4

All under Heaven and the Chinese

Nation-state
Bart Dessein

1. Introduction

In contemporary Chinese political philosophy, as part of so-called ‘New

Confucianism’ (dangdai xin rujia), the concept tianxia (All under Heaven)
has gained renewed attention. The interpretation of the concept tianxia
in terms of Confucian political philosophy goes back to the unification
of the then Chinese territory under the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE) and
the promotion of Confucianism to the status of state orthodoxy in the
subsequent Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). This chapter will discuss the
historical importance of this concept for contemporary Chinese politics.

2. All under Heaven in imperial China

The ‘Prefaces’ to the Shijing (Book of Poetry), China’s oldest extant liter-
ary work, while not authored in the transitional period from Western to
Eastern Han (i.e. ca.50 BCE–50 CE), were in fact expanded and revised
in that period.1 Inspired by the territorial and political unification of the
then China under the Qin dynasty and by the victory of Confucianism
in the Han dynasty, they present the history of the Zhou state as a con-
tinuous process from its beginning in the 11th century BCE up to 599
BCE. It is the history of a Zhou state inhabited by the people of Zhou,
born through divine intervention and surrounded by barbarian peo-
ples.2 The unification of the Chinese territory under the first imperial
dynasty of the Qin and the subsequent installation of the Han dynasty
and Confucian state orthodoxy, were then interpreted as the next log-
ical step in the unification of the known world. This interpretation
was important because it suggested that the inhabitants of the central
plains (zhongyuan) – elites and commoners alike – imagined themselves

64
 Bart Dessein 65

and the territory they inhabited – the ‘Middle Kingdom’ (Zhongguo) –

to be fundamentally different from the people, creeds and customs of
the regions surrounding the central plains, and believed that this supe-
rior ‘Chinese’ culture was maintained through divine support.3 In this
respect, Michael Nylan remarks that where the term All under Heaven

initially referred to the lands and activities under the beneficent

supervision of the ancestors of the ruling house, [ . . . ] by a fairly easy
extension, the term later suggested the imagined community that
depended upon the moral ruler’s exemplary consciousness that he
held his lands in trust for the ancestors above and the people below.4

This also explains why the unification of All under Heaven – including
both the ‘Chinese’ and ‘barbarian’ parts – is presented as the ultimate
goal of true rulership,5 and why, through the concept tianxia, politics
in China were always in some sense regarded as internal politics.6 This
interpretation differs significantly from that of the Romans during their
period of expansion, for whom history was a progressive phenomenon,
moving towards their domination of the world through expansion.7
The first period of extended cultural growth, characterized by the
development of economic and political relations with territories that
lay beyond the ‘central plains’, began with the accession to the throne
of the Han emperors. These relations were philosophized in the well-
known cultural concept ‘tribute states’.8 The ‘Daxue’ (The Great Learn-
ing), the 39th chapter of the Liji (Records of Ritual), a Han dynasty work
compiled in the 3rd–2nd century BCE, has the following to say on
homeland polity and its international effects:

[W]hen the personal life is cultivated, the family will be regulated;

when the family is regulated, the state will be in order; and when the
state is in order, there will be peace throughout the world.9

This passage of the Liji explains that it is the wisdom of the ruler that
will extend to the rest of the world, that is, tianxia. As Confucianism
remained the state orthodoxy of all unified empires throughout China’s
history – at least, until the beginning of the 20th century – the impor-
tance of this passage for Chinese domestic and international political
history is hard to overstate. Fei Xiaotong illustrated this world view with
the metaphor of the concentric circles that appear when throwing a rock
into the water. Each individual is at the center of the circles produced by
his or her own social influence. Everyone’s circles are interrelated, and
66 Historical Consciousness

