From its early days, the PRC has taken as its banner the fight for ‘international justice’. This fight was first about recovering China’s own ‘rightful place’ in international society after the abuses suffered at the hand of imperial powers during the ‘century of humiliation’, but it did not stop there. Indeed, Chinese leaders have consistently presented themselves as advocates of the rights and aspirations of all non-Western states for a more just world (Mitter, 2003: 218 ff.). Under Mao, this meant condemning imperialism and offering rhetorical support for national liberation movements. In the reform and opening period and especially after the end of the Cold War, Mao’s successors have defined international justice as absolute respect for sovereignty in the face of Western interventionism and criticism of non-democratic domestic governance regimes, as well as a fairer repartition of economic resources. This is still the message promoted by Xi Jinping today.

The advocacy of ‘international justice’ is just one aspect of the moralism that characterizes Chinese leaders’ rhetoric on the international stage. As Chih-Yu Shih notes, a moralizing discourse has remained a central pillar of Chinese political culture, with the consequence that ‘the Chinese seem obliged to envision international politics as fashioned of some sort of moral hierarchy’ (1993: 2–3). The PRC claims the top spot in this moral hierarchy by favourably comparing itself to the West. Having concluded early on that these Western powers were morally corrupt and that their domination over international society was illegitimate, modern Chinese statesmen have consistently advocated a ‘better’ way to conduct international relations that would justify their country’s eventual return at the top of the international hierarchy as a more virtuous leader for the nations of the world. Examining this discourse of moral leadership as articulated by the CCP is the first task of this chapter.

Its second task is to consider how this discourse translates into diplomatic practice. We may recall from Chapter 2 that ritual, or behaviour according to the rules of propriety, is intimately linked with moral cultivation in the traditional Chinese conception of order.

The purpose of this chapter is to highlight several important structural factors of Asia seen as an international system which constrain and influence China’s ability to shape its relations with neighbours. This is meant to serve as a prelude to our main argument. The aim of this book is to study the attraction that one idea, namely hierarchy as it relates to order, has exerted on Chinese statesmen in their dealings with the outside world, serving as a figurative pole star towards which they have oriented themselves time and again. This means we will emphasize continuity in the intellectual realm. It is therefore important to bring nuance to that argument with a reminder that, whatever continuity there has been in China’s understanding of what a stable and harmonious order should look like, its international environment itself has been anything but stable or unchanging over the course of its long imperial history, to say nothing of the transition to the modern society of states.

The features we will highlight here all relate to Asia understood as a system, that is, as a group of polities brought into sustained contact by economic and geopolitical forces. Discussion in those terms will thus focus on power, technology, and other factors conditioning to an extent states’ behaviour independently of their aspirations or values. As discussed in the introduction, this can include normative elements as well if they become so widely and unquestionably accepted as to form another conditioning factor, weighting on states or pushing them in a certain direction regardless of immediate intent. In the following pages, then, we highlight some important systemic forces and their fluctuations that have set the conditions for China’s foreign relations over the centuries. We will put particular emphasis on how much structural change the modern transition brought to Asia and how this change has altered the nature of China’s relations with its neighbours, redefining the boundaries within which it can pursue the ideal of hierarchical order. Specifically, the three forces discussed are the distribution of power in the system, its interaction capacity as determined by available technologies, and hegemonic beliefs about basic principles of legitimacy.

This chapter spells out the constitutive elements of the ideal type of hierarchical order grounded in China’s traditional culture. These constitutive elements will then serve as a framework for the examination, in the chapters that follow, of China’s concrete historical experience during the imperial era, during the period of transition to modern times, and under the People’s Republic. Chinese foreign relations, like those of any major country, are complex, ever evolving, and multifaceted. By accentuating some of their significant features, an ideal type can serve as a guide to wade through that complexity and identify one particularly meaningful and consistent Chinese foreign policy aim. Although we use core elements of ancient Chinese political philosophy to build this ideal type, we do not pretend that a hierarchical inclination sums up the whole of its rich and diverse cultural traditions, or that those traditions are the only force that drives its behaviour even today. This is not an attempt to comprehensively classify and study all aspects of Chinese foreign policy in light of different orientations either. Rather, by examining its relations with neighbouring states in light of a particular set of values that Chinese statesmen hold dear and that is incarnated in the ideal type of hierarchical order, we wish to emphasize one significant purpose they pursue when they engage in interactions with other polities and to show that this purpose has stayed important to them over the centuries and remains so today.

This ideal type has at its core the idea of a moral duty of the individual to accept his role in a ranked society and to follow the rules of proper behaviour specific to his rank, and of a moral duty of the ruler to enforce those rules and to lead by example so as to maintain social order. The underlying values that it most strongly reflects are, simply stated, the achievement of social order as a goal in itself, the cultivation of the virtues that sustain individuals in the fulfilment of their social role, and respect for social rules of proper behaviour. None of these is particularly unique to the Chinese.

The ritual order, as it existed in one form or another during the whole imperial era, eventually came to an end around the turn of the 20th century under the combined assault of European colonialism and Japan’s Westernization and turn to imperialism. Internationally, the transition to a diplomatic system based on bilateral treaties was not sudden or absolute – Hamashita Takeshi speaks of an ‘era of negotiation’ between tributary and treaty relations from 1830 to 1890 (1997: Ch. 7; 2003) – but eventually all East Asian states still free from colonial rule had to adopt the Western style of relations between nation states. China itself had to abandon its traditional view of itself as the centre of a world order governed by ritual and adapt to the new realities of the expanding Western international society. This involved reconfiguring its domestic state structure on Western lines as well, culminating with the Xinhai revolution of 1911, which aimed for the establishment of a constitutional republic. Eventually, Confucianism itself, now seen as the cause of China’s decline and the source of its woes, was rejected and replaced by nationalism and Marxism-Leninism as the two new ideological pillars of the ‘new China’ that eventually emerged in 1949.

