International Relations with Chinese Characteristics

Abstract

International relations, as currently construed, are multi-dimensional. They are also Euro-American, which means modern-day China had no hand in making them. It was obliged to adapt to the state-centered, marketeering, nationalistic realities with which it was confronted when it became independent. And adapt it did. It also, however, revised these realities by adopting its own approach. Its leaders first repudiated China’s traditional experiences, while reworking its world ones to promote their own ends. Later, however, they began to express admiration for the values and vision of their own culture and civilization. They began to articulate policies, like the Belt and Road Initiative, that were not only representative of Euro-American principles, such as international cooperation and free trade, but also representative of non-Euro-American principles, such as the so-called “tribute system”. The latter characterized China’s foreign policy approach for millennia. It still arguably demonstrates China’s willingness not only to accept — while reforming — those Euro-American practices imposed upon it, but also to repudiate — by revolutionizing — those very same practices.

International Relations as Euro-American

Contemporary international relations refer most commonly to those analytic conclusions and policy practices that pertain to global affairs, i.e., to the global state-system, to global markets, and to global society. It refers less commonly to the global mode of production, and to global ideas and values, as well as to a combination of the two. It refers even less commonly to the modernist rationalism that is the cultural context to these analytical languages, plus the way this cultural context marginalizes women, environmentalists, indigenous peoples, post-colonials, the poor, and the religious (all of whom have come to assert their global significance in turn). Finally, it refers to those rationalists who discern limits and distortions to modernist rationalism itself, and who seek to compensate for these limits and distortions by seeking either more of the same or by seeking to promote doctrines that are variously post-modernist, post-structuralist, posthumanist, psycho-pathologist, emotivist, intuitivist, or sacralist (at least as these approaches apply to world affairs).

Despite their commitment to reason as an end in itself en masse, international relations analysts and practitioners make non-rationalist assumptions about human nature and human nurturing practices. Because of their detachment, and their supposed objectivity, they are not meant to do so, but they do. It is these assumptions that they use to articulate the particular approaches they take to the first three dimensions to international relations identified above (the state-system, the world market, and global society).

Thus, those who see human nature as being basically bad see the statesystem in realist terms. They also see the world market in protectionist terms, and global society in nationalist terms.

Those who see human nature as being basically calculating see the statesystem in liberal internationalist terms. They also see the world market in terms of liberal economics, and global society in terms of liberal individualism.

Meanwhile, those who see human nature as being basically good see the state-system in globalist terms. They also see the world market in (reform or Fabian) socialist terms, and global society in collectivist terms.

By contrast, those who see people in terms of what they learn to be (rather than what they are born to be) assume that the basic nature of people’s nurturing practices is either materialist or mentalist or both.

Materialists are mostly Marxists; mentalists are (social) constructivists; while those who highlight both materialism and mentalism combine these two.

The above is the briefest possible overview of a very diverse discipline and very disparate range of political concerns. It is neither nuanced nor referenced, though it is coherent, and it is comprehensive. As such it does represent a form of international relations research (Bull, 1977, p. x).

The point here is that it does not go far enough. Indeed, most contemporary analyses and policies do not amount to an account of international relations at all. Instead, they are Euro-American international relations made global by imperial and neo-imperial means.

This is not meant to downplay the differences between international relations as analyzed and practiced in Europe, and as analyzed and practiced in the United States. Nor is it meant to downplay the differences within these two important parts of the world (Waever, 1998).

It is, however, meant to highlight the significance of the refusal on the part of Euro-Americans to acknowledge the narrowness of their agenda. Currently they define much of what obtains for the world as a whole. In the process they prevent other ways of knowing from being given their due. This is especially the case in the discipline’s North American heartland, where the refusal to make international relations more global only very recently prompted an appropriate scholarly response (Zemanová et al., 2019).

What would a truly global international relations look like? What would its analysts and practitioners say if the discipline actually did consider the full range of its concerns?

First, it would include those non-Euro-American accounts that represent a “reformist” approach to mainstream Euro-American international relations. “Reformist”, in this context, means staying within the dominant (Euro-American) approach to international relations while attempting to revise it.

For example, while most non-Euro-American policy practitioners talk and behave like Euro-Americans in order to get heard by their global peers, many do so in ways that would change those international relations if they were successful. This said, they do not seek to reconstruct international relations in any really radical way. They accept the fundamental patterns of repeated practice that constitute current world affairs. They seek merely to revise these affairs so they further their concerns.

Then there are the non-Euro-American analysts who learned to talk and behave like Euro-Americans, often in Euro-American tertiary institutions. Some of them mount challenges to Euro-American world affairs. Some of these challenges can be called revisionary, though they are not radical since they do not call into question the fundamental practices that constitute world affairs. They take these for granted, while working within them to bring about the changes they recommend.

In short, a truly comprehensive overview of international relations would describe and explain how non-Euro-Americans adapt themselves to the dominant (Euro-American) institutions and thought-forms, while trying at the same time to promote their own analytic perspectives and policy purposes. It would describe and explain, i.e., how non-Euro-Americans engage with the Euro-American view of the state-system, the world market, and global society, and how they use the terms of this engagement to articulate their own approaches and interests. It would also look at how they engage with the capitalist mode of production, as well as with the social constructions that underpin (Euro-American) world affairs, in similarly revisionary ways. Also it would look at modernist rationalism itself, and how it is reproduced worldwide, not as one kind of modernity but as multiple, hybrid, synergistic “modernities” (Eisenstadt, 2000).

Second, a truly global international relations would take into account those non-Euro-American responses to (Euro-American) world affairs that are, in effect, “revolutionary”. In this context “revolutionary” means contesting the mainstream, Euro-American approach to international relations, in order to change its fundamental features.

“Revolutionary” policy practitioners, for example, may pay lip-service to the hegemonic (Euro-American) vision of international relations, while seeking to radically reconstruct them. They do not accept the fundamental patterns of repeated practice that constitute current (Euro-American) world affairs. Indeed, they aim to reconstruct them in line with their historical or contemporary policy concerns.

“Revolutionary” analysts call into question the mainstream structures of world affairs as well. They do not take them for granted. For the moment they may have to live with them, but they seek to radically change them, too.

In short, a truly comprehensive overview of international relations would describe and explain how non-Euro-Americans seek to overthrow the (Euro-American) institutions and thought-forms dominant today in order to put others in their place. It would describe and explain, i.e., those non-Euro-Americans who eschew the state-system, the world market, and global society, and the way they seek to put radical alternatives in their place. It would also look at how they radically eschew the capitalist mode of production, and the ideas, values, and norms that underpin the (EuroAmerican) construction of world affairs. It would look as well at their rejection of modernist rationalism and their predilection for pre-modern and post-modernist alternatives to this politico-cultural hegemon.

Both the “reformist” and “revolutionist” perspectives highlighted above have long and complex histories. Their cultural foundations may be similar or even the same, however, the revolutionary ones envisage radically different alternatives and outcomes — in whole or in part.

Euro-Americans find such responses difficult to understand and accept since they come from outside their cultural purview. They find it difficult to see them as legitimate, either, since they contest the dominance of their global principles and how they are applied.

This lack of understanding biases all Euro-American foreign policies and every Euro-American international relations text. It prevents Euro-American international relations from coming to terms with non-Euro-American alternatives.

This applies not only to those Euro-American policies that say they are committed to “worlding” world affairs. It also applies to those texts that describe themselves as comprehensive accounts of globalization, and of the transition — in theory and in practice — from international relations to world politics (Baylis et al., 2017).