one touches different circles at different times and places. Each inci-
dence of overlap of one’s own circles with those of another individual
represents a different type of relationship and therefore also a specific
type of moral behavior. An individual’s behavior, however, is not sim-
ply a function of his social roles. Individuals possess a potential moral
autonomy, and it is one’s own self-cultivation that will have a transfor-
mative effect on other things, and that effect is itself a measure of one’s
progress in self-cultivation. Society thus is both the inspiration and the
aim of an individual’s existence. As a consequence, the value of an indi-
vidual is measured by his value to society, and the way to go beyond
oneself and reach out to the world is ‘to extend oneself circle by cir-
cle’.10 This model has traditionally been transposed to the world at large,
to All under Heaven. Applied to international relations, this means that
the idea that the ruler, the ‘son of heaven’ (tianzi), must safeguard the
harmonious relations in his state through his superb Confucian behav-
ior, was extended to the relation between China and its neighboring
territories. As with the relations between two individuals, inter-state
relations are characterized by particular rules of behavior, without over-
arching ethical concepts, and All under Heaven is considered both the
inspiration and the aim of China’s existence. The existence of ‘tribute
relations’ was seen in China as proof that the Chinese emperor excelled
in Confucian virtue, adding to the domestic prestige of the empire
and thus serving an internal political agenda. For the so-called ‘tribute
states’, engaging in a ‘tribute relation’ with China, the most important
political and economic power in the region, was a necessary condition
to establish commercial relations. In periods in which the cultural luster
of the Chinese Confucian elite in the capital was waning, the ‘cultural
model’ based on moral virtue no longer worked. As a result, the Chinese
political elite could no longer maintain their authority over the border-
ing territories, while the ‘tribute states’ no longer saw any economic or
political profit in maintaining these relations. The more recent and the
less thorough the connection with China had been, the easier Chinese
influence disappeared again.11 It can therefore be argued that the history
of Chinese international relations is a continuous movement of slowly
surging and retreating concentric circles of cultural Han influence.
It is obvious that historical events that affected China’s body politic
necessitated reinterpretations of the All under Heaven concept. Major
events during the Tang (618–907), Yuan (1271/79–1368),12 and espe-
cially the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) seriously challenged the conviction
that, as stated in the passage of the Liji quoted above, it is the wisdom of
the ruler that will extend to the world at large. Like the earlier Mongol
 Bart Dessein 67

Yuan dynasty, the Manchu Qing dynasty was a unified empire under
non-Chinese rule. The Manchus legitimated their rule over Confucian
China by accentuating the Confucian concept ‘virtue’ (de), defined in
terms of political stability ensured by ruling the country as a ‘univer-
sal empire’. That is, they chose to rule all the different ethnic domains
(the Qing ruled over the domains of the former Ming dynasty (1368–
1644), Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet, and a part of Muslim Central Asia)
through native elites, whereby these different ethnic groups retained
their respective traditions.13 This transformed the All under Heaven con-
cept into a universal/exclusivist dichotomy. This is evident from the
Qing scholar Zhang Xuecheng’s (1738–1801) Yuan Dao, a work in which
he claims that the differentiation between ‘Chinese’ and ‘barbarians’
is no longer meaningful, as all people have at any moment the abil-
ity to ‘civilize’ themselves.14 This means that the traditional dichotomy
‘Chinese’–‘non-Chinese’ developed into a ‘Chinese’–‘not yet Chinese’
dichotomy. This interpretation was further expanded in the late 19th
and early 20th century with the concept of ‘China’s assimilative power’
(Zhongguo tonghuali).

3. The creation of a Chinese nation-state within the borders

of the Qing empire

The Qing identification of political leadership with the maintenance

of harmony and stability in its multi-ethnic empire was severely chal-
lenged in the 19th century. The ‘Treaty of Nanjing’ of 1842 and the
ensuing ‘unequal treatises’ (bu pingdeng tiaoyue) that allowed Western
influence in the traditional ‘tribute states’ to expand to China proper,
shook the traditional All under Heaven concept especially hard and
questioned the value of Confucianism as a political philosophy. Young
intellectuals like Kang Youwei (1858–1927), Liang Qichao (1873–1929),
and Sun Zhongshan (1866–1925) were convinced that Confucians could
no longer be seen as protectors of the cultural norm. Inspired by
Western political, social, and economic ideas, political nationalism –
the movement to create a nation-state – grew.15 Illustrating the claim
that nationalism aligns itself with the large cultural systems that pre-
cede it and out of which – as well as against which – it emerges,16
the Chinese nation-state, they believed, would have to be constructed
from the remains of the Qing empire. Inspired by the Darwinian con-
cept ‘survival of the fittest’ and its social interpretation by Herbert
Spencer in 1864, who claimed that the evolutionary process worked
between groups that, therefore, had to work together, the creation of
68 Historical Consciousness

