Beginning with Huntington

Will conflicts arise between different cultures? The American scholar Samuel P. Huntington put this question forward in the 1990s in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.¹ According to Huntington, by the 1990s the ideology of the Cold War had gradually receded, while conflicts between different civilizations were coming to the forefront. He predicted that Confucian and Islamic civilizations would join forces against Western civilization.

Is this conflict happening now? Regardless of whether Huntington’s predictions were on or off the mark, his predictions sparked worldwide debate about civilizations, conflict, history, and the future. Nowadays in China we are discussing the topic of “world peace and Chinese culture,” a theme that clearly is formulated in response to Huntington’s thesis. I am more than willing to believe that people who discuss “world peace and Chinese culture” have good intentions and hope not only that conflicts will not arise between various cultures but also that Chinese culture can play a special role in creating world peace, much in the way that the ancients hoped their states would, in the famous words of the literatus Zhang Zai (1020–1077), “create peace for ten thousand generations.”

As a historian, however, I cannot help but see many unanswered questions here. For example: What is Chinese culture? What aspects of Chinese culture can lead to clashes between civilizations or promote world peace? Will emphasizing the significance of Chinese culture lead to new, not-so-peaceful scenarios?

Once again, then, we must return to the question, “What is China’s culture?”

All-under-Heaven: A Traditional Chinese View of “the World”

In Chapter 4 I discussed the importance of answering the question, “What is Chinese culture?” In this discussion, “Chinese” (Zhongguo) is an important word, because all peoples have culture: once you can explain those aspects of a culture that exist in China (or are particularly prominent) and those aspects that do not exist among other peoples (or are not very prominent), then you have arrived at typical aspects of Chinese culture; other, nontypical elements cannot be thrown in and counted as part of Chinese culture.

What, then, is typical of “China’s” culture? Allow me to repeat some of what was said in Chapter 4: if we consider Han culture to be the mainstream, then we can refer to five basic aspects of Han Chinese culture. First among these is the use of Chinese characters to write and the modes of thinking that come from them. The second aspect is the home, family, and state found in ancient China, as well as the ideas they gave rise to: Confucian political and ethical ideas about the state, society, and the family. The third aspect is the “unification of three teachings” of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. No single religion in China surpasses all others or can make the claim to absolute or singular authority; as they are all dominated by political authorities, they tolerate one another. The fourth aspect is the “unity between Heaven and Man” (Tian ren he yi); the philosophies of Yin and Yang and the Five Elements, as well as the knowledge, ideas, and technologies that emerged from them. The fifth aspect is the unique idea of All-under-Heaven, which developed under the influence of the “round Heaven, square Earth” cosmology, as well as the international order, based on the tribute system, which developed out of the idea of All-under-Heaven. If we compare these five aspects with Christian civilization or Islamic civilization, or even with those regions in East Asia and South Asia that follow Buddhist beliefs and also make use of Confucian ethics, then we see that it is these five aspects that make up the “culture” of “(Han) China.”²

If we want to isolate certain important aspects of history and cultural traditions when we discuss the outlook and possibilities for world peace, then the concept of All-under-Heaven in ancient China and the tribute system, as well as the way these ideas and orders extend into modern China’s hopes and visions for a new world order, are most worthy of our attention and discussion.³ In recent years, some scholars in China have felt that, as China begins its “rise” after several centuries of a world order led by the West, an “All-under-Heaven order” (Tianxia zhixu) or “All-under-Heaven-ism” (Tianxia zhuyi) that is rooted in traditional China should be treated as an important new resource for replacing the world order that has held sway since the early modern period. Some works by Western scholars, including On China, by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and When China Rules the World, by Martin Jacques, follow a similar line of thought, mentioning repeatedly that in the past China had its own Chinese world order. They argue that China will use the traditional tribute system to imagine and establish an East Asian order and even a world order.⁴ Likewise, when I was interviewed by a journalist in South Korea in November 2012, my interviewer asked repeatedly whether China’s rise would lead to a revival of the tribute system.⁵

It is necessary to discuss, therefore, whether these cultural traditions, which understand the world in ways that are vastly different from the West, can bring peace to the world. Do we not also see the potential for conflict? What can reduce or resolve conflicts between cultures?

The Traditional Chinese Ideal of Grand Unification and Culturalist Strategies

It need not be the case that, because we are Chinese people, we have to heap praise on Chinese culture and feel that every aspect of the culture is good, or even the basis for building the human culture for the future. It is my belief that while there is a hierarchy among civilizations, there are no questions of good or bad when it comes to culture.⁶ As a scholar of history, I am interested in the historical analysis of Chinese culture.