China’s International Relations as “Reformist”

Contemporary China lives, like all non-Euro-American countries — South American, Central American, African, Pacific Island, and other Asian — within a version of international relations it played no part in devising. The road to its current global standing, i.e., was not only extremely fraught. It also resulted in a strategic, economic, social, and cultural form of world affairs radically at odds with the one it spent millennia devising for itself.

China’s modern history was characterized by a sustained attempt to win sovereign autonomy from a range of imperial interlopers — British, Portuguese, French, Japanese, Russian, and American. It was not alone in this regard since a similar strategic story was told across the whole nonEuro-American world. With the collapse of the European empires, and the defeat of the one Asian power (Japan) that managed to acquire sufficient industrial might to follow Europe’s lead, a new world order emerged. This order was based on the principle of state non-intervention, a principle first promulgated in 1648 at the end of a Thirty Years’ War, and one subsequently bequeathed — after a protracted expansionist interlude — to everybody else.

Once China was independent it required a market capable of providing for its material needs. This meant producing, trading, and investing, in a world full of other producers, traders, and investors, many of whom were long-practiced and highly skilled.

It meant building a society, as well, capable of fostering a coherent national identity. This had to be done despite the differences between its regions, between its cities and their rural hinterlands, and between its various ethnic groups (the Han and a number of minority ones).

It also meant doing this as a peasant power in a capitalist world economy. It meant making sure the owners and managers of this world economy did not neo-colonize it, while bringing the country’s creativity to bear on becoming developed too.

In the process it had to devise shared ideas, values, and norms capable of constructing a robust sense of Chineseness. The alternative was to fragment and/or fail.

Finally, it had to do this in a world where the power of modern science and technology was evident in every aspect of people’s lives. It had to master, i.e., the hypothetico-deductive method, and to reverse-engineer the industrial revolution, so as to make this revolution work for itself. Again, this was a matter of succeed or suffer global irrelevance.

The above is yet another broad-brush review of many political issues. It is the briefest of outlines of the challenges China faced for more than a century and a half.

It is also an outline that articulates a characteristically Euro-American view of international relations — a view that fails to highlight how China did not respond passively to the political imperatives involved. To be sure, China did adopt and adapt to Euro-American international relations. At the same time, however, it sought to promote and protect its own concerns. It sought to respond to these imperatives in its own way.

This non-passivity is only to be expected given China’s long and dynamic history. Chinese civilization first developed around 3000 BCE, among prehistoric peoples living along the Yellow River. Although individual dynasties (hereditary monarchies) rose and fell, the cultural thread was never broken. China is unique in this regard. This is why analysts now admit that “[e]ven a poor Chinese with no [learning] … sets great store by such things as personal dignity, self-respect, and respect for others … [a]nd … has a tremendous hunger and aptitude for education” (American Historical Association, 2018). It is also why other analysts — led for years by the British Biologist, Joseph Needham — continue to document China’s historic accumulation of scientific knowledge and technology (Needham et al., 1954–1998). The breadth and depth of this body of knowledge have proven to be considerably more extensive, and considerably more significant, than was originally supposed.

So, we have the following two questions: What form did China’s nonpassivity take? How did it combine the multi-dimensional strictures of (Euro-American) international relations with its own ideas about how to relate appropriately with peoples living elsewhere?

First, and most importantly, this story is one of change. It was not singular and it was not simple.

The key change in modern times was the defeat of the nationalist Kuomintang, in 1949, after a protracted civil war in which the Communist Party of China (the CPC) prevailed. This was a Marxist party. Marxism itself was part of the Euro-American agenda. It was the part that described and explained industrial capitalism, and the exploitation of the world working class by the world’s ruling class. It was the part that saw primitive communism as the prehistoric, hunter–gatherer mode of production, and advanced communism as what came after the overthrow of capitalism and the dismantling of the system of states. As such it was only applicable to China — still at that stage a feudal, agricultural society and not an urban, industrial one — by rewriting it. Thus, while the CPC used Marxism to repudiate both the country’s dynastic past and all forms of extra-national imperialism, it was only able to do so by giving it “Chinese characteristics”. The same happened in Russia. There the task fell to the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (the CPSU), Vladimir Lenin, and the result was Bolshevism. In China, the task fell to the leader of the CPC, Mao Zedong, and the result was Maoism (Feng, 2012–2019).