a Chinese nation-state was given an ethnic component.17 This explains

why, as Julia Schneider explains, ‘At the same time, Han Chinese schol-
ars began to think about the validity of their own historical models
based on Confucian philosophy like historical atrophy (lishi tuihua), a
belief in the great achievements of the so-called Golden Age and the
general notion that the past could provide a model for present-day
politic,’ that is, the tianxia concept, lingered on.18 This also explains why
Liang Qichao introduced the concept of China’s ‘assimilative power’
(Zhongguo tonghuali), or the ‘power’ of superior ethnicities (that is, the
Han) to ‘swallow inferior weak ethnicities and wipe their frontiers’.19
With his appeal to the Han to take the lead in the unification of the
Han, Manchus, Mongols, Turkish Muslims, Miao, and Tibetans into one
large nation (yi da minzu), and his claim that the organization of the
large nation that would ensue from this unifying policy would have to
be formed by the hands of the Han people,20 he represented the Han
as the guides for all the surrounding people. That this would revive the
age-old All under Heaven concept is clearly visible from his claim that,
in the creation of a Chinese nation-state, ‘large nationalism’, the senti-
ments of all people towards all people outside the borders of the former
Qing empire (guowai), should be supported.21
Sun Zhongshan also valued ethnicity (minzu) as fundamental to the
creation of a Chinese nation-state. In his understanding, minzu was
synonymous with guozu, ‘statism’. This explains why, in his inaugural
speech to the first congress of the Nationalist Party in January 1912,
he declared that he no longer wanted to ‘govern’ the state through
the Party (yi dang zhi guo), but rather to ‘establish’ it through the Party
(yi dang jian guo).22 The Han Nationalist Party (Guomindang) was thus
presented as the instrument with which to ‘create’ the new Chinese
nation-state. This identification of the Guomindang with the state was
coined ‘dangguo’ (party-state).23 Because the non-Han people of the for-
mer Qing empire felt threatened by the Han ethnic focus, some already
highly acculturated non-Han communities further assimilated with the
Han, while different ethnic and religious nationalisms developed in
those regions that had enjoyed a high degree of autonomy during the
Qing period. Some of these regions broke away from central power
and proclaimed their independence: Xinjiang had broken away from
Manchu rule already in 1864 with the rebellion of Yakub Beg, and again
saw the proclamation of independence under an ‘East Turkestan Repub-
lic’ in Kashgar in 1933 and in Yining (Ghulje) in 1944.24 In 1911, Outer
Mongolia declared its independence in the form of a monarchy, led by
rJe-btsun-dam-pa Qutuγtu, a Tibetan by birth, but from a theological
 Bart Dessein 69

viewpoint a descendant of Činggis Khan.25 Between 1905 and 1930

China, usually a strong presence in Tibet, was essentially absent from
the country.26 The still embryonic new Republic was thus confronted
with the problem that the Han-centered national rhetoric strengthened
precisely that tendency it tried to overcome, that is, it undermined the
tianxia concept.

4. The CCP nation-state

Having come to power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)

turned to Marxism-Leninism to build up a ‘New China’, now called
‘Zhonghua renmin gongheguo’, People’s Republic of China (PRC).
In contradistinction to the former concept ‘Zhongguo’ that essen-
tially refers to the ‘central plains’, this new term comprises all ethnic
groups that live in the territory of the former Qing empire, and, in a
broader sense, it also comprises the overseas Chinese and the people of
Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan.27
Like the liberal thinkers of the 19th century, Karl Marx was of the
opinion that the future of mankind is connected to great nations charac-
terized by highly centralized political and economic structures, because
it is such structures that make the development of a bourgeois class, and
thus of a capitalist society, possible. In a later phase of historical develop-
ment, according to Marx and Friedrich Engels, a proletarian revolution
would occur in these nations, after which wealth would be evenly dis-
tributed and both the nation and the state would become historically
outdated. Because smaller nations could not play an independent role
in this historical development, their only option would be to assimilate
with a greater, and by definition more vital, nation.28 Put differently, the
degree to which the PRC would become a modern state would depend
on the CCP’s success in bringing all the domains of the former Qing
empire together in a unified nation-state. This aim had been promul-
gated already in 1922, at the Second National Congress of the CCP held
in Hangzhou, when a maximum and a minimum program were pro-
posed: the maximum program was to establish a ‘communist society’,
while the minimum program was to unify the country (and establish
a genuinely democratic republic).29 As China was far from being a cap-
italist industrialized nation in 1949, the choice of Marxism-Leninism
was not self-evident. Marxism did provide a solution, however, to the
apparently insurmountable difficulty of bringing the different non-Han
peoples of the former Qing Empire into one nation-state, as the empha-
sis on the class struggle highlighted class differences within each of the
70 Historical Consciousness

individual ethnic groups, not the mutual ethnic differences between

these groups.30
On an international level, the choice for Marxism-Leninism infused
the All under Heaven concept with a new dimension, as this choice
made China part of the communist world. In this context, Zhou Enlai’s
claim that ‘socialist patriotism is not a narrow nationalism, but a
patriotism aimed to strengthen national pride under the guidance of
internationalism’ echoes Liang Qichao’s differentiation between ‘small
nationalism’ and ‘large nationalism’ mentioned above. China’s unease
with the Soviet Union’s leading role in the communist world, as well as
the country’s involvement in the Vietnam war, can also be interpreted
against the background of the traditional All under Heaven concept.31
When Mao Zedong died on 9 September 1976, the failure of the class
struggle to create a modern nation-state had become evident. Deng
Xiaoping’s (1904–1993) appeal to ‘productive forces’ made it possible to
introduce the needed economic reforms within a Marxist framework, as
‘productive forces’ encompasses more than only the working class and
allows for the introduction of capitalist instruments. This new emphasis
not only redefined Marxism as a ‘developmental nationalism’ but also
allowed a reconnection of the Deng era to the era of transition from the
Qing empire to the Republic. With the words:

No matter what clothes they wear or what political stand they take,
all Chinese have a sense of pride and identification with the Chinese
nation and would want the People’s Republic of China to become
strong and prosperous,32

Deng Xiaoping appealed to the overseas Chinese (huaqiao) in South-

east Asia to contribute to the build-up of China, in the same way Kang
Youwei had done.

