Chinese Hegemony

Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History

By Feng Zhang

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-9389-6

Contents

List of Illustrations,
Notes on Transliterations,
Acknowledgments,
List of Abbreviations,
1. Introduction,
2. A Relational Theory of Grand Strategy,
3. Sino-Korean Relations,
4. Sino-Japanese Relations,
5. Sino-Mongol Relations,
6. Fundamental Institutions of Chinese Hegemony,
7. The Value of Relationalism,
Appendix I. Major Periods in Ancient and Imperial China,
Appendix II. Translation of Key Chinese Terms and Expressions,
Notes,
References,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

China's rise is one of the most significant developments in contemporary international relations. As the result of more than three decades of phenomenal economic growth, since the initiation of economic reform in 1978, a strong China now stands before the world for the first time in over a century. As China may rival the United States in material capabilities, recent discussions on China's role in world politics have been gradually shifting from a focus on the material characteristics of China's rise to a growing concern with the impact of Chinese power on regional and international order. The central question is no longer "Can China rise?" or "How great will its capabilities be?" but "What will China do with its new power?" and "What will China want?" As Paul Evans puts it, "The great strategic issue of our times is not just China's rising power but whether its worldview and applied theory will reproduce, converge with, or take a separate path from the world order and ideas produced in the era of trans-Atlantic dominance."

Indeed, such an analytical shift is apparent in an emerging academic and policy discourse, inside and outside China, on possible Chinese hegemony in East Asia. Inside China, an important group of scholars, albeit still a minority in the Chinese intellectual community, has begun to promote China's world leadership on the basis of a distinctive type of Chinese hegemony, "humane authority." Outside China, discussions of Chinese hegemony either reflect a general concern with the ramifications of greater Chinese power or derive from a traditional, realist preoccupation with hegemonic competition in international politics. Thus, the writer Martin Jacques asks, "What will a globally hegemonic China look like?" And Aaron Friedberg, a realist scholar worried about China's challenge to US hegemony, avers that "Beijing may not seek conquest or direct physical control over its surroundings, but despite repeated claims to the contrary, it does seek a form of regional hegemony." These discussions are taking place despite the Chinese government's persistent renunciation of any hegemonic ambition throughout the reform era (1978 to the present).

But how can we think about a future Chinese hegemony if it is possible? Pure theoretical deductions will not offer great help, because most theories in the social sciences, including international relations (IR) theories, are poor at useful predictions of any sort. And when general predictions are possible, such as the offensive realist one that a strong China will be bent on regional hegemony, they are too general to illuminate the characteristics of a putative Chinese hegemony. As John Ruggie has observed, "All hegemonies are not alike." Nor will policy speculations about possible Chinese strategies based on recent trends help us understand future strategies, since current trends are not necessarily reliable guides for the future. Nor will historical analogies offer great insights. Many Chinese analysts frequently assert that a strong China will be as peaceful and benign as its imperial predecessor supposedly was. Many Western observers take for granted the disruption of the rise to power and the hegemonic struggle—in this case, China as the rising power in competition with the United States as the existing hegemon. Yet such analogies are extremely facile on close scrutiny, and the historicist notion of invariant historical laws has long been discredited.

Although we cannot claim to know too much about the consequences of a possible future Chinese hegemony, scholarly research can achieve a modest aim of providing theoretical clues and establishing historical foundations from which to view those clues. This book explores the strategic and institutional dynamics of international relations in East Asian history when imperial China was the undisputed regional hegemon. The theoretical and historical orientation serves three purposes. First, it examines China's historical hegemony in the East Asian region as a distinct mode of international hegemony in world history. Second, it provides the essential historical background for us to consider China's new, and possibly hegemonic, role in contemporary East Asia. Third, it offers an important historical East Asian case to qualify, challenge, and revise some existing IR theories and perspectives that have developed out of the modern Western experience. Although this study is motivated by a current policy concern, it is not a contemporary policy analysis. Its aim is to provide a new explanation of traditional East Asian international relations under the condition of Chinese hegemony and to make a theoretical argument about the value of a relational approach for IR research.

Contemporary policy implications follow from theory and history, but they are not derived from theoretical deduction or historical analogy. Instead, employing ethical relationalism as a critical and normative IR theory for evaluating contemporary Chinese foreign policy grounds those implications in a rich historical background. I understand the policy significance of history to be an indispensable background for making sense of contemporary developments. Theory, in contrast, is an essential instrument for gaining deep understanding of enduring problems, which can shed light on contemporary issues. Of course, China may not become a hegemon, given the inherent limits and constraints of its power, and the question of a future Chinese hegemony would thus be a moot one. Even so, the value of this study as a historical and theoretical inquiry into international relations in East Asian history will stand. An exploration of the dynamics of historical Chinese hegemony and the intellectual challenges it poses to existing Eurocentric IR theory will in itself make a contribution to IR as a global field of study.

Specifically, the book examines two major dimensions of international relations in East Asian history: the grand strategies of imperial China and its neighbors in their strategic interactions and the fundamental institutional practices of regional politics. Addressing the strategic patterns and institutional maintenance of hegemony, these are central questions for understanding any hegemonic order. What were the grand strategic choices that imperial China and its neighbors adopted toward one another under the condition of Chinese hegemony? What were the fundamental institutional practices that sustained their interactions as part of an international society of Chinese hegemony? And how can we explain these strategic and institutional choices? I develop and evaluate a relational theory of grand strategy and institutional formation to answer these questions.

For policy implications, my question is not what the grand strategies and...