Hegemony in Chinese? Ba in Chinese international relations.

Chinese international relations (IR), is often said to be heavily reliant on Western

concepts, in particular the realist conceptualisation of hegemony. Since the 1980s,

however, Chinese academic discourse has witnessed increasingly vocal calls to build

a theory with “Chinese characteristics”. Under President Xi Jinping and his

predecessor Hu Jintao, such calls have been bolstered, as the government turned to

traditional Chinese thought for discursive resources in its international policy. In these

discourses, China’s role in a future world order is formulated in direct relation, and

often opposition, to what is portrayed as “Western theory” and “Western hegemony”.

This chapter examines the tensions of this relation through an exploration of the

Chinese concept ba (霸), most commonly translated as “hegemony”, as it appears in

contemporary Chinese academic and policy discourse. These typically portray United

States (US) ba hegemony as the bad other to the good Chinese self. This chapter

draws on resources from Chinese politicians and academics to explore how different

the Chinese alternatives to ba or hegemony really are. Can thought that draws on a

Chinese rather than Western traditions imagine a better world leadership, beyond

problematic hegemony?

The first section outlines the broad strokes of international debates concerned with the

idea of hegemony. It pays specific attention to the idea of China’s rise as a potential

challenge to current world order. The second section introduces Chinese

governmental rhetoric, which has tried to reassure those who fear such a challenge by

promising that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will never seek hegemony. The

third section turns to recent Chinese IR scholarship to excavate what such a claim

might mean. It examines the use of ba in such accounts, showing how ba is not

simply indicative of leadership, but also of immorality. The fourth section examines

how ba plays out in the work of prominent IR scholar Yan Xuetong, who has argued

that China will instead be a new kind of “humane authority”.

My central argument is that despite drawing on a Chinese tradition of thought, such

visions of world order replicate the problematically hierarchical imagination that they

criticise in US/Western hegemony. Both “Western” and “Chinese” articulations of

1

world order that deploy the concepts of hegemony and ba work to constitute

dichotomized categories of “China” and “the West”, obscuring their mutual

constitution and hybridity. I conclude that those who are sceptical about US/Western

hegemony should also be cautious of claims that Chinese thought provides an escape

from these problems. Chinese thought – at least as articulated in contemporary

discussions of world hegemony and ba power – does not provide a greener grass

where theorists can escape English language conceptual confines.

Hegemony and China in Global IR Discourses

The term “hegemony” in English, as well as corresponding concepts in all major

European languages, developed from the post-classical Latin term hegemonia which

harks back to the early sixteenth century at least. The term originally described

“[p]olitical, economic, or military predominance or leadership” (Oxford English

Dictionary, 2014). Since then, the concept has developed along similar lines in IR to

denote the regional or global dominance of one state over others, by political,

economic or military means. In Realist IR theory of the late twentieth century this led

to a preoccupation with questions of state power, conceived in zero-sum terms.

Influential literatures argued that the end of the Cold War resulted in a unique

“unipolar moment”, where the world was faced with a state whose military power

exceeded that of the ten next most powerful states combined. On this understanding,

the US was described as the “world hegemon”. Where this proposition was accepted,

the question has been whether US hegemony is a good thing or not. A central debate

in IR, emerging in the 1970s and continuing after the Cold War, therefore concerned

the question of whether a multipolar, bipolar or unipolar power structure was most

conducive to peace and stability. In these debates, hegemonic stability theorists

approvingly argued that the US could act as a “benevolent despot” to provide a

number of institutional public goods (Snidal, 1985: 579).

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, and talk of the “unipolar moment” is less

fashionable. Prominent IR scholars such as Joseph Nye argued in the 1990s that the

US was not in fact a true hegemon, because it lacked the financial and military

resources to impose formal global hegemony (Nye, 1993: 276). Today, common

wisdom seems to be that if America’s unipolar moment ever existed, it has passed in

2

favour of a power shift from West to East. The question that is now preoccupying

scholars and pundits is whether China’s rise will lead to a new hegemony to replace

the American one, and if so what this might mean for the world. Power transition

theorists like John Mearsheimer argue that US leadership, and the associated global

system, is structurally determined to be undermined by a rising China (Mearsheimer,

2010: 381-396). Others are convinced that such a clash between the US and PRC is

not only spurred on by structural factors, but also by a common Chinese sense of

entitlement to greatness based on Chinese history, as well as a clash of civilisational

or political values (Friedberg, 2011). Those who criticise China, and urge it to act as a

more responsible stakeholder vis-à-vis the system that has supported its rise, are often

labelled in China and internationally as “China threat” theorists. Liberal

institutionalists, meanwhile, claim that any shift in power and leadership from

America to China is more likely to maintain or even strengthen the current liberal

capitalist system (Foot and Walter, 2011).

