China’s Many Dreams

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Titles include:

David Kerr (editor)

CHINA’S MANY DREAMS
Comparative Perspectives on China’s Search for National Rejuvenation
Steve Tsang (editor)
THE VITALITY OF TAIWAN
Politics, Economics, Society and Culture
Shujie Yao and Pan Wang (editors)
CHINA’S OUTWARD FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENTS AND IMPACT ON THE
WORLD ECONOMY
Shujie Yao and Maria Jesus Herrerias (editors)
ENERGY SECURITY AND SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC GROWTH IN CHINA
Jing Zhang
FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT, GOVERNANCE, AND THE ENVIRONMENT
IN CHINA
Regional Dimensions

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China’s Many Dreams
Comparative Perspectives on China’s
Search for National Rejuvenation

Edited by

David Kerr
Introduction, Conclusion, selection and editorial matter © David Kerr 2015
Individual chapters © contributors 2015
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Contents

List of Tables and Figures vii

Acknowledgements viii
Notes on the Contributors ix

1 Introduction: China’s Many Dreams 1

David Kerr
2 Contextualizing the China Dream: A Reinforced
Consultative Leninist Approach to Government 10
Steve Tsang
3 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas
in the Era of National Rejuvenation 35
David Kerr
4 Worrying About Ethnicity: A New Generation
of China Dreams? 65
David Tobin
5 A Swinging Pendulum: The Chinese Way in Growth
and Development from 1800 to the Present Day 94
Kent G. Deng
6 Let The Hundred Businesses Donate (bai shang qi juan):
The New Chinese Ways of Philanthropy,
Traditional Values and the US Model 132
Gordon C. K. Cheung
7 Does China Offer a New Paradigm for Doing Science? 156
Joy Yueyue Zhang
8 Chinese Cultural Diplomacy: Old Wine in New Bottles? 180
Michael Barr
9 China at Arms: Millennial Strategic Traditions and
Their Diplomatic Implications 201
Shi Yinhong

v
vi Contents

10 China Dream: A New Chinese Way in

International Society? 226
Zhang Xiaoming
11 Conclusion: How Close is China to National Rejuvenation? 246
David Kerr

Index 263
List of Tables and Figures

Tables

3.1 Trends in governance by percentile rank in three

modernizing states, 1998–2012 59
5.1a Demand shock: annual opium imports, 1800–35 99
5.1b Tea and opium trade 100
5.2 Qing provincial arms industry 103
5.3 Chinese and Japanese naval shipbuilding capacity, 1875–85 104
5.4a Pattern of investments in railways, 1888–1946 105
5.4b Comparative transport costs 105
5.4c Travel time, 1924 105
5.5 Growth in capital markets, 1911–25 106
5.6 Industrial structure 107
5.7 Comintern funding to Chinese Communist Party 109
5.8a Annual nominal and real wage in the state sector, 1957–78 113
5.8b Non-grain rations per month, 1978 113
5.8c Food rations (kilogram per month), 1955–78 114
5.9 Households below the official poverty line (% in total),
1978–88 114

Figures

5.1 China’s golden age of silver imports, 1650–1825 96

5.2 China’s silver imports, 1832–1907 100
7.1 Administrative framework regarding stem cell research 160

vii
Acknowledgements

This edited volume is the product of a workshop ‘A New “Chinese

Way”? Multi-disciplinary perspectives on China as an alternative to the
West’ organized by the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies at
Durham University in July 2013. The workshop was held in the School
of Government and International Affairs at Durham University and we
would particularly like to thank the School’s Research Administrator
Dr Lorraine Holmes for her valuable efforts in the organization of
the event. Financially the workshop was supported by the Centre
of Contemporary Chinese Studies, the School of Government and
International Affairs, and the Universities China Committee in London.
We thank these bodies for their willingness to provide funding for the
event. We are happy to publish the volume in the Nottingham China
Policy Institute Series for Palgrave Macmillan and thank Professor
Steve Tsang and Professor Shujie Yao at CPI and Taiba Batool and Ania
Wronski at Palgrave Macmillan for their assistance in bringing the vol-
ume to publication.
Steve Tsang’s chapter is an updated version of an earlier article
‘Consultative Leninism: China’s new political framework’, Journal of
Contemporary China (2009) 18:62, pp. 865–80. This is reprinted by per-
mission of the publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd.

viii
Notes on the Contributors

Michael Barr is Lecturer in International Politics at Newcastle University.

He is the author of Who’s Afraid of China? (2011) and Green Politics in
China (2013, with Joy Zhang). His work investigates the implications
of the cultural and scientific rise of China. He has been funded by the
UK Foreign Office, the UK Department of Innovation, Universities, and
Skills, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust.
Gordon C. K. Cheung has been Editor of East Asia: An International Quarterly
for more than nine years and Director of the Centre for Contemporary
Chinese Studies at Durham University. He has written four books on
China’s international relations and political economy and more than
20 articles in leading regional and disciplinary journals such as Political
Studies, Sustainable Development, Journal of Contemporary China, China: An
International Journal, Journal of Contemporary Asia, The China Review, Asia
Pacific Business Review, Issues and Studies, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs,
and Asian Politics and Policy, along with many book chapters.

Kent G. Deng is Reader in Economic History, London School of Economics

and Political Science, and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Kent
Deng is specialized in economic performance, reforms, growth and devel-
opment in China in the long run. He has published five monographs
and two dozen book chapters and journal articles. He also acts as Deputy
Director of the Confucius Institute for Business at the London School of
Economics and Political Science.

David Kerr teaches Chinese politics and Asian International Relations

at Durham University. He is a Research Associate of Durham University’s
Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies. He has published on Chinese
domestic and international affairs in journals such as Critical Asian
Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Political
Economy, and International Affairs. A previous edited volume (with Liu Fei)
is The International Politics of EU–China relations (2007).

Shi Yinhong is Professor of International Relations and Director of the

Center on American Studies at Renmin University of China, Beijing.
His research fields include history and ideas of International Relations,
strategic studies, and foreign policies of China and the United States.
Publications include Global Challenges and China (2010), Thirty Studies

ix
x Notes on the Contributors

on Strategy: Reflections of China’s External Strategy (2008), History of

Modern International Relations: From the 16th Century to the End of the 20th
Century (2006), and International Politics and Statecraft (2006). He has
published more than 490 professional articles and essays in academic
journals, magazines and newspapers.

David Tobin is Lecturer in Chinese Politics at the University of

Glasgow. His PhD thesis ‘Nation-Building and Ethnic Boundaries in
China’s North-West’ was awarded by Manchester University in 2013.
His current research project explores how China’s increasingly influen-
tial public intellectuals theorize the role of ethnicity in what they see as
China’s rise to global superpower status.

Steve Tsang is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Studies and Director

of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham. He intro-
duced the concept of ‘consultative Leninism’ as an analytical frame-
work for understanding the nature of the political system in the People’s
Republic of China after the death of Deng Xiaoping in 1997.  He is
currently engaged in a joint project with the Central Party School to
research into Xi Jinping’s strategy to secure balanced development. He
has published extensively on the government and politics, foreign
policy, and security of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, including five
single authored books.

Joy Yueyue Zhang is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent.

Her research focuses on the transnational governance of scientific uncer-
tainty, with a focus on the Sino-European context. She is the author of
two books: The Cosmopolitanization of Science: Stem Cell Governance in
China (2012) and Green Politics in China: Environmental Governance and
State–Society Relations (with Michael Barr).

Zhang Xiaoming is Professor of International Relations at the School

of International Studies, Peking University. He is the author of several
books, including The Cold War and Its Legacy (1998), China’s Relationship
with Her Neighbors (2003), and English School of International Relations:
History, Theory and View on China (2010). Recent publications in inter-
national journals include: ‘China in the Conception of International
Society: The English Schools’ Engagements with China’, Review of
International Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2 (2011), pp. 763–86 and ‘A Rising
China and the Normative Changes in International Society’, East Asia,
Vol. 28, No. 3 (2011), pp. 235–46.
1
Introduction: China’s Many
Dreams
David Kerr

Since the change at the top level of the Chinese leadership in 2012–13
the idea of a China Dream (Zhongguo Meng) has been strongly pro-
moted in the media, policy and academic commentaries, and in public
areas across China in what has become a major ideological campaign.1
Understanding the China Dream, its components, motivations and
consequences has particular importance, of course, because of the rela-
tionship between China change and international change – the Dream
is not only about the change experienced by Chinese people but the
world’s experience of a changing China.2 The China Dream idea is not
entirely new but the way it has been defined and advanced by the new
leadership, headed by General Secretary of the Chinese Communist
Party Xi Jinping, suggests it is more than the desire of an incoming
administration to have a strong narrative for its period in office but also
a new phase in China’s modernization and internationalization. Since
Xi is seen as the principal architect of the official version of the Dream
it is worth considering his understanding of the term. On 28 November
2012 Xi and the other members of the standing committee of the
Politburo of the CCP visited the Road to Revival exhibition in Beijing.
Xinhua reported Xi’s comments during the visit as follows:

The Road to Revival exhibition reviews the Chinese nation of yester-

day, reveals the Chinese nation of today, and announces the Chinese
nation of tomorrow, providing profound education and enlighten-
ment. The Chinese nation of yesterday can be likened to “it should
not be said the guarded pass is as solid as iron”. Before modern times
the Chinese nation faced heavy suffering and paid many sacrifices,
rarely seen in all the world’s history. But the Chinese people never
yielded, at long last mastered their own destiny, and began to build
1
2 China’s Many Dreams

their country’s great progress, amply displaying that patriotism was

the core of the great national spirit. Today’s Chinese nation may
rightly be likened to “the correct path in the world has many turns”.
After reform and opening we refined historical experience and con-
tinued difficult exploration, and at long last found the correct path
to realise the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, which has
achieved worldwide attention. This path is that of socialism with
Chinese characteristics. Tomorrow’s Chinese nation can be likened
to “one day a great wind will break the waves”. After 170 years of
continuous struggle since the Opium Wars, the great rejuvenation
of the Chinese nation displays bright prospects. Now in comparison
with any period of time in our history we are closer to the objective
of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and confidence is
greater than at any time in history that we have the capacity to real-
ise this objective.3

And he added to ‘realise the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation

is the greatest dream of the Chinese people in modern times’ (shixian
Zhonghua minzu weida fuxing, jiu shi Zhonghua minzu jindai yilai zui weida
de mengxiang).
It is clear then that much of the significance of the dream lies in the
historical, developmental and political logic that surrounds the idea.4 Xi
presents China as being in a struggle with history and with forces in history
that did not want China to be successful. Today, through sacrifices
and hard experience the Chinese nation has learned to be successful
once again: national rejuvenation is very close. The core lessons the
Chinese people should take from history are about patriotism and
socialism – the national spirit of patriotism and socialism with Chinese
characteristics have together placed the Chinese nation on the path
to rejuvenation. Xi’s language is redolent with symbols and appeals to
ideas and emotions, but there remain several layers of meaning to the
terms he uses. The notion of the China Dream itself is a clever negotia-
tion between collective identity and individual aspirations. It is rather
like a large body of water – the dream reveals the Chinese people as hav-
ing a collective will and identity shaped by a difficult history but at the
same time if individuals and communities look closely into the dream
they should be able to see their own reflection in it. The China Dream
is also about facing the future with confidence  – about patriotic opti-
mism. However, it is clear that the idea of the Dream by itself is not very
political – it is symbolic, emotive and psychological but does not have
clear political definition. The true politics of the Dream are located in its
 David Kerr 3

consequences – in its objectives and outcomes. These are encapsulated

in the term ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ and these terms
are very political. The term used for the Chinese nation  – Zhonghua
minzu – does not refer to China as a state but addresses a community
of peoples bound together in the past by culture, fate and sacrifice and
in the future by progress and achievement, including achievements in
the eyes of the world. Xi’s Chinese nation is political because it raises
questions about who this nation is; about who the members of the
community are; and who controls the identity of this people as China
undergoes great changes: is Zhonghua minzu now a fixed identity or
something that is still open to negotiation? The term used for the
national mission  – great rejuvenation  – is also political for different
reasons. A  governing party that promises rejuvenation has created a
benchmark for judging its own performance. It also creates questions
about what it means to be rejuvenated: how will we know when China
is rejuvenated; who gets what from rejuvenation  – what are the costs
and benefits of rejuvenation and how are they to be distributed across
China’s many citizens? The historical, political and developmental logics
of the China Dream aim to convince Chinese citizens – and foreigners –
that big questions have been answered about China’s future: we know
who the Chinese nation is, we know what the national mission is,
and we know the basic ideas and institutions that will take China to
national rejuvenation. But each of these assertions is open to some kind
of interrogation.
Thus, though the idea of a China Dream will continue to draw
much attention in China and internationally, it is the underlying
logics behind national rejuvenation that are open to wider discussion.
As noted these are threefold. The first is the historical logic of rejuve-
nation that contrasts a China that failed historical tests in the past but
is meeting historical tests in this century. Xi Jinping says that national
rejuvenation has been the dream of the Chinese people since the
beginning of modern times, so how does the current leadership’s vision
of the China Dream relate to China’s past – what are the elements of
continuity and change between the current vision of China’s rejuvena-
tion and the long and difficult path that China has followed histori-
cally? Another set of questions does not compare China of the present
day to China’s path to rejuvenation, but takes national rejuvenation
to be a logic of modernization and internationalization. In the current
discourse these are known as reform and opening (gaige kaifang) but 35
years after Deng Xiaoping set China on a new course it is evident that
reform means China’s search for the right modernity and opening is
4 China’s Many Dreams

China’s search for the right position in international society. This

means pursuing a Chinese kind of modernization–internationalization
through new ideas, relationships and institutions, and connects to
other debates about a Chinese way or a China model: is there a clearly
defined Chinese model of rejuvenation and does this Chinese version
of modernization and internationalization have lessons for other socie-
ties? A  third set of questions relates more specifically to the political
logic of rejuvenation in terms of systems and consequences. President
Xi urges confidence in the system of rejuvenation that China has
developed – its ideas, institutions and its capacity to deliver change. Is
this confidence justified? What have been the consequences of Chinese
rejuvenation for the people of China and for other states and societies
that have increasing forms of interaction with rejuvenated China?
What has been achieved in China’s search for rejuvenation and what
has still to be achieved? How close is China to winning its struggle for
great rejuvenation?
The China Dream is therefore quite diverse in its logics and in its con-
sequences: it is an attempt to draw together many kinds of change expe-
rienced in different ways by different people. Even though the China
Dream is presented as a singular collective noun there are evidently many
ways of experiencing and understanding this dream. For this reason
China dreaming should always be thought of in the plural  – China’s
many Dreams – to indicate the many forces, experiences and perspec-
tives of change taking place in a very diverse Chinese nation. The
essays in this volume are an attempt to capture some of these multiple
perspectives of change that lie behind the logics of the China Dream.
The authors look at different aspects of rejuvenation from within their
academic disciplines, but they have been asked to follow the questions
set out above: What is the historical perspective on rejuvenation when
the current dream is set against the background of the change between
China’s past and present? What is the comparative logic of rejuvenation if
the Chinese experiences of a struggle with modernity are compared
with the ideas and institutions of modernity in other societies? What
are the consequences of rejuvenation for the Chinese people and for
peoples and countries that are affected by China’s rejuvenation: what
has been achieved in the struggle for rejuvenation, what has still to be
achieved, and how much confidence can we have in the ideas, institu-
tions and capacities of contemporary China to complete the mission?
The essays in the volume provide a spectrum of comparative analysis
that can be divided into four parts: politics and society (Chapters 2,
3 and 4); economics and philanthropy (Chapters 5 and 6); science
 David Kerr 5

and culture (Chapters 7 and 8); and strategic affairs and international
relations (Chapters 9 and 10).

Structure of the book

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 examine change in China’s politics and society in

terms of the system of government, the development of a civil society,
and debates about China as a multi-ethnic country. In Chapter 2 Steve
Tsang examines critically the statements and policies Xi Jinping intro-
duced after he took over from Hu Jintao as General Secretary of the
Chinese Communist Party in November 2012.  Tsang argues that Xi
has utilized the authority he acquired by taking over all three top posi-
tions in the Chinese establishment, as head of the Party, head of the
armed forces and head of state, and to introduce an intensified reform
programme. Xi has energetically projected a determination to do what
it takes to move China forward including public commitments to deal
with corruption and reform governance in the Party. The symbolic
phrase meant to encapsulate his approach and capture the imagination
of China and the world is ‘the China Dream’. Tsang’s chapter puts the
real meaning and implications of the China Dream in context by assess-
ing critically how much it has departed from the ‘consultative Leninist’
system that Xi inherited from his predecessor Hu Jintao. Tsang argues
that despite the outward changes Xi has proclaimed, his approach is
intended to strengthen and reinforce the consultative Leninist nature
of the political system in place, and to use this highly adaptive system
to enable China to become a more effective and assertive actor in the
coming decade. In Chapter 3 David Kerr explores China’s development
of a modern civil society in terms of internal and international dynamics
and consequences. The chapter examines policy and academic discourse
on the Chinese citizens’ society (gongmin shehui) and its relationship to
China’s challenges of governance. The chapter criticizes the claim that
the Chinese kind of citizens’ society is a successful alternative to the
more conventional idea of a civil society with full political and legal
powers for citizens. This is evident in a number of spheres in contem-
porary China but none more so than China’s challenges of governance.
Kerr argues that the Chinese state’s unwillingness to share political and
legal authority with a civil society is the largest single barrier to achieving
the goal of good governance on which the goal of national rejuvenation
will depend. Kerr also internationalizes this question by pointing to the
problems the Chinese Model faces in making an impact in international
society without allowing for engagement between a Chinese civil society
6 China’s Many Dreams

and global civil society. In Chapter 4 David Tobin considers changing

ethnic politics in the era of national rejuvenation. There is at present
much controversy in China’s ethnic minority policy debates about
whether China should be a multi-ethnic state or a mono-ethnic nation-
state. Tobin argues that the increasingly contested relationship between
ethnicity and the nation is central to understanding how China’s leading
thinkers articulate China’s identity and how the resolution of this
question may either propel or bring an end to China’s rise. The chapter
explores how these different ethnic futures are deeply intertwined with
predictions about China’s position in international politics. The ethnic-
ity question as a component of the China Dream thus becomes a way
to chart the future of China’s domestic and international politics and a
means to narrate ‘who is China’ at home and abroad.
Chapters 5 and 6 look at economic rejuvenation and its consequences
in China. As an economic historian Kent G. Deng examines China’s
long path towards modern growth and development. The first model
adopted by the Chinese elite was called ‘Chinese learning as the foun-
dation, Western learning for utility’ (zhongxue weiti, xixue weiyong).
Deng argues this model was workable as it took the lessons of modern
economic growth but shaped them for Chinese culture. In comparison,
the Maoist development model pursued from 1949 to 1976 was unmis-
takably Eurocentric or Russo-centric and public resistance  – though
often passive  – was high. As a result, Mao had to constantly purge
his Party and society. Towards the end of the Maoist period China’s
economy was on the brink of total collapse. Deng Xiaoping’s reforms
after 1978 have resumed the original spirit of the ‘Westernization
Movement’ of over a century earlier, emphasizing education, private
wealth, private property rights and the market economy, things that the
Chinese culture approves. Deng argues the results speak for themselves:
within only one generation, China has become the second largest
economy in the world and the country has now qualified as a middle-
income country in per capita terms. In Chapter 6 Gordon C. K. Cheung
explores the emerging phenomenon of the relationship between
business and philanthropy in China. This chapter assesses the broader
meaning of philanthropy in the Chinese context. It first illustrates the
latest developments in philanthropy in China and analyses the relation-
ship between the state and businesses in setting the current landscape
between personal wealth and philanthropy in China. The chapter then
conducts a comparative examination between China and the philan-
thropic tradition in the United States. The essay examines traditional
Chinese perspectives on philanthropy to see if historical social and
 David Kerr 7

business values help us understand the role of philanthropy in contem-

porary China, and then examines the US model of philanthropy and
its significance for defining and evaluating the role of philanthropy in
China. The chapter concludes by assessing the political and economic
implications of the emerging trend of philanthropy in China.
Chapters 7 and 8 examine China’s development of two different kinds
of knowledge power – scientific power and practice and cultural power
and practice. Joy Y. Zhang’s chapter traces the development of a mod-
ern scientific paradigm in China. In line with the general development
of the reform programme in China official recognition of science has
evolved so that it is seen as a critical ‘production force’. This has meant
among other things that research and development (R&D) has risen to
the top of the government’s agenda. Zhang’s chapter systematically anal-
yses Chinese scientific directives promulgated since 1978, with a special
focus on the life sciences. In doing so she is able to identify a ‘Chinese
paradigm’ for scientific development consisting of four distinct charac-
teristics: centralized planning, generous government budgets, permissive
regulations, and a political rationale Zhang terms ‘post-hoc pragmatism’.
Based on empirical evidence from the life sciences, this chapter critically
evaluates the strengths and limits of the Chinese approach to scientific
development. It argues that the Chinese paradigm is not as effective as
it may seem. For underlying China’s strong presence within the global
scientific community, international scepticism remains. In Chapter 8
Michael Barr examines China’s rising interest in cultural power and in
particular the attempt to develop new political uses for Chinese tra-
ditional culture. The chapter highlights the government’s motives for
wanting to promote Chinese soft power and cultural influence  – both
within China and to foreign audiences. The chapter then focuses on
the revival of Confucianism, using examples from popular culture, filial
piety legislation, and the Confucius Institutes to illustrate the tensions
and ambiguities that are involved in these efforts. The chapter also
discusses the roles being developed for China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan
including her social roles and image of responsibility and modesty in
comparison to the many excesses of China’s current consumption culture.
Barr concludes that there is little prospect of bringing back China’s tra-
ditional values as a living force given that China’s people are now part
of the modern world. This suggests that the government’s interest in
promoting Chinese traditional values is more to do with managing the
manifold problems and dislocations of Chinese modernity.
The final two chapters turn to international affairs. In Chapter 9 Shi
Yinhong conducts a long-term analysis of China’s strategic culture. Shi
8 China’s Many Dreams

first reviews the long-lasting influence of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Authored
25 centuries ago this had profound influence on China’s strategic tradi-
tions, through its principles of ‘diplomatic defence’, ‘tributary peace’,
and its connection to the Confucian way of diplomacy. Shi compares
this tradition with the Clausewitzian tradition that dominated the mod-
ern states system in Europe. Shi argues that modern China has had to
conduct a process of merging Chinese and Western traditions, exempli-
fied by Mao Zedong, whose approach to warfare and strategy was a com-
bination of the Sun Tzuian and Clausewitzian philosophies. The chapter
then discusses the present contents of China’s grand strategy from the
same historical/cultural perspective. The chapter concludes that there is
a causal relationship between changes of balance of strength and that of
the fundamental strategy. From a profound cultural perspective, China
has been more inclined to adopt the Sun Tzuian or Confucian strategic
tradition, which places the consistent priority theme on minimization
of costs instead of maximization of returns. This tradition is weakening
with China’s strategic modernization so that it will soon be able to meet
the Clausewitzian test of launching a head-on offensive and win deci-
sive victories through ‘pitched battle’. In Chapter 10 Zhang Xiaoming
considers China’s changing relationship with Western-dominated inter-
national society. Zhang argues that China has always been a very special
country in terms of its relationship with international society, dictated
by the fact that it is a very old civilization, but also a relative newcomer
in relations with modern international society. Therefore, China’s rela-
tionship with the international society has always been a crucial issue in
Chinese foreign relations and now China’s rise has become an issue of
great concern in international society. Some analysts worry that China
might be an alternative to the West in international society, but Zhang
argues that China has already chosen integration within the existing
international society. So the China Dream is not for China to be a chal-
lenger to the norms and institutions of the Western-dominated inter-
national society, but rather to use China’s participation in international
society as a means to assist the ideal of national rejuvenation.
In a concluding chapter David Kerr provides a comparative account of
what the authors have concluded about the achievements and problems
of China’s great rejuvenation.

Notes and references

1. Between fall of 2012 and spring of 2014 the Chinese Communist Party’s
theoretical journal Qiu Shi (Seek Facts) published around 300 papers on the
 David Kerr 9

China Dream. Party and academic theorists quickly converted the China
Dream idea into ‘China Dream studies’ as an addition to the standard canon
of ideological work, for example, Wang Jianguo and Xi Wenbin (2014)
‘Guonei guanyu “Zhongguo Meng” de yanjiu xianzhuang he zhanwang’
[Present condition and future prospects of national ‘China Dream’ studies],
Journal of the Nanjing City Party School, January 2014, pp. 21–7; and Cheng
Meidong and Zhang Xuecheng (2013) ‘Dangqian “Zhongguo Meng” Yanjiu
Pingshu’ [Commentary on contemporary ‘China Dream’ studies], Studies in
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, (2), pp. 58–65. Conversely on netizens
views of the China Dream see the survey of Sina Weibo posts conducted
by Christopher Marquis and Zoe Yang ‘A Tale of Two Dreams’, Civil China
Research Paper, available at: http://www.civilchina.org/research.
2. On the China Dream as experience between China and the world, see Zhao
Tingyang (2013) ‘The China Dream in Question’, Harvard-Yenching Institute
Working Paper, 10 September 2013; and William A. Callahan (2013) China
Dreams: 20 visions of the future (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
3. ‘Xi Jinping: chengqian qihou jiwǎng kailai jixu chaozhe Zhonghua minzu
weida fuxing mubiao fenyong qianjin’ [Xi Jinping: From past to future carry
forward and courageously advance toward the goal of the great rejuvenation
of the Chinese nation], Xinhua Net, 29 November 2012, http://news.xinhua-
net.com/politics/2012-11/29/c_113852724.htm.
4. The Chinese commentaries on the Dream follow the same kinds of logics. One
aspect that needs to be emphasized is the significance Chinese analysts place
on what is Chinese about this Dream in comparison to other dreams, most
obviously the American dream. See, for example, Shi Yuzhi (2013) ‘Zhongguo
Meng qubie yu Meiguo Meng de qi da tezheng’ [Seven major characteristics dif-
ferentiating the China Dream and the American Dream], Qiu Shi, 20 May 2013,
at: http://www.qstheory.cn/zz/zgtsshzyll/201305/t20130520_232259.htm.
2
Contextualizing the China Dream:
A Reinforced Consultative Leninist
Approach to Government
Steve Tsang

Introduction

After he took over as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party

(CCP) and as Chairman of the Central Military Commission in November
2012, Xi Jinping articulated for the first time ‘the China dream’ at ‘the
road to revival’ exhibition at the National Museum in Beijing. As he did
so he stressed that since the start of the reform period China had finally
found the way to restore the greatness of the country and it was called
‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’.1 What Xi has revealed is not a
new political system or even a new term to describe it. It is a confidence
in the existing political system which, despite all its faults, he now believes
is sufficiently strong, effective and robust to deliver the national revival
encapsulated in his ‘China dream’. The nature of the system that Xi
loosely refers to, in line with the long-standing usage after the end of the
Mao Zedong era, as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ gets clearer if
it is set within the analytical framework of consultative Leninism.
The use of this term in scholarly writings was first made by Richard
Baum in a paper released by the French Centre for International Studies
and Research or CERI in 2007.2 It was developed independently and
fully into an analytical framework for understanding the nature of
the political system in place in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
in an article I published in the Journal of Contemporary China in 2009.3
This paper incorporates parts of the previous article, particularly the
definition of consultative Leninism. It shows that the approach Xi has
adopted fits in with this analytical framework even better than the one
he has inherited. The China that Xi has taken over from Hu Jintao is
not a superpower that can challenge the United States of America as an

10
 Steve Tsang 11

equal – at least not yet. But it stands tall as a rapidly rising power that
commands attention globally and attracts admiration particularly from
the developing world. In contrast to the early 1990s when the CCP lead-
ership was worried that China might follow in the footsteps of other
former Communist states and collapse, Xi exudes immense confidence
in China’s political system and its prospects.
Xi’s China has come a long way from the earlier post-Mao experi-
ments that sought to devise a not clearly defined development model
for a political system distinctly different from liberal democracy. The
original post-Mao approach of ‘crossing the river by feeling for rocks
under the surface’ has now been replaced by a distinctly identifiable
system. The most revealing way to describe this system is the analyti-
cal framework of consultative Leninism. This system had taken shape
by the time Deng Xiaoping died in 1997 as Jiang Zemin asserted his
authority fully as the core of the third generation leaders.
Since then it has stood the tests of two orderly successions, in 2002
and 2012, as well as a major potential crisis as the global financial
crisis of 2007–9 threatened to engulf China as well. It is a system that
reaffirms the basic Leninist nature of the political system as it greatly
strengthens its capacity to respond to public demands and shape public
opinions, as it builds up a strong sense of national pride. While this
involves introducing considerable changes in the political arena, this
system is meant to enable the CCP to reject democracy as a model for
China. ‘Chinese democracy’ as interpreted and implemented under the
Party does not tolerate any scope for it to lose power.
This consultative Leninist system blends together the Leninist instru-
ment of control with innovations from other sources. It has five defin-
ing characteristics:

1. The Communist Party is obsessively focused on staying in power, for

which maintaining stability in the country and pre-emptively elimi-
nating threats to its political supremacy are deemed essential.
2. A focus on governance reform both within the Party and in the state
apparatus in order to pre-empt public demands for democratization.
3. A commitment to enhance the Party’s capacity to elicit, respond to
and direct changing public opinion.
4. A commitment to sustain rapid growth and economic development
by whatever means and, where the party leadership deems politi-
cally expedient, regardless of its previous ideological commitment
to Communism.
12 Contextualizing the China Dream

5. The promotion of a brand of nationalism that integrates a sense of

national pride in a tightly guided narrative of China’s history and
its civilization with the greatness of the People’s Republic under the
leadership of the Party.

This chapter will discuss each of these characteristics in turn.

Perpetuation of Party rule

After the CCP used military power to crackdown and suppress chal-
lenges to its authority in 1989, it has become clear that Communism is
no longer the ultimate goal for development despite the official rhetoric.
Indeed, as Communist states in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
collapsed one after the other in the following few years the relevance of
Communism as the state ideology faded in China. Notwithstanding this
historic change in terms of global history, the CCP has kept its Leninist
structure, ethos and organizational principles and remains totally
dedicated to staying in power. It keeps its anti-democratic nature and
continues to exercise control over the state institutions. The only basic
compromise it has made to the Leninist principles was to put aside, not
formally give up, the ultimate objective of reaching Communism.
The Party’s formal commitment to and its assertion that it already
practises ‘democracy’ needs to be put in context. Socialist ‘democracy’
in place in China requires electoral outcomes to be predictable and
to deliver general results approved by the Party beforehand. The
chief mechanism the Party relies on to secure this is the principle
of democratic centralism, which governs ‘intra-party democracy’. In
the wider context, this mechanism is reinforced by its Maoist variant
known as ‘from the masses and to the masses’. In essence this means
the Party must go to the masses or ‘patriotic citizens’ to collect and
collate ideas from them, then organize and otherwise add new input to
produce a coherent and constructive set of policies and then take them
back to the masses, educate and otherwise induce the masses to embrace
such ideas as their own.4 As far as the Party is concerned its leadership
‘is a fundamental guarantee for the Chinese people to be masters in
managing the affairs of their own country’.5 When the Communist
Party refers to ‘democracy’ this is generally the meaning it has in mind.
Indeed, the leading role and position of the Party continues to be
enshrined in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
as the basic principle that underpins the political system.6 This is the
only one of the ‘four cardinal principles’ that Deng Xiaoping put forth
 Steve Tsang 13

at the start of the reform period, and the only provision in the state
constitution, that is strictly upheld.7 The CCP remains the ‘vanguard
party’ and ‘guardian of the people’. As such it not only maintains its
long-standing repressive capacities but also devises and implements a
development model that seeks to deliver growth, employment, stability,
order, prosperity and improved governance for the ordinary people.
Under Jiang Zemin this approach was described in terms of ‘the Three
Represents’, a concept articulated in July 2001. Jiang proclaimed that
‘The whole Party must always maintain the spirit of advancing with
the times and constantly extend Marxist theory into new realms … give
top priority to development in governing and invigorating the country
and constantly break new ground and open up a new prospect in the
modernization drive… [and] improve its Party building in a spirit of
reform and constantly inject new vitality into itself.’8 Jiang did not
spell out clearly his formulation except the fundamental importance
of upholding the leading role of the Party with a new requirement. It
was to broaden the basis of the Party from an alliance of workers and
peasants to include the culturally advanced and economically vibrant
elements of society. The private space in which individuals could seek
work or personal fulfilment without engaging in activities the Party
deemed threatening to its supremacy was enlarged.
After Hu Jintao succeeded Jiang this formulation was replaced by a
policy of promoting a socialist harmonious society. In Hu’s words ‘a
harmonious society should feature democracy, the rule of law, equity,
justice, sincerity, amity and vitality’ in order to produce ‘lasting stability
and unity’.9 What happened in reality was more complex. While the
general trend in enlarging the private space for individuals to engage
in many different kinds of activities was sustained, the Party also
enhanced its capacity to identify those who might pose a challenge to
its monopoly of power, and to eliminate such potential threats as soon
as they were detected.
As Xi takes the reins of power, Hu’s formulation no longer gets wide
publicity. But the same basic ideas are incorporated and encapsulated
in the ‘China dream’ that Xi regularly reiterates. Whether it is put
in the language of Xi, Hu or Jiang, the fundamental principle has
remained essentially the same. It is for the Party to adapt in order to
improve its capacity to stay in power. This is to be achieved, when the
general conditions in the country are benign, by the Party dominated
government machinery delivering improvements in governance,
reaching out to the general public, redressing public grievances and
improving living conditions. In the leadership change year of 2012,
14 Contextualizing the China Dream

there were strong pent-up public discontents over the scale and reach of
corruption which caught the public imagination as the powerful leader
of Chongqing Bo Xilai was removed from office.10 Hence, Xi promptly
appointed Wang Qishan, widely seen as the member of the new
Politburo Standing Committee least prone to corruption, to spearhead
an anti-corruption drive, after he succeeded Hu.11
As a political system consultative Leninism seeks to pre-empt popular
demand for liberal democracy or constitutionalism.12 It dedicates itself
to sustaining a benevolent and efficient one-party system that practises
democratic centralism. In so doing the Party retains its Leninist
character and structure. This implies maintaining the capacity and
the political will to use whatever means it deems necessary to stay in
power should this policy fail to achieve its desired result and the Party’s
political supremacy is challenged. Consultative Leninism prefers to use
smart or well-focused repression and, where practicable, inducements
adroitly to eliminate or neutralize challenges to the Party as soon as
such challenges are detected in order to pre-empt or reduce the need to
resort to dramatic large-scale or summary repression.

Enhancing governance

Consultative Leninism promotes ‘good governance with Chinese char-

acteristics’. What this means needs to be contextualized carefully. The
‘Chineseness’ in this formulation should not be confused with tradi-
tional Chinese culture or genuine Confucian values. The traditional
Chinese concept of ‘the ideal government … is one which is efficient,
fair, honest and paternalistic, yet non-intrusive vis-à-vis the life of the
ordinary people’.13 This contradicts the basic nature of the CCP as a
Leninist institution, which is about proactively leading, directing and
mobilizing the general population to support all aspects of development
as the Party sees fit.
In defining good governance with Chinese characteristics the Party
looks back into both its own relatively short history and China’s long
history for inspiration. It also examines ideas and experience from
outside of China as it constructs an alternative model to democratiza-
tion that is suited to the ‘special conditions of China’. As Xi Jinping
explained, ‘with regard to our cultural tradition and those from
outside the country, we must make the old serve the present and
those originating in the West useful for China’ today.14 Leninism, a
Russian import, is therefore no less Chinese for this purpose than, say,
Confucianism.
 Steve Tsang 15

A particularly important set of lessons the Party has learned are the
causes that led to the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe.15 Xi felt that the most important point about the fall
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was that ‘nobody
was man enough to stand up and resist’ Mikhail Gorbachev.16 This
reinforces the moral the Party took from the Beijing protests centred
on Tiananmen Square in 1989 – that popular protests got out of hand
as internal divisions at the top became public knowledge after the
Party failed to act quickly and decisively when an unauthorized mass
gathering was allowed to take place in the form a vigil commemorat-
ing the death of Hu Yaobang.17 Since he took over Xi has insisted on
returning to traditional Leninist discipline to pre-empt the risk of the
CCP following the fate of the CPSU.18 The Party has further examined
the experience of the ‘Asian tiger economies’ under authoritarian rule,
particularly that of Singapore.19 The final product is, however, what the
Party chooses to put together regardless of origins, which it labels as a
distinctly modern Chinese approach.
The chosen instrument to deliver good governance is the Party
itself.20 It is an instrument that requires constant reform and updating.
The Party seeks to do so by broadening ‘its membership base, promot-
ing a new generation of leaders, reformulating its ideological content,
appealing to nationalist impulses in society, strengthening its organiza-
tional apparatus throughout the country, and opening the channels of
discourse within the party and between the party-state and society’.21
Such an approach, which is reinforced by increasing institutionalization
and merit-based promotion, has made its brand of authoritarianism
resilient.
More specifically the Party has introduced reforms in the politi-
cal arena aimed at enhancing its own capacity and that of the state
to govern effectively. It should be emphasized that such reforms are
not meant to be political changes in the direction of democratization
but administrative and other changes intended to pre-empt the need
for democratization.22 The Party uses ‘a mix of measures to shore up
popular support, resolve local protests, and incorporate the beneficiar-
ies of economic reform into the political system’.23 Reforms, including
anti-corruption drives, are deemed necessary to enhance positively its
governance capacity and its assertion of legitimacy. At the same time
the Party also ‘forcefully represses efforts to challenge its authority and
monopoly on political power and organization’.24
Since Hu Jintao succeeded Jiang Zemin the Party has paid more atten-
tion to the general population as a means to enhance the governance
16 Contextualizing the China Dream

capacity of the Party. It does so by selectively putting into practice some

Maoist ideas or practices. They include, for example, reviving the princi-
ple of democratic centralism,25 as well as making a public commitment
to redress the neglect and abuse faced by the rural population, who had
been left behind in the rush towards fastest possible growth under Jiang.
This suggests a stronger recognition that the Party must deliver
social justice in order to pre-empt discontent in the countryside from
developing into a major source of instability.26 Hu publicly advocates
that the government should ‘provide improved public services for the
country's citizens’.27 He takes the view that ‘the biggest danger to
the Party  … has been losing touch with the masses’ and the Party
leadership must therefore ‘focus on the core issue of the inextricable link
between the Party and the masses’.28 This basic approach seems to have
been followed by Xi. Even though it is doubtful if Xi’s anti-corruption
drive will in fact end systemic corruption, it goes a significant way in
appeasing the general public. The ostentatious display of ill-gotten gains
or lavish entertainment by officials at public expense has dramatically
been reduced after Xi rose to the top.29 The approach adopted by Xi and
Hu reflects awareness of how effective some of the Maoist mobilization
and propaganda methods are, and a preparedness to revive some of
them.

Increasing institutionalization and merit-based promotion

Consultative Leninism relies on institutionalization to make Chinese

politics less volatile. The most important achievement in this regard is
the introduction of an institutionalized way to manage the generational
succession. When Jiang’s ‘third generation’ leadership handed over to
Hu’s ‘fourth generation’ leaders in 2002–3 it was the first time that an
heir-apparent successfully took over as planned. This is a significant
landmark as all previously anointed successors, from Liu Shaoqi to
Zhao Ziyang, ended their careers in dramatic and in most cases tragic
circumstances. Hu’s relatively uneventful succession to Jiang was meant
to set a precedent.
This practice was followed and strengthened in November 2012 as
Hu handed over to Xi in the 18th Party Congress. On this occasion,
Hu passed on both the offices of General Secretary of the Party and
Chair of the Central Military Commission to Xi and formally retired.
In contrast, his predecessor Jiang hung on to the latter position for two
years after relinquishing the Party leadership in 2002. 2012 was also the
first time in the history of the PRC when the new Party Chairman and
 Steve Tsang 17

Premier emerged from a compromise reached by the top leadership in

the previous Party Congress five years previously, and was not the result
of having been anointed by a strong man. Even by the standards of the
post-Mao era this is another landmark development, as Deng Xiaoping
had in fact anointed three direct and one indirect successor. Among the
direct ones, Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang and Jiang Zemin, only the last
completed his term of office without being removed by fiat. The indi-
rect successor was Hu Jintao himself.
Despite all the drama and rumours that appeared in the media ahead
of the 18th Party Congress (2012) and the intensity of tough bargain-
ing and horse-trading behind the scenes, the politics of succession has
become sufficiently institutionalized that it is now nearly predictable,
at least for the headship of the Party and of the State Council. The old
practice of the paramount leader anointing a successor has now been
replaced by a new one, which is still at the early stage of being institu-
tionalized. It involves the existing top leadership collectively choosing
their key successors and placing them in apprenticeship for five years
before ascending to the top offices, as General Secretary of the Party and
Premier of the state. The handing over of power may not be democratic
but it is becoming structured, stable and basically predictable – indeed,
much more predictable than possible in a genuine democratic system.
As a political system consultative Leninism supports collective leader-
ship with an identifiable top leader but limits (though it cannot elimi-
nate) the scope for the rise of a strong man.
Greater institutionalization also means the increasing importance
of enforcing the law and containing corruption. In sharp contrast to
the Maoist era when the law was reduced to irrelevance, the Party has
resorted to rule by law.30 Whereas the judicial system was a shambles
just over three decades ago, China now has roughly 200,000 judges,
160,000 prosecutors and 150,000 registered lawyers at work to improve
the quality of justice administered. Although the Party and its top lead-
ership remain above the law and there is no indication that they are
individually or collectively willing to subject themselves to the law, it
does occasionally allow one of their own to face the force of the law as
guided by the Party where it is in the interest of the current top leader-
ship for this to happen, as was the case in the trial of Bo Xilai.
What is being put in place is not the rule of law, essential for democracy
to function properly and flourish, but rule by law. It means that in cases
with no political implications, the law is increasingly being upheld and
the Communist Party seeks to govern through the enforcement of the
law rather than in spite of the law.31 Under consultative Leninism, the
18 Contextualizing the China Dream

Party retains leadership over the judiciary. The improvements in the crimi-
nal justice system have meant substantial reduction in cases of human
rights abuse even though political activists and dissidents are treated no
less harshly than under Deng, as reflected in the cases of, say, the Nobel
peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo and dissident artist Ai Weiwei. Indeed, the
Chinese government required all lawyers ‘to swear an oath of loyalty to the
“leadership of the Chinese Communist party” and the “holy mission of
socialism with Chinese characteristics”’ in 2012.32 But substantial improve-
ments had been made in the criminal justice system particularly during
Xiao Yang’s tenure as President of the Supreme People’s Court (1998–2008).
Xiao focused on improving training and standards of judicial personnel in
order to reduce gross abuses that used to be endemic in the criminal jus-
tice system.33 Although this did not eliminate or even significantly reduce
political interference into the judicial system, its resultant improvement in
the administration of justice in criminal cases was valuable in enhancing
the credibility of the regime and thus the Party’s governance capacity.
As far as corruption is concerned the Party recognizes the importance
in tackling it. But the Party cannot stamp out systemic corruption as
China lacks the necessary institutional checks and balances against
corruption as well as the rule of law. Unchecked power corrupts.
Nevertheless, despite considerable public scepticism, the Party has man-
aged to limit the damage corruption does to its legitimacy.34 It does so
by launching periodic high profile attempts to contain the ills of cor-
ruption and by requiring the media to report known cases as failings of
specific officials and not of the Party or of the central government. The
Party’s efforts to contain corruption are also needed to limit the erosion
of its capacity to exert party discipline as required under Leninism albeit
of the consultative variant.
The ascendance of the younger generations of leaders has brought
about another major change from the past, when the top positions were
held almost exclusively by revolutionary veterans. This generational
change meant that technocrats had replaced the revolutionary cadres
holding all the top offices by the time Jiang became the genuine core of
the third generation leadership in 1997 or when consultative Leninism
took shape. The technocrats have a different outlook from the ‘old revo-
lutionaries’.35 They recognize that none of them can really take over
Deng Xiaoping’s mantle as the paramount leader.36 They cannot justify
their hold on power by their revolutionary pedigree as founders of the
PRC or veterans of ‘the revolutionary war’ or of the Long March. Instead
they must do so by demonstrating their competence and political skills
in keeping others in line.
 Steve Tsang 19

This has led to a greater acceptance of proven ability or record. Since

the legitimacy of the Party’s rule after 1989 has been based in part on
a de facto social contract that the people will acquiesce in the con-
tinuation of its monopoly of power as long as it delivers continuous
improvements in living conditions, improving the governing capacity
of the Party is vital. The other element that sustains this de facto social
contract, namely that the Party’s political dominance should not be
challenged as it has the will and the means to use force to suppress
any such attempt, also requires a strengthening of the administrative
capacity of the Party. With the technocrats lacking the standing Deng
Xiaoping enjoyed in the armed forces that enabled him to deploy the
army to stage the crackdown in June 1989 despite the initial public
articulation of reservation within the military establishment, their rise
to power provides a strong incentive to pre-empt a crisis that will neces-
sitate a similar military crackdown. Since the technocrats cannot count
on the military to repress popular unrests in the way that Deng could,
they have less scope to ignore public opinions.
This means that consultative Leninism sought to enhance govern-
ance capacity by recruiting and promoting on merit.37 The Party’s
objective is to secure a ‘high quality contingent of Party leaders that are
competent for ruling the country and handling state affairs’.38 This does
not spell the end of privileges or relevance of family background. The
so called Princelings ‘faction’  – or, the grouping of senior cadres who
are descendants of leaders of the revolution – has flourished and clearly
benefited from this new emphasis. How should this apparent contradic-
tion be explained?
It is because merit in the consultative Leninist system requires one
to have political astuteness and a capacity to network effectively in the
establishment in order to deliver results. Princelings have privileged
upbringings, career backgrounds and family connections that enable
them to build up the necessary technical competence, personal net-
work and political skills to operate successfully within the Party. This
puts them in good positions to gain promotion on the basis of merit
or achievement. The elevation at the 17th Party Congress (2007) of Xi
Jinping to become the unofficial heir apparent to Hu Jintao illustrates
this in action. The promotion of Xi, a ‘princeling’, despite Hu’s personal
preference for anointing ‘non-princeling’ Li Keqiang, has widely been
attributed to two factors. These are the economic success of two coastal
provinces where Xi served as Party secretary and wide acceptance of
him within the Party establishment.39 The latter quality also counts as a
‘merit’ as the capacity to garner support or at least neutralize opposition
20 Contextualizing the China Dream

within the establishment is an important requirement to function effec-

tively in consultative Leninism. By adopting a system that enables the
more able administrators and political operators to rise more quickly,
the Party ensures that its upper echelons are filled by individuals who
are able to work effectively within the existing political system.

Strengthening consultative capacity

While consultative Leninism is meant to pre-empt democratization,

ironically its adoption also involves the introduction of some changes
that are commonly seen in democratization. They include not only
expanding good governance practices but also allowing for a greater
scope for civil liberties and for political participation. In terms of greater
political participation the most important general elections in China
are not those for the National People’s Congress but for the Communist
Party’s national congress. At the 17th Party Congress, held in October
2007, the party leadership allowed 15 per cent of nominees to fail to get
elected.40 At the 18th Party Congress of November 2012, 9.3 per cent of
those nominated for Central Committee membership were required to
accept ‘electoral’ defeat, whereas the percentage was set at the higher
figure of 11.3 per cent for those nominated as alternate members of the
Central Committee.41 The Chinese government has also experimented
with township level elections since the turn of the century on the
basis of experimentation with village level elections introduced since
the 1980s.42 Admittedly such developments do not amount to genu-
ine democratic exercises as the Party can and generally does secure its
desired electoral outcomes, but they do enlarge the scope for election.43
The Party has also made a point of consulting more external indi-
viduals and organizations than before. Important gestures underlin-
ing the Party and the government’s commitment to do so range from
reaffirming the right of existing consultative institutions to criticize
specific government policies to the use of the new media as an opinion
forum, to allowing greater scope for civil society to operate.44 Indeed,
the Party revived the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference
(CPPCC) as an institution of consultation. Non-Communist parties
that are represented at the CPPCC are now encouraged to articulate
their views and ‘discuss directly with the central government leaders’.45
Non-Communist individuals of considerable personal achievement
have also been co-opted to join the central government. Wan Gang
was appointed Minister of Science and Technology in 2007. Chen Zhu
also served as Minister of Health from 2007 to 2013. Although such
 Steve Tsang 21

appointments represent primarily the application of a classic United

Front idea to ‘show the trust of the CPC Central Committee in people
from outside the Party’, it was a significant step in strengthening the
non-exclusive element of consultative Leninism.46
As to the Internet, which can be an important instrument for undermin-
ing authoritarian regimes, the Chinese authorities not only monitor and
control it vigorously but also adopt it as an instrument for consultation.
Starting in 2007 the State Council has committed itself experimentally to
using its official website to collect opinions on draft laws and regulations.
Even top leaders like to project the image that they can be accessible via
the Internet. When he was Premier, Wen Jiabao maintained a presence on
Facebook.47 As General Secretary of the Party Hu Jintao held online discus-
sions in the Renmin Ribao’s ‘strong country forum’ in 2008.48
The swift and effectively choreographed responses to the catastrophic
Sichuan earthquake of May 2008 suggest the top leadership had realized
the importance of seizing the moment to strengthen the state and the
Party’s capacity to reach out to the general population and win over
their support. In so doing it demonstrated consultative Leninism work-
ing in its most effective way.
By dispatching Premier Wen Jiabao to the disaster scene while Hu
retained supreme control in Beijing, the Party projected the image that
it cared and the top leadership worked closely together. Wooden in
public events, Hu could not have projected the right image for the Party
had he gone instead of Wen. Wen’s public performance focused public
attention on the efforts being led by the top leadership and directed
media coverage to showcase the rescue efforts rather than the suffering
of the victims.49 It distracted attention, even of the international media,
from raising obvious questions about China’s less than perfect rescue
operation. The Chinese government’s decision not to permit foreign
rescue teams to enter Sichuan immediately after the scale of the earth-
quake was known meant that irreplaceable time for rescuing victims
from collapsed buildings was lost. In the end the first external or foreign
rescue teams were allowed to reach the scene of the earthquake on day
four, when experience elsewhere established that by then relatively few
survivors trapped under rubble could be pulled out alive. Whatever
the government’s considerations were for such a decision, the adroit
management of the public image of the rescue operations allowed the
importance of this specific inhumane decision to go largely unnoticed.
By seizing the moral high ground promptly and turning public reac-
tions to the disaster into a nationalist response the Party made it pos-
sible to win wide praise and support from the country generally and to
22 Contextualizing the China Dream

deflect the inevitable criticisms on specific failings in the rescue and

relief operation. Where such criticisms could not be silenced, they were
directed against the inadequate performance of lower level officials in
Sichuan and thus avoided criticism being directed against the overall
performance of the Party. This effective use of propaganda to shape
public opinion helps to sustain its positive image and moral authority
which, in turn, reinforces its governance capacity and legitimacy. In
addition, by beaming images of ‘Grandpa Wen’ at the front of the dis-
aster zone, the Party reached out to the general public nationwide in a
paternalistic way. Through its well-oiled propaganda machine it created
a heroic image of Premier Wen and soldiers of the People’s Liberation
Army saving victims of a natural disaster in the front line and under the
overall leadership of the Party General Secretary. Thus, even in a situa-
tion where public opinions were being formed and changed quickly, the
Party leadership seized the moment to control, shape and direct public
opinion. This further enabled the Party to claim credit unobtrusively
for galvanizing the country to respond proudly as a nation, once the
outpouring of sympathy nationwide turned into self-organized non-
government organization (NGO) based efforts to help the victims. For a
short time NGOs were given space to help to deal with the aftermath of
the earthquake but the non-local volunteers or NGOs were squeezed out
after six months.50 With its moral authority affirmed, the Party was able
to require NGOs to co-operate without appearing overly heavy-handed.
This shows an important improvement in governance capacity as the
Party allowed a much larger scope than usual for NGOs to take civic
action at a time of a major natural disaster. But it also reveals the exist-
ence of a strategy for the Party to play a leadership role in directing the
efforts of NGOs. The approach adopted is to treat civil society like a bird
in a cage. The Party is prepared to enlarge the cage as it sees fit but a cage
is nonetheless maintained. This is to ensure that civil society can have
sufficient scope to operate in the non-critical realm while its ambition
to extend its scope to the critical realm is contained so that the develop-
ment of civil society cannot pose a threat to the continuation of Party
rule. Indeed, consultative Leninism seeks to make NGOs help the Party
efforts to move the country forward under its leadership. Since he came
to power, Xi has reaffirmed or, indeed, reinforced this approach.

Economic pragmatism

Since the start of the reform period under Deng Xiaoping in 1978, prag-
matism guided the management of China’s economy. But it took time
 Steve Tsang 23

for the old command economy to be transformed and for the mentality
of policy-makers to adjust. The ‘bird cage approach’ for managing the
economy, as explained by party elder Chen Yun, was clearly applied in
the earlier half of the reform period. In this conception the economy
was the bird and the scope for it to develop was the cage and the Party
was willing to enlarge the cage as long as the performance of the bird
justified it, but the Party could and did reduce the cage when required.
By the time Deng died, in 1997, transformation from the old
command economy had basically been completed. With the economy
substantially modernized, much new infrastructure already built, a
generation educated in modern management and other skills required
to service a modern economy, the Party leadership increasingly allowed
greater scope for the economy to develop, particularly after the poten-
tial contagion effect of the Asian Financial Crisis passed. In the last
decade major debates among economic and financial policy-makers are
no longer about whether the economy should be primarily a socialist
or a market one but about what would be the most effective policy to
secure sustained and sustainable rapid growth.
Indeed, China’s economy is neither a free market nor a command
economy. It is a mixed one where private capital now has huge scope
to invest in almost whatever it deems the most profitable lines of
manufacturing, trade or service provision. It is also one where state
or publicly owned enterprises enjoy great privileges and government
patronage, and are still subject to government direction. In a nutshell
the Party leadership has enlarged the bird cage so much that the bird
largely developed without finding itself seriously constrained by the
cage most of the time. But pragmatism has its limits so far. The cage has
not been removed.
As Xi, Premier Li Keqiang and the rest of the leadership work out a
strategy to rebalance the Chinese economy in the coming decade, they
will consult China’s best economists in think tanks and in academia as
well as corporate leaders, and engage in dialogues with major foreign
governments and corporate partners, but the Leninist nature of the
regime will also assert itself. As far as the Party is concerned, it consults
not because of recognition of the intrinsic value of consultation but
because it sees consultation as useful in enabling the Leninist system to
retain control and come out of an impending crisis stronger. There is no
question that the Party retains the final say on what to do.
To rebalance the economy essentially means that it needs to make
the Chinese economy less dependent on rapid growth driven by export
and heavy investments, particularly in big infrastructural projects,
24 Contextualizing the China Dream

and more dependent on domestic consumption. Indeed, Premier Wen

Jiabao acknowledged this in 2007 and what is required today remains
essentially the same, namely:

1. widening the social safety net and raising household incomes and,
ultimately, consumption;
2. removing the distortions in relative prices – mainly in the exchange
rate and input costs  – to exploit real comparative advantages and
make the model more sustainable;
3. reducing the government’s interference in the allocation of resources;
and
4. liberalizing the financial system, which would allow for a more effi-
cient and effective intermediation of savings.51

Such changes implicitly require the Party to relinquish some of the

most powerful levers it holds over the economy and allow the market
to function more effectively and empower ordinary citizens as consum-
ers. It amounts to finding an alternative to the ‘bird cage’ approach
which has served the Party well since 1978. The requirements are not
unknown to the Party leadership but implementing them will still
prove difficult, as giving up control on anything that can potentially
undermine the Party’s political hegemony is anathema to consultative
Leninism. Whether under Xi’s leadership, the consultative Leninist
system will be able to do what Hu failed to deliver in this regard in the
previous decade remains to be seen.

Nationalism: the new state ideology

The last defining feature of consultative Leninism is the promotion of

nationalism as the new ideological force that binds the country together
under the leadership of the Party. After Communism in effect ceased
being the state ideology, the CCP had to put in place a new ideological
framework. This was in part a reaction to the events in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union as the Chinese establishment feared social and
national disintegration following ‘the decline of the traditional ideol-
ogy’.52 It was also because the Party intended to prevent Western values
and beliefs from captivating Chinese citizens living in an ideological
void.53 In any event, the provision of an ideological binding force was
needed to enable the Leninist system function effectively.
The choice of nationalism as the new though informal state ideol-
ogy is meant to enhance the Party’s capacity to stay in power on two
 Steve Tsang 25

mutually reinforcing ways. It is to provide a new ideological basis for

legitimacy on one hand and to serve as a new rallying force to develop a
national aspiration around the leadership of the Party on the other. After
the cleavages created between the Party and the ordinary people by the
Tiananmen Massacre, the top leaders found nationalism ‘the most reli-
able claim to the Chinese people’s loyalty and the only important value
shared by the regime and its critics’.54 They thus ‘moved quickly to posi-
tion themselves as the defenders of China’s national pride’ and unity.55
Few Chinese citizens in fact know the history of their country well
but they have all been indoctrinated in the greatness of China’s long
civilization and unity, as well as the iniquity of the ‘century of humili-
ation’ when China suffered from Western imperialism after 1838.56 The
historical narrative chosen is outwardly a ‘pan-Chinese’ one. But in
reality it is a Han-centric view of the history of greater China, in which
minorities like Tibetans and Uighurs are written into Chinese history
as Mongolians and Manchurians have been incorporated. Any ethnic
group thus ‘honoured’ by their inclusion into China’s history will be
deemed traitorous should they try to assert their own national identity
and separate historical narratives. The nationalism thus promoted is
essentially xenophobic in nature, which encourages the Chinese peo-
ple to identify with a rising China under the leadership of the Party in
juxtaposition against the West that is portrayed as uncomfortable with
China’s resurgence and historic unity.57
More specifically, the Party has launched an extensive propaganda
and educational campaign to indoctrinate the people in patriotism. It is
one that requires the citizens of the PRC to participate in affirming ‘the
rightness and acceptability of the state, its values, policies and agen-
cies’.58 The core of this campaign is to emphasize ‘how China’s unique
national conditions make it unsuitable to adopt Western style liberal
democracy’ and how China’s existing political system helps to ‘main-
tain political stability, a prerequisite for rapid economic development’.59
By ‘[r]einforcing China’s national confidence and turning past humili-
ation and current weakness into a driving force for China’s moderniza-
tion’ the Party has turned nationalism into ‘an effective instrument for
enhancing [its] legitimacy’.60 The intention is to instil in the mind of
the Chinese people a sense of pride in China and its development that
is inseparable from the leadership of the Party or a strong feeling of ‘my
government right or wrong’.
The success of this nationalist indoctrination campaign manifested
itself dramatically in 2008, the year the Communist Party had intended
to launch the rebranded modern China on the occasion of the Beijing
26 Contextualizing the China Dream

Olympics. The force of nationalism, however, could not be contained

until the Olympics as was originally planned. The nationalists asserted
themselves internationally when the Olympic torch relay outside of
China generated unfavourable foreign comments and reactions in April
that year. The negative foreign reactions were directed immediately at
the way the Chinese authorities organized the relay, which was heavily
guarded by elite members of the People’s Armed Police dressed as torch
attendants to protect the Chinese parade against pro-Tibetan demon-
strators in Western cities.
Chinese nationalists reacted angrily and strongly against those who
demonstrated in foreign cities where the torch passed against specific
Chinese government policies, most of which were focused on Tibet.61
They readily dismissed out of hand the fact that by sending elite police
officers, who often told the local police how the torch should be
guarded during the overseas relay, Chinese authorities were interfering
in the domestic affairs of the host countries concerned. The large num-
ber of Chinese citizens who responded so nationalistically showed that
they preferred to ‘side with the government when foreigners criticize
it, believing that, no matter how corrupt [or misguided] the govern-
ment is, foreigners have no right to make unwarranted remarks about
China and its people’62 – a classic manifestation of ‘my country, right
or wrong’.
The Party’s adoption of nationalism also dramatically enhanced its gov-
ernance capacity in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake of May 2008.
By adopting a nationalist approach to the rescue operation and holding back
entry of foreign teams from reaching the scene, the Chinese government
ensured that nearly all survivors were saved by Chinese rescue workers. The
heroism of the rescue operations by the Chinese nation was used to galva-
nize a countrywide movement to rally around the Party’s leadership in the
subsequent relief efforts, even though generous foreign aid and donations
were readily accepted. Thus, however well or poorly the Party might have
actually performed on the ground, and whether bureaucratic corruption
and other policy failures were responsible for the collapse of a dispropor-
tionately large number of school buildings, the Party still emerged from it
stronger than before. Just as the astute management of propaganda after
the earthquake ensured a positive image of the Party being projected, the
long-standing indoctrination of nationalism produced a people ‘willing to
dissociate their leaders in Beijing from the local officials they blame’.63
The Chinese government might have failed to silence all grieving
parents but it could divert their anger from the central government to
specific individuals or departments at the local level and reduce the
 Steve Tsang 27

negative impact on its own credibility.64 Galvanizing the nation to

focus on the ‘heroic’ rescue operations of the People’s Liberation Army
apparently personally superintended by Premier Wen was the key to
this success.
All indications since Xi assumed leadership point towards even greater
emphasis being put on nationalism. Within a month of his elevation,
Xi explained to sailors in Guangzhou that the ‘China dream’ was about
national revival, and it was about both the building of a strong country
and powerful armed forces that should be totally loyal to the Party.65
His invocation of national victimhood in China’s ‘century of humilia-
tion’ provides the basis for foreign observers to see him as unashamedly
appealing to emotion.66 As elaborated in the Party’s theoretical journal,
Qiushi, the ‘China dream’ is about ‘merging the dreams of the individ-
ual with the dream of the country, of the nation, and of the people, and
to put the interest of the individual, of the country, of the nation and
of the people together as a whole’.67 This focus on national revival in
Xi’s China dream suggests that he is at least as committed as, if not even
more so than, his predecessor to use nationalism as the state ideology to
galvanize the country in support of consultative Leninism.

Conclusion

As a leader Xi Jinping clearly intends to leave his mark. The launch of

the ‘China dream’ propaganda line is designed to showcase his new
approach, compared to that of his predecessor. But it is built solidly on
the basis of the consultative Leninist political system already in place.
Consultative Leninism has given China arguably as resilient a political
system as it can have without democracy. The resilience is rooted in
the ruthless repressive capacity inherent in what remains an essentially
Leninist political machinery. It is strengthened by incorporating various
consultative elements and a new ideology that has much wider appeal
than Communism. By modernizing the regime’s capabilities to moni-
tor and direct public opinion and instil a sense of patriotic duty in its
citizens to support the government, the Party has built up a significant
capacity to deflect public discontent away from itself. By enhancing its
ability to detect challenges as they emerge and remove most of them,
either by co-optation or by smart (i.e., relatively well-focused) repres-
sion, before they become major threats to the system, consultative
Leninism has lowered the need to resort to large-scale summary repres-
sion. This implies reduced exposure to risks that can destabilize or break
the system in a fundamental way.
28 Contextualizing the China Dream

Consultative Leninism is not a system that was specifically designed

to replace the Maoist or Dengist political edifice. It evolved out of
measures the Party took to confront and contain the challenges posed
by the Tiananmen movement of 1989 and the subsequent collapse of
Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The original
impetus for change in the political arena was the Party’s concern over
its own hold on power in China. Once this threat came to pass in the
second half of the1990s and China found itself on track for very fast
growth, the Party leadership gained in confidence. This new political
setup demonstrated its resilience in the last few years. The Party’s self-
confidence rose as China rode out the wave of instability and threats
unleashed by the global financial crisis of 2008. As Xi took over in
2012, he articulated confidence in the system’s ability to sustain itself
and form the foundation for China to secure its re-emergence as a great
power of the first league. In this process, the Chinese establishment’s
previous interest in the Singaporean approach as a possible model for
China dissipated. This new-found confidence among Chinese leaders
has been reinforced by the existence of China fever in the twenty-first
century, as a world infatuated with China offers general recognition of
and praise for its achievements.
Consultative Leninism is not a static system but one that continues
to evolve, as inherent in its requirements is the need for the Party
to adapt to the changing environment in order to stay in power and
direct China’s development. But its basic structure and governing
dynamics have taken shape since 1997. The period since then has seen
the incorporation of consultative elements to enhance what remains a
basically Leninist institution and allow the CCP to react and respond
to new challenges and to monitor and to direct public opinion.
Consultative Leninism uses whatever means at its disposal to maintain
stability, order and economic growth, and it seeks to minimize the
need to use harsh repressive measures on a large scale, but at the same
time it keeps such capacity readily available for use. Indeed, a hallmark
of consultative Leninism is the Party’s readiness to nip in the bud any
challenge to the political supremacy of the Party as soon as such a
challenge is detected. Confirmation of this took the form of the Party’s
heavy-handed but effective response to the inter-ethnic riots in Urumqi
(2009) or planned peaceful protests following the Jasmine Revolution
of the Arab world (2011). To maintain this capacity the Party needs to
collect and collate constantly the changing mood and opinions in the
country at large. Indeed, doing so is essential for the Party to pre-empt
nationalism from asserting itself so much that it may tie the hands of
 Steve Tsang 29

the Party leadership in dealing with a major great power such as the
United States of America or Japan in some future and as yet undefined
crisis.
In general terms as consultative Leninism consolidates the Party
gains in confidence and competence. As it does so it allows greater
scope than previously for experimentation in finding ways to enable
China to develop without moving towards democracy. Corporatist
ideas are taken on board where they appear to work. A larger sphere is
allowed for civil society to operate as long as the Party feels confident
that it can keep NGOs in line when and where required. Reinvigoration
of specific Maoist or highly modified Confucian ideas has also been
adopted where the Party believes they can enhance its ability to
govern or improve its moral authority. But the bottom line remains
unchanged – the dominance of the Party, even if intra-party reforms,
such as greater ‘inner party democracy’, may appear to make the top
leader more responsive to others than his predecessors. Indeed, the
increased scope for debate among Party leaders is one of the means
through which the Party enhances consultative Leninism and improves
on its development model.
Resilient as it is, consultative Leninism suffers from a major inherent
problem. It is that the Party needs to get its policies on the economy,
politics and society right most of the time – a very tall order in the long
term. The built-in safety valve to avoid a major policy or economic
failure that may have significant negative impact on people’s living
conditions that exists in a democracy – a change of government via the
ballot box – does not exist in this model. Instead consultative Leninism
relies on two main systemic ‘safety valves’. They are the application of
nationalism and the bird cage approach to adjust the degree of control
as required. The former raises the prospect that in order to divert public
frustration and anger away from itself during a crisis the Party is likely
to channel them against foreign powers or capitalists and blame them
for turning a benign international environment into a hostile one for
China. The latter implies that the Party will assert its Leninist nature
at the expense of its consultative elements if the country should face
a sustained crisis against which the Party appears helpless. Repression,
tightening of control and manipulation of public opinion are the
default options for ensuring regime survival when the Party feels it is
under threat.
How well consultative Leninism will fare in the very long term
remains unknown, as the PRC has not faced any real crisis since
1992 after the aftershocks of the 1989 protests and the subsequent
30 Contextualizing the China Dream

collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Its first big test happened as the global financial crisis unfolded. The
Party responded to the economic slowdown by spending massively on
infrastructure projects to rekindle short-term growth. But it resisted
the much needed rebalancing of the economy to make its growth
sustainable on a long-term basis. By transforming the political system
into consultative Leninism, the Party has built the most powerful and
resilient authoritarian system dedicated to keeping itself in power. As
long as the central leadership stays united and determined to nip all
challenges in the bud, it should be able to perpetuate its hold on power.
Consultative Leninism has now been adopted by Xi Jinping as the basis
to build the ‘China dream’ as he defines it. While its capacity should
not be underestimated, there is a question over how sustainable this
will prove over the long term. Export-driven growth in China will slow
down as the demographic surplus turns into a demographic deficit, the
environmental degradation becomes intolerable, and the scope for using
infrastructural investments to generate growth exhausted. To pre-empt
such an eventuality, China will need to rebalance its economy and find
an alternative model to secure sustainable growth and economic stability.
This requires consultative Leninism to change fundamentally and move
out of its comfort zone. Whether it can do so or not remains unknown.
Should the eventuality outlined above materialize, whether the Party
leadership would be able to hang together is an open question. Xi’s ‘China
dream’ seeks to pre-empt such eventualities by making consultative
Leninism more effective. Consultative Leninism may not last in the very
long term, but it only needs to survive a decade for Xi to proclaim how
much his ‘China dream’ has done for the country as he retires in a decade.

