Emotions, international hierarchy, and the problem of solipsism in Sino-US South China Sea politics

Christian Wirth

doi:10.1177/0047117819875995

Abstract

This study offers an explanation for Beijing’s seemingly self-defeating approach to the South China Sea that distances China ever more from the regional and international communities which it wants to lead and join while drawing in the foreign military presence that it seeks to keep at a distance. Combining recent research on the role of emotions and on hierarchy in international politics, this article shows how the powerful narrative of national ‘humiliation’ and ‘rejuvenation’ has informed Chinese maritime politics. As the South China Sea became incorporated in the linear timeline of China’s 5000 year civilizational history, the US’ and its allies’ push-back against Beijing’s territorial claims deepened China’s ideational isolation. The ensuing state of solipsism increases the risk of violent confrontations.

Highlights

In November 2012, Xi Jinping, the newly elected General-Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission led the other six members of the Politburo Standing Committee through the National Museum at Tiananmen Square
The present study suggests that international hierarchy centred on ‘Western’ international community of developed and democratic states made it difficult for the non-Western, underdeveloped and communist-party-ruled China collectively, and people in China individually, to communicate grief that stems from past violence and obstructed the re-construction of new identities
The emotional action-reaction cycle around maritime territorial disputes ensures that China remains caught in the ‘trauma time’ warp: Referring to late 19th and early twentieth century international politics, the editors of the authoritative China Daily reassured ‘Westerners’ that ‘they have underestimated China’s determination to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity’, that ‘the days have long passed when the country was seen as the “sick man of East Asia”, whose fate was at the mercy of a few Western powers’, and that ‘It is naive to expect China to swallow the bitter pill of humiliation from this orchestrated attempt to run roughshod over it’

Summary

Introduction

In November 2012, Xi Jinping, the newly elected General-Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission led the other six members of the Politburo Standing Committee through the National Museum at Tiananmen Square. Instead of being ‘situated within a social world where the painful experience has meaning within a [national as well as international] community such that the bereaved receives the necessary support over time to redefine [their] place in everyday life’, much of peoples’ grief became ‘accompanied by betrayal and isolation’ and lead to the continuation of trauma.[63] China’s ‘rise’ coincided with the resurgence of status anxiety and rekindled feelings of victimhood and national humiliation.[64] As we have seen, emotions of shame result from memories and corresponding fears of renewed loss of control over the self, and the exposure of that loss in ways that suggest to others and, crucially, to the victim him or herself, that he or she lacks agency, and potentially deprives him or her of being respected as a human.[65] contrary to giving up and turning upon oneself, ‘living well is the best revenge’.66. The emotional action-reaction cycle around maritime territorial disputes ensures that China remains caught in the ‘trauma time’ warp: Referring to late 19th and early twentieth century international politics, the editors of the authoritative China Daily reassured ‘Westerners’ that ‘they have underestimated China’s determination to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity’, that ‘the days have long passed when the country was seen as the “sick man of East Asia”, whose fate was at the mercy of a few Western powers’, and that ‘It is naive to expect China to swallow the bitter pill of humiliation from this orchestrated attempt to run roughshod over it’.117 Put differently, the Chinese inability to communicate the meaning of the twentieth century’s painful experiences, both domestically and internationally, makes many of its leaders see twenty-first century maritime politics through the solipsistic lenses of China’s incessant and solitary struggle against the ‘Western’ world

Conclusion

11. This concept has been proposed by Jenny Edkins

19. See prominent scholars

Findings

22. See for instance