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Redefining A Philosophy for World Governance
This Key Concepts pivot discusses the contemporary relevance of the ancient Chinese concept of tianxia or ‘All-Under-Heaven’ and argues the case for a new global political philosophy. ‘All-under-heaven’ is a conceptualization of the world as the composition of three realms: the physical, psychological and political, which places inclusivity and harmony at the heart of a global world view above other considerations, transcending the notion of nation state. In a highly interconnected and globalized world, the idea of tianxia can offer a new 21st century vision of international relations and world order, based on a harmonized global organization defined by the “all-inclusiveness principle.” Promoting the ontology of co-existence and relational rationality hand in hand with rational risk aversion in a globalized world, this pivot makes the case that tianxia could offer a new vision for contemporary world order, redefining the universality and legitimacy of politics.
- GenresPhilosophyChinaPolitics
68 pages, Hardcover
Published March 29, 2019
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April 1, 2019
Zhao notes
International politics is not world politics: It’s still states competing with each other, anarchically, on the basis of national interest, more or less institutionalized.
Two traditional of world order: the Roman imperial system, the Chinese Tianxia system. “The imperial system seeks to conquer and achieve a dominating role, while the Tianxia system tries to construct a shareable model” (xvii)
Tianxia emerged because the small Zhou kingdom became dominant and needed a logic to justify itself: “Zhou had to come up with a universal system of long-term cooperation acceptable to all states in order to maintain its supreme authority over vassal states…. This meant that Zhou had to create a world system, that would transcend states in order to realize the internationalization of the world, thus utilizing common and cooperative interests to guarantee its own interests…. A world order had become the condition for a state to survive, and the rule of the world the premise for the rule of the state.” (5)
In constructing his benign model of Tianxia, Zhao largely leaves the question of tribute to one side, and implies that it is a consensual relationship, involving “mutual benefit” based on the development of “public interest, shared interest, and public enterprise beneficial for all states” (6-7)
“Enfeoffment is a supervisory system in which separate states govern themselves within an integrated world. The Tianxia system is designed as a network which includes myriad subordinate political members…. The sovereign power of the political body, or the suzerain of Tianxia, is responsible for overseeing common safety and order, and protecting common and shared interests for the whole system,.” (7)
[The closer and more local the governance matters are, the more it makes sense for there to be democratic decision-making because the people making the decision are also the ones who experience (all of) its effects. But the further the geographic or temporal implications of a policy, when people other than the local experiencers will be effected, the more it makes sense of those matters to be judged on the basis of professional, scientific experts who have been vested with looking out for long-term, and collective interests.]
“People-centered Confucian thinking may easily be associated with the concept of democracy. But being people-centered is not the same as being democratic, because the former is not based on people’s opinions but their interests.” (8)
“Governing by virtue means that benefits must be universally shared and fairly distributed. The purpose of this is to maximize benefits for everyone, not to promote their maximization for a few.” (9)
“To create a system of Tianxia is to construct a compatible Tianxia out of a conflicted and divided world so as to realize the internalization of the world…. The purpose of politics is to being order to Tianxia, that is, to achieve the maximization of compatibility and coexistence.” (10)
“If there is no world system, then Tianxia will remain a chaotic and disintegrated place, and there will be no hope of achieving permanent peace.” (12)
Tianxia resembles a network like the Internet”
1. Every local structure replicates the whole structure
2. The network has infinite openness
3. The system is characterized by voluntary openness
4. The aim of politics is to turn enemies into friends
5. Every state has the potential to become the new core of the Tianixia
“The suzerain is in charge of keeping public order in the whole system, while vassal states have a highly autonomous level of self-governance…. Vassal states must pay tributes and services to the son of Heaven, at much lower rates than taxes.” (15) Contra Fairbank: “To take a tributary policy as a tributary system may be, in my opinion, an over-interpretation... tributary practice since the Han time… did not have, as required by a system, the actual power to control and manage tributary’s politics, military and economy; instead it served merely as a cultural model… Elevating this policy to a system without essential functions of a system is an overcharacterization.” (40-41)
“The world has its own interests that cannot be reduced to national interests” (18)