Notes and references

1. Xinhua Net, 29 November 2012, ‘Chengqian qihou jiwang kailai jixu
chaozhe Zhonghua minzu weida fuxing mubiao fenyong qianjin’ [Building
on what was done previously, sustain the past and press on with the future,
sustain the great goal of the Chinese people, and courageously move for-
ward], http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2012- 11/29/c_113852724.htm
(accessed 30 May 2013).
2. Richard Baum (2007) ‘The Limits of Authoritarian Resilience’, January 2007,
http://www.stephen- t.com/pdf/the%20limits%20of%20authoritarian%20
resilience%20-%20Baum.pdf (accessed 31 May 2013).
3. Steve Tsang (2009) ‘Consultative Leninism: China's new political framework’,
Journal of Contemporary China, 18(62), pp. 865–80. Much of the basic analysis
in this paper is based on the article cited above.
 Steve Tsang 31

4. Tony Saich (2004) Governance and Politics of China (2nd enlarged edition)
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), p.  44. The concept of ‘the masses’ is
essentially a Maoist concept. The nearest meaning to such a term is ‘patri-
otic’ citizens, with the Communist Party holding the right to define what
‘patriotic’ means. The issue of patriotism is examined further towards the
end of this paper.
5. Kerry Brown (2011) Ballot Box China: Grassroots Democracy in the Final Major
One-party State (London and New York: Zed Books), p. 40.
6. Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (4 December 1982), http://english.
people.com.cn/constitution/constitution.html (last accessed 16 May 2008).
7. The four cardinal principles are: ‘1. We must keep to the socialist road. 2.
We must uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat. 3. We must uphold the
leadership of the Communist Party. 4. We must uphold Marxism–Leninism
and Mao Zedong Thought.’ They were first formally articulated by Deng on
30 March 1979. Deng Xiaoping (1983) Deng Xiaoping Wenxuan (1975–1982)
[Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, 1975–1982] (Hong Kong: Sanlian shu-
dian), pp. 150–1.
8. ‘Three Represents’, 26 June 2006, http://english.cpc.people.com.
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Politics (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press), p. 5.
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daju bawo dashi zhuoyan dashi nuli ba xuanchuan sixiang gongzuo zuode
genghao’ [Bear in mind the context, make the most of the situation, keep an
eye on the big issues, work hard to improve work on propaganda and politi-
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cn/n/2013/0821/c64094-22636876.html.
15. Joseph Fewsmith (2001) China Since Tiananmen: The Politics of Transition
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17. Andrew Nathan and Perry Link (eds) (2001) The Tiananmen Papers (London:
Little, Brown and Company), p. xxxvi.
32 Contextualizing the China Dream

18. Chris Buckley, ‘Vows of Change in China Belie Private Warning’, New
York Times, 14 February 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/world/
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(Washignton DC: Woodrew Wilson Center Press), p. 9.
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23. Bruce Dickson, ‘Populist Authoritarianism: China’s Domestic Political
Scene’, conference paper dated 23 May 2005, quoted in Shambaugh, China’s
Communist Party, p. 37.
24. Ibid.
25. Wang Yang (2006) Xin shiqi Dang de ganbu zhidu jianshe [Building up a new
cadre system in the new era] (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe),
p. 354.
26. Shambaugh, China’s Communist Party, pp. 114–15.
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28. Quoted in Andrew J. Nathan and Bruce Gilley (eds) (2002) China’s New
Rulers: The Secret Files (London: Granta Books), pp. 193–4.
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cussing constitutional rule and civilized political conduct] (Beijing: Renmin
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Asian Law, 20(1), pp. 6–7.
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Supreme People’s Court], 22 March 2008, http://news.xinhuanet.com/
newscenter/2008-03/22/content_7837838_1.htm (accessed 23 May 2014).
34. Yan Sun and Michael Johnston (2009) ‘Does Democracy Check Corruption?
Insights from China and India’, Comparative Politics, 42(1), p. 14.
 Steve Tsang 33

35. Zheng Yongnian (2000) Jiang-Zhu zhixia de Zhongguo [China under the rule
of Jiang and Zhu] (Hong Kong: Taipingyang shiji chubanshe), p. 12.
36. Susan Shirk (2007) China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University
Press), p. 46.
37. Shambaugh, China’s Communist Party, pp. 142–3.
38. Xinhua News Agency, ‘Document of CPC on Governance Capability Issued’,
27 September 2004, http://www.china.org.cn/english/2004/Sep/108142.htm
(accessed 31 May 2013).
39. Melinda Liu and Jonathan Ansfield, ‘A Princeling of the People’, Newsweek,
5 November 2007, http://www.newsweek.com/id/62256 (accessed 28 May 2008).
40. John L. Thornton (2008) ‘Long Time Coming: Prospect for Democracy in
China’, Foreign Affairs, 87(1), pp. 8–9.
41. Xinhua, ‘New China Party leadership elected’, 14 November 2012,
http://www.china.org.cn/china/18th_cpc_congress/ 2012- 11/14/con-
tent_27108963.htm (accessed 31 May 2013).
42. Tianjian Shi (2000) ‘Economic Development and Village Elections in Rural
China’, in Suisheng Zhao (ed.), China and Democracy: Reconsidering the
Prospects for a Democratic China (New York: Routledge), pp. 244–6.
43. Deliberative and incremental steps in increasing the element of election
are part of democratization. In the case of Taiwan, for example, local elec-
tions from the 1950s onwards helped the democratization process once the
Kuomintang authoritarian regime under Chiang Ching-kuo accepted the need
to democratize in the late 1980s, even though such elections in the 1950s
were not particularly democratic or meaningful at the time.
44. For enlarging the scope for civil society, see discussions below regarding the
rescue and relief efforts during the Sichuan earthquake of 2008.
45. ‘Greater role ahead for non-communist parties’, China Daily, 7 March 2008,
http://www.chinaelections.net/newsinfo.asp?newsid=16175 (last accessed
11 February 2009).
46. ‘CCP taps talents outside the Party’, Xinhua, 29 June 2007, http://www.chi-
naelections.net/newsinfo.asp?newsid=4331 (last accessed 11 February 2009).
47. Wen’s Facebook page is: http://en- gb.facebook.com/pages/- Wen- Jia-
bao/13823116911 (last accessed 12 February 2009).
48. ‘Online chat with Hu Jintao’, Danwei, 20 June 2008, http://www.danwei.
org/internet/president_hu_jintao_talks_to_n.php (last assessed 11 February
2009).
49. Richard Spencer, ‘China orders journalists to end negative quake coverage’,
The Sunday Telegraph, 8 June 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world-
news/asia/china/2091084/China-earthquake--journalists-orderered--to-end-
negative-quake-coverage.html (accessed 9 June 2008).
50. Fengshi Wu and Kin-man Chan (2012) ‘Graduated Control and Beyond: The
Evolving Government–NGO Relations’, China Perspectives, (3), p. 15.
51. Ettore Dorrucci, Gabor Pula and Daniel Santabárbara (2013) China’s Economic
Growth and Rebalancing (ECB Occasional Paper 142, February 2013), p. 45.
52. Zheng Yongnian (1999) Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China:
Modernization, Identity, and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press), p. 51.
53. Chen Shaoming (1996) ‘Minzu zhuyi: Fuxing zhi dao’ [Nationalism: The way
to rejuvenation], Dong Fang, (2), p. 74.
34 Contextualizing the China Dream

54. Zhao Suisheng (2005–6) ‘China’s Pragmatic Nationalism: Is It Manageable?’,

The Washington Quarterly, 29(1), p. 134.
55. Ibid.
56. Yuan Weishi (2006) ‘Xiandaihua yu lishi jiaokeshu’ [Modernization
and history text books], 11 January 2006, http://edu.people.com.cn/
GB/1055/4016350.html (accessed 23 May 2014).
57. The large public outburst of nationalism when the Olympic torch relay
outside of China met with large-scale public protests in April 2008 confirms
the xenophobic nature of China’s new nationalism. This is addressed later in
this essay. For a strong representation of some Chinese nationalists’ frustra-
tions, see ‘My Friends, What Do You Want From Us?’ in China Digital Times,
12 April 2008, http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/04/my-friends-what-do-
you-want-from-us/ (last accessed 16 May 2008).
58. David Kelly (2006) ‘Citizen Movements and China’s Public Intellectuals in
the Hu-Wen Era’, Pacific Affairs, 79(2), p. 201.
59. Zhao, ‘China’s Pragmatic Nationalism’, p. 135.
60. Ibid.
61. Austin Ramzy, ‘China's View of the Olympic Torch War’, Time, 9 April 2008,
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1729169,00.html (last accessed
10 April 2008).
62. Zhao, ‘China’s Pragmatic Nationalism’, p. 136.
63. Tom Mitchell and Mure Dickie, ‘“Just emperor” in Beijing escapes blame’,
The Financial Times, 30 May 2008, p. 5.
64. Mark Magnier, ‘China tightens media limits loosened after earthquake’, Los
Angeles Times, 5 June 2008, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/
world/la-fg-rollback5-2008jun05,0,4764776.story (accessed 6 June 2008).
65. Xinhua, ‘Xi Jinping kaocha Nanhai jiandui, guanmo junyan yu guanbing
gongjin wucan’ [Xi Jinping inspecting the South Sea Fleet, overseeing an
exercise and sharing lunch with officers and me], undated but the Xinhua
dateline is 10 December 2012, http://bbs.tiexue.net/post_6465710_1.html
(accessed 31 May 2013).
66. ‘Xi Jinping and the Chinese dream’, The Economist, 4 May 2013, http://
www.economist.com/news/leaders/21577070-vision-chinas-new-president-
should-serve-his-people-not-nationalist-state-xi-jinping (accessed 31 May
2013).
67. Zhongguo shehuikexue yuan Zhongguo tese shehuizhuyi lilun tixi yanjiu
zhongxin [The centre for the theoretical and systematic study of socialism
with Chinese characteristics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences],
‘Ningju Zhongguo liliang shixian weida mengxiang’[Bring together the
power of China to implement the great dream], 1 June 2013, http://www.
qstheory.cn/zxdk/2013/201311/201305/t20130527_234345.htm (accessed
3 June 2013).
3
Civil Society and China’s
Governance Dilemmas in the Era
of National Rejuvenation
David Kerr

Introduction

Chinese society has changed far more radically in the last 30 years than
the Chinese system of government. There are many consequences to
this lack of correlation between social and political change but one
evident outcome is the widening of the governance gap. All political
systems must aim to match the capacities and activities of government
to the values and expectations of populations, not least because a fail-
ure to do so will lead to public alienation and in extreme conditions to
public rejection of government. Therefore while all governments may
experience a governance gap of some kind one of the main tasks of
government is to convince populations that the government is aware of
the governance gap, that it is mobilizing to deal with the gap, and that
it has a determination not to let the gap widen to the point where it
becomes a major issue of competence and legitimacy. Much of the rhet-
oric and activity of the Hu Jintao–Wen Jiabao administrations in China,
2003–13, showed the Chinese government’s awareness of this politics.1
However, the governance gap in China continues to widen for two
reasons: the first is the noted lack of correlation between social change
and political change, so that the state’s level of activism is rarely able to
keep pace with society’s level of dynamism. The second reason is the
limitations of the Chinese government’s responses to the governance
gap. Not only is the Chinese mode of governance top-down but the Party-
state shows considerable reluctance to allow society to participate in
governance: the Chinese state prefers to govern alone rather than
sharing political authority with capable groups and associations within
society. The primary reason for this is the state’s resistance to the emer-
gence of a civil society in China: if the state permitted civil groups

35
36 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

and associations to share authority in governance it would create an

alternative centre of political power in China and it seems determined
to avoid this. Therefore the Chinese governance dilemmas are a dual
dilemma: the state’s activism cannot match society’s dynamism and the
state is unwilling to allow social participation in governance because it
believes that sharing governance with a civil society would weaken the
state’s monopoly of power and it cannot risk this.2
The assertion of the new Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping that
China stands on the brink of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese
nation needs to be viewed in this context of governance dilemmas
and the Party-state’s rejection of a civil society for China. The great
rejuvenation of the Chinese people is of course entirely possible,
but what are the consequences for the politics of rejuvenation when
governance remains state-defined and state-organized rather than
designed and organized by state and society together? Indeed is the
dream of national rejuvenation possible without resolution of China’s
governance dilemmas? This essay explores the relationship between
civil society emergence, China’s governance dilemmas, and the dream
of national rejuvenation. It first examines contemporary discussion
in China from officials and intellectuals as to what is happening in
China’s citizens’ society and how this should or might be connected
to the goal of national rejuvenation. In this area it discusses the pros-
pects and limits for China’s governance without a civil society that
possesses the complete range of legal and political powers enjoyed by
civil societies elsewhere. It then examines the wider implications of
national rejuvenation with a restricted citizens’ society by considering
China’s governance in international context. This externalization of
the governance question is necessary because China’s modernization
is neither entirely national nor global but operates in the social, politi-
cal and cultural spaces between nation-building and globalization.
This section discusses the relationship between China and interna-
tional governance but questions the significance of a Chinese Way
or China Model in international society that does not address the
role of civil societies in international governance or the potential of
Chinese citizens to act outside the functional roles ascribed to them
under the China Model.
The essay concludes that the twin objectives of the China Dream of
national rejuvenation promoted by the Xi Jinping leadership of a China
that is effectively and justly governed at home and a China that is a
respected and successful power of the global era will be hard to achieve
if China does not have a fully empowered civil society.
 David Kerr 37

Civil society and China’s governance: domestic perspectives

In China today, as in most other countries in Asia, public and political

life centres around the struggle for modernization. In Chinese moderni-
zation is ‘xiandaihua’, which means ‘becoming modern times’. As China
joins modern times it is natural that the Chinese state and society
look to revise their relationship. To use one indicator of modernity’s
impact  – the urban population of Asia rose from 897 million in 1991
to 1,668 million in 2012, an increase of 771 million in just 21 years.
Of these new urban citizens half were in China alone where the urban
population more than doubled from 314 million to 699 million.3 These
urban citizens reflect and embody the changing economic, technical,
educational, environmental and cultural context of modern China, but
they are also redefining the values and purposes of Chinese politics.
China is producing something like a civil society for the first time and
the Chinese state can no longer govern as it did in the past when society
was treated as the passive recipient of the government’s instructions.
The incoming leadership of 2013 seems to have understood the chal-
lenges of governing a country with the world’s largest urban society.
On becoming President in March 2013 Xi Jinping pointed to the con-
nection between social modernity and the ideals of the Chinese people:

To realise the goals of building a well-off society, of building a strong,

prosperous, democratic, civilised, harmonious and modern socialist
country, to realise the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of
the Chinese nation, it will be necessary to sincerely reflect the ideals
of the Chinese people for a strong and prosperous country, national
revival, and popular happiness, and also profoundly embody the
honourable tradition of earlier generations in their untiring struggle
in the pursuit of progress.4

However to say that Chinese modernization must be the servant of the

ideals of the Chinese population is not the same thing as giving the
Chinese people choices over the form and direction of modernization:
China still has a political system in which elites make choices for all,
and the population demonstrates their approval of the choices by work-
ing hard, consuming hard, and answering positively when asked their
opinion of the performance of the Chinese government.5
It is for this reason that we can only use the term ‘something like a
civil society’ in modernizing China. Civil society remains a contested
idea, and perhaps especially when different societies are comparing
38 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

their experience of modernity. When Giovanni Sartori asked 40 years

ago whether political science had concepts that travelled he might have
had civil society at the top of his list of ideas that travelled only with
difficulty.6 Civil society is indeed everywhere now but it is very rarely
the same thing in two places. In the large modernizing countries of
the global era – Brazil, India, China – it is often not the same thing in
any two cities or provinces. But we can say that a generic civil society
has probably four characteristics: (i) it represents new forms of political
consciousness  – that is, it is the embodiment of normative transition
from traditional to modern society; (ii) it presents new channels for
political mobilization particularly by creating new bonds of solidarity to
replace the traditional solidarities of rural life; (iii) it seeks autonomy of
organization – civil society takes the emancipation of urban citizens and
sustains this movement through self-organization and self-expression;
and (iv) the preceding three movements  – political consciousness,
mobilization and autonomy  – culminate in a bid to control the law:
to merge the associations of civil society on the law so that the law
becomes an instrument of social negotiation and ultimately the consti-
tutional state, and not an instrument of social control exercised by the
absolutist state.7
If these four characteristics are correct then we can say that the first
two apply to China but the latter two do not: Chinese society has rising
modernist consciousness of many kinds that finds expression in new
public values and through new media, and it has demonstrated rising
social mobilization around the solidarities of urban society. However,
there are clear limits on the capacity of civil groups to self-organize and
self-express, and the law is not yet available as an instrument of negotia-
tion between state and society, and still operates primarily as an expres-
sion of the state’s will over society. As this suggests the civil society in
China is suspended between the social formation of modernity and a
political-legal formation that formulates and advances claims over gov-
ernance. This aspect of differentiating the civil society as an expression
of modernity and as movement towards institutional change is one that
continues to divide interpretations of civil society emergence in China.
In their definitive text on China and civil society in the 1990s White,
Howell and Shang differentiate between sociological and political con-
ceptions of the civil society. They are reluctant to impose a political
conception on the civil society of China believing this to be ‘indistin-
guishable from a standard conception of a liberal democratic polity’ and
thus ideological.8 However, in the most detailed comparative study of
civil society development and political change in Asia Alagappa points
 David Kerr 39

to wider processes of political formation and expression around the civil

society:

Civil society  … provides the space and means for articulating and
aggregating public interests, forming public opinion, developing
agendas outside the state and market, and creating the means to
influence them. Unlike the state and market – whose primary organi-
zation and transaction mediums are power and money respectively –
freedom of association and unfettered public discourse that enable
representation (of differences and commonalities), influence, and
communicative power are the central pillars of the non-state public
sphere  … Roles that expand (or contract) the space of the public
realm in terms of the domain for societal self-governance – as well as
the institutions, actors, and agendas that enable collective action to
influence political society and the state – constitute political change
in the realm of civil society.9

As this suggests in conditions of Asian modernization the civil society

is unavoidably political. However, this does not suppose any automatic
or linear movement towards the institutionalization of the civil society
as it aspires to become ‘a legally protected sphere distinct from the
state and political society’.10 Alagappa’s conclusion is that from open to
closed political systems across Asia a common feature is the lag in insti-
tutionalization, so that the social formation of modernity, change to
the political society, and institutionalization of the civil society operate
on different, though interconnected, political timeframes. In explain-
ing these disjunctures in timeframes Alagappa identifies the dominant
role of the state: ‘The type of regime and state capacity to guarantee
fundamental rights are the crucial variables in explaining the delayed
institutionalisation of civil society in Asia.’11 In this regard the emergent
civil society of China is not so very different in its experiences from
that in other Asian countries; where China differs of course is in the
understanding of what political society should look like under Chinese
socialism, and how the state’s commitment to its own institutions
impacts on the emergent civil society’s ability and capacity to approach
its institutionalization, including the critical problem of recognition
and protection under the law.
Part of the problem with discussing this partial civil society of China
is that there is no accepted name for it: definitions of China’s society are
transitional just as the society itself is. Chinese scholars tend to reserve
the term shimin shehui for their understanding of ‘civil society’ as this is
40 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

used in the bourgeois social structure of the West or the Marxian tradi-
tion that sought to revolutionize this. They tend not to use this term
for China, both because it is Western and because it would emphasize
the potential for contradiction between the new society and China’s
Leninist political system. The alternative terms that are used are gong-
min shehui or minjian shehui, which can be translated as citizens’ society
and popular society. The first term is much closer to a designation of
the non-state, non-private sphere; the latter refers more to the idea of
a free cultural-economic space among the people. All of these terms are
however much more common in academic discourse than in public life.
To give some idea of their prevalence we can use a word count from
the Chinese Academic Journals database: between 2001 and 2011 there
were 700 articles with minjian shehui in the title, 1,400 with shimin she-
hui in the title, and 2,400 with gongmin shehui in the title. In contrast
there were 40,000 papers with hexie shehui in the title; so the predomi-
nant discourse is not about civil, public, or citizens’ society but about a
harmonious society under socialism. China’s leading social theorist, Yu
Keping, gives the following characterization of the relationship between
the academically defined citizens’ society and the officially endorsed
programme of harmonious society:

As we see it, after reform and opening, following the development

of the socialist market economy and democratic politics, in various
forms and ways a large number of popular organisations emerged,
and a comparatively independent citizens’ society is rapidly arising
in China, with an increasingly profound influence on the political
and economic life of society. The rise of China’s citizens’ society is
the most important manifestation of the whole of China’s social pro-
gress; it not only assists in promoting the progress of China’s charac-
teristic democratic politics and political culture, but also contributes
to the healthy development of the market economy, improving the
administrative capacity of the Chinese Communist Party, and the
construction of a harmonious society … Over the course of 20 years,
the development of China’s citizens’ society has also reached a new
stage, the present institutional environment in many ways is unable
to adapt to the needs of it’s further maturity, and institutional fac-
tors are already becoming a bottleneck in the development of the
citizens’ society, requiring the conduct of relevant reform.12

So in Yu’s view the citizens’ society both reflects and contributes

to China’s rational modernization through market development,
 David Kerr 41

administrative efficiency, and encouraging the harmonious society. At

the same time institutional changes must keep up with these develop-
ments otherwise institutions will not reflect social change but restrict it.
It is clear then that the harmonious society idea that developed dur-
ing the Hu Jintao administrations 2003–13  – and the related ideas of
peaceful development and scientific outlook  – address the emergence
of a Chinese-kind of civil society but in a way that restricts and moulds
this public society to tasks defined and administered by the state. In his
report to the 17th Party Congress in 2007 Hu Jintao said:

In accordance with the general requirements for democracy and the

rule of law, equity and justice, honesty and fraternity, vigour and
vitality, stability and order, and harmony between man and nature
and the principle of all the people building and sharing a harmoni-
ous socialist society, we will spare no effort to solve the most specific
problems of the utmost and immediate concern to the people and
strive to create a situation in which all people do their best, find
their proper places in society and live together in harmony, so as to
provide a favourable social environment for development.13

The harmonious society is certainly related to the changes in China’s

society therefore but mainly in the sense of persuading the population
to limit their demands and activism in the name of social unity and sta-
bility and to accept CCP leadership over the challenges of moderniza-
tion and globalization. Harmonious society is also about social patience:
about the people only asserting those demands that the general level
of development in China will permit. From this characterization it can
be seen that harmonious society is a way of managing the emergence
of a Chinese-kind of civil society but without endorsing pressures for
autonomous organization and legal empowerment.
Both Chinese and international scholars debate the role and potential
of this Chinese-kind of civil society. Most agree that there is now a
more open and decontrolled space in Chinese society that has resulted
primarily from three changes: (i) the expansion of market relations and
the relaxation of controls on social exchanges more generally; (ii) the
widening social awareness of citizens as facilitated by rising educational
levels, diversified social roles, and new media that allow under-
standing of change across China and internationally; (iii) the state’s
willingness to allow the expansion of social exchanges and rising public
awareness provided these changes do not generate challenges to the
fundamental parameters of socialism as a political-ideological system.
42 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

A term commonly used in the academic literature for this decontrolled

space is the associational sphere, which seems to correspond to the
Chinese notion of minjian shehui. More complex questions are raised
by the nature and role of a citizens’ society. This term has more clearly
defined political and social functions and can be expressed through
social activism and organizations, including the development of social
organizations (shehui tuanti) in China that are not part of the state
apparatus, and elsewhere would be called NGOs. These social activisms
and organizations now exist in a wide variety of areas such as business,
education, health, welfare, community and environmental organiza-
tions. The accepted number for registered social organizations reached
400,000 in 2008, up from 200,000 in 2001 and suggesting growth of
around 10 per cent per year at this point.14 The number of social groups
operating without formal registration may be many multiples of this.
The undecided question about this activism is whether it represents an
alternative to Chinese state corporatism – that it is a movement towards
genuine social autonomy  – or whether it represents formations that
will remain subordinate to the agencies and purposes of the state. That
the Chinese system has corporatist form and function has long been
recognized: core state organizations – Party, government, economic and
security organs – have organizational forms extended into society that
balance central control and functional specialization.15 The most obvi-
ous examples of large corporatist bodies are the labour organization,
the women’s organization, and the religious associations which manage
the state’s relations with the permitted religious communities. It should
also be noted that the state still retains administrative and functional
control over much of the economy and not just the large parastatals
that contribute around 30 per cent of GDP, as Fan et al. note.16 Howell
has been critical of the application of the corporatist model to contem-
porary China noting that it does not adequately explain the diversity
and resurgence of associational life in the reform era; that it assumes
that the corporatist structures can adequately contain and express the
interests and values of social groups; and because the state in some
ways needs the associational sphere given its governance limitations,
for example in dealing with welfare demands.17 However, a corporatist
account of state–society relations in China does not require that every
social formation is fully incorporated into the state by administration
or function. It does require that the corporatist state’s control over
social organizations is hegemonic: that the social organizations operate
within limits defined by the state and face sanctions if they transgress
these limits; that the primary social and economic exchanges remain
 David Kerr 43

corporately controlled and the functions of permitted social organi-

zations are often extensions of corporate objectives; that the social
organizations are often atomized and operate in a vertical relationship
with the state and not integrated in a horizontal relationship with each
other; that the social organizations are often dependent on superior
corporate agencies for resources; and that the law is invariably invoked
by the state to control social activism and organization and is not
reciprocally available to social organizations to negotiate their status
in society. In China today this corporatist form of state hegemony over
social activism and organization remains in place. Analysts such as Lu,
Mertha, Saich and Thornton all point to the diversity, mobility, and
complexity of social formations in contemporary China.18 What they
do not suggest is that the social organizations are achieving a legally
defensible status, or that there has been any significant transfer of
political and legal authority from the state to social organizations. I will
cite two contrasting cases: religious association and labour activism. In
the area of religious association McCarthy finds:

The state employs a variety of discursive, administrative and spatial

strategies to contain religion and limit its influence in other areas of
social life. It attempts to influence the selection and career paths of reli-
gious professionals through patriotic associations, official seminaries
and training academies, and the organization of the religious danwei.
Spatially, laws restrict religious activity to registered sites and generally
prohibit collective expressions of faith in the public realm. Proselytizing
outside the boundaries of religious sites is illegal. Overall, the govern-
ment maintains the power to decide the legality of faith practice
and communities, and even to designate what is and is not religion.
Although its goal is no longer to eliminate religion, the government
tries to minimize the space and forms of religious expression.19

Note the particularities of religious association: religious social organiza-

tions have limited functionality for the state’s own purposes, therefore
there is no need to foster them or to offer them closer incorporation.
Legal controls and sanctions are deployed to marginalize and restrict
religious activity, and not only religious observance but the definition
of religion itself is determined by the state. Other social formations may
have more significance for the state – their usefulness or opposition to
state objectives may require the state to invoke closer incorporation
or apply vigorous repression; but here the choice of strategy still lies
with the state, or more correctly with the manifold branches of the
44 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

state from centre to locality. Perhaps the most difficult of cases for the
state is labour activism. The state must have particular care over labour
mobilization, because of the size of the urban workforce and because of
the danger of workers turning against the ‘workers state’ as happened
in a number of East European regimes prior to the fall of communism.
A further complexity is whether the state should be pursuing incorpo-
ration or repression; so in practice it deploys both. Friedman and Lee
characterize the state’s strategy as follows:

Both workers in the state-owned and private sector have been pro-
testing with great frequency, though the origins and dynamics of
such insurgency vary. While the majority of worker activism remains
cellular and generally not explicitly political in character, there have
been instances in which worker insurgency in a particular sector has
spread to multiple workplaces. However, the state is still categorically
opposed to independent worker-based organization, as is evidenced
by the constant harassment, surveillance and repression directed
at the tiny and generally conservative NGO sector. Meanwhile, the
official trade union remains tied to the accumulation-oriented state
apparatus, and is unwilling to be antagonistic to capital.20

In this case the corporatist state deploys a dualistic posture – leaderships

of both capital and labour are incorporated and independent organiza-
tion repressed. Over the longer term the core state strategy must be to
confine labour to ‘economism’ – short-term work-based issues rather than
longer-term strategic mobilization focused on political and legal rights.21
Against a background of surging but fragmented social activism the
state’s awareness of, and interest in, social diversity and social resources
has markedly increased in recent years. The 12th Five-Year Plan 2011–15
announced in March 2011 included for the first time a complete section
of the plan devoted to social management (shehui guanli).22 Part 9 of
the plan is titled ‘Treating symptoms and roots, strengthen and inno-
vate social management’ and has five chapters (37–41): Innovate the
social management system; Strengthen the autonomy and service func-
tions of urban and rural communities; Strengthen the construction of
social organizations; Perfect the mechanism for safeguarding the rights
and interests of the people; Strengthen the construction of the public
security system. In the chapter on strengthening social organization
construction the plan has the following objectives:

Promote the healthy and orderly development of social organisa-

tions by laying equal stress on their cultivation, development and
 David Kerr 45

management supervision; bring in to play their functions of service

supply, reports and appeals, and the standardisation of behaviour …
To improve the management of social organisations establish and
strengthen their integration, functional separation, harmonious
coordination, responsibility classification, and legal oversight. Focus
priority on the development of social organisations in the economic
sector, charity sector and non-government, non-enterprise units of
urban and rural communities. Promote professional associations,
reform and development of chambers of commerce, strengthen pro-
fessional self-discipline, and bring in to play communication func-
tions between enterprises and government.23

From this we can conclude that the overall approach to the Chinese
citizens’ society and its social organizations is state utility – that social
organizations exist as extended support and service suppliers to the
corporatist state and its nation-building objectives. This characteriza-
tion conforms to the model of state–society relations advanced by Kang
and Han:

In the system of graduated controls that appeared in China in the

1990s, the state does not totally control the economy or interfere in
personal lives any longer, but it firmly controls the political and pub-
lic spheres. The state permits citizens limited freedom to organize,
but social organizations are permitted neither to exist independently
of the state nor to challenge the power of the state. At the same time,
the state fully uses the capabilities of social organizations to provide
public goods.24

We should note in particular that because the political and the legal
remain exclusively the domain of the state that a Chinese-kind of civil
society has formations confined to social expressions or functions. The
Chinese citizens’ society is economic, technical or cultural: it is not,
nor can it apparently be, an autonomous political society. This does
not mean that ‘politics’ is not happening in China’s new society; but it
means that politics is not allowed to take form in society outwith the
limits of Party ideology and organization.
Of course this system of ‘socialism without politics’ is illogical and
untenable and the emerging civil society increasingly pushes for politi-
cal and legal expression only to be faced with the resistance from the
institutions of state. Two recent examples can be cited from the media
and the public rights movement. In response to Xi Jinping’s ‘China
Dream’ message at the end of 2012 editors at the Southern Weekly
46 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

(Nanfang Zhoumo) in Guangdong attempted to publish a New Year

message on 3 January 2013 by Dai Zhiyong titled ‘The China Dream
is the Dream of Constitutional Government’, including the following
argument:

The Chinese people should be a free people. Therefore the China

dream should be the dream of constitutional government. Under
constitutional government the nation can become strong and pros-
perous, under constitutional government the people will be truly
mighty. Fulfilling the dream of constitutional government will fur-
ther enable national sovereignty externally, safeguarding the nation’s
freedom; and further enable civil rights internally, safeguarding the
people’s liberty.

This was blocked by the censors and a more conventional version of the
Dream imposed, leading to confrontation between the paper’s journal-
ists and the authorities.25 A  further example of political mobilization
is the attempt of a group of rights activists and lawyers to create a
platform called China New Citizens Movement (Zhongguo Xin Gongmin
Yundong). The activists associated with this network have called for the
political and legal awakening of Chinese citizens. One of the leading
activists behind the call for a new citizens’ movement, Xu Zhiyong,
published a text in May 2012 that argues:

Today China has still not been able to leave behind autocracy,
monopoly of power, rampant corruption, the gap between rich
and poor, violent home demolitions, educational imbalances, and
the black hole of social security – the root of all these major social
problems is autocracy. The Chinese nation needs a great citizens’
movement that, conforming to historic trends, moves from bottom
to top, from political and social to cultural, from the awakening of
each individual citizen to the regeneration of the entire Chinese
civilization.26

In December 2013 Xu and at least 16 other activists associated with

the network were indicted under China’s public security laws for public
disorder offences that included posting public notices that called for full
disclosure of the wealth of officials and equal access to education.27 Xu
was sentenced to four years jail on 26 January 2014.28 These activists,
it should be noted, are not calling for the overthrow of the Chinese
system but only that the political and legal systems operate as China’s
 David Kerr 47

laws require that they should. However this is still too political for the
depoliticized citizens’ society of China.

The costs of resisting civil society institutionalization

The core question of China’s governance is not the nature of the Party-
state’s programme for social organization development but the sustain-
ability of this model of state–society relations. Often the civil society
question in China has been connected to China’s democratization. This
is understandable since democratic politics can be considered the nor-
mal mode of politics for an empowered civil society  – and conversely
problems in democratic government often reflect incomplete, corrupted
or divided civil societies. For the purposes of this essay, however, the
question of democratic change in China is consequent to the develop-
ment of a civil society; it does not explain whether China’s civil society
development is more or less likely or whether the Party’s obstruction of
that development is more or less sustainable. Those answers depend on
the challenges of China’s governance.29
Modernity has brought a rapid increase in the range and intensity
of challenges that Chinese society faces: inequality, corruption, float-
ing populations, social and generational insecurity, land seizures,
labour unrest, environmental degradation and health problems are
all at unprecedented levels. The government says that given time and
resources it can manage and resolve these challenges; but what is the
prospect of achieving this without moving forward the development of
Chinese civil society? The Chinese state wants an educated, lawful and
orderly society in China but it does not intend to give its citizens author-
ity in governance, only output responsibilities. This means the citizens’
organizations may be given some responsibility for implementing
policy  – especially important given the well-known implementation
deficit in China’s governance  – but they will not be given control
over governance processes and objectives. Crucial governance tasks
like defining problems, analysing information, evaluating solutions,
developing policy proposals, and representing the people in public
institutions will remain the responsibility of Party functionaries
and state agencies alone, because the state cannot share political
responsibility and authority with a civil society without facilitating a
transfer of power. This creates a supply–demand imbalance in China’s
governance – demand for governance solutions will continue to expand
but the scope and responsiveness of governance supply will continue
to fall behind.
48 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

Chinese conservative intellectuals like Pan Wei and Zhang Weiwei have
argued that traditional Chinese government virtues of meritocracy and
people-based politics (ji you zhunze; minbenzhuyi) will ensure that there is
a class of highly qualified bureaucrats who will overcome this gap between
governance demand and effective supply.30 But this misinterprets the
challenges of governance in the world’s largest urban society. However tal-
ented China’s official class, governance in modern societies requires open
and untainted flows of information, clear division of roles and functions
between government and governed, and a system of laws that bind gov-
erned and government in mutual obligation. Assuming that China can
have effective governance while information, governance functions, and
legal instruments remain solely in the hands of officials, however com-
mitted to minbenzhuyi, is mistaken. Any number of governance failures
point to this weakness but none demonstrates it more clearly than China’s
struggle with systemic corruption.
In systemic corruption there is a clear difference between extensive
and intensive corruption: societies in which corruption is pervasive or
strongly concentrated in core institutions. China’s corruption problem
does not appear to be extensive  – China’s leading political economist
Hu Angang states the black economy may account for 15 per cent of
GDP.31 However, it is important to note two specific aspects of the cor-
rupt economy. First, China’s GDP in 2012 exceeded US$8 trillion so 15
per cent of GDP would be around $1.2 trillion. This is equivalent to the
GDP of Mexico, which is the fourteenth largest economy in the world.
So China may have a corrupt economy the size of the world’s four-
teenth largest economy inside the world’s second largest economy. This
intensity of corruption is a structural weakness with potential for politi-
cal as well as economic destabilization. Secondly, China’s corruption
is systemic in the sense that it has moved and adapted with economic
development. Wedeman notes that:

[N]ot only did corruption spread in to new areas and intensify as the
reform period advanced, it also changed shape becoming less based
on plunder and more based on the buying and selling of political
authority. In a sense therefore the marketization of the Chinese econ-
omy also led to the marketization of corruption as corrupt activities
shifted outside the state apparatus and moved increasingly to the
boundary between state and market.32

The level of corruption in China did not spin out of control to the
extent that it began to affect market development largely because of the
 David Kerr 49

Party’s disciplinary campaigns, which were not sufficient to eradicate

corruption but sufficient to hold it in check. In Wedeman’s view corrup-
tion can be reversed if based on three institutional factors: markets must
be transparent, competitive and free from administrative manipulation;
establishment of rule of law in property rights; and the continued sepa-
ration of political and economic power.33 The Party’s struggle to reverse
systemic corruption should rely less on disciplinary and ideological
campaigns and more on institutional reform, therefore. Some in the
Chinese leadership clearly understand this. Thus when Premier Wen
Jiabao was asked at a news conference in March 2012 about events in
Chongqing that led to the fall of Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai he did not refer
to the personal culpability of Bo and Gu but to the problems of institu-
tional reform of the Chinese state:

Now reforms have reached a crucial stage, without success in reform-

ing the political system, reform of the economic system will be
impossible to complete, the gains we have already achieved may be
lost, and the new problems being produced in society cannot be fun-
damentally resolved. Moreover, the historical tragedy of the Cultural
Revolution could possibly happen again.34

The Chongqing crisis was a system crisis for the Chinese state because it
revealed that neither institutional transparency nor rule obligation were
adequate to prevent party cadres from exercising personal and arbitrary
power, hence the Cultural Revolution reference by Wen.
Following the appointment of the new leadership headed by Xi
Jinping in 2013 there has been a new drive against the corruption
problem but this has been by resort to conventional campaigns and
not by institutional reform.35 Both ideological orthodoxy and disci-
plinary investigations intensified leading to a rise in convictions in
many branches of the corporatist structure. However the belief that
the Leninist version of good governance can restrain China’s inten-
sive corruption problem is undoubtedly mistaken. The Party-state
cannot reform its internal mechanisms in such a way that transpar-
ency, appointments and rule obligations become sufficiently robust to
restrain corrupted behaviour. The only source of sufficient restraint lies
in the sharing of governance with a civil society so that there is a power
of supervision, appointment, exposure and sanction that is beyond the
capacity of the state to hide or manipulate. In essence, state and society
have to be joined politically within the same institutional framework
and bound by the same rules across this framework.
50 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

Of course, the degree to which the Party-state’s governance model is

failing to cope with social change is also revealed by the expansion of
the coercive state. China’s internal security expenditure continues to
exceed defence expenditure with a budget of around $127 billion in
2013,36 making the Chinese public security system the largest in the
world. All governments use both coercive and institutional mechanisms
to govern state–society relations; but institutional mechanisms are
always preferable to coercive measures: they are not only more efficient,
they turn out to be more robust in the long term. The extraordinary
scale of the coercive state in China is testimony to the weakness of the
institutional state; and China is undoubtedly expanding the coercive
state in compensation for the failure to achieve institutional reform.
Claims to a Chinese-style meritocracy that does not require civil soci-
ety participation in governance are contradicted by facts on the ground,
which daily demonstrate the state’s limitations in accountability and
responsiveness. The public support given to the prevailing political
order to rise to the challenges of governance (as in note 5) may seem to
contradict this conclusion; but Jie Lu’s research indicates much greater
complexity than this single response would suggest. Using data from
ABS III Lu first demonstrates that Chinese citizens share characteristics
with citizens of other East Asian societies in adopting a substance-based
rather than procedure-based view of good governance – East Asian soci-
eties overall value government’s ability to deliver substantive results in
effective governance and social equity more than adherence to ideal
normative or procedural understandings of democracy.37 In this regard
Chinese citizens are in the mid-range of those surveyed. In a further
study examining the cognitive values that underpin Chinese urban
citizens’ view of government performance Lu indicates the importance
of distinguishing between competence and intention in governance.
Asked to rank the Chinese central government’s competence on a
5-point scale on four key policy domains, responses indicated moder-
ate to low evaluations: promoting economic growth (3.26), ensuring
social security (2.62), reducing corruption (2.26), and lowering income
inequality (2.25).38 Conversely when asked to evaluate the statement
‘Our central government is willing to do its best to serve the people and
take their needs seriously’ 55 per cent responded positively. This leads
Lu to conclude:

Chinese urbanites did cognitively and effectively differentiate

between competence and intention in governance when evaluating
their central government. Moreover, the respondents, on average,
 David Kerr 51

held moderate or even low evaluations of their central government’s

competence in delivering good governance, while a majority of them
simultaneously held a quite positive assessment of the government’s
intention to serve the people, and the two cognitive components are
only weakly correlated.39

The Chinese government has thus been able to detach evaluations

and expectations in governance, indicating how important it is for
the Party-state to retain control over public discourse and thinking on
China’s political future. The governance gap between the state’s activ-
ism and society’s expectations of governance is filled not just by people-
centred politics, experiments with inner-party reform, and disciplinary
campaigns, but with the state’s narrative about China’s rejuvenation.
The politics of China are being stabilized, and to a degree legitimated,
by the state’s capacity to shape the narrative of patriotic dreams, even as
expectations of citizens about core challenges in equity, corruption and
social protection remain unfulfilled. The state’s ability to keep its citi-
zens’ society depoliticized depends on many factors, therefore, but who
controls Chinese dreams of good governance is clearly one of these.
This said, China’s civil society development is likely to follow a path
towards institutionalization. China’s governance is becoming a more
open political arena in which state and citizens’ society engage to
contest their mutual responsibilities, the primary objective of these
engagements being efforts to expand or restrict governance functions
and capacity: social activism pushes to convert the citizens’ society
into a civil society; the state pushes back to preserve its capacity and
privileges. The Chinese state is much richer and more robust than it was
20 years ago; but so is the citizens’ society. So it is not possible to say
with any certainty that authoritarian resilience will continue to outstrip
civil society development. In particular the state’s ability to retain
control over the development of political society will continue to erode.
The discourse of national rejuvenation is predicated on progress
towards just and effective government. The Chinese government is
fighting a multifaceted struggle on several fronts to deliver on this
but cannot break out of the ideological, procedural and organizational
limits that its Leninist politics impose. Even those institutional reforms
that have been proposed  – inner-party democracy and consultative
procedures – have not seen significant progress, as Fewsmith’s detailed
research demonstrates.40 In consequence alternative strategies such as
retooling corporatism, advancing social management and expansion
of the coercive state are being deployed. None of these is likely to lead
52 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

to good governance – they are no more than coping mechanisms that

postpone institutional change but do not address the origins of social
pressure for better governance. National rejuvenation is Janus-faced
therefore: it encourages China’s citizens to believe that good governance
may yet arrive and they should embrace social patience and restraint;
but it also creates a standard by which improvements in China’s gov-
ernance may be judged. To be rejuvenated means to be better governed;
but how will the existing system overcome its self-imposed limitations
to achieve this?

A China Model/Chinese Way without a civil society?

The idea of a China Model or Chinese Way (Zhongguo Moshi, Zhongguo

Daolu) has taken on increased significance in recent years due to the
international dimensions of China’s success. Discussions of such a
China Model point not only to rapid economic growth and intensive
state construction but also to China’s surge in international status.41
However, very few of these investigations discuss the role of civil society
in a China Model, or conversely the consequences for a model that does
not require an engaged civil society. Given the widespread discussion of
the expansion of civil societies under globalization – and even the idea
of a global civil society42 – it seems necessary to consider what the con-
sequences are for a China Model that depends significantly on the hard
work and ingenuity of a citizens’ society but does not require the capaci-
ties of a civil society.
It must first be recognized that the creation of the new urban society
of China has been conducted under unique historical circumstances.
The things that drive Asian modernization today have continuity back
to the earliest eras of the ‘new society’ – capital accumulation, commod-
ity flows, technological waves, concentration and division of labour,
urbanization, the generation of new solidarities and ideas for modern
society – but these forces are now global in shape and scope. Thus the
motor forces of civil society construction have evidence of continuity
but the spatial and structural dynamics operate under conditions that
connect local, national and global societies. China has experienced
modernization and internationalization within the circuits of globali-
zation with the result that China’s partial civil society is connected
to change in civil societies elsewhere; and China’s struggles around
effective governance are built into circulations of governance that
connect local, national to global governance. For these reasons discus-
sion of China’s governance dilemmas must also take account of these
 David Kerr 53

circulations between China and the world. For the last 20 years it is
possible to say that the Chinese state has gained more than Chinese
society from globalization – the wealth, skills and technologies that the
Chinese state possesses are substantially a product of the state’s ability
to control, filter and exploit flows of capital, commodities and knowl-
edge into and out of China; but Chinese citizens also gain opportuni-
ties and face new risks due to global circulations, and this inevitably
drives change in the civil society. China’s participation in globalization
promotes some facets of state strengthening and adaptation but it also
generates learning and adaptation in the civil society. In order to switch
off civil society development the Chinese state would have to switch off
globalization, and of course that is not going to happen. There is then
something of a struggle between the Chinese state and citizens to see
who can learn and adapt the most from global integration. There is a
built-in assumption in most China Model analysis that the state must
come out ahead of civil society in this race; but this may misinterpret
the staging effect of China’s path to global integration. China’s rise
is undoubtedly a ‘state-first’ rise but China’s citizens may yet play an
important role in Asian or global civil society construction.
This is a broad and largely uncharted issue and it is best to confine
discussion to the relationship between governance challenges and the
international roles of China’s civil society. On governance we can say
that China’s experience of globalization has largely been shaped by
patterns of convergence and non-convergence of institutions. This
is because institutions have two faces  – functional adaptation and
normative adaptation. China has urgently sought functional adapta-
tion, believing  – correctly  – that this was the route to power, wealth
and knowledge; at the same time it has remained suspicious of, if not
entirely hostile to, normative adaptation. One way to interpret this
stance is as continuation of the long tradition of ti–yong dichotomy.
As Hughes argues, since China was confronted with Western mate-
rial dominance it has faced the problem of how to be modern  – and
strong – but not to compromise on the essential character of China.43
The philosophy that was adopted was ‘Zhongxue wei ti; Xixue wei yong’ or
‘Chinese learning as essence; Western learning as function.’ By adopting
this philosophy China’s modernizers could embrace the powerful utility
of modern social systems but retain the essence of Chinese character
and experience. Under reform and opening ti and yong, essence and
utility, have once again been strongly to the fore. Chinese officials and
public intellectuals want to argue that although China resembles other
modernizing societies under globalization in which modernity, civil
54 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

societies, and social and political pluralism generate each other, this
need not happen in China because its essence will remain particular
and thus outside patterns of social and institutional change elsewhere.44
These kinds of arguments were apparent in Xi Jinping’s speech on
becoming President in March 2013. Xi pointed to the China Dream of
great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and argued that its realiza-
tion required three commitments (san ge bixu): ‘to realise the China
Dream we must keep to the Chinese way; to realise the China Dream
we must carry forward the Chinese spirit; to realise the China Dream
we must consolidate Chinese power.’45 The idea of a Chinese way linked
Chinese reform socialism to 5000 years of cultural development. The
idea of a Chinese spirit linked Chinese patriotism to the spirit of unity
in the Chinese people. The idea of consolidating Chinese power linked
the dreams of individual Chinese citizens to the collective dream of
national revival. Each of these commitments stressed the particular-
ism of the Chinese experience – due to its political culture, its spiritual
unity, and the tying of individual ambitions to the fate of the state,
China would follow its own distinctive path. Even as China converged
on functional modernity, therefore, it would not converge in essence;
indeed China’s integration into global systems would be deployed
as functional strengthening in the defence of the Chinese essence,
including China’s political essence as defined and developed by the
Party-state.
This separation of normative and functional adaptation around insti-
tutions has a number of implications for China’s role in the world, and
thus the international viability of the China Model. Some of the most
significant implications are:

1. China is asymmetrically integrated into international institutions –

functionally receptive but normatively distant. China does not pro-
mote new norms or institutions for international society and in most
instances is a functional partner only.
2. The agencies of China’s integration also assume primarily functional
form and are unsurprisingly often internationalized versions of its
internal corporatist structures. These corporatist forms are conduits
for the extraction of the things China needs for state-building,
but do not facilitate close integration between China and other
societies.
3. Many of the issues that China faces in its governance are neither
internal nor external but bridge governance domains. But while the
Chinese state has been extremely active and increasingly successful
 David Kerr 55

in defending state-centric interests and security, it has been much

less focused and much less productive in promoting governance
on issues that affect societies and individuals. For example, the
Chinese notion of non-traditional security is not the same as
human security.46 Non-traditional security for China commonly
means the possibility that non-state factors will threaten state
interests  – development, stability, national unity  – not that civil
societies face their own kind of security challenges and that advanc-
ing and defending international civil society is a way to secure both
publics and states.

Chinese analysts are aware of these problems with China’s international

role. Shi Yinhong correctly argues:

The trilateral cooperative structure composed of nation states, inter-

national organizations and transnational civil society groups is often
most advantageous for coping with global challenges because of its
broad reach and mobilization. Here China’s prospects for participa-
tion and contribution have a major weakness: due to historical,
political and ideational causes its government is largely insulated
from transnational civil society groups, while the country lacks,
in general, groups of this sort active in world politics  … For these
groups to be enabled, China, primarily its government, must chal-
lenge those inhibiting elements in its political culture, governing
system and policy habits. In this way, the prospect that China’s ‘grass
roots’ could participate in ‘global governance’, playing an important
role therein, would be opened up. Failure to enable greater civil soci-
ety activity would seriously disadvantage China in one vital aspect
of future world politics, significantly reducing the contributions the
country could make to the world response to global challenges.47

The absence of civil society in the external relations of the China Model
creates a number of restrictions, therefore: it restricts China’s under-
standing of governance and where governance should be directed; it
restricts the forms of China’s integration to largely functional agen-
cies and functional objectives; it restricts effective Chinese diplomacy
on critical security and governance issues because this would mean
recognizing the value of national and international civil societies as
contributors to governance. These restrictions, it should be noted, are
not in China’s interests – it makes China a less engaged and less influ-
ential member of international society than it might be; and it restricts
56 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

effective management on transnational governance challenges that

impact China’s own citizens.
China’s preference for a citizens’ society but not a civil society also
has repercussions for the international roles that Chinese people can
adopt under globalization. To date if we examine the participation of
Chinese citizens in globalization we can see that this has been almost
exclusively as economic or knowledge actors – as workers, as consum-
ers, as traders, investors, scientists and scholars. There has been a lim-
ited amount of horizontal communication about modern China as a
society that moves beyond the conventional narratives promoted by
the Chinese state. Thus although the Chinese state debates at length
the value and the need for new kinds of Chinese cultural soft power
(wenhua ruan shili) the culture promoted conforms to what the state
considers suitable for state-building and interest-defending purposes.48
This official version of Chinese culture may gain some exposure over-
seas; but this is not how civil societies communicate with, and learn
from, one another under globalization. China’s real cultural soft power
is its people – and yet at home and abroad this potential source of influ-
ence is constrained by the doctrine that culture is something that must
be authorized. Those artists and activists who will not confine their
expressions of being modern and Chinese to the forms and narratives
approved by the Chinese state end up as dissidents at home or exiles
overseas.49 There is moreover an ongoing problem with China’s ability
to retain its talented people. In 2012 the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences estimated that there were 45 million Chinese overseas  – the
largest migrant population in the world  – and that 150,000 Chinese
had gained permanent residency overseas in 2011.50 These individuals
were obviously those with high wealth and high skills who were able to
use globalization to negotiate their departure from China, and concerns
remained that many of those who are successful in modern China use
this as a passport to alternative citizenships.51
In looking at the China Model without an empowered civil society we
can make the following conclusions. Inevitably the China Model extends
into international society the distortions and restrictions it faces at home:
strong functional adaptation, weak normative adaptation, and a distorted
approach to institutionalization overall. The claim that China has insti-
tutionally adapted under global integration overlooks the fact that the
gap between China institutionalization and global institutionalization
has not closed that much in 20 years.52 Steinfeld argues persuasively
that China has ‘institutionally outsourced’: employing engagement with
external institutions to learn and adapt, but it is noticeable that the
 David Kerr 57

examples he uses are all functional categories – industrial restructuring,

cross-border transactions, creating ‘national champions’, strengthening
regulatory capacity.53 If we ask ‘Has China’s engagement with inter-
national law significantly improved the rule of law domestically?’ the
answer is ambiguous. Understanding of international law has undoubt-
edly increased awareness of the importance and potential of the rule
of law,54 but it has not in itself increased the quality of law available to
Chinese citizens because that would mean both functional and norma-
tive adaptation and the Party-state’s doctrine of law prevents that.55
This asymmetry between functional receptivity but normative dis-
tancing will continue to restrict China’s participation in international
society. This restriction is notable in both the governance and civil
society questions. China’s governance domains span the local, national
and international; but maintaining a staunchly state-centric approach
to governance restricts China’s field of vision and engagement on
critical issues. Recognizing the value of civil society in global govern-
ance is in the interest of China’s own citizens and of citizens in other
countries. On vital human security issues China’s refusal to be engaged
with international civil society may itself be a source of risk. If these are
the negative consequences of China’s internationalism without a civil
society, we should also take account of the positive potential of China’s
civil society. China’s international identity is undoubtedly a problem in
its relations with international society. The official explanation is that
this is because other countries do not understand China, its history, tra-
ditions and institutions. An alternative explanation is that the various
forms of international identity that China has proposed since 1949 have
been state-defined and state-interested. Allowing China’s civil society to
have more influence and authority over China’s international identity
would not only produce more creativity in this area but would encour-
age other civil societies to revalue their views of China. Thus, China can
not only increase its influence by allowing Chinese and international
civil societies to communicate and learn from each other more freely,
but can overcome some of the barriers in trust and understanding that
China faces in its global integration. Put simply China’s own citizens
are probably the largest unrealized source of China’s global influence.

Conclusion

It is unlikely that China’s citizens’ society is an alternative to the more

conventional civil society. China’s leaders and intellectuals continually
point to China’s differences from Western traditions and institutions.
58 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

That argument made sense 30 years ago but today civil society is not a
Western phenomenon but a global one. Indeed civil society mobiliza-
tion is strongest in countries that have modernized under globalization
in the last 30 years  – Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa  – just as
China has. Arguments about China’s particularism have to be set
against a social reality for China’s citizens that is substantially the same
as for citizens in many other countries, and perhaps especially other
countries of modern Asia.
Discussion of civil society in relation to China’s democratization is
to be expected. But civil society in China does not present itself as a
democratizing force in the first instance for three reasons: the mean-
ing of political society is managed by the Party-state; the institutions
of the state stand in contradiction to the attempted institutionaliza-
tion of the civil society; the state’s restriction of the civil society has
shown some capacity for adaptation, adding social management to
older mechanisms of coercion and corporatism. The future of Chinese
authoritarianism is hard to judge; but the limits of ‘socialism without
politics’ may already have been reached. Governance pressures will con-
tinue to rise but improving governance responses without significant
institutional reform may no longer be possible. Current evaluations
and future expectations of governance are detached in the responses of
Chinese citizens; but this separation cannot be maintained indefinitely:
as China’s citizens redefine political society their evaluations and expec-
tations of governance will converge. The principal location for this
convergence will be the struggle to move China from ‘law of the state’
towards ‘law over the state’: it will be seen in the struggle of Chinese
citizens to constitutionalize their state.
China’s reluctance to recognize the value of civil society in govern-
ance also has international consequences. A  China Model without a
civil society restricts rather than advances China’s international influ-
ence. In governance terms it prevents China’s engagement with the full
spectrum of international and global governance actors and issues. This
is not in China’s interests, the interests of its citizens, or the interests
of citizens of other countries. Equally, a China Model without a civil
society leaves China’s international identity in the hands of the state.
This creates unnecessary barriers restricting trust and communication
between China and other countries and prevents China’s most impor-
tant resource – its citizens – from playing a full part in China’s relation-
ship with international society.
China’s great rejuvenation is a work in progress and many contra-
dictions in China’s modernity need to be overcome before we can say
 David Kerr 59

with any certainty that national rejuvenation is achieved. These con-

tradictions include: Can China be successfully modern without one of
the commonest institutions of modernity, a civil society? Can China
achieve peaceful development without giving its citizens more control
over their own lives? Is the Chinese path to national rejuvenation an
alternative way of being modern – or is it a desire to be left alone? Does
China want to be integrated or does it want to be excepted? There is not
a single answer to these questions coming out of China, but multiple
responses reflecting the fragmentation of ideas about the future of the
country. Perhaps China will go on living with its contradictions – a per-
manently contradicted China – but perhaps it will resolve them as this
is what its internal and international governance needs and ambitions
would seem to require.

Appendix

Table 3.1 Trends in governance by percentile rank in three modernizing states,

1998–2012

1998 2012 Trend

98–12

China Control of Corruption 46 39 −0.798

India Control of Corruption 44 35 −0.779
Brazil Control of Corruption 61 56 −0.077

China Government Effectiveness 53 56 0.367

India Government Effectiveness 54 47 −0.001
Brazil Government Effectiveness 52 50 −0.684

China Political Stability/Absence of Violence 30 28 −0.415

India Political Stability/Absence of Violence 14 12 −0.300
Brazil Political Stability/Absence of Violence 31 48 0.143

China Regulatory Quality 37 44 0.799

India Regulatory Quality 33 34 −0.027
Brazil Regulatory Quality 66 55 −0.909

China Rule of Law 39 39 0.531

India Rule of Law 60 53 -0.379
Brazil Rule of Law 42 52 1.123

(continued)
60 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

Table 3.1 continued

1998 2012 Trend

98–12

China Voice and Accountability 11 5 −0.445

India Voice and Accountability 57 58 0.198
Brazil Voice and Accountability 54 61 0.671

China Aggregate rank 36.0 35.1

India Aggregate rank 43.7 39.8
Brazil Aggregate rank 51.0 53.6

Notes: Governance indicators by percentile rank (0, low; 100, high) for years 1998–2012.
Trend by OLS.
Source: World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators at http://data.worldbank.
org/data-catalog/worldwide-governance-indicators.

Notes and references

1. On the politics of governance in contemporary China see the collected
essays in ‘Growing Pains in a Rising China’, Dædalus, 143(2), Spring 2014.
Also, Hongyi Lai (2010) ‘Uneven Opening of China’s Society, Economy, and
Politics: pro-growth authoritarian governance and protests in China’, Journal
of Contemporary China, 19(67), pp. 819–35.
2. On the politics of stability preservation (weiwen) and rights defence (weiquan)
see Feng Chongyi (2013) ‘Preserving Stability and Rights Protection: Conflict
or Coherence?’, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 42(2), pp. 21–50.
3. Asia’s share of the world’s urban population increased from 39 per cent to
45 per cent 1991–2012; and China’s share from 14 per cent to 19 per cent.
China’s share of global urban population is now larger than that of the
European Union and North America combined. Population data from World
Bank database: http://data.worldbank.org.
4. ‘Xi Jinping: zaijie zaili, jixu wei shixian Zhongguo meng fendou’ [Xi
Jinping: make persistent efforts and continue the struggle to realise the
China Dream], http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2013/03-17/4650079.shtml,
17 March 2013.
5. In the Asian Barometer Survey III, 2011, 75 per cent of respondents in
China answered positively to the question ‘Over the long run, our system
of government is capable of solving the problems our country faces.’ Data
and analysis in Jie Lu ‘Democratic Conceptions and Regime Support among
Chinese Citizens’, Asian Barometer Working Paper Series, No. 66.
6. Giovanni Sartori (1970) ‘Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics’,
American Political Science Review, 64(4), pp. 1033–53.
7. This is a broadly Habermasian view of the civil society and the system of
law. See Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vols.1&2
(Cambridge: Polity, 1987); Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge: Polity, 1992).
 David Kerr 61

8. Gordon White, Jude Howell and Shang Xiaoyuan (1996) In Search of Civil
Society: market reforms and social change in contemporary China (Oxford:
Clarendon), p. 4.
9. Muthiah Alagappa (2004) Civil Society and Political Change in Asia: expanding
and contracting democratic space (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p. 51.
10. Ibid., p. 470.
11. Ibid., p. 475.
12. Yu Keping (2006) ‘Zhongguo gongmin shehui: gainian, fenlei yu zhidu
huanjing’ [China’s citizens’ society: concept, classification, and institutional
environment], Zhongguo Shehui Kexue, (1), p. 122.
13. Hu Jintao (2007) ‘Hold High the Great Banner of Socialism with Chinese
Characteristics and Strive for New Victories in Building a Moderately
Prosperous Society’, 15 October 2007, http://www.china.org.cn/english/
congress/229611.htm.
14. Wang Ming and Sun Weilin (2010) ‘Trends and Characteristics in the
Development of China’s Social Organizations’, The China Nonprofit Review,
2(2), pp. 153–76.
15. Jonathan Unger and Anita Chan (1995) ‘China, Corporatism, and the East
Asian Model’, The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, (33), pp. 29–53. Bruce
J. Dickson (2000) ‘Cooptation and Corporatism in China: The Logic of Party
Adaptation’, Political Science Quarterly, 115(4), pp. 517–40.
16. Joseph Fan, Randall Morck and Bernard Young (2011) ‘Capitalizing China’,
National Bureau of Economic Research, Washington, DC, NBER Working
Paper 17687, p. 18.
17. Jude Howell (2012) ‘Civil Society, Corporatism and Capitalism in China’,
Journal of Comparative Asian Development, 11(2), pp. 271–97.
18. Yiyi Lu (2007) ‘The autonomy of Chinese NGOs: a new perspective’,
China: An International Journal, 5(2), pp. 173–203. Andrew Mertha (2009)
‘“Fragmented authoritarianism 2.0”: political pluralization in the Chinese
policy process’, The China Quarterly, 200, pp. 995–1012. Tony Saich (2000)
‘Negotiating the state: the development of social organizations in China’,
The China Quarterly, 161, pp. 124–41. Patricia M. Thornton (2013) ‘The
Advance of the Party: Transformation or Takeover of Urban Grassroots
Society’, China Quarterly, 213, pp. 1–18.
19. Susan K. McCarthy (2013) ‘Serving Society, Repurposing the State: Religious
Charity and Resistance in China’, The China Journal, 70, p. 49.
20. Eli Friedman and Ching Kwan Lee (2010) ‘Remaking the World of Chinese
Labour: A  30-Year Retrospective’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 3,
p. 529.
21. On the differences between interest-based and rights-based labour activism
see, Feng Chen and Mengxiao Tang (2013) ‘Labor Conflicts in China: typolo-
gies and their implications’, Asian Survey, 53(3), pp. 559–83.
22. For further discussion of the social management strategy, see Frank N. Pieke
(2012) ‘The Communist Party and social management in China’, China
Information, (26), pp. 149–65.
23. ‘Guomin jingji he shehui fazhan di shi’er ge wu nian guihua ganyao’, [12th
Five Year Plan for National and Social Development], at: http://www.gov.
cn/2011lh/content_1825838_10.htm.
62 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

24. Kang Xiaoguang and Han Heng (2008) ‘Graduated Controls: The State–
Society Relationship in Contemporary China’, Modern China, (34), pp. 51–2.
25. ‘Nanfang Zhoumo Yuandan xianci liang banben bijiao’ [Two versions Of
Southern Weekly New Years message compared], at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/
zhongwen/simp/chinese_news/2013/01/130104_nanfangzhoumo_newyear.
shtml.
26. Xu Zhiyong (2012) ‘Zhongguo Xin Gongmin Yundong’ [China’s New
Citizens Movement], at: http://xuzhiyong2012.blogspot.com/, English
translation at: http://www.hrichina.org/en/crf/article/6205.
27. ‘Leading citizen movement activist Xu Zhiyong formally charged’, South
China Morning Post, Friday 13 December 2013, at: http://www.scmp.com/
news/china/article/1379903/leading-citizen-movement-activist-xu-zhiyong-
formally-charged.
28. ‘China court sentences Xu Zhiyong to four years in jail’, http://www.bbc.
co.uk/news/world-asia-china-25900272.
29. On civil society and democratization in China, see Yu Liu and Dingding Chen
(2012) ‘Why China Will Democratize’, The Washington Quarterly, 35(1), pp.
41–63. On civil society without democratization, see Jessica C. Teets (2013)
‘Let Many Civil Societies Bloom: The Rise of Consultative Authoritarianism
in China’, The China Quarterly, 213, pp. 19–38. On regime sustainability, see
Andrew J. Nathan (2003) ‘Authoritarian Resilience’, Journal of Democracy,
14(1), pp. 6–17. On the limits of regime sustainability, see Cheng Li (2012)
‘The End of the CCP’s Resilient Authoritarianism? A Tripartite Assessment of
Shifting Power in China’, China Quarterly, 211, pp. 595–623.
30. Pan Wei (2012) ‘Zhongguo Gongchandang de minben “xin lu”’ [The
Chinese Communist Party’s people-based ‘new way’], Zhengdang Zhengzhi,
(4), pp. 66–74. Zhang Weiwei (2012) ‘Meritocracy Versus Democracy’, New
York Times, 9 November 2012.
31. Angang Hu (2007) Economic and Social Challenges in China: challenges and
opportunities (Abingdon: Routledge), p. 222.
32. Andrew Wedeman (2012) Double Paradox: rapid growth and rising corruption in
China (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press), p. 141.
33. Ibid., p. 119.
34. ‘Wen Jiabao 2012 nian jizhehui dawen quanwen’ [Full text of Wen Jiabao’s
press conference question and answers, 2012], 14 March 2012, at: http://
china.caixin.com/2012-03-14/100368202.html.
35. Andrew Hall Wedeman (2013) ‘Xi Jinping’s Anti-corruption Campaign and
the Third Plenum’, Nottingham China Policy Institute  Blog, 15 November
2013, at: http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinapolicyinstitute/2013/11/15
/xi-jinpings-anti-corruption-campaign-and-the-third-plenum/.
36. Reuters UK, ‘China hikes defense budget, to spend more on internal secu-
rity’, 5 March 2013, at: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/03/05/us-china-
parliament-defence-idUSBRE92403620130305.
37. Jie Lu (2013) ‘Democratic Conceptions in East Asian Societies: a contextual-
ized analysis’, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 9(1), pp. 117–45.
38. Jie Lu (2013) ‘A Cognitive Anatomy of Political Trust and Respective Bases:
Evidence from a Two-City Survey in China’, Political Psychology, 35(4),
p. 483.
39. Ibid.
 David Kerr 63

40. Joseph Fewsmith (2013) The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
41. The China Model debate can best be framed as a Chinese form of moderni-
zation theory. It shares with previous modernization theories three charac-
teristics: it is a political economy question about the relationship between
national and international development; it is a political development ques-
tion about how modernity will or should change political relations between
states and publics; and it is a world politics question about the relationship
between pluralism and solidarism in international society  – is there one
model or many models of modernity? For examples of these three kinds
of discussion, see on political economy, Sean Breslin (2011) ‘The “China
model” and the global crisis: from Friedrich List to a Chinese mode of gov-
ernance?’, International Affairs, 87(6), pp. 1323–43; on political development,
Suisheng Zhao (2010) ‘The China Model: can it replace the Western model
of modernization?’, Journal of Contemporary China, 19(65), pp. 419–36; and
on political solidarism or pluralism, see Daniel C. Lynch (2007) ‘Envisioning
China’s Political Future: elite responses to democracy as a global constitutive
norm’, International Studies Quarterly, (51), pp. 701–22.
42. Mary Kaldor (2003) ‘The Idea of Global Civil Society’, International Affairs,
79(3), pp. 583–93.
43. Christopher R. Hughes (2011) ‘The Enduring Function of the Substance/
Essence (Ti/Yong) Dichotomy in Chinese Nationalism’, in William A.
Callahan and Elena Barabantseva (eds), China Orders the World: Normative
Soft Power and Foreign Policy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press
for the Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington, DC), pp. 118–42.
44. Zhang Weiwei (2012) argues that China’s uniqueness is a synthesis of four
uniques  – language, politics, society and economy  – and that the Chinese
civilizational state ‘cannot and should not be assessed by over-simplistic
dichotomies of “modern” or “backward”, “democratic” or “autocratic”,
“high human rights standards” or “low human rights standards”, as con-
tended by some Chinese and Western scholars’, The China Wave: rise of a
civilizational state (Hackensack, NJ: World Century), p. 67.
45. ‘Xi Jinping; make persistent efforts’ 17 March 2013.
46. See the essays in Guoguang Wu (2012) China’s Challenges to Human Security:
foreign relations and global implications (London and New York: Routledge).
47. Shi Yinhong (2011) ‘China, “Global Challenges” and the Complexities of
International Cooperation’, Global Policy, 2(1), p. 90.
48. See, for example, Hu Jintao (2012) ‘Jiandingbuyi zou Zhongguo tese she-
huizhuyi wenhua fazhan daolu, shili jianshe shehuizhuyi wenhua qiang-
guo’ [Resolutely follow the cultural development path of socialism with
Chinese characteristics, make great efforts to build a powerful socialist cul-
tural country], Qiu Shi Lilun wang: http://www.qstheory.cn/zywz/201201/
t20120101_133218.htm.
49. On the choice between silence and exile that confronts many Chinese
intellectuals, see Gao Xingjian’s Nobel Prize lecture 2000 ‘The Case
for Literature’, at: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/
laureates/2000/gao-lecture-e.html.
50. People’s Daily Online, ‘More Chinese to migrate, invest overseas: report’,
18 December 2012, at: http://english.people.com.cn/90778/8061735.html.
64 Civil Society and China’s Governance Dilemmas

51. Beijing Review, ‘Billionaires Emigration’, 20 December 2012, at: http://www.

bjreview.com.cn/forum/txt/2012-12/17/content_507298.htm.
52. In the appendix to this chapter I  provide an international comparison of
China’s governance performance, 1998–2012. Assuming the trend lines
can be accepted as broadly indicative, these suggest strong improvement to
regulatory quality, fair improvement to rule of law and government effec-
tiveness; declines in political stability and voice and accountability, and
significant decline in control of corruption. China is performing better than
India in three indicators – government effectiveness, political stability and
regulatory quality; its performance is weaker than Brazil in all indicators
except government effectiveness. If percentile ranks are aggregated  – and
I accept this is stretching methodology somewhat – China’s overall interna-
tional rank did not improve.
53. Edward S. Steinfeld (2010) Playing Our Game: why China’s rise doesn’t threaten
the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
54. Ann Kent (2008) ‘China’s Changing Attitude to the Norms of International
Law and its Global Impact’, in Pauline Kerr, Stuart Harris and Qin Yaqing
(eds), China’s New Diplomacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 55–76.
55. Peerenboom argues that there has been broad improvement to regulatory
efficiency in the legal system, but notes that legal reforms have reached an
impasse that requires resolution of issues that go beyond the bounds of a
thin or procedural rule of law to the differences that define competing thick
or substantive conceptions of rule of law. Randall Peerenboom (2007) China
Modernizes: threat to the West or model for the rest? (Oxford: Oxford University
Press) p. 229.
4
Worrying About Ethnicity: A New
Generation of China Dreams?
David Tobin

Introduction

President Xi Jinping’s China Dream is the ‘renewal of the Chinese

nation’ to become a ‘strong and prosperous nation’ (fuqing daguo).1
This chapter will analyse China Dreams as acts of identity articulation
to chart China’s (inter)national identity. It analyses China’s ethnic
minority policy debates which centre on arguments about whether
China should be a multi-ethnic state or a mono-ethnic nation-state.
The increasingly contested relationship between ethnicity and nation
is central to understanding how China’s leading thinkers articulate
who is China and how the answer will either propel or bring an end
to China’s rise. The chapter then explores how these different ethnic
futures are deeply intertwined with predictions about China’s position
in international politics. The China Dream thus becomes a way to chart
the future of China’s domestic and international politics and a means
to narrate who is China at home and abroad. William A. Callahan2 has
shown how Chinese exceptionalism is increasingly popular amongst
political elites and public intellectuals in China. The military inva-
sions of Afghanistan and Iraq alongside the 2008 financial crisis have
led to a perception amongst Chinese thinkers such as Hu Angang3 and
Zhang Weiwei4 that the soft power of the United States is declining and
China’s is concomitantly rising. Hu Angang’s approach is described in
his own book by Li Cheng as ‘optimism’ and ‘exceptionalism’.5 Zhang
Weiwei and other leading public intellectuals draw attention to the
failures of the US combined with China’s double-digit growth figures
to argue we are entering a ‘post-American century’.6 They argue that
China will emerge as a new type of superpower which relies on consent
rather than coercion to organize its international relations. These are

65
66 Worrying About Ethnicity

profoundly optimistic dreams of China’s future as a conservative return

to its historically rightful place in world affairs.7 The growing optimism
amongst scholarly elites is driving public debate through popular books
as well as online commentary in China and has culminated in Xi
Jinping’s signature slogan of the ‘China Dream’.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faces the challenge of how to
manage this rising optimism because it does not entirely reflect state
capacity or its level of economic development. Up to 200 million peo-
ple live on a dollar a day and by 2005 the Party stopped announcing
the number of public incidents of protest a day as the figure reached
500.8 China’s leading thinkers and policy-makers now ask how they
can avoid the ‘nightmare’ of ‘domestic’ insecurity derailing the China
Dream, most notably the increasingly violent challenges to CCP eth-
nic minority policies in Xinjiang and Tibet. The ethnically targeted
violence in Lhasa in the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the
rising body-count from self-immolating Tibetans have stimulated
policy debates marked by uncertainty and insecurity which bring China
‘nightmares’ to the foreground. The ethnically targeted violence of July
2009 in Ürümchi overshadowed the lead-up to the 60th anniversary
of the founding of the PRC. Uyghurs and Han were both victims and
perpetrators with official figures claiming 197 people were killed.9 The
violence showed that ethnic relations remain an important issue in
people’s daily lives in Xinjiang and a significant challenge to the Party-
state’s capacity to provide ‘stability’.10
The events of July 2009 led then Guangdong Party Committee
Secretary and now 3rd ranked Vice Premier, Wang Yang, to suggest
that China that needs to readjust its ethnic minority policies or there
will be further ‘difficulties’.11 Zhang Haiyang, Professor of Ethnology
and Sociology at the Minzu University of China (MUC) described the
events of Lhasa 2008 and Ürümchi 2009 as a ‘turning point’ for ‘ethnic
relations’ in China.12 Huang Zhu, chairman of the research office of
the United Front Work Department, framed the ‘minzu13 question’ as ‘a
question of life or death for our nation’.14 The CCP similarly explains
that ethnic unity (minzu tuanjie) is a ‘zero-sum political struggle of life
or death’.15 Discussions of ‘domestic’ ethnic minority policies, namely
using the minzu category to differentiate between ethnic groups, the sys-
tem of regional autonomy, and ‘preferential policies’ (youhui zhengce),
are now hot topics in China. These events and Wang Yang’s comments
sparked unusually frank debates amongst scholars at Beijing’s elite uni-
versities. These were publicized on the State Ethnic Affairs Commission
(SEAC) website as an ‘exploration of a Second generation of minzu
 David Tobin 67

policies’ and pitted two ‘generations’ of minzu policy scholars against

one another.16 These discussions are now being led by Second genera-
tion thinkers, Hu Angang and Ma Rong, who argue that the success or
failure of these policies will determine China’s international trajectory
toward the dream of rejuvenation. Chinese intellectuals are debating
who is China by linking China’s potential international futures to com-
peting conceptualizations of ‘domestic’ identity. Debates on China’s
future are increasingly concerned with domestic governance and the
avoidance of internal instability as means to strengthen China’s soft
power at the global level.17 Minzu tuanjie is taught to high school and
university students as the basis of the ‘great revival of the Chinese peo-
ple’, the basis of ‘national strength’, and the expansion of China’s inter-
national ‘soft power’.18 Ethnic minority identities are frequently framed
by the CCP and Chinese intellectuals as a source of backwardness and
insecurity for the Chinese nation. These feelings of insecurity are char-
acteristic of the ‘patriotic worrying’ Gloria Davies referred to in Worrying
About China: the critical reflexivity of intellectuals is constrained by the
need to contextualize academic discussion of the subject not in terms
of how to deconstruct and understand a problem but how authors can
help to construct China as a perfect civilization.19 The Second genera-
tion debate shows how China’s leading thinkers worry about ethnicity
as an obstacle to the perfection of the China Dream.
The China Dream, as Steve Tsang suggests in Chapter 2, promotes a
brand of nationalism and a ‘tightly guided narrative of China’s history’
within a ‘consultative Leninist’ institutional framework. However, now
that the China Dream discourse is written into public life, the party-state
no longer controls how it is interpreted, reinterpreted, and employed
to articulate a plethora of China Dreams. The party-state has long lost
its grip over the monopoly of Chinese nationalisms.20 The ability of the
CCP to articulate Chinese-ness is restricted by communications tech-
nology which has opened new spaces and possibilities for the articula-
tion of alternative meanings of Chineseness.21 Citizen intellectuals, as
Callahan calls them, in contemporary China occupy an ambivalent
position between power and resistance by discussing a multitude of
China Dreams which shape and are shaped by the official discourse of
the party-state.22 The China Dream offers a ready-made template for an
alternative world order but the way the phrase is reinterpreted to articu-
late alternative futures shows ‘nothing is inevitable and the possibilities
are endless’.23 The inter-generational minzu policy debate is ostensibly
between proponents of the First generation of ethnic minority policies
who wish to maintain China as a multi-ethnic state of 56 different
68 Worrying About Ethnicity

minzu groups and the Second generation who seek to transform China
into a mono-ethnic race-state (guozu). This debate has been framed as a
form of institutional competition between the SEAC state bureaucracy
as the First generation and the party’s United Front Work department
with Zhu Weiqun as a key representative of the Second generation.24
The debate is contained within the democratic centrism of Tsang’s
consultative Leninism and does not usually spill over into non-expert
contributions; internal party governance is marked by contestation
between factions but held together under the rubric of nationalism and
the party-line. However, the debate is about much larger questions faced
by leaders of a rising power seeking to negotiate a peaceful rise which
shocks the world but does not threaten it. Minzu and a shared national
identity have become issues which are seen by policy-makers and public
intellectuals as prerequisites to the China Dream. The inter-generational
debate asks ‘who is China?’ and what type of superpower will China
become in the context of ethnic minority policy recommendations.
This chapter will analyse the Second generation of minzu policy
debates not as an institutional or geopolitical struggle but as an idea-
tional struggle to articulate the future and the identity of the Chinese
nation. Their policy discussions are vague and the models of ethnic
relations proposed abstract but they are all clear in how they define who
is and who will be China. This chapter looks to how minzu, a source
of insecurity for China, is incorporated into China Dreams as an ever-
present potential nightmare threatening to derail China’s rise. The first
section will analyse the arguments of the Second generation of minzu
policy proponents to explore how they answer ‘who is China?’ by pro-
posing ‘fusion’ (jiaorong) and a politically engineered shared national
identity – guozu – as a solution to the insecurity caused by China’s eth-
nic conflicts. The second section analyses the responses from the First
generation to the Second generation proposals. These responses argue
for the maintenance of minzu as the key mode of ethnic differentiation
so that China remains a multi-ethnic state. Their goal is to achieve ‘gen-
uine equality’ under socialism to maintain ethnic diversity and political
stability. The final section will explore how the two generations concep-
tualize the dangers of majority ethnic chauvinism and minority ethnic
nationalism in constructing the future of China. The collapse of the
Soviet Union, the hegemony of the United States, and the more generic
and ambiguous Other of ‘the West’ haunt these debates and are offered
as model future dreams and nightmares for China. The argument is
that both generations stress the need for fusion and a stronger sense
of national identity in China. However, both generations approach the
 David Tobin 69

question of policy reform to achieve fusion by appealing to competing

conceptions of Chinese identity. The Second generation see China’s rise
as a reason to abandon group rights and promote economic competi-
tion between individual citizens modelled on representations of race
relations in the United States. The First generation maintain that group
rights are essential to maintain diversity and to protect minorities from
being economically and culturally excluded.

A new generation of ethnic minorities policies?

