The problem with interpreting and evaluating China solely or mainly in terms of the Western lexicon of experience is that, by definition, it excludes all that is specific to China: in short, what makes China what it is. The only things that are seen to matter are those that China shares with the West. China’s history and culture are dismissed as a blind alley or merely a preparation for becoming Western, the hors d’oeuvres before the Western feast. Such an approach is not only demeaning to China and other non-Western cultures, it also largely misses the point. By seeing China in terms of the West, it refuses to recognize or acknowledge China’s own originality and, furthermore, how China’s difference might change the nature of the world in which we live. Since the eighties and nineties, the heyday of the ‘globali zation as Westernization’ era, when the Asian tigers, including China, were widely interpreted in these terms, there has been a dawning realization that such a huge country embodying such a rich history and civilization cannot be so summarily dismissed. We should not exaggerate — the Western consensus still sees history as a one-way ticket to Westernization — but one can detect the beginnings of a new Western consciousness, albeit still weak and fragile, which is more humble and realistic. As China grows increasingly powerful — while remaining determinedly different — the West will be forced, however reluctantly, to confront the nature and meaning of that difference. Understanding China will be one of the great challenges of the twenty-first century.

What then will be the key characteristics of Chinese modernity? They are eight in all, which for the deeply superstitious Chinese happens to be their lucky number. In exploring these characteristics, we must consider both the internal features of China’s modernity and, given China’s global importance, how these might impact upon and structure its global outlook and relations.

First, China is not really a nation-state in the traditional sense of the term but a civilization-state. True, it describes itself as a nation-state, but China’s acquiescence in the status of nation-state was a consequence of its growing weakness in the face of the Western powers from the late nineteenth century.

The Chinese reluctantly acknowledged that China had to adapt to the world rather than insisting, in an increasingly utopian and hopeless mission, that the rest of the world should adapt to it. That cannot hide the underlying reality, however, that China is not a conventional nation-state. A century might seem a long time, but not for a society that consciously thinks of itself as several millennia old. Most of what China is today — its social relations and customs, its ways of being, its sense of superiority, its belief in the state, its commitment to unity — are products of Chinese civilization rather than its recent incarnation as a nation-state. On the surface it may seem like a nation-state, but its geological formation is that of a civilization-state.

It might be objected that China has changed so much during the period of its accommodation to the status of nation-state that these lines of continuity have been broken and largely erased. There was the failure of the imperial state to modernize, culminating in its demise in the 1911 Revolution; the failure of the nationalist government to modernize China, unify the country, or defeat the occupying powers (notably Japan), leading to its overthrow in the 1949 Revolution; the Maoist period, which sought to sweep away much of imperial China, from Confucius and traditional dress to the old patterns of land tenure and the established social hierarchies; followed by the reform period, the rapid decline of agriculture, the rise of industry and the growing assertion of capitalist social relations. Each of these periods represents a major disjuncture in Chinese history. Yet much of what previously characterized China remains strikingly true and evident today. The country still has almost the same borders that it acquired at the maximum extent of the Qing empire in the late eighteenth century. The state remains as pivotal in society and as sacrosanct as it was in imperial times. Confucius, its great architect, is in the process of experiencing a revival and his precepts still, in important measure, inform the way China thinks and behaves. Although there are important differences between the Confucian and Communist eras, there are also strong similarities. This not to deny that China has changed in fundamental ways, but rather to stress that China is also marked by powerful lines of continuity — that, to use a scientific analogy, its DNA remains intact. This is a country, moreover, which lives in and with its past to a greater extent than any other: tormented by its failure to either modernize or unify, China possesses a past that casts a huge shadow over its present, to the extent that the Chinese have lived in a state of perpetual regret and anguish. But as China finally circumnavigates its way beyond the ‘century of humiliation’ and successfully concludes its 150-year project of modernization, it will increasingly search for inspiration, nourishment and parallels in its past. As it once again becomes the centre of the world, it will luxuriate in its history and feel that justice has finally been done, that it is restoring its rightful position and status in the world. [1335]

When China was down, it was obliged to live according to the terms set by others. It had no alternative. That is why it reconciled itself to being a nation-state, even if it never really believed this to be the case. It was a compromise borne of expediency and necessity. But as China arrives at modernity and emerges as the most powerful country in the world, it will no longer be bound by such constraints and will in time be in a position to set its own terms and conditions. It will feel free to be what it thinks it is and act according to its history and instincts, which are those of a civilization-state.

Second, China is increasingly likely to conceive of its relationship with East Asia in terms of a tributary-state, rather than nation-state, system. The tributary-state system, as we saw in Chapter 9, lasted for thousands of years and only finally came to an end at the conclusion of the nineteenth century. Even then, it was not entirely extinguished but continued — as a matter of habit and custom, the product of an enduring history — in a submerged form beneath the newly dominant Westphalian system. Up to a point, then, it never completely disappeared, even when China was a far less important actor in East Asia than it had been prior to the mid nineteenth century. The fact that the tributary-state system prevailed for so long means that it is deeply ingrained in the way that both China and East Asian states think about their relationship. As a consequence, any fundamental change in the position of China in the region, and the consequent balance of power between China and its neighbouring states, could well see a reversion to a more tributary-state relationship. The tributary system was undermined by the emergence of the European powers, together with Japan, as the dominant presence in the region, and by the remorseless decline of China. The European powers have long since exited the region; their successor power, the United States, is now a declining force; and Japan is rapidly being overshadowed by China. Meanwhile, China is swiftly resuming its position as the fulcrum of the East Asian economy. In other words, the conditions that gave rise to the dominance of the nation-state system in East Asia are crumbling, while at the same time we are witnessing the restoration of the circumstances that underpinned the tributary-state system.

The tributary-state system was characterized by the enormous inequality that existed between China on the one hand and its neighbouring states on the other, together with a mutual belief in the superiority of Chinese culture. John K. Fairbank suggests in The Chinese World Order that: ‘If its belief in Chinese superiority persists, it seems likely that the country will seek its future role by looking closely at its own history.’ [1336] Given that the idea of Chinese superiority remains firmly in place, China ’s growing economic strength, together with its enormous population, could return the region to a not dissimilar state of affairs to that which existed in the past. China is in the process of becoming the most important market for virtually every single East Asian country. Nor is the huge imbalance in power necessarily one that other states in the region will baulk at or resist, with the possible exception of Japan; indeed, all bar Japan and, until very recently, Taiwan have consciously sought to move closer to China during the course of its rise rather than hedge with the United States against it. This is partly based on the habit and experience of history and partly on an accommodation with what these countries view as an inevitable and irresistible process. The rise of China and a return to something more akin to a tributary-state system will not necessarily be distinguished by instability; on the contrary, the tributary-state system was highly stable, rooted as it was in China ’s dominance and a virtually unchallenged hierarchical pattern of relationships. It would be wrong, however, to see any return to a tributary-style relationship as a simple rerun of the past — with, for example, the presidents and prime ministers of neighbouring states making ritualized trips to Beijing bearing gifts in recognition of the greatness of the Chinese president and the superiority of the latter-day Celestial Kingdom. Rather it is likely to be defined by an acceptance that East Asia is essentially a Chinese-centric order; that it embodies an implicit hierarchy in which China ’s position of ascendancy is duly acknowledged; and that there is underlying recognition and acceptance of Chinese superiority.