Harmony and War

Confucian Culture and Chinese Power Politics

Yuan-kang Wang

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780231522403
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Confucianism has shaped a certain perception of Chinese security strategy, symbolized by the defensive, nonaggressive Great Wall. Many believe China is antimilitary and reluctant to use force against its enemies. It practices pacifism and refrains from expanding its boundaries, even when nationally strong.

In a path-breaking study traversing six centuries of Chinese history, Yuan-kang Wang resoundingly discredits this notion, recasting China as a practitioner of realpolitik and a ruthless purveyor of expansive grand strategies. Leaders of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) prized military force and shrewdly assessed the capabilities of China's adversaries. They adopted defensive strategies when their country was weak and pursued expansive goals, such as territorial acquisition, enemy destruction, and total military victory, when their country was strong. Despite the dominance of an antimilitarist Confucian culture, warfare was not uncommon in the bulk of Chinese history. Grounding his research in primary Chinese sources, Wang outlines a politics of power that are crucial to understanding China's strategies today, especially its policy of "peaceful development," which, he argues, the nation has adopted mainly because of its military, economic, and technological weakness in relation to the United States.

1

CONFUCIAN STRATEGIC CULTURE AND THE PUZZLE

CHINA’S WEIGHT is increasingly felt around the globe. Its booming economy, growing military might, and rising diplomatic clout are gradually changing the international landscape. As China rises, many observers are wondering how a rich and powerful China will behave in the world. International relations (IR) scholarship offers various answers to this important question, ranging from dangerous power transition to cooperative international integration and to peaceful identity transformation.¹ Yet, for Chinese civilian and military strategists, one argument repeatedly stands out: Because of its Confucian culture, China has not behaved aggressively toward others throughout history and will continue to be a pacific power after it has risen on today’s world stage. Confucianism denigrates the efficacy of military force as an instrument of statecraft, giving rise to a strategic culture that is pacifist, defensive, and non-expansionist. The Great Wall embodied China’s strategic culture of peace and defense. According to this view, existing IR theory, developed mainly in the West, where wars were abundant, is ill suited to explain and understand the distinctive Chinese experience centered on peace and harmony. Chinese strategists are enamored of the distinction between the brutal, hegemonic way (ba dao) of the Western powers and the benevolent, kingly way (wang dao) of the Chinese world order. The West, they argue, is quick to use force to resolve interstate disputes, but China has always shunned violence in preference to defense and diplomacy. Against the realpolitik tradition of the West, China did not expand in history even when it was powerful.

Chinese military strategists have given considerable attention to cultural variables. Lieutenant General Li Jijun of the Academy of Military Science, who first introduced the concept of “strategic culture” to China, argues that “the defensive character of China’s strategic culture is widely recognized in the world.”² General Xu Xin, former deputy chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army, argues that “the Chinese nation has a long tradition of honoring peace. As early as two thousand years ago, Confucius has emphasized that ‘peace should be cherished.’”³ Because of this preoccupation with defense, generations of Chinese leaders have chosen not to pursue an offensive-oriented strategy. Contemporary civilian analysts, though not necessarily using the term “strategic culture,” also suggest that China has a cultural preference for peace, harmony, and defense. Unlike the Westphalian system, in which interstate relations were formally equal but conflictual, the Confucian world order with China at the center was, in the words of Qin Yaqing, “unequal but benign.”⁴

Official policy papers and public statements by top leaders hew to the idea of a pacifist strategic culture. In a 2005 foreign policy white paper, the Chinese foreign ministry proclaimed that “Chinese culture is a pacific one.”⁵ The 2006 Defense White Paper stated that “China pursues a national defense policy which is purely defensive in nature.”⁶ The late senior leader Deng Xiaoping reiterated on several occasions that “China’s strategy is always and will be defensive.… If China is modernized in the future, its strategy will still be defensive.”⁷ Former Vice Premier and Foreign Minister Qian Qichen remarked, “China has never had the tradition of expanding abroad.”⁸ In a speech delivered at Harvard University in 2003, Premier Wen Jiabao stated, “Peace loving has been a time-honored quality of the Chinese nation. The very first emperor of the Qin dynasty commanded the building of the Great Wall 2,000 years ago for defense purposes.”⁹ President Hu Jintao announced in 2004 that “China since ancient times has had a fine tradition of sincerity, benevolence, kindness and trust towards its neighbors.”¹⁰

Granted, almost every nation will proclaim that it is peace-loving and that its security policy is defensive. What is striking about the Chinese case is the extent to which this preference for nonviolent, defensive measures is emphasized by the political, military, and academic elites—so much so that Andrew Scobell terms it the “Chinese Cult of Defense.”¹¹

Like their Chinese counterparts, international analysts have long subscribed to the notion that Confucian culture has constrained China’s use of military force. In the West, the pacifist image of China has been in existence since the Enlightenment, when the philosophes praised Chinese civilization as “rational and peaceful.”¹² Max Weber wrote about “the pacifist character of Confucianism” and observed, “The Confucianists, who are ultimately pacifist literati oriented to inner political welfare, naturally faced military powers with aversion or with lack of understanding.”¹³ John K. Fairbank asserted that Chinese culture has a “pacifist bias,” rendering the use of force a “last resort.”¹⁴ Ralph Sawyer argued, “Despite incessant barbarian incursions and major military threats throughout their history … Imperial China was little inclined to pursue military solutions to external aggression.”¹⁵ Writing on the revival of Confucianism in today’s China, Daniel Bell opined, “Confucian theorizing on just and unjust war has the potential to play the role of constraining China’s imperial ventures abroad, just as it did in the past.”¹⁶

The popularity of this cultural argument cannot be overemphasized, yet there have been surprisingly few studies examining the proposition that China’s Confucian culture has constrained its use of force against external threats during its imperial past. Most of the existing studies focus on the People’s Republic of China after 1949, a period in which China has never been in a dominant position in the system. Few IR scholars have ventured to study Imperial China as the main body of their research.¹⁷ As such, they provide inadequate guidance on the issue of how China will behave when its power rises in the future. If history is any guide, studying Chinese strategic behaviors in the past will likely shed light on its future behavior. When was China most likely to use force? How had China behaved as it grew more powerful? Did Chinese war aims expand in the absence of systemic and military constraints? This book provides answers to these important questions.

