The Decline of the Western-Centric World and the Emerging New Global Order: Contending Views 9780367255299, 9780367540272, 9780429288272

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China Policy Series

THE DECLINE OF THE WESTERN-CENTRIC WORLD AND THE EMERGING NEW GLOBAL ORDER CONTENDING VIEWS Edited by Yun-han Chu and Yongnian Zheng

THE DECLINE OF THE WESTERNCENTRIC WORLD AND THE EMERGING NEW GLOBAL ORDER

The Western liberal democratic world order, which seemingly triumphed following the collapse of communism, is looking increasingly fragile as populists and nationalists take power in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, as the momentum of democratization in developing countries stalls, and as Western liberal establishments fail to deal with economic stagnation, worsening political polarization, social inequality, and migrant crises. At the same time there is a shift of economic power from the West towards Asia. This book explores these critical developments and their consequences for the world order. It considers how far the loss of the West’s power to dominate the world order, together with the relative decline of United States power and its abdication of its global leadership role, will lead to more conf lict, disorder, and chaos; and how far non-Western actors, including China, India, and the Muslim world, are capable of establishing visionary policy initiatives which reconfigure the paths and rules of economic integration and globalization, and the mechanisms of global governance. The book also assesses the sustainability of the economic rise of China and other non-Western actors, explores the Western liberal democratic order’s capacity for resilience, and discusses how far the outlook is pessimistic or optimistic. Yun-han Chu is Distinguished Research Fellow at Academia Sinica and Professor of Political Science, National Taiwan University. Yongnian Zheng is Research Professor and former Director of the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore.

China Policy Series Series Editor: Zheng Yongnian,Advanced Institute of Global and Contemporary China Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen)

54. China’s Pension Reforms Political Institutions, Skill Formation and Pension Policy in China Ke Meng 55. China’s New Silk Road An Emerging World Order Edited by Carmen Amado Mendes 56. The Politics of Expertise in China Xufeng Zhu 57. Gender Dynamics, Feminist Activism and Social Transformation in China Edited by Guogang Wu, Yuan Feng, Helen Lansdowne 58. The Struggle for Democracy in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong Sharp Power and its Discontents Andreas Fulda 59. The Chinese Communist Party in Action Consolidating Party Rule Edited by Zheng Yongnian and Lance L.P Gore 60. Development and Poverty Reduction A Global Comparative Perspective Edited by Zheng Yongnian and Jiwei Qian 61. Designing Emergency Management China’s Post-SARS Experience, 2003-2012 Wee-Kiat Lim 62. China’s Environmental Foreign Relations Heidi Wang-Kaeding 63. The Decline of the Western-Centric World and the Emerging New Global Order Contending Views Edited by Yun-han Chu and Yongnian Zheng For more information about this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/ China-Policy-Series/book-series/SECPS

THE DECLINE OF THE WESTERN-CENTRIC WORLD AND THE EMERGING NEW GLOBAL ORDER Contending Views

Edited by Yun-han Chu and Yongnian Zheng

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Yun-han Chu and Yongnian Zheng; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Yun-han Chu and Yongnian Zheng to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book. ISBN: 978-0-367-25529-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-54027-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-28827-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

CONTENTS

Contributors Preface Foreword Introduction to the decline of the Western-centric world and the emerging new global order Yun-han Chu and Yongnian Zheng

viii x xiii 1

PART I

The crisis of liberal democracy in the West and its competitors from Asia 1 The principal vulnerabilities of Western liberalism John Dunn

15 17

2 Taking back control? The future of Western democratic capitalism Wolfgang Streeck

37

3 Crisis and mutation in the institutions of representation in “real-existing” democracies Philippe C. Schmitter

58

4 The China model: Internal pluralism, meritocracy, and democracy Yongnian Zheng

74

vi

Contents

5 India’s development path: Prospects, challenges, and implications for the emerging world order Sandeep Shastri

105

PART II

Can the post-war liberal international order be saved?

127

6 Can liberalism envision a widely acceptable world order? Thomas Pogge

129

7 Fractures and resilience of liberal international orders Peter J. Katzenstein

146

8 Will the liberal international order survive? An English School perspective Barry Buzan

166

9 A reformist, not a revisionist: The emerging global role of China Yun-han Chu

186

10 Tailored multilateralism: China’s grand strategy in search for great rejuvenation Yongnian Zheng and Bojian Liu

213

PART III

Asia’s rise and the emerging global order

237

11 Can Asia reshape global governance? Kishore Mahbubani

239

12 Globalism, nationalism, and regional order in Asia: A Japanese perspective Keiichi Tsunekawa

259

13 Order between heritage and law Wang Gungwu

284

14 Global and local challenges and opportunities for Taiwan Lawrence J. Lau

297

Contents

15 Towards an Asian regional order led by China and India Daniel A. Bell

vii

326

PART IV

Conclusion

355

16 Asia’s rise and the transition to a post-Western global order Yves Tiberghien

357

Index

379

CONTRIBUTORS

Daniel A. Bell is Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration

at Shangdong University and Professor of Philosophy at Tsinghua University. Barry Buzan is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the LSE; Honorary Professor at Copenhagen, Jilin, and China Foreign Affairs Universities, and at the University of International Relations (Beijing); Senior Fellow at LSE IDEAS; and Fellow of the British Academy. Yun-han Chu is Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica and Professor of Political Science of National Taiwan University. John Dunn is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory at King's College, Cambridge,

and Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Chiba University, Japan. Wang Gungwu is Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS),

Emeritus Professor at the Australian National Academy, and Chairman of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute and East Asian Institute at the NUS. Peter J. Katzenstein is Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at

Cornell University. Lawrence J. Lau is Ralph and Claire Landau Professor of Economics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Bojian Liu is Research Assistant at the East Asian Institute, National University of

Singapore.

Contributors

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Kishore Mahbubani is Professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Thomas Pogge is the Director of the Global Justice Program and Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University. Philippe C. Schmitter is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the European

University Institute in Florence and Distinguished Scholar at the Fudan Institute of Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, Shanghai. Sandeep Shastri is Pro Vice Chancellor of Jain University and Director of its Centre for Research in Social Sciences and Education (CERSSE), and National Coordinator of the Lokniti Network. Wolfgang Streeck is Director Emeritus and Professor at the Max Planck Institute

for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) in Cologne. Yves Tiberghien is Director Emeritus of the Institute of Asian Research at the

University of British Columbia (UBC), Executive Director of the UBC China Council, and Associate Professor of Political Science. Keiichi Tsunekawa is Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo and visiting

professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS). Yongnian Zheng is Research Professor of National University of Singapore and he

has served previously as Director of the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore from 2008–2018.

PREFACE

This volume is the product of a gala academic event that took place in Taipei on June 2–3, 2018. This major international conference was co-organized by the Taiwan Research Foundation and the Fairwinds Foundation and co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies of Harvard University, the East Asia Institute of Singapore National University, the IDEAS of London of Economics and Political Science, and the Fu Hu Center for East Asia Democratic Studies of National Taiwan University. In my capacity as the Founder of the Taiwan Research Foundation, I presided over the opening ceremony of the International Conference on “From the Western-centric to a Post-Western World: In Search of the Emerging Global Order in the 21st Century”. In my opening remarks, I emphasized that the groundwork for the conference was a major undertaking that took 18 months of hard work, but for me it was a labor of love. In a sense, this conference seemed like an anniversary gift for the Taiwan Research Foundation, which turned 30 in 2018. As far as I am concerned, this conference is a significant event for several reasons. First and foremost, largely owing to “the clash of civilizations and the remarking of world order”, to borrow the term from Samuel Huntington’s famous work, the attempt to undertake cross-cultural dialogue in general, and to resume comprehensive studies of non-Western modes of thinking and ways of living in particular, has recently turned out to be one of the crucial areas in intellectual discourses around the world. In this regard, the theme of this conference is of great importance, simply because what lies at the center of the expression “postWestern” is not only an endeavor to examine the pitfalls of Western-centrism from different angles, but also, and more importantly, an invitation to go towards mutual understanding between the Western and non-Western worlds. Secondly, against this background, it is worth noting that the panorama of Western liberal ideas, the prospect of Western democratic capitalist systems,

Preface

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and the stability of the Western liberal international order are all under severe attack nowadays, which in turn encourages scholars to re-evaluate the cultural adaptability of Western modernity in the non-Western context. At this historical juncture, I believe that undertaking post-Western ref lection upon Westerncentrism seems to be extremely pertinent, as it aims to help explore the nature of such a re-evaluation, while shedding light on the implications of the rise of Asia, the different development paths undertaken by Asian emerging giants, China’s agenda for transforming the global order, and the challenges and opportunities for other countries in the region. If I am correct in observing that one of the most serious f laws embedded in Western-centrism is that it falls short of a sympathetic appreciation of non-Western cultures and values, then it seems appropriate to confess here that the motivation behind the organization of this conference is to enhance our common understanding of a new world order, already underway, by taking Asia seriously. To be sure, the diagnosis of the crisis of Western civilization is not a new topic. For example, Friedrich Nietzsche long ago urged Western people to make an “attempt at a revaluation of all values” so as to overcome nihilism. Oswald Spengler, in his well-known work, The Decline of the West, indicates that we are living in a time when “money is celebrating its last victories”. Robin George Collingwood, to take another example, articulates that the reign of instrumental reason “within no very long time”, will be “converting Europe into a wilderness of Yahoos”. By no means, however, does this mean that there is nothing more that we can learn from the West. Quite the contrary, as Niall Ferguson points out in his recent works Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. Although Britain had lost an empire, the British people through the so-called “Anglobalization” succeeded in shaping and maintaining the world order in respect of the value of freedom and “the importance of a set of legal, financial and administrative institutions such as the rule of law, credible monetary regimes, transparent fiscal systems and incorrupt bureaucracies in encouraging cross-border capital f lows”. Seen in this light, one of the most profound questions that this conference touched on is something like this: in the face of the emergence of a post-Western world, what sort of new beliefs and what kind of innovative establishments are we supposed to adopt in order to make the world a better place to live? There is, of course, no easy answer to this question. But it seems to me that one thing is absolutely certain: while before it was “the white man’s burden” to rule the world, now it is “all people’s burden” to make a new world order happen. Top scholars from around the world were invited to the conference to deliberate and debate on these big issues. Many of them, in fact, are salient representatives of some of the noteworthy tendencies underlining the theoretical discourses on the non-Western challenges for Western-centrism. More precisely, the papers presented in the conference not only involved profound theoretical perspectives and deep practical insights, but also consisted of essential approaches to reveal the

xii Preface

limits of Western-centrism. I am delighted to eyewitness the process of turning these papers into an edited volume, which I believe would to a great extent help reshape the landscape of studies on the making of the “post-Western world”. I would like to thank the following friends and colleagues for their contribution and efforts in bringing this academic project to its fruition. I am grateful and very much honored to collaborate with Prof. Yi-huah Jiang, Chairman of the Fair Winds Foundation. I would like to thank Prof. Yun-han Chu of Academia Sinica and Prof. Yongnian Zheng of National University of Singapore for giving me the full support in not just making the conference possible but also bringing out this edited volume. In addition, I would like to duly express my appreciation to Prof. William Kirby and Prof. Michael Szonyi of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies of Harvard University, and Prof. Michael Cox of IDEAS of the London School of Economics. I am also grateful to friends and colleagues at the East Asia Institute at National University of Singapore and the Hu Fu Center for East Asia Democratic Studies at the National Taiwan University. Huang-Hsiung Huang

FOREWORD

This book originated from an international symposium “From the WesternCentric to a Post-Western World: In Search of the Emerging Global Order in the 21st Century” held from June 2–3, 2018, in Taipei. The academic conference was co-organized by the Taiwan Research Foundation and Fair Winds Foundation and was co-sponsored by Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute, LSE IDEAS of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and National Taiwan University’s Hu Fu Center for East Asia Democratic Studies. The event assembled authoritative scholars from all over the world to present superb and insightful papers. It was perhaps the grandest in Taiwan’s political science arena over the last quarter century. The core theme of the conference explored whether the current global order centered on the United States and Western nations is facing a paradigm shift and whether it is possible for China, India, and other emerging Asian countries to create a new “non-Western” centered global order. These issues involve not only the comparative study of political systems, economic models, military strength, and diplomatic strategy but also the integration and balance of trade relations, scientific and technological development, financial systems, intellectual cultures, and ideologies. They present a major challenge to nearly 400 years of human development. It is not difficult to imagine that scholars will not have a consensus on this key question. Some believe that the Chinese revival and rise of the East already constitute an irreversible trend. Western nations must adjust their mentality as early as possible from accepting the equal status between China and the United States and finally accept the Eastern world replacing the Western world in guiding historical development. Others find that although China and India have grown substantially, their development models are extremely uneven. They still

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Foreword

lag far behind the United States and European countries in key areas, especially in terms of constitutional system, market economy, the rule of law, pluralistic society, standard of higher education, and scientific research and innovation. The East has yet to show sufficient achievements to attract the world to follow its examples. Between these two views are various electric judgments. Some think that the rise of the East does not necessarily mean the decline of the West; others argue that the Western liberal system is facing crisis but still self-adjusting. But no matter how much the individual perspectives differ, almost everyone agrees that the future world can no longer be dominated by the values and institutional designs of the United States and Europe, as in the past four centuries. In other words, we are about to enter a post-Western centered world. What deserves our further consideration is what kind of global order will emerge. In other words, will modern liberalism still have universal applicability? Will the concept of multi-culturalism become a pre-requisite for interaction among countries in the world? Will international relations be based upon binary opposition or a multi-dimensional structure? Will rising and receding powers battle it out in the end? How should small countries in the crack find their way? How long will the process of paradigm shift take? Will the global order emerge more peaceful or turbulent? Will human life be richer and more equitable or poorer and more unequal? The perspectives provided by the authors of each paper analyze some key issues from different angles. They inspire our understanding of the future global order, which is immensely valuable. I would like to thank Mr. Huang-Hsiung Huang, founder of the Taiwan Research Foundation, for his forward thinking and initiation of this important international seminar. I would like to thank Prof. Chu Yun-han and Prof. Yongnian Zheng, who planned and coordinated the entire conference and wrote a comprehensive introduction to this book. I am grateful for every paper presenter, commentator, and moderator who attended the conference. Their insights constitute the essence of this book. I also appreciate our organizers and co-sponsors. Without their dedicated assistance, this event of the century could never have competed so smoothly. Finally, it is my hope that the publication of this volume will help readers acquire a deeper understanding on the major issues facing humanity in the future. Yi-huah Jiang

INTRODUCTION TO THE DECLINE OF THE WESTERN-CENTRIC WORLD AND THE EMERGING NEW GLOBAL ORDER Yun-han Chu and Yongnian Zheng*

After the frozen period of the protracted Cold War and the subsequent interregnum marked by United States unipolarism, the world has begun the new millennium with profound transformation. Many observers believe that the world today stands at the cusp of a historic shift of power away from the West towards Asia. The consequences of the historic shift of power are increasingly being felt in global politics. The relative decline of the United State, the crisis in the European Union, the ascendance of China and other emerging economies, and the diffusion of the power to non-state actors all constitute significant elements that demand a new conceptualization of the rupture and reconfiguration in the world order. Today, as is always the case in times of transition, the global restructuring of international affairs is generating a deep ref lection on whether the postSecond World War international order is still viable and sustainable and, if not, how it would and should be restructured.1 For more than a century, an extreme concentration of military and economic power allowed the West, representing a small proportion of the world’s population, to construct and legitimize a global order reigning over all the social domains, from security, production and exchange, finance and money, energy and ecology, to ideology and knowledge. Entering the 21st century, the West is rapidly losing the remarkable capacity to set the agenda on a global scale, something that the world has become so used to since the Second World War. The biggest intellectual challenge today is to imagine a polycentric world without the preponderance of United States hegemony, explore alternatives to the

* We would like to acknowledge the assistance that we have received from Dr. Jason M. Kuo and the staff at Hu Hu Center for East Asia Democratic Studies of National Taiwan University during the preparation of this introductory chapter.

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Western-centric world order, and define the contours of the emerging global order in the 21st century. Since the Great Recession of 2008–2009, the political elite in the West have been wrestling with the profound implications of the rise of China and the relative decline of the United States for the existing world order. To the dismay of many Western observers, with Donald Trump abdicating America’s international leadership and attacking existing multilateral arrangements, and with many mainstream political forces in Western Europe being washed away by the tidal wave of radical anti-globalization movements on the left and anti-European Union populist uprising on the right, China has emerged paradoxically as a beacon of stability and predictability as well as a major source of impetus propelling the world economy forward and encouraging regional integration. Many Western observers have raised concerns about a corresponding disorder as the strategic competition between China and the United States has escalated in recent years. This has heightened ideological competition on the one hand, and an increasing resort to power politics on the other. With the United StatesChina trade war rapidly escalating into a nascent Cold War, many economic analysts issued warnings that it might trigger a process of deglobalization and the decoupling of the global economy.2 Some Western political leaders also raised their concerns that China has not only increasingly defied the rules of the game set by the erstwhile hegemon openly, but has also begun to outline an alternative set of rules.3 They have been annoyed by the fact that the emerging powers, such as China and India, are initiating ever more visionary policy initiatives to reconfigure the paths and rules of economic integration and globalization, advocating ever more ambitious agenda through such platforms as BRICS and G20 for reforming the mechanisms of global governance, and building up new multilateral institutions that complement, supplement, and could eventually replace today’s international institutions and rules of economic exchange and cooperation. The realist-minded strategists also worry that Russia and China might take advantage of a retreating United States and fill up all of the strategic vacuum that a receding hegemony leaves behind. In particular, they look at China’s bold policy initiatives, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, with deep suspicion. They were struck by China’s strategic vision to accelerate economic integration of the Eurasia continent, establish new multilateral lending institutions (such as the New Development Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)), and supply ever more regional and global public goods in the form of new policy coordination mechanisms, new infrastructure for global e-commerce, and mega infrastructural projects that could vastly improve intra-regional or cross-regional connectivity via trade, personnel exchange, financial transactions, knowledge sharing, energy transmission, and digital communication. Another deep-seated worry among the Western political elite is about the dire prospect that the West might lose its grip on the steering wheel in the ideological arena. Following the collapse of communism, Western liberal democracy was extolled as the best system of governance to have emerged out of the long

The emerging new global order

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experience of history. Today, such a confident assertion is far from self-evident. The momentum of the Third-Wave democratization had lost its steam well before the 2008–2009 global financial crisis.4 The Western liberal democracies are facing the gathering storm of populism and nationalism, of which Donald Trump and his European counterparts are not the cause, but a symptom. Long gone is the sense of triumphalism emanating from the end-of-history thesis. Instead, Western observers now register their worries that China is poised to present credible and serious challenges to the Western political and economic model. Frances Fukuyama raised his concern at the beginning of 2016, well before Donald Trump emerged on the political horizon. He declared that “as 2016 begins, an historic contest is underway, largely hidden from public view, over competing Chinese and Western strategies to promote economic growth. The outcome of this struggle will determine the fate of much of Eurasia in the decades to come”.5 In the meantime, many signs suggest that Western liberalism is in retreat and Western liberal democracy is facing its gravest challenge since the Second World War.6 The political establishments in many Western societies look ideologically exhausted without a viable prescription to deal with the daunting challenges of worsening political polarization, economic stagnation, social inequality, intergenerational conf lict, and foreign immigrant crises. The deepening of political crises in the West has prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to warn his top diplomats that “these new economies which are not just economic but political powers and which consider themselves, as some have noted, genuine civilization states and which have not just disrupted our international order, assumed a key role in the economic order, but have also very forcefully reshaped the political order and the political thinking that goes with it”.7 Many epic events have indicated that we are eye-witnessing the end of Western hegemony and entering a post-Western world. In the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, United States President G. W. Bush felt compelled to convene the first summit under the auspices of G20 to cajole China and other emerging economies to inject a strong dosage of fiscal stimulus to jump-start the world economy, to underwrite the International Monetary Fund’s newly expanded emergency lending facilities to quell the panics in the global financial market, and channel more of their foreign reserves and domestic savings into American and European securities markets. Since then, G20 has overtaken G7 as the most important political platform forging consensus and concerted efforts over a wide range of global issues among leaders of all the key stakeholders of the world economy. At the final stage of the negotiation of the Paris Accord, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa emerged as indispensable key brokers, upstaging the role that Western European countries traditionally had played, and engaged with President Obama in hammering out the final version of this historic global pact on climate change. Future historians might also identify the futile effort by the Obama administration to dissuade its closest Western allies from joining the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2015 as another

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watershed event that clearly marked the beginning of the end. There is no question that the transition has accelerated with the election of Donald Trump and especially his decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement, and the Iranian nuclear deal. The shift in economic power from G7 to the emerging economies is the key driver behind this reconfiguration in world order. Between 2009 and 2018, China and other emerging economies had consistently contributed to more than 70% of the growth of the world economy. The structure of world trade has also undergone profound changes. China overtook the United States as the world’s largest trading state in 2016. According to the database constructed by the team led by Michel Fouguin and Jules Hugot, in 2013, for the first time during the last two centuries, the volume of exports f lowing from the “non-rich” countries to other “non-rich” countries has been on parity with the total exports from the “rich” countries to other “rich” countries.8 The shift in economic power is still well underway. According to a widely-cited research report issued by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the sheer size of the emerging seven – namely China, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, and Turkey – in terms of purchasing power parity adjusted GDP was already on parity with that of G7 in 2015, and by 2040 they could be double the size of G7.9 It is understandable why most mainstream international relations scholars based in the West tend to associate the decline of Western hegemony with a disintegrating world order. First, there exists a widely shared nostalgia about the heyday of liberal hegemony under Pax Americana. Since the end of the Second World War, humanity has been able to reach the highest levels of prosperity, social well-being, and connectivity in its long history. It did so thanks to unprecedented levels of technological progress, trade and financial f lows, and human exchange. In turn, the rules, institutions, and norms of the post-Bretton Woods era have provided the necessary governance infrastructure for this expansion. This infrastructure greatly evolved over time, initially supporting a more restrained interdependence focused on trade and long-term investments (1945–1971) before bringing about a more intense new form of globalization. The participants of this global economic order were initially limited to a few Western countries and their trading partners, before gradually and then massively expanding to the rest of the world in the post-Cold War era, i.e. since 1990 until today. The post-Second World War Liberal International Order (LIO) repeatedly faced serious tests, such as the tensions around the gold window, currency convertibility, and trade imbalances in the 1960s, leading up to abrupt measures taken by President Nixon in 1971, the two oil shocks, and the challenge of Japan’s rise to United States economic dominance in the 1980s. Yet, the LIO has shown resilience and f lexibility, enabling various countries and players to take leadership.10 But even the ardent supporters of the LIO would acknowledge that over the last two decades, the LIO has faced more fundamental challenges. The ascendance of

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neo-liberalism since the mid-1980s as the prevailing economic ideology worldwide has fundamentally tilted the power balance in favor of the capital-owning class at the expense of the blue-collar and white-collar working class across the advanced industrialized economies. The neo-liberal policy prescription gradually rolled back the cushion, safeguard, and social welfare spending that were politically necessary for sustaining a domestic consensus in favor of international economic openness just as the forces of globalization were unleashed by waves of trade and financial liberalization during the 1980s and 1990s. The 2008 global financial crisis nearly led to a systemic meltdown and demonstrated serious failures in both domestic and international financial and macroeconomic governance. As technological change and economic interdependence kept intensifying, governments had to face rising social inequalities and social dislocations that often grew faster than their ability or will to cope with.11 Falling economic standards for large sections of the population has translated into identity crises and social anger in countries such as the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, France, and the United States.12 Populist entrepreneurs have been quick to exploit these new opportunities and offer new approaches that directly challenge the LIO. Eventually, the unfavorable distributional effects brought about by globalization and technological change gave rise to a new populist and economic nationalist coalition in the United States. As a consequence, the political foundation of LIO, which has been buttressed by an internationalist coalition at home since the Second World War, has been seriously shaken.13 Meanwhile, the functional demands for global rules and norms have kept expanding in new and ever more complex domains, such as genetic engineering, cyber security, artificial intelligence, and crypto currencies. The expansion of complex global supply chains and the explosion in cross-border financial f low as well as speculative trading in financial derivatives also meant that it has become ever harder to monitor (much lass to enforce) compliance to trade or financial rules, and even harder for national governments to crackdown on tax dodging of the multinational corporations and the superrich. It also became clear that the LIO had to go beyond trade and economics and needed to generate solutions to market failures, such as the concentration of monopolistic power, in a few rentseeking high-tech titans and market externalities such as climate change, global pandemics, enduring pockets of poverty, and the over-exploitation of maritime resources. Many mainstream Western international relations scholars believe that a transition to a “post-Western world” will only accelerate the erosion of the LIO and bring more conf lict, disorder, and chaos to the world. They also believe that the relative decline of the United States’ power and an abdication of its leadership role will have profoundly negative global consequences.14 They tend to be rather gloomy about the consequences of the decline of Western dominance because history doesn’t provide many reassuring precedents suggesting otherwise. As Graham Allison reminded us, there is ample historical evidence suggesting that when a rising power threatens (or simply is perceived to have the intention) to

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displace a ruling power, it rarely ends well.15 Global superpowers have always found it painful to acknowledge their relative decline and deal with fast-rising challengers. Today, the United States finds itself in this situation with regard to China. A century and a half ago, imperial Britain faced a similar competitive threat from America, and in the 17th century, the Dutch Republic was the superpower and England was the challenger. It remains to be seen if the United States can take lessons from history by aiming for a soft landing, including by engaging with its likely successor, so that it still has a comfortable place in the world once its dominance fades. Even the liberal-minded international relations scholars also recognize that, as in many orders in history, the ultimate test for the LIO may well be whether it can survive a fundamental change in the balance of power. Great Britain oversaw the first era of globalization in the 19th century and remained its nominal caretaker until the First World War, even though the United States had surpassed the United Kingdom as the top global economic power towards the end of the 19th century. Charles Kindleberger convincingly argued that the lack of coordination between the United Kingdom and the United States, and the lack of will from the United States to take leadership led to the collapse of the global economic order in the 1930s.16 In turn, after the Second World War and with an economy representing more than 40% of the world economy, the United States orchestrated a comprehensive set of economic rules and institutions, backed by a set of military alliances and liberal political norms. The United States and its allies in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have consistently controlled over 60% of the world economy between 1945 and 2000. Since 2000, however, the world has entered a phase of rapid power transition. Eye-witnessing Donald Trump’s blatant attack on multilateralism, Joseph Nye worries that the world economy today is sliding into a “Kindleberger Trap” implying that China is not ready or willing to fill up the leadership vacuum.17 Another reason why most mainstream Western international relations scholars are reluctant to entertain the possibility that a post-Western world could be more peaceful, prosperous, and ecologically more sustainable than the era under Western dominance, is that the Western-centric worldview is so deeply rooted and ubiquitous. It creates an implicit epistemological barrier to imagining global affairs without the dominance of the West. According to their cognitive map, the actors from the Rest (non-Western world) have hardly ever played constructive and transformative roles to any significant extent in the management of global affairs. They tend to ignore that historically the West has depended on foreign knowledge, technology, ideas, and norms – such as from China, India, and the Muslim world – to develop economically and politically.18 In contrast, the critics of the prevailing Western-centric worldview are perceptive to the constructive and transformative role that China, India, and other emerging powers are likely to play in shaping the post-Western world order. They remind us that we ought to pay due attention to the role that non-Western powers have played and the

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varieties of hierarchical order that they had established and maintained for a much longer duration before the rise of the West.19 Otherwise, we would deprive ourselves of a much-needed, broader historical perspective as we try to make sense of the self-identities, aspirations, and priorities of the non-Western civilizational states coming to the forefront of managing global affairs.20 This volume is designed to sharpen the debate over what Asia’s rise might mean for the transformation of global order. We invited leading political scientists, historians, and economists to put the ongoing rupture and reconfiguration of the world order into longer-term historical perspective. The volume begins with a cluster of chapters that ref lect on the challenges that Western political liberalism is facing today. John Dunn’s chapter argues that the Trump Presidency, the Brexit Referendum, and the European Union’s feeble responses to economic crises over the last decade have turned what once looked like a formidable structure of power into an assemblage of rapidly disintegrating expedients for damage limitation. He believes the view that representative democracy on the basis of free elections, constitutional government, the rule of law, an expansive schedule of civil rights, freedom of thought and speech, and political organization, taken together, offer a dependably felicitous system for choosing governmental policies, and pursuing them steadily and effectively has always depended on a wholly unwarranted and epistemically indefensible view of the political role and content of public opinion. At no point in liberalism’s history as a political doctrine has this fundamental f law been remedied. Both the chapter by Wolfgang Streeck and the one by Philippe Schmitter address the prospect of resolving the ongoing crisis in Western representative democracy primarily in the context of Western Europe. Schmitter observes that beginning in the early 1990s, financial liberalization and the globalization of production radically upset the previous balance of class, sectoral, and professional forces. The individualist ideology of neo-liberalism further undermined both the appeal of and capacity for organized collective action on behalf of these interest groups. Political parties had already demonstrated their weakness in either responding to or inculcating the interests of citizens. However, he believes that this serious dysfunction in representation is not a systemic failure. Other channels of representation – especially those involving the associations and movements of civil society – might be capable of offering an alternative basis for participation, accountability, and legitimacy. Streeck is less sanguine about the future of the European democratic capitalist system. He argues that the “European social model” of yesteryear has failed on two fronts. First, it has failed as a social project to create capitalism with a human face. It has also failed as a cultural education program to inculcate liberal values. “Europe”, as a federated democratic capitalist system, may try its luck as an imperial center-periphery regime under a French-German co-directorate. Whether this version of the “European idea” will be less prone to miscarriage than its predecessors is uncertain. Does the model of Western liberal democracy face serious challenges from its alternatives? Yongnian Zheng’s chapter explicates the essence of the Chinese

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model of governance and how it has effectively adapted itself to a rapidly changing society. First, the Chinese model is built on the millennium-long Chinese tradition of meritocracy, which recruits governing elite on the basis of selection, not election. Second, the principle of intra-party democracy allows both social democracy and internal pluralism, but not external pluralism in the form of open political contestation. When different interests emerge in society, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) opens itself up to them, absorbing them into the political process and representing their interests through different mechanisms. Social democracy allows various forms of democratic practice, including public deliberation, citizen participation, and horizontal accountability. He argues that if in the future China’s political system can effectively amalgamate meritocracy and democracy, selection and election, it has the potential to transcend Western types of democracy. On the basis of rich empirical survey data, Sandeep Shastri’s chapter illustrates how the “principle” of democracy has been put to the test by the stark realities of the “practices” of development and governance in the world’s most populated representative democracy. Indian citizens overwhelmingly privilege the welfare and justice dimensions of democracy. The legitimacy of Indian democracy depends on the extent the state can implement an effective development program that prioritizes equality, inclusiveness, responsiveness, participation and partnership. The success of India’s electoral democracy over the last seven decades has given hope to many nations that are similarly placed in terms of economic development to attempt to pursue the twin objectives of economic development with expanding democracy with the same degree of intensity. Both the Indian and Chinese models suggest that, at the end of the day, citizens judge their political system on the basis of its delivery of development and governance. The volume’s second section features a cluster of chapters deliberating on whether the post-Second World War international order faces an existential crisis as the West is wrestling with the implications and repercussion of the rise of the Rest on the one hand, and Trumpism on the other. Thomas Pogge’s chapter offers a critical analysis of how Western states have become the greatest enemies of Western ideas about social justice, as being most effective at undermining these ideas by cynically abusing them for the sake of their own political dominance. While Western states fall short – significantly, albeit to varying degrees – of realizing basic rights and democracy within their own borders, they have also greatly fallen short of realizing human rights and democracy in the world under United States hegemony. He elaborates on why the ideas of rule of law, human freedom, and human equality – three key normative ideas that are central to Western liberal political philosophy – are, nevertheless, still valuable and relevant as we explore how a post-Western-dominated world might be reconstituted. Peter Katzenstein’s chapter looks at dramatic changes in Western liberalism since the late 19th century. He reminds us that liberal orders have existed in the past and continue to exist today in plural forms. One reason is the hollowness of liberalism’s core purpose. In little more than a century, liberalism has traded

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in imperialist racism for complex sovereignty and contested multi-culturalism. A second reason for the plurality of liberal orders lies in America’s regionalized imperium. Its institutional diversity is evident in the co-existence and co-evolution of multilateral, bilateral, and unilateral political arrangements and practices. Finally, since 1945 the liberal international order has passed through a series of costly and disorienting decades of fracture which were caused by American foreign policy: in the 1970s, the early 2000s, and after the 2016 election. He concludes that variety rather than uniformity marks Western liberalism, diversity makes up its institutional arrangements, and coping with crisis conditions its recent past. Barry Buzan’s chapter explores how the present global international society will unfold over the coming decades. It frames this as a form of deep pluralism in which wealth, power, and cultural authority will all become more diffuse, and the system will contain no superpowers but only great and regional powers. It makes the case that this will be, in effect, a post-Western world, where neither Western power nor liberal ideology will be hegemonic. He nonetheless argues that quite a few of the main elements of liberalism that are already rooted in global international society will remain durable because they have been accepted and internalized within illiberal ways of thinking. For various reasons, he predicts that the great powers, both old and new, are likely to be autistic. Whether deep pluralism will be contested or embedded hinges on whether these autisms are more inward-looking and defensive, or attempt to replay the universalism of the now passing Western liberal era. Both Yun-han Chu’s chapter and the chapter by both Yongnian Zheng and Bojian Liu engage head-on with the ongoing debate over whether or not China is a revisionist power determined to topple the Western-centric world order. Chu argues that China is a rising global power with a reformist agenda. China has moved to forge common ground among major developing countries to put forward a reform agenda under the central theme of “multi-polarization and the democratization of international relations”. In particular, it is pushing for a more representative governance structure that gives more voices and responsibilities to emerging economies and is strengthening the principle of equality, not just in the norms and rules but also in their implementations. China is welcomed by most developing countries to provide supplemental international public goods when these goods are seriously in short supply under the existing multilateral arrangements. China’s emerging global agenda might actually help strengthen and refurbish (rather than undermine) many important principles which undergird the post-Second World War liberal international order. Yongnian Zheng and Bojian Liu’s chapter explains why the concept of tailored multilateralism, in which initiating the subject’s specific interests largely shapes the distinctive type of multilateralism, is the key to understanding China’s grand strategy in search of a “great rejuvenation”. The strategic value of tailoring multilateralism to China is mainly a natural offspring of the historical path that China has led to since the collapse of the Qing dynasty, and the inherent ethos of tailored multilateralism

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that had been embodied in China’s strategic practices throughout the process of seeking national autonomy against imperialist invasion, seeking security against extraneous containment, and rising towards national rejuvenation out of the lost global status that had fallen during the so-called “Century of Humiliation”. Moreover, the dynamically inclusive and f lexible institutions that were set up by China are helpful in placating suspicions and fears by potential rivals and neighboring small states. China also employed tailored multilateralism to reassure the United States of China’s non-offensive intentions, this entails cautiously institutionalizing multilateral cooperation while reserving seats of membership for any potential parties, including the United States, that are interested. The third section of the book offers a cluster of chapters that explore what role emerging Asia might be able to play in this epochal shift in world order, in particular, how it might provide the impetus for reforming the existing multilateral institutions and provide the necessary building blocks for new mechanisms of global governance to address daunting challenges facing human societies today. Kishore Mahbubani in his chapter laments that both the Americans and Europeans have been unwise in recent years in walking away from the rulesbased order that they created. As the newest and biggest beneficiaries of this rules-based order, it is in the long-term interest of Asians to walk the Americans and Europeans back towards a rules-based order. He believes that it is possible to create a new world order that works for both the West and the Rest by bringing out a greater convergence in Asian and Western worldviews. There are three areas in which the Western and Asian social elite need to seek a greater consensus: 1) the nature of our current world order, 2) the need to reform global multilateral institutions, and 3) the need to abide by the gold standard for creating rules-based international organizations for implementing the reforms. Keiichi Tsunekawa’s chapter explores whether or not Asia has the potential to provide a region-based organizing principle that can serve as an alternative to the discredited Western liberal internationalism. In comparison with global frameworks, issue-specific and regional regimes will gain importance not only in practice, but also in principle. As for the nature of the post-liberalist regional order in Asia, China’s role will be of paramount importance in view of its expanding economic and military capabilities. Whether China can build a consensus-based hegemony in Asia or not will partially depend on China’s capability of providing regional public goods, such as greater access to domestic markets and concessional foreign aid. It will also depend on whether China is ready to accept regional codes of conduct that may constrain China’s own actions in the future. The best case will be a consensus-based regional order in which China, Japan, and other member countries jointly bear the costs in fostering economic transactions and assistances. The worst case will be a vicious cycle of force-based Chinese actions and equally force-based reactions from the countries that are not ready to see a Chinese empire established in Asia. His chapter concludes with the prediction that globalism will shrink and regions will gain importance. However, region-building endeavors in Asia are full of uncertainties.

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Wang Gungwu’s chapter observes that the world order of post-1945 is being challenged, as it is crumbling at the edges and soft at its center. However, he hastens to point out that the idea that United States global supremacy might be replaced by a set of Asian powers dominating the future of the world is highly improbable, or may even be counterproductive as it could trigger the United States to play out the script of the “Thucydides Trap”. Newly rising powers like China and India could at best hope that a multipolar order might eventually emerge, one that the world might accept as the basis for a durable peace. Underlying the uncertainties in United States-China relations today is the understanding of what “rule of law” stands for in international relations. While the Chinese believe that “rule by law” means that law is man-made and can be unmade, all Western references to “rule of law” as representing something universal and absolute in the world order would tend to arouse China’s suspicions. Chinese leaders are not asking for a new world order, rather they are seeking room to review the liberal world order that seems to be rooted in a value system contrary to their heritage. Lawrence Lau’s chapter begins with a projection of where the world economy will be by the middle of this century. He believes that given continuing American superiority in innovation and military power, it is premature to talk about a post-Western world, even though a gradual transition may begin to take place around the middle of this century. It took the United States more than a generation, from the First World War to the early 1950s, to finally assume undisputed leadership of the Western (or non-Communist) world. It will likewise take more than a generation before the world becomes more pluralistic, that is, not solely dominated by the West. However, as China’s economic power grows, it is likely to become a more active participant in international rule-setting, as it did in making the unanimous passage of the Paris Climate Accord in 2015 possible. His chapter moves on to identify economic deglobalization, the relative decline of United States economic power, the risks of the “Thucydides Trap”, intensified global competition, and the rise of the Chinese mainland economy as the major global and local challenges that Taiwan’s economy (and other comparable newly industrializing economies in Asia) is and will be facing. His chapter also provides some policy prescriptions for policymakers to cope with these challenges. Daniel Bell’s chapter puts forward the thesis that to foster a more peaceful, inclusive and sustainable world order, international relations scholars have to theorize the reality of hierarchy between states, identify the areas and instances in which hierarchical order can be normatively justified, and distinguish between good and bad forms of international hierarchies. He cites cases in which hierarchical arrangements can actually benefit weaker states and peace can be better maintained when dominant states are required to take up extra responsibilities. He moves on to mine Chinese and Indian ancient theories for contemporary insights, and he forcefully demonstrates that, in both classical India and classical China, political thinkers had developed rich and diverse normative theories of international politics that took hierarchy between states for granted. In the end of

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his chapter, he argues for an ideal of “one world, two hierarchical systems” that may be appropriate for future forms of global order. The volume concludes with Yves Tiberghien’s synthetic analysis. He observes that the Liberal International Order is facing multi-pronged disruptions, including an internal social crisis in response to the inequalities generated by globalization, an American crisis of liberal hegemony, and great power shifts. Liberal norms remain relatively entrenched, but global rules and institutions are facing a global contest. The rise of China and Asia as a whole represent a systemic displacement of epic proportions and require adjustments to the rules of the LIO. The ongoing transformation of the global rules and institutions of the LIO could follow a process of mediated strategic interactions between systemically-important countries, especially the United States and China. The fear that China’s approach to global governance reforms represents a process of fundamental revisionism is misguided. The future of human governance lies in increasing the mutual understanding of respective domestic focal points and in defusing misperceptions. The outcome of such a transition in the world order is not preordained, and a range of outcomes is possible, from a new hybrid negotiated order, to fragmentation and conf lict.

Notes 1 In recent years, there are growing numbers of publications on this theme. Most notably, Amitav Acharya, The End of American World Order 2nd Edition, Cambridge: Polity, 2018; Oliver Stuenkel, The BRICS and Future of Global Order, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015; Oliver Stuenkel, Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers Are Remaking Global Order, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2017; Sergio Fabbrini, Raffaele Marchetti, Still a Western World? Continuity and Change in Global Order, Abingdon-onThames: Routledge, 2018; Joscka Fischer, Der Abstieg des Westens. Europa in der neuen Weltordnung des 21. Jahrhunderts (The decline of the West: Europe in the new global order of the 21st century). [In German]. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2018. 2 Nouriel Roubini, “The Global Consequences of a Sino-American Cold War”, Project-Syndicate, May 20, 2019. 3 For instance, former German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who fired a parting shot at China during the 2018 Munich Security Conference, slammed China's Belt and Road Initiative with the allegation that China is developing a comprehensive system alternative to the Western one. 4 Larry Diamond, “The Democratic Rollback”, Foreign Affairs, March–April, 2008. 5 Frances Fukuyama, “Exporting the Chinese Model”, Project-Syndicate, January 12, 2006. 6 Edward Luce, The Retreat of the Western Liberalism, New York: Little Brown, 2018. 7 The speech by French President Emmanuel Macron at the annual ambassador conference, August 27, 2019. See: https://lv.ambafrance.org/Ambassadors-conference-S peech-by-M-Emmanuel-Macron-President-of-the-Republic 8 Michel Fouquin & Jules Hugot, “Two Centuries of Bilateral Trade and Gravity Data: 1827–2014”, CEPII Working Paper 2016–2014, May 2016, CEPII. According to their definition, “Non-rich” countries are all countries in the world except: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States.

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9 PriceWaterhouseCoopers, The World in 2050: The Long View: How will the Global Economic Order Change by 2050, 2017. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/economy /the-world-in-2050.html#downloads 10 John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American System, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011. 11 Dani Rodrick, The Globalization Paradox: Why Global Markets, States, and Democracy Can't Coexist, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 12 Martin Wolf, “Seven charts that show how the developed world is losing its edge”, Financial Times, July 20, 2017. 13 David A. Lake, “International Legitimacy Lost? Rule and Resistance When America Is First”, Perspectives on Politics, VOL. 16, NO. 1, March, 2018, pp. 6–21. 14 Most notably, Ian Bremmer, Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World. (New York: Portfolio, 2012); Charles Kupchan, No One's World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 15 Graham Allision, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? Boston: Houghton Miff lin Harcourt, 2017. 16 Charles Kindleberger, “An Explanation of the 1929 Depression”, The World in Depression 1929–1939, Ch. 14, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973, pp. 291–308. 17 Joseph Nye, “The Kindleberger Trap”, Project-Syndicate, Jan 9, 2017. 18 Oliver Stuenkel, Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers Are Remaking Global Order, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2017. 19 David Kang, East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. 20 Martin Jacquea, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, London: Penguin Books, 2012. See also, Gideon Rachman, “China, India and the rise of the ‘civilisation state’”, Financial Times, March 4, 2019.

PART I

The crisis of liberal democracy in the West and its competitors from Asia

1 THE PRINCIPAL VULNERABILITIES OF WESTERN LIBERALISM John Dunn*

What we actually have to do is demonstrate by our behavior that our values are better than theirs. That’s the only thing we’ve got to work with. It will take a long time and you’ll take a lot of hits for it but finally you can’t coerce people. You have to be more attractive than the competition.1 To identify the vulnerabilities of a political viewpoint you do not have to be its settled enemy nor presuppose it any more determinate than it proves on inspection.2 The fact that liberalism is indeed vulnerable from many different angles has always been apparent,3 but that does not distinguish it from any other political or cultural orientation of comparable breadth or longevity, nor from any of the great world religions. Still less does it distinguish it from the far less imposing protocols for economic explanation which have traveled the world since the globe became a single ragged domain of economic interaction for the great majority of its human inhabitants. Insofar as these are not simply misnomers, it may well distinguish it in some respects from non-Western forms of liberalism (like those which entered the Chinese thought world quite early in the last century and even now perhaps remain uneasily and somewhat hazardously alive within it);4 but insofar as it does, it is inherently unlikely that it will do so by proving less vulnerable. Liberalism, of course, comes in many different shapes and sizes and is plainly least vulnerable when carefully contextualized and presenting itself in its slenderest and most parsimonious forms. Recently, however, it has been at its most * The first version of this paper was prepared for a memorable and exceptionally interesting conference in Taipei in June 2018, which I am deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to attend. It has been revised in the United Kingdom in the closing month of 2018 as the chaos unleashed by the Brexit Referendum continued to deepen.

