SUNY series, James N. Rosenau series in Global Politics

Cultural Politics and International Relations

Chih-yu Shih

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781438487724
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Relations internationales

There have been few efforts to overcome the binary of China versus the West. The recent global political environment, with a deepening confrontation between China and the West, strengthens this binary image. Post-Chineseness boldly challenges the essentialized notion of Chineseness in existing scholarship through the revelation of the multiplicity and complexity of the uses of Chineseness by strategically conceived insiders, outsiders, and those in-between. Combining the fields of international relations, cultural politics, and intellectual history, Chih-yu Shih investigates how the global audience perceives (and essentializes) Chineseness. Shih engages with major Chinese international relations theories, investigates the works of sinologists in Hong Kong, Singapore, Pakistan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and other academics in East Asia, and explores individual scholars' life stories and academic careers to delineate how Chineseness is constantly negotiated and reproduced. Shih's theory of the "balance of relationships" expands the concept of Chineseness and effectively challenges existing theories of realism, liberalism, and conventional constructivism in international relations. The highly original delineation of multiple layers and diverse dimensions of "Chineseness" opens an intellectual channel between the social sciences and humanities in China studies.

PART 1

DECENTRALIZING CHINESENESS

Relations from the Inside Out

Part 1 studies how nations practice international identities in relations. It argues that nations discover or improvise their resemblance by reading their self-understanding into others or, reversely, imagining their self-understanding according to selected alter-understanding. In practice, nations only find themselves in different relational settings, bilateral as well as multilateral. Even self-imagination in an ostensibly domestic context must be relational, rendering any claim to national identity a relational statement. Such impossibility of merely being only autonomous and self-centric is exemplified through the substitution of post-identity for identity and, in part 1, post-Chineseness for Chineseness.

Succinctly, part 1 contains a chapter on theorizing relations through the theme of post-Chineseness and, further, three chapters, respectively, on a case of the “bilateral” relations of Chineseness via Pakistan, a case of the “multilateral” relations of Chineseness via East Asia, and a case of the “self”-relations of Chinese cultural nationalism.

Chapter 1 provides the theoretical rationale and an analytical frame regarding why and how actors are obliged to improvise a relationship by constructing or reconstructing their resemblance or lack of it, in context, for each other to acquire a certain post-identity; in our case, post-Chineseness. Epistemologically, it tackles China-centrism and argues why it inevitably results in decentralism. Chapter 2 shows how initially seemingly unrelated corporate actors, that is, Pakistan and China, have discovered their relationships through experiencing each other’s concerns. The chapter contends that self-centrism, based upon essentialized national interests, is pseudo-epistemology. In addition, it shows how post-Chineseness is dynamic and improvisational rather than fixed. Chapter 3 contrarily offers a pessimistic assessment of nonessential solidarity that does not rely on a self/other binary. On the one hand, it testifies to the discursive plausibility of nonessential regional identity. On the other hand, it alludes to the tenacity of the hegemonic Cold War relations that insist on a securitizing binary embedded in anti-communism. Opposed to the abortion of nonessentialism during the Cold War, chapter 4 instead gathers from religious practices informed by Chinese nationalism various styles of cultural nationalism to the disadvantage of political nationalism. The variety of individual believers preempts political mobilization through religion.

Chapter 1

Away from China-centrism

Balance of Relationships

Self-centrism and Chineseness of Strangers

Attempting to overcome Eurocentrism in both the intellectual and practical worlds, on the one hand, and avoid committing self-centrism, in our case China-centrism, while engaging in self-empowerment to resist Eurocentrism, on the other hand, poses somewhat of a dilemma (Chu 2020). This dilemma has puzzled modern and contemporary Asiatic thinkers in Japan (e.g., Takeuchi Yoshimi), Korea (e.g., Baik Young-seo), and Taiwan (e.g., Chen Kuang-hsing) as well as in China (e.g., Sun Ge) for over a century (Calichman 2010; Sun, Baik, and Chen 2006). They are fully aware that self-centric thinking is destined to destroy solidarity among the world’s subaltern populations, who suffer due to imperialism. This book will rely instead on “post-Chineseness” as an epistemological wedge to open all varieties of self-centrism. Post-Chineseness, alongside other post-identities, can launch a trajectory of practical analysis and theoretical reflection that is premised not upon binaries, but upon relationality. Its geocultural scope of inquiry can be as broad as East Asia, Asia, and the globe and yet reversely dissolved wherever one selects an alternative post-identity, such as post-Asianness, post-Vietnameseness, post-Tibetanness, and so on.

This chapter explores how, theoretically at the international level, post-Chineseness is the natural consequence of a self-regarded Chinese state either preempting a familiar state from becoming estranged or reaching out to a perceived stranger or potential stranger state and making a role for the latter in the hope of neutralizing mutual strangeness in their subsequent relationships. However, the attempt in the literature to bring forth relationality as a constituent of Chinese international relations (IR) tends to look at Chineseness as composed of absolute otherness to the West (Qin 2018; Jacques 2009).