In strategic terms, Mao described how capitalists use their industrial power, centered on their cities, to dominate the pre-industrial peoples who live in the world’s hinterlands. He envisaged this dominance being reversed so the global countryside might encircle and subdue the towns. He combined this with a “three worlds” approach. This depicted a United States and a Soviet Union in the First World facing off against other imperialist countries in the Second World and against the non-imperialist ones in the Third.

In economic terms he focused on the collective ownership of rural land. This agrarian form of socialism was radically different from what the European Marxists had had in mind. He subsequently devised a Great Leap Forward as a way to implement his approach, and to generate the resources needed to promote industrialization. This in turn drove a wedge between the party and the people. It was meant to meet the people’s needs and it ended up denying them.

In social terms he focused on ridding China of both traditionalists and capitalists. This took the form of a so-called Cultural Revolution and, like the Great Leap Forward, proved in practice to be immensely disruptive. Rather than consulting the people, and considering their requirements in Marxist terms, it took recruits en masse into an ideological army that critiqued any supposed ideological enemy.

Mao’s version of Marxism interpreted the original doctrine in a way that served Chinese interests as Mao saw them, however, it also reflected premodern beliefs that were longstanding and profound. The most significant of these beliefs was the politico-sacral doctrine of tianming, or the “mandate of heaven”. This doctrine had been used for millennia to legitimize state affairs as long as these were righteous and benevolent. If such an order failed to acknowledge the political significance of the Chinese people, then the rulers were seen as having lost their celestial authority and the people had the right to rebel (Mencius and Lau, 2004 [372–289 BCE]). Vestiges of this doctrine persist today in the idea of the CPC as taking a “peoplecentered” approach (Xi, 2017a, pp. 17–18).

Despite his awareness of China’s traditional ideas, Mao was a “reformist” in the sense described above. He gained control of a China that had little choice but to accept the dominant (Euro-American) version of world affairs. He became more revolutionary over time, but his revolutionism never questioned the hegemonic (Euro-American) account of international relations of which Marxism, with its concept of capitalist collapse, was an integral part. Mao was not a “revolutionary” in the sense described above. He sought to change the world affairs he faced but he did not see this change as radically replacing these affairs with a preferred alternative. He saw it as revising these affairs, rather than replacing them.

After Mao Zedong’s death his political heir, Deng Xiaoping, repudiated many of his key concepts in favor of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (Baum, 1996). This took China in a new direction.

Deng Xiaoping was even more of a “reformist” than Mao, however. He saw China clearly within the rubric of the dominant (Euro-American) international relations of his day. He also saw it taking advantage of these relations to further its interests as defined in (Euro-American) terms.

In Euro-American parlance there are two kinds of socialism. One is optimistic about human nature and focuses on the economic dimension to world affairs. The other highlights the materialist nature of human nurturing practices and focuses on the transition from capitalism to advanced communism.

The first is the Fabian-style socialism originally articulated by Henri de Saint-Simon (de Saint-Simon, 1964 [1865–1878]) and Robert Owen (Owen, 1991 [1813–1816]). Its main aim is to ensure that the product of mass labor, i.e., the largesse of the industrial revolution, gets fairly distributed so that people receive sufficient food, shelter, healthcare, education, and the like.

The second is the socialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Marx and Engels, 1975 [1848]). It is the name they gave to the stage of history that comes after capitalism is overthrown by its alienated wage workers and before the advent of utopian communes. Socialism, in other words, is the name they gave to that historical era where capitalism and its class system are dismantled, along with the system of sovereign states that the owners and managers of the means of production use to promote their ends.

