Challenging the Concept of “China-World”

Anne Cheng ()
Additional contact information
Anne Cheng: Collège de France

Chapter Chapter 12 in Rethinking Asian Capitalism, 2022, pp 271-278 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Over its very long history, China has been claiming some sort of universality which has been inseparable from a certain idea of civilisation, with a centre shining upon surrounding regions. The geographical embodiment of this radiating influence is what is commonly—albeit controversially—called the sinicised world, which would include the entire East Asian region surrounding China itself: Korea, Japan, Vietnam, all cultures which have been influenced by China to different extents and at different moments in history. Conversely, each time China itself was encroached upon or invaded by “outsiders,” it was always assumed that the latter would end up being transformed and adopting Chinese civilisation. Imperial China thus depicted itself not only as the centre of the world but also as a sort of “civilisation-world,” and it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century, under attack from Western powers, that it was constrained to consider itself as just one nation amongst others. It is the same universality of “China-as-world” which, after being jeopardised by colonial powers (including Japan) at the end of the nineteenth century, is today once again becoming a type of nostalgic self-representation and a unifying factor in the revival of the ancient notion of “All under Heaven” (tianxia), an ideological construct which needs to be re-examined in a critical light. It is indeed high time that China should come to realise in its own interest that posing as a domineering superpower will not ensure it a sustainable influence in the region, nor in the world for that matter.

Keywords: China; East Asia; Universality; Tianxia; Civilisation; Confucius; Confucianism; Tradition; Modernisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-98104-4_12

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030981044

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-98104-4_12

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().