Unlike a nation-state, its frontiers were neither carefully drawn nor copiously policed, but were more like zones, tapering off from civilization through the various states of barbarianism. [741] It is not surprising that the centre of the world did not require a name, for the Middle Kingdom needed no further explanation or description. Its mode of expansion was a combination of conquest and cultural example, its ideological justification that of a ‘civilizing mission’. [742] The Chinese system exercised an extraordinary hegemonic influence on the entire surrounding region: on the distant island of Japan and on the Korean Peninsula, which, as we have seen, both adopted Chinese characters for their writing systems and used a form of Confucianism for their moral tenets and system of governance; on the tribal nomads of the northern steppes, most of whom, when circumstances enabled or dictated, came under the Confucian spell; on what we now know as Vietnam, which was thoroughly Confucianized while fiercely defending its independence from the Chinese over many centuries; and finally, as we have seen, on the progressive Sinicization of the diverse peoples that comprise what we know as China today. Whatever the role of force, and it was fundamental, there is no brooking the huge power, influence and prestige of Chinese thinking and practice.
The Ancient Chinese view of the world
The classic ancient Chinese account of the world, dating from the sixth century BC, was the Yugong, a chapter of the Shujing (Classic of History). This highly influential document describes five major concentric geographical zones emanating outwards from the capitaclass="underline" royal domains, princely domains, a pacification zone, the zone of allied barbarians, and the zone of savagery. These zones have conventionally been portrayed in rectangular form, in line with the cosmological notion of a square earth.
Traditional Western political theory has been at pains to draw a firm and categoric distinction between agrarian-based dynastic regimes and nation-states. China, which has adopted many of the key characteristics of a nation-state while remaining essentially a civilization-state, confounds these kinds of traditional distinctions, as the lines of continuity between the Celestial Kingdom and modern China as a civilization-cum-nation-state indicate. [743] Thus imperial China already enjoyed, in elemental form, some of what we understand, in a broader comparative context, to be the crucial building blocks and incipient characteristics of a nation-state. In Confucianism, for example, it possessed a state ideology par excellence, by far the most advanced of its time, which imbued the outlook of the elite and also influenced the wider population. [744] The mandarin bureaucracy — schooled in the precepts of Confucianism, devoted to the idea of service and endowed with a powerful credo of administration — was the most sophisticated civil service of its time. And the country already enjoyed a shared written language: many dialects may have been spoken across China, most of which could be understood only by their own speakers, but all the spoken versions shared a common written script and this acted as a source of affinity, identity and cohesion across the population. [745] Finally, Sinocentrism — the idea of the Middle Kingdom, the view that China was the centre of the world, the belief that Chinese civilization was the most advanced in the world — provided what might be described as a primordial form of patriotism. [746] This was not the kind of patriotism that we associate with the nationalism of the modern nation-state, but rather a belief in their own universalism, the relevance and applicability of their culture to all peoples and societies, and its inherent superiority in relation to others. Implicit in this feeling of pre-eminence, as we shall see, was an inchoate notion of racial, as well as cultural, superiority, such that the two became intimately entwined.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, under growing threat from the European powers and Japan, the Qing dynasty was increasingly obliged to operate according to the rules of a nation-state-based international system. The haughty view that it had previously maintained of its elevated role in relation to that of other states foundered on the rock of European superiority. The ‘land under Heaven’ was brought down to earth. The Middle Kingdom became just another state, now with a name, China, like any other. An elite and a people schooled in the idea of their cultural superiority entered a prolonged crisis of doubt, uncertainty and humiliation from which, a century and a half later, they are only now beginning to emerge. China, besieged by foreign powers, was forced to begin the process of defining its frontiers with the same kind of precision as other states, though such was the length of these borders and the number of its neighbours that even today those with India remain unresolved.
The belief in their cultural superiority shaken and undermined, the Chinese began a long and agonized search for a new sense of identity as circumstances grew more precarious and desperate at the end of the nineteenth century. It was during this period that the nationalist writer Zhang Taiyan introduced the term ‘Han people’ ( Hanren) to describe the Chinese nation, and it rapidly acquired widespread popularity and usage. [747] ‘Qin Chinese’ might have been chosen, but Han was preferred, probably because the Han dynasty, which immediately followed the Qin (the first unified Chinese empire), lasted much longer: 400 years compared with a mere fifteen. The term ‘Han Chinese’ was an invention, nothing more than a cultural construct: there was no such race; the Han Chinese were, in reality, an amalgam of many races. [748] The purpose of the term was overtly racial, a means of inclusion and exclusion. It was used as a way of defining the Chinese against the Manchus, who formed the Qing dynasty and who, after 250 years in power, increasingly came to be seen, as their rule began to crumble, as an alien and objectionable presence. It was also directed against the Europeans, who controlled most of the treaty ports and who were seen as undermining the fabric of China and Chinese life. The deep resentment against Europeans, who were increasingly referred to in derogatory racial terms, was graphically illustrated by the xenophobic and nativist Boxer Uprising (1898–1901), [749] which marked the early beginnings of a popular Chinese nationalism, though it was not until the Japanese invasion in 1937 that this became a genuinely mass phenomenon. There are many expressions of Chinese nationalism today, most notably directed against the Japanese — as in the demonstrations in 2005 — and also against various Western powers, especially the United States; as a result, it has become commonplace to refer to the rise of Chinese nationalism. The problem is that this suggests it is essentially the same kind of phenomenon as other nationalisms when, in fact, Chinese nationalism cannot be reduced to nation-state nationalism because its underlying roots are civilizational. Imperial Sinocentrism shapes and underpins modern Chinese nationalism. It would be more accurate to speak of a dual phenomenon, namely Chinese civilizationalism and Chinese nationalism, the one overlapping with and reinforcing the other.
[741] R. Bin Wong,
[742] Callahan,
[743] Zhao,
[744] Wang Gungwu,
[745] Nicholas Ostler,
[746] Zhao,
[747] Ibid., p. 46.
[748] Chen Kuan-Hsing, ‘Notes on Han Chinese Racism’ (revised version, 2009, available at www.inter-asia.org /khchen/online/Epilogue.pdf; to be published in