Deng Xiaoping was a longstanding member of the CPC (he joined in 1923), however, he was also confronted by a China that needed to become more productive if it was to provide for its large, impoverished population. The problem was that, in Marx’s terms, it is not possible to go from feudalism to advanced communism without going through capitalism first. So Deng Xiaoping decided to do just that, i.e., to ensure China became capitalist so that it might tap the potential of this particular mode of production. This meant cleaving closer to modern (Euro-American) international relations. He did this in a distinctive way that combined historical materialism and economic liberalism, while allowing the CPC to rejuvenate its claim to rule with the mandate of heaven (Deng, 1994). He did not do this, however, in such a way as to challenge the fundaments of the modern (Euro-American) system that China was obliged to share.

What then of Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the CPC today, and the country’s President as well? Is he also a “revisionist”? Or is he more than a “revisionist”? In which case, how much more of a “revisionist” is he? Could he be a “revolutionary”, even?

He certainly continues to use the language of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” to summarize his political agenda. Indeed, this language is now enshrined in the Party’s constitution.

In an address to the Party’s 19th National Congress in 2017, for example, he highlighted the importance of fostering the “great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era” (Xi, 2017a). This congress is held every five years. It always features a keynote speech by the general secretary. This speech is considered the most authoritative public account of the CPC’s policy “on all major policy fronts” (Yu, 2017). It makes the use of this language especially noteworthy (Jiang, 2018).

What did Xi Jinping mean, however? Did he mean what Deng Xiaoping meant? Or did he have something else in mind, perhaps something more radical?

In general terms, he meant placing a priority on “Chinese wisdom” and on a “Chinese approach” to solving global problems (Xi, 2017a, p. 9). Indeed, he referred repeatedly in his 2017 address to China’s 5,000-year history as the ultimate source of its wisdom. He also noted China’s “fine” traditional culture, as well as the importance of keeping this culture alive, and of developing its “vision, concepts, values, and moral norms” (Xi, 2017a, pp. 37–38). He also noted how “socialist culture with Chinese characteristics” was directly derived from the country’s traditional culture (Xi, 2017a, p. 36), and how China had created a “splendid civilization” that had made “remarkable contributions to mankind …”. Though the Opium War of 1840 plunged the country into the “darkness” of “domestic turmoil and foreign aggression …”, the Communist Party had managed to rejuvenate it again by reuniting the people and by leading them, through “arduous struggles”, to “epic accomplishments” (Xi, 2017a, pp. 11–12).

In more particular terms, he meant the meeting of the “basic needs” of more than a billion people so that they might live more “decent lives” (Xi, 2017a, p. 10). It is noteworthy that he put a “people-centered approach” beside “Party leadership” in this regard (Xi, 2017a, pp. 17–18). The people, he said, were the “creators of history … [and] the fundamental force that determines … [the] Party and [the] country’s future …”. The CPC is committed to serving the “public good”. It is also committed to putting into practice the “mass line” in “all aspects of governance” (Xi, 2017a, p. 18).

In short, his 2017 address depicted him as someone who saw development in terms of fostering the well-being of the people, and as furthering development in terms of the market’s “decisive role in resource allocation”. The government, industrialization, information technology, urbanization, and agricultural modernization were all present and correct, he said. Their fundamental role, however, was to give the market a helping hand (Xi, 2017a, p. 18). In addition, he declared that China would “never pursue development at the expense of others’ interests …”; that is, it would never “seek hegemony or engage in expansion” (Xi, 2017a, p. 53).

All of which was clearly meant to inspire, while remaining well within the rubric of modern (Euro-American) international relations. It flagged Xi Jinping’s continued acceptance, i.e., of the state-system, the world market, and global society, as currently construed. In particular, it flagged his continued promotion of a combination of Fabian socialism and international market liberalism. It also confirmed his commitment to EuroAmerican-style scientific research, and the growth in productivity that such research makes possible.