Accounts within both the “China threat” and “China opportunity” approaches

sometimes fall back on the kind of Orientalism that is performed and reconstituted in

the scholarly field as much as it is acknowledged and criticised. Rey Chow put it aptly

when she described how both the Sinologist adulator of Ancient Civilisation and the

decrier of Chinese brutality on Tiananmen Square contribute to the construction of

China as the “Other country” (Chow, 1991). In both cases, China is produced as a

spectacle for Western eyes, which has more to do with the production of an

(American) idea of civilized self than anything else (see also Madsen, 1995).

The idea of a rising China that either does, or does not, challenge the status quo might

seem overly simplistic – most scholars write of China bringing gradual and partial

changes to the system. Nonetheless, approaches to the question of hegemony and the

status quo tend to either aim to completely overhaul it, or to maintain it by improving

it. These two approaches are mirrored in debates about how theorisations of the

international system contribute to its maintenance. Robert W. Cox famously

distinguished between “critical” theories – the ones that want to overhaul the system –

and “problem solving” theories – the ones that want to fix it. Cox developed a concept

of hegemony that did not focus on military might, but denoted cultural and ideological

dominance. IR theory is part of such ideology, expanding in the global realm through

3

“organic intellectuals”. On this understanding, hegemony comes to designate “a

structure of values and understandings about the nature of order that permeates a

whole system of states and non-state entities” (Cox and Sinclair, 1996: 151).

This raises the question: what values and understandings may be detectable in

Chinese discussions of hegemony? How might these relate to the understandings

described above? The answers to these questions are multiple, complex and often

contradictory, and the scope of a book chapter cannot do justice to the variety of ideas

that circulate in China. Nonetheless, we can look for indicative trends in the

discussions amongst what might be thought of as influential “organic intellectuals” in

Chinese government and academia.

Hegemony and China in Chinese Government Discourses

Chinese discussions of China’s rise are marked by what William A. Callahan has

described as a Chinese “pessoptimist structure of feeling” (Callahan, 2010). On the

one hand, many in China look forward to a bright future of continued economic

growth and increasing political influence. On the other hand, and simultaneously,

memories of a painful past of “national humiliation” (guochi) at the hands of Western

powers and Japan are persistently reinvoked to warn of what might happen if China

fails to rise and rejuvenate. This need for, and possibility of, rejuvenation led by the

Chinese Communist Part (CCP) is key to contemporary Chinese politics, and is

central in President Xi Jinping’s slogan of choice: the “China Dream” (Zhongguo

meng). However, the sentiment is far from new, and it has long resulted in particularly

strong opposition to any form of expansionism by other powers, or what is referred to

in China as “hegemonism” (baquan zhuyi). In 2006 Ian Taylor described the Chinese

understanding of hegemony as fitting with Gilpin’s assertion that hegemony “refers to

the leadership of one state … over other states in the system” (Gilpin, 1981: 116, cited

in Taylor, 2006: 1). He argued that China’s self-perceived position in the international

system has resulted in a fairly persistent attempt at preventing or limiting such

“hegemony” at the same time as it tries to carve out a space for itself as a growing

economy (Taylor, 2006: 1).

4

The PRC rhetoric of anti-hegemonism has indeed been present throughout the

lifespan of the PRC, and has been largely coterminous with anti-imperialism, in

conjunction with (selective) insistence on non-interference in “internal affairs”. To

Mao Zedong, “it is only in modern times that [China has] fallen behind. And that was

entirely due to oppression and exploitation by foreign imperialists” (Mao, 1977: 22).

