This is a comprehensive account of the major features of Chinese history down to the present. Its schematic approach highlights the main features of what made China the kind of state-based civilization or central kingdom it was, multifaceted with many layers and dimensions. Pulling them together into a frame that can be easily understood is a remarkable achievement.
I am impressed by its emphasis upon continuities, both China’s resilience and the patterns of dynastic rise and fall that led the emperor-state to believe that it would rise again after every fall. That confidence came from having a long period of history that both rulers and subjects had come to share. That was ensured by officials who recorded the patterns of reunification and resurgence through the centuries and paid special attention to the ups and downs of every dynasty as well as the reasons why some dynasties succeeded and others failed. The records were compiled with great care as to what lessons might be learned. The continuities noted were not arbitrary. They were determined by historians who drew on the wisdom of Confucian and Legalist thinkers that was accepted by all the people tasked to govern the state.
The emphasis upon continuities captures the varied responses to all challenges to political order, especially after the dynastic central kingdom of the Western Zhou (1046–771 BC) was set aside and warring feudal states defined a new reality for more than five centuries. In the struggle for mastery during an age of creativity and ambition, a larger idea of China as tianxia 天下(all under heaven) was produced. At its core was the drive to recover an undivided unity under the tianzi 天子 (Son of Heaven). The oneness, “one sun in the sky,” promised that whoever could bring the states together would be respected by all.
This concept of centrality was one that the rulers had defined for their people. The founders of the Shang and Zhou dynastic houses confirmed that they had developed the most appropriate governance structure for what was to become the largest agrarian civilization in the world. They had built their power and wealth along the Yellow River with intensive relations with the states of the Yangzi valley to its south and brought the two cultivated worlds together. By so doing, they supported the lives of numerous communities that came to share cultural values and support a single political order.
This strong awareness of past achievements supported by the records lies behind the idea of China’s centrality. This chapter picks out the key concepts that marked the country’s progress from its early past to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when it faced the most dangerous moments in its history. That is clearly outlined and I have little to add. What I shall do here is to connect that centrality to a paradigm that Brantly has done more than anyone else to advance, the concept of asymmetry in interstate relations, especially the theoretical model he provided to help us understand that asymmetry.
I have noted that the Chinese have long seen themselves as central and defined that quality of centrality for themselves. They did not wait for others to concede that to them. Nor was it merely a matter of pride in proven success, but of asserting the obvious, the reality of an exceptional state-building process. Brantly’s concept of presence is very helpful in giving us its geopolitical dimension. Every history of China refers to the fact that its two river systems, both among the largest in the world and, unlike anywhere else, flow from the same uplands source from west to east in the same direction and end up in the same ocean. Without being overly deterministic, I would argue that this provided the foundation of China’s continuous presence.
Added to this was the dimension that produced its cultural power: the Chinese script that still survives today. No other language has been so exclusive, and yet it impacted hugely on the region that included countries like Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. Allowing these neighbors access to key Chinese texts and records helped to project the sense of superiority that still remains in the minds of most Chinese.
Taking the vast agrarian base together with a distinctive literate system points to another kind of centrality, that arising out of the relationship between a strong centralized state and those nomadic organizations that did not need to learn from China but eyed its concentration of wealth with longing. Throughout history, most of China’s rulers had to confront that mobile power with the utmost care.
Chinese records show that the nomadic forces of Central Asia occupied more attention than other outsiders. That suggests that any description of China’s centrality with reference to peoples to the east and south must take account of the overland threats of wars and invasions. This was a centrality that had inbuilt imbalances. The threats did much to shape the very nature of China’s first imperial power of the Qin and Han dynasties.
Having held off numerous attacks and even pushed Chinese rule into nomad terrains, this Han centrality was so entrenched that, four centuries later, its northern half could survive centuries of foreign rule and still be identified as Chinese. As for the Han people who moved south to establish separate kingdoms, they dominated the indigenous peoples there and assimilated them into the larger agrarian economy. In that way, after surrendering the northern provinces to the Toba Turks, Han Chinese civilization expanded to the southern provinces, including the lands of the Yue 越 peoples of modern Vietnam.
The Confucian-Legalist state encouraged its subjects to become Chinese; if they accepted key ideas and institutions, they joined those who had enriched China’s civilization before them. Thus many descendants of the Xiongnu, Turkic, Tibetan, Mongolic, and Tungusic peoples started on the road to Chineseness and came to change the Chinese center itself. By the Tang dynasty, China had acquired a centrality encompassing a large part of the Eurasian continent. This did not mean that China was central to the known world, but its strategic centrality was recognized and defined by its precarious relationship with mobile non-agrarian enemies. In short, the concept of centrality was also shaped by the seriousness of the threats on China’s land borders.
To return to the question of asymmetry, it is not only the asymmetry of kingdoms in eastern Asia or of the smaller political units of the southwest but also that of a host of nomadic polities overland. The asymmetry between them and China forced them to form confederations strong enough to push into Chinese territory. I mentioned the Turkic and Tibetan armies that played their part in shaping the great Tang empire. Later leaders also learnt how they might be able to govern China. By the end of Tang, fragmentation in the empire forced its lesser kingdoms to accept a reversed asymmetry. As a result, for the next three centuries, the Song emperors acknowledged the power of the Khitan Liao, lost half their lands to the Jurchen Jin and the Tangut Xixia, and finally lost everything when all of China came under Mongol rule.
This procession of territorial losses marked the asymmetry of a great agrarian state conceding the military superiority of nomadic power. It was no accident that it was only after the Mongol interregnum that the Ming rulers and mandarins redesigned the tribute system to manage the borders. They adapted the tribute system to the new asymmetry and evolved a brilliant way of re-centering themselves into an older framework. It devised specific links with each nomadic group and, as much as possible, kept the groups separate and divided. This also meant that the less predictable nomadic forces could focus on wealth and power and expect treatment that was adjusted to meet their different needs. In contrast, China’s well-established relations with other agrarian states could remain tied to finer points of rituals and cultural exchange.
This might be seen as a cautious superiority, one that recognized an asymmetric reality in the agrarian society’s efforts to keep out a highly mobile enemy. When the Great Wall built across the whole length of the northern borderlands failed to stop the invaders, it was not surprising that the kingdoms of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan should become skeptical of what China’s centrality really meant. If that centrality was relative and changeable, at least the asymmetry remained a constant.
I shall be brief about how this condition might be compared to China’s experience with the West since the middle of the nineteenth century. This chapter rightly points out that China was always land-oriented and paid far less attention to maritime affairs. When it had the capacity to build a great navy and found that there were no enemies at sea, the mandarins stopped the navigations and destroyed the fleets. Their concentration on the Great Wall symbolized the nomadic dimension of asymmetry, and it suggests that the Mongol conquest was more than a passing nightmare. It gave the Chinese an early taste of what total defeat could mean. To be conquered again by the Manchu Qing represented for China a deepening of that experience and demonstrated the diminution of Han civilization in the eyes of its eastern neighbors.
At the same time, it could also be said that surviving two such conquests provided China with a faith in the centrality of what was later called “Chinese characteristics.” I am not suggesting that its elites were always confident of the outcome after each disaster. But if we look at the cultural residue of the two conquests on China’s history since the early nineteenth century, we can identify a resilience that emerged from two kinds of asymmetric resistance. One saw the possibility of total collapse and the necessity for China to be modernized with Euro-America as its model future. The other emerged with its new rulers confident that the radical changes needed can be controlled and the governance structure can remain recognizably Chinese.
The first resistance was the feeble response to the military challenge at sea that was made possible by the massive economic assets coming from Western Europe’s industrial capitalism. These incursions were further supported by a set of political institutions also never encountered before, the nation-state consciousness that shaped Western imperialism and went on to produce a new world order. China’s loss of centrality here was not merely because the maritime powers dominated the China coasts. Throughout the nineteenth century, Qing China never lost sight of the Turko-Mongol challenge to its continental west and retained huge defence forces to guard against Russian and British advances into Central Asia.
This continued to be significant when the dynastic state gave way to the Western-inspired Republic in 1912. After the Russian revolution and the self-defeating consequences to the European empires in two World Wars, many Chinese were inspired by the overland alternative to imperial capitalism and organized to oppose the modernity that the latter had offered as a model. For a while, after the Maoist victory in 1949, the asymmetry shifted from seaward to a westward outreach into the heart of the Eurasian continent. In the end, the Chinese communists found that there was no safety in that orientation and turned back to seek the progress that only the market economy could offer.
These costly reversals led to the second resistance. The adaptability and resilience demonstrated during the next five decades have enabled China to overcome another kind of asymmetry. Here I think Brantly’s concepts of presence, population, and production help to explain the relevance today of the multiple rise and fall experiences in China’s heritage. Put simply, when presence cannot be fragmented and entrepreneurial peoples are allowed room and motivation to learn, the production factor can take off afresh. Together that can make a tremendous difference to any status quo.
The situation today after the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the United States as the sole superpower created an exceptional asymmetry that China has risen to question. I agree that China’s partial centrality can be seen to have extended towards Pacific Asia because it is now awake to the dangers of neglecting maritime security. However, China has always had to deal with other kinds of asymmetry. It cannot afford to neglect the necessary balance to be safe and prosperous. In the new global order, it will still have to face the exceptional landlocked centrality of the Eurasian core that gave shape to the three ancient civilizations – the Sinic, the Indic, and the Mediterranean – that have survived to the present day.