What of the “Chinese characteristics”, then, that ostensibly allow China to play a role in the global (Euro-American) game that is culturally distinctive? What does China bring to this game that lets it play it differently from the (Euro-American) principles and practices that prevail today? And how radical are these characteristics?

It is here that Xi Jinping’s reference to Chinese “vision, concepts, values, and moral norms”, and especially to those that underpin China’s “traditional culture”, arguably takes on added significance. Xi Jinping not only exalts China’s 5,000-year history. He does so in a way that seemingly influences his iteration of the doctrine of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. In short, he does so in a potentially “revolutionary” way.

China’s International Relations as “Revolutionary”

Two examples of Xi Jinping’s commitment to a “revolutionary” concept of international relations are briefly discussed below. One is his use of the concept of a Chinese “civilization”. The other is what is his Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

As to China’s “civilization”, Xi Jinping does not specify what China’s traditional vision and values might be. He does refer repeatedly in his 2017 congress address to China as a “civilization”, however. Also he does refer repeatedly there to its traditional vision and values.

The “civilization” is a unit of analysis above and beyond that of the state. Most Euro-Americans think of states as the main actors in global affairs. This has certainly been the case for last century or so. As one EuroAmerican analyst observes, however, the “broader reaches of human history” have arguably been a “history of civilizations” (Huntington, 1993, p. 24), with their own characteristic modes of production, patterns of settlement, governmental systems, social stratification systems, economic systems, and forms of cultural practice.

In civilizational terms, Euro-Americans currently dominate international relations, though this said they increasingly confront non-Euro-Americans with the “desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in … [nonEuro-American] ways” (Huntington, 1993, p. 26). This suggests that in the future one “central axis” of world affairs will be the response of “[nonEuro-American] civilizations to … [Euro-American] power and values”. In China’s case, for example, it is clearly “modernizing”. The question raised here, however, is the extent to which it is doing so by “Westernizing” (Huntington, 1993, pp. 41, 48).

Xi Jinping seems to accept the revolutionary implications of such a conclusion. Indeed, he seems to have done so ever since he became the CPC General Secretary in 2012. At that time, he spoke of China as being animated by a diffuse but evocative “dream” (Xi, 2013). This concept seemed not only to highlight his intention to restore China’s strategic, economic, and social significance. It also had ancient literary and intellectual associations. It appealed, i.e., not only to “modernizing” ideals to do with China’s rejuvenation and development. It also appealed to longstanding civilizational values to do with China’s own, non-“Western”, culture and society.

As to BRI, Xi Jinping’s vision of this far-reaching economic and strategic initiative is of an infrastructure network that connects China and Europe by both land and sea. The prototype for such a network was the historic Silk Road, which for two millennia expedited China’s trade with Europe in goods, ideas, and people.

The current project already involves over three-quarters of all the countries in the world, as well as a range of international organizations. It includes 60% of the global population, in other words, and one-third of the world’s trade (Freund and Ruta, 2018).

It was formally launched in 2015 as an example of “regional connectivity” and “deep integration” (The State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2015). It was followed by the setting up of an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, 2018) and a Silk Road Fund (Silk Road Fund Co. Ltd., 2014).

In first putting it forward, Xi Jinping talked of international cooperation and mutual benefit. He did so, in other words, in terms familiar to the dominant global (Euro-American) ethos.

Was this all he did, however? Did he stay completely within the modern (Euro-American) rubric? Did he only play the mainstream world game — albeit by giving it a Chinese twist? Or did he see China as challenging this game in the light of another based on China’s own historical experience?

This is where the Chinese concept of “neo-tributary” relationships comes in, since it suggests that more might be involved here than meets the (EuroAmerican) eye. The evidence is inferential. Nowhere has Xi Jinping so far said that as the “Middle Kingdom”, China seeks to recast world affairs so as to enhance its role at the global core, and so as to exert its influence in a way that radically diverges from the modern (Euro-American) rules of the game (Zhang and Buzan, 2012).

