Publication Type

Working Paper

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

5-2007

Abstract

China’s recent ‘charm offensive’ is captivating the world stage. Although there has been a thorough cataloguing of China’s soft power assets in terms of the effectiveness and limitations of the PRC’s public diplomacy, much less attention has been paid to how the normative aspect of China’s growing soft power will set the world agenda. This essay will examine the concept of ‘Tianxia’ to understand Chinese visions of world order. Tianxia is interesting both because it was key to the governance and self-understanding of three millennia of Chinese empire, and also because discussion of Tianxia is becoming popular again in the twenty-first century as an alternative world order that is universally valid. Firstly, the paper will examine Tianxia tixi [The Tianxia System], a popular book that discusses an all-inclusive world order that aims to solve the globe’s problems with a world institution that embraces difference through a ‘magnanimous’ system of governance. Then it will examine some of the philosophical and historical problems posed by this romantic understanding of Tianxia, in particular how its approach to ‘Otherness’ encourages a ‘conversion’ of difference, if not a conquest of it. The essay thus examines how Tianxia has been redeployed in ways that blur the conceptual boundaries between empire and globalism, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. It concludes that Tianxia is a strong example of how domestic and international politics overlap and inform each other as part of a broader struggle over the meaning of ‘China’. Soft power thus works not just in international influence, but also can tell us about the identity politics of national image in domestic politics. Hence rather than guide us towards a utopian world order that will solve global problems, Tianxia is an example of how some in China are working to re-center Chinese understandings of world order as a patriotic activity. This essay thus 1) critically describes a non-western worldview as an example of soft power, and 2) examines how ideas get put into play in Chinese foreign policy discussions.

Discipline

Asian Studies | International Relations

Research Areas

Political Science

First Page

1

Last Page

24

Publisher

British Inter-University China Centre

City or Country

Oxford

Additional URL

https://bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristol.ac.uk/dist/0/168/files/2012/06/01-Callahan.pdf

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