Following the riots of Lhasa 2008 and Ürümchi 2009 China’s minzu
policies face a ‘turning point’.25 As James Leibold26 has shown, calls for
reform have now become the mainstream amongst officials and public
intellectuals. Even many of the First generation scholars who support
the status quo in the inter-generational minzu policy debate admit
‘improvements’ must be made.27 A  major overhaul of minzu policy
in the short term is highly unlikely with the current political system
intact.28 The consultative Leninist institutional framework in China
places considerable restrictions on the type of reforms that scholars
are able to propose in public. Minzu policy reforms have to be framed
in terms of their contribution maintaining the current political system
and a brand of nationalism which frames China as an unbroken and
timeless civilization. The idea of China as an unbroken civilization is a
red line scholars cannot challenge without risking being censored. The
chapter analyses how the relationship between minzu and nation are
written within this discourse and how these authors are offering differ-
ent visions of the idea of China but shaped by the discursive demands
of CCP censorship and the need to worry about China. In the inter-
generational minzu policy debate, Chinese scholars of ethnicity put
forward their competing perspectives on the future of ethnic minority
policies and the relationship between ethnicity and nation in China.
The debate is over whether to emphasize the multi-culturalism or the
mono-culturalism in Fei Xiaotong’s hugely influential conceptualiza-
tion of the ‘plurality and unity’ (duoyuan yiti) of the Chinese nation.29
Writers calling for reforms lean less towards the pluralist approach to
language rights proposed by Smith Finley and are instead infused with
patriotic worrying about how to produce the perfection of this China
idea. The social scientists calling for reform, primarily Ma Rong and Hu
Angang, are based in elite institutions in Beijing at the China Academy
of Social Sciences (CASS), Tsinghua University, and Peking University.
They can be described as neo-conservatives because of their assertive
70 Worrying About Ethnicity

foreign policy positions.30 They worry about ethnicity in China and

frame ethnic identity as an obstacle to China’s rise. Their core argu-
ment is that China needs less pluralism and a stronger sense of shared
national identity. A shared national identity is then a means to reduce
inter-ethnic violence and, thus, for China to be the most powerful state
in global affairs.
The relationship between nation and ethnicity is crucial to under-
standing debates about China’s future and to answer ‘who is China?’.
From the outset of one-party rule, minzu was institutionalized as an
ethno-taxonomy mapping the ethnic makeup of China through its
classification project (minzu shibie).31 Marxist-Leninism and Stalin’s
four principles of nationhood32 are ordinarily cited as the basis of the
party-state’s ethnic minority policies and the solution to the minzu
problem.33 Minzu as a political category imposed from the outside is not
the same as the English term ethnicity which includes self-identification.
Of the more than 400 groups who applied to be a minzu, only 56 were
eventually accepted.34 The first task of minzu shibie was to differentiate
which groups were members of the Han ethnic majority and which
groups were ‘ethnic minorities’ (shaoshu minzu).35 Fei Xiaotong’s review
of the process of minzu shibie explained how researchers had to con-
vince the Chuanqing of Guizhou that were in fact Han and groups of
self-identified Mongolians in Hulun Buir, Inner Mongolia that they
were not Mongolian but Dawoerzu (Daur). This process was ‘scientific
research work’ which used historical records to determine the genealogi-
cal lineage and migrations of these peoples to tell them to which minzu
they belong.36 Furthermore, the party-state departed from Stalin and
Engels by rejecting the idea that nation and ethnicity were intimately
connected to modernity and a capitalist stage of development.37
The party-state worked to re-write Marxism so as to fit Marx to
Chinese history as much as Chinese history to Marx. In the spring of
1962, the party-state held a conference in Beijing to unify translations
of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin into Chinese. The conference decided
to abandon all use of tribe (buluo) and clan (shizu) thus translating all
social groupings in Marxist works from the beginning of time and for-
ever as minzu.38 This was what Prasenjit Duara calls a ‘regime of authen-
ticity’. The political policing of the discourse on minzu and Marxism
helped secure a fixed national subject moving in a linear progression.39
Political control over the Marxist conceptual framework, so central to
political vocabulary in China, has the effect of erasing the self-identified
differences between groups from the historical record. All tribes and
clans become ephemeral transitions to the inevitability of unification
 David Tobin 71

as Chinese under the minzu category. Ethnic minority regions are not
simply to be understood as a territorial component of China but its
peoples must identify with China and desire to be modernized by China.
For example, in the official narrative, every shaoshu minzu in Xinjiang
is said to have welcomed their ‘liberation’ from their ‘backward condi-
tion’ with the arrival of the PLA in 1949.40 Minzu can be retrospectively
applied to every period of history but there are ‘backward minzu’ and
‘civilized minzu’.41
Ma Rong, trained by Fei Xiaotong, has been very influential in offi-
cial and scholarly debates on anthropology in China in a way which
Hu Angang and Zhu Weiqun were not until very recently. Ma builds
on but subverts official discourse on minzu to propose a new model of
ethnic relations. His key proposal for a new model of ethnic relations
is that China has to ‘de-politicize’ (qu zhengzhihua) shaoshu minzu in
order to strengthen national identity and maintain political stability.42
For a state to be economically strong it has to reduce the ‘operational
costs’ of maintaining stability and ‘culturalize’ (wenhuahua) shaoshu
minzu. Ma Rong argues that it is culture and not ethnicity which
historically defined social distinction in China. Ma claims that the
distinction between ‘civilization’ and ‘barbarians’ in ancient China is
the basis on which the nation ought to be ordered and that the ethnic
category (minzu) was merely a temporary policy measure copied from
the Soviet Union.43 For Ma Rong, the barbarian/civilization distinction
is not between different civilizations but between ‘highly developed and
less developed “civilizations” with similar roots but at different stages
of advancement’. This draws from the materialist theories of cultural
evolution of Friedrich Engels and Lewis Morgan. Lewis Morgan’s Ancient
Society and Friedrich Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and
the State remain key texts and are celebrated in Chinese anthropology.44
However, Ma normatively frames Han Chinese culture as the apex of
civilization. Modernization and majority (Han) culture are thought of
as the same thing, thus, ‘barbarians’ can become developed by learning
Chinese culture (jiaohua).45
Ma Rong suggests that for China to be stable, it must replace the
political concept of minzu with that of zuqun which is also translated as
ethnicity but it is not institutionalized and therefore cannot be associ-
ated with the European concept of nationality.46 The idea was that de-
linking ethnicity from the politics of minzu and the regional autonomy
system would ‘culturalize’ minorities and thus make them less likely to
seek recognition and more likely to identify themselves through China
as a nationality. This conceptual move was a reinvigoration of debates
72 Worrying About Ethnicity

from Taiwan in the 1970s regarding how to categorize aboriginal peo-

ples. Gaoshanzu – ethnic people of Gaoshan – are officially designated
as a singular minzu but in practice they identify themselves using
multiple ethnonyms. Zuqun was seen as a solution by some to this gap
between officially ascribed identity categories and how people identify
themselves. These debates re-emerged in the early twenty-first century
and today zuqun is used as a substitute for minzu by some anthropolo-
gists in China. However, these debates caused considerable controversy
and highlight how minzu debates are central to answering the ques-
tion ‘who is China?’. In 2004, Hao Shiyuan, a First generation analyst,
had already written that the zuqun concept was a way for advocates
of Taiwanese independence to incite discord amongst Chinese people
of different provincial origins and split China.47 Ruan Xihu of MUC
similarly argued that it was a tool of ‘Taiwan separatists’ to damage
the ‘integrity’ of the Han minzu.48 During the communist period, the
party-state and anthropologists stated that minzu theory is the ‘theo-
retical frontline’ in ‘resolving the minzu problem’.49 The dramatic and
politicized response to conceptual debates illustrates the persistence in
the twenty-first century of the idea that anthropological theorists form
a front line to defend the discursive boundaries of the nation. One of
the key contributors to the debate, Hao Shiyuan, explained that the
responsibility of Chinese scholars is to show ‘firm consciousness to the
party, the state, and the people at the political level’.50 These comments
indicate how debates on minzu are central to how Chinese scholars
define who is China and are located within a framework of patriotic
worrying about ethnicity. The scholarly responses are so dramatic and
politicized because the authors see themselves in a life or death struggle
to write the history and future of the Chinese nation.
The minzu/zuqun debates also illustrate the flexibility of seemingly
rigid politicized concepts of China Dream, minzu and zuqun. Early
responses to the zuqun concept, largely from the social anthropol-
ogy establishment at MUC, were focused on the threat of national
disunity the discourse would produce. However, Ma Rong and Hu
Angang argue for zuqun to replace minzu on the grounds of the need
for a stronger Chinese national identity which will unite all and
relegate zuqun to the cultural, ‘apolitical’ sphere. Following the vio-
lence in Ürümchi in 2009, the CCP held a Xinjiang Work Forum to
address the situation, announcing ‘leapfrog development’ (kuayueshi
fazhan). Zhang Chunxian, party chief for Xinjiang, claimed this was
a ‘new starting point’ for Xinjiang.51 While official statements and
quotes from scholars, Hao Shiyuan and Ma Dazheng, stressed the
 David Tobin 73

focus was livelihood of the people and stability, Hu Jintao called for
greater minzu tuanjie education to ‘help local people identify with the
great motherland’.52 Political economist Hu Angang and his Tsinghua
colleague Hu Lianhe then published a controversial article in 2011
building on the official slogan, ‘contact, communication, fusion’
(jiaowang, jiaoliu, jiaorong), which emerged from the 2010 Work
Forum to summarize Hu Jintao’s call for a stronger shared national
identity.53 The two authors argued that since the 2010 Xinjiang Work
Forum, ethnic minority policies have moved from managing a multi-
ethnic society and the use of minzu categories to one of fusion.54
Hu Angang is at the forefront of public debates on foreign policy in
China. His articles lead the self-dubbed Second generation on the SEAC
website, and his ideas are the subject of most of the concerns raised by
the First generation discussed in the next section. Hu is often thought
of as an old-school Chinese socialist given that he describes the great
leap forward period as promoting modernization and ‘establishing the
basis of Chinese industrialisation’.55 Hu Angang writes that to bring the
‘dream’ of building a rich and strong China (fumin qiangguo) to frui-
tion requires the development of ‘ethnic regions’ and a more equitable
distribution of wealth.56 Hu Angang argues that by 2020 China will be
a ‘new type of superpower’ which uses its Leninist political system to
promote development and stability, ultimately surpassing the USA.57
His arguments about minzu policy are not forcefully made in his books
but his articles on the subject makes it clear that securing the national
identity (guojia rentong) of shaoshu minzu is a prerequisite to the ‘great
revival’ (weida fuxing) of the Chinese people.58 For Hu, the twenty-first
century is a globalized world of nation-states, thus China must promote
fusion amongst minorities and become a nation-state (minzu guojia) to
compete and ‘protect its interests’.59 Zhu Weiqun similarly connects
the need to use ethnic minority policies to promote China’s rise by
highlighting that fusion is in need of urgent attention because ‘western
enemies’ are attempting to stop China’s rise.60
The argument that China should become a nation-state goes to the
heart of debates on who is China. Until now, the CCP and the social
anthropology establishment have appeared to be in consensus that
‘one-nation, one-state’ is a Western concept unsuitable for China’s
national conditions and that China is instead a multi-ethnic state (duo
minzu guojia).61 Hu Angang and Ma Rong are challenging the estab-
lishment discourse yet they do so within the system and using the
language of socialism and nationalism the CCP seeks to promote. Hu
and Ma are examples of the interplay between citizen intellectuals and
74 Worrying About Ethnicity

official politics in contemporary China because they advocate reforms

without directly challenge the party’s authority. There are no voices
from Uyghur or Tibetan scholars and no serious calls to address ethnic
discrimination in the SEAC debate so this opening is highly curtailed
and managed. Hu and Ma are able to have their voices heard because
they do not challenge any of the fundamental features of consultative
Leninism. Hu’s core argument is that the party-state must actively pro-
mote fusion, with less attention paid to contact and communication.
Fusion into a mono-cultural race-state – guozu – through monolingual
education policies, the abandonment of formal minzu differentiation,
including the regional autonomy system and preferential policies,
is seen as necessary for China to have security at home and power
abroad.62 Hu Angang used his writings to re-introduce the concept
of guozu into Chinese public discourse. Towards the end of the Qing
dynasty and continuing through the Republican era nationalists such
as Liang Qichao and Zhang Binglin lamented the lack of a consistent
name for the Sinic community. They linked nationhood, statehood, and
modernity by arguing that a ‘race state’ (guozu) was the most advanced
stage of human evolution.63 Liang Qichao and Zhang Binglin were writ-
ing at a time of crisis where Chinese civilization was perceived as under
threat from the internal corruptibility of the Manchu government
and the international encroachment of European imperialists. Today,
the threat to the Chinese nation as defined by Hu and Ma is internal
discontent in Tibet and Xinjiang and the international challenge of US
hegemony.
The core concern for Hu Angang and Ma Rong, like Liang Qichao and
Zhang Binglin, is that the very existence of China as they understand
it is under threat. This existential threat comes from external forces but
is only a real threat if the state cannot strengthen the shared national
identity of different minzu. Ma Rong argues that China imitated the
European tradition of ‘politicising’ ethnic groups as the basis of nations
by institutionalizing minzu and permanently marking them through
the system of regional autonomy for minzu populated regions and
preferential policies.64 Hu Angang followed this argument in claiming
China, like the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, reinforced and politicized
ethnicity by using minzu leaders and regional autonomy to represent
their respective minzu groups thus enabling ‘rights and interests’ to
be framed through minzu instead of the nation.65 Zhu Weiqun gave
political clout to these arguments by suggesting that fusion must be
the basis of ‘minzu work’ and that the politicization of minzu leads to
the collapse of great nations such as the Soviet Union.66 These are not
 David Tobin 75

new ideas in Chinese scholarship. In 2001, Zhu Lun, a minzu theorist

at CASS, argued that regional autonomy for ethnic minorities is part of
Western nation-state thinking and that demands for autonomy always
result in demands for independence.67 Zhu Lun’s solution is ‘common
rule’68 (gongzhi), where autonomy should be granted to all ethnic groups
living in autonomous regions on an equal basis. What is new is that
citizen intellectuals and influential officials are now adding weight to
these claims by placing them at the forefront of public debates on the
future of China.
These scholars are also effectively tapping in to public opinion
amongst Han living in ethnic minority regions where complaints about
‘preferential treatment’ for ethnic minorities are increasingly common-
place.69 Hu Angang explains that national identity is weak in frontier
regions because minorities are treated preferentially. Hu goes further
to argue that preferential policies, namely extra points on university
admission exams and looser birth control policies70 are ‘discrimination
against the Han’.71 This discrimination is then framed as an impediment
to fusion, thus an obstacle to China’s rise. Hu argues that the media and
the education system must be used to strengthen guozu identity, includ-
ing strengthening of the national language (Mandarin) through ‘bilin-
gual education’ (shuangyu jiaoyu). Bilingual education has been official
policy in Xinjiang since 2004 and in practice means using Mandarin
as the sole medium of education with a maximum of four hours per
week study of a minority language.72 Zhu Weiqun claims that because
minzu identity depends on minzu consciousness China must remove
minzu categorizations from identity cards and promote Mandarin.73
His assertion that this is what minorities want is not substantiated and
contradicts ethnographic research conducted in the region as well as
incidents of protests against the policy.74 Ma Rong argues that Chinese
civilization and bilingual education are based on ‘teaching without
discrimination’ such that ‘barbarians’ can become Chinese through
acculturation.75 These arguments are not based on socialist claims to
equality and the need to protect group rights but rather an economi-
cally liberal perspective that rights are inherently individual. Ma Rong
claims rights are individual and not group-derived.76 Hu Angang also
argues that minority rights weaken guozu and China must move to a
model of equal rights for all citizens in a competitive market economy.77
These arguments are a heady mixture of appeals to Chinese tradition
and, as we shall see in the third section, reluctant admiration for the
USA. In policy terms, these scholars want to abandon the multi-cultural
model of regional autonomy and preferential policies so that the state
76 Worrying About Ethnicity

does not formally distinguish different minzu and only marks people as
individual citizens of a guozu.
The Second generation scholars suggest that a shared national identity
can be produced through conscious human design. Zhu Weiqun quotes
Zhou Enlai to suggest fusion by force from one minzu is ‘reactionary’ but
the ‘natural process’ of fusion which comes with common prosperity
is ‘progressive’.78 The official discussion of the slogan ‘contact, com-
munication, fusion’ tends to suggest this will be a long-term historical
process along the lines of the arguments of the First generation to be
discussed in the next section. However, Hu Angang uses this discourse
to forward his own argument that ‘leapfrog development’ will enable
Xinjiang to rapidly pass through the stages of development set out in
Marxist theory. Human agency will allow Xinjiang to leap across stages
of development in the way proposed by Mao Zedong during the great
leap forward period. Ultimately, the contribution of the Second gen-
eration to these debates is the conviction that the direction of history
towards guozu can be accelerated by state policy. Hu Angang’s dream
is for China to surpass the US to become a ‘new type of superpower’
but his dream first requires minorities to abandon self-identification
through ethnicity.

The First generation responds

Most of the key scholars of the First generation, such as Hao Shiyuan,
Ming Jie, Bao Shengli, Wang Xi’en and Zhang Haiyang, are based
at MUC and represent the social anthropology establishment as opposed
to the focus on political science at CASS and Tsinghua. Their responses to
the arguments of the Second generation have an intellectual advantage
in that they do not justify any policy proposals but closely deconstruct
the arguments presented by the Second generation and Hu Angang in
particular. They are also somewhat heated to a certain extent because
Hu Angang threatens their institutional and epistemological power to
define ethnicity in China. Hao Shiyuan repeatedly accuses Hu of ‘theo-
retical errors’,79 some make thinly veiled sarcastic remarks welcoming
new contributions to an old topic, and Bao Shengli specifically points
out that these scholars want to shut down Minzu education institutions
such as MUC.80 However, their most devastating responses are reserved
for the key question of ‘Who is China?’ because they accuse the Second
generation scholars of chauvinism and of reviving ethnic Han national-
ism under the guise of ‘national interests’.81 They are grouped together
because they oppose the specific reforms proposed by Hu, Zhu and Ma.
 David Tobin 77

For example, Zhang Haiyang’s earlier work celebrates Hegel and argues
that the materialism of Marx means people are thought of as ‘animals’
and minorities as ‘living fossils’, which runs counter to a Confucian
vision of a ‘harmonious society’.82 Zhang Haiyang is an interesting out-
lier in a debate that could have been framed as socialists versus capital-
ists because Hao Shiyuan, Bao Shengli, Ming Jie and Wang Xi’en are all
Marxists.83 Nevertheless, the fact that materialists and idealists are able
to set aside their differences to oppose these reform proposals suggests
there are very wide-ranging concerns regarding who China will be in the
future if Hu Angang’s dreams come to fruition.
Hao Shiyuan, head of the Research Institute for Ethnology and
Anthropology at CASS, opened his response to the Second generation
arguments, The Core Principles of China’s Minzu Polices are not easy to
improve, with a cutting rejection of their fundamental premises. For Hao,
the Second generation perspective is based on the ‘theoretical error’ that
China follows the Soviet model of ethnic policy.84 ‘De-politicisation’ for
Hao is a straw-man argument because China has never politicized minzu.
Wang Xi’en also refutes the premises of Ma Rong’s ‘de-politicisation’
argument, instead asserting that minzu policy has always been based on
Chinese Marxism and not Stalinism.85 Bao Shengli similarly argues that
globalization has led to a resurgence of minzu consciousness across the
world thus the regional autonomy system cannot be seen as the cause
of minzu consciousness and ethnic violence in China.86 Hao Shiyuan
argues that ‘de-politicisation’ in practice means ‘de-system-isation’,
‘de-autonomy-isation’, and ‘de-minzu-policy-isation’.87 The Second gen-
eration arguments are thus presented by Hao and the First generation
as a threat to the system of regional autonomy used to govern minzu
populated regions. Bao Shengli’s opening remarks acknowledge that
policy needs to be ‘improved’88 while Zhang Haiyang goes further in
his opening paragraphs to say that while the autonomy system ‘needs
improving’, abandoning it altogether would be unconstitutional.89 All
the contributions to the debate, like most minzu theory in China, are
vague when it comes to identifying ‘problems’ so as to avoid political
controversy. Yet, there is no shortage of acknowledgement amongst the
First generation that policy and the system need to be improved. The
struggle between the two generations is over the guiding theoretical
principles which serve as the basis of the system. Hao Shiyuan’s response
is so dramatic not because the Second generation offer different policies
but because they want to abandon the ‘core principles’ of diversity and
equality which structure China’s approach to ethnicity.90 Hao explains
that official policy has shifted in the reform era from ‘let some get rich
78 Worrying About Ethnicity

first’ to ‘common prosperity’ yet the guiding principle of ‘genuine equal-

ity’ (zhenzheng de pingdeng) has been maintained.91
The real concern amongst these scholars is that they object to the
Second generation definition of who is China. Ultimately, they are
arguing that the Second generation seek to abandon socialism and
promote a chauvinistic approach to ethnicity which ignores the histori-
cal reality of inequality and diversity in China. Bao acknowledges the
system was constructed to address ‘historical inequality’ between Han
and other ethnic groups.92 Hao references Han chauvinism (da minzu
zhuyi) to stress that there is still no economic equality between ethnic
groups in China today due to ‘historical, geographical, natural, and
cultural factors’.93 Zhang Haiyang wrote in 2006 that the ‘paradox of
development’ in the reform era has been that economic growth is nec-
essary to increase satisfaction amongst minorities but has exacerbated
inequality and marginalization.94 Zhang used his contribution to the
inter-generational debate to argue that Chinese society has a ‘disease’:
discrimination against shaoshu minzu.95 In the next section, we shall see
how the First generation are proudly arguing for a Chinese approach to
ethnicity that will contribute to global debates on the subject. However,
unlike the Second generation they are acutely aware that China, like
most other nations in the world, has an exclusionary dimension to its
history which results in ethnic inequality today both in terms of mate-
rial benefits96 and cultural respect.97
The First generation couch their arguments in terms of how to
address the reality of ethnic inequality. Hao Shiyuan explains that the
fundamental principle of the First generation is ‘genuine equality’ and
that only under socialism and an acknowledgement of group rights is
equality possible.98 Bao Shengli similarly explains that equality between
ethnic groups is the ‘guiding principle’ of modern, multi-ethnic states
and is the ‘fundamental basis’ of China (liguo zhi ben).99 Zhang Haiyang
argues for the need for ‘genuine equality’ from a Confucian perspec-
tive. For Zhang, China is a ‘multi-minzu, unified nation’ and ‘multi-
culturalism’ is the essence of the nation.100 It is diversity (he er bu tong)
which constitutes the nation and Zhang claims the Second generation
are incapable of dealing with the ‘contradictions’ in China between
‘multi-culturalism’ and ‘mono-culturalism’.101 If China does not pro-
mote pluralist (duoyuanxing) policy which accounts in the short term
for the reality that many minorities do not speak Mandarin, the ‘equal
competition’ and ‘citizen rights’ offered by the Second generation will
result in injustice. Zhang is fond of metaphors and here he narrates that
China is like a bird with two wings where tradition and modernity and
 David Tobin 79

assimilation and identity hold the nation together. He explains that

marking minzu on identity cards was to give rights to minorities but
this has led to discrimination in employment and public positions as
they face historically unresolved chauvinism of the majority. He then
accuses the Second generation of satisfying the prejudices and ‘discur-
sive hegemony’ of ‘mainstream culture’ without giving any thought to
unity or equality between different minzu.102
For the First generation the system of regional autonomy was estab-
lished to protect the ‘essence’ of China (diversity and genuine equality).
Hao Shiyuan argues the inter-generational debate is a ‘struggle’ between
‘equality’ and ‘assimilation’.103 Hao attacks the Second generation for
not understanding the system because regionalized development poli-
cies such as the Western Development Project (Xibu Da Kaifa) are part
of a national strategy to develop all of China. Many of the regions they
target (e.g. Inner Mongolia) have a majority Han population who ben-
efit equally.104 Bao goes further to tackle Hu Angang’s argument that
minorities are the ‘greatest beneficiaries’ of policy by saying they end
up being the biggest losers because resource extraction policies have
thus far been used to develop the East of China and subsidize domestic
energy consumption.105 Hao mocks Hu Angang for his excessive focus
on GDP. Hao suggests that Hu is ignoring growing poverty amongst
ethnic minorities since 2001 and that the strategy of ‘leapfrog develop-
ment’ is not the same as the great leap forward of 1958.106 Bao Shengli
argues that the Second generation want to replace minzu autonomy with
regional autonomy because they have been swayed by popular opinion
which frames China though the idea that the centre ‘looks after’ minzu
regions thus enabling an attack on preferential policies as ‘discrimi-
nation’.107 It is worth reminding ourselves that this debate does not
empirically analyse policy in any rigorous manner and is instead
focused on the conceptual and theoretical structure of China’s national
identity. Bao Shengli explains the Chinese system has never been about
‘preferential’ treatment, ‘care’, or ‘charity’ because it was constructed to
address historically persistent Han-minority inequality and discrimina-
tion towards non-Han.108 Hao Shiyuan summarizes the First generation
position that only with ‘genuine equality’ can China achieve socialism
but ‘genuine equality’ requires special measures such as preferential
policies to support historically marginalized ethnic groups.109 Bao
Shengli expands this argument to stress that ‘citizen rights’ and the
abandonment of minzu differentiation within China’s ‘marketisation’
path would only lead to a system of ‘majority rights’ because it would
reproduce existing inequalities between groups.110
80 Worrying About Ethnicity

After Hao Shiyuan deconstructs Hu Angang’s focus on GDP and claims

of discrimination against the ethnic majority, Hao Shiyuan states that
‘history shows us that civic nationalism often conceals ethnic national-
ism’ and asks if the Second generation are repeating these mistakes.111
Zhang Haiyang continues his metaphor that discrimination against
minorities in China is a ‘disease’ to argue that Chinese society needs
‘medicine’ rather than for people’s minzu identity to be concealed.112
Zhang cuts to the heart of the ‘who is China?’ question with a fiery
response that ‘national interests’ are the clothing of the Second genera-
tion but ‘great Han chauvinism’ and ‘assimilation-ism’ are the essence
of their proposals because they deny the ‘contribution’ and ‘loyalty’ of
ethnic minorities to China.113 Zhang conceptualizes China somewhat
differently from other First generation Marxists but he taps in to their
cultural evolution arguments to say that ‘bio-diversity is the result and
premise of evolution’.114 Zhang is arguing that the Confucian concep-
tion of diversity is both China’s historical tradition and its attainment
will mean China is more evolved than the mono-cultural proposals of
the Second generation. China, thus understood, is a diverse, multi-
ethnic state and the Second generation are a threat both to Chinese
tradition and evolution.
Zhang Haiyang thinks of diversity as a valued end in itself. Other First
generation thinkers do not value diversity in the same way but they are
concerned that power relations in China could mean that diversity is
eliminated through force by Han chauvinists in tandem with the mar-
ket. For Hao Shiyuan, Bao Shengli and Wang Xi’en minzu differentiation
and the regional autonomy system for ethnic minorities are central to
China’s tradition as a socialist nation. As Marxists, material inequality is
the root cause of ethnic identity and conflict. Hao Shiyuan explains this
by saying that ‘contact, communication, and fusion’ are only possible
with ‘genuine equality’.115 These thinkers follow the traditional party-
line that development will naturally resolve the ‘minzu question’. This
stream of thought resolves the tension between ethnicity and nation-
hood through the party-state’s Leninist discourse on cultural evolution:
culture can be normatively measured because stages of cultural devel-
opment are superstructural to economic development. The party-state’s
ethnic unity education materials in Xinjiang state its explicit goals
as ‘ethnic extinction’ (minzu xiaowang) and the fusion of 56 ethnic
groups into the common identity of Zhonghua Minzu. Its contention
that ‘only if ethnicity exists can there be an ethnic problem’ suggests
that the party- state’s approach is the eradication of ethnicity over
the long term.116 This phrase is drawn from the identity politics of
 David Tobin 81

the Cultural Revolution,117 a period of open hostility to all identities

deemed traditional and ethnic:

Ethnic extinction is an inevitable result of ethnic self-development

and self-improvement … It is the final result of ethnic development
at its highest stage … in this big ethnic family every ethnic group has
a higher level of identification – Zhonghua Minzu.118

Ethnic extinction is thus officially understood as an inevitable step in

the teleological progress where the economic development of minzu
will compel them to move up the ladder of cultural evolution and lose
their consciousness as groups. The stated end-point of this teleology
is a global classless society where all nations disappear as Karl Marx
and Mao Zedong envisaged. However, ‘ethnic extinction’ is dependent
on the continuation of the economic development experienced through
the reform period under ‘market socialism’.119 National prosperity and
the disappearance of ethnicity it entails require temporary ethnic unity
such that peoples in Xinjiang understand themselves as members of a
Chinese national community. Ethnic minority work (minzu gongzuo),
including minzu tuanjie education and Mandarin-medium education
with the ‘scientific development outlook as their basis’ are essential to
the ‘common unity and development of every ethnic group’.120 This
ideological work then is a temporary measure to eliminate the lefto-
ver remnants of ethnic identification from earlier historical stages of
development and transform ethnic identification into national iden-
tity (minzu tuanjie). Ming Jie, a First generation theorist, explains that
assimilation is a natural economic process and thus not a direct part of
the party-state’s ‘minzu work’.121
Ultimately, the inter-generational debate is not over ends but the
means to the end of fusion. The First generation of the inter-generational
debate has argued that a shared national identity will naturally emerge
with economic development. Wang Xi’en122 and Hao Shiyuan123 of the
First generation explicitly rely on the scientific inevitability of Marxist
dialectics to chart the future of ethnicity in China. Wang and Hao both
argue that Chinese Marxism and economic development will naturally
produce a unified nation over time. Zhang Haiyang aside, all these
scholars are in agreement that fusion and the disappearance of minzu is
the most desirable future for China. The debate focuses on whether to
achieve that end-state through the social engineering by human design
of the Second generation or a more equitable model of economic devel-
opment proposed by the First. The First generation think this should
82 Worrying About Ethnicity

be left to the anonymous inevitability of Marxist dialectics whereas the

Second generation believe they can socially engineer a shared Chinese
identity. The debate is over how to achieve that end–state; either
through the ‘natural’ means of socialist development (‘cultural evolu-
tion’) or through human design and planned state policy. The two ‘gen-
erations’ do offer different policy recommendations (e.g. bilingual vs
monolingual education). Yet, the reason the debate stimulates so much
commentary is that they offer different visions of the Chinese nation:
multi-ethnic vs mono-ethnic. The next section will analyse the way
the ethnic relations are woven into broader arguments about the type
of state China should model itself on to have a more powerful role in
global affairs.

Modelling the future

Since the spectacular displays of the opening of the Beijing Olympics,

debates in IR have suggested that China’s foreign policy is becoming
increasingly assertive with territorial disputes in the East and South
China seas highlighted as examples of China’s move away from
Deng Xiaoping’s ‘hide your capabilities and bide your time’ princi-
ple (taoguang yanghui).124 China is gradually expanding its influence
in constructing global norms, for example, through participation in
peacekeeping and diplomacy in Africa and Latin America.125 Within
China there are increasingly animated and diverse debates on China’s
future foreign policy directions but discussion has largely shifted from
whether China will be a great power to what type of great power
will China be.126 Most of the discussions on foreign policy in China
tie competing conceptualizations of ‘domestic’ Chinese identity to
how China should approach global affairs. For Hu Angang, the minzu
problem gives ‘capitalists’ the opportunity to split Socialist countries
and the ‘great revival’ thus requires a co-ordination of domestic and
international strategies.127 ‘Who is China?’ and what type of model
of international relations China should pursue are intimately related
questions. Officials, dissidents, and citizen intellectuals are all ‘thinking
up new ways of being Chinese’ and building the future of China at the
same time as the party-state has loosened control in some areas of daily
life.128 In David Shambaugh’s words, ‘China has no single international
identity today, but a series of competing identities.’129
Debates on ethnicity are often overlooked in analyses in IR but it is
becoming an increasingly central dimension of understanding who is
China and how China will shape future global affairs. Zhang Haiyang
 David Tobin 83

wrote in 2006 that since the May 4th movement China has adopted
‘Western methods and concepts’ to guide minzu relations such as
‘development’ and ‘minzu extinction theory’ (minzu xiaowang lun).130
Zhang goes on to argue that Chinese scholars need a new non-Western
vocabulary to guide minzu relations.131 Ming Jie wrote in 2012 that the
minzu concept is based on China’s ‘national conditions’ (guoqing) and to
be a ‘great power’, China has to display its ‘methods’ and ‘experience’ to
the world to ‘participate in international discourse building’.132 Zhang
Haiyang explains that China now ‘has the ability to lead the 21st cen-
tury’ and should contribute its own Chinese ideas to the world, namely
harmony.133 There is increasing optimism amongst scholars then that
China is able to solve its domestic problems and contribute its own
ideas to the world. However, as has been shown, the patriotic worrying
of these authors actually stimulates heated disputes over how to be patri-
otic and how to be Chinese. For example, Hu Angang places resolving
the minzu question at the heart of China’s national revival. However, in
contrast to Zhang Haiyang and Ming Jie, he argues that China’s ‘cultural
soft power’ first requires strengthening guozu identity through bilingual
education and the abandonment of the minzu concept altogether.134
Chinese anthropology and minzu theorists conceptualize China as a
multi-ethnic nation. This is positioned in stark contrast to the ‘Western
nation-state’ (‘one-nation-one-state’) and its historical experiences of
nationalist conflict instead of tuanjie in China.135 Outgoing President
Hu Jintao used his final speech to the 18th National Congress of the
CCP to announce that ‘we will never copy a Western political system’.136
This rejection of the West is not simply about institutional reform but
about the identity politics of exceptionalism in which Chinese lead-
ers order the world into two civilizational camps separated by distinct
cultural characteristics. Thus, China is understood as not the West and
is unified not divided by nationalism. Minzu as marker of difference is
thus subsumed into a larger national identity, which produces a unified,
non-Western China. To be minzu is to be Chinese and to be Chinese is
to be non-Western. The inter-generational debate is framed on the SEAC
website and in most of the articles as a choice between the US model of
a ‘melting pot’ and the ‘salad bowl’ of the former Soviet Union. There is
no empirical discussion of whether the USA can genuinely be described
as a ‘melting pot’ and the debates take place at the conceptual level. The
shadow of the West looms over these debates as authors compete to be
authentically Chinese and non-Western despite the fact that as Zhang
Haiyang’s arguments suggest, the USA and Soviet Union simply offered
different models of Western modernity.
84 Worrying About Ethnicity

The central concern of the Second generation is how to make China

strong at the international level. Hu Angang suggests that all ‘great
powers’ (da guo), namely the USA, have used a ‘melting pot’ model
(da ronglu moshi) and all collapsed empires (Soviet Union, Yugoslavia
and Czechoslovakia) used a ‘salad bowl’ model (da pinpan moshi).137
Hence, China must now focus ethnic minority policies, education, and
language policies on producing shared identification into a race-state
to achieve the China Dream of the ‘great revival’. Ma Rong earlier
argued that China had followed the Soviet model by recognizing,
institutionalizing, and marking minzu as permanent political units by
giving them territorial units, marking minzu on identity cards and assist-
ing minorities with ‘affirmative action’ policies.138 In 2011, in a series of
interviews with leading minzu studies scholars for the Global Times, Ma
Rong reiterated this position more forcefully, claiming that that minzu
separatism led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ma argues that the
Ürümchi riots of 2009 show us that China faces the same potential col-
lapse and that the ‘politicisation’ of minzu and the principle of ‘minzu
self-determination’ are the ‘greatest threats’ to China.139 Zhu Weiqun
repeated these claims in his contribution the SEAC debate stating that
the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia both collapsed because ‘political guid-
ance’ reinforced and politicized minzu consciousness by using minzu
cadres and offering self-determination to different minzu.140 In official
discourse, the autonomy system remains the ‘fundamental policy’ to
address the ‘minzu problem’.141 However, the Second generation are
drawing on official fears that China does not collapse in a manner akin
to the Soviet Union.
Despite their support for this policy, the First generation challenge the
underlying assumptions behind the looming threat of Soviet-style col-
lapse. Hao Shiyuan argues that it was not ethnic minority identities that
led to the collapse of the Soviet Union but the nationalist chauvinism
of the majority (da minzu zhuyi).142 In a rare turn to empirical evidence
in the debate, Hao shows that more than 90 per cent of Central Asians
voted to maintain the Soviet Union in contrast to less than 75 per cent
of Russians.143 Bao Shengli suggests that the Soviet Union ‘shocked the
West’ by ‘resolving the minzu problem’ but that Stalin and his successors
violated the constitution by oppressing minorities and promoting great
Russian chauvinism.144 Bao argues that ‘local nationalism’ (difang minzu
zhuyi) only emerged in response to majority chauvinism. Hao Shiyuan
likens Hu Angang, Zhu Weiqun and Ma Rong’s critique of preferential
policies to majority Russian chauvinists who were ‘political opportun-
ists’ instigating minzu-based politics with the call ‘don’t give them milk’
 David Tobin 85

to mean Russia should stop ‘subsidising’ non-Russian areas of the Soviet

Union.145 Hao and Bao both suggest that Russians and Han were the
greatest beneficiaries of national policies and their claims of ‘discrimi-
nation’ are merely evidence of majority chauvinism means. They both
argue that China does not follow the Soviet model because Russians
were under-represented in autonomous regions, which is not the case
in China and preferential policies are more regionally than ethnically
focused.146 The First generation then seek to invalidate the Second on
the grounds that these thinkers fundamentally misunderstand China
and minzu policy. The implications of these arguments are that because
the Second generation don’t know who China is, they will lead China to
a disastrous future. Hao Shiyuan and Bao Shengli are implying that the
reforms proposed are akin to the late Soviet model which will ultimately
lead to the break-up of China because it will spark a cycle of great Han
chauvinism and minority nationalism.
The model of citizen rights proposed by the Second generation dis-
cussed in the first section is explicitly modelled on their understanding
of the USA as a ‘melting pot’ model. Despite Ma Rong’s appeal for China
to ‘learn from its heritage’, he celebrates the USA as a model of minority
‘culturalisation’ and acculturation.147 In Ma’s representation of the USA,
race and ethnicity are disappearing because of industrialization and the
promotion of a ‘unified national culture’ through English as the sole
national language.148 Hu Angang followed this argument further to say
that the model of ethnic relations China adopts decides China’s sur-
vival. This illuminates the ‘life or death’ nature of the ‘who is China?’
question for these scholars. These thinkers do not discuss issues of race
riots, racial inequality or the legacy of slavery in the USA. They engage
debate at a level of abstraction where they are able to argue that the West
threatens the survival of China and that by becoming more like the
West China will become more like itself as China’s ‘heritage’ and
the contemporary USA are somehow reconciled as a singular model.
China’s relationship with the West hangs over these debates. The First
generation have responded to these policy proposals with the claim that
they do not fit China’s ‘national conditions’ as a non-Western, multi-
ethnic state. Bao Shengli, and other First generation thinkers, stress that
policy can only be ‘improved’ if it is according to China’s ‘national con-
ditions’ (guoqing) as a multi-ethnic state.149 On paper, Hu Angang and
Ma Rong’s individual ‘citizen rights’ model is akin to Western liberalism
and runs counter to both China’s promotion of equality under socialism
and diversity in a multi-ethnic state. Bao Shengli argues that the West
adopts citizen rights under a nation-state model where ‘culturalisation’
86 Worrying About Ethnicity

only conceals racial discrimination and a history of colonialism and

assimilation.150 Bao Shengli writes that China should ‘not repeat the
same mistakes as the West’.151 Bao is summarizing the concerns of the
First generation that the Second generation are essentially proposing
Westernization which contradicts who is China (equality and diversity).
These thinkers are haunted by the spectre of the West as a model that
China must not become, thus, the Second generation are feared because
they will not breathe life into the nation but portend its death.

Conclusion

The inter-generational minzu policy debate asks and offers different

answers to ‘Who is China?’ The debate is broadly divided into think-
ers promoting mono-cultural or multi-cultural models of managing
the relationship between ethnicity and nation. The plethora of Chinas
narrated in these discussions reveals tensions in contemporary China
between competing ideas of nationhood: China as an inclusive multi-
ethnic state where different ethnic groups live in harmony or China as
a Han nation with a singular model of national belonging. Hao Shiyuan
and Bao Shengli essentially accuse the Second generation of promoting
the worst of both worlds for China: a return to great Han chauvinism
and an embrace of Westernization. Zhu Weiqun of the Second gen-
eration acknowledges that the majority Han are at the forefront of the
‘struggle against separatism’ because they must fight against Han chau-
vinism as a form of ‘separatism’.152 This was quite a stunning admission
as discrimination between ethnic groups is rarely acknowledged in
China because it runs counter to the official model of China as a multi-
ethnic nation. However, their conclusions also indicate a distinct lack of
self-reflexivity amongst the scholars making these new proposals. Their
ideas (i.e. monolingual education and guozu) assume that China can
take Han ethnic culture as the basis of national culture. Zhang Haiyang
argues the Second generation suggestion to adopt a ‘melting pot’ model
and making minzu ‘secret’ contradicts their adulation for the USA and
Barrack Obama’s rise to power. Zhang Haiyang rightly points out that it
is ‘unthinkable’ in China that a Uyghur could become an ambassador
to Turkey or a Tibetan to India let alone that a top leader could be an
ethnic minority.153 The Second generation want China to be more like
their idealized vision of the USA but they do not offer any solutions to
China’s problems as to how to get there.
Vladimir Lenin said ‘scratch any Communist and you find a Great
Russian chauvinist … He sits in many of us and we must fight him.’154
 David Tobin 87

The difference between the two generations of minzu policy scholars

is not so much who is or who is not a chauvinist. The difference is
between who is self-reflexively aware of the reality that China, like the
USA and the Soviet Union, have histories of racism concealed by ‘civic’
and ‘inclusive’ models of national ‘dreams’. The First generation are
nationalists just like the Second and both are equally worried about eth-
nicity. However, the First generation are equally worried about majority
chauvinism as they are about minority ethnic nationalism. The Second
generation not only seek to conceal minzu but also a history of social
relations where the Han have been framed as the ‘nucleus’ of China
and non-Han groups as ‘barbarians’.155 The models these thinkers refer
to are used to model ideal representations of China. Neither generation
explicitly addresses the reality that China has sought to assimilate or
eliminate ‘barbarians’ since at least the late-Qing period when the slo-
gan ‘expel the Northern barbarians and restore China’ was revitalized
from the Ming dynasty.156
The authors of China’s ethnic minority policies in the inter-
generational debate frame a common Chinese national identity as a
prerequisite to China’s international strength. Ethnic minority identi-
ties are frequently framed by the CCP and Chinese intellectuals as a
source of backwardness and insecurity for the Chinese nation. This
‘patriotic worrying’ sets enormous limitations on and shapes how prac-
tical problems and solutions can be discussed. Problems and solutions
have to be framed in terms that are unreflexive and focus on perfecting
something, the theoretical foundation of which is the subject of the
debate. One obvious way to broaden the debate on ethnic minority pol-
icies in China and to enable it to effectively respond to the implications
on the ground would be to include, rather than worry about, hitherto
unheard ethnic minority perspectives on the subject.

Notes and references

1. Xinhua, ‘Profile: Xi Jinping: Pursuing Dream for 1.3 Bn Chinese’. Available
at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-03/17/c_124467411.htm,
17 March 2013 (last accessed 1 August 2013).
2. William A. Callahan (2013) China Dreams: 20 Visions of the Future (Oxford:
Oxford University Press).
3. Hu Angang (2012) Zhongguo 2020: yige xinxing chaoji daguo [China in 2020:
A New Type of Superpower] (Zhejiang: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe).
4. Zhang Weiwei (2012) Zhongguo Chudong [China Shock] (Shanghai: Shanghai
Renmin Chubanshe).
5. Hu Angang, Zhongguo 2020, p. 5.
6. Ibid., p. 3.
88 Worrying About Ethnicity

7. William A. Callahan, China Dreams, p. 1.

8. Minxin Pei (2012) ‘China’s Troubled Bourbons’. Available at: http://www.
project-syndicate.org/commentary/rising-political-uncertainty-in-china-by-
minxin-pei, 31 October 2012 (last accessed 21 January 2014).
9. James A. Millward (2009) ‘Does the Urumchi Violence Mark a Turning
Point?’, Central Asian Survey, 28(4), p.  354; Joanne N. Smith Finley (2011)
‘No Rights Without Duties: Minzu Pingdeng in Xinjiang Since the 1997
Ghulja Disturbances’, Inner Asia, 13(1), p. 77.
10. David Tobin (2011) ‘Competing Communities: Ethnic Unity and Ethnic
Boundaries on China’s North-West Frontier’, Inner Asia, 13(1), p. 7.
11. James Pomfret (2009) ‘China Needs New Policies After Xinjiang:
Official’, Reuters 30 July 2009. Available at: http://www.reuters.com/
article/2009/07/30/ us- china- xinjiang- idUSTRE56T1XJ20090730 (last
accessed: 21 December 2013).
12. Zhang Haiyang (2012) ‘“Xinren tuanjie hezuo” haishi “bilang bihei bizuo”?
Jinian Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo 62 nian he Xinhai Geming gonghe bainian’,
10 April 2012. Available at: http://www.mzb.com.cn/html/node/293068-1.htm
(last accessed 9 January 2014).
13. Minzu is officially translated as ‘ethnicity’. However, following Harrell
(1990), minzu should not be translated as ethnicity because the concept
does not entail self-identification as is often assumed in North American and
European anthropology.
14. Huang Zhu (2012) ‘Hewei di er dai minzu zhengce’ [What are the 2nd Generation
of Minzu Policies] Zhongguo Gongchandang Xinwenwang, 13 January 2012.
Available at: http://theory.people.com.cn/GB/16866893.html (last accessed
21 January 2014).
15. Ministry of Information (2009) ‘50ge “weishenme”: weihu guojia tongyi, fandui
minzu fenlie, jiaqiang minzu tuanjie duben’ [The 50 Whys: Protecting National
Unification, Opposing Ethnic Separatism, Strengthening Ethnic Unity Study
Book] (Wulumuqi: Xinjiang Education Press), p. 15.
16. State Ethnic Affairs Commission (2012) ‘Di er dai minzu zhengce tantao’
[Exploration of a 2nd Generation of Minzu Policies]. Available at: http://www.
mzb.com.cn/html/folder/292573- 1.htm?utm_source=China+Policy&utm_
campaign=0025fe4449-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email (last
accessed: 21 December 2013).
17. Nam Cho Young and Ho Jeong Jong (2008) ‘China’s Soft Power: Discussions,
Resources, and Prospects’, Asian Survey, 48(3), pp. 453–72.
18. Ministry of Information, Theoretical Department (2009) ‘Lilun redian mian-
duimian’ [Face to Face Hot Theory Topics] (Beijing: People’s Publishing
Press); Ethnic Unity Education Board (2009) ‘Minzu lilun changshi’ [Common
Knowledge of Ethnic Theory] (Beijing: Central Television and Broadcasting
Publishing House).
19. Gloria Davies (2007) Worrying about China: The Language of Chinese Critical
Inquiry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).
20. Peter Hays Gries (2004) ‘Popular Nationalism and State Legitimation in
China’, in Peter Hays Gries and Stanley Rosen (eds), State and Society in 21st
Century China: Crisis, Contention, and Legitimation (London: Routledge), p. 181.
21. James Leibold (2010) ‘The Beijing Olympics and China’s Conflicted National
Form’, The China Journal, 63, p. 24.
 David Tobin 89

22. William A. Callahan, China Dreams, p. 13.

23. Ibid., pp. 174–5.
24. James Leibold (2013) ‘Ethnic Policy in China: Is Reform Inevitable?’, East-
West Center Policy Studies, 68, p. 42. Available at: http://www.eastwestcenter.
org/sites/default/files/private/ps068.pdf
25. Smith Finley, ‘No Rights Without Duties’, p. 86.
26. Leibold, ‘Ethnic Policy in China’.
27. For example, see Bao Shengli (2011) ‘Ye tan zhongguo ke jinyibu wanshan
minzu zhengce’, 28 October 2011. Available at: http://theory.people.com.cn/
GB/16057587.html (last accessed 21 December 2013); and Zhang Haiyang,
‘“Xinren Tuanjie Hezuo”’.
28. James Leibold, ‘Ethnic Policy in China’, p. 51.
29. Fei Xiaotong (1988) ‘Plurality and Unity in the Configuration of the Chinese
People’, Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 15 and 17 November 1988.
Available at: http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/fei90.
pdf
30. James Leibold, ‘Ethnic Policy in China’, p. 13.
31. Thomas S. Millenary (2011) Coming To Terms with the Nation: Ethnic
Classification in Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press),
p. 135.
32. These four principles are common language, common territory, common
economic life and common psychology.
33. Hu Jintao (2009) ‘Hu Jintao zhute Zhongyang zhengzhiju changwu weiyuan
huiyi yanjiu buzhi weihu Xinjiang shehui wending gongzuo’, in Xinjiang
Uyghur Autonomous Region Party Commission Ministry of Information
(eds), Jiaqiang minzu tuanjie, weihu Xinjiang wending: xuanchuan jiaoyu cailiao
yi [Strengthening Ethnic Unity, Protecting Xinjiang Stability: Information
Education Materials No.1] (Wulumuqi: Xinjiang People’s Publishing Press).
34. Fei Xiaotong (1980) ‘Guanyu woguo minzu shibie wenti’ [On China’s Ethnic
Classification Project], Zhongguo Shehui Kexue, (1), p. 165.
35. Ibid., p. 166.
36. Ibid., pp. 170–4.
37. Ya Hanzhang (2008) ‘Guanyu minzu yici de yiming tongyi wenti’ [On the
Problem of Unifying Translations of Minzu], in Pan Jiao (ed.), Zhongguo
shehui wenhua renleixue / minzuxue bainian wenxuan [Selected Works of 100
Years of Chinese Social and Cultural Anthropology / Minzu Studies] (Beijing:
Zhishi Chanquan Chubanshe), pp. 117–19.
38. Ibid., 125–6.
39. Prasenjit Duara (1995) Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives
of Modern China (London: University of Chicago Press), p. 4; Prasenjit Duara
(1998) ‘The Regime of Authenticity: Timelessness, Gender, and National
History in Modern China’, History and Theory, 37(3), pp. 288–91.
40. Ministry of Information, ‘Lilun redian mianduimian’, pp. 150–1.
41. Ya Hanzhang, ‘Guanyu minzu yici de yiming tongyi wenti’, p. 116.
42. Ma Rong (2007) ‘A New Perspective in Guiding Ethnic Relations in the
21st Century: “De-politicization” of Ethnicity in China’, The University of
Nottingham China Policy Institute, Discussion Paper 21, pp. 2–3.
43. Ibid., pp. 5–7.
44. Pan Jiao, Zhongguo shehui wenhua renleixue, pp. 1–9.
90 Worrying About Ethnicity

45. Ma Rong, ‘A New Perspective in Guiding Ethnic Relations’, p. 7.

46. Ibid., pp. 4–5.
47. Hao Shiyuan (2004) ‘Taiwan de zuqun yu zuqun zhengzhi xilun’ [An Analytical
Discussion of Ethnicity and Ethnic Politics in Taiwan], Zhongguo Shehui
Kexue, (2), pp. 123–36.
48. Ruan Xihu (2004) ‘Minzu haishi zuqun’ [Minzu or Zuqun], Guanxi Minzu
Xueyuan Xuebao, (5).
49. Ya Hanzhang, ‘Guanyu minzu yici de yiming tongyi wenti’, p. 224.
50. Hao Shiyuan (2012) ‘Interview with Hao Shiyuan’, 14 July 2012. Available at:
http://english.cssn.cn/8202/820203/82020300/201207/t20120714_100287.
shtml (last accessed 1 December 2012).
51. People’s Daily, ‘Xinjiang Development at New Starting Point’, 7 July 2010.
Available at: http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/7055962.
html (last accessed 8 January 2014).
52. Xinhua, ‘Chinese Central Authorities Outline Roadmap for Xinjiang’s
Leapfrog Development, lasting Stability’. Available at: http://news.xinhua-
net.com/english2010/china/2010-05/20/c_13306534.htm, 20 May 2010
(last accessed 8 January 2014).
53. Zhongguo Minzubao (2012) ‘Zhengque lijie he bawo dang Zhongyang tichu de “ge
minzu jiaowang jiaoliu jiaorong”’ [Correctly Understanding and Grasping the
Party’s Idea of ‘Contact, Communication, Fusion’], 4 May 2012, p. 6.
54. Hu Angang and Hu Lianhe (2011) ‘Di er dai minzu zhengce: cujin minzu
jiaorong yiti he fanhua yiti’ (The Second generation of Minzu Policies:
Promoting Minzu Fusion and Prosperity in an Organic Whole), Xinjiang
Shifan Daxue Xuebao, 5.
55. Hu Angang and Wen Jun (2004) ‘Minzu diqu quanmian jianshe xiaokang shehui
de zhanlue xuanze’ [The Strategic Choice of Building a Moderately Prosperous
Society in Ethnic Regions], in Mao Gongning (ed.), Minzu zhengce yanjiu
wencong, di san ji (Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe), pp. 406–7.
56. Ibid.
57. Hu Angang, Zhongguo 2020.
58. Hu and Hu, ‘Di er dai minzu zhengce’.
59. Ibid.
60. Zhu Weiqun (2012) ‘Dui dangqian minzu lingyu wenti de jidian sikao’ [A Few
Thoughts on Current Problems in the Field of Ethnicity], Xuexi Shibao,
13 February 2012. Available at: http://www.studytimes.com.cn/2012/02/13/
01/01_51.htm (last accessed 11 July 2012).
61. For example, see State Council (2009) ‘Zhongguo de minzu zhengce yu ge minzu
gongtong fanrong fazhan’ [China’s Ethnic Minority Policy and the Common
Prosperity of all Ethnic Groups], (Beijing: People’s Publishing Press); and Pan
Jiao (2008) ‘Zuqun jiqi xiangguan gainian zai xifang de liubian’ [Ethnicity and
Related Concepts in the Later Developments of the West], in Pan Jiao (ed.),
‘Zhongguo shehui wenhua renleixue’, pp. 83–92.
62. Hu and Hu, ‘Di er dai minzu zhengce’.
63. James Leibold (2007) Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism: How the Qing Frontier
and its Indigenes Became Chinese (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 9–11.
64. Ma Rong, ‘A New Perspective in Guiding Ethnic Relations’, pp. 9–10.
65. Hu and Hu, ‘Di er dai minzu zhengce’.
66. Zhu Weiqun, ‘Dui dangqian minzu lingyu wenti’.
 David Tobin 91

67. Zhu Lun (2001) ‘Minzu gongzhilun’ (‘Minzu Jointonomy’), Zhongguo Shehui
Kexue, 4 (2001).
68. Zhu Lun translates Gongzhi as ‘jointonomy’.
69. David Tobin, ‘Competing Communities’, p. 15.
70. It should be noted here that the idea that ethnic minorities are exempt from
birth control planning remains a popular myth in China today. My own
fieldwork in Ürümchi 2009–10 inadvertently encountered ethnic minority
women who had been subject to forced abortions despite having only one
child. At the end of 2013, Radio Free Asia also reported stories on 4 Uyghur
women who were forced by authorities to undergo abortions. For example,
see Radio Free Asia (2013) ‘4 Uyghur Women Forced to Abort their Babies in
Xinjiang’, 30 December 2013. Available at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/
uyghur/abortion-12302013050902.html (last accessed 9 January 2014).
71. Hu and Hu, ‘Di er dai minzu zhengce’.
72. For example, see Eric Schluessel (2007) ‘Bilingual Education and Discontent
in Xinjiang’, Central Asian Survey, 26(2), pp. 251–77.
73. Zhu Weiqun, ‘Dui dangqian minzu lingyu wenti’.
74. In 2011, 20 teachers at a college in Ürümchi refused new lower-rank jobs due to
lack of Mandarin Chinese ability, with one stating ‘we are Uyghur, we should
keep our language for the preservation of our culture’. See Radio Free Asia, ‘Laid
off Profs Reject Deal’. Available at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/
deal-09272011172719.html, 27 September 2011 (last accessed 9 January 2014).
75. Ma Rong, ‘A New Perspective in Guiding Ethnic Relations’, p. 7.
76. Ibid., p. 11.
77. Hu and Hu, ‘Di er dai minzu zhengce’.
78. Zhu Weiqun, ‘Dui dangqian minzu lingyu wenti’.
79. Hao Shiyuan (2012) ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin yuanze bu rong gaibian’
[The Core Principles of China’s Minzu Policies are not Easy to Improve],
14 February 2012. Available at: http://theory.people.com.cn/GB/17106132.
html (last accessed 1 August 2013).
80. Bao Shengli, ‘Ye tan Zhongguo’.
81. Zhang Haiyang, ‘“Xinren tuanjie hezuo”’.
82. Zhang Haiyang (2008) ‘Jianlun Zhongguohua yu hexie shehui’ [Comments on
Sinicisation and a Harmonious Society], in Pan Jiao (ed.), Zhongguo shehui
wenhua renleixue, pp. 335–8.
83. It is worth noting that while Zhang Haiyang is listed as a key scholar on
minzu theory on the SEAC website, his contribution to this debate is the
most radical and is placed at the bottom of the list of articles on the ‘1st
generation’ section of the website.
84. Hao Shiyuan, ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin’.
85. Wang Xi’en (2012) ‘Ye tan zai wo guo minzu wenti shang de “fansi” he “shishi-
qiqushi” yu Ma Rong jiaoshou de jidian shangkui’, 10 April 2012. Available at:
http://www.mzb.com.cn/html/Home/report/293073-1.htm (last accessed
1 August 2013).
86. Bao Shengli, ‘Ye tan Zhongguo’.
87. Hao Shiyuan, ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin’.
88. Bao Shengli, ‘Ye tan Zhongguo’.
89. Zhang Haiyang, ‘“Xinren tuanjie hezuo”’.
90. Hao Shiyuan, ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin’.
92 Worrying About Ethnicity

91. Ibid.
92. Bao Shengli, ‘Ye tan Zhongguo’.
93. Hao Shiyuan, ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin’.
94. Zhang Haiyang, ‘Jianlun Zhongguohua yu hexie shehui’, pp. 340–1.
95. Zhang Haiyang, ‘“Xinren tuanjie hezuo”’.
96. For a quantitative analysis of Han–Uyghur income inequality in Xinjiang,
see Calla Wiemer (2004) ‘The Economy of Xinjiang’, in Fred Starr, Xinjiang:
China’s Muslim Borderland (London: M.E. Sharpe).
97. Further discussion in Gardner Bovingdon (2010) Uyghurs: Strangers in their
own Land (New York: Columbia).
98. Hao Shiyuan, ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin’.
99. Bao Shengli, ‘Ye tan Zhongguo’.
100. Zhang Haiyang, ‘Jianlun Zhongguohua yu hexie shehui’, p. 335.
101. Zhang Haiyang, ‘“Xinren tuanjie hezuo”’.
102. Ibid.
103. Hao Shiyuan, ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin’.
104. Ibid.
105. Bao Shengli, ‘Ye tan Zhongguo’.
106. Hao Shiyuan, ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin’.
107. Bao Shengli, ‘Ye tan Zhongguo’.
108. Ibid.
109. Hao Shiyuan, ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin’.
110. Bao Shengli, ‘Ye tan Zhongguo’.
111. Hao Shiyuan, ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin’.
112. Zhang Haiyang, ‘“Xinren tuanjie hezuo”’.
113. Ibid.
114. Zhang Haiyang, ‘Jianlun Zhongguohua yu hexie shehui’, p. 336.
115. Hao Shiyuan, ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin’.
116. Ethnic Unity Education Board, ‘Minzu lilun changshi’, p. 37.
117. Shijian Bianji Bu (2008) ‘Bixu bawo minzu wenti de jieji shizhi’ [We Must
Grasp the the Class Essence of the Minzu Problem], in Pan Jiao (ed.),
Zhongguo shehui wenhua renleixue, p. 220.
118. Ethnic Unity Education Board, ‘Minzu lilun changshi’, p. 17, p. 79.
119. Ibid, p. 17.
120. Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Party Commission Information
Department (eds) (2009) Jiaqiang minzu tuanjie, weihu Xinjiang wending:
xuanchuan jiaoyu cailiao yi [Strengthening Ethnic Unity, Protecting Xinjiang
Stability: Information Education Materials No.1] (Wulumuqi: Xinjiang
People’s Publishing Press), p. 86.
121. Ming Jie (2012) ‘Tonghua haishi gongtong fanrong fazhan?’ (‘Assimilation or
Common Prosperity?’), 20 February 2012. Available at: http://theory.peo-
ple.com.cn/GB/17106132.html (last accessed 14 January 2014).
122. Wang Xi’en, ‘Ye tan zai wo guo minzu wenti’.
123. Hao Shiyuan, ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin’.
124. For example, see David Shambaugh (2011) ‘Coping with a Conflicted
China’, Washington Quarterly, 34(1), p. 24; Randall Schweller and Pu Xiaoyu
(2011) ‘After Unipolarity: China’s Visions of International Order in an Era
of US Decline’, International Security, 36(1), p. 44; William A. Callahan (2010)
China: The Pessoptimist Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 1.
 David Tobin 93

125. Schweller and Pu, ‘After Unipolarity’, p. 54.

126. Shambaugh, ‘Coping with a Conflicted China’, p. 8.
127. Hu and Hu, ‘Di er dai minzu zhengce’.
128. William A. Callahan, China Dreams, p. 2.
129. Shambaugh, ‘Coping with a Conflicted China’, p. 9.
130. Zhang Haiyang, ‘Jianlun Zhongguohua yu hexie shehui’, pp. 352–3.
131. Ibid., p. 355.
132. Ming Jie (2012) ‘Minzu Yingwen fanyi yingwei minzu’ (‘Minzu Should be
Translated into English as Minzu’) 28 August 2012. Available at: http://opinion.
huanqiu.com/1152/2012-08/3074472.html (last accessed 14 January 2014).
133. Zhang Haiyang, ‘Jianlun Zhongguohua yu hexie shehui’, pp. 355–6.
134. Hu and Hu, ‘Di er dai minzu zhengce’.
135. For example, see Pan Jiao, ‘Zuqun jiqi xiangguan gainian zai xifang de liubian’;
Zhang Haiyang, ‘Jianlun Zhongguohua yu hexie shehui’; Ruan Xihu, ‘Minzu
haishi zuqun’; Fei Xiaotong, ‘Plurality and Unity in the Configuration of
the Chinese People’ and ‘Guanyu woguo minzu shibie wenti’; Ma Rong, ‘A
New Perspective in Guiding Ethnic Relations’.
136. Xinhua, ‘Xinhua Insight: China Never to Copy a Western System’.
Available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/special/18cpcnc/2012-
11/12/c_131968691.htm, 12 November 2012 (last accessed 21 January 2014).
137. Hu and Hu, ‘Di er dai minzu zhengce’.
138. Ma Rong, ‘A New Perspective in Guiding Ethnic Relations’, p. 10.
139. Global Times, ‘San xuezhe tan: Zhongguo ke jinyibu wanshan minzu zhengce’
[3 Scholars Comment: China Can Progressively Improve Minzu Policy].
Available at: http://news.sina.com.cn/pl/2011-09-20/103423185215.shtml,
21 September 2011 (last accessed 16 January 2014).
140. Zhu Weiqun, ‘Dui dangqian minzu lingyu wenti’.
141. State Council, ‘Zhongguo de Minzu Zhengce’, p. 19.
142. Hao Shiyuan, ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin’ .
143. Ibid.
144. Bao Shengli, ‘Ye tan Zhongguo’.
145. Hao Shiyuan, ‘Zhongguo minzu zhengce de hexin’.
146. Ibid.
147. Ma Rong, ‘A New Perspective in Guiding Ethnic Relations’, p. 10.
148. Ibid., p. 11.
149. Bao Shengli, ‘Ye tan Zhongguo’.
150. Ibid.
151. Ibid.
152. Zhu Weiqun, ‘Dui dangqian minzu lingyu wenti’.
153. Zhang Haiyang, ‘“Xinren tuanjie hezuo”’.
154. Terry Martin (2001) The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism
in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (New York: Cornell University Press), p. 3.
155. Fei Xiaotong, ‘Plurality and Unity in the Configuration of the Chinese
People’, pp. 203–4.
156. James Leibold, Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism, pp. 30–1.
5
A Swinging Pendulum:
The Chinese Way in Growth
and Development from 1800
to the Present Day
Kent G. Deng

Introduction: the debate on modern growth

in a premodern society

In the economic history literature, there has been a long debate on how
to generate and nurture modern growth in a premodern society with
a list of influential authors who have devoted their time and energy
contemplating ways to conduct social changes to accommodate modern
growth in a premodern society.1 This is because industrialization-cum-
modern growth only ever occurred ‘naturally’ once in England during
the eighteenth century. In other words, modern growth was historically
highly conditional and occasional. For the rest of the world, China
included, it was a learning process. If so, it was a matter of (1) how much
resistance to change from the Weberian notion of culture and values,2
(2) whether the elite wanted to have modern growth and (3) whether
the elite were able to create and manipulate indigenous socio-economic
conditions to allow modern growth to take root and reach maturity
and so on. Empirically, many societies have tried to generate and nur-
ture industrialization through reverse engineering. Good examples are
twentieth-century Soviet Union, Japan and the Asian Tigers as well as
nineteenth-century United States and Germany. Evidence shows that as
early as circa 1800 learning from the outside world – Western Europe, the
Soviet Union and the Asian Tigers – become obvious among the Chinese
elite. As a result, China behaved like a swinging pendulum between
different growth options. Opposite to the general impression, China’s
traditional culture and values did very little in stopping such a process.
This chapter then presents a long-term perspective of China’s path towards
a system of modern economic growth.

94
 Kent G. Deng 95

Stage One: ‘Sinocentrism’ when the pendulum

stayed on China’s side

If we consider learning from other civilizations, we see that China was

in fact very experienced. During its Ming-Qing Period (1368–1911),
there was a distinctive ‘Period of Sinocentrism’ c. 1600–1830 in which
China’s cultural supremacy and national sovereignty were not seriously
challenged from the West. Instead, a long string of European Jesuit
intellectuals as well as European merchants came to China for their
respective peaceful pursuits.3 Despite their religious agendas, the real
legacy left by these European Jesuit missionaries in China was post-
Renaissance science and technology mainly in the form of mathemat-
ics and astronomy. This was implemented by a long chain of highly
visible imperial appointments, starting from Matteo Ricci (1552–1610)
who reached Macao in 1582 and gradually worked his way to enter
Beijing in 1601 where his career as a knowledge broker began.4 He had
a fellow Jesuit with him named Diego de Pantoja (1571–1618).5 They
were succeeded by Sabbatino de Ursis (1575–1620),6 Johannes Schreck
(1576–1630),7 Johann Adam Schall von Bell (1592–1666),8 Nicolas
Longobardi (1565–1655) and Jacques Rho (1593–1638).9 Their inputs
were reflected in the Ming Imperial Almanac (Daming Chongzhen Lishu)
during 1629–34 and a zodiac armillary sphere, a quadrant, and a celes-
tial globe in the Ming Observatory.10 The political changeover to the
Qing rule made little difference; as well as Johann Adam Schall von
Bell, there were Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–88),11 Thoma Pereira (1645–
1708),12 Philippus Maria Grimaldi (1639–1712),13 Joachim Bouvet
(1656–1730),14 Jean Francois Gerbillon (1654–1707),15 Bernard-Kiliam
Stumpf (1655–1720),16 Joseph Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766),17
Ignatius Koegler (1680–1747),18 Andre Pereira (1690–1743),19 Augustin
de Hallerstein (1721–74),20 Antonius Gogeis (1701–71), Fé1ix da Rocha
(1713–81), José de Espinha (1722–88), José Bernardo de Almeida
(1728–1806), André Rodrigues (1729–96), Alexandre Gouveia (1787–
1807), Vervissimo Monteiro da Serra (?) and Gaetano Pires Pereira
(?–1838). The relationship between the Ming-Qing elite and the
European Jesuit intellectuals was one of mutual respect although
there were complaints that most Jesuit missionaries became Sinicized
and hence failed in their mission of Christianizing the Chinese as a
whole.21 The strong resistance to the spread of Christianity came from
the well-entrenched Confucian belief and ancestor worship, which led
to the notorious ‘Chinese Rites Controversy’. From the point of view
of the Chinese elite, the utility of Christianity was no more than to
96 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

‘complement Confucianism to make the latter better’ (tianxue bu ru)

instead of replacing the latter completely.
Obviously, the Jesuit missionaries who came to China offered their
services to the Empire and functioned as the knowledge brokers
between the West and the Qing elite. However, this was unilaterally
ended in 1773 by the Pope Clement XIV who decided to dissolve the
Society of Jesuits. The common interpretation of the Pope’s action
was that those Jesuit missionaries were seen as being converted by the
Chinese rather than the other way round. But by then, the Jesuits had
created and developed the desire and taste for things oriental. China’s
practices found their way to Europe. This is evident in the movement
of chinoiserie among the upper classes as well as the recognition of the
Chinese ideas of good governance among the thinkers on the other
end of the Eurasian Continent.22 In addition, European manufacturers
began to reverse-engineer goods produced by India and China.23 This
new fashion went hand in hand with trade with China. Opportunities
were systematically exploited by the West to trade directly with China
by partaking in China’s ‘tribute trade’, a miniature world system with
China in the centre. Huge quantities of foreign silver were absorbed by
China via trade as a result.24 The surge of China’s silver intake occurred
during the Qing, which shows how open China was (see Figure 5.1).
The ‘Manila Galleon Trade’ run by the Spaniards for over two centuries

Silver taels
6,000,000

5,000,000

4,000,000

3,000,000

2,000,000

1,000,000

0
1650 1685 1720 1755 1790 1825

Figure 5.1 China’s golden age of silver imports, 1650–1825

Source: Li Longsheng (2009) ‘Qingdai (1645–1911) Meinian Liuru Zhongguo Baiyin Shuliangde
Chubu Guji’ (Estimation of the Annual Inflow of Silver to China during the Qing Period,
1645–1911), Renwen Ji Shehui Kexue Qikan (Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences), 5(2),
pp. 31–58. Note: Data are in three-year intervals.
 Kent G. Deng 97

from the seventeenth century across the Pacific Ocean played a key
role.25 It is worth noting that with the attitude of acceptance China’s
silver stock was made of a collage of about all the possible shapes, sizes
and qualities under the sun, the common ones being (1) the Dutch
‘Knight with Sword’ (馬劍), (2) the Spanish ‘Original Silver Dollars’
(本洋) with various names such as ‘Hair Coils’ (大髻, 小髻), ‘Alien God’
(番佛), (3) Portuguese ‘Cross’ (十字), (4) Mexican Carolus Dollar or ‘Eagle
Dollar’ (鷹洋), and (5) American ‘Liberty Head’.26
Meanwhile, on the commercial front, there was the Canton cohong
system of monopoly whereby China’s foreign trade was closely regu-
lated by the Ming-Qing authorities to safeguard, as it should have
done, China’s economic sovereignty and interests. After all, apart from
silver,27 China needed very few items from the outside world while
China’s unique products of tea, porcelain and silk sold themselves glob-
ally, so much so that foreign traders had to put up with the Ming-Qing
state monopoly in order to get anything produced by China.28 On the
other hand, after 1773, a vacuum was created by the departure of the
Jesuits. This vacuum was quickly filled up by Western merchants who
had no prospects of serving the Qing Empire in the way the Jesuits had
done because of their social and educational backgrounds in a society
where the merchant class was politically marginalized by tradition. In
other words, European merchants were treated persistently very dif-
ferently by the Chinese state compared with their Jesuit counterparts.
This planted the seed for a shift in opinion about China from Sinophile
with the Jesuits to Sinophobe without the Jesuits, although Qing China
remained more or less the same.29 In this context, the attitude of Beijing
to foreign trade and foreign merchants was highly consistent since
Ricci’s time. This explains why in his letter of 1793 to King George III
of England (r. 1760–1820) Emperor Qianlong claimed that the Celestial
Dynasty of the Qing was so abundant that it relied on no goods from
Western countries which, in contrast, lived on China’s exports of tea,
porcelain and silk and that he was doing the West a favour in permit-
ting sea trade at Macao.30 With hindsight, instead of British commodi-
ties, if Earl George Macartney (1737–1806) had in 1792 offered the Qing
Emperor new European knowledge represented by Isaac Newton (1642–
1727), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), Adam Smith (1723–90),
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) and so forth, his embassy to
China would have fared much better. So far, from what is available
regarding the attitude of the Qing elite, such new European knowledge
would have been well received. A range of post-Renaissance books were
successfully translated into Chinese.31 Now the Jesuit-brokers were long
98 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

gone, Macartney, poorly advised on how to handle the formalities for

the Qing Court, entered a diplomatic impasse.32
Something else changed, too. During the ‘Period of Sinocentrism’ a
tie between China and the West was based on mutual respect or rapport
which resonated in both the Christian and Confucian teachings. In that
sense, China and Europe were on the same moral page. This was remark-
able since, by 1800, Europeans had had about a three-century long expe-
rience of colonization of the Americas and South and Southeast Asia.
But they did not see China as a next target despite their global military
supremacy. On the other hand, well-informed Chinese were well aware
of European technology in the form of ship design and weaponry,33
evident in Chen Lunjiong’s well-circulated Travels of the Seas (Haiguo
Wenjian Lu) written in 1730.34 But this old equilibrium was unilaterally
ended with a ruthless market-led model for commercial profit-making.
This was the new era of opium trade backed by military interference from
the Western powers in dealing with China. Opium was chosen by the West
as a substitute for silver to continue its trade with China.35 However, by
1800, some 70 years after the first commercial shipment of opium to China
by the Portuguese,36 the total importation of opium to China was merely
2,000 chests (maximum 240,000 Qing catties, or 143.2 tons) worth about
800,000–1,200,000 pesos (19.1–28.6 tons) a year,37 roughly 10 per cent of
the aforementioned value of China’s tea export of the time. The quantity
was not enough to make opium a ‘drug food’ for the general population.
After 1820, the importation and consumption of opium took off with
the opium prices rocketing in a typical demand shock scenario where
both the price and quantity increase (see Table 5.1a).38
The major economic impact of the opium trade was acutely felt in
China’s balance of trade: on the eve of the Opium War, China began
to suffer trade deficits with Britain (including India), as its tea exports
were unable to offset its opium imports (see Table 5.1b). China’s trade
deficits had to be paid in silver. It is documented that a total of 20 mil-
lion taels a year drained from China in the first half of the 1830s which
was increased to 30 million taels during the second half of the 1830s.39
Figure 5.2 shows the change in terms of China’s silver intake.
In the process, the West (Europe and the United States) systemati-
cally bypassed the Cohong monopoly at Canton and smuggled opium
in along China’s long boards. It worked. From 1810 to 1830, opium
import to China tripled.40 By the 1840 Opium War about 50 per cent
of adult males in coastal regions and 80 per cent of Qing officials had
become opium addicted.41 The moral issue aside, the track record of
 Kent G. Deng 99

Table 5.1a Demand shock: annual opium imports, 1800–35

Chestsa Weight (catty) Value (pesos)b Pesos [taels]/

catty

1800–5 3,562 401,960 2,009,800c 5.0 [3.2]

1805–10 4,281 484,580 – –
1810–5 4,713 534,980 – –
1815–20 4,633 519,740 – –
1820–5 6,774 729,320 33,502,440 45.9 [29.4]d
1825–30 12,108 1,312,440 56,930,593 43.4 [27.8]
1830–5 20,546e 2,217,260 63,866,684 28.8 [18.5]
1836–7 21,505 2,312,000 14,454,193 6.3 [4.0]
1838 50,000 6,000,000 15,000,000f 2.5 [1.6]
a
A chest contained 100–120 catties (133–140 lb) of 40 opium balls (the same size as a cannon
ball, 15 cm in diameter, 3 catties each), see Martin Booth (1996) Opium: A History (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1996), ch. 1.
b
1.56 pesos contained one tael of silver.
c
Maximum price based on 2,000 chests for 1,200,000 pesos, see E. H. Pritchard (1929) Anglo-
Chinese Relations during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Urbana: The University of
Illinois Press), p. 160.
d
One Qing catty was made of 16 taels. So, the average opium prices per catty were all higher
than silver in weight. The high-quality opium cost up to four times in weight of silver; see Qi
Sihe, Yapian Zhanzheng (The Opium War) (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press), vol. 1, p. 537.
e
It is worth noting that Chinese sources often put a figure of 25,000 to 35,500 chests a year
for the late 1830s including the factor of smuggling; see e.g. Zhongguo Shixuehu (ed.) (1954)
Yapian Zhanzheng (The Opium War) (Shanghai: Shenzhou Guoguang), vol. 2, p. 543; Kuang
Haolin (1989) Jianming Zhongguo Jindai Jingjishi (A Brief Economic History of Early Modern
China) (Beijing: Central National University Press), p. 38. China could easily afford these
inflated figures for opium imports. Morse’s data may be taken as the minimum.
f
Based on Article IV of The Treaty of Nanking regarding six million silver dollars for the
seized 20,000 chests of opium (1839 price). In exchange, during 1820–25, the amount of
tea exported from Canton at 29.2 taels of silver per picul was only enough to exchange for
0.91–1.45 catties of opium, or 69.0–109.9:1 in favour of opium.
Sources: H. B. Morse (1926–29), The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China,
1635–1834 (Oxford: Oxford University Press) vols 3–5; Timothy Brook and B. T. Wakabayashi
(eds) (2000) Opium Regimes, China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952 (Berkeley: University of
California Press), p. 204 (for 1838 figure). Chest–weight conversion, based on Gong Yingyan
(1999) Yapiande Chuanbo Yu Duihua Yapian Maoyi (Spread of Opium Consumption and Opium
Imports of China) (Beijing: East Press), pp. 281, 284–90, 292.

opium imports and silver drain only show how open China was to
the international market. In this context, it was logical for the Qing
authorities to ban opium imports. If China had been militarily strong,
this ban would have ended the opium trade. The West would have to
find something else to replace the narcotic, e.g. to switch back to silver.
The Jesuits would certainly have adopted this approach. But this time it
100 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

Table 5.1b Tea and opium trade (in 105 taels of silver)

Tea exported Opium imported Tea–Opium

1834–37 45.0 54.1 –9.1

1837–40 42.7 40.1 +2.6
1840–43 31.1 49.7 –18.6
Average 39.6 48.0 –8.4

Source: Chen Ciyu, ‘Yi Zhong Yin Ying Sanjiao Maoyi Wei Jizhou Tantao Shijiu Shiji Zhongguo
Duiwai Maoyi’ (Study of Nineteenth Century Sino-foreign Trade based on the Trade Triangle
of China, India, and Britain), in Maritime History Editing Committee (ed.), Zhongguo Haiyang
Fazhanshi Lunwen Ji (Selected Essays on the Maritime History of China) (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1984),
pp. 144–5. Measured by pound sterling, one pound sterling = three taels of silver.