Chinese IR has emerged in recent years to counter Euro- or Western-centrism. Qin Yaqing (Qin 2016a), the leading scholar of Chinese relationality, specifically advocates such a relativist quest for a Sinocentric reinterpretation of Chinese uniqueness. Sinocentrism has received strong support in the studies of Chinese modern history but is more about discovering neglected history than sheerly relativist in nature (P. Cohen 2010; Mizoguchi 1989; P. C. C. Huang 1991, 2016; R. Huang 1999). This relativist challenge to the allegedly universal knowledge arising from the European intellectual traditions has most noticeably emerged in the field of indigenous psychology (Yang 1993; K. Hwang 2001), which made an original inspiration for Qin’s relational theory. However, this relativist string of Sinocentrism becomes deeply problematic when applied to relational studies, because the relational agenda substitutes processual practices for substantivism (K. Hwang 2009). Without an ontologically substantive China, any relativist claim on behalf of China is groundless. In this chapter, therefore, I will tackle this ironic synthesis in Chinese IR and restore its processual sensibilities through the approach of post-Chineseness without completely jettisoning Qin’s quest for Chinese distinction.

As mentioned above, Sinocentrism refers to understanding the world through a Chinese lens. This book narrows this down to mean understanding other people through a Chinese lens. It thus refers to the practice of determining the kind and level of Chineseness in another person as well as in one’s self by those acting from an allegedly Chinese identity. In international relations, it is about the Beijing authorities improvising a resemblance to the other national actors by discovering their Chineseness or the potential to have it. These perceived and yet unstable strings of resemblance complicate China as a category. Consequently, Chineseness can only exist in “post-Chineseness” due to its negotiable nature as well as its context- and actor-driven peculiarities. Given that Chineseness is highly uncertain, contextualized, and agentially based, even Beijing, on behalf of the entire country, cannot enforce a coherent resemblance between those considered Chinese.

The chapter will discuss how post-Chineseness supports a system of “balance of relationships” (BoR). This is a system that obliges nations to practice self-restraint and reciprocate benevolence to enable other nations’ interests. The stronger the perceived resemblance between nations, the more obliged they are to engage each other using self-restraint, and the more secure they all are. The BoR agenda differs from the current relational IR to the extent that, whereas the former obliges actors to reciprocate benevolence and improvises resemblance between each other in context, the latter imagines a prior string of resemblance that already constitutes all actors, who are able to expect the behavior of one another and even feel a certain level of solidarity.

The balance of relationships joins the relational turn in IR and treats it as an agenda that traces the evolution and practice of the imagined prior resemblances of the actors in terms of genes, geoculture, language, history, values, norms, customs, memories, works, institutions, residence, memberships, threats, interests, and so forth. In a nutshell, no relation exists without some imagined resemblance. These imagined as well as constructed strings of resemblance commonly constitute the identities of the actors and allow the actors to build networks to address collective concerns, recruit and train new members, watch those lacking such resemblance, and, most importantly, gain confidence in the goodwill of the resembled others.

In the situation where there is only thin prior resemblance or where the imagined prior resemblance breaks down, improvised resemblance is the solution. The balance of relationships introduced later reveals these practically (post-)Chinese styles of improvising resemblance. Readiness to improvise resemblance in context and adapt to new circumstances appears to be a short-term orientation, but actually it has a long-term rationale. This has to do with the prior relations being not always reliable where vital interests, for example, a high-staked electoral campaign, or a perceived urgency in context, for example, the 9/11-kind of terrorist attack, can prompt a survival instinct or resort to exceptionalism to abort self-restraint. Then, all would be pushed back to mutual strangeness as if previous solidarity hardly relates them anymore. That is why, for the sake of remaining related and thus secured, the readiness to improvise resemblance between strangers can, even in the long run, be more fundamental to security and welfare than the reliance on prior resemblance. Thus, adjustable Chineseness in others is practically bound to diverge.

In this light, the task of Chinese IR becomes to discover the processes through which a shared sense of Chineseness emerges and adapts in different contexts, in order to appreciate how relational concerns constrain power or interest (Dessein 2016; S. Zhao 2015; Fingar 2012). The main challenge the BoR poses to mainstream IR is that engendering and reproducing Chineseness in others ontologically equalizes the parties of the BoR so that their interaction does not proceed in accordance with the relative level of power (P. C. C. Huang 2016; Noesselt 2015). In fact, both parties contribute to the crafting of Chineseness intersubjectively. Hence, in an asymmetrical power relationship, the weaker party may act strongly, and the stronger party compliantly (Womack 2012; Huang and Shih 2014). An additional challenge lies in the fact that nations do not always pursue apparent national interests (Qin 2016a, 2009; Kalvaski 2016; Shih and Chang 2017).

Sacrificing interests to restore the relational balance embedded in imagined resemblance is common everywhere in the world and at all times throughout history (Fierke 2013; Ching-chang Chen 2015; Wulf 2016), including for those actors who subscribe to prior resemblance. Thus, the study of the BoR adds to the relational turn those cases where prior resemblance is lacking in general or inadequate in context. The BoR agenda studies the process of engendering Sinocentric resemblance embedded in some kind of invited Chineseness. It contains two dimensions: constructing the resemblance and ensuring the willingness to reproduce resemblance.

