Today’s international system of states is characterized by the strategic competition between US and China, which are consider to be the most significant powers in terms of hard and soft power. Western analysts try to interpret the Chinese presence which threatens the status quo of the East Asia-Pacific region. This paper is a brief introduction to the Chinese worldview as it’s important to comprehend the Chinese high strategy.
It is a fact that the majority of the western analyses based on the theory of political realism consider the behavior of the People’s Republic of China (China) at a global level as actions of a predetermined plan by the elite of the Communist Party for the take-over of the global hegemony (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013). However, in order to properly interpret the Chinese policy and its pursuits, the complex situation within the country should be scrutinized. Indeed, the various state organizations like ministries, agencies, services compete for influence growth on the shaping of the country’s foreign policy, since they often have conflicting interests (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013). It is also a certainty that within the country a confrontation between state policies and enterprise objectives is escalating, a case that makes promotion of policies of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CPC’s) leadership difficult (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013). Consequently, the scholars’ view of China as an undivided international actor with a plan of peaceful rise, as claimed by the CPC’s leadership, is problematic, because each Chinese activity abroad may not be at all connected to the official governmental policy (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013).
Already since the beginning of the 20th century the non-European countries were forced by Western Powers to westernize their societies. In the Chinese case its obligatory opening to the West took place painfully after its defeat by Great Britain in the Opium War (1839-1842) (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013). The radically opposed social organization of China, which embodied in a cultural planet the lifestyle of Chinese people that was compatible with the principles of Confucianism, had to yield to the totally strange Western model for the sake of its modernization. The Chinese culture, as well as other cultures of the Far East, reached maturity too early, but it was trapped in a very strict framework that offered cohesion. Simultaneously, this had a result to pause its development as well as any modernity (Braudel 2007). In the scheme of culture, the center of the world was the Chinese state while all the rest were considered to be barbaric, since their people did not engage in the Chinese education (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013). The zhongguo “Middle Kingdom” that is referred to China is not related to a specific geographical place between other kingdoms but to the area that China occupies between Sky (Heaven) and Earth and is indicative of the perception of the Chinese about their country (Allison 2017). An attribute of the Chinese worldview, apart from Confucianism, is both the ancestral and the monarch’s worship that rooted in the time of the empire (Braudel 2007). Confucianism was not strictly a religion but a social and political expression of the country’s superior social caste that survives, with many changes, until today and promotes the maintenance of order and social hierarchy as a lifestyle (Braudel 2007). It is crystal clear that it contributed enormously to the shaping of the Chinese traditional culture that in the current time of globalization fascinates increasingly extensive masses of people, even of Western countries (Nye Jr. 2011). The dissemination of the Chinese culture is achieved also by the students, both the Chinese in the universities of mostly Western countries and the westerns in the Chinese higher education institutes, who are estimated to reach 500,000 in 2020 (Nye Jr. 2011). The trend of the circulation of the Chinese language and culture worldwide is promoted aside the Chinese leadership by funding both China Radio International and the television network Xinhua which broadcast also in English 24/7, as well as the Confucian institutes that are founded in various states (Nye Jr. 2011). Of course, the development of the Chinese soft power is critical but still is significant lower than the respective of the USA and EU (Nye Jr. 2011).
The perspective of Chinese people about the dominance of their country compared to others was also augmented by China’s geographical position which is ideal. Indeed, the country was protected by the sea, the deserts and the mountain ranges of Central Asia at least until the arrival of the Western Powers. The country’s strategic position contributed to the duration of Chinese empire, namely almost 21 centuries (Braudel 2007). The first contact with Westerns was humiliating and ended with the destruction of the Summer Palaces and the downfall of the Chinese emperor Sien Feng (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013). Several decades later, the conflict between China and Japan, a power that was westernized to a large extent, lead to a new destruction. Since then, the country was living humiliated by the Western Powers. During the 1930’s, the communists pursued another way to modernize the state (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013). They basically destroyed the traditional Chinese lifestyle by importing western values and doctrine. The foundations of the contemporary Chinese miracle of the country’s emergence as a global power that can influence World Order in which totally engages, in contrast to its historical past, were established (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013). Modern China was founded by the CPC in 1949 when officially declared the end of the century of humiliation (Braudel 2007). To a great extent the current Chinese leadership is comprised of descendants of the first communists who came to power then (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013). Ultimately the Chinese leadership is a kind of political aristocracy whose primary concern is to stay in power. For this reason Chinese authorities are particularly suspicious towards the western criticism regarding the monopoly of power by the Party and the simultaneous violation of human rights[1] . However, despite the Party’s predominance within the country, its foreign policy is not ideologically charged but is characterized by pragmatism due to the negative impact of the Cultural Revolution both on the society and the Party (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013).
Another equally important factor for understanding the China’s foreign policy is the awareness of the means in which historical reminiscences define the way in which the country apprehends the rest of the world today. The Opium Wars, the embarrassment by Japan in the War of 1895-1896 as well as the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 constitute traumatic experiences for the Chinese people that influence their current worldview (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013). The Western involvement in China led to the mid 19th-mid 20th century of Chinese humiliation. This vision of the past resulted to China’s goal to retrieve its lost honor and pride. Its high strategy does not seek to inflation, on terms of territorial expansion[2], but to acquire the vanished esteem (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013). It does not consider itself as a rising power, as it is considered within the USA, but on the contrary, as a power that returned to the forefront of international affairs after its displacement by the West. Nationalism is an up-and-coming ideology within the country. Nonetheless, it is not absolutely based on the bitter historical recollection that the Chinese people have from the involvement of the Western Powers within their country, but on the contrary, it stems from the CPC as an alternative authority origin in the case that the economy starts to slow down, as it is actually noticed in recent years[3] (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013).
In conclusion, the position of China as a significant power in global affairs, the only one which can seriously challenge the American hegemony, is not seriously doubted by any scholar, in contrast to its potentials. The logic of reasoning this differentiation is traced in the complicated and vulnerable situation within its territory (corruption and social inequality that leads to a dramatic rise of social conflicts) but also in features of the Chinese economy (dependency on exportations’ increase, dominant position of the state in economy, energy dependency, environmental destruction) (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013). Its painful westernization meant the conversion of the multinational empire to an undivided national state. An essential outcome of this change is the installation of nationalism in the Chinese worldview as well as the formulation of broadly Western ideas. However, the latter causes problems both within the country, with the issue being focused on the cohesion of the Chinese society, and abroad with tensions between China and its neighbors (Petropoulos Chouliaras 2013).
[1] The most recent example derives from the riots which took place in Hong Kong
[2] The case of Taiwan is distinctive because the island considers, by the elite of the Chinese Communist Party, to be part of the mainland China. For this reason further independence of Taiwan is Casus Belli for China.
[3] The halt of the growth, which characterized the Chinese economy for the last four decades, is significant today due to the Covid-19 outbreak which started from Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province.
