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An observation: There’s semantic, conceptual, and historical confusion in this. The conflation of China and empire underscores the regrettable tendency in Western scholarship to understand non-Western experiences only in terms of their own historical experiences and concepts. 

First, semantics: Rome had an emperor, an empire, and colonies; they were called that. China had a  皇帝, so it had a huangdinate, just like Ottoman was a Sultanate. Unfortunately, owing to the Western dominance of knowledge since the Enlightenment  — Said called it Orientalism, I believe — all pre-modern polities that came after the Romans, whether in the West or non-West, were labelled  Empire and Emperor. It is more accurate to say that China/Zhongguo was a Huangdinate, a grounded tributary system, which was a phenomenon that was global and that accounted for the existence of a multi-civilisational world at the time. The West had its own in the form of its feudal system. All were internally parochial systems.

Second, conceptual and historical: But if we are to overlook the semantic confusion and allow that China was an empire that went about conquering the world, we would today be conversing in some dialect of Chinese and the predominant worldview would be neo-Confucian/Daoist/Buddhist. But that is not the case, not now or the past 150 years at least: English remains the universal language, French, the language of diplomacy, most of the prominent languages have been derivatives of Latin etc, and the preponderant worldview is Liberalism. Why? That’s where history comes in. 

From European feudalism emerged what can be designated Euro-modernism, a cultural form that was let loose on the world and conquered it. In short, it established an empire in the true sense of the word. If you take a look around its predations continue, unabated, putting at risk the entire fate of humanity. Its influence is why we converse in English; why the preponderant worldview is liberalism, not Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism etc. The world went from multi-civilisational to mono-civilisational to unipolar. Of course, it seems like this uni-polarity is today crumbling and we could be headed towards a multi-polar world order again, but if we are to talk of empire, is this not at least where we should begin?

I don’t know Bell’s work well but from what little I have read, he should be applauded for having the courage to urge his colleagues re-visit what they already think they know.

Tung-yi Kho <kho.tungyi@yahoo.com>

A few thoughts to add to the mix.

On Daniel Bell: To me, Daniel Bell seems like a cottage industry of finding virtue in “China” by any means necessary. So, even if China today obviously, by most counts, is an increasingly chauvinistic and narrow-nationalistic country, he harks back to the imperial era when ethnicity was indeed less relevant or salient (as is typically the case in empires!), and suggests that stance is, or should be, more true of China the eternal. I think he completely misses things like 1, empire; and 2, the profound impact of the modern ideas of nationalism and racism on modern China, an empire awkwardly re-cast as nation, today joining the new global trend of inwardlooking nationalism.

(One side of the Tiananmen gate has the text “Long live the unity of the world’s people” (世界人民大团结万岁), — I wonder how long it will be before it is taken down, — it does not fit with today’s dominant nationalism).

And so the whole thing comes across as an exercise in wishful thinking (something like his earlier effort to declare China the ultimate laudable “meritocracy” — for a review of that effort, read: http://insidestory.org.au/the-qing-is-dead-long-live-the-qing). Continue reading →

Reality or not, the Chinese themselves tried to redefine Chinese identity as cultural rather then ethnic in attempts to unify the empire. American identity can be mixed with anything, true, but so can other identities in the world. People are born in one place, educated somewhere else, work in a third country, and marry in a fourth. I married into a Chinese family, and my children would be Chinese: couldn’t I share an identity with them?

Naomi Thurston <naomithurston@hotmail.com>

It is interesting that Daniel Bell has brought up this topic. I think he is aware of the reality that Chineseness is defined by the ethnicity more so than the nationality/citizenship, and he just refuses to accept such reality. The meaning of being Chinese, in a non-immigrant country, is vastly different from being Canadian. One can say s/he is Canadian and Irish/Scottish/Chinese at the same time, while the two refers to different aspects of one’s identity. From my understanding, the definition of nationality in any countries except immigrant countries such as US, Canada and Australia is closely tied to heritage and ethnicity. It might not be the reality the author is willing to accept, but I doubt this is likely to change any time soon.

Peng Z <scorpiotide@gmail.com>