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vulnerable and most conspicuous in its most expansive form – as a would-be connected answer to the question of how the relations between human beings should best be structured in living with one another across the globe. In this billowing guise it is scarcely surprising that, inspected with even minimal attention, liberalism should have proved very vulnerable indeed. So seen, it unites a conception of an order of right with a rationale for a structure of power and fuses both, at least in aspiration, in a single global legal and institutional format which can somehow furnish the power to realize the structure of right: the liberal model of world order and the apparatuses through which that aspiring order was brief ly and sporadically enforced. Less transparently, it aligns all of these with a conception of a global economy, held together by, and consisting in, free exchanges on the basis of existing rights of ownership. Behind all these, and casting an implausibly f lattering light on most of them, is an implicit but confident conception of the character of the good life for any individual: the free exploration and choice by each of how to live day by day and hour by hour. Viewed at the receiving end, as it has perforce been historically by most of the world’s population, this is intensely provocative. It unites an overweening normative self-regard, an evasive and f lagrantly implausible conception of the basis and justification of existing and effectively enforced property rights, with a robust indifference to the resulting distribution of suffering, humiliation, and privilege across the world. Envisaged through the history of Europe and its diaspora, it is not hard to discern the value of each component of this synoptic and immodest vision; but viewed from any other angle it was always hard to miss the scale of effrontery and self-deception involved throughout in pressing it promiscuously upon the rest of the world. It is not that the world’s human population as yet have between us any other surviving and comparably encompassing model for world order, nor that there is the least plausibility to the hope that the world may not need any such order. It is just that the passage of this remarkable vision through the power structures which organize human life across the world has reached a very different point today from where it stretched as it entered the twilight years of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The Trump Presidency’s, the Brexit Referendum’s, and the European Union’s feeble responses to economic crises over the last decade have turned what once looked like a formidable structure of power into an assemblage of rapidly disintegrating expedients for damage limitation. Across the United States, Great Britain, and the European Union, the lighting conditions differ markedly from place to place; but seen from elsewhere in the world, this looks very much like The Twilight of the West.5 Nowhere do the countries of the West at this point seem more wounded than in their residual capacities for effective political response. You could perhaps say, echoing Britain’s then Foreign Secretary as the First World War loomed,6 that the lights are going out all over the West. I am not a prophet and cannot confidently guess just how rapidly or drastically they will prove to be dimming now, but with the incomparable benefits of hindsight it is

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clear enough already that this is a more instructive point than in 1989 at which to assess the vulnerabilities of liberalism. In its most expansive form, it is scarcely surprising that liberalism should have compounded the vulnerabilities of each of its components in a grotesque caricature of them all. The relation between any structure of power and such rationales as it chooses to offer for itself is necessarily contingent, and the more assertive the rationale the stronger the grounds for audiences to disbelieve it and the probability of there being good reason for them to do so. What there is not, however, is the least reason to expect the force of the impulse to match the cogency of the grounds for disbelief. In its contemporary Western guise, the force of this impulse is especially important in the case of liberalism’s currently preferred political form. The view that representative democracy on the basis of free elections, constitutional government, the rule of law, an expansive schedule of civil rights, freedom of thought and speech, and political organization, taken together offers a dependably felicitous form for choosing governmental policies and pursuing them steadily and effectively, which has always itself depended on a wholly unwarranted and epistemically indefensible view of the political role and content of public opinion.7 At no point in liberalism’s history as a political doctrine has this fundamental f law been remedied. Scanning across the polities of the West today, from the United States to Britain and the European Union, no one could possibly see it as currently vindicated. Long-term coherence and efficacy have always been the prime criteria for governmental merit, but as human life becomes more densely and tightly connected across the globe, and its fundamental ecological precariousness in that form becomes ever more evident, it should be clear by now that they have become by far the weightiest criteria. That is surely, at this stage in its long history, where liberalism’s most portentous weakness lies. Perhaps it is especially apparent just how weak it has become when it is viewed from China’s perspective.8 From that angle it offers virtually a mirror image of the classical Chinese vision of social order, where the order is effectively taken as given absolutely and any detriment to it thus automatically discredited by that alone. To see order as integral in this way is necessarily to presuppose a comprehensive social theory, which liberalism may indeed have always covertly assumed itself to possess;9 but which it has never convincingly articulated,10 and is certainly now in no position to invoke in its own defense. The less that vision corresponds to reality in any given setting, the more rapidly liberalism must disintegrate as a coherent viewpoint within practical politics and, accordingly, the less able it is sure to prove to muster its own protection from political resources of its own. Global liberalism was an overstretch from the start, not because it presented an inherently inequitable or malignant model for several key aspects of the relations between human societies, political units. and domestic economies in contrast to alternative models which unite justice in acquisition and distribution with proven feasibility,11 but because the human population of the world as a whole has always been an unimagined and unimaginable community and has yet to

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become the focus of any compelling social theory.12 The impulse to govern the world is necessarily self-assigned and unlikely ever to elicit unalloyed gratitude from anyone else at the receiving end. As President Trump shows incomparably, you do not need to be poor or maltreated to experience it in this way. The United Kingdom, and even the realm of England which would no doubt survive its demise, have also always been very much imagined communities and in both cases have now become communities increasingly unable to imagine themselves as such. On a more parvenu basis, this has also always been evidently true of the European Union. Over at least the last four presidential elections very much the same has clearly proved so too for the United States of America. Insofar as you are lucky enough to belong to a community with determinate boundaries and a current population, most of whose members view it as such, you do not need a comprehensive social theory. But as soon as either its scope or its constituents come seriously into question, neither liberalism nor democracy offer any clear basis on which to supply either on your behalf. The intimacy and the claustrophobic intensity of social media amplifies anxieties, suspicions, and questions far more potently than they supply ease, confidence, or convincingly common answers; and the images for which our citizenries reach, and the slogans to which they respond, evoke social theories with no foundation whatever in historical reality. It is clear in liberalism’s case that this f law is structural and ineliminable. Like one of those assemblages of hanging sticks which delight an Issey Miyake boutique in Tokyo, because from one angle and one angle only they look like chairs,13 liberalism is a composite of discrete elements which fit together as a whole only when viewed from a single angle, and insofar as they ever do come together in time and space, can never reasonably be expected to stay together for long or bear the weight of anything else. Liberalism’s deep sources in the west lie far back in the past: in its vision of the good life for individuals and in attitudes to ownership and to exertion in economic life. The aspirational elements of this vision are rooted primarily in the imaginative life of Christianity which privileges the individual soul overwhelmingly as a site of significance for human beings, along with the primacy of choice for humans in determining its ultimate fate. The momentum of the latter in an ever more commoditized world is scarcely aspirational, but it is increasingly insistent and gains constantly in causal force whatever it lacks in spiritual dignity. It no longer matters quite what launched it on its course;14 and it is in any case less than plausible that its terminus ad quem today in the West differs markedly from the point it has now reached in the People’s Republic itself. It is not for me to judge how far the People’s Republic as a political form clashes with or corresponds to the realities of China’s society and economy as these are today.15 Comprehensive social theories are epistemically ambitious creations and apt to seem like superstitions or impostures to anyone who does not share them, so there is no reason whatsoever to view more skeptical versions of liberalism as necessarily vulnerable in comparison with rival political doctrines with more

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encompassing pretensions. The most sophisticated of pretensions is no substitute for political efficacy. In the West, the evaluative primacy of autonomy and the exhilarations of Romanticism have little elective affinity with the characteristic pleasures elicited today by Benjamin Constant’s modern liberty,16 the opportunity to live within the bounds of your income and in an economy founded on the division of labor organized through free choice, however ineligible in themselves the choices made available to many. Only when it comes to consumption do these very disparate elements capture much of the experience of living in any Western society over time and ever less so as you move towards the present. The social breadth and motivational power of Constant’s modern liberty, by contrast, remains most evident in Western politics and within the representative democracies of the West. It still sets sharp limits to the power of Western governments even where the latter, as in the Federal Republic of Germany, remain reassuringly solvent, at least within their own reckoning. The legal protections for freedom of speech and political coordination continue to provide some effective support for it across the polities of the European Union, if diminishingly so as you move eastwards from the Atlantic coast. In each case, the efficacy of modern liberty seems firmly located in the field of consumption. There, if anywhere, it articulates directly with the choices of governments through the reliability and plenitude of what there is to consume. It is there that it can exert peremptory causal force in directing or constraining the power to govern. A salient case in point would be the vicissitudes of the Macron Presidency. (There is no more effective way to constrain someone’s power to govern than to take it away from them.) In this instance at least, one power can reasonably be seen as arresting or directing another, as in Montesquieu’s classic imagery.17 Where legal rights and their custody clash more directly with what are seen as the requirements for acceptable levels of consumption, as they now at times appear to clash on the eastern fringes of the European Union or even the eastern areas of Germany itself, they can no longer rely on firm electoral support; and governments which view them simply as obstructions to their purposes increasingly choose to brush them aside. Depleted consumption has become the key currency of governmental efficacy and at best stands in purely instrumental relation to Liberalism as a political creed. The demands of autonomy exert no discernible effect in any form on the degree of discretion open to governments. Being ineffectual weakens any government. Being arbitrary, oppressive, and even brutal, unfortunately, appears not at all to do so at the same degree, provided only that those characteristics are directed at individual scapegoats or at widely stigmatized groups. Viewing liberalism through its most prepossessing and aspirational features accordingly does little to identify what has made it politically potent, or explain what has spread the form of regime which it favors across the world over the last half century.18 Liberalism’s coherence and confidence are sustained or jeopardized in four distinct arenas: in the structuring of production and economic exchange, in the

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organization of political action, in the genesis and reproduction of culture, and in the equilibration of power. In the first three of these, however inexplicitly, its strengths and weaknesses must be intrinsic to it. Only in the last case can they be clearly seen as extrinsic. There is no reason to assign causal priority to any of the first three, while the fourth merely tracks the outcome of all three together over time and space in a world which has only ever succumbed to liberalism very incompletely, where it has done so at all. To impose any form of normativity on the equilibration of power is a heroic ambition. Liberalism plausibly has prompted more of an effort to do so in recent centuries than anyone since the successors of Mahomet, if hardly with more lasting success.19 This is scarcely a victory for any but the most predatory of interests: ethnicity-based tyrants, pirates, drug lords, markedly unsocial bandits. As with China’s very different vision of legitimate political order, so too in liberalism’s case – the gap between aspiration and achievement is almost always quite wide and often cavernous. If liberalism was always more vulnerable than it hoped to be, and all but certain to elicit particular enmity when its ambitions were at their zenith, why exactly has it now so lost confidence in itself, and why is it faltering as badly as it is today? It is tempting to look for the answer primarily in the first of these arenas, where its requirements are tracked most continuously and exhaustively and the results can be categorized and graphed with relative precision. A decade after a major cyclical crisis in the leading Western economies, with limited recovery for most in their economic growth, some faltering in the momentum of the majority of other large economies across the world, no clear conception of what might restore their economic dynamism or enable the rest of the world economy to do much better continuously for any length of time,20 and some little doubt as to whether it could ever be ecologically safe for it to do so, it is eminently reasonable to view liberalism’s current discomfiture primarily from this angle. This is certainly the setting in which it is easiest to read an answer from current news. If it scarcely explains why the elements of liberalism have spread as widely as they have, or why they retain some appeal in some circles – even in a society like China where the immediate prospects for governmental efficacy, and even popularity, appear far better than in most societies of the West – it may do somewhat more to explain some of the limits of that spread. What best explains most of the timing and incidence of its expansion, and will also presumably explain much of any subsequent faltering or retreat, is the interaction between the convenience and f luency of its core economic mechanism, the relative efficacy of competing mechanisms in other contemporary polities, and the positive or negative impact of intense geopolitical struggles, above all, over the last century, the two World Wars, the construction and collapse of the USSR, and the initially volatile trajectory of the People’s Republic of China. These are all obtrusive processes of power, and they were hardly modified by conceptions of the good life. Even legal punctiliousness, which does plausibly have some relation to economic efficacy in the long term, has played little obvious causal role in determining its course.

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If liberalism’s preferred self-image is as an audacious cultural creation, fired by the courage to know21 and the freedom to choose, supported and made possible by the belated protection of the state, and driven by the energy and ingenuity unleashed by market exchange,22 it is unsurprising that it should keenly prefer not to highlight the interactive chaos driven by the states and markets which have duly developed in response,23 and that it should turn a blind eye to the corrosive cultural impact of ever intensifying commodification. To recognize in liberalism a contingent cultural construction rather than a secular theodicy is to register why there is nothing necessarily surprising in its current faltering, but not necessarily to imply that it could not in due course recover from these setbacks and relaunch itself as the expansive cultural ideal to which it sometimes seemed to appear to many across the globe in the last century. This ideal has always had a more elite rather than demotic allure; and it was then, as it remains now, plainly more accessible for those in a social and economic position to choose their style of life.24 It is still hard to judge how much political weight it has ever really exerted (how soft can power afford to be for it to be power at all?). What is very clear, however, is that to carry real political weight in the future liberalism will have to disabuse itself of the comforting assumption that a representative electoral democracy with freedom of speech and political coordination is either a wholly reliable guarantor of its cultural needs and commitments, or a deft selector of the means needed to ensure the material prosperity of its citizens, still less so of the basis on which to conduct their economic and political relations with other polities and populations. It is reasonable to take the political experience of the range of these democracies since 2015 as a clear refutation of that optimistic presumption. This aversive experience has prompted extensive effort to explain it.25 If liberalism is intrinsically so good, and a representative democratic vehicle is so well contrived to convey it safely on its course; if the majestic edifice constructed by America’s founders has proven its unique political efficacy in forging and sustaining an expanding population drawn from ever wider sources over more than two centuries since,26 if the European Union was a subtle and discerning enough model to pull the population of a savagely divided continent together, in the aftermath of a devastating war, into peaceful and increasingly prosperous collaboration and even incipient social intimacy, how can things now have gone so frighteningly wrong? Of the explanatory efforts yet offered, Yascha Mounk’s The People vs. Democracy is the most vivid, and easily the most perceptive. He treats the question very much as an American citizen would and takes as a given the essential coherence and unique normative standing of the characteristically American composite, liberal democracy. He does not attribute this daunting setback of liberalism’s political hopes merely to the impact of factors which liberals have long been inured to take seriously (major economic crises, the stimulus to the greatest single 20th century political invention of any liberal thinker for impeccably liberal ends, and the techniques of cross-cyclical demand

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management which formed the agenda of John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Money and Interest27), nor to its coincidence with the disruption occasioned by novel technologies of communication which have been made possible by the internet. On these, he reasonably assumes, the political representatives and guardians of liberal polities, like other political competitors, must learn as briskly as they can to take their measure, deploy them effectively on their own behalf, and limit the scope of damage they can evidently do.28 No technique of communication is self-sanitizing. All can convey harm as well as benefit. Technological changes can expand the range of instruments or facilities for pursuing political purposes. It is not in itself an independent source of political power and can only ever determine political outcomes by stealth or inattention, or by being applied within a political field by those who already hold power to act within it which is drawn from somewhere quite different: politically protected private wealth or politically accumulated and secured personal power. The surveillance capacities and data resources open to the present Chinese government may well render the People’s Republic the most formidable totalitarian state there has ever been, but they depend not just on the economic imagination and nerve of the entrepreneurs who built them and the brilliance of the software engineers who devised them, but on the prior authority which China’s Communist Party had drawn from its decisive victory in a protracted civil war in a country which overwhelmingly needed that war to end, and which it has sustained now for several decades by transforming its country, along with the life chances of many hundreds of millions of its citizens.29 The far from negligible corresponding resources of its American counterpart, if more precariously related to the public law which articulates its authority, likewise rest on the current outcome of the endless tug of war between its different components which were painstakingly inaugurated in its founders’ design. Mounk gives full weight to the aversive impact of regional economic decline, persistently high rates of unemployment – especially among the young, along with the growing proportion of employment which is temporary or insecure – stagnant or declining real incomes, the deconstruction of occupational communities, and the rising resentment at an increasingly absurd and indefensible concentration of wealth obtained through economic mechanisms which are ever more tightly controlled by their direct beneficiaries. Over most of this range, it is not hard for defenders of the legitimacy and justification of the current structuring of society in the West to acknowledge the outcomes as regrettable, to insist that they were in no sense collectively intended, and even to concede in the urgency of correcting them or at least rendering them less obtrusive. In the case of wealth concentration, the degree to which the leaders of giant corporations have succeeded collusively over time in ensuring the scale of their own incomes is an outcome which can scarcely be presented as inadvertent; and the most legitimatory conceptions of the felicity of capitalism quail at the task of defending it.30 The scale of what there is to resent in these outcomes is hard to exaggerate, but it is almost certainly less consequential than the spreading of fear that it has

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aroused, and the evaporation for very large areas of the United States, Britain, and virtually every state in the European Union (apart from Luxembourg) of any clear and compelling focus for hope. There could hardly be a more painful historical setback for liberalism. No one can become autonomous or remain so for long in a setting where there is nothing for them to hope for. No community which loses all hope can remain a community for long. No community can nurture autonomy which has lost all control over its own destiny. Insofar as Liberalism at the acme of its ambition centered on a vision of the self-emancipation of the membership of a single animal species, it has never applied this convincingly to much of the world,31 and it has never succeeded in aligning itself with a realistic picture of autonomy’s very restricted incidence across that planet. But as far back as Adam Smith, and indeed John Locke,32 the creators of its main elements picked out for its human core an amalgam of attitude and experience which carries some weight wherever it is found, which is the sense in which human beings feel themselves subject to or free from personal dependence and anticipate safety or fear harm over time from those on whom they depend. The organizers and leaders of Britain’s Brexit campaign chose brilliantly the slogan they picked out for it: “Take back control!” Sovereignty, their prior inspiration and continuing obsession, is an ethereal notion for almost everyone. Being controlled is not. More subtly but just as importantly, Mounk picks out as the key imaginative line where control can be made to appear in greatest danger: the territorial borders of a country, disallowed to exclude arrivals from elsewhere on two quite different bases, and increasingly fearful of its capacity to do so insofar as still notionally free to do so. This fused the gravest and most elusive issues of national and class interest with utter incoherence in the bricolage of normative presumptions which liberalism at that point aspired to integrate. At the level of public policy, no relatively safe and wealthy state in the world has yet articulated a clear account of whom it deems appropriate for admission to enter and remain within it, and on what grounds or of whom it definitely does not – still less an account which sets out and vindicates cogently to its own citizens the collective practical benefit and domestic distributive justice of whatever answer it does contrive to offer. In the face of the demographic futures of Africa, Europe, the United States, Japan, and eventually even China, it is hard to see how any but the last can hope to exclude a huge mass of arrivals, many in no sense solicited or intended by the recipient country. But beneath this eminently practical anxiety there is a very different (and every bit as disconcerting) pressure on liberal political purposes: the blank fact that no one at all holds a clear and rationally compelling conception of just where human beings should rightfully be, a conception through which they could at least focus on which features of their dispersion across the world’s land mass can and cannot be justified. Mounk sees this, crucially, not so much as a lacuna in liberalism’s philosophical integrity or articulation but as a catastrophic failure in its political imagination: an incapacity on the part of its champions to grasp the weight of identity in

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political response, the degree to which, for individuals, their identity depends on their sense of membership in a community, and the degree to which their nation for those whose sense of membership in any more proximate form of community is becoming ever more etiolated has come to serve as that haven instead. As communities of residence and occupation increasingly fall apart, what is left and reimagined with greater urgency is the always precarious reality of the nation. A nation is by definition, above all, a community of birth, and in that stricter sense a possible foundation for identity. But in historical and social fact, its relation to any particular individual is utterly contingent from a normative point of view, an artifact of dynastic accident or the brutal fortunes of an often very distant war. Liberals have, for the most part, tended to see identification with the nation under conditions other than those of acute collective peril as atavistic and somewhat uncouth, and fear that it forms a reciprocal ugly and dangerous chauvinism. This does less than justice to the asymmetry between a state’s duties and responsibilities to its own citizens and those it may reasonably be thought to have towards the rest of the world’s human inhabitants, whether or not the latter happen to be temporarily located within its own borders. In the first place, these duties and responsibilities are principally defined through the provision of security to its own citizens and can scarcely, in the case of the rest of the world’s inhabitants, be seen as equally clear and strong, except over the provision of security, whether or not any of the latter happen at the time to be found within its territory. There cannot be a coherent conception of distributive justice unless there are things which can be distributed justly or unjustly; and nothing can be distributed in either manner unless it could be held and utilized justly in the first place. Behind and beneath every normative conception of human relations to the rest of the world, or to one another, and articulating the vision of what they may or may not and must or must not do, has to be some vision of property: of which elements of the world they may or may not do it to and with. At this point in time, property is still defined by and located within individual states, and states in turn (wherever their present dimensions first came from) are conceived and fashioned through the category of nation. Nations rise and fall as poles of identification and havens of security and hope with the ebb and f low of their imaginative plausibility. As Mounk underlines, they have been rising recently not because of any increase in their own efficacy or plausibility in either respect, but because the plausibility and efficacy of other older or more recent forms of community have wilted or dissipated.33 It would be hard to find a more graphic example of the practical pertinence of this movement than the recent history of the United Kingdom: the fracturing relations between its constituent nations, the Brexit Referendum, and the basis on which Theresa May precariously governed the country in its wake. In England itself, that referendum split the country very starkly in geographical terms,34 with the population of the metropolis and much of its surrounding area, Oxford, Cambridge, Liverpool, Manchester, and a set of smaller but prosperous

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cities voting resolutely to remain in the Union, and the rest of the country equally and solidly voting to leave it. In Scotland, it produced quite a large majority to remain; in Wales, there was a narrow overall balance. In Northern Ireland, the key necessary condition for Theresa May to continue to govern after her hapless decision to call a general election which lost her the parliamentary majority bequeathed her by her ill-fated predecessor, the parliamentary representatives of the Protestants chose unanimously to support her in leaving, while those of the Catholics, who had voted equally and decisively to remain in the European Union alongside their Irish fellows in the Republic, continued to decline to take up their seats in Westminster because they reject its authority over Irish soil. If there is anything which still unites the citizens of the United Kingdom in a convincing political community, it is plainly neither the nation to which they deem themselves to belong, nor the degree to which they feel at home in one another’s company or that of other Europeans, and still less the degree to which they share each other’s political tastes or sentiments. It cannot be a narrative of common origin or shared founding; and it is most assuredly not the effectiveness with which they now find themselves being governed. It is not easy to see what kind of legitimacy a polity in this condition can reasonably be judged to retain.35 Sooner or later, the answer will be given by the merciless judgment of history, but for now at least you can see the political vulnerability of liberalism in any party or philosophical variant in the radical absence of agreement, not just about what the population should now set itself to try to do in the distinctive local crisis it has foisted on itself and in its sharp disagreement over who or what is entitled to decide for it. It is certainly, and with increasing self-awareness, “af loat on a boundless sea without harbour for shelter or f loor for anchorage”;36 and it is anyone’s guess who, if anyone, will prove to be on the bridge and at the wheel in a few months’ time. It has no Ancient,37 still less modern, Constitution to settle the matter, and it audibly no longer accepts the austere but decisive answer which Thomas Hobbes crafted so laboriously for it three and a half centuries ago in the clearest account anyone has ever fashioned of what a state is and what it is for.38 In this self-inf licted extremity, all the strengths of liberalism in a historical setting which favors it – its impulse to conciliate, to plead for tolerance and even amity between those who feel little or no impulse towards either, its stalwart promise to protect its citizens against one another, and when necessary even against those who govern them at the time, falter or turn against it. At this point, what haunts it is its lack of anything which could be mistaken for a theory of society: of what binds human beings together and what a living community must ultimately consist of – the f luctuating reality which Hobbes so acerbically denied. What makes liberalism (or if you will, liberal democracy) so vulnerable is its tacit dependence on the prior existence of a society to realize its aspirations, and its complete lack of any conception of how to hold together a society which is fracturing beneath it, or recreate one which is melting into thin air. This vulnerability is neither unique to liberalism nor a peculiarity of the West; it is a structural potentiality for any form of polity and any ideology which claims the

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capacity to direct a population reliably to its own good. That it holds true of liberalism now, and matters that it does, is an occasion for remark at this point only because liberalism so recently presumed itself a beacon to humans right across the world, and liberal democracy as a potentially universal model polity for the globe. Then was then and now is now, so the scale of indiscretion no longer gravely matters. What does still matter acutely is what those vulnerabilities imply for the future, and what, if anything, they mean for societies in which liberalism has only ever touched very lightly.39 The internal vulnerability of liberal democracy as a regime was there from the start in the clear tension between its two principal components: in its exposure to misjudgment in the choice and implementation of economic policy, and in the ingenuousness of its conception of international relations. In face of the two greatest threats to the value of any regime – potentially depraved purposes on the part of its rulers and their proneness to practical indiscretion – liberalism from its beginning (whenever you take that to have been) had a fuller and better tested conception of how to constrain the first than of how to remedy the second. It developed this conception well before any state had become a mass-suffrage electoral democracy.40 Those who feared the coming of democracy expected it to lead to the expropriation of the rich by the poor (as of course did many of those who favored it for exactly that reason). But neither hope nor anxiety have proved warranted. Where it has often proved indiscreet has been in prioritizing consumption over growth through the tax and welfare systems which it developed (an inherently complex macroeconomic assessment), and, more surprisingly, in the superficial and perfunctory vigilance it has exerted over its financial sector. The demos has been in some measure complicit in each element of this priority; but it can scarcely be said to have forced it onto a reluctant stratum of career politicians or an austere or diffident financial milieu. The former at least emerged directly from the strategy of the career politicians in their competition for the power to govern. (There is as yet, however, no reason whatsoever to see any other form of regime as proofed more securely against the same vagaries.) More disconcertingly, it has proved to be over the issues of tolerance and respect for the human rights of immigrants that its alliance with democracy has most obstructed liberalism’s mission of edification. For representative democracy to accede to the authority of liberalism’s normative vision (to bend to the mind of Ronald Dworkin, for example), those who share that vision need to convince the demos of its authority. It is from the demos that representative democracy draws the authority to govern, and in the end anyone who rules under its aegis simply has to accede to that authority. A profoundly illiberal demos, such as Hungary’s for example, has proven itself for some time and very much remains so at present, explicitly and precisely rejects that normative authority and has no obvious reason to defer to it. To establish any such authority for itself is a political task for liberalism; it has no pre-political or supra-political entitlement to it. Against this gloomy canvas it is clearer than ever that liberalism’s principal residual political strength beyond the terrain it currently occupies (and also by

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now perhaps even within it) is the vulnerability of any of its rivals as a political model for others. Even those, like the People's Republic of China which by many weighty criteria have proved remarkably successful in recent decades, have extremely conspicuous weaknesses in the belatedness and obscurity of their address to the challenge of accountability and the control of corruption, and in the handling of their financial systems which are every bit as selectively inattentive as that of the states of the West. The image of the People’s Republic as a heavily-armed and Argus-eyed kleptocracy, diligently purging even its highest office-holders when they fall out of favor or threaten its current rulers, while fully matching the reticence of President Trump over the scale of their own current assets or those of their closer friends and relations, is not a seductive one. The vision of a police and a court system rigidly committed, not to holding officeholders to account where they abuse their power and office, but to persecuting anyone who challenges that abuse, is not just ugly; it is also fiercely de-legitimatory. It fits very poorly, indeed, with the well-founded pride of China’s rulers in the scale of their collective achievement and assimilates them damagingly instead to regimes of uninhibited and unmistakably destructive predation. It also highlights a feature of the state which, whatever its convenience from the viewpoint of current rulers, no one at all could see as a clear merit: the degree to which any citizen at all of the People’s Republic, however impeccable their character or impressive the scale of their personal contribution to the public good, has good reason to fear for their own safety and freedom if they incur the anger or raise the anxiety of those at the summit of the Chinese state. It must be a deep weakness of a political order that no one within it can ever know for certain that they are not in personal peril. It has been clear within the intellectual trajectory of the West, ever since Plato, that any really exigent theory of the human good which combines it with due recognition of human beings’ social character is a very ambitious venture. It requires its vision of the goals of individual life to mesh with and support a way of ordering an entire society, and both of them then to be proof against the relentless attrition of political life.41 It is not evident that anyone has as of yet seen how to secure this outcome, and it is certain that no one yet has seen how to render it at all likely. To do so would, as Plato saw, require the complete subordination of power over and between human beings to the good or right and require that practically implausible outcomes, if ever achieved decisively in the first place, be engineered in a way which sustained it robustly intact over time. Even complete success would leave the result very much as Liberalism within One Country or polis and casts no light at all on how such a delicate and intensely vulnerable creation could hope to survive for long within the equilibration of power across the wide and drastically unreconstructed world beyond its borders. Liberalism within a single, carefully selected, and painstakingly fashioned community might at least be a coherent political project. Global liberalism within a world recognizably similar to our own is just an obvious category mistake.

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Insofar as anyone has ever taken it seriously, it has also proven to be a farfrom-innocent category mistake.42 But liberalism was always seriously miscast as an ideology for world domination, a goal deeply at odds with more than one of its most vigorous and insistent sources, and certain to require the systematic use of means which no clear-headed liberal could conceivably endorse, let alone applaud.43 As an ideology which deeply values (and perhaps even fetishes) inhibition, liberalism, if it is not to betray itself hopelessly, must change the world by example, not by subjugation.44 Every movement in the latter direction, however forced or motivated, simply weakens whatever exemplary cogency it has ever mustered or could muster in the future. As a doctrine of state, it is necessarily at the mercy of the states which happen to adopt it, few of which at present are an education to the world.45 If it is to recover its luster from now on, it must face without f linching a range of questions it has never answered convincingly and find fresh means to pursue its goals within the equilibration of power. Does this mean that representative democracies in the Western style cannot now recover from their present debacle or the People’s Republic of China in due course develop systems of accountability and guarantees for personal freedom which fully match (or indeed surpass) those still in operation in many existing representative democracies? In neither case is the answer necessarily negative; but in each the changes needed to achieve those happier outcomes are very extensive indeed. In the former, the key transformations required lie in their existing (and increasingly exclusionary) political economy, in the overall political comprehension of their citizens, in the representative efficacy of their party systems,46 and in the quality of their political class; and all of these must combine above all to restore their capacity to act effectively for the better over time. In China, by contrast, the main shift required lies in the governmental style of its communist party, the degree of independence and personal security it leaves open to China’s citizens, and in the extent to which it equips and permits them to define China’s goals as a state. In both cases, disconcertingly for the overt rationales of their political systems, how far and how effectively these possibilities are realized will depend largely on the contingencies of the political leadership they happen to elicit.47 Very large transformations for the better require high and protracted concentrations of political luck. As we have recently seen in the case of democracies in the Western style, comparable transformations for the worse regrettably do not. Politics is a very refractory medium for achieving human betterment.48 It is also a medium of overwhelming importance: the medium through which, however resentfully or unwittingly,49 we determine our collective fate.

Notes 1 Tom Stoppard, Erica Wagner, “Time is short. There is a lot to know”, New Statesman, 6 Feb 2015, pp. 31. 2 Liberalism is a precarious candidate for scrupulously historical treatment unless narrowly restricted to those who choose it specifically to identify their own views. Within the scope of this volume, its use in denouncing the views of others is at least as

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5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18

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pertinent, and I address it here more as a tracer of political disagreement than a clearly bounded domain of belief and commitment across time and space. Compare James Tully, editor, Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988; John Dunn, “The Identity of the History of Ideas”, Political Obligation in its Historical Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980, 13–28, pp. 302– 303; Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, translated by Keith Tribe, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1985. John Dunn, Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 28–54. Jeremy Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1937, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1970; Max Ko-Wu Huang, The Meaning of Freedom: Yan Fu and the Origins of Chinese Liberalism, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2008; Thomas A Metzger, A Cloud Across the Pacific, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2005. Judging the strengths and vulnerabilities of these must in the end simply be left to the people of China. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendslandes, Munich: Oskar Beck, 1923. Lord Grey of Falloden, Twenty Five Years 1892–1916, New York: Frederick A Stokes, 1925, p. 20. See especially Biancamaria Fontana, Germaine de Staël: A Political Portrait, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Thomas A Metzger, A Cloud Across the Pacific; The Ivory Tower and the Marble Citadel, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2012. John Dunn, Political Thought of John Locke, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969 Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. John Dunn, From Applied Theology to Social Analysis: the Break Between John Locke and the Scottish Enlightenment; Dunn, Rethinking Modern Political Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 55–67; Istvan Hont, “Adam Smith’s History of Law and Government as Political Theory”, in Richard Bourke and Raymond Geuss, eds, Political Judgement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 131–171; Cf Paul Sagar, The Opinion of Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Of which there are none: Cf John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970; Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Oxford: Blackwell 1975; Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice, London: Allen Lane, 2009. This is not for want of trying: compare the vicissitudes of the thinking of Karl Marx (Gareth Stedman Jones, Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion, London: Allen Lane, 2016). Hanging sticks create illusions of chairs at Issey Miyake boutique in Tokyo. https:// www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/12736811423218852/ Hanging sticks create illusions of chairs at Issey Miyake boutique in Tokyo. Cf Alan Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1978. Some of the grounds for doubt are set out forcefully in Jiwei Ci, Moral China in the Age of Reform, Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2014 and Democracy in China, Cambridge: Mass: Harvard University Press, 2019. Benjamin Constant, Political Writings, ed Biancamaria Fontana, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 313–328. Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, De L’Esprit des Loix, 1748, ed jean Brethe de la Gressaye, Paris: Société Les Belles Lettres, 1955II, Bk Xi, cap 6, p. 61: “Pour qu’on ne puisse abuser du pouvoir, il faut que, par la disposition des choses, le pouvoir arrête le pouvoir.” Cf John Dunn, “The Identity of the Bourgeois Liberal Republic”, in Biancamaria Fontana, ed, The Invention of the Modern Republic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 206–225.

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19 Mark Mazower, Governing the World, London: Penguin, 2012. 20 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twentieth Century, tr Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2013; Robert Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Economic Growth, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016; Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, London: Allen Lane, 2018. 21 Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” Political Writings, ed Hans Reiss & tr H.B.Nisbet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971, pp. 54-60. 22 Cf Istvan Hont & Michael Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and Virtue, Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1983. 23 Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. 24 John Dunn, “Liberty as a Substantive Political Value”; Dunn, Interpreting Political Responsibility, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 61–84. 25 David Runciman, How Democracy Ends, London: Profile, 2018; Steve Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die: What History Reveals about our Future, London: Viking, 2018; Jan-Werner Müller, What is Populism? Philadelphia, Pennsylvania University Press, 2016; Yascha Mounk, The People vs. Democracy, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2018; Luca Tomini, How Democracies Collapse: Assessing Transitions to Non-Democratic Regimes in the Contemporary World, London: Routledge, 2018. 26 Alexander Hamilton, James Madison & John Jay, The Federalist Papers, ed Ian Shapiro, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009; and see John Dunn, “UnManifest Destiny”, op cit, pp. 483–501. 27 John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Money and Interest, London: Macmillan, 1936. 28 Mounk, The People vs. Democracy, pp. 137–160. 29 Rana Mitter, China’s War with Japan 1937-1945: the Struggle for Survival, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013; cf John Dunn, Modern Revolutions: an Introduction to the Analysis of a Political Phenomenon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed 1989, chapter 3. 30 Cf Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed R.H. Campbell & A.S. Skinner, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976, 2 VOL, pp. 83–85, 145 “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices”. & cf 664 “Instead of allowing every man to pursue his interests his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice”, 31 John Dunn, “Autonomy’s Sources and the Impact of Globalisation”, Ludvig Beckman & Emil Udhammar eds, Virtues of Independence and Dependence on Virtue, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2003, pp. 47–61. 32 See esp John Dunn, “Identity and Clientage in the Formation of Locke’s Social Imagination”, Dunn, Rethinking Modern Political Theory, cap 1, 13, pp. 195–196n57 and more generally caps 1–3: Christian Natural Law and the Foundations of Liberalism. 33 Cf Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002; E Pluribus Unum: Diversity & Community in the Twenty-first Century, Scandinavian Political Studies, 30, 2, June 2007, pp. 137–174. 34 It split the country just as decisively by age grade too, with the young choosing heavily to remain and the old to leave, and intervening cohorts aligning themselves accordingly, and by educational level, with those with higher education strongly disposed to remain, and those who had left school at the earliest legally permitted point correspondingly keen to leave. 35 Cf John Dunn, “Legitimacy and Democracy in the World Today”, justice Tankebe & Alison Liebling eds., Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: an International Exploration, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 7–18.

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36 Michael Oakeshott, “Political Education”, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, London: Methuen, 1962, p. 127: “In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor f loor for anchorage, neither starting point nor appointed destination”. 37 J.G.A.Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1957. 38 Cf Quentin Skinner, The Genealogy of the State, Proceedings of the British Academy, 162, 2008, pp. 325–370, an account sharpened and deepened at intervals ever since the 1960s and still being further honed to this day. 39 Robert H.Taylor ed, The Idea of Freedom in Asia and Africa, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002; Christopher Bayly, Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012; Karuna Mantena, Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. 40 Franklin L. Ford, Sword and Robe, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953. Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 95–172. 41 Plato, The Republic, tr Paul Shorey, 2 vols, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930–1935; John Dunn, The Cunning of Unreason: making sense of politics, London: HarperCollins, 2000. 42 Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea, London: Penguin, 2012. 43 Cf Michael Ignatieff, New York Times Magazine, May 2nd, 2004. 44 A particularly vulnerable aspect of John Stuart Mill’s lifetime relations with the Indian subcontinent. 45 Cf Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, tr Charles Forster Smith, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1919, II, xli,1,Vol II, pp. 330–331. 46 Frances McCall Rosenbuth & Ian Shapiro, Responsible Parties, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. 47 Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation (Max Weber, Political Writings, ed Peter Lassmann & Ronald Speirs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 309–369. 48 John Dunn, The Cunning of Unreason 49 Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, 1852, Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, XI, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1979, p. 103: “Men make their history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living”.

References Bayly, Christopher. Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Ci, Jiwei. Democracy in China, Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Ci, Jiwei. Moral China in the Age of Reform, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Constant, Benjamin. “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns”, edited by Biancamaria Fontana, Political Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 313–328. Dunn, John. “Autonomy’s Sources and the Impact of Globalisation”, edited by Ludvig Beckman and Emil Udhammar, Virtues of Independence and Dependence on Virtue, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003, pp. 47–61. Dunn, John, ed. “From Applied Theology to Social Analysis: The Break between John Locke and the Scottish Enlightenment”, Rethinking Modern Political Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 55–67.

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Dunn, John, ed. “Identity and Clientage in the Formation of Locke’s Social Imagination”, Rethinking Modern Political Theory, cap 1, 13, pp. 195–196n57. Dunn, John. “Legitimacy and Democracy in the World Today”, edited by Justice Tankebe and Alison Liebling, Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: An International Exploration, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 7–18. Dunn, John, ed. “Liberty as a Substantive Political Value”, Interpreting Political Responsibility, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 61–84. Dunn, John. Modern Revolutions: An Introduction to the Analysis of a Political Phenomenon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 1989, Chapter 3. Dunn, John. Political Thought of John Locke, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. Dunn, John. The Cunning of Unreason: Making Sense of Politics, London: Harper Collins, 2000. Dunn, John. “The Identity of the Bourgeois Liberal Republic”, edited by Biancamaria Fontana, The Invention of the Modern Republic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 206–225. Dunn, John, ed. “The Identity of the History of Ideas”, Political Obligation in its Historical Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980, pp. 13–28, pp. 302–303. Dunn, John. “Unmanifest Destiny”, edited by Ian Shapiro, The Federalist Papers: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009, pp. 483–501. Dunn, John. Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 28–54. Fontana, Biancamaria. Germaine de Staël: A Political Portrait, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. Ford, Franklin L. Sword and Robe, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953. Gordon, Robert. The Rise and Fall of American Economic Growth, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. Grieder, Jeremy. Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1937, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. Hamilton, Alexander, John Jay, and James Madison. The Federalist Papers, edited by Ian Shapiro, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. “Hanging Sticks Create Illusions of Chairs at Issey Miyake Boutique”, Pinterest, http:// www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/12736811423218852/, Accessed 31 October 2019. Huang, Max Ko-Wu. The Meaning of Freedom: Yan Fu and the Origins of Chinese Liberalism, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2008. Hont, Istvan. “Adam Smith’s History of Law and Government as Political Theory”, edited by Richard Bourke and Raymond Geuss, Political Judgement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 131–171. Hont, Istvan. Jealousy of Trade, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Hont, Istvan and Michael Ignatieff, editors. Wealth and Virtue, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Ignatieff, Michael. “Lesser Evils”, New York Times Magazine, Section 6, p 46, May 2, 2004. Jones, Gareth Stedman. Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion, London: Allen Lane, 2016. Kant, Immanuel. “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”, edited by Hans Reiss and translated by H. B. Nisbet, Political Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971, pp. 54–60. Keynes, John Maynard. The General Theory of Employment, Money and Interest, London: Macmillan, 1936. Koselleck, Reinhart. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, translated by Keith Tribe, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.

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Levitsky, Steve and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die: What History Reveals about Our Future, London: Viking, 2018. Lord Grey of Falloden. Twenty Five Years 1892–1916, New York: Frederick A Stokes, 1925, pp. 20. Macfarlane, Alan. The Origins of English Individualism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1978. Mantena, Karuna. Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, XI, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1979, pp. 103. Mazower, Mark. Governing the World: The History of an Idea, London: Penguin, 2012. Metzger, Thomas A. A Cloud Across the Pacific, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2005. Metzger, Thomas A. A Cloud Across the Pacific; The Ivory Tower and the Marble Citadel, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2012. Mitter, Rana. China’s War with Japan 1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Mounk, Yascha. The People Vs Democracy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Müller, Jan-Werner. What is Populism? Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State and Utopia, Oxford: Blackwell, 1975. Oakeshott, Michael. Political Education, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, London: Methuen, 1962, pp. 127. Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twentieth Century, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Plato. The Republic, translated by Paul Shorey, 2 Vols, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 1930–1935. Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957. Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002. Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970. Rosenbuth, Frances McCall and Ian Shapiro. Responsible Parties, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018. Runciman, David. How Democracy Ends, London: Profile, 2018. Sagar, Paul. The Opinion of Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. Secondat, Charles-Louis de and Baron de Montesquieu, De L’Esprit des Loix, 1748, edited by jean Brethe de la Gressaye, Paris: Société Les Belles Lettres, 1955, Vol. II, Bk Xi, cap 6, pp. 61. Sen, Amartya. The Idea of Justice, London: Allen Lane, 2009. Skinner, Quentin. “The Genealogy of the State”, Proceedings of the British Academy, 162, 2008, pp. 325–370. Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, Oxford: Clarendon Press, Vol. 2, esp 83–85, 1976, pp. 145. Sonenscher, Michael. Before the Deluge, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 95–172. Spengler, Oswald. Der Untergang des Abendslandes, Munich: Oskar Beck, 1923. Stoppard, Tom and Erica Wagner, Time is Short. There is a Lot to Know, London: New Statesman, 2015, pp. 31.

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Taylor, Robert H., editor. The Idea of Freedom in Asia and Africa, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Charles Forster Smith, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, II, xli, 1, Vol II, 1919, pp. 330–331. Tomini, Luca. How Democracies Collapse: Assessing Transitions to Non-Democratic Regimes in the Contemporary World, London: Routledge, 2018. Tooze, Adam. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, London: Allen Lane, 2018. Tully, James, editor. Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics, Cambridge, 1988. Unum, E. Pluribus. “Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century”, Scandinavian Political Studies, 30(2), 2007, pp. 137–174. Weber, Max. “Politics as a Vocation”, edited by Peter Lassmann, Ronald Speirs, and Max Weber, Political Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 309–369.

2 TAKING BACK CONTROL? THE FUTURE OF WESTERN DEMOCRATIC CAPITALISM Wolfgang Streeck*

More than a quarter century after the end of the Cold War, the international state system is in turmoil, both within and between states. The fundamental cause of the growing disorder is the rapid progress of capitalist “globalization”, outpacing the capacity of national societies and international organizations to build effective institutions of political-economic governance. Increasing debt, rising inequality, and unstable growth, especially but not exclusively in capitalism’s core countries, indicate a general crisis of governability. Having become embedded in markets, rather than the other way around, they are governed more by politically unaccountable “market forces” than by their citizens and governments. Global markets and corporations, on their part, are governed only weakly, if at all, by improvised and often non-governmental institutions of so-called “global governance”. New problems – political conf licts over interests, values, and identities, as well as technocratic puzzles and dilemmas, in national and international politics – are appearing almost daily. Systemic disarray gives rise to a widespread sense of uncertainty. What may be in store for the capitalist world is a period of extreme unpredictability in which structures that had been taken for granted are dissolving without new structures taking their place.1

The standard model in decline Post-war capitalism in Western core countries was capitalism under government, also known as “state-administered capitalism”2. The state that was to administer post-war capitalism was no longer the liberal state of earlier periods of capitalist * This chapter evolved from an earlier conference paper for inclusion in Yun-han Chu and Yongnian Zheng, “The Decline of the Western-Centric World and the Emerging New Global Order”, 2020. I am obliged to the editors and John Keane for constructive suggestions.

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history. The United States and Britain had triumphed over fascism, not because they were liberal, but because they had managed to mobilize the productive capacities of their capitalist economies for a collective social purpose – winning the war – through massive supervision and planning of economic activities. Economic planning, as practiced extensively in the war economy, was continued, in modified ways, in subsequent decades when capitalism became the “mixed economy” of the 1950s and 1960s. This also ref lected what was universally considered as the hard-learned lesson of the interwar years, when ungoverned liberal capitalism had proven an economic and political disaster. With the other version of industrial society, communism, offering a potentially attractive alternative to capitalism, nobody doubted that the capitalist economy had to be controlled by a strong and active government, preventing it from destroying its surrounding society and ultimately itself. State-administered capitalism was instituted in the “Free World” by the United States as it had emerged out of the New Deal of the 1930s. Under its leadership and in its global rivalry with communism, national “varieties of capitalism”3 were permitted within limits, to the extent that this helped stabilize non-communist governments friendly to the United States and ready to integrate those elements of the left into national social and political pacts that were willing to participate in New Deal-like administration of national capitalist economies. State-administered capitalism was democratic capitalism, different from its liberal predecessor as well as from fascist capitalism and Stalinist communism. By the end of the Second World War, capitalist countries under United States leadership had adopted a common standard model of democracy, with reasonably free elections, governments dependent on parliamentary majorities, broad-based political parties of the center–left and center–right, by and large pluralistic mass media, strong trade unions with a right to strike, freely negotiated collective agreements regulating wages and working conditions, in some countries rights for workers of “industrial democracy” at the workplace, and only moderate repression of opposition, except where it came too close to the Soviet-communist alternative to state-governed democratic capitalism. Standard-model democracy served to correct, within limits, the outcomes of free markets and of the free deployment of capitalist property rights. Institutionally, it was calibrated to function as an engine of social and economic progress through social compromise, mobilizing popular support for capitalism through redistributive intervention in market outcomes while leaving untouched the foundations of capitalist political economy, including private property and free of regulated markets. Redistributive democratic egalitarianism was to manifest itself in slowly but steadily rising wages and wage shares, stable and secure employment (indeed full employment as a social and political right), comprehensive social insurance continually adjusted to newly arising social needs, and growing economic possibilities for a “de-commodification” of social life, together with the elimination of the worst forms of social and economic inequality, ushering in an “age of compression” of incomes, wealth, living standards, and life chances. Universal collective bargaining, an

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expanding social welfare state and redistribution of income from the top to the bottom, fitted in with a Keynesian economic policy that relied on egalitarian democracy for turning the capitalist economy into a collective wealth creation machine by using low income-earners’ higher propensity to consume as a driver of economic growth, in the service of political objectives like full employment. This configuration of state-governed capitalism, redistributive democracy and Keynesian growth broke up in the 1970s with the beginning of the neoliberal revolution. One aspect of this was a gradual but nothing short of transformative change in the relationship between capitalism and the nation-state, as part of a secular process of economic, political, and social internationalization, aka “globalization”. With capitalism governing states rather than states governing capitalism, the result was a deep liberalization of domestic political economies and national policy-making, at different speeds and in different forms, but still universally. “Competitiveness” became both a way of economic and social life and a national goal to be achieved by political “reform” – a benchmark for relentless “restructuring”. In essence, this meant a de-coupling of the democratic nation-state from a newly market-governed, liberalized capitalist economy, together with a shift from a Keynesian to a Hayekian growth model. Under the latter, capitalism is to f lourish from redistribution, not from the top to the bottom but vice versa from the bottom to the top, to reinforce work incentives at the lower and investment incentives at the higher end of the income distribution4.

From national democracy to global governance Where exactly “globalization” comes from cannot be discussed here. In effect it was the way for capital out of the social-democratic national regimes of the post-war era, using new transportation and information technologies for this purpose.5 Generally, the continuing conquest of virgin land, in a broad sense, is fundamental for capitalist accumulation (“landnahme” 6). Importantly, globalization could not have proceeded without the collusion of the same states and governments that were disempowered by it – agreeing to be divested of powers they could or would no longer responsibly and responsively discharge. There were several motives for this, from the benefits of free trade for consumers to the benefits of global production chains for profit-making firms. “Globalization” could also be used to justify cutbacks in social spending or employment security and worker rights in general, in political efforts to restore discipline among workers, trade unions and citizens “spoiled” by the long era of stable growth and social progress. Especially social-democratic parties and governments that took recourse to enlisting and indeed calling in the competitive pressures of international markets to restore domestic governability at the expense of domestic democracy. Different countries and political coalitions had different reasons to rely on “globalization” as a policy tool, ranging from social-democratic strategies of national niche-building in international markets to the neoliberal destruction of domestic industrial employment in the course of “financialization”. The

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United States is a special case, as a hegemonic nation for which “globalization” means extending its own domestic order and corporate structure to the rest of the world, eliminating national sovereignty for all countries but one7. Globalization redefined the post-war compromise – the “shotgun marriage” – between capitalism and democracy. In the formative period after 1945, capitalism had to be made acceptable to a powerful working class, which required subjecting it to redistributive democratic politics. Now that globalization demands the liberalization of national economies, which means limiting political interference with free markets, the compatibility of democracy and capitalism is again in question – the difference being that today, under neoliberalism, democracy must be adjusted to capitalism rather than the other way around. Short of an authoritarian turn, and in order to avoid it, democracy and democratic egalitarianism need to be economically sterilized for neoliberalism to be possible, by instituting diverse kinds of firewalls between it and the capitalist market economy. These may include international free trade agreements or supranational competition law tying the hands of national governments, but they may also involve a shift to an identitarian politics of categoric rather than economic equality, or a new politics of human rights and single-issue social movements. All of these are fine as long as they remain sufficiently distant from core issues of the distribution of incomes and life chances, as well as staying within the ambit of liberal middle-class concerns and forms of political participation.8 In terms of international political economy, liberation of capitalism from national government and national democracy is glorified as a transition to “global governance”.9 In reality, it would be more appropriate to speak of a return of what used to be called “capitalist anarchy”, which of course never was anarchy in the original sense of the word, but a rule of markets and big firms unmodified by political intervention. Governance may be generically defined as a laissez-faire mode of order production that lacks democratic accountability and is proud of it. Negotiated between states, firms, international organizations and all sorts of, appointed as well as self-appointed, representatives of “civil society”, governance is biased towards those able to exercise private property rights as private power, as these can unilaterally withdraw the means of production under their control from jurisdictions and regions that refuse to accede to their demands. Under governance, there is no, or only weak, public power to balance the private power of capital. Ideologically, governance, in particular international governance, is conceived as delegation of “problem-solving” to “experts”, excluding from decision-making those who, not being able to comprehend the complex issues that arise in a global economy, are considered too vulnerable to populist demagoguery. This hides the fact that whatever governance may be able to do, it is unsuited to two tasks that democratic capitalism had by and large been able to perform: to correct the results of market justice in an egalitarian direction, and to restrain through effective regulation the inherent tendencies of a capitalist economy toward unbounded commodification of labor, land, and money.

