Why the civilization-state is fundamental to understanding China’s past and future

Martin Jacques, British scholar, former senior fellow at Cambridge University. (Photo/Xinhua)

China is profoundly different from Western countries. At the heart of this difference is the fact that China is a product of civilization, while the Western countries are a product of nation. Chinese civilization has an unbroken and continuous history of many millennia, and this civilizational inheritance shapes every aspect of modern-day China: the nature of government, the role of the family, the concept of the individual, and much more. Western countries are far more recent creations, which leads to the West’s inability to understand the difference between a civilization state and a nation-state, means that the West treats China as if it was a nation-state and, as a result, cannot understand it except in a very superficial way. Unsurprisingly, China fails the Western test of how a nation-state should be. How can it, if it is not a nation-state?

China, of course, is not only a civilization-state. The picture is a little bit more complicated than this. It was forced by its debilitating weakness at the end of the nineteenth century, during the dark days of the Century of Humiliation, to adopt the norms and values of the European-dominated international system and become a nation-state. China was obliged to become what it was not.

China, in effect, became a hybrid, forced to embrace a dual identity, primarily that of a civilization-state, and secondarily that of a nation-state. The western-dominated international system was, and remains, exclusively predicated on the nation-state. It is in this sphere that China behaves – and has long been obliged to behave – in the manner of a nation-state. But things have begun to change. As China has become more powerful, self-confident, and increasingly influential, it has demonstrated an increasingly distinctive approach to its relations with the rest of the world, one that reflects its civilizational history and fundamentally different values. A classic illustration of this is the Belt and Road Initiative, an idea that is rooted in China’s civilizational history. Belt and Road is very different from how the West views the world. Belt and Road has no parallel in the nation-state tradition.

The origins of Belt and Road take us back to the way in which Chinese civilization evolved. One of the most fundamental ideas in Chinese thinking is tianxia – or ‘all under heaven’. At the heart of tianxia was the notion of the world as embracing everyone. This stood in stark contrast to the Western approach, dating from the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which gave birth to the idea of the nation-state. From a Western perspective, the nation-state rather than the world is the starting point: the world is no more than a collection of nation-states. In the tianxia tradition, Chinese thinking, thus, is very different: inclusive rather than exclusive, global rather than national. It has a concept of the world in the way that the West does not. Add to this the fact of China’s sheer size, that it embraces almost one-fifth of the world’s population, which naturally engenders and leads to a very different kind of mentality. Belt and Road is informed and inspired by a concept of the world in the manner, historically speaking, of tianxia. For the Chinese this is a natural way of thinking. It is impossible to imagine any other country thinking in such an all-enveloping and inclusive manner. And, of course, in association with Belt and Road, the Chinese notion of tianxia has inspired other closely related and paradigmatic ideas, most notably a community with a shared future for humanity. The essence of such thinking is the ability to move beyond the narrow confines of the nation-state to a concept of much broader coalitions of opinion and action.

If civilizational thinking in Chinese foreign relations has, in the modern context, been a very recent phenomenon, that is not true of China itself. Chinese civilization has always exercised a profound influence on China’s own structures, norms, and ways of thinking. These ideas led to a highly ordered and coherent relationship between the state, society, the family, and the individual, at the heart of which was an intimate and symbiotic relationship between civilization and the state. The key to China’s remarkable success over an extraordinarily long period of history lies in the strength of Chinese civilization. During at least four periods of the last two millennia, China has been the most advanced, or one of the most advanced, countries in the world, and it now stands once more on the eve of another such period. China has been through several very serious periods of decline, but what has been remarkable is its resilience, its ability to rise again, not once but several times: no other civilization or country has been able to do this.

China is not alone in describing itself as a civilization. India is another example. The same is true of Turkey and Russia. Indeed, there are many examples of different civilizations across Africa, Asia, and South America. But, and here lies the rub, in the great majority of cases they fell victim to European colonialism. The colonial powers consciously sought to undermine and erase these pre-colonial civilizational traditions in the name of a Western modernising project that preached and insisted upon universal (that is, Western) values. One of the most important events of the last century, arguably the most important, was national liberation and the overthrow of colonial rule. It enabled for the first time in the modern era, a majority of people in the world to rule their own countries and become subjects in their own right, rather than being appendages of their colonial rulers. But independence, except in the most formal sense, was not to mean, and has not meant, respect or equality. In the name of Western modernisation, their traditions, customs, religions, ideas, languages, natural boundaries, and much else were lost or buried, or confined to a subterranean existence, or, alas, in many cases destroyed. Their continuity and their history were damaged, in some cases irreparably. There is now, however, a growing desire in these countries to rediscover and exhume their past, to reaffirm their traditions and customs. That is why there is a growing desire in developing countries to discover and restore their civilizational history. As the developing countries become more prosperous and more self-confident, this desire is likely to grow ever stronger. Given this history and yearning, it is easy and natural for these countries to relate to and embrace China’s insistence on the need to respect the diversity and inclusivity of civilizations. We can expect this to become a growing theme over the coming decades and far into the future.

The term Western civilization is occasionally used, but the term West is far more common. The word civilization is virtually never used to describe developing countries, except in the very distant past. How should we explain this glaring absence? It is not difficult. The West has been responsible for the destruction of many of these civilizations. The most blatant example was the near extermination of native Americans and the Australian aboriginal people; then there was the fate of those West Africans who were shipped to America to be sold as slaves. There were countless examples of suppression and discrimination in the colonies. In the name of Western modernity, these civilizations were effectively destroyed or largely lost. They were the victims of Western expansion across the world. America’s claim to be a civilization perished at the hands of the European settlers who effectively exterminated the native population. Given this, it is not surprising that the West is reluctant to dignify, or honour, them with the word civilization, or seek to exhume or restore them from the past. Their fate is a constant reminder of the iniquities of Western expansion. This is the main reason why the idea of civilization is not recognised or acknowledged in the West.

The idea of civilization, and of civilizational difference and diversity, has been placed at the forefront of global attention by China’s insistence on its fundamental importance, as exemplified by the Global Civilization Initiative. It is inconceivable that the West would have done this. For China, it is unsurprising. It lies at the very heart of its identity. Its success over several millennia is ultimately to be explained by the remarkable continuity of its civilization. Without the latter, China would be both unrecognisable and would have been incapable of achieving what it has. No other country enjoys anything like the same intimate relationship with its civilizational heritage as China. Nothing more starkly illustrates the profound gulf between Chinese and Western global thinking than China’s civilizational awareness and the West’s wanton blindness and insensitivity to the issue. China believes the many diverse civilizational traditions should be recognised and respected, that they are fundamental to achieving a more harmonious and peaceful world. Western foreign policy barely ever mentions them, let alone seeing them as a major priority. China’s own history has taught it not only to respect civilizational values but also hold them in the highest regard. Development and civilization are reverse sides of the same coin. Both are crucial for the success of developing countries, the former for primarily economic reasons and the latter for cultural reasons. Successful development requires civilizational and cultural self-confidence. The two are inextricably linked.

China is the great exemplar of civilization. It believes that, rather than being ignored, suppressed, or dismissed, civilizations, in their multiplicity, should be preserved, restored, celebrated, respected, and enriched. It believes that all civilizations are unique and of equal value, that civilizations should learn from each other, and that the future should bear witness to a great efflorescence of civilizations.

(Author: Martin Jacques, British scholar, former senior fellow at Cambridge University)