Mao used the rhetoric of anti-hegemonism to garner support of the non-aligned

countries and to represent the PRC as the legitimate representative of global

communism. Accordingly, Mao’s “three worlds theory” described the “first world” as

the superpowers, including both the US and the Soviet Union as pursuing

hegemonism. In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping continued the line of anti-hegemonism and

announced that one of three key tasks for the CCP in the 1980s must be to “continue

opposing hegemonism” in international affairs (Deng, 1983: 224).

In today’s PRC foreign policy discourse, this rhetoric of anti-hegemonism continues.

In particular, accusations of “hegemonism” are levelled when people based in Japan,

Russia or any Western country criticise China, or behave in ways that are understood

as hostile to Beijing’s ambitions. Such criticism or perceived hostile behaviour is

often dismissively and defensively designated as part of the “China threat” theory that

allegedly aims to dominate and contain China. Against the background of such a

perceived “China threat” rhetoric, a key concern of the Chinese government in the

twenty-first century has been to reassure the world about the country’s rise. Such

reassurance often falls back on claims about the essential nature of Chinese people

and the Chinese state as peaceful and harmonious. Previous President Hu Jintao

articulated his vision of China’s role in the world through the foreign policy concept

“Harmonious World”, which involved a focus on the search for win-win solutions in

international affairs (Hu, 2005; Nordin, under review). In a 2005 White Paper called

China’s Peaceful Development Road, this approach to international affairs was

portrayed as pre-determined by history:

[i]t is an inevitable choice based on China’s historical and cultural tradition

that China persists unswervingly in taking the road of peaceful development.

The Chinese nation has always been a peace-loving one. Chinese culture is a

pacific culture (State Council of the PRC, 2005).

5

Thus, although an explicit aim is to “make the country powerful”

China did not seek hegemony in the past, nor does it now, and will not do so

in the future when it gets stronger. China’s development will never pose a

threat to anyone” (Ibid.).

This claim is repeated through various policy documents and speeches (eg. State

Council of the PRC, 2009).

Under current president Xi Jinping, the “China Dream” slogan continues this rhetoric

of anti-hegemonism. The China Dream sometimes appears to be deployed in a more

universalist win-win sense, which continues the stress of Hu’s “harmonious world”.

However, it is also deployed as part of a more exceptionalist logic that renders China

as a socialist alternative to the US-led world order of bourgeois capitalism. This is

said to be the emphasis to communist party audiences (Callahan, 2014). The primacy

of opposing “hegemonism and power politics” in the China Dream is also stressed in

rhetoric surrounding China’s increasing military capacity through the People’s

Liberation Army. As Guo Fenghai, professor of Marxism studies at the PLA National

Defence University, described the China Dream in 2013:

The great renewal of the Chinese nation doesn’t mean China seeking

hegemony. Harmony and a respect for diversity are deeply rooted in

traditional Chinese ideology. In international affairs, China will continue to

oppose hegemonism and power politics, and promote global peace and

stability (Guo in Peng, 2013).

In these twenty-first century articulations of anti-hegemonism, the meaning of

hegemony is diverse. It denotes various types of international domination: economic,

ideological and military. Most often, the win-win theme of Hu’s harmonious world

continues today. Accordingly, part of the PRC government’s attempt to reassure the

world about its rise has been to demonstrate that China is a “responsible great power”

(fu zeren de daguo), as “a means for China to illustrate its commitment to the current

order and its management” (Yeophantong, 2013: 331). On the other hand, China is

6

also portrayed as a more peaceful and responsible alternative to that order (Nordin,

2014). These tendencies are arguably most clear in Xi’s elaborations of Harmonious

World and the China Dream outside of government documents. For example, I have

shown elsewhere how the architecture, exhibitions and messages of the 2010 World

Expo in Shanghai imagined a future world order under Chinese leadership (Nordin,

2012b; 2012c). Xi was responsible for the Expo, which articulated a distinct vision of

Harmonious World and the China Dream. Key symbols at the Expo also showed how

this vision not only builds on claims about the peaceful nature of the Chinese people,

but is also propped up by what some would call “hard power” (Nordin, 2012a). In

these articulations, China offers an alternative – and better – idea of world order under

Chinese leadership. The next two sections turn to some Chinese academics’

suggestions as to what this alternative might look like, and ask to what extent it differs

from the hegemonism which is so fervently opposed.

