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The Chinese View of Their Place in the World: An Historical Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2019

John Cranmer-Byng
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Extract

The object of this article is to examine changing Chinese attitudes to their place in the world from a Chinese historical and intellectual perspective, in order to provide a basis for anticipating developments in the future attuned more to a Chinese than to a western point of view. The question immediately arises whether such a perspective is in any way relevant to the recent theory and practice of international relations in the People's Republic of China, and what insights, if any, such a perspective may provide for discussing the future. This is a controversial subject concerned with the nature of cultural change, and the extent to which " imprinting" from a long continuity of accepted social and cultural values can psychologically condition people even after a decisive break in that tradition appears to have occurred.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 53 , March 1973 , pp. 67 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1973

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References

1. Mark Mancall, “The persistence of tradition in Chinese foreign policy,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 349 (September 1963), pp. 14-26. Benjamin Schwartz, “ The Chinese perception of world order, past and present” in Fairbank (ed.) The Chinese World Order, Traditional China's Foreign Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. 276-88. For a recent analysis which tends to reinforce Schwartz, see Albert Fuerwerker, “ Chinese history and the foreign relations of contemporary China,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 402 (July 1972), pp. 1-14.

2. The fullest analysis to date is in John K. Fairbank (ed.), The Chinese World Order. The contributions by Mancall, Wang Gungwu, Fairbank and Schwartz are of special relevance to the theme of this article.

3. See J. L. Cranmer-Byng, “ The Chinese attitude towards external relations,” International Journal, Vol. 21, No. 1 (winter 1965-6), pp. 57-77.

4. On the implications of this development of positive law in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century, see Mark Mancall, Russia and China: Their Diplomatic Relations to 1728 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 266-76.

5. Paul A. Cohen, “Wang Tao's perspective on a changing world” in A. Feuerwerker et al., Approaches to Modern Chinese History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. 142. Cohen's article contains an excellent exposition of Wang Tao's perception of might and right in interstate relations, pp. 138-45.

6. Confucian China and its Modern Fate: a Trilogy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), especially Vol. 1, ch. 7.

7. Schwartz, “The Chinese perception of world order,” p. 284.

8. Benjamin Schwartz, “The Maoist image of world order,” Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 21, No. 1, 1967. Reprinted in Schwartz, Communism and China: Ideology in Flux (N.Y.: Atheneum, 1970), pp. 228-42.

9. Cohen, “ Wang T'ao's perspective on a changing world,” p. 145. See also pp. 153-4.

10. See Joseph Levenson, Confucian China and its Modern Fate, Vol. 1, pp. 81-2.

11. Joseph Ixvenson, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953), p. 169.

12. Translated in Wm. Theodore de Bary et al. (comp.), Sources of Chinese Tradition (N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 847-9. See also Levenson, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, ch. 6, in which he analyses Liang's intellectual position between 1912 and 1919.

13. Maurice Meisner, Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 64.

14. Ibid. pp. 46-7.

15. Frank W. Price, trans., San Min Chu J; The Three Principles of the People (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1927). Abridged ed. (Taipei: China Cultural Service, 1953), p. 50. The Chinese text occurs in the Shanghai, 1927 ed., p. 148.

16. W. G. Saywell, “Modernization without modernity: Tai Chi-t'ao, a conservative nationalist,” Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol. 5, No. 4 (October 1970), p. 263. For a fuller treatment of Tai, see William G. Saywell, “The thought of Tai Chi-t'ao, 1912-1928 “ (unpublished thesis, University of Toronto, 1968).

17. Ishwer C. Ojha, Chinese Foreign Policy in an Age of Transition: the Diplomacy of Cultural Despair (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969). Ch. 2 refers.

18. Meisner, Li Ta-chao, pp. 126-7.

19. H. Carrere d'Encausse and S. Schram, Marxism and Asia (London: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 1969).

20. Meisner, Li Ta-chao, p. xiv.

21. D'Encausse and Schram, Marxism and Asia, pp. 45-6.

22. For a suggestive discussion on this problem see James Chieh Hsiung, Ideology and Practice: the Evolution of Chinese Communism (N.Y.: Praeger, 1970), chs. 5-7, especially pp. 158-65.

23. On this point, see Benjamin Schwartz, “ China and the West in the thought of Mao Tse-tung,” in Ping-ti Ho and Tang Tsou (ed.), China in Crisis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), Vol. 1, Bk. 1, pp. 365-79, and the comments on this article by Stuart Schram and Donald Munro, pp. 380-96.

24. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, Vol. IV (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1961), pp. 411-23.