The concept of All-under-Heaven and the tribute system developed in ancient China on the basis of the “round Heaven, square Earth” cosmology. “All-under-Heaven” is actually a self-centered cultural imaginary. On the one hand, it was this cultural vision that, by placing itself (China) at the center of the world, produced “distinctions between Chinese and barbarian” (Hua Yi zhi fen). On the other hand, these distinctions between Chinese and barbarian were not really based on racial distinctions expressed in statements such as, “If he is not my kin, he is sure to have a different mind.”⁷ Instead, they were established on differences in culture, between the uncultured and the culturally developed. It was these two sides of the concept of All-under-Heaven that would produce two ideas for how to manage the distinctions between “inner” (nei) and “outer” (wai). These two ideas are grand unification (da yitong) and culturalism (wenhua zhuyi).

It is certainly the case that, after a long series of conflicts, the Han Chinese and the peoples on their borders, the core regions, and the peripheries gradually formed into a sprawling empire rule by a central political power. Throughout this historical process, the vision that held that “under the whole Heaven, every spot is the sovereign’s ground” and “to the borders of the land, every individual is the sovereign’s minister” spurred on the desire for a unified and complete state. As a notion handed down from ancient China that All-under-Heaven can be “settled by unification” (regardless of which unification does the settling), “grand unification” has been a political ideal, some might even say a dream, throughout Chinese history. Both strong and weak states sought to realize the dream of a grand unification, as is seen in the way the Qin state dealt with the Xiongnu, the way the Sui and the Tang dealt with the Goguryeo and the Turkic peoples, the way the Song dealt with the Liao and Jin, or in the way the Qing state dealt with the “Four Barbarians” (si Yi). This is particularly important because today China’s territories come from the Qing dynasty; the means by which the Qing state established the territories of today’s China always make one recall the Ten Great Campaigns of the eighteenth century. It was this pursuit of grand unification—and the use of military force in the conquest of the Four Barbarians—that resulted in a great empire that stretched from “Sakhalin Island in the east to Shule in Xinjiang and the Pamir Mountains in the west, to the Stanovoy Range in the north, to Mount Ya (Yashan) in Guangdong in the south.”⁸ Here there was much blood and fire; the history of opening new territories is not particularly peaceful. To insist that China always “cherished men from afar” is to deceive oneself and others,⁹ and it is hardly always the truth to say that “China is a country that has loved peace since ancient times.”¹⁰

History also shows us another side of these questions. Although China has always been accustomed to applying the methods used to manage its internal order to the management of external orders,¹¹ ancient China was more interested in “spreading light in the Four Directions” and less interested in invasion and colonization because China tends to emphasize cultural differences over racial or ethnic differences. It is probably because of this self-satisfied sense that “our dynasty lacks nothing” that the tribute system in ancient times usually emphasized bestowing gifts over receiving them, requiring only respect, glorification, and recognition of the supreme dynasty’s Heavenly Emperor—this attitude was quite different from the rapacious colonial strategies of early modern states such as England, France, Spain, and Portugal. Another important aspect of this question to consider is that ancient China was relatively isolated in terms of its geography and its knowledge of the outside world. As a result, people in traditional China usually imagined all foreigners as barbaric, poor, and backward; foreign lands were not worth crossing the seas and mountains to set up territories that had to be controlled from afar.¹² A passage from the Instructions by the Ancestor of the August Ming (Huang Ming zu xun) expresses this attitude well: “The barbarians of the four directions are cut off from the world by mountains and seas, isolated in their respective corners. If we controlled their territory, we could not extract tribute from it; if we ruled the people there, we could not extract labor service from them. If they overstep their bounds and attempt to trouble us, they will suffer. Likewise, if they cause us no trouble, and we still take up arms against them, then we will suffer.”¹³