Hegemony and China in Chinese IR Discourses

If President Xi’s articulation of the China Dream is somewhat ambivalent about the

relation between its envisaged Harmonious World and the current world order, many

Chinese academics have been less coy. To many, the task of Chinese academics is to

step out of the shadow of US/Western hegemonism by shedding the reliance on

US/Western theorisations that are said to be bound up with the political, economic

and military hegemony of the status quo through its “organic intellectuals”. The

opposition to such intellectual hegemonism has been one key imperative for the

development since the 1980s of a Chinese school of IR theory (see Ren, 2009;

Cunningham-Cross, 2014). Many of these literatures invoke China’s so called

“national conditions” (guoqing) which are said to account for “China’s distinct

worldview and defence of a privileged position free from rules imposed by the West”

(Wang, 2013: 525, referring to; Shi, 2009; and Mu, 1991). As such, it is taken to help

Chinese resistance to Western imperialism and universalism (Shi, 2009; see also

Wang, 2013: 525).

Many of the diverse literatures that have assembled under the rather broad umbrella

term of the “Chinese School” draw on the government rhetoric of Harmonious World

and the China Dream. They have particularly embraced the development of concepts

7

from Chinese Ancient history, which have received new legitimacy by their

deployment in government rhetoric. Building on such inspiration, Chinese scholars

have begun to develop a body of literature referred to as “harmonist discourses that

aim to challenge Western hegemonic discourses and create a new system of

governance” (Son, 2012: 400). These discourses resonate with previous attempts at

articulating or describing a Chinese alternative, as seen in Western-led concepts such

as “The Beijing Consensus”, “The Chinese Way” or “The China Model” (see Breslin,

2011 for an overview). What is new here is the extensive development of concepts

from Ancient Chinese thought, rather than English language terms, in a manner that

“extends to a rather explicit questioning of the very ‘constitutional structures’ that are

the core of the international system” (Carlson, 2010: 96).

Against the backdrop of such newfound confidence, several Chinese scholars have

also claimed that the “China Dream” and the “American Dream” are locked in a

contest of opposing values (for example Hu, 2013). This contest is often described in

black and white terms of good Chinese values versus bad American values (Tian,

2013). The values that China is said to represent are often undefined, but nonetheless

presented as good in an absolute and universal sense. Therefore, we need not worry

that some others may not look forward to embracing the China Dream: the China

Dream is the World’s Dream (Ibid.). If anybody disagrees, they have simply

misunderstood, probably under the influence of the hegemony of evil China Threat

theorists in the West (cf. Nordin, under review).

The operative character for “hegemony” in these Chinese language literatures is ba

(霸). It forms part of China’s strategic culture, discussed by Lu Yang in a chapter for

this volume. This concept is often deployed in the sense of “the leadership of one state

… over other states in the system” as described by Gilpin (Gilpin, 1981: 116, cited in

Taylor, 2006: 1). However, it also has a strong moral undertone. China’s idea of a

Harmonious World is often contrasted with hegemonism (baquan zhuyi, for example

in Fang, 2008: 71; Wang, 2008: 14; Zhou and Jiao, 2008: 21). Likewise, harmony

theory is contrasted with hegemonic stability theory (Li and Li, 2008) or hegemonic

security (baquan anquan, Yu and Wang, 2006), and Chinese harmonious nationalism

with US nationalism as hegemonism (Wang, 2006; Liu, 2005: 41). The character ba

combines with other characters in words that mean to take over by force (baju),

8

aggressiveness (baqi) or despotic conduct (bashu). These combinations indicate how

the Chinese understanding of ba does not simply indicate leadership, but a particular

kind of despotic and aggressive leadership that operates through force and coercion.

A key criticism levelled against the hegemony of language and values associated with

US/Western dominance is that they fail to respect the difference of others, and expect

others (including China) to simply become like the imagined American/Western self.

Writing on China’s Harmonious World, Wang Yiwei offers the term as an alternative

to such Western attitudes:

[i]n their [Westerners’] view, patriotism and nationalism became separated

into a symbol of advanced and backward, sameness and difference. This is a

typical case of ‘logic of taking initiative’ (xianfa luoji), the implication is

‘your life is in our history’ … Therefore, under the hegemonic speech system

of the contemporary world, nationalism has already been derided by the

strong, just as though a piece of clothing, worn out by developed countries,

was tossed to developing countries (Wang, 2006).