5. The contemporary nation-state and the military

Dengist capitalist policies have led to a rate of economic growth

unprecedented in any single country in such a short span of time.33 But
Dengist policies have also led to growing social inequality. Moreover, in
order to create economic growth, the CCP government has increasingly
engaged with Western partners, with the result that a variety of (wanted
and unwanted) Western values have entered China. These developments
have cast doubts on the socialist and nationalist identity of the CCP.
With the class struggle increasingly being moved to the background in
favor of economic growth, the non-Han domains of the PRC have been
 Bart Dessein 71

given greater autonomy. It is believed that economic growth guided by

the CCP, not class struggle, will prevent these domains from breaking
away from the Chinese nation-state. Good relations between the central
government and the territories inhabited by ethnic minority groups is
also of strategic importance to China’s foreign relations, as these ethnic
minorities often are of the same ethnic group inhabiting the bordering
foreign country. The drawback of the latter policy is that it has fed ethnic
nationalism among some ethnic groups that feel themselves supported
in their ‘uniqueness’. This is especially true in Xinjiang, Mongolia, and
Tibet, regions that enjoyed greater autonomy under Qing rule. This
explains why the CCP continually emphasizes its role as the factor bind-
ing together the Chinese nation-state, and why ‘patriotism’ has come to
the foreground of political rhetoric. Patriotism affects the nation-state
as a whole, not a single national/ethnic group. Historical memory is an
important element in this: it is the CCP that, after the period of Western
domination, reunited China. A weakened Party is therefore portrayed as
a virtual threat to territorial unity, as in such circumstances China might
once again fall prey to Western dominance.34
The practical decline of Marxism-Leninism – a Western political
theory – has given way to a return of Confucianism – now called ‘New
Confucianism’. This trend points to the fact that while Confucianism
was seen as an obstacle for development in the Republican period and in
the first decades of the PRC, history has proven otherwise – in much of
Southeast Asia, the presence of elements of traditional Chinese culture,
often labeled Confucianism, has not hindered economic progress, but
is, according to New Confucians, the precise reason for the economic
success of the Chinese communities in the region. In fact, this situation
is reminiscent of what was formulated by Hu Shi (1891–1962), one of
the major figures of the nationalist 4 May Movement of 1919:

The problem is: How can China adjust herself so that she may feel
at home in that modern western civilization which has become the
civilization of the world? The problem suggests three possible ways
or solutions. China may refuse to recognize this new civilization and
resist its invasion; she may accept the new culture whole-heartedly;
or, she may adopt its desirable elements and reject what she considers
to be non-essential or objectionable. The first attitude is resistance;
the second, wholesale acceptance; and the third, selective adoption.35

Hu Shi’s attitude is illustrative of what Mary Matossian described as the

necessity of adopting a pragmatic attitude that accepts those elements
72 Historical Consciousness

from the West that are supportive of national interest and strength in
order for developmental nationalism to be successful.36
That the CCP embraces traditional Confucian concepts is seen for
example in the introduction of such concepts as the ‘harmonious
society’ (hexie shehui) or the ‘moderately prosperous society’ (xiaokang
shehui) – two concepts derived from the Han dynasty Liji referred to
above – into political rhetoric. Also in the field of international poli-
tics, the apparent similarities between the contemporary rise of China
and the formative period of Chinese history that led to the creation of a
unified Chinese empire in 221 BCE – after which China gradually devel-
oped into one of the dominant cultures in pre-modern history37 – have
led academics to reinterpret age-old Confucian works for their value in
formulating a creative alternative for the present world order. According
to Yan Xuetong, one of China’s most influential foreign policy analysts
and theorists of international relations,38 the global order is bound to be
hierarchical, with some states being dominant and others less influen-
tial.39 This hierarchical order is to be based on moral leadership rather
than on economic or military power,40 and can be illustrated with the
following statement from the Confucian Mengzi:

When one by force subdues men, they do not submit to him in heart.
[They submit because] their strength is not adequate [to resist]. When
one subdues men by virtue, in their hearts’ core they are pleased, and
sincerely submit, as was the case with the seventy disciples in their
submission to Confucius. What is said in the ‘Book of Poetry,’ ‘From
the west, from the east, From the south, from the north, There was
not one who thought of refusing submission,’ is an illustration of
this.41

Notwithstanding the fact that hegemonic authority lacks the ability to

win the hearts of the people at home and abroad, and thus is a lesser
form of rulership, it must, in the practical lack of fulfillment of moral
authority, be strategically reliable, and reliability must be accompanied
by hard power. Yan Xuetong therefore argues that it is