Modern China can no longer serve as an “empire” and should not take an imperialist attitude, but China in the Qin and Han times onward certainly was an empire. Even if this empire was forced in the early modern period to transform into a “nation-state,” the history, ideas, and imaginations of empire continue to exercise influence, even down to the present day. In Dwelling in This Middle Kingdom, I argued that, while the idea of a limited state was contained within the notion of the empire without borders, this limited state also continued to imagine an empire without borders. China as a modern nation-state is precisely that which evolved out of the traditional centralized empire, yet the modern nation-state continues to hold within it remnants of the ideology of centralized empire, and thus the two are entangled throughout history.¹⁴ Obviously, China has a strong desire to protect its “national territory” (Guo tu); losing the imperial capital is the worst outcome, and signing unfavorable treaties under duress is the greatest shame. In particular, because China was bullied by both East Asian and Western countries in the early modern period, none of its rulers can accept the ignominy of losing sovereignty or giving up territory. We also see, however, that in their complacency the dynasties that ruled China did not necessarily have much interest in the territories of others.¹⁵ Even though China often worried about threats to the core regions, it usually intended to “pacify” and “assuage” the areas on its periphery.¹⁶ At times China would also try to use the peoples on its periphery as buffers against outside threats, but China often was not interested in actual “foreign” territory and remained within its limited domains.¹⁷

Over a long period of time, the peripheries of “China,” or the so-called All-under-Heaven of traditional China, by and large referred only to the eastern part of Central Asia. For this reason, other than the aspirations to bring revolution to every part of the world that were expressed during the “Cultural Revolution,” China’s idea of itself as a ruler of All-under-Heaven (Tianxia ba zhu) meant at most that it was a “suzerain” (gong zhu) state of the Asia region. Of course, when the “imperial” mentality of this (Chinese) regional suzerain meets with the “imperial” behavior of (Western) global hegemons, then conflicts may in fact arise if we add in threats rooted in political ideology.¹⁸ If political ideologies are not involved, however, and there is no direct involvement in Chinese territory or interests, then compromise will often carry the day.¹⁹

Religion as a Factor in Cultural Conflict: The Decline of Absolutism and Claims to Uniqueness in Chinese Religion

Here we can also turn to the question of religion. Religion is a core problem in Huntington’s discussion of the clash of civilizations; he argues that “religion is a central defining characteristic of civilizations.”²⁰ Scholarship on religion has also become a natural point of focus for contemporary cultural studies. It is often said that the ability or inability of civilization formed by so-called world religions, such as Christianity (including Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodox) and Islam, to coexist has a decisive influence on the global order.²¹ For these reasons, historical research on these fields often has a very practical dimension, because their subjects relate directly to the field of international relations and also speak to concerns about whether religion can actually promote peace in the world today.

I will take a brief look at the perspectives, lines of thought, and conclusions drawn by recent scholarly works on various religions. Many scholars are addressing one problem: Across history, is conflict between world religions unavoidable? Are they unable to coexist? If conflicts are unavoidable, what draws them toward violence? If they can exist side by side, what factors lead followers of these religions to tolerate one another? In other words, what differences in perspectives, spirituality, and values between these religions cannot be overcome? What compromises can be reached between each religion’s faith in its “one and only” God and “absolute” truth?

If we look back to traditional China, despite the fact that we see the attempt to wipe out Buddhism by the imperial court,²² rivalries between Buddhism and Taoism,²³ and attacks on foreign religion,²⁴ by and large there were no major wars between religions. Instead, the “unification of the three teachings” (san jiao he yi) of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism has been the main course taken in both the history of religion and the history of politics. It has been said that the Xiaozong emperor (r. 1189–1194) of the Song dynasty, the Yongle emperor (r. 1402–1424) of the Ming dynasty, and the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1722–1735) of the Qing dynasty all spoke in favor of the unification of the three teachings, under which, it is often said, Confucianism was used for worldly affairs, Buddhism was used for the heart and mind, and Taoism was used to cultivate the body. Why did this happen?