“The concept of Tianxia implies a political ontology of coexistence…. [It] rejects any unilateral universalism or cultural imperialism” (18)
THESIS: “In ancient China, activities among peoples all over the country in which they competed for maximum material interest and maximum spiritual resources generated a whirlpool of force on the Central Plains [which] developed into an inevitable centripetal force and self-reinforcing power that made it difficult for the majority of people involved to disengage from it…. The theoretical advantage of the whirlpool formula is its ability to explain effectively why the ancient China could continuously expand its territory into a super-sized country without being an expansionary empire…. Its expansion was not dividends out outward military expansion, but gifts from outside competitors who were continually drawn by the centripetal force into the Chinese whirlpool.” (23) I love how naturalized this image is, as if there was no agency involved, just an inexorable flow. He also asserts that the Chinese plain has “a magic power… a spiritual world that enjoyed the maximum value added politically.” (29) “The fundamental force that drives the Chinese whirlpool comes from the need for ethnic groups to fight over the right to share the spiritual world and its knowledge system.” (30)
“China is a methodology, not a limited concept… To borrow Taleb’s term, it is ‘anti-fragile’ by being responsive to vanes and adaptable to new circumstances.” (32-33)
Everyone who conquers China chooses to adopt its ways, including its language, and Zhao specifically attributes this to superiority of the Chinese “knowledge system,” and specifically its language.
Sensing perhaps that this might have any pleasant ring, he qualifies it by saying, “China has always been the result of interactive recomposition and co-construction by multiple ethnic groups and multiple cultures. It is not complete assimilate to Han, nor rejection and alienation among different cultures. It is recreation through gene reconfiguration.” (35)
“We are living in a physical world that does not have a global political sovereignty or a universal constitution. In that sense, the world today is still a non-world.” (43) “The real problem is not the so-called failed states, but the failed world.” (44) “Hegemonic states are always trying to maintain their exploitative international systems in total disregard of the world’s common interests.” (44-45)
“We cannot expect to develop world politics out of international politics, because international politics is derived from national politics and is consequently subject o the logic of the latter…. International politics is not world politics per se because it is not based on world interests but on national interests; not aimed at achieving peace and cooperation but at maximizing self interests by overwhelming opponents…. While national politics can generally establish an effective system or rules, international politics does not have any systems or fair rules other than seeking so-called strategies that benefit the self at the expense of others…. Since international politics is in essence hostilities in the guise of politics, it turns the world into a commons of total anarchy.”” (45)
“Kant’s theory contains at once an idealistic fantasy and a realistic vision. The idealistic fantasy is to establish a universal republic for world citizens… an idea that even Kant dismisses as unrealistic because a universal country will never become the common aspiration of all countries.” (46) “Kantian peace requires all countries to have homogeneous systems and common values, a condition that is not possible to satisfy.” (47)
Critique of Rawls: the difference principle that helps the vulnerable does not apply. In Law of Peoples (1999), Rawls ends up sanctioning intervention, saying that democratic countries may subject non-cooperative countries to forceful sanctions and even to intervention. “A stale proposition such as this is nothing but modern Neo-imperialism.” (49)
“Thinking wrongly that universality comes from universalization,” imperialism “always attempts to universalize its own values unilaterally. This is a fatal misunderstanding. Whether in logic or in practice, universality is a precondition for universalization, not the other way around.” (52) “The significance of Tianxia lies in its vision for an inclusive world, a world that has internalizes but not externalities…. It means. World order must acknowledge the internalization of the world as a transcendental principle before it can achieve universality.” (53)
So how is the governance supposed to work? Zhao laments the disintermediation of rule from the public — “a politics that is based on public opinions.” The problem is that these do not represent people’s true preferences, but only reflect “opinions expressed by mass media and the mainstream, created by systemic power…. The real power behind this is the technological system that makes game rules.” (57)
“Individual rationality is the correct type of reason for economics, as it gives priority to exclusive interests; whereas relational rationality is a humane rationality, giving priority to mutual safety and security…. The institutional rationality of the new system of Tianxia must be based on relational rationality to ensure its non-exclusive model of existence.” (59) here he draws a parallel to the difference between “Pareto improvements” and “Confucian improvements” (61).
