The century-long predicament of Chinese constitutionalism lies not in its constitutions, but in the complete absence of social contracts as the legitimizing foundation of any constitution. Although the Xinhai Revolution did not shed much blood, it was carried out very much in a way opposed to the spirit of social contract. In less than two years after the establishment of the First Republic, the ill-fated political cooperation between Yuan Shikai and the Nationalist Party was fatally disrupted. The Treaty of Versailles ignited the patriotic fire overnight and set the stage for Communist ascendance. The frequency analysis of keywords from the Xinhai Revolution to the May Fourth Movement showed that anti-contractual concepts such as revolution, Leninism and socialism had been soaring, and had become a popular trend by 1919, leading to the establishment of the Communist regime in 1949.

Over the past century, there have been two landmark events in Chinese constitutionalism: the promulgation of the Outline of the Imperial Constitution in 1908 and the Xinhai Revolution in 1911. In between there was also the hastily enacted and short-lived Nineteen Articles, which envisioned a constitutional monarchy. Unfortunately, the Imperial Court repeatedly obstructed the constitutional reforms and squandered its own opportunities of self-renovation by forfeiting the faith of the public. The arrogant and myopic Qing dynasty dug its own grave and deserved its fate, but the success of the revolution meant the end of constitutional reform. Although the First and Second Republics came one after another, China has decidedly drifted away from the path of constitutionalism over the past century. The Third Republic will hopefully bring China back to its constitutional path through the third cooperation between the two rival revolutionary parties.

A hundred years after the Xinhai Revolution, a centennial judgment has to be made by an impartial observer for the interest of China’s constitutional cause. Despite its sharp language, the main theme of the Manifesto is to explore the conditions and mechanisms of constitutional transformation, as well as the way out of the hopeless historical cycle of reform and revolution. It analyzes the cultural syndrome under absolute despotism and the difficulties it has caused to constitutional transformation, and presents the human dignity theory of modernized Confucianism as a possible solution to transform the Chinese moral and political personality.

Once the totalitarian regime is established, various disasters are bound to recur. A totalitarian state is diagonally opposite to liberal democracy, which is characterized by prevalence of horizontal connections, the sum total of which constitute a social contract. An ideal totalitarian structure, to the contrary, is like a zero-impedance conductor: orders flow from the top to the lowest level all without any obstacle. It was this totalitarian system that enabled Mao, the charismatic leader, to use his overwhelming social support to overthrow his political rivals within the system when his authority was weakened. Like a courtly struggle, the Cultural Revolution was for the sake of Mao’s personal power, but the cost of social destruction was incomparably greater.

Chapter 4 starts with a discussion of imperialism constructed as a fact and as theory. It highlights the major disruptions in East Asian and world history. The prevailing realist, liberal institutionalist, and constructivist theories are not scaled to explain such dramatic transformations of East Asia by Western imperialism. Rather, a historical sociological approach anchored on evolutionary theory is a better fit. Western domination based on the rise of the West in terms of economic, technological, and military power took several centuries to complete. Some East Asian empires were also expanding after 1500. A turning point was Britain’s defeat of China in the Opium War of 1839–1842. After that, East Asian nations engaged earnestly in reform. Some, like Japan, succeeded, while others, like China, failed, resulting in a great divergence among Asian countries. To some extent, much of East Asia still lives in the shadow of that imperialist past.

Chapter 1 introduces evolution theory and evolutionary explanation for studies of East Asian international relations and lays out the design of the whole book

Chapter 8 analyzes East Asian regionalism projects, which demonstrate that the choices of governments and non-state actors constitute the structure of East Asian international relations, albeit within evolutionary constraints. East Asian countries are not integrating in a European Union sense, but their desire for and efforts at regional cooperation remain strong. East Asian regionalism was underdeveloped compared to Europe and some other developing regions, but an economic regionalism open to non-East Asian countries emerged when the Cold War ended. The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis trigged greater East Asian efforts at creating more exclusive economic and financial groups, but East Asia has shifted to mega regionalism since the early 2010s, reflecting growing great power rivalries between Japan, China, and the United States. Other East Asian countries, particularly those in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), have their own agency and drive the process in more immediate terms.

Chapter 10 explores democracy versus autocracy. It offers a frequency-based fitness analysis of the political regimes in the world, demonstrating the superior fitness of democracy, represented by the United States in time and place, but also revealing the resilience of non-democratic forms of government, represented by China. Countering the larger historical trend, democracy has retreated and autocracy has gained in recent years. It is difficult to tell whether this is a temporary setback for democracy or the start of a longer trend. Evolution does not assume constant progress, so the chapter dives deeper into the performance criterion for competing political regimes by peeling off the labels and examining different components of a political regime. In addition, the chapter offers a discussion of how East Asians have lived with the liberal international order, which most current American and Western leaders view as central to their fight against autocracy.

Chapter 7 introduces students to the monetary and financial dimensions of East Asian international relations, which are fragmented regionally while tied closely with the Western-dominated monetary order. Monetary power is arguably as important as military power, but it is not well understood and not commonly included in an IR textbook. As a social construction, monetary and financial power are related to but not equivalent to productive power. East Asia does not stand in isolation, because its contemporary monetary and financial practices and theories are integrated into the global system. Thus, this chapter examines U.S. dollar hegemony. Following a broader discussion of the exchange-rate regimes adopted by East Asian nations, the chapter discusses the 1997–1998 Asian Financial Crisis, a monumental event in post-war East Asian international relations triggered by a currency crisis. The chapter ends with a discussion of the 2008 Great Recession.