My Take | How to rule under the heaven

Out of curiosity and also to regain my fading knowledge of the Chinese language, I have recently started following debates among mainland literati or public intellectuals about the nation and its future and past. It’s an arcane and difficult forum that unless you make an effort to enter it, its debates and publications rarely get reported or discussed outside the country. Still, I think it’s important to know what the best and brightest thinkers, or at least the most influential ones, are thinking about their own country and the world. By and large, I am in awe of their erudition and intellectual depths. But on one fashionable subject that has attracted Western attention, I have not been able to appreciate its significance or relevance. Perhaps it’s just my own incompetence. In recent years, many mainland intellectuals have acquired a great enthusiasm for an international relations theory that may be summed up in one word, or rather two Chinese characters: tianxia. Literally, it’s sky/heaven and down/under. As a phrase, it’s often translated as “all under the heaven”. More colloquially, it just means the world or everywhere. Our literati imbue profound meanings and concepts to tianxia with its historical roots and seek to develop a whole international relations theory to chart or describe China’s place in the world today and tomorrow: a global system run on mutual respect and harmony grounded in civilised Chinese values and practices, presumably Confucian. It’s the opposite of a Hobbesian world in which all is against all. To be fair, Chinese diplomats and statesmen rarely talk about tianxia, at least not publicly, so our intellectuals may be getting ahead of themselves. Its main attraction, I think, is that it’s a thoroughly Chinese theory of international relations based on ancient history. But, before we get to their deep discussions, I think it’s important to get a sense of how tianxia is expressed or used in everyday language. Let me put my cards on the table now. Ultimately, its success or failure – and in my judgment, its irrelevance – depends on its colloquial usage, not its academic or scientific veneer. What globalisation says about our past and future If you say someone, say singer-actor Andy Lau Tak-wah, is famous throughout tianxia, it means his fame is unrivalled. If young people are starting in life or embarking on a new career, you can say they are taking on tianxia, as in the world is yours to take, which is an expression of encouragement. Netflix, for a while, dominated the world of movie and TV streaming, so you could say internet streaming was its tianxia. A triad boss may become the boss of bosses. In that case, he has become the godfather and now owns tianxia. Likewise, you can similarly use it to describe the world or the country under a tyrant – a “hegemonic king” in Chinese – or a beneficent ruler who has achieved supremacy. In this case, the concept can easily be extended to the more formal notion of sovereignty and also territorial conquest. But it’s important to note that having tianxia, taking over it or taking it on, is value-neutral. No one would doubt that for a while Lau was Hong Kong’s biggest star, but his tianxia doesn’t say whether he could really sing or act, or whether he deserved his success. Likewise, it’s the same with the big triad boss and the supreme ruler. The whole phrase should not be confused with “the mandate of heaven”, which does confer legitimacy. I think this is the key difference between tianxia in its ordinary usage and as a technical term, which does aim to describe a legitimate international order with China as its source and centre. Now, in this Chinese academic world, tianxia has become a whole intellectual fad. Mostly it was started by Zhao Tingyang, one of China’s best known philosophers, when he published his influential essay Tianxia tixi: Diguo yu shijie zhidu (The Tianxia System: Empire and World Institutions) in 2003, followed by Tianxia tixi: Shijie zhidu zhexue daolun (The Tianxia System: An Introduction to the Philosophy of a World Institution) two years later. At about the same time, a group of scholars at Tsinghua University such as Yan Xuetong started exploring the notion of tianxia during the Zhou, the Spring and Autumn (770–476BC) and Warring States (475–221BC) periods to examine how independent kingdoms interacted and to apply their dynamics to the contemporary world. It’s important to note that having tianxia, taking over it or taking it on, is value-neutral Zhao recently wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post to explain tianxia. “Today’s world is full of conflict, hostility and continuing clashes among civilisations,” he wrote. “I suggest another path, one rooted in the ancient Chinese concept of tianxia, which roughly translates to ‘all under heaven’ coexisting harmoniously. This concept of world order was embraced for hundreds of years from around 1046 to 256BC during the Zhou dynasty, China’s longest-lasting. “The concept of tianxia defines an all-inclusive world with harmony for all. It often refers to the physical world in early literature, but it is essentially a political concept consisting of a trinity of realms. “First, tianxia means the Earth under the sky, ‘all under heaven’. Second, it refers to the general will of all peoples in the world, entailing a universal agreement. It involves the heart more than the mind, because the heart has feelings. And third, tianxia is a universal system that is responsible for world order. The world cannot achieve tianxia unless the physical, psychological and political realms all coincide.” Wealth or empire – China’s dilemma Interestingly, Zhao admits no one ever practised tianxia after the Zhou – therefore after China’s first unification. Perhaps he is following Confucius’ rallying cry, “I follow the Zhou.” After the unification, when China wasn’t invaded or occupied by “the foreign hordes”, it practised a hierarchical system of suzerainty-vassalage relations. That, presumably, is not what Zhao and other proponents of tianxia have in mind. The very idea would be highly provocative to China’s neighbours today. Perhaps as a prescriptive moral ideal to guide China’s leaders in their international conduct, tianxia may be useful. It allows for a pluralistic world order in which the central state, zhongguo, rules not by hegemony but through moral guidance and example. But as a description of the contemporary world, it rather defeats the purpose. It’s because if you ask, who has tianxia today, well, like it or not, it’s the United States, with its unrivalled military, economic and technological dominance. I was amused by Salvatore Babones, a sinologist at the University of Sydney, with what he calls the “American tianxia”. He has been criticised for misunderstanding tianxia. Well, he isn’t using it in a prescriptive or nominative sense, but rather its everyday meaning. On that, he has a strong case. Why China and the US can’t be friends any more “Today the United States is the central state – the zhongguo, so to speak – of the international system,” he wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine. “Some people say that we now live in a multipolar world; that the US share of global GDP is in terminal decline; that the dollar’s central role in the world economy is under threat; that the rest of the world no longer respects the United States. These declinists miss the point: the United States doesn’t have to rule the world in order to harmonise it. In a tianxia like Ming East Asia or today’s American world, it is not the raw power of the central state that stabilises the system. It is its centrality.” Babones is citing tianxia and zhongguo to describe a basic fact about the state of the world today. Either tianxia is a legit general theory of international relations, which other people will use to describe the US, the British Empire in the 19th century or anyone else who has achieved hegemony. Or it’s the privileged status exclusive to the Chinese state, in which case tianxia has no application outside China.

My Take | How to rule under the heaven

Is ‘tianxia’ an authentic Chinese vision of international order or just nostalgia for a time that never was?