He then closes with an argument for “compatible universalism,” by which he means “any value that can be defined by symmetrical relations is a universal value” whereas “ any value that cannot be defined by symmetrical relations only represents personal preferences or the specific values of a particular group.” (60)
International politics is not world politics: It’s still states competing with each other, anarchically, on the basis of national interest, more or less institutionalized.
Two traditional of world order: the Roman imperial system, the Chinese Tianxia system. “The imperial system seeks to conquer and achieve a dominating role, while the Tianxia system tries to construct a shareable model” (xvii)
Tianxia emerged because the small Zhou kingdom became dominant and needed a logic to justify itself: “Zhou had to come up with a universal system of long-term cooperation acceptable to all states in order to maintain its supreme authority over vassal states…. This meant that Zhou had to create a world system, that would transcend states in order to realize the internationalization of the world, thus utilizing common and cooperative interests to guarantee its own interests…. A world order had become the condition for a state to survive, and the rule of the world the premise for the rule of the state.” (5)
In constructing his benign model of Tianxia, Zhao largely leaves the question of tribute to one side, and implies that it is a consensual relationship, involving “mutual benefit” based on the development of “public interest, shared interest, and public enterprise beneficial for all states” (6-7)
“Enfeoffment is a supervisory system in which separate states govern themselves within an integrated world. The Tianxia system is designed as a network which includes myriad subordinate political members…. The sovereign power of the political body, or the suzerain of Tianxia, is responsible for overseeing common safety and order, and protecting common and shared interests for the whole system,.” (7)
[The closer and more local the governance matters are, the more it makes sense for there to be democratic decision-making because the people making the decision are also the ones who experience (all of) its effects. But the further the geographic or temporal implications of a policy, when people other than the local experiencers will be effected, the more it makes sense of those matters to be judged on the basis of professional, scientific experts who have been vested with looking out for long-term, and collective interests.]
“People-centered Confucian thinking may easily be associated with the concept of democracy. But being people-centered is not the same as being democratic, because the former is not based on people’s opinions but their interests.” (8)
“Governing by virtue means that benefits must be universally shared and fairly distributed. The purpose of this is to maximize benefits for everyone, not to promote their maximization for a few.” (9)
“To create a system of Tianxia is to construct a compatible Tianxia out of a conflicted and divided world so as to realize the internalization of the world…. The purpose of politics is to being order to Tianxia, that is, to achieve the maximization of compatibility and coexistence.” (10)
“If there is no world system, then Tianxia will remain a chaotic and disintegrated place, and there will be no hope of achieving permanent peace.” (12)
Tianxia resembles a network like the Internet”
1. Every local structure replicates the whole structure
2. The network has infinite openness
3. The system is characterized by voluntary openness
4. The aim of politics is to turn enemies into friends
5. Every state has the potential to become the new core of the Tianixia
“The suzerain is in charge of keeping public order in the whole system, while vassal states have a highly autonomous level of self-governance…. Vassal states must pay tributes and services to the son of Heaven, at much lower rates than taxes.” (15) Contra Fairbank: “To take a tributary policy as a tributary system may be, in my opinion, an over-interpretation... tributary practice since the Han time… did not have, as required by a system, the actual power to control and manage tributary’s politics, military and economy; instead it served merely as a cultural model… Elevating this policy to a system without essential functions of a system is an overcharacterization.” (40-41)
“The world has its own interests that cannot be reduced to national interests” (18)
“The concept of Tianxia implies a political ontology of coexistence…. [It] rejects any unilateral universalism or cultural imperialism” (18)