THE CENTRAL QUESTION

The central question of this study is: To what extent does culture influence a state’s use of military force against external security threats? Put in the context of China, did Confucian culture constrain Chinese use of force in the past?

This question is grounded in IR theory. Structural realism holds that anarchy, defined as the absence of a central authority above states, pushes states to engage in power competition and use force when necessary; a state’s culture does not have an independent effect on how it behaves in the world.¹⁸ Cultural theories, in contrast, argue that ideational factors such as culture can transform the harmful effects of anarchy and have an independent effect on state behaviors. For instance, Peter Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara argue that, in the aftermath of World War II, a culture of pacifism has become institutionalized in Japan, to the extent that Japanese policymakers no longer follow the logic of realist theory.¹⁹ Thomas Berger suggests that Japan’s “culture of anti-militarism” makes it very hard for that country to assume a substantial military role.²⁰ According to cultural theorists, if leaders can forgo the realist ideas of competition and instead cultivate the norms of cooperation, then international politics can be transformed; conflicts among states will no longer be inevitable.

In the extant literature, there are two strands of cultural explanations in regard to China’s strategic behavior: Confucian pacifism and cultural realism. Both maintain that culture has an independent effect on how states behave in the world, but they disagree sharply over which culture best characterizes the Chinese tradition. Confucian pacifism depicts Chinese use of force as reluctant, reactive, and defensive.²¹ The antimilitarist ideas of China’s Confucian culture proscribed the use of violence in statecraft and prescribed peaceful, noncoercive means in resolving disputes. Having an antimilitarist strategic culture, China has rarely taken the initiative in using force—its actual use of force was for self-defense, a response to the aggression of others. Confucianism denigrates the efficacy of violence in statecraft and preaches peace and harmony in state-to-state relations: war is aberrant; brute force begets chaos. The use of force was unnecessary, futile, and counterproductive. The key to national security is good domestic governance built on moral education as well as cultivation of benevolence and virtue among the country’s leaders. Following Confucian precepts, a wealthy and powerful China has historically been a benign hegemon, not an expansionist power bent on dominating others. Looking ahead, because of this cultural heritage, a strong China will not behave aggressively toward others, nor will it be an expansionist power—even though its capabilities to do so have increased.

In contradistinction to Confucian pacifism, cultural realism sees Chinese use of force as eager, proactive, and offensive. While acknowledging the parallel existence of Confucian pacifism, which is said to be symbolic and inoperative, Alastair Iain Johnston contends that China has had an often neglected, but operational, strand of realpolitik strategic culture.²² Because of this strategic culture, China viewed conflict as inevitable, held a zero-sum view of the adversary, and valued the utility of force in resolving interstate disputes. Furthermore, in times of superior strength, China preferred to pursue an offensive, expansionist grand strategy that included extended campaigns beyond the borders, annexation of territories, and total annihilation of adversaries. In times of relative weakness, China adopted a defensive grand strategy such as static defense and deterrence, or even an accommodationist grand strategy that entailed territorial concessions, economic incentives, and peace treaties. Contrary to the claim of Confucian pacifism, a rise in China’s relative power would lead to an increasingly aggressive, belligerent, and expansionist security policy. Importantly, according to cultural realism, Chinese realpolitik was not a product of the anarchic structure of the system but rather a product of social learning. Chinese strategists have learned the precepts of realpolitik by reading the Seven Military Classics as well as other military writings. Because power politics is learned, it can therefore be unlearned. The hardwiring of realpolitik thinking in Chinese leaders can hence be replaced by a more peaceful discourse.²³

Both Confucian pacifism and cultural realism start from a cultural, ideational perspective. Structural realism, on the other hand, holds that culture has little effect on how states behave in the world. The theory argues that, in an anarchic system, the distribution of power, not country-specific strategic cultures, accounts for much of international outcome and state behavior. In this view, the material structure of the system exerts overriding influence on state behavior. Realists do not deny that when international pressures are not salient, a state’s cultural and historical legacies may have an effect on its strategic behavior, but they do insist that power considerations frequently trump unit-level variables such as culture, ideology, and regime type. International anarchy, defined as the absence of a higher authority above states, is the permissive condition that allows war to occur regardless of the intentions of states. Because war is always a possibility in an anarchic system, survival-seeking states will arm themselves for security and seek to gain relative power at the expense of others, since power is the key to survival in a system with no central authority to protect states from aggression. A powerful state, with more resources at disposal, will pursue an offensive grand strategy by expanding its political, economic, and military interests abroad. Hence, structural realism shares with cultural realism an identical view of state behavior; they differ, however, over the source of realpolitik behavior, which structural realism attributes to the mater...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Preface
• 1: Confucian Strategic Culture and the Puzzle
• 2: Culture and Strategic Choice
• 3: The Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127)
• 4: The Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279)
• 5: The Ming Dynasty (1368–1644)
• 6: The Ming Tribute System
• 7: Chinese Power Politics in the Age of U.S. Unipolarity
• Notes
• Glossary: Chinese Terms
• Bibliography
• Index