China's Rise and the West's Bias

[ 165 ] book review roundtable • china rising does outside its precinct—what ideas and norms China promotes in the world at large and how those ideas and norms are interpreted, constructed, and acted upon—will together become a wider test of the peaceful rise thesis. China’s Rise and the West’s Bias Bin Yu Until the publication of David Kang’s China Rising, China’s rise was greeted with apprehension, alarm, and even outright antagonism by much of Western academia, including general international relations (IR) theorists and China studies scholars. Kang proffers a “puzzle”: why has the rapid rise of China not led to a balancing backlash by other Asian nations? Kang’s answer is to “de-Orientalize”1 China as it was: a big power but also a nice one. IR Theorists’ Blind Spots For most Western theorists, China’s behavior in history is either unheard of or unthinkable. As a result, realists are worried that China’s rise inevitably will upset the Western-dominated international system,2 and the liberalist “democracy-peace” treatise has no room for the rise of a non-Western, nonChristian , non-white, and undemocratic (not of Western-style) power like China.3 Samuel Huntington’s brilliant yet provocative “clash of civilizations” discourse provides a convenient package for a “grave” new world, in which China’s Confucianist culture would conspire with Islam to undo the West.4 These theorists derive their conclusions from the West’s own history of social Darwinism and amplify this history as universal (p. 23). Seemingly unaware 1 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). 2 John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001), 4. 3 Michael W. Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” American Political Science Review 80, no. 4 (December 1986): 1115–69. 4 Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 93 (Summer 1993): 45. bin yuis Senior Fellow for the Shanghai Institute of American Studies and Director of East Asian Studies at Wittenberg University, Ohio. He can be reached at . [ 166 ] asia policy that interstate relations can be carried out differently, these theorists contend that the West’s past of wars and conquest will be China’s future as a great power. According to Kang, a strong China has not historically been associated with aggression or expansionism. The number and boundaries of countries in East Asia have remained essentially the same since AD 1200 (pp. 3–7). In contrast, the independent European states, numbering some 500 in the year 1500, were reduced in number to 20 by 1900 (pp. 37–41). There were many losers in the course of Western history. There is a key difference between the East Asian and Western systems: the East Asian system of yesteryear consisted of formal hierarchy and informal equality (with neighboring states enjoying de facto autonomy), whereas the Western system has established formal equality but informal hierarchy based on power, balance of power, or hegemony. With a strong China in East Asia, other nations in the region did not wish to challenge China, and China had no need to fight (pp. 25, 41). A system that for millennia had served the interests of all in East Asia was swiftly displaced in the nineteenth century by a Western system of equality (sovereignty) in name—a survival-of-the-fittest system in reality. For East Asia this meant opium trade, territorial loss, and colonial conquest. And the rest is history. Only in the last 30 years, with China once again having become a strong and stable power in East Asia, have the region’s states exhibited a semblance of the traditional mode of reciprocity. China’s steady rise has so far engendered regional stability, mutual prosperity, and greater cooperation. China Studies: “Trees” without “Forests” If on the one hand IR theorists’ lack of awareness of China’s history and culture may be understandable—though not excusable—on the other hand Kang’s finding also challenges some China experts who immerse themselves deeply in China’s culture and history. One such group is the strategic-cultural school of thought pioneered by Harvard’s Iain Johnston. Based on his review of...