We cannot simply conclude that these developments can be attributed to openness or tolerance between Confucianism and Taoism. Why, instead of this tolerance, do they not claim to be absolute? I would offer a simple explanation. First, religion in China has never acquired a status that allowed it to supersede or compete with secular political powers. No similarities are to be seen in China with those places where religion has held absolute spiritual and political power, as has occurred in the divine authority attributed to the pope in Europe and the unity of religious and political power in West Asia. Such phenomena were not possible after the disappearance of medieval Taoist traditions that organized the faithful into groupings that imitated military organizations and managed groups of households and people; it has not been possible since arguments that had been made from the time of the Eastern Jin dynasty through the Tang dynasty that monks do not bow to political power were rejected by the imperial court, establishing the requirement that monks pay respect to the ruler and bow to their parents. From the point that Confucians came to accept Buddhists’ and Taoists’ interpretations of the afterlife and the supernatural, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism effectively all came under the control of secular political power.²⁵ Second, the great power of the emperor in ancient China ensured that all religious groups and organizations fell under official control of some sort.²⁶ The Buddhist Controller (Seng tong) and Taoist Controller (Dao tong) were appointed by government officials, permits for individuals to join monasteries were issued by the government, and the distribution of monasteries and temples were controlled by local governments. Religions organizations not only did not have the tight organization of churches, they also did not have a single unified leader like a pope. More important, they did not have their own military, so both religious organizations and the state could live in peace with one another.²⁷ Third, the worlds of belief to which Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism attended were different from one another, with a separate emphasis for each—hence the saying “Confucianism is used for worldly affairs, Buddhism is used for the heart and mind, and Taoism is used to cultivate the body.” No single religion could claim an absolute or complete interpretation of the truth or establish a monopoly on thought, knowledge, or the world of faith. This was especially true among elites, where such beliefs became a kind of culture represented in the form of religion.²⁸ This role developed into a special characteristic of traditional Chinese culture.

For the reasons I have described, “religion” in traditional China transformed into “culture” and thereby lacked a single or absolute sense of spiritual truth. At the same time, elite society made a habit of separating mundane, secular life from the more transcendent aspects of religion, and elites became accustomed to achieving those transcendent aspects of religion within secular life.²⁹ Could these practices from Chinese culture provide perspectives and resources for other world religions on how to peacefully coexist with one another? A few years back, an attempt was made to bring together the various religions of the world and to find the “highest degree of compatibility” within each religion. In the end, however, they were only able to argue for a shared ethic based found in the “Declaration toward a Global Ethic” or in the Confucian teaching, “Do not do to others what you would not have others do to you.” Is it not possible now, then, that we could find the spirit of peaceful coexistence from within the history of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism in China?

China in Conflict: Predicaments of the “Modern,” the “Nation-State,” and “Culture”

From 1895 on, faced with the multiple challenges presented by Western politics, science, and culture, China was dragged step-by-step into the world. Whether in terms of culture, politics, or the world of faith, China faced numerous, complex struggles. In the three major questions of the modern, the nation-state, and culture, China has faced a series of dilemmas and predicaments.

The first dilemma is the meaning of “modern.” On the one hand, “modern” means the laws, democratic institutions, science, and technology of modern Western nation-states, which are seen as the source of wealth and power. They are, in this view, the necessary and ideal path that must be taken; China should, according to this view, work to become “modern” and find its route to the “future.” On the other hand, the modern is understood as the path by which the Western powers spread out across the world and by which “the strong eat the weak.”³⁰ From this point of view, the modern is what led China to weakness and poverty, and, therefore, China should find another path toward a new version of the modern.³¹

The second dilemma is the “nation-state” (guojia). Many have accepted in concept the notion that the modern West take the “nation” as the basis of the “state” and believe that establishing a modern nation-state will enable China to pursue “modern civilization” in the same way as the West. At the same time, many are sympathetic to the idea that has held out in history that China is a state that is formed on the basis of culture, and feel that it is important to defend the idea of a great multinational state that has existed since the Han and Tang dynasties and was exemplified in the Qing-dynasty ideal of “spreading virtue in the four directions” across vast territories.³² People who share this point of view still support “bringing the Four Barbarians into China.”³³

The third dilemma is “culture.” On the one hand, China tends to see itself as the place that “gathers together all that is good”³⁴ of Eastern culture, such that it can stand on equal footing with the West, and thus many in China have become accustomed to speaking of “Chinese and Western culture” or “Eastern and Western Culture” as if they had the same meaning. On the other hand, China is also eager to show that its culture is the representative of Eastern culture, competing with Japan (the West of the East), India, and Iran, and other Eastern cultures for this status.

The question of culture has been the greatest source of complexity, contradiction, and conflict for Chinese thought since the late nineteenth century. These contradictions and conflicts all arise from the fact that China was an empire with a long history and powerful traditions. Even though this empire was challenged in the early modern period, it never went through a period of complete colonization and thus never lost its sense of cultural agency. For these reasons, to this day scholars are always working to find a unique perspective on the matter, whether in terms of historical narratives or theoretical expressions, that will resolve this dilemma.