Silver imports, taels

100,000,000

80,000,000

60,000,000

40,000,000

20,000,000

–20,000,000

–40,000,000

–60,000,000

–80,000,000
1832 1847 1862 1877 1892 1907

Figure 5.2 China’s silver imports, 1832–1907

Source: The same as Figure 5.1; cf. Lin Manhong, ‘Zhongguode Baiyin Wailiu Yu Shijie Jinyin
Jianchan, 1814–1850’ (China’s Silver Outflow and Decline in Gold and Silver Outputs in the
World, 1814–1850), in Wu Jianxiong (ed.) (1991) Zhongguo Haiyang Fazhanshi Lunwenji (Selected
Essays on the Maritime History of China) (Taipei: Academia Sinica), vol. 4, pp. 1–44.
Note: Data in a three-year interval.

was the battle-hardened British mercantilists who called the shots. They
opted for Social Darwinism.42 The British Industrial Revolution gave
the opium dealers the much needed ‘absolute advantage’ in military
competition. The 1840 Opium War was fought and won which ended
the ‘Period of Sinocentrism’. However, it would be a major misun-
derstanding of the Qing history and the Sino–foreign relationship to
view China’s Opium War defeat as evidence of China’s quintessential
 Kent G. Deng 101

conservatism and narrow-mindedness.43 Almost all non-industrialized

societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had the same expe-
rience. China was not alone.

Stage Two: ‘Westernization Movement’

when the pendulum began to swing towards the West

The period of Sinocentrism was followed by the ‘Westernization Movement’

(yangwu yundong) and ‘Self-strengthening Movement’ from circa 1860.44
It was not officially terminated until the end of the Qing in 1911. Its
momentum remained highly visible until as late as 1937. What triggered
this development was China’s empire-wide social unrest.45 Undoubtedly,
the military efficiency and strength of the West shown in the 1840 Opium
War embodied in modern military technology produced a demonstration
effect of the tyranny of sheer physical force with the minimum amount
of manpower. Moreover, it was logical to officially recognize the utility of
Western knowledge which the Ming-Qing elite were quite familiar with
thanks to the Jesuit intellectuals’ endeavour in the previous two centuries.
So, no further persuasion was needed. This time, however, it was the
Qing mandarins, not the European Jesuits, that functioned as brokers of
Western knowledge. To make this change, the Foreign Affairs Department
(Zongli Geguo Shiwu Yamen) was established in early 1861 as the beginning
of modern foreign relations and diplomacy in China.46
Because of that, China’s pendulum began to swing towards the West for
the first time. With it, some fundamental changes occurred in the attitude
of the Qing elite. Unlike the Jesuit period, China was no longer treated as
equal by newly emerged industrial powers. The new approach of the Qing
elite was ‘Chinese knowledge as the foundation and Western knowledge
for utility’ (中学为体，西学为用) whereby China’s internal order could be
maintained. Here, the very fact that Chinese knowledge was still regarded
as the foundation of the Chinese civilization shows the confidence of the
Qing elite. Even so, the European notion of Social Darwinism that rewards
the winner at the expense of the loser, something that was diagonally
opposite to the Confucian traditional values including ‘benevolence’ (ren)
and ‘golden mean’ (zhongyong), was accepted by the Qing Westernizers
(yangwu pai). Wang Maoyin (1798–1865), the Deputy Minister of Wars,
famously argued in 1858 that: ‘It is not impossible to resist the Europeans
if we learn from their strength (erfei jingwufa zhi keyu).’47
Unlike the Jesuits, who limited themselves to Beijing, the Westernizers
had much wider appeal to the Qing literati in the provinces. Zeng
Guofan (1811–72), the undisputed leader of the movement, was
reported to be able to attract a group of the Confucian elite to work for
102 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

him. Rong Hong (1828–1912, also known as Yung Wing), the very first
Yale-educated Chinese, was deeply impressed:

There were living in his military headquarters at least two hundred

officials, gathered there from all parts of the empire, for various
objects and purposes … The picked and noted men of China were all
drawn there by the magnetic force of his character and great name.48

Rong himself ended up working for Zeng as a commercial representative

to supply American machines to Zeng’s arsenal. Training and education
were first targeted. In 1866, Zuo Zongtang (1812–85) commented that
to learn from the West depended much on education.49 The old way of
transforming European knowledge continued in the form of translation,
only on a much larger scale and scope (apart from technical aspects of
European knowledge, humanities being given unprecedented atten-
tion) comparable with the time when Buddhism was first introduced to
China over a millennium before. According to Liang Qichao’s (梁启超)
statistics in 1896, there were 352 Western books translated during the
Westernization Movement.50 The newly established Capital Foreign
Language Academy (Jingshi Tongwen Guan) in 1869 in Beijing appointed
William A. Martin (丁韪良, 1827–1916), a Yale-educated missionary, as
Director who consequently served the institute for the next 25 years.
Twenty-four textbooks were produced by the academy, including law
(x 6), mathematics (x 3), astronomy (x 3), chemistry (x 3), linguistics (x 3),
physics (x 2), medicine (x 2), economics and world history.51 International
law was given priority by the academy since China’s door was now widely
open to the West.52 In Shanghai, there was another centre for book trans-
lation called ‘Translation Division of the Jiangnan (Kiangnan) Arsenal
(Jiangnan Zhizaoju Fanyigua)’, established in 1868. It hired John Fryer
(傅兰雅, 1839–1928), a Briton, as Chief. The division produced in all 129
books in three decades. Its output covered mathematics (calculus and
analytical geometry), electricity, metallurgy, chemistry, medicine, phys-
ics, astronomy, geology, geography and cartography, steam-engine ships,
shipyards, marines, weapons, communication, navigation, sea routes,
naval warfare, coastal defence, ship deployments, battle formation and
annual budgets.53 It was also responsible for China’s first modern scien-
tific journal Magazine of Nature (Gezhi Huibian).54
Manufacturing modern arms was given priority by the Westernizers.55
The Jiangnan Arsenal was largest of its kind in East Asia of that time.56
In 1879, the quality of its work force was recognized as close to that of
 Kent G. Deng 103

contemporary Europe.57 Other arsenals mushroomed across Qing prov-

inces (see Table 5.2).
Militarily speaking, the effectiveness of the adoption of foreign ideol-
ogy and technology was testified by the crackdown on the empire-wide
social unrest (i.e. the Nians, Taipings and Muslims) in the 1860s and
1870s. In 1861 alone, the Qing elite troops under the command of Zeng
Guofan fired a total of 500,000 catties of bullets (250 tons) to eliminate
10,000 Taiping troops; the Qing side lost only 100 men.58 According
to Augustus F. Lindley, an English merchant who joined the Taiping
Movement, the war was one-sided in 1860–4 with a fatality ratio of
61:1 in favour of the Qing government.59 What is striking here is that
the Westernizers already worked out what is commonly called ‘dynamic
advantage’ in that economic advantage is artificially created against the
God-given ‘absolute advantage’ of the economy in cheap labour which
made capital investment and technological progress less attractive. It
should thus have been irrational for China to adopt expensive modern

Table 5.2 Qing provincial arms industry

Location Starting in Annual output

Suzhou 1865 Bullets (100,000 rounds)

Shanghai 1867 Rifles (65,000), bullets (8.6 million),
cannons (742), shells (1.6 million),
gunpowder (6.7 million pounds), and
ships (15)
Tianjin 1870 Rifles (52), bullets (16.1 million),
shells (40,000), and gunpowder
(6.1 million pounds)
Guangzhou 1874 Bullets (240,000)
Chengdu 1877 Rifles (18,681), bullets (3.3 million),
and shells (5,400)
Hubei 1890 Rifles (18,250), bullets (15.6 million),
cannons (96), shells (84,000), and
gunpowder (7,200 pounds)
Nanjing 1899 Rifles (18), bullets (131,500), cannons
(64), and shells (65,800)

Sources: Based on Xu Tailai (1986) Yangwu Yundong Xinlu (Re-examination of the Westernisation
Movement) (Changsha: Hunan People’s Press), pp. 25, 28, 32, 34, 35, 36. Li Yunjun (ed.)
(2000) Wanqing Jingji Shishi Biannian (A Chronicle of Late Qing Economic History) (Shanghai:
Shanghai Classics Press), p. 423. For the Jiangnan Arsenal, see also M. C. Wright (1957) The
Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism, the T’ung-Chih Restoration, 1862–1874 (Stanford: Stanford
University Press), p. 293.
104 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

firearms.60 But China did it anyway. This approach re-emerged again

and again in China’s pursuit for modernity in the following century.
The Westernizers went beyond the battle field to import the whole
package of modern infrastructure in the forms of shipbuilding, tel-
ecommunication, transport and banking. Until the end of 1880s, Qing
shipyards built larger and more powerful warships than their counter-
parts in Meiji Japan (see Table 5.3). In the following decades, during the
1884 Sino–French War and the 1894 Sino–Japanese War, the new Qing
naval fleet performed very well. It threw more shells on the French and
technically won the war. China lost only at the diplomatic table. It
allowed Japan to have a narrow victory due to the Japanese sneak attack
to start its undeclared war. In both wars, the final result could easily
have gone in a different way. By 1887, all provincial capital cities and
strategic locations in China were linked up by a telegraphic network of
over 23,000 kilometres (46,450 li).61 Li Hongzhang (1823–1901), a later
leader of the Westernization Movement, was behind this new infra-
structure, saying that ‘A telegraph network for the coast line will keep
us informed a thousand li away.’62 Unlike all the arsenals, the network
even made business profit.63 By 1936, China’s telegraphic lines grew to
100,000 kilometres.64
Railways also took off, attracting persistent interest of foreign direct
investment.65 What striking is that investors’ confidence remained
high despite China’s internal instability. Foreign capital dominated
railway investment in China (see Table 5.4a).66 Most extraordinarily, the
construction of these lines frequently continued to enter political and
military troubled zones without being stopped.

Table 5.3 Chinese and Japanese naval shipbuilding capacity, 1875–85

Name Length Beam Draught Horse power

Chinese-built ships (Jiangnan Arsenal)

Zhiyuan (1875) 300.0 chi 42.0 21.0 1,800
Baomin (1885) 225.3 36.0 14.3 1,900

Japanese-built ships (Yokohama Shipyard)

Seiki (1876) 203.0 ft 35.0 13.0 443
Tenryu (1885) 210.0 35.0 17.0 1,267

Note: chi ≈ ft.

Sources: Based on Wei Yungong (1905) Jiangnan Zhizaoju Ji (A History of the Jiangnan Arsenal)
(Shanghai: Wenbao Books); Wang Ermin (1963) Qingji Xinxing Binggongyede Xingqi (Rise of
New Arms Industry during the Qing Period) (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia
Sinica), p. 82; Hansgeorg Jentschura, Dieter Jung and Peter Mickel (1977) Warships of the
Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869–1945 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press).
 Kent G. Deng 105

In 1894, China had only about 360 kilometres of railway lines in

aggregate. It grew to over 9,610 kilometres by 1911, 13,000 kilometres
by 1927 and then 21,800 by 1937.67 The growth was a whopping
60-fold over four decades with an annual growth rate of 10 per cent,
faster than most industries in China of the time due to its obvious
competitive edge in the market. The rationale of such growth was the
railway’s comparative advantage in transport cost (in yuan/ton) (see
Table 5.4b):
Moreover, railway transport saved time by a factor of 4.9 (days/1,000
kilometres, as in 1924) (see Table 5.4c).

Table 5.4a Pattern of investments in railways, 1888–1946

Total Foreign Chinese, private Chinese, state

Projects 90 76 10 4
Investment* 1,398.2 1,078.9 299.7 19.6
% in Total 100.0 77.2 21.4 1.4

Note: * In million taels of silver.

Sources: Based on Research Centre of History of Railways in China (ed.) (1996) Zhongguo
Tielu Dashiji, 1876–1995 (Main Events in the History of Chinese Railways, 1876–1995) (Beijing:
China’s Railway Press); Yang Yonggang, Zhongguo Jindai Tielushi (A History of Railways in
Modern China) (Shanghai: Shanghai Books, 1997).

Table 5.4b Comparative transport costs

1923 1934

Railway 0.032 (100) 0.024 (100)

Carts 0.33 (1031) 0.30 (1250)
Pack animals 0.19 (594) 0.18 (750)
Wheelbarrows 0.12 (375) 0.19 (800)
Porters 0.32 (1000) 0.34 (1417)

Source: Julean Arnold (1926) China, A Commercial and Industrial Handbook (Washington, DC:
Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce), p. 533; Zhang Ruide, (1987) Pinghan Tielu He
Huabei Jingjide Fazhang , 1905–1937 (The Pinghan Railway Line and Economic Growth in North
China, 1905–1937) (Taipei: Institute of Early Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1987), p. 16.

Table 5.4c Travel time, 1924

Railway 1.2 days

Traditional means 5.9 days

Source: Zeng Kunhua (1924) Zhongguo

Tielu Shi (A History of Railways in China)
(Beiping: Yianjing Press) pp. 669, 763–6,
812.
106 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

In this context, all the early resistance was overcome quickly. From
1910 to 1936 railway freight measured by ton-kilometres increased
over four-fold; and passengers measured by person-kilometres, over six-
fold.68 There were number of linkages related to this railway growth.
During the same period China’s locomotives and freight cars both grew
by a factor of three. China’s coal output also closely trailed the railway
growth and increased at 5.9 per cent per annum in 1912 to 1936.69
Additionally, China’s motor-road length tripled from 1927 to 1936,
reaching 111,000 kilometres. Combined, China’s modern overland
transport system totalled 132,800 kilometres.70 Less known is that by
1937 China had 2.7 million kilometre-long air links.71 All these figures
were comparable with India of the time.
Investment in new industries was supported by a strong growth in
China’s banking and capital market which grew 10-fold in the 1910s
and 1920s (in million silver yuan) (see Table 5.5).
Huge progress was made by China’s own banking sector with two-
digit growth rate per annum.72 To substitute for the lack of private
entrepreneurship, the Qing state and private business joined forces and
ran a ‘public–private partnership’ called ‘merchant operations under
official supervision’ (guandu shangban), a scheme under which the
Qing state provided licences, legal protection and business opportuni-
ties while the private capitalists amassed capital, expanded networks
and explored the market. The most cited example is ‘China Merchants’
Steamership Company’ (Luchuan Zhaoshangju) set up in 1873 with
capital of 2.6 million taels.73 It successfully competed with the best
commercial fleets of the West and Japan. This created the precedent of
what is called state-led capitalism in the country. In terms of invest-
ment in the civilian industry, private firms (shangban) counted for the
vast majority among modern enterprises: of the 167 modern firms

Table 5.5 Growth in capital markets, 1911–25

Banks Total capital 1900 price Index (1900 price)

1911 16 21.6 19.2 100

1915 53 45.2 40.7 212
1920 103 88.1 117.4 611
1925 158 169.1 196.7 1,024

Source: Guo Xianglin and Zhang Liying (1999) Jindai Zhongguo Shichang Jingji Yanjiu (The
Market Economy in Early Modern China) (Shanghai: Shanghai Finance and Economics
University Press), p. 158. Price conversion is based on Liu and Wang, Market and Economic
Growth, p. 179.
 Kent G. Deng 107

established from 1863 to 1895, 151 (90.4 per cent) were outright pri-
vate, including 12 under ‘government supervision’ (guandu shangban).
Only 13 firms (7.8 per cent) were government-owned (guanban) and
three (1.8 per cent) were government and private joint-ventures (guan-
shang heban). These firms were entirely market-oriented.74 As a result,
light industry was steadily modernized. By 1895 China’s modern cot-
ton textile industry had 2,150 modern looms and 185,000 spindles
worth 5.2 million taels.75 By the end of the nineteenth century, China
had a three-pronged structure for its modern sector: mining, transport-
communication, and light industry (see Table 5.6).
Regardless of what has been said about the differences between
reforms in the provinces and Beijing, the climax of the Westernization
Movement was in fact the radical ‘100-Day Reform’ in 1898 which
involved the young (just 27 years old) Emperor Guangxu (r. nominally
1875–1908, actually 1875–98) and his eight advisers Kang Youwei, Liang
Qichao (1873–1929), Lin Xu (1875–98), Liu Guangdi (1859–98), Tan
Citong (1865–98), Yan Fu (1854–1921), Yang Rui (1857–98) and Yang
Shenxiu (1849–98). During the three months, over 100 Imperial edicts
were issued, including abolishing eight-legged essays (bagu), releasing
Bannermen from military tenure, trimming government departments,
establishing a state-run post and a central bank, promoting modern tex-
tiles, shipbuilding, mining and railways, and re-building the navy. The
young emperor modelled himself after ‘enlightened monarchs’ of the
time: the Prussian King Frederick (r. 1740–86) and Habsburg Emperor
Joseph II (r. 1765–90).
The reform was however short-lived due to the in-fighting among
different interest groups. But the momentum of the Westernization
Movement continued, increasingly in the direction of political
reform towards a constitutional monarchy from 1898 to 1906.76 Early
advocators of a constitutional monarchy included the well-informed

Table 5.6 Industrial structure

Number of firms Capital, in million taels

Total modern firms 167 100% 19.2 100%

Mining 37 22.1 8.5 44.2
Transport-communication 3 1.8 5.8 30.2
Light industry 108 64.7 4.3 22.4
Source: Data based on Xu Tailai, (1986) Yangwu Yundong Xinlu (Re-examination of the
Westernisation Movement) (Changsha: Hunan People’s Press, 1986), pp. 76–84. All the silver
yuan figures are converted at one yuan = 0.637 taels.
108 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

Feng Guifen (1809–74), Zheng Guanying (1842–1922) and Xue Fucheng

(1838–94). All were members of Li Hongzhang’s personal bureaucracy.
Their view was that some sort of democracy was inevitable when China
moved towards modernity. Zheng famously commented in his 1894
Warning during the Time of Peace and Prosperity (Shengshi Weiyan) that
‘The essence of ending chaos and achieving wealth and strength lies not
in tough ships and powerful guns alone; it depends much on a parlia-
ment with which consensus across society can be reached from the top
to the bottom.’77 They maintained that the British–German constitu-
tional monarchy was the best suited for China. The Franco–American
style of democracy, they reckoned, was less favoured because of the
venerability to political stability.78
The moment finally arrived in 1908–9 when new legislations were
drafted regarding the formation of a parliament. The new law speci-
fied that all males of the age 30 and above were entitled to be elected.
All males above the age of 25 had the right to vote provided they met
certain criteria.79 A  provisional parliament with 1,677 members was
established.80 It was replaced by the first parliament of 196 members
in 1910.81 If this experiment had been allowed to continue until the
1930s, China’s political landscape would have looked very different.
Sun Yat-sen’s alleged republic was in fact run by Yuan Shikai who first
implemented reform towards a constitutional monarchy and then won
a landslide victory in the 1913 national election of the new republic.82
Unfortunately, this experiment was stopped by Yuan himself who
decided to restore the moribund monarchy as a political institution,
à la Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) a century before, a blunder that
opened the floodgate for European political radicalism to China.

Stage Three: ‘Sovietization’ when the pendulum

swung to European radicalism and Russo-centrism

During the entire Westernization Movement (including the Self-

strengthening Movement) a balance was maintained between what was
the foundation and what was the utility. Progress was made towards
modernity but China’s own cultural identity was carefully preserved.
All this was changed in 1918 when two Soviet secret agents, identified
as A. A. Ivanov and S. A. Polevoi (or A. A. Иванов and С. А. Полевой),
made contact with some Chinese radicals to export communism,
a European ideology and political system, to China.83 In December
that year, the Soviet collaborator Li Dazhao (1888–1927) launched
his campaign for ‘victory of Bolshevism in China’.84 Three years later,
 Kent G. Deng 109

the Chinese Communist Party was established as a branch of the

Comintern. The Comintern agent Dutch-born Henk Sneevliet (pseu-
donym ‘Maring’, Chinese names ‘Ma Lin’ and ‘Sun Duo’, 1883–1942)
called the shots. According to Chen Tanqiu (1896–1943), an early com-
munist leader, from 1922 to 1937:85

All aspects of the Chinese Communist Party’s life, struggle, policy

as well as the growth and consolidation of China’s Red Army and
China’s Soviet Territories have been aided and instructed by the
Comintern.

The Comintern funding quickly multiplied, as the party had no hope to

finance itself (see Table 5.7).
The early party leader Cheng Duxiu thus openly admitted in 1923
that ‘Almost all our party revenues come from the Comintern.’86 A new
approach for China was described by Mao Zedong as yibian dao in his
1949 essay ‘People’s Democratic Dictatorship’ (Lun Renmin Minzhu
Zhuanzheng).87 In this regard, the early balance between China’s tradi-
tion and changes from the outside world disappeared. Rather, it became
Soviet learning as the foundation and for utility.
Less expected was how this European radical ideology also made
inroads into the leadership of Chinese Republicans (Guomindang), partly
because of Sun Yat-sen’s ‘three populist doctrines’ (sanmin zhuyi) with
heavy doses of European ideology.88 But this was further changed into
what were called Sun’s ‘three key policies’ of ‘allying with the Soviet
Union, allying with the Communists and supporting workers and
peasants’ (lian e, lian gong, fuzhu gongnong), as Sun became more and
more radicalized. Here, the prime mover was again Moscow. It was in
the best interest of the Soviet Union to have a pro-Soviet China on its
border. The Soviet double dipping between the Chinese Communists

Table 5.7 Comintern funding to Chinese Communist Party

1921–22 16,655 silver yuan

1924 36,000
1927 > 360,000
1928–32 3,000,000

Source: Yang Kuisong (1999) Zhuoxiang Bolie, Mao Zedong Yu Mosikede

Enen Yuanyuan (Communist Break-up, Personal Scores of Mao Zedong
with Moscow) (Hong Kong: Sanlian Books), pp. 187–9.
110 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

and Republicans began right from the start. In early 1921, before the
formation the Chinese Communist Party, Sneevliet, the lurking Soviet
spy, already contacted Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) in person.89 Soon, in
1923, Sun paid his visit to Moscow, meeting all the Soviet top statesmen
and Red Army chiefs except Lenin. In the same year, Sun and the Soviet
Ambassador to Beijing, Adolf Abramovich Joffe (or Адольф Абрамович
Иоффе, Chinese name ‘Yue Fei’, 1883–1927), produced Sun-Joffe Joint
Declaration (Sunyue Lianhe Xuanyan).90 The declaration is commonly
seen as Soviet official recognition of Sun’s regime, although the Beijing
Military Government was at the time the internationally recognized
authority to govern China. A year later, the Comintern agent Borodin
(real name Mikhail Markovich, or Михаил Бородин, Chinese name
‘Bao Luoting’, 1884–1951) was appointed Sun’s ‘special adviser’.91
After Sun’s death in 1925, Borodin stayed on in the inner circle of
the Guomingdang for another two years to help the party seize state
power through war against Beijing.92 Borodin had a good reason to stay
because the Soviets provided Sun’s party with weapons (over 100,000
pieces) and the finance for both the Huangpu (Whampoa) Military
Academy (or huangpu junxiao) and the civil war called the ‘Northern
Expedition’. The Soviet General Vasily Konstantinovich Blyukher (or
Василий Константинович Блюхер, commonly ‘Galen’, Chinese name ‘Jia
Lun’, 1890–1938) led several dozen Soviet officers to organize Sun’s
military.93 The Soviet Corp had become so powerful that it was widely
regarded as Sun’s shadow government.94 Thanks to the Soviet Union
and Comintern, Sun’s party began to play a prominent role in China’s
politics in the twentieth century.
But the honeymoon between Moscow and Sun’s party was over in
1927 when Sun’s successor, General Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975),
sacked Borodin and purged all the Communists from his party and
government. Another Republican leader Wang Jingwei did the same
in his controlled region.95 In the next decade, Chiang changed his
patron. A string of high-profile advisers from the German military came
to China to help Chiang with administration, military training and
warfare. General George Wetzell (dates unknown) and General Hans
von Seeckt (1866–1936) played an important role in Chiang’s mili-
tary victory over the communist separatists in October 1934. General
Alexander von Falkenhausen (1878–1966) was in charge of Chiang’s
military strategy during the vital years of 1934 to 1938 when Japan
stepped up its war against China. He even led Chinese soldiers in the
Shanghai defence campaign in September 1937. Then, when Hitler
intervened and severed the tie, Chiang switched to the US. During
 Kent G. Deng 111

1938–44, Chiang’s government borrowed an equivalent of 82 per cent

of China’s annual total GDP to support its war effort. Over half of the
loans came from the United States.96 The aid from the United States was
uninterrupted from both the Sino–Burmese Highway and the air-link
over the Himalayas (known as the ‘Hump’).
Meanwhile, after the German direct attack on the Soviet Union,
the Soviet leadership accepted a Japan-controlled China on the Soviet
border. All the Soviet aid to China’s war effort ended in April 1941.
A  Soviet–Japan treaty of mutuality was followed to recognize the
Japanese colony in Manchuria in exchange for Japan’s recognition of
the Soviet colony in Outer Mongolia, both sides preying on China.
Sure enough, the attitude of Chinese Communist leadership changed,
too: from 1942 onwards it avoided fighting the Japanese as much as
it could.97 Mao’s intension was to carve China into ‘three kingdoms’
between a Japan-controlled zone in Manchuria and the East Coast, a
Soviet Union-supported zone in North China plus Outer Mongolia, and
Chiang’s zone for the rest of China, backed by the West.98 Thus, after
1941, the real forces fighting the Japanese on China’s soil were Chiang’s
partly because of the determination of Western allies on the Far East
Front. Mao’s loyalty was promptly rewarded at the end of the Second
World War when Japan surrendered unconditionally. Stalin’s Red Army
moved in to Manchuria when the Japanese defeat was obvious, handing
over land and war matériel obtained from the Japanese to Mao’s forces
to change the balance of power in China in order to create a pro-Soviet
Manchuria and beyond. It worked thanks to the decision of Chiang’s
Western patrons to implant a democratic multi-party polity of the
Anglo-Saxon type in post-war China. Chiang’s strength was undercut by
the ‘Marshall Plan for post-war China’ with General George C. Marshall
as a peace broker on a two-year mission.99
In essence, Chiang was asked to disarm his forces unilaterally by
half (1.8 million troops) in 1946 or face the ‘Marshall Embargo’ with
serious consequences.100 Chiang caved in, whereby began his defeat in
the resumed civil war in 1946–49. Western powers – the United States,
Britain and France – did not lift a finger to help Chiang despite his des-
perate call for outside intervention after the final military show-down
in the Xu-Bang Campaign (or ‘Huaihai Campaign’) in 1948. In contrast,
the Communists wanted single-mindedly to establish a party-state of the
Soviet type, a plan that was evidently laid out in 1940 in Mao’s ‘On the
New Democratic Doctrine’ (Xin Minzhuzhuyi Lun), his 1949 ‘On People’s
Democratic Dictatorship’ (Lun Renmin Minzhu Zhuanzheng),101 and in par-
ticular his demand in the ‘1949 Beiping [Beijing] Peace Negotiation’.102
112 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

All the 24 clauses proposed by the Communists in the peace talks aimed
at a total take-over of state power. The predictable refusal from the
Republican side only gave Mao the much needed pretext to finish the war.
In this episode of Chinese history, it is only too obvious that the side
which received foreign help till the end won the war.
After his final victory over his Republican rival in 1949, logically
Mao wanted to build another Soviet Union on China’s soil which
included nationalization of capitalist assets, collectivization of the
peasantry, centrally planned command economy and ‘forced indus-
trialization’ disproportionately for military capacity. Mao’s ‘first five-
year plan’, from 1953 to 1957, imported 156 projects from the Soviet
Union to build China’s heavy industry. It was immediately followed
by the ‘Great Leap Forward’, which commenced in 1958 to increase
industrial outputs. China’s iron and steel was singled out to be mul-
tiplied from four million to 10.7 million tons in a few short years.
A  nuclear weapons programme was set up in 1956 which yielded
results in 1964. Such projects won Mao’s regime a great deal of inter-
national publicity as a rising industrial-military power in Asia which
led to President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. By then, China indeed
looked like a miniature Soviet Union. But behind the glossy façade,
the same Soviet disease recurred. First of all, there were the excessive
costs of resources and human lives. It was well documented that Mao’s
regime re-invested continuously a quarter of China’s annual GDP year
in and year out. It was also known that China’s capital assets to GDP
ratio (hence the assets’ GDP yield level) was about unity after 1957.
It means that after each round of re-investment China’s GDP would
increase by a quarter, ceteris paribus. Theoretically, therefore, after 25
years (1952 to 1977) China’s capital stock should have grown to an
equivalent of 264.7 times its starting size (24.1 billion yuan in 1952,
constant price) to a total of 6,379.3 billion yuan.103 If so, China would
have become fully industrialized many times over. In reality, however,
the registered state-owned fixed capital assets (guding zichan) in 1978
were a mere 448.2 billion yuan (constant price).104 The actual growth
was only 7 per cent of the expected total. The rest was what was
wasted by the Soviet system. The post-Mao official view in the 1980s
agreed:

A high rate of accumulation and large-scale capital construction

alone cannot bring about sustained fast growth and good economic
result … [Excessive capital formation] is neither feasible nor well
planned.105
 Kent G. Deng 113

Consequently, by 1976 when Mao died, China still had a premodern

economic structure with at least 77 per cent of its workforce working
in the agricultural sector,106 not too different from Meiji Japan in 1872
(at 72 per cent), Tsarist Russia in 1914 (at 75 per cent) and higher than
colonial India in 1901 (at 65 per cent).107A real structural change had to
wait until Deng Xiaoping’s reforms.
Secondly, there were the human costs in terms of mass poverty and
mass famine. Given that Mao’s China had the negligible amount of
foreign trade earnings and practically no foreign aid or foreign direct
investment after the Korean War, all the savings and capital formation
worth 6,379.3 billion yuan had to come from somewhere internally in
a closed economy. Evidently, most of the savings and capital forma-
tion came from cutting back workers’ wages and ordinary people’s
daily consumption. Urban workers’ real wages were reduced by half
(see Table 5.8a). People’s daily consumption was institutionally con-
trolled at the subsistence level of 2,009 kilocalories a day, of which
1,750 came from cereals (83 per cent of all energy).108 The remaining 17
per cent came from non-grain rations for each calendar month, exclud-
ing vegetables and fruit (also in 1978) (see Table 5.8b).

Table 5.8a Annual nominal and real wage in the state sector, 1957–78

Year Nominal wage yuan Index Real wage (1957 price)* Index

1957 637 100 637 100

1961 537 84 493 77
1970 609 96 429 67
1978 644 101 310 49

* Conversion is based on the average inflation rate of 2.01percent per year for the
period of 1950 to 1978, based on Li Jingwen (1997) ‘Zhongguo Jingji Tizhi Zhuanxing
Guochengzhongde Hongguan Tiaokong’ (Macro Control over the Process of Switching
China’s Economic System), Xinhua Wenzhai (Xinhua Compilation), (4), pp. 49–51.
Sources: Based on V. D. Lippit (1987) The Economic Development of China (Armonk, New York
and New York: M. E. Sharpe), p. 150; cf. Zhao Dixie (2000) ‘Zhongguo Jingji Wushinian
Fazhande Lujing Jieduan Yu Jiben Jingyan’ (Path, Stages and Main Lessons from the 50-year
long Growth of the Chinese Economy), Zhongguo Jingjishi Yanjiu (Research into Chinese
Economic History), (1), pp. 73–85.

Table 5.8b Non-grain rations per month, 1978

Eggs Pork Sugar Bean-curd Bean noodles

4 250 g 100 g 300 g 50 g

Source: Ling Zhijun (1997) Lishi Buzi Paihuai (History, No More Hesitation) (Beijing: People’s
Press), p. 101.
114 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

Table 5.8c Food rations (kilogram per month), 1955–78

Shanghai Beijing

1955 1979 1955 1979

0–3 years of age 3.5 3.5 4.0 4.3
10+ 12.5 12.5 13.8 15.0
University students 16.0 16.0 17.5 17.0
Office clerks 14.0 14.0 15.1 15.0
Heavy physical workers 20.0 20.0 22.0 22.5

Source: Croll, Family Rice Bowl, pp. 118, 211; also Ta-chung Liu and Kung-chia Yeh (1965)
The Economy of the Chinese Mainland: National Income and Economic Development, 1933–1959
(Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 48–50. Note the upper band of 22.5 kilograms
of cereals a month (for heavy physical workers) provides 2,625 kilocalories a day while
14.0 kilograms of cereals a month (for clerks), 1,519 kilocalories a day.

Table 5.9 Households below the official poverty line (% in total),

1978–88

1978 1988

China’s total 49.3 15.9

Index 100 32
Rural sector 65.1 15.7
Index 100 24

Source: Based on Chen Zongsheng (2000) Shouru Chabie Pinkun Ji Shiye (Income
Differentiation, Poverty and Unemployment) (Tianjin: Nankai University Press),
pp. 132–3.

Over 20 years, food rations were frozen (cereals in kilogram per month)
(see Table 5.8c). Under such a consumption regime, China’s national
Engel’s coefficient stayed at 0.7 in the 1960s to 70s, meaning that 70 per
cent of income was spent on food.109 This was worse than the Republican
record during the 1920s and 30s when Engel’s coefficient in six northern
provinces, Shanghai, Tianjin and Wuhan was lower than 0.6,110 compa-
rable with Britain, Japan and India at the time.111 As a result, poverty was
institutionalized and widespread in Mao’s China. Thus, the industrial
growth of the Soviet type did not benefit ordinary people (see Table 5.9).
Worse still, during the Great Leap Forward, 30–40 million citizens
died of starvation in 1959–62 when weather conditions were nor-
mal and China had internal peace.112 The figure dwarfed China’s
famine fatalities during the Second World War of 2.3 million for
1937 to 1945 and 25,000 during the 1946–49 Civil War.113 The real
 Kent G. Deng 115

scandal was government food hoarding and food procurements

during the famine. As people were dying of hunger, Mao’s state gra-
nary system had a total of 44.3 million tons of food in 1959 and
20.2 million tons in 1960, enough for at least 100 million adults
to live for a year.114 If this were not enough, evidence reveals that
Mao’s state exported large quantities of food presumably to the
Soviet Union to settle China’s US$300 million industrial loan and
Korean War debt.115 A  total of seven million tons went to the Soviet
Union in the crucial years of 1959 and 1960, sufficient to feed
38 million adults for a year.116 If the food hoarding and export had
been postponed, no one should ever have died in China in 1959–62.
Mao’s political purges also ruined a large number of people, but were
vital for the survival of the artificially installed Soviet system. Mao’s
leadership depended on purges right from the beginning: the ‘1930–1
“AB League” Purge’ (suqing AB-tuan) cost 100,000 lives of the early
Communists, including 22 high-ranking officers;117 the ‘1941–5 Yan-an
Rectification Purge against Trotskyites’ incriminated 80 per cent of the
40,000 communist intellectuals.118 After 1949, Mao’s purged intensi-
fied. The ‘1951–2 Three-Anti and Five-Anti Movement’ (sanfan wufan)
purged 1.2 million officials.119 Society-wide, there was the ‘1950–3
Suppression of Anti-revolutionaries Campaign’ (zhenfan, sufan) in
which 12 million were investigated; 4.6 million accused; and 710,000
executed.120 After that, three million Communist Party members were
victimized in the ‘1957 Internal Rectification Purge’ (zhengfeng), the
‘1959 Lushan Purge against the Party Right-Wingers’ (lushan huiyi),
and the ‘1964 Four Cleansings’ (siqing).121 Intellectuals, who were badly
needed for China’s post-war reconstruction, were singled out for Mao’s
suppression. The Gulag model was copied from Moscow.122 The ‘1955
Purge of the Hu Feng Anti-Party Clique’ (hufeng fandang jituan), affecting
a few thousand intellectuals, served as Mao’s warning shot.123 The ‘1957
Anti-Rightist Movement’ (fanyou) persecuted over half a million (or 10
per cent of the educated).124 The ‘1966–76 Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution’ (wuchan jieji wenhua dageming), designed to wipe out all
intellectuals and persecuted over 100 million in an overkill (9.4 per cent
of China’s total population of 1976). Mao’s victims in post-1949 alone
totalled about 105.2 million, of whom 60 million were assumed dead.125
In comparison, the Japanese invasion in 1937 to 1945 caused 29.7 mil-
lion deaths in China Proper.126 So, in terms of deadly social conflict,
European radicalism, Russo-centricism and ‘Sovietization’ generated,
rather than ended, deaths in China.
116 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

Finally, there were economic costs incurred by Mao’s mismanage-

ment. In the case of the Great Leap Forward, 90 million peasants were
mobilized to produce iron and steel,127 which accounted for about
twice the size of China’s entire industrial workforce of the time (45.5
million in 1959) and about 50 per cent of the rural worker force.
When the dust settled in 1959, a total of 7.2 million tons (not 10.7
million) was produced of which over a half was useless (thus about
3 million in real terms).128 The whole campaign ended with a budget
deficit of 17 billion yuan together with 16.2 per cent inflation,129 not
to mention the 30–40 million unnatural deaths thereafter. During
the Cultural Revolution, the self-inflicted damage was even greater.
Workers and peasants stopped producing. No train operated according
to a timetable.130 Universities and schools were also closed down. In
many parts of the country, there were military confrontations with real
guns and cannons. In Chongqing (Sichuan) for example, armed fight-
ing lasted for two years; 10,000 cannon shells and a million rounds
of bullets were fired; all the arsenals in the region were levelled to
the ground.131 This was followed by a decade-long ‘De-urbanization
and de-industrialization Drive’ to settle 16 million urban students in
the countryside.132 In the end, Mao’s pandemonium of the Cultural
Revolution cost China 100 billion yuan in industrial GDP, 28 million
tons of steel, 40 billion yuan fiscal revenue, pushing the economy to
the brink of total collapse.133
Now, whichever way one looks at European radicalism and the Soviet
model and their application in China, it was a failure.

Stage Four: ‘Neo-Westernization Movement’ under

Deng Xiaoping when the pendulum swung back
to Chinese characteristics

Among researchers of contemporary China, there is always a question of

modernity and Chinese identity or tradition. There can be little doubt
that the latter was systematically attacked and destroyed under Mao.
Deng Xiaoping’s new leadership promoted a new ideology and approach
called ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ by looking again at China’s
own traditions and what the West could offer. What it suggested was that
Mao’s system had no Chinese characteristics. Deng rejected the European
radicalism, Russo-centrism and Sovietization that had caused so much
misery for the Chinese population. It was no secret therefore that Deng’s
‘Chinese characteristics’ were a market economy under the political rule
 Kent G. Deng 117

of Party-technocrats.134 To make sure his message was getting through

Deng announced in 1980 that:

Modernisation is the key to all our solutions to internal and external

problems [associated with Maoism]. By the end of this century, we
must try our best to reach a GDP at 1,000 American Dollars per head
and live a reasonably comfortable life [xiaokang].135

Deng represented a sharp U-turn towards the age-old Confucius’ belief

of ‘people as the foundation’ (minben) and ‘benevolent rule’ (renzheng),
meaning that the state has the responsibility to make ordinary people
better off in their material life. In this context, ‘class struggle’, political
purges and xenophobia, key stones of Maoism, were condemned and
abandoned. On his final tour to South China in 1990–1, Deng redefined
the concept of ‘socialism’ for his party, again along Confucius’ line
of ‘food is people’s heaven’ (min yishi wei tian) instead of a social
revolution:

Our officials have hesitated in reforms. They have feared of too much
capitalism in China. The criterion to judge whether we are with
capitalism or with socialism is to see whether we … improve people’s
living standards.136

His famous metaphors of ‘a good cat catching mice’ and ‘groping for
rocks to cross river’ (mozhe shitou guohe) reveal a traditional Taoist
approach.137 All the Marxist–Leninist principles were thrown out of the
window. With it, de-Sovietization began. Not surprisingly, therefore, the
post-Deng party leadership was eventually prepared to accept capitalists
as party members. Jiang Zeming, the Party Secretary from 1989 to 2002,
announced in 2001 on the 80th anniversary of the Chinese Communist
Party that ‘We should allow the worthy members of this [capitalist]
sector to join our party.’138 Meanwhile, Jiang’s signature motto of ‘three
represents’ (sange daibiao) redefined what the Communist Party should
now stand for: ‘an advanced culture’, ‘advanced productive power’ and
‘interests of the general population of the Chinese’.139 Jiang’s successor
took a similar direction. At the Seventeenth Congress of the Party
in October 2007 Hu Jintao announced that socialism with China’s
characteristics is a ‘scientific development outlook’.140 Here, one detects
no vestige of European radicalism, Russo-centricism and Sovietization
at all.
118 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

It has to be said that Deng’s new ideology and strategy of open-

ing up the Chinese economy to the Western world was very selective
regarding owners of foreign capital. Deng clearly preferred investment
from overseas Chinese. As early as 1977, before taking over the party
leadership, Deng said openly that ‘Our overseas Chinese relatives are
not too many but too few for us. Our overseas Chinese connections
are beneficial to China for many of our pursuits.’141 Later on, he clari-
fied his view by saying that ‘I am positive that overseas Chinese will
support our economic construction earnestly’;142 and ‘we should adopt
foreign capital and technology and allow overseas Chinese to build
factories’.143 With this idea in mind, Deng specified the geographic
locations of the first four special economic zones for overseas investors:
Shenzhen for Hong Kong Chinese, Zhuhai for Macao Chinese, Shantao
for overseas Chinese of the Chaozhou origin, and Xiamen (Amoy) for
overseas Chinese of the Southern Fujian origin.144 This clearly reflects
the Confucian ideas of ‘differentiation between Chinese and barbar-
ians’ (huayi zhibian) and five-level cultural assimilation (wufu).145 It
worked just as Deng wished. By 2000, 70 per cent of China’s FDI came
from overseas Chinese.146
In this process, traditional Chinese thinking and knowledge was
pivotal as the foundation to facilitate Deng’s reforms (zhongxue weiti).
Again, Western knowledge was tapped for its utility (xixue weiyong).
This time the main difference was that the ‘Westernizers’ had a
well-organized party machine with 80 million members behind the
changes, no longer an emperor with a handful of courtiers or a dozen
provincial Mandarins. The secret of China’s fast growth has been the
market economy and economic freedom, both of which were strictly
forbidden under Mao but were common traditionally in Chinese
long-term history. This was achieved by abolishing in the 1980s over
400 pieces of Maoist anti-market laws and regulations.147 As expected,
the market economy was quickly revitalized and thrived. In this con-
text, the private sector became once again the main engine of growth
and development. China’s agriculture became de facto private after
1978. In urban China, the state-owned sector had been shrinking fast.
In 1992, the state’s share in China’s industrial GDP dropped under 50
per cent.148 Its share of the state-employed workforce in China’s total
declined to a mere 10 per cent in 2000.149 Meanwhile, 70 per cent of
China’s industrial GDP came from non-state firms.150 Deng dubbed
it as ‘socialist market economy’ rather than ‘market socialism’ to show
the true colour of his reforms. The result was an unprecedented, spec-
tacular economic boom that transformed China from a closed agrarian
 Kent G. Deng 119

economy to an open and export-oriented one.151 With its uninter-

rupted GDP growth at nearly 10 per cent a year, the Chinese economy
is at least 15 times larger now that it was in 1978. In 2009, China
replaced Germany as the largest exporter in the world. A year later, it
replaced Japan as the second largest economy in the world. China now
also boasts foreign exchange reserves worth US$ 3.3 trillion (by 2012),
the highest in the world.152
This new growth has led to a range of consequences. First of all, con-
sumption rationing finally ended and people have more food on the
table. A  large number of people have been alleviated from man-made
abject poverty. Poverty head-count has decreased from over 50 per cent
to below 10 per cent in China’s total population from 1981 to 2010. In
absolute terms, rural people living in poverty have reduced from over
200 million to less than 30 million.153 Secondly, modern manufacturing
took off. Today, China has topped the world league table in 220 indus-
trial outputs (as in 2011),154 which qualifies China as the ‘workshop of
the world’. Unlike in Mao’s era when over 70 per cent of its workforce
was locked in agriculture, the farming sector now employs only about
30 per cent of China’s workforce and produces about 10 per cent of
the country’s total GDP (as in 2010). With it, a fundamental structural
change in the economy has finally occurred, hand in hand with rapid
urbanization. China’s urbanization under Mao’s rule grew pathetically
at 0.3 per cent a year, slower than China’s population growth.155 In
2000, China’s urban population doubled its 1978 level, at 3.2 per cent
a year, over 10 times faster than Mao’s record.156 In 2011, for the first
time in history, over half of China’s population became urban.157 Finally,
in 2003 China’s per capita income reached the US$1,100 mark, a huge
jump from the 1977 level of less than US$200. If the purchasing power
parity (PPP) is used, the figure becomes US$4,990.158 As a result, the
World Bank has identified 1999 as the time when China became a ‘low
middle income country’.159 Deng’s mission of ‘Neo-Westernization’ was
well accomplished.160

Conclusion

History shows that the ‘Chinese Way’ in economic growth and

development from 1800 to the present day has been that of a swinging
pendulum, full of trials and errors. Evidently, what has worked in
China has been the old paradigm of ‘the Chinese learning as the
foundation and the Western learning for utility’. This delivered some
impressive results during the late Qing. However, this sound approach
120 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

was obstructed by European radicalism and Russo-centrism. The alleged

industrialization pursued under Sovietization was a complete disaster.
The Chinese population became much worse off. Towards the end of
Mao’s rule, China’s economy was on the brink of total collapse. China’s
per capita income was among the lowest in the world. Historically,
China never had it so bad as under Maoism.
Deng Xiaoping’s reforms after 1978 have resumed the same spirit of
the ‘Westernization Movement’, began over a century ago. The essence
of Deng’s reforms was its appreciation of the market economy, some-
thing that the Chinese culture approves. In this context, Deng’s reforms
constituted China’s Neo-Westernization Movement. The result speaks
for itself: within only one generation, China has emerged as an indus-
trial superpower in the world.

Notes and references

1. For example, Alexander Gerschenkron (1962) Economic Backwardness in
Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press); D. C. North
and R. P. Thomas (1973) The Rise of the Western World: A  New Economic
History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Arthur Lewis, ‘Economic
Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour’, in Mark Gersovitz (ed.)
(1983) Selected Economic Writings of W. Arthur Lewis (New York: New York
University Press), pp. 139–76; A. H. Amsden (1989) Asia’s Next Giant: South
Korea and Late Industrialization (New York: Oxford University Press); Robert
Wade (1990) Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government
in East Asian Industrialisation (Princeton: Princeton University Press). In
this context, the Marxian notion of a common and uni-linear growth path
towards modernity for all societies is no more than a fantasy; see Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels (1963) Communist Manifesto (New York: Russell and
Russell); cf. W. W. Rostow (1966) The Stages of Economic Growth, a Non-
Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
2. Almost all Western scholars accept Max Weber’s notion that China’s tradi-
tional culture and values hindered to some extent its modernity. See Max
Weber (1951) The Religion of China (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press).
3. It is believed that from 1552 to 1800 a total of 920 Jesuits entered China; see
David E. Mungello (2005) The Great Encounter of China and The West, 1500–
1800 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), p. 37.
4. He got his work permit to stay in Beijing as a clock-repairing artisan, not as
a Jesuit missionary, see Li Madou (Matteo Ricci), Li Madou Zhongguo Zhaji
[Matteo Ricci’s Diary on China], translated by He Gaoji (何高济), (c. 1610.
Beijing: Zhonghua Books, 1983), p. 582. Ricci was mentioned in the official
history of Ming Shi (The History of the Ming Dynasty); see Zhang Tingyu (ed.)
(1974) Entry ‘列传二百十四, 外国七’ [Biography 214, Foreign 7], in Ming
Shi [The History of the Ming Dynasty] (Reprint. Beijing: Zhonghua Books).
However, Ricci was by no means the first foreigner who came to China in a
religious mission. The Buddhist Monk Bodhidharma (? – 536 AD) came from
 Kent G. Deng 121

India to China in 527 AD and left the lasting legacy of the Shaolin Temple.
Later, in 651 AD, Sa`d ibn Abī Waqqās came to China on a religious and
diplomatic double mission which ushered in the spread of Islam.
5. Diego de Pantoja, a Spaniard, is believed to have accompanied Ricci to
Beijing after 1599 to work for the Ming government.
6. Sabbathin de Ursis, an Italian, first came to China in 1606 under the recom-
mendation of Matteo Ricci. He succeeded Ricci in 1611 to take charge of the
Imperial calendar project.
7. Johannes Schreck, a German, first came to Macao in 1619, entered China in
1621 and reached Beijing in 1623. He died in his post as Officer of the Ming
Imperial Observatory working on the Daming Chongzhen Lishu [Ming Imperial
Almanac].
8. Von Bell, a German, came to China in 1622. He was the successor of Johannes
Schreck by the invitation of the then Ming Premier Xu Guanqi in 1630. In
1623 he took advantage of repairing a piano for Emperor Chongzhen to
try, unsuccessfully, to persuade the emperor to convert to Christianity.
Eventually he was appointed the Director of the Imperial Observatory (钦天
监正), reaching the very top of the bureaucratic ladder as Official of the First
Rank Proper (正一品).
9. Nicolas Longobardi, an Italian, was another successor of Matteo Ricci. It
remains unclear when he first entered China. Jacques Rho, an Italian, first
came to China in 1624. He was invited to Beijing in 1630 to join the Ming
Imperial Observatory.
10. See Zhang, 《明史》[The History of the Ming Dynasty], ch. ‘Imperial Almanac
One’.
11. Ferdinand Verbiest, a Belgian, entered China in 1659. He was involved in
the Qing firearms design in 1675. Like von Bell, Verbiest was appointed to
the post of Director of the Imperial Observatory in 1669. He supervised the
construction of six new instruments for the observatory from 1670 to 1674:
a zodiac armillary sphere, an equatorial armillary sphere, two altazimuths,
a quadrant and a celestial globe. His biography was included in Zhao, Entry
‘列传59’ [Biography 59], in Qingshi Gao [Draft of the History of the Qing Dynasty].
12. Thoma Pereira, a Portuguese, came to China in 1672. He worked in the
Imperial Observatory in the 1670s and 80s. He worked for the Qing as one
of the official translators and interpreters for the 1689 Sino–Russian Treaty
of Nerchinsk. It was documented that he did all he could to protect China’s
interests against the Russian attempt to encroach its territory. Incidentally,
the treaty has been commonly regarded as an equal and fair treaty for China,
very rare during Qing history.
13. Philippus Maria Grimaldi, an Italian, was the successor of Ferdinand Verbiest
to work for the Imperial Observatory.
14. Joachim Bouvet, a Frenchman, first arrived in China in 1688 and was
employed by the Qing state from 1707 to 1717 to map the entire Qing
Empire with the European technology of cartography.
15. Jean Francois Gerbillon, a French Jesuit, first arrived in China also in 1688
and was employed by the Qing court in 1689 as an official interpreter and
translator for the Sino–Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk.
16. Bernard-Kiliam Stumpf, a German, was employed by Emperor Kangxi in
1696 to build China’s first glass-making factory. He joined the Qing Imperial
122 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

Observatory in 1715 and was responsible for building a European-style

theodolite.
17. Joseph Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian, arrived in China in 1715 and was
employed almost immediately as the court artist for 50 years until the end
of his life. He held the post of Official of the Third Rank (三品) of the Qing.
18. Ignatius Koegler, a German, arrived in China in 1716 and reached Beijing in
1717 to take up his position in the Imperial Observatory. He was promoted
to Director of the Imperial Observatory (钦天监正) in 1725.
19. Andre Pereira, a Portuguese, worked in the capacity of Deputy Director of the
Imperial Observatory alongside Koegler.
20. Augustin de Hallerstein, an Austro-Hungarian, was the successor of Ignatius
Koegler in charge of the Imperial Observatory.
21. By 1844, there were about 240,000 Roman Catholics, a mere 0.06 per cent
of China’s population of the time; see Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of
Christian Missions in China (New York: Macmillan, 1929), p. 83.
22. Lewis A. Maverick (1946) China a Model for Europe (San Antonio, Tex: Paul
Anderson); Zhang Guogang and Wu Liwei (2006) Qimeng Shidai Ouzhoude
Zhongguo Guan [European Views on China during the Enlightenment Period]
(Shanghai: Shanghai Classics Press); Yan Jianqiang (2002) Shiba Shiji
Zhongguo Wenhua Zai Xioude Chanbo Jiqi Fanying [Transmission and Impact of
the Chinese Culture in Eighteenth Century Europe] (Beijing: Chinese Academy
of Art Press).
23. Maxine Berg (1988) ‘Manufacturing the Orient, Asian Commodities and
European Industry, 1500–1800’, in Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Prodotti e
Tecniche d’Oltremare nelle Economie Europee (Florence: Le Monnier), pp. 394–6;
Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger (eds) (2002) Luxury in the Eighteenth Century:
Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan); John
M. Hobson (2004) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004).
24. For the debate and assessment, see Kent Deng (2008) ‘Miracle or Mirage?
Foreign Silver, China’s Economy and Globalisation of the Sixteenth to
Nineteenth Centuries’, Pacific Economic Review, 13(3), pp. 320–57.
25. W. L. Schurz (1985) The Manila Galleon (n.d., reprint, Manila: R. P. Garcia);
D. O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez (2002) ‘Cycles of Silver’, Journal of World
History, 13(2), pp. 391–427; also, A. G. Frank (1998) ReOrient (Berkeley:
University of California Press).
26. Hao, Yen-P’ing (1986) The Commercial Revolution in Nineteenth-Century China
(Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 35–46; Zhao Dixie (1990)
Zhongguo Jongjishi Cidian [Dictionary of Chinese Economic History] (Changsha:
Hubei Books), pp. 613–14.
27. D. O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez (1995) ‘Born with a “Silver Spoon”: The
Origin of World Trade’, Journal of World History, 2, pp. 201–21; A. G. Frank
(1998) ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of
California Press), ch. 3; Katharine Bjork (1998) ‘The Link That Kept the
Philippines Spanish: Mexican Merchant Interests and the Manila Trade,
1571–1815’, Journal of World History, 1, pp. 25–50.
28. See Gang Deng (1997) Chinese Maritime Activities and Socio-economic
Consequences, c. 2100 b.c.–1900 a.d. (New York, London and West Port:
Greenwood Press), chs 4 and 5.
 Kent G. Deng 123

29. Timothy Brook and Gregory Blue (eds) (1999) China and Historical Capitalism,
Genealogies and Sinological Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press), ch. 3.
30. It reads ‘天朝物产丰盈, 无所不有, 原不藉外夷货物以通有无. 特因天朝所产茶叶,
瓷器, 丝斤为西洋各国及尔国必需之物, 是以加恩体恤, 在澳门开设洋行, 俾得日用
有资, 并沾余润’. See Anon. (1985)《清高宗实录》[Veritable Records of Emperor
Gaozong of the Qing Dynasty] (Reprint. Beijing: Zhonghua Books), vol. 1435,
p. 15.
31. Numerous sources; see e.g. Xu Haisong (2000) Qingchu Shiren Yu Xixue [The
Chinese Literati and Western Knowledge] (Beijing: East Press); Xu Zongze
(2006) Mingqingjian Yesuhuishi Yizhu Zhaiyao [A Survey of Translated Books into
Chinese by Jesuit Missionaries during the Ming-Qing Period] (Shanghai: Shanghai
Books).
32. Deep down, Macartney’s episode was not about the differences in social
formalities but cultural/racial hegemony and supremacy between China and
the West; see Zhang Guogang (2003) Cong Zhongxi Chushi Dao Liyi Zhi Zheng
[From a Favourable Impression to the Conflict with Formalities) (Beijing: People’s
Press).
33. See F. W. Drake (1975) China Charts the World: Hsu Chi-Yü and His Geography
of 1848, (Cambridge, Mass.), chs 8–9.
34. Chen Lunjiong, Haiguo Wenjian (1974) Lu [Travels of the Seas] (Reprint.
Taipei: Taiwan Commercial Books).
35. There are numerous works on the cause, incentive and impact of the opium
trade, to mention only several by Frederick Wakeman, Jr. (1975) The Fall of
Imperial China (Boston: The Free Press), ch. 7; Immanuel C. Y. Hsü (1983)
The Rise of Modern China (New York: Oxford University Press), chs 7–8; and
Jonathan D. Spence (1990) The Search for Modern China (New York: W. W.
Norton), chs 6–7.
36. In 1729, the Portuguese shipped the first recorded 200 chests of opium to
Macao, ushering in the age of opium trade with China; see John Phipps
(1835) A  Practical Treatise on the China and Eastern Trade (London: Wm H.
Allen), p.  208. The first British opium cargo arrived half a century later in
1773; see E. H. Pritchard (1929) Anglo-Chinese Relations during the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press), p. 150.
37. E. H. Pritchard, Anglo-Chinese Relations, p. 160.
38. See Gong Yingyan (1999) Yapiande Chuanbo Yu Duihua Yapian Maoyi [Spread
of Opium Consumption and Opium Imports of China] (Beijing: East Press),
p. 118.
39. This was well documented in Jia Zhen’s Chouban Yiwu Shimo, Daoguang Chao
[History of Foreign Affairs during the Daoguang Reign] (1867, reprint, Beijing:
Zhonghua Books, 1964), vol. 2, pp. 3–4. China’s opium imports from
Singapore of the 1830s, 55 per cent was paid in silver; see Yan Zhongping
(1955) Zhongguo Jindaishi Tongji Ziliao Xuanji [Selected Statistical Materials
of Economic History of Early Modern China] (Beijing: Science Press), p. 35.
From 1795 to 1840, 72 per cent of China’s opium import from Calcutta was
paid in silver; see Gong Yingyan, Yapiande Chuanbo, p. 179.
40. Based on Yen-p’ing Hao (1986) The Commercial Revolution in Nineteenth-
Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 69; cf. Morse, The
Chronicles of the East India Company, vols 3–5.
124 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

41. Gong Yingyan, Yapiande Chuanbo, pp. 293–4; Brook and Wakabayashi (2000)
Opium Regimes, China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952 (Berkeley: University of
Berkeley Press), pp. 9, 194, 214, 294.
42. P. W. Fay (1997) The Opium War, 1840-1842 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press).
43. People often forget that Tokugawa Japan signed the Treaty of Kanagawa as it
was told in 1854 without a fight after the visit of Mathew Perry’s small fleet.
Qing China dared to fight invaders many times from 1840 to 1894. Losing
wars is quite another matter.
44. Xu Tailai (1986) Yangwu Yundong Xinlu [Re-examination of the Westernisation
Movement] (Changsha: Hunan People’s Press).
45. It included the Nians in the north, Taipings in the south, the Muslims in
the northwest and the Miaos in the southwest; see Kent Deng (2011) China’s
Political Economy in Modern Times: Changes and Economic Consequences,
1800–2000 (London: Routledge Press) ch. 4.
46. See Rodney Gilbert (1929) The Unequal Treaties, China and the Foreigner
(London: John Murray), pp. 54–5.
47. Jia Zhen and Bao Yun (eds) (1979) Chouban Yiwu Shimo, Xiaofeng Chao [A
History of Qing Foreign Affairs: the Xianfeng Period] (1880, reprint, Beijing:
Zhonghua Books), vol. 3, pt. 3, p. 1049.
48. Yung Wing (Rong Hong) (1909) My Life in China and America (New York:
Henry Holt), p. 148.
49. It reads ‘仍归重于设学堂,  … 学成而后, 督造有人, 管驾有人, 轮船之事, 始为一
了百了’; see Zuo Zongtang (左宗堂), c. 1885, ‘上总理各国事务衙门’ [Report
to The Foreign Affairs Department], in Anon. 《中国近代史资料汇编, 海防档
乙, 福州船厂》 [Collected Materials of China’s Early Modern History, Archives of
Coastal Defence, Fuzhou Shipyard], (Taipei, reprint 1957), vol. 2, p. 53.
50. Liang Qichao (梁启超), 1896, 《西学书目表》 [Bibliography of Western
Learning], in Liang Qichao (梁启超),《饮冰室合集》 [Readings for Ice Drinkers’
Hut], reprint 1989, (Beijing, 1936), vol. 1, pp. 122–5.
51. William A. Martin (1989) 《同文館題名錄》[Translated Titles by Translation
Division of the Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai] (Shanghai). See also Tian Tao
(2001)《国际法输入与晚请中国》 [The Introduction of International Law and
Late Qing China] (Jinan), p. 59.
52. Martin spoke fluent Chinese. His first Chinese translation was Henry
Wheaton’s 1836 work of Elements of International Law (万国公法), which
was first published in 1864. This work was re-translated into Japanese in
1865. He went on to translate two more law textbooks《公法便览》[Outline
of International Law] and《公法会通》[Guide to International Law] and wrote
two of his own 《邦交提要》[Essence of Foreign Diplomacy] and《中国古世公
法论略》 [International Law in Ancient China]. See Xiong Yuzhi (1994)《西学
东渐与晚清社会》[Western Knowledge Approaching China and Late Qing Society]
(Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press), p.  322; Wang Tieya (1996)《中华法学
大辞典》（国际法学卷） [Encyclopaedia of Law, International Law Section]
(Beijing), p.  101; Wang Jian (2001) 西法东渐  – 外国人与中国法的近代变革》
[Western Knowledge Approaching China – Foreigners and Law Changes in Early
Modern China] (Beijing), p. 11; and Zou Zhenhuan (1989) ‘京师同文馆及其译
书简述’ [Capital Foreign Language Academy and Its Translation Output], 《
出版史料》 [History of the Press), (2), p. 83.
 Kent G. Deng 125

53. Anon.,《江南制造局译书提要》 [Translated Works from the Last Forty Years with
Brief Descriptions], (Shanghai, 1909).
54. Wang Yangzong (2000) 《傅兰雅与近代中国的科学启蒙》 [John Fryer and
Scientific Enlightenment in Early Modern China] (Beijing).
55. It is worth noting that the European cannon technology was once intro-
duced to Ming China.
56. Wright, Chinese Conservatism, p. 212.
57. Sun Yutang (1957) Zhongguo Jindai Gongyeshi Ziliao [Materials on Early Modern
Industries in China] (Beijing: Science Press), p. 1224.
58. Luo Ergang (1957) Zhongwang Li Xiucheng Zizhuan Yuangao Jianzheng
(Annotated Confession of Li Xiucheng) (Beijing: Zhonghua Books), p. 275.
59. A. F. Lindley (1866) Ti-Ping Tien-Kwoh: the History of the Ti-ping Revolution
(London: Day and Son), vol. 2, pp. 671–3.
60. It is worth re-visiting the verdict on China’s comparative advantage made
by Adam Smith: ‘Rice in China is much cheaper than wheat is anywhere in
Europe.  … The difference between the money price of labour in China and in
Europe is still greater than that between the money price of subsistence; because
the real recompense of labour is higher in Europe than in China, the greater part of
Europe being in an improving state, while China seems to be standing still.’ Adam
Smith (1776) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
(London: Publisher unknown), vol. 1, ch. 11, pt. 3.
61. Institute of Modern History (IMH), Academia Sinica (Taiwan) (ed.) (1957)
Haifang Dang [Archival Materials on Naval Defence], Entry ‘Dianxian’
[Telegraphic Lines] (Taipei: Yiwen Press), vol. 4.
62. Wu Rulun (ed.) (1908) Li Wenzhong Gong Quanshu [Complete Collection of
Master Li Wenzhong’s Writings] (Nanjing: Publishers unknown), (24), p. 22.
63. Xu Tailai, Yangwu Yundong Xinlu , pp. 89–93.
64. Zheng Yukui (1984) Zhongguo Duiwai Maoyi He Gongye Fazhan [Growth in
China’s Foreign Trade and Industry] (Shanghai: Shanghai Social Sciences Press),
p. 39.
65. Yan Zhongping, Zhongguo Jindai Jingjishi, p. 190.
66. Tang, Customs Revenue, p.  21; Wang, Early Modern China, vol. 1, p.  674,
Table 77, p. 706, Table 81; Research Center of History of Railways in China
(ed.) (1996) Zhongguo Tielu Dashiji, 1876–1995 [Main Events in the History
of Chinese Railways, 1876–1995] (Beijing: China’s Railway Press); Yang
Yonggang (1997) Zhongguo Jindai Tielu Shi [A History of Railways in Early
Modern China] (Shanghai: Shanghai Books), pp. 3–4.
67. Wang Jingyu (2000) Zhongguo Jindai Jingjishi, 1895–1927 [An Economic History
of Early Modern China, 1895–1927] (Beijing: People’s Press), (3), pp. 2021–2.
68. Yan Zhongping, Zhongguo Jindai Jingjishi, pp. 207–8.
69. Yan Zhongping, Zhongguo Jindai Jingjishi, pp. 102–5.
70. T. G. Rawski (1989) Economic Growth in Prewar China (Berkeley: University of
California Press), pp. 209, 214, 217.
71. Zheng Yukui, Zhongguo Duiwai Maoyi, p. 39.
72. Wang, Early Modern China, vol. 3, pp. 2243–56.
73. A. Feuerwerker (1958) China’s Early Industrialization: Sheng Hsuan-huai
(1844–1916) and Mandarin Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press); Zhang Houquan (1988) Zhaoshangju Shi [A History of China Merchants’
Steamship Company] (Beijing: People’s Transport and Communication Press).
126 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

74. Sun Yutang, Zhongguo Jindai Gongyeshi Ziliao, p. 887.

75. Wang Jingyu (2002) Zhongguo Ziben Zhuyide Fazhan He Bufazhan
[Development and Underdevelopment of Capitalism in China] (Beijing: China’s
Finance and Economics Press), p. 331.
76. Amongst them the most prominent were Zeng Guofan (1811–72), Zuo
Zongtang (1812–85), Shen Baozhen (1820–79), Li Hongzhang (1823–1901),
Zhang Zhidong (1837–1909), Yuan Shikai (1859–1916), Yan Fu (1854–
1921), Kang Youwei (1858–1927), Tan Citong (1865–98) and Liang Qichao
(1873–1929).
77. Zheng Guanying (1998) Shengshi Weiyan [Warning during the Time of Peace
and Prosperity] (1894, reprint, Zhengzhou: Central Classics Press), p. 51.
78. Zhang Yufa (1971) Qingjide Lixian Tuanti [Societies for Constitutional Changes
during the Qing] (Taipei: Academia Sinica), pp. 29–31.
79. One of the following: (1) Holder of the Cultivated Talent Degree or higher,
(2) holder of a modern schooling at the medium level, (3) a civilian official
at the Seventh Grade or above or as an army officer at the Fifth Grade or
above, (4) owner of assets locally of 5,000 yuan (about 3,000 liang) or more,
and (5) worker in local affairs and charities for three years or longer.
80. Zhang Yufa, Qingjide Lixian Tuanti, pp. 386–9.
81. Ibid., pp. 420–35.
82. Sun got 1.7 per cent of the votes, compared with Yuan Shikai’s 62 per cent;
see Li Jie (2004) Wenwu Beiyang [Achievements of the “Northern Modern” Elite]
(Nanning: Guangxi Normal University Press), p. 109.
83. Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (ed.)
(1979) Wusi Yundong Huiyilu [Memoirs of the May Fourth Movement] (Beijing:
China’s Social Sciences Press), vol. 1, p. 340.
84. Li Dazhao, ‘Bu-ershiweike de Shengli’ [Victory of Bolshevism], in Li Dazhao
(1984) Li Dazhao Wenji [Collected Works of Li Dazhao] (Beijing: People’s
Press), vol. 1, p. 600.
85. Chen Tanqiu (1989) ‘Huiyi Zhongguo Gongchandang Diyici Quanguo
Daibiao Dahui’ [Reflections of the First National Congress of the Communist
Party], in Li Dazhao, Li Dazhao Wenji [Collected Works of Li Dazhao] (Beijing:
People’s Press), vol. 1, p. 45.
86. Yang Kuisong (1999) Zhuoxiang Bolie, Mao Zedong Yu Mosikede Enen
Yuanyuan (Communist Break-up, Personal Scores of Mao Zedong with Moscow)
(Hong Kong: Sanlian Books), p. 188.
87. Mao Zedong, ‘Lun Renmin Minzhu Zhuanzheng’ [On People’s Democratic
Dictatorship], in Mao Zedong (1960) Mao Zedong Xuanji [Selected Works of
Mao] (Beijing: People’s Press), vol. 4, p. 1473.
88. They were ‘minzu zhuyi’ (Han nationalism), minzhu zhuyi (democracy) and
minsheng zhuyi (people’s livelihood); see Sun Zhongshan (2000) Sanmin
Zhuyi [Three Populist Doctrines] (n.d., reprint, Changsha: Yuelu Books).
89. H. R. Isaacs (1938) The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (London: Secker &
Warburg), p. 64.
90. Sun Zhongshan (1981) Sun Zhongshan Quanji [Complete Collection of Sun
Zhongshan’s Works] (Beijing: ZB), vol. 7, pp. 51–2.
91. After Sun’s death, Borodin became involved in steering the Communist
Party from 1926 onwards. He returned to the Soviet Union after the
Republican–Communist split in 1927, and died in a labour camp in Siberia
 Kent G. Deng 127

in 1951 after being incriminated by the Stalin regime despite his extraor-
dinary work to lure two large political parties in East Asia into the Soviet
orbit; see Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (2005) Mao, the Unknown Story
(London: Vintage Books), pp. 33–4, 39.
92. Chang Kuo-t’ao (1971) The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, 1921–1927
(Lawrence: University of Kansas Press), p. 329.
93. Blyukher later became the commanding officer of Soviet Far-Eastern Army.
94. Lai Xiansheng (1986) ‘Zai Guangdong Dagemingde Luliuzhong’, in
Communist Party Committee of Guangzhou (ed.), Guangzhou Dageming
Shiqi Huiyilu Xuanpian [Selected Autobiographies regarding the Revolutionary
Period in Guangzhou] (Guangzhou: Guangdong People’s Press), pp. 32–3.
95. Zhang Xianwen (ed.) (2005) Zhonghua Minguo Shi [A History of the Republic
of China] (Nanjing: University of Nanjing Press), vol. 1, pp. 567–9.
96. China’s Second Historical Archives (ed.) (1994) Zhonghua Minguo Shi
Dang-an Ziliao Huibian [Collected Archival Materials of the Republic of China]
(Nanjing: Jiangsu Classics Press), 5(2), pp. 393–4, 434–5.
97. For an eyewitness account, see Peter Vladimirov (1975) The Vladimirov
Diaries, Yenan, China: 1942–1945 (New York: Doubleday), pp. 25, 66, 95,
186, 237, 252, 274, 298.
98. Mao was quoted to confess at the 1959 Lushan Conference that ‘We allowed the
Japanese to capture more territory in China. … We wanted China to repeat the history
of three kingdoms: Chiang, Japanese and us.’ See Li Rui (1989) Lushan Huiyi Shilu
[Records of the 1959 Lushan Conference] (Beijing: Spring-Autumn Press), p. 186.
99. G. M. Hawes (1977) The Marshall Plan for China, Economic Cooperation
Administration 1948–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Co),
p. 5.
100. Zheng, Chiang Kai-shek Lost, pp. 428, 430.
101. Mao Zedong, ‘Xin Minzhuzhuyi Lun’ [On the New Democratic Doctrine],
in Mao Zedong (1961) Mao Zedong Xuanji [Selected Works of Mao] (Beijing:
People’s Press), vol. 2, pp. 655–704; and ‘Democratic Dictatorship’, in Mao
Zedong Xuanji, vol. 4, pp. 1473–86.
102. L. I. Bland (ed.) (1998) George C. Marshall’s Mediation Mission to China
(Lexington: George C. Marshall Foundation), pp. 442–3.
103. Ministry of Finance (1997) Zhongguo Caizheng Nianjian, 1997 [China’s
Financial Year Book, 1997] (Beijing: Financial Magazine Press), p.  479;
National Bureau of Statistics (2002) Zhongguo Tongji Nianjian, 2002 [China’s
Statistical Year Book, 2002] (Beijing: China’s Statistical Press), p. 51.
104. Ministry of Finance, Financial Year Book, 1997, p. 479.
105. Yu Guangyuan (ed.) (1984) China’s Socialist Modernization (Beijing: Foreign
Language Press), p. 458.
106. See Ling Zhijun (1997) Lishi Buzi Paihuai [History, No More Hesitation] (Beijing:
People’s Press), p. 102; National Bureau of Statistics (2003) Zhongguo Tongji
Nianjian, 2003 [China’s Statistical Year Book, 2003] (Beijing: China’s Statistics
Press), p. 34.
107. Minami, Ryoshin (1986) The Economic Development of Japan (London:
Macmillan), p. 24; Penelope Francks (1992) Japanese Economic Development
(London: Routledge), p.  29; R. W. Davies, Mark Harrison and S. G.
Wheatcroft (1994) The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–
1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 112; P. R. Gregory (1994)
128 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

