China’s approach to US relations now dominated by focus on ‘East v West’ civilisational differences, says leading Chinese scholar

Peking University academic Wang Jisi argues in article for think tank that US has not ‘paid enough notice’ to the implications of China’s ideological shift

He warns that heightened sensitivities around areas such as history, culture and ethnic relations are making academic cooperation between the two sides harder

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The article argued that Chinese thinking about relations with US is based on cultural and civlisation differences rather than on traditional Marxist ideological lines. Photo: AP

Published: 5:31pm, 29 Mar 2024Updated: 5:37pm, 29 Mar 2024

Chinese thinking on relations with the United States is now dominated by a focus on “East versus West” cultural and civilisation differences, a shift that is making academic collaboration between the two sides more difficult, a leading Chinese international relations expert has said.

Wang Jisi, founding president of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies at Peking University, also warned in an article for a US think tank that: “Not many US officials and observers have paid enough notice of changes in China’s ideological propaganda and the implications for its foreign policy and international studies.”

His article was one of 27 contributions by Chinese and American academics to a report titled US-China Scholarly Recoupling by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, which covered a range of topics from artificial intelligence to international relations.

“China’s current political and ideological debates with the United States are essentially defined in China along nationalist, cultural and civilisational queues – ‘the East versus the West’ – not between socialism and capitalism, between proletariat and bourgeoisie, or between worldwide proletariat revolution and imperialism in the traditional Marxist-Leninist conceptual framework,” Wang wrote.

The most notable change in China’s ideological thinking, Wang said, is the emphasis on President Xi Jinping’s theories. Although Marxism is nominally Beijing’s official ideology, Xi Jinping Thought is now “serving as the actual overarching, defining ideology”.

He said the other notable shift is the “absence of Leninism”, which could be related to the Leninist emphasis on violent revolution and other radical ideas that the ruling Communist Party “no longer holds”.