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Ungoverned, or under-governed, capitalism under global governance means two things: capitalism emancipated from democratic control, and capitalism lacking political stability. As a product of the neoliberal revolution, today’s capitalism is more capitalist and less stable, less egalitarian and more crisis-prone, more market-driven and less able to sustain a reliable social order. With advanced capitalism extracting itself from the post-war settlement, growth rates declined, inequality increased, and debt, both public and private, kept accumulating at a rate vastly exceeding the growth of the economy. At the same time, in parallel with low growth, profit rates went up, labor shares plummeted, and inequality reached levels not seen since the 19th century. De-socialized capitalism, moving into its new, Hayekian growth model, came with a deep oligarchic restructuring of capitalist society.10 Capitalism after government, like liberal capitalism before government, is crisis capitalism. Gone are the days when national governments were sufficiently confident of their control of the capitalist economy to promise their voters stable growth without cyclical ups and downs, free from financial bubbles, fiscal crises, and ungoverned structural change. Capitalism under global governance constitutes a world of uncertainty, essentially for all, but in practice much more for those unable to off load their uncertainties to others – those confined to the receiving end of the increasingly sophisticated uncertainty management of large corporations and oligarchic families. Without government, that is to say, uncertainty means very different things for different classes, regions, and countries. This holds for the fallout of imploding pyramids of debt, for labor markets offering increasingly precarious employment, and for the results of the monetary policy experiments conducted by “independent” central banks without public accountability. It also applies to the re-importation of violence, in the form of terrorism, from a capitalist periphery devastated by the crisis and by the military interventions of the hegemonic powers of the capitalist world system, in their attempts to dictate their terms of “globalization” to peripheral countries through “global governance”.

Domestic revolts Globalization has brought with it a deep penetration of nationally constituted societies by international markets and corporations. The centrist left-right consensus of the past two to three decades – of the era of the neoliberal revolution – was that national political economies must be opened up to the world, to be integrated into the increasingly global markets of contemporary capitalism, in order not to hopelessly fall back in global competition. This involved deregulation, or re-regulation, of social protection to increase the “competitiveness”, external and internal, of national economic societies. In the process, the number of “losers”, economic and cultural, kept growing slowly but continuously, until it reached a threshold where their frustration became politically potent. That moment arrived more or less simultaneously across advanced capitalist societies,

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when it finally transpired that the promised fast recovery from the global crisis of 2008 was a chimera. It also turned out that growth after the Great Recession, to the extent it materialized at all, was even more unequally distributed than before, being captured in some countries entirely by the top one percent. One result was that the established political parties of the center–right and center–left that had represented the internationalist consensus lost support. While electoral participation had long declined across the OECD world11, it now increased in a large number of countries as voters turned to new, no longer centrist and increasingly radical parties, or movements, mostly from the right, summarily called “populist” by their older, up to then safely established rivals. Once the internationally-oriented center–left had rendered itself unable to give voice to the rising countermovement against the new wave of capitalist progress – towards a global “post-industrial” “knowledge society” or “service economy” – what remained for the losers, in the absence of a left alternative, was recourse to nationalism and, sometimes, nativism. The rise of what is called populism has opened a new, deep cleavage in Western democracies, between the assembled forces of social and economic liberalism on the one hand and new popular movements and parties on the other that have been rapidly gaining support in recent years. On the surface, the main point of contention is whether the new “populists” are sufficiently liberal and democratic to be allowed a voice in liberal democracy. “Democratic” here means not whether they are seeking power through democratic elections rather than armed uprisings, and whether they are ready to respect the outcome of such elections. Rather, it is to do with whether they adhere to (middle-class) liberal values and styles of public expression, including “tolerance” for other views than theirs, in particular those of the social mainstream. “Populists” are generally at risk of being seen as “intolerant”, due to their combatively taking up issues established opinion prefers to sideline, or to deny that they exist at all.12 Unlike the “cartel parties”13 of post-democratic democracy14, the new “populists” tend to be more “responsive” than “responsible”, which comes with little respect for recognized expertise and makes them express their views in often plebeian, rather than technocratic or legalistic, language. Thus what may at first glance look like a culture war on the “values” of the right rests upon, and is sustained by, popular discontent with the pensée unique of internationalist neoliberalism on free trade, migration and the like, in particular with the expectations among political and economic “elites” that citizens will adapt without questioning to very rapid economic and institutional change as made necessary by and in response to “globalization”. “Populism” is found by its detractors on both sides of the political spectrum. Typically, liberal discourse knows little difference between left and right populism, which adds to the uncertainty of what the concept really means. Leaving it only vaguely defined makes it possible to subsume under it anything that the still-dominant liberal, globalization-minded mainstream does not like or that could undermine its hegemony. In this sense, “populism” is a polemical

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concept, a battle cry or Kampfbegriff. For its users, it is associated, among other things, with simplistic thinking not up to the “complexities” of modern life, which are comprehensible only for the “responsible” political and economic elites. Excluding, rhetorically or institutionally, the new populists from the constitutional spectrum of liberal democracy may come with tactical benefits; for example, uncomfortable themes can be left for the “populists” to pick up, which may then poison them by association and justify refusing to talk about them. The risk is, of course, that allowing too many political problems to be appropriated by the “populists” will make them appear as the only ones likely to do something about them. “Populism”, right or left, has not yet achieved a governing majority in any of the Western democracies, except perhaps Italy and the United States. But it is now strong enough almost everywhere to make forming a government difficult, if not impossible, for the established democratic parties of the center–right and center–left.15 Even where this is not, or not yet, the case, governments find themselves forced to respond in some way to the demands of the new opposition and its constituents. Uppermost among these demands are limitations on free trade and controls on immigration to protect the economic position of the resident population from further decline and their social life from disintegration. Among the new political and social cleavages that are immobilizing the politics of capitalist democracy is a growing division between the big, often “global”, cities on the one hand and their surrounding countryside on the other. That division is not only about income, although cities have emerged as the new growth poles of post-industrial society, but also about social values and cultural ways of life, as became obvious in particular in the British vote to leave the European Union. Whereas the lifeworld of global cities is “cosmopolitan” and “liberal”, accepting of global competition and migration, people in national hinterlands, some of whom had to move out of the cities because they could no longer afford living there, tend to feel abandoned and betrayed by a state that no longer regards shielding its citizens from foreign competition as its duty. The crisis of the modern state system extends not just to the centers of capitalism, but also to its periphery. There, major BRICS states, once hailed as core areas of future economic growth, are sinking into corruption and stagnation (Brazil, Russia, and South Africa) while the number of “failed states”, from West Africa to South-East Asia, keeps growing. Where hopes for peaceful “development” to North American and West European levels of prosperity have vanished, people abandon their homelands and try to join the advanced capitalist world by migrating there. At the same time, advancing disintegration of social and political order in peripheral societies, often as a result of Western military adventures on behalf of friendly local elites, gives rise to millenarian movements organized around fundamentalist religious ideologies. Some of these take their frustration from the periphery to the center of the capitalist world, where they engage in terrorist cultural and class warfare, recruiting

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among second or third generation migrants from their regions of origin. The results are both more military interventions in peripheral areas and pressures in the societies of the center for more “homeland security”, including tighter restrictions on immigration.

International disorder Moving on to the global level, the decline of the United States may leave global capitalism without the carrier state and hegemon of last resort that capitalism has historically needed for its progress. For some time now, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, the United States has tended to lose its wars, coincident with political-economic turbulences at home caused by de-industrialization and financialization. Military defeat and domestic economic and social decay co-produced the election of Donald Trump as President, with his initial promises of protectionism and isolationism. Concerning isolationism, this continues a trend that already began under Obama, with his decision not to send ground troops to Libya and Syria, his staying out of the conf lict between Israel and the Palestinians, and his attempted withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan. Capitalist carrier states must be able to provide capitalism with a stable international order, especially with reliable money and imperial peace on the periphery. There, obedient client regimes must be kept in power to assure a reliable supply of cheap raw materials and secure access to new markets. The role of international capitalist hegemon, successively performed by Genoa, the Netherlands, and Britain, was taken over by the United States in 1945, after disruptive conf lict in the 1930s over the organization of the global economy between the two Anglo-American democracies on the one hand, and the neo-imperialist powers of Nazi Germany and Japan on the other, and resulted in the worst catastrophe in human history.16 Today, a power vacuum appears to be developing in the international state system that may make China claim a share in its governance.17 As Chinese state capitalism continues to grow in size and strength, it needs, like all capitalist centers in the past, to secure its periphery. Capitalist growth has in the past always been accompanied by political land-grabbing, typically combined with the provision of a stable international currency and a militarily-backed international credit regime. This used to cause international conf licts even when there was just one capitalist hegemon. Now it appears that China is determined to establish its own center–periphery relations, which is likely to interfere with the interests of the declining hegemon, the United States.18 Perhaps China and the United States will somehow learn to divide the world between them. There is, however, no historical precedent for a peaceful co-directorate of global capitalism, not even between Britain and the United States in the interwar period or, for that matter, after 1945. In any case, the way the United States and China will relate to each other in the global political economy of the future will decisively affect European countries

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and their domestic as well as foreign policies. If something like an international balance of power was to develop between the two, in the widest sense, capitalist superpowers, then Europeans might be able to gain more independence from the United States, provided they manage to settle their conf licts with Russia. What could be helpful in carving out a position of greater autonomy is that China, unlike the United States, has no imperialist or messianic tradition19. While the United States sees itself as an “indispensable nation” – the only one of its kind to be sure – on a mission to spread liberal democracy to the remotest corners of the world, if necessary by military means, Chinese foreign policy doesn’t seem to be interested in other countries’ forms of government. There are no examples of Chinese attempts at “nation-building” anywhere, compared to the United States which has spent life, limb, and treasure on a gigantic scale on projects of this sort, most of which have dismally failed. Moreover, while the United States has military bases in roughly 130 of the globe’s 200 countries, China does not have any. Having to deal with a rival like this is likely to deeply change the American perspective on, and behavior in, international relations, although it is far from clear how. For some time now, the largest nation-states have experimented with ever new formats of international cooperation, among other things by expanding the G6 summit meetings of the 1970s to the G20 after 2008. Rather than developing into a global government, however, the G20, as became apparent once again in Hamburg 2017, turned into a multi-million dollar public relations spectacle for the benefit of national leaders and their mass media. No effective decisions can be made by what is as devoid of legitimacy as the self-appointed, would-be world opposition that the local police keep away from its meetings. Meanwhile, the gap in “global governance” is filled by large financial and other global corporations, leaving governments and peoples at the mercy of “the markets”, in particular the financial markets, as ultimate arbiters not just of their policies but also of their societies.

Centrifugal forces The contemporary state system, as inherited from the post-war era, is subject to strong centrifugal forces, not just between but also within states. In one way or another, these are related to the penetration of national polities by international markets, weakening their capacity to protect social cohesion. With states more or less voluntarily leaving the structure of their societies to be determined by market competition, disparities between winners and losers in global markets tend to increase, by class as well as by region.20 With class interests more difficult to organize than regional interests – given that capitalists are no longer within reach for national societies while national states are – lack of confidence in central government protecting societies from the vagaries of global markets gives rise to demands for more local and regional autonomy. Large political entities having become enforcers of globalization, seeking national prosperity through the integration of national into international markets, the hope is for smaller,

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more homogeneous and more locally responsive units of governance carving out niches in the world market in which smaller communities can develop their specific potentials and competitive strengths. Centrifugal pressures tend to meet centripetal resistance in central governments and imperialistic international organizations. At the national level, state size, communal homogeneity, and the strength of democratic traditions seem to be important factors determining the outcome of conf licts over what may be called political architecture.21 Large states tend to be more heterogeneous internally than small states and are therefore more susceptible to demands for decentralization or, if this is not conceded, secession. Since large size carries a bonus in terms of international power, governments of large countries are unlikely to take separatist tendencies lightly; remember the American Civil War, which was fought over the unity of the United States as a continental-size state. Current tendencies among very large countries such as China, India, and Russia, but also Turkey, toward more authoritarian forms of government may indicate an increasing vulnerability of large states vis-à-vis movements for greater regional and ethnic autonomy, and generally growing difficulties in keeping heterogeneous societies united in a common state, in the face of market pressures making them more unequal.22 As far as the United States is concerned, its system of governance is historically strongly decentralized, allowing considerable space for the expression of specific regional needs and interests.23 In the United States, centrifugal pressures caused by rising regional disparities have led, not to authoritarian centralization – at least not yet – but to the national government being paralyzed by a stand-off between post-democratic show-business “populism” and the remnants of an imperial deep-state based in the military and the secretservice complex.24 Medium-sized countries without a capacity for imperial ambitions, especially if they are ethnically heterogeneous and politically democratic while lacking sufficiently deep federalist structures, may be most likely to be affected by centrifugal tendencies.25 In the post-war period, ethnically diverse medium-sized nation-states controlled centrifugal forces among their citizenries not just by political-administrative devolution, but also by institutionalizing conf lict as class conflict between capital and labor.26 Negotiated class compromise between employers and trade unions, and between pro-business and pro-labor political parties, cut across ethnic divisions and thereby absorbed much of societies’ conf lict potential. Moreover, by managing the insertion of national political economies in international markets, moderating competitive pressures and offering protection against them, post-war nation-states built loyal constituencies that identified with them even if they were less than ethnically homogeneous. As neoliberalism abolished the institutionalization of class conf lict and withdrew national economic protection in pursuit of internationalization – or in Europe: of European integration – ethnically-based regional divisions were bound to regain prominence. This was especially true where the institutional structure of the state did not allow for more autonomous regional or local responses.

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The United Kingdom and Spain, both medium-sized democracies with an ethnically heterogeneous population, are the most visible cases of regional separatism: the former in Scotland, but also in Wales and, perhaps, Northern Ireland; the latter in Catalonia, the Basque Country, and a few other regions. But there are also secessionist movements in France (Corsica), Italy (the Po Valley, among others), and Belgium. While in Belgium, secessionism is kept in check by a highly complex federalist political system, Spain and the United Kingdom have notoriously weak ad hoc federalisms and seem unable to respond to centrifugal pressures by orderly devolution allowing for more local and regional self-government. It is interesting to note that French governments have for some time tried to decentralize the French state, with overall little success. With regard to Germany, which appears ethnically rather homogeneous, its relative stability may be due to an elaborate federalist system of government keeping centrifugal forces, where they exist, busy governing their regions in forced close interaction with the federal government and the governments of the other Länder.27 Subnational, just like national, nationalism must be understood as a reaction to the neoliberal revolution. Regional separatism in today’s Europe shares with the new nation-state nationalism, also known as “right-wing populism”, its opposition to market-opening (“globalization”) by way of political centralization: the one fights to prevent, the other to undo it. Both demand decentralization, one from “Europe” to the nation-states and the other from nation-states to subnational regions and communities. National nationalists insist that the protective functions of the nation-state be restored, after the promises of neoliberal prosperity for all have not come true. Subnational nationalists, for their part, have given up on the existing nation-state and demand new, smaller nation-states of their own, for protection to be restored at what is now still the regional level. Note that neither of the two seeks to enlarge political jurisdictions: separatist nationalists want smaller units of sovereignty, and national nationalists – unlike nationalists in the past – demand that national borders and national sovereignty be respected and reinstated, rather than abolished to make political entities larger.28 Promises of a restoration of the democratic class compromise at supranational or international, let alone the global level, appear illusory. A supranational labor movement would have no organized counterpart on the side of capital, and there is no global state able and ready to make global capital organize for a negotiated co-government of the economy (as was common at the national level in the neo-corporatist era 29). As a consequence, an overriding concern among Western democracies today is with the right size and cut of “sovereign”, in the sense of autonomous, political units seeking a place for themselves in the global political economy and its state architecture. The idea here is to draw on and develop localized productive solidarity in search of a world market niche in which local competitive advantage can gainfully be deployed. The quest for a repossession of local autonomy within national or subnational boundaries under multilaterally contracted international regimes departs from existing political units and their historical experiences, social identities, and economic relations. Models are small

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European democracies that are not member states of the European Union or of European Monetary Union, like Switzerland (which is itself highly decentralized politically), Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, all of which are economically very successful. There is also the case of Britain leaving the European Union in search of greater economic independence, where Brexit may (have to) be accompanied by accelerated regional devolution, in response to pressure from, in particular, Scotland. Regional autonomy within a multinational nation-state can take many and quite different forms. Regionalist movements are of different kinds and require different answers. Sometimes, as in the case of Czechoslovakia in 1992, countries may peacefully divorce, but this is the exception; the simultaneous dissolution of Yugoslavia involved several civil wars and attracted external military intervention. To avoid separation with its high potential costs – imagine the difficulties of telling Spaniards and Catalans apart after a Catalan secession, or Brits and Scots if Scotland seceded from the United Kingdom – ingenious customized solutions may be needed.30 Be this as it may, even before nationalist “populism”, there has been no case in post-war history of the citizenry of two or more nation-states voluntarily turning over their sovereignty to a supranational superstate.31 In fact, the number of independent states under international law has grown since the end of the Second World War from about 90 in 1950 (of which 60 were in the United Nations) to 202, among them 192 United Nations members, in 2010. Major forces behind this were decolonization and the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Most of today’s states are small; in 2010 median population size was around 7.1 million. Although this makes them vulnerable to imperialistic encroachment, sovereign statehood as a form of political organization has a lot of support, presumably also because national sovereignty is today better than ever protected in international law (although not necessarily in international practice; see the frequent American or “Western” military interventions in countries like Libya, Mali, or Afghanistan). Also, while many existing states are far from democratic, and some are in the hands of warlords and robber barons who mercilessly exploit their citizens, states remain the only political organizations that can in principle be democratized, in the final instance by armed revolution.32 Clearly the historical trend, even and precisely in an era of economic globalization, is toward more rather than less nation-statism, and towards smaller rather than larger units of governance.33

A Europe of nation-states For the future of the European Union, this would imply that centrifugal forces are likely to dominate over centripetal ones, at both the nation-state and supranational level, making a continued pursuit of integrated centralization destructive of integration. No European Union member country will voluntarily transfer its national state sovereignty to Brussels; in fact, many if not all have joined the European Union precisely to lock in their national statehood.34 Were the “ever

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closer union of the European peoples” (as in the Treaty of Maastricht) to become too close, exit is the likely result, the first case being Britain.35 Short of exit, faked compliance will crowd out bona fide cooperation (Hungary, other East European countries). Forced unification – in the form of centrally mandated economic and cultural “reform” – will result in national state sovereignty being employed for national resistance, undermining whatever European unity may over the years have been achieved on a voluntary basis. In any case, dreams of integrated European statehood-cum-democracy forget that large state size comes with high internal heterogeneity and must therefore in a democracy be paid for, in order to be sustainable, with decentralization – the larger a state, the more so. This should hold true in particular in Europe where there are older traditions of national statehood that would have to be bargained away in the course of supranational state-building. In a United States of Europe (a term sometimes used by fervent “Europeans” like the defeated Social Democratic Party candidate for chancellor in 2017), democratic-majoritarian government would therefore inevitably be located deep down in a federal hierarchy of sites of government – at the level of the former nation-states now turned into federal states, or even further down – while democracy at the central level will, and can only, take a consociationalist, non-majoritarian, not-veryredistributive form. Imposing hegemonic values from above on diverse citizen communities will have no constitutional legitimacy in such conditions, nor will it command sufficient power, at least as long as democracy cannot be replaced with technocratic manipulation or military coercion. A democratic European Union – one that is not an, inevitably unstable, outgrowth of imperial ambitions of individual member states like France and Germany, or both together – cannot be a European superstate. Anti-technocratic and anti-centralist sentiment is strong in Europe, even in countries like Germany and France, not to mention the United Kingdom or Eastern Europe. What “the European project” might be, and then it will perhaps survive, is a platform for voluntary international cooperation, among countries desiring to do things together or to maintain a common physical and institutional infrastructure, based on respect for the external sovereignty of participating countries as an essential precondition of their internal democracy. An international order of this sort, allowing as it would for high nation-state autonomy, would – in the reality of everyday policy-making – not differ much from the decentralized federal regime that a United States of Europe would have to be if it were to be politically and democratically viable – which should in itself be reason enough not to embark on the costly uncertainties of a collective effort at integrated European state-building. National autonomy in a cooperative international order would have to allow democratic nation-states to defend their societies and their politics against the “unfair”, meaning socially disruptive economic competition, with tools of their own rather than depending on the benevolence of lead nations or supranational bureaucracies. One such tool is devaluation of national currencies, which is a

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way of politically correcting market-driven international disparities.36 Such disparities are presently undermining the European Monetary Union, a group of European Union member states that have given up an independent monetary policy in favor of a common currency while defending their sovereignty with respect to their fiscal and economic policies. Since economically superior countries are unwilling to accept international redistribution in favor of weaker members, instead demanding domestic institutional “reforms” that are, however, opposed by local populations, the European Monetary Union has been, and continues to be, on the brink of disintegration, first in the course of the Greek debt crisis and now due to ongoing economic decline in Italy, on a scale likely to defy any international or supranational “rescue operation”. A restored capacity for national political self-help by way of monetary adjustment could be regulated under a cooperative international regime, of the kind of the Keynesian Bretton Woods economic order. The same applies to national protection in international trade. It is increasingly recognized as a myth, spread by interested parties, that “free movement of goods, services, capital, and labor” (the European Union term for its “Internal Market”) ultimately benefits all members of all societies involved. This holds not just between the capitalist center and its various peripheries, but also within Europe, especially when it comes to the mobility of capital and labor. It is now widely considered a gross simplification that global liberalization of trade benefits so-called “developing countries” if, for example, it prevents them from sustaining local financial institutions, protecting subsistence agriculture, or cultivating employment in small- and medium-sized firms. Increasingly, leading economists are putting forward concepts like “globalization à la carte” and “responsible nationalism”37 as guideposts for a future international trade regime in which national protection has a legitimate role. Similarly, immigration, from both outside and inside Europe, increasingly meets with resistance from resident populations fearing for their wages, their jobs, their social insurance benefits, their share in the national infrastructure (schools, housing, and the like), and their cultural way of life. The Brexit vote was, to a large extent, driven by such concerns, and so is the growing opposition in Europe against international technocratic agencies like the European Union dedicated to “internationalizing” European economies and societies, by telling European natives how they have to live to fit in the modern world.

Conclusion “Taking back control” was the slogan of the Leavers in the Brexit campaign. Today it may be seen as the motto of a powerful sentiment throughout Western democracies, from Trump’s “America first” throwing off the constraints of an – American-made – multilateral world order, to the new nationalism and subnationalism in Europe, the latter extending from demands for federalist decentralization to secessionist, separatist, sovereigntist claims for national independence. The new enemies are centrist national governments, right and

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left, devoted to “globalizing” their societies and economies, together with international technocracies like the European Union dictating to national governments, and international organizations like the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. There are no, or only very few, pressures in the opposite direction, certainly not bottom-up. As both international organizations and centrist national governments are perceived to be unable or unwilling to contain, let alone correct, growing international or inter-regional disparities, protection from capricious international markets overwhelming social solidarity is increasingly sought at lower levels of political organization, in hoping to find their politics more democratically responsive to communal concerns over economic security, sustainable prosperity, and cultural integrity and continuity. If a more decentralized state architecture will “work” better than the present, or a more centralized one, is a hypothetical question that seems impossible to answer. Generally, confidence in centralized politics seems to be at an all-time low, especially as far as electorates are concerned that have become, for good reasons, increasingly “populist”. Experimentation with smaller, more autonomous units of (self-) government would require creative industrial policies combined with “responsible protectionism”, allowing for self-determined insertion of smaller regional–national economies into the world economy at large. Mutual protection from beggar-thy-neighbor policies, for example in environmental and tax politics, would be essential (remember, however, that tax competition and tax evasion are already rampant under the present regime, even within the European Union). There is some thinking now about a renewed international multilateralism leaving more space for decentralized autonomy and creativity, including new international mechanisms of conf lict resolution, in economic and other matters. Still, there are no reasons to be overly optimistic here. Looking at Europe in particular, the decades-old drift toward a European superstate has been halted, with the remaining integrationists, most of them located in Brussels, reduced to picking up the pieces. The future of an organized “Europe” is uncertain, and will not become less so after the British exit. Multiple “integration” projects have failed. In relation to Eastern Europe, the authoritarian imposition of liberal “values” has produced what are now called “illiberal democracies” – the more so the greater the pressure applied. In relation to the Mediterranean, the monetary union has revealed vast differences in economic institutions and political-economic traditions that make Southern political economies, very likely including France, incompatible with a German-style hard-currency regime. The result is huge gaps in “competitiveness” that seem incurable given growing popular – “populist” – resistance, in the South against neoliberal “reform”, and in the North against international redistribution or an expansion of aid for regional development. What remains of the European Union? Ultimately, the monetary union is unlikely to be sustainable and some other, less centralized monetary regime will have to be put in place, after long haggling and international hostility, if

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at all. Also, there will have to be more tolerance with respect to the domestic politics of member states, including their policies on immigration. This may result in the geo-strategic functions of the European Union becoming more prominent, in relation to the Balkans (where Germany, prodded by the United States, acts as sponsor of “Western”-oriented governments expected to resist Russian sticks and carrots) and Africa, in particular West Africa (where especially France has long-standing political and economic interests). Here, a European periphery may be about to be constructed, in competition with Russia, China (the New Silk Route ending in the Eastern Mediterranean!), and the United States. This would probably require considerable investment in military capabilities and capitalist–economic development, to keep pro-European elites in power and thereby secure access for center nations to markets for raw materials and finished goods. Again, it is far from clear whether this can work; see, for example, the German refusal in 2011 to join France, the United Kingdom and the United States in bombing Syria for its alleged use of weapons of mass destruction. Can the still rather pacifist German public be convinced to support the still rather militant French state in its Françafrique adventures? How seriously will “Europe” (have to) take Eastern European fears of Russia? Will “Europe” tolerate German purchases of Russian natural gas? Will Turkey take sides with Russia, or the United States, or “Europe”? What role will the United Kingdom play once it will be outside the European Union? Having failed as a social project to create a capitalism with a human face – the “European social model” of yesteryear – and also as a cultural education program to inculcate “liberal values”, “Europe” may try its luck as an imperial center–periphery regime under a French–German co-directorate. Whether this version of the “European idea” will be less prone to miscarry than its predecessors is, once again, uncertain.

Notes 1 For more on the prospect of an “interregnum” of high systemic uncertainty, see the introductory chapter in Streeck, 2016. 2 Brown, Wendy, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2015. 3 Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, editors, Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; Wolfgang Streeck, “E Pluribus Unum? Varieties and Commonalities of Capitalism”, edited by M. Granovetter and R. Swedberg, The Sociology of Economic Life. 3rd edition, Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 2011. 4 Wolfgang Streeck, Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. Second Edition, with a new preface, London and New York: Verso Books. 2017. 5 On the relationship between globalization and (neo-) liberalization, see Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2018. 6 “Land-grabbing”. The metaphorical use of the concept is from Rosa Luxemburg, Die Akkumulation des Kapitals: Ein Beitrag zur ökonomischen Erklärung des Imperialismus. Berlin: Buchhandlung Vorwärts Paul Singer GmbH, 1913.

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7 Perry Anderson, “Imperium”, New Left Review, VOL. 83, September/October 2013, pp. 5–111. 8 On economically neutralized forms of democracy, as can be expected to evolve with liberalization and the growth of a libertarian-individualistic middle-class. See John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy. London etc.: Pocket Books. 2010. 9 Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels, editors. Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century. A Middle Way between West and East. London: Polity Press, John Wiley and Sons, 2012; Jörg Friedrichs, “Global Governance as the Hegemonic Project of Transatlantic Civil Society”, Criticizing Global Governance, edited by M. Lederer and P. S. Müller. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan. 2005. 10 Facundo Alvaredo, et al, “The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective”. Journal of Economic Perspectives, VOL. 27, NO. 3, 2013, pp. 3–20; Brooke Harrington, Capital without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016; Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Ken-Hou Lin, “Income Dynamics, Economic Rents and the Financialization of the US Economy”. American Sociological Review, VOL. 76, NO. 4, 2011, pp. 538–559; Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014. 11 Armin Schäfer, and Wolfgang Streeck, “Introduction”. Politics in the Age of Austerity, edited by A. Schäfer and W. Streeck. Cambridge: Polity, 2013. 12 As examples for the liberal critique of “populism” see Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, New York: Crown. 2018, and Jan-Werner Müller, What is Populism? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2016.. 13 Peter Mair, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy. London and New York: Verso. 2013; Peter Mair and Richard S. Katz. “Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy. The Emergence of the Cartel Party”, Party Politics, VOL. 1 NO.1, 1995, pp. 5–28. 14 Colin Crouch, Post-Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004. 15 This holds true even in Germany, hitherto considered a paragon of political stability. Italy is now divided politically between two “populisms”, left and right, with uncertain effects. In France, both parties of the center, the Socialists and the Conservatives, were wiped out in 2017 by a new kind of “centrist populism”, or Bonapartism. Similarly in the United States, where neither Republicans nor Democrats were able to govern the country – together or by winning a decisive majority – Trump is the result of a revolt within the Republican Party, just as Sanders was within the Democratic Party. In Austria, the Conservatives were able to take over the government only by presenting themselves as a party of populism of the center, led by someone acting like a Bonapartist rebel, and by inviting the right-wing populists to join them in a national coalition. In the Netherlands, the once so important Social Democrats, the Partij von de Abeid, are now reduced to below five percent of the national vote. 16 As to protectionism, Trump’s various trade wars have become the defining features of the first years of his administration. Unlike isolationism, which the “deep state” of the huge military and “intelligence” apparatus of the United States has up to now managed to contain, there are only weak countervailing forces in the American political economy against policies to correct the country’s balance of trade and restore industrial employment in the American heartlands. Anti-isolationism and protectionism may combine where the United States commits itself and its allies to higher expenditures on “defense”, with the understanding that the new hardware will have to be “made in America”. 17 In any case, even if the United States was still in good health politically and economically, the new, post-communist China is much too big for inclusion in an American empire. Moreover, whether the Chinese political economy is properly classified as capitalist is an open question. Much depends on how the role of the state and of stateowned banks and corporations will evolve. Clearly, Chinese “state-administered” capitalism differs greatly from that of the post-war West. There is very little information, let alone debate, in Europe on the true nature of the Chinese political economy.

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18 There is also Russia, as a would-be third hegemonic power afraid of being reduced to a contested peripheral terrain for the two others. American “deep state” imperial strategy seems to assign the task of keeping Russia in check to Europe, setting the United States free for a possible confrontation with China. It may be in this context that the Trump administration seems to have reconciled itself with NATO, on the proviso that NATO members raise their defense spending to two percent of their GDP, as promised already under Obama. Note that Russia’s military spending, at 3.1 percent of GDP, amounted to (a mere) 45.6 billion dollars in 2017, compared to 41.7 billion dollars (1.1 percent of GDP) in Germany alone. If Germany were to spend, as promised, 2 percent of its GDP on defense, its military expenditure would be as high as 75.8 billion dollars. Aggregate defense spending of NATO countries, excluding the United States, is currently at 254.7 billion US dollars; the U.S. spends more than twice that amount. 19 Perry Anderson, The H-Word: The Peripeteia of Hegemony. London, New York: Verso. 2017. 20 For an excellent account of the discontents of “globalization” as pursued by the neoliberal internationalism in the 1990s and early 2000s, see Dani Rodrik, “The Great Globalization Lie”. Prospect, VOL. 226, January 2018; Dani Rodrik, Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018. 21 On this see, in more detail, Wolfgang Streeck, “Ref lections on Political Scale. Adam Smith Lecture in Jurisprudence”, University of Glasgow. Jurisprudence: An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought 10, 2019. 22 Regional separatism may also be promoted by integration of nation-states into global markets, making economic integration at the level of nation-states themselves dispensable as a condition of free market access. See Alberto Alesina, et al, “Trade, Growth and the Size of Countries”. Handbook of Economic Growth, VOL. 1B, edited by P. Aghion and S. N. Durlauf. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005. For a discussion see Wolfgang Streeck, “Ref lections on Political Scale. Adam Smith Lecture in Jurisprudence”, University of Glasgow. Jurisprudence: An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought 10, 2019. 23 With the federal states, in the best of cases, functioning as “laboratories of democracy”. 24 Trump’s “America first” may mean two things, one old and the other new. The old meaning would be the imperialistic meaning, as last proclaimed by Obama when he declared the United States “the indispensable nation”. The new meaning would entail a promise of the national government turning “isolationist”, in the sense of caring more for its own country than for the world at large, and indeed withdrawing from it in favor of doing its hitherto neglected “homework”. 25 I use the concept of federalism in the continental-European sense, not the AngloAmerican one. While federalism in the United Kingdom and the United States means a strong “federal” in relation to regional governments, in Germany, in particular, it means strong subunits with a good deal of autonomy from the government of the central state. 26 On post-war democratic corporatism, see Philippe C. Schmitter, “Still the Century of Corporatism?” Review of Politics 36. 1974, pp. 85–13 and Philippe C. Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch, editors, Trends towards Corporatist Intermediation, London: Sage. 1979. 27 The only region in Germany where there might still be something like ethnically colored separatism is Bavaria, with its “Free State” that became a Land of the Federal Republic in spite of a majority of its electorate having voted against the West German constitution in 1949. Post-war separatist tendencies were successfully kept in check by the Christian Social Union, a regional sister party of the Christian Democratic Union, playing a special role at the national level where it represents Bavarian interests and sentiments with great vigor and success. This has enabled it to become something like a state party of Bavaria, where it has governed with an absolute majority since the 1950s, with only two very short interruptions.

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28 The new nation-state nationalism is defensive rather than aggressive: it defends the political sovereignty of extent states against transfer to larger, new states, often to protect national cultures against globalist dilution. Interwar nationalism, by comparison, was expansive, searching for new Lebensraum (living space) to be cleared of what was regarded as inferior cultures and races. Characterizations of the “populist” right as “fascist” overlook the fact that none of the parties and movements in question come with paramilitary organizations or with a national Führerprinzip ideology. To the extent that they agitate against parliamentary democracy, they sound less radical than leading liberal proponents of technocratic post-democracy, who declare democracy to be unfit to ensure national competitiveness in global markets or to uphold universalistic moral principles. It is true that populist nationalists sometimes speak the language of pre-war fascist and semi-fascist movements, in the hope of thereby increasing their support among sections of the electorate. Disgusting as this may be, however, one may regard it as a reaction to the elimination of pro-national topics from public discourse by a center–left that has in the era of neoliberalism turned “cosmopolitan”. 29 Wolfgang Streeck and Philippe C. Schmitter, “From National Corporatism to Transnational Pluralism: Organized Interests in the Single European Market”. Politics and Society, Vol.19, No. 2, 1991, pp. 133–164. 30 Unless secession or separation can be avoided by deep federalism. A successful example would be Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. 31 Thus Italy, Spain, and Portugal failed to merge into Latino–Mediterrania, just as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland abstained from forming Greater Scandinavia, and Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia never considered dissolving into east Baltistan. German unification is not an exception as in this case the result was not the creation of a supranational state, but the restoration of a nation-state. 32 There are several attempts to determine the number of democracies in the world. Most of them come up with about 20 “complete” and between 80 and 90 more or less “f lawed” democracies, among the roughly 200 existing states. 33 An interesting case in point is Taiwan. For a long time, the Taiwanese government, led by the Kuomintang party, agreed with the Communist government of mainland China, if on nothing else, that there is just one China, the question being only who was its legitimate government. After mainland China had in its own way become capitalist, the Kuomintang became willing to use the shared One China doctrine as a political launching pad for national reunification. Meanwhile, however, it lost its majority to a party strictly opposed to a Taiwanese return to the mainland. To an important extent, this seems to have been caused by events in Hong Kong and places like the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where the Chinese central state increasingly relied on repressive means to rein in local demands for autonomy in defense of its unity. 34 This applies to Ireland in its relationship to the United Kingdom, to Denmark visa-vis Germany, to the three Baltic States that used to be part of the Soviet Union, to Poland, certainly to Luxemburg, and also to West Germany in the 1950s. For the general point see Alan Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation State, London: Taylor and Francis, 1992. 35 The Brexit story is a complicated one. It begins with the Conservative Thatcher government in the 1980s obstructing, in the name of national sovereignty, all attempts to enable the European Union to interfere with the neoliberal political-economic trend of the time. Its preliminary end was the rediscovery of national sovereignty as a means of political-economic defense in an era of globalization by those who might have benefited from the very “Social Europe” that their government had blocked, voting together with those who believe that the real neoliberal paradise is still to be found outside of the European Union. 36 Wolfgang Streeck, “Why the Euro Divides Europe”. New Left Review 95, September/ October 2015, pp. 5–26.

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37 Dani Rodrik, Has Globalization Gone Too Far? Washington D.C.: Institute for International Economic, 1997; Dani Rodrik, “The Great Globalization Lie”. Prospect, Vol. 226, January 2018; Dani Rodrik, Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018; Lawrence H. Summers, “Voters deserve responsible nationalism not ref lex Globalism”, Financial Times, 10 July, 2016.

References Alesina, Alberto, Enrico Spolaore and Romain Walcziarg, “Trade, Growth and the Size of Countries”, Handbook of Economic Growth, Vol. 1B, edited by P. Aghion and S. N. Durlauf. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005. Alvaredo, Facundo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 27(3), 2013, pp. 3–20. Anderson, Perry, “Imperium”, New Left Review, 83, September/October 2013, pp. 5–111. Anderson, Perry, The H-Word: The Peripeteia of Hegemony. London: Verso, 2017. Berggruen, Nicolas and Nathan Gardels, editors, Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century. A Middle Way between West and East. London: Polity Press, John Wiley and Sons, 2012. Brown, Wendy, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015. Crouch, Colin, Post-Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004. Friedrichs, Jörg, “Global Governance as the Hegemonic Project of Transatlantic Civil Society”, Criticizing Global Governance, edited by M. Lederer and P. S. Müller. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Hall, Peter A. and David Soskice, editors, Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Harrington, Brooke, Capital without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. Keane, John, The Life and Death of Democracy. London: Pocket Books, 2010. Levitsky, Steven and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die. New York: Crown, 2018. Luxemburg, Rosa, Die Akkumulation des Kapitals: Ein Beitrag zur ökonomischen Erklärung des Imperialismus. Berlin: Buchhandlung Vorwärts Paul Singer GmbH, 1913. Mair, Peter, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy. London: Verso, 2013. Mair, Peter and Richard S. Katz. “Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy. The Emergence of the Cartel Party”, Party Politics, 1(1), 1995, pp. 5–28. Milward, Alan, The European Rescue of the Nation State. London: Taylor and Francis, 1992. Müller, Jan-Werner, What is Populism? Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Piketty, Thomas, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Rodrik, Dani, Has Globalization Gone Too Far? Washington, DC: Institute for International Economic, 1997. Rodrik, Dani, “The Great Globalization Lie”, Prospect, 226, January 2018. https://www .prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-great-globalisation-lie-economics-financetrump-brexit Rodrik, Dani, Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.

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Schäfer, Armin and Wolfgang Streeck, “Introduction”, Politics in the Age of Austerity, edited by A. Schäfer and W. Streeck. Cambridge: Polity, 2013. Schmitter, Philippe C., “Still the Century of Corporatism?”, Review of Politics, 36, 1974, pp. 85–131. Schmitter, Philippe C. and Gerhard Lehmbruch, editors, Trends Towards Corporatist Intermediation. London: SAGE, 1979. Slobodian, Quinn, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Streeck, Wolfgang and Philippe C. Schmitter, “From National Corporatism to Transnational Pluralism: Organized Interests in the Single European Market”, Politics and Society, 19(2), 1991, pp. 133–164. Streeck, Wolfgang, “E Pluribus Unum? Varieties and Commonalities of Capitalism”, The Sociology of Economic Life, 3rd Edition, edited by M. Granovetter and R. Swedberg. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2011. Streeck, Wolfgang, “Why the Euro Divides Europe”, New Left Review, 95, September/ October 2015, pp. 5–26. Streeck, Wolfgang, How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System. London: Verso, 2016. Streeck, Wolfgang, Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. Second Edition, With a New Preface. London: Verso Books, 2017. Streeck, Wolfgang, “Ref lections on Political Scale. Adam Smith Lecture in Jurisprudence”, University of Glasgow, Jurisprudence: An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought, 10, 1 (2019): 1–14. Summers, Lawrence H., “Voters Deserve Responsible Nationalism not Ref lex Globalism”, Financial Times, 10 July, 2016. Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald and Ken-Hou Lin, “Income Dynamics, Economic Rents and the Financialization of the US Economy”, American Sociological Review, 76(4), 2011, pp. 538–559.

3 CRISIS AND MUTATION IN THE INSTITUTIONS OF REPRESENTATION IN “REAL-EXISTING” DEMOCRACIES Philippe C. Schmitter

Introduction “Real-existing” democracies (REDs) seem to be in real trouble.1 Academics and practitioners tend to agree on this and both can produce long lists of negative trends to illustrate it. Most of these would include items such as: (1) decline in electoral turnout; (2) fall in party membership and identification; (3) greater volatility in voter preferences and, hence, electoral outcomes; (4) greater difficulty in obtaining and sustaining majority support for governments; (5) decrease in trust in politicians, parties, and political institutions in general; (6) declining centrality of parliament; and (7) increased devolution of authority to administrative bodies. Antonio Gramsci may have had these in mind when he referred to “the morbidity symptoms” that marked the crisis of a declining political order and the birth pangs of a new one.2 The one thread that connects all of these symptoms is representation and, even more specifically, the extent to which citizen representation through political parties competing in “free and fair” elections within territorial constituencies is capable of keeping rulers accountable and ensuring their legitimacy. Could it be that the partisan channels for articulating, aggregating, deliberating, and deciding among competing interests and passions are no longer working as they used to and, therefore, generating most of the disaffection among citizens? If so, the crisis would not be of democracy itself, but just of one set of institutions that have come to be closely identified with it.3 The solution therefore is to be found not in getting rid of this generic type of regime, but in transforming or re-dimensioning the role played in it by political parties and elections. Lurking in the background of this hypothesis is the notion that other channels of representation – especially those involving the associations and movements of civil society – might be capable of offering an alternative basis for participation, accountability, and legitimacy.

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A polysemic concept Before one can assess whether or not REDs are suffering from a generic crisis in representation, it is necessary to specify what it is that is allegedly in crisis. At least since Hanna Pitkin’s path-breaking book on The Concept of Representation, we know that this is by no means an easy task. It is an “essentially contested” matter what representatives are supposed to do with the interests and passions of citizens in order to produce and re-produce RED.4 Are they agents, delegates, trustees, mandatories, guardians, embodiments, tutors, aesthetic symbols, statistical descriptors, metaphorical agents, figments of ideology, or … ? Different theories of what democracy is or should be would support any or all of the above conceptualizations and Pitkin’s capacious (and much cited) definition could be applied to almost all of them: representing here means “acting in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to them”.5 In my work on interest politics, I found it desirable to eliminate the term altogether and to replace it with another: intermediation.6 This was intended to signal that representatives (i.e. intermediaries) are not just passive “re-presenters” of already and independently formed preferences of citizens, but also play an active role in formulating those preferences. They do not just aggregate (or adjudicate between) the preferences of individuals, but also contribute to creating the identities and even the constituencies within which their interests and passions are expressed. Granted this process of intermediation is likely to be more significant in corporatist systems in which individuals have no choice but to be represented by singular, monopolistic, state-recognized associations than in pluralist ones where they presumably are free to exit and to enter alternative ones. Nevertheless, I would argue that, given sunken “historical costs” and organizational “path dependencies”, intermediation is still a better descriptor of much of what they do than the usual, more passive and unidirectional, notion of representation.7 This effort at re-conceptualization also encourages the analyst to question three key assumptions to be found in much of the American literature that: (1) political parties are the primary, if not exclusive, channel through which the interests and passions of these individual citizens are represented; (2) regular, free, and fair elections between these competing parties should provide the most important mechanism for holding representatives responsive and rulers accountable; and, (3) together, parties and elections should authorize a distinctive set of winning agents to act in the name of citizen principals and, thereby, should establish the legitimacy of the political process as a whole.8

A different typology In an effort at re-conceptualizing it, I propose the following classification system for what it is that representatives are supposed to do in the framework of a RED. It cross-tabulates two dimensions: (1) process – whether they act merely as “passive” transmitters of information (representation) to the political process, or whether they are also “active” transformers of that information (intermediation);

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Representation

Responsiveness

Tutor

Agent

Responsibility

Embodiment

Trustee

Purpose

Intermediation

FIGURE 3.1

Generic types of representatives.

and (2) purpose – whether their role is only to be “responsive” to the interests and passions of their voters / members or whether they are presumed to be “responsible” for the performance / survival of the unit as a whole. (Figure 3.1.) The standard description in the literature is that of an agent who is supposed to pass on information to authorities about interests and passions provided by individual citizens (who are presumed to be the exclusive principals), to act to his or her best ability to further those interests or passions, and to present him or herself periodically for approval by these same citizens – usually within a territorial constituency.9 The standard alternative description is that of the trustee, someone who listens to his or her constituents, but is expected to be capable of acting independently of their interests or passions, in response to the interests or passions of the unit as whole – usually conceptualized as an existing nation-state or one of its sub-units. If one abandons the notion of passivity in the transmission process and credits representatives (especially organizationally – or self-selected ones, rather than just competitively elected ones) with having an active role in forming the interests and passions of their voters / members / followers / admirers, then we find two new types of representatives: the tutor who focuses on convincing his or her constituents (functional and ideational, not only territorial) to conform to his or her conception of what their interests and passions should be, and the embodiment who claims on the basis of his or her special inheritance (in the historical cases of royalty) or personal talent (in the contemporary case of charismatic populist leaders) that he or she is uniquely capable of understanding their interests or passions and of using public authority to realize them. Tutors and embodiments tend to emerge as the leaders of interest associations or social movements in the context of civil society, although they may convert their efforts at collective action into political parties, either by taking over pre-existing ones (usually the case in first-past-the-post electoral systems) or forming new “fringe” ones (usually in systems of proportional representation). [There is a sixth type of representative that has very ancient democratic credentials and is used very frequently by those who wish to be successful as agents, trustees, tutors, and embodiments, namely, the sortee, or person randomly chosen to “statistically represent” a given population. Since this type of representative

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is rarely given the direct opportunity to hold public office or to inf luence public policy, I have not included it – which is not to say that survey research which depends on honest representations by sortees has not become an important component of all REDs.]

RED = representative democracy Partially as a result of their independent efforts at re-conceptualization, it has become apparent to many students of democracy ( Jane Mansbridge, Nadia Urbinati, Bernard Manin, Mark Warren, Dario Castiglione, Pierre Rosanvallon, John Keane, and Frank Ankersmit – just to name a few) that representation is not a mere pragmatic artifact of political technology introduced in order to compensate for the enlarged scale of political units (from city-states to nation-states and even to region-states) and the expanded scope of citizenship (from a privileged socio-economic, male minority to an indiscriminate majority and even to some foreign residents and nationals living abroad), but the very basis upon which all REDs function (and dysfunction).10 Territorial representation saved democracy from its city-state / cantonal ghetto and made it potentially applicable to larger political units, eventually national states. The mechanism itself was not new. Its origins in Europe are pre-democratic and go back to early medieval times when those chosen to somehow “make present in political decision-making those who could not be present themselves” were expected to represent persons according to their occupations, bishoprics, parishes, Stände (Orders), families, or estates. Moreover, once representation was accorded this more intrusive and autonomous role, it inserted itself into many more sites within the polity. Elected partisan representatives may still enjoy a more visible status, but they are surrounded and supplemented by (and, sometimes, even subordinated to) self-appointed and organizationally-selected ones emerging from alternative channels provided by interest associations and social movements. What this initial assumption did not recognize were the subsequent changes that (again) radically changed the very nature of RED: (1) the almost immediate emergence of cross-territorial, eventually “national” political parties, some of which with strict internal discipline; (2) the later professionalization of the role of politician and of those surrounding him or her; (3) the development and inf luence of mass media (and more recently of information and communication technology and social media) that provided a much greater variety of “extra-territorial” (and “extra-partisan”) sources of information; (4) the increase in spatial mobility, the break-up of traditional small-scale communities and the growing diversity of inhabitants within constituencies; and (5) the astronomic increase in the cost of campaigning and, hence, the role of external funding for political parties (mostly public in Europe; almost exclusively private in the United States).11 All of these contributed to a decline in the presumed “trustful” relationship between representatives and the citizens in their respective (territorial) constituencies and an increase in the “incumbency resources” of those already elected.