Our aim in this chapter is to identify what remained, after these revolutionary changes, of China’s traditional world view and of its attachment to the core principles underlying its traditional vision of order. The following pages show how China’s pessimistic assessment of the international society dominated by Western imperial powers gave rise to a new sense of mission, aiming to establish a more just, though still hierarchical, international order that would see China recover its rightful place as the leader of Asia. This claim was still framed in moral terms, as China favourably compared itself with Western imperial powers thanks to its ‘inherent virtues’ and advocacy for the liberation of Asian nations. This chapter also discusses how, despite the necessity to abandon traditional tools of statecraft and embrace the norms of modern diplomacy, China remained focused on matters of international status in its interactions with international society.

The purpose of this book was to deepen our understanding of China’s vision for international order in Asia, by focusing on the concept of hierarchy at the centre of this vision and by highlighting the lines of continuity between the country’s pre-modern past and its present foreign policy. It has argued that ancient ideas about the creation of an enduring Sinocentric political order have survived into the modern era and continue to guide Chinese foreign policy today. It was traditionally considered the ultimate mission of the Chinese emperor to bring order to ‘all-under-heaven’ in the form of a stable hierarchy centred on himself, where the subordinate position of all surrounding polities would be made clear and manifest through ritual diplomacy. The hierarchical structure of order was justified by the Son of Heaven’s all-encompassing virtue and supported by the empire’s wealth, military might, and control over names. An enduring attachment to these principles did not prevent Chinese statesmen from displaying a great degree of flexibility and adaptability in applying them to changing and sometimes adverse circumstances. Successive emperors displayed very variable degrees of attachment to the Confucian model of virtuous rulership, while making ‘barbarians’ adhere to proper ritual forms was a constant challenge and required negotiations and compromises. Nowhere was this more evident than in the empire’s relations with its nomadic neighbours in Inner Asia, with their often superior military might and tendency to push into the Chinese heartland and establish ‘conquest dynasties’ of their own. Attachment to the imperial ideal of hierarchical order nevertheless remained consistent throughout this tumultuous history.

It took the trauma of the ‘Western shock’ to bring about a fundamental rethink in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This rethink did not result in the complete abandonment of this ideal but in its transformation and adaptation to China’s modern conditions. Achieving order was still a sacred mission, but one that implied radical change and evolution out of the parlous conditions Chinese statesmen thought international society to be in. China pursued equality with Western great powers, but other Asian nations were still considered natural subordinates and followers.

To wrap up the argument of this book, this chapter looks at the way in which the three traditional ‘tools of rulership’ identified in Chapter 2 – namely, language, awesomeness, and profits – are being employed by the PRC to achieve the vision of a hierarchical international order. Needless to say, those tools have uses other than the ones that will be highlighted here. Yet the orientation towards maintenance of order and of China’s central position is an important one that has deep historical roots and has remained visible throughout the history of the PRC. As noted in Chapter 4, before 1949, a weak and divided China beset by foreign invasion and internal strife was in no position to devote resources to support its position in international society. In its early years, the PRC was still relatively weak but did seek to make use of the power that naturally comes from having founded a unified government ruling over the world’s largest country to sustain its status claim on the world stage. In these early endeavours, it was already clear that traditional ways of thinking about the use of power had endured through the transformations of the early 20th century. This remained true throughout the following decades, and has become more apparent than ever under Xi Jinping. The following pages will discuss in turn how each of the three ‘tools of rulership’ continue to be used in ways reminiscent of China’s imperial past, starting with language. Here, two aspects deserve particular attention. First, PRC leaders have dedicated much attention to their country’s overall ability to have its voice heard internationally and control how its foreign relations are depicted. Second is a more specific use of ‘names’ in one of the central pillars of PRC foreign policy since the 1990s, namely, a network of partnerships that is the closest thing China has to a modern ranks and titles system.

Increasing discourse power

The PRC was initially a poor and technologically backward country, so the resource the CCP could use most liberally was its ability to speak to its citizens and to the rest of international society.

Sixty years is a particularly meaningful number in the traditional Chinese calendar, the completion of a cycle and the beginning of a new one. On the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 2009, marked by a grand military parade in the centre of Beijing and many festivities, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had indeed a lot to celebrate. It had successfully hosted the Olympic Games and used it as a sort of coming-out party, displaying to the world the fruits of China’s economic miracle. While the West was mired in the deepest recession since the 1930s, China had avoided a complete crash thanks to a massive fiscal stimulus. The G20, where China could play a prominent role, replaced the G8 as the main forum to discuss global economic issues. China was also about to surpass Japan to become the second-largest economy on the planet, an ascent symbolizing the success of its growth strategy and the enormous economic (and military) capabilities that it had acquired. In short, things were mostly going China’s way and a sense that the world’s centre of gravity was shifting eastwards was spreading in the PRC and around the world.

Against this background, an increasingly confident CCP declared that a ‘new situation’ (xin xingshi) had arisen. At the fourth plenum of the 17th CCP Central Committee in mid-2009, this new situation was described thusly: