, on the contrary, the sense of identity has primarily been shaped by the country’s history as a civilization-state. Although China describes itself today as a nation-state, it remains essentially a civilization-state in terms of history, culture, identity and ways of thinking. China’s geological structure is that of a civilization-state; the nation-state accounts for little more than the top soil.

China, as a civilization-state, has two main characteristics. Firstly, there is its exceptional longevity, dating back to even before the break-up of the Roman Empire. Secondly, the sheer scale of China – both geographic and demographic – means that it embraces a huge diversity. Contrary to the Western belief that China is highly centralised, in fact in many respects the opposite is the case: indeed, it would have been impossible to govern the country – either now or in the dynastic period – on such a basis. It is simply too large. The implications in terms of the way the Chinese think are profound.

In 1997 Hong Kong was handed over to China by the British. The Chinese constitutional proposal was summed up in the phrase: ‘one country, two systems’. Barely anyone in the West gave this maxim much thought or indeed credence; the assumption was that Hong Kong would soon become like the rest of China. This was entirely wrong. The political and legal structure of Hong Kong remains as different now from the rest of China as in 1997. The reason we did not take the Chinese seriously is that the West is characterised by a nation-state mentality, hence when Germany was unified in 1990 it was done solely and exclusively on the basis of the Federal Republic; the DDR in effect disappeared. ‘One nation-state, one system’ is the nation-state way of thinking. But, as a civilization-state, the Chinese logic is quite different. Because China is so vast and embraces such diversity, as a matter of necessity it must be flexible: ‘one civilization, many systems’.

The idea of China as a civilization-state is a fundamental building block for understanding China in its own terms. And it has multifarious implications. The relationship between the state and society in China is very different to that in the West. Contrary to the overwhelming Western assumption that the Chinese state lacks legitimacy and is bereft of public support, in fact the Chinese state enjoys greater legitimacy than any Western state. We have come to assume that the legitimacy of the state overwhelmingly rests on the democratic process – universal suffrage, competing parties et al. But this is only one element: if it was the whole story, then the Italian state would enjoy a robust legitimacy rather than the reality, a chronic lack of it. And to explain this we have to go back to the Risorgimento as only a partially fulfilled project.

The reason why the Chinese state enjoys a formidable legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese has nothing to do with democracy but can be found in the relationship between the state and Chinese civilization. The state is seen as the embodiment, guardian and defender of Chinese civilization. Maintaining the unity, cohesion and integrity of Chinese civilization – of the civilization-state – is perceived as the highest political priority and is seen as the sacrosanct task of the Chinese state. Unlike in the West, where the state is viewed with varying degrees of suspicion, even hostility, and is regarded, as a consequence, as an outsider, in China the state is seen as an intimate, as part of the family, indeed as the head of the family; interestingly, in this context, the Chinese term for nation-state is ‘nation-family’.

Or consider a quite different example. Over 90 per cent of Chinese think of themselves as of one race, the Han. This is so different from the world’s other most populous nations – India, United States, Indonesia and Brazil, all of which are highly multi-racial – as to be extraordinary. Of course, in reality the Han were a product of many different races, but the Han do not think of themselves like that. And the reason takes us back to the civilization-state and one of its defining characteristics, namely China’s remarkable longevity. Over thousands of years, as a result of many processes, cultural, racial and ethnic, the differences between the many races that comprised the Han have been weakened to the point where they were no longer significant.

We will never make sense of China if we persist in treating it as if it is, or should be, a product of our own civilization. Our present attitude towards China is a function of arrogance and ignorance. And it threatens to leave us bewildered, confused and alienated. Our historical inheritance, and the mentality it has engendered, ill equips us for the very new world that is presently unfolding before us.

 

SOURCE :

http://www.martinjacques.com/articles/civilization-state-versus-nation-state-2/

 

 

 

 

 

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U.S. Must Accept China’s Economic Rise

Sean Para, Columnist
December 11, 2015
Filed under Columns, OPINIONS

The U.S. is no longer in a league of its own among the world powers. The end of the Cold War ushered in a prolonged period of undisputed American hegemony, but the emergence of China as the second-largest economy in the world and an increasingly crucial hub of the global economy — coupled with China’s enormous investment in its military — signals the end of uncontested American dominance. The International Monetary Fund recently made the renminbi, the currency of the People’s Republic of China, an official world reserve currency alongside the American dollar, the Euro, the British pound and the Japanese yen. The emergence of new great powers is a phenomenon that can be seen throughout history. The U.S. should and must accept that its influence on the international stage is waning for the first time since 1991 and deal China into the international system rather than try to oppose or control it.

The beginning of the 20th century presents an analogous situation to the rise of China. By 1900, Britain was the preeminent world power and had been for the better part of a century. The rising powers, on the other hand, were the U.S. and Germany. Both countries had seen huge economic growth in the past half-century and were seeking to cast a larger shadow on the international stage. However, Germany’s aggressiveness, coupled with the desire of Britain, France and Russia to contain the titan emerging in the heart of Europe led to two disastrous world wars and the collapse of the Eurocentric world system that had dominated since the Age of Exploration. The United States took a different path — it was accepted as a major power by Britain, France and the older European powers. It did not embark on expansionist wars in the same way Germany did; instead, it sat out of World War I until the end and fought the major battles of World War II far from its home territory. The result of these divergent trajectories was that by 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union stood in a league of their own. As the first “superpowers,” they were capable of exercising influence and deploying military force around the world — not only to create a formal empire, but to direct events in countries all around the world. Germany, on the other hand, was devastated by having lost two global wars. While there had been a consortium of great powers that  dominated global affairs before the world wars, after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union existed in a league of their own. China is the first country to attain this level of power since then.

Both the U.S. and China have much to learn from the global drama and power struggle of the 20th century. China should understand that it is not necessary to use force to become a superpower — economic influence beats out military might over time. It is easier to achieve political dominance through economic heft coupled with the threat of force than aggressive wars of conquest. The U.S. was an influential economic power long before it was a military one, as China is in modern times. The U.S., for its part, must realize that China does not represent a threat to its existence. Instead, it is possible to deal China into the club of preeminent powers, as Great Britain and France did with the U.S. in the early decades of the 20th century. There can be peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and China.

We live in a very different world than the one our predecessors did a century ago. The global economy is more interconnected than ever. A war between the U.S. and China is extremely unlikely, given the two countries’ intertwined economies. Nonetheless, China has become increasingly assertive in East Asia, attempting to create a zone of influence in the South China Sea. It has recently constructed artificial islands to buttress its military claim to the sea region. It has created the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to counter the American-led IMF, which has been a central facet of the global financial system since its inception after World War II. These developments are natural as China seeks to assert itself on the global stage and in its region in particular. The U.S. should accept these developments while seeking to retain influence in East Asia by continuing alliances with other countries in the region such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. The U.S. has and continues to balance against China. Furthermore, it does not recognize China’s claims or unilateral construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea. It nevertheless recognizes China’s increasingly important position in East Asia and has begrudgingly accepted China’s new development bank. These actions will hopefully prevent China from acting aggressively in East Asia, at the same time muting rather than stoking conflict. Much can be gained by working with China. The two countries can cooperate peacefully on issues such as climate change and seek mutually beneficial economic growth. There is no need for overt conflict between the two powers.

– See more at: http://oberlinreview.org/9378/opinions/u-s-must-accept-chinas-economic-rise/#sthash.21Ovv6kS.dpuf