What follows in chapter 1 is a Sinocentric method for transcending both Sinocentrism and Eurocentrism. This method would regard a Eurocentric method of dealing with improvised resemblance as a natural ally that would craft a post-European theory. However, both could adhere to the general theory of a balance of relationships, which is thus not a Sinocentric theory. The discussion shows that the improvisation of resemblance can be a general analytical frame transcending the binary of China and the West. This book introduces those dimensions that define these categories of resemblance, how they are variously practiced, and why no one has total control.

Balance of Relationships and Bilateral IR

Analytically distinguishing the two different modes of relating nations that underline the allegedly Chinese and Western practices can transcend the binary of China and the West. While some are culturally prepared to enlist the one instead of the other, both modes are accessible to the world population anywhere. In other words, BoR is not about China replacing the West. The first mode is prior resemblance. It undergirds the primarily multilateral relations, whose members, with or without engaging in any interaction with one another, abide by the consensual institutional rules or discursive conventions, and operate within the same cosmological order that universally constitutes the otherwise differing identities of all. While prior resemblance can support dyadic relations, for example, a historical hierarchy between a suzerain and its vassal, it is volatile, given the negotiable nature of bilateral relationships. Prior resemblance enables multilateral relationality to the extent that it nurtures solidarity among the members and motivates all to care for and enforce its principles in the face of deviance (Kopra 2016; Johnston 2008).

The second mode is improvised resemblance, which facilitates the formation of a mainly bilateral relationship that is external to the commonly recognized rules or codes of conduct. Having a specific relationship with all other nations respectively requires a nation to address the peculiarity of each coupling relationship (Hagström 2005). Due to its practical nature, improvised resemblance is concerned with strategic relationships, making it a poor tool for multilateralism, that discourages peculiarity. Without a prior consensus on the rules or norms, the enactment of resemblance must rely almost entirely on gift giving of all sorts (Yang 1994). A properly devised benefit for the other state symbolizes and enacts the resemblance of certain role identities—for example, friendship, neighborship, comradeship, brotherhood, and partnership—whose prior consensus is thin. In the ancient tributary system, for example, subjection to an abstract heavenly order and the derived common mission to reproduce the relationship between China and a remote vassal might be the only point of resemblance that served to enhance the internal legitimacy of each party (Ji-young Lee 2016; M. Liao 2012a, 2012b).

Improvised resemblance obliges unity in public stance, without which contrived resemblance ceases to exist and both constituted parties lose their relational identity as well as the sense of security embedded in mutual acceptance. Therefore, improvised resemblance requires the skill to create mutual roles in accordance with the situations. That is why BoR can appear too random to merit scientific interrogation.

Multilateral relations then articulate how nations already resemble one another and partially explain, as an independent variable, how consensual relations constitute self-identity. Bilateral relations, by contrast, reflect how nations strategically improvise resemblance and serve as a dependent variable to be partially explained by how nations choose to interact in accordance with their relational resources. Arguably, Christianity and capitalism contribute to prior consensual principles (Luoma-aho 2009; R. B. J. Walker 1993; Ruggie 1982), whereas Confucianism and the Chinese tributary system encourage improvised arrangements (for a detailed discussion, see Shangsheng Chen 2015; M. Liao 2012a, 2012b; Zhang and Buzan 2012).¹ Multilateral relational thinking, however divided among the notions of field, pragmatism, network, practice, discursive possibility, and configuration, attends to a shared context of all situated actors and their interactions that have consequences for all (Jackson and Nexon 2019). In this light, minimal solidarity is spontaneous under prior relations, in which the members accept or even protect each being different otherwise. However, improvised relations impose unity as an obligation in context to downplay or even ignore each being different. A significant example is the notion of natural rights that define universal humanity. Insufficiency in prior resemblance may cause estrangement, misunderstanding, and even aversion, which could be solved through improvised resemblance bilaterally. Without its stranger-partners sharing the human rights tradition, for example, Washington can rely on economic, educational, and military aid to consolidate a mutual defense pact.

Widely noted, both Qin Yaqing’s Confucianism and Zhao Tingyang’s Daoism, in which an imagined common string—Tianxia—constitutes the identities of all of the actors, overstate the relativist side. For the purpose of discussion here, suffice it to define their Tianxia as a system in which all are bound to be related (in some way). Accordingly, strangers are by all means related, so they will naturally try to strike out a way to relate that can testify to their place in Tianxia. Finding ways to relate requires improvisation, reciprocity, and self-control. The highest level of self-control is expected of the prince, whose complete selflessness defines the state of benevolence, according to Confucianism. The rationale of self-control is allegedly that all who accept the prince may feel secure in growing and retaining their own crops. This rationale does not differ, qualitatively, from the logic behind signing a social contract, which allows Lev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1 Decentralizing Chineseness
• Part 3 Belonging to Chineseness
• In Lieu of a Conclusion: Noninternational Relations, Nonidentities
• Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Back Cover