AS world attention is now focused on the April 8 to 11 Boao Forum for Asia in Boao, Hainan, China, it is worth studying “Tianxia,” one of the many ancient Chinese philosophies that offer world unity, which we can lock-in China to this commitment to counter fears its rise to superpower may create a hegemon that could lead to wars as what happened to superpowers and empires in history.
Sleeping giant awakens. These fears are valid after witnessing China’s malicious creeping encroachment into our waters, although there are many conflicting reasons how this issue evolved and heated up.
We now see this once “sleeping giant” waking up, and growing huge. Imagine, in 2000, Japan was larger than the combined economies of China, South Korea, India, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
But by 2015 China was already as large as all these economies combined, and a “power shift” indeed took place, said Takashi Shiraishi of Japan External Trade Organization.
“Neo-con hawks” threatened by peace? The “neo-conservative war-mongering hawks,” representing the military-industrial complex, are threatened not much because China has become a superpower, but more so because China seems to still keep its cool relatively, despite all sorts of heated provocations and near skirmishes.
Expectedly, war hawks want to perpetuate the outdated system of “geopolitics,” perpetual “Cold War” and “regime changes” or power grabs as the war industry benefits from continuous wars and revolutions.
This reminds us of British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston of the British empire, who once said “there are no permanent friends, but permanent interests” and that there should be “permanent wars and permanent revolutions.” These ideas on permanent war were pursued by British intelligence Parvus (real name Alexander Gelfhand), who influenced Vladimir Lenin and later Leon Trotsky, who advocated for “permanent revolutions.”
But it is this culture of continuous wars, particularly in the Middle East, that has cost $7 trillion for over a decade during the Bush-Obama administrations, President Donald J. Trump said, whose position to talk peace and do business with arch enemies Russia and China is also threatening the hawks, thus the campaign to vilify and possibly remove him by linking him to Russiagate.
Waging wars in the mind. The worst war waging is a propaganda war of ideas (battle of minds of intellectuals), whose ideas once translated into policies could spell boom or doom, prosperity or poverty, fortune or destruction.
One thinker, who justifies continuous conflicts, is Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations, particularly the conflict between Muslims versus Christians, Jews versus Muslims, and among Muslims (Sunni versus Shiites).
Another is Harvard Prof. Graham Allison’s book, Destined For War: America, China and Thucydides’s Trap, which I wrote about two years ago at the height of conflicts with China.
Allison’s thesis is scary as it posits the “Thucydides Trap” idea that the rise of a power brings hubris or arrogance, and fear and loss of honor of old powers, that make war inevitable, similar to the stupid 28-year Peloponnesian wars between Athens and Sparta that led to the Greek civilization’s downfall. Allison’s thesis was debunked by academicians Yale Prof. Donald Kagan and Harvard Prof. Ernst Badian, who claimed “there was no such thing as the Thucydides Trap.”
Francis Fukuyama’s book, The End of History and the Last Man, argues there are no more new ideas that could emerge, as he endorses the current liberal democracy and free- market capitalism as the be-all and end-all system for all.
Fukuyama, who writes voluminous tomes of work, is a brilliant scholar, but his End of History sweeping statement, triggered the beginning of his end as he was barraged with strong counter-arguments from brilliant economists. China’s case is one such counter-model.
Risk is history? The danger of rooting for either traditional antagonists like US and China or Russia is we may be drawn into a potential nuclear war that can occur due to senseless blunders out of ignorance, or reckless aggression, or mere hubris or loss of pride and patience on any party, including ourselves as go-betweens.
The situation is fraught with danger that one false move can lead to nuclear war that could annihilate the entire humankind in an hour or two. The risks are not in the future, nor are the risks already history, but are still very much present.
In fact, détente for a Mutually Assured Destruction with superpowers as an acceptable deterrence to war is no real deterrent as it is like talking peace on the table with powder kegs under.
Tianxia shows future of peace? This brings us to the only alternative to war and geopolitical conflicts—China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Xi Jinping’s “Win-Win Development Agenda.”
Moreover, if 140 countries have joined or are interested in China’s BRI, why can’t we do the same. It is also worth learning one of the ancient Chinese philosophies providing the theoretical underpinnings to China’s BRI—Tianxia, as popularized by Prof. Zhao Tingyang, China’s most influential contemporary philosopher and author of Tianxia System: An Introduction to the Philosophy of World Institutions.
Tianxia means “all under heaven” coexisting harmoniously. He said Tianxia was developed 3,000 years ago under the Zhou Dynasty, China’s longest dynasty. It is a version of today’s “inclusivity” concept, as it puts all, even negative elements, under one tent. It is the “art of coexisting through transforming hostility into hospitality—a clear alternative to Hitler’s German legal theorist Carl Schmitt’s politics of “Us versus Them,” or Hans Morgenthau’s “realist” struggle for power and Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations.”
Tianxia involves a trinity of realms: 1) Earth under the Sky or “all under heaven;” 2) General will of all peoples (concept of common good) involving heart more than mind; 3) Universal system responsible for world order. Tianxia is not attained, unless all three realms coincide.
Go wow with Boao. There is no choice, but to go wow with China’s BRI thrust as reiterated at Boao, by Xi Jinping, who rejected the idea of hegemons, pushed for world prosperity, a common destiny for all, and promised specific reforms easing trade war potentials with China. The Boao Forum is significant as it was formed starting with a proposal in 1998 by former President Fidel V. Ramos along with other Asian leaders.