[O]nly if China can greatly increase its political power – at least its
strategic reliability – that China can greatly increase its comprehen-
sive national power and international status.42

While he claims China should mainly rely on its own military construc-
tion to maintain its own peaceful environment, it should, in line with
 Bart Dessein 73

Mencius, press for the establishment of an international security system

and norms, and promote the realization of universal world peace, as
this will prove China’s moral standard. Chinese leadership should real-
ize that only when the international community believes China to be a
more responsible state than the United States will it be able to replace
the US as the world’s leading state.43 With this, Yan Xuetong urges PRC
leadership to become a responsible stakeholder in a new international
order.
The growth of China’s nationalist, patriotic, and military rhetoric has
attracted attention. Lucian W. Pye has observed that in cultures that tra-
ditionally looked down on the military, including China, technological
perfection and advanced military technology have led to a parallel high
prestige for the military, as the structure of the military ‘comes as close as
any human organization can to the ideal type for an industrialized and
secularized enterprise’.44 This explains why armies tend to emphasize
a rational outlook and to champion responsible change and national
development. As discussed above, the challenge to the CCP’s legitimacy,
combined with the fact that economic development tends to be accom-
panied eventually by both political and economic decentralization and
a decline of one-party rule along with the rise of a welfare state,45 and
against the background of the CCP’s growing patriotic and nationalist
stance, the long-standing issue of the relationship between the People’s
Liberation Army (PLA) and the CCP may again come to the fore.46
Given the historically difficult relationship in Chinese society
between the civilian and the military, and the reality that the military
needs civilian institutions to implement its policies, it is noteworthy
that Xi Jinping, the newly elected president of the PRC, spelled out the
lesson his party should draw from the failure of its Soviet counterpart:
‘We have to strengthen the grip of the party on the military.’47 An article
published in the People’s Daily (Renmin Ribao) of 13 December 2012 and
authored by Wang Hongshan of the Press Agency New China (Xinhua She)
and Liu Shengdong of the Liberation Army’s Newspaper (Jiefangjun bao),
reporting on an inspection tour Xi Jinping made in the military region
Guangzhou on 8 and 10 December 2012, touches upon the possible
tension between the PLA and the CCP. According to the article,

Xi Jinping [ . . . ] in particular pointed out that realizing the great

revival of the Chinese people is the greatest dream of the Chinese
people since the modern period. It can be said that this dream is the
dream of a powerful nation and that, for the armed forces, it also is
the dream of a powerful army. When we want to realize the great
74 Historical Consciousness

revival of the Chinese people, it is necessary to uphold the mutual

unification of a wealthy nation (fu guo) and a powerful army; and
to diligently build up a solid national defense and powerful armed
forces. We primarily have to keep in mind that resolutely listening to
the command of the Party is the spirit of a strong army; that it is nec-
essary to unremittingly uphold the absolute leadership of the Party
over the armed forces; and that at all times and in all circumstances,
[it is necessary] to resolutely listen to the words of the Party and to
go along with the Party.

The article’s conclusion is worth noting: Xi Jinping mentions Deng

Xiaoping’s theory (lilun), Jiang Zemin’s ‘Three Represents’ (san ge
daibiao), and Hu Jintao’s ‘Scientific Development’ (kexue fazhan guan),
but does not mention Marxism-Leninism (Ma Lie zhuyi) or Mao Zedong
‘thought’ (Mao zhuxi sixiang). As it is the policies of Deng Xiaoping that
have led to a wealthy nation (fu guo), and as these policies, it is argued,
have made a historical reconnection with Republican nationalism pos-
sible, a historic line of development connecting the Republican period
with Deng Xiaoping – omitting Marx, Lenin, and Mao Zedong – and
with China’s revival is at the very least suggested.48 It is, in this respect,
equally telling that in 2002 a project was launched to compile a new
official history of the last imperial dynasty – an undertaking that was
never accomplished during the Republic.49

6. Conclusion

The unification of China in the first imperial dynasty and the follow-
ing Golden Age of Confucianism gave rise to the concept All under
Heaven as a dichotomy between the Chinese realm of ‘civilization’ and
the realm of the non-civilized other. Historical events have necessi-
tated a continuous reinterpretation of this concept, leading to the Qing
dynasty’s ‘Chinese’–‘not yet Chinese’ dichotomy along with the asser-
tion of China’s assimilative power. The idea that the rest of the world
could be brought to the elevated level of Han culture lived on in the
Republic and the early PRC. The failure of the class struggle to create
a Han-centered nation-state within the territorial expanse of the Qing
dynasty ushered in the concept of ‘developmental nationalism’. The
perceived similarities between China’s current economic – and increas-
ingly also political – development and the unification of China in the
imperial period have triggered a revaluation of China’s historical tradi-
tion. While China’s rise has drawn in a growing number of developing
 Bart Dessein 75

countries and led to the formation of the concept ‘China model’, the
issue of CCP legitimacy has also seemingly brought to the fore the long-
standing question of the relationship between the CCP and the PLA.
The latter also encroaches on the contemporary interpretation of the
traditional Confucian concept All under Heaven.