THESIS: “In ancient China, activities among peoples all over the country in which they competed for maximum material interest and maximum spiritual resources generated a whirlpool of force on the Central Plains [which] developed into an inevitable centripetal force and self-reinforcing power that made it difficult for the majority of people involved to disengage from it…. The theoretical advantage of the whirlpool formula is its ability to explain effectively why the ancient China could continuously expand its territory into a super-sized country without being an expansionary empire…. Its expansion was not dividends out outward military expansion, but gifts from outside competitors who were continually drawn by the centripetal force into the Chinese whirlpool.” (23) I love how naturalized this image is, as if there was no agency involved, just an inexorable flow. He also asserts that the Chinese plain has “a magic power… a spiritual world that enjoyed the maximum value added politically.” (29) “The fundamental force that drives the Chinese whirlpool comes from the need for ethnic groups to fight over the right to share the spiritual world and its knowledge system.” (30)
“China is a methodology, not a limited concept… To borrow Taleb’s term, it is ‘anti-fragile’ by being responsive to vanes and adaptable to new circumstances.” (32-33)
Everyone who conquers China chooses to adopt its ways, including its language, and Zhao specifically attributes this to superiority of the Chinese “knowledge system,” and specifically its language.
Sensing perhaps that this might have any pleasant ring, he qualifies it by saying, “China has always been the result of interactive recomposition and co-construction by multiple ethnic groups and multiple cultures. It is not complete assimilate to Han, nor rejection and alienation among different cultures. It is recreation through gene reconfiguration.” (35)
“We are living in a physical world that does not have a global political sovereignty or a universal constitution. In that sense, the world today is still a non-world.” (43) “The real problem is not the so-called failed states, but the failed world.” (44) “Hegemonic states are always trying to maintain their exploitative international systems in total disregard of the world’s common interests.” (44-45)
“We cannot expect to develop world politics out of international politics, because international politics is derived from national politics and is consequently subject o the logic of the latter…. International politics is not world politics per se because it is not based on world interests but on national interests; not aimed at achieving peace and cooperation but at maximizing self interests by overwhelming opponents…. While national politics can generally establish an effective system or rules, international politics does not have any systems or fair rules other than seeking so-called strategies that benefit the self at the expense of others…. Since international politics is in essence hostilities in the guise of politics, it turns the world into a commons of total anarchy.”” (45)
“Kant’s theory contains at once an idealistic fantasy and a realistic vision. The idealistic fantasy is to establish a universal republic for world citizens… an idea that even Kant dismisses as unrealistic because a universal country will never become the common aspiration of all countries.” (46) “Kantian peace requires all countries to have homogeneous systems and common values, a condition that is not possible to satisfy.” (47)
Critique of Rawls: the difference principle that helps the vulnerable does not apply. In Law of Peoples (1999), Rawls ends up sanctioning intervention, saying that democratic countries may subject non-cooperative countries to forceful sanctions and even to intervention. “A stale proposition such as this is nothing but modern Neo-imperialism.” (49)
“Thinking wrongly that universality comes from universalization,” imperialism “always attempts to universalize its own values unilaterally. This is a fatal misunderstanding. Whether in logic or in practice, universality is a precondition for universalization, not the other way around.” (52) “The significance of Tianxia lies in its vision for an inclusive world, a world that has internalizes but not externalities…. It means. World order must acknowledge the internalization of the world as a transcendental principle before it can achieve universality.” (53)
So how is the governance supposed to work? Zhao laments the disintermediation of rule from the public — “a politics that is based on public opinions.” The problem is that these do not represent people’s true preferences, but only reflect “opinions expressed by mass media and the mainstream, created by systemic power…. The real power behind this is the technological system that makes game rules.” (57)
“Individual rationality is the correct type of reason for economics, as it gives priority to exclusive interests; whereas relational rationality is a humane rationality, giving priority to mutual safety and security…. The institutional rationality of the new system of Tianxia must be based on relational rationality to ensure its non-exclusive model of existence.” (59) here he draws a parallel to the difference between “Pareto improvements” and “Confucian improvements” (61).