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All of which have undermined the following items of orthodox liberal ideology upon which most REDs rest, namely, that individual citizens are the exclusive “principals” and their representatives should act as mere “agents” responsive to them, that the “natural” constituencies within which these citizens should articulate their interests or passions are formally delineated territories, and that competition between alternative providers – whether between parties in public elections or between factions within representative organizations – is the exclusive mechanism for determining who these legitimate representatives should be. None of these are any longer empirically the case (if they ever were) in virtually all REDs. Those who are normally being represented are not individuals as such with only the status of citizens, but members of families, firms, social classes, economic sectors, professional specializations, religious congregations, etc., within pre-established or prescribed constituencies. The core assumption of liberal theories of representative democracy seems to have been that the territory / constituency that elected them already formed a community with its own “pre-political” structure of respect and authority and it was from this structure that the representative would emerge. He (and it was only he for a long, long time) would have already acquired a personal status that would inspire trust, not just from those who voted for him, but from the territory / constituency as a whole. Even where that unit had more than one of these pre-political (family- or functionally-based) structures and they competed against one another, the eventual winner would still inherit at least some of his locally-acquired status. He would at least be “an honest man” or “a good farmer” or “a competent lawyer” – known to his opponents, as well as his supporters. Needless to say, representation was always a riskier proposition in large cities where the citizenry was more diverse and the pre-political social structuring less salient. For a critical period in the United States and some European metropolises, the gap was filled by internal and international migration and the ethno–linguistic–religious communities that were banded together to produce the infamous “machine politics” of the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In other locations, the emerging infrastructure of industrial capitalism produced an analogous pre-structuring, thanks to large factory-communities, the emerging trade union movement and its close relationship to “sister” parties on the left. Put bluntly, it is impossible to represent individuals. Lawyers can do this, but only with highly specialized information and at considerable personal cost. Normally, politicians cannot afford either and therefore it is only possible for them to represent “categories” of citizens who have already been aggregated and have some shared identity and conception of interest or passion. The exception occurs in REDs that are plagued by so-called “pork barrel politics” – more politely known as “clientelism”. Here, the politician is merely an agent who provides selective goods to some patron who in turn guarantees the votes or appearances of his or her dependent clients. In another essay, I place a great deal of emphasis on anomie as the compound product of exogenous changes in the society and economy and therefore

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the primary source of the crisis of representation and RED.12 This emerging social condition generated by rapid change in the nature of capitalist production and distribution has undermined the significance of the previous structural cleavages embedded in industrial capitalism – of class, status, profession, and location – without introducing new ones of similar magnitude or nature. “Individualization” of work and life experience is frequently cited as a descriptor for this state of affairs and it has made representation a much more difficult task for politicians – especially those claiming to represent contemporary workers and employees with such fragmented and contradictory experiences. The post-industrial politics of REDs has become filled with representative agents who are continuously having to invent and inculcate new (and usually more diverse) conceptions of interest and passion in their alleged citizen principals. These surrounding constituencies, whether based on functional interests (class, sector, and profession, in my jargon) or on passionate issues (collective identity, life style, religious conviction, environmental concern, e così via), have proliferated and tend to cut across existing territorial boundaries – both national and international. Finally, most of the representatives that have merged from these alternative channels do not (and cannot) claim legitimacy on the basis of a publicly organized process of competition. They have been appointed through some obscure process internal to their association or movement or, in the most extreme cases, they have simply proclaimed themselves to be the embodiment of some category of interest or passion – and then called upon followers to support them.13 Paradoxically (from the perspective of liberal democratic theory), public opinion surveys seem to indicate that the representatives chosen by this “selectorate” are more trusted (and perhaps more relied upon) than the politicians chosen by the “electorate”.14

A meta-functionalist hypothesis F. R. Ankersmit has proposed by far the most intriguing hypothesis about the causes and origins of these changes in the practice of representation – at least, if one is willing to take a chance on the plausibility of a “meta-functionalist” theory that reaches back over 1,000 years!15 According to Ankersmit, one (if not the) reason that there has been so much confusion about what it is that representatives should be doing is that the nature of representation has changed historically according to its ability to cope with “a political problem whose extreme urgency no one could sensibly doubt and that could not possibly be made to fit the existing political machinery” (p. 97). The feudal system of representation arose out of the disruption caused by the barbaric invasions and absolutist monarchy and it was that regime that “solved” the schism between Catholics and Protestants. What, according to him, was the kind of problem that produced representative democracy in continental Europe in the 19th century? You guessed it: the permanent fear of civil war due to the polarized ideologies left in the aftermath of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.16 Only some institutionalized

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(hopefully constitutionalized) type of arrangement that allowed both sides to participate in the political process, thereby limiting persistent domination by one over the other and encouraging both to find compromises in the juste-milieu, was capable of preventing endemic violence. Political parties emerged to express this division between revolutionaries and defenders of the ancient régime and they converted a life-and-death struggle into electoral and parliamentary competition under the auspices of what he calls “principled unprincipledness” (p. 98). Subsequently, in the same century, when this cleavage waned, the conf lict between capital and labor took over and anchored the process of representation firmly within a new set of political parties arrayed along a left–right continuum. Seen from this “meta-functionalist” perspective, the roots of the present crisis become obvious – at least, hypothetically. The polarizing and threatening nature of class conf lict has declined and has not been replaced by another one of similar configuration or overriding significance. Many citizens have acquired ambiguous class positions that confound their choice of party, weaken their “aesthetic” identification with representatives, and diminish their interest in political participation. Deprived of an overriding cleavage, they face a multitude of minor ones – many of which Ankersmit notes are the result of the unintended consequences of past public policies rather than anchored in deeply entrenched social, cultural, or ideological antagonisms. Citizens become more divided within themselves than against each other, especially between exploiting short-term advantages and suffering long-term effects. Political parties would seem utterly incapable of processing such cleavages and therefore should be doomed to functional extinction. That they have not already done so can only be attributed to their “path dependence” upon past symbolic capital and “legal-formal protection” from competitors (not to mention the oligarchic effect of public funding). Not surprisingly, Ankersmit regretfully observes that “most of the dramatis personae of representative democracy – the political party, the ideological opinionmaker either inside or outside the political party, the party’s representatives in the legislative body, the legislative power itself, the executive power – are all on their way out” (p. 128). At this point, what I anticipated was for the author to turn to (and to extol) the shift to “civil society” where citizens can presumably find a wide diversity of associations and movements catering to represent their fragmented identities, exploit them to set policy agendas, and forge shifting alliances to control the subsequent behavior of their rulers – in other words, a shift towards some form of “associative” democracy. Instead, Ankersmit accords no explicit or enhanced importance to these civil society organizations and foresees the emergence of a new form of “plebiscitary” democracy in which the role of citizens will be confined to passively approving or rejecting the performance of state bureaucracies and experts in elections every four to five years. The only hope for representative (as opposed to populist) democracy, he argues, lies in reviving political parties, something that is “eminently practicable, but even an absolute must for the survival of (representative) democracy” (p. 129). Unfortunately for the reader,

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his only suggestion about how to do this is an aphoristic reference to “a reideologization of party programs” without any practical advice about how to make (or even encourage) these units of representation “take up a clear and widely recognized position in the dilemmas with which the citizen feels confronted” (p. 132). At this point, Ankersmit’s functionalism breaks down and wishful thinking seems to take over. One could take Ankersmit’s argument a bit further. The effacement of polarized class cleavage with the “post-war settlement” between capital and labor via the institutionalization of peaceful collective bargaining and the spread of public policies designed to cover a wide range of social, economic, and personal risks from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s gave a momentary boost to the significance of employer associations and trade unions as representatives (especially in the more corporatist cases) and marginalized the contrasting appeals of traditional left–right political parties. But once that was accomplished, the focus shifted to those organizations in civil society representing more specialized sectoral and professional interests – at least until the “Trente Glorieuses” of unparalleled economic growth ended in the 1980s. Beginning in the early 1990s, financial liberalization and the globalization of production radically upset the previous balance of class, sectoral, and professional forces. The individualist ideology of neo-liberalism further undermined both the appeal of and capacity for organized collective action on behalf of these interest associations. Political parties had already demonstrated their weakness in either responding to or inculcating the interests of citizens. Moreover, they had converged toward policy positions that offered less and less choice to these citizens as voters. Into this vacuum of collective expression have stepped an extraordinary variety of social movements-cum-political parties mobilizing critical passions around multiple sources of dissatisfaction rather than around the more traditional motive of satisfying common material interests.17 In the electoral domain, “populist followings” from the fringes of political respectability have emerged to challenge the hegemony of previously dominant centrist parties.

Alternative conceptions of representation and models of democracy Once the analyst recognizes explicitly that representation provides the generic institutional basis for all REDs, and that its institutions have evolved historically as a function of changes in issue content and cleavage patterns, then he or she should be in a better position to discern the significance of different types or models of democracy than by relying on the traditional criteria of differentiation, e.g. parliamentarism vs. presidentialism, unitary vs. federal, two vs. multiparty, first-past-the post vs. proportional, e così via. What counts is the “systemic configuration” of representative institutions, not just one set of them. And, it is likely that changes in their interrelationships will be indicative of the emergence of new types or models of RED. Individual components do not disappear and

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may not even change much. The constitution remains the same; “free and fair” elections continue to be conducted under the same rules; the number of parties does not vary; the identity of the party in power varies between the same elites; presidents and parliaments come and go regularly – but somewhere in the respective roles played by parties, associations, and movements and in the salience of multiple constituencies, changes do occur that direct the exercise of public and private power in different directions – and to the benefit of different persons and groups. Two contemporary theorists of democracy have arrived at such a calculation. Their descriptions match; their evaluations do not. Pierre Rosanvallon’s Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust should have been entitled L’Autre Volet de la Démocratie or simply L’Autre Démocratie.18 For his purpose is to explore the other side of liberal democracy, i.e. the ways in which citizens exercise power alongside and beyond the ballot box. Rosanvallon argues that democracy has not necessarily been in decline and certainly is not in danger of imminent demise. It has been changing (even in some respects improving), but in ways that do not involve electoral competition between political parties or the formation of governments by the winners. He identifies three generic mechanisms whereby citizens – through their representatives – can hold their rulers accountable between elections and independent of who wins them: (1) oversight, (2) prevention, and (3) judgment. Each of them may have ambivalent effects for the quality of democracy, he argues, and they are not novel, but they have all been expanding and diversifying precisely as the more traditional modes of representation have declined in significance. His guiding hypothesis is that “the inability of electoral / representative politics to keep its promises (has) led to the development of indirect forms of democracy” (p. 274). The trilogy of oversight, prevention, and judgment provides the core components of his treatise. The categories are loose and overlapping, but Rosanvallon’s explication of each is both original and (almost) convincing. The first refers to the various means whereby citizens (or, more accurately, organizations of citizens) are able to monitor and publicize the behavior of elected and appointed rulers; the second refers to their capacity to mobilize resistance to specific policies, either before or after they have been selected; and the third refers to the trend toward “juridification” of politics when individuals or social groups use the courts and, especially, jury trials to bring delinquent politicians to judgment. Oversight (or surveillance) is divided into three parts: vigilance, denunciation, and evaluation (not to be confused with judgment which is a more formal and legal process). Increased education, awareness, and mistrust have led not to broader participation in traditional liberal institutions, but to what Rosanvallon calls greater “social attentiveness” by citizens. This, in turn, has generated more and more demands for transparency of information and accusations with regard to the honesty and good faith of politicians. He mentions only brief ly the role played in this connection by a more alert and competitive press – something that I believe to have made a more independent contribution to the efficacy of

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denunciation in many countries. The fact that the French press has been notoriously weak in this regard may explain his lack of attention. I also would have thought that some explicit mention would have been made to what seems to be the archetypical collective agents of vigilance, denunciation, and evaluation, namely, think tanks. Paradoxically, Rosanvallon was the founder of one of the most prominent ones in France, la Fondation Saint-Simon, and according to the book f lap, is currently the president of another, la République des Idées. He does comment brief ly and insightfully on the rise of internet-based systems of communication and assesses favorably their impact upon all three dimensions of oversight. Strangely, in my view, the author has relatively little to say about his third sub-category: evaluation. He assigns it exclusively to the technical process of bringing “expertise to bear on governmental management” as exemplified by the proliferation of independent accounting agencies, “benchmarking” exercises, internal review boards, etc. What is democratic about these activities is a bit of a mystery to me – unless they eventually serve to increase the awareness of citizens and motivate them to intervene directly. Prevention would seem to be the least problematic aspect of the “other democracy”. Rosanvallon observes (without further proof ) that elections are no longer effective as a sanctioning mechanism – in large part because citizens do not regard parties and their ideologies as credible and because they continue to distrust the legitimacy of the politicians that win these elections. All they can do is to punish incumbents – which they do with greater frequency than in the past. Having dismissed parties and elections early on, Rosanvallon also has virtually nothing to say about another dimension of “real-existing” politics that seems to have been expanding in recent decades, namely, that of interest politics. He is scornful of “traditional” groups that only defend the interests of their members and assigns no role to them in his conception of “other democracy”. The clue to this treatment is to be found in his narrow and decidedly peculiar definition of politics: “Politics does not exist unless the range of actions can be incorporated into a single narrative and represented in a single public arena” (p. 23). In other words, everything that involves backroom negotiation and compromise – whether in the drafting of laws or their implementation – is simply non-political. One can, therefore, forget about the role of self-regarding associations in inf luencing the authoritative allocation of values – not to mention what the Italians call the sottogoverno, i.e. secret societies, religious orders, criminal gangs, informal networks, and even cohorts of graduates from grandes écoles.19 For a treatise that prides itself on its “realism”, this is a surprisingly large empirical lacuna. Fortunately, according to the author, a new mechanism has arisen to provide citizens with “the ability to resist the powers-that-be” continuously and on specific issues, namely, the other-regarding associations and movements of civil society. He implicitly denies the possibility that these “counter powers” might be sponsored or manipulated by the self-regarding organizations he has so scornfully dismissed. They are characterized as autonomous agents pursuing “legible and visible” goals for the polity as a whole. Unfortunately, he laments, this form

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of moderate resistance to the powers-that-be can only be exercised “negatively” under present circumstances. Due to decline in the oppositional role of political parties rooted in class cleavages, these groups have become increasingly fragmented socially and politically and are therefore incapable of promoting positive solutions. Here, Rosanvallon may be ref lecting excessively on the French experience where a relatively weakly organized civil society coupled with wellentrenched special interests (“les corporatismes”) have been successful in preventing reforms. Elsewhere, in Western Europe and North America, civil society organizations have been capable of altering the public agenda and contributing to important policy changes in such fields as women’s rights, environmental protection, and racial discrimination. In Eastern Europe, dissident groups in civil society made a very positive contribution to the process of democratization. On the other side of the ledger (but in many of the same polities), these associations and movements accepted or, at least, did not attempt to veto some of the most radical changes in economic policy since the post-Second World War reconstruction. Granted that many of them may have come to regret the support or tolerance they accorded to neo-liberal deregulation, privatization, and removal of barriers to trade and financial f lows, but one can hardly accuse them of only being capable of asserting “negative sovereignty”. Judgment is the least convincing of Rosanvallon’s three mechanisms. He assigns most of the responsibility for it to the judicial system, although he does insist on “the people as judges”. Jury trials are cited as a concrete example of this (even if they are diminishing in number and importance) and he makes some rather exaggerated claims for the “theatricality” of court rooms as archetypical public spaces crowded by “active spectators”. Living in Italy, I can recognize some of these references, but my suspicion is that the more common evolution of judgment has been in the opposite direction. Not only are more trials ended by “out-of-court” settlements that no one witnesses, but there has been a burgeoning move to private forms of arbitration and dispute resolution. Granted that individual and collective actors have increasingly resorted to judicial proceedings due, in large part, to the increasing complexity of private contracts and public policies, I would hesitate to elevate this prosecutorial activity to a new and significant realm of democratic politics. This may be the only treatise on democracy, even on “real-existing” democracy, not to have a single mention of “equality” in its index.20 I can only conclude that, for Rosanvallon, l’autre démocratie has no reason to be concerned about this. Access to its mechanisms of oversight, prevention, and judgment is very unevenly distributed throughout the society and, even as a passive spectacle, they afford very little opportunity for mass publics to experience them. Ironically, for him, the worse possible outcome emerges precisely when its selective mechanisms burst their bounds and mobilize wider publics across a diverse set of issues. He calls this “populism” and is horrified about the prospect of it occurring.21 One could very well take the opposite position: it is the very threat that the “staging” orchestrated by elites of the three mechanisms will escape their control

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that ensures a modicum of attention to those not able to actuate them. Populism becomes a necessary (if temporary) antidote to the intrinsic selectivity of attention and inequality of the “counter powers” built into “other democracy”. The final section of the book deals with the embarrassing fact that “counter power” is not (yet?) institutionalized. It emerges erratically and indirectly, and its efficacy depends on a complex and unpredictable set of linkages between its various components. Obviously, this explains why it is only accessible to a restricted subset of citizens with the requisite capacity to gather information, publicize results, and produce credible judgments. In order for more citizens to participate effectively in “other democracy”, it would seem necessary to change the existing rules of “normal democracy” to encourage and allow them to overcome these barriers. The author explores this under the label: “the modern mixed regime”, but the results are disappointing. Some of the usual participatory and deliberative suspects are mentioned, but a reader already familiar with the literature on “re-designing” democracy will find nothing new and only platitudes such as “the counter-democratic function must be pluralistic, but its pluralism must find embodiment at different organizational levels” (p. 300), or “better results might be obtained by requiring judges to explain their decisions in detail” (p. 306), or “the whole problem of democratic politics lies here: it cannot substantively exist without effort to make the organizing mechanisms of social life visible” (p. 310). Rosanvallon claims to have produced “a new realist theory of democracy”, and I agree that he has come perhaps closer than anyone to doing so, but his additional claim that this effort “leads to realistic proposals for overcoming our current political disillusionment” (p. 317) is sadly unfulfilled. John Keane’s notion of “monitory democracy” is descriptively similar to Rosanvallon’s “counter democracy”.22 Its attention is focused on all “power scrutinizing mechanisms”, other than the traditional ones of political parties and parliaments, and his claim is that with their emergence, all REDs have entered a distinctive third phase in their 5,000 years of political evolution – displacing the previous ones of “direct democracy” and “representative democracy”.23 Once he begins to specify more concretely the forms that these mechanisms have adopted, it is immediately apparent that he has a more capacious notion of what this new type or model of democracy involves. While Rosanvallon tends to circumscribe his examples of counter power by “oversight, prevention, and judgment”, i.e. to organizations and instances to which citizens have access and where their leaders have some plausible reason to be responsive to the interests or passions of the citizens they claim to represent,24 Keane reaches beyond this subset of civil society organizations and includes a wide variety (and great number) of sites and agencies that are chartered by public authorities and composed of experts chosen by them: independent regulatory commissions, anti-corruption agencies, accountancy boards, consumer protection departments, councils of expert advisors – even “summit meetings” between top executives. While it is conceivable that these sorts of arrangements may take public opinion into account in their operations and, hence, provide citizens with some vicarious presence

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in the political process, I fail to understand their democratic credentials. They have been created by public authorities and normally restrict their purview to an assessment of performance based on expert opinion and peer review. However useful they may be in limiting arbitrary and self-serving behavior by rulers and however popular they may become with public opinion, they are neither democratically composed nor are they representative. To the best of my knowledge, Keane has not cited independent central banks and constitutional courts among his monitors, but in generic terms there would seem no reason to exclude them. But the real contrast with Rosanvallon comes when evaluating the overall impact of “counter-monitory” practices upon the quality of democracy. Keane waxes ecstatically on their virtues, at one point proclaiming them as “positive, exciting, intoxicating trends”.25 He is not, however, unaware of some f laws in the product. Access to and use of these organizations is definitely not as equal as the status of citizenship would imply. Indeed, one could argue that they augment the inequalities that are already known to exist in traditional, party-based, electoral representation. The wealthier and better educated are much more likely to take advantage of what he extols as “communicative abundance” and to be able to interpret the cacophony it produces. Much of the content embedded in these communications may be misleading or outright false. It is by no means clear that engaging in monitoring – especially in its more virtual forms – will broaden the horizons of citizens, make them feel more responsible for the messages they send, and lead them to a more consensual (“rational”) view of the public good – as Keane claims. Not being much of a “netizen” myself, I hesitate to opine, but much of what I have observed seems to be intended to reinforce existing (and often quite intolerant) positions, encourage the senders to hide behind anonymity to make exaggerated claims, and submerge the potential for agreement under a cacophonic abundance of perspectives. What remains to be addressed, however, is precisely what Rosanvallon regards as the main f ly in the “counter-monitory” soup – namely, its differential negative potential to reward opponents of change and therefore to produce policy stasis. Its dynamism is in form not substance. It gives to even very small and concentrated minorities the power not just to articulate their demands publicly, but also to exaggerate the negative or downside of policy initiatives that, in the old-fashioned politics of negotiating trade-offs and log-rolls between elected representatives, could have resulted in agreements on reforms that, if not always Pareto-optimal, often more closely approximated the public good. At some point in democratic politics, it is imperative to take binding decisions and implement them – and I find it difficult to imagine how this can be accomplished by “counter monitors”.26 To be fair to both Rosanvallon and Keane, neither of them observes nor advocates the complete abolition of classical liberal forms of representation. Pace some of the more enthusiastic assertions of the latter, both recognize that – at the most – these novel forms of representation only change the “mix of practices and principles” that have always characterized all REDs.

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Notes 1 A ‘real-existing democracy’ (RED) has only three characteristics: (1) it is a regime that calls itself “democratic;” (2) it is accepted by other self-proclaimed REDs as one of them; and (3) most political scientists would agree that it meets or exceeds their minimal procedural standards for democracy. It is roughly equivalent to what Robert Dahl once tried to label as a “polyarchy”. Needless to say, the relationship between this regime and what classical theories designate as a democracy or what normative theories advocate for in a democracy is fortuitous since REDs are historical compromises that mix different principles of liberalism, representation, centralization, technocracy, monarchism and populism with those of democracy. 2 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, p. 276. 3 “The political parties created democracy and modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties”, Schattschneider, Party Government, 1. Leaving aside the fact that the first part of this statement is manifestly not true, the second remains “foundational” for much of contemporary political science. 4 Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. 5 Hannah Pitkin, The Concept of Representation, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, p. 8. 6 Philippe C. Schmitter, Interest Conflict and Political Change in Brazil, Stanford University Press, 1971. 7 This limited conception of the role of representatives is well illustrated by a recent collection of excellent essays edited by Hall et al., “Politics of Representation in the Global Age”. While the volume does not limit itself to analyzing party politics – perhaps, because most of the authors are Europeanists, not Americanists – it does specify the role of representatives in the usual “passive mode”. Their distinctive political tasks are analyzed as “identification”, “mobilization”, and “adjudication” – all seeming to presume that the interests and passions they represent have already been formed by individual citizens and just waiting to be “re-presented” by party politicians, interest group spokespersons, or social movement activists. In the case studies assembled, there is ample evidence that these intermediaries actually play an important and active role in all three of these processes – and this is even recognized in the introductory essay, which might have led to the introduction of a four task: “indoctrination” or “tutelage”. 8 Lisa Disch, in a recent article (“Toward a Mobilization Conception of Democratic Representation”, pp. 100–115) has “discovered” that, contrary to the received wisdom, Pitkin also advocated a more activist and interventionist understanding of the relation between represented and representative rooted in a “public, institutionalized arrangement which emerges not from ‘any singular action by one participant, but [from] the over-all structure and functioning of the system’” (p. 107). Needless to say, I applaud this rediscovery and its implicit rejection of the simplistic “principal-agent” conceptualization of the process of representation. 9 The usual term for this was delegate but, given the ubiquitous use of the rationalist “principal-agent” paradigm in the recent literature, I have preferred to use agent. 10 If this group of theorists had taken the occasion to draft a single phrase capturing the essence of their revisionist conception of RED, it might have been: “Representative democracy is government by professional politicians, not by amateur citizens”. On these “democratic revolutions” of scale and scope, see Dahl, Democracy and its Critics. 11 Philippe C. Schmitter, “Diagnosing and Designing Democracy in Europe”. The Future of Representative Democracy, edited by Sonia Alonso, John Keane, and Wolfgang Merkel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 191–211. 12 Schmitter, Philippe C. “‘Real-Existing’ Democracy and Its Discontents: Sources, Conditions, Causes, Symptoms, and Prospects”. Chinese Political Science Review 4, No. 2, 2019, pp.149–163.

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13 For a critical review of this literature, see David Marsh, et al., “Celebrity Politics: The Politics of the Late Modernity?” Political Studies Review 8, No. 3, 2010, pp. 322–340. 14 Kenneth Newton, “Trust, Social Capital, Civil Society, and Democracy”. International Political Science Review 22, No. 2, 2001, pp.201–214. 15 Franklin R. Ankersmit, Political Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. 16 Obviously, the timing of the English and American Revolutions – not to mention their less contentious aftermaths – places representative democracy in these two countries on a different historical trajectory. Ankersmit observes this divergence between Anglo-Saxon and Continental representative democracies and attributes the predominance of two-party systems in the former and multi-party systems in the latter to this factor (pp. 99–104). 17 Another way of thinking about this shift and one that may be more compatible with revising the underlying democratic theory involved is to consider that, while equality in “numbers” – one citizen, one vote, one weight – was the defining characteristic of previous forms of direct and representative democracy, the new emerging form is more sensitive to “intensities” of preference as expressed by citizens in their different (and often multiple) constituencies. Only representatives from a f lexible set of associations and movements could be expected to respond to this challenge. 18 Pierre Rosanvallon, Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 19 Rosanvallon is, of course, a graduate of one of these écoles, but not one of the most prestigious of them. 20 Nor, incidentally, do “liberty” or “fraternity”. 21 I am not sure whether and, if so, how this is related to the emergence of “audience democracy” so lamented by Manin, “On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation”, pp. 338–368. 22 John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy. London: Simon and Schuster, 2009. 23 Keane claims that this distinctive form of democracy was born in 1945. By my (and Ankersmit’s) calculation, it is a much younger product emerging from the decline in polarized class politics and rise of new social movements some 30 years later. To the extent that “monitoring” by citizens (and not by authorities of each other) really only took off with the proliferation of the internet, its birthday should probably be celebrated sometime in the 1990s. 24 Although Rosanvallon does make exceptions when referring to institutions involved in what he calls “evaluation” by non-traditional representatives. 25 Parliament House, Canberra, “Media Decadence and Democracy”. Although, I should add that Keane also expresses some ambiguity about the value for democracy of “these exciting events”. 26 Presumably, it is this prospect that led Rosanvallon to predict and to fear that “counter democracy” will be subject to periodic outbursts of “populism” when a frustrated public responds favorably to personalistic (and usually demagogic) “embodiment” leaders who promise to break through the impasse and decree solutions that will benefit everyone.

References Alonso, Sonia, et al., editors, The Future of Representative Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Ankersmit, Franklin R., Political Representation, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. Dahl, Robert A., Democracy and Its Critics, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.

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Disch, Lisa, “Toward a Mobilization Conception of Democratic Representation”, American Political Science Review 105(1), 2011, pp. 100–115. Gramsci, Antonio, et al., Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, edited and translated by Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-Smith, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971. Hall, Peter A., et al., The Politics of Representation in the Global Age: Identification, Mobilization, and Adjudication, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Hirschman, Albert O., The Passions and the Interests, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. Keane, John, The Life and Death of Democracy, London: Simon and Schuster, 2009. Manin, Bernard, “On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation”, Political Theory 15(3), 1987, pp. 338–368. Marsh, David, et al., “Celebrity Politics: The Politics of the Late Modernity?”, Political Studies Review 8(3), 2010, pp. 322–340. Newton, Kenneth, “Trust, Social Capital, Civil Society, and Democracy”, International Political Science Review 22(2), 2001, pp. 201–214. John Keane, “Media Decadence and Democracy”, Papers on Parliament No. 53, Canberra: Parliament House, 2010. Pitkin, Hannah, The Concept of Representation, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, p. 8. Rosanvallon, Pierre, Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Schattschneider, Elmer E., Party Government, New York: Rhinehart & Co., 1942. Schmitter, Philippe C., “Diagnosing and Designing Democracy in Europe”, The Future of Representative Democracy, edited by Sonia Alonso, John Keane and Wolfgang Merkel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 191–211. Schmitter, Philippe C., Interest Conflict and Political Change in Brazil, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1971. Schmitter, Philippe C., “‘Real-Existing’ Democracy and Its Discontents: Sources, Conditions, Causes, Symptoms, and Prospects”, Chinese Political Science Review 4(2), 2019, pp. 149–163.

4 THE CHINA MODEL Internal pluralism, meritocracy, and democracy Yongnian Zheng

Introduction In modern times, whether or not China will become democratic has always been the biggest question for social scientists, policymakers, and the common folk. The current discussion on China’s meritocracy has added a new dimension to the debate.1 While China was perceived as having a meritocratic tradition for thousands of years before the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the current discussion on meritocracy implies that China is likely to fall back on its traditional meritocracy rather than democracy. In the 1980s, when China reopened its doors to the West, the scholarly community both inside and outside of China overwhelmingly focused on how China could be democratized, a trend that continued over the next two decades. The shift of scholarly interest in recent years is due to, first, the repudiation that China would eventually democratize after drastic social and economic changes, particularly market-oriented changes. Second, the relative success of the Chinese regime vis-à-vis democracies in the world which have encountered great difficulties recently; some are even in serious trouble and are unable to produce an effective government in what Samuel Huntington called the “third wave of democratization”.2 By contrast, the Chinese regime, long regarded as communist, has not only achieved high economic growth and lifted millions of people out of poverty, but has also overcome various difficulties and consolidated the regime. Scholars are now at a stage of re-examining both democracy and meritocracy, or the regimes in the West and in China. This is a positive scholarly development. In the past, the scholarly community, particularly the field of China studies, tended to simply use the West, read as democracy, as a yardstick to assess China, read as authoritarianism. Research has so far been ideologically biased, consciously or unconsciously. A re-examination with a comparative perspective

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between the West and China will facilitate a fact-based understanding instead of a heavily value-loaded one. While this debate is still in its infancy, it has already generated a growing body of literature. Nevertheless, to a degree, it continues to be ideologically biased. Both democracy and meritocracy are “ideal types”, if one uses Max Weber’s term. The “democratization of China” argument is based on the ideological assumption that authoritarianism is bad and China should and will develop into a democratic system. Similarly, the “meritocracy” argument is based on the ideological assumption that democracy in the West is problematic, and China should and will develop a meritocratic system deeply rooted in China’s tradition. While both arguments have shown supporting evidence, in reality, China appears to be a mixed regime of meritocracy and democracy. This chapter attempts to conceptualize this mixed regime under the concept of “internal pluralism”. Generally speaking, democracy and meritocracy are in actuality intertwined, where one cannot survive without the other. It is not a dichotomy. Meritocracy without democracy will not be sufficient to solicit legitimacy. Democracy is not only about elections; more importantly, it is an arrangement of interest representation. By definition, meritocracy is a way to select a leader or a group of leaders. Without interest representation, meritocracy can hardly be perceived as legitimate. In the same vein, democracy without meritocracy will not be able to deliver, hence undermining its own legitimacy. By design, meritocracy is to select the most capable leaders to form an effective government. On the other hand, democracies not helmed by capable leaders will not function properly. Simply put, an ideal type of meritocracy will not survive; neither can an ideal type of democracy. China does not have a tradition of democracy. However, in modern times, after the idea of democracy had been introduced into the country, democracy has been a powerful political idea in the development of the country’s political system. While the regime can hardly be defined as democratic, the communist regime has accommodated democratic elements and integrated them into the regime.3 Meanwhile, China has endeavored to revive its own tradition of meritocracy and has reformed it to fit the contemporary age. At the practical level, neither democracy nor meritocracy can explain the Chinese contemporary regime. More importantly, both meritocracy and democracy cannot be narrowly defined. Meritocracy is usually defined as a system of selecting government officials, while democracy is defined as a system of electing government officials. In reality, the far most important feature of democracy is interest representation. This is also true of meritocracy. Without interest representation, no political system will gain legitimacy. While violence has been regarded as the key feature of modern states, no state can survive by solely depending on violence. All regimes have to gain sufficient social support by developing various types of interest representation. This chapter attempts to go beyond these narrow definitions of meritocracy and democracy. I define China’s political system as “internal

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pluralism” and highlight how interests are “represented” by a combination of meritocracy and democracy. The chapter is divided into several sections. The first section defines internal pluralism from a comparative perspective and highlights some of its key features. The second section discusses how internal pluralism is embedded in China’s long tradition of meritocracy and how the system has been transformed since modern times. I will not discuss traditional meritocracy per se, but focus on some prerequisites for meritocracy to function. The third section focuses on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and discusses how internal pluralism forms and functions in the contemporary era. And the last section shifts the discussion to state institutions, and examines how meritocracy is ref lected in state institutions and how democratization can take place under such a condition.

Pluralism: external vs internal Pluralism is an interpretation of politics. To make sense of internal pluralism in China, it is useful to have a brief discussion of external pluralism in the West. In the West, there are different forms of pluralism or different interpretations of politics over time. First, there is classical pluralism, where politics and decisionmaking are located mostly in the framework of the government, with many non-governmental groups as their resources for exerting inf luence. The key question is how power and inf luence are distributed in a political process. In classical pluralism, groups of individuals attempt to maximize their interests, and power is a continuous bargaining process between competing interests. There may be inequalities but they tend to be distributed and evened-out by the various forms and distributions of resources throughout the population. The existence of diverse and competing interests is the basis for achieving a democratic equilibrium which is crucial for individuals in a population to obtain their goals.4 Robert Dahl, a theorist of classical pluralism, defines pluralism as “polyarchy”, a situation of open competition for electoral support within a significant part of the adult population.5 Scholars of pluralism also stress civil rights, such as freedom of expression and organization, and an electoral system with at least two parties. The pluralistic approach to politics depends on its definition of power. According to pluralism, the sources of power vary, such as legal authority, prestige, skill, knowledge, charisma, legitimacy, free time, and experience. The list is endless, depending on time and space. Actual power means the ability to compel someone to do something and pluralism is the view of power as a causation. Dahl describes power as a realistic relationship, such as A’s capacity for acting in such a manner as to control B’s responses.6 After classical pluralism, different forms of pluralism have developed, including elite pluralism and neo-pluralism. Scholars of elite pluralism agree with classical pluralism that there is “plurality” of power; however, they also argue that this plurality is not pure as some people and groups have more power than others. For example, some people have more money than others, so they can pay to have

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their opinion put across in a better way than what the working class can. This inequality is because society has elites: people who have more power, perhaps through money, inheritance or social tradition, than others.7 Neo-pluralism sees multiple pressure groups competing for political inf luence, but it also points out that the political agenda is biased towards corporate power. Neo-pluralism no longer perceives the state as an umpire mediating and adjudicating between the demands of different interest groups, but as a relatively autonomous actor that forges and looks after its own interests. In pluralism, constitutional rules which are embedded in a supportive political culture should be seen in the context of a diverse, and not necessarily supportive, political culture and a system of radically uneven economic sources. This diverse culture exists because of an uneven distribution of socio-economic power. Charles E. Lindblom is regarded as positing a strong neo-pluralist argument. While Lindblom continued to attribute primacy to the competition between interest groups in the polity process, he recognized the disproportionate inf luence that business interests have in the polity process. At its extreme is corporatism. According to corporatism, a few selected interest groups are involved in the policy-formulation process, to the exclusion of a myriad of other interest groups. For example, trade unions and major sectoral business associations are often consulted about specific policies. Philippe C. Schmitter defined contemporary corporatism as: A system of interest representation in which the constituent units are organized into a limited number of singular, compulsory, hierarchically ordered and functionally differentiated categories, recognized or licensed (if not created) by the state and granted a deliberate representational monopoly within their respective categories in exchange for observing certain controls on their selection of leaders and articulated of demands and supports.8 It is not difficult to see that from classical pluralism to corporatism, scholars have shifted their focus from laissez-faire politics to actors-dominated politics, be it capitalists or the state. In the West, politics is the process of making decisions that apply to all members of a group. In a narrow sense, it refers to achieving and exercising positions of governance – or organized control over a human community, particularly a state. A variety of methods are often deployed in politics, including promoting or forcing one’s own political views upon people, negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising force, including warfare against adversaries. In a strict sense, China does not have a perception of politics in a Western sense. From the very beginning of state formation, the Chinese had a very realistic perception of politics. The concept of equality which has existed from the ancient Greek to the modern West is “almost entirely lacking in feudal and postfeudal China. The point of departure in the Confucian social ideology is that all

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things, including human beings, are by nature unequal”.9 As John K. Fairbank pointed out, “the Chinese world was hierarchic and anti-egalitarian. Its people were organized in status levels according to sex, kinship, and social function. Men were superior to women, elders to juniors, and the literate few to the illiterate mass”.10 There is a fundamental difference between gentlemen ( jun zi), who are interested in only what is morally right, and inferior men (xiao ren), whose sole concern is self-interest. Politics was about ruling and governance of the former over the latter. In its traditional emperorship, politics was a singular term in theory since it solely belonged to the emperor. Both Legalists and Confucianists did not question why politics should be monopolized by the emperor. The difference was their emphasis. While Legalists placed an overwhelming emphasis on the “hard power” of politics, Confucianists stressed “soft power”. In reality, both powers go together. As historian Ping-Ti Ho emphasized, “While it was necessary for the unified empire to rely on the rule of law rather than on lofty Confucian moral principles, the harsh aspects of Legalism had to be softened and cloaked by Confucianism”.11 Both hard power and soft power affirmed the status of the emperor as the only ruler in the country. However, this did not mean that the traditional emperorship did not need to ref lect social interests. Politics in a Western sense was only introduced into China in modern times after Western powers came to the country. That power can be divided and shared is a totally new concept for the Chinese. The Chinese have accepted this new notion in a very limited sense after a period of political experimentation with a Western style of political pluralism. After the collapse of the Qing dynasty, a multiparty-based parliamentary system was introduced. The parliamentary system was very short lived, and its collapse led to the rise of warlordism in the 1930s. After this experience, while external pluralism or a multiparty system continued to be desirable at least among liberals, the idea was generally regarded as not feasible for the formation of a new state. Both the Kuomintang (KMT) and the CCP, while struggling for domination, placed their emphasis on the role of the political party (and later the government) in building a new state.12 In political circles, the idea was no longer external pluralism; instead, if interest representation was necessary and inevitable, it would have to be limited within the party (and the state). Such was the ideational and experimental background of the formation of internal pluralism. I modified Schmitter’s definition of corporatism and defined China’s regime of internal pluralism as: A system of interest representation in which society is organized into an unlimited number of hierarchically ordered and functionally differentiated categories both at the national and local levels, initiated, recognized or licensed by the Communist Party and its state and granted a deliberate representational monopoly within their respective categories and generated political and administrative leaders at each level by selecting from above first and from below later in exchange for soliciting legitimacy for the regime.

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A few important points should be highlighted. First, like other forms of pluralism, the far most important aspect of internal pluralism is interest articulation and representation. It recognizes the existence of plural interests in society. Without an effective arrangement of interest articulation and representation, the regime would generate counter-regime forces which would either overthrow the regime or transform the political system into “external pluralism”, namely, a multi-party system. Second, unlike corporatism in which only limited numbers of social forces come into being, internal pluralism is an open process. The regime is in actuality concerned more about potential challenges or threats of a given social group than its birth and development. At the de facto level, social groups form and develop, but their political significance is determined by the regime. If a given social group is regarded as “positive”, namely, as beneficial to the regime, it is likely to be accepted, assisted, and incorporated. On the other hand, if it is perceived as “negative”, namely, a potential challenge or threat to the regime, it is likely to be constrained, controlled, and banned. Third, meritocracy is only a part of this system. Elite circulation takes place only among the party, the government, and social groups which are perceived as “positive”. Fourth, the source of legitimacy. The regime solicits its legitimacy due not only to its control and domination, as commonly perceived, but also its continuous interaction with social groups. The transformation between the party-state and society is mutual: by opening its political process to social groups, the regime gains acceptance, and by accepting the regime, social groups have their interests articulated and represented. There are three related prerequisites for internal pluralism to function, namely, an open-party system, meritocratic competition, and public participation. These are concepts which guide my analysis here. Political openness is the most important indicator and also the prerequisite for meritocratic competition and public participation. In the political area which this chapter deals with, openness refers to the openness of the political process to social groups and their interests. It is a process of interest articulation and representation. The other two concepts from openness, namely, meritocratic competition and public participation, can also be derived. Competition is conditional and constrained. It is not free competition among members of society; instead, it is the competition among the selected potential leaders. They are chosen based on their expertise and experience in managing state affairs in different domains, both domestic and international. Specifically, potential leaders from social groups must be selected first before they compete for party and government positions. This indeed was a part of China’s long tradition of meritocracy. Since the CCP is the only ruling party of China’s political system, the party’s openness determines the openness of the entire political system. Strictly speaking, to examine the openness of China’s political system is to explore how the CCP has opened its political process to society by recruiting elites from different social groups.13 Apparently, openness is the precondition of competition. Without opening the political process to the whole society, it would be difficult for potential leaders

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to enter the political process, not to mention compete for positions of power. The closeness of the political process means that it is not open to society and there is monopolization by existing power holders. Notably, competition is not the Western-style elections. It is the selection-based elections, or meritocracybased democracy. Any political competition is conditioned and constrained, be it economic or cultural. While political competition in the West is constrained by economic factors, such as campaign financing, political competition in China is conditioned by a different set of constraints which are largely political and cultural. Economic factors so far have not entered the domain of political competition. Of course, this does not mean that economic factors, money for instance, do not impact the process of selection in an informal way. Public participation refers to participation by social groups in the political process. This is what China calls “people’s democracy” or “social democracy”. Again, competition is the precondition of participation. No competition, no participation. Public participation can be embodied not only in the process of selecting and electing potential leaders, but also in the process of policymaking and implementation. Among them, openness was imbedded in China’s tradition system, while competition and participation have entered the system since modern times. All these institutions have been gradually enhanced in China’s political practice. Contemporary history shows that the rise and fall of China’s politics are closely related to its degree of openness. When politics is open, there will be competition; society will have opportunities to participate, which in turn boosts effective governance. By contrast, when politics is closed, there is no competition, with society becoming less relevant to politics and leads to the decline of politics.

Political tradition and its modern transformation In the West, from the times of ancient Greece to the contemporary era, the Chinese regime has been conceptualized under several grand concepts, such as “oriental despotism”, and its various modern forms such as totalitarianism and authoritarianism. But this very culturally loaded and ideologically biased approach does not lead one to understand how the Chinese regime operates and functions, be it the traditional emperorship or the contemporary Communist Party. In the long history of China, traditional politics or the way imperial power operated was also quite open. China’s traditional state, namely, emperorship, had last several thousand years before it was completely defeated by modern forms of the state from the West. Internal dynamics had sustained the system for such a long period without major revolutionary changes. After China was defeated by Western powers in modern times, the emperor was believed to be responsible for China’s weaknesses. However, simple denial of the emperorship will not help deepen our understanding of Chinese civilization. Compared to Western feudalism before the advent of modern nation-states, the Chinese system of

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emperorship had a considerably higher degree of openness. The question is how was the openness of emperorship achieved and maintained. While a detailed discussion seems unplaced here, several aspects of the emperorship can be highlighted, aspects which had led to its openness.