The concept of a “tributary system” is originally Euro-American (Fairbank, 1968, p. 10). This said, China’s rulers and administrators presided for centuries over foreign arrangements that were righteous, prosperous, durable, and flexible. They were based on a belief in autonomy, hierarchy, and ceremonial justice, and on a sense of cosmic accord. They manifest moral principles like the Confucian li (ritual) and ren (virtue). Also their ground was China’s own sense of its cultural pre-eminence.

Paying tribute is not unique to this part of the world, nor to this particular era. The extent to which it was used by pre-modern Chinese regimes to legitimize and civilize those who lived both near to them and far from them, however, was unique (Zhang and Buzan, 2012).

There are suggestions, like those in Xi Jinping’s 2017 congress address, that he intends to re-establish a discourse of this sort. Thus, he talks in this address not only in modern (Euro-American) terms of cooperation and of respect for national autonomy. He talks of “civilization”, and of Chinese largesse, too.

He also talks, in his keynote speech to the first Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (held in the same year), of a particular Chinese expression, namely: “Peaches and plums do not speak, but they are so attractive that a path is formed below the trees” (Xi, 2017b). The whole tenor of his remarks is not only strategically internationalist and economically liberalist. It also envisages China becoming a beacon to those who live in the rest of the world, as it shares its infrastructural know-how with them, and as it showers them with its developmental beneficence.

Pre-modern China endured a “long learning process” that taught it how to manage several dozen “asymmetric relationships” over hundreds of years (Womack, 2012). From what Xi Jinping said in his Party congress address, these (non-Euro-American) lessons have not been lost. Indeed, they continue to inform what he currently sees as possible in world affairs. This possibility, what is more, is radically at odds with the mainstream Euro-American one. So, while he cannot ignore the thought-forms and policy practices that prevail today, he does seem prepared to seek to radically revise them using China’s own historical experience.

International Relations with Chinese Characteristics

Those Euro-Americans disconcerted by China as a “reformist” power, that is challenging how the modern (Euro-American) game is played, see China behaving in neo-imperialistic ways. But then, they are predisposed to do so given their unwillingness to look at the world from other points of view.

With regard to BRI, for example, they decry China’s “debt-trap diplomacy”. They say China used this ploy to gain control, for example, of the Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka. They do not say how from 2007 to 2019 there were 40 other examples, in 24 other developing countries, that resulted in debts either being written off or deferred (Zhou, 2019).

Critics like these are arguably missing the point anyway, as China’s approach could be notably more “revolutionary” than they realize. China could be in the process, i.e., of challenging the rules of the modern (EuroAmerican) game itself.

While China is currently constrained to work within the global rubric set by modern (Euro-American) international relations, and to act as a good global (Euro-American) citizen in politico-strategic, politico-economic, and politico-civic terms, it could arguably — at the same time — be reviving its own (non-Euro-American) values, and its own (non-Euro-American) visions. These values and visions could be radically at odds with the current (Euro-American) one.

In the light of the above China could well be construed as more “revolutionary” than is commonly supposed. Modern (Euro-American) myopia limits — as noted above — modern global perspectives. It could make Chinese revolutionism, of the sort described here, very difficult to see.

However, it is possible to think of Xi Jinping as beginning to provide a pre-modern alternative, as a post-modern counter, to the modern (EuroAmerican) awareness of world affairs. He certainly seems “eager” to explore traditional ideas that after “centuries of weakness” could significantly augment China’s power and influence (Wang, 1968, p. 60). Also though he is always obliged to confront a world order he did not in any way help to construct — one that he inherited from the dominant (Euro-American) players — he does seem willing to think about how to reconstruct this order. Besides, though it is too much to expect him to do so overnight, he does seem prepared to play the long game, and he does seem to have already made a start.

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