Harmonious Realism: Undecidable Responses to the China Threat

Abstract

Chinese foreign policy practices contribute to international relations (IR) theory and the conduct of foreign policy analysis (FPA) in a peculiar way—they do so not necessarily by transforming IR/FPA theory but by refocusing IR theorization on the civilizational aspect.1 From the imperial times through the Republican and socialist eras in China, the purpose of achieving modernity from the point of view of Chinese leaders and intellectuals has been to transform a civilizational gathering in pervasive space, which could be practical, customary, or spiritual, into a rational construct in territorial space in order to exclude imperialist intrusion. Ironically, in the twenty-first century, China’s successful emergence as a nation-state resulted in the Chinese people’s spilling over their territorial boundary. However, from time to time, Chinese people from all over the world respond to the call of the Chinese foreign policy of national consciousness, making civilizational politics noteworthy again.2 Ambivalence among Chinese people toward China’s civilizational image causes a division in Chinese foreign policy between those motivated to reaffirm the civilizational pride of being Chinese and those who desire to transcend civilizational incapacity and act rationally on behalf of territorial China.3 Together, the two approaches create a self-role conflict within Chinese foreign policy and its analysis. This conflict further complicates and at the same time transforms the external analysis of Chinese foreign policy. In the past, FPA was not focused on ontological issues. However, as China’s unsettled situation between a civilizational and a territorial state gives it an increasingly uncertain identity, the self-role conceptions that sustain Chinese FPA become ambiguous. This ambiguity is a challenge to both Chinese foreign policy practitioners and internal as well as external narrators of Chinese FPA.