“Reign without rule” At the apex of the Chinese hierarchy was the Son of Heaven, namely, the emperor who eventually became omnicompetent, functioning as military leader, administrator, judge, high priest, philosophical sage, arbiter of taste, and patron of arts and letters – all in one. However, one should not mix this perceived image with the harsh reality. The scope of politics was often limited, and the reach of imperial power seriously confined. The emperor usually “reigned without rule”. The “reign without rule” was realized, mainly, by two measures. First, there was a separation of politics from administration, or a separation of power of the emperor and those of his prime ministers. Although imperial power was exclusive, the ministerial power was open. In contemporary interpretation, the “property rights” of the country belonged to the emperor, while the rights of administration was open to the whole of society. John Fairbank had distinguished two different types of political structures or powers in traditional China. The first was “based on personal relations between emperor and subject” and the second type bureaucratic.14 The two structures coexisted throughout the imperial era down to 1912 when the ancient regime was overthrown. One can regard the first type as political structure and the second as administrative. Central to the emperorship was the first structure which was based on the emperor’s personal relationships, both within and outside of the dynastic family. According to Fairbank, this structure can also be called a feudal system in which the emperor “invested” a number of hereditary “vassals” who in turn presented him with a “tribute”. First, there were “clan vassals” or “clan feudatories” within the dynastic family who were vested with titles and authority, or at least gifts. This group included princes of the imperial house and even imperial concubines. Second, there were also “inner feudatories” or “internal vassals” who were similarly invested.15 These “vassals” were the ones who created the “aristocracy” of each dynasty. However, as I will discuss later, China did not have the aristocracy in the European sense; on the contrary, the European type of aristocracy was not compatible with the Chinese emperorship. If the first structure occupied political space, then the second structure often ruled these spaces. The administrative structure, or the bureaucracy, spread over China proper under the unifying Qin and early Han dynasties after 221 BC. The bureaucracy recruited its members from the literati by examinations; hence bureaucratic status was based neither on birth nor on supernatural consideration or divine grace. The government used professionally qualified administrators who were given defined territorial jurisdictions, paid fixed salaries, controlled

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by written correspondence, and replaced at prearranged periods. According to Max Weber, these universalistic features were conducive to bureaucratic rationalization.16 The second measure of “reign without rule” is the existence of a high degree of territorial autonomy. Again, Fairbank pointed to this essential feature of the Chinese emperorship: The rule of the central and unique Son of Heaven could be maintained over so broad and diverse a terrain and so vast a population precisely because it was so superficial. The emperor remained supreme as a symbol of unity because his officials did not attempt to rule directly in the villages. Instead, the indoctrinated local elite, mainly holders of examination degree, dominated the villages while remaining loyal to the emperor as the keystone of the social order. Their training in Confucianism gave this local elite, or so-called gentry class, an inner-directed commitment to orthodox beliefs and a faith in the social order of which they formed the privileged upper stratum.17 William G. Skinner and others have provided ample evidence. For example, the number of counties (xian), units ruled by magistrates who occupied the lowest rung of the official hierarchy, hardly changed after Han (206 BC–AD 220) times. Despite a vastly larger population and territory, Qing China had 1,360 counties compared to 1,230 under the Song dynasty. The imperial administration never penetrated below the county level.18 An examination of how rural China was ruled in imperial China was conducted by Kung-Chuan Hsiao.19

The size of the hereditary class The relationship between the emperor and the hereditary nobility was complicated. The hereditary nobility stood at the apex of society. It consisted of imperial clansmen and non-imperial noble houses created on account of meritorious services to the state or by special imperial favor and grace. While the emperor had to rely on the hereditary class to rule the country politically, imperial power (huang quan) exclusively belonged to the emperor. However, this hereditary class could become a potential threat to the power of the emperor. According to Legalists, to create and maintain a unitary state, with all powers concentrated in the hands of the absolutist ruler, the various intermediary social classes, including the hereditary class, between the ruler and the commoners had to be abolished. While it was absolutely impossible for the emperor to abolish the hereditary class, there were measures to control its size and prevent it from challenging the emperor’s power. One effective measure was to limit their hereditary rights. As Chinese historian Qian Mu correctly pointed out, except for the throne per se, none of the other positions had the legitimacy of hereditary succession.20 Historian Ping-Ti Ho examined how the limited hereditary system worked during the Ming and Qing dynasties.21 In Ming times there were eight noble

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ranks for imperial clansmen. Only the eldest legitimate heir of the prince of the first or second rank inherited the title; the other sons were bestowed a lower rank. From the third imperial noble rank down, even the eldest legitimate son could not maintain his father’s rank and was subject to a progressive descending scale. Under normal circumstances, the majority of imperial clansmen descended in a matter of a few generations to the lowest noble rank. It was also fairly common for imperial clansmen who committed crimes or misdemeanors to be relegated permanently to the commoner rank. Obviously, this applied even more to non-imperial Ming nobility. So suspicious were the early Ming rulers of the hereditary nobility, and so cruel was the treatment they accorded to them, that by the late 15th century out of six dukes and 28 marquises created at the beginning of the dynasty, only one ducal family retained its title. The same tradition continued in the Qing dynasty. The imperial Qing nobility was divided into 12 ranks and subjected to a declining descent rule similar to that of Ming times. When the son of a noble reached the twelfth and lowest rank, the title ceased to be hereditary. Members of imperial clansmen could enter government service, but they had to go through examinations. The non-imperial Qing nobility consisted of nine ranks, the upper seven of which were each subdivided into three degrees. All noble ranks, except for the ninth and lowest, were hereditary for a specified number of generations. This is drastically different from the system of hereditary succession of political families in the European countries. Ho concluded, “The hereditary nobility in Ming-Qing times should not be placed on an equal footing with traditional European aristocracy and must be regarded as a separate class of sinecure holders”.22 This coincided with Montesquieu’s emphasis when he looked into the difference between Chinese despotism and European Monarchies in his time. The key difference between the two, according to Montesquieu, is the presence or absence of “intermediate, subordinate, and dependent power”. While in both monarchies and despotisms, the prince is the source of all power, only in monarchies are there intermediate channels through which power f lows, channels which are established and acknowledged, fixed, immovable, and long-standing. The most natural, intermediate and subordinate power is that of the nobility. No monarch, no nobility; no nobility, no monarch; but there may be a despot. Simply put, monarchy and despotism are both characterized by the rule of one, but intermediate, subordinate, and dependent powers present in monarchical government are absent in despotism.23

The size of administration A related measure was to control the size of administration both at the national and local levels. In searching for institutional roots of economic performance in traditional China, a group of economic historians concluded: High agency costs associated with administration of the empire and concerns about insurrection steered imperial China toward outcomes built upon

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modest formal taxation, a small official bureaucracy, and a correspondingly limited scope of nonmilitary activities financed from the public purse.24 Source: Data compiled by Guanglin Liu, see Liu “Wresting for Power: The State and Economy in Later Imperial China, 1000–1770”, PhD Thesis, Harvard University, 2005, p. 90. Adopted from Loren Brandt, Debin Ma, and Thomas G. Rawski, “From Divergence to Convergence: Reevaluating the History Behind China’s Economic Boom”, Source: Journal of Economic Literature 2014, 52(1), p. 67. While the causes of small government are debatable, China indeed retained a rather small bureaucracy throughout its long imperial age. While Legalists were concerned very much with the fiscal burden of a large government, Confucianism was in favor of a small government and gave a forceful ideological justification. Of course, there were also practical difficulties in collecting tax revenues in a system of “reign without rule”. Table 4.1 shows tax revenues under the Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties. While there are changes over different time periods, tax revenues consistently remained low. Comparative data shown in Table 4.2 demonstrate the Qing dynasty’s limited fiscal capacity. According to the same group of economic historians: During the late eighteenth century, per capita revenues of the leading European states, expressed in grams of silver, were 15–40 times those of comparable figures for Qing China. England’s revenues actually surpassed the comparable figure for the immensely larger and more populous Qing Empire! Per capita revenues, which remained roughly constant over long periods under the Qing, tended to increase elsewhere. … Limited revenues and the prospect that adding officials could undermine administrative effectiveness means that the size of the bureaucracy lagged far behind the growth of population.25 As for the hereditary class, the hereditary privilege was also imposed on the bureaucracy. In traditional China, generally speaking, the bureaucracy of China proper can be divided into three strata. The upper stratum consisted of officials of the first, second, and third ranks who had the power of recommending their subordinate officials and whose descendants had the hereditary privilege. However, this privilege was normally limited to one descendant only and was TABLE 4.1 Tax revenues in China, 1085–1776 (in shi of rice)

Song (1085) Ming (1407) Ming (1577) Qing (1685) Qing (1776)

Per capita land tax

Per capita indirect taxes

Total taxes

Per capita tax burden

Index (1085=100)

0.26 0.54–0.75 0.21 0.18 0.09

0.54 0.02–0.03 0.03 0.04 0.03

72,102,000 47,657,000 42,185,000 38,044,444 36,620,000

0.8 0.56–0.79 0.24 0.22 0.12

100 70–98 30 28 15

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TABLE 4.2 Qing central government’s annual revenue in international comparison

Panel A: Aggregate revenue (tons of silver) China Ottoman Russia 1650–1699 940 248 1700–1749 1,304 294 155 1750–1799 1,229 263 492 1800–1849 1,367 1850-99 2,651

France 851 932 1,612

Spain 243 312 618

England Dutch R* 239 632 310 1,370 350 6,156 10,941

Panel B: International comparison of per capita tax revenue (grams of silver) China Ottoman Russia France Spain England Dutch R* 1650–1699 7.0 11.8 46.0 35.8 45.1 1700–1749 7.2 15.5 6.4 46.6 41.6 93.5 161.1 1750–1799 4.2 12.9 21.0 66.4 63.1 158.4 170.7 1800–1849 3.4 303.8 1850–1899 7.0 344.1 Panel C: Per capita revenue expressed in days’ wages for unskilled urban workers China Ottoman Russia France Spain England Dutch R* 1650–1699 1.7 8.0 7.7 4.2 13.6 1700–1749 2.26 2.6 6.4 6.7 4.6 8.9 24.1 1750–99 1.32 2.0 8.3 11.4 10.0 12.6 22.8 1800–1849 1.23 17.2 1850–1899 1.99 19.4 Source: Adopted from Brandt, Ma, and Rawski, “From Divergence to Convergence”, p. 69.

not likely to go beyond two or three generations. The middle stratum of the bureaucracy consisted of officials from the seventh rank up to the fourth, and lacked the right to recommend subordinate officials and the hereditary privilege for their families. And there was no hereditary privilege for the third stratum.26

Imperial examination system The earlier discussion is vital to making sense of Chinese meritocracy. One can argue that these aspects of the emperorship were pre-conditions for meritocracy to operate and function. If the size of the hereditary class was too big, then power competition would become too intensive, and members of this class would invade the administrative domain. Similarly, if there was a hereditary system for the bureaucracy, there would be very limited access for members from other social classes, or the bureaucracy would become closed and monopolized by the same class. As discussed, theoretically, imperial power was ubiquitous; in practice, however, it had only limited reach. China’s ministerial power was rather open to all social strata. Such openness was also highly institutionalized, mainly through the imperial examination system.27 As the emperor usually “reigned but did not rule”, the government (ministerial power) held the administrative power. In fact,

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traditional China developed a very sophisticated civil service system that was later discovered by the Europeans. The openness of administrative power directly led to the openness of society. In the concepts of the modern social sciences, traditional China only had concepts of stratum and class rather than those of clan or caste, which prevailed in many other societies. Class and stratum are open, i.e. one can change the stratum and class that he / she belongs to through his / her own efforts. By contrast, clan and caste are permanent, i.e. they cannot be changed through any individual efforts. While the Chinese accepted a hierarchic and unequal society, they also recognized that the world could become equal. According to Fairbank, in traditional China, “caste was avoided. In theory and to some degree in practice, the outstanding individuals’ mobility into the elite was made possible through his virtuous conduct as a ‘superior man’ and through his achievement in examinations or otherwise”.28 Confucianism provided the strongest ideological justification for meritocracy. According to Confucius, an effective way to rationalize the hierarchical society was to select members of the ruling class on the basis of individual merit. He believed that political and social disorder or degeneration usually start from the top stratum of a state or society. If the government was served by gentlemen, peace, order, and justice would prevail. He thus regarded rule by the wise and virtuous as the very foundation of good governance.29 Men are not born equal in intelligence and capacity. The question is how to distinguish and select the intellectually and morally superior from the mediocre and mean-minded. Confucius’ proposal was to offer the high and the low classes equal opportunity for education. For only thus could superior men be distinguished and selected from the rest. Here, Confucius emphasized “providing education for all people without discrimination (you jiao wu lei), or “in education there should be no class distinctions”. For Confucianism, human nature is not fixed and education is the foundation for changing human nature. The difference between human beings was between those who are educated (e.g. civilized) and those who are uneducated (e.g. uncivilized). The idea of “you jiao wu lei” was widely accepted by the various schools of thought in early China. They realized the importance of social equality in an unequal society, but only the Confucian school tackled the problem at its base, “[f ]or followers of Confucius were concerned not only with establishing merit as the basis of social status but with the creation of a just opportunity-structure for the poor and humble as well”.30 While the ideal type of meritocracy proposed by Confucius and his followers was never realized in China, the idea was accepted and became the ideology for both the emperor and his ruling class. According to Ho: After the competitive examination system became permanently institutionalized in Tang times, the ancient principle that ruling class membership should be determined on the basis of individual merit was firmly established in all subsequent periods. The only exceptions were the regional kingdoms

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founded by the alien Khitans and Juchens in North China between the late tenth and early thirteenth centuries and the Mongol Yuan dynasty (12601368). Even under the rule of these aliens the examinations were held, though irregularly.31 This system enabled China to maintain a rather open society for most of its history. Society at large was customarily classified into four major functional orders, namely: shi, scholars in a very loose sense; nong, those who engaged in agriculture; gong, artisans and craftsmen; and shang, merchants and tradesmen. However, there was no clear and fixed boundary between these groups, and there was a considerable degree of social mobility. In his detailed examination of the Ming and Qing dynasties, Ho highlighted several important ways this system had impact. First, while at any given time the gulf separating the ruling bureaucracy and commoners seemed an awesome one, the social composition of the former, especially after the competitive examination system became permanently institutionalized, was constantly changing. Distinctions of juridical status between the two were merely lines of demarcation, lines that seldom constituted effective barriers to social mobility but could be crossed by men of ability and ambition. Second, though the sequence of priority of the four major functional orders of commoners was legally defined with scholars in the lead, followed by those engaged in agriculture, industries and crafts, and trade and commerce, it is extremely doubtful that it was strictly observed in any period of Chinese history. Third, while the legal texts suggest that traditional Chinese society consisted mainly of two sharply opposed classes, namely, the ruling and the ruled, in actuality it was always a multi-class society. The ruling class was far from being socially homogeneous.32 Apparently, the most serious limitation, or even the enemy, of the “open” characteristic of traditional China, was imperial power. Imperial power demonstrated exclusiveness, monopoly, and hereditariness; it was incompatible with openness and inclusiveness. Consequently, the only resolution to change were revolutions which led to dynastic changes in the Chinese tradition. Just like other societies, the closeness of imperial power in China directly led to its eventual decline and demise. While imperial power in other societies was marginalized and became merely a political symbol, the Chinese imperial power was replaced by modern organized power, namely, the power of the political party.

Modern transition Although in existence for thousands of years, the traditional Chinese empire could not even withstand a single blow from Western modern states in modern times. In the half century after the fall of the Qing dynasty, China experienced the single most significant transformation from traditional imperial power to modern organizational power, namely, the power of the political party (hereafter, party power). This transformation has the most significant cultural implications

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in modern Chinese history.33 Hence, it would be more effective if one examines China’s political party system from a cultural perspective than simply viewing China’s political parties in a Western sense, in spite of the use of the same term of a “political party”. Why is the CCP the only ruling party in China? In academic circles, China’s ruling party is often perceived in the same way as its counterparts in other countries. However, though it has a form that is similar to that of other political parties, especially the Leninist ones, the CCP is highly different from its Western counterparts in its cultural implications. In multi-party systems or external pluralism, regardless of Western democracies or developing countries, a political party is perceived as representing only the partial interests of society, in another word, “factions”.34 The original meaning of “party” refers to one part of the population, not the entire population. In multi-party systems, the survival and development of political parties depends on their openness. If a political party aims to hold political power, it has to gain the approval of the majority. Moreover, if different political forces within a party are in dissension, its members can found new parties separately. For this reason, I call the multi-party system “external pluralism”. There is always an “exit”. In the meantime, people are free to choose from among the different political parties. If they do not like party A, they can turn to party B or party C or something else. Such political processes generate dynamics for political parties, forcing them to be open so as to represent different interests. In contemporary China, though there are a number of so-called “democratic parties” and political organizations, the CCP remains the only ruling party. Other parties and political organizations are not allowed to compete for power but can participate in politics through the political process established by the ruling party. The domination of the CCP is self-evident; it has not changed since the People’s Republic was founded in 1949 and is unlikely to change in the near future. This is due not only to the CCP’s own survival and development that require it to be dominant, but also, even more importantly, the profound historical and cultural roots that it possesses. China’s long history did not engender the concept of modern political parties. What is relatively close to the concept of modern political parties in Chinese culture is the term “clique” (peng dang). While the “clique” always existed, it did not have any ideological legitimacy in Chinese political culture. Indeed, in every dynasty, there were frequent campaigns to crack down on “cliques”. Although the modern concept of political parties in China was imported from the West, it has gradually changed its nature since the concept was introduced. Multi-party competition lacks a sufficient cultural basis in China as the country does not have a tradition of multi-party politics. After the collapse of the Qing dynasty, Western styles of pluralism which were based on a multi-party system came into being, but it did not work out. It caused the country to undergo political chaos, leading to the rise of warlordism in the 1930s. Chinese culture prefers a unitary authority. This unitary authority was traditionally the emperor and is now an organization, i.e. the party. While people in traditional China expected a

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strong emperor, the people today expect strong party leadership, be it individual or collective. An important research question to address is the Chinese people’s shift in allegiance from the emperor to the political party. The party and its leaders are now identified by many in society in the same way as the emperor was recognized in the past. China’s deeply rooted traditional culture implies that its political party can hardly become a Western one. Nevertheless, the organizational format of China’s political party also distinguished it from the traditional emperorship. The traditional emperorship was a closed system, and was “ruled as in a family” ( jia tianxia). The political party, to the contrary, could be an open political process to all social groups and social interests. In particular, though the traditional emperorship and the modern party share some similarities in their structure, the latter has the open characteristic that the former lacks. By its nature, traditional emperorship cannot be democratized because its carrier is an individual and a family, whereas the carrier of the modern party is an organization. Individuals and family cannot be democratized, while an organization can.

The one-party-dominated open political process Since China’s reform and opening up, the transformation of the CCP has increasingly demonstrated the characteristics of Chinese civilization, i.e. an open political party. This differentiates the CCP from other communist parties in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries before they collapsed. As socio-economic transformation deepens, the pluralization of economic and social interests has become a fact in China. Eastern European Communism had chosen the Western path, allowing different interests to found different political parties. Somehow, such a choice was inevitable because it was in accordance with Western culture and those countries did not have great difficulty accepting this culture. In China, against the backdrop of a pluralization of social and economic interests, the CCP, as the only ruling party, has chosen a different way, namely, opening the political process up to all social and interest groups. To put it simply, China has evolved into an open-party system under one-party rule. Since the CCP is the dominant political force in China, this discussion focuses on the CCP. However, as will be discussed, this does not discredit other sectors as unimportant. The Chinese regime has been conceptualized as the partystate. In reality, the party and the state are two intertwined and interdependent organs. The party dominates over the state. The state sector, which includes the State Council, the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), tends to be increasingly open to the non-party sector. Non-communist party members are eligible to hold ministerial positions in the State Council, and indeed, it is required of some ministries to have non-communist party members. The representatives of the NPC and the CPPCC are allocated functionally, with a large number of representatives from the non-communist and private sectors.

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Interest representation With nearly 90 million members, the CCP is the largest political organization in the world today (Table 4.3). It is almost impossible to imagine a single interest with such a huge organization. In this sense, the openness of the CCP is understandable since only by openness can it cope with different interests. Any political system that is not open to social interests will inevitably become exclusive. Only with openness can politics be inclusive. As discussed earlier, in the West, political openness materializes through external pluralism, i.e. multi-party politics, in which every kind of interest can find representation in a party. In China, since there is no multi-party politics, political openness is realized through internal pluralism. Internal pluralism means the openness of the party. When different interests emerge in society, the ruling party opens itself to them, absorbing them into the political process and representing their interests through different mechanisms. For many years, the CCP has been making efforts to transform itself from a Maoist revolutionary party to a ruling party. In the course of a revolution, a political party has to depend on the support of certain classes and strata. In the case of the CCP, it was an alliance with the working class and peasantry. As a ruling party, however, it needs to rely on all classes and strata in order to attain the most extensive social base. The transformation of the CCP has been very rapid. The CCP has to open itself up to various social groups; otherwise, great dynamics would be generated for the opposition to rise. Given the fact that no opposition is allowed, social groups which wish to articulate their interests, and to have their interests represented the most efficient way, enter the political process of the CCP. To represent social interests has been one of the driving forces behind the transformation of the CCP. The “Three Represents” concept proposed by the CCP in the early 2000s typically ref lects its realistic perception that the CCP has to represent different social interests.35 Since China’s reforms and opening up, the most obvious change in Chinese society is the rise of the middle class.36 The number of the Chinese middle class, including private entrepreneurs, is not large, but they have already demonstrated very strong demand for political participation. This has pushed the ruling party to keep pace with the times by not only providing constitutional protection to non-state-owned sectors, including private enterprises, but also allowing and encouraging private entrepreneurs to join the ruling party. Behind the establishment of the “Three Represents” concept are various social and economic interests. An important distinction between external pluralism and the CCP’s internal pluralism is that in external pluralism, interests are often articulated and aggregated by autonomous social and political organizations. In China’s internal pluralism, the CCP often becomes the organizer of social interests. In some cases, interests are articulated and aggregated by social and political organizations, but they have to subject to the CCP’s endorsement. More often than not, interests are articulated and organized functionally, with functions that are initiated, organized, and approved by the CCP.

64,517 65,749 66,355 68,232 69,603 70,800 72,391 74,153 75,931 77,995 80,269 82,602 85,127 86,686 87,793 88,758

5.1% 5.2% 5.2% 5.3% 5.4% 5.4% 5.5% 5.6% 5.7% 5.8% 6.0% 6.1% 6.3% 6.4% 6.4% 6.5%

11,200 -11,920 12,350 12,950 13,590 14,290 15,130 15,970 16,940 18,030 19,250 20,350 21,090 21,670 22,280

17.4% -17.8% 18.1% 18.6% 19.2% 19.7% 20.4% 21.0% 21.7% 22.5% 23.3% 23.9% 24.3% 24.7% 25.1%

% 4,010 -4,230 4,320 4,410 4,520 4,630 4,820 4,940 5,130 5,340 5,560 5,790 5,950 6,050 6,180

No.: 1,000

Ethnicity

6.2% -6.3% 6.3% 6.3% 6.4% 6.4% 6.5% 6.5% 6.6% 6.6% 6.7% 6.8% 6.9% 6.9% 7.0%

% 1,368 -16,060 17,540 19,000 20,530 22,220 24,030 25,830 27,840 29,780 31,910 34,050 36,070 37,760 39,320

No.: 1,000

College

21.2% -24.2% 25.7% 27.3% 29.0% 30.7% 32.4% 34.0% 35.7% 37.1% 38.6% 40.0% 41.6% 43.0% 44.3%

%

Sources: Compiled and calculated by the author. Based on sources from government reports and official media, various years.

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

No.: 1,000

No.: 1,000

% of total population

Female

Total membership

TABLE 4.3 Changes in party membership, 2000–2013

--14,880 15,300 15,780 16,260 16,920 17,280 17,860 18,470 19,510 20,620 21,800 22,380 22,480 22,540

No.: 1,000

--22.2% 22.4% 22.7% 23.0% 23.4% 23.3% 23.5% 23.7% 24.3% 25.0% 25.6% 25.8% 25.6% 25.4%

%

Aged 35 and below 35

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The change in the nature of party members is an indicator of interest representation. In the Maoist era, workers, peasants, and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) constituted the majority of CCP membership; since China’s reforms and opening up, intellectuals, professionals, and the newly risen social stratum have made up an increasing proportion of the party. 37 Table 4.4 demonstrates the composition of party membership over the past decades. If the West practices “external pluralism”, the Chinese party system tends to be characterized by “internal pluralism”. Different interests are “internalized” first, that is, included into the existing system, to compete for and coordinate their interests from within. After the successful incorporation of private entrepreneurs into the party and the political process, the CCP has begun to put an emphasis on “social governance” to expand its ruling foundation by absorbing more social forces, which have gained significant growth and development over the past decades. Needless to say, the CCP has had a harsh policy towards those social organizations which are perceived as potential threats to the regime. As the social base of the CCP enlarges, the demand for intra-party democracy has also increased. The ruling party has been emphasizing the importance of intra-party democracy and searching for manifold inner-party democracy in recent years. At the 17th National Party Congress in 2002, the CCP leadership laid out a road map for the process of China’s democratization, namely, intra-party democracy that is leading social democracy or “people’s democracy”. 38 The effectiveness of such internal pluralist openness is no less than that of any other system. The rise of the Jasmine Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa has equated the Chinese regime with regimes in the Arabic world. While these regimes in general can be categorized as authoritarianism, internal pluralism differentiates China from regimes in the Arabic world. The Arabic world basically has no external or internal pluralism; most regimes are closed, with one family (monarchy) or a few families chronically monopolizing political power and dominating the country. Even in democratic countries, such as Britain, the United States, and Japan, political power is more often than not monopolized by a small number of political families. The number of people entering politics from the lower social levels is much larger in China than that in democratic countries. The rule of the CCP is not based on a political family. It is a mass party with highly diversified interests.39 Without interest representation, meritocracy in China alone cannot give political legitimacy to the CCP. Moreover, the functioning of meritocracy is conditional. As discussed earlier, there were conditions for meritocracy in traditional China. Conditions for meritocracy in contemporary China include three related institutions, namely, political exit, term limits, and age limits. All these institutions make it possible for the CCP to first, stabilize its leadership; second, ref lect social interests in elite recruitment; and third, accommodate various social interests.

19,981 --19,992 19,110 19,155 5,429 5,477 6,208 6,596 6,812 6,999 7,397 7,303 7,397 7,485

7.5% 7.4% 8.2% 8.5% 8.5% 8.5% 8.4% 8.4% 8.4% 8.4%

15,492 15,869 16,876 17,725 18,413 19,250 21,548 20,976 21,548 22,059

30.97% --24.9% 27.5% 27.6% 21.4% 21.4% 22.2% 22.7% 22.9% 23.3% 25.5% 24.2% 24.5% 24.9%

---7,915 8,029 7,959 8,035 8,009 7,336 6,937 6,989 7,047 7,342 7,343 7,342 7,244

---9.9% 11.5% 11.5% 11.1% 10.8% 9.7% 8.9% 8.7% 8.5% 8.4% 8.5% 8.4% 8.2%

No: 1,000 %

Industrial workers

---22,175 22,350 22,639 22,948 23,358 23,612 24,020 24,427 24,834 25,937 25,703 25,937 26,025

No: 1,000 ---27.6% 32.1% 32.6% 31.7% 31.5% 31.1% 30.8% 30.4% 30.1% 29.5% 29.7% 29.5% 29.3%

%

Farmers, herders, and fishermen

--10,924 12,152 12,606 13,283 13,610 13,776 14,282 14,525 14,852 15,182 16,216 15,891 16,216 16,581

No: 1,000

Retirees

--16.5% 15.1% 18.1% 19.1% 18.8% 18.6% 18.8% 18.6% 18.5% 18.4% 18.5% 18.3% 18.5% 18.7%

% ---18,120 -1,289 1,593 1,947 2,014 2,269 2,539 2,778 2,247 2,604 2,247 2,034

No: 1,000

Students

----5,169 5,285 6,513 5,601 5,923 6,236 6,513 7,105 6,874 7,105 7,330

-1.9% 2.2% 1.6% 2.7% 2.9% 3.2% 3.4% 2.6% 3.0% 2.6% 2.3%

No: 1,000

----

%

Others

---22.6% -7.4% 7.3% 8.8% 7.4% 7.6% 7.8% 7.9% 8.1% 7.9% 8.1% 8.3%

%

Sources: Compiled and calculated by the author. Based on government reports and official media, various years. The “others” category includes the military and armed police.

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

%

No: 1,000

No: 1,000

%

Professionals in enterprises and public institutions

Party and government

TABLE 4.4 Composition of party membership, 2000–2015

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Political exit A system of political exit was established in the post-Mao age. Political exit is important for elite politics, particularly power succession. Before new leaders can be appointed, old leaders have to leave. No exit, no entry. In traditional China, the only institutionalized rule was that only after the old emperor / empress passed away could his / her successor formally succeed him / her as the new emperor / empress. The death of the old emperor / empress could be caused by different factors. There were cases when the old emperor / empress was forced to abdicate the throne. In the change of the dynasty by various violent means, the incumbent emperor / empress was simply overthrown. For decades after 1949, China virtually did not have a system of political exit. Top leaders were able to hold on to their positions until they had passed away. Mao Zedong died in the position of the chairman of the CCP. While Deng Xiaoping did not have any formal position in his late years, he was able to exercise great inf luence through informal channels. The exit problem had troubled both the party and the country since it often had to be solved by bitter power struggle. To deal with the problem, formal regulations and informal rules have been developed. The most important institution is political exit. Senior leaders can exit gracefully from their political positions without power struggle. Political exit is regulated by the age limit. To a large extent, the nature of Western democracy is to realize alternation of political elites through periodical elections. Before the coming of democracy, violence often played an important role in the process of power succession. This was also the case in traditional China for thousands of years; indeed, the aim of a “revolution” was “to change the dynasty”. While the CCP has refused to follow the path of Western democracy, it has developed a very efficient system of elite circulation. The retirement system for aged cadres was formally established in the early 1980s. Candidates for ministers, provincial party secretaries, and governors have to be below 65 years of age. There are detailed and rigid regulations for cadres and government officials at each rank and administrative level. Due to the age limit (i.e. all leaders should retire from their position once they reach the age of retirement), the speed of elite circulation at all levels is comparable to any other system, including democracy.

Outcomes While observers are often suspicious of these institutions of elite circulation, they have indeed generated various positive political outcomes. Such a system of elite circulation has produced several advantages for China. First, it avoids personal dictatorship which prevailed during the eras of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. The “intra-party democracy” or intra-party collective leadership system has been engendered by internal pluralism. There are checks and balances in the highest leadership of the CCP. While the Standing

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Committee of the Political Bureau of the CCP, the highest and most powerful decision-making body, is often regarded as the symbol of a highly centralized political system, or authoritarianism, its members have almost equal power, with each having his / her own decision-making area with the most important say in that area. While Xi Jinping has greatly centralized power and changed the power configuration at the top in recent years, the nature of collective leadership does not change.40 Second, China’s political system allows politics to refresh itself at a fast pace and can thus effectively ref lect generational changes and changes of social conditions, including social interests. Compared to many other political systems, the Chinese political system facilitates the rapid and massive renewal of public officials. With the rigid enforcement of age limit, there are thousands of officials leaving their positions every year, with the same number of officials assuming these positions. Although such rapid mobility has its own disadvantages, it undeniably ref lects the changes of the times. Third, China’s party system is conducive to prompt policy changes. Theoretically, the obstacle to policy change in multi-party systems should be smaller than that in one-party states, for policies can change with the alternation of ruling parties. When a new party comes to power, it can discontinue policies initiated by the former ruling party. However, this is often not the case. In many democratic countries, Western developed countries or developing countries, opposition parties no longer serve their constructive roles; instead, they oppose merely for the sake of opposing and often reject cooperation, vetoing one another. Under such circumstances, substantial policy changes often become very difficult. In China, this is not the case. If Western democracies are more about an alternation of political power, the Chinese system is more about policy alternation. Although Chinese society often complains that the ruling party is too slow in making policy changes, comparatively, they are implemented on a more rapid basis than those in other political systems. In democratic countries, political elites can pass the responsibility of making policy changes to each other; in China, the ruling party has the inescapable responsibility. From the 1980s to the 1990s and to this century, China has achieved several significant policy changes. It is difficult to understand the huge changes in China in these decades without taking into account the ruling party’s immense ability to respond to situations with appropriate policy changes. If the CCP is the core of China’s politics, the reform of party politics is the core issue of China’s political reform. Given the open nature of the Chinese civilization, building a one-party-dominated open political system is becoming a desirable direction of China’s political reform. As discussed earlier, the traditional imperial power failed due to its lack of openness. In contrast, with intra-party democracy, the CCP remains open. As an organization, the ruling party definitely has its own interests. Without interests, there are no responsibilities. However, as the only ruling party, the CCP should not become vested in its interests, and existing interests should not monopolize the political process in

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order to avoid the path of traditional emperorship. As the only ruling party, the CCP needs to adopt an open political system and the political process has to be open for its survival and development. Besides strengthening the dominant position of the CCP, intra-party democracy has another important task, namely, to maintain the openness of the entire social system. As the American economist Mancur Olson verifies, even in Western multi-party democracies, the behavior of individuals and firms in stable societies leads to the formation of dense networks of collusive, cartelistic, and lobbying organizations that make economies less efficient and dynamic, and polities less governable. The longer a society goes without an upheaval, the more powerful such organizations become. Olson is rather pessimistic as he believes that such interest groups cannot be eliminated except through measures such as revolution, war, and large-scale conf licts.41 However, China’s experience in the contemporary era has shown that maintaining the openness of the system could become an effective way to overcoming vested interests. Obviously, to overcome vested interests requires an open political party.

Openness in state institutions Political openness should be embodied at different levels of political institutions between state and society, government and people. In this respect, China already has the basic state institutions, and the goal of reform is to ameliorate or improve them. The existing institutions include the People’s Congress, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the judiciary system. As the terms suggest, the People’s Congress is a representative organization and CPPCC is an organization to coordinate different interests by representing different functional groups. After the “Three Represents” was proposed by the CCP leadership at the beginning of this century, the party began to emphasize the problem of the interest representation of people’s representatives. As discussed earlier, such a situation indicates the openness of politics. The significant progress in this aspect mainly lies in the expression of opinions of the people’s representatives. However, there are still enormous problems at the institutional and policy levels that require solutions. An example can be seen in the establishment of a relationship between the people’s representatives and the people that the former attempts to represent. If the representatives could not relate to the people they represent, it would be impossible to realize representation. There is also the question of how to improve the nomination process of representatives and enable them to represent the people. For some years, people’s representatives in Guangdong have tried to set up workstations in order to meet the people. However, the question remains as to whether the people’s representatives can represent people’s interests individually. The same applies to those in the People’s Congress. The question is how the People’s Congress collectively represents the people. New practices of interest representation are emerging; by accepting these practices and encouraging innovation could new institutions through innovation be established.

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The functions of the CPPCC need more reconsideration. At present, CPPCC representatives are selected from dozens of functional social groups. The functions of the CPPCC do play in part in overcoming some of the weaknesses of Western forms of democracy. Western democracy emphasizes the separation of power and checks and balances within the state. However, such checks and balances at the governmental level are often not sufficient to guarantee political stability. When different forms of Western democracy were introduced to the developing countries, especially those with highly divided societies, multi-party politics tends to become the root of political instability and even political disruption. The major reason for this is that there are no checks and balances among different social groups. The CPPCC can, in reality, become a state institution of checks and balances for various social groups because its major function is interest-consultation and coordination. From this perspective, the CPPCC needs to address many practical questions, such as defining and augmenting / reducing social functional groups more scientifically and transforming all social functional groups into more open and democratic entities. The Hong Kong experience is relevant here. Hong Kong has been debating the proposed abolishment of the functional constituency system. However, the issue does not center on the system, but on how the system could be democratized.

From intra-party democracy to social democracy Based on the argument of openness, one can identify three key areas where China’s political reforms could move forward and which have already existed in its political practice to a degree. The proposal to boost intra-party democracy and social democracy had been put up at the 17th National Congress of the CCP. Two major fields, namely, the reform of the ruling party itself (intra-party democracy) and social democracy, were emphasized. On competition or intra-party democracy, the current understanding mainly focuses on fields such as intra-party collective leadership, selection, and power succession. These are the most fundamental issues. As discussed earlier, the most important task for intra-party democracy is to maintain the openness of the party. As the CCP is the single most important political institution, establishing an intra-party interest articulation and coordination system becomes imperative. Representing and aggregating so many social interests in one political process is a colossal task. Without good mechanisms to articulate and coordinate interests, conf licts will emerge within the system. More importantly, as different social classes and interests did not enter into this political process synchronously, the formation of vested interest groups within the party may arise. If the process is maneuvered by first-comers, political fairness will be undermined. History has shown that a closed party cannot last, but an open one can; a party that represents the interests of one part of the people cannot last, while a party representing all social interests enjoys longevity. The more open a party is, the more sustainable it will be. The question is found in the maintenance of the party’s openness to society.

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The Chinese approach is to recruit elite through the civil service examination system. This is similar to the traditional imperial examination system. Much also depends on the openness of the education system. If the education system is exclusive, openness of a party is inhibited. Indeed, maintaining an open education system has been one of the serious challenges that face China today. Another important approach which is very typical of the CCP is to embark on periodic anti-corruption campaigns which aim to crack down on existing or potential political oligarchies. As the German sociologist Robert Michels pointed out at the beginning of the last century, rule by an elite is inevitable as an “iron law” in any political organization. According to Michels, all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they were in the outset, eventually develop into oligarchies. Michels observed that since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always be delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise.42 This tendency is the most apparent in communist states dominated by a Leninist Party, as described by former Yugoslav intellectual and writer Milovan Đilas during the Cold War era.43 In this context, it makes sense why the CCP leadership has initiated periodic and forceful anti-corruption campaigns. Among others, such campaigns serve two main purposes: first, to maintain the legitimacy of the ruling party; and second, to prevent the ruling party from becoming a party of itself and for itself. Furthermore, the ruling party could become open to accommodating and recruiting social elite into its political process. So far, the elites in the CCP are mostly cultivated from within the party system. Due to the low degree of institutionalization, particularly formal rules-based fair competition, the elitecultivating system often becomes an elite-eliminating system where people with capabilities and ideas may be eliminated. As elites are also cultivated within the party, they are mostly of the bureaucratic type. The problem of bureaucratization of the CCP as a huge organization is very serious. Over-bureaucratization in turn trains officials to become bureaucrats rather than politicians. Furthermore, due to bureaucratization, the party is not sufficiently open to society; once bureaucratized, the party will lose its connection to society and increasingly become irrelevant to society. The CCP has the potential to open itself up to society further. Singapore provides many experiences for China to emulate. Indeed, since the late Deng Xiaoping, China has been very much interested in the Singapore political model. Although under one-party domination, the political system of Singapore is open to society. Since the Republic of Singapore came into being, Singapore’s leaders were aware that for a country with no resources, political talent is key to the survival and development of the country. In Singapore, civil servants in the bureaucratic system are selected from within the system, but political elites are mostly recruited from society. In other words, many political leaders are not trained by the ruling party itself, but absorbed by the ruling party from society.

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Only after they have proven themselves in their own fields would the ruling party invite them to join the party to serve the people. Thus, the terms “party age” or “seniority”, which are often prevalent in China, are rarely relevant politically in Singapore. A person is recruited into the party not by virtue of seniority, but by his or her proven experience in different fields of society. Such an approach solves the problem of “assigning priority according to seniority” in many Leninist parties. Leninist parties are open to accommodating social elite, but they often become vested interest groups after forming themselves into organizations. Singapore has solved this problem rather effectively. The solution is to maintain the openness of the party to society. Intra-party democracy does not prevent social democracy from taking place. In China, open politics means to continue with various forms of democratic practice, including public deliberation and participation which have come into being in various forms for many years.44 Elections are an important part of democratic participation. Direct elections of people’s representatives only take place at the local levels, basically at the county and township levels. Among the country’s 2.7 million people’s representatives, 3,000 are national representatives, namely, NPC representatives, and 2.5 million county and township representatives from 2,850 counties and 3.2 million towns in the country.45 China has practiced direct elections since the reforms and open-door policy. Needless to say, all elections are managed by CCP organizations at different levels. While the Constitution allows independent candidates to run, independent candidates are often suppressed by party organizations and the governments at each level.46 Furthermore, equating social democracy with elections is not sufficient. In fact, at the local levels, institution-building and good governance are more important. The democratic practice at the village level since the late 1980s has demonstrated that elections cannot generate effective governance. Village democracy has been practiced for many years and the problems that have emerged during such a process should be carefully reviewed and examined, for these problems ref lect the possible variants of electoral democracy. In many parts of China, clans and families continue to be very inf luential at the village level and democracy exists only in a nominal sense. If the scale of democracy is too small, it will be easily manipulated by a clan or an inf luential family. Conf licts between locally identified elite and elite selected by party organizations often take place. To a large extent, public participation and deliberation are more relevant to good governance at the local level. Democracy has more wide-ranging content and relevance in this respect. Electoral democracy is mainly for producing local organizations or local elite to solve the problem of elite circulation at the local level in China. Simply opening localities for election will not produce an effective government. In contrast, public participation and deliberation are for improving the governance of the existing local political power. Open budgets, an open policymaking process and civil society building are the content of local democracy.

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Concluding remarks In intra-party democracy, with social democracy and interest representation (People’s Congress), and coordination (CPPCC), the pluralism of interests has made political competition inevitable. In the West, the main manifestation of political competition is the election. In China, if electoral democracy is to be enacted (at any level), the millennium-long Chinese tradition of meritocracy should be taken into account. Meritocracy is China’s fine tradition, while democracy is the West’s. The former is based on selection and the latter on election. If China is to introduce electoral democracy, it should effectively amalgamate meritocracy and democracy, and selection and election. Only by doing so can China’s political system transcend Western types of democracy. In history, election alone can neither elect the pre-eminent talent, nor can it prevent the election of the worst candidate. Though Chinese leadership is aware of the increasing importance of political reform, it does not have a basic consensus on what to reform and how. The issue has been given greater impetus with the pluralism of socio-economic interests. According to the logic of Marxism, when the economic foundation has been changed, so should the political infrastructures. Political reform will have to first consider China’s current conditions before it could set the future direction of the country’s reform efforts. Extensive knowledge of the Chinese political model that has existed for thousands of years and the consideration of the entire transformation process that takes it from a traditional political model to its present modern form are critical. Since the passing of the strongman age, though there has been little discussion of China’s political reform, many political practices are already indicative of such a general trajectory of building a one party-dominated open political party system. Such a direction is in line with not only the openness of traditional Chinese culture, but also the open spirit of modern politics. The future and trajectory of China’s politics from the perspective of openness thus deserve further research and deeper analysis.

Notes 1 Daniel A. Bell, The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015; Daniel A. Bell and Chenyang Li, eds., The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in Comparative Perspective, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. The discovery of the Guodian bamboo texts has also revived scholarly interest on the subject. For the texts, see Scott Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation, volumes 1 and 2, Cornell University, Cornell East Asian Series, 2012. For an analysis, see Sarah Allan, Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Recently Discovered Early Chinese Bamboo-slip Manuscripts, SUNY Series in Philosophy and Culture, New York: SUNY Press, 2015; also see her earlier work, The Heir and the Sage: Dynastic Legend in Early China, Asian Libraries Series, San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1981. 2 Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.

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3 Zheng Yongnian, The Chinese Communist Party as Organizational Emperor: Culture, Reproduction and Transformation, New York and London: Routledge, 2010. 4 David Held, Models of Democracy, third edition, Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2006, Chapter 6. 5 Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1971. 6 Robert Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956. 7 E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960, p. 35. 8 Philippe C. Schmitter, “Still the Century of Corporatism?”, Review of Political Studies, Vol. 36, No.1, 1974, pp. 93–94. 9 Ping-Ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368– 1911, New York: Columbia University Press, 1962, p. 2. 10 John K. Fairbank, “A Preliminary Framework”, in John K. Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968, p. 5. 11 Ho, The Ladder of Success, p. 9. 12 Yongnian Zheng, Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China: Modernization, Identity, and International Relations, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 13 Democracy can be defined in different ways. Here, following Schumpeter, democracy is defined as competition among elites for political power. According to Schumpeter, “the democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote”. See Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1975, p. 269. 14 Fairbank, “A Preliminary Framework”, p. 7. 15 Ibid. The third category that Fairbank discussed was “outer feudatories” or “external vassals” who were rulers of states or other entities outside the borders of China proper. It will not be discussed since it is not a part of the political structure. 16 Max Weber, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth with an introduction by C. K. Yang, New York: The Free Press, 1951. 17 Fairbank, “A Preliminary Framework”, p. 8. 18 William G. Skinner, “Introduction: Urban Development in Imperial China,” in William G. Skinner, ed., The City in Late Imperial China, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1977, pp. 19. 19 Kung-Chuan Hsiao, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960. 20 Qian Mu, Zhongguo lidai zhengzhi deshi [The Success and Failure of Politics in Chinese History], Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2001. 21 Ho, The Ladder of Success, Chapter one. 22 Ibid. p. 24. 23 Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, translated by Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller, and Harold S. Stone, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, Book 1, pp. 5–9. 24 Loren Brandt, Debin Ma and Thomas G. Rawski, “From Divergence to Convergence: Reevaluating the History Behind China’s Economic Boom”, Journal of Economic Literature 2014 (52(1), 45–123, in pp. 66–67. 25 Ibid. p. 68–69. 26 Ho, The Ladder of Success, Chapter one. 27 Ping-Ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China, New York: Columbia University Press, 1962; Wolfagng Franke, The Reform and Abolition of the Imperial Chinese Examination System, Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Monograph, 1960; Benjamin A. Elman, “Political, Social, and Cultural Reproduction via Civil Service Examinations in Late Imperial China”, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 50, No. 1, Feb. 1991, pp. 7–28.

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28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44

45 46

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Fairbank, “A Preliminary Framework”, ibid., p. 6. Ho, The Ladder of Success, p. 5. Ibid. p. 16. Ibid. p. 16. Ho, The Ladder of Success, Chapter one. For my examination of the process of this transformation, see Zheng Yongnian, The Chinese Communist Party as Organizational Emperor: Culture, Reproduction and Transformation, New York and London: Routledge, 2010. For example, see G. Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Zheng Yongnian, “Technocratic Leadership, Private Entrepreneurship and Party Transformation”, in Zheng, Will China Become Democratic? Elite, Class and Regime Transition, Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2004, pp. 253–281. Cheng Li, ed., China’s Emerging Middle Class: Beyond Economic Transformation, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2010. Also, see Zheng, The Chinese Communist Party as Organizational Emperor, chapter 6; and Lance L. P. Gore, The Chinese Communist Party and China’s Capitalist Revolution: The Political Impact of Market, New York and London: Routledge, 2011. Yongnian Zheng, “Hu Jintao’s Road Map to China’s Future”, Briefing Series, Issue 28, China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham, 2007. Of course, the rise of political families in recent years is also observable. More princelings are now entering Chinese politics. However, it is questionable if political families will dominate the CCP in the future. Zheng Yongnian and Weng Cuifen, “The Development of China’s Formal Political Structures”, in Robert S. Ross and Jo Inge Bekkevold, eds, China in the Era of Xi Jinping: Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016, pp. 32–65. Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stag flation, and Social Rigidities, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982. Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, introduction by Seymour Martin Lipset, New York: Collier Books, 1962. Milovan Đilas, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957. Ethan Leib and Baogang He, eds., The Search for Deliberative Democracy, New York: Palgrave, 2006; Zhengxu Wang and Colin Durkop, eds., East Asian Democracy and Political Changes in China: A New Goose Flying? Singapore: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung 2008; and Zheng Yongnian, Will China Become Democratic? Elite, Class and Regime Transition, Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2004. Mingpao, Hong Kong, November 16. Ibid.

References Allan, Sarah, Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Recently Discovered Early Chinese Bamboo-Slip Manuscripts, SUNY Series in Philosophy and Culture, New York: SUNY Press, 2015. Allan, Sarah, The Heir and the Sage: Dynastic Legend in Early China, Asian Libraries Series, San Francisco, CA: Chinese Materials Center, 1981. Bell, Daniel A. and Chenyang Li, editors, The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in Comparative Perspective, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Bell, Daniel A., The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.

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Brandt, Loren, Debin Ma, and Thomas G. Rawski, “From Divergence to Convergence: Reevaluating the History Behind China’s Economic Boom”, Journal of Economic Literature 52(1), 45–123, 2014, pp. 66–67. Cheng, Li, editor, China’s Emerging Middle Class: Beyond Economic Transformation, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2010. Cook, Scott, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation, Vol 1 and 2, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, Cornell East Asian Series, 2012. Dahl, Robert, A Preface to Democratic Theory, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1956. Dahl, Robert, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, New Heaven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971. Đilas, Milovan, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957. Elman, Benjamin A., “Political, Social, and Cultural Reproduction via Civil Service Examinations in Late Imperial China”, The Journal of Asian Studies 50(1), 1991, pp. 7–28. Fairbank, John K., “A Preliminary Framework”, edited by John K. Fairbank, The Chinese World Order, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968, p. 5. Franke, Wolfagng, The Reform and Abolition of the Imperial Chinese Examination System. Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Monograph, 1960. Gore, Lance L. P., The Chinese Communist Party and China’s Capitalist Revolution: The Political Impact of Market, New York: Routledge, 2011. Held, David, Models of Democracy, 3rd Edition, Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2006, Chapter 6. Ho, Ping-Ti, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368–1911, New York: Columbia University Press, 1962. Hsiao, Kung-Chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960. Huntington, Samuel P., The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. Leib, Ethan and Baogang He, editors, The Search for Deliberative Democracy, New York: Palgrave, 2006. Liu, Guanglin, “Wresting for Power: The State and Economy in Later Imperial China, 1000–1770,” PhD Thesis, Harvard University, 2005, p. 90. Michels, Robert, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, introduction by Seymour Martin Lipset, New York: Collier Books, 1962. Mingpao, a Hong Kong-based Chinese Language Newspaper, November 16, 2010. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, translated by Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller, and Harold S. Stone, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Book 1, 1989, pp. 5–9. Olson, Mancur, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stag flation, and Social Rigidities, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. Qian, Mu. Zhongguo lidai zhengzhi deshi [The Success and Failure of Politics in Chinese History], Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2001. Sartori, Giovanni, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Schattschneider, E. E., The Semi-Sovereign People, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960, p. 35. Schmitter, Philippe C., “Still the Century of Corporatism?”, Review of Political Studies 36(1), 1974, pp. 93–94. Schumpeter, Joseph A., Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1975, p. 269.

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Skinner, William G., “Introduction: Urban Development in Imperial China”, in William G. Skinner, editor, The City in Late Imperial China, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1977, p. 19. Wang, Zhengxu, and Colin Durkop, editors, East Asian Democracy and Political Changes in China: A New Goose Flying? Singapore: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2008. Weber, Max, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth with an introduction by C. K. Yang, New York: The Free Press, 1951. Yongnian, Zheng, Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China: Modernization, Identity, and International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Yongnian, Zheng, “Technocratic Leadership, Private Entrepreneurship and Party Transformation”, in Zheng Yongnian, editor, Will China Become Democratic? Elite, Class and Regime Transition, Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2004, pp. 253–281. Yongnian, Zheng, Will China Become Democratic? Elite, Class and Regime Transition, Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2004. Yongnian, Zheng, “Hu Jintao’s Road Map to China’s Future”, Briefing Series, Issue 28, China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham, 2007. Yongnian, Zheng, The Chinese Communist Party as Organizational Emperor: Culture, Reproduction and Transformation. New York and London: Routledge, 2010. Yongnian, Zheng and Weng Cuifen, “The Development of China’s Formal Political Structures”, in Robert S. Ross and Jo Inge Bekkevold, editors, China in the Era of Xi Jinping: Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016, pp. 32–65.

5 INDIA’S DEVELOPMENT PATH Prospects, challenges, and implications for the emerging world order Sandeep Shastri

A framework for analysis Approaching the theme The concept of development has, over the years, been defined from multi-track perspectives. The rich literature on the theme has sought to cover a wide range of perspectives on what the idea of development has come to involve across time and in varied socio-cultural, political, and economic settings. The multiple contours that have been part of the debate in India on what constitutes meaningful development have, over the years, enriched both the content of the development narrative and the wider context in which it unfolds.1 It would be useful to add a few caveats at the start of this dialogue in order to outline the principal framework for analysis that this chapter outlines. Firstly, the attempt here is to look at India’s development experiment within the specific framework of its tryst with democratic governance. Secondly, the specificities of the strategy of development grounded in an appreciation of the socio-economic environment and political conditions are attempted. Thirdly, this chapter places citizens as the main focus of assessment, often privileging popular common sense rather than expert opinion. In order to undertake this task, this chapter, tentative in its formulations and limited in its sweep, draws heavily from the findings of survey research. Survey research has brought to the dialogue table a fascinating and stirringly different dimension to the conversations on development,2 both globally and in the specific Indian context. It has encouraged the discussion on development to permit the showcasing of popular attitudes and perceptions. What constitutes development is today being re-worked, keeping in mind the “vision” of citizens who constitute the core of any developmental experiment. This has allowed development to be viewed from “below’” rather than merely constructing a meaning

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and methodology that emanates from the academic “high ground”. Thus, the anxieties and aspirations, trials and tribulations, and preferences and priorities of citizens, with regard to their vision for their collective future, are a key element in constructing the encounters with development. Much of the survey data that forms the basis of this analysis revolves around a few specific studies. These include the National Election Study (NES) and other surveys in India pioneered by Lokniti-CSDS.3 Data drawn from the State of Democracy in South Asia (SDSA)4 studies, which are an integral part of the Global Barometer Surveys and is coordinated in India by Lokniti-CSDS, are a key element of the present study. This chapter is divided into three segments. In the first, an attempt is made to contextualize India’s development experience from multi-track perspectives. In the second section, the findings from different nationally representative surveys are presented to substantiate the key contours of the prospects and challenges in the development pathway. The final section attempts to summarize the key formulations on India’s development strategy and its wider implications for a non-Western framework for analysis.