It seems to me, however, that in modern people’s world of ideas, it is important to maintain rational divisions. The political, the historical, the cultural, the popular, and the official (or state) all need rational boundaries. Take, for example, the question of “culture”: if you concede that (universal, modern) civilization and (particular) cultures are always in conflict with one another, and that you can use reason to distinguish between civilization and culture, then you might not be inclined to engage in a simple and forceful rejection of globalization and modernity, which together are also a kind of “civilization.” You would not think that this “civilization” is a barbarian onslaught, or that this new “civilizing” of our culture means that our culture will be broken apart by globalization and modernity. Simply put, globalization or modernization means for everyone to use one rhythm, one principle, one common understanding to associate and communicate with one another. If this association and communication does not have a shared rhythm, principle, and common understanding, then it will be like playing soccer on a basketball court, with no referees in sight—a complete mess.³⁵ Since the world has become smaller, and everyone lives on one planet, then we need to have generally recognized principles, an ethics that is followed by all, and a common understanding that is accepted by the majority of people. These principles, ethics, and common understanding are the “civilization” that is brought by globalization. The problem now lies in how to preserve and maintain with care many different cultures as they operate under the principles of modern civilization. Of course, this is a difficult question, one that cannot be resolved in a few words.

Conclusion: Cultural Traditions Are but One Resource—They Must Be Selected Rationally and Subjected to Modern Interpretation

Chinese intellectuals have a deep-seated faith in All-under-Heaven and a “Celestial dynasty” mentality. Many intellectuals, spurred by the so-called rise of China and troubled by the Western-led (and especially American-led) world order have begun to trumpet the idea of All-under-Heaven-ism, the All-under-Heaven system, or “Neo-All-under-Heaven-ism” (Xin Tianxia zhuyi).³⁶ Some scholars argue that, at a philosophical level, the Confucian world is a world without borders, without notions of inner (nei) and outer (wai) and no distinctions between us and them. It is a world, these scholars argue, in which all people are treated equally; this All-under-Heaven order, therefore, should replace the current world order. Some people even go so far as to argue that, as calls for world governance grow louder, “China, whose national strength grows with each passing day, should reconstruct Confucian orthodoxy and take up once again the Confucian view of the world that ‘All-under-Heaven is one family.’ This set of ideas is better suited to maintaining fairness and peace in a world that is both interlinked and riven by conflict.”³⁷ When they look back in history, these scholars suddenly discover that across all of history, China was the only “civilization that had brought the era of Warring States (Zhan guo shidai) to a close and established a culture of All-under-Heaven.” “Her cultural traditions,” one scholar argues, “may serve as the spiritual source for efforts to establish a culture of All-under-Heaven in the present.”³⁸

We can certainly sympathize with these sentiments. But because they want to rebuild All-under-Heaven, which is the self-centered outlook of a traditional empire, if this slapdash version of a new global thought is not stripped of its core of nationalism (which sees China as the “center of All-under-Heaven”) and the attitude of arrogant self-regard, then it can very easily become a new form of chauvinism that claims to have universal relevance through its gestures toward the “equality of the multitude of states” and “all in the four seas are one family.” No matter how ideas about All-under-Heaven are updated for new fashions, for the simple reason that they come from the history and traditions of ancient China, they cannot avoid bringing with them a certain associations with ideas about the “celestial dynasty.” Although the idea that all people are “one family” seems warm and friendly, as soon as memories of China serving as the center return, then there is also a need for a head of the household who is at the center and controls everything. For these reasons, it is unavoidable to end up applying the All-under-Heaven order of traditional China to replace the vision for international order that emerged in the early modern period.³⁹

If we take an evenhanded look at the idea of All-under-Heaven from a scholarly perspective and discuss Confucian ideals in a way that takes into account the historical background, then this would not be a problem. The problem lies in the fact that, these days, some Chinese scholars’ discussions of All-under-Heaven attempt to understand what took place during imperial history as a universal order for the modern world.⁴⁰ Even more troublesome is that current discussions have gone beyond the realm of academic scholarship and attempted to reach the level of practical governance, which means that behind them lies all kinds of complex motivations and issues. Simply put:

First, excitement and even exuberance over the so-called rise of China has prompted these discussions. This exuberance has led what originally was a rational strategy by which China would “keep a low profile and bide its time” (tao guang yang hui) to fall apart,⁴¹ and has also weakened the principles of order found in arguments for formal equality among the multitude of states; even the “five principles of peaceful coexistence,”⁴² which took shape after 1949, are also pushed to the side. When people speak of a new order of All-under-Heaven, therefore, they show what one scholar has called a concern for power politics: “We will manage resources that are far greater than what we had before, undertaking economic management and political leadership. We want to exercise leadership over this world.”⁴³

Second, the emotional factors behind this narrative often come from China’s long history of fierce struggle to resist humiliation and oppression. This fierce resistance is both the main storyline used in writing the history of early modern China and a key influence on China’s attitude toward the rest of the world. For these reasons, as China becomes more powerful, it is easy for people to begin to agree with some scholars who argue that, after a century of the West plundering, oppressing, and plotting against China, they are now facing a crisis. China, however, has grown strong, and China can save the West. As a result, some argue that “future eras will see a political unification of humanity carried out by Chinese people and the establishment of a world government.”⁴⁴

Third, aside from the history of the Han and Tang Empires, the most important historical evidence for these narratives comes from the Mongol Yuan and Manchu Qing dynasties (especially the latter). They believe that these two “Chinese Empires” (Zhonghua diguo) not only “had no pagans”—meaning that, unlike Christian states, they tolerated all religions—but also “had no clear geographical borders and no cultural borders.”⁴⁵ These historical empires “with no ‘outside’ ” are then imagined as the future world of the “great unity” (da tong). These scholars further argue for the prescience of Qing-dynasty scholars of the Gongyang School, who, they contend, put forward ideas (buttressed by their classical scholarship) about a “world of peace” in which “all far and near, great and small are one” that provided the basis by which to establish the legitimacy of a (multi)national state under the banner of “Five Nations Under One Republic” in the Republic of China. Based on these arguments, they conclude that contemporary China has gone beyond the nation-state model that is based on early modern Europe and can point to its own practical legitimacy and historical rationality.

Fourth, at times the political bases of these discussions are supported by political ideology. We see an example of this when a scholar who also holds an official government position argues that the state should not only be “an entity established by law” but also “a cultural and civilizational entity” and concludes that the system of nation-states can be surpassed not only through the reconstruction of a cultural “China” but also through the revival of an ever-expanding All-under-Heaven (or what some call a “civilizational empire”) that is rooted in the political and philosophical traditions of the Confucian classics.⁴⁶

It is for precisely these reasons that ancient scholars’ ways of remembering and imagining the Three Dynasties of Antiquity (the Xia, Shang, and Zhou), along with the Gongyang School’s historiography of the “three eras” of history,⁴⁷ have all been newly rediscovered and elaborated upon by scholars in China, who have used them to support various political narratives and to construct new versions of world order.

I have noticed that quite a few scholars have enthusiastically discussed “China’s moment in world history” and argued that “with the renaissance of Chinese civilization, humanity will begin to enter the ‘Chinese moment in world history.’ … China will fundamentally remake the world.” According to this argument, promoting the concept of All-under-Heaven will be an important step in this work to change the world.⁴⁸ In all fairness, in an era of openness, some of this All-under-Heaven-ism and “Celestial dynasty mentality” could transform into a globalism that accepts universal values and universal truths and maintains a consensus within a framework of unity in diversity. These ideas would allow for the acceptance of the institutions, cultures, and ideas provided by other nations and countries while preserving one’s own cultures and traditions. However, in times of impoverishment and weakness, when a crisis mentality reigns, or in times of ascendancy, when an attitude of arrogance and self-satisfaction holds sway, these ideas might also follow in the footsteps of nationalisms that look down on the “Four Barbarians” or hold one’s own in higher regard than all others. As a result, these ideas might lead to ambitions to gain hegemony over All-under-Heaven with the wealth and military power gained through modernization. These ambitions, in turn, can become barriers that use culture to divide inner and outer—and you and me.

For these reasons, new questions arise: When promoting the revival of Chinese culture, is it possible to consider Chinese culture as a so-called resource that, according to the needs of modern civilization, can be subjected to reasonably selective and creative interpretation? Put another way, under conditions in which China is open to global culture, is it possible to align globalization and Chineseness, as well as universal values and Chineseness? If it is possible to strike that balance, then it is also likely that we can seek from that balance new inspiration for and ways of thinking about peace. If not, then the difficulty lies in the fact that when All-under-Heaven is brought to life, when imagined versions of the tribute system are taken to be real, and memories of the Celestial Empire are unearthed, then it is likely that Chinese culture and national sentiment will turn into nationalism or (or statism) that resists both global modern civilization and regional cooperation. Such a turn of events would truly lead to a clash of civilizations.

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