This imagination of other as “behind” has, of course, been a significant concern also

amongst critical scholars writing in the West and in Western languages. Many see it

as a persistent problem bound up in Western language and ontology, and perhaps a

problem to which there is no permanent solution (Hutchings, 2008; Inayatullah and

Blaney, 2004). Wider Chinese literatures, however, commonly claim that Chinese

thought does not operate through the kind of radical dichotomisation and binaries that

Wang points to here, with the implication that the harmonist discourses can move

beyond these hegemonic thought patterns (Huang, 2001). On this logic, Zhao

Tingyang has famously argued that the Ancient Chinese worldview of Tianxia, or

‘All-under-heaven’, escapes dichotomisation because it is based in a “Chinese

ontology, the ontology of relations” rather than the Western “ontology of things”

(Zhao, 2006: 33). Western thought, on this view, leads precisely to the kind of

dominant hegemonism that provokes a view of the world that sees it only from the

self, and with self-interest. The Chinese Tianxia system can enable us instead to adopt

“a view from nowhere” or from “the world” (Zhao, 2003). This logic has lead some to

argue that Tianxia is “completely different from Western civilisation, since Chinese

9

civilisation insists on its own subjectivity, and possesses inclusivity” (Zhou and Jiao,

2008: 28). In Ancient China’s Tianxia system, it is said, “the dualistic positioning

between ego and alter did not exist at all” (Qin, 2009: 36).

Yan Xuetong: ba, wang and Chinese world leadership

The understanding of hegemony or ba in Chinese discourse that has been outlined

above can be further understood by looking at one particular account that has

reflected on its significance in world politics: that of Professor Yan Xuetong. Yan is

one of the most influential contributions to the effort of building IR theory on Ancient

Chinese thought – his 2011 book Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power

claims that he is the most influential IR scholar in China (Yan, 2011a). Yan is

sometimes referred to as a Realist IR scholar, but is also very concerned with the role

of norms and values in world politics. In particular, Yan wants to draw on Ancient

Chinese thought to develop a distinction in IR theory between different kinds of great

power.

On Yan’s view, the current international system was constructed by self-interested

hegemons, or ba powers, exemplified most notably by the US (Yan, 1999). The US

exemplifies a kind of bad world leader that he encapsulates in the concept ba, which

Yan translates as “hegemony” or “hegemon” (Yan, 2008: 136, 137; 2011a: ix, 71), or

sometimes as “lord protector” (Yan, 2008: 136). Ba represents the bad and ultimately

immoral leadership against which good and moral Chinese leadership is juxtaposed.

The good Chinese leadership is expressed in the concept wang (王), or wangdao,

usually translated as “the kingly way” or “true kingship”, which are also the terms

used in the English language article that became a chapter in Ancient Chinese Thought

(Ibid.: 136, 137, 152, corresponding to chapter 2 in the book). The book instead

translates wang as “humane authority” because, its editors claim, “[o]bviously, Yan is

not arguing for the reestablishment of a monarchical system led by one sage who

would save the world with his moral goodness” (Yan, 2011a: ix). In opposition to ba,

wang is a form of benevolent superpower, based on sagely morality and political

power that leads by example. If China becomes a wang-style great power, others will

see its magnanimous ways and will want to emulate them. Therefore, the Chinese

10

elites will never need to use coercion, because everybody will want to become like

them.

The juxtaposition between US and Chinese leadership is thus rendered in stark

opposition: Chinese wang “humane authority” means “to lead the world”; American

ba “hegemony” means “to dominate the world” (Ibid.: 71). How should we

understand Yan’s development of ba and wang in this manner? Most immediately,

Yan’s analysis conceptualises self and other, good and bad, wang and ba in strongly

dichotomous terms. If this Chinese development of pre-modern thought exemplifies a

“Chinese ontology”, it falls back on precisely the kind of dichotomous thinking that it

is said by thinkers like Zhao to guard against. What is more, Yan’s and others’

imagination of a good Chinese self in opposition to a bad US/Western other falls back

on essentialised ideas of these categories, and perhaps of “Chineseness” in particular.

