The Foreign Policy Doctrine of Traditional China

Abstract

The article is a continuation of the cycle of theoretical works by Oleg E. Nepomnin (1935–2020) published in previous issues of the “Oriental Courier” [Nepomnin, 2019, 2020, 2021]. Oleg Nepomnin was among the most brilliant theorists of the development of Eastern societies. The author considers the foreign policy doctrine of traditional China as an integral part of China’s social perceptions of the world order. Based on the concepts of “world–cosmos” and “world-society”, the Chinese foreign policy doctrine was based on the fundamental idea of the oneness of the world order. In the “world of men”, world laws were embodied by the Chinese emperor — the Son of Heaven — and Chinese statehood. Next to China and its emperor, there could be no equal states and no equal monarchs. In this view of the world, China had borders and the Celestial Empire had none, implying the worldwide scope of the power of the Son of Heaven. On this ideological basis emerged the foreign policy dichotomy “civilized centre — savage periphery”, or “China — barbarians”. The author examines the origins of this influential concept from antiquity to the fall of the empire in China in the 20th century. A “tribute” system of interaction with other states was a logical continuation of ideas about the world order in China and its place in it. But the author stresses that despite China’s desire to maintain the illusions of a functioning “tribute” system, strengthen the prestige of imperial power and carry out monopolistic state trade with “barbarians”, “barbarian” embassies themselves often arrived in China with purely pragmatic goals: to establish trade, receive rich gifts from the emperor, elevate official status, get investiture and the Chinese title. In fact, China lost its status as the hegemon of the ‘tribute” system and the “Centre of the Universe’ after the Opium Wars in the 19th century. China was relegated to the level of the “sick man of Asia”, although the “tribute system” itself continued to function long after that. Even as the “Chinese world order” rapidly collapsed in the 70–90s of the 19th century, and previous Chinese “tributaries” were turned into colonies and semi-colonies of the capitalist West, Beijing’s rulers clung frantically to the “tribute” system. Up to the fall of the empire, the Manchu rulers could not get rid of the burden of traditional notions of China as the “Centre of the Universe” surrounded by the periphery and “barbarian rebellion”.