Before Command: An Economic History of Russia from Emancipation to the First

Five-Year Plan (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 21, 42; Priyatosh
Maitra (1991) Indian Economic Development: Population Growth and Technical
Change (New Delhi: Ashish), pp. 101, 132.
108. Elisabeth Croll (1983) The Family Rice Bowl, Food and the Domestic Economy
in China (Geneva: UNRISD), p. 211.
109. He Bochuan, (1994) ‘2000 Nian Zhongguo Mubiao Xitongde 20 Ge
Cuiruodian’ [Twenty Weak Points in China’s Targets for the Year 2000],
Xinhua Wenzhai [Xinhua Compilation] (5), p. 8.
110. Bureau of Social Affairs of Shanghai (1932) The Cost of Living Index Numbers
of Laborers, Great Shanghai, January 1926  – December 1931 (Shanghai:
Bureau of Social Affairs of Shanghai), p. 18; Li Wenhai, Xia Mingfang and
Huang Xingtao (eds) (2005) Minguo Shiqi Shehui Diaocha Congbian, Chengshi
Laogong Shenghuojuan [Selected Social Surveys of the Republican Period, Volume
on Urban Workers] (Fuzhou: Fujian Education Press), vol. 1, pp. 25, 26, 358;
vol. 2, pp. 2, 758, 827, 1225.
111. Li et al., Social Surveys, vol. 1, pp. 273, 359. For Meiji Japan’s Engel’s coefficient
together with widespread poverty, see also S. B. Hanley (1997), Everyday things
in Premodern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 171 and passim.
112. Jasper Becker (1996) Hungry Ghost, China’s Secret Famine (London:
John Murray), ch. 18; Jin Hui, (1993) ‘Sannian Ziyanzaihai Beiwanglu’
[Memorandum on the Alleged Three Years of Natural Disasters, 1959–62],
Shehui [Society], (4–5), p.  13–22; Cao Shuji (2005) Da Jihuang 1959–1961
Niande Zhongguo Renkou [Great Famine and China’s Population in 1959–1961]
(Hong Kong: Times International Publishing Co.). By far, the best work
is Yang Jisheng (2008) Mubei  – Zhongguo Liushi Niandai Dajihuang Jishi
[Gravestone for the Great Leap Famine Victims, Evidence from History] (Hong
Kong: Tiandi Book).
113. R. J. Rummul (1991) China’s Bloody Century (New Brunswick [N.J.]:
Transaction Publishers), p. 12.
114. Yang Jisheng (2008) ‘Tonggou Tongxiaode Lishi Huigu’ [A Historical
Reassessment of Government Monopsonic Procurement and Monopolistic
Sale of Food], Yanhuang Chunqiu [History of Chinese], (12), p. 53.
115. Ibid., p. 52.
116. National Bureau of Statistics (1982) Zhongguo Tongji Nianjian, 1982 [China’s
Statistics Year Book, 1982] (Beijing: China’s Statistics Press), pp. 393, 422.
117. Li Rui (2005) Li Rui Tan Mao Zedong [Li Rui’s Memoir on Mao Zedong] (HK:
Times International), p. 2. For the documentation of the horror of Mao’s
torture and killing of the time, see Vladimirov, Diaries, pp. 167–78. For
high-ranking officers; see Li Weiming (2008) ‘Huifu Lishi Benlai Mianmude
Jiannan Licheng’ [Difficulties in Restoring Truth in History], Yanhuang
Chunqiu [History of Chinese], (11), p. 57.
118. Li Rui, Li Rui Tan Mao Zedong, p.  39. According to Vladimirov, 30,000
Communists were purged with excessive violence in secrecy, The Vladimirov
Diaries, pp. 513–14.
119. Against embezzlement, waste and bureaucracy among officials; and
against bribery of the government officials, tax evasion, stealing from
the state, cutting corners in state-contracted works, and spying on state
economic secrets by the private sector. For the data, see Liao Luyan,
 Kent G. Deng 129

‘Guanyu Jieshu Wufan Yundong He Chuli Yiliu Wentide Baogao’ [Report

on the Ending of the Five-Anti Movement and Its Residual Issues], 17
October 1952 (Beijing: Central Archives); An Ziwen, ‘Guanyu Jieshu
Sanfan Yundong He Chuli Yiliu Wentide Baogao’ [Report on the Ending
of the Three-Anti Movement and Its Residual Issues], 18 October 1952
(Beijing: Central Archives).
120. Anon., Mao Zedong Sixiang Wansui [Long Live Mao Zedong’s Thought]
(Beijing: Peking University, August 1969, SOAS Library Copy), p.  15; Bai
Xi (2006) Kaiguo Da Zhenfan [Sweeping Suppression of Anti-revolutionaries in
the Early Days of the People’s Republic] (Beijing: Chinese Communist Party
History Press), p. 494.
121. Li Rui, Li Rui Tan Mao Zedong, pp. 147–8.
122. For a case called ‘The Narrow Valley’ (Jiabian Gou) in the Gobi Desert in
remote Gansu, see survivals’ accounts: He Fengming (2001) Jingli  – Wode
1957 Nian [The Year 1957 When A Disaster Struck on Me] (Lanzhou: Dunhuang
Literature and Art Press); Yang Xianhui (2003) Jiabian Gou Jishi [Diary in the
Narrow Valley) (Shanghai: Shanghai Literature and Art Press, 2003).
123. See Li Hui (2003) Hu Feng Jituan Yuan-a Shimo [A History of the Fabrication of
the “Hu Feng Clique”] (Wuhan: Hubei People’s Press); Sheng Guofan (2007)
Wo Suo Qinlide Hu Feng An, Faguan Wang Wenzheng Koushu [My Personal
Experience of the Hu Feng Clique, Memoir of Judge Wang Wenzheng] (Beijing:
Chinese Communist Party History Press).
124. Official figures, see Cong Jin (1989) Quzhe Fazhande Suiyue [Period of
Tortuous Development] (Zhengzhou: Henan People’s Press), p. 61; see also Li
Rui, Li Rui Tan Mao Zedong, p. 132.
125. For estimates, see Li Rui, Li Rui Tan Mao Zedong, p.  2; Song Yongyi, (ed.)
(2007) Wenhua Dageming: Lishide Zhenxiang He Jiti Jiyi [The Cultural
Revolution: Historical Truth and Collective Memories] (HK: Tianyuan), vol. 2,
p. 951. See also Chang and Halliday, Mao, the Unknown Story, p. 3.
126. Other estimates for war fatalities caused by Japan vary from 19.6 to 35 mil-
lion deaths in China; see R. J. Rummul, China’s Bloody Century, p. 12; Cao
Shuji (2001) Zhongguo Renkoshi [A Demographic History of China] (Shanghai:
Fudan University Press), vol. 6, p. 581.
127. Song Haiqing (2000) Renmin Gongshe Xingwang Lu [Rise and Fall of the
People’s Commune] (Urumqi: Xinjiang Youth), vol. 2, pp. 406, 409.
128. Kung and Lin (2003) ‘The Causes of China’s Great Leap Famine, 1959–
1961’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 51(2), p. 54.
129. Song, Rise and Fall, vol. 2, pp. 279, 424.
130. Zhang Hua and Su Caiqing (eds) (2000) Huishou Wenge [Recollection of the
Decade of Cultural Revolution] (Beijing: CCP History Press), vol. 1, p. 425.
131. Pang Guoyi (2007) ‘Chongqing Wudou Yu Wenge Qunmu’ [Military Clash
in Chongqing and the Cultural Revolution Cemetery], Yanhuang Chunqiu
[History of Chinese], (3), p. 52–4.
132. Zhang and Su, Huishou Wenge, vol. 2, p. 890.
133. Hua Guofeng (1978) ‘Tuanjie Qilai, Wei Jianshe Shehuizhuyide Xiandaihua
Qianguo Er Fendou’ [United to Build a Socialist Modern Power], People’s
Daily, 27 February 1978, p. 1.
134. Gu Shutang (2001) Shehuizhuyi Shichang Jingji Lilun Yanjiu [A Model for
Socialist Market Economy] (Beijing: China’s Audit Press), chs 3, 12, 17.
130 The Chinese Way in Growth and Development

135. Li Li-an and Zheng Keyang (eds) (1993) Deng Xiaoping Yu Gaige Kaifang Shisi
Nian [Deng Xiaoping and Fourteen Years of Reforms and Opening Up] (Beijing:
Beijing Normal University Press), p. 14.
136. Deng Xiaoping (1993) Deng Xiaoping Wenxuan [Selected Works of Deng
Xiaoping] (Beijing: People’s Press), vol. 3, p. 372.
137. Li and Zheng, Fourteen Years of Reforms, p.  31; Ling, No More Hesitation,
p. 131.
138. Jiang Zemin (2001) ‘Zai Qingzhu Jiangdang Bashi Zhounian Dahuishangde
Jainghua’ [Speech on the 80th Anniversary of the Chinese Communist
Party], People’s Daily, 2 July 2001, p.1.
139. Jiang Zemin (2001) Lun Senge Daibiao [Three Represents] (Beijing: Central
Documents Press).
140. Hu Jintao (2007) Gaoju Zhongguo Tese Shehuizhuyi Weida Qizhi Wai Duoqu
Quanmian Xiaokang Shehui Xin Shengli Er Fendou [Upholding the Great Banner
of Socialism with China’s Characteristics and Striving for a New Victory in
Building a Comprehensive Well-off Society] (Beijing: People’s Press), pp. 7, 11.
141. Overseas Chinese Office of the State Council and CCP Archives (eds) (2001)
Deng Xiaoping Lun Qiaowu [Deng Xiaoping on Polities for Overseas Chinese]
(Beijing: Central Literature Press), p. 6.
142. Deng Xiaoping, Deng Xiaoping Wenxuan, vol. 3, p. 162.
143. Deng Xiaoping, Deng Xiaoping Wenxuan , vol. 2, p. 156.
144. Deng Xiaoping, Deng Xiaoping Wenxuan, vol. 3, p. 366.
145. Wu Genyou (ed.) (1993) Sishu Wujin [The Four Books and Five Classics of
Confucianism] (Beijing: China’s Friendship Publishing House), pp. 118–19.
146. Ministry of Commerce (2003) Zhongguo Duiwai Jingji Maoyi Nianjian, 2003
[China’s Foreign Trade Year Book, 2003] (Beijing: China’s Foreign Trade Press),
p. 490.
147. Ma Licheng (2008) Jiaofeng Sanshi Nian [Thirty Years of Confrontation]
(Nanjing: Jiangsu People’s Press), p. 163.
148. Ma Hong and Sun Shangqing (eds) (1993) 1992–1993 Zhongguo Jingji
Xingshi Yu Zhanwang [China’s Economic Situation and Prospect, 1992–1993]
(Beijing: China’s Development Press), pp. 39, 271.
149. National Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Year Book, 2003, p. 126.
150. National Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Year Book, 2003, p. 461.
151. In terms of China’s economic orientation, in 2006, 67 per cent of China’s
GDP was related to export; in 2011 it still remained 51 per cent after some
drastic changes after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. See http://economy.
caixin.com/2012-02-16/100357461.html.
152. See http://performance.ey.com/2013/02/05/china- economy- foreign-
exchange-reserves-finish-2012-on-a-high/.
153. See http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjfx/fxbg/t20110310_402710030.htm.
154. See http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2011-03/04/content_1816351.htm.
155. National Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Year Book, 2003, p. 97. Also see Liu
and Yeh, The Economy of the Chinese Mainland, p. 212; Zhong Dajun (2002)
Guomin Daiyu Bupingdeng Shenshi [Assessment of Unequal Entitlement amongst
Citizens] (Beijing: China’s Workers’ Press), pp. 224, 242.
156. National Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Year Book, 2003, p. 97.
157. See http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjfx/jdfx/t20120118_402779722.htm.
 Kent G. Deng 131

158. World Bank (2004) World Development Report, 2005 (New York: Oxford
University Press), pp. 255, 256.
159. For the 1998 ranking, see World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2000,
pp. i–ii; for the 1999 ranking, see World Bank, World Development Indicators,
2002 (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2002), pp. i–ii; see also World
Bank, Development Report, 2000/2001, p. 271.
160. Of course, there have been alarming negative externalities associated with
Deng’s reforms, ranging from environmental degradation to official corrup-
tion and social inequality. These problems have presented huge challenges
to China for years to come.
6
Let The Hundred Businesses
Donate (bai shang qi juan):
The New Chinese Ways
of Philanthropy, Traditional
Values and the US Model
Gordon C. K. Cheung1

Introduction

On 31 December 2013 Xi Jinping made his first New Year speech after
becoming the new President of China in March 2013. In the speech
he reiterated the importance of the ‘quest for the dream of the road to
rejuvenate China’s previous glory’.2 While many people may have dif-
ferent interpretations of the exact meaning of the ‘Chinese Dream’, it
is undeniable that it will be a tall order for China to realize this dream.
Considering the enormous problems China is facing at present, the
Olympic Games held in Beijing in 2008 and the Expo held in Shanghai
in 2010 can be viewed as more like the preamble of the ‘free association’
for understanding the real messages behind the dream. More impor-
tantly, how to reconcile the political notion of the Chinese Dream
and the connotation of the new reform momentum is the real test to
understand the challenges that China faces and the assessment of Xi’s
ability. The enormous personal wealth generated by more than 30 years
of economic reform in China and finding ways in which to redistribute
this wealth to the weak and needy is one of the areas that have to be
resolved.
By 2012, according to the Wall Street Journal, China had already sur-
passed the US in having more billionaires (212 in China and 211 in
the US). Yet, in terms of charitable donations, the US donated US$298
billion (US$952 per capita) in that year, while the donations in China
reached only US$11 billion (US$8 per capita), resulting in a significant
gap in terms of philanthropy.3 Although there are other factors that

132
 Gordon C. K. Cheung 133

may contribute to the gap, it is particularly interesting, if not an impera-

tive, to understand about the connection between wealth, business and
philanthropy in relation to China’s new economic power. This is espe-
cially when the di shier ge wunian guihua (Twelfth Five-Year Plan), cover-
ing 2011 to 2015, had already outlined some policy orientation.4 After
three decades of economic openness and the accumulation of capital,
what is the best way to use such huge amounts of capital in China?
China has invested enormously in resources and energy industries; but
conspicuous consumption of luxury goods or high-end products are
certainly abhorrent to Xi Jinping, China’s new leader. In addition, when
Chinese businesses are increasingly playing an important role in terms
of economic transformation, both academic workers and policy-makers
will urgently need to know more about the distribution pattern of such
enormous wealth. This will include examining the trajectory of China’s
new ways of development through the understanding of the role of phi-
lanthropy in China’s economic rise in order to locate the connection,
prospects and challenges between philanthropy and business.
In China’s case philanthropy is an underdeveloped topic. The first
reason for this is due to the pre-reform period’s emphasis on ‘self-
reliance and autarky as a means to ensure regime legitimacy’ under
Mao, when donation and philanthropy were not congruent with the
economic structure, not to mention the potential danger of the politi-
cal message about the inability of the state to provide social means.5
The second reason lies more in differences with the traditional Western
ideas about charity and philanthropy, which very often meant the con-
nection between religion and economics. Max Weber’s work on The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was well known for discuss-
ing this relationship, and R. H. Tawney, a British scholar working at
Oxford, also worked out a very precise historical study of the correlation
between religion and capitalism later.6 Finally, the ideas of market lib-
eralism of the United States is still very much impacting on the global
economy, making Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s ‘promotion’ of the US
model of philanthropy very timely and appealing.
Nevertheless, two recent developments allow academic workers and
policy-makers to reconsider the potential and far-reaching significance
of donation and charitable activities in China. The first development
that raised private donation and philanthropy to the surface with the
mass media and general public was after the massive earthquake that
struck Sichuan province in 2008, resulting in about 80,000 people
losing their lives. Donations from China, support from multinational
companies, and fundraising activities in Hong Kong were in full swing
134 Let The Hundred Businesses Donate

to help disaster relief. Yet, the money that people donated was thought
to end up in the pockets of corrupted government officials or simply
disappeared in the process. For instance, according to the South China
Morning Post, the leading English newspaper in Hong Kong, the Hong
Kong people complained that ‘The HK$1.2 billion [US$154 million]
donation to the 2008 earthquake relief in Sichuan was also misused for
infrastructure and government banquets, as reported by the media.’7
Although transparency has become an important issue as far as dona-
tion is concerned, it is an undeniable fact that the 2008 Sichuan earth-
quake in China helped rejuvenate the concept of donation and the
impact of philanthropy in contemporary Chinese economy and society.
The second development has been the rise of very wealthy people in
China after 30 years of economic reform. After 30 years of economic
growth, many of the world economies are intimidated by China’s eco-
nomic power, and they fear that one day China may be able to buy up
the world, emulating what Japan did in the 1980s to the US. However,
Peter Nolan, a well-known expert on China’s economy at Cambridge
University, painted a rather modest picture about the economic perfor-
mance of China according to his painstaking research and substantial
statistical supports. Instead of having the power capable of buying up
the world, he contended, ‘China has not yet bought the world and
shows little sign of doing so in the near future.’8 To his understanding,
China’s economic power has been exaggerated, and it is not remotely
able to buy up the world. To further help tone down the political
drumbeat and to boost the spirit of the West after the 2008–09 finan-
cial crisis and the US in particular, Edward Steinfeld, a China expert
from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), came to the conclu-
sion that ‘China today is doing what we in the United States and the
advanced industrial West more broadly have for decades hoped it would
do. It has invested itself in our global system, our game basically.’9 In
other words, China is assimilating into the world economy and its insti-
tutions have become more pliable and accommodating.
In 2040, according to the calculation of Robert Fogel, winner of the
1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, China will be the world’s
largest economy with US$123 trillion (40 per cent of the world GDP).10
Also, at a time when China’s current foreign reserve stands close to
US$4 trillion (first quarter of 2014) and the aforementioned emergence
of a super-rich class, the role of philanthropy in China seems to be an
unavoidable topic of academic inquiry. Obviously, religion and capi-
talism are highly connected in Western philosophy. Yet, what can we
learn from Confucianism, a long-established philosophy which helped
 Gordon C. K. Cheung 135

create a highly hierarchical society in Chinese history, and many suc-

cessful stories in Chinese business? The role of some traditional Chinese
perspectives is worth exploring because there are, both historically and
currently, evidences of interconnection between Chinese business and
philanthropy. Again, the US economic model is being debated partly
because of the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008–09, and
partly because of a global scepticism about the economic leadership
position of the US. Yet, in terms of the understanding of how philan-
thropy works, the US model of entrepreneurial philanthropy is still a
logical starting point to examine its characteristics, values and overall
impact on China.
This chapter tentatively aims at probing such an emerging new phe-
nomenon between business and philanthropy in China and to assess
the broader meaning of philanthropy in the Chinese context. The fact
is that philanthropy is increasingly gaining more currency, and there-
fore attention should be paid to the latest examples and development.
The aforementioned three reasons will be closely examined in the fol-
lowing manner. To start with, we will illustrate the latest development
of philanthropy in China and the relationship between the state and
business to set the current business and philanthropy landscape. The
second section attempts to locate the traditional Chinese perspectives
on philanthropy in order to examine whether historical, social and
business values will help us understand the role of philanthropy in
contemporary China. Finally, we try to understand the US model of
philanthropy, its major characteristics and the implications for philan-
thropy in China.

New directions of Chinese business and philanthropy

The central focus of China’s economic reform after 1978 has been
broadly accepted as a result of the accumulation of capital through pro-
duction and investment. After 30 years of reform and breakneck growth
and economic development, China’s future challenges are more related
to the constraints of the previous model of cheap labour, the regenera-
tion of many heavily polluted manufacturing cities and the improve-
ment of the welfare system, if not redistribution of wealth, to the
general public. China realizes that the previous model of high growth
and cheap labour will be increasingly less attainable in the future
because reliable workforces are diminishing. More recent problems,
for instance, are the shortage of labourers in China’s coastal cities. In
Shenzhen, one of the most successful manufacturing cities in Southern
136 Let The Hundred Businesses Donate

China, for instance, new migrant labourers are much younger and less
willing to stay for long. They are also more willing to go back to their
home town to set up new businesses once they have acquired enough
capital or management skills in the city.11
Bombarded by industrialization, environmental degradation and
poor quality of life, most of the manufacturing towns and cities in the
coastal region are ready to revamp themselves to pave the way for the
next phase of economic and social transformation. Shenzhen, again,
is making substantial progress in transforming both living standards
and quality of life. On 29 March 2013, a special report of South China
Morning Post illustrated that Shenzhen’s culture and creative industries
would be able to generate an output of 580 billion yuan (US$94 billion)
in 2015. Many new urban projects are aiming at cultural values, sustain-
ability and energy efficiency. For instance, the Overseas Chinese Town
(OCT) Harbour near Shenzhen Bay was built to comply with the highest
environmental standards and specifications.12 Other Special Economic
Zones (SEZs) and provinces are likely to follow suit, although the pace
will be very different.
From the society’s point of view, there is a genuine need to strengthen
social welfare because the growth factor of cheap labour is going to
play a diminishing role in the Chinese economy. On 17 May 2010, Tan
Guocheng, a Honda auto worker in Foshan, Guangdong, pressed the
emergency stop button of the production line, grinding the entire pro-
duction line to a standstill. Such a one-man-strike instantly awoke the
rest of the 1,900 underpaid and overworked workers in the same factory,
and further aroused thousands of similar demands from the entire Pearl
River Delta region.13
It is in this direction that one of the most intriguing, yet perhaps
overlooked, policy orientations of the di shier ge wunian guihua (Twelfth
Five-Year Plan), is to signpost the reforming of the welfare system. As far
as charity is concerned, the Plan pointed out clearly that China should
actively promote philanthropy, increase the sense of awareness of social
charity, promote charitable groups and foundations and streamline the
tax incentive to cater for the improvement of philanthropy and charity.
It was the first time that China put such a clear message in the Five-
Year Plan on philanthropy with a corresponding policy incentive.14 The
specific policy orientation on philanthropy is closely connected with
the overall theme of the Plan on social welfare improvement. As can
be seen from the assessment of the Plan by John Wong, a Professorial
Fellow at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore,
‘China’s future economic growth will de-emphasise external demand
 Gordon C. K. Cheung 137

(or export) as an important source of growth’ and more emphasis will

be placed on ‘the improvement of “people’s livelihood” or minsheng.’15
Of course, Chinese politics depends very much on the implementation
of policy. Central and local relations sometimes can be very political
and very often confrontational.16 Yet, some new trends of philanthropy
in China do help illustrate the current pattern and perspectives from
the state level.
Bestowed by the Plan, some follow-up initiative on philanthropy
should be developed upon the central demand. The first China
Philanthropy Forum, which was supposed to be the highest level
conference of its kind, was held in Beijing on 30 November 2012.
The forum was organized by a committee chaired by Li Zhaoxing, the
former Minister of Foreign Affairs of China and supported by China
Association for International Friendly Contact, Caijing [Finance and
Economy] Magazine (one of the most influential economic magazines
in China) and Beijing Charity Gala Ball. According to the organizer
of the Forum, ‘The Forum aims to foster constructive dialogue among
Chinese and international visionary leaders in philanthropy to promote
the healthy development of China’s philanthropic sector.’17 Tony Blair,
the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was the keynote
speaker, and talked about his own experience of running three charita-
ble foundations and his vision on the co-operation between business,
government and policy to facilitate future philanthropy in China. The
China Philanthropy Forum 2013 (the second one) was held in Beijing
on 18 November 2013. The Forum was sponsored by the China Private
Foundation Forum (CUSP) and the China Philanthropy Research
Institute (CPRI), based at Beijing Normal University (as I  will detail
below). This time, the keynote speaker was the former President of the
United States, Bill Clinton. The central theme of this Forum moved the
debate to look at the transformation, if not modification, of state phi-
lanthropy to private philanthropy.18
The China Philanthropy Research Institute at Beijing Normal
University was established in June 2010 as the first academic institute
studying philanthropy in China. It collaborated with various well-
known foundations in China to study philanthropy through research,
education, development and consultancy.19 On 1 February 2013, it
released the 2012 Top 100 Philanthropists in China. From their press
release, the top philanthropists contributed 14.9 billion yuan (US$2.4
billion) in total. Amongst the donors, 10.5 billion yuan (US$1.7 bil-
lion) were from heads of companies focusing on natural resources. The
majority of the donations went to environment (67 per cent), education
138 Let The Hundred Businesses Donate

(14 per cent), poverty reduction (5 per cent), local development (3

per cent) etc., whilst the organizations that received the money were
mainly foundations (74 per cent), schools (11 per cent), government
(10 per cent), charity groups (5 per cent) and others.20 In terms of
geographical distribution, Guangdong topped the list and there were
31 philanthropists from that province alone, followed by Fujian (14
people) and Beijing (10 people). To many people’s surprise, Shanghai
only had two people on the list, contrasting from the income genera-
tion power of Shanghai.21
Another feature of the report was that a single person, Wang Wenbiao
from Elion, already contributed 10 billion yuan (US$1.63 billion) from
Neimenggu (Inner Mongolia) alone. According to the company’s intro-
duction, its major businesses are coal, gas and other pharmaceutical
products.22 As a state-owned enterprise, Elion has been trying to send
the message that this company is highly responsible for the environ-
ment and the community/province. Yet, if we zoom more closely on the
socio-economic plight of Inner Mongolia, the picture becomes clearer.
Baotou, for example, is the largest rare earth resource in China, account-
ing for two-thirds of rare earth resources, which produced 97 per cent of
the rare earths in the world.23 Yet, due to illegal mining and the human
and environmental loss, more than 2,900 mining sites were closed in
2012 in order to demonstrate the government’s ability in controlling
the mining industry in Inner Mongolia.24 Elion’s high profile donation
and philanthropy and emphasis on charitable work in Inner Mongolia
was more like a redemption and ‘social compensation’ from the state
level, something to probe our further interest in understanding the
nature of philanthropy and the business relationship in the context of
China’s political economy.
Recent academic works also touch upon such intricate politics
between Chinese enterprises and philanthropy. By analysing the
Chinese National survey in 1995 of 2,870 private businesses’ dona-
tions and the political consequences, Dali Ma and William L. Parish
confirmed that ‘Chinese private entrepreneurs donated generously to
government welfare projects, and in exchange gained political access
and social status via appointment to political councils’.25 A more recent
study arrived at a similar conclusion. Jun Su and Jia He conducted a
survey of 3,837 Chinese private enterprises in 31 provinces in 2006
to understand the political economy of donation. They figured out
‘Chinese private enterprises carried out philanthropy activities to bet-
ter protect property rights and nurture political connections and, in
turn lead to better enterprise profitability. The result is even stronger in
 Gordon C. K. Cheung 139

institutions weaker provinces.’26 A further economic externality is that

they can get better loans because the banks are more inclined to treat
philanthropy favourably and the owners of donor companies are more
confident in the legal system.
Last but of course not the least, Rurun Report, together with China’s
Rich List, is currently the major reference for the richest entrepreneurs in
China.27 China’s Rich List is the most authoritative report on China about
the richest people and their businesses. Since the list was established in
1999 by Rupert Hoogewerf, increasingly, the Rurun Report branches out
to include many other reports and discoveries for the rich. The guides for
overseas education destinations, tourism and high-end consumer goods
are some examples. According to Hoogewerf himself, ‘The China Rich
List has proven that there are real, highly capable entrepreneurs in China
and shown the world who they are.’28 Logically, business development
and entrepreneurship mirror imaged three decades of economic develop-
ment in China and this is why their success stories are being captured by
some journalists, for example, Wu Xiaobo’s Jidang Sanshi Nian [Striking
30 years] (a two-volume book covering 30 years of economic develop-
ment in China with unique cases focusing on the entrepreneurial spirit
of individual business people) has been so successful and eventually
turned out to be a very popular documentary TV series in China.29 It is
therefore a natural development to follow up the rich list in China and
also to search for their donation and philanthropic behaviour.30
As a result, the China Philanthropy List was released in 2011. The
latest 2013 China Philanthropy List indicated the most up-to-date per-
formance of the rich in China in terms of their philanthropy.31 In the
first place, those who follow the list very closely can easily recognize
some familiar names such as Huang Rulun (1st), Zong Qinghou (7th)
and Yang Guoqiang (10th) because their businesses are big household
names in China. Zong’s Wahaha beverage and bottled water and Yang’s
Country Garden estate development are well-known in the whole of
China. Secondly, their donations are used to provide poverty allevia-
tion, education and social welfare, which are consistent with the tradi-
tional values of Chinese philanthropy that we are going to explore later.
Finally, four of the ten philanthropists are from Guangdong and Fujian.
Shanghai is less representative. Again, as we have already discussed ear-
lier, this pattern of geographical distribution is consistent with what we
have studied before.
Nevertheless, philanthropy development in China is not plain sail-
ing. One of the key problems of the development of philanthropy
in China is the lack of public trust in the government and also the
140 Let The Hundred Businesses Donate

non-transparent of most of the government controlled philanthropy

organizations. According to Xie Ying, ‘Charities across China have
found themselves in a Catch-22. Big government-sponsored organiza-
tions have lost public trust, while small-scale operations struggling to
acquire funding and personnel are pursued and shut down by cautious
State officials.’32 It means the system of Chinese philanthropy also needs
structural reform and more good practices should be learnt from many
examples from other parts of China as well as the US. Philanthropy is
a relatively new phenomenon in China, and therefore responses from
society can be mixed. In the case of Chen Guangbiao, a self-made bil-
lionaire in China, his outspoken style and proactive participation in
many charitable works very often created a mixed view from the media.
Some people called him visionary, whilst others regarded his donation
as showing off.33 More recently, he was talking about of buying up the
New York Times when interviewed by the media.34
Given these and many other less appreciated examples of Chinese
philanthropy, nevertheless, we have witnessed the state, the private
sector and the academics all working toward the understanding and
discovering of ways to unlock the potential of the capital from the busi-
ness sector with their philanthropic work. A more innovative example
was the establishment of Huamin Charity Foundation in 2008 by Dr
Lu Dezhi (a self-made businessman previously working for the Hunan
Provincial Government), who not only contributed capital and money
but also put forward his own vision and theory of philanthropy upon
the establishment of the Foundation.35 The Chinese celebrity’s involve-
ment in philanthropy, such as the One Foundation by Jet Li, one of
the most famous Hollywood kung-fu stars in China, is also making a
difference to poverty alleviation and education with significant social
impact and media attention.36 If bai hua qi fang (let a hundred flowers
bloom) was so widely acknowledged in Mao’s era,37 there is no reason
why bai shang qi juan (let the hundred businesses donate) should not
be profoundly promoted in the foreseeable future of Chinese philan-
thropy. Given the new development of philanthropy in China, what
can we learn from Chinese tradition about the relationship between
business, the state and philanthropy? It is in this direction that we turn
to understand some traditional Chinese philosophy of philanthropy.

Philanthropy: the Chinese way

Before we talk about the traditional Chinese way of philanthropy, I will

first recount a story from my previous experience. Between 1999 and
 Gordon C. K. Cheung 141

2001, as a researcher working for a research centre looking at overseas

Chinese business in Hong Kong, I  was able to go to Singapore and
Malaysia for many research visits. In the middle of a research trip in
Malaysia focusing on overseas Chinese business, I  was invited to a
community hall watching some Chinese speakers’ presentation. After
the talk and rounds of applause, some helpers presented buckets to the
audience members for donations for local charity. To my surprise, the
majority of the people (around 150 people) who attended the seminar
did contribute some money, either in coins or notes. Such incidents sug-
gested that there could be some moments in which money could be eas-
ily slipped away from the pocket of the Chinese into charitable means,
and the opportunities should be made swiftly with various situational
and atmospheric supports – the art of Chinese philanthropy if you like.
However, the ad hoc manner of donation was determined very much
by the circumstances, the atmosphere, if not the spirit of the event. So,
it was not systematic and generally situational and therefore made the
recording of Chinese philanthropy very difficult.
As we pointed out at the very beginning of this chapter, philanthropy
has long been an underdeveloped topic in China. According to Glen
Peterson, the first systematic book looking at the subject matter of
philanthropy in China was ‘a revised PhD dissertation prepared for the
Faculty of Political Science at Columbia University’ and was published
a century ago in 1912.38 The author of the dissertation was named Tsu,
Andrew Yu-Yue, who also had religious background. According to Tsu’s
understanding:

Chinese philanthropy may be divided into three general groups: I.

Charity, in the strict sense of the word, meaning disinterested aid to
the poor; II. Mutual Benefit, or the method of relief and protection by
reciprocal efforts; III. Civic Betterment, or the promotion of public wel-
fare through voluntary co-operation on the part of the inhabitants.39

His view refers to the meaning that the Chinese philosophy behind
philanthropy was virtue based. His categories of philanthropy of char-
ity, mutual benefit and civic betterment are quite intrinsic and broadly
conceived under social welfare in the Chinese context. However, the
year of publication, 1912, signalled the historical trace of contemporary
Chinese politics as the underlying reason for philanthropy being an
underdeveloped topic, perhaps. For instance, in the case of Tsu, before
he took up PhD study at Columbia University, China was still under
Qing dynasty. When the dissertation was published in 1912, Qing was
142 Let The Hundred Businesses Donate

collapsed and China was under the National Government! Later, the
National Government plunged into internal chaos and the contestation
of warlords, civil war and eventually the establishment of the People’s
Republic of China in 1949. Coupled with the Mao’s self-reliance policy
as well as Deng’s early reform and openness, there seemed to be lacking
the stable economic and social environment to really allow philan-
thropy to take root, not to mention academic studies!
A window of opportunity to examine the Chinese philosophy behind
charitable works or philanthropy can be captured more completely
by looking at a case in Hong Kong. This case will illustrate that suc-
cessful Chinese-based private philanthropy organization can take root
and develop to help the general public if appropriate policy and good
administration can be co-ordinated. Tungwah Group of Hospitals,
established in 1870, was the oldest and the largest private charitable
organization in Hong Kong. According to Carl Smith’s study of Chinese
business in nineteenth-century Hong Kong, traditional Chinese val-
ues were highly protected and embodied by the business people. He
contended that ‘The Chinese community in Hong Kong did wish to
embody the traditional Chinese values and virtues. The Committee
of the Tung Wah Hospital (opened 1870) were the “mandarins” of the
Hong Kong Chinese.’40 It was established by the collective effort of
Chinese business people and the Hong Kong government. According
to the records, Chinese business people donated 47,000 dollars and the
Hong Kong government contributed 115,000 dollars at that time to
provide hospital services and Chinese medicine for the poor and needy,
originally under the name of Tungwah Hospital.41
Providing health and basic welfare were part of its works. But, more
importantly, the provision of free burial and transhipment of the dead
bodies of overseas Chinese back to their home town was a key function.42
To provide basic dignity for the overseas Chinese was one thing, yet, a
well-prepared funeral could be very costly in the past, and was increas-
ingly becoming a lucrative business in the last decade in China due to
the fact that it was considered to be a ‘grey area’ because not many peo-
ple wanted to or could actually participate in this business.43 Therefore,
Tungwah Group of Hospitals contributed enormously to the benefit of
many Chinese people and its name was equivalent to charity. Nowadays,
Tungwah Group of Hospitals has five hospitals, 52 different schools,
kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, together with many other
organizations for the general welfare needs of the Hong Kong people. If
we look at the Board of Directors of Tungwah Group of Hospitals 2013/14,
interestingly, nine out of the 12 Directors originate from Guangdong
 Gordon C. K. Cheung 143

province.44 This composition reflects clearly that Tungwah, since it was

based in Hong Kong, is a key driving force, if not model, of philanthropy
in the southern part of China.45 More importantly, its Chairman, Dr Chan
Un Chan, Ina, is also a member of Guangdong Provincial Committee of
the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and the Vice-
Chairman of Beijing Chinese Overseas Friendship Association. Clearly,
China is very interested in the role, the performance or the influence of
Tungwah Group of Hospitals.46 Nevertheless, whether the good practice
of this star example of philanthropy will be transferable to the general
practice of other up-and-coming philanthropy organizations in China is
a subject for further study.
Putting the state aside, nevertheless, if we take a look at the overseas
Chinese who left China in different periods of time, perhaps more so
after the late Qing period, this group of people actually incorporated
some very fundamental concepts between business and philanthropy.
The overseas Chinese, for example in Southeast Asia and in the United
Kingdom, are not just business-oriented, but are also politically alert
and their businesses are interdependent with the societies in which
they reside.47 Traditional Chinese philosophy embodied philanthropy
as business ethics, which should constitute a core part of Chinese busi-
ness relationships:

The Chinese logic of give-and-take ideally should be worked out in

such a way that business can prosper, profit can be made, the society
and the needy should be taken into consideration. In this context,
charitable activities are seen as virtuous for family members and
good for business.48

The promotion of philanthropy as embedded business ethics amongst

the overseas Chinese can help improve the image of the overseas
Chinese as well as the kind of functional value of investment in guanxi
(relationship).
Amongst others, Tan Kah Kee and Aw Boon Haw were two well-
known overseas Chinese businessmen, who are also considered as two
great philanthropists. Tan Kah Kee was considered as model by linking
his qiaoxiang (sojourner village) in Xiamen, China. Aw Boon Haw was
famous for building two Tiger Balm Gardens or Haw Par Villas (Chinese
mythological theme park) in Singapore and Hong Kong.49 The central
theme of those parks was to educate the overseas Chinese about the
traditional Chinese culture of filial piety, family values, and he insisted
that the park should be opened free of charge to general public. But,
144 Let The Hundred Businesses Donate

such Confucius-derived philanthropy conflicts with more nationalistic

ways of philanthropy.
To celebrate China’s Olympic dream, it was considered by the Beijing
municipal government that the Beijing National Aquatics centre (Water
Cube) should be used to showcase the contribution of the overseas Chinese
toward the national building of China and therefore donations should be
from the people in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and the overseas Chinese.
Although the majority of the contribution of the building cost of 940 mil-
lion yuan (US$139 million) was from a handful of businesses tycoons in
Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, the whole project was actually supported
by 350,000 people across 107 countries.50 Through donation, the business
people helped build a transnational network of nationalism. By contribut-
ing to the Olympic Games through donation, the overseas Chinese and
the business people can move up their social status through charity and
philanthropy. Of course, the aftermath effect of the donation and tangi-
ble business benefit may not be realized instantly. Yet, recognition by the
Chinese government would be an honour and the improvement in social
relationships is a potential social capital formation.
Philanthropy, as far as we can see from the example of the overseas
Chinese or the previous business philanthropy in China, is more than
benevolent behaviour deriving from altruism alone. The overseas
Chinese invested, through the medium of philanthropy, in order to
gain recognition and hopefully (for those big donors) to further gener-
ate business benefits. For business philanthropy in China, philanthropy
serves multiple functions: political benefits, tax returns and access to
more capital from the banks. To further develop such a trajectory, one
should also be very curious to see how the US ‘entrepreneurial and
return driven’ model of philanthropy can shed light on the newly
emerged philanthropy in China.

Philanthropy: the US model?

If we extend the meaning of philanthropy from emergency relief for the

less fortunate to an endeavour that seeks the improvement of mankind
and solution to long-term social problems, we unavoidably should be
looking at US philanthropy because state-building and the education
of mankind are two major programmes under the US model of philan-
thropy. It was captured very clearly by Olivier Zunz:

Traditional charitable givers had more modest goals and did not
expect much in return for their generosity. What may have been true
 Gordon C. K. Cheung 145

of the traditional giver, however, was no longer true of the modern

philanthropic funder. American philanthropy would be a capitalist
venture in social betterment, not an act of kindness as understood
in Christianity.51

Asking for return from philanthropy can be considered as social invest-

ment. The management, effectiveness and efficiency of philanthropy
will be under huge public scrutiny because the result of ‘investment’
in donation will affect the well-being of the general public as a whole.
The American model of philanthropy, if anything, may include fea-
tures like: the pooling of resources in the form of philanthropy M&A
(merger and acquisition), active management of the donation, corporate
philanthropy (result driven), and it should reflect the needs of the soci-
ety and economy and the capacity of the country. In December 2010,
the Foreign Policy, a well-known US-based magazine dedicated to foreign
affairs and global issues, released its annual special issue of Top 100
Global Thinkers. This year’s number one thinker was not a state leader
or outspoken public intellectual. The number one thinkers who topped
the list were Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, because they came up with
the excellent idea of asking the richest in the world to give away at least
half of their wealth to form a global ‘Great Givers’ Club.52 The Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation is the world’s largest philanthropy founda-
tion, which is today’s ‘counterpart to the Rockefeller Foundation in the
1920s and the Ford Foundation in the 1960s’.53 Its most recent achieve-
ment, according to Bill Gates in the Richard Dimbleby Lecture on
29 January 2013, was the very possible eventual eradication of polio in
the future.54 When I was sitting in front of the television watching his
seminar, one could almost feel his passion and also appreciate the results
emanating from the Foundation. Building on so many track records of
effective outcomes of philanthropy from the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, Warren Buffet, Chairman of the Berkshire Foundation (the
world’s second richest man), was attracted to Bill and Melinda’s effort
and vision, resulting in giving the majority of his wealth to the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation to reinforce its capacity to make sure return
from donation can be achieved in the most effective manner. If we look
at this M&A style of philanthropic capital by two of the richest men in
present-day America, it may broadly reflect the truth about the tradi-
tion of US philanthropy because such a ‘merger’ of philanthropic work
actually can be traced from another well-established historical founda-
tion in the US, the Rockefeller Foundation, which also benefited hugely
from Henry Ford (an automobile guru), who also donated heavily to
146 Let The Hundred Businesses Donate

further buttress its success, resulting in extraordinary science, education

and social development in US history.
Active management, if not smart donation, was mainly shaped by the
great philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, who was born in Dunfermline,
Scotland, a hard-nosed industrialist building his philanthropy empire
on steel production in the US. According to Andrew Carnegie, his
model of philanthropy can be called smart spending, which has been
adopted by many followers in the US in particular. In his own words, he
put forward the philosophy of today’s American philanthropy:

Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, the proper use
of which for public ends would work good to the community from
which it chiefly came, should be made to feel that the community, in
the form of the State, cannot thus be deprived of its proper share …
This policy would work powerfully to induce the rich man to attend
to the administration of wealth during his life, which is the end that
society should always have in view, as being by far the most fruitful
for the people.55

From his point of view, donors should very much care about the out-
come if not the ‘investment’ of their donation. One should make an
effort to ensure its good use. The intermingling relationship between
the donor and the community, which benefited from the donation,
should be placed in a more active and connective way. Active manage-
ment can be interpreted as the American way of entrepreneurship, if
not the political tradition of being very sceptical of the government.
Eileen Heisman, CEO of National Philanthropic Trust, one of the top 25
grant-making institutions in the US, pointed out that, ‘In the US, 80
percent of charitable donations come from individuals and 14 percent
from corporations.’56 In other words, the role of the US government in
philanthropy has never played a crucial role in any time, which is fun-
damentally different from the development of philanthropy in China.
Our discussion so far has only focused on the individual level. Yet,
corporate donation is another important characteristic of US philan-
thropy. From the general public’s perspective, donation from a com-
pany or individual perhaps is more or less the same, deriving social
benefit and delivery of public goods. Yet, from a more methodological,
if not social science, point of view, donation from a company (or cor-
porate philanthropy) is very different. Frank Koch argued in The New
Corporate Philanthropy: How Society and Business Can Profit, a very influ-
ential book about corporate philanthropy in the US, that, ‘A revitalized
 Gordon C. K. Cheung 147

sense of corporate mission for a more active and broader role in society
can reduce the isolation of corporations and begin to turn around some
of the current negative public attitudes toward business.’57 Diehard
economists or market fundamentalists, such as Milton Friedman, will
disagree with any corporate donation because companies are deemed
to make profit not create social benefit. When Michael Porter and
Mark Kramer discussed the role of corporate philanthropy, they did not
entirely agreed with Milton Friedman that business should stay with
business and follow the concept of making profit, not making fame.
They argued that

Increasingly, philanthropy is used as a form of public relations or

advertising, promoting a company’s image or brand through cause-
related marketing or other high-profile sponsorships ... While these
campaigns do provide much-needed support to worthy causes, they
are intended as much to increase company visibility and improve
employee morale as to create social impact.58

Again, their judgement is that in order to promote one’s industry (brand

name is certainly valuable either in economic or business terms), corpo-
rate philanthropy is one way of contributing to public good as well as
allowing the general public to associate with the company. Their study
also indicates that by focusing on four areas: selecting the grantees,
signalling other funders, improving the performance of grant recipients
and advancing knowledge, corporate philanthropy can help maximize
the value of philanthropy. A  positive sum equation of philanthropy
therefore can be obtained.59 The argument that welfare and public good
should be provided by the government is under huge criticism because
it was the relentless corporate greed and profit motive that led to the
financial crisis that we are still suffering from. Corporate philanthropy
can send a strong message to society about business ethics and social
responsibility.
As far as the model of US philanthropy is concerned, we need to bear
in mind that the current US ‘enterprise’ of philanthropy was built upon
from as early as ‘those gentle Indians of the Bahama Islands who greeted
Columbus at his first landfall in the New World’.60 Yet, the theory and
practice of American philanthropy thereafter evolved after the civil
war, the scientific revolution and the business style of philanthropic
movement. Alternatively, the success of the US model of philanthropy
is based on the need and the capacity of the US as a nation and a global
power. In time, the capacity of the US is going to change, modify and
148 Let The Hundred Businesses Donate

reshape. So the model needs to be revised and reconstructed to allow

for the requirements of the economy. For instance, in the Cold War
and early post-Cold War period, it was actually the enormous industrial
power which drove the US technological changes, economic develop-
ment and innovation. Lewis Branscomb and Richard Florida demon-
strated that

Industrial funding of university research has also increased dra-

matically in recent years, providing a further indication of industry’s
growing reliance on external sources of technology. It grew by nearly
600 percent in real terms between 1970 and 1993, from $176 million
to $1.2 billion.61

The late 1990s saw the change of the US economy to communication

technology and financial innovation, resulting in exceptional growth in
these two sectors in the late 1990s and early 2000s but also generating
a huge economic bubble, which collapsed eventually in the 2008/09
financial crisis. Joseph Schumpeter called such dynamics of change
‘creative destruction’ or more narrowly the American capitalist system
in our case of philanthropy.
The American capitalist system, undeniably, propelled the US econ-
omy after the Second World War, and the concomitant technological
advancement and even the soft power of American brands, ideas and
culture also resulted in the US unique economic system with clear sup-
port from the government’s economic strategies, institutions and of
course huge philanthropic investment. American philanthropy, there-
fore, works closely with the US economic system, resulting in a highly
successful impetus to safeguard US capitalism. In Zoltán J. Ács’s recent
study, Why Philanthropy Matters: How the Wealthy Give, and What It
Means for Our Economic Well-being, the author correctly pointed out how
the model of US philanthropy works with its economic system:

Historically, philanthropy has been loyal to the institutions of

American capitalism. This has been most evident in the institutions
supporting opportunity creation and innovation: philanthropists
have invested fortunes in schools, universities, libraries, and research
centers. The strength of American capitalism depends on the health
of these institutions and on their ability to produce new ideas and
train new workers for the marketplace. Thus, philanthropy and capi-
talism are symbiotic, with strength of one reinforcing the strength of
the other and vice versa.62
 Gordon C. K. Cheung 149

To keep the US system running and to generate global influence, philan-

thropy now plays a key role in gearing up the social and the economic
sectors because the industrial section is facing a transformation. As we
have already indicated, many US Foundations are actually the house-
hold names of the world. Philanthropy has become the socio-economic
impetus, which seems to be working for the welfare system as well as
for the likely re-engineering of the next phase of economic transforma-
tion of the US.
With this as backdrop, however, I still want to go back to history to
trace the relationship between the Rockefeller family and its century-
long philanthropic activities in China. According to Bullock’s study, the
Rockefeller family’s China story began with John D. Rockefeller’s $10
donation to China missions in 1863 and continues to the present day –
a one and a half century relationship. More importantly, ‘Exporting
Western science and medicine to China dominated the Rockefellers’
institutional agenda’ and oil, art and science are the three institutional
agendas behind Rockefeller’s philanthropic works in China. Nowadays,
Rockefeller institutions in China include the Rockefeller Foundation,
the China Medical Board, Inc, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Asia
Society and the Asian Cultural Council. As a result, in 2007, there was
a statue established in Beijing to commemorate this ‘Oil Prince’.63
However, nowadays, given the economic rise of China and the relative
decline of the US, those Rockefeller institutes modified and narrowed
their new agenda of targeting policy-oriented areas such as ‘China’s
role in Africa, China’s need for equitable health access, and China’s sus-
tainable development’.64 The Rockefeller family’s philanthropy helped
China’s modernization and social welfare, resulting in relieving Chinese
government’s economic pressure.
We want to conclude this section not just by simply asking if the US
model can fit into the Chinese system or not, which does not seem to
be automatic, neither can it be done without further serious thinking
and readjustment, which is also beyond the capacity of this chapter.65
The US model is basically a market-oriented model, depending very
much on private donors and companies’ contributions, whilst Chinese
philanthropy is not only emerging, but also the entire system is state
run and the role of the private sector is less significant. American phi-
lanthropy has already been working with the economy and the global
society for decades, if not centuries, whilst Chinese philanthropy is
under scrutiny not only in the scale but also in the governance and
transparency. If, again, there is a real sense of an American model of
philanthropy, asking for return is the core value behind this model.
150 Let The Hundred Businesses Donate

Now, it is time for China to demonstrate whether this lesson has been
learnt and whether the US model is working or not. If China can make
the best use of the newly emerging philanthropy activities to come up
with real improvement of welfare at home, the previous US ‘invest-
ment’ of philanthropy in China was break even. If China can further
extend its philanthropy to help global mankind and the human good-
ness, the US philanthropy model is making a profit. However, if Chinese
philanthropy has degenerated into another swamp of corruption and
scandals, both the US model of philanthropy will be discredited and the
hope of the so-called Chinese way of modernization will be shattered.

Conclusions

We began this chapter with the New Year ‘resolution’ about the ‘Chinese
Dream’ from Xi Jinping, China’s new President. At this time the meaning
of the Chinese Dream is still considered by many as the political slogan
of Xi Jinping. Although he mentioned the rejuvenation of the national
glory and the sustainability of Chinese economic growth, how to realize
that dream is a testing ground not just for Xi himself but also for China
as a whole. Putting aside the political rhetoric of the so-called Chinese
Dream, if one wants to know a little bit more about the images that may
lead to the further realization of the desires about the dream, one needs
to be guided by more concrete policy orientation and understanding the
ways to move China forward. When Xi became the President in March
2013, the forthcoming Third Plenum of China’s 18th Communist Party
Congress took place in November 2013. It was considered to be a clear
blueprint for deepening various aspects of the next images of China’s
reform and development, although many reform policies are waiting to
be unpacked. Also, the di shier ge wunian guihua (Twelfth Five-Year Plan),
covering 2011–15, coincides with Xi’s early administration period. Our
study of the new development of philanthropy and Chinese business is
an interesting point of departure to help understand one of the areas of
China’s economic reform, and to see how China can brave the wind of
challenges in order to tackle further economic reforms hurdles which
will certainly touch upon the fundamental structure of the society and
the political economy of the country.
Understandably, philanthropy is an emerging issue in the current
Chinese political economy. As can be seen from the aforementioned
cases and examples in China, there are pockets of new ideas and
changes from both the state and society that are certainly worth men-
tioning in trying to hopefully generate some initial understanding of
 Gordon C. K. Cheung 151

the new ways of philanthropy development in China. The central ques-

tion behind China nowadays is more about redistribution of resources
rather than further accumulation. Many academic inquires have
already explored the social inequality and environmental problems
that have been generated in the previous 30 plus years of economic
growth and what should be the next reform development in China.
As Zheng Yongnian, Director of the East Asian Institute at the National
University of Singapore, pointed out after 30 years of economic reform,
China is moving toward the second phase of reform of the society as
a whole.66 Other mainland Chinese economists also predicted that the
perpetuation of reform will generate the biggest ‘dividend’ to China.
Wu Jinglian, one of the most celebrated Chinese economists, agreed
that the future of Chinese reform relies more on the ‘directions’ and
‘focus’.67 Whether reform of the society is a way to realize the ‘Chinese
Dream’ is under continuous scrutiny or debate, but this study of philan-
thropy sheds light on one way of seeing it.
To bring private money and pubic goods together through charitable
works is not new in Chinese traditions, especially amongst the overseas
Chinese and along the philosophy of Chinese business ethics, resulting
in the enhancement of business relationships as well as recognition by
the state. Our discussion of the US philanthropy model allows us to
re-establish the connection between state-building and philanthropy
works through investment and entrepreneurial thinking in the US
experience, which allowed the US to tap into such enormous private
resources in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for its economic
growth. The current economic rise of China, the economic develop-
ment process after 30 years of growth and the emerging super-rich
class push us to rethink, albeit very rudimentarily, about the reasoning
behind the US model of philanthropy and the possibility of deriving a
more sustainable model of philanthropy in China.

Notes and references

1. The author would like to thank Professor Zheng Yongnian, Director of East
Asian Institute (EAI) at the National University of Singapore for providing
a research fellowship in late 2011 for my research at EAI, and the Chiang
Chingkuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (Project No.
RG012-P-10) for two research visits to Hong Kong, China and Taiwan in the
summer of 2012.
2. Caijing Magazine [Finance & Economy], 2 January 2014, http://politics.
caijing.com.cn/2014-01-02/113766543.html (accessed 4 January 2014).
For new academic study of the Chinese Dreams or the future of China, see
152 Let The Hundred Businesses Donate

William A. Callahan (2013) Chinese Dreams: 20 Visions of the Future, (Oxford:

Oxford University Press) and Angang Hu (2011) China in 2020: A New Type
of Superpower (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution).
3. The Wall Street Journal (2013), 14 June, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000
1424127887323734304578542820578612476.html (accessed 16 June 2013).
4. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo guomin jingji he shehui fazhan di shier ge wun-
ian guihua gangyao [The Outline of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan for National
Economic & Social Development of the People’s Republic of China] (2011)
(Beijing: Renmin chubanshe), chapter 33, section 3.
5. Andre, Laliberie (2008) ‘“Harmonious Society,” “Peaceful Re-Unification”,
and the Dilemma Raised by Taiwanese Philanthropy’, in Andre Laliberte and
Mac Lanteigne (eds), The Chinese Party-State in the 21st Century: Adaptation
and the Reinvention of Legitimacy (London: Routledge), p. 83.
6. See Max Weber (1992 [1930]) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
(tran. by T. Parsons) (London: Routledge) and R. H. Tawney (1952) Religion and
the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co).
7. South China Morning Post, http://www.scmp.com/comment/blogs/
article/1226532/why-i-didnt-donate-sichuan-earthquake-relief (accessed 2
January 2014).
8. Peter Nolan (2012) Is China Buying the World? (Cambridge: Polity), p. 143.
9. Edward S. Steinfeld (2010) Playing our Game: Why China’s Economic Rise
Doesn’t Threaten the West (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 234.
10. Robert Fogel (2010) ‘The $123 Trillion Economy’, Foreign Policy no. 177
(January/February), p. 72.
11. Personal communication with visitors from China Development Institute
(Shenzhen) in East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore, 19
November 2011, and discussion with factory owners in Zhongshan, the
Garden City of Guangdong, in August 2012.
12. See Michael Taylor (2013) ‘Business and Pleasure’, South China Morning Post
(Special Report, Shenzhen) (29 March), p.  4 and David Powell (2013) ‘At
the Cutting Edge’, South China Morning Post (Special Report, Shenzhen) (29
March), p. 10.
13. Minnie Chan (2012) ‘Strike’, in Stefan Al (ed.), Factory Towns of South China:
An Illustrated Guidebook (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press), p. 28.
14. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo guomin jingji he shehui fazhan di shier ge wunian gui-
hua gangyao [The Outline of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan for National Economic
& Social Development of the People’s Republic of China] (2011), p. 96.
15. John Wong (2013) ‘The Twelfth Five-Year Programme: A  Turning Point in
China’s Socio-Economic Development.’ In Gungwu Wang and Yongnian
Zheng (eds) China: Development and Governance (Singapore: World Scientific),
p. 149.
16. Teresa Wright (2010) Accepting Authoritarianism: State-Society Relations in
China’s Reform Era (Stanford: Stanford University Press).
17. China Philanthropy Forum 2012, http://www.caijing.com.cn/2012/ltjj/
index.html (accessed 17 June 2013).
18. China Philanthropy Forum 2013, http://www.caijing.com.cn/cpf2013/
(accessed 2 January 2014).
19. The centre is headed by Wang Zhenyao, who was previously worked in the
Ministry of Civil Affairs.
 Gordon C. K. Cheung 153

20. Press Release, http://www.bnu1.org/research/donated/dynamic/1514.html

(accessed,29 June 2013).
21. Shanghai, however, is very unique as far as poverty reduction is concerned.
For a long period of time, because of its economic position in China,
Shanghai was in partnership with other very poor provinces. It was required
to contribute the majority of its GDP, if not taxed very heavily, by the central
government for helping those poor provinces.
22. Elion’s official web site, http://www.elion.com.cn/gxyl/ylcy/index.shtml
(accessed 1 July 2013).
23. The Guardian (2012) (7 August), http://www.guardian.co.uk/environ-
ment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution (accessed 13 June
2013).
24. Mining.com (2012) (22 September), http://www.mining.com/2900-mines-
closed-down-in-chinas-coal-and-rare-earth-region-73692/ (accessed 13 June
2013).
25. Dali Ma and William L. Parish (2006) ‘Tocquevillian Moments: Charitable
Contributions by Chinese Private Entrepreneurs’, Social Forces, vol. 85, no.
2 (December), p. 943.
26. Jun Su and Jia He (2010) ‘Does Giving Lead to Getting? Evidence from
Chinese Private Enterprises’, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 93, pp. 85-87.
27. Rurun Report (2013), http://www.hurun.net/zhcn/Default.aspx (accessed
1 July 2013).
28. ‘The China’s Rich List: The Remarkable Achievement of Alumnus Rupert
Hoogewerf’ (2011) Durham Difference, issue 30 (Spring/Summer), p. 18.
29. Xiaobo Wu (2007) Jidang Sanahi Nian [Striking 30 Years] (Beijing: CITIC
Publishing Group).
30. Interestingly, it has become a global search and the link-up between the
rich and their philanthropy is one of the key media interests in the UK as
well. In the Rich List 2013 (constructed by the Sunday Times and Charities
Aid Foundation), the first few pages before the ranking of the super-rich in
2013, were actually discussing the Giving List, a very thought-provoking
way to demonstrate that the philosophy of money is that ‘give is perhaps
better than take’. See ‘The Rich List’ (2013), The Sunday Times (21 April), pp.
10–13. In 2012, the total amount given away from the list of 231 people in
the 2013 Rich List increased from £1,715 million in 2011 to £2,081 million
in 2012, and more importantly, they were not giving money due to appeal
but instead ‘pushing their money out into the world’ (ibid., p. 10). Again, in
the Rich List 2014, 280 people gave away £2.387 billion. See ‘The Rich List’
(2014), The Sunday Times (18 May), p. 16.
31. 2013 China Philanthropy List (2013), http://www.hurun.net/usen/HRCpl.
aspx (accessed 2 July 2013).
32. Ying Xie, ‘Something’s Gotta Give’, China Report, 6 November 2013, p. 25.
33. Ethical Corporation (2013), http://www.ethicalcorp.com/governance-
regulation/chen- guangbiao- show- or- visionary (accessed 20 September
2013). I  would like to thank Joy Yueyue Zhang, one of the presenters in
the workshop, for raising the immediate concern about the outspoken style
of Chen Guangbiao’s charitable work. Yet, it will take time to know more
about the impact of his donation on society and if anyone will be inspired
by him.
154 Let The Hundred Businesses Donate

34. South China Morning Post, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/

article/1221542/billionaire- chen- guangbiao- hands- out- cash- earthquake-
stricken-lushan (accessed 2 January 2014).
35. Thomas C. Tuttle and Shengcheng Chen (2012) ‘Productivity in a private
charity: Interview with the founder and leader of one of China’s largest pri-
vate charity foundations’, International Journal of Productivity and Performance
Management, vol. 61, no. 5, pp. 563–77.
36. World Economic Forum (2013), http://forumblog.org/2013/09/how-chinas-
entrepreneurs- are- shaking- up- philanthropy- 2/ (accessed 17 September
2013).
37. Of course, one should remember that bai hua qi fang, bai jia zheng ming (let a
hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend) eventu-
ally generated huge persecution toward many intellectuals!
38. Glen Peterson (2005) ‘Overseas Chinese and Merchant Philanthropy in
China: From Culturalism to Nationalism’, Journal of Chinese Overseas, vol. 1,
no. 1, p. 88.
39. Yu-Yue Tsu (1921) The Spirit of Chinese Philanthropy: A  Study in Mutual Aid,
Columbia University (London: P.S. King and Son), pp. 29–30. Almost a
century later, another ‘full-length book on premodern Chinese charity’ was
written by Joanna Handlin Smith (2009) The Art of Doing Good: Charity in
Late Ming China (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 1.
40. Carl T. Smith (1983) ‘Compradores of the Hongkong Bank’, in Frank K. K.
King (ed.), Eastern Banking: Essays in the History of the Hongkong and Shanghai
Banking Corporation (London: The Athlone Press), p. 98.
41. However, the money provided by the Hong Kong government was actually
from the licensing of those casinos where many Chinese people surrendered
most of their fortune on the gambling table. In other words, it was quite
clear that all the money gathered for the Tungwah hospital was practi-
cally from the Chinese. See Elizabeth Sinn and Yun Wo Lau (2006) (eds),
Yishanxingdao: Tungwah Sanyuan 135 zhounian jinian zhuanti wenji [The
Way of Charity: Tungwah Group of Hospitals 135 Anniversary Special Essay
Collections] (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (Hong Kong) Co. Ltd), pp. 25–8.
42. Tung Wah Coffin Home, a leaflet, Tungwah Group of Hospitals.
43. Huashang Bao [Chinese Business Gazette] (2006) (20 January), p. 8.
44. They could be born in Hong Kong, but, their ancestors were from Guangdong
province, especially when referring to their native province.
45. South China Morning Post, 2 April 2013, p. A5.
46. Ibid.
47. Gordon C. K. Cheung and Edmund Terence Gomez (2012) ‘Hong Kong’s
Diaspora, Networks and Family Business in the UK: A History of the Chinese
“Food Chain” and the Case of the W. Wing Yip Group’, China Review, vol.
12, no. 1, pp. 45–72.
48. Gordon C. K. Cheung (2011) ‘The Significance of the Overseas Chinese in
East Asia’, in Mark Beeson and Richard Stubbs (eds), Routledge Handbook of
Asian Regionalism (London: Routledge), p. 85.
49. The one in Hong Kong was demolished and the land was sold to Li Ka-shing,
the richest man in Hong Kong, and the one in Singapore was donated to the
Singapore government and is open to the public.
50. Gordon C. K. Cheung, ‘The Significance of the Overseas Chinese’, pp. 85–6.
 Gordon C. K. Cheung 155

51. Olivier Zunz (2012) Philanthropy in America: A History (Princeton: Princeton

University Press), p. 2.
52. ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers 2010’ (2010) Foreign Policy, no. 183 (December),
p. 34.
53. Olivier Zunz, Philanthropy in America, p. 284.
54. BBC One, Richard Dimbleby Lecture, ‘Bill Gates: The Impatient Optimist’
(2013), http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qfr6l (accessed 11 June
2013).
55. Edward C. Kirkland (1962) (ed.) The Gospel of Wealth and Other Timely Essays
by Andrew Carnegie (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press), p. 2.
56. Nonprofit Quarterly, 6 September 2013, http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/
philanthropy/22864-philanthropic-leapfrog-giving-in-china.html (accessed
2 January 2014).
57. Frank Koch (1979) The New Corporate Philanthropy (New York and London:
Plenum Press), p. 4.
58. Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer (2000) ‘The Competitive Advantage
of Corporate Philanthropy’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 80, no. 12
(December), p. 57.
59. Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer (2000), pp. 63–6.
60. Robert H. Bremner (1960) American Philanthropy (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press), p. 5.
61. Lewis M. Branscomb and Richard Florida (1998) ‘Challeanges to Technology
Policy in a Changing World Economy’, in Lewis M. Branscomb and James H.
Keller (eds), Investing in Innovation: Creating a Research and Innovation Policy
That Works (Boston, MA: The MIT Press), p. 24.
62. Zoltán J. Ács (2013) Why Philanthropy Matters: How the Wealthy Give,
and What It Means for Our Economic Well-being (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press), pp. 150–1.
63. Mary Brown Bullock (2011) The Oil Prince’s Legacy: Rockefeller Philanthropy in
China (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p. 4.
64. Mary Brown Bullock, The Oil Prince’s Legacy, p. 199.
65. However, we do witness some latest adaptations of American model of phi-
lanthropy in China. For instance, the China Foundation Centre is supposed
to be modelled on the New York Foundation Centre. See The Hauser Center
for Nonprofit Organization (2013), http://www.hks.harvard.edu/hauser/
engage/nonprofitsinchina/events/development-of-philanthropy-in-china/
(accessed 17 September 2013).
66. Yongnian Zheng (2012) Zhongguo gaige sanbuzou [China’s Reform: A  Road
Map], (Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe).
67. Jinglian Wu (2013) Zhongguo gaige zaichufa [China’s Reform Re-launch], in
Shangquan Gao (ed.), Gaige shi zhongguo zuida de hongli [Reform is China’s
Largest Dividend] (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (HK) Co. Ltd), pp. 46–52.
7
Does China Offer a New Paradigm
for Doing Science?
Joy Yueyue Zhang

Introduction

Despite the fact that the idea of ‘science’ has always been associated
with China’s modernization, it was not until 1978 that science was for
the first time recognized not as an ideology, but as a ‘production force’
which would lead to a better future.1 Since then, China’s every stride
towards international excellence in science has been supported by at
least three key elements: (1) centralized decision-making, (2) generous
but selective state investment, and (3) a regulatory ethos of what I term
‘post-hoc pragmatism’, which underlines both application-oriented
agenda setting and permissive regulation.2
The reception of China’s soaring status in global science, however, con-
stitutes competing, sometimes conflicting, views. Optimists see China as
the next scientific powerhouse and laud the fact that, since its economic
reform, China has made significant achievement in a short span of 35
years. China’s gross domestic expenditure on research and development
(GERD) enjoyed an approximately 20 per cent annual growth since 1999.
In 2009, China became the world’s second largest research and develop-
ment (R&D) expenditure after the United States. Today about 10 per cent
of the world’s journal articles come out of China.3 In addition, China
is also most keen on the application of new technologies. It exhibits
the world’s largest growth in patent applications, for example. In 2011,
China’s patent office overtook the United States Patent and Trademark
Office (USPTO) and topped each of the four forms of IP  – patents,
utility models, trademarks and industrial designs.4 In short, on both the
research and application front, China seemed to be ‘on the right track’.5
At least for developing countries, there seemed to be valuable lessons to
be learnt from the ‘Chinese model’ of ascent in global science.

156
 Joy Yueyue Zhang 157

Yet those with more critical views would argue that China may
remain a ‘bit player’ of scientific advancement.6 This is not only
because China’s scientific growth still seems to rely on heavy invest-
ment, but also because both in terms of innovative capacity and regu-
latory outlook, China remains more a follower rather than leader. The
sustainability and actual productivity of China’s R&D strategy are still
disputable.7 Even among the optimists who characterize China as the
‘emerging’ power and ‘potential’ powerhouse, these temporal qualifica-
tions of their expectations reveal an underlying sense of reservation.
To paraphrase Murray and Spar’s commentary on China’s life science
development published in the New England Journal of Medicine,8 in the
future, China may be a powerhouse in global science, but that future is
not yet. Instead of offering a new paradigm of doing science, the con-
tinuation of a Chinese success in science may still rely on progressive
Westernization.
China is not unique in confronting this ambivalent reception. In fact,
other developing countries, such as India and Brazil,9 that are moving
from the periphery to the centre of the global scientific landscape, also
encounter similar scepticism. To make sense of seemingly conflicting
views on the Chinese model of developing science and to develop a
coherent assessment of what the Chinese experience can offer, I adopt
a subaltern analytical perspective. By ‘subaltern’, I  draw on Spivak’s
idea that it denotes not so much an identity of having been oppressed
or exploited. Rather, the term alludes to the predicaments of establish-
ing authority and wielding influence.10 In this sense, being subaltern
not only signifies a struggle for recognition from a peripheral status,
such as in the case of China’s effort to put itself on the map of Western-
dominated science. More importantly, being subaltern highlights a
process of how (previously) marginalized actors mediate ‘a space of dif-
ference’ to acquire a representation in the hegemonic discourse. It is on
this last point that I found Spivak’s theory most helpful in our under-
standing of the Chinese scientific paradigm. For in her classic essay ‘Can
the Subaltern Speak?’, Spivak made a clear distinction between the act
of speech and that of listening, which may not necessarily happen in
tandem. This separation is significant to the analysis of this chapter, as
it allows us to discern the difference in strategies at work which enabled
Chinese scientists to ‘acquire a voice’ and ‘to be heard’ in the global
scientific community.
Using China’s stem cell development as a case study, I  will argue
that while the ‘Chinese model’ may have been successful in increasing
China’s global presence, or to establish a ‘voice’, it remains conformist
158 A Chinese Paradigm for Doing Science?

to a Western ‘grammar’ to have its scientific contribution recognized,

or to have its voice ‘heard’.
It must be noted that although stem cell research is not representa-
tive of every aspect of the Chinese scientific landscape, it provides a
most appropriate case study for analysing the strength and limits of the
‘Chinese model’. This is due to the following reasons: Firstly, the fast
expansion of stem cell research in China has largely been conducted
by top-down directives. Stem cell research took off at the beginning
of the new millennium with all key stem cell research centres set up
with state-of-the-art facilities, internationally trained personnel and
permissive regulation.11 It was further recognized in the 2006 ‘National
Mid-term and Long-term Science and Technology Development Plan
(2006–2020)’ as one of the ‘frontier development subjects’.12 Secondly,
it is one of the high profile research areas that received most debates
over the effectiveness of the Chinese model. While some see the fast
development in China’s stem cells as presenting a ‘scientific feast’ in
a vibrant research environment, others worry that it may constitute a
‘Wild East’ devoid of necessary ethical governance.13 Thirdly, without
delving too much into technical details and to suit the analysis of this
chapter, stem cell research may be best described as in vitro cultivation
and differentiation of primitive cells (stem cells) into various specialized
cells types. As such, studying stem cells holds profound implications for
improving and expanding the field of regenerative medicines. The main
focus of applied stem cell research has been developing cell therapies to
replace diseased cells or damaged tissues. For these reasons, many coun-
tries, such as China, have marked stem cells as one of their strategic
R&D areas and is closely related to the fulfilment of a ‘Chinese Dream’.
In fact, in the same month that Xi Jinping assumed office, the Ministry
of Health and Ministry of Science and Technology jointly promulgated
three sets of regulations on the clinical application of stem cells, which,
as demonstrated later in the chapter, aimed to signify China’s new
responsible governance in the life sciences.14
In addition to regulatory documents and related literature, data used
in this chapter is based on interview data collected for a bigger research
project on the internationalization of stem cell governance.15 The sample
used consists of 38 Chinese life scientists and seven bioethicists inter-
viewed during 2007 and 2011. This chapter is divided into two sections
and it examines the three key elements of the Chinese model. The first
section investigates how centralized decision-making and selective heavy
investment impact the organization of science. More specifically, it looks
at how the Chinese model impacts research culture and the structure
 Joy Yueyue Zhang 159

of human resources. It is argued that while a top-down commitment

with significant financial backing has helped the Chinese stem cell
community to be at the centre of international scientific dialogues, the
volume of Chinese research output may benefit from more transparent
decentralized governance that encourages wider contribution. The
second section examines the effectiveness of ‘post-hoc pragmatism’ in
promoting basic and applied research. It mainly focuses on the case of
making the world’s first hybrid embryo and the China Spinal Cord Injury
Network’s clinical application of stem cell therapies. It is demonstrated
that while a post-hoc pragmatic governing ethos and permissive regula-
tion seem to have provided Chinese scientists with a competitive edge in
establishing a ‘head start’ in emerging science, their influence remains
extremely limited unless they communicate and justify their practice
within existing (Western) frameworks and ethics discourse.