Matthias Liehr’s chapter in this volume engages with the “internal Orientalism” of

Han China’s relation to Tibet. Bhavna Sing describes, in another chapter, how the

deployment of Chinese “soft power” abroad has led many to understand their

diasporic “Chinese” self and host country “other” in antagonistic terms. These

analyses reflect something similar, perhaps, to the chauvinistic self-strengthening

logics that are at work in Chinese discussions of ba-style hegemony. The concept is

used as part of a nationalist “patriotic worrying” that is widespread in Chinese

scholarship (Davies, 2007), and that is primarily concerned with offering policy

advice that can help China rise and, as Yan puts it, “defeat America” (Yan, 2011b).

To one commentator, Yan thus “liberally draws from historical discourses to pass

moral judgement and … promote realist foreign policy in the People’s Republic of

China” (Schneider, 2014: 6).

11

Conclusion

Many have rightly pointed towards the Euro-centrism of concepts developed in the

West. Many in the West also look to the politics and concepts of the “Other” for a

resolution to the problems of Western thought. This chapter cautions against

assumptions that China can offer a greener conceptual grass. Currently influential

Chinese scholarship that engages the notion of hegemony does so in an effort to

counter the perceived hegemony of Western culture and ideas. As a reaction to that

hegemony, and the self-other relations that underpin it, Chinese scholars have argued

for the need to develop Chinese IR theory. By doing so, some hope to convince the

international community that China will not act as a hegemonic force (Wang, 2000).

Clearly, current Chinese deployments of hegemony or ba do not simply develop a

concept originating in the “West”. Contemporary imaginations of ba may be

influenced by Marxism, and developed in opposition to established theories like

hegemonic stability theory, but it is concerned primarily with developing a term with

deep roots in Ancient Chinese thought. Where a number of chapters in this volume

stress hybridity or hybridization in the formation of concepts, much of the Chinese

literature concerned with hegemony tries to resist the idea. Compared to the English

language notion of hegemony, Chinese ba does not simply denote leadership, but

immorality. This puts Chinese government claims in a new light. As Cunningham-

Cross and Callahan have pointed out:

when you say the United States is the ‘hegemonic power’, English-speakers

probably think that it is big and powerful, while Chinese-speakers definitely

think that it is immoral and evil. When the Chinese state tells us that it will

never be ‘hegemonic’, it is not saying that it will not dominate; it is merely

saying that it will never see itself as immoral – which, as experience shows,

few states do (Cunningham-Cross and Callahan, 2011: 367).

This is an important awareness that will escape scholars, policymakers and publics in

the West who are not aware of the implications of the term to Chinese-speakers.

12

Likewise, some Chinese-speakers might be less hostile to American thinkers if they

did not think they were purporting their own ba-style immorality as a virtue.

Given the contours of the Chinese debate about hegemony that has been outlined here,

the intended outcome of such a project to escape from the problematic imagination of

self-other relations of Western notions and practice of hegemony appears far from

reach. As Callahan has argued, the Tianxia concept that Zhao advocates as a new and

better imagination of world order works through conversion of difference, turning

other into self (Callahan, 2008; see also Nordin, 2012b; under review). He therefore

concludes that “rather than guide us toward a post-hegemonic world order, Tianxia

presents a new hegemony where imperial China’s hierarchical governance is updated

for the twenty-first century” (Callahan, 2008: 749). I have also described elsewhere

how both Yan and Zhao imagine time and space, sameness and difference, self and

other in a way that positions others as “behind” in just the way that Wang Yiwei and

others have criticized “Western” thought or IR for doing (Nordin, under review). Both

accounts operate on the conversion of “the bad” into “the good”, of other into self.

Both are explicitly imagining such conversion as led by China, or the Chinese elites

who properly understand how to be a “humane authority” of Tianxia. For this reason,

Linsay Cunningham-Cross and Callahan have suggested that Yan’s idea of a new

world order directed by the moral leadership of the Chinese political elite may have

been more astutely grasped, not by the term “humane authority” but precisely by the

“kingly way” (Cunningham-Cross and Callahan, 2011: 349). In this manner, these

Chinese alternatives to Western/American hegemony replicate the difficulties they

identify as a “Western” problem. They reproduce an imagination of a hegemonic

world system – it is just that this time it has China rather than the US at its helm.

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