Notes
1. See A. Mittag ([2008] 2009) ‘Forging legacy: The pact between empire and
historiography in ancient China’, in F. Mutschler and A. Mittag (eds.) Con-
ceiving the Empire. China and Rome Compared (Oxford: Oxford University
Press), pp.151–3.
2. D. W. Pankenier (1995) ‘The cosmo-political background of heaven’s man-
date’, Early China, 20, 140, remarks that ‘When the notion of a “central
kingdom” (zhong guo) is first made explicit in early Western Zhou inscrip-
tions, we recognize this as a continuation of the (Shang) concept that the
heart of their domain was the center of the universe, as well as the physical
center of the world’.
3. See B. Dessein (2014) ‘Faith and politics: (New) Confucianism as civil
religion’, Asian Studies 18/1, pp.39–64.
4. M. Nylan ([2008] 2009) ‘The rhetoric of “Empire” in the classical era in
China’, in Mutschler and Mittag (eds.) Conceiving the Empire (Oxford: Oxford
University Press), pp.42–3.
5. See Y. Pines ([2008] 2009) ‘Imagining the empire? Concepts of “Primeval
Unity” in pre-imperial historiographic tradition’, in Mutschler and Mittag
(eds.) Conceiving the Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p.81.
6. See A. Mittag and F. Mutschler ([2008] 2009) ‘Epilogue’, in Mutschler and
Mittag (eds), Conceiving the Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p.440.
7. Th. Göller and A. Mittag (2008) Geschichtsdenken in Europa und China.
Selbstdeutung und Deutung des Fremden in historischen Kontexten (Sankt
Augustin: Academia), pp.78–84.
8. See J. K. Fairbank (1942) ‘Tributary trade and China’s relations with the
West’, The Far Eastern Quarterly, 1/2, 137–9. For a discussion of the nature
of these relations, see the contribution by Bruno Hellendorff in this volume.
9. Translation: W. Chan (1963) A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton:
Princeton University Press), p.87.
10. X. Fei (1992) From the Soil. The Foundations of Chinese Society (Berkeley:
University of California Press), pp.62–3.
11. See J. K. Fairbank and S. Teng (1941) ‘On the Ch’ing tributary system’,
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 6/1, 129–30.
12. For these historical examples, see B. Dessein (forthcoming) ‘Historical nar-
rative, remembrance, and the ordering of the world: A historical assessment
of China’s international relations’, in S. Harnisch, S. Bersick and J. Gottwald
(eds.) China’s International Roles: Challenging or Supporting International Order?
(New York: Routledge).
13. See H. Harrison (2001) China. Inventing the Nation (London: Arnold), pp.36–8.
14. See Göller and Mittag, Europa und China, pp.100, 105–11.
76 Historical Consciousness

15. It has been suggested, indeed, that typically it is the intellectuals who, out-
raged by imperialism and appalled by the great discrepancies in standards of
living and culture between their own people and the West, feel the need for
action. See E. Shils ([1966] 1971) ‘The intellectuals in the political develop-
ment of new states’, in J. L. Finkle and R. W. Gable (eds.) Political Development
and Social Change (New York: John Wiley & Sons), pp.258–60.
16. B. Anderson (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism (London: Verso), pp.127–8.
17. J. Spence (1990) The Search for Modern China (London: W.W. Norton),
pp.290–1.
18. J. Schneider (2012) Ethnicity and Sinicization. The Theory of Assimilative Power
in the Making of the Chinese Nation-State (1900s–1920s). Unpublished PhD
dissertation. Gent/Göttingen, p.54.
19. Liang Qichao ([1902] 1983) ‘Lun minzu jingzheng zhi dashi’, Yinbingshi heji,
Wenji, 10, 11.
20. Liang Qichao ([1903] 1983) ‘Zhengzhixue dajia Bolunzhili zhi xueshuo’,
Yinbingshi heji, Wenji, 13, 76. Translation: J. Schneider (2012) Ethnicity and
Sinicization, p.69.
21. Liang Qichao, ‘Zhengzhixue dajia Bolunzhili zhi xueshuo’, 75. See also the
contribution by Julia Schneider in this volume.
22. See J. Fitzgerald (1996) Awakening China. Politics, Culture, and Class in the
Nationalist Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p.185; B. Dessein
(2012) ‘ “Sozdavat Gosudarstvo v opore na Partiyu” (I Dan Jyan Go):
Politika Kitaiskoi Respubliki I eye Znachenie dlya Sovremennogo Kitaya’,
in A. Ostrovski and S. Gorbunova (eds.) Vekovoi Put Kitaya k Progressu
I Modernizacii. K 100-letiyu Sinhaiskoi Revolutzii. Papers of the 19th Interna-
tional Conference on China, Chinese Civilization and the World: History,
Modernity and Future Prospects. Moscow, Institute of For Eastern Studies,
Russian Academy of Sciences, pp.280–97. Sun Zhongshan’s position affirms
the following observation by P. Duara (1995) Rescuing History from the Nation.
Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press), p.749:

The nation becomes the main subject of a capital-H history as well as the
end of it, working for the Chinese people paradoxically, both as means and
destination: the nation becomes the only ship that can set sail for utopia
(the others being bound to the shores of the empire) and the utopian
destination itself. While the perspective of culturalism is self-referential in
the sense that it refers to ‘a national conviction of cultural superiority that
[seeks] no legitimation or defense outside the culture itself,’ nationalism
cannot be deployed as a regulative principle without acknowledging a
plurality of nation-views or world-views.

23. See Harrison, Inventing the Nation, pp.190–3. This new identification also
remained important in the People’s Republic of China, where the Chinese
Communist Party is identified with the state.
24. See D. C. Gladney (2003) ‘Islam in China: Accommodation or separatism?’,
in D. L. Overmyer (ed.) Religion in China Today. The China Quarterly Special
Issues. New Series, No.3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p.150.
 Bart Dessein 77

25. See K. Sagaster (2007) ‘The history of Buddhism among the Mongols’, in
A. Heirman and S. P. Bumbacher (eds.) The Spread of Buddhism (Leiden: Brill),
p.422.
26. On the question of the extent of Tibet’s autonomy vis-à-vis China and the
British and Russian policy on this issue, see D. Norbu (2001) China’s Tibet
Policy (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon), pp.165–76.
27. Therefore, Fitzgerald, Awakening China, p.57, claims that the People’s Repub-
lic of China is a state without nation, since, with the unity as state, there is
no corresponding uniform nation.
28. See E. Nimni (1995) ‘Marx, Engels, and the national question’, in
W. Kymlicka (ed.) The Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University
Press), pp.63, 66–7, 71–2; P. Mentzel (1992) ‘Nationalism’, Humane Studies
Review, 8/1, 10. The continuation of the All under Heaven concept in offi-
cial rhetoric is evident for example in Chou Ku-cheng’s claim (‘Highlights
of Chinese history’, in China Reconstructs, Beijing, 1962, p.17) that ‘[i]n the
region under the Northern Dynasties, the cultural process was one of gradual
assimilation of the nomads into the Han people’.
29. See Sh. Wang (1962) ‘China’s first revolutionary civil war’, in China Recon-
structs (Beijing: Zhongguo jianshe zazhi chuban), p.46.
30. See Nimni, ‘Marx, Engels, and the national question’, 57–61. Therefore,
although a special administrative status was developed and implemented for
the domains that are predominantly inhabited by non-Han people (Tibet,
Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, and Ningxia), in practice these domains
had to join in the agricultural, industrial and political campaigns engineered
by the CCP, albeit sometimes at a slower pace. The practical result was that
in the 1950s the minority regions were far more integrated into the Chinese
state and state policy than ever before in history.
31. See Zh. Chen (2005) ‘Nationalism, internationalism and Chinese foreign pol-
icy’, Journal of Contemporary China, 14/42, 41–3. See also M. Näth (1975)
‘Die Aussenpolitik der VR China: Talleyrand Redivivus?’, in J. Domes (ed.)
China nach der Kulturrevolution (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag), pp.259–68
for China’s relationship with the Soviet Union. For the Vietnam issue, see
also the contribution by Emile Kok-Kheng Yeoh in this volume.
32. Deng Xiaoping (1987) Fundamental Issues in Present-day China (Beijing:
Foreign Languages Press), p.51.
33. This development is illustrative of what was stated by J. J. Spengler ([1966]
1971) ‘Economic development: Political preconditions and political conse-
quences’, in Finkle and Gable (eds.) Political Development and Social Change
(New York,London, Sydney, Toronto: John Wiley and Sons), pp.174–5,
namely that in developing countries a multiparty system appears to be
incompatible with economic growth; developing countries with one dom-
inant political party (or a pair of parties) that is strongly committed to
economic development are more likely to realize this development as they
are ‘able to keep the ideology of development effectively alive, to impose
the necessary costs of development on the population, and yet to remain in
office long enough to get economic growth effectively under way’.
34. M. H. Chang (2001) Return of the Dragon. China’s Wounded Nationalism (Boul-
der: Westview Press), p.163, suggests that this is also the reason why Deng
Xiaoping did not completely denounce Mao Zedong and why, although he
78 Historical Consciousness