Contextualizing development The assessment of development in the context of democracy and democratization has led, in recent years, to an increasing focus on the emergence of the “rest of the world” (as against the Global North) as an important site for the practice of democracy, development, and governance.5 Many contemporary studies on democracy prefer to make a distinction (and search for the distinctive features or similarities) between “old” and “new” democracies. The onus often was on the “new” democracies needing to fall in line with the ways in which democracy is viewed, understood, and practiced in established democratic polities. Thus, for a long period of time, the conversations on democracy (and of course development) privileged the procedural dimensions of democracy as being the core of the “idea” of democracy. The newer studies of democracy allow one to look at possible ways in which the idea of democracy itself can be democratized and pluralized. This attempt consciously avoids the temptation of essentializing or overemphasizing the differences in values as the main explanatory factor for understanding the different perceptions and conceptions of democracy. This attempt to “democratize the understanding of democracy”,6 implies that substance-based ideas of democracy and development are now increasingly occupying the center stage. The focus on “outcomes” as against (or alongside?) the “processes”, has the potential of enriching the quality and content of the contemporary debates on what constitutes democracy and development. In the first SDSA report it was highlighted that: democracy has come to stand for a substantive promise of rule by equal communities of citizens, and the well-being of all in terms of dignity and

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freedom from fear as well as want. This version pays less attention to some of the procedural aspects of democracy seen to be central to liberal, western democracies such as equal access to rule of law and to guard against the tyranny of the majority or a powerful minority.7 By seeking to go beyond the established “prism” of the Global North, the SDSA studies attempted to ref lect on both the “idea” of democracy and development on the one hand, and its “imagination” on the other, which have been a key focus of analysis. The second SDSA report underscored the importance of the core concerns of countries like India which are attempting to: achieve substantive outcomes (reduction of wealth inequality and provision of basic economic goods and services) while maintaining procedural institutions (regular elections based on universal adult suffrage, political participation and contestation) to produce an electorally legitimate government.8 An important indication of the development priorities of citizens in India was clearly manifest in the way they defined democracy.9 In the second round of the SDSA study, half the respondent’s defined democracy in the language of justice and welfare. Another one in five highlighted the procedural dimensions of democracy and a more or less similar number defined democracy in the language of rights and freedom.10 This finding was in line with what was reported in the first SDSA study.11 In this sense, when half of the respondents in India privilege justice and welfare as representing the idea of democracy, this brings to the discourse on development a specific focus. It is clear that the appreciation of democracy is shaped by the context of poverty and asymmetries of well-being. Hence democracy is seen as a harbinger of welfare and fair distribution of resources. This expectation derives not so much from the procedural and “rule of law” dimensions of democracy, but it originates from the idea that democracy mandates that those in power will use the instrumentality of governmental power for a positive intervention in the socio-economic dimensions of life in a given society. This understanding posits an interventionist and transformatory character in democracy.

The multi-track focus Having highlighted the fact that the welfare and justice dimensions of democracy were privileged by the citizens, it would be useful to mention that in the designing of India’s development paradigm, the focus on equality, inclusiveness, freedom, participation, and partnership were considered critical.12 From a social perspective, the development strategy involved ensuring a balance between accommodation and identity. Through an economic lens, it entailed balancing growth with distribution and politically it involved institutionalizing the practices of democratic governance. India has often been described as an “old” society with a “young” population. In this context, it has frequently been described

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as the “poster child” of a potential “demographic” dividend.13 Leveraging the presence of a population, which would be close to 40% of the world’s working population by 2030, requires the prioritizing of the development strategy with a focus on empowering people to reap the benefits of the dividend. This would require the spotlight of attention to be turned to the questions of balancing concerns of equality with equity, and a focus on critical social indicators of development. Given the fact of economic backwardness and poverty, high rates of unemployment, and relatively poor performance on key social indicators like education, healthcare and life expectancy, India in many ways faces multiple challenges. While India is considered the third largest economy in the world from the perspective of purchasing power parity (PPP), and the sixth largest economy of the world in terms of nominal GDP, it ranks 139th in the world in terms of per capita GDP (nominal) and 122nd from the angle of per capita GDP (PPP).14 Inclusive growth has been the focus of much of the debates in India on development. A major challenge confronting India is the widening income inequality. A study titled “Reward Work, Not Wealth” by Oxfam, highlights the fact that during 2016–2017, the richest 1% in India held 58% of the nation’s wealth. Further, in this period their wealth increased by an amount that is close to the total expenditure estimates of the Federal Budget of 2017. In the same period, half of the population, who are at the lower end of the economic spectrum, saw their wealth rise by just 1%.15 Estimates of the prevalence of poverty in India have varied quite dramatically. A recently appointed expert group (the Rangarajan committee) developed a methodology to determine the poverty line based on certain normative levels of adequate nourishment, clothing, house rent, conveyance, and education, and a behaviorally determined level of other non-food expenses. As per the estimates drawn up by the committee, the all India ratio of population below the poverty line as in 2011–2012 was 29.5%. It was 30.9% when it came to the rural population and 29.5% when it came to urban India.16 A World Bank study undertaken in May 2014 came up with a revised methodology for poverty calculation and a purchasing power parity basis for measuring poverty. It estimated that 17.5% of the world population was below the poverty line and India has a 20.6% share of the world’s poorest as of 2013.17 More recently, the NITI18 Aayog (India’s Policy Commission) has suggested as part of its recommendations that rather than committing to a poverty line alone, a supplementary would be to track the economic progress of the bottom 30% of the population over time. Rising incomes of this group would then imply a decline in the levels of poverty. The Aayog went on to add the TwoTrack Approach for Sustained Economic Growth. At one level, it stressed on the need to focus on raising real wages which would enhance capacities to purchase essential services as well as improve the ability to access government services. On another level, it focused on an increase in government revenues to expand social expenditure by the government.19

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Economic reforms and the democratic governance debate Given the nature of socio-economic challenges that India had to confront with around the time of independence, the country chose to pursue the mixed-economy road to development. While this model did provide the space for private initiative and enterprise, the state and its structures remained the key drivers of social change and economic development. Close to three decades ago (in 1991), partly by compulsion and also by conviction, the nation leadership decided to continue this journey of development by inaugurating a phase of economic reforms with a clear focus on liberalization and a market-driven economy.20 Since then, there has been an animated debate on the role of the state and its attendant institutions. The NITI Aayog approach to sustainable economic development focuses on increasing the income (purchasing power) of people to enhance their capabilities to improve their well-being even as the resources of the state focus on social expenditures. Yet, the argument is made that: a large segment of the society increasingly looks to the state as both a provider as well as a facilitator. For many, accessing the state for basic needs constitute the only choice and not one among a set of different options. In these circumstances, the responsiveness of the democratic state is critical to giving empirical meaning to the justice and welfare dimensions of democracy that citizens …uphold and cherish …(India) would sure face greater challenges of governance as (one) … moves from mere welfare to expectations of well being.21 The centrality of the process of democratic governance merits elaboration as it appears to be at the core of both the successes and challenges of the developmental process. In the Global South, attempts at developing governance, measured from a non-Western perspective, have increasingly gained currency.22 The Asian Development Bank, for instance, not only has its own definition of governance, similarly sub-Saharan Africa also has its own Ibrahim Index to ensure governance quality.23Though the assessors in both these cases are different in the sense that they are not Western, the measures, methodology, and the values guiding the exercise are clearly guided by the same goals. International IDEA’s Assessing the Quality of Democracy: A Practical Guide is methodologically and conceptually refreshing. By bringing into account the background history and culture, and understanding democracy as “a shifting continuum”, it attempts to go beyond existing measurement indicators. By involving the citizens of the country in assessing the quality of democracy, it is trying to democratize the assessment procedures. The World Governance Survey which attempts a holistic assessment of governance takes into account the key processes that are relevant. They make a distinction between performance and process indicators.24 They are more concerned with not how a country compares with others, but with its own past.25 The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) pro-poor, pro-gender governance indicators are also an example to get over the limitations of the

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earlier generation of governance indicators.26It was based on the recognition that different groups within a society could have competing needs and interests. In many parts of the Global South, the political system and its political elite, either by design or by accident, side-tracked the issues of “delivery”. Similarly, it is a fact that the mobilization of large sections of society was taking place without adequate mechanisms being provided to ensure that the system was accountable to these sections of society. In other words, “measuring development” often sought to address the challenges with limited democratic sensibility. Rather, it attempted to rest on the ideological/conceptual premise of the 1960sthat implicitly believed that once “efficiency” is attained and economic reform is on the right track, development will logically follow. This act of placing democracy on the backburner was partially corrected by the UNDP that engaged in the language of “governance for whom”. This significant shift in expression resulted in echoing popular sentiments in more effective ways and shifting the focus from the concerns of the donors to the realities of the population of the Global South. Thus, in assessing India’s development framework, this paper privileges popular perceptions of the development process. Within this overall context, this paper seeks to understand governance in a particular way. This paper considers and argues that “access” is the central theme in development and governance. The three most important dimensions of access, each with various domains that have a bearing on the contours of development, would need to be privileged. These dimensions include: (a) ideological dimension–normative acceptance of the right to access; (b) institutional dimension –the establishment of appropriate organizational structures to ensure access; and (c) empirical dimension –the actual practice of access. Access has to be integrated in the ideological basis of politics and power, elaborate institutional paraphernalia are put in place for access, and the people must enjoy the experience of accessibility. Access must thus be a routinely experienced fact. Access is the right theme to integrate the concerns of democracy and development because access is obtained at the intersection of responsiveness and efficiency.

The 2014 national elections and the development debate In accessing the development priorities outlined by the Indian state and the attendant challenges and opportunities, one is using the last national elections (2014), and developments thereafter, as the framework for analysis. Several factors have inf luenced the choice of this “moment” in Indian politics. Firstly, the 2014 elections were heralded as symbolizing an important departure from the past.27 It was also an election which ended a quarter century trend of no single party securing a clear majority in the Lower House of the national parliament. Most importantly, it was an election which many believed had an important focus on development28 and ushered into power a party – the Bharatiya Janata Party29 (BJP) – that was considered pro-market, pro-economic reforms, and proindustry. The BJP skilfully used the “development plank” to enlist the support of the emerging middle class who “wanted to benefit from the triumvirate of liberalization, privatization, and globalization”.30 The BJP’s promise of:

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Unencumbered development and infrastructure growth attracted a whole section of the urban middle class and youth who needed job opportunities and business facilities … the BJP under the stewardship of Narendra Modi has something to offer … everyone.31 The BJP began its 2014 election campaign with a huge advantage. The ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government led by the Congress party which was completing a decade in office, was hugely unpopular on account of a near policy paralysis, perceptions of non-performance, and serious charges of corruption.32 Its reasonably popular prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, adopted a clear pro-business line and the party “appealed to a large section of voters who saw it as an alternative to the apologetic welfare policies coupled with crony capitalism and mal-governance that India saw during the UPA government”.33 The election manifesto of the BJP highlighted the need to see India emerge as a global manufacturing hub that would incentivize individual freedom to operate legitimate businesses, thus creating jobs and prosperity. It went on to assure providing an enabling environment to do business in India, transforming the nation into a “hub for cost-competitive labor-intensive, mass-manufacturing industries” (BJP 2014). A few key campaign slogans of the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi during the 2014 elections, and statements made soon after coming to power, clearly privileged the `development focus` of both the election campaign and the government that was voted into power. Early in the campaign, he announced that `Good days were coming` as his party would be soon voted into power34. This became a very popular campaign slogan taken forward by the party. Another campaign slogan was “With All, We All Develop” and this was projected as an all-inclusive development agenda. 35 During an interview during the election campaign, he ref lected that India needed “better skill, greater scale, and faster speed”36 if it is to compete with China. Yet another critical indicator of his government’s development strategy was unveiled soon after the BJP came to power, when the Prime Minister said that his government would focus on “minimum government, maximum governance”. 37 At the first anniversary celebrations of the government, the Prime Minister asserted that he wanted “skill India, not scam India”. 38 All this was clearly a response to the expectations of people from the government. It has also been pointed out by Chhibber and Verma that the 2014 elections saw a “clear rightward shift on issues related to the role of the state in the economy”.39 They also make the point that the market-friendly approach of the BJP and its leadership helped swing support among the “economically rightward-leading middle class voters”: According to some estimates, the size of India’s middle class grew five-fold in the past ten years and is currently around 250 million people… middle class voters are more likely to be aware of the discourse around state regulations and thwarted business development.40

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Yet this shift brought with it important contradictions. One saw a funnel of support for the BJP that was broad among the socially and economically elite segments of society and narrow as one came to the less socially and economically privileged.41 Having come to power with the support of the social and economic elite and having also promised “With All, We All Develop”, the development strategy initiated by the BJP led the NDA government to come under close scrutiny. The next segment assesses the citizen response to the policies of the government during its four years in office and relates the same to its popular expectations on the other hand, and the development strategy of the state.

Citizen assessment and perceptions In this segment, citizen aspirations and expectations from the state and their perceptions of service delivery are presented. If development is to be seen from the “prism of access” for those whom the programs and schemes of the state are meant, it is important that their perceptions of the same become central to this analysis. In order to gauge the public mood, the findings from three studies are being included in the analysis. Three years after the Modi-led NDA government came to power, Lokniti-CSDS conducted the Mood of the Nation Survey in May 2017. The same was repeated after six months in January 2018, and once again in May 2018, when the government completed four years in office. Wherever relevant, data from the India Round of the State of Democracy in South Asia (SDSA) Report II is also considered to provide a comparative framework.

Most important problems faced by the country The role of the state as not merely a provider but as a key facilitator was underscored by citizens in their response to what they considered as the most important problem they faced and the agency that was responsible for addressing the issue. Among the most important concerns of the people was the need to find jobs, and the role of the state in generating employment. Over one-fourth of the respondents saw this as their principal concern. The growing prices of essential commodities, rising inf lation, facts of poverty, and the gap between the rich and the poor were the concerns making up close to another one-fourth. One out of every five respondents were deeply worried about lack of economic development, slow improvement of infrastructure, and the malaise of corruption. This trend relating to popular concerns has been patently visible in the National Election Study surveys over the last two decades and seems especially pronounced in the recent past (Figure 5.1.). A similar question was asked in the India component of the second round of the SDSA study. The manner in which citizens prioritized the problems was more or less similar. The SDSA study undertook a further probe on whether citizens trusted the responsiveness of the state to resolve the most important

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What is the most important problem faced by the country 26

28

25

23

24

24 11

Finding jobs and genera ng employment

Poverty, Rich - Poor gap, Price Rise and Infa on May-18

FIGURE 5.1

Jan-18

17

21

Lack of Development, Poor Infrastructure, Corrup on

May-17

What is the most important problem faced by the people Source: CSDSLokniti Data Set

problems that they had identified. A little less than half the respondents opined that they had faith in the responsiveness of the state to solve the problems they considered as being most important. What is also important to note is that close to four in ten expressed low levels of trust in the responsiveness of the state to their most critical problems. The ratio of trust to distrust was 3:1. For every three people who trusted the state to be responsive, one had serious reservations.42 Thus is it evident that what citizens considered as the most important problems facing the country required the intervention of the state through its policies and programs. There was a visible expression of the sentiment of unhappiness with the responsiveness of the state, possibly based on their own past experience. This has important implications for how citizens view the development priorities of the state. The SDSA study round two also found that the perception of the capacity of the state to deliver on the economic front is highly correlated with trust in state responsiveness. Citizens’ satisfaction with the nation’s and their individual household’s economic condition greatly strengthens their trust in the state. There also exists a strong correlation between the belief in the responsiveness of the state and their assessment of the workings of democracy. Those who had higher levels of belief in the responsiveness of the state were more likely to have a positive attitude toward the workings of democracy in the country as well as its future.43 Given the fact that finding jobs and generating employment were listed as the most important problems by people, respondents were also asked whether it was easier or more difficult to find jobs. Now close to three out of every five people said it was more difficult to find jobs with one out of every five saying that it was much easier getting a job or the situation was just the same. Over the last year this has seen a dramatic change. A year ago, one-third felt it was more difficult finding a job while another one-third said the situation remained unchanged and one in five felt that it was less difficult compared to before (Source: CSDS – Lokniti Data Unit) (Figure 5.2).

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Finding a Job 57

34

33

23

22

More diÿcult than before

Same as before May-18

FIGURE 5.2

16

Less diÿcult than before

May-17

Finding a job Source: CSDS-Lokniti Data Set

If this response of despair with regard to the difficulties faced in being able to find a job is linked to their changing perception of the performance of the government, it is clear that from the perspective of common people, the inability of the state to contribute to the securing of minimum services and benefits clearly impacts their evaluation of the government. In the latest round of the Mood of the Nation Survey, when people were asked whether or not their total household income was sufficient to fulfill their basic needs, only one out of every ten responded in the positive, and one-fourth opined that they were able to fulfill their basic needs with some difficulty. What is important to report is that more than two-thirds of the respondents said that they cannot fulfill their basic needs with their current household income. Four out of every five of those who were poor, two-thirds of the lower middle class, and half the upper middle class felt that their household income was inadequate to fulfill their basic needs. Thus, for the segment of society which was dependent on the state for securing their basic needs, the developmental initiative of the state appeared insufficient. This fact was further reinforced in the SDSA study round two. In countries like India, ensuring universal health care and providing for access to education at multiple levels has often been used as an indicator of development. Public expenditure in these two sectors is often a barometer to measure the primacy given by the state to enhance the quality of key social indicators. As mentioned earlier, the key to the success of any healthcare or education scheme is its “accessibility” for those it is meant for. It was reported in India that for every three out of ten respondents, government hospitals and health care centers were at a distance of more than 5 km from their homes.44 Government schools appeared to be more accessible, as for more than half of the respondents it was less than

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1 km from their home. For close to nine out of every ten respondents, it was at a distance of less than 3 km from home. Three out of every five respondents felt that they have a right to free treatment in a government hospital, while the balance of them were willing to pay for quality health care. Two-thirds favored free education in government schools while another one-third expressed a willingness to pay for quality education. The SDSA study also found that accessing government hospitals and schools was often not a choice but the product of “choicelessness”.45 It is often a compulsion for the poor, less educated, and rural residents. Furthermore, even those who access government health and educational facilities as a conscious choice could well be doing the same on account of the inf luence that they wield and their ability to “ensure a better quality of service” for themselves on this account.46 It is clear that the experience of citizens with regard to obtaining state services shapes their perceptions of the responsiveness of the state. For many, accessing the state for basic needs constitutes the only choice and not one among a set of options. Close to two-thirds of the respondents of the second SDSA survey maintained that the government should take principal responsibility for taking care of the well-being of its citizens while only one-third were of the view that people should look after themselves and be responsible for their own well-being.47 In these circumstances, the responsiveness of the state is an important measure for the quality and direction of development, especially from the perspective of citizens who are less economically privileged.

Development for whom? Do people believe that development in the country focuses on all people, on the rich only, or has there been no development? Across the last two rounds of the survey it is found that one out of every five believes that there is no development. Today, two out of every five believe that development is only for the rich. Six months ago a much lesser percentage took that stand. In January this year, two out of every five felt that development was for all. As the government completes four years in office, the percentage who takes this positive stance has reduced (Figure 5.3). Question posed: People have different opinions about the development that has taken place in the country in the last three to four years. Some believe it has only been for the rich, others say it has been for all people. What is your opinion? It is clear that the rich and the middle class are more likely to say that development has been for all, while the poor are more likely to opine that development has only been for the rich. The inference one can draw is extremely clear. The poor and the economically marginalized are increasingly convinced that the development agenda of the state caters exclusively to the needs of the rich. Given the “provider” role that is expected of the state, the economically

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Development for Whom 42 31

42 31 23

22

4 Development for All Development for Rich May-18 FIGURE 5.3

No Development

5

Cant Say/ Don’t Know

Jan-18

Development for whom? Source: CSDS-Lokniti Data Set

underprivileged are increasingly unconvinced of the genuineness of the development agenda of the state.

The promise of “good days” One of the key promises on which the BJP-led NDA government came to power was the promise of “good days”. Those from different socio-economic segments of society who voted for the BJP had hoped that the new government under the leadership of Narendra Modi would usher in development for all, especially the “vision” of development that each segment of society had. How are people responding to that promise at the end of four years of this government? Last year, when the government had completed three years, three out of every five people still felt that the government had succeeded in bringing in “good days”. Over the last six months, it can be noticed that more than half of the respondents feel that the government has failed in ushering in the promised “good days”. The failure is even more pronounced at the end of the four year term. If one were to further divide those who said that the government has failed to bring “good days” between those who said it has somewhat failed and fully failed, it can be noticed that more than one-third of the respondents say it has fully failed (Figure 5.4.). From the perspective of expectations of development, it is important to record that this feeling that the government and its leadership has failed to bring “good days” is across all economic groups, right from the poor to the rich. This implies that segments of all strata of society are convinced that their expectations of “good days” from the government in terms of development policies, priorities,

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FIGURE 5.4

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Has the Modi government promise of “good days” succeeded or failed? Source: CSDS-Lokniti Data Unit

and programs have not been met. While this sentiment is much stronger in urban areas than in the rural hinterland, it is similar across those with different levels of access to education and across all age groups. The above narrative is indicative of the fact that a government that came to power on a “wave of expectations” of change, progress, and development has not been able to meet popular expectations and witnesses a dip in its ratings, essentially on account of its inability to deliver on its promise of development. The latest round of the Mood of the Nation Survey indicates that close to half of the respondents feel that things in the country are going in the wrong direction. A government and leadership which was reasonably popular a year into office on the basis of the heightened expectations, is today witness to a situation wherein close to half of the respondents would not like to give it a second chance in the next elections.48

India’s development pathways Seven decades after Independence, India appears to have moved forward on its development journey with several striking successes, even as many of the contradictions that were visible in the social and economic framework of the society at the time of independence continue to confront policy makers. The mixed-economy model of growth that sought a partnership between private initiative and government involvement has fostered growth and development. Yet, keeping in mind the specificities of the Indian socio-economic context, the roadmap to development had to be dovetailed to the unique challenges that the polity faced.

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At the time of the inauguration of the Constitution, the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly, B. R. Ambedkar, sought to present before Indian policymakers an important paradox that required their urgent attention and intervention. Ref lecting on the day that India would emerge as a Republic, he stressed: On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which is Assembly has to laboriously built up.49 The life of contradictions that Ambedkar referred to 68 years ago still seems to be ref lected in the life and living of common Indian citizens. Having adopted the framework of democracy to pursue development, it is important to underscore the fact that while there is a deep and abiding commitment to the `idea of democracy`, the `practical imagination` of democracy as seen in the lived experience leaves much to be desired. This slippage between objectives and operational reality explains the intensely strong desire to remain democratic on the one hand, even as there is an element of deep frustration with the implementation of development priorities and policies on the other. While one cannot lose sight of the socio-economic context in which democratic politics operates, governments are also `mandated to change that context as much as they are also prisoners caught in the web` of that same context.50 It also needs to be emphasized that the Indian state and its policymakers are confronted with a huge “expectation overload”. This is partly on account of the hopes and aspirations of common people from the state as well as the slew of promises offered by political parties and their leadership at the time of elections. The paper ref lected on how the 2014 national elections in India saw the BJP coming to power on a “wave of expectations” f lowing from its promise of “good days” through “all round development” catering to the needs of all segments of society. Four years down the line, one is witness to a dip in optimism in view of what is perceived as a “performance deficit”. When high expectations are confronted by average or below-average performance, often not just on account of lack of will to perform but simply due to the multiple and often conf licting expectations, the stresses and strains it causes are patently visible. It also must be stressed that in a globalized world, India has been attempting to dovetail its developmental priorities to the realities of the emerging global

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economic order. Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighted this fact in his speech at the UN Summit for the adopting of a Post 2015 Development Agenda: I am pleased that elimination of poverty in all forms everywhere is at the top of our goals. Addressing the needs of 1.3 billion poor people in the world is not merely a question of their survival and dignity or our moral responsibility. It is a vital necessity for ensuring peaceful, sustainable and just world … The goals (Sustainable Development Goals) recognize that economic growth, industrialization, infrastructure, and access to energy provide the foundations of development … We welcome the prominence given to environmental goals, especially climate change and sustainable consumption. The distinct goal on ocean ecosystem ref lects the unique character of its challenges and opportunities … today, much of India’s development agenda is mirrored in the Sustainable Development Goals.51 The “bedrock of this collective enterprise” was highlighted by the NITI Aayog (India’s Policy Commission) as a “national responsibility” based on a faith in “international partnership and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities”.52 India is also alive to the fact that it is required to pay a more active role in multilateral institutions. The Commerce Minister of India drew attention to the Indian strategy in his address at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Partnership Summit. When talking of the WTO and similar institutions, he stressed that organizations “need reformation all the time and it needs to be changed with changing times”.53 Given its status and position in the community of nations, India is often seen as a case study by many other developing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Its experiment with democracy and development indicates an effort to privilege both without placing either on the backburner. The success of its electoral democracy over the last seven decades has given hope to many nations that are similarly placed in terms of economic development to attempt to pursue the twin objectives of economic development and expanding democracy with the same degree of intensity. The slippages and contradictions highlight the fact that the challenges have not in any way reduced the intensity to retain an abiding faith in democracy and its capacities to usher in economic growth and development. The socioeconomic diversity mirrored in Indian society has also sought to be addressed by both the democratic and economic processes. The policy of reservations for the socially marginalized and the special concessions to the economically deprived have both provided a legitimate space within the framework of the fundamental right to equality. This balancing has ensuring equity with equality and justice with freedom. The accountability in the economic development paradigm is an important safety valve of Indian democracy. As Ruchir Sharma in his analysis of Indian democracy points out, “real power resides with the political class but ultimate power resides with the Indian voter – the vote is the great leveler – the memo of the poor to the rich and powerful as to who is calling the shots”.54

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This chapter attempted to present a vision of the pathways to development in India, as seen from the vantage position of the average Indian citizen. Through the findings of survey research, the aspirations, anxieties, experiences, and expectations of people on their individual and collective future were outlined. The more aff luent segments of society, who have had access to education and benefits of economic reforms, favor a redefined role for the state as a partner in the process of development, more in terms of fulfilling its regulatory role. In contrast, the socially and economically underprivileged, who still see the state as a provider and not merely a facilitator, would believe in a more visible role for the state apparatus in the process of development. This contradiction often plays out in electoral politics and popular expectations of democracy. While the poor and less privileged would not favor the retreat of the state and its withdrawal from key sectors, the more emerging middle class and the more aff luent would plead for a reworking of the state priorities, focusing on creating an environment to encourage private initiatives to contribute to economic development and prosperity. In a nation that faces multiple challenges, striking the right balance between the multi-track expectations seems to be the biggest challenge of policymakers. The “principle” of democracy is often put to the test by the stark realities of the “practices” of development and governance. Given the privileging of the welfare and justice dimensions of democracy, the corollary expectation from the state and its institutions is to ensure an element of sensitivity towards the aspirations of the people relating to their basic needs and well-being. The development strategies adopted by the state to give meaning to this popular aspiration lie at the core of the development debate in India. Clearly “inclusiveness”, “access”, and “responsiveness” as an answer to the emergence of visible and invisible “divides” that compartmentalize people and groups into “we” and “they” is part of the way forward. The fact that people in India still wish to “invest” in democracy as the true hope for their collective future implies that the development agenda needs to address the multiple contradictions, diverse expectations, and manifold aspirations while moving forward.

Notes 1 Sudipta Kaviraj, On State, Society and Discourse in India. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.17595436.1990.mp21004003.x. 1990. Accessed 08 November 2019; Pranab Bardhan, “Corruption and Development: A Review of Issues”, Journal of Economic Literature 35:3, 1997, pp. 1320–1346; Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999; Amartya Sen, Beyond the Crisis: Development Strategies in Asia. Singapore: ISAS, 1999; M.E. Warren, editor, Democracy and Trust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; Kaushik Basu and C.Marks, India’s Emerging Economy. Boston: MIT Press, 2002; Anne O. Krueger, editor. Economic Policy Reforms and the Indian Economy. Stanford University Center for Research: University of Chicago Press, 2002; Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze, India: Development and Participation. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002; Atul Kohli, Democracy and Development in India: From Socialism to Pro-Business.

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Oxford: OUP, 2010; Atul Kohli, Poverty and Plenty in the New India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012; Sanjay Ruparelia, et al.editors. Understanding India’s New Political Economy: A Great Transformation? London: Routledge, 2011; Isher Judge Ahluwalia, India’s Economic Reforms and Development. New Delhi: Oxford, 2012; Ashutosh Varshney, Battles Half-Won: India’s Improbable Democracy, New Delhi: Penguin, 2013; Jagdish Bhagawati and Arvind Panagaria, Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Economies. Philadephia: Perseus, 2014. Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Post Modernization: Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997; Michael Bratton and Robert Mattes, “Support for Democracy in Africa: Intrinsic or Instrumental?” British Journal of Political Science 31:3, 2001, pp. 447–474; Ronald Inglehart, Human Values and Social Change: Findings from the Values Survey, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2003; Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Dieter Fuchs and Edeltraud Roller, “Learned Democrcy? Support for Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe”. International Journal of Sociology.36:3, 2006, pp.70–96; Michael Bratton and Robert Mattes, “Learning About Democracy in Africa: Awareness, Performance and Experience”. American Journal of Political Science 51:1, 2007, pp. 192–217; Russel J. Dalton and Christian Welzel, The Civic Culture Transformed: From Allegiant to Assertive Citizens. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014; David Denemark, et al., editors, Growing Up Democratic: Does It Make a Difference? Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 2016; SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008; SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia II. Bengaluru: Jain University Press, 2017. Lokniti Programme for Comparative Democracy that was established in 1997 as a research program of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi. By bringing various projects of the CSDS on elections and party politics together under a single program, Lokniti seeks to engage with the global debates on democracy. In an age where globalization of democracy has come to mean a universalization of a thin checklist model of managerial governance and cultural homogenization, the worth of a participatory model of plural democracy, a model that recognizes multiple paths to realizing the rich ideals of democracy, cannot be over-emphasized. For details: www.lokniti.org Hereinafter referred to as SDSA. SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 2; SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia II. Bengaluru: Jain University Press, 2017, pp. 12–16. SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia II. Bengaluru: Jain University Press, 2017, p. 9; Suhas Palshikar and Sandeep Shastri. Democratizing the Meaning of Democracy: Voices from South Asia. Paper presented as the Global Barometer Surveys Conference on “How People View and Value Democracy” held at Taipei, 15–16 October 2010. SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 8. SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia II. Bengaluru: Jain University Press, 2017, p.16. This analysis is based on the findings of an open-ended question asked in both rounds of SDSA: According to you what is democracy? SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia II. Bengaluru: Jain University Press, 2017, p.20. SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008. Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze, India: Development and Participation. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. World Economic Forum. India Can Bring Prosperity and Social Justice to one-fifth of the World. http://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/india-can-bring-prosperity-andsocial-justice-to-a-fifth-of-the-world. Accessed 18 May 2018.

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14 As per World Bank database. 15 Oxfam, Reward Work Not Wealth. www.oxfamindia.org. Accessed 15 May 2018. 16 Government of India. Report of the Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Measurement of Poverty. June 2014. 17 World Bank, A Measured Approach to Ending Poverty and Boosting Shared Prosperity. Washington: World Bank, 2015. 18 The word Niti means “policy” in Hindi, India’s national language. NITI is also an acronym for National Institution for Transforming India, and Aayog means “commission”. 19 Government of India, “NITI Aayog”, http://www.niti.gov.in “India calls for changes in WTO to transform world economy”, The Economic Times, www.economictimes.in diatimes.com/articleshow/63067273.cms?utm_source=contentof interest&utm_ medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst, 25 February 2018. Accessed 08 November 2019. 20 Ann O. Krueger, ed. Economic Policy Reforms and the Indian Economy. University of Chicago Press, 2002; Amartya Sen, Beyond the Crisis: Development Strategies in Asia. Singapore: ISAS, 1999; Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999; Kaushik Basu and C.Marks, India’s Emerging Economy. Boston: MIT Press, 2002; Sumir Lal, “Can Good Economics Ever Be Good Politics? Case Study of the Power Sector in India”. Economic and Political Weekly 40:7, 2005, pp. 649–656; Sanjay Ruparelia, et al.editors. Understanding India’s New Political Economy: A Great Transformation? London: Routledge, 2011; Devesh Kapur, et al., editors, Rethinking Public Institutions in India. Delhi: OUP, 2018. 21 SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia II. Bengaluru: Jain University Press, 2017, p.10. 22 Sandeep Shastri, Karnataka: Governance and Human Development. In Karnataka Human Development Report 2018. Government of Karnataka. 2018. 23 Ibrahim Index of African Governance assesses government on 57 criteria and is a project of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. The project was carried out by the Kennedy School of Government‘s Program on Intrastate Conf lict and Conf lict Resolution under the direction of Robert I. Rotberg and Rachel M. Gisselquist. http://www.moibrahim foundation.org/the-index.asp 24 The six issues they focus on include accountability, transparency, efficiency, decency, fairness, and participation in six arenas of civil society, political society, government, bureaucracy, economic society, and judiciary. 25 Goran Hyden, et al., “Conclusions: Governance in 16 Developing Countries”. World Governance Survey Discussion Paper 10. 2003. 26 Loraine Corner, Gender-sensitive and Pro-poor Indicators of Good Governance. Paper prepared for the UNDP Governance Indicators Project, Oslo Governance Centre, 2005. 27 Rajdeep Sardesai, 2014: The Election That Changed India. Delhi: Penguin, 2015; Paul Wallace, editor, India’s 2014 Elections: A Modi-led Sweep. Delhi: Sage, 2015; Paul Wallace, editor, India’s 2014 Elections: A Modi-led Sweep. Delhi: Sage, 2015; Suhas Palshikar, et al. Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party. New York: Routledge, 2017. 28 Pradeep Chhibber and Rahul Verma, The BJP’s 2014 Resurgence` in Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, eds. Suhas Pakshikar, New York: Routledge, 2017, pp.15–33; Suhas Palshikar and K.C. Suri. “Epilogue: Critical Shifts in 2014 election”, Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Suhas Pakshikar, editor, New York: Routledge, 2017, pp.282–299. 29 Hereinafter referred to as BJP. 30 Sanjay Lodha, et al., “Introduction” in Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, edited by Suhas Pakshikar. New York: Routledge, 2017. 31 Sanjay Lodha, et al., “Introduction” in Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, edited by Suhas Pakshikar.New York: Routledge, 2017.

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32 Sandeep Shastri and Reetika Syal, “The Modi Factor in 2014”, Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, edited by Suhas Pakshikar, New York: Routledge, 2017, pp.215–229. 33 Suhas Palshikar and K.C. Suri. “Epilogue: Critical Shifts in 2014 election”, Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Suhas Pakshikar, editor, New York: Routledge, 2017. 34 http://www.dnaindia.com/india/video-manmohan-singh-inspired-bjp-s-camp aign-tagline-ache-din-aane-waale-hain-says-narendra-modi-1983560 35 http://www.thehindu.com/elections/loksabha2014/congress-trying-to-hide-in-b unker-of-secularism-modi/article5953432.ece 36 https://www.outlookindia.com/blog/story/narendra-modi-in-aap-ki-adalat/3234 37 https://www.narendramodi.in/minimum-government-maximum-governance3162 38 https://timesof india.indiatimes.com/india/We-need-to-change-scam-India-imag e-to-skill-India-Modi-says/articleshow/36395897.cms 39 Pradeep Chhibber and Rahul Verma, The BJP’s 2014 Resurgence in Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, eds. Suhas Pakshikar, New York: Routledge, 2017. 40 Pradeep Chhibber and Rahul Verma, The BJP’s 2014 Resurgence in Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, eds. Suhas Pakshikar, New York: Routledge, 2017. 41 Sandeep Shastri, “Leadership as a Factor in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections” presentation at a conference on the Indian General Elections and after organized by the South Asia Institute of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, London, 10 June 2014. 42 SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia II. Bengaluru: Jain University Press, 2017. 43 SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia II. Bengaluru: Jain University Press, 2017, p. 78. 44 5 kilometers is approximately 3.1 miles. 45 SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia II. Bengaluru: Jain University Press, 2017, pp. 83–88. 46 SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia II. Bengaluru: Jain University Press, 2017, p. 88. 47 SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia II. Bengaluru: Jain University Press, 2017, p. 90. 48 http://www.lokniti.org/pdf/Lokniti-ABP-News-Mood-of-the-Nation-SurveyRound-3-May-2018.pdf 49 India, Constituent Assembly Debates, New Delhi: Lok Sabha Scretariat. 16, 1986. 50 SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia II. Bengaluru: Jain University Press, 2017, pp. 96. 51 https://www.narendramodi.in/text-of-pm-s-statement-at-the-united-nations-su mmit-for-the-adoption-of-post-2015-development-agenda-332923 52 https://www.niti.gov.in 53 www.economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/63067273.cms?utm_source=c ontentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst 54 Ruchir Sharma, Democracy on the Road: A 25 Year Old Journey through India. Delhi: Penguin. 2019.

References Ahluwalia, Isher Judge, India’s Economic Reforms and Development. New Delhi: Oxford, 2012. Bardhan, Pranab, “Corruption and Development: A Review of Issues”, Journal of Economic Literature35(3), 1997, pp. 1320–1346. Basu, Kaushik and C. Marks, India’s Emerging Economy. Boston: MIT Press, 2002. Bhagawati, Jagdish and ArvindPanagaria, Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Economies. Philadephia: Perseus, 2014.

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Bratton, Michael and RobertMattes, “Support for Democracy in Africa: Intrinsic or Instrumental?”, British Journal of Political Science31(3), 2001, pp. 447–474. Bratton, Michael and RobertMattes, “Learning about Democracy in Africa: Awareness, Performance and Experience”, American Journal of Political Science51(1), 2007, pp. 192–217. Chhibber, Pradeep and RahulVerma, The BJP′s 2014 Resurgence in Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, edited by SuhasPakshikar. New York: Routledge, 2017, pp. 15–33. “Congress Trying to Hide in Bunker of Secularism: Modi”, The Hindu, 28 April 2014. http://www.thehindu.com/elections/loksabha2014/congress-trying-to-hide-in-b unker-of-secularism-modi/article5953432.ece. Accessed 08 November 2019. Corner, Loraine, Gender-Sensitive and Pro-Poor Indicators of Good Governance. Paper Prepared for the UNDP Governance Indicators Project, Oslo: Oslo Governance Centre, 2005. Dalton, Russel J. and ChristianWelzel, The Civic Culture Transformed: From Allegiant to Assertive Citizens. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Denemark, David, et al., editors, Growing Up Democratic: Does It Make a Difference. Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 2016. Dreze, Jean and AmartyaSen, India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999. Fuchs, Dieter and EdeltraudRoller, “Learned Democrcy? Support for Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe”, International Journal of Sociology36(3), 2006, pp. 70–96. Government of India, “NITI Aayog”, http://www.niti.gov.in “India Calls for Changes in WTO to Transform World Economy”, The Economic Times, www.economictimes.in diatimes.com/articleshow/63067273.cms?utm_source=contentof interest&utm_ medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst, 25 February 2018. Accessed 08 November 2019. Government of India, Report of the Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Measurement of Poverty. June 2014. www.planningcommission.nic.in/reports/genrep/pov_rep070 7.pdf. Accessed 08 November 2019. Hyden, Goran, et al., “Conclusions: Governance in 16 Developing Countries”, World Governance Survey Discussion Paper10, 2003. India, Constituent Assembly Debates, New Delhi: Lok Sabha Scretariat, 16, 1986. Inglehart, Ronald, Modernization and Post Modernization: Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Inglehart, Ronald, Human Values and Social Change: Findings from the Values Survey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2003. Inglehart, Ronald and ChristianWelzel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Kapur, Devesh, et al., editors, Rethinking Public Institutions in India. Delhi: OUP, 2018. Kaviraj, Sudipta, On State, Society and Discourse in India. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.17595436.1990.mp21004003.x, 1990. Accessed 08 November 2019. Kohli, Atul, Democracy and Development in India: From Socialism to Pro-Business. Oxford: OUP, 2010. Kohli, Atul, Poverty and Plenty in the New India. Cambridge: Cambirdge University Press, 2012. Krueger, Anne O., ed., Economic Policy Reforms and the Indian Economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Lal, Sumir, “Can Good Economics Ever Be Good Politics? Case Study of the Power Sector in India”. Economic and Political Weekly40(7), 2005, pp. 649–656.

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Lodha, Sanjay, et al., ‘Introduction’ in Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, edited by SuhasPakshikar. New York: Routledge, 2017, pp. 1–12. “Lokniti-CSDS-ABP News Mood of the Nation Survey, Round 3”, http://www.lokn iti.org/pdf/Lokniti-ABP-News-Mood-of-the-Nation-Survey-Round-3-May-201 8.pdf, 24 May 2018. Accessed 08 November 2019. “Manmohan Singh Inspired BJP's Campaign Tagline 'Ache din aane waale hain', Says Narendra Modi”, DNA, 30 April 2014. http://www.dnaindia.com/india/videomanmohan-singh-inspired-bjp-s-campaign-tagline-ache-din-aane-waale-hain-sa ys-narendra-modi-1983560. Accessed 08 November 2019. “Minimun Government, Maximum Governance”, Narenda Modi, http://www.nare ndramodi.in/minimum-government-maximum-governance-3162, 14 May 2014. Accessed 08 November 2019. Mo Ibrahim Foundation, “Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG)”, https:// mo.ibrahim.foundation/iiag.2018. Accessed 20 November 2019. “Narendra Modi: In Aap Ki Adalat”, Outlook, 13 April 2014. http://www.outlookindia.com/ blog/story/narendra-modi-in-aap-ki-adalat/3234. Accessed 08 November 2019. NITI Aayog, Task Force on Elimination of Poverty in India, 11 July 2016. http://niti.gov. in/writereaddata/files/presentation%20for%20regional%20meetings-%20NITI%20 AAYOG.pdf. Accessed 10 May 2018. Oxfam, Reward Work Not Wealth. www.oxfamindia.org. Accessed 15 May 2018. Palshikar, Suhas and SandeepShastri, Democratizing the Meaning of Democracy: Voices from South Asia. Paper presented as the Global Barometer Surveys Conference on “How People View and Value Democracy” held at Taipei, 15–16 October 2010. Palshikar, Suhas, et al., Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party. New York: Routledge, 2017. Palshikar, Suhas and K. C.Suri. “Epilogue: Critical Shifts in 2014 Election”, Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, edited by SuhasPakshikar. New York: Routledge, 2017, pp. 282–299. “PM’s Statement at the United Nations Summit for the Adoption of Post-2015 Development Agenda”, Narendra Modi, http://www.narendramodi.in/text-ofpm-s-statement-at-the-united-nations-summit-for-the-adoption-of-post-2015-d evelopment-agenda-332923, 25 September 2015. Accessed 08 November 2019. Ruparelia, Sanjay, et al. editors. Understanding India’s New Political Economy: A Great Transformation?London: Routledge, 2011. Sardesai, Rajdeep, 2014: The Election That Changed India. Delhi: Penguin, 2015. SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008. SDSA, State of Democracy in South Asia II. Bengaluru: Jain University Press, 2017. Sen, Amartya, Beyond the Crisis: Development Strategies in Asia. Singapore: ISAS, 1999. Sen, Amartya and Jean Dreze, India: Development and Participation. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Sharma, Ruchir, Democracy on the Road: A 25 Year Old Journey through India. Delhi: Penguin, 2019. Shastri, Sandeep, Leadership as a Factor in the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections. Presentation at a Conference on The Indian General Elections and after organized by the South Asia Institute of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, London, 10 June 2014. Shastri, Sandeep and ReetikaSyal, “The Modi Factor in 2014”, Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, edited by SuhasPakshikar. New York: Routledge, 2017, pp. 215–229.

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Shastri, Sandeep, Karnataka: Governance and Human Development. In Karnataka Human Development Report 2018. Bengaluru: Government of Karnataka Press, 2018. Varshney, Ashutosh, Battles Half-Won: India’s Improbable Democracy. New Delhi: Penguin, 2013. Wallace, Paul, editor, India’s 2014 Elections: A Modi-led Sweep. Delhi: SAGE, 2015. Warren, M. E., editor, Democracy and Trust. Cambirdge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. “We Need to Change ‘Sscam India’ Image to ‘Skill India’, Modi”, The Times of India, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/We-need-to-change-scam-India-imageto-skill-India-Modi-says/articleshow/36395897.cms, 11 June 2014. Accessed 08 November 2019. World Bank, A Measured Approach to Ending Poverty and Boosting Shared Prosperity. Washington: World Bank, 2015. World Economic Forum, India Can Bring Prosperity and Social Justice to One-Fifth of the World, October 2017. http://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/india-can-bring-p rosperity-and-social-justice-to-a-fifth-of-the-world.4. Accessed 18 May 2018.

PART II

Can the post-war liberal international order be saved?

6 CAN LIBERALISM ENVISION A WIDELY ACCEPTABLE WORLD ORDER? Thomas Pogge

A crucial distinction Many scholars are predicting that an era of Western hegemony is ending, and challenge us to anticipate and envision the post-Western order that will come to structure humanity by the end of the 21st century. Responding to this challenge, let me start out with a distinction that is often obscured: the distinction between the values and principles that dominate Western discussions in political philosophy versus the practices and policies pursued by Western states. There is, on the one hand, “Western democracy” as a body of thought addressing national and supranational political organization. And there are, on the other hand, “Western democracies” as a group of allied states, centrally including Britain, France, Spain, and the United States, which have over the last half millennium violently reshaped the whole world under their hegemony. With the spectacular rise of China and India, the end of their political hegemony may indeed be in sight – though we should be careful with such predictions as they can go spectacularly wrong, as has happened, for instance with the ascendancy of communism, as widely predicted in the 1950s, and the ascendancy of Japan, as predicted in the 1980s.1 The former – Western democracy, also referred to as Western liberalism or Western liberal ideas – is a set of concepts, principles, and values about how human collective life ought to be structured and organized. These concepts, principles, and values have evolved in Europe and the United States, with substantial (though often unacknowledged) inf luence from elsewhere, over the last 3,000 years, and have reached their currently conspicuous articulations in the writings of several mostly Western political intellectuals who have forged them in various ways into competing conceptions of social justice. Western democracy thus is a family of – broadly speaking liberal and democratic – ideas that are

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dominant in today’s social justice discourse in the aff luent Western states and also prominent in today’s social justice discourse around the world. While the distinction between Western democracy and Western democracies may seem overly subtle for those who are hostile to both, it makes a world of difference to people like myself who have spent a lifetime seeking – with scant success – to mobilize Western liberal democratic values against the policies and institutional arrangements imposed on the world by Western states. I see these Western states as the greatest enemies of Western ideas about social justice, as being most effective at undermining these ideas by cynically abusing them for the sake of their own political dominance. Western states fall short – significantly, albeit to varying degrees – of realizing basic rights and democracy within their own borders. And they have greatly fallen short of realizing human rights and democracy in the world, which these states have been crushingly dominant in shaping. Let me illustrate this latter claim with some brief examples, focusing on the United States-dominated period since the end of the Second World War. In this period, Western states have designed and upheld an international trading system under which its firms buy huge quantities of natural resources from the rulers of developing countries without regard for how these rulers came to power and how they exercise power. This practice rewards the undemocratic acquisition and exercise of political power, allowing tyrants and juntas to entrench their rule in resource-rich countries2 with funds they receive from Western states for the natural resources they steal from “their” countries and with weapons that such funds enable them to buy mostly from those same Western states.3 Western states have designed and upheld international lending rules under which aff luent countries and their banks are encouraged to lend money to such illegitimate rulers and under which the country’s people are later compelled to repay such loans even after the ruler is gone. This international privilege for autocrats to borrow in the name of “their” people has facilitated the entrenchment of autocratic regimes and severely weakened democratic successors inheriting their excessive debts.4 Western states have helped build a worldwide network of tax havens, secrecy jurisdictions, shady banks, letterbox companies, and sham trusts, with legions of corrupt bankers, accountants, lawyers, lobbyists, and financial advisers – all enabling massive tax abuse and draining of wealth by multinational corporations and rich individuals throughout the developing world and in the successor states of the Soviet Union. This network undermines progress toward democracy in these countries by depriving them of capital and badly-needed tax revenues, and by facilitating the corruption of their public officials through bribery and opportunities for embezzlement.5 Western states have frequently prevented and terminated democratic regimes. Among the better-known examples are these. In 1953, the Secret Intelligence Service (commonly known as MI6) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed the Shah, after Iran’s parliament had ended a British Petroleum

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(BP) monopoly by nationalizing the oil industry. In 1954, the CIA overthrew the elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, thereby inaugurating 40 years of bloody civil war in that country. In 1956, the United States supported Ngo Dinh Diem’s refusal to hold a nationwide election in Vietnam as had been agreed in the Geneva Accords, triggering a horrendous war that lasted 19 years and killed some 2.5 million people. In 1960, the CIA backed a coup that replaced the elected President of the Congo / Zaire Patrice Lumumba with Colonel Mobutu Sese Seko, whose brutal and corrupt dictatorship lasted 37 years. In 1964, Brazil’s elected President Joao Goulart was overthrown in a CIA-supported military coup, inaugurating 20 years of military rule. In 1966, elected President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in a CIA-led military coup and replaced by Lieutenant General Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka. In 1967, liberal Prime Minister Andreas Georgios Papandreou of Greece was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup, leading to seven years of military dictatorship. In 1973, the CIA encouraged General Augusto Pinochet to overthrow the elected President of Chile Salvador Allende, inaugurating decades of military rule with economic neoliberalism. In 1976, the United States backed a successful military coup against the constitutional government of Argentina headed by President Isabel Peron, who as Vice President had succeeded her deceased husband two years earlier. In 1984, the United States continued its massive support of the Contras in Nicaragua, even after the Sandinistas had won democratic elections there. In Haiti, the United States was involved in two separate coups against elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in 1991 and again in 2004. In 2009, the United States was involved in a coup in Honduras, which removed and exiled elected President Manuel Zelaya.6 Examples could be multiplied. But let me just restate my first conclusion. The foreign policies of the main Western states are not animated by a sincere concern to honor and promote Western ideas of freedom and democracy. The present world order – heavily shaped by the most powerful Western democracies – is not an incarnation of Western Enlightenment values; and the great f laws of this order therefore do not discredit these values in any straightforward way. The leading Western states have spectacularly betrayed their own professed universalistic ideas of social justice, which should have led to a profound transformation of human affairs: to securing, under the rule of law, the freedom and dignity of all human beings on a basis of fundamental equality, to the kind of world eloquently envisioned in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech.7 On their best understanding, the ideas of the Western Enlightenment envision a world that is very different from the world that the leading states of the West have violently forged and upheld. Western Enlightenment ideas are much better ref lected in the internal organization of some Western states – France, Germany, Canada, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands perhaps. If we want to get a sense of what a world order inspired by Western Enlightenment ideas would look like, we can learn much more from the study of the internal organization of such advanced Western

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states than from the world order that the West has been imposing on the rest. I shall return to this theme in section 4.

