Kawsu Walter Ceesay
The Diplomat
December 09, 2014
China’s conception of “Chinese wisdom” deforms China’s past and limits its future.
Much has been written about China’s changing foreign policy since the new Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang took power on November 15, 2012. It’s surprising, then, that one new catch-phrase in China’s evolving diplomacy has gone largely unnoticed: “Chinese wisdom.”
At the APEC summit in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi underlined, “We want to use the advantage of our home ground. Under the conditions of democratic transparency and the basis of sufficient consultation, we want energetically sent out China’s voice, put forward China’s proposals and contribute China’s wisdom.” On the one hand, the Chinese leadership refers to Chinese wisdom in the context of the so-called home-field diplomacy, describing China’s effort to use its advantage as host to promote its own proposals and ideas. On the other hand, China’s new catch phrase also appears at events outside of China, like the sixth BRICS summitin Brazil.
What is behind this idea of Chinese wisdom? Overall, the phrase encompasses many diplomatic concepts, ideas, or proposals that emerged in China’s diplomacy since 2013: the New Asian Security Concept, the Nuclear Security Concept, China’s new neighborhood diplomacy and “new type great power relations.” Officially, many of those new diplomatic efforts are aimed at preventing a repeat of historical zero-sum games and at creating international equality. Interestingly, Chinese media praises Chinese wisdom only as a new tool to handle international affairs while neglecting its impact on and roots in China’s internal affairs.
A large consensus among scholars agrees that China’s foreign policy is mostly shaped by China’s internal development. Thus Beijing’s new diplomatic initiatives can best be understood against the background of China’s internal changes. Xi Jinping constantly stresses that Western-style civil society and democracy do not fit with China’s developmental path. Instead, Xi focuses on ancient Chinese thinkers like the legalist Han Feizi and quotes them: “When those who uphold the law are strong, the state is strong. When they are weak, the state is weak.” While some Western media and all Chinese propaganda proclaims that China is making genuine efforts to promote the “rule of law,” Xi clearly means the “rule by law.” In other words: China’s new leadership does not regard the empowerment of an independent judiciary as attractive, but instead seeks to create a new Tang Code implementing an effective system of punishment.
Domestically, then, appeals to “Chinese wisdom” demonstrate an unwillingness to accept Western concepts. The diplomatic purpose is similar. The New Asian Security Concept or “new type great power relations” seek to create a new structure of international relations, one different from what China considers to be typical European and American concepts of zero-sum games and Cold War alliance systems.
Both these Chinese concepts are in line with China’s traditional notion of harmony, which is often wrongly exclusively attributed to Chinese Confucianism. The basic elements of Chinese harmony are much older than Confucius. Shi Bo, a scholar from the Western Zhou period (1066–771 B.C.E.), elaborated on harmony: “Harmony is indeed productive of things. But sameness does not advance growth. Smoothing one thing with another is called harmony. For this reason things come together and flourish.” Under the Chinese conception of harmony, different things and even contradictions are complementary to each other and only their mutual existence guarantees prosperity. When Chinese leaders speak about “being united, but not being the same” they directly refer to China’s ideal concept of harmony.
The historian Hayden White pointed out that history is a social construct and it does not exist independently from the observer. Language and the questions we ask shape our understanding of history; our constructed history says more about the present than about the past. In contrast to critical historical science, the backbone of Chinese wisdom is an uncritical interpretation of China’s past and Chinese thinkers.
Almost all the new diplomatic initiatives mentioned above largely complement China’s long-standing official line on peaceful development, claiming that China has always been peaceful and will continue to be so. Of course, the Chinese have invaded neighboring countries like Vietnam several times. Plus, before there was any conscious of an unified China, the Chinese fought bloody wars in today’s geographical China. Another long-held CCP position is that Western democracy and civil society per se do not match to China’s culture. Why then does Taiwan have both?
The ongoing diversification of quotations, mainly by Xi Jinping, of ancient Chinese intellectuals like Confucius, Han Fei, Xunzi or Shang Yang merely serves two big CCP goals: To transform China into a superpower and to maintain the monopoly of the party. The CCP has created a myth about China’s past and thus faces an internal and external credibility problem. More significantly, due to the uncritical usage of China’s history and “Chinese wisdom,” many aspects of China’s very diverse wisdom cannot be fruitfully used for China’s own future.
In the future, look for many other Chinese domestic and diplomatic concepts or ideas to appear under the framework of “Chinese wisdom.” Though “Chinese wisdom,” as outlined above, is a product of myth-making and China’s current challenges, these new concepts do not need to be harmful to the international community. For instance, Chinese wisdom stresses harmony between humans and nature. Hence, a new binding and concrete environment protection regime proposed by “Chinese wisdom” at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris next year is a worthy New Year’s wish.
Kawsu Walter Ceesay is a Master’s candidate at Tsinghua University and an intern at the EU Delegation to China and Mongolia. The views expressed here are his own.