did not seem to object to Western democracy in principle, he rejected it

in practice. A recent study by X. Wang (2010) ‘Entertainment, education,
or propaganda. A longitudinal analysis of China central television’s spring
festival galas’, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 54/3 shows how
almost one-third of all performances of the spring festival galas serve to
praise the CCP and promote patriotism, and that 26 per cent of all per-
formances refer to national pride. A similar study by X. Xu (2007) ‘The
construction of a United Great China: A comparative study of the CCTV
spring festival galas, 1984–1986 and 2004–2006’, MA dissertation, Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University, reveals how the eternal theme of
a united China remains constant.
35. Quoted through R. L. Walker ([1957] 1967) China and the West: Cul-
tural Collision. Selected Documents (New Haven: Yale University Far Eastern
Publications), p.138, who, ibid., remarks that
this attitude of cautious selection is an impossible one, and also quite
unnecessary. A civilization by its very magnitude affects necessarily the
vast majority of the people who are invariably conservative. By the nat-
ural workings of the law of inertia of great masses, the majority of the
people will always take very good care of the traditional elements which
are dear to them. It is, therefore, gratuitous and absolutely unnecessary
that the thinkers and leaders of a nation should worry about traditional
values being lost.
36. M. Matossian (1971) ‘Ideologies of delayed industrialization’, in Finkle and
Gable (eds.) Political Development and Social Change (New York, London,
Sydney, Toronto: John Wiley and Sons), p.113.
37. See H. S. Kohli, Sh. Ashok and S. Anid (2012) Asia 2050. Realizing the Asian
Century (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC: Sage
Publications), pp.19–20.
38. In 2008, Foreign Policy named him one of the world’s hundred most influ-
ential public intellectuals. Mark Leonard (2008), the author of What Does
China Think? (London: Fourth Estate), p.139, labeled Yan Xuetong as China’s
‘leading “neo-comm,” an assertive nationalist who has called for a more
forthright approach to Taiwan, Japan, and the United States’. See also
D. Shambaugh (2013) China Goes Gobal. The Partial Power (Oxford: Oxford
University Press), pp.31–4.
39. As against the generally accepted principle that all nations are equal.
40. X. Yan (2011) Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power (Princeton:
Princeton University Press), pp.48–9.
41. Mengzi, book II, Part I, Chapter 3. See also the contribution by Julia Schneider
in this volume.
42. Yan, Ancient Chinese Thought, p.102.
43. Ibid., pp.60–5. See also the contributions by Niall Duggan and Frank
Gaenssmantel in this volume.
44. L. W. Pye ([1966] 1971) ‘Armies in the process of political modernization’,
in Finkle and Gable (eds.) Political Development and Social Change (New York,
London, Sydney, Toronto: John Wiley and Sons), pp.278–80.
45. See Spengler, ‘Economic development: Political preconditions and political
consequences’, p.176, who further claims:
 Bart Dessein 79

An effective one-party system, though often favorable to economic

growth, appears to be incompatible with a complex economy in which
consumer goods, together with a high level of education, have come
to play a paramount role. Similarly, the welfare state, though initially
incompatible with the effective development of economically retarded
lands, eventually becomes a part of the set of arrangements whereby, in
high-income economies, collective goods and services are supplied and
expenditure is kept abreast of ‘full-employment’ output in pacific times.
The Economist, 16 March 2013, 54, states: ‘[ . . . ] change will have to come.
Many think it will. According to Andrew Nathan, an American scholar, “the
consensus is stronger than at any time since the 1989 Tiananmen crisis that
the resilience of the authoritarian regime in [ . . . ] China is approaching its
limits” ’.
46. As formulated by Pye, ‘Armies in the process of political modernization’,
p.280:
[A]rmies by nature are rival institutions in the sense that their ultimate
function is the test of one against the other. [ . . . ] The soldier, however,
is constantly called upon to look abroad and to compare his organiza-
tion with foreign ones. He thus has a greater awareness of international
standards and a greater sensitivity to weaknesses in his own society.
The International New York Times of 1 April 2014, 1 and 7, gives an account
of how President Xi Jinping is expanding his anti-corruption policies from
the CCP to the PLA:
Mr Xi’s goal [ . . . ] is to transform a service larded by pet projects and
patronage networks into a leaner fighting force more adept at projecting
power abroad and buttressing party rule at home – and to strengthen
his own authority. His campaign presents him with a cudgel to enforce
tighter control over an institution that some say has drifted from the
party leadership’s orbit even as it remains a bulwark of one-party rule.
47. According to The Economist, 16 March 2013, 54, Fu Ying, spokeswoman for
the National People’s Congress, phrased this as follows: ‘political reform is
“the self-improvement and development of the socialist system with Chinese
characteristics”. Put another way, it is about strengthening party rule, not
diluting it.’
48. We can remark here that Liu Kwei-wu (1962) ‘Revolution of 1911: The
monarchy falls’, in China Reconstructs (Beijing: Zhongguo jianshe zazhi
chuban), p.46, states that the political program proposed by Sun Zhongshan
in July 1905, at a conference held in Tokyo, was to ‘revive’ China.
49. See the contribution by Ady Van den Stock in this volume.