Whence the appearance that Western foreign policies are driven by Western values? Why does the point of the previous section even need to be argued? How is it possible that, at least within the Western democracies, a large majority of citizens see their governments as champions of liberty and democracy in world affairs? A simple reply is that governments appreciate the political importance of being so perceived, especially among their own people, and consequently invest considerable public-relations resources into maintaining this perception. Western citizens like to see their own country as a benign force for good in the world and therefore put up little critical resistance against the official propaganda. While this simple reply is surely part of an adequate answer, two important additional explanatory factors also need to be mentioned. The first might be called “morality avoidance” (in analogy to “tax avoidance”). Moral norms, designed to protect the livelihood and dignity of the vulnerable, place burdens on the strong. If such norms are compelling enough, the strong make efforts to comply. But they also, consciously or unconsciously, try to get around such norms by arranging their social world so as to minimize their burdens of compliance. Insofar as agents succeed in such norm avoidance, they can comply and still enjoy the advantages of their dominance. Such success, however, generally reduces not merely the costs and opportunity costs of moral norms for the strong, but also the real protection these norms afford to the weak. Efforts at norm avoidance are common in various areas of law – for example, in relation to the tax code. Clever accountants for wealthy individuals and corporations are endlessly searching for loopholes and other methods of tax avoidance which keep their clients in compliance with the law and yet thwart legislative efforts toward raising funds for social protection and achieving a fairer distribution of tax burdens. Moral norms elicit similar strategic responses as when, for instance, corporations, concerned about harsh labor conditions in a foreign factory, sell this factory and then buy its products from its new local owner. The so-called developing world has been similarly transformed from colonies into independent states. Many people there are still desperately poor and oppressed, and Western states still get the natural resources they demand. But we now pay native rulers and “elites” in resource-rich countries for such imports and therefore are – or at least feel – morally disconnected from the misery of the locals. Far from using their global dominance in order fully to implement a plausible Western conception of global justice, Western elites have, through such merely cosmetic rearrangements, maintained and at times even expanded their economic and political dominance over many poor populations even while bringing themselves into apparent compliance with the core norms of their professed Enlightenment morality.

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Morality avoidance requires no deliberate plan or grand conspiracy, and would probably be far less successful if it did. Rather, the relevant cosmetic rearrangements come about through the uncoordinated activities of many inf luential players – each seeking its own advantage, learning from its set-backs, processing new information, and strategically adjusting itself to compelling moral norms by seeking to find and to exploit moral loopholes and other methods of morality avoidance. An invisible hand, rather less benign than the one acclaimed by Adam Smith, ensures that the world, driven by these self-seeking efforts, equilibrates toward a mode of organization that gives Western elites as much as possible while still allowing them to feel in compliance with their moral norms. This process tends toward the worst of all possible worlds to which these elites are able to morally reconcile themselves. While giving up the practices of slavery, colonialism, and genocide, the dominant Western states have maintained their crushing economic, political, and military dominance over a world in which effective enslavement, neo-colonial exploitation, and genocidal massacres continue, and in which a majority of human beings are still subsisting on the brink of bare survival. The second additional explanatory factor is that Western states can, with some apparent plausibility, justify their violations of their own values by pointing out that international relations are a jungle in which states must give absolute priority to preserving and increasing their power. Were we to constrain our pursuit of power by our values, they say, then we would be endangering our long-term survival as well as the survival of those very values. This argument has been quite effective – also, by the way, in helping other governments (such as those of the Soviet Union and China) justify some unsavory policies to their own populations and allies. But the argument has trouble explaining why Western states showed no inclination to live up to their professed values or to move international relations toward a more peaceful and law-governed condition even during their periods of crushing dominance (especially after the end of the Second World War and after the end of the Cold War). To cite just one telling example: when the end of the Cold War ended the rivalry with the Soviet Union, Western states took advantage by reducing their defense budgets by about 2% of gross national income (GNI). This was a perfect time to be a little more generous toward the developing countries by living up to the West’s long-standing promise to raise official development assistance (ODA) to 0.7% of GNI. So how much of their gigantic “peace dividend” did the Western states actually spend on additional ODA? Much less than zero! The United States, for instance, slashed its ODA from 0.21% of GNI in 1990 to 0.10% of GNI in 2000; Germany reduced its ODA from 0.42% to 0.27%; Canada from 0.44% to 0.25%; Italy from 0.31% to 0.13%; and oil-rich Norway from 1.17% to a still respectable 0.76%.8 When you submerge a stick halfway in water, it looks bent. This appearance is both true and false. It is false insofar as the stick really is straight. It is true insofar as the stick really does look bent to standard observers. My point about Western states is analogous. To their citizens and, to a lesser degree, also

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to outsiders, Western states look as though they are engaged in an effort to realize Western values. This appearance must come to terms with the fact that deprivations, oppression, and environmental destruction are continuing on a massive scale.9 Westerners save the appearance by lamenting how very hard it is to export democracy to traditionally autocratic cultures and how very risky it is to be too trusting or too generous in world affairs. Knowledgeable non-Westerners often save the appearance by rejecting the Western values that they regard as animating self-serving Western foreign policies as well as unjust supranational institutional arrangements the Western states have forged. But then, appearance notwithstanding, the exercise of Western power is not animated by Western values. Barely democratic even within their own borders, Western states often undermine democratic advances in the rest of the world and vigorously oppose any advance toward rule of law and democracy on the global plane.

(How) Can a world order be both Western and widely acceptable? It emerged from the first two sections that the realization of a global order realizing Western liberal–democratic ideas must overcome, first and foremost, the resistance of the Western states who – if only for reasons of their overwhelming power – have been far more significant obstacles to the spread of democracy, freedom, and international rule of law than China or the Soviet Union. But now we face the question: should we want to build a global order realizing Western liberal–democratic ideas? Aren’t these ideas partisan to one culture and as such unsuitable for global realization? Would not their realization in a global order – though very different from the neo-colonialism practiced in recent decades by Western states and their multinational corporations – be yet another variant of Western colonialism? Three thoughts are essential to an adequate response to this worry. First, our world can be structured in only one way. In the case of ordinary colonialism, there is a non-partisan alternative: let each country be free to decide on its own domestic arrangements and conception of domestic justice, according to what its people deem appropriate to their history XE "historians/history" , culture XE "culture" , population size and density, natural environment XE "environment see also pollution: natural" , geopolitical context, and stage of development. By contrast, in regard to global institutional arrangements – the structure of international relations and diplomacy, the organization of global trade and finance, the design of international agencies and organizations – there is no “agree-todisagree” solution. Insofar as people – or peoples or cultures or religions or philosophical schools – disagree about what global institutional order we should seek to realize, some must necessarily lose in the sense that their proposal will not in fact prevail. If a global order realizing Western liberal–democratic ideas would be partisan, so would any alternative global order.

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Second, any sophisticated morality or religion contains resources for dealing with the fact that there are those who do not share it. In some cases, these resources are crude and horrifying, as when a religion calls for the extermination of all non-believers. But Western liberal–democratic ideas do very much better than this, partly thanks to the fact that they give great weight to the values of freedom, tolerance, and democracy. These values strongly favor a global order that is supportive of alternative frameworks for national economic cooperation – if China or Cuba want to try out a different form of national economic organization, they should be able to do so and the rest of us should be happy to learn from the experiment.10 To be sure, a global order realizing Western liberal–democratic ideas would be unsupportive of some forms of national organization, ones that gravely violate individual freedom, tolerance, basic human rights, or democracy domestically. But such a global order would still provide much space for diverse cultures to realize themselves in diverse forms of national organization. And, of course, the same might be true of a global order realizing some other set of ideas – for example, those of Tianxia (all under heaven).11 Third, that a global order realizes one, for instance, Western set of liberal– democratic ideas does not necessarily entail that it fails to realize other, nonWestern ideas as well. While the global system of human interaction can, at any given time, be structured in only one way, this common global order may be justifiable in terms of the moral principles and values of several different cultures, religions, or traditions. For example, the European Enlightenment firmly supports the vision of a global order in which conf licting claims are settled through shared general rules impartially administered without regard to the contenders’ military or economic strengths. But it does not follow from this fact that that same vision does not also find firm support in other cultures as well. Different premises may support the same conclusion.

Three key normative ideas toward conceiving a widely acceptable world order Western Enlightenment values demand, and Western states have in fact largely realized, national regimes in which conf licting claims are settled through shared general rules impartially administered without regard to the contenders’ wealth or capacity for violence. These national regimes are centered around three key normative ideas. The first of these is the rule of law, which has at least the following five basic elements. (1) The interactions of agents are regulated by recognized clear laws laying down in advance what each participant is entitled, permitted, forbidden, and required to do. These laws include (2) upstream procedures for creating and modifying law as well as (3) downstream procedures for its interpretation, adjudication, and effective enforcement. (4) The laws as authoritatively interpreted are complete, so that agents do not have to conduct options whose deontic status (entitled, permitted, forbidden, required) is left indeterminate. (5) The laws as

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authoritatively interpreted are to be consistent, so that whatever any one participant is entitled or required to do no other participant is permitted to prevent him or her from doing. One might add, as a somewhat more controversial sixth element, a division of powers, separating the officials in charge of formulating the laws (legislative branch) from those in charge of interpreting the laws ( judicial branch) and both of these from the officials in charge of implementing the laws (executive branch). While the rule of law gives agents protected domains, it does not ensure that these domains are minimally adequate to the needs or dignity of human persons, nor does it preclude excessive disparities. These gaps are addressed by the other two key normative ideas. The second key idea is the safeguarding of every human being’s basic freedom. This idea again has five basic elements. (1) The legal system is to be designed so that all its participants securely enjoy freedom from violence as well as from threats and fear of violence, from slavery, coercion, intimidation, harassment, and duress. (2) The legal system is to be designed so that all its human participants securely enjoy freedom from deprivation: have secure access to adequate food, water, shelter, sanitation, electricity, clothing, human interaction, education, and health care. (3) The legal system is to be designed so that all its human participants securely enjoy, by themselves or in community with others, liberty of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of association and assembly, freedom to petition political authorities, and access to human knowledge, debates, and cultural productions. (4) The legal system is to be designed so that all its human participants securely enjoy the freedom to direct their own lives and activities: that they can choose their place of residence and profession, marry and start a family, travel, and own personal property. (5) The legal system is to be designed that all its adult participants can play a constructive role in shaping and revising its rules and procedures, and have the opportunity for input into the design of the legal system that governs their lives and interactions. The third key normative idea is that there must be significant limits to the inequalities that the legal system establishes or engenders. The specification of this idea is somewhat more disputed, but I think we can safely posit three main elements. (1) The legal system must not discriminate by assigning different rights or privileges to people on the basis of such factors as gender, skin color, sexual orientation, religion, values, or political beliefs. (2) All participants in the legal system must have roughly equal opportunities to inf luence political decisions about its design. (3) Any design decisions about the law (or the legal system more generally) should take equal account of the needs and interests of all its participants; which might be stated somewhat more precisely in terms of Pigou-Dalton: in the choice between two candidate legal design options, D1 and D2, if the representative groups that would do better with a decision in favor of D1 are (i) larger, (ii) worse off, and also (iii) more strongly affected by the outcome than the representative groups that would do better with a decision in favor of D2, then D1 is to be chosen over D2.12 These three egalitarian elements are to ensure that

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income and wealth, as well as educational and employment opportunities, are widely distributed and that there will consequently be no small “elite” inf luential enough to capture or corrupt the political system. I have outlined the three key normative ideas here in rather Western terminology, for example by making the notion of individual freedom central to the explication of the second idea; the notion of human rights could have served equally well. Because reliance on such notions has been challenged on behalf of Asian values, it is worth stating that this idea can also be developed in terms of fundamental human needs. The crucial point is that all human beings ought to have secure access to the components of a decent life; and there just isn’t much controversy over what many of the core components are. All real national societies today fall short of the ideal, especially by being far more unequal than could be justified by reference to the equally weighted needs and interests of their members. Yet, on the whole, the three key normative ideas are pretty well realized in the most advanced Western states, strongly suggesting that they could be realized to an even much greater extent. It is not difficult to imagine a global order along the lines of the three key normative ideas. Yet, such an order seems far-off because – appealing to the junglelike nature of international relations – states that excel in military or economic strength are reluctant to set this advantage aside without assurances that doing so will not endanger their long-term standing and survival. Such assurances are difficult to conceive. The contrast between present international relations and the conditions within the best-organized national societies instantiates then a catch22: because citizens within a well-governed state feel assured that their standing and rights under the going rules will be protected by the united power of all, they are willing to play by the rules rather than use wealth or violence to advance their power and interests in whatever way seems most prudent. And because states within the current global order do not feel confident that their standing and rights will be protected by the united power of all, they are willing to use their economic and military might to advance their power and interests in whatever way seems most prudent. The contrast suggests that a global order under the rule of just laws is entirely practicable: if states had the relevant assurances, they would be willing to settle their differences through general rules impartially administered. The great question is how such a world can be reached – and soon enough to meet the enormous challenges humanity is facing in the 21st century.

A crucial frst step toward a widely acceptable world order As a small but important and immediately actionable piece of the answer to this question, let me suggest the importance of establishing on the global plane a distinction that is deeply entrenched at the national level: the distinction between two kinds of roles that citizens play in society. In one set of – call them “private” – roles, we are partisans, seeking to advance our interests and those of our near and dear, often in competition with others or at least while prioritizing

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our own needs and interests and those of our associates over the needs and interests of the rest. Among the roles in this first set are our roles as parents, spouses, friends, employers, employees, investors, consumers, and our many other roles as competitors in education, business, athletics, artistic performance, science, and so on. In the other set of – call them “public” – roles, we are guardians of the justice of our society: voters, jury members, judges of competitive performances, and so on, responsible for achieving or maintaining the alignment of our society’s operating principles and their application and enforcement with something like the three key normative ideas of the preceding section (rule of law under just laws). These public roles require that we give no more weight to our own needs and interests, and those of our closest associates, than to the needs and interests even of compatriots totally unknown to us. The evolution of public roles that come with such an impartiality requirement is a quite remarkable development. Human beings form very close bonds with one another: the bond between lovers or between a parent and her child, for instance. And it is extremely natural, then, for people who stand in such a very close relationship to give it a lot of special weight: for a mother, say, to greatly prioritize her child over others to whom she has a much slighter attachment or none at all. To be sure, the special weight a mother may give to the needs and interests of her child is not unlimited; but it is nonetheless very substantial. It is all the more remarkable, then, that ordinary morality strictly limits the scope of any such partiality: there are certain contexts in which a mother must not give even important interests of her child any special weight at all. When she acts as principal of a high school, for instance, submitting pupils’ grades to colleges and universities, it would be wrong of her to give greater weight to her own child’s very important interest in admission than to the analogous interest of other pupils. The same is true when she holds a public office that involves the awarding of government contracts. The same is also true even when she merely exercises the office of citizen, when she weighs in perhaps on the question whether and how affirmative action (“reverse discrimination” in British English) should be continued in her country. In this context, it would again be wrong of her if she based her public statements on private reasoning such as the following: “I love my children and, if they were girls or were black, I would of course speak up in support of affirmative action. But, in fact, both of my kids are white boys who would be taxed to fund an affirmative action effort that would also erode their competitive advantage over girls and non-white kids. For the sake of my children, I will therefore use my political clout in opposition to affirmative action programs”. Even opponents of affirmative action would find such reasoning immoral: it is widely agreed that, in their public pronouncements and electoral decisions about matters of legislation and institutional design, citizens ought to set aside their private commitments and loyalties to focus exclusively on social justice and the national good. This piece of ordinary moral thinking is surprisingly demanding. The requirement is not merely that, in cases of conf lict or competition, one should give more

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weight to the demands of one’s public roles – as parliamentarian or citizen, as judge, principal, or procurement officer – than to any reasons arising from one’s private roles. The requirement is rather that, in exercising one’s public roles in designing and applying the rules and procedures of one’s national society, one ought to be strictly impartial by setting aside all of one’s private roles entirely, by giving no extra weight whatsoever to the needs and interests of one’s own children, spouse, parents, and friends for example. Acting in such an official role, one is to treat its demands as providing what Joseph Raz has called exclusionary reasons, that is, strong first-order reasons combined with second-order reasons to set aside other first-order reasons that would otherwise have competing relevance to one’s conduct decisions.13 It is remarkable that, in many national societies, such an impartiality requirement associated with certain roles and performances has come to be internalized and honored to the extent that it is, and that most citizens are genuinely disgusted when they learn that a father has used his political office to enrich his daughter, even when her gain is much greater than the social loss. Centuries of social struggle on different continents and in diverse cultures have preceded this civilizational achievement. Crucially important to the historical outcome is the plain fact that, in any historical period, societies that were ahead in terms of internalizing a strong national impartiality requirement had a substantial competitive advantage over societies that were behind. By interfering with an efficient, merit-based division of labor, nepotism is a serious drag on any society’s ability to solve its problems and to hold its own against other societies. Needless to say, present global political decision making does not remotely satisfy an analogous impartiality requirement; and the supranational analogue of nepotism is so widely taken for granted that there is not even a word for it. The dominant view is that those involved in the creation and revision of international laws, treaties, agreements, or conventions, or in the design and administration of intergovernmental agencies and organizations, are morally permitted – even encouraged – robustly to advance the interests of their home country in such negotiations. This dominant view is tolerant of such national partiality even in regard to the formulation, interpretation, application, and enforcement of international laws, treaties, agreements, and conventions and in regard to the daily operation of intergovernmental agencies and organizations. This expectation of national partiality is most clearly instantiated in organs like the United Nations Security Council and the United Nations General Assembly, where delegates display only a minimal rhetorical commitment to the United Nations Charter, other international law, global justice, and the common good. There is more of an impartiality expectation in regard to the United Nations officers and heads of United Nations agencies who are charged with administering and implementing intergovernmental rules and decisions and who are highly dependent on governments for their positions as well as for their budgets.14 But it is widely expected and accepted that even most international officials (members of the World Trade Organization Appellate Body,

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for example, and even judges at the International Court of Justice) give disproportionate weight to the interests of their own country and its governing elites. In the context of such wide acceptance, these persons do in fact often and blatantly favor their home country in ways that would be met with nearunanimous condemnation at the national level. National governments consequently expend considerable efforts on filling such important positions with a compatriot. Consider the extreme length to which the United States government regularly goes to ensure that the President of the World Bank will be one of their own. This effort stands in stark contrast to the quite negligible effort that the government and citizens of Texas expend toward ensuring that the United States President will be someone from Texas. The difference cannot be explained by the greater power and inf luence of the President of the World Bank – on the contrary! Rather, the difference is primarily explained by the fact that state officials and citizens throughout the United States know that the President of the United States will not, and politically could not, substantially favor the interests of his or her home state; whereas government officials and individuals around the world well understand that the President of the World Bank will run the Bank to promote United States economic and political interests and United States ideological commitments, and that such conduct will be expected and accepted by the global elites and replicated by other intergovernmental officials and national governments.15 A global impartiality requirement is then, relative to the status quo, a quite radical proposal and yet also one that is obviously continuous with the national impartiality requirements that are widely accepted – at least in word if not always in deed – in the more advanced national societies. A global impartiality requirement can be justified by the fact that supranational institutional arrangements and governance organizations have become highly inf luential in their distributive effects and rather similar in their authority and functioning to national institutional arrangements and governmental agencies. Its widespread acceptance around the world could begin to reduce the enormous inequality that has been built up over the last few centuries of Western dominance. Could such widespread acceptance evolve; is it feasible? If human beings can and do limit the scope of their partiality toward their spouses, parents, and children, then, surely, they can also be brought to limit the scope of their partiality toward their home country. If the members of a nuclear family can understand that the deep love they share for one another is not devalued when one of them completely sets it aside in the exercise of her public office, then, surely, a country’s citizens can understand that their elected leader is honoring rather than violating her fiduciary duties when she sets aside national partiality in certain supranational contexts. Our elected leaders ought to take care not merely of our interests but also of our responsibilities – including that of achieving and maintaining a just supranational legal order. Analogous to the national case, this moral insight can be reinforced by a prudential appreciation of the huge collective costs imposed by national nepotism.

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What we cannot count on in the global case, though, are the competitive pressures that have probably played an important role in the historical achievement of an unnatural but now (in some countries) widely accepted national impartiality requirement. It is clear enough that the global governance structures that have grown by leaps and bounds in the decades since the end of the Cold War – infested as they are with national nepotism – will not be able to solve the challenges facing human civilization. Foremost among these challenges are the threats posed by nationally controlled advanced weapons and other dangerous technologies, the threats of ecological catastrophe through climate change, pollution, and resource depletion, and the threats posed by supranational lobbying resulting in inefficient and unstable supranational institutional arrangements that can lead to massive economic collapse. If humanity is to master these existential challenges, we must learn to reject national nepotism and to expunge it from our supranational rule-making and international organizations. Given the magnitude of the threats, it would be good if we could get on with this learning before disaster strikes. Now rules, procedures, and other institutional arrangements are not living, accountable creatures who could be expected to conform themselves to moral standards. Rather, their character and effects depend on the human agents who formulate, shape, design, interpret, apply, enforce, obey, violate, undermine, or ignore them. Thus, moral prescriptions about what criteria supranational rules and practices ought to meet must ultimately be cashed out as moral prescriptions addressed to human agents and, specifically, to the conduct of human agents in regard to such rules and practices. And, similarly, for moral prescriptions addressed to collective agents such as governments and international organizations. The global impartiality requirement is ultimately, then, a differentiation in the standards of moral assessment, applying to the conduct of individual human agents. While they may and should give priority to their near and dear in their personal conduct, and to their home country when they represent it in a fairly structured competitive context, they must be required to be suitably impartial in contexts where they – as individuals, or in some official role or on behalf of a state or enterprise – contribute to the formulation, interpretation, or implementation of global rules and procedures. In such contexts, their sole concern must be that these rules and practices, collectively, accord with the three key normative ideas. This requirement is strong and extensive enough to ensure that, if most of us honor it, the ensemble of supranational institutional arrangements will have the requisite impartiality, organizing a genuine cosmopolis in which countries, enterprises, and individuals can cooperate and compete on a level playing field.

Conclusion The authors of this volume were convened to discuss “the search for the emerging global order in the 21st century”. This phrase can be read predictively (what

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sort of order will evolve?), but I have here interpreted and responded to it normatively: what sort of order do we have most reason to seek? My response was based on three key normative ideas that are central to Western liberal political philosophy as well as to Western domestic political organization: the ideas of rule of law, human freedom, and human equality. I have sought to understand these three ideas in a way that allows them to find support well beyond the Western orbit. So understood, they give us a widely sharable basis for envisioning how the whole world might be reorganized in a just and peaceful way. I see the United States as the main obstacle to such a reorganization. Its resistance is defended by distrust (the jungle of international relations) but systematically favored and fed by the realization that the political power of the United States, and especially of its economic-political elite, would be much diminished in a world in which military might will have become largely irrelevant. To be sure, the transition to such a world would produce power losers other than the United States – Russia, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea come to mind – but these weaker states pose rather more manageable impediments on the way forward. Given that international tensions, hostilities, and crises – which perpetuate distrust and keep the frightful image of the international jungle vividly before us – are far easier to trigger than to pre-empt and avert, it is unlikely that humanity can achieve the envisioned world order, necessary though it may be both morally and for our very survival. Our task is to make it less unlikely. I have suggested that one good way to do this is to push for progress toward establishing a supranational impartiality requirement, with a strong normative expectation of compliance, in analogy to the national impartiality requirements that are now deeply entrenched in the more advanced national societies – both Western and non-Western. Anti-nepotism has a long and distinguished tradition in China as well as much younger, but also inspiringly passionate, support elsewhere as documented, most recently, in India (the anti-corruption movement formed around Anna Hazare and the Aam Aadmi party), South Korea (the long jail terms for ex-President Park Geun-Hye and her confidante Choi Soon-Sil, with the taming of the corrupting chaebol), Malaysia (the dislodging of the long-governing Barisan Nasional in the wake of the 1MDB corruption scandal), Brazil (the struggle against corruption triggered by Operação Lava Jato), and South Africa (the removal of hyper-corrupt President Jacob Zuma). We should work to gain a foothold for the idea that it is as shameful to subvert the justice of our global institutional order for the benefit of one’s own country or (more likely) its elites as it is to subvert the justice of one’s country’s national legal system for the sake of benefiting oneself and one’s family and cronies.

Notes 1 According to the World Bank, China’s 2019 GDP is over $14 trillion as compared to about $88 trillion for the world at large and $37 trillion for the United States and European Union combined. If China’s annual economic growth will exceed that

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of the West by 4%, then the size of China’s economy will match that of the United States by 2030, that of the West by 2044, and be twice that of the West by 2062. This may seem like an unlikely scenario until we recall China’s stunning growth in the 1987–2019 period, when its economy expanded from 1.6% of the world economy to 16% – and from 5.6% of the United States economy to 67%. We should also remember in this context that China is still far from its economic might in 1820, when it represented one-third of the world economy. More precisely, I have in mind here countries whose natural resource sector constitutes a relatively large part of their national economy. Such countries are especially vulnerable to victimization by the international resource privilege, as is ref lected in popular talk of the “resource curse”, referring to the fact that countries with more abundant natural resources tend to have lower economic growth, less democracy, and greater persistence of poverty than countries with smaller natural resource endowments. Thomas Pogge, “Achieving Democracy” in Ethics and International Affairs 15, 2001, pp. 3–23. Leif Wenar, Blood Oil. Tyrants, Violence and the Rules that Run the World, New York, Oxford University Press 2015. Pogge, “Achieving Democracy”. Nicholas Shaxson, Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens, New York, St. Martin's Press 2012. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_chan ge. One should also mention the United States instigation and support of Suharto’s 1965 coup, which was accompanied by a horrific massacre of hundreds of thousands of suspected Communists and ethnic Chinese. http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/fdr-the-four-freedoms-speech-text, paragraphs 82–90. Data at http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/SeriesDetail.aspx?srid=568. The United Kingdom went against the trend by raising ODA from 0.27% to 0.32% during the same decade. Undernourishment with child stunting and wasting remains stubbornly high, though it has declined in relative terms due to a rising world population; see https://www. globalhungerindex.org/results The number of slaves is estimated at 40.3 million in 2016, larger than at any time during the 19th century; see https://www.globalslavery index.org/2018/findings/global-findings Western states have of course been hostile to such experiments; which illustrates once more the importance of the distinction drawn in the first section. See Ban Wang, ed., Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics, Durham and London, Duke University Press 2017. The intended meaning of (ii) is: those who would do better with a decision in favor of D1 would do worse under D1 than those who would do better with a decision in favor of D2 would do under D2. Together, (ii) and (iii) entail that those who would do better with a decision in favor of D1 would do worse under D2 than those who would do better with a decision in favor of D2 would do under D1. Joseph Raz, Practical Reason and Norms, Princeton, Princeton University Press 1990, Chapter 1.2. The faithful execution of such official roles would be less demanding if its responsibilities were thought of as merely taking lexical priority over the occupant’s private loyalties and commitments, which could then still serve as tie breakers among otherwise admissible options. If her son put in a bid that is equally as good as that of another bidder, a procurement officer could then favor the bid of her son because he is her son. Our commitment to impartiality is such that, even in this case, we tend to feel better about the mother if she tosses a coin or disqualifies herself from the decision. The United Nations Secretary-General and United Nations staff are required to sign the following declaration: “I solemnly declare and promise to exercise in all loyalty, discretion and conscience the functions entrusted to me as an international civil

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servant of the United Nations, to discharge these functions and regulate my conduct with the interests of the United Nations only in view, and not to seek or accept instructions in regard to the performance of my duties from any Government or other source external to the Organization”. Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations (www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=ST/SGB/2018/1). Also, Article 100 of the United Nations states: “1. in the performance of their duties, the SecretaryGeneral and the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any Government or from any other authority external to the Organization. They shall refrain from any action which might ref lect on their position as international officials responsible only to the Organization. 2. Each Member of the United Nations undertakes to respect the exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the Secretary-General and the staff and not to seek to inf luence them in the discharge of their responsibilities.” Now, of course, powerful member states seek to inf luence the Secretary-General quite frequently behind the scenes, in violation of this provision. And even the instructions United Nations staff officials receive from the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly are shaped by intergovernmental negotiations driven by the partisan interests and highly unequal bargaining power of states. 15 In light of the huge discrepancy between the sketched demands of a global impartiality requirement and such common practices and perceptions, one might wonder whether the impartiality requirement is morally appropriate for the world at large. Such doubt might be substantiated in two distinct ways. One might reject the requirement wholesale, that is, even in regard to national political decision making. Or one could reject it specifically for the realm of supranational political decision making. In the latter case, one would then have to explain the disanalogy. Paradigmatic efforts to do so are Michael Blake, “Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy” in Philosophy and Public Affairs 30, 2001, pp. 257–96, and Thomas Nagel, “The Problem of Global Justice” in Philosophy and Public Affairs 33/2, Spring 2005, pp. 113–47, pointing to certain special features of intra-societal cooperation that supposedly make principles of justice applicable within, but not beyond, societies. A general problem for such arguments is that they must explain why such principles apply even to societies in which the selected special features are absent: to societies divided by caste, class, or religion, for instance, in which the rulers make no pretensions to ruling in the name or for the benefit of all.

References Blake, Michael. “Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 30, 2001, pp. 257–96. “Charter of the United Nations Article 100”, United Nation, 1945, http://www.un.o rg/zh/sections/un-charter/chapter-xv/index.html, Accessed on 10 November 2019. “Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1941 State of the Union Address ‘The Four Freedoms’”, 1941, http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/fdr-the-four-freedoms-speech-text. Accessed on 6 January 1941. “Global Findings”. Global Slavery Index. 2018, http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2 018/findings/global-findings, Accessed on 10 November 2019. “Global Hunger Index”, 2019, http://www.globalhungerindex.org/, Accessed on 10 November 2019. Nagel, Thomas. “The Problem of Global Justice”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 33(2), Spring 2005, pp. 113–47. “Net ODA as Percentage of OECD/DAC Donors GNI”, 2018, http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/ mdg/SeriesDetail.aspx?srid=568, Accessed on 10 November 2019.

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Pogge, Thomas. “Achieving Democracy”, Ethics and International Affairs, 15, 2001, pp. 3–23. Raz, Joseph. Practical Reason and Norms. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990, Chapter 1.2. Shaxson, Nicholas. Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012. “Staff Regulations and Rules of the United States” United Nation, January 2018, http:// www.un.org/en/ga/search/view:doc.asp?symbol=ST/SGB/2018/1, Accessed on 10 November 2019. “United States Involvement in Regime Change” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change, Accessed on 10 November 2019. Wang, Ban, ed. Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. Wenar, Leif. Blood Oil. Tyrants, Violence and the Rules that Run the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

7 FRACTURES AND RESILIENCE OF LIBERAL INTERNATIONAL ORDERS* Peter J. Katzenstein

The future of the liberal international order has once again become an important topic ever since Donald Trump was elected as President of the United States. An avalanche of commentary reminds me of the old adage about the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation – which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, nor German, nor a nation. And so it is with the liberal international order. It does not exist in the singular; never has, never will. Yet, its future is of obvious importance and merits sustained ref lection. Over the past 100 plus years, liberal international orders have served purposes as different as racist imperialism and contested multiculturalism; have taken different multilateral, bilateral, and unilateral institutional forms; and have adapted to periods of normalcy and crisis. This historical record of fracture and resilience, I argue, requires one simple intellectual move. The liberal international order does not exist in the singular, never has, never will. Such a move is suggested also by the definitional controversies which have bedeviled the concepts of liberalism and order. Liberalism is a plastic, everchanging, and all-purpose concept that we cannot do without. It contains no aspects that remain unchanged by history. Its meaning has expanded, especially in the 20th century, to incorporate most political positions considered legitimate today even though these positions often were anathema to prominent liberal theorists in the past. Retrojective extensions of the contemporary meaning of liberalism are one way to divert attention away from the obvious fact that over time we can track liberalism not in the singular but only in the plural, in its multiple forms and traditions. Definitional ambiguity also marks the concept * I would like to thank Yun-han Chu, Matthew Evangelista, Peter Gourevitch, Jonathan Kirshner, Sarah Kreps, and Yongnian Zheng for their helpful comments and criticisms of earlier drafts of this paper.

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of order that can cover state agreements on norms and institutions, behavioral regularities, and the leeway those regularities leave for the interpretation of formal and informal ordering practices as well as the consistency of these practices in different domains. It is therefore no surprise that Liberals and Realists take very different views on the liberal international order. Liberals like Edward Luce, for example, focus on changing conditions of prosperity.1 Luce pays particular attention to the declining opportunities open to the middle and working classes in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, “the precariat”. In the neo-liberal market race, too many people are running too hard while standing still or sliding back. This has opened political spaces for populist and reactionary parties and movements. Rising inequality calls into question notions of progress and advancement that are the foundation of the Western model of democracy and of the liberal international order. Together with the super-rich, non-Western, illiberal states like China have been the main beneficiaries of the liberal international order.2 The glue holding the international system together is failing because the system no longer delivers. Confidence in the benefits of economic openness and social pluralism has eroded, and with it the support for the liberal international order. The need to rely on emerging countries, foremost China, will make cooperation not guided by agreed-on underlying principles more difficult. Realists like Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth complement Luce’s analysis by focusing on military, technological, economic, and institutional dimensions of power.3 They make a compelling case for the continued military preponderance of the United States in the foreseeable future, including over China. Despite its rapid economic rise, it will take China decades to erase the military and technological lead of the United States. And they advocate a continuation of the three components of the traditional United States strategy of “deep engagement”: management of the security environment, fostering economic globalization, and sustaining institutionalized cooperation.4 “Retrenchment” and “deep engagement plus” are inferior. Retrenchment is not cheaper than deep engagement; and liberal add-ons to deep engagement plus, such as democracy promotion or human rights, overburden unduly American foreign policy.5 Any answer to the question of the future of the liberal international order touches vested interests.6 To some, the past was a rule-governed multilateral order overseen by a benevolent United States, leading and defending the free world. To others, the past was marked by traditional power politics and the United States’ instrumental use of multilateral institutions to achieve its narrow national objectives. In the analysis of the liberal international order, these two perspectives constitute our conventional wisdom. This chapter develops its argument in two steps. First, it looks at dramatic changes in Western liberalism since the late 19th century. Race and empire have given way to contested multiculturalisms and complex sovereignties. At

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the international level, the core of liberalism cannot be rendered in the singular. Second, it shows that the regional structure of the American imperium after 1945 has embodied diversity in its institutional orders and is currently experiencing its third fracture since the 1970s. In short, past and present point to the same conclusion. Variety rather than uniformity marks Western liberalism, diversity its institutional arrangements, and coping with crisis conditions its recent past.

Varieties of liberalisms Multiple traditions of liberalism have evolved in Anglo-American orders, the center of world politics for the last three centuries.7 Between the mid-19th and the early 20th century, Britain was the primary international power. After 1945, the United States assumed that role. Deeply held liberal notions and practices in support of racial hierarchy eventually morphed into multiculturalism. In the singular, the liberal international order thus did not exist. Instead, we should think of the existence of different liberal orders spanning different historical periods, different parts of the globe and different issue domains. Often tension-filled, these orders co-exist and co-evolve. The Western, liberal international order did not crystallize around a set of immutable values and practices. Its core was f luid, not fixed. Analyzing the Western liberal order from the perspective of France, a selfproclaimed alternative to Anglo-America, and of the Americas, Anglo-America’s extended periphery illustrates that f luidity and the existence of varieties of liberalisms. Competing universalisms illustrate liberalism’s plural nature. The core values motivating the French revolution – liberté, egalité, fraternité – have remained of utmost importance to France’s sense of self and the projection of that self in the world.8 Republican values, French officials hoped, would secure French inf luence in its “special relation” with Africa even after decolonization. Lacking the resources necessary for pursuing its self-proclaimed universalist mission civilisatrice on a global scale, during the Cold War, sub-Saharan Africa in particular acquired great significance for France. Always the political realist, De Gaulle cut the political links to North Africa early in the Fifth Republic. But he saw France’s grandeur as deeply enmeshed with Black Africa. Africa was thus an essential partner in the universalist liberal values embodied in the French revolution. For decades, French officials feared American more than Soviet involvement in what they regarded as an exclusively French African sphere of inf luence. This was one of the many deep-seated sources of France’s anti-Americanisms.9 The Americas also illustrate the f luid core of the liberal international order. The Western Hemispheric Idea is a distinct sphere of communication, interaction, and interest that constitutes international legitimacy in the Americas.10 Ever since Jefferson, the idea of a distinctive hemispheric pattern of interaction has grown up around the notion that the new world is different from the old. Over time, the internal division of the Western Hemisphere has diminished, as illustrated by the Pan-American movement. Starting with the Washington Conference of 1889,

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the modern Inter-American system coincided with the upswing of anti-Yankee sentiments which were fueled by recurrent United States interventions in Central America. Tensions and disagreements about the normative order of the Americas’ version of the West did not abate until 1936 when President Roosevelt initiated the “Good Neighbor Policy”. The Unites States and its partners in the Americas accepted unconditionally the principle of non-intervention and the commitment to democracy, peace, and justice. The self-proclaimed distinctiveness from Europe gave way to an expression of principled, shared solidarity. It was subsequently expressed in 1948 in the Bogotá Charter, the founding document of the Organization of American States. The Western Hemispheric Idea thus expressed a mixture of liberal principles. The United States supported strongly the principle of rights-based representative government, Latin American, Central American, and Caribbean states the principle of non-intervention. Writ large, this is also liberalism’s story in Anglo-America. In the 19th century, the conventional view held that there existed a single standard of civilization. And that standard was suffused by racism. Theories of white racial supremacy were part and parcel of widely-held theories of the international order, liberal and otherwise. This is not to deny the long history of the political construction of the white race, grounded in the institution of slavery. This included white slavery, first practiced on a large scale by the Vikings and Italian city-states. Later, Britain became the leader of Europe’s imperial powers in selling its own peoples into bondage in faraway lands – convicts and children prominently among them. Before the 18th century boom in the African slave trade, 300,000–400,000 people, more than half of the British immigrants to the Western Hemisphere, came as unfree laborers.11 Despite this long history of white slavery, in the late 18th century the doctrine of the supremacy of the white race was widespread. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, racial constructs merged with a scientific racism that placed AngloSaxons at the apex of the white races, ahead of all others. In liberal theory and practice, a binary distinction between white and non-white replaced the recognition of a multiplicity of races, religions, and nations – such as Caucasian, Aryan, Chinese, Hindu, Malay, Black, Muslim, and Japanese.12 Transnational in inspiration and identification, the white political project was nationalist in methods and goals. White settlers claimed their racial superiority as grounds for Aboriginal dispossession and genocide first, and racist immigration controls later. With 50 million Chinese and the same number of Europeans, as well as 30 million Indians migrating to new homes around the world in the 19th century, “whites only” became a global color line. Education and literary tests, first used in Mississippi in 1890 to disenfranchise black voters, were promulgated by self-styled Anglo-Saxons like Henry Cabot Lodge and served as models for federal immigration restrictions in the United States, Natal, other British Dominions as well as Nazi Germany. In the United States, the social fact of racial inequality was pervasive well into the 20th century, illustrated by the re-enslavement of large numbers of black

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Americans between the Civil War and Second World War, and the persistence of legally sanctioned racial segregation into the mid-1960s.13 For more than a generation, America’s liberal internationalism, supported by both Republicans and Democrats, was based on a pact with Southern Democrats defending segregation as a form of legalized racism.14 Eventually, a determined political opposition drawing on universalistic liberal principles undermined and eventually defeated laws and policies based on monoracial categories.15 Cast for the most part in biological terms in the 19th century, racist theories were reformulated in sociocultural terms in the 20th. It remains a much debated question whether this shift from biology to culture has ended racism or shifted it to new terrains.16 In practice, the difference between what is biologically innate and what is culturally deeply ingrained is far from clear. Although the language in which race is discussed publicly has changed greatly, there exists considerable continuity in other forms of discourse, use of stereotypes, and targeted groups. President Trump’s racist pronouncements illustrate that the legacy of the past can be reactivated politically. And the intense resistance of Trump illustrates that multicultural liberalism is alive and well. Ref lecting the plurality of liberalisms, its different variants remain deeply divided over questions of race. Based on an inversion of the conventional Self–Other distinction in world politics, race has provided a vital foundation for liberal conceptions of international order that contrasts sharply with realist ones. The conventional realist view holds that the Self is familiar and safe and confronts an unfamiliar and unsafe Other in an anarchic international system. Only very specific conditions can generate common collective identities among Self and Other so as to make war unthinkable.17 The history of South Africa and India points to an inversion of this realist view.18 In the liberal international order of the British empire, a racially white “external Self ” was pitted against a racially non-white “internal Other”. Threats to the Self thus emerged not from international but domestic encounters. The identity of the Self was affirmed by a transnational community based on white racial homogeneity. This racial liberalism in the Commonwealth evolved into contained political autonomy by the Dominions first, and the emergence of a genuine multi-racial Commonwealth later. The conceptual liberal understanding of world politics thus has changed dramatically over time. In the late 19th century the conventional view was that Anglo-Saxon whites were innately superior to all other races. In America, the nascent discipline of “imperial relations” was informed by the biological rather than the territorial division of the world. The predecessor of the journal Foreign Affairs, founded in New York in the 1920s, was the Journal of Race Development.19 The Second World War, the Holocaust, decolonization, and the decline of the Commonwealth altered beyond recognition conventional race-based liberal notions. Transnational opposition movements helped bring about change as they worked for the principles of racial equality and human rights. In 1919, the British Empire and the United States defeated the Japanese bid to have a racial

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equality clause included in the Treaty of Versailles. After 1945, however, the tide turned decisively. The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 signaled a sharp break. Human rights movements have fundamentally reshaped global politics.20 Elites and grass-roots activists have created an established vernacular out of a once aspirational language. The rise of a new global language in which to air agreements and disagreements is a momentous shift in global politics that has occurred outside of established international relations and conventional great power politics.21 By 2016, explicit invocations of race had all but disappeared from the world of international diplomacy.22 With the exception of the extreme fringes of right-wing nationalism, race-based arguments cannot be found even at the margins of the rationalist categories that inform today’s liberal and realist analyses of international affairs. Domestic politics is another matter.23 Is the century-long evolution of international liberal thought and practice from racialized empire to multicultural community a matter of plain empirics, historical narration, or a combination of both? And if it is both, what is the balance between the two? There exists no quick and easy answer to that question. Furthermore, it remains an open question whether liberal multiculturalism has eliminated traditional race-based hierarchies (by emphasizing the idea and practice of cultural diversity in the era of human rights); whether it merely conceals the racial-liberal symbiosis in a new kind of politics (which appears to accommodate diversity at the surface only to resist ever more strongly a more far-reaching transformation of its traditional core); or whether it accommodates itself to various sources of opposition through a series of pragmatic compromises. These are difficult questions. For now, it seems safe to venture only one guess. Stories told from the perspective of Europe and America that emphasize the spread of liberal values as an unmitigated success miss the mark. In its protean politics, liberalism always risks sliding back into deplorable, old practices of exclusion and unjust rule; and at the same time liberalism always holds forth the promise of evolving admirable, new practices that search out emerging commonalities in diversities.