The organization of science: centralized decision-making

and funding patterns

To comprehend how centralized decision-making and generous, albeit

selective, state funding constitute a Chinese model of R&D, it is impor-
tant to first understand the structural and political context of Chinese
science. The development of science and technology (S&T) is seen by
Chinese leadership as essential to its nation-building. The idea of ‘reju-
venating the nation through science and technology’ (kejiao xingguo)
was first formally proposed as a national strategy in 1995 by the then
President Jiang Zemin and was further recognized as a ‘foundational
national policy’ (jiben guoce) the following year.16 Given this high level
emphasis, it is not surprising that China’s S&T system is under the
direct leadership of the State Council’s Steering Committee of S&T and
Education, which is chaired by Premier Li Keqiang.
Stem cell research, as other scientific disciplines in China, is also
governed by this regulatory structure.17 To facilitate the discussion of
this chapter, a simplified version of China’s administrative framework
relating to stem cell research is shown in Figure 7.1. As is shown in the
figure, administrative powers radiate from the State Council and are dis-
seminated through a parallel division of executive branches. Subordinate
agencies are held answerable only to this central Steering Committee.
It is, thus, the Steering Committee’s responsibility to plan long-term
national S&T strategies and co-ordinate among different ministries. All
regulatory decisions and administrative resources can be traced back to
a handful of national-ministry-level organizations. At the same time,
160 A Chinese Paradigm for Doing Science?

state governance reaches local laboratories and clinics by a consecutive

outspread of regulatory scope through different administrative levels.
It is also important to note that the diagram shown in Figure 7.1 is
not just a regulatory structure, but also outlines main funding sources
for stem cell research. This is because virtually all social resources are
channelled through governmental administrative branches. Although
the Chinese government has made efforts to diversify the funding base
for non-state-owned organizations and to decentralize research support
in institutions since the 1990s, it is not until recent years that China’s
innovation system has made an observable shift to a firm-centred market-
based innovation system.18 However, currently, business investment only
accounts for 11 per cent of academic research, as compared to 70 per cent
in the US.19 National funding remains crucial for promoting scientific
development. In the case of stem cell research, while the Ministry of
Health (MOH) and Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) are the
main regulators of stem cell research, MOST, National Natural Science
Foundation of China (NSFC) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) are
the main funders.
In this structural and political context, ‘centralized decision-making’
plays a key role in organizing scientific practice in China. This

State Council
State Steering Committee of S&T and Education
Other
ministries

Ministry of Science and Technology

(MOST)

Ministry of National Natural

Ministry of Chinese Academy
Education Science
Health (MOH) of Sciences (CAS)
(MOE) Foundation of
China (NSFC)

Hospitals Universities Basic research CAS affiliated

Local ministry Major national projects research
of health institutions

Basic research: 973 Program

High-tech R&D: 863 Program
Technology transfer: Spark Program
Science park and incubator: Torch Program
China National Centre for Biotechnology Development (CNCBD)
University development with Ministry of Education
Science Research Integrity Office (established in 2007 with MOE, CAS, CAE, NSFC, CAST)

Figure 7.1 Administrative framework regarding stem cell research

 Joy Yueyue Zhang 161

centralization of steering power is not limited to agenda-setting at

the strategic level, but also exerts significant influence in the actual
funding decisions, which may directly define the content and the
personnel of projects to be carried out. In the last decade, China’s
funding agencies, especially the NSFC, have put much emphasis on
upholding a peer review system that ‘rel[ies] on experts and develop-
ing democracy to select best proposals for support in a fair and rea-
sonable way’.20 Yet a number of empirical studies have suggested that,
in terms of scientific governance, scientific elites, such as yuanshi
(members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences), or high administra-
tive positions are still ‘too powerful’ over how scientific resource is
distributed.21
My research, carried out in six major scientific cities in China, also
found that there was a restricted membership in participating in govern-
ance. Only those with senior administrative or scientific positions were
entitled to the actual power in decision-making. One professor in Zhejiang
University explained the existing funding process in China as follows:

The funding system in China is like this: the smaller the grant, the
more stringent the reviewing process. The bigger the grant, the less
rigorous the review is. If it is a billion-RMB project, there is virtually
no reviewing process. Who the grant-holder will be has already been
decided internally by funding bodies before applications are sent for
‘peer-review’… It seems that at least now most of the application
must be approved by yuanshi [academician]. It must be either meet
the yuanshi’s approval, or be led by yuanshi. (Senior Scientist 4)

But what was interesting was that a number of scientists I interviewed

did not simply see this hierarchical small circle governance style as
intrinsically wrong, or unjust. It seemed to be, to a limited degree, tol-
erable, because it was to ensure ‘safe’ investment with limited social
resources. Two such examples are from two young professors:

Many of the big funding schemes, you cannot really say the way it is
operated is unfair, because the way it is operated actually resembles a
way of task-commissioning (weituo). They [major funding] are com-
missioned by the government, to the appointed scientists. (Senior
Scientist 1)

The [decision-making] board would always try to ‘balance’ the fund-

ing choices ... To some extent, I  see their point. I  understand their
162 A Chinese Paradigm for Doing Science?

effort [in optimizing resource allocation] (light laugh) although it is

unfair. But in this kind of research environment, it is very hard for
a young scholar to develop … The most basic importance attached
to scientific governance is that it signals a message. In China’s case,
the message is ‘the senior the better’… but, young researchers are the
ones with most enthusiasm and creativity, yet they may be denied
the opportunities of funding. (Senior Scientist 21)

Both of these respondents were aged under 35. In other words, nei-
ther would be considered as an influential ‘senior’. However, neither
made blunt criticism without taking into account the Chinese context.
According to Senior Scientist 1, the evaluation of fairness might not be
the most pertinent concern in understanding China’s funding scheme,
for it was not operated on the basis of competition, but on the basis of
‘task-commissioning’. Similarly, Senior Scientist 21 could sympathize
with the intervention from seniors in the top inner circle, for they
wanted to ‘correct’ administrative decisions. Yet he was sceptical about
whether such an intention was best realized through closed-circle
decision-making rather than the other way around:

Previous study of scientific policy in China demonstrated how

‘belong[ing] to a class of elite scientists’ can enable senior scientists
‘to see themselves, and others to see them, as “superscientists” who
could speak with originality and authority on any subject and com-
mand attention’.22 However, with the expansion and progress of
scientific enquiries, it became almost impossible to have ‘“know-all”
type of scholars’. (Senior Scientist 17)

Centralized steering of scientific development, albeit in the hands of a

few distinguished ‘superscientists’, becomes insufficient in making right
funding choices. This is better demonstrated in the experience of a jun-
ior scientist in People’s Hospital working on liver stem cells:

I got my current grant last year, but I made the application two years
ago ... At that time, such research was just emerging. We made the
proposal, but got rejected. And by early last year, there was already
paper published in a foreign journal on this same topic. Thus,
although [through resubmission of grant application], I  got NSFC
funding last year, I wasn’t happy at all … because other people have
already done it … I’ve been troubled by such issues for a long time.
 Joy Yueyue Zhang 163

I  feel at least [in China] this is because those people in charge of

funding decisions or those in charge of hospital resource cannot
really see the merit of these new ideas. Thus, we [China’s research]
are always a few steps behind. (Junior Scientist 07)

This junior scientist felt his delayed success with funding came at a cost
of being discounted in its originality, for the selection committee failed
to understand his proposal until similar research already start to appear
in international journals.
Thus, while China’s centralized decision-making might have been
a sound national resource distribution strategy when the aim was to
‘“balance” the funding choices’ (Senior Scientist 21), as contemporary
science is increasingly specialized and global research competitiveness
is at stake, conventional small-circle decision-making, albeit with
distinguished senior scientists, becomes insufficient. This top-down
steering on selective funding strategies is also reflected in China’s
focus on rewarding and improving professional excellence, which
has attracted an increasing number of scientific personnel trained
abroad to join its scientific force.23 As the Chinese saying goes, ‘a sin-
gle spark can set the prairie afire’. In the case of the life sciences, key
researchers with the appropriate knowledge/experience are seen as
the ‘sparks’ or the main force to push China’s development forward.
The ethos of promoting individual excellence as the core of scientific
governance has been reflected in a series of Chinese funding incen-
tives launched since the early 1990s,24 for example, the Cross-Century
Foundation for the Talents, the Hundred Talents Programme, the
Spring Bud Programme, and the Chang Jiang Scholars Programme
and the ‘Thousand Talents Programme’ of the General Office of
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.25 This focus on
strategically investing in notable individual excellence is to be carried
on under Xi Jinping’s leadership, as he called for ‘ever more com-
mitment’ to promote the new National Special Support Programme
for High-level Talents, also known as the ‘Ten-Thousand Talents
Programme’.26
However, despite hundreds of researchers returning to China every
year with the expectation of being the ‘sparks’ to initiate regional
scientific advancement, the ‘prairie’ of the life sciences has not yet
been ignited as anticipated. In fact, during my fieldwork, interviewees
expressed a shared anxiety that most researchers who have demon-
strated high proficiency abroad find it difficult to keep up with their
164 A Chinese Paradigm for Doing Science?

research productivity once settled back in China. One promising early

career scientist made the following comparison:

If we now transfer a researcher into a Western laboratory, with the same

level of individual ability but with Western framework and the scientific
resource it provides, and say this transferred researcher could achieve
100% of what his professional capability allows him to. But when this
same researcher is in China, things work differently – however hard he
tried and however much effort he put towards his research, he can only
achieve 10% of his potential. (Junior Scientist 9)

Of course it should first be noted that the above comparison is an

exaggeration and the degree of divergence cannot be taken literally.
However, common frustration among ambitious individuals was not
unfounded. One quantitative study on China’s patent and publica-
tion per unit of investment from 1991 to 2003 indicated a ‘scientific
productivity paradox’, in which despite the increasing R&D input, the
‘growth rate of scientific productivity of China’s S&T institutes has been
negative since the 1990s’.27
There are at least two reasons why focused support on individual
distinctions failed to realize its full promise. Firstly, as discussed in my
previous work,28 a common team structure in stem cell research, as in
many other Chinese scientific disciplines, is a flat team structure with
deficient ‘middle-layer’ positions. That is to say, most teams are seen
to have few personnel that fill in the position levels between the top
rank (principal investigator, in most cases a professor) and the base rank
(research student). Even when teams have few associated professors or
post-doctoral positions, such positions are often nominal with these
experienced researchers conducting their independent projects.29 Thus,
most research teams were found to have the functioning organization
as ‘one-professor-many-students’. Such an ‘island-like’ ‘Chinese’ team
structure, in many Chinese interviewees’ view, is in stark contrast with
‘Western’ team structure, which is perceived as having a multi-layer
‘tree-like’ structure that allows the combination of experienced person-
nel with different expertise. Although this is not to say that all group
structures in Chinese teams are flat or to suggest all Western team struc-
tures are multi-layered and highly efficient, such a finding does signify
a research particularity in China. Thus, in contrast to the Chinese gov-
ernment’s original intention of upgrading scientific human resource by
banking a ‘thousand talents’, China’s scientific sector is described as
consisting of a ‘very large number of “innovative islands”’.30
 Joy Yueyue Zhang 165

In addition, the emphasis on individual distinction indirectly con-

tributed to a reluctance for proficient researchers to contribute to team-
work. For Senior Scientist 5, president of one of Beijing’s IVF hospitals,
this egoistic rewarding system accompanied by centralized decision-
making produced unfavourable rivalry, or ‘too many tigers’.

Too many tigers, and everybody wants to be the king among the
group ... You care too much about competing for the title [of being
the team leader], it actually hampers your progress. However talented
you are, you don’t communicate with others, you are closed to your
own circle. It really affects your research  … the common practice
(fengqi) is really bad. (Senior Scientist 5)

At the time I visited Senior Scientist 5, I wasn’t convinced by his ‘too many
tigers’ description, in which the resulting environment was aggressive and
closed, rather than collaborative and open. This is because almost all
scientists I interviewed emphasized the mutual exchange of ideas, research
collaboration and an open academic atmosphere. In addition, more
than 60 per cent of the senior scientists I visited have overseas working
experience. To some extent, one could argue China’s stem cell community
consists of a highly ‘internationalized’ group of people with ample expe-
rience of scientific exchange. Thus I  was puzzled by this interviewee’s
characterization. However, as my fieldwork progressed, I started to realize
underlying the rivalry described by Senior Scientist 5 was the difference
between what scientists in China want to do, and what the current organi-
zation of scientists at the team level allows them to actually achieve.
In fact, while many are attracted by the opportunities of leading
their own teams and the state-of-the-art facilities Chinese institutions
can offer, they are also sceptical about the supporting research envi-
ronment. One example is Senior Scientist 1 quoted previously, who
describe himself not as ‘“back” back’ to China, as he was still holding
dual research posts both at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences
and the Max Planck Institute in Germany. He regarded his position
in Germany as a safety-net for his settling back in China, for he was
still in doubt of how the closed-circle research culture would affect
his research productivity. Senior Scientist 1 was just one among many
of those ‘half-returned’ Chinese researchers, who still maintain their
overseas affiliations and, in some cases, spend only part of their time in
China. As previous individual-excellence funding schemes have created
many cases of researchers leading a ‘double-life’, it has attracted much
domestic criticism on the spending of public funding.
166 A Chinese Paradigm for Doing Science?

The new Ten-Thousand Talents Programme launched in August 2012

may have the potential to address some of the existing concerns. For
example, this scheme recognizes three different tiers of ‘Talents’ China
needs. It aims to recruit both internationally renowned scientists and
brilliant young minds. In addition, in comparison with the pervious
Thousand Talents Programme, the new scheme seems to be more bal-
anced in attracting overseas-returns and strengthening the existing
scientific workforce at home.
To summarize, centralized decision-making and selective state sup-
port have been the two most visible strategies China used in carrying
out its ‘foundational national policy’ of developing science. To some
extent, this Chinese approach has yielded significant results. China
has been successful in turning ‘brain drain’ into a ‘brain circulation’.31
Overseas-returns are now the backbone in bringing international expe-
rience and fresh ideas into China. It was also successful in increasing
Chinese science’s exposure in the world. In 2008, Chinese scientists
were publishing almost six times as many scholarly articles as they did
in 1996.32 In 2012 alone, China’s top quality science publications went
up by 35 per cent.33 According to a recent survey led by EuroStemCell,
China has become the second most prolific publisher on stem cells in
the international scientific literature.34 However, despite the immediate
growth the Chinese approach delivers, undemocratic top-down steering
and an elite-focused funding system have also formed the very predica-
ment for Chinese stem cells to fully take advantage of its investment.
For example, China’s citation impact is still below average. According to
a 2008 report, in terms of science productivity per unit of investment,
China ranked only 16th globally.35 For China to become a real-world
bioscience power, further reform is necessary, such as decentralization
of agenda setting, transparency, increased peer-contribution, as well as
wider public participation in governing science.36
In short, while the Chinese way has bolstered its international scien-
tific competitiveness, to further sustain its growth, it may be necessary
to incorporate approaches favoured in the West. This point is more
evident in the next section.

Post-hoc pragmatism and the regulation of research

In addition to centralized leadership and strong financial backing,

China’s quick ascent in global science is also attributed to its often per-
missive attitude towards emerging sciences and relaxed control towards
their potential risks. A  similar regulatory approach can be identified
 Joy Yueyue Zhang 167

in the case of stem cell research. During the assembly of ‘Ad hoc
Committee on an International Convention against the Reproductive
Cloning of Human Beings’ at the United Nations in March 1997, then
Minister of MOH, Chen Minzhang, declared that China supported ther-
apeutic cloning but did ‘not agree, nor support, nor allow, nor accept’
reproductive cloning. Yet, after drawing the limit of stem cell research
in China, the creation of more specific policy protocols seemed to be at
a halt. For several years, governance on stem cell research in China was
described as ‘lack[ing] clear national policies, with different institutes
following different rules’.37
To be sure, this perceived reluctance to institutionalize stem cell poli-
cies can be partly explained by China’s cultural context. While debates
on the regulation of stem cells raise a direct challenge to life itself in
many parts of the world, research on embryos did not invoke much
anxiety in China, as it is a country with no equivalent to Christian
debates over the status of the human embryo. But, more importantly,
this inattentiveness to synchronizing national policy with national
funding development is associated with the conventional rationale
in Chinese policy-making, which one bioethicist, who participated in
many policy consultations, expounded as follows:

The policy-making process in China usually depends on ‘reality’ and

on ‘practice’. That is, rules are made based on the lessons we learnt
from failure. It is always after undergoing negative experience, we
‘realize’ we have to consider some other alternatives. But we never
give theoretical or ethical reflections on why we should adopt such
and such a change. This is a big drawback … Take our medical reform
for example, they [regulators] never clarified what was the aim of
medical reform, what was the value medical service should insist
on … For medical reforms, it all started by the question on how to
relieve the financial burden for the government, and thus centred
on financial issues (rather than on medical issues). That’s why it
failed … It [policy-making in China] is always limited to very practi-
cal consideration and only cares about solving practical problems.
(Ethicist 2, original emphasis)

This traditional logic underlying Chinese policy-making, according

to Ethicist 2, was problem-solving. More specifically, I term it as ‘post-
hoc pragmatism’. Firstly, the regulatory rationale was ‘pragmatic’, for
it was based on ‘reality’ and on needs from ‘practice’. It was first and
foremost aimed at ‘very practical considerations’ and ‘solving practical
168 A Chinese Paradigm for Doing Science?

problems’. In contrast, wider social values and developmental plans

were only of secondary concern. As pointed out by this ethicist, the
over-concentration on contextual specific problems had limited regu-
latory competence and blinded administrators from seeing where the
problem really lay. That is to say, as a complex managerial situation
(health system reform) was reduced to a single executive problem
(relieving financial burden), it distorted the original administrative
intent (better health service) and impeded administrators from address-
ing the primary concerns (improved national health).
Secondly, such pragmatism in policy-making had the feature of being
‘post-hoc’. This means administrative bodies only focused on identifiable
predicaments that had already taken place. In the ethicist’s words, ‘rules
[were] made based on the lessons we learnt from failure’. In contrast
to the ‘precautionary principle’, which is a statutory requirement for
scientific regulations of the European Union, Chinese policy rationale
is little concerned with ‘hypothetical’ situations or inexplicit issues, and
regulatory action is often initiated ‘post-hoc’.
Of course, to depict a dominant character of Chinese regulatory
rationale as ‘post-hoc pragmatism’ does not mean Chinese regulations
had no preventative function for future events, nor does it deny their
applicability to general circumstances. ‘Post-hoc pragmatism’ is intended
to describe the policy-making rationale that comprises reluctance to
align with core social values and hesitation in confronting pending
challenges. In practice, this governing ethos seems to be least restrictive
in promoting new science. Yet as is demonstrated in this section, the
lack of institutional regulatory certainty and consistency also tarnished
the reputation of Chinese science. In the following, I employ two case
studies to analyse the costs and benefits of this Chinese regulatory ethos
brought to stem cell development. The first case concerns basic research
and the second applied research.

Hybrid embryos and the image of the ‘Wild East’

According to China’s most high profile science newspaper, Science and

Technology Daily, hybrid embryo research, which consists of fusing
human somatic cell with animal gametes, was already a recurring con-
ference theme in China in the second half of 2000.38 Yet it wasn’t until
7 September 2001, when People’s Daily reported scientist Chen Xigu’s
research on creating the world’s first human–rabbit hybrid embryo,39
and Chen’s research subsequently attracted international criticism, that
such research became the centre of a national policy debate.
 Joy Yueyue Zhang 169

At the time, Chen Xigu, a Sun Yat-sen University professor, trans-

ferred a skin cell nucleus from a seven-year-old boy into a rabbit’s
denucleated egg and successfully created in total 109 hybrid embryos.
The initial report appearing in People’s Daily highly praised Chen’s
achievement by stating that it ‘pushed a big step forward in research
on human embryonic stem cell and clone technique’.40 This report
also noted that Chen emphasized his research was only preliminary for
therapeutic cloning and he would ‘never make any attempt in research-
ing reproductive cloning’.
As will be noted later in this section, such practice was later accepted
by the scientific community and was legalized by the UK in September
2007.41 Yet back in 2001, the scientific uncertainty and ethical issues
on stem cell research were under heated discussion in the West. The
US government banned federal funding on stem cell research using
embryos created after August 2001,42 and the British government was
also planning to ban the creation of hybrids.43 Thus, when Chen’s sud-
den success came became news, it was easily ‘the most controversial
case at that time’.44 Despite the fact that Chen’s research was initially
praised in China, it soon received much criticism and scepticism world-
wide.45 Hybrid embryo research in China soon became a symbol for ‘a
morally bankrupt “Wild East” of biology’.46
As a consequence, Chen’s research was almost immediately termi-
nated in China. A  few days after People’s Daily described Chen’s find-
ings as a ‘big step forward’ in stem cell research, the Chinese media’s
portrayal of this research dramatically changed. Chinese ethicists
and regulators made a series of public statements re-emphasizing
the Chinese government’s firm commitment to developing stem cell
research ‘“rational[ly]” and closely monitored’.47 What is more, on
16 October 2001, China Human Genomic Centre (CHGC) at Shanghai
issued ‘Ethical Guideline on Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research
(Recommended Draft)’.48 In Article 14 of this Recommended Draft, all
hybrid embryonic research was banned regardless of the circumstance.
It is useful to be reminded of Spivak’s differentiation of the act of
speech and the act of being heard in a subaltern struggle. At the begin-
ning of the new millennium, Chinese scientists were still at the periphery
of global stem cell research. In the 2001 hybrid embryo case, Chinese
scientists took advantage of China’s permissive social attitude towards
embryo research and became the first to ‘speak’ on this topic. In fact, the
subaltern actor ‘spoke’ quite loudly and quite unexpectedly. But instead
of leading an interesting conversation, Chinese scientists were immedi-
ately ‘hushed’ into silence by their global peers.
170 A Chinese Paradigm for Doing Science?

During the years that followed, hybrid embryo research gradually

received more support from the international scientific mainstream.
Research such as injecting human somatic cells into an animal egg
to create embryos up to 14-days (such as Chen’s research) was seen as
acceptable. In 2003, Sheng Huizhen, Chief Scientist for the national
973 Programme, published her findings and research details on human–
rabbit hybrid embryos in Cell Research.49 This was the first time such
research was published in a peer-reviewed journal. As controversial as
the research itself, existing documentations and interview data on the
consequence of this groundbreaking paper also consists of contradic-
tory accounts. To be sure, there was still opposition to such research
and many scientists kept their reservation.50 But Sheng didn’t receive
as overwhelming criticism as Chen did two years previously. In fact,
Sheng’s research received some praise from the international scientific
community.51
One key element that ensured Sheng a more receptive response from
the international scientific community was that Sheng managed to
provide evidence of a full ethical review from the Shanghai local ethical
review board. This was significant because while ethical approval was
already a pre-requisite for any research to obtain legitimacy in most
Western countries, at the time it was still a novel practice in China. This
was an important step in the Chinese stem cell community’s adherence
to international conventions.
In addition to Sheng’s ‘bottom-up’ adherence to Western conventions,
the 2001 ‘Wild East’ controversy also promoted China’s regulatory
response. To be sure, the subsequent making of China’s first stem cell
guideline was a demonstration of the ‘post-hoc’ regulatory ethos. It was
the problem of addressing international accusations, rather than the
potential ethical risk of making hybrid embryos itself, that made the
Chinese stakeholders feel the need to initiate a national guideline over
stem cell practice. It took about two years of deliberation for China’s
MOH and MOST to jointly promulgated the first guideline on stem cell
research, the Ethical Guidelines for Research on Human Embryonic Stem
Cells (SC Guideline).52 In addition, despite the fact that hybrid embryos
had not caused much social debate in China, the SC Guideline heavily
borrowed the criteria as well as the rhetoric of the ethical stands of lead-
ing European scientific powers, especially that of the UK.
In September 2007, the UK’s HFEA sanctioned licensing hybrid
embryo research on the basis of the new draft fertility bill passed by
Parliament.53 This meant the UK officially endorsed scientists conduct-
ing cytoplasmic hybrid research, which was identical to Sheng Huizhen
 Joy Yueyue Zhang 171

and Chen Xigu’s previous studies. In the lead-up to this HFEA decision,
Sheng was among the few experts outside Great Britain who were con-
sulted by the UK government. In fact, on the list of written evidence
included in the Government Proposals for the Regulation of Hybrid and
Chimera Embryos,54 Sheng’s statement was given a prominent position
as it appeared on the very first page of the 44-page document.
To summarize, the practice of post-hoc pragmatism may have enabled
Chinese reseachers to have a ‘head-start’ in controversial basic research.
But this national regulatory ethos was not sufficient to make Chinese
research findings acknowledged by leading Western countries. On
the contrary, it brought China an infamous characterization as the
‘Wild East’. Although Chinese scientists’ early efforts were eventually
recognized by the global mainstream, this recognition came only after
the Chinese scientific community adhered to the same regulatory
procedures (such as peer-review and ethical approval), and policy
rhetoric (such as ethical standards).

The normalization of stem cell therapy

A similar practice of post-hoc pragmatism was also at play in China’s

regulation of the clinical application of stem cell research. Although
China has been a hot destination for global medical tourism in the past
decade for experimental stem cell therapies, it was not until March 2013
that China launched its first comprehensive national guidelines on stem
cell’s clinical application.55 As with the case of laboratory research, the
absence of clear national policies meant that researchers only needed to
obtain a local hospital’s approval for clinical trials of stem cell therapies
to proceed. This legally grey area gave rise to a number of clinical sites
throughout the country offering unapproved stem cell therapies.
One of the most well-known therapeutic research networks is the
China Spinal Cord Injury Network (ChinaSCINet), which consists of
22 centres in China. This network was founded by Hong Kong-born US
scientist Wise Young in 2004. Young did not mind admitting that the
big attraction of establishing this network in China was the absence of
comprehensive regulation and its patient resources, which meant ‘new
therapies can be tested more quickly and cheaply’.56 In the absence of a
national approval procedure for stem cell therapies, however, concerns
arise internationally about potential exploitation of the ‘vulnerability
and safety of desperate patients’.57 Young reportedly expressed his indif-
ference to conform to Western expectations by saying, ‘As long as they
[media/Network members] don’t throw it [questionable conduct] into
172 A Chinese Paradigm for Doing Science?

my face, I am not going to investigate’.58 In other words, at the begin-

ning, as many stem cell clinicians in China, Young cared more about
getting clinical data and racing ahead with the new clinical technique.
After all, would not hard scientific data speak louder than gestures of
conformity? Would not actual clinical advancement naturally quieten
scepticism?
Yet in the years that followed, despite fast development within the
domestic circle, clinical findings from Chinese hospitals were largely
dismissed by the international community. For example, one of the
Network members and a close associate of Young, Huang Hongyun from
Beijing, devised therapies using stem cells harvested from aborted foe-
tuses. According to an early report on such trials in the UK newspaper,
The Guardian, Huang and his colleagues exhibited prudence in carrying
out their treatments. Huang ‘promises nothing. He claims no miracle
cure. He admits he cannot fully explain his results. All he knows, and
all he tells his patients, is that his method often works, that the results
speak for themselves.’59 Yet according to a commentary in Science, in
2006, this did not prevent Huang’s work from becoming ‘the uncon-
ventional cell therapy that’s received the most scientific scrutiny’.60 As
there was no international consensus on the measurement of clinical
efficacy, many regarded Huang’s success as ‘anecdotal’.61 Despite the
fact that Huang has published nine papers in China-based journals,
including one in English, this US-trained surgeon was rejected by all
the top international journals. Huang was ‘confused over why the
Western academic world won’t recognize him’.62 Similar to the hybrid
embryo case, the relaxed regulatory environment enabled Chinese
scientists to assume a unique voice in the field of stem cell therapy in
a relatively short time. Yet, instead of being invited to the top table of
international science, Chinese clinicians were confronted with a series
of scepticisms.
A change in international perceptions has gradually emerged in
recent years. This is largely due to two facts. Firstly, there have been
increasing bottom-up initiatives in China to incorporate international
norms and to promote the harmonization of research practice. For
example, in contrast to Young’s initial indifference, to press ahead with
their research, his network later became keen to assimilate international
norms into its practice. Such efforts were recorded in detail by Lancet
correspondent Jane Qiu in 2009:

To ensure a high standard, all participating centres in ChinaSCINet

must be certified with Good Clinical Practice ... As part of the
 Joy Yueyue Zhang 173

capacity-building initiatives, ChinaSCINet organises regular training

workshops, in which experts from around the world gather to teach
and standardise the assessment of sensory and motor functions in
patients with spinal-cord injury, cell transplantation, and other sur-
gical methods, as well as rehabilitation techniques.63

As rightly pointedly out by this Lancet report, it was through adopting

and building on existing international discourse that ChinaSCINet
increased its own influence within the global scientific community.
A  similar professional organization based on China’s experience was
later replicated in the US. Wise Young convinced a number of American
centres to join him and launched the North American Spinal Cord
Injury Network in March 2009.
A second factor that helped to restore the credibility of Chinese
clinical research on stem cells was the joint promulgation of three
sets of regulations regarding stem cell clinical trials by China’s MOH
and the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) in March 2013.
These new regulations also made important clarifications on a few
key issues. For example, they distinguished stem cell clinical trials and
stem cell treatments and made a specific ban on fee-charging and any
form of marketization during the clinical trials phase. They also made
an explicit suggestion that unless these trials were centrally registered,
approved, and annually reviewed by the MOH and SFDA, they should be
considered illegal. It is hoped that these new rules will contribute to the
normalization of this field. It is too early to assess their effectiveness, yet
China’s latest effort in introducing a sense of order into the field of stem
cell applications remains an reiteration of mainstream international
regulatory procedures. Similar to the making of SC Guideline, these new
regulations on clinical research offer nothing new or challenging to
established Western norms.
In short, similar to the regulation of basic research, in terms of clinical
application of stem cells, government strategy was a practice of post-
hoc pragmatism. That is to say, administrative bodies only focused on
identifiable problems that had already taken place. As in the words
of Ethicist 2 cited earlier, regulatory action was initiated ‘always after
undergoing negative experience’. In the case of stem cell therapies,
national guidelines were not introduced until after Chinese stem cell
clinics received a notorious reputation for ‘exploit[ing] patients with
devastating conditions’.64
In terms of promoting China’s research capacity, although light
regulation seems to have helped Chinese stem cell scientists to set out
174 A Chinese Paradigm for Doing Science?

their research agenda quickly, it showed little advantage in promoting

Chinese research to the global community. In both basic and applied
research, as demonstrated in this section, to exert scientific influence
beyond the national borders, Chinese stakeholders needed to adapt to
and build on established Western epistemology, which approves only
certain modes of knowledge production.

Conclusions

Emerging science, such as stem cell research, is seen by developing

countries as a Sputnik opportunity to catch up with the West. Key char-
acteristics of the ‘Chinese model’ of developing science have shown
their effects. As discussed in this chapter, firm steering from the top
down and generous state funding have helped China to establish the
world’s largest pool of S&T human resources, with an increasing num-
ber of internationally trained researchers. The conventional post-hoc
pragmatism in policy-making has further enabled Chinese scientists
to take advantage of permissive social attitudes towards new scientific
interventions.
The Chinese experience also indicated that China’s national strategy
has been successful in establishing a ‘voice’, or producing results, on
stem cell science but it cannot be taken for granted that such input will
automatically assume authority among the international community.
The trajectory of China’s struggle for international recognition in this
field bears resemblance to other developing countries’ experience. That
is to say, in the process of moving from the peripheral to the centre of
global science, in order to be heard, social actors ‘must embrace the
dominant epistemic mode of expression’.65 As is shown in this chapter,
the rising status of Chinese stem cell science globally relies not so much
on how it challenges Western norms. Rather, it is a result of China’s
adherence to existing discourses on how knowledge should be produced
and scientific advancement made.
From the case study of stem cell development in China, it is safe to
conclude that while the Chinese government’s strategy of promoting
R&D has fuelled scientists’ ability to do science, it has shown limited
impact on China’s capacity to lead science internationally. The value
of Chinese experience lies not so much in it offering a completely new
paradigm of conducting science, but in its reaffirmation of the strength
and limits of the role of the state in scientific development. Political
directives and policy incentives have made China a significant player
in world science. Yet to become a scientific powerhouse, China needs to
 Joy Yueyue Zhang 175

yet further reform its infrastructure and incentivize wider deliberation

as well as contribution from different levels of society.

Notes and references

1. Ministry of Science and Technology, China (2005) The Course of China’s
Science and Technology Development, 23 September 2005, online access:
http://www.gov.cn/test/2005-09/23/content_69616.htm. See also Muorong
Guo (1978) ‘The Spring of Science: Closing speech at the National Science
Conference’, People’s Daily, 1 April 1978, online access: http://scitech.people.
com.cn/GB/25509/56813/57267/57268/4001597.html.
2. Joy Yueyue Zhang (2012) The Cosmopolitanization of Science: Stem Cell
Governance in China (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
3. See OECD (2011) OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2011:
Innovation and Growth in Knowledge Economies, 20 September 2011 (Paris:
OECD); OECD (2012) OECD Science, Technology and Industry Outlook,
September 2012 (Paris: OECD); Nature Publishing Group (2013) Nature
Publishing Index 2013: Global (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), p. 24.
4. World Intellectual Property Organization (2012) World Intellectual Property
right indicators 2012: WIPO Economics & Statistics Series (Geneva: WIPO).
5. See DTI Global Watch Mission Report (2004) Stem Cell Mission to China,
Singapore and South Korea, September 2004 (London: Department of Trade
and Industry); UK Stem Cell Initiative (UKSCI) (2005) UK Stem Cell Initiative:
Report and Recommendations, November 2005 (London: UKSCI).
6. Fiona Murray and Debora Spar (2006) ‘Bit Player or Powerhouse? China and
Stem-Cell Research’, New England Journal of Medicine, 355, pp. 1191–94
7. On scientific productivity see Can Huang, Celeste Amorim Varum and
Joaquim Borges Gouveia (2006) ‘Scientific Productivity Paradox: the Case
of China’s S&T System’, Scientometrics, 69(2), pp. 449–73. Joy Yueyue
Zhang (2010) ‘The organization of scientists and its relation to scientific
productivity: Perceptions of Chinese stem cell researchers’, Biosocieties, 5(2),
pp. 219–35.
8. Fiona Murray and Debora Spar (2006) ‘Bit Player or Powerhouse? China and
Stem-Cell Research’, New England Journal of Medicine, 355, pp. 1191–94.
9. See Eva Harris (2004) ‘Scientific capacity in developing countries’, EMBO
Reports, 5(1), 7–11. Anna Petherick (2010) ‘High hopes for Brazilian science’,
Nature, 465, pp. 674–5. Ong and N. N. Chen (ed.) (2010) Asian Biotech: Ethics
and Communities of Fate (Durham and London: Duke University Press).
10. See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1993) ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in
P. Williams and L. Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory
(Cambridge: Harvester Wheatsheaf), pp. 66–111. Rosalind C. Morris (2010)
‘Introduction’, in Rosalind Morris (ed.), Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections
on the History of an Idea (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 1–18.
In addition, as is mentioned later in this chapter, Aditya Bharadwaj also
made an insightful discussion on the nature of subaltern ethicality relating
to stem cell research. Aditya Bharadwaj (2013) ‘Ethic of consensibility, sub-
altern ethicality: The clinical application of embryonic stem cells in India’,
Biosocieties, 8(1), pp. 25–40
176 A Chinese Paradigm for Doing Science?

11. Joy Yueyue Zhang, The Cosmopolitanization of Science.

12. State Council, China (2006) The National Mid-term and Long-term Science
and Technology Development Plan 2006–2020, 9 February 2006 (Beijing: State
Council).
13. Carina Dennis (2002) ‘China: Stem cells rise in the East’, Nature, 419,
pp. 334–6; Economist (2010) ‘Stem Cell in China: Wild East or scientific feast?’,
14 January 2010, Economist, online access: http://www.economist.com/
node/15268869.
14. The three sets of rules jointly promulgated on 7 March 2013 by China’s
Ministry of Health and State Food and Drug Administration are ‘Managerial
Rules on Stem Cell Clinical Trials Research’, ‘Managerial Rules on the
Research Base for Stem Cell Clinical Trials’ and ‘Guidelines of the Quality
Control and Clinical Research on Stem Cell Agents’.
15. The main research is carried out in six cities (Beijing, Tianjin, Changsha,
Shanghai, Hangzhou and Guangzhou) in China between 2007 and 2010. It
was funded by the Wellcome Trust. Follow-up study was carried out in 2011
on the same sites.
16. Jiang Zemin (1995) Implementing the Kejiao Xingguo Strategy, 26 May 1995
(Beijing: State Council). Decision of the State Council Concerning the Deepening
of the Reform of the Science and Technology Management System (1996) (Beijing:
State Council).
17. For a most comprehensive overview on China’s innovation system and the
depiction of its key features in relation to OECD countries, see Can Huang,
Celeste Amorim, Mark Spinoglio, Borges Gouveia and Augusto Medina
(2004) ‘Organization, programme and structure: An analysis of the Chinese
innovation policy framework’, R&D Management, 34(4), pp. 367–87. For a
concise summary of its historical development, see J. T. Ratchford and W. A.
Blanpied (2008) ‘Path to the Future for Science and Technology in China,
India and the United States’, Technology in Society, 30, pp. 211–33 and Jian
Song (2008) ‘Awakening: Evolution of China’s Science and Technology
Policies’, Technology in Society, 29, pp. 235–41.
18. OECD (2012) OECD Science, Technology and Industry Outlook, September 2012
(Paris: OECD).
19. Ibid.
20. Zuoyan Zhu and Xu Gong (2008) ‘Basic research: Its impact on China’s
future’, Technology in Society, 30(2), p. 298.
21. Cong Cao and Richard P. Suttmeier (2001) ‘China’s New Scientific Elite:
Distinguished Young Scientists, the Research Environment and Hopes
for Chinese Science’, China Quarterly, 168, pp. 960–84. Hepeng Jia (2006)
‘China’s scientific elite “too powerful”’, Scidev, 10 February 2006, online
access: http://www.scidev.net/en/news/chinas-scientific-elite-too-powerful.
html
22. Susan Greenhalgh (2005) ‘Missile science, population science: The origins of
China’s one-child policy’, China Quarterly, 182, pp. 253–76.
23. S.-G. He (2008) ‘Medical overseas-return’s current situation and sugges-
tions’, China Hospital Management (Zhongguo Yiyuan Guanli), 28(5), pp. 43–4.
Cynthis Fox (2007) Cell of Cells: The Global Race to Capture and Control the
Stem Cell (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.). Martin Schaaper
(2009) ‘Measuring China’s innovation system: National specificities and
 Joy Yueyue Zhang 177

international comparisons’, OECD Directorate for Science, Technology

and Industry Working Paper Series, online access: http://www.oecd.org/
sti/working-papers.
24. State Council, China (2004) The State’s Decision on Further Strengthening
Personnel Development Programs, Beijing: People’s Press. Ministry of Science
and Technology, China (2007) ‘Section 6 International Comparison’ in
China Science and Technology Statistics Data Book 2007 (Beijing: MOST), online
access: http://www.sts.org.cn/sjkl/kjtjdt/data2007/cstsm07.htm.
25. Related national policies include: Ministry of Education (MOE), China
(1993) Proposed Scheme for Cross-Century Foundation for the Talents,
October 1993 (Beijing: MOE). MOE (1996) Spring Bud Programme: Rules
on Designated MOE’s Financial Support on Overseas Personnel Short Term
Employment in China, 25 April 1996 (Beijing: MOE). MOE (1998) Rules on
the Employment of Changjiang Scholar in the ‘Chang Jiang Scholars and
Innovative Team Programme’, 4 August 1998 (Beijing: MOE). General Office
of CCCPC (Central Committee of the Communist Party of China) (2009)
Central Government Personnel Work Coordination Committee’s Executive
Programmes on Importing Overseas High Level Personnel, 7 January 2009
(Beijing: General Office of CCCPC). Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)
(1994) Director Lu Yongxiang’s Speech on 1994 Hundred Talents Programme
Reporting Conference (Beijing: CAS). For updated information on Hundred
Talents Programme, see: www.cas.cn/ggzy/rcpy/brjh/.
26. Ruowei Sheng (2013) ‘First recruit of Ten-thousand Talent Program
announced’ People’s Daily, 30 October 2014, p. 4, online access: http://paper.
people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2013- 10/30/nw.D110000renmrb_20131030_1-
04.htm.
27. Can Huang et al., ‘Scientific Productivity Paradox’, p. 453.
28. Joy Yueyue Zhang (2010) ‘The organization of scientists’, pp. 219–35. Joy
Yueyue Zhang (2011) ‘Scientific institutions and effective governance: A case
study of Chinese stem cell research’, New Genetics and Society, 30(2),
pp. 193–207.
29. Joy Yueyue Zhang (2010) ‘The organization of scientists’, pp. 223–4
30. OECD (2007) OECD Reviews of Innovation Policy: China Synthesis Report,
OECD in collaboration with the Ministry of Science and Technology China
(Paris: OECD), p. 22.
31. Martin Schaaper (2009) ‘Measuring China’s innovation system: National
specificities and international comparisons’, OECD Directorate for Science,
Technology and Industry Working Paper Series, online access: http://www.
oecd.org/sti/working-papers.
32. John Sexton (2012) ‘A measure of the creativity of a natoin is how well it
works with those beyond its borders’, Scientific American, 307(4), p. 36.
33. Nature Publishing Group (2013) Nature Publishing Index 2013: Global
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
34. Jan Barfoot, Emma Kemp, Kate Doherty et al. (2013) Stem Cell Report:
Trends and Perspectives on the Evolving International Landscape, December
2013 jointly prepared by EuroStemCell, Kyoto University’s Institute for
Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (WPI-iCeMS), and Elsevier, p. 30.
35. Zoe Corbyn (2008) ‘China nears UK in brain games’, The Times Higher
Education, 7–13 August 2008, p. 9.
178 A Chinese Paradigm for Doing Science?

36. Neal Lane (2008) ‘US science and technology: An uncoordinated system
that seems to work’, Technology in Society, 30, pp. 248–63. Hao Xin (2006)
‘Scientific misconduct  – Scandals shake Chinese science’, Science, 312,
p. 1464.
37. Jim Giles (2006) ‘Rules tighten for stem-cell studies’, Nature, 440, p. 9.
38. Cuirong Nie (2003) ‘Special focus: Sheng Huizhen is leading the race in
therapeutic embryonic cloning’, Science and Technology Daily (Keiji Ribao),
13 August 2003, online access: http://stdaily.com/oldweb/gb/stdaily/2003-
08/31/content_137012.htm.
39. Leren Zhang and Yunyan Chen (2001) ‘Major breakthrough for thera-
peutic cloning: Sun Yat-sen Medical University cloned more than 100
human embryos using new technology’, People’s Daily (Southern China
News), 7 September 2001, online access: http://www.people.com.cn/GB/
paper49/4169/485725.html.
40. Ibid.
41. Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority (HFEA), UK (2007) HFEA
Statement on its Decision Regarding Hybrid Embryos, 5 September 2007
(London: HFEA), online access: http://www.hfea.gov.uk/455.html.
42. Julian Borger (2001) ‘Bush compromise allows stem cell research in US’,
The Guardian, 10 August 2001, online access: http://www.guardian.co.uk/
world/2001/aug/10/medicalscience.usa.
43. Roger Highfield (2001) ‘Boy’s DNA implanted in rabbit eggs’, Daily Telegraph,
27 September 2001, online access: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world-
news/asia/china/1357755/Boys-DNA-implanted-in-rabbit-eggs.html
44. UNESCO (2008) Asia Pacific Perspectives on Biotechnology and Bioethics
(Bangkok: UNESCO Bangkok).
45. Alison Abbott and David Cyranoski (2001) ‘China plans “hybrid” embryonic
stem cells’, Nature, 413, p. 339.
46. Carina Dennis (2002) ‘China: Stem cells rise in the East’, Nature, 419,
pp. 334–6.
47. Yanguang Wang (2003) ‘Chinese ethical views on Embryo Stem (ES) cell
research’, in S. Song and Y. Koo (eds), Asian Bioethics in the 21st Century
(Bangkok: Eubios Ethics Institute).
48. Ethics Committee of CHGC (China Human Genome Centre) Shanghai (2001)
‘Ethical guideline on human embryonic stem cell research (Recommended
Draft)’, Chinese Medical Ethics (Zhongguo Yixue Lunlixue), 6, pp. 8–9.
49. Chen, Y., He, Z-X., Liu, A., Wang, K., Mao, W-W., Chu, J-X., Lu, Y., Fang, Z-F.,
Shi, Y-T., Yang, Q-Z., Chen, D-Y., Wang, M-K., Liu, J-S., Huang, S-L., Kong,
X-Y., Shi, Y-Z., Wang, Z-Q., Xia, J-H., Long, Z-G., Xue, Z-G., Ding, W-X. and
Sheng, H-Z. (2003) ‘Embryonic stem cells generated by nuclear transfer of
human somatic nuclei into rabbit oocytes’, Cell Research, 13(4), pp. 251–64.
50. Apoorva Mandavilli (2006) ‘Profile: Hui Zhen Sheng’, Nature Medicine, 12,
p. 265. Cynthis Fox (2007) Cell of Cells: The Global Race to Capture and Control
the Stem Cell (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.) p. 340.
51. Carina Dennis (2002) ‘China: Stem cells rise in the East’, Nature, 419,
pp. 334–6.
52. Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST),
China (2003) Ethical Guidelines for Research on Human Embryonic Stem Cells,
24 December 2003 (Beijing: MOH and MOST).
 Joy Yueyue Zhang 179

53. Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority (HFEA), UK (2007) HFEA

Statement on its Decision Regarding Hybrid Embryos, 5 September 2007
(London: HFEA), online access: http://www.hfea.gov.uk/455.html.
54. UK’s Government Proposals for The Regulation of Hybrid and Chimera
Embryos: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/
cmsctech/272/272ii.pdf.
55. Please see note 14.
56. Jane Qiu (2007) ‘To walk again’, New Scientist, 10 November 2007, p.  58.
See also Martin Enserink (2006) ‘Selling the stem cell dream’, Science, 313,
pp. 160–3. Emily Singer (2006) ‘Spinal cord cures in China’, Technology
Review (MIT), 18 April 2006, online access: http://www.technologyreview.
com/news/405671/spinal-cord-cures-in-china/. Mark Johnson (2008) ‘Stem
cell scientists urge clinical trials in US’, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
24 September 2008, online access: http://www.jsonline.com/news/wiscon-
sin/32492559.html.
57. Ayo Wahlberg and Thomas Streitfellner (2009) ‘Stem cell tourism: Desperation
and the governing of new therapies’, in O. Doering (ed.), Life Sciences in
Translation. A Sino-European Dialogue on Ethical Governance of the Life Sciences
(London: BIONET), p. 94. Jane Qiu (2009) ‘China spinal cord injury network:
Changes from within’, Lancet, 8, pp. 606–7.
58. Jane Qiu (2007) ‘To walk again’, p. 59. Emily Singer (2006) ‘Spinal cord cures
in China’, Technology Review (MIT), 18 April 2006, online access: http://www.
technologyreview.com/news/405671/spinal-cord-cures-in-china/.
59. Jonathan Watts (2004) ‘I don’t know how it works’, 1 December 2004, The
Guardian (UK), online access: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2004/
dec/01/highereducation.uk1.
60. Martin Enserink (2006) ‘Selling the stem cell dream’, Science, 313, p. 161.
61. David Cyranoski (2005) ‘Fetal-cell therapy: Paper chase’, Nature, 437,
pp. 810–11. David Cyranoski (2006) ‘Patients warned about unproven spinal
surgery’, Nature, 440, pp. 850–1.
62. David Cyranoski (2005) ‘Fetal-cell therapy: Paper chase’, Nature, 437, p. 810.
63. Jane Qiu (2009) ‘China spinal cord injury network’, p. 606.
64. Jane Qiu (2007) ‘To walk again’, p. 59.
65. Aditya Bharadwaj (2013) ‘Ethic of consensibility, subaltern ethicality: The
clinical application of embryonic stem cells in India’, Biosocieties, 8(1),
pp. 25–40.
8
Chinese Cultural Diplomacy:
Old Wine in New Bottles?
Michael Barr

Introduction

One way of considering the stunning transformation China has under-

gone is to look at the plight of Confucius over the past century. ‘Smash
Confucianism’ was a common slogan of the May Fourth Movement,
in which Chinese demonstrated against not only foreign powers but
also the weakness of its own government which consistently caved in
to them. The rationale behind the anti-Confucian movement could
be found in the reformers’ iconoclastic drive to rid China from the
traditions which were seen as holding it back from modernity. Later,
Mao, in his 1940 essay ‘On New Democracy’, made clear his opposi-
tion to the ‘worship’ and study of Confucius, a hostility which culmi-
nated during the Cultural Revolution in various campaigns to destroy
Confucian symbols, criticize ‘old’ cultural institutions, and question
figures of authority – a habit forbidden under the Confucian value of
filial piety.1
Today, however, the Chinese leadership calls for Confucius and other
forms of Chinese traditional culture to help provide a benign social
order and encourage loyalty to the state.2 In late 2013 Xi Jinping visited
Confucius’s hometown in Qufu and made some of his most candid
comments on the topic. His speech was not officially published but
was reproduced, and not retracted, on several mainland websites.3 In it
Xi indicated that ‘the destruction in the Cultural Revolution was par-
ticularly severe. Everything was condemned, the good things from our
ancestors were also tossed out’. He went further in saying that ‘since
reform and opening up, the decadent things of the bourgeoisie and
capitalism have entered, along with commodities’. He also said that the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was preparing a policy document to

180
 Michael Barr 181

promote traditional values, implant new social mores and a cohesive

national spirit to enhance cultural soft power.4
Judging from past practice, it likely that the document will highlight
the various ways that traditional culture can help solve the ills of mod-
ern society. These include Confucian-inspired measures to re-evaluate
human–nature relations and address environmental degradation; laws –
yes, laws  – to enforce the virtues of filial piety and intergenerational
justice; and narratives of peace to help forge cultural ties with develop-
ing nations who, like China, have been on the receiving end of colonial
and imperial power.
In other words, as this chapter suggests, Chinese traditional culture
offers not so much a path to modernity but rather a cure for modernity.
In what follows I cover the conceptual terrain of soft power studies and
explore Chinese understandings of these terms.5 The chapter then asks
what is new about Chinese cultural diplomacy by looking at some of
the main criticisms against China. I then consider the current state and
aims of Chinese cultural diplomacy by considering two key examples:
the revival of Confucianism and the soft power of First Lady Peng
Liyuan.

Soft power, public diplomacy and cultural diplomacy:

conceptual problems

One common issue for scholars working in the field of soft diplomacy is
the lack of an agreed upon definition. What is cultural diplomacy and
how does it relate to public diplomacy and soft power?6 In this chapter
I  adopt Milton Cummings’s approach to cultural diplomacy: it is the
‘exchange of ideas, information, values, systems, traditions, beliefs,
and other aspects of culture, with the intention of fostering mutual
understanding’.7 Cultural diplomacy is one of the best examples of the
broader field of public diplomacy, which refers to the methods govern-
ments and organizations use to communicate their values, policies and
beliefs – with the goal of improving their relationship, image and repu-
tation with the publics (i.e. not just governments) of other countries.
The similarities between these concepts and soft power should be
evident. Soft power lies in the ability to ‘shape the preferences of others’
through the attraction of one’s values, culture and policies.8 It is often
contrasted – and confused – with hard power, that is, the ability to get
others to want what you want through coercion or inducement. Hard
power, of course, largely grows out of a country’s military or economic
might, whereas soft power arises from getting others to ‘want what you
182 China’s Cultural Diplomacy

want’ through persuasion and being able to co-opt rather than coerce.
But like hard power, soft power is a descriptive rather than a norma-
tive concept. It may be used for good or for ill. Osama bin Laden, for
example, had tremendous soft power amongst a certain group of peo-
ple. It can stem from either government or non-governmental actors.
Importantly, the success of soft power depends on the actor’s reputa-
tion within the given community, as well as the flow of information
between actors. This is one reason why we have seen such attention
given to the concept of soft power in recent decades: its importance has
been facilitated by the rise of globalization and networked communica-
tion systems.
It is important to understand that soft power is not merely anything
non-military such as economic sanctions  – since sanctions are clearly
intended to coerce, and thus a form of hard power. And herein is where
the confusion sometimes lies. For when discussing power, many tend
to conflate the resources that may produce a behaviour with the actual
behaviour itself. This is known as the ‘vehicle fallacy’. It is committed
by those who believe that ‘power must mean whatever goes into opera-
tion when power is activated’.9 Yet, as we know, having the means of
power is not the same thing as being powerful. It is an elementary point
perhaps but one that curiously escapes many observers. For example,
China may invest billions of yuan into Confucius Institutes but that
does not necessarily mean the Institutes are actually increasing attrac-
tion to China or the influence of its people and government. Indeed,
knowing how to measure attraction and influence is one of the biggest
problems with soft power. Does someone study Chinese because they
are culturally attracted to China or just because they are simply mak-
ing a calculation that language proficiency will lead to better employ-
ment opportunities? This problem is not unique to China, of course.
American culture is often admired by those who politically despise the
country and all it stands for (i.e. ‘we hate you but send us the latest
season of Desperate Housewives’). It should be clear then that the rela-
tion between hard and soft power is not always evident and the two
concepts are often intertwined. After all, how can we ever know for
certain why someone is attracted to something and what that attraction
may mean?
Interestingly, cultural and public diplomacy and soft power are not
concepts which hold much resonance with international relations
scholars. Even though a well-known political scientist, Joseph Nye, first
popularized the concept of soft power, the conceptual confusion of the
term, outlined above, has led many to back off from its use and instead
 Michael Barr 183

talk in more general terms about image promotion. Added to this is the
curious fact that diplomatic studies tend to be less popular within the
academic study of international relations than topics such as strategic or
security studies or international political economy.10 As a result, many
of the authors who work on cultural diplomacy tend to come from a
communication or media studies background. This is understandable
given the primacy of communication and media systems in expressing
cultural soft power. As shown below, this fact also applies to China.

Chinese ways of cultural diplomacy

Many academics and policy-makers in China tend to describe cultural

diplomacy as a variant and particular method of both soft power and
public diplomacy. Yet they use multiple terms to describe the practice.
For example, gonggong waijiao and gongzhong waijiao are often used
interchangeably to refer to public diplomacy, however renmin waijiao
(people-to-people diplomacy) and minjian waijiao (civil diplomacy)
can both also be found in the literature. The phrase dui wai xuan chuan
(external propaganda) is still sometimes used and, arguably, has a more
positive connotation than its English translation, referring to image
promotion through ‘benign activities’ such as news broadcasts and
advertising.11 For soft power, Chinese writers tend to use three different
terms. The word closest to the Western definition and the one most often
used is ruan shili (literally ‘soft strength’, with the implication that one
also has the ability and means to act on that strength). However,
some writers also use ruan quanli or ruan liliang. These differ slightly in
meaning in that quanli means having the authority or the right to do
something, whereas liliang means physical strength or force.
One can trace the growing importance of soft diplomacy by look-
ing at the formation of institutional bodies. The Charhar Institute,
established in 2009, is a think tank which runs the journal, Public
Diplomacy. The publication is edited by the pioneer of the field, Zhao
Qizheng. Zhao has held important posts in both the State Council and
as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chinese People’s
Political Consultative Conference. Yet, in keeping with the point made
above about Western disciplinary boundaries, he is not a political sci-
entist. Rather, Zhao is currently the Dean of the School of Journalism
and Communication at Renmin University. The Charhar Institute is
one of the few independent think tanks devoted to the topic. Or, to
put it another way, the government has established plenty. In 2009, for
example, the Chinese Foreign Ministry established a Public Diplomacy
184 China’s Cultural Diplomacy

Office; in 2010 a state-backed Public Diplomacy Research Centre

opened at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. More recently, the
China Public Diplomacy Association was launched in 2013 as a non-
profit organization (with heavy government involvement) dedicated
to providing professional consultation and co-ordination services to
advance the development of China’s public diplomacy. The poten-
tial benefit of public diplomacy has increasingly trickled down to
local-level governments and party-related bodies. Local authorities in
Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin and Wenzhou have established Public
Diplomacy Associations with the expressed purpose of explaining their
cities, and in turn China, to the outside world.12
The importance ascribed to developing cultural power can hardly
be overstated as evidenced by any number of official statements and
CCP reports. Xi Jinping, under the guise of the Chinese Dream, has
vowed to promote China’s cultural soft power by disseminating Chinese
values  – defined as socialist values with Chinese characteristics. In a
recent speech to members of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central
Committee, Xi called for efforts to promote advanced socialist culture,
deepen reform in the cultural system, and enhance people’s cultural
creativity.13 Most recently, for example, the Third Plenary Session
of the 18th CPC Central Committee repeated the determination to
reform its cultural sector and to reap social and economic benefit as
a result. This included a wide range of measures, such as encouraging
state-owned cultural institutions to transform themselves into market-
oriented enterprises and improving access to public cultural services
for all Chinese.14 Beyond this, the 12th Five-Year Plan for National
Economic and Social Development (2011–15) states that China must
‘actively create a favorable external environment’ and ‘strengthen
public diplomacy, comprehensively conduct friendly people-to-people
exchanges, stimulate cultural exchanges, and enhance mutual under-
standing and friendship between the Chinese people and the people of
all countries’.15
While the promotion and management of cultural soft power has
gained full force under Xi, recognition of its can be traced back to
Wang Huning, a former academic at Shanghai’s Fudan University, and
close ally of former leader Jiang Zemin. In 1993, Wang wrote that ‘if a
country has an admirable culture and ideological system, other coun-
tries will tend to follow it  … It does not have to use its hard power
which is expensive and inefficient.’16 Many intellectuals have followed
Wang’s lead, arguing that Chinese values of benevolence and winning
respect through virtue offer substantial appeal in an era of globalization
 Michael Barr 185

and cultural diversity.17 Zheng Biao, a political economist in China,

believes that the West as a political concept is in decline but that the
‘clash of civilizations’ is merely a transitional phase which will give way
to greater dialogue and co-operation once nations begin to adopt the
traditional Chinese value of establishing harmony between nature and
humans.18
If the ideal of harmony still forms a key aspect of official CCP ideol-
ogy, it is because of its political utility and because its roots run deep in
Chinese thought. The Analects claims:

I have heard that the possessors of states or noble families do not

worry about under population, but worry about the people being
unevenly distributed; do not worry about poverty, but worry about
discontent. For when there is even distribution there is no poverty,
and when there is harmony there is no under population, and when
there is contentment there will be no upheavals. It is for such rea-
sons that, if far off people do not submit, then culture and virtue
are enhanced in order to attract them; and when they have been
attracted, they will be made content.19

By the mid-2000’s, the CCP had largely adopted the view that soft power
was a key aspect of Chinese policy and that the country needed to do
more to promote its cultural traditions and idea of harmony between
peoples. Official documents, editorials and literature at the local and
national level frequently mentioned the need to rebuild Chinese culture
to help people cope with a rapidly changing society.20 A 2006 editorial
in the English edition of the People’s Daily reads:

Just as experts have said, [despite China’s being] a cultural foun-

tainhead with more than 5,000 years of civilization, we only export
television sets and don’t export content to be televised. We have
become an ‘assembly plant’. Actually, culture is a key integral part of
a country’s overall national strength, what people have called ‘soft
power,’ and it has become a point of competition between national
powers.21

Chinese leaders feel they need to increase their international soft power
for several reasons. First, China feels that it needs to better explain itself
to the world in light of China threat theories. Here, there is a widespread
belief amongst policy-makers, academics and the general public that the
West worries about the rise of China because of a lack of understanding.
186 China’s Cultural Diplomacy

This gap in knowledge is perpetuated by Western control over interna-

tional media, as Zhao Qizheng made clear in a 2004 speech:

More than 80 percent of international news is now supplied by

news agencies of advanced countries. It is indispensable for China
to explain itself to counter the image shaped by these media of
advanced countries. It is especially important for us to give high pri-
ority to offering explanations to the international community about
matters such as the human rights issue, the Tibetan and Taiwanese
questions, the issue of religion, the Falun Gong cult question, and
the theory of a ‘China threat’.22

If China can better explain itself, then, its leaders hope, China’s interna-
tional image will improve. This is the second key aim behind its interna-
tional soft power campaigns: to brand China as a peaceful, developing
country and as a stable and responsible partner in the international
community.23 A  better image, China’s leaders hope, may also help
secure the legitimacy of the CCP and limit the appeal of Western ideolo-
gies within the country. In sum, Chinese soft power is determined ‘to
project an image of strength, affluence, and political responsibility that
surmounts the popular impression of China as a state which routinely
violates human rights and threatens global stability’.24
There are, however, several key differences between Western and
Chinese ways of conducting soft cultural diplomacy. First, Chinese
soft power has considerable domestic application, a point sometimes
missed by Western analysts focused solely on China’s image abroad.25 In
their comprehensive review of different strands of Chinese soft power,
researchers at the China Soft Power Research Group in Peking University
described how a large number of Chinese scholars stress domestic cul-
tural revitalization as a key part of the concept.26 For example, Zuo
Xuejin, a leading figure at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences,
argues that for a developing country like China, the importance of soft
power is as much related to domestic development and well-being as it
is to improving its international image.27
At the 17th National Congress in 2007 for example, Hu stated that
the CCP must ‘enhance culture as part of the soft power of our country
to better guarantee the people’s basic cultural rights and interests.’28 His
statement indicated that cultural soft power had two main purposes: to
promote national cohesion and creativity in order to meet the spiritual
demands of modern life and to strengthen China’s competitiveness
within the international arena. At the 18th National Congress, Hu
 Michael Barr 187

reminded China that ‘culture is the lifeblood of a nation and it gives the
people a sense of belonging’. Pre-shadowing Xi’s mantra, Hu claimed
that in order to ‘complete the building of a moderately prosperous soci-
ety in all respects and achieve the great renewal of the Chinese nation’
it is, amongst other things, necessary to ‘increase China’s cultural soft
power’.29
As suggested above, there are several reasons why the use of soft
power at home resonates with the Chinese leadership. Domestically,
as a number of authors have noted, soft power helps the regime sus-
tain its legitimacy and acceptance amongst China’s 56 different ethnic
minority groups.30 The goal here is not just the promotion of minor-
ity culture but, crucially for the government, providing the cultural
means for minorities to identify as Chinese. The idea underpinning soft
power here is that by promoting Han culture, minority nationalities
will become more receptive to it, and, by extension, will more easily
accept Han people as part of their own communities. Beyond the need
to shore up national ethnic cohesion, the idea of enhancing soft power
can be found in Chinese domestic policy discussions regarding the need
for social justice, improved moral standards, anti-corruption measures,
and developing an innovative social scientific research as a means to
compete internationally.31 According to Nicholas Cull, the Chinese
government wishes ‘to buttress their own legitimacy, and counter any
doubt that the CCP might not be the best stewards of China’s destiny’.32
A second difference in China’s approach is the extent to which it
attempts to overtly quantify its cultural power as part of the broader con-
cept of comprehensive national power (zonghe guoli). Comprehensive
national power refers to a numerical calculation, reached by combining
various quantitative indices, to create a single number, which represents
a state’s overall power. It includes factors such as territory, availability of
natural resources, military strength, economic clout, social conditions,
domestic government, foreign policy and its initiatives, and the degree
of wielding international influence. Soft power fits well into China’s
development of asymmetrical power projection.
Another difference in the Chinese way, of course, is the official focus
on traditional – i.e. not contemporary – culture as the main vehicle of
Chinese cultural diplomacy. There are several points to make here. First,
although culture stands as the main source of Chinese soft power pro-
jection, not everyone in China subscribes to the notion that it ought to
be the main source of the government’s charm offensive. Yan Xuetong
argues that politics and good governance can better attract others by
serving as an ideal model of an equitable and just society.33 Adherents
188 China’s Cultural Diplomacy

to this view argue that China ought to build credible institutions in

line with international norms and more fully integrate itself into mul-
tilateral diplomacy, overseas assistance programmes and peacekeep-
ing operations. Although both sides agree that domestic stability and
maintaining favourable internal conditions for China’s peaceful rise
and sustained growth are of paramount importance, Yan argues that
‘the central point of soft power is not cultural strength, but political
strength’ and that American soft power derives more from its political
system than from its cultural institutions.34
Beyond this, the emphasis on traditional culture, rather than con-
temporary, is analytically noteworthy. This emphasis makes sense, at
least from the Chinese leadership’s point of view, for several reasons.
Firstly, emphasizing Chinese culture celebrates several thousand years
of Chinese cultural history and highlights the continuity and relative
stability of Chinese civilization – born long before many Western states.
Secondly, culture itself is seen as more apolitical and therefore more
harmless than Nye’s other soft power components.35 Whilst the ‘Beijing
Consensus’ may have some appeal amongst authoritarian minded
leaders, if we take Yan’s call seriously it is difficult to imagine the
international community embracing the political style and repressive
policies of the CCP. Thirdly, traditional culture, unlike its contemporary
variants, is untainted with Western influence. This is attractive to the
leadership which has often blamed the West for undermining Chinese
values with cultural and sprirtual hegemony.36
A final difference  – or perhaps I  should say perceived difference  – in
Chinese cultural diplomacy is the level of state involvement. While some
in China argue that the government should also remain behind the
scenes to let non-governmental organizations, companies or individuals
be the public face of Chinese public diplomacy, most academics and offi-
cials believe the government should play a leading part in soft campaigns
by offering guidance and funding.37 In practice, the government offers
this and considerably more, which is one of the key criticisms of Chinese
cultural diplomacy. Who should be the driving force of soft power?
This question leads us to the many critics of Chinese soft power. They
claim that China fails to understand soft power because (a) it is led by
the state and CCP rather than civil society, and (b) it often acts in ways
which are contrary to the message it wishes to send. Sceptics believe
that the involvement of state authorities and the mismatch between
what is said and what is done ends up undermining the attractiveness of
Chinese culture. It is worth examining these two points since they are
 Michael Barr 189

instructive in answering the question of what is new about the Chinese

practice of cultural diplomacy.
As Falk Hartig correctly notes, the Third Plenum’s statement to make
China a cultural power provides interesting insight into how the CCP
understands culture – ‘as something that can be managed, controlled,
and guided’.38 Inherent in the definition of cultural diplomacy is the
understanding that diplomatic actors need not – in fact, should not –
primarily be governments. To be successful, the exchange of culture,
values, traditions, and so forth, must also be initiated by the private
sphere and by civil society. On this point, the Chinese way seems to fail
for many of its efforts at cultural soft power have been top down. This
approach tends to see soft power as something that needs to be actively
promoted, rather than something that societies simply have. In China,
this occurs through the funding of the study of Chinese language and
culture via the Confucius Institutes, the internationalization of Chinese
media organizations such as China Radio International, CCTV and
foreign-language editions of the People’s Daily and related papers, films
such as Confucius (a box office flop, it must be said), high-profile events
such as the Beijing Olympics and Shanghai Expo and promotional
videos designed for international broadcast which show the preferred
official version of a happy, multicultural, inclusive and globally respon-
sible China.39
Given the prominent role of the state, Chinese leaders have been
heavily criticized for failing to understand both culture and cultural
attraction. However, is there anything new about this? Early in the
Cold War, American efforts at cultural diplomacy were funded by the
CIA as well as the State Department’s Division of Cultural Relations.
Government-backed cultural events included creative writing work-
shops, sponsorship of Hollywood films, and sending African-American
jazz artists as ambassadors all over the world, in the belief that introduc-
ing American culture and values would be a pathway towards further
political and economic interests.40 More recently, in 2002 then Secretary
of State Colin Powell launched the photographic exhibition After
September 11: Images from Ground Zero. The exhibition, made up of 27
images by the respected American photographer Joel Meyerowitz (the
only photographer with unimpeded access to Ground Zero), was shown
in more than 60 countries. Backed by the US State Department and
regionally promoted by embassies and consulates, the exhibition was
clearly intended to shape and maintain public memory of the attacks
on the World Trade Center and their aftermath.41
190 China’s Cultural Diplomacy

My point is that there is nothing new about the Chinese way of rely-
ing heavily on state support to promote its culture. Criticism of China
in this regard says more about Western threat theories and anxieties of
impotence than they do about China. However, despite the myopia,
there are in fact two separate but related issues here: one is to what
extent states ought to be involved in promoting their country’s culture;
the second is to what extent states permit an independent, flourishing
civil society to aid in the promotion of that culture. My claim is that on
the first point, Chinese soft power may be state led but that is hardly
surprising, worrying, or historically unique. On the second point,
I  would assert that while China has a growing civil society that often
works in a beneficial, symbiotic relationship with the CCP, China’s
cultural power is indeed diminished by the harsh controls the govern-
ment places on individuals and organizations in the name of security
and stability. China ‘lacks Gangnam Style’ because their artists do not
enjoy full freedom of expression; this is a slightly different issue from
whether or not the government ought to be pouring funds into the
promotion of culture.
This closely relates to the second major criticism of Chinese cultural
diplomacy: that is, in the words of Nye, that ‘great powers try to use
culture and narrative to create soft power that promotes their national
interests, but it’s not an easy sell when the message is inconsistent with
their domestic realities’. Discrepancies between the CCP’s stated values
of harmony and peace and its actual policies of internet censorship,
forced assimilation in Tibet and Xinjiang, treatment of political dissi-
dents, and so forth, lead some to question which are the true examples
of Chinese culture.42 I have much sympathy with those who make this
argument. Yet again: what is new here? Is China the only hypocritical
power? The only state to hold double standards? There is a long history
which I need not rehearse here of Western governments professing to
believe in democracy while also lending support to dictatorial regimes
and undermining democratically elected governments. And of course
this says nothing of the many and well documented abuses surrounding
the ‘war on terror’ – all, as in China, in the name of security.
My point is not to engage in Chinese apologetics. Rather, the goal
here is to simply highlight how short memories can be and how quick
some can be to lay blame when in fact their own history and practice is
not starkly different from that which they criticize. In the final section,
I  wish to address some of these issues  – traditional culture, national
rejuvenation – through two key examples of Chinese cultural power.
 Michael Barr 191

Living the dream: Confucius meets Peng Liyuan

Although the point is often lost on threat theorists, the Chinese Dream
is less about expansionism than a return to the glory days when China
had – or is now perceived to have had – a strong, unified culture and
identity. Many feel these traits have been seriously weakened under
the forces of industrialization and modernization. Seen in this way, the
Chinese Dream is an attempt to restore China’s ideational greatness
while not losing the material gains of the past 35 years.
The Confucian revival is instructive in order to help understand
these points. Of course the sage’s return, much like his demise, comes
with a fair amount of official control. This goes right down to the very
image of the philosopher. In 2006, for example, the China Confucius
Foundation published a standard portrait of Confucius to give him
a single, recognizable identity around the world. Working on advice
from Confucian scholars and even descendants of the philosopher, art-
ists, with government backing, designed a portrait that would set the
standard criteria for the sage’s image. The Foundation believed that a
standard portrait was needed so that different countries could have the
same image of the philosopher. The sculpture depicts Confucius as an
old man with a long beard, broad mouth and big ears. He wears a robe
and crosses his hands on his chest. ‘The amended portrait highlights the
ancient philosopher’s kindness in appearance as well as his cultured and
gentle characteristics’, according to one member of the sculpture design
group. ‘We want to show a Confucius that exists in people’s minds, who
is a kind, sagacious and respectful person.’43
These, of course, are the exact values which the CCP hopes to cul-
tivate amongst Chinese today. One method for doing this lies in the
growth of educational programmes and schools, funded by both pri-
vate and government means. Increasingly, parents are sending their
children to evening or weekend classes where they memorize and
learn to chant Confucian classics. A number of schools have begun to
develop curricula based on traditional culture.44 But the sage’s return
has not been limited to formal education; Confucian self-help may
be an apt description for Yu Dan who has developed the reputation
of a ‘public intellectual’ in China for her popularization of Confucian
thought. Her loose interpretation of the Confucius Analects first aired
in a TV series in 2006. A year later her book sold 10,000 copies on the
first day of its release and an estimated total of over 10 million copies
overall.45
192 China’s Cultural Diplomacy

Given that more than a quarter of the population will be over 65 by

2050, it will come as no surprise that one of the traditional values Yu
has tried to promote is filial piety. The basis for this, as readers will likely
know, is ‘The Classic of Filial Piety’ (Xiao Jing) and Guo Jujing’s 14th
century collection of folk tales, ‘The 24 Paragons of Filial Piety’ (Ershisi
Xiao).46 In 2012, the government attempted to update these ancient
exemplars and to make them more relevant for today’s families. The
revised version included calls for children to purchase health insurance
for their parents and to teach them how to use the Internet. A  year
later the government updated a 1996 law on elderly protection in a bid
to compel adult children to take better care of their ageing parents.47
The revised law, called ‘Protection of the Rights and Interests of Elderly
People’, lays out the duties of children and their obligation to tend to
the spiritual needs of the elderly. Under the law, elderly people are given
legal protection in virtually every aspect of life, from entitlement to
basic provisions and family maintenance, to freedom from discrimina-
tion and to marry without interference from their children. Children
are instructed to go home often to visit their parents and to send occa-
sional greetings. Only days after the legislation came into force, Chinese
media ran stories of a woman and her husband in Wuxi, who were court
ordered to visit her elderly mother at least once every two months, and
during at least two public holidays every year.
There are a number of curious points about these efforts. First, the
law does not apply to children who have gone overseas  – leaving the
awkward situation where those who have run furthest away from their
parents in order to live the dream are immune from the law’s effects.
Second, and more importantly, filial piety, traditionally about demon-
strative gratitude, has in contemporary China evolved to become a legal
contract between family members with less room for spontaneous affec-
tion.48 Revised laws simply carry this a step further but in the process
beg the question: how can one legislate a virtue? Leaving aside the fact
that few parents would turn in their own child to the filial piety police,
these efforts also draw attention to the plight of migrant workers.
Although the law states that employers should give their staff sufficient
time off to make parental visits, as Yu Hua notes, for decades the official
media have been extolling those exemplary workers who stay at their
posts during the Spring Festival.49 Although the law carries no punitive
measures, Yu asks whether or not these model workers will end up being
condemned for the same practice that once earned them praise.
The reasons for Confucius’ success are not hard to understand in a
country where income differentials have widened from being the lowest
 Michael Barr 193

in the world to some of the highest. Confucian principles of respect for

authority and equality of opportunity for rich and poor through educa-
tion within a stable social hierarchy are obviously attractive to China’s
leaders who struggle to hold the country together amid unprecedented
social and economic change. Clearly the return of Confucius helps fill
a political vacuum as well as a spiritual one. China’s leaders have done
well in integrating their ideologies into the parts of the Confucian
tradition which promotes the relational and communal nature of the
philosophy, the call for proper social ordering and stability, and the
inculcation of community values in the face of increasing materialism.
My second example of Chinese cultural power is far more contem-
porary in origin but fulfils many of these same functions. It would be
fair to say, I think, that in spring 2013, a new star was born – or, to be
more accurate, an old star was cast in a new role. Peng Liyuan joined the
People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at age 18 and went on to become a pop-
ular soprano, known for her folk songs and operas celebrating the brav-
ery of Chinese soldiers. She holds an honorary rank of major-general
but her fame is hardly limited to China. In 2005 she performed at the
Lincoln Center in New York; two years later she appeared at the Vienna
State Opera House. In 2011 the World Health Organization named Peng
their Goodwill Ambassador for Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Today Peng
is better known as China’s First Lady – the wife of Xi Jinping. There are
many noteworthy aspects to Peng’s newfound status but in the remain-
der of this chapter I shall focus on only one: her sense of fashion. As the
New York Times puts it, some view the First Lady as ‘roughly equivalent
to Michelle Obama: modern, outgoing, intrigued by fashion’.50 Other
media outlets referred to her as China’s Kate Middleton.
Certainly reaction within China has confirmed this. The outfits and
accessories (e.g. handbags, peep toe court shoes, scarfs, trench coats)
that Peng wore during her initial state visits have become highly sought
after items. According to Xinhua News Agency, the First Lady’s appear-
ance sparked a notable rise in the clothing and textile sector of China’s
stock market, bucking an overall downward trend.51 Beyond her own
apparel, Peng also promoted Chinese brands by presenting her foreign
counterparts with skincare products made by Pehchaolin, a Shanghai
based company. One label whose stock certainly rose is Ma Ke, one of
Peng’s favourites.52 Trained at Central Saint Martins in London, Ma is
now based in Guangdong province. Her line is known for its simple,
minimalistic style, weaving fabric with Chinese loom technology dating
back to the nineteenth century. In contrast to usual haute couture, her
fashion shows are open to the public and held outside, using modern
194 China’s Cultural Diplomacy

dancers and tai-chi performers instead of models. Interestingly, Ma

says she wants the label to redefine the meaning of luxury away from
Western materialism.
Why are Peng’s fashion choices politically significant? How do they
relate to cultural diplomacy and soft power? First, Peng’s attire plays
well to the narrative of the Chinese Dream and the promotion of
Chinese national identity. What is interesting about the promotion of a
Chinese Dream is how it seeks to inspire rather than inform. Somewhat
paradoxically (given the vagueness of the ‘dream’), this could be seen
as a move by Xi to go beyond the empty ideological slogans of his pre-
decessors. In talking about national ‘rejuvenation’ and the ‘revival of
the Chinese nation’, the government has not been shy in promoting
nationalism as a force for social cohesion. Whilst this may be a risky
strategy internationally, at home it plays well – as does the First Lady’s
fashion sense. What nationalist can complain about Peng the way they
do about other famous Chinese women or so-called tuhao who cover
themselves in bling-bling and foreign designer brands?
Second, and perhaps most important, Peng’s choice of labels gives life
to China’s efforts to move from a manufacturing economy with cost as
its greatest competitive advantage to a creative economy with innova-
tion as its main source of competitiveness. Tired of being the world’s
factory, one of the government’s new mottos is not ‘Made in China’
but rather ‘Created in China’. Li Wuwei, a leading economist, has even
gone so far as to suggest that ‘creativity is essential for the renewal of
Chinese society’.53 Coupled with this goal is the attempt to promote
greater domestic consumption to help ease a reduction in demand from
traditional export markets. Again, Peng’s preference for Chinese labels
plays beautifully to these wider initiatives. If Chinese cultural power
is to be realized and if Chinese cultural products are to be successfully
exported, a flourishing domestic industry is needed. The development
of such could, eventually, help give soft power the independence from
government that so many critics wish for. As a number of Chinese intel-
lectuals have noted, who better to represent the nation’s best brands
and mentor China’s fledgling fashion and creative industries than an
iconic singer, PLA hero, and now First Lady?54
Finally, Peng underscores one of her husband’s leading policy initia-
tives: the need to curb corruption. It is well known that giving foreign
luxury items to government officials is a normal part of doing business
in China. Aware of the danger corruption poses to the future of the CCP,
Xi begun to crack down on these practices. Peng’s choice of less glitzy
domestic brands can be seen as part of this campaign. It is no accident
 Michael Barr 195

that Chinese netizens have praised her understated style. In this way,
her choices address one of the many discrepancies between what the
CCP does and what it says. If – and it is a big if – Xi can limit graft and
nepotism, then these issues will not plague the image of the country to
the extent that they currently do.
The great irony of Peng, of course, is that she represents the epitome
of Chinese state power. But perhaps her greatest strength may not be –
as some have suggested  – her ability to soften China’s international
image. In fact, her reception abroad has already been blighted by the
appearance of a photo showing her singing to PLA martial law troops
following the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Ultimately, Peng’s soft
power importance may lie more within China than it does overseas.
And here we come back to the one point which may truly distinguish
Chinese cultural diplomacy and soft power: that they must be under-
stood in light of Chinese domestic politics.
What do Peng Liyuan and the return of Confucius tell us about
Chinese cultural power today? As mentioned above, one clear lesson
is that China is turning to the past in order to try and ameliorate the
sins of the present. But there is a deeper issue, and, I would assert, prob-
lem, here. Traditional values may carry benefits for both the CCP and
Chinese society. However, as I highlighted at the start of this chapter,
deploying soft power resources cannot be equated with actually getting
soft power results. Chinese society and people are no longer traditional.
People may admire Peng or send their children to Confucian schools
but it remains to be seen if these things will have an impact on a cul-
ture and an identity which has undergone, and is still undergoing, such
rapid and dramatic change. When the contemporary is disturbed and
is in constant flux, appeals to history and tradition make sense. Yet the
question remains: what does it mean to be Chinese today? Until there
is a more articulate answer to this question, China’s soft initiatives will
continue to lack definition and its leaders will have no choice but to
appeal to a halcyon era in search of positive visions.

Conclusion

Soft power is really about the power of example. Yet this is hardly new.
Mencius (372–289 BC) drew attention to the value of non-coercion and
the necessity for a ruler to cultivate their own virtue to attract others:

There is a way to gain the whole world. It is to gain the people, and
having gained them one gains the whole world. There is way to gain
196 China’s Cultural Diplomacy

the people. Gain their hearts, and then you gain them … If others do
not respond to your love with love, look into your own benevolence;
if others do not respond to your attempts to govern them, look into
your own wisdom; if others do not respond to your courtesy, look
into your respect. In other words, look into yourself whenever you
fail to achieve your purpose. When you are correct in your person,
the whole world will turn to you.55

In the spirit of Mencius, many analysts believe that China’s attraction is

based on the logic that ‘the ultimate level of wielding soft power is not
to persuade others by force or by intelligence, but by morality ... which
is the essence of Chinese traditional culture’.56
So what is new about this effort? I have asserted that despite the crit-
ics, China’s method of heavy state support for its cultural soft power is
not new. Appeals to traditional cultural values are both new and not
new. If one takes the short view (i.e. of only the twentieth century),
then official appeals to such values seem to offer something different.
Taking a slightly longer perspective, however, government attempts to
revive Confucian thought should not be surprising. Importantly, the
long-term success of Chinese soft power rests on its ability to articulate
a positive vision. Seen in this way, Chinese traditional culture offers
an antidote to modernity, a way of addressing the excesses of liberal-
ism. How do we fill the moral void that seems to pervade society? How
do we achieve social justice in light of the legacies of colonialism and
imperialism? What is the best form of political representation? How are
we to understand our relationships – to each other and to nature? And
how can the Chinese leadership save themselves from destruction? The
answers, it seems, lie in the dreams of past glory.

Notes and references

1. Mao Zedong (1940) ‘On New Democracy’, Selected Works of Mao Zedong.
2. Michael Barr (2012) ‘Nation branding as nation building: China’s image
campaign’, East Asia 29, pp. 81–94.
3. Chris Buckley (2014) ‘Xi Touts Communist Party as Defender of Confucius’s
Virtues’, New York Times Online, Sinosphere Dispatches from China, 13
February 2014.
4. Confucius’s official rehabilitation began not long after Deng’s reforms were
launched and accelerated in the 1990s when the Ministry of Education
introduced guidelines for moral education. Under the guise of ‘Chinese
traditional virtues’, Confucian principles of loyalty, social responsibility,
respect for authority and self-discipline were adopted by school curricula
 Michael Barr 197

and continue to be taught today. See Yu Tianlong (2008) ‘The revival of

Confucianism in Chinese schools: a historical-political review’, Asia Pacific
Journal of Education, 28(2), pp. 113–29.
5. There is no shortage of literature on Chinese soft power and cultural
diplomacy. See for example: Qing Cao (2011) ‘The language of soft power:
mediating socio-political meanings in the Chinese media’, Critical Arts (25),
pp. 7–24; Barthelemy Courmont (2013) ‘What Implications for Chinese
Soft Power: Charm Offensive or New Hegemony?’, Pacific Focus, XXVIII,
pp. 343–64; Ding, S. (2009) The Dragon’s Hidden Wings: How China Rises with
Its Soft Power (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books); Alex Hunter (2009) ‘Soft
Power: China on the Global Stage’, Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2,
pp. 373–98; M. Li (2009) Soft Power: China’s Emerging Strategy in International
Politics (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books); Shogo Suzuki (2009) ‘Chinese Soft
Power: Insecurity Studies, Myopia, and Fantasy’, Third World Quarterly, 30,
pp. 779–93.
6. For the endless debates on this topic, see Nicholas Cull (2008) ‘Public
Diplomacy: Taxonomies and Histories’, ANNALS of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, 616(1), pp. 31–54; Nancy Snow and Phillip Taylor
(eds) (2009) Routledge Handbook for Public Diplomacy (London: Routledge);
Joseph Nye (2008) ‘Public Diplomacy and Soft Power’, ANNALS of the
American Association of Political and Social Sciences 616(1), pp. 94–109.
7. Milton Cummings (2003) Cultural Diplomacy and the US Government: A Survey
(Washington, DC: Center for Arts and Culture).
8. Joseph Nye (2005) Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics
(Washington: Public Affairs), pp. 5–15; Joseph Nye (2011) The Future of Power
(Washington, DC: Public Affairs).
9. Steven Lukes (2005) ‘Power and the Battle for Hearts and Minds’, Millennium:
Journal of International Studies, 33, pp. 477–93.
10. Paul Sharp (2009) Diplomatic Theory of International Relations (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
11. Wang Yiwei (2008) ‘Public Diplomacy and the Rise of Chinese Soft
Power’, ANNALS of American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616(1),
pp. 257–73.
12. Maria Wei-Shen Siow (2012) Chinese Domestic Debates on Public Diplomacy,
Asia Pacific Bulletin, 5 November.
13. See the China Daily (2014) ‘China to promote cultural soft power’, 1 January
2014.
14. See the People’s Daily (2013) ‘China ambitious to become culture power: CPC
decision’, 16 November 2014.
15. See National People’s Congress (2011) 12th Five-Year Plan for National
Economic and Social Development. Available via: China.org.cn.
16. Wang Huning (1993) ‘Culture as National Soft Power’, Journal of Fudan
University, March edition.
17. See for example: Jiang Hiayan (2007) ‘Hongyang Zhonghua Minzu de Youxiu
Wenhua yu Zengqiang Woguo de Ruan Shili’ [Promoting the Outstanding
Culture of the Chinese Nation and Strengthening China’s Soft Power], Journal
of the CCP School of the Central Committee of the CCP, 11(1), pp. 107–12; Luo
Jian (2006) ‘Zhongguo Jueqi de Duiwai Wenhua Zhanlue’ [External Cultural
198 China’s Cultural Diplomacy

Strategy in China’s Rise], Journal of the CCP School of the Central Committee
of the CCP, 3, pp. 97–100; S. J. Tong (2008) Wenhua Ruanshili [Cultural Soft
Power] (Chongqing: Chongqing Chubanshe).
18. Zheng Bian (2008) Zhongguo ruanshili: Jueding zhongguo mingyun de liangzhong
silu [Chinese Soft Power: Two Approaches in Deciding China’s Destiny],
(Beijing: Central Compilation & Translation Press).
19. The Analects (1993), trans. Raymond Dawson (Oxford: Oxford University
Press), p. 4.
20. See for example: Z. Wang (2007) Goujian Shehuizhuyi Hexie Shehui de Ruan
Shili [Building Soft Power for a Socialist Harmonious Society] (Beijing:
Renmin Chubanshe); People’s Daily (2007) ‘Tigao Guojia Wenhua Ruan Shili’
[Upgrading National Cultural Soft Power], 29 December 2007.
21. People’s Daily (2006), editorial, 31 March. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/
22. Cited in: Zhai Zizheng (2004) ‘Nuli Jianshe youliyu Woguode Guoji
Yulun Huanjing’ [To formulate a favorable public opinion in the world],
Journal of Foreign Affairs College, third quarter, p.  3; see also X. Yao (2007)
‘Gonggong Guanxi de Chuanbo Shouduan yu Zhongguo Ruan Shili Jiangou’
[Communication Methods of Public Relations and China’s Soft Power
Building], Xinwen qianshao, 7, pp. 93–4.
23. For more on the goals of nation branding, see Melissa Aronczyk (2013)
Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
24. Gary Rawnsley (2009) ‘China talks back: Public Diplomacy and Soft Power
for the Chinese Century’, in Nancy Snow and Philip M. Taylor (eds),
Routledge Handbook on Public Diplomacy (New York: Routledge), p. 282.
25. Michael Barr (2011) Who’s Afraid of China? The Challenge of Chinese Soft Power
(London: Zed Books).
26. See B. Han and Q. Jiang (2009) ‘Ruanshili: Zhongguo shijiao’ [Soft Power:
A Chinese Perspective] (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe).
27. Cited in Han and Jiang (2009), pp. 127–35.
28. Hu Jintao (2007) Report to the Seventeenth National Congress of the Communist
CCP of China, 15 October 2007. Available at: www.china.org.cn/english/
congress/229611.htm.
29. Hu Jintao (2012) Report to the 18th National Congress. Available at: http://
www.china.org.cn.
30. Zhu, Z. and Quan, Z. (2009) Zhongguo gongchandang yu zhonghua minzu fux-
ing ruanshili [Chinese Communist CCP and the Soft Power of the Chinese
National’s Renaissance] (Wuhan: Hubei Renmin Chubanshe), pp. 94–5.
31. Yi, H. (2009) Wenhua yu guojia wenhua ruanshili [Cultural Sovereignty and
Cultural Soft Power of Nation] (Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe).
32. Nicholas Cull (2009) ‘Testimony before the US–China Economic and
Security Review Commission hearing: China’s Propaganda and Influence
Operations, its Intelligence Activities that Target the United States and its
Resulting Impacts on US National Security’, 30 April 2009.
33. Yan Xuetong (2007) ‘Ruan Shili de Hexin Shi Zhengzhi Shili’ [The Core of
Soft Power is Political Power], Global Times, 22 May 2014.
34. Zhu and Quan (2009); J. G. Huang (ed.) (2009) Ruanshili yingwuqi – gaibian
shijie de shehui kexue chuanxin [Innovation that will Change the World]
(Beijing: Dangjian Duwu Chubanshe).
 Michael Barr 199

35. Falk Hartig (2012) ‘Cultural Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics: The
case of Confucius Institutes in Australia’, Communication, Politics & Culture,
45, pp. 256–76.
36. Ingrid d’Hooghe (2010) ‘The Expansion of China’s Public Diplomacy
System’, in Jian Wang (ed.), Soft Power in China: Public Diplomacy through
Communication (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 19–35.
37. See for example: Zhao Kejin (2007) Public Diplomacy: Theory and Practice
(Shanghai: Fudan University Press); Zhao Qizheng (2010) Gonggong waijiao
yu kua wenhua jiaoliu [Public diplomacy and communication between cul-
tures] (Beijing: Renmin University Press).
38. Falk Hartig (2013) ‘Culture and the Third Plenum of China’s Communist
Party’, Annenberg School Center for Public Diplomacy Blog, 23 December
2014. Available at: http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org.
39. Shaun Breslin (2011) The Soft Notion of China’s Soft Power, Chatham House
Programme Paper, London: Chatham House.
40. Justin Hart (2013) Empire of Ideas: The Origins of Public Diplomacy and the
Transformation of US Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
41. Ben O’Loughlin (2011) ‘Images as weapons of war: representation, media-
tion and interpretation’, Review of International Studies, 37(1), pp. 71–91.
42. David Bandurski (2010) ‘Voices in the Gap’, South China Morning Post, 17
August 2010.
43. Xinhua (2006) ‘China Unveils Standard Portrait of Confucius’, 24 September
2006. Available at: http://www.china.org.cn/english/2006/Sep/182087.htm.
44. Stephen Angle (2012) Contemporary Confucian Philosophy (London: Polity);
Daniel Bell (2008) China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a
Changing Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
45. Sun Shuyun (2010) ‘Confucius from the Heart by Yu Dan’, The Observer,
London Sunday 28 February; Yu Dan (2006) Yu Dan’s Insights into the Analects
(Beijing: Zhonghua Suju).
46. For a good analysis of the effect of this ancient text, see Weimin Mo and
Wenju Shen (1999) ‘The Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety: Their Didactic
Role and Impact on Children’s Lives’, Children’s Literature Association
Quarterly, 24, pp. 15–23.
47. Ed Wong (2013) ‘A Chinese Virtue Is Now the Law’, New York Times, 3 July,
p. A4.
48. Kuang-Hui Yeh, Chin-Chun Yi, Wei-Chun Tsao and Po-San Wan (2013) ‘Filial
piety in contemporary Chinese societies: A  comparative study of Taiwan,
Hong Kong, and China’, International Sociology, 28, pp. 277–96; see also Rita
Chou (2011) ‘Filial Piety by Contract? The Emergence, Implementation, and
Implications of the “Family Support Agreement”, China’, The Gerontologist,
51, pp. 3–16.
49. Yu Hua (2013) ‘When Filial Piety Is the Law’, New York Times, 7 July, p. A21.
50. Jane Perlez and Bree Feng (2013) ‘China’s First Lady Strikes Glamorous Note’,
New York Times, 24 March, p. A10.
51. Han Miao, Liang Saiyu and Ren Ke (2013) ‘First Lady sparks interest in
home brands’, Xinhua Online, 27 March. Available at: http://news.xinhua
net.com
52. China Times (2013) ‘Ma Ke, the “useless” designer behind Peng Liyuan’s
wardrobe’, 26 March.
200 China’s Cultural Diplomacy

53. Li Wuwei (2011) How Creativity is Changing China (London: Bloomsbury

Press; English edition edited by Michael Keane).
54. Pan Liang (2013) ‘Singing a Note of Caution About New First Lady Peng
Liyuan’, Tea Leaf Nation, 1 April. Available at: http://www.tealeafnation.com
55. Works of Mencius, Liloushang no. 9.
56. Zheng Bian (2008) Zhongguo ruanshili: Jueding zhongguo mingyun de liangzhong
silu [Chinese Soft Power: Two Approaches in Deciding China’s Destiny]
(Beijing: Zhongyang Bianyi Chubanshe).
9
China at Arms: Millennial Strategic
Traditions and Their Diplomatic
Implications
Shi Yinhong

Introduction

At all times and in all countries the primary content of politics, or at

least the content that has long drawn the most intensive attention from
historians and observers of political affairs, is the struggle and conflict
for power, with conflicts of interests, wills and passions as its essential
driving forces. For this reason, politics often entails violent conflict or
its potentiality and because of this critical mechanism embedded in the
internal and external affairs of human polities, strategy directly aimed
at preparing or conducting organized large-scale violent conflict – that
is strategy in its original or narrow sense  – has often accompanied
national politics. At the same time, the politically organized human
community has always been both civil and military in combination,
with civil affairs having diplomacy as one of the important compo-
nents in the conduct of foreign relations. Over time, both the strategy
and diplomacy of a country could develop their respective traditions.
At a much profounder level, the relationship between the strategic
and diplomatic traditions of any country is such that they reflect
in a mutually complementary way the characteristics and political
culture of a particular people or national state, and together constitute
the common foundation of its international relations. In regard to these
traditions, the most fundamental questions we should ask are: Whose
traditions are these? What is particular about this people or national
state in terms of its fundamental historical features and the ethos of its
political culture?
China, as a national community broadly defined and a political entity
that has enjoyed degrees of political unity at most times, has the longest
history in the world in terms of its continuous survival, development

201
202 China at Arms

and extension, giving birth to its particularly long and distinct tradi-
tions in strategy and diplomacy. China’s new leadership has advanced
the idea of a China Dream of national rejuvenation. An exploration
into China’s millennia-long strategic traditions and their diplomatic
implications will undoubtedly help observers understand the strategic
and diplomatic character that lies behind this idea of national rejuve-
nation, and provide ways to think about the directions it will take in
future.

Sun Tzu vs Clausewitz

In order to further explore and reveal the shifts in China’s strategic

traditions over time, this essay will conduct a comparative examination
of the thinking of two dominant figures in the strategic traditions of
China and the West – Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz. More precisely,
employing the core contents of Clausewitz’s outlook on war, this essay
will provide a Clausewitzian examination of Sun Tzu’s perspective on
war as well as its wider implications. In the same way one might in turn
examine Clausewitz’s ideas from Sun Tzuian perspective, in a bid to
detect, grasp and alert the relativity, limitations and possible pitfalls in
Clausewitzian notions of warfare and the modern Western mainstream
strategic tradition.
Sun Tzu, born during the same period as Confucius and Aeschylus,
has long been viewed by the Chinese people as representing the single
originating point of China’s strategic thinking and the most eminent
founder of the tenets of military and strategic affairs. With extraordinar-
ily profound and sophisticated thinking, Sun Tzu’s great work, The Art
of War, came before two Persian Wars and the birth of Themistocles, the
earliest great strategist of the classical West, and that of Herodotus and
Thucydides, the twin pioneers to recount and analyse classical strategic
history. The reason Sun Tzu has gained such a great and ever-lasting
reputation and the paramount position in Chinese strategic traditions
should be attributed to two facts. Firstly, he left to China, and even to the
whole world, The Art of War, a very systematic and tersely worded work
that is like an integrated collection of axioms, in addition to his excep-
tionally eminent and profound thoughts. The second reason for his
paramount reputation is that in terms of temperament and utility most
of his ideas reflected, or were largely compatible with, Confucianism,
China’s mainstream political culture and ideology in the eras after the
first decades of the Han Dynasty (202 BC–AD 220). Though the use of
Sun Tzu by Confucian followers was often unthinking, this still enabled
 Shi Yinhong 203

his ideas to enlist vigorous ‘invisible’ support from this source. This was
surely beyond any possible imagination of Sun Tzu himself.
In examining Sun Tzu’s philosophy of war from a Clausewitzian per-
spective the following conclusion can be drawn in advance: Sun Tzu vir-
tually ignored or concealed war’s most fundamental nature as explicitly
disclosed and emphasized by Clausewitz – violent acts and fierce clashes
that are driven by vehement antagonistic emotions without inher-
ent restraint from the logic of violence itself. Thus, in his elegant and
comfortable strategic style, Sun Tzu fundamentally broke away from
the reality of violence and its accompanying dangers. Sun Tzu attached
overwhelming importance to ‘knowledgeableness’ (zhi) in war, and also
showed unlimited self-confidence in obtaining as thorough knowledge
as possible about various war conditions.1 This approach was in sharp
contrast to that of Clausewitz who repeatedly stressed the extensive
existence of contingency and uncertainty and their enormous influ-
ences upon the conduct and outcomes of war. Clausewitz was the first
theorist to put contingency and uncertainty (‘chance’) in the central
position of his war studies, alongside violence and politics.2
The first major characteristic of war inferred by Clausewitz is vehe-
ment antagonistic emotions and violence. In his masterpiece On War,
Clausewitz stated that it would be a terrible mistake to regard war
between ‘civilised nations’ as a rationalist act between governments and
to consider that war would be more and more free from the influence of
all passions so that it would only need algebraic calculations on the bal-
ance of forces between antagonists and on military operations, to the
degree that real battles by real armed forces would virtually be no longer
required.3 He also lashed out at those who believed that there must exist
some smart ways to disarm enemies or dismantle their troops without
causing much casualty, and that the search for these should be the true
direction of the development of the art of war.4 To Clausewitz, such an
idea is wrong and must be eliminated, although it sounds worthy. He
argued that the side which used violence resolutely and was unafraid of
bloodletting would inevitably gain an upper hand over an enemy that
would do otherwise. As a result, he noted, this calculus would force
each antagonist to the same course by necessity, so both sides become
disposed to the extreme.
What then are the superior and inferior strategic policies? Sun Tzu
gave his answers as follows. ‘In the practical art of war, the best thing
of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and
destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire
than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company
204 China at Arms

entire than to destroy them,’ Sun Tzu said in his The Art of War.5 That
means, according to his criteria, the superior as well as feasible way of
warfare is to overcome the enemy state and its troops without devasta-
tion and destruction, therefore without violence, bloodshed and battles.
‘Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without
fighting,’6 Sun Tzu concluded. In comparison to Clausewitz, what Sun
Tzu stressed and displayed in his strategy is a kind of elegance and clev-
erness, or a strategy whose essence is shrewd stratagem, which through
sophisticated planning and preparations aimed at enticing or forcing
opponents into a deliberately designed predicament in which they may
be defeated and conquered without real battles. This was much like the
‘refined manoeuvre’ advocated and admired by Europe’s mainstream
strategic thinking in the eighteenth century. Judging from Sun Tzu’s
criteria, passion or fierce battles will not only be redundant, but also
detrimental.
In contrast, the second major characteristic of warfare advanced by
Clausewitz is the extensive existence of uncertainty, contingency and
unpredictability as well as their enormous influence upon the conduct
of war. Such a concept and its elementary position is Clausewitz’s
revolutionary innovation in the theory of war.7 The largest uncertainty,
according to Clausewitz, probably originates from the effects of human
volition or willpower, which by its nature is often most unpredictable.
Besides, there are also all the unexpected events, accidents and errors,
which, together with their effects upon decision-making and morale,
may substantially or even decisively influence the outcome of battles,
and even wars. Sun Tzu, however, was more optimistic on this issue.
‘Knowledgeableness’ is the word that can best reflect the essence of his
theory on war. He not only attached utmost importance to acquiring
information, but also showed full confidence in the perfect fulfilment
of this task. It can be said that there are neither uncertainties and con-
tingencies nor any ‘fog of war’ in his military theory. If there are any,
it was a deliberately designed deception to the adversary: ‘in war noth-
ing is too deceitful,’ as people usually say. Compared with Clausewitz’s
tragedy-like perception on the probability that war could be free from
human control because of passion, logic of violence, and chance, Sun
Tzu demonstrated something like rationalistic romance, or rationalistic
optimism.
Moreover, unlike Clausewitz’s consistent emphasis that political lead-
ership should always enjoy predominance and monitoring over military
affairs, Sun Tzu sometimes inverted the relations between them. ‘A field
commander must decide even against the king’s orders’, was Sun Tzu’s
 Shi Yinhong 205

cherished credo that was included in The Art of War8 – a credo also val-
ued much by Helmuth von Moltke, the military founder of the Second
Reich, or Douglas MacArthur, the arrogant American general who chal-
lenged the authority of his President. Such words of Sun Tzu were some-
times used conveniently as an authoritative excuse for some in Chinese
history to usurp and exert predominance of the military over political
leaders and exempt military responsibilities from political control.

Refined manoeuvre, tributary peace and feeble diplomacy

China’s Sun Tzuian strategic tradition, characterized by ‘refined manoeu-

vre’, avoiding pitched battles, running no risk and strictly controlling
costs, was to have profound diplomatic implications, and was especially
significant in the early Han Dynasty. This was because the China of that
time, after suffering six hundred years of nearly constant wars, devasta-
tions, destitution as well as tyrannies during the eras of the Spring and
Autumn, the Warring States, and Qin Dynasty, was at an extremely
critical historic juncture for building a unified, tranquil, prosperous and
long-lived new empire.
A country’s strategic traditions share much in common with its dip-
lomatic traditions, and they together reflect its national character and
its political culture. At the same time, the strategic traditions will also
inevitably produce important but rather indiscernible influences upon
the formation and evolution of a country’s diplomatic character.
However, there was a further specific and decisive factor that shaped
the strategy and diplomacy adopted by the newly-founded Han
Empire. This emerged out of the struggle of the Han Empire with the
Empire of the Hun, a northern ethnic group with a nomadic way of
life. The Han Empire’s weaknesses in conducting war compared with
that of the Hun Empire to a large extent decided that the early Han
Empire had to adopt a form of ‘diplomatic defence’ (waijiao fangyu).
This form of defence mainly relied on diplomacy rather than on
armed force in its relations with the Hun Empire in the first 70 years
after its establishment, in a bid to seek peace and avoid the Hun’s
military invasion and devastation by means of paying tributes to the
more powerful ethnic group. From a broad perspective of strategy
and even national ethos, such as ‘diplomatic defence’ and ‘tributary
peace’ (chaogong heping) can be regarded as classically Sun Tzuian. The
diplomatic humbleness of the Han Empire during this early period
can also be viewed as its ‘low-profile posture’, a lengthy prelude to the
massive counterattacks that it subsequently undertook. As its national
206 China at Arms

strength increased, a series of large-scale long-distance expeditions of

annihilation were launched by the Chinese Emperor Wu (156–87 BC,
literally a War Lord), resulting in the collapse of the Hun Empire and
the permanent end of its deadly threat to the Han Empire and the
Chinese agricultural civilization.9
Refined manoeuvre, diplomatic defence, and tributary peace can be
called a Sun Tzuian diplomatic approach, which was made impera-
tive by the relative weakness of the military strength of the Han
Empire. From the founding of the Empire to the later massive expe-
ditionary counterattacks under Emperor Wu, through five successive
monarchs, the ‘tributary peace’ was always a kind of fragile peace
terrain. Several substantial armed conflicts and even real limited wars
occurred between the Han and Hun empires during this time, because
the cultural customs, nomadic way of life, and military superiority of
the Hun compelled them to launch occasional large-scale armed inva-
sions and plunders against the agricultural Han Empire to the south.
When Emperor Wen began his reign in 180 BC, ‘pacification through
marriage’ was again adopted, a policy dating from 198 BC of sending
women of the Han court along with substantial wealth to become royal
wives of the Hun.10 At that time, an instant and overwhelming consen-
sus among the ministers at the court was that the weaker must pursue
peace, even at the humiliating price of tribute paying.
In 166 BC, the fragile peace between the two empires broke down
again as a massive cavalry army of 140,000 horsemen under the per-
sonal command of the Hun monarch invaded southward into the terri-
tory of the Han Empire reaching 150 kilometres north of Chang’an, the
then Imperial capital. Emperor Wen was forced to resist by arms. The old
pattern of the military/diplomatic interaction between the two empires,
the cycle of the Hun’s invasion and plunder followed by advance of the
Han troops to the frontier area for armed defence, then by the Hun’s
withdrawal and the resumption of the tributary peace, was repeated
time and again until 133 BC, when Emperor Wu entered the eighth year
of his reign and the tributary peace finally ended without further res-
toration. Rather than the character of a diplomat, Emperor Wu’s most
essential feature was that of an extraordinary warlord. For the farming-
dominant ancient Chinese nation that was naturally inclined to accept
a Sun Tzuian strategy and the Confucian political culture, to have such
an iron-fisted and very militant monarch rarely seen in its long history
was really a historic fortune. Emperor Wu would determinedly break
the fierce and powerful Hun and their Empire, a centuries-long deadly
threat, although his unlimited belligerence, exacting of exorbitant
 Shi Yinhong 207

taxes, and wild personal disposition in the following decades caused

state bankruptcy, domestic chaos and societal destitution.
In 127 BC, Emperor Wu launched his first large-scale expeditionary
campaign against the Hun Empire, appointing Wei Qing, one of the
greatest soldiers in Chinese history, who could be labelled as China’s
Mars, as the commander-in-chief of this campaign. With the strategy
of long-distance massive assaults, Wei’s troops decisively defeated the
Hun’s invading army and drove them out of a most critical frontier
region. In 121 BC, Emperor Wu launched his second great campaign
against the Hun Empire, with Ho Qubing, another particularly great
general of Chinese history, as the theatre commander storming hun-
dreds of miles by cavalry army, resulting in great victory. In 119 BC,
Emperor Wu waged his final major expedition to destroy the Hun
Empire. Generals Wei and Ho were ordered to lead two massive cavalry
armies respectively striking deep into the enemy’s heartland, result-
ing in the complete annihilation of the opponent’s main forces and
the final collapse of the aggressive Hun Empire, a protracted deadly
threat to Han China.11 Since that time until the early twelfth and the
late thirteenth century when the Jin Empire (1115–1234), established
by Nuzhen ethnic minority, and the Yuan Empire (1271–1368), set up
by Genghis Khan, launched their massive southward invasions with
slaughter and plunder, the Chinese nation and the ethnic Chinese
people were never to suffer deadly military threats from any nomadic
power outside the Chinese territory in those numerous centuries. An
overview of China’s ancient history will help draw the conclusion that
both the ‘tributary diplomacy’, which was the implication of the Sun Tzuian
strategic approach, and Emperor Wu’s large-scale head-on counterattack,
aimed at decisive victory through destructive (and costly) battles, in their
very contrasting ways protected the Chinese nation, its civilization and
even survival in respective historical periods.

Complete annihilation and large-scale expedition:

another Chinese strategic tradition

Despite the lasting and overwhelmingly dominant status that Sun Tzu
and The Art of War have enjoyed in the history of China’s military ideas,
there exists another strategic tradition in China that has unfortunately
been neglected or underestimated by most of the contemporary observ-
ers of Chinese strategy – a tradition of ‘complete annihilation and large-
scale expedition’ aimed at pursuing complete victory through staging
decisive battle.
208 China at Arms

In China’s history, the foremost master of complete annihilation as

the fundamental strategy in war was Bai Qi (?–257 BC), a paramount
general and military commander of the Qin Kingdom under King
Zhaoxiang, one of its greatest princes and a major pioneer of the later
Qin Empire.12 Bai Qi prominently adopted in many major campaigns
a strategy almost completely different from the one advocated by Sun
Tzu, but in essence and major components it was quite similar to the
warfare practised by Napoleon and then advocated by Clausewitz (he
was perhaps, as it were, even more Napoleonic than Napoleon and
Clausewitzian than Clausewitz): mass concentration, mass movement,
large-scale surprise attack, and juggernaut-like decisive major offen-
sives aimed at complete annihilation. In addition to these features,
absolutely merciless destruction and massive slaughter constituted the
main characteristics of Bai’s personal conduct of warfare. His enormous
battlefield slaughters were only matched very rarely in the ancient his-
tory of the world and never practised by Napoleon or advocated by
Clausewitz. However, Bai Qi was by no means simply a barbaric warfare
butcher. Sima Qian (145 or 135–86 BC), the greatest Chinese historian
and the author of famous Shiji, or Historical Records, described him as
an exceptionally ‘strategic’ battlefield slayer, with great flexibility and
unlimited surprise in his operations.13 During an exceptionally war-
abundant bloody era, he never lost a single fight, let alone a campaign
or war, in his almost 40-year-long career as a commanding general.
In the whole Western military history, only one commanding general
achieved a similar merit  – Scipio Africanus (236–184/3 BC), a com-
mander of the Roman army in the Second Punic War and the primary
military architect of the de facto Roman Mediterranean empire. By this
feat, Bai Qi may be regarded as the greatest Chinese general, and the
greatest one in classical history along with Scipio Africanus.
Why did Bai conduct war in this way? For an accurate answer, we
should explore the ethnic origins, culture, society, polity and political
ideology of the Qin Kingdom he served. To be specific, the contribut-
ing elements include the Qin kingdom’s nomadic origin, its adjacency
to western ethnic groups and the long distance to the centre of the
ancient Chinese civilization, the residue of semi-barbarian customs
and the convention of political culture in an outlying state, as well as
the military-dominated social system, the belligerent ideology, and the
military-centred institutions and values following the Reforms of Shang
Yang, the militaristic imperialist national objective set soon after Shang
Yang’s death, and the newly adopted way of warfare characterized
first of all by large-scale battlefield slaughter.14 However, what is most
 Shi Yinhong 209

important here is to demonstrate the nature of Bai’s warfare and stra-

tegic approach, or the origin of China’s annihilative military tradition,
instead of revealing its origins.
If we take the Changping Battle as the most prominent example,
this was a campaign like the numerous other decisive battles con-
ducted by Bai with massive battlefield slaughter and sweeping mop-
up. This historic battle in 260 BC between the states of Qin and Zhao
was the largest campaign Bai Qi and the Qin Kingdom ever waged
and ended in 400,000 Zhao soldiers who surrendered being buried
alive following battlefield deaths numbering 50,000, making this
the fiercest battle and the largest slaughter in Chinese history. In
his Shiji, Sima Qian recounted the Changping Battle in more detail
and at greater length than he used on other battles in his history,
leaving to later Chinese generations a brutal and bloody scenario
of Bai’s completely annihilative warfare.15 The military practices of
Bai Qi, together with all we know about his Kingdom and the later
Qin Empire, may spark speculation about what kind of Chinese state
and what sort of mainstream strategic tradition and strategic culture
China would have had if the short-lived Qin Empire had persisted
much longer, for example as the prosperous Han and Tang dynasties
did in their centuries.
As far as large-scale expeditions are concerned, a typical case is the
three major campaigns launched by Emperor Wu and commanded by
Generals Wei Qin and Huo Qubing, that resulted in the final collapse
of the Hun Empire. Emperor Wu was not the only Chinese ruler that
waged this sort of long-distance massive expedition against the outly-
ing aggressive states. In the early seventh century, Emperor Taizong
(626–649) of the Tang Dynasty (618–907) launched several massive
expeditions under another military genius of Chinese history, the com-
manding general Li Jing, against the East Turkistan Empire that seri-
ously threatened the security of the Tang during its initial period, and
finally destroyed that nomadic imperial regime.16 Emperor Taizong also
organized an expedition under the same Li Jing against the outlying
but very threatening Tuyuhun Kingdom, and dealt it an overpower-
ing military strike. In the early fifteenth century, Zhu Yuanzhang,
the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), sent a grand
cavalry army deep into the Mongolian grassland, dealing a severe
strike against the strong remnant forces of the overthrown Mongol
Empire, which, together with the successful expedition of 500,000
soldiers personally led by his immediate royal successor Zhu Di,
served to eliminate the Oryat Mongols in the north desert and
210 China at Arms

helped to establish the Ming Empire that would achieve a 300-year-

long rule. The large-scale long-distance expedition for decisive results
such as these indeed constitutes a long-standing Chinese strategic
tradition, occasionally prominent in history.

Diplomacy based on overwhelming superiority of strength:

a Chinese version of the classic diplomacy

This essay has revealed that there are at least two basic elements that
determine a country’s strategic approach and diplomatic landscape:
its historical national character and political culture, and the primary
balance of national strengths. In discussing Sun Tzu’s foremost stra-
tegic thinking and the Sun Tzuian strategic approach, this essay has
highlighted the first element, while in its account of the ‘diplomatic
defence’ and ‘tributary peace’ practised by the Han Empire during its
initial period, the second element has been emphatically demonstrated.
In some major specific historical periods, diplomatic concepts and strat-
egies adopted by ancient China shared many similarities with those
adopted by the classical West. In the following section we will discuss
the Chinese versions of the ‘classic’ diplomatic manners and concepts,
all of which were based on overwhelming power preponderance,
although they happened under different and even opposing historical
national systems and political cultures or ideologies.
The first illustration is the diplomatic strategy of ‘divide and rule’
adopted by a super-powerful and aggressive state  – the Qin Kingdom
in the later Warring States period. This is reminiscent of Philip II, the
founder of the Macedonian hegemony in the Greek world who intro-
duced ‘divide and rule’ as a concept and institutional practice to the
West. With the assistance of threats of force, Philip II was a master of
power politics and created an imperialist state that repeatedly employed
a kind of divisive diplomacy, finally destroying the inter-state system of
the independent Greek city-states and creating the colossal Macedonian
Empire that experienced a dramatic expansion in the following years.
Philip II is comparable to Zhang Yi, a notorious Qin diplomat who was
so skilful at diplomatic ‘divide and rule’, in the eras of Kings Hui and
Wu of the Qin Kingdom. A second illustration is Li Si, a representative
statesman of power politics serving King Ying Zheng, the most promi-
nent imperialist in ancient China who later became the first emperor of
the Qin Empire. Different from Zhang Yi and Sun Qin, two skilful dip-
lomats who suffered setbacks in their early careers, Li gained fast success
from the outset. Under the recommendation of his first superior, prime
 Shi Yinhong 211

minister Lu Buwei at the court of Qin, Li won high appreciation from the
newly crowned King Ying Zheng. Ying Zheng longed for expansionist
achievements and agreed with Li’s proposal that the time was ripe for the
Qin Kingdom to eliminate all other six concurrent states resolutely and
establish the universal empire. Such a proposal took as its essential basis
the current overwhelming preponderance of strength possessed by the
Qin Kingdom over all the other states. King Ying Zheng following Li’s
proposal used all available means as suggested, including bribery, assas-
sination, ‘divide and rule’ diplomacy and destruction by force to prompt
the elimination of the other six states. The Qin Kingdom’s pursuit of an
extremely rapid and widespread destruction of the surrounding states
was a rare storming process of state-extinction in the world’s history.
A third illustration is a famous historical essay titled nan shu fulao (this
means ‘Censure against the Old Gentlemen in Sichuan’), authored in
129 BC by Sima Xiangru, one of the greatest literati during the centu-
ries of the Han Dynasty.17 This political text is similar in essence to the
Western classic diplomatic theory of ‘cultural imperialism’, or imperial-
ism in the name of superior civilization. It advocated the expansion of
the Chinese Empire because of its superior civilization, together with a
Chinese version of ‘Gospel Diplomacy’ and the mobilization of imperial
resources for expansion by this sort of imperial ideology. Against the pro-
vincial and cost-obsessed conservatives (‘the old gentlemen in Sichuan’)
like the ‘anti-imperialists’ within the imperial period in Western history,
Sima Xiangru’s core argument is that the imperial mission of civilizing
the barbarian land was morally benign, especially to the barbarians
themselves as well as to the ideal of universal peace and common wel-
fare, and was therefore imperative to both the rulers and ruled of the
civilized Chinese empire. Of course, as the success of military-diplomatic
expeditions 20 years later were to prove, what achieved the formal civi-
lizing process was the superior physical power of the empire.

The triumph of ‘Confucian strategy’ and the military

decline of the ancient Chinese empire

As can be seen, the strategic traditions of the Ancient Chinese system

were at least as diverse as those of the Western world. The following
section will discuss developments in the fields of strategic tradition and
political culture in an era of change in China’s history, corresponding to
the trend of military decline of the ancient Chinese empire and of the
return to a ‘diplomatic defence’ position by China driven primarily in
consequence of this weakness in military strength.
212 China at Arms

The era of change was in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries when

the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) ruled China. We can make the following
overview of its military and strategic history. After forcing the Mongolians
and their troops out of China proper to the grasslands where they origi-
nated, Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di, the first two Ming emperors, launched
one military expedition after another deep into Mongolia, to strike or
exterminate the still-strong remnant forces of the former Mongolian
Empire. However, as time passed, this kind of active and aggressive security
strategy was gradually shelved or even virtually forgotten. By the middle
of the fifteenth century, the Ming Dynasty began turning to conservatism,
introversion, and a passive defence posture. A decisive turning point was
the ‘Tumu Debacle’ in 1449 near to Beijing, in which the Mongol forces
annihilated by massive ambushes the whole of the Ming expeditionary
grand army of 500,000 men and captured the Ming emperor himself who
had personally led the expedition. After the debacle, the Ming Empire
abandoned forever its previous active military approach and turned to a
strategy of passive defence, as indicated by its dramatic construction of an
enormous system of frontier fortification, the Great Wall, involving the
extension and reinforcement of the earlier version built from the time of
the Qin Dynasty more than 1,500 years previously. This continued until
the final demise of the Ming Empire two centuries later amid internal
revolts and outside aggression from the Manchu kingdom.
An exploration of the Ming Dynasty’s strategic transformations high-
lights the complicated and paradoxical behaviour system of the Chinese
ways of warfare and strategy, which incorporated two major compo-
nents: a traditional nomadic approach and a traditional ‘Chinese’ (or
roughly speaking, Confucian) one, established respectively in the early
and middle periods of the Ming Empire. As a contemporary American
historian notes:

Chinese culture in our minds, one that is usually imagined into

a unique and pure Chinese culture, is in essence a complicated
combination composed of different components, which originated
from two major sources – a grassland civilization developed by
the nomadic people and a sedentary civilization developed by the
Chinese today called Han people.18

These different customs and traditions are inevitably reflected in China’s

military strategy and capability. Until the early period of modern times,
the nomadic peoples had been known for their prowess in fighting,
with magnificent military feats and a fast speed of warfare. Through
 Shi Yinhong 213

their centuries-long experience of fighting on horseback, a set of sophis-

ticated military creeds were worked out though they were never written
into military statutes and codes or even recorded. Such a heritage left
by China’s nomadic ethnic groups constituted one of the two major
factions of its military traditions. The other major branch of China’s
military traditions originated from the strife and wars that occurred
among states at the centre of the ancient Chinese territory long before
the nomadic peoples came to the centre stage. Such a strategic tradi-
tion built on a sedentary living style which was often not sufficient in
dealing with new military challenges. However, its profound cultural
foundation and social connotation determined that such a military tra-
dition, supported culturally and even philosophically in various ways
by the mainstream Confucian ideology, naturally had strong sustained
influence despite the fact that it was often less effective militarily.
In short, the three-century-long history of military strategies adopted
by the Ming Empire is a history of the alternation between the two tradi-
tions. With their alternate application, the Ming Empire aimed to effec-
tively tackle the endless ‘peripheral threat’ posed by external nomadic or
semi-nomadic peoples; but there was profound tension between the two
military approaches from the beginning. However, accompanied by the
fundamental evolution of the Ming Empire’s economy, society and cul-
ture, the tension was more and more diluted because the second tradi-
tion gradually triumphed over the former. What was ultimately decisive
even in the military and national security fields was that the national
economy became more and more centred in the southern prosperous
agriculture and commerce areas, so that socially and culturally a class of
refined elites came to dominate, and the turn back to the traditionally
Confucian Chinese political culture and ideology was irresistible. In this
context, the ‘Tumu Debacle’ provided only a tipping-point.
In fundamental meaning, this traditional China declined militarily
to the extent that it can be succinctly defined as a ‘defensive China’
that lacked profoundly offensive capability as well as offensive mental-
ity. On this issue, a contemporary Polish scholar on East Asia describes
the military decline of China from the middle and late Qing Dynasty
(1644–1911) to the end of the Nationalist Party’s rule over the Chinese
mainland in 1949:

At the middle and late Qing, China’s military was completely at the
margin of social reputation. Soldiers were given a poor material treat-
ment and serving in the army was regarded as the greatest misery.
The army was organised according to the patriarchal system based on
214 China at Arms

the Confucian outlook of the state, in which officers were selected

only for their personal loyalty. The army lacked centralised national
leadership, troops were subordinated to the various provincial gover-
nors. Because of this sort of organising, field battle was regarded only
as a last resort. In case of military conflicts, diplomatic talks replaced
military actions in a bid to pacify adversaries or try to cause rivalry
among them. The classic Sun Tzuian approach was practiced. In fact,
the troops were purely defensive ones, unable to launch counter-
offensives, and helpless in the face of invaders.19

As Potocka further notes such an army, a product of the national phi-

losophy prevailing in that era, posed no threat to sophisticated foreign
imperialist forces,20 and never achieved a major victory. Instead, end-
less fiascos from time to time befell them, for example in the 1894–95
maritime war with Japan. When parts of the Chinese territories were
occupied by Japan during 1937–45, the Nationalist troops were not suc-
cessful in resisting the aggressor, and were barely able to pin down the
advancing Japanese troops.
Such a state of political and military affairs, strategic approach, and
national strength had of course profound diplomatic implications.
Among the most important was the diplomatic stratagem of yiyi zhiyi, or
‘playing off one barbarian against another’, which was compatible with
almost all the requirements for ‘refined manoeuvre’. Yiyi zhiyi was not
only used by the government of the northern warlords after the demise
of the Qing Dynasty and then by the Nationalist government, as the pri-
mary diplomatic tactic aimed at ‘diplomatic defence’, but became their
diplomatic philosophy or strategy, through which they tried to obtain
various rights, or even an equal legal status, for China in the interna-
tional society. These weak, depressed and externally timid governments
seemed to believe that they could gradually acquire similar or equal
rights with the imperialist Great Powers without radical revolt, because,
they believed, these powers were involved in fierce competition among
themselves and thus needed China’s help in their rivalry with each other.
Rewards for such service were expected, including some concessions to
China in terms of rights. Moreover, these governments also believed that
competition among the imperialist powers would sometimes make them
sabotage each other’s power position and oppressions in China, a move
which could be advantageous to China’s legal rights and status.21
These assumptions proved fatal to their fortune, so this sort of
‘refined manoeuvre’ and gradualist approach for partial transformation
could not satisfy a majority of China’s modern nationalists.
 Shi Yinhong 215

Mao Zedong, the greatest strategist in modern China:

the combination of the two strategic approaches

Of all of Chinese modern nationalists, Mao Zedong is undoubtedly the

most important and eminent. He and his comrades successfully com-
bined the country’s radical nationalism with mass social revolution,
and through fighting the necessary large-scale warfare they achieved
the biggest political and military struggle of modern China, the great
success of which owed much to Mao’s strategic brilliance.
Mao is a universally recognized strategic genius. There are numer-
ous books and articles in China and internationally about his great
strategic thinking, practices and experiences, many of them contain-
ing some profound insights and real understanding. However, there
are also some very prevailing but partial and stale critical concepts on
Mao’s strategic approach. Most researchers have branded Mao as the
No.1 Sun Tzuian strategist in modern China, but few have linked Mao
to Clausewitzian military strategy and fewer again have examined his
strategy in terms of the decisive battles and complete annihilations that
characterized the other centuries-long Chinese strategic tradition as
pointed out above. ‘An all-round, objective and historical comparison
will find that the biggest difference between Mao Zedong and Sun Tzu
lies in that Mao long held a commanding position that could help him
better apply his military strategies and ideas. On the contrary, Sun Tzu
was always in a consulting position, thus could not effectively enforce
his strategic thinking,’ as a leading PLA researcher on strategy puts it,22
narrowly and somewhat misleadingly. Two distinguished American
scholars dealing with ‘revolutionary warfare’ demonstrate an in-depth
understanding of Mao’s way of thinking and his revolutionary military
practice that is more penetrating than most others; but they also only
talk of the peasant-dependent guerrilla war and political/military strat-
egy, tactics and skills of ‘protracted warfare’ when they discuss Mao’s
creative foresights and creeds on how to conduct a revolutionary war
in a huge agricultural country like China.23 In fact, of all the books and
articles probing into Mao Zedong’s strategy, few talk of his alternative
strategic approach in focused detail. Yet, what completely defeated the
millions of Nationalist forces and their huge supporting systems in
only three years, and led to conquest of an enormous China by revolu-
tion, was Mao’s other strategy of warfare based on decisive battles for
decisive victory between 1946 and 1949, with frequent mass concentra-
tion and mass movement of forces, resulting repeatedly in large-scale
surprise assaults and decisive battles aimed at complete annihilation.
216 China at Arms

Throughout his whole career as the commander of his revolutionary

wars, Mao, at the most fundamental level of strategy, employed suc-
cessively both Sun Tzuian and non-Sun Tzuian military strategies with
full genius, and thereby set a rare brilliant record in this respect in the
political history of the world.
There are two keys to such success of Mao as strategist. Mao, a great
revolutionary leader over decades, experienced the full process of
change in his military forces, transforming them from very weak to
exceptionally strong. His inferiority in strength to his political enemies
in his early career determined that Mao had no option except to prac-
tise creatively the Sun Tzuian military approach. ‘The enemy advances,
we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the
enemy retreats, we pursue’, a 16-Chinese character military principle
summarized by Mao during the time when the revolutionary armed
forces were at their weakest, is the most famous embodiment of Sun
Tzuian strategy in modern China. However, Mao completely changed
his guerrilla approach after such a strategy helped him gradually culti-
vate a strong force of hundreds of thousands of very combative soldiers
with widespread logistic bases, in a bid to attain an overwhelming
military victory through decisive battles. This change of the balance of
strength is the paramount structural cause for Mao’s strategic brilliance
and success.
Mao Zedong also repeatedly stressed that full understanding and
accurate analysis of every concrete situation is needed before taking mil-
itary action. He always tried to counter laziness and subjectivist think-
ing, which were regarded by him as primary sins. For Mao the military
creeds he held that are now well-known to the world were mere clichés
and only by realistic application with the utmost creative effort could
they lead to major success in practice. However, it is exactly this essen-
tial aspect of Mao’s thinking that has been ignored by so many later
studies. Readers in the West and elsewhere have long paid high atten-
tion to Mao’s military mottos. However, they have shown little care
regarding his ideas on how such mottos should be applied in practice.
Mao Zedong’s masterly intelligence in strategic investigation, strategic
practices, and strategic perception follows to a large extent the principle
of ‘measurement, quantifying, calculation, and weighing’ contained in
Sun Tzu’s Art of War. It is even more compatible with the fundamentals
of Clausewitz’s strategic craftsmanship  – talents (the ability to create)
and practice. Either in strategic approach or in strategic cognition, Mao
can be called a great strategist who brilliantly combined the Sun Tzuian
and the Clausewitzian approaches.
 Shi Yinhong 217

The composite strategy of contemporary China

and its diplomatic implications

The era of contemporary China began with Deng Xiaoping’s launch

of reform and opening. Since that time, the national grand strategy of
China can be summarized as Peaceful Rise or Peaceful Development
which has been in essence an asymmetrical strategy, or so-called ‘indi-
rect approach’ in terms of a theoretical conception in strategic studies.
It means in theory ‘promoting one’s own strength while overcoming
opponent’s weakness’ and ‘avoiding opponent’s strength’.24 This corre-
sponds to the Sun Tzuian approach, containing deep historical origins
in the very ancient mainstream Chinese political culture and strategic
tradition. On the other hand, as to the arms build-up and military
modernization efforts of contemporary China, the strategic form is
essentially a symmetrical one, or so-called ‘direct approach’, which
means as it were ‘retaliate in kind’, ‘frontal attack against opponent’s
stronghold’ and ‘fighting pitched battle’. This in spirit amounts to the
Clausewitzian approach.
China’s rise is a peaceful rise. It has brought to China huge strategic
benefits. In most times and most aspects it depends overwhelmingly
on the assumption that to promote a peaceful rise a country will
overwhelmingly depend on its ‘soft power’ broadly defined, that is,
the peaceful, non-military, and non-compulsory power resources and
power exercise. Resources in economy, foreign trade, ‘smile’ diplo-
macy, culture and immigration, as well as those of prestige and dissua-
siveness (‘soft deterrence’) have risen markedly with China’s success in
national development as well as its huge magnitude as a nation-state;
and these are all characterized by their non-violent, gradually accu-
mulated, and mutually beneficial effects. In comparison, such powers
and influences are less easy to resist, encountering less obstruction,
with more acceptable results for those influenced, and thus in a sense
most invisible. In particular, the greatest benefit of the peaceful rise is
that its cost is comparatively lower and its effects last longer though
it is more time-consuming in realization. China is not abundant in
natural resources and it also encounters numerous internal difficul-
ties. So it is particularly necessary that the country should promote
its rise at a low cost. With great long-term aspirations and traditional
national patience, China is more inclined to depend mainly on the
longer-lasting power effects brought about by soft power broadly
defined and is willing and able to afford the relative slowness this
strategy requires.
218 China at Arms

A peaceful rise like China’s enjoys a solid foundation in large part

because of the changing nature of world politics. The value of war as an
effective instrument of national interest is in general in rapid decline.
The routine primary issues of international relations have increasingly
changed from territorial and military security to economic and soft
power capacities. Interdependence among nations in the economic field
has been on the increase. A country’s performance in economy, culture,
diplomacy and moral affairs is generally becoming more important
than in military matters. Under these circumstances, as a huge ‘trad-
ing state’, China’s peaceful development generally follows the current
waves of world history, and thus enjoys important conveniences and
a prospect brighter than otherwise might be expected in becoming a
world power in the future. However, either from a theoretical or from
a practical perspective, China should know and firmly remember the
limitations of soft power and peaceful development, together with a
historical common sense that the world has proved itself so often omi-
nously dynamic, and China must therefore realize and keep in mind
the necessity of developing military power in the form of symmetrical
strategy.
The military muscle and will, and the efficiency of military institu-
tions of a nation, play the most crucial role in an emergency. Moreover,
in addition to their deterrent role in preventing the worst situations
from happening in peacetime, the prestige, influence, and the capac-
ity for occasionally required coercive diplomacy are also important. In
particular, for China, though it has seen the rapid increase of its eco-
nomic strength and trade volume as its greatest national achievement
and experience, it should realize and firmly remember that economic
strength, like military force, also has its inherent limitations in fungibil-
ity. The use of force is still a relatively common phenomenon in inter-
national relations, while advanced and forcible arms are still imperative
for defending one’s own nation in the face of abusive military power.
Territorial and military security still remain significant, and disputes
over sovereignty, territory and other vital interests are still common,
although they have become generally less outstanding and less fierce
when compared with previous eras. In this context, military strength
is still of significance to a sovereign nation. History and international
practice both indicate that military security and war preparations
should still be taken as an important part of a country’s grand strategy
even in peacetime. It is critically import to conduct peace with a con-
stant concern for the war or even wars you might be asked to fight, as
the distinguished strategic historian Paul Kennedy puts it.25 Kennedy
 Shi Yinhong 219

notes the real task for a political entity is to ensure that non-military
fields are not completely ignored in wartime and military fields are not
put aside in peacetime.
The determined launch of the military build-up and military mod-
ernization in contemporary China came long after that of the country’s
reform and opening-up. For this, there is a historical analogy. In the
early decades of the Han Dynasty, the monarchs had to adopt a quite
passive posture in statecraft including ‘defense by diplomacy’ and to
shift the country’s focus overwhelmingly to agriculture and economic
recovery at an exceptionally hard time, a time when the whole country
faced extreme destitution and poverty. Similarly, Deng Xiaoping, the
chief architect of China’s reform and opening, decided to focus the
country’s political, spiritual and material resources on bringing order
out of chaos and boosting the national economy by promoting reform.
China’s military build-up and modernization was thereby placed in a
marginal or delayed position. ‘The military must keep patience’,26 Deng
Xiaoping said at a Central Military Commission meeting on 4 June
1985, meaning that military modernization should come after national
economic modernization. In the eyes of Deng, a great Chinese states-
man with both pragmatic approach and great aspiration, moderniza-
tion of the country’s military was only possible after the country is well
founded economically. According to the definition stated at the begin-
ning of this section, such a grand strategy under Deng’s leadership is an
overwhelmingly asymmetrical strategy.
Deng’s original intention was that it would be only a temporary
imperative for the military to keep patience.27 Just as China’s eco-
nomic development achieved enormous progress in the years since
the initiation of Deng’s reform and opening so the turn to military
modernization and build-up became possible in the 1990s. However,
two things in that decade also caused China to look to military mod-
ernization. The first was the overwhelming and surprisingly rapid
victory of the US in the first Gulf War and the role of its high-tech
weapon systems, which caused great psychological shock to China’s
leaders and its military. The second was the thesis of ‘the Republic of
China in Taiwan’ advanced in 1995 by Li Teng-hui, the independence-
prone Taiwan leader, which was seen as a provocative bid for Taiwanese
independence. Under these circumstances, then Chairman of Central
Military Commission (CMC) Jiang Zemin launched and accelerated
China’s steps toward military modernization in a bid to develop its
military capability to win a local war in the era of high technology and
informationization.
220 China at Arms

Under the guidance of such an objective or direction, China’s mili-

tary experienced various remarkable changes during Jiang’s tenure as
Chairman of CMC and most of them are still ongoing: (1) China’s
military spending has maintained a two-digit growth for almost 13
consecutive years since 1999 except for two; (2) a strict ban has been
imposed on commercial activities by the military, to a large extent
eliminating the factors that had fuelled slackness, laziness, discipline
violations and corruption within the military circle; (3) major measures
have been adopted to convert some industries from military manufac-
turing to civilian use, which has helped streamline previously swollen
military industries and the logistic system; (4) new and modernized
military principles and doctrines have been worked out and vigorously
implemented, including: establishment of multi-branched combined
arms, with its emphasis on build-up placed on all the strategic and
combative services except the traditional infantry forces; putting much
more attention to the development of advanced military technologies
and new-type sophisticated weaponry; pushing vigorously the research,
development and deployment of some ‘deathblow’ weapon systems (or
conventional strategic weaponry); expanding, enriching and deepening
strategic planning, as well as relevant strategic researches; considerably
increasing the scale and importance of the country’s specialized military
education, and at the same time strengthening military specialization.
Since Hu Jintao assumed CMC chairmanship in September 2004,
the country’s established course and military strategy has been further
implemented and important new developments achieved. At the 17th
National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party held in 2007, Hu
Jintao declared that China will ‘raise the capabilities of its armed forces
to deal with multiple security threats and fulfil diversified military tasks
for resolutely safeguarding national sovereignty, security, and territorial
integrity while contributing to the maintenance of world peace’.28 That
means that China, in addition to developing a military capability to
win a local war in the era of informationization, will regard non-combat
military actions as an important way to employ its armed forces, focus
more on preventing crises and war, promote the scientific planning
and execution of the build-up of its non-combat military capabilities,
improve the ability to maintain its security in maritime areas, outer
space and electromagnetic space, and that for anti-terror, domestic sta-
bility, as well as emergency relief and international peacekeeping mis-
sions, participate in international security co-operation, conduct various
military exchanges, and push for the formation of mutual military trust
mechanisms.29 Integrating the elements or dimensions of the military,
 Shi Yinhong 221

political and diplomatic, combining domestic and international secu-

rity as well as traditional and non-traditional security, China’s course
and policies of military strategy have never been enriched to such a
degree as today to accommodate ongoing changes at home and abroad.

Conclusion

At crucial points in China’s history important strategic leaders com-

bined both a Sun Tzuian and Clausewitzian approach. An overview of
Mao’s career as the commander of revolutionary warfare in the modern
era indicates that he realized brilliantly a rare combination of both
the Sun Tzuian and the Clausewitzian strategic approaches. Similarly
Emperor Wu, 2,000 years before, because of the ‘defence by diplomacy’
with ‘tributary peace’ in the first years of his reign and then his large-
scale decisive battles and long-distance expeditions waged in breaking
the Hun Empire, was also a great strategist realizing in some sense such
a combination. The discussion above also demonstrates that it was
exactly or largely transformations in strength from weak to strong that
resulted in the change of Mao Zedong’s strategy from the Sun Tzuian
to the Clausewitzian, and brought about the change of contemporary
China’s grand strategy from the Sun Tzuian approach (or the asym-
metrical approach) to the combination of the Sun Tzuian and the
Clausewitzian approaches (or the symmetrical approach). Such analysis
can help draw the conclusion that a causal relationship exists between
change in balance of strength and change of the fundamental strategy.
However, in traditional China, the Sun Tzuian strategic approach
had for most of Chinese history enjoyed formidable ‘invisible’ backing
from the millennia-long foundation of Chinese national character and
mainstream political culture or ideology. This suggests two other points
are quite significant for the past, the present and the future: (1) China
has culturally been more inclined to adopt the Sun Tzuian or Confucian
strategic tradition, including its inherent as well as situational benefits
and defects; (2) this strategic inclination has had complicated diplo-
matic implications, and its consistent theme has been the minimization
of costs rather than maximization of returns. Roughly speaking, the test
that China has been less able to overcome on frequent occasions is to
launch a head-on offensive if required and win a decisive victory by a
decisive battle.
We can then explore the possible applications of the major find-
ings of this essay for the new Chinese political leadership headed by
Xi Jinping, thinking of its strategic ‘style’ or character, including that
222 China at Arms

of the supreme commander himself, and exhibited in China’s current

strategic, defence and diplomatic policies and behaviour as it faces an
increasingly complicated external environment with its dramatically
enhanced economic and military strengths.30 Though one should not
rush to any definite conclusion about these questions for an administra-
tion of China that came to power only one year or so before the com-
pletion of this essay, one can still tentatively find that a combination
of the Sun Tzuian and Clausewitzian strategic approaches is embedded
there, with the latter for the first time since Mao’s death obtaining an
almost remarkable preponderance in this combination. China’s external
grand strategy therefore seems to be changing substantially, due to both
fundamental structural and situational causes, as well as the individual
one of the change in the top leadership.
This has been evident most obviously since the beginning of Xi’s
leadership in a new preference for the extraordinarily intensive con-
frontation with Japan throughout the past year, provoked by the illegal
‘nationalization’ of Diaoyu islands by the Japanese government. It is
evident in what could be described as ‘pushing vigorously toward (but
not seriously touching) the bottom line’ while managing the increased
risk of military conflict and the weakening of China’s influence in its
periphery, to which Xi Jinping has himself referred. It might also be
seen in the main pattern of strategy in dealing firmly with the longer-
term strategic rivalry with the United States in the China off-shore areas
and the western part of the Pacific, and in the field of the build-up of
strategic capability of longer-range power projection, however relatively
‘gentle’ that may be.
Moreover, one can refer to the following strategic developments since
the beginning of the current Chinese political leadership, which was
enacted at the 18th Party Congress in November 2012: (1) Xi Jinping’s
repeated use of the theme of ‘the great resurgence of the Chinese nation’
(referred to more officially as ‘China’s Dream’); (2) A shift in the driv-
ing aim of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from an effort not just to
build up modernized forces to the simpler but more comprehensive and
forceful aim of ‘being capable of fighting, and fighting victoriously’;
(3) Extraordinarily frequent official reports of breakthroughs in China’s
advanced weaponry, military technology and the increasing capabil-
ity of the PLA’s combat readiness, mainly in the few months around
the 18th Party Congress and in the context of extraordinarily intense
confrontation with Japan; (4) The further hardening of China’s posture
toward territorial and maritime disputes with some neighbouring coun-
tries, especially Japan and the Philippines; (5) The remarkable decline,
 Shi Yinhong 223

especially in the months before President Xi’s Boao speech in early April
2013 in Hainan Island, in the number of references to the principle of
‘peaceful development’ that used to guide Chinese foreign policy and
was declared frequently by the Chinese government for numerous pre-
vious years, while ‘taking a low profile’, another traditional principle in
contemporary Chinese foreign policy, is no longer referred to.
Generally speaking, the structural elements are more constant than
others in a historical era. For our time, including the predictable future,
the most important structural elements are the interplay between the
structural rivalry between China and the United States in the strategic
forefront, and China’s dramatic increase of national strength. In the
minds of more and more people in China, whether elites or public, the
Clausewitzian approach seems more compatible with the new strategic
realities and China’s national strength and aspirations. The structural
rivalry of China and the United States is becoming more comprehen-
sive, profound and pronounced. On the one hand, China’s continuing
dramatic military build-up (especially in strategic power projection
capability through oceans, air, and even outer space) is becoming an
increasingly prominent concern for American strategists and even the
American public. On the other, the US ‘pivot’ to Asia, its diplomatic
gains in East and Southeast Asia, a military revolution driven by dimin-
ishing financial resources and a desire for fewer combat casualties,
and the increasing perception of China as a threat, have put Beijing
at odds with the United States. These increasing tensions, along with
the rising possibility of armed conflict with a few of the United States’
strategic partners in Asia have, in turn, further spurred China’s military
build-up.
Since the Reagan administration, the United States has been resolved
in its maintenance of unquestionable military superiority, perceiving
it to be the most significant strategic asset of a superpower. At the
same time, China has resolved to modernize its military for the sake
of what it believes to be its vital national interests, for its self-respect,
and because of the wishes of its people in overwhelming majority,
expressed in increasing ‘popular nationalism’ and characterized by self-
confidence and something like ‘triumphism’. This dissonance between
the American and Chinese positions is somewhat like a potential
‘pitched battle’, surely revealing the possibility of future paralysis in
China–US relations. ‘The Clausewitzian moment’ for China is still only
a possibility, and may remain so for a relatively long period into the
future, but it is becoming nearer and more likely than at any time since
Mao Zedong left the stage four decades ago.
224 China at Arms

Notes and references

1. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, passim. There are numerous editions of this text in
Chinese and other languages.
2. Carl von Clausewitz (1976) On War, edited and translated by Michael
Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
3. Carl von Clausewitz (1964) On War (PLA Academy of Military Sciences: PLA
Press), p. 25.
4. Ibid., p. 23.
5. Sun Tzu, The Art of War – III Attack by Stratagem.
6. Ibid.
7. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Howard and Paret (eds), especially Chapter 7
of Book One: ‘Friction in War’.
8. Sun Tzu, The Art of War – VIII Variation in Tactics. See also Sima Qian, Shiji
[Historical Records] Biographies of Sun Tzu and Wu Qi.
9. Especially, Sima Qian, Historical Records, Record on the Huns.
10. Sima Qian, Historical Records, Record on the Huns.
11. For all the available details, see Sima Qian, Historical Records, Record on the
Huns and Biographies of Generals Wei and Ho.
12. Sima Qian, Historical Records, Biographies of Bai Qi and Wang Jian.
13. Sima Qian, Historical Records, Biographies of Bai Qi and Wang Jian.
14. For example, see Sima Qian, Historical Records, Record on Qin Kingdom, and
Biography of Shang Yang.
15. Sima Qian, Historical Records, Biographies of Bai Qi and Wang Jian.
16. Liu Xu, Old History of Tang Dynasty, Biography 17th.
17. Sima Qian, Historical Records, Biography of Sima Xiangru.
18. Arthur Waldron (2004) ‘China’s Strategies from the 14th–17th Century’, in
Williamson Murray et al. (eds), The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States and War,
translated by Shi Yinhong et al. (Beijing: World Affairs Press), p. 91.
19. Elżbieta Potocka (2011) ‘21st Century – Japan in the Shadow of China?’,
Chinese Cross Currents, 8(1).
20. Ibid.
21. Shi Yinhong (2002) International Politics: Theoretical Exploration, Historical
Survey, and Strategic Thinking (Beijing: Contemporary World Press), pp. 305–6.
22. Yao Youzhi (2008) ‘Mao Zedong’s Historical Status and Strategic Influences’,
Zhongguo Sunwu, 21 November 21 2008. At: http://www.sunwu.cn/ben-
candy.php?fid=8&id=94.
23. John Shy and Thomas W. Collier (2006) ‘Revolutionary War’, in Peter Paret
(ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, translated
by Shi Yinhong et al. (Beijing: World Affairs Press), pp. 815–17.
24. John Lewis Gaddis (2005) Strategies of Containment: A  Critical Appraisal of
Postwar American National Security Policy, translated by Shi Yinhong, Li
Qingsi and Fan Jishe (Beijing: World Affairs Press), pp. 368–9.
25. Paul Kennedy (2005) ‘The Grand Strategy of the United States at the Present
and in the Future’, in Paul Kennedy (ed.), Grand Strategies in War and Peace,
translated by Shi Yinhong and Li Qingsi (Beijing: World Affairs Press), pp.
169, 170.
26. See Deng Xiaoping (1985) ‘The Military Should Keep Patience’. Available at:
http://baike.baidu.com/view/4140128.htm.
 Shi Yinhong 225

27. ‘(In the future), after our economic power becomes stronger, we can take
out more money to upgrade our military armament’, and ‘after the national
strength is much stronger, we can also develop some atomic bombs, missiles
and upgrade some military armament, including air, naval and land forces.
That will become easier at that time.’ Deng Xiaoping (1993) Deng Xiaoping
Wenxuan [Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping] (Beijing: People’s Press), Vol. 3, pp.
99, 129.
28. Compilation of the Documents of the 17th National Congress of the CPC (Beijing:
People’s Press, 2007), pp. 40–1.
29. ‘The White Paper on China’s National Defense in 2008’ (full text), Part II,
‘National defense policies’. Available at: http://mil.news.sina.com.cn/2009-
01-20/1058539493.html.
30. Cf. Shi Yinhong (2013) ‘China’s New Leadership, Prospects for Foreign
Policy, and for the China–US Relationship’, The German Marshal Fund of
the United States, Policy Brief, Transatlantic Security Task Force Series, June
2013.
10
China Dream: A New Chinese Way
in International Society?
Zhang Xiaoming

Introduction

China has always been a very special country in international society. It

is an old civilization, but it is also a relative newcomer to the Western-
dominated international society of sovereign states. China did not
enjoy full recognition and membership in the Family of Nations until
1943 when extraterritorial jurisdiction was finally abrogated through its
treaties with the US and Great Britain. Therefore, China’s relationship
with international society has always been a big issue in Chinese for-
eign relations ever since the mid-nineteenth century when China was
forced by the West to open its doors.1 The rise of China at the begin-
ning of the twenty-first century is becoming a big story and sometimes
a subject of concern in the international society. Thus the relationship
between China and the world is one of the key issues of our era.2 Some
analysts seem worried that rising China might be a challenger, or even
an alternative, to the West in international society.3 In this essay, I am
not going to elaborate on every aspect of rising China’s relationship
with international society, but focus on two related questions, namely:
Is the so-called China Dream advocated by the new Chinese leadership
of Xi Jinping a new Chinese Way in international society? Will this new
Chinese Way seek to alter the norms or institutions of the still Western-
dominated international society?

Leadership change and the discourse of the China dream

The China dream is surely not a new concept,4 but its current popular-
ity has a lot to do with the leadership change in China in late 2012 and
early 2013. In March 2013, China completed its transition to a new
226
 Zhang Xiaoming 227

leadership team led by President Xi Jinping. Xi elaborated on the China

dream discourse shortly after he was elected as the party general secre-
tary in late 2012. China’s new top leadership visited ‘The Road toward
Renewal’ exhibition in the National Museum of China on 29 November
2012. Xi, by then the general secretary of the Chinese Communist
Party (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the CPC Central
Military Commission (CMC), delivered a speech during that visit. Xi
pointed out, rejuvenation (great renewal: weida fuxing) of the Chinese
nation has been the greatest Chinese dream in modern times ever since
the Opium Wars in the nineteenth century. He said, ‘After more than
170 years of hard struggle since the Opium War, the Chinese nation has
bright prospects, is closer than ever to reaching its goal of great renewal,
and is more confident and capable of reaching the goal than ever.’5 Xi
repeatedly elaborated on the China dream discourse after he became the
Chinese President in March 2013. China dream or ‘Chinese dream’6 has
since then become a widely-used concept to describe the new Chinese
leadership’s policy orientation, gaining media coverage both in China
and the world as a whole.
But the meaning of the China dream is not so clear as yet. To this
author, Xi’s China dream is, first of all, a national or collective dream,
not an individual dream, although Xi did argue that ‘the China dream
is, in the final analysis, the people’s dream’, and the Chinese people
want better education, stable jobs, higher incomes, greater social secu-
rity, better medical and health care, improved housing conditions and
better environmental quality.7 In fact, as individuals, the Chinese peo-
ple have expressed their own dreams in different ways. Their dreams
range from ‘fewer corrupt officials’, ‘a more decent life’ to ‘the complete
reunification of China’.8 It is quite interesting that some Chinese web
users compared and contrasted the China dream with the ‘American
dream’, with many saying the former is more of a ‘collective thing’,
and the latter is more individual. So one Chinese scholar commented
on the difference between the China dream and the ‘American dream’
by arguing that:

The term ‘China Dream’ reminds me of the ‘American Dream’, and

the famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech delivered by Martin Luther King.
But the China Dream has a specific meaning, compared with the
other two. It includes the renewal of the Chinese nation and the
aspirations of the Chinese people for a good standard of living. Great
renewal can’t be achieved without accomplishing the people’s dream,
and the people’s dream can’t come true without a stronger nation.9
228 A New Chinese Way in International Society?

We can also ask if Xi’s China dream is a great departure from the policy
goals that previous Chinese leaders pursued in the past decades since
the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Or, in other words, are
Mao’s ‘the Chinese stand up’, Deng’s ‘to make China rich’, Hu’s ‘rise of
China’, and Xi’s China dream the same thing or different things? As
mentioned, the China dream is a national and collective dream, and
the main purpose of the China dream is to build a stronger China and
realize the goal of the great renewal of the Chinese nation in the world.
In this sense there is not a great difference between Xi’s idea and those
of earlier leaderships. To some extent, the renewal of the Chinese nation
has been a dream shared by every Chinese government and the Chinese
people as a whole since the mid-nineteenth century. ‘This dream can
be said to be the dream of a strong nation’, Xi told sailors on board the
destroyer Haikou in December 2012. And he further pointed out, ‘and
for the military, it is a dream of a strong military’. 10 Yang Jiechi, State
Councillor and Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Leading
Group of the CPC Central Committee, elaborated on the meaning of
China dream or Chinese dream in September 2013. He said, ‘President
Xi’s comprehensive, profound and exquisite description of the Chinese
dream is a continuation and development of the important thinking
of China’s peaceful development in the new era.’11 On the other hand,
it is important that Xi elaborated on the China dream discourse at the
start of the second decade of the twenty-first century when the rise of
China had become a conventional wisdom in the international society,
and China has become increasingly confident and active on the world
stage. As a result, the China dream discourse demonstrates a much
stronger aspiration of the new Chinese leadership to play a greater role
in international society. Professor Wang Yizhou of Peking University has
analysed the continuity and change in the PRC’s international policy:

In fact, all leaders of the PRC have had global ambitions, although
their direction and emphasis may have differed. For Mao Zedong,
it was to complete the revolution in China and push forward the
world revolution, fighting an international system dominated by
the West, especially when the red star faded in the Soviet Union. For
Deng Xiaoping, it was to solve the problem of poverty and economic
growth in China, gaining more appeal and charm for socialism with
Chinese characteristics in an economically globalized world. Later
leaders, namely Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, are follow-
ing Deng’s path and emphasizing China’s role as a responsible great
power.
 Zhang Xiaoming 229

And he further said:

I believe China’s new leaders are committed to leading a peaceful,

ascending and constantly stronger nation dedicated to the cause
of helping to create a more reasonable and just world order, thus
gaining more respect from the world. However, these ambitions are
encountering some doubts and challenges.12

In a similar way, Liu Mingfu, a professor at the Defence University

of China, who probably coined the concept China dream, argued
that, since Sun Yat-sen, the China dream has been to make China
the No. 1 great power in the world.13 But his viewpoint is neither the
official explanation of, nor the intellectual consensus on, the China
dream discourse. That is to say, the China dream discourse is both old
and new, and its new contents particularly need to be surveyed and
explored.

What does the China dream mean in foreign policy terms?

The discourse of China dream is obviously targeted mainly at the

domestic audience, rather than the foreign or international audience,
with the purpose of giving the Chinese people increased hope under the
new leadership. On the other hand, it also expresses the new Chinese
leadership’s aspiration to make China a great power and to play a
greater role in the world. We therefore need to analyse the meanings of
China dream discourse in the field of Chinese foreign policy.
The new Chinese leadership has brought some changes in Chinese
politics, both domestically and internationally. But it would be too hasty
to say that there will be any change to China’s overall foreign policy
strategy and China’s relationship with the international society under
the new leadership. Change to any Chinese foreign policy will be incre-
mental, but a fundamental change would not be possible. Xi Jinping
will focus on promoting the economic transformation and expanding
the social safety net within China first. Therefore, the first priority of
Chinese foreign policy is continuing to pursue a favorable international
environment for the domestic modernization drive. The 18th National
Party Congress report in 2012 described China’s development as still
in an ‘important period of strategic opportunities’. These opportunities
were first outlined by the 16th National Party Congress in Hu Jintao’s
era, which emphasized how globalization, scientific developments, a
multi-polar world, domestic reform, and opening up the economy were
230 A New Chinese Way in International Society?

essential to China’s development. The period of strategic opportunities

means that China needs a peaceful international environment, which,
in turn, means that China’s foreign policy will mainly have to serve the
economic development. This is why Chinese leaders repeatedly stated
that China would stick to the path of peaceful development, which is
a path to promote peace and common development of the world with
China’s own development. In order to build a richer and stronger state,
the first priority is to ensure the sustainable growth of the Chinese
economy by ensuring resources supply and route protection, overseas
investment, markets for Chinese products, and environmental protec-
tion. On two occasions shortly after the 18th Party Congress, President
Xi made remarks on China’s opening-up strategy and foreign policy,
sending out a clear message that China’s new collective central lead-
ership is committed to reform and opening-up, the path of peaceful
development and the strategy of win–win co-operation with the outside
world while resolutely upholding China’s core national interests.14
Although any change to China’s overall foreign policy strategy would
be impossible in the near future, with China’s increasing power and
under the new leadership, China might search for a greater role, both
globally and regionally, and take a more resolute position in protect-
ing its ‘core national interests’. As one Chinese scholar commented
on the policy orientation of the new Chinese leadership, ‘the next
step for China is to shift toward being more proactive in the foreign
policy realm and move away from its previous stance of maintaining
a low profile. From now on, China will be more proactive in stating
its opinion and proposing its own ideas.’ This author also noted that
Xi has already begun this process by describing his vision of the ‘new
great-power relationship’ during his February 2012 visit to the US.15 But
there are different opinions among the Chinese scholars and analysts
on this subject matter.
The China dream discourse demonstrates that China hopes to play a
greater global role. As mentioned above, the China dream or the great
renewal of the Chinese nation, expresses China’s aspiration for a greater
role in the world. When the Chinese new leadership came to power,
China had already become the second largest economy in terms of gross
GDP in the world, by overtaking Japan in 2010, although its per capita
GDP is still very low in the world. Some scholars predicted that China
will overtake the US to be the No. 1 economy in the world, and even
become one of the two superpowers in the world before 2030.16 China
has also achieved remarkable progress, or even breakthroughs, in sci-
ence and technology, especially in the fields of outer space exploration
 Zhang Xiaoming 231

and defence modernization. The gap between China and the developed
countries in terms of comprehensive power is still great, but being nar-
rowed. In recent years, China has been taking a much more proactive
approach towards international affairs, by taking more responsibility
in UN peace-keeping activities, supporting UN Security Council resolu-
tions on the North Korean and Iranian nuclear issues, providing more
aid to developing countries (especially African countries), sending war-
ships to join the anti-piracy patrols in the open seas near Somalia and
Arden Bay, playing an active role in G20 and other global gatherings,
etc. I am quite sure the new Chinese leadership will continue to imple-
ment those kinds of policy measures on the world stage, and might
even take greater efforts to make China more visible in international
society in the future.
Xi and his team have been in power for about one year, and we still
need much time to identify and understand his and his team’s policy
orientation. But over the past year, we have witnessed some things
new (at least tactically, if not strategically) in Chinese policy, both in
domestic politics and foreign relations, which might provide clues for
China’s future foreign policy orientation. First of all, the new Chinese
government has clearly advocated transforming China into a maritime
power in the world. The 18th Party Congress of the CCP in November
2012 declared that China would resolutely defend its maritime interests
and become a strong maritime country. It is the first time the Chinese
leadership has elaborated the goal to ‘build a strong maritime country’.
The new Chinese leadership is paying much attention to, and will
invest more in, maritime security-related and maritime development-
related projects, including the modernization of the Chinese navy.
Secondly, the new Chinese leadership advocated a new type of great
power relationship (xinxing daguo guanxi). I  am going to elaborate on
this issue in the next section of this chapter. Thirdly, China and Ukraine
signed a treaty on friendship and co-operation on 5 December 2013, in
which China promises to provide Ukraine with security assistance in
case Ukraine is attacked or threatened by a nuclear invasion. This is the
first time China has promised to provide a nuclear umbrella to a non-
nuclear country.17 Finally, in November of 2013, the Chinese Defence
Ministry declared an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) in the East
China Sea which overlaps with the Japanese and Korean air defence
identification zones, and the Chinese act provoked uproar and negative
responses from the US and its allies in Northeast Asia, especially from
Japan. Within days, military aircraft from the United States, Japan and
South Korea defied China’s assertion that all aircrafts entering the ADIZ
232 A New Chinese Way in International Society?

would have to submit flight plans, maintain radio contact and follow
directions from the Chinese Defence Ministry or face ‘emergency defen-
sive measures’.
The China dream discourse also demonstrates that China hopes to
play a greater regional role, especially in its neighborhood. China’s
geopolitical location is quite unique. It has been surrounded by many
continental and maritime neighbours on all sides over the past two
thousand years. Today China has more neighbouring countries than
any other in the world, sharing land borders with 14 countries, and
maritime borders with eight countries (two of them, North Korea and
Vietnam, share both land borders and maritime borders with China).
If we count states that do not share common borders with China but
are geographically close to it  – Singapore, Thailand and Cambodia
in Southeast Asia; Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives in South Asia;
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in Central Asia  – then, China today is
now surrounded by about 30 neighbouring countries in the east, south,
west and north. Several of them are big powers, such as Russia, Japan,
India; and even the United States can be called a ‘special neighbouring
country’, due to it being the only superpower in world in the post-Cold
War era, and exercising great influence and playing an important role
in the surrounding areas of China.18 Dealing with the neighbouring
countries to ensure a favourable external security environment in the
surrounding areas (zhoubian waijiao) has therefore always been at the
top of the policy agenda of the Chinese government. In fact, China is
probably the only big power in the world that has been so concerned
about its relationship with neighbouring countries and has expended so
many resources in dealing with them. In the early twenty-first century,
China has been facing great challenges in its neighbourhood, because
the rise of China has triggered some anxiety, even fear, for the prospect
of China’s ‘dominance’ in some of China’s neighbouring countries.
It would be a great task for the new Chinese leadership to deal with
China’s relations with its neighbours in an appropriate and creative
way, by assuring its neighbours that China’s rise will not come at the
expense of her neighbouring countries.19
The new Chinese leadership has been taking great (even greater)
efforts to deal with China’s relations with its neighbours than the previ-
ous Chinese leaders did. Xi made his first official visit to Russia, the big-
gest neighbouring country north of China, in the spring of 2013 shortly
after he became the Chinese president. He also visited several Central
Asian and Southeast Asian countries while attending the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit and Asia-Pacific Economic
 Zhang Xiaoming 233

Cooperation (APEC) Summit in the same year. Premier Li Keqiang vis-

ited India as his first official trip abroad as the Chinese premier, and
several Southeast Asian countries also in 2013. Those visits show that
the new Chinese leadership has been paying even greater attention to
China’s neighbourhood than previous leaderships. It should also be
pointed out that a top-level conference focusing on China’s diplomatic
affairs in neighbouring countries was held on 24 and 25 October 2013,
attended by all seven members of the Standing Committee of the
Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.
Premier Li Keqiang chaired that meeting, and Party General Secretary
and President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech. That meeting
shows that the new Chinese leadership is unprecedentedly strengthen-
ing China’s relations with its neighbours. Xi emphasized in his presen-
tation that ‘to handle China’s relations with its neighboring countries
in an appropriate way is serving the purpose to realize great renewal of
the Chinese nation or China dream’.20
It should also be noticed that Xi and his team have been trying to
initiate some new projects, in order to promote China’s co-operation
and strengthen relations with its neighbouring countries. Xi spoke of
the ‘Silk Road’ strategy first in September of 2013 during his visits in
Central Asia. The ‘Silk Road’ strategy includes the ‘Silk Road economic
belt’ and ‘maritime Silk Road’. Xi elaborated on the ‘Silk Road economic
belt’ in a speech he gave at a university in Kazakhstan in September of
2013 while he visited that country. As another effort for the Silk Road
strategy, Xi was in Malaysia and Indonesia in October of 2013, wrap-
ping up tens of billions of dollars in business deals and promoting trade
and military ties with the two countries. He mentioned historical links
between China and Southeast Asia, with tales of the Chinese navigator
Zheng He, who made seven visits to ‘the Western Seas’ in the fifteenth
century. Xi also spoke of building a ‘maritime Silk Road’ during his visits
in Southeast Asian countries. Probably as part of the ‘Silk Road’ strategy,
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang proposed to construct the Bangladesh–
China–India–Myanmar economic corridor during his visit to South Asia
in May of 2013.
Rising economic interdependence is no doubt a very important factor
and glue in China’s relations with its neighbours. Most of the neigh-
bouring countries have benefited a great deal from, and often heavily
rely on, the booming Chinese economy. The new Chinese leadership
will definitely continue to strengthen and deepen China’s economic
links with its neighbours both at bilateral and multilateral levels. But
on the other hand, China might also face greater challenges from
234 A New Chinese Way in International Society?

territorial disputes with its neighbouring countries in the East China

Sea and South China Sea, and the counter-balancing efforts by the other
great powers in its neighbourhood, especially by the US superpower
in the near future. The Chinese government’s strong and nationalist
(primarily defensive) stance on territorial disputes in recent years has
been perceived by some of its neighbours as excessively assertive, even
aggressive and dangerous. The Sino–Japanese relationship is now at the
lowest point since the normalization of bilateral relations in the early
1970s. From the Chinese perspective, it was the nationalization of the
Diaoyu Islands or Senkaku Islands by the Japanese government in 2010
and Japanese Prime Minister Abe’s hard-line postures that led to the
worsening of the bilateral relationship. In 2013, there was no summit
meeting between the Chinese and Japanese leaders, and even the sched-
uled yearly China–Japan–Korea Summit was not held. People rarely
talk about the so-called East Asian Community today. While Beijing
is skilled at bilateral state-to-state relations, China’s ability to move
beyond them is limited. In order to play a greater regional role, China
needs to be more involved, flexible, and act as a more complete part-
ner. This will require China to participate more at the multilateral level
and realize the historical reconciliation with some of its neighbours. In
addition to economic interdependence, China under the new Chinese
leadership needs more capital and other resources, including soft power
resources, to attract its neighbours, in order to ensure the peaceful rise
of China and to develop a greater regional role.
In summary, the China dream discourse expresses the new Chinese
leadership’s aspiration for China’s greater global and regional role. Xi’s
government has taken some new initiatives in this regard, but also faces
great challenges. At the same time the new Chinese leadership’s foreign
policy orientation is still in the making, and we need more time to see
its development.

The China dream and the new type of great powers

relations

At the centre of China’s relationship with the international society

and China’s effort to realize the great renewal of the Chinese nation,
or ‘China dream’, is China’s relationship with the other great powers,
first of all, the Western great powers in international society and espe-
cially the Sino–American relationship. The United States and China are
both at a moment of transition and facing great strategic opportuni-
ties and challenges. For the new Chinese leadership, how to deal with
 Zhang Xiaoming 235

the Sino–US relationship is today and will continue to be at the top of

the policy agenda. In this regard, Xi Jinping has advocated for the so-
called ‘new type of great powers relationship’, and the most important
content of that relationship is the Sino–US relationship.21 In order to
understand the China dream discourse, we surely need to analyse the
‘new type of great powers relationship’.
Xi Jinping first elaborated on the new type of great powers relations
in February 2012, during his official visit to the United States in the
capacity of Chinese Vice President. In his lunch address in Washington,
DC, on 15 February 2012, Xi said that China and the United States
should take great efforts to shape the Sino–US bilateral co-operation
partnership into the ‘new type of great powers relationship in the 21st
century’.22 President Xi then called for building a ‘new type of great
powers relationship’ based on mutual respect and win–win co-operation
during his informal summit meeting with US President Barack Obama
at the Annenberg Estate in California on 7–8 June 2013. The two lead-
ers expressed principles to guide future co-operation and laid the foun-
dation for a practical yet visionary way forward. Xi talked about the
China dream and ‘new models of big powers’ relationship’ during the
meetings. Xi spoke out on the meaning of new type of big powers’ rela-
tionship: firstly, non-conflict and non-confrontation; secondly, mutual
respect; thirdly, win–win co-operation.23
Yang Jiechi, the State Councillor who accompanied President Xi in
the visit to the US, summarized and explained Xi’s ‘three insightful
points’ on the new type of great powers relations in National Interest, an
American journal, as the following:

First, non-conflict and non-confrontation: that requires the two

sides to view each other’s strategic intention in an objective and
sensible way, stay as partners instead of adversaries, and properly
handle their differences and disputes through dialogue and coopera-
tion instead of taking a confrontational approach. Second, mutual
respect: that requires the two sides to respect each other’s choice
of social system and development path, respect each other’s core
interests and major concerns, seek common ground while shelving
differences, uphold inclusiveness and mutual learning, and make
progress side by side. Third, win–win cooperation: that requires
the two sides to abandon a zero-sum mentality, accommodate the
other’s interests while seeking one’s own, promote common devel-
opment while developing oneself, and continue to deepen the pat-
tern of shared interests.
236 A New Chinese Way in International Society?

And Yang Jiechi concluded:

The building of a new model of major-country relationship between

China and the United States is an unprecedented endeavor that
will inspire future generations. It is a historic innovation that has
no ready experience to emulate. As such, it may not be a smooth
process. Nevertheless, as long as we seize the situation, focus on the
goal, be firm in our determination and keep forging ahead, we will be
able to achieve sound and steady growth of China–US relations. 24

What then is the motive or purpose for the new Chinese leadership to
advocate for a new type of great powers relations? There have been a
lot of Chinese publications on the new type of great powers relations
over the past two years.25 This author believes that the majority of the
Chinese analysts argue that the main purpose for the Chinese leader-
ship to advocate for the new type of great powers relationship is to
overcome the traditional logic of great powers confrontation, or the
so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’, and search for a new model of great powers
relations instead.26 It should be pointed out that some Chinese high-
ranking diplomats and officials seem to accept this kind of explanation.
The Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai talked about the mean-
ing of the ‘new type of great powers relationship’ in his recent interview
with Foreign Affairs in 2013. He said:

In the past, when one big country developed very fast and gained
international influence, it was seen as being in a kind of a zero-sum
game vis-à-vis the existing powers. This often led to conflict or even
war. Now, there is a determination both in China and in the United
States to not allow history to repeat itself. We’ll have to find a new
way for a developing power and an existing power to work with each
other, not against each other.27

On 29 May 2013, Zheng Zeguang, Chinese assistant foreign minister,

told reporters China and the US should construct a new type of big-
power relationship, which is different from the traditional big-power
confrontation.28
I personally don’t deny the new Chinese leadership’s aspiration for
proposing some new ideas or new thinking of international relations, as
previous Chinese leaders did in their era by advocating a ‘new interna-
tional political and economic order’ and a ‘new concept of security’. But
I think the purpose for the new Chinese leadership to advocate a new
 Zhang Xiaoming 237

type of great powers relationship is mainly defensive. As a rising non-

Western power in international society, China has been facing great
pressures and challenges from international society, especially from
the United States’ ‘rebalance’ efforts in China’s neighbourhood. China
is eager to be recognized and accepted as a legitimate great power, and
respected by the other great powers, especially the only superpower of
the international society. China has not the intention or capability to
get involved in confrontation with the other great powers.29 But for the
new Chinese leadership, the reality of the great powers relationship is
not so encouraging, and the Chinese government has not had a very
positive response from the US government to its proposal for a new type
of relationship. Instead a new type of great power rivalry between the
US and China seems to be looming. To some extent, Sino–US competi-
tion, or even conflicts, are going on globally and regionally, especially
in China’s neighbourhood. Some famous China watchers in the US
are quite pessimistic about the future development of the bilateral
relations. To Warren Cohen, when China continues to gain influence
on the world stage, ‘American influence in the world, having peaked
in the “unipolar moment” of the late 1990s, is probably at its lowest
level since the 1930s  … American leaders will see no choice but to
resist China’s growing military power. The United States will spare no
effort to maintain air and naval superiority in the western Pacific and
to strengthen its alliances in the region.’30 Similarly the American ana-
lyst Avery Goldstein noted that the security community in the US was
divided as to which was the major challenge to the US security in the
new century: problems of nuclear proliferation, rogue states and inter-
national terrorists, or ‘the potentially disruptive impact that China will
have if it emerges as a peer competitor of the United States, challenging
an international order established during the era of US preponderance’.
In his mind, however, ‘the gravest danger in Sino–American relations
is the possibility the two countries will find themselves in a crisis that
could escalate to open military conflict’.31
The recent developments in the Sino–American relationship seem
to provide hard evidence for the pessimistic assumptions. The US has
been taking a variety of balancing actions against China in its neigh-
bourhood. By 2020, the US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said at
the 2013 Shangri-La Dialogue, the United States intended to base 60
per cent of its naval assets in the Pacific. The Air Force, meanwhile, has
stationed 60 per cent of its overseas forces in the Asia-Pacific region. The
United States is working to expand its partnerships with Washington’s
closest allies in the region: Japan, South Korea and Australia, Hagel
238 A New Chinese Way in International Society?

said.32 The Chinese analysts used to question whether the United States’
growing military presence in Asia is anything more than a challenge
to Beijing’s rise. Taking clear aim at China’s growing aggressiveness in
territorial disputes with its smaller neighbours, US Secretary of State
John Kerry announced on 16 December 2013 that the United States
will boost maritime security assistance to the countries of Southeast
Asia amid rising tensions with Beijing. On his first visit to Vietnam as
America’s top diplomat, Kerry pledged an additional $32.5 million for
members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to protect their
territorial waters and navigational freedom in the South China Sea,
where four states have competing claims with China. Included in the
new aid is up to $18 million for Vietnam alone that will include five
fast patrol-boats for its Coast Guard. With the new contribution, US
maritime security assistance to the region will exceed $156 million over
the next two years, Kerry said.33
In the consensus of the Chinese leadership the global balance of
power has not undergone fundamental changes and the United States is
still the only superpower, so that China should not claim leadership and
challenge the United States but make great efforts to build a new type of
relationship between great powers. However, it should be pointed out
that there are different views among Chinese IR scholars. Professor Yan
Xuetong recently predicted in his new book, China will become one
of the two superpowers in 2023, and the nature of the Sino–American
relationship in the next decade will be competitive.34 While the US and
China are frequently portrayed in the media and elsewhere as mutual
enemies, a recent survey shows that the attitudes of Americans and
Chinese toward each other’s country are less extreme. The US–China
Security Perceptions Survey, released in December of 2013 by the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the China Strategic
Culture Promotion Association, showed that low percentages of the US
and Chinese public viewed the other country as an enemy – 15 per cent
in the US and 12 per cent in China. The results could reflect, as Michael
Swaine has said, that the Chinese public and elites didn’t think China
is capable at the moment of being a sole leader, and it could also ‘tell
us that the general belief in Chinese thinking is that a dominant single
power is a hegemonic power, and they see that sort of role not as one
of benign leadership, but as one of lording it over other countries, and
they don’t want to see China doing that’.35
We can conclude therefore that it is the new Chinese leadership’s pol-
icy to build a new type of great powers relationship in order to ensure
the peaceful rise of China and realize the great renewal of the Chinese
 Zhang Xiaoming 239

nation, or the ‘China dream’. But the new Chinese leadership is facing
and will continue to face great challenges from the other great powers,
especially from the US superpower.

Is the rising China a status quo power or a revisionist

power in international society?

In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion on rising China’s rela-
tionship with the Western-dominated international society. The debate
has mainly focused on one question, namely, is rising China a revision-
ist power or a status quo power in international society? Often China’s
contributions to global governance are seen by Westerners as a litmus
test of whether Beijing is emerging as a ‘status quo’ or ‘revisionist’
power.36 Under the new Chinese leadership, what is China’s approach
to its relationship with the international society; and what does the
China dream discourse mean for China’s role in international society?
There is a consensus among most Chinese IR scholars that there is not
a major shift in the distribution of power in the international society,
and that the West is still the dominant force in international society.
The goal of Chinese foreign policy is still, as it had been since Deng
Xiaoping’s era, to create a peaceful environment for national develop-
ment. Since the era of Deng, Chinese leaders are clearly aware that
confrontation with the US has more disadvantages than advantages.37
This requires China to co-operate with the US and enter into the US-
dominated international order, and China should not challenge the
current international system. In fact, China has been benefiting from
the current international society since the end of the 1970s. The United
States has been pursuing a strategy of integrating China into the inter-
national society. By joining the World Trade Organization in December
2001, China opened her arms to globalization, which gave a great push
to the Chinese economy. China has defined itself as an insider of the
current international society. As one Chinese scholar argues, China has
gradually become ‘an insider of the international system’ and ‘a status
quo state and thus no longer seeks to overthrow the current interna-
tional system’ by integrating itself into the international marketplace
and international society through its reform and opening-up policy.38
At the same time, the Chinese leadership has defined China as a respon-
sible great power, which means that China will provide more public
services to the international community, such as active participation
in UN peacekeeping initiatives, and regular escort missions in the Gulf
of Aden and waters off Somalia. China has promised to work with the
240 A New Chinese Way in International Society?

international community to actively respond to global climate change

on the basis of equity and in accordance with the common but differ-
entiated responsibilities and respective capabilities of all countries. As
one of the rising non-Western powers, China is eager to be recognized
as a responsible great power in international society. According to this
logic, China under the new leadership will continue to be a status quo
power in the international society.39
In response to the following question from Foreign Affairs: ‘Scholars
sometimes distinguish between status quo and revisionist powers, argu-
ing that problems arise only if the new power is the latter and wants to
change the rules of the game. Which is China?’ Chinese Ambassador
Cui Tiankai said:

If you look at recent history since China reformed and opened

up, there has been a clear integration of China into the existing
global order. We are now members of many international institu-
tions, not only the United Nations but also the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund. We have joined the World Trade
Organization. We are taking part in many regional mechanisms. So
we are ready to integrate ourselves into the global system, and we are
ready to follow the international rules. Of course, these rules were
set without much participation by China, and the world is chang-
ing. You cannot say that the rules that were set up half a century
ago can be applied without any change today. But what we want is
not a revolution. We stand for necessary reform of the international
system, but we have no intention of overthrowing it or setting up an
entirely new one.40

The interviewer further asked, ‘What sort of rules does China feel need
to be adjusted?’ Cui Tiankai replied, ‘For the last few years, we’ve had
the G-20. This mechanism is quite new  … For the first time in his-
tory, these [G-20] countries are sitting together around the same table
as equals and discussing major international financial and economic
issues. This is the kind of change we want to have.’41
In the view of American experts also, China is not an international
challenger either because China does not want to challenge the ideas
or institutions of international society or because China is still not
strong enough to replace these. Alastair Johnston wrote in an article
in International Security that there has not been a fundamental shift in
Chinese diplomacy away from the status quo-oriented behaviour of the
previous thirty years to be proactive or assertive in East Asia and the
 Zhang Xiaoming 241

world as a whole.42 David Shambaugh more recently argued that ‘it is

clear that China’s global presence and reputation is mixed. It remains
a long way from becoming a global superpower like the United States
(which has comprehensive power and global influence across economic,
cultural, diplomatic, security, governance, and other realms). Over time
it may gain these attributes, but for the time being China remains very
much a partial power.’43
It seems to me that, with increasing power, China is certain to be
more proactive globally and regionally, but China is not ready to pro-
vide an alternative in international society. It is not the new Chinese
leadership’s goal to search for centrality in the international society.
China in fact has not the will and capability to dominate the interna-
tional society. What China needs at the present time and in the near
future is respect and equality in the Western-dominated international
society. China has benefited a great deal from the international society,
and has taken great effort to integrate itself into the international soci-
ety. It is not in China’s national interest to become or be treated as a
revolutionary state in the international society again.
China under the new leadership will continue to be a status quo
power, rather than a revisionist power in the international society,
although it will search for a greater role and status in international
society. In the distant future, China probably might seek to establish
new rules and alternative institutions with the other great powers in the
international society, even present Chinese traditional foreign policy
thinking as an alternative to the current international order. But, at least
in the near future, there is no market for China’s export of its world-
views. As David Shambaugh pointed out, ‘China is not a magnet that
attracts others. No nation seeks to emulate the political or social sys-
tems, the culture is sui generis, and the economic experience – though
admirable – is not transferable.’44

Conclusion

Therefore we can answer the two questions this chapter addressed:

Is the so-called China dream advocated by Xi Jinping a new Chinese
Way in international society? Will this new Chinese Way seek to alter
the norms or institutions of the still Western-dominated international
society?
Xi’s China dream, the purpose of which is to build a stronger China
and realize the goal of the great renewal of the Chinese nation in the
world, is not a great departure from the policy goals that previous
242 A New Chinese Way in International Society?

Chinese leaders pursued in the past decades since the founding of

the People’s Republic of China. China under the new leadership is still
in the process of rising. China has not the will or capability to chal-
lenge the Western dominance in international society or provide an
alternative in international society. What China most needs in inter-
national society at least in the near future is the recognition from the
international society as a respected, legitimate and equal member of
the international society. In this sense, the China dream is essentially
not a new Chinese way in international society. But on the other hand,
under the new leadership and with the increasing power and nation-
alism of the present era, China is sure to be more proactive globally
and regionally, and take more resolute positions in protecting its ‘core
national interests’. It should be recognized that this might lead to con-
flicts or confrontations with some of its neighbouring countries or the
US superpower.
Accordingly, China under the present leadership will not seek to alter
the norms or institutions of the Western-dominated international soci-
ety. The Chinese leadership is quite clear that the world is still, and is
going to be, dominated by the West, and it is not in China’s interest to
challenge the Western dominance in the international society. In fact,
the PRC has learnt a great lesson from the past that, to be a revolution-
ary state in the international society again will isolate China and do a
great harm to China’s interest, and so it would not be conducive to the
realization of the great renewal the Chinese nation, or the China dream.
Since the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy in late
1970s, China has been in the process of integration into the interna-
tional society and has benefited a great deal from that process, and the
Chinese leadership and people have come to regard China as part of
the international society. Therefore, what China is seeking is definitely
not to alter the norms or institutions of the Western-dominated inter-
national society, but to play a greater role in the working of the norms
and institutions of that society.

Notes and references

1. Gerrit W. Gong (1984) ‘China’s Entry into International Society’, in Hedley
Bull and Adam Watson (eds), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford:
Oxford University Press), pp. 171–83; Gerrit W. Gong (1984) The Standard of
‘Civilization’ in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press); Yongjin
Zhang (1998) China in International Society since 1949: Alienation and Beyond
(Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, in association with St Antony’s College,
Oxford).
 Zhang Xiaoming 243

2. Arne Odd Westad (2012) Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750
(London: Bodley Head); David Shambaugh (2013) China Goes Global: The
Partial Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
3. Martin Jacques (2009) When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle
Kingdom and the End of the Western World (London: Allen Lane).
4. At least in 2010, one Chinese book entitled Zhongguo Meng (China Dream)
was published. See Liu Mingfu (2010) Zhongguo Meng [China Dream] (Beijing:
China Friendship Publishing House).
5. Lin Bian (2012) ‘Xi Jinping: Move on in the direction of the great renewal
of the Chinese nation’, Xinhua News Agency, 29 November 2012. Available
at: http://news.sohu.com/20121129/n359053063.shtml. Access date:
29 April 2013.
6. The Chinese official media used the English translations of zhongguo meng –
China dream and Chinese dream – interchangeably.
7. Cited from Li Junru (2013) ‘Zhongguo meng de yiyi, neirong, jiqi bianzheng
luoji’, (‘China dream: Its meanings, contents, and logic’), Studies on Mao
Zedong and Deng Xiaoping Theories, 7, pp. 14–17.
8. ‘“China dream” resonates online after Xi’s speech’, Xinhua News Agency,
30 November 2012. Available at: http://english.cntv.cn/20121130/107580.
shtml. Access date: 29 April 2013.
9. Peng  Yining (2013) ‘Realizing the “China Dream”’, People’s Daily Online,
5 March 2013, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90785/8153096.html.
Access date: 13 December 2013.
10. ‘Xi Jinping paid a visit to the destroyer Haikou’, Xinhua News Agency,
12 December 2012, http://war.163.com/12/1212/16/8IHPAC1N00014OMD.
html. Access date: 29 April 2013.
11. Yang Jiechi (2013) ‘Implementing the Chinese Dream’, The National
Interest, 10 September 2013. At: http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/
implementing-the-chinese-dream-9026. Access date: 12 September 2013.
12. Wang Yizhou (2013) ‘Opportunities and Challenges for China’s New Leaders
in Building Mutual Trust with the World’, Global Asia, 8(3), Fall 2013.
13. Liu Mingfu, Zhongguo Meng [China Dream], pp. 3–26.
14. Yang Jiechi, ‘Implementing the Chinese Dream’.
15. Zhao Kejin (2013) ‘A New Generation of Chinese Leadership’, 9 April 2013,
Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. At: http://www.carnegiets-
inghua.org/2013/04/09/new-generation-of-chinese-leadership/fyqq. Access
date: 25 October 2013.
16. Yan Xuetong (2013) Lishi De Guanxing [The Inertia of History: China and the
World in the Next Decade] (Beijing: The CITIC Publishing House), p. 18; Song
Guoyou (2013) Zhong-Mei Jin Rong Guanxi Yanjiu [Money, Power and China–US
Relations] (Beijing: Current Affairs Press), p. 3.
17. ‘China promised to offer security assurance to Ukraine in case that country
faces nuclear threats’, Xinhua News Agency, 9 December 2013, http://news.
ifeng.com/mainland/detail_2013_12/09/31934627_0.shtml. Access date: 9
December 2013.
18. See the definition of ‘China’s neighbouring countries’ in Zhang Xiaoming (2003)
Zhongguo Zhoubian Anquan Huanjing Fenxi [China’s Security Environment in Its
Surrounding Areas] (Beijing: China International Broadcasting Press, 2003),
‘Preface’, p. 4.
244 A New Chinese Way in International Society?

19. Zhang Xiaoming (2014, forthcoming) ‘China’s Relations with Its Neighboring
Countries: Historical Patterns and the Formation of East Asian Regional
Community’, in Yong Wook Lee and Key-young Son (eds), China’s Rise and
Regional Integration in East Asia: Hegemony or Community (London and New York:
Routledge).
20. ‘Xi Jinping: Let the sense of community of destiny to develop in China’s
neighborhood’, Xinhua News Agency, 18 December 2013, http://news.
xinhuanet.com/politics/2013-10/25/c_117878944.htm. Access date: 18
December 2013.
21. The official Chinese translation of daguo guanxi (great powers relations) is
‘major countries’ relations’, but this author prefers to use the English con-
cept ‘great powers relations’.
22. People’s Daily, 17 February 2012, p. 2.
23. ‘Yang Jiechi’s Talk on Xi-Abama Annenberg Estate summit meeting’,
Xinhua News Agency, 9 June 2013, http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2013-
06/09/c_116102752.htm. Access date: 9 June 2013.
24. Yang Jiechi, ‘Implementing the Chinese Dream’.
25. On 2 December 2013, I searched on CNKI, a data base of Chinese periodicals,
and got 271 entries after inputting the key word ‘new type of great powers
relationship’, about one third of them were research essays published by
the Chinese academic journals, and the rest of them were commentaries in
Chinese newspapers.
26. For example, Chen Jian (2012) ‘On the New Type of Great Powers Relationship’,
China International Studies, 6, pp. 11–17; Yu Hongjun (2013) ‘The Importance
and Prospect of the Sino–US New Type of Great Powers Relationship’, China
International Studies, 5, pp. 1–9; Xue Litai and Feng Zheng (2013) ‘Why Is the
Historical Logic Could Be Overcome Today?’, People’s Forum, June 2013, p. 47.
27. Cui Tiankai (2013) ‘Beijing’s Brand Ambassador: A  Conversation with Cui
Tiankai’, 16 May 2013, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/interviews/
beijings-brand-ambassador. Access date: 29 June 2013.
28. ‘There is enough space for Sino-American cooperation, and the bilateral
relationship between China and the US will not repeat the traditional great
powers confrontation’, Jinhua Times, 30 May 2013, http://news.xinhuanet.
com/world/2013-05/30/c_124783997.htm. Access date: 30 May 2013.
29. Zhang Xiaoming (2014, forthcoming) ‘New Great Powers Relationship: An
Interpretation’, Guoji Zhengzhi Yanjiu.
30. Warren I. Cohen (2010) America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American
Relations, 5th edn (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 290–1.
31. Avery Goldstein (2013) ‘First Things First: The Pressing Danger of Crisis
Instability in US–China Relations’, International Security, 37(4), p. 49.
32. Ernesto Londono (2013) ‘Hagel chides China for cyberspying’, Washington Post,
1 June 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/hagel-rebukes-china-for-
cyber-espionage/2013/06/01/da9c1c6c-ca6f-11e2-9cd9-3b9a22a4000a_story.
html. Access date: 1 June 2013.
33. ‘US takes aim at China, ups naval aid to SE Asia’, AP, 16 December 2013, http://
www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/kerry-pushes-reform-maritime-
security- in- vietnam/2013/12/16/e5545bfc- 6618- 11e3- 997b- 9213b17dac97_
story.html. Access date: 17 December 2013.
34. Yan Xuetong, Lishi de Guanxing.
 Zhang Xiaoming 245

35. Amy He and Kelly Chung Dawson (2013) ‘US, China, no enemies, report
says’, China Daily USA online, 12 December 2013, http://usa.chinadaily.com.
cn/epaper/2013-12/12/content_17169932.htm. Access date: 19 December
2013.
36. David Shambaugh (2013) China Goes Global: The Partial Power (Oxford:
Oxford University Press), p. 121.
37. Wang Yizhou, ‘Opportunities and Challenges for China’s New Leaders’.
38. Zhu Liqun (2010) ‘China’s Foreign Policy Debate’, Chaillot Papers, September
2010 (Paris: EU Institute for Security Studies), p. 39.
39. Zhang Xiaoming (2011) ‘A Rising China and the Normative Changes in
International Society’, East Asia, 28, pp. 235–46.
40. Cui Tiankai, ‘Beijing’s Brand Ambassador: A Conversation with Cui Tiankai’.
41. Ibid.
42. Alastair Iain Johnston (2013) ‘How New and Assertive Is China’s New
Assertiveness?’, International Security, 37(4), p. 7.
43. David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power, p. 10.
44. Ibid., p. 310.
11
Conclusion: How Close is China
to National Rejuvenation?
David Kerr

The contours of the China Dream are not that hard to define. The
Dream sets objectives and means for China’s revival and provides an
interim assessment of where China is in its search for rejuvenation. As
to the objectives of the Dream, these are cased within a grand histori-
cal narrative. Weida fuxing (great rejuvenation) points to the glory of
China’s past but also provides a narrative of how this glory was lost
or stolen between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Dream
points to China’s trajectory from an undesired and unchosen history in
the era of loss to a desired and chosen future that has become possible
with the successes of the current Republic. The Dream is therefore about
accomplishments gained and accomplishments still to be achieved. As
to the means, Xi’s choice of three is notable. In his 38 character state-
ment he defines the essential components of China’s revival:

实现中国梦必须走中国道路
实现中国梦必须弘扬中国精神
实现中国梦必须凝聚中国力量
To realize the China Dream we must keep to the Chinese way
To realize the China Dream we must advance the Chinese spirit
To realize the China Dream we must consolidate Chinese power1

The means of realizing the Chinese Dream are then learning from the
Chinese experience, advancing the spiritual consciousness of being
Chinese, and consolidating all means of Chinese power. Together these
three imperatives will see China complete the mission of national
rejuvenation.
The authors in this volume, though they have considered the mean-
ing and context of the China Dream idea from a variety of different
246
 David Kerr 247

directions, do not fundamentally disagree about the content of the

programme. Nor do they greatly disagree about the interpretation that
should be given to the related ideas of a Chinese Way or Chinese model
and their connection to the China Dream. These terms should not be
taken to mean a fixed philosophy or system. Thus, although the term
‘moshi’ is usually translated as model it should probably be understood
as similar to the Latin word ‘modus’, meaning a way of doing some-
thing especially when this is learned from experience. Both the Chinese
way and the Chinese mode indicate Chinese understanding of their
own experience. Very few Chinese think that this Chinese way of doing
can be converted into an international model since this would require
other people and societies to have had the kind of experiences that the
Chinese have had in the last 200 years or so, and this is not considered
likely or perhaps desirable.2
The questions about the China Dream, therefore, relate more to the
historical, developmental and political logics that underpin the idea.
In this sense concepts such as Chinese nation and great rejuvenation
as the subjects and objects of the Dream require more explanation and
investigation than just the idea of a having a Dream alone. The authors
in this volume conducted their analysis from different academic, policy
or social perspectives  – government, civil society, ethnic politics, eco-
nomic history, philanthropy, scientific development, cultural politics,
strategic affairs and international relations. Their discussions and con-
clusions can be evaluated by considering the three questions that were
set out in the introduction to this volume:

• What is the historical perspective on national rejuvenation when

the current dream about the rejuvenation of China is set against the
background of the change between China’s past and present?
• What is the comparative logic of rejuvenation if the Chinese experi-
ence of a struggle to be successfully modern is compared with the
ideas, policies and institutions of modernity in other societies?
• What are the consequences of rejuvenation for the Chinese people
and for peoples and countries that are affected by China’s transfor-
mation: what has been achieved in the struggle for rejuvenation,
what has still to be achieved, and how much confidence can we have
in the ideas, institutions and capacities of contemporary China to
complete the mission?

This conclusion will conduct a comparative examination across the

essays to see what the authors think about these three sets of questions.
248 How Close is National Rejuvenation?

Historical perspectives on rejuvenation

The issue of history appears quite often in the essays in this volume –
authors discuss both what happened in Chinese history and how the
past is being used to define narratives about the present. This is under-
standable as the China Dream is strongly shaped by a historical logic
of loss and renewal. However it is also true that China seems to have
so many pasts that it becomes a matter of experiment and contestation
as to how the past should be used to explain the present and shape the
future.
The two essays that most closely follow a historical analysis of
rejuvenation are those by Kent G. Deng on economic renewal and
Shi Yinhong on strategic revival. Deng’s essay uses the metaphor of a
swinging pendulum to describe China’s interaction with the West and
its search for the right model of modern economic growth. Deng argues
that traditional China and Europe interacted as equals and exchanged
ideas and technologies, but this pattern was disrupted with the
European pursuit of aggressive mercantilism from the mid-nineteenth
century. Deng outlines how China attempted modernization in the
late nineteenth century by copying Western economic and political
systems but this movement was cut short by the collapse of the impe-
rial order and the difficulties experienced by the new Chinese Republic.
Thereafter China again sought to learn from foreign experience but
chose an entirely different route to modern economic growth – that of
Russian radicalism. Deng is firm that this attempt to Sovietize China
was a disaster in human terms and a dead-end in economic terms. With
the failure of Sovietization China was forced to turn back to the path
of neo-Westernization. The economic reforms of the Deng Xiaoping
era conformed to the model of the earlier Westernization movement
by employing Western utility, meaning the market, in the service of
Chinese foundations, meaning now the Party-state and its nation-
building objectives. Perhaps at last China has found the correct balance
between international knowledge and Chinese talents.
Shi Yinhong conducts a detailed historical overview of the relation-
ship between China’s strategic traditions and its diplomatic political
culture. He argues that China’s long-term adherence to principles of
diplomatic defence, tributary peace and using barbarians to defeat
barbarians was a result of the Confucian political culture but also the
concern of the Chinese state about its relative weakness in the face
of a hostile environment. This Sun Tzuian or indirect approach to
strategy has predominated historically; only in the last 80 years or so
 David Kerr 249

has there been a shift to a combined approach that involved winning

decisive battles in the Clausewitzian tradition as well as emphasizing
co-existence for peace and development in the Sun Tzuian tradition.
Mao Zedong’s strategic approach was in Shi’s view a brilliant combina-
tion of both traditions, but under Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening
movement there was once again an emphasis on non-compulsory and
indirect power as China practised peaceful rise diplomacy. After 20 years
of military modernization however Shi sees a return to a more balanced
or combined strategic approach. China now approaches the external
environment with changes to PLA doctrine that emphasize fighting
and winning battles, consistent breakthroughs in military science and
technology, a hardening of China’s position on disputed territories, and
the replacement of the rhetoric of peaceful development favoured in the
era of Hu Jintao with the more confident strategy announced by Xi
Jinping’s ‘great resurgence of the Chinese nation’.
Several of the other essays, though not taking a chronological
approach to their analysis, point to the uses of history in contempo-
rary China. Steve Tsang argues that history as a grand narrative about
China and its place in the world has been at the heart of the promotion
of nationalism as the new official ideology of the Party-state. Tsang
notes that many Chinese do not have a great understanding of the
history of their own country but they have been persuaded to accept
both the explanation for China’s loss of strength and status between
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the explanation for its
revival through the creation of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Tsang argues the nationalism that has been promoted is essentially
xenophobic – that it encourages Chinese people to think of the outside
world as hostile to China and its return to international status. David
Tobin’s paper on ethnic politics points to the historical nature of the
minzu tuanjie (ethnic unity) question. In practice no modern Chinese
state has had a solution to the nationalities problem: the imperial,
republican and socialist states all claimed to be building a unified multi-
ethnic China but in fact the nationalities issue has never weakened
and may indeed be intensifying in the present day. Tobin’s discussion
of the inter-generational debate between nationalities scholars reveals
the continued difficulty the Chinese state has in presenting ideas and
policies to overcome the historicized problem of multiple nations and
multiple nationalisms co-existing in modern China. Michael Barr’s
study of the Chinese government’s search for soft  – or non-coercive  –
power investigates the attempt to bring traditional values and culture
into service. Barr argues that traditional culture has a number of virtues
250 How Close is National Rejuvenation?

in the eyes of the current leadership. Traditional culture emphasizes the

longevity and stability of Chinese civilization in an era of considerable
turmoil and change; discussion of culture is very often apolitical and
thus avoids having to discuss contemporary China’s problems in openly
political terms; and Chinese culture is definitively Chinese: it references
a world before Western hegemony and thus appeals to Chinese nativ-
ism. Barr also notes that Xi Jinping visited the birthplace of Confucius
in Shandong province and criticized the excesses of the Cultural
Revolution when great harm was done to China’s cultural legacy; so
discussion of traditional values gives the CCP an opportunity to correct
some of its earlier hostility to Chinese culture.
In summary Deng and Shi point to the considerable progress that
China has been able to achieve in the era of reform and opening: China
has, after a period of much difficulty and not a few catastrophic mis-
judgements, found a path to modern economic growth and advanced
strategic capacity. This in turn is having an inevitable impact on China’s
status in the world in the areas of international economics and stra-
tegic affairs. The essays by Tsang, Tobin and Barr point to a different
understanding of history in China. History is a very political subject in
contemporary China and the Party-state desires to use arguments about
history, or to deploy historical ideas or symbols, to assist state-building
and nation-building. But the legacy of history is ambiguous: the state-
sanctioned versions of nationalism, ethnic unity and cultural tradition
are open to different interpretations and indeed to dispute. Thus histori-
cal narratives and symbolism are very often part of China’s contentious
politics: the state desires to control these but the very emphasis that the
state places on nationalism, ethnic unity and cultural politics suggests
that it is not always confident that it can control the historical narrative
of rejuvenation.

Comparative logic of Chinese rejuvenation

Many discussions in this volume point out that the Chinese idea of
rejuvenation is closely linked to the pursuit and experience of mod-
ernization in different forms. The idea that China is experiencing many
dreams not just one points to this since the multiplicity of Chinese
dreams is driven by the diversity of modernity in China today.
Of course much of China’s experience of modernity has been shaped
by economic transformation and the two essays on political economy
examine this from different perspectives. Kent G. Deng suggests success-
ful modern economic growth in China has always been about adapting
 David Kerr 251

the best of international economic experience, very often originating

in the European or American West, but applying this to the historical,
cultural or institutional conditions of China. He argues that the suc-
cess of China under reform and opening represents just such a hybrid
of mixing international capital and technologies with culturally and
institutionally defined conditions for high economic growth. Gordon
C. K. Cheung’s essay is also about China’s economic success but less
about how China got there but rather one of the consequences of new
wealth creation: the emergence of a Chinese philanthropy. This turn
to charitable donation is notable in policy terms because the govern-
ment’s 12th Five Year Plan 2011–15 makes especial note of the need
to develop charitable activism as part of social development. Cheung
points out that there is still a considerable gap between Chinese and
American philanthropic activity: in 2012 China had around the same
number of billionaires as America but made less than 4 per cent of the
philanthropic donations. As in many other aspects of China’s politi-
cal economy the philanthropic activity is strongly shaped by relations
between business and government. Many heads of corporations are
making donations to government-directed social welfare projects and
clearly do so with the hope of gaining some political or economic lev-
erage. Cheung argues that this follows an international pattern where
philanthropic giving tends to mirror both the form and development
of political economy more generally: the American way of philanthropy
mirrors its entrepreneurial traditions and has also evolved as American
capitalism has changed. In the same way China’s philanthropy should
also be expected to mirror Chinese business practices and can be
expected to evolve as the Chinese political economy changes.
The essays by Steve Tsang, David Kerr and David Tobin examine
the consequences of political and social modernity in China and also
point to some international comparisons. Steve Tsang argues that after
30 years of reform and opening the CCP has been able to produce a
political system that is sufficiently strong, effective and robust to claim
responsibility for national rejuvenation. The main aim of the Chinese
system domestically is to meet public demands and shape public
opinion and thus head off pressures for democratic or constitutional
change. The main aim internationally is to disprove the claim that
political liberalism is universal and that China has no alternative but to
embrace it. Consultative Leninism retains the basic organizational and
coercive features of communist government but shows increased flex-
ibility in managing state–society relations and a talent for ideological
innovation, with the removal of nearly all socialist ideals for China and
252 How Close is National Rejuvenation?

their replacement with patriotic ideals. The China Dream discourse is

thus best understood as a reflection of the confidence of the Chinese
leadership that political, economic and ideological resilience has been
achieved. David Kerr argues that civil society is one of the most distinc-
tive institutions of modernity and that civil society development is
now a Pan-Asian phenomenon. China has seen one of the most rapid
urbanizations of any country in the world but this has produced an
incomplete civil society: it exists as a social and economic formation but
cannot take legal or political form because the Party-state’s institutions,
ideology and interests prevent this. The limits of the Chinese kind of
citizens’ society that lacks the formal political and legal powers associ-
ated with civil societies elsewhere are revealed most clearly by the Party-
state’s struggle with governance. Rejuvenation of the Chinese nation
must mean the rejuvenation of governance so it can match the trans-
formation in Chinese society, yet the new leadership has not changed
the CCP’s overall conclusion that power and authority should not be
shared between state and society. Instead Kerr notes a variety of strate-
gies by the state that are designed to preclude political or legal institu-
tionalization of the citizens’ society: refining corporatism, modernizing
social management, and strengthening coercive capacity. The repression
of civil society not only restricts the state’s responsiveness in domestic
governance but also China’s international influence and governance
participation. Kerr points out the problems of assuming there can be a
China Model as long as China rejects integration between a Chinese civil
society and international civil societies. David Tobin’s essay is also about
the problems of China’s social modernization, especially the question of
whether modern China is producing a single national identity or multi-
ple national identities. Divided ideas of how to explain modern China’s
identity to itself are revealed through the inter-generational debate on
majority–minority relations. What Tobin styles the Second generation
of scholars working on the ethnic question wish to abandon the idea of
China having 56 nationalities altogether: China must become like other
successful modernist states, such as America, and advocate – and if nec-
essary impose – a single political-patriotic identity. This means removing
all aspects of positive discrimination that the non-Han nationalities were
offered in the era of socialist modernization. This strategy is opposed
by First generation scholars who favour socialist ideological frameworks
for conducting nationalities work. Some also point out that this single
imposed political-patriotic identity would be indistinguishable from
Han chauvinism and would therefore produce the very thing that it
claims to be averting – an ethnically divided China.
 David Kerr 253

Joy Y. Zhang and Michael Barr examine two different aspects of China’s
ambitions to create a knowledge society: science and culture. Though
these may seem to be too different to permit comparison they have two
defining similarities: they are both state-led and they both have had
difficulty establishing an independent ‘national’ form of knowledge
power. Zhang argues that China’s science model has achieved consid-
erable success based on twin drivers of central decision-making and
selective state support. This has increased China’s comparative scientific
competitiveness and replaced a brain drain with something more like
a brain circulation between China and other scientific centres. What it
has not achieved as yet is an autonomous self-sustaining scientific com-
munity. Explanations for this are both domestic and international: they
reflect the policies and institutions that China has developed to pursue
science catch-up but they also reflect China’s difficulty of developing
an independent voice as it attempts to move from the periphery to the
core of global science. Zhang defines the Chinese scientific paradigm
as post-hoc pragmatism. This means that science is seen as problem-
solving – as opposed to pursuing abstract inquiry – and that most often
the identification of issues for research is retrospective rather than pro-
spective. Zhang argues that China has been focused on emulating the
best international practice with the aim of applying such knowledge
to China’s needs; but not developing new scientific ideas or practices
that would allow China to challenge the way knowledge is produced
and which would allow it to emerge as a scientific leader rather than
a follower. Political direction and policy-based incentives have allowed
the Chinese scientific community to catch up with international coun-
terparts but not to establish a leading autonomous community at the
frontier of science.
Michael Barr also notes the role of state direction in China’s pursuit of
cultural soft power (wenhua ruan shili). Barr argues that the criticisms of
China for relying on statist definitions of what culture is and what it is
for rather than allowing culture to emerge as a form of social knowledge
is misplaced: many governments support cultural development and
attempt to shape cultural identities for political purposes. Barr argues
that China’s use of culture as a form of knowledge power is distinctive
in that it is primarily an exercise in self-explanation: the discourse of
Chinese soft power is about explaining China to itself as well as to the
wider world. It is for this reason that the practice of culture is always
highly political: the state cannot afford to have China’s identity openly
contested. This also accounts for the fundamentally conservative nature
of the Chinese cultural discourse: China’s modernity is an arena of
254 How Close is National Rejuvenation?

pervasive risk and uncertainty so that neither the present nor the future
look particularly stable, and only the past is considered sufficiently safe
to be the basis of statist values. This creates the paradox of modern
China seeking its identity in the past rather than the future.
Shi Yinhong and Zhang Xiaoming consider China’s modernization
as a great power in terms of strategic and diplomatic character. Shi
argues that the Chinese military have achieved remarkable advances
in military modernization and that this is now feeding into a new
strategic vision and capacity that will allow China to undertake more
ambitious tasks and objectives: China is advancing both its interests
and its capacities. In contrast Zhang Xiaoming thinks that China’s
posture in relation to international society has not changed so much in
the modern era: Xi Jinping’s Chinese Dream of a strong nation and a
strong military is one that could have been expressed by most Chinese
leaders in the last 100 years. Zhang notes the new geopolitical phase of
China’s diplomacy: China is able to undertake increased diplomatic and
security activity in more distant regions but there is also an increased
emphasis by Xi Jinping on managing China’s complex neighbourhoods
so these support the goals of national rejuvenation. China’s advocacy of
a ‘new kind of great power relations’ with America should also be seen
in this context of managing complex geopolitics while maintaining
the primacy of national rejuvenation as the objective. Even with this
widening and deepening of China’s diplomatic efforts Zhang does not
see China’s strategy as aimed at challenging the fundamental norms
and institutions of the Western-dominated international society for two
reasons. First, China has benefited greatly from its co-operative stance
towards the existing international society: China has risen through
integration not through opposition. Second, if China was to weaken the
existing international society it would have to propose something that
would take its place and China has neither the will nor the capacity to
develop an alternative to the current system. This does not mean that
China is content with the status quo: China sees international society
as undergoing a necessary process of reform in which new ideas, actors
and institutions emerge. China sees itself as both representing and
encouraging this kind of international reform.
In summary, China’s pursuit of rejuvenation by the Chinese form of
modernity is evaluated in quite wide-ranging terms. The main areas of
success are identified by Deng, Cheung, Shi and X. Zhang in econom-
ics, strategy and diplomacy. China’s wealth, military development and
diplomatic capacity seem to support the idea of some kind of grand
rejuvenation. However, as Kerr points out in his essay, this is because
 David Kerr 255

China’s rise has been a ‘state-first’ rise: wealth, military modernization

and diplomatic effort have been privileged by the state for the state.
Tsang’s concept of consultative Leninism notes the political gains that
the CCP has been able to achieve from social and economic moder-
nity: in nearly all aspects of its work  – consultation, responsiveness,
economic performance, ideology, coercion – it has been able to convert
social and economic resources into ‘state-strengthening’. At the same
time Tsang refers to the system as resilient but not yet as successful as its
sustainability is still unknown. When we look away from state-centric
assumptions about modernization the picture becomes more complex
and varied. J. Zhang and Barr note both successes and barriers in China’s
pursuit of knowledge power. In the fields of science and culture state-
centricity has permitted some kinds of rapid catch-up as China seeks
to emulate other successful knowledge countries: China’s centralized
decision-making and ability to direct resources towards specific projects
has to date been successful and gained some international recognition.
However, both Zhang and Barr point to some limitations in the areas
of sustainability and instrumentality. The sustainability question relates
to whether China can have knowledge systems that know what to do
when they are not being given specific government directives: path-
dependency can be a strength in early system-building but become an
impediment as systems attempt to become self-sustaining. The instru-
mentality of the Chinese approach to knowledge is evident in both sci-
ence and culture: knowledge is assumed to be something you need in
order to achieve other goals. The idea that good and even useful knowl-
edge might emerge without having specific instrumental functions is
not evident in the Chinese scientific and soft power debates.
Kerr and Tobin move furthest away from state-centric evaluations
of rejuvenation in their consideration of civil society and ethnic
politics. Both authors point to the contentious politics that modernity
has brought to China’s society and question whether state policies
are producing the stability and unity that is claimed for them. Social
modernity is creating considerable pressure on governance questions
for society across China and particularly intense problems of govern-
ance in ethnic relations. Kerr and Tobin point to the limitations of the
prevailing institutional framework to meet these challenges of govern-
ance. It is also notable that they think the civil society question and the
ethnic relations question in China are in some part an identity problem,
about who China is becoming. Kerr argues that having a China Model
without a civil society poses great problems for stable development in
China’s domestic and international identities. Tobin notes that the two
256 How Close is National Rejuvenation?

generations of China’s nationalities scholars both long for a unified

Chinese nation to underpin its great power rise and worry greatly that
a rising China might also be a divided China, but that they have no
clear idea of how to achieve this within the limits of China’s present
institutions and ideas.
In sum the closer the authors examine the state the more they are
inclined to see the successes of rejuvenation; the closer they examine
the experiences of society the more inclined they are to see accumula-
tion of problems and considerable variation in the effects of rejuvena-
tion for different parts of Chinese society.

How close is China to great rejuvenation?

This leaves the authors of the volume with a final question: is national
rejuvenation of China something that has occurred, will occur, or might
or might not occur? The answers to this question are also quite varied.
None of the authors think that rejuvenation has been achieved; where
they differ is in the degree of confidence they have for prevailing ideas,
institutions and policies to achieve rejuvenation. Steve Tsang’s five char-
acteristics of consultative Leninism indicate some of the problems in
conducting evaluation of rejuvenation. He says consultative Leninism
has given the Party-state as much resilience as it can expect without
committing to democratic transition. The new leadership’s adoption of
the China Dream of rejuvenation in his view indicates their increased
confidence that the prevailing system has achieved sustainability, and
perhaps also their perception that the Western challenge to the Chinese
system has weakened in the wake of damaging wars and financial crisis.
However, Tsang points out that this system has the traditional failings
of all absolutist government: there is no one to blame but the state
when things go wrong because no one has any power but the state.
At the same time there is no political-constitutional mechanism for
dealing with failure. The Chinese system has two safety-valves that are
supposed to overcome these shortcomings: a form of nationalism that
blames foreigners for China’s problems and a system of repression that
can impose state control if consultative mechanisms fail. Tsang doubts
whether these two fail-safes can succeed indefinitely and concludes that
consultative Leninism must embrace change. However, this must imply
democratic change – as there is no other kind available – and this raises
the question of whether the Party can move from consultative Leninism
to democratic constitutionalism and stay in power. If it achieves this it
will be the first Communist Party to do so.
 David Kerr 257

David Kerr questions the idea that China can be rejuvenated without
permitting the institutionalization of civil society: the economic and
social formation of the world’s largest urban society must be matched
with its political and legal formation. Institutionalization of the civil
society is likely to drive forward democratic politics but that is not the
main objective of civil society politics today. State–society relations in
contemporary China are strongly focused on the nature and quality of
governance. At present the state has been able to separate expectations
and evaluations of governance but this is unlikely to stay the case: as
China’s citizens redefine political society their evaluations and expec-
tations of governance will converge. The principal location for this
convergence will be the struggle to move China from ‘law of the state’
towards ‘law over the state’: Chinese citizens’ movements will move to
constitutionalize the state. Kerr is also sceptical about an international
rejuvenation for China without a civil society. China is asymmetrically
engaged with global governance and this not only compromises China’s
own governance needs but presents a barrier in resolving China’s prob-
lems with international identity. A  rejuvenated China would have to
have a more balanced and engaged relationship with the main struc-
tures of international society but to achieve this it would have to accept
that its own civil society has a positive and independent role to play.
David Tobin questions whether China can be ready for great rejuve-
nation when its fundamental issues with identity are unresolved. Using
debates on ethnic politics and policies as a mirror in which to view
China’s worries about identity he notes how conflicts around China’s
‘interior identity’ both reflect and serve to shape China’s desire for a
new international identity. Scholars and intellectuals are ‘thinking up
new ways of being Chinese’ as part of the project of building a rejuve-
nated China; but this produces conflicting views of how to achieve the
unified identity that China needs. The core of this struggle seems to be
between mono-cultural and multi-cultural images of China. The multi-
culturalists hold the traditional Marxist view that ethnic differences
are a product of incomplete or distorted development. In consequence
as China develops it will be possible to achieve an identity that provides
equality, pluralism and unity in equal measure. The mono-culturalists
seem more concerned with geopolitics than development: they see
internal divisions as a barrier to China’s rise and a source of weakness
that can be exploited by hostile external forces. China will have to
abandon the idealism of ‘harmony through diversity’ for the realism
of great power transition. In Tobin’s view the ethnicity debates reveal
the degree of anxiety China faces when discussing multi-ethnicity and
258 How Close is National Rejuvenation?

multi-culturalism. The logic of great rejuvenation is that China is sur-

mounting its challenges and can view the future with confidence; but
the identity debates of China suggest deeper concerns about whether
ethnic unity is being achieved and whether China can rise and stay
united.
The two essays on China’s political economy provide broadly posi-
tive appraisals of the course of national rejuvenation. Kent Deng argues
that the neo-Westernization system developed under reform and open-
ing has achieved the correct balance between ‘Chinese learning as the
foundation and Western learning for utility’. The connection of utili-
tarian forces of capital and technology to the Chinese foundations of
organizational stability and abundant labour power have transformed
China into an industrial superpower in two generations. In terms of
China’s economic history, including the disastrous consequences of an
attempted Sovietization of China’s society and economy, the current
period of modern economic growth can be classed as one of consider-
able rejuvenation. In the same manner Gordon G. K. Cheung points
to the positive developments in Chinese charitable activity. However,
his interpretation of economic change points to the dual motivations
for the rise of Chinese philanthropy. The rise in charitable giving is the
result of vast expansion in personal wealth in China but it is also being
designed as a form of state-corporate social policy aimed at addressing
the downside of China’s new economic system: environmental degrada-
tion, social inequality and the loss of economic security. Cheung notes
that charitable giving is being promoted as part of the reform of the
economic model set out in the 12th Five-Year Plan and further endorsed
by the decisions of the CCP taken since the 18th Party Congress in
2012. The aim of these changes is to achieve sustainability in the broad-
est sense, including though a fairer distribution of the gains of growth
rather than accumulation alone. Cheung argues that whether this shift
can be achieved is a testing ground not just for Xi Jinping and his idea
of the China Dream but for China itself.
The essays of Joy Y. Zhang on China’s scientific paradigm and Michael
Barr on China’s soft power paradigm suggest rising capacity and confi-
dence that China can join the top rank of countries in these fields. But
they both note a tension in the respective paradigms between doing this
in a Chinese way and simply duplicating Western knowledge systems.
Zhang argues that the Chinese scientific community remains in the
subaltern position of increasing global presence and reputation but
remaining conformist to the Western grammar of science. The Chinese
model for advancing scientific research has allowed China to achieve
 David Kerr 259

considerable catch-up in doing science but it has rendered China a fol-

lower and not yet a leader in scientific development. China faces both
internal and international restrictions that reinforce each other. The
paradigm of post-hoc pragmatism means that administrative direction
is towards problems or events that the science administrations have
already identified so that ‘rules were based on the lessons [research-
ers] learned from failure’. Post-hoc pragmatism represents a scientific
rationale that suffers from ‘administrative capture’ in that it is reluc-
tant to align with core social values or to confront pending challenges.
These restrictions domestically are then compounded by the difficulty
Chinese researchers face in having their voice accepted as equal in the
Western-dominated scientific communities. China needs to change its
scientific research system  – ideas, policies and organization  – to allow
autonomy for the scientific community, including more autonomy for
engagements between science and society. Michael Barr details China’s
intense interest in developing a system of public diplomacy and accord-
ing culture a particular role in that. The Chinese view the world of public
diplomacy as Western-dominated as governments, medias and cultural
producers co-operate to advance the Western view of the world. China
is seen as suffering from an understanding gap: it needs to have greater
international presence and communicative power so that the image of
China is in Chinese hands not in the hands of foreigners. This seems
understandable but more problematic is where China has chosen to find
the contents of its new international image, which is in the past rather
than the present. As noted this may be because the past is a lot less politi-
cally sensitive than the present, but it may be that China is nostalgic
for a world in which the West was largely absent. There is a paradox in
China’s ‘back to the future’ soft power strategy: China wants to use its
traditions to advance its international image but many of the symbols
that it deploys reveal a China that is different from other places, not
the same as other places. China’s soft power symbolism often seems to
point away from the universal grammar of successful public diplomacy.
As both Zhang and Barr suggest, China’s development of science and
culture as forms of knowledge power is not simply about policies, insti-
tutions and resources, it is fundamentally about the identity of China.
In neither science nor soft power has China been able to achieve an
independent identity that is not in some senses referential to Western-
centric paradigms. China aspires to do science and cultural diplomacy
a distinctively Chinese way but it is not yet sure how to go about this.
Shi Yinhong believes that China’s strategic modernization is one
of the surest indicators that great rejuvenation is under way. The use
260 How Close is National Rejuvenation?

of this term reveals the new Chinese leadership’s confidence that it

can meet the range of strategic challenges that all rising powers face,
from possible emergencies to the emerging ‘structural rivalry’ with the
United States. This represents a fundamental shift from the era of Deng
Xiaoping when a traditional ‘defence by diplomacy’ was necessary
due to problems of domestic backwardness. The combined successes
of economic development and military modernization have placed
China in a position where it need not fear the ‘Clausewitzian moment’
when vital interests can only be defended by force. In contrast to Shi
Yinhong’s confident and resolute China, Zhang Xiaoming presents a
more cautious picture of China’s rise. Noting China’s more determined
stance on core interests and the widening spectrum of China’s geopo-
litical interests, Zhang does not believe that there has been a significant
change in China’s posture towards the international society: China
wants increased integration and status within the prevailing order even
as international society undergoes some necessary shifts in leadership
and institutions that reflect global changes. The United States’ position
as the sole superpower is not likely to change in the immediate future
and China’s primary responsibility is to seek a new kind of great power
relationship with America that will allow both to secure their vital inter-
ests. The China Dream is not the announcement of a radical China that
will challenge the norms and institutions of the current international
society. It is however the announcement that China’s interests in the
international society and its views about reform of international society
will have to be awarded the consideration that its changed international
status mandates.
In conclusion, all the authors accept that great rejuvenation is under
way and that many things have been achieved. A  number of essays
question whether the ideas, policies and institutions that brought
China thus far, into the era of national rejuvenation, can continue
unchanged. Problems of continuity, sustainability, reform, and even
radical reform, are debated in the essays. The essays also note that a
number of challenges are mounting in line with modernization rather
than receding. Two general conclusions can be reached about the future
of national rejuvenation based on the essays.
First, it is very hard to look further into the future of China than per-
haps ten years ahead. The course that national rejuvenation has covered
is relatively clear; the path that lies ahead is harder to discern. It should
be remembered that the course of national rejuvenation over the last
100 years has been an erratic and often hazardous journey for China.
The discourse of the China Dream assumes that stability of institutions,
 David Kerr 261

ideas and basic domestic and international relations has been achieved
but are we confident that the current system of rejuvenation is sta-
ble and sustainable? Evaluating the trajectories that China’s national
rejuvenation might take is quite difficult, therefore, and none of the
authors want to take particularly strong positions on what China might
look like 20 years into the future.
A second general conclusion is the persistence of the identity prob-
lem. In this volume China’s national rejuvenation is debated as a prac-
tical process of widespread modernization, catch-up, and institutional,
intellectual and policy change; but grand rejuvenation is clearly also
about China’s identity under rejuvenation. Many of the essays treat
rejuvenation as an identity question at least as much as a moderniza-
tion question: about where China’s idea of itself is heading; about what
we know or do not know about the identity of a rejuvenated China;
about how national rejuvenation reflects and creates complex and
sometimes contentious questions about who modern China wants to
be. The uncertainties of national rejuvenation noted in the first general
conclusion obviously relate to this identity problem. It will remain
quite difficult to give firmer prognoses on the course of national reju-
venation until we have more certainty about what China, or whose
China, is being rejuvenated. As such the question of how many China
Dreams there are and how they can be mutually resolved is likely to
remain open.

Notes and references

1. ‘Xi Jinping: zaijie zaili, jixu wei shixian Zhongguo meng fendou’ [Xi Jinping:
make persistent efforts and continue the struggle to realize the China Dream],
http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2013/03-17/4650079.shtml. 17 March 2013.
2. This conclusion about the limited transferability of the Chinese way or model
was expressed by all authors in this volume when they attended the work-
shop at Durham University in July 2013.
Index

Alagappa, Muthiah 38–9 Europe 94–8, 101–3, 108–9,

115–17, 120, 168, 170, 204,
Bao Shengli 76–80, 84–6 248, 251
Baum, Richard 10 India 106, 113–14, 157, 232–3
Bill and Melinda Gates Japan 104, 106, 110–11,
Foundation 145 113–16, 119, 134, 214, 222,
Bo Xilai 14,17, 49 230–2, 234, 237
Buffett, Warren 133, 145 Korea, North 231, 232
Korea, South 231, 234, 237
Callahan, William A. 65, 67 Korean War 113, 115
Carnegie, Andrew 146 Russia, Soviet Union 12, 15, 24,
Chiang Kai-shek 110–11 28, 30, 68, 71, 74, 77, 83–6, 94,
Clausewitz, Carl von 202–4, 208, 108–17, 113, 232, 248, 258
215–17, 221–3 China, foreign policy 70, 73, 82,
China as civilization 25, 46, 67, 187, 223, 229–34, 239–4
69, 71, 74–5, 83, 101, 185, 188, ‘new type of great powers
226, 250 relations’ 234–39, 260
China and democracy 11–18, 20, 25, China, international society 54–8,
27, 29, 37, 40–1, 46–7, 50–1, 58, 214, 226–45, 254, 257, 260
108, 251, 256–7 China as alternative (see also China
China Dream Model, Chinese Way) 14, 57–9,
defined 1–4, 65–7, 191, 226–9, 67, 241–2, 254
246–7 China’s rise 53, 65, 68–70, 73,
and international relations 52–6, 75, 133, 149, 151, 185, 188,
222–3, 229–34, 240–1 217–18, 226, 228, 232, 234, 238,
and national rejuvenation 3–4, 36, 249, 255–8
51–2, 247–61 China as revisionist 239–41
and Xi Jinping 10–11, 13–14, 27, China Model 4, 13–14, 36, 52–8,
30, 37, 54, 246 247–8, 252, 255
China economic development 11, Chinese Academy of Medical
13–14, 25, 28–9, 40–41, 48, Sciences 165
229–30, 235 Chinese Academy of Sciences 160–1
as economic history 94–131 Chinese Academy of Social
and ethnic question 66, 72–3, 76, Sciences 56, 69, 75–7
78–83, 257 Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
China, external relations Central Committee 20–1, 163,
Africa 82, 149 184, 233
America 10, 29, 65, 108, consultative Leninism,
145–9, 182, 188–9, 223, 227, defined 11–12
240, 254 Leninist Party 10–34, 40, 49, 51,
Asia 112, 223, 231–3, 237–8, 241 67–9, 73–4, 80, 251, 255

263
264 Index

Chinese Communist Confucius institutes 182, 189

Party (CCP) – continued constitutionalism 12–14, 38, 46, 58,
1989 crisis 12, 15, 19, 28–9, 195 251, 256–7
Party Congress 16–17, 19–20, 83, corruption 14–18, 26, 46–51, 59,
117, 150, 186, 220, 222, 229–31 194–5
Party ideology (see also Marxism, Cui Tiankai 236, 240
nationalism) 13, 24–7, 37, 40–1, cultural diplomacy 181, 183,
45, 83, 116–18, 185, 190, 249 186–90, 194–5, 259
Party organization 15, 20, 22, 29, Cultural Revolution 49, 81, 116,
42–5, 51, 159–60, 181 180, 250
Chinese dynasties Cummings, Milton 181
Han 202, 205–7, 209–11, 219
Ming 87, 95, 101, 209–13 Dai Zhiyong 46
Qin 205, 208–12 Davies, Gloria 67
Qing 74, 87, 95–108, 119, 141–3, Deng Xiaoping 12–13, 17–19, 82,
213–14 116–20, 217–19, 228, 239
Tang 209
Chinese history 1–2, 25, 188, 246, education 25, 46, 67, 102, 137,
248–50 139–40, 159–60, 191, 193, 227
Chinese identity (see also ethnic in ethnic relations 74–5, 80–6
identity) 3, 25, 57, 65, 67–9, environment 30, 42, 136–8, 151,
72–3, 86–7, 191, 194–5, 252–3, 181, 227, 258
255, 257, 259, 261 ethics
Chinese modernization (see also business 133, 143, 147, 151
reform and opening) 13, 25, science 158–9, 167–7
36–7, 39, 40–1, 52, 71, 73, 149–50, ethnic identity (minzu) 65–93, 187,
156, 217, 219, 231, 248–50, 252, 249–50, 252, 255, 257–8
254–5, 259–61 defined 70–1
Chinese nationalism (see also Han
nationalism; patriotism) 24–9, 69, Fewsmith, Joseph 51
73, 76, 80, 194, 223, 249–50, 256 five-year plan, 12th 44, 133, 136,
Chinese People’s Political 150, 184, 258
Consultative Conference Friedman, Eli 44
(CPPCC) 20, 143, 183
Chinese Way 52, 54, 119, 166, 183, Gates, Bill 133, 145
226, 246–7, 258–9 Great Leap Forward 73, 76, 79, 112
Christianity (see also Jesuits in famine 114, 116
China) 95, 98, 145, 167 governance 11, 13–15, 18–20, 22,
civil society 20, 22, 29, 35–64, 26, 35–64, 67–8, 96, 149, 158–63,
188–90, 252, 255, 257 167, 187, 239, 241, 252, 255, 257
defined 37–8
and state corporatism 29, 42–5, Han Heng 45
49, 51, 54, 58, 252 Han nationalism (see also patriotism)
Confucian values (see also harmony, 25, 75–6, 78, 80, 85–7, 187, 252
harmonious society, minben, Hao Shiyuan 72, 76–81, 84–6
ren) 14, 29, 78, 80, 95–6, 101, harmony, harmonious society, 13,
117–18, 134, 144, 180–1, 185, 37, 40–1, 77, 83, 86, 257
191–3, 195–6, 202, 206, 211–14, 248 Hong Kong 133–4, 141–4
 Index 265

Howell, Jude 42 Ministry of Science and Technology

Hu Angang 48, 67–85 (MOST) 160, 170
Hu Jintao 13–15, 17, 19, 21, 35, 41, Mongolia
73, 83, 117, 220, 229, 249 Inner Mongolia (Mongolian
Hu Yaobang 15, 17 people) 25, 70, 79, 138
Hughes, Christopher R. 53 Outer Mongolia 111, 209, 212

intellectuals, scholars 39, 41, NGOs 22, 42, 44

48, 57, 65–9, 75–6, 82, 86–7, Nolan, Peter 134
115, 184, 186, 194, 249, Nye, Joseph 182, 190
252, 257
Obama, Barack 86, 235
Jesuits in China 95–7, 99, 101 Obama, Michelle 193
Jiang Zemin 11, 13, 15, 17, 117, 159, Olympics, Beijing 26, 66, 82, 189
184, 219, 228 opium 98–100
wars 2, 100–1, 227
Kang Xiaoguang 45 Overseas Chinese 56, 118, 141–4,
151, 192
labour 42–4, 135–6
Lee, Ching Kwan 44 Pan Wei 48
legal system 13, 17–18, 38–9, patriotism 2, 12, 25, 27, 43, 51, 54,
41, 43, 49, 57–8, 102, 108, 83, 252
192, 257 patriotic worrying 67, 69, 72,
Leibold, James 69 83, 87
Li Keqiang 19, 23, 159, 233 Peng Liyuan 191–5
Liu Xiaobo 18 Peterson, Glen 141
Lu Jie 50–1 philanthropy, Chinese 132–55,
251, 258
Ma Rong 67, 69, 71–5, 84 compared with American
Mao Zedong 76, 81, 109, 111–20, philanthropy 144–50
133, 180, 215–16, 221, 223,
228, 249 reform and opening 2, 3, 40, 53,
Marxism 13, 70, 76–77, 80–82, 117 180, 217, 219, 230, 239, 242,
McCarthy, Susan K. 43 249–51, 258
meritocracy 15–16, 19, 48, 50 religion 42–3, 95–6, 133–4, 145
military affairs 19, 228, 237–8, 249, ren (benevolence) 14, 101, 117, 144,
254–5, 260 184, 196
Central Military Commission 10, research and development (see also
16, 219, 227 science) 156–60, 164, 174
maritime affairs 220, 222, Road to Rival Exhibition 1, 10
231–3, 238 Rockefeller Foundation 145, 149
People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 71,
193–5, 215, 222, 249 Sartori, Giovanni 38
strategic tradition 201–25 science, Chinese 146, 149, 156–79,
minben (people as foundation) 230, 253, 255, 258–9
48, 117 organization 159–66
Ministry of Health (MOH) 20, paradigm 157, 174, 253, 258–9
158, 160 Shambaugh, David 241
266 Index

Shi Yinhong 55 West, the

Sichuan earthquake, 2008 21–2, 26, Western learning 53, 101–4, 116,
133–4 118–19, 120, 157–9, 164, 174,
Sinocentrism 95, 98, 101–1 202–5, 258–9
soft power (see also cultural Western values 24–5, 39–40,
diplomacy) 56, 65, 67, 57–8, 73, 83, 85, 133–4,
83, 180–200, 217–18, 234, 186, 259
253, 258 Westernization 86, 101–4, 107–9,
defined 181–2 157, 248
socialism 39, 40–1, 45, 54, 58, 68, Western Development Project 79
73, 78–9, 85 Wong, John 134
with Chinese characteristics 2, 10,
18, 116–18, 228, 249 Xi Jinping 1–4, 10–11, 13–16,
Southern Weekly 45–6 19, 23, 27–30, 36–7, 45, 49,
Steinfeld, Edward S. 56–7, 134 54, 65–6, 132–3, 150, 163,
Sun Tzu 202–8, 210, 214–17, 221–2, 180, 184, 193, 195, 221–2,
248–9 226–33, 235, 241, 249–50,
Sun Yatsen 108–10, 229 254, 258
Xinjiang 65–93
Taiwan 72, 144, 186, 219 Xu Zhiyong 46–7
technocrats 18–19, 117
ti and yong 53–4, 118, 120, 258 Yan Xuetong 187–8, 238
Tibet 25–6, 66, 74, 186, 190 Yang Jiechi 228, 235–6
Tsu, Andrew Yu-Yue 141 Yu Keping 40
Yuan Shikai 108
United Nations 231, 239
Zhang Haiyang 66, 76–83, 86
Wang Qishan 14 Zhang Weiwei 48, 65
Wang Yizhou 228 Zhao Qizheng 183, 186
Weber, Max 94, 133 Zhao Ziyang 16–17
Wedeman, Andrew 48–9 Zhu Weiqun 68, 71, 73–6, 84, 86
Wen Jiabao 21–2, 24, 27, 49 Zunz, Oliver 144