He then closes with an argument for “compatible universalism,” by which he means “any value that can be defined by symmetrical relations is a universal value” whereas “ any value that cannot be defined by symmetrical relations only represents personal preferences or the specific values of a particular group.” (60)
April 3, 2020
nice propaganda sobre la alternativa china al imperialismo, faltó más profundización, pero difícil por el formato del libro
May 19, 2022
In this book, Prof. Zhao Tingyang introduces the Chinese ancient concept of Tianxia as the best philosophy for the future of World Governance: "If a new system of Tianxia cannot be established to bring global risks under control, then Human beings are very likely to lose their world."
What is Tianxia? Meaning "All under Heaven", it is a paradigm for governance formulated for the first time allegedly by the Duke of Zhou to govern of a territory with thousands of different cultures, to solve the specific issue of the "small rules the large" and "one rules the many", providing a solution with universal significance. This system guarantees that (1) all states are willing to join it because of shared benefits; (2) safety and peace through check and balances, shared benefits, interdependence; (3) public interests and state interest to be the same --> "achieve the internalization of the world, so that it doesn't have any externality". In this system, every vassal state is "independently governed but belongs to the network system. it is interdependent with the suzerain, subject to its supervision but, at the same time, allowed to play a supervisory role". This system relies on Confucian humanism, with a people-centred approach: if compared to democracy, which is the collection of people's opinions and choices for the purpose of decision-making, Zhao affirms that "the professional analysis of people's interests is more likely to yield a rational choice". Naturally, according to Zhao, such ideal system of openness and compatibility centred around a main state would need to be administred by China, which has already adopted such philosophy to organize its own civilizational state, echoing Zhang Weiwei's argument. According to Zhao's explanations, 4 key components (and benefits) of Tianxia as a new paradigm for global governance are: 1. internationalization of the world: "the new system of tianxia will become a supervisory system so that a universal world order can be maintained"; 2. relational rationality: whereas individual rationality tends to maximize personal gains, relational rationality is humane rationality, "giving priority to mutual safety and security". 3 Confucian improvement: "if and only if a system is universally legitimate, then it will be able to guarantee [...] Pareto's improvement of everybody's interests so long as the overall interests of a society are improved." 4. Compatible universalism: "considers universal values as those applied to every interrelation; namely it anchors universal values on symmetrical relations rather than on unilateral values, thus avoiding the paradox in values."
What i really appreciated about Zhao's conceptualization is his starting point: whereas in different words, he perfectly summarizes the current critical political economic perspective on neoliberalism and on the necessity of radical change in global governance system. Zhao interestingly identifies the current system as "a dictatorship realized by offering freedom and equality [...]; free choices are defined and preset by technocracy, so that freedom loses all its potential for creativity and significance to human life." But how to change a situation in which "the primary beneficiary of globalization is not any state, but a new power in the form of a network encompassing the whole world?"
Hence my criticism of Zhao's Tianxia: whereas the concepts of relational rationality and compatible universalism are useful solutions to fix/change the current system, how is a China-centred system with tributary states any different from American Hegemony? Zhao already answers this question in the book by pointing at the inherently "Tianxia" nature (peaceful, tolerant, benevolent) of china as a global actor, and at the philosophy of tianxia itself, with its checks and balances and its stress on the world as a family. But in reality, would this be enough to ensure that a Pax American doesn't turn into a hegemonic Pax Sinica? Furthermore, how would this address the inequality and the "externalities" that neoliberalism as an approach to international trade will inevitably keep producing, even if not in a US-centred anymore? I hope that cross-cultural dialogue will have the potentiality to bring these scholars together, maybe to conceptualize an anti-capitalist version of Tianxia, without imperialist undertones, even if Zhao tries to convince us of the opposite.
What is Tianxia? Meaning "All under Heaven", it is a paradigm for governance formulated for the first time allegedly by the Duke of Zhou to govern of a territory with thousands of different cultures, to solve the specific issue of the "small rules the large" and "one rules the many", providing a solution with universal significance. This system guarantees that (1) all states are willing to join it because of shared benefits; (2) safety and peace through check and balances, shared benefits, interdependence; (3) public interests and state interest to be the same --> "achieve the internalization of the world, so that it doesn't have any externality". In this system, every vassal state is "independently governed but belongs to the network system. it is interdependent with the suzerain, subject to its supervision but, at the same time, allowed to play a supervisory role". This system relies on Confucian humanism, with a people-centred approach: if compared to democracy, which is the collection of people's opinions and choices for the purpose of decision-making, Zhao affirms that "the professional analysis of people's interests is more likely to yield a rational choice". Naturally, according to Zhao, such ideal system of openness and compatibility centred around a main state would need to be administred by China, which has already adopted such philosophy to organize its own civilizational state, echoing Zhang Weiwei's argument. According to Zhao's explanations, 4 key components (and benefits) of Tianxia as a new paradigm for global governance are: 1. internationalization of the world: "the new system of tianxia will become a supervisory system so that a universal world order can be maintained"; 2. relational rationality: whereas individual rationality tends to maximize personal gains, relational rationality is humane rationality, "giving priority to mutual safety and security". 3 Confucian improvement: "if and only if a system is universally legitimate, then it will be able to guarantee [...] Pareto's improvement of everybody's interests so long as the overall interests of a society are improved." 4. Compatible universalism: "considers universal values as those applied to every interrelation; namely it anchors universal values on symmetrical relations rather than on unilateral values, thus avoiding the paradox in values."
What i really appreciated about Zhao's conceptualization is his starting point: whereas in different words, he perfectly summarizes the current critical political economic perspective on neoliberalism and on the necessity of radical change in global governance system. Zhao interestingly identifies the current system as "a dictatorship realized by offering freedom and equality [...]; free choices are defined and preset by technocracy, so that freedom loses all its potential for creativity and significance to human life." But how to change a situation in which "the primary beneficiary of globalization is not any state, but a new power in the form of a network encompassing the whole world?"
Hence my criticism of Zhao's Tianxia: whereas the concepts of relational rationality and compatible universalism are useful solutions to fix/change the current system, how is a China-centred system with tributary states any different from American Hegemony? Zhao already answers this question in the book by pointing at the inherently "Tianxia" nature (peaceful, tolerant, benevolent) of china as a global actor, and at the philosophy of tianxia itself, with its checks and balances and its stress on the world as a family. But in reality, would this be enough to ensure that a Pax American doesn't turn into a hegemonic Pax Sinica? Furthermore, how would this address the inequality and the "externalities" that neoliberalism as an approach to international trade will inevitably keep producing, even if not in a US-centred anymore? I hope that cross-cultural dialogue will have the potentiality to bring these scholars together, maybe to conceptualize an anti-capitalist version of Tianxia, without imperialist undertones, even if Zhao tries to convince us of the opposite.
August 3, 2023
Kind of the PRC equivalent of all those American books that think the US system is the end goal of history. Absolutely absurd levels of historiographical problems, but unless you are a historian specializing in the topic it is very convincing - especially if you are both smart and from the country in question.
July 29, 2021
A brief and favorable introduction into a model of globalism under Chinese hegemony, even though the author would probably prefer to describe it as a "familial world order, united under one heaven with China as the head of the family". Informative, if taken with a grain of salt.
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