Diverse regional orders in the American imperium For the last 70 years, the liberal international order has been coterminous with the regional structure of the American imperium and has been shaped by the ups and downs in American foreign policy.24 Rather than existing hierarchically, or in parallel, the relationship among these regions is interlaced with other global, international regional and national sites. Because of their importance in American foreign policy, I focus here on three regions in particular: the Americas, Europe, and East and Southeast Asia. Relying on the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary, until the mid20th century the United States has ruled unilaterally over Latin and Central America and the Caribbean – both directly through military interventions and indirectly by economic means. After 1945, it created a hegemonic system in

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two multilateral arrangements, the Rio Pact of 1947 and the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1948. Both offered an institutional veneer that concealed the profound inf luence that the United States exercised in its dual role as leader of the anti-Communist alliance in world politics and undisputed primary power in the Americas. With the exception of Cuba, rigorously contained after 1963, and permissive of the democratization wave of the 1980s, this system operated until left-wing nationalist–populist regimes after 2000 carved out a greater degree of autonomy for Latin America. In contrast to its long history in the Americas, the United States imperium in Western Europe was created in a burst of multilateral military, economic, and political initiatives in the late 1940s. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Marshall Plan were creative diplomatic innovations aimed at securing Western Europe against the threat of Soviet occupation and kick-starting the reconstruction of a continent. Although it did not have as much direct inf luence in Europe as in the Americas, the United States consistently sought to exclude Communist parties and movements from ascending to or sharing domestic power. For the next two generations, these policies provided the foundations for a close trans-Atlantic relationship. And they were indispensable for Europe’s regional integration. In East Asia, America’s imperium was founded on a hub-and-spokes system of bilateral alliances.25 With China the undisputed leader on the mainland, America’s imperium ruled over much of maritime East and Southeast Asia ( Japan, South Korea, Republic of China on Taiwan, and the Philippines). It was fortified by both bilateral security treaties concluded between 1946 and 1953 and economic ties that grew closer and more complementary with the passing of time. Matching the creativity of United States diplomacy in Europe after 1945, American political and economic elites offered bilateral security guarantees and access to the vast American market as a substitute for traditional Chinese markets closed by the Cold War. Institutional diversity not homogeneity thus was a hallmark of the imperium. Informal and formal modes of intervention and weak regional institutions in the Americas, deep multilateral arrangements in Europe and across the Atlantic, and bilateral security arrangements and preferential access to the enormous American market illustrate the diversity in institutions, policies, and practices that marked the international liberal order that evolved within the American imperium. A brief review of the history of American foreign policy puts some meat on this skeletal argument and weakens the impulse of painting the past only in rosy colors. As early as the 1960s, for example, divergence in institutions, policies, and practices made Cuba, France, and Vietnam centers of opposition to the American-led, liberal international order in the Americas, Europe, and Southeast Asia. The Cuban and French challenges were eventually contained. Not so Vietnam. It caused the first great disruption in the liberal international order that had f lourished in America’s regionalized imperium. At appalling human cost, the

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Nixon-Kissinger policy of “Vietnamization” sought to create a “decent interval” between United States disengagement and South Vietnam’s collapse. Even before its end, the Vietnam War had shaken the international liberal order. Funded by inf lation, the Vietnam War caused the collapse of fixed exchange rates in 1971. United States policy substituted rule by markets for rule by states, a choice it would repeat in subsequent decades. In oil markets, the United States’ passivity contributed greatly to the shifting balance of power away from the Seven Sisters to Middle Eastern, oil producing states. The role of the United States Federal Reserve and American corporations eroded significantly. Global financial markets and Saudi Arabia became more important players.26 Furthermore, these adverse developments were reinforced by a decade of stagf lation. The Fordist model of mass production and consumption that had powered the American and European economies since the end of the Second World War was running out of steam. These disruptions had profound domestic consequences. Anti-war populism and racial conservatism fractured the New Deal coalition of the Democratic Party and introduced a panoply of new age social movements and politics. As Joe Merton argues, in America the politics of white ethnicity was a complex process in an era marked by political f luidity.27 New forms of ethnic identities and affiliations were shaped and reshaped, while traditional norms were upended. Abroad, Latin America witnessed the spread of military dictatorship, Europe the anti-Vietnam, and anti-nuclear and peace movements. It was no accident that in the trans-Atlantic world there existed a sense of a profound crisis of democracy.28 Since they were governed by authoritarian or one-party-dominant regimes, East and Southeast Asia, supported by high economic growth, experienced their disruptions a decade later. The 1970s were not only a decade of conservative backlash but also a decade of volatile experimentation leading to the refashioning of American power along many dimensions that policy makers in Washington, preoccupied with the national malaise, could neither detect nor direct.29 In California, the seeds of a different world were emerging in that bleak decade: container shipping in the Port of Long Beach, evangelicals in Orange County, gay advocacy movements in San Francisco, a now ubiquitous adult entertainment industry in the San Fernando Valley, the emergence of the California wine industry as a serious competitor for France, Star Wars as the most profitable movie of all times, the sale of the first Apple computer and, most importantly, the rise of Silicon Valley. Unnoticed, the future was then being made in California “where deep and often obscure historical forces were working to transform the United States economy, society, technological base, and culture in ways that would have profound effects on American power and world history”.30 Although it fell short of the “revolution” its supporters sought to bring about, the Reagan Presidency ushered in a restoration of the liberal international order. At home, President Reagan reunited his party’s elite and grass roots around a classical liberal agenda. The state was not the solution but the

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cause of all problems. And he followed Republican orthodoxy – deregulation, military spending, and tax cuts – to jumpstart the economy and modernize the military at home. Abroad, President Reagan began to restore the fractured American imperium by reasserting military primacy. The invasion of Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989), airstrikes in Libya (1985), and naval operations protecting the shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf (1987–1988) helped the American public overcome its war weariness after the bloody loss of Vietnam. The victorious Gulf War of 1991 was a culmination of the Reagan restoration. It paved the way for an increasing militarization of American foreign policy in the next 25 years. In one policy domain, however, Reagan was a revolutionary who reset the course of American and global politics. He was the first conservative American president to make the running up of the national debt a central part of a growth strategy financed by the foreign holders of depreciating dollar assets. Until the mid-1960s, the imperium had granted preferential access to American markets and given economic aid in support of its political objectives. Under the regime of f lexible exchange rates, since the 1980s the United States extracted instead large financial sums from holders of dollar assets as the dollar’s value declined against the Yen and the Deutschmark. Reagan’s enduring success was to convince American Conservatives to embrace a weak dollar, accept growing domestic debt, and dramatically increase current account and balance of payment deficits. This change in policy quickly became part of a new conservative orthodoxy. The new strategy was a brilliant partisan move. Cutting taxes to favor Republican constituencies created structural budget deficits and thus constrained the spending programs of the Democratic Party when it was holding the reins of power. Thus, Democrats became the party of fiscal responsibility. Internationally, in an era of financial deregulation and globalization, a domestic savings gap of about 2% of gross domestic product was filled by the inf lux of foreign capital invested in Treasury notes and the stock market. Starting with the 1985 Plaza Accord, the United States imposed a “depreciation tax” on the holders of dollar assets – Saudi Arabia in the 1970s and 1980s, Japan in the 1980s and 1990s, and China in the 2000s. In short, the Reagan restoration initiated three decades of foreign savings financing America’s consumption-led and debt-induced growth strategy. The second great disruption of the liberal international order occurred after 9/11. The United States turned from a status quo to a revisionist power. Now almost forgotten, this shift occasioned a furious debate among Neoconservatives, Realists, and Liberals.31 The United States defeated the Taliban regime in Afghanistan which had sheltered Al Qaeda. It adopted an aggressive, preventive war doctrine to defend itself against future attacks by terrorist groups or states seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. The break with the liberal international order was almost total. Unilateralism replaced multilateralism as the United States decided on attacking Iraq on faulty intelligence, without United Nations support, and against the opposition of most of its allies and the rest of the international community. Diplomatically isolated, politically unprepared, and

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militarily enmeshed in a quagmire war, the Bush Presidency pivoted from a neoconservative, nationalist policy before 2004 to a realist–liberal policy of democratic enlargement thereafter, without garnering much international support. With different types of anti-Americanism spreading, the United States became a lonely superpower.32 The Bush Presidency also brought about another huge disruption in the first decade of the new millennium. Financial deregulation, two deficit-inducing tax cuts and a persistent low interest rate policy of the Federal Reserve created a speculative boom. In 2008, the subprime mortgage crisis created the greatest meltdown of financial markets since 1929. Measured in trillions of dollars and millions of jobs lost, it made the Federal Reserve and the federal government bailout Wall Street – banks, insurance companies, and large corporations – while doing very little to assist Main Street. It took a decade for the effects of the Great Recession to wear off. After the Asian financial crisis of 1997, Southeast and East Asia had begun to self-insure and thus avoided the aftershocks of 2008. Not so Europe. Its searing sovereign debt crisis started in 2010 with effects that are still being felt today, especially in southern Europe. In short, the international liberal order suffered greatly between 2001 and 2008. And so did America. President Bush succeeded in deeply dividing a country that had rallied together after 9/11. Split into red and blue political debates raged over issues such as civil liberties, abortion, religion, gay rights, the Second Amendment, freedom of the press, financial deregulation, torture, preventive warfare, and the militarization of foreign policy. The Obama interregnum (2008–2016) restored some of the luster of the liberal international order abroad and promised a new start at home. Obama was “an adventurous moderate at home and a cautious realist overseas”.33 At first preoccupied by reacting to the consequences of the Great Recession, Obama spent his political capital on passing a health reform bill. After the Democrats lost the Congressional election of 2010, the rest of Obama’s Presidency was consumed by a domestic war of attrition with a Republican party that had only one objective: defeating him politically in 2012 and, failing that, battling him over every inch for the remainder of his term. Ruling by executive decree, many of Obama’s policies were reversed during the first year of the Trump administration. More importantly, the electoral coalition that he had created in 2008 and 2012 did not hold together in 2016. Abroad, unlike his Republican predecessor, Obama avoided major disasters. He was a pragmatic realist who lacked a grand strategy, failed in his effort to close Guantanamo, acceded to what turned out to be a disastrous intervention in Libya, and greatly expanded drone strikes to pursue America’s war on terror in the Middle East. Obama had little inf luence on the unraveling of national borders in the Middle East. This generated fissures in and around Pakistan and Afghanistan was helped by Saudi Arabia’s persistent funding of radical Islamist groups (such as Al Qaeda and ISIS), and created a growing split between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia that fueled brutal, destabilizing proxy wars in Syria

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and Yemen. Obama’s Russian “reset” and Asian “pivot” were tropes rather than sustained policy initiatives. His caution kept America out of war. His liberal values and support of multilateralism were reassuring, especially to his domestic base and the European public. The foundation of the liberal international order survived. But Obama’s personal charisma did not re-energize it. Donald Trump’s 2016 election has initiated a third cycle of disruption of the international liberal order. His election campaign foreshadowed Trump’s actions once he took office. NATO allies are confronted with threatening language and inconsistent policies. Trade deals have been canceled (the Transpacific Partnership) or are being renegotiated (the North American Free Trade Agreement). Tariffs are raised unilaterally. Mideast diplomacy has tilted dramatically in favor of Israel and Saudi Arabia. And the United States is threatening to withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran, and is confronting vexing choices in dealing with the nuclear threat posed by North Korea. Once again, as between 2001 and 2008, the United States champions unilateralism and short-term gain is often isolated in the United Nations, and stands alone in many parts of a world awash once again in anti-Americanisms. For Trump, unpredictable disruption is both a psychological necessity and a strategic imperative. His Presidency has had a close resemblance to his reality TV show. On questions of foreign policy, ever eager to insult and to be f lattered, the president has shown profound ignorance. For the most part, and reportedly often unwillingly, he relied on the advice of seasoned military and corporate leaders. This changed in the spring of 2018. In response to what the United States charges to be widespread infringements of the intellectual property rights of American corporations, Trump followed his long-standing protectionist instincts and imposed stiff tariffs unilaterally on steel and aluminum citing national security. While the tariffs were supposedly aimed at China which is dumping steel on international, but not on the United States, markets, they hit Japan, the European Union, Brazil, and other allied countries. This was not an unprecedented action. In response to the dramatic inroads of Japanese corporations in steel, automobiles, and computer chips in the 1970s and 1980s, the United States relied not on old-fashioned tariffs but on novel forms of protection. Japan then was what China is not now, a dependent ally rather than an independent rival. The political repercussions of this unilateral action for the liberal international order are therefore entirely unclear. At the same time, Trump reorganized his foreign policy team, surrounding himself with especially conservative and hawkish advisors at the beginning of crucial negotiations with North Korea and a looming decision about walking away from the Iran nuclear agreement. Fifteen years earlier, when the stakes were lower and the United States’ power was greater, an inexperienced President Bush started the Iraq war following the advice of similarly hawkish and conservative advisors. Although Trump’s past political instincts have been non-interventionist, his tempestuousness, bluster, and strategy of signaling toughness before the start of negotiations could easily lead him away from “the art of the deal” to the messiness of war.

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The conjoining of these two crises in the hands of a uniquely inexperienced and unfit president arguably poses the greatest crisis the liberal international order has seen since the end of the Second World War. In short, for a third time since 1945, American politics and policy are undermining the international liberal order. Just as crisis is the new normal in deregulated financial markets, so are repeated and ongoing fractures in the liberal international order that are caused by American foreign policy.

Conclusion At the 2018 annual meeting of the International Studies Association, a wellattended session on “The Future of Liberal International Order”, perhaps unintentionally, skirted the question this chapter has addressed: should we think of that order in the singular or plural? The conventional wisdom holds that there is no such thing as a singular, liberal international order. One of its leading theorists and defenders, for example, distinguishes between three different versions that are updated like different computer programs.34 Barma, Ratner, and Weber call the liberal international order “mythical” and argue that “today we have an international political landscape that is neither orderly nor liberal”.35 Randall Schweller insists that what looks like a liberal international order is a realist balance-of-power world.36 Robert Lieberman concurs when he writes that “any political moment or episode is situated within a variety of ordered institutional and ideological patterns”.37 Alastair Johnston points to the complexities of defining the concept of order and establishes empirically that there is “less to the liberal international order than many believe”, and that there exists a “high degree of contestation within and across orders” that define contemporary world politics.38 Choosing a different line of argument, this paper concurs with the conventional wisdom. Liberal orders have existed in the past and continue to exist today in plural forms. One reason is the hollowness of liberalism’s core purpose. In little more than a century, liberalism has traded in imperialist racism for complex sovereignty and contested multi-culturalism. A second reason for the plurality of liberal orders lies in America’s regionalized imperium. Its institutional diversity is evident in the co-existence and co-evolution of multilateral, bilateral, and unilateral political arrangements and practices. Finally, since 1945 the liberal international order has repeatedly passed through costly and disorienting decades of fracture caused by American foreign policy: in the 1970s, the early 2000s, and after the 2016 election. This paper’s argument, however, also cuts against the grain of many liberal and realist writings on world politics. They often emphasize singularity over plurality and homogeneity over heterogeneity. For many liberals and realists, world politics is shaped by growing convergence on efficient markets and effective states. Competition eliminates inefficient or ineffective arrangements and actors. Convergence and homogeneity thus stabilize international orders.

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This paper argues differently. Diversity and heterogeneity in 19th century and 20th century Anglo-America, as well as in America’s regional imperium since 1945, have co-existed and have co-evolved. This conclusion concurs with the central findings of a number of recent macro-historical studies: market-liberalization and state-rationalization are not uniform prerequisites for international order. 39 Diversity alerts us to the fact that political practice operates in layered spaces. One is the space of reason, of prediction, forecasting, and scenarios. Another is a space outside of the space of reason. It also merits attention. Understanding the constitution of that larger space requires something different than the reconstruction and criticism of explicit or tacit prognoses and justifications. It requires “thinking the unthinkable or the crazy”.40 Randall Schweller grounds that craziness in the laws of physics of closed systems.41 Bereft of the bracing effect and regenerative force of now unthinkable hegemonic, nuclear war, international politics is moving rapidly to entropy. This characterization recalls an old description of the late Habsburg empire: every one of the empire’s many parts moved, but not the imperial machinery itself. Cycling between sclerosis and chaos prevents energy to achieve anything useful. The same idea has cropped up in discussions of American strategy. Moving like a pendulum, since the beginning of the republic, politically charged debates about United States grand strategy have persisted.42 But the 21st century may have ended grand strategy as a useful concept.43 How then should we think about policy choices at this juncture of history? Machiavelli and Hobbes point us in different directions: Machiavelli toward firemen, Hobbes toward policemen.44 Firemen contain and control disasters; policemen create and maintain order. Firemen are skeptics; they react to events in the present as they unfold, cultivating skills that make them adapt to unpredicted and unpredictable events. Policemen are optimists; they are confident that crazy events can be mastered through reasoned analysis and force. We give such events different names. “Unknown unknowns”, “low-probability highimpact events”, “black swans”, “ruptures”, “shocks”, or “tipping points” are the language we rely on. These terms feed growing skepticism over prediction, forecasts, and scenarios as tools for managing and manipulating our political future. Instead, today we value resilience, the ability to adapt to the future rather than to know it.45 This still leaves room for hope and a specific international order, liberal and otherwise, that may survive our current predicaments. It is not the optimistic liberalism of Kant or of today’s neo-liberals with their plans of a knowable future. It is the skeptical and humanist liberalism of Camus who wrote: “He who dedicates himself to … history dedicates himself to nothing, and, in turn, is nothing. But he who dedicates himself to the duration of his life, to the house he builds, to the dignity of mankind, dedicates himself to the earth … and sustains the world again and again”.46 The future of this international order, liberal and otherwise, may not be knowable; but it is resilient.

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Notes 1 Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017. 2 Trump’s domestic policy agenda is addressing inequality with an economic growth strategy. A temporary tax cut for individuals and a permanent one for corporations, Republicans hope, will generate effects that will sharply increase corporate profits and living standards for average Americans in the short term and lessen government debt in the long term. 3 Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, America Abroad: The United States’ Global Role in the 21st Century, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 4 The realist core of the Trump foreign policy aligns with deep engagement; fostering economic globalization and sustaining institutionalized cooperation does not. The nationalist bent and short-term transactional approach of Trump’s foreign policy avoids capacious conceptions of self-interest and disregards the beneficial, long-term effects of institutional control. See Elliott Abrams, “Trump the Traditionalist: A Surprisingly Standard Foreign Policy”, Foreign Affairs, July 2017, and Richard Haass, “Where to Go from Here”, Foreign Affairs, July 2017. 5 Thomas Oatley focuses on the links between liberal political economy and realist national security in the waxing and waning of the liberal international order during the last half century. See Thomas Oatley, A Political Economy of American Hegemony: Buildups, Booms and Busts, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 6 Martin Wolf, “Davos 2018: The Liberal International Order Is Sick”, The Financial Times, January 23, 2018, accessed February 3, 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/ c45acec8-fd35-11e7-9b32-d7d59aace167; Ikenberry, “The End of Liberal”. 7 Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., Anglo America and Its Discontents: Civilizational Identities beyond West and East, New York: Routledge, 2012. 8 Tyler Stovall and Georges van den Abbeele, eds., French Civilization and Its Discontent: Nationalism, Colonialism, Race, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003; Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall, eds., The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. 9 It finds its American analogue in the periodic outbursts of anti-French sentiment, as in the renaming of French fries into freedom fries on the United States Congress’ cafeteria menu at the height of the 2003 crisis over the American invasion of Iraq. See Peter J. Katzenstein and Robert O. Keohane, Anti-Americanisms in World Politics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. 10 Arthur Whitaker, The Western Hemisphere Idea: Its Rise and Decline, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1954; Arturo Santa-Cruz, International Election Monitoring, Sovereignty, and the Western Hemisphere Idea: The Emergence of an International Norm, New York: Routledge, 2005, pp. 6–8, 17–18, 34–42. 11 Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People, New York: W.W. Norton, 2010, pp. 40–42. 12 Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality, Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 4, 5, 9. 13 Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, New York: Doubleday, 2008. 14 Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time, New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. 15 Lauren Basson, White Enough to Be American? Race Mixing, Indigenous People, and the Boundaries of State and Nation, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008; Stephen Skowronek, “The Reassociation of Ideas and Purposes: Racism, Liberalism, and the American Political Tradition”, American Political Science Review 100, No. 3, 2006; Desmond King and Rogers Smith, “Racial Orders in American Political Development”, American Political Science Review 99, No. 1, February 2005.

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16 Thomas McCarthy, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development, Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 11–13. 17 Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, eds., Security Communities, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 18 Katzenstein, Anglo America; Audie Klotz, “The Imperial Self: A Perspective on Anglo-America from South Africa, India, and Ireland”, in Anglo America and Its Discontents: Civilizational Identities beyond West and East, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein, New York: Routledge, 2012. 19 Robert Vitalis, White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015; Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Race in the Modern World”, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2015. 20 Mark Philip Bradley, The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 21 Charles Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Beyond human rights there exists a broad array of transnational social and political movements forging links across state borders and affecting the politics of a growing number of policies. Epistemic communities, networks of professionals and linked advocacy groups are also consequential in transmitting, filtering, interpreting, analyzing, framing, and packaging information for clients and governments. In so doing they contribute to the creation of standards of best practice. See Nicole Weygandt, “Flight of the Bumblebees: The Role of Private Sector Advisors in Petroleum Policy Diffusion”, unpublished manuscript, Princeton University, Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, Princeton, NJ, 2017; Leonard Seabrooke and Lasse Folke Henriksen, eds., Professional Networks in Transnational Governance, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017; and Anne-Marie Slaughter, The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. 22 The language of modernization and economic development, however, has provided political space for the articulation of views that have an unbroken lineage to older, race-based arguments. 23 Jerry Muller, “Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism”, Foreign Affairs 87, No. 2, 2008; Abby Ferber and Michael Kimmel, “Reading Right: The Western Tradition in White Supremacist Discourse”, Sociological Focus33, No. 2, 2000. 24 Charles Kupchan, No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012; G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011; Henry Nau, Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013; Herfried Münkler, Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States, New York: Polity, 2007; Daniel Deudney, Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007; Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, New York: Henry Holt, 2004; John Agnew, Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005; James Kurth, “Fracturing at the Core of the Global Order: The Death of the Seventy-Year American Empire”, paper presented at the panel on Core Fractures and International Relations Conference of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Edinburgh, Scotland, October 21, 2017; Salvador Santino Regilme, Jr. and James Parisot, eds., American Hegemony and the Rise of Emerging Powers: Cooperation or Conflict, New York: Routledge, 2018; Fredrik Söderbaum, Rethinking Regionalism, New York: Palgrave, 2016; Peter J. Katzenstein, A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in the American Imperium, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 25 Christopher Hemmer and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Why Is There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity, Regionalism, and the Origins of Multilateralism”, International Organization 56, No. 3, Summer 2002.

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26 David Spiro, The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. 27 Joe Merton, “Rethinking the Politics of White Ethnicity in 1970s America”, The Historical Journal 55, No. 3, 2012. 28 Michel Crozier, Samuel Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission, Triangle Papers, New York: New York University Press, 1975. 29 Gavin, “Thinking Historically”, p. 7. 30 Ibid. 31 Francis Fukuyama, “The Neoconservative Moment”, The National Interest, Summer 2004; Charles Krauthammer, “In Defense of Democratic Realism”, The National Interest, Fall 2004; G. John Ikenberry and Charles Kupchan, “Liberal Realism: The Foundations of a Democratic Foreign Policy”, The National Interest, Fall 2004; Robert Kagan, “Cowboy Nation: Against the Myth of American Innocence”, The New Republic, October 23, 2006; Paul Starr, “War and Liberalism”, The New Republic, March 5, 2007. 32 Katzenstein and Keohane, Anti-Americanisms in World Politics. 33 Joe Klein, “Yes He Did: Judging Obama’s Legacy,” Foreign Affairs, July 2017. 34 G. John Ikenberry, “Liberal Internationalism 3.0: America and the Dilemmas of Liberal World Order”, Perspectives on Politics 7, No. 1, 2009. 35 Naazneen Barma, Ely Ratner, and Steven Weber, “The Mythical Liberal Order”, The National Interest, March/April 2013, p. 56. 36 Randall Schweller, “The Problem of International Order Revisited: A Review Essay”, International Security 26, No. 1, 2001. 37 Robert Lieberman, “Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order: Explaining Political Change”, American Political Science Review 96, No. 4, 2002, p. 701. 38 Johnston, Alastair Iain. “Is Chinese Nationalism Rising? Evidence from Beijing” International Security 41(3) (Winter 2016/2017), p. 32. 39 Andrew Phillips and J.C. Sharman, International Order in Diversity: War and Rule in the Indian Ocean, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015; Sandra Halperin and Ronen Palan, Legacies of Empire: Imperial Roots of the Contemporary Global Order, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015; Tim Dunne and Christian Reus-Smit, The Globalization of International Society, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 40 Patchen Markell, “Power, Attention and the Tasks of Critical Theory”, unpublished manuscript, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago, Chicago, May 2017, p. 3. 41 Schweller, Maxwell’s Demon. 42 Christopher Hemmer, American Pendulum: Recurring Debates in U.S. Grand Strategy, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. 43 Simon Reich and Peter Dombrowski, The End of Grand Strategy: US Maritime Operations in the 21st Century, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. The precise formulation of these arguments is open to debate. For example, there are good reasons to believe that world politics are complex not complicated, open and interconnected, not closed and isolated. See Robert Axelrod and Michael Cohen, Harnessing Complexity: Organizational Implications of a Scientific Frontier, New York: The Free Press, 1999, and Richard Bookstaber, The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017. There is a serious argument to ground the analysis of world politics not in Newtonian but quantum physics. See Alexander Wendt, Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Finally, unpredictable and unexpected protean power dynamics can destabilize predictable control power at all times and in all places. See Peter J. Katzenstein and Lucia Seybert, eds., Protean Power: Exploring the Unexpected and Unpredictable in World Politics, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Whatever the precise formulation, we need to cultivate our capacity to acknowledge and apprehend the craziness of the unexpected. 44 Dienstag, “Pessimistic Realism”, pp. 171–172.

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45 Myriam Dunn Cavelty, “The Role and Impact of Future Methodologies in Public Policy-Making”, paper presented at the workshop on Potentials and Pitfalls on Predicting Politics, Zurich, August 2016, pp. 1, 11. 46 Albert Camus, The Rebel, New York: Vintage Books, 1991, pp. 301–302, quoted in Dienstag, “Pessimistic Realism”, p. 172.

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Halperin, Sandra, and Ronen Palan. Legacies of Empire: Imperial Roots of the Contemporary Global Order. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Hemmer, Christopher. American Pendulum: Recurring Debates in U.S. Grand Strategy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. Hemmer, Christopher, and Peter J. Katzenstein. “Why Is There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity, Regionalism, and the Origins of Multilateralism.” International Organization 56(3), Summer 2002, pp. 575–607. Ikenberry, G. John. “Liberal Internationalism 3.0: America and the Dilemmas of Liberal World Order.” Perspectives on Politics 7(1), 2009, pp. 71–87. Ikenberry, G. John. Liberal: Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. Ikenberry, G. John, and Charles Kupchan. “Liberal Realism: The Foundations of a Democratic Foreign Policy.” The National Interest, Fall 2004, pp. 38–49. Johnston, Alastair Iain. “Is Chinese Nationalism Rising? Evidence from Beijing.” International Security 41(3), Winter 2016/2017, pp. 7–43. Johnson, Chalmers. The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. New York: Henry Holt, 2004. Kagan, Robert. “Cowboy Nation: Against the Myth of American Innocence.” The New Republic, October 23, 2006, pp. 20–23. Katzenstein, Peter J. A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in the American Imperium. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. Katzenstein, Peter J., ed. Anglo America and Its Discontents: Civilizational Identities Beyond West and East. New York: Routledge, 2012. Katzenstein, Peter J., and Robert O. Keohane. Anti-Americanisms in World Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. Katzenstein, Peter J., and Lucia Seybert, eds. Protean Power: Exploring the Unexpected and Unpredictable in World Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Katznelson, Ira. Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. King, Desmond, and Rogers Smith. “Racial Orders in American Political Development.” American Political Science Review 99(1), February 2005, pp. 75–92. Klein, Joe. “Yes He Did: Judging Obama’s Legacy.” Foreign Affairs, July 2017, pp. 134–140. Klotz, Audie. “The Imperial Self: A Perspective on Anglo-America from South Africa, India, and Ireland.” In: Anglo America and Its Discontents: Civilizational Identities beyond West and East, edited by Peter J. Katzenstein. New York: Routledge, pp. 81–104, 2012. Krauthammer, Charles. “In Defense of Democratic Realism.” The National Interest, Fall 2004, pp. 15–25. Kupchan, Charles. No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Kurth, James. “Fracturing at the Core of the Global Order: The Death of the SeventyYear American Empire.” Paper presented at the Panel on ‘Core Fractures and International Relations’, Conference of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Edinburgh, Scotland, October 21, 2017. Lake, Marilyn, and Henry Reynolds. Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

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Lieberman, Robert. “Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order: Explaining Political Change.” American Political Science Review 96(4), 2002, pp. 697–712. Luce, Edward. The Retreat of Western Liberalism. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017. Markell, Patchen. “Power, Attention and the Tasks of Critical Theory.” Unpublished manuscript. Chicago, IL: Department of Political Science, University of Chicago, May 2017. McCarthy, Thomas. Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Merton, Joe. “Rethinking the Politics of White Ethnicity in 1970s America.” The Historical Journal 55(3), 2012, pp. 731–756. Muller, Jerry. “Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism.” Foreign Affairs 87(2), 2008, pp. 18–35. Münkler, Herfried. Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States. New York: Polity, 2007. Nau, Henry. Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk. Truman, and Reagan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. Oatley, Thomas. A Political Economy of American Hegemony: Buildups, Booms and Busts. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Painter, Nell Irvin. The History of White People. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Peabody, Sue, and Tyler Stovall, eds. The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Phillips, Andrew, and J.C. Sharman. International Order in Diversity: War and Rule in the Indian Ocean. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Regilme, Salvador Santino, Jr., and James Parisot, eds. American Hegemony and the Rise of Emerging Powers: Cooperation or Conflict. New York: Routledge, 2018. Reich, Simon, and Peter Dombrowski. The End of Grand Strategy: US Maritime Operations in the 21st Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. Santa-Cruz, Arturo. International Election Monitoring, Sovereignty, and the Western Hemisphere Idea: The Emergence of an International Norm. New York: Routledge, 2005. Schweller, Randall. “The Problem of International Order Revisited: A Review Essay.” International Secuirty 26(1), 2001, pp. 161–186. Seabrooke, Leonard, and Lasse Folke Henriksen, eds. Professional Networks in Transnational Governance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Skowronek, Stephen. “The Reassociation of Ideas and Purposes: Racism, Liberalism, and the American Political Tradition.” American Political Science Review 100(3), 2006, pp. 385–401. Slaughter, Anne-Marie. The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. Söderbaum, Fredrik. Rethinking Regionalism. New York: Palgrave, 2016. Spiro, David. The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Starr, Paul. “War and Liberalism.” The New Republic, March 5, 2007, pp. 21–24. Stovall, Tyler, and Georges van den Abbeele, eds. French Civilization and Its Discontent: Nationalism, Colonialism Race. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. Vitalis, Robert. White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. Wendt, Alexander. Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

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Weygandt, Nicole. “Flight of the Bumblebees: The Role of Private Sector Advisors in Petroleum Policy Diffusion.” Unpublished manuscript. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, 2017. Whitaker, Arthur. The Western Hemisphere Idea: Its Rise and Decline. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1954. Wolf, Martin. “Davos 2018: The Liberal International Order Is Sick.” The Financial Times, January 23, 2018. Accessed February 3, 2018. http://www.ft.com/content/ c45acec8-fd35-11e7-9b32-d7d59aace167.

8 WILL THE LIBERAL INTERNATIONAL ORDER SURVIVE? AN ENGLISH SCHOOL PERSPECTIVE Barry Buzan

Introduction This chapter starts by setting out my general view of the current transition in the world order as the background against which to address the question of whether the liberal international order will survive. Put very brief ly, the prevailing global order for the last two centuries has been largely structured around a small core of states that modernized during the 19th century – the Western powers plus Russia and Japan – and a large periphery of states that became relatively poor and weak because they were slower, sometimes much slower, to find ways of adapting their own cultures to modernity. As more and more countries find ways of blending their own cultures with modernity in durable forms, the power gap that separated the original small core from the large periphery is shrinking. The core is expanding as others – China and India most notably – acquire the wealth and power of modernity. The old core-periphery order is now giving way to the “rise of the rest”1 and a more diffuse distribution of wealth, power, and cultural authority. The next section brief ly sets out my understanding of this transformation. The section that follows looks at the case for the ongoing inf luence of the liberal order through this transition to a post-Western world order. And the last section looks at the case for its weakening and marginalization. The conclusions sum up the key arguments and assess the balance between them.

The post-Western global order: deep pluralism My general thinking about the post-Western global order has been unfolding for several years.2 The core idea is that the revolutions of modernity are now spreading rapidly beyond their original 19th century core, and this means that wealth, power, and cultural authority are steadily becoming more diffuse. The first version of modern global international society (GIS) was the highly uneven colonial

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one that emerged during the 19th century centered on a small core of Western states plus Russia and Japan. This first version has subsequently undergone two revisions in which important components of it changed, albeit still within the original framework. To capture the unfolding of GIS through three main phases, or versions, over the last two centuries, I use a periodization scheme developed in earlier works:3 ··

··

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Version 1.0 GIS is the first founding of modern international relations, taking Western-colonial form, dominated by a handful of modern states, and running from the 19th century up to 1945. In this highly centered GIS, sovereignty was divided; political and racial relations were unequal; imperialism and racism were legitimate; a global economy organized along core-periphery lines penetrated everywhere; and the Western powers set a standard of “civilization” that they imposed on all others. Version 1.1 GIS, was the first major revision to this, keeping the basic statecentric form, and the highly centered, core-periphery global economy, but ending colonialism, divided sovereignty, and formal racial inequality. This version ran from 1945 to 2008. It might be called Western-global GIS because it was still dominated economically, and up to a point politically, by a small Western core. Although the term “standard of civilization” was no longer legitimate, the practice continued in the form of standards of human rights, democracy, “good governance”, and conditionality for entry into various international agreements and organizations. Version 1.2 GIS started emerging after 2008, and is still unfolding. After the economic crisis in the West beginning in 2008, and the implosion of the Anglosphere with the 2016 votes for Brexit and Trump, Western dominance increasingly gives way to an increasingly de-centered, diffuse, and deeply pluralist form of GIS in which there are many centers of wealth, power, and cultural authority, both state and non-state. The state-centric political form, and the interdependent global economy both continue, so this does not involve a shift to a version 2.0 GIS. We are still living in a clear relative of the first modern GIS founded during the 19th century, despite there having been some significant changes along the way. Version 1.2 GIS marks the end of the Western ascendancy, and the onset of a more politically, culturally, and economically pluralist world, in which the West no longer defines the economic and cultural core, and liberal democracy no longer defines a hegemonic teleology for GIS. An additional twist is that non-state actors of many kinds play increasingly large roles, and a variety of shared-fate issues such as the global environment, terrorism, disease control, mass migrations, nuclear proliferation, management of the global economy, and internet security loom increasingly large on the international agenda.

The global economic crisis starting in 2008 has brought into question the political sustainability of the neoliberal model of the globalized economy. The instability

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of this model in terms of recurrent financial crises extracts a high economic price, and it is unclear whether the large inequalities it generates are politically manageable within the frame of likely rates of economic growth. Indeed, if extreme economic inequalities become embedded, it is unclear whether global capitalism can remain compatible with mass franchise democracy. At the same time, the Western core has gone into relative decline, both economically and in terms of political leadership. The rise of China and India brings into play great powers that still see themselves as developing countries, carry big postcolonial historical chips on their shoulders, and are so far without a clear vision of what kind of GIS they want other than one in which they have higher status and a bigger say.4 The 2016 votes for Brexit in the United Kingdom, and for Trump in the United States, point to the end of the Anglosphere leadership of the core that has prevailed for two centuries. Version 1.2 GIS will probably retain the economic globalization and interdependence that came into being during the 19th century, not least because the pursuit of wealth and power depends on it, as most graphically demonstrated by the rise of China. Because of that, the emerging GIS will not be a “back to the future” scenario of returning to the premodern world defined by several fairly autonomous cores of civilization. It will be a novel mix of multiple centers of power, significant cultural differences, and high interdependence, not only economic, but also in terms of violence, infrastructure, culture, and environment. In the version 1.2 world, power, wealth, and cultural authority will be more evenly spread, and no state will be able to amass sufficient material resources or ideational legitimacy to play a superpower role. Arguably, the idea that any state, or any single civilizational group of states, has the right to lead GIS will itself become illegitimate. Version 1.2 GIS will be pluralist in a deep sense. It will be a world of great and regional powers playing alongside a wide range of non-state actors (NSAs), some of them also quite powerful. Rising powers, such as China and India, will join older dissidents, such as Russia, in asserting their own cultural and political values, and the West, although it will remain strong and inf luential, will no longer be able, or indeed willing, to set the terms of a liberal standard of “civilization” applicable to all. The revolutions of modernity will have spread decisively beyond the West, Russia, and Japan. This spread will not, however, create a culturally and politically homogenous membership for GIS. The spreading of wealth and power, and the benefits and problems associated with them, will support a substrate of the shared ideas of modernity, including sovereignty, territoriality, nationalism, human equality, development, the market, and scientific progress. But it will also empower a wide range of cultural and political differences. The spreading of modernity, following the logic of uneven and combined development, will continue to generate many different varieties of capitalism, each with its own political and cultural norms.5 There is a real problem about how to label this emergent post-Western order other than by using terms like “post-Western” which only identifies what it isn’t.

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There is perhaps some consensus, at least outside of realist circles, that the classical idea of multipolarity is inadequate to the task. Certainly, there will be several centers of wealth, power, and cultural authority, and thus in a sense version 1.2 GIS will be multipolar. But even just thinking about states, the emerging GIS will not be multipolar as classically understood, because lacking any superpowers or any aspiring to be superpowers, it will not feature a realist type struggle for domination of the whole system. Various labels have already been put forward to capture the novelty and complexity of this rather diverse and de-centered construction: plurilateralism,6 heteropolarity,7 polymorphic globalism,8 no one’s world,9 multinodal,10 multiplex,11 decentered globalism,12 and multi-order world.13 In this chapter I adopt the small, integrated set of simple concepts, derived from the English School, and developed in earlier work, that capture what is now unfolding as version 1.2 GIS: deep pluralism and contested vs. embedded pluralism.14 By deep pluralism I mean a diffuse distribution of power, wealth, and cultural authority set within a strongly interdependent GIS, within which both states and non-state actors play substantial roles. Deep pluralism is an essentially material description of where version 1.2 GIS is taking us whether we like it or not. In addition to a material description, however, we also need social terms to indicate how that material condition is understood and acted upon, and where the scope for agency and policy lies. Contested pluralism means that there is substantial resistance to the material reality of deep pluralism. This might take various forms: states resisting the roles and standing of non-state actors; former superpowers (most obviously the United States) refusing to give up their special rights and privileges; great powers refusing to recognize each other’s standing; and playing against each other as rivals or enemies. Embedded pluralism means that the main players in GIS not only tolerate the material, cultural, ideological, and actor-type differences of deep pluralism, but also respect and even value them as the foundation for coexistence. Another way of seeing this is that embedded pluralism is about the preservation and/or cultivation of the political and cultural differences and distinctness that are the legacy of human history.15 The normative stance of embedded pluralism is thus grounded in a practical ethics conception of the responsible management and maintenance of a culturally and politically diverse GIS.16 Embedded pluralism might also be supported by a degree of intersubjective realization of common interest in dealing with the set of inescapable sharedfate issues discussed above. Before I turn to the argument about whether or not the liberal international order will survive under deep pluralism, I first need to say a few words about what is meant by “liberalism”, which is a famously contested concept.17 To know whether or not liberalism will survive deep pluralism, we need to have a reasonably clear idea of what we mean by it. The first thing to note is that liberalism is not, as some authors imply, a synonym for modernity.18 Although liberalism may have some claim to being the first modern ideology, socialism, communism, fascism, and social democracy all provide alternative pathways for modernity. Modernity is the whole complex of ideational

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and material revolutions – industrial, political, economic, social, legal, and psychological – that f lowered into a global force during the 19th century, remaking most aspects of human society.19 My assumption is that modernity in this sense, unless it wrecks the planet and the human race in some big way, will continue to evolve. Liberalism is one way of interpreting and implementing modernity. It has been competing with other ways since the 19th century, and therefore may, as throughout the 20th century, wax or wane, win or lose, as modernity marches on. Within the competition to understand and practice modernity, liberalism is associated with a range of value-commitments (individual autonomy and equality, meritocracy, pluralism, and universalism), and concept-practices (free markets, self-determination, human rights, representative government, and collective security) that are often conf licting. In general terms, it is oriented around three core ideas: the individual as the primary site for the articulation of normative claims; the market as the primary site of economic exchange; and representative democracy as the primary site of political authority. In its origins, liberalism’s main opponent was dynasticism particularly, and more generally the principle of birthright, as the key to structuring society. This made meritocracy another key liberal principle. It remains such, though now mainly in a quieter way, because both of the difficulty of squaring it with democracy based on the extension of the franchise to the masses, and of the tension created by merit-driven inequality in capitalist economies. In principle, many of these liberal ideas are complementary: liberals favor republican polities in which free markets, sustained through private property regimes, provide the means for maximizing individual autonomy. Indeed, one of the central themes in liberal thought is the notion of the “harmony of interests” – the idea that the world is, potentially, orderable (through relations of free market exchange and representative governance) in ways that serve the interests of all. In practice, alas, the relationships among these principles are often deeply contested. Market logic and individualism do not always line up in harmony, and neither does democracy and meritocracy, or the market and democracy. Nonetheless, it is this package of ideas that identifies liberalism, contradictions and all. Because of its emphasis on markets, it is tempting to identify liberalism with capitalism. But liberalism is not a synonym for capitalism either. Here one needs to disaggregate the liberal package. Capitalism makes sense as economic liberalism, but the classical liberal assumption that individualism, market, and democracy must necessarily operate together is hotly contested. In the early days of liberalism, meritocracy was much more important than universal franchise democracy, and liberalism could and did support imperialism as well as oppose it. More recently, it is clearly the project of the Chinese Communist Party to prove that one can have capitalism without democracy.20 There are now many varieties of capitalism that allow leeway to the market, but not to either democracy or individualism.21 Taking all of the above into account, it suggests that the liberal order may indeed be in some trouble. The states and peoples of the Anglosphere have been

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its principle promoters and supporters for the past two centuries, and they are getting relatively weaker within GIS. Not only that, but the votes for Brexit and Trump suggest that the neoliberal form of capitalism is in crisis even in its heartlands, as its legitimacy is undermined by pressures around inequality, migration, globalization, and the looming crisis over automation reducing employment prospects. China, and to a lesser extent Russia, Turkey, and some others, pose the challenge of illiberal capitalism.

Yes Given that the West is in relative decline, the main case that the liberal international order will in some important senses survive rests on the durability of the liberal values and practices embedded in GIS during the period of Western dominance. This is an argument about the ideational and institutional legacy left by the period of Western dominance, and that legacy is likely to last long into the era of deep pluralism. The simplest way to investigate this is through the liberal values built into the set of primary institutions that define GIS, and that look likely to remain robust in the era of deep pluralism. Another question here is whether, given the current tensions between capitalism and democracy, liberalism will survive as a cultural package within the West itself. These two issues are to a considerable extent separable, and given limitations of space, I will concentrate on the former only. Primary institutions are those mainly talked about by the English School. They are deep and relatively durable social practices, evolved more than designed, and shared among the members of international society. Primary institutions are about the shared identity of the members of international society. They are constitutive of both states and international society in that they define not only the basic character of states but also their patterns of legitimate behavior in relation to each other, and the criteria for membership of international society. The classical “Westphalian” set includes sovereignty, territoriality, the balance of power, war, diplomacy, international law, and great power management, to which could be added nationalism, human equality, and more recently, development, the market, and environmental stewardship. But primary institutions can be found across history wherever polities have formed an international society.22 Buzan has recently argued for two additional primary institutions in contemporary world society: collective identity in the interhuman domain, and advocacy in the transnational domain.23 Of course, not all primary institutions are liberal. Some predate liberalism (sovereignty and non-intervention, territoriality, diplomacy, war), and some are not specifically linked to liberal values (balance of power, great power management, environmental stewardship, development). Some key liberal values, although strong within the West and up to a point elsewhere, never became globally established, most notably democracy and the Western version of mainly political and civil human rights. Although strongly promoted by the West, both

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of these remained hotly contested, and failed to reach the consensus criteria of being neither widely (i.e. by lots of states) nor substantially (i.e. by any major power) opposed. Democracy has been consistently opposed by a range of authoritarian and communist states that have always included one or more great powers. Human rights, or at least the political / social aspect that the West generally pushed, has been similarly opposed, though there is some consensus on the more economic, social, cultural, and developmental view of human rights promoted by China and many in the Global South.24 Nevertheless, liberalism can claim three sorts of success in shaping the normative structure of GIS over the past two centuries: first, it has removed some illiberal premodern primary institutions from GIS; second, it has successfully set up some primary institutions that ref lect core liberal values; and third, it has modified the meaning and practices of some non-liberal institutions to ref lect liberal values. From the 19th century onwards, liberalism has steadily eroded, defeated, and replaced several illiberal primary institutions that used to be prominent elements of GIS. During the 19th century, liberalism displaced the legitimacy of dynasticism as the basic source of state legitimacy and replaced it with nationalism and popular sovereignty. The struggle against mercantilism went on throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and is not wholly settled yet. But by 1989, the idea of global market capitalism had become broadly dominant. Liberalism had some role in the de-legitimation of slavery during the 18th and 19th centuries. But it was much slower to come around to replacing the broader institution of human inequality (which underpinned not only slavery, but also race and gender discrimination, and more broadly, imperialism), which did not happen until after the Second World War. Liberal values have been part of the secular thrust of modernity that has opposed the role of religion in politics, both domestic and global. This, however, is an ongoing struggle, and liberalism is not the only secular, modernist ideology that opposes religion by promoting secular values. In addition, liberalism has succeeded in installing three of its core values as primary institutions of contemporary GIS: human equality, the market (aka capitalism), and the idea that civil society should have a role in global governance. As already mentioned, after 1945, human equality replaced racism and human inequality. In the post-imperial world, this primary institution enjoys near universal support because of the big role that racism played in version 1.0 GIR, and anti-racism and anti-colonialism in versions 1.1 and 1.2. Progress on gender equality has proved much more difficult. In part, this is because until the 20th century, gender inequality was a strong feature of domestic life and politics in nearly all “civilized” societies, and therefore did not play into relations between states and societies in the highly conspicuous way that racism did. The widespread acceptance of the market as the best way to organize economies, both domestically and globally, was another signal victory for a purely liberal value becoming a primary institution of GIS. This was a long struggle initially led by Britain, and then by the United States, and suffered many ups and

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downs through the 19th and 20th centuries. The global market generates many problems: periodic financial and trade crises; pressures on national cultures and politics; inequality within and between states; structural disadvantages for late developers; and a pressure to change so relentless as to amount to a permanent social and technological revolution that even Mao might envy. Yet despite all of these difficulties, global market capitalism has persistently shown itself to be the fastest and most effective pathway to the widely desired goals of wealth and power. This was true for Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Russia, and Japan, and later for the Tigers, China, and India. The command economy only challenged it brief ly between the 1930s and 1960s, but turned out to be a dead end for both the Soviet Union and China. Ironically, economic liberalism has turned out to be substantially detachable from the rest of the liberal package, and is now embraced by both authoritarians and those who still call themselves communists in China and Vietnam (aka “socialist market economy”). Nevertheless, the commitment to global market capitalism is an inherently liberal value. The third core liberal value now embedded in GIS is the idea that global civil society should have a right of advocacy at the top tables of interstate society.25 Many and varied non-state actors that make it their business to intermediate between normative world society (the array of shared identities ranging from humankind as a whole, though religious and national, to a host of others), and interstate society through social movement activism. The interests of these NSAs range across a wide spectrum: peace, humanitarianism, human rights, religion, science, sport, commerce, labor rights, environmentalism, etc. Such activity can be traced back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Anti-slavery organizations lobbied at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and peace activists were present at The Hague Conferences in the late 19th century. Organized social movement activism rode on the back of the rise of nationalism and popular sovereignty during the 19th century, which legitimized public opinion as part of political discourse and negotiation. International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) proliferated alongside and in interaction with intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) during the 19th and 20th centuries, rising from a few hundred before the First World War, to 25,000 today.26 It has now become an embedded part of the practice of multilateral diplomacy (on which there is more about below) that it is normal for INGOs to play an active role in global negotiations on matters ranging from the global environment, through world trade, development, and health, to arms control and disarmament. The third form of liberal success in changing the normative structure of GIS is that it has successfully modified and used primary institutions that were not intrinsically liberal in themselves, but which could be directed to liberal purposes. This was true for nationalism, development, diplomacy, and international law. Nationalism is not an obvious liberal institution. It both stands independently, and can serve other ideologies as well (e.g. national socialism in both fascist

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and communist forms). The ability of nationalism to find synergies with other ideologies of progress is one explanation for it has been perhaps the most successful new primary institution in finding deep, durable, and nearly universal acceptance.27 As The Economist (December 2017: 60) puts it, nationalism “has embedded itself in global politics more completely and more successfully than any of the Enlightenment’s more celebrated legacies, including Marxism, classical liberalism and even industrial capitalism”. Nationalism linked to the liberal cause in three distinct ways. First, it underpinned popular sovereignty as a way of driving dynasticism out as the principal legitimizing idea for the state. Second, it provided the basis for defining a demos that could be made workable with democratic government. And third, later in the 19th century when liberalism was increasingly challenged by socialism, it provided a powerful unifying force with which to counter Marxian attempts to promote class as the dominant logic of identity politics. Although not only a liberal project, nationalism both shunted aside dynasticism, and changed the meaning of sovereignty and territoriality as the institutions of GIS that constructed the state. It effectively redefined the nature and purpose of the state during the 19th century in a very profound way, albeit one that was in tension with the cosmopolitan instincts of both liberalism and socialism, and that was vulnerable to the extreme parochialism of “scientific” racism. Development is again not exclusive to liberalism. The primary institution of development emerged after 1945 as the post-colonial successor to what had previously been the obligation of colonial powers to try to raise the economic, political, and educational level of their subject peoples so that they could eventually meet the standard of “civilization” and assume self-government. Pursuit of this obligation during the colonial era was, to say the least, very uneven. Yet it was formalized in the League of Nations mandate system, and after decolonization carