All under Heaven: The Tianxia System for a Possible World Order (Great Transformations)

by Tingyang Zhao, Odd Arne Westad (Foreword), Joseph E. Harroff (Translator)

In this succinct yet ample work, Zhao Tingyang, one of China’s most distinguished intellectuals, provides a profoundly original philosophical interpretation of China’s story and also develops a Chinese worldview for the future. Over the past few decades, the question W here did China come from?  has absorbed the thoughts of many of China's best historians. Zhao, keenly aware of the persistent and pernicious asymmetry in the prevailing way scholars have gone about theorizing China according to Western concepts and categories, has tasked both Chinese and Western scholars to "rethink China." Zhao introduces what he terms a distinctively Chinese centripetal "whirlpool" model of world order to interpret the historical progression of China’s tianxia  (All under Heaven) identity construction. In this book, Zhao forwards a compelling thesis not only on how we should understand China, but also on how China until recently has understood itself.

Genres: China, Philosophy, History, Politics

332 pages, Hardcover

Published June 29, 2021

Reviews

[Owlseyes]

"While the notion of ‘All-under-Heaven’(tianxia 天下) is most certainly an ideal, it is by no means a utopia."
Tingyang Zhao