It would be wrong to regard this feeling of superiority as purely or perhaps even mainly racial in character. Rather it is a combination of both cultural and racial, and has been such for thousands of years. [848] The steady expansion of the Chinese empire rested firstly on a process of conquest and secondly on a slow process of absorption and assimilation. As we have seen, Chinese attitudes fluctuated between regarding other races as incapable of adaptation to Chinese ways, or alternatively believing they could be assimilated, depending on how self-confident the Chinese felt at the time and the precise balance of power. Expansion, in other words, was a hegemonic project, a desire to absorb other races, to civilize them, to teach them Chinese ways and to integrate them into the Chinese self. Given that the notion of ‘Chinese’ was constantly being redefined in the process of expansion and absorption — including the case of those dynasties, like the Qing, that were not Chinese — it is clear that the idea of ‘race’ was not — and could not be — static or frozen: it was steadily, if very slowly, mutating. Thus, while race is a particularistic and exclusionary concept in the present, this did not prevent the process of hegemonic absorption and assimilation in the long run.
The fact that the Chinese regard themselves as superior to the rest of the human race, and that this belief has a strong racial component, will confront the rest of the world with a serious problem. It is one thing to hold such attitudes when China is relatively poor and powerless, quite another for those attitudes to inform a country when it enjoys huge global power and influence. Of course, there is a clear parallel with European and Western attitudes, which have similarly been based on an abiding sense of superiority rooted in cultural and racial beliefs. [849] There are, though, two obvious differences: first, China ’s hubris has a much longer history and second, the Chinese represent one-fifth of the world’s population, a far larger proportion than, for example, Britain or the United States at their zenith have ever constituted. Precisely how this sense of superiority will inform China ’s behaviour as a global superpower is a crucial question.
The Chinese believe that China ’s rightful place is as the world’s leading power, and that the last two centuries represent a deviation from the historical norm. Every Chinese leader over the last century has regarded it as their historic task to overcome the national humiliation represented by the colonial era and to restore China to its lost grandeur. [850] A nation like Germany may have felt a need to right past wrongs, but these grievances were invariably of relatively recent origin; uniquely, China ’s have lasted well over a century. The idea of China ’s restoration is rather succinctly expressed by Yan Xuetong, one of China ’s leading international relations experts:
The rise of China is granted by nature. The Chinese are very proud of their early achievements in the human history of civilization. In the last 2,000 years China has enjoyed superpower status several times, such as the Han dynasty, the Tang dynasty and the early Qing dynasty… This history of superpower status makes the Chinese people very proud of their country on the one hand, and on the other hand very sad about China’s current international status. They believe China ’s decline is a historical mistake which they should correct… The Chinese regard their rise as regaining China ’s lost international status rather than as obtaining something new. [851]
Or, as Lucian Pye puts it: ‘The most pervasive underlying Chinese emotion is a profound, unquestioned, generally unshakeable identification with historical greatness. Merely to be Chinese is to be a part of the greatest phenomenon of history.’ [852] The rise of China and its restoration as the number one nation in the world is widely regarded as a matter of historical inevitability.
The roots of China ’s sense of difference, superiority and greatness lie not in its recent past as a nation-state — indeed, its period as a nation-state largely overlaps, at least until very recently, with its historical ignominy and humiliation — but in its much longer history and existence as a civilization-state. There are two key elements to this. First, there is China ’s belief in its cultural superiority, which dates back at least two millennia and which underpinned the expansion of the Chinese empire. Second, there is the idea of China ’s racial superiority, which is closely linked to its cultural hubris and which anchors the latter in nature, that to be born Chinese, rather than as a ‘for eigner’, ‘barbarian’ or ‘foreign devil’, carries a special status and significance. Together they constitute what might be described as the Middle Kingdom mentality. The historically arresting fact is simply how old these beliefs and convictions actually are. The obvious parallel is with Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations: but it is unimaginable that modern Egyptians, Greeks or Italians would believe that the efflorescence of their civilizations in ancient times would offer any guide or solace as to their present or future fortunes — yet that is precisely what the Chinese almost universally believe. This is not to suggest that the Chinese identity is fixed: on the contrary, the creation of a Chinese modernity is subjecting ‘Chineseness’ to a process of restless change, disorientation, reconstruction and turmoil. [853] That these belief systems date back to antiquity, however, suggests that they not only possess extraordinary historical stamina and resilience but that they are unlikely, in important respects, to change in the near future: rather, China ’s rise is likely to strengthen them.
The problem with Western commentary on China has been its overwhelming preoccupation with China ’s polity, in particular the lack of democracy and its Communist government, and, to a lesser extent, its potential military threat. In fact, the challenge posed by the rise of China is far more likely to be cultural in nature, as expressed in the Middle Kingdom mentality. Or, to put it another way, the most difficult question posed by the rise of China is not the absence of democracy but how it will handle difference. A country’s attitude towards the rest of the world is largely determined by its history and culture. The power of each new hegemonic nation or continent is invariably expressed in novel ways: for Europe, the classic form was maritime expansion and colonial empires, for the United States it was airborne superiority and global economic hegemony. Chinese power, similarly, will take new and innovative forms. The Chinese tradition is very distinct from that of the West, even though there are certain affinities, notably a shared belief in universalism, a civilizing mission and a sense of inherent superiority. Although the Chinese steadily augmented their territory as a result of land-based expansion, there has been no equivalent of Western overseas expansion or the European colonization of large tracts of the world. The most likely motif of Chinese hegemony lies in the area of culture and race. The Chinese sense of cultural self-confidence and superiority, rooted in their long and rich history as a civilization-state, is utterly different from the United States, which has no such legacy to draw on, and contrasts with Europe too, if less strongly. The Chinese have a deeply hierarchical view of the world based on culture and race. As a consequence, the rise of China as a global superpower is likely to lead, over a protracted period of time, to a profound cultural and racial reordering of the world in the Chinese image. As China draws countries and continents into its web, as is happening already with Africa, they will not simply be economic supplicants of a hugely powerful China but also occupy a position of cultural and ethnic inferiority in an increasingly influential Chinese-ordered global hierarchy.
[848] Fairbank,
[849] Martin Jacques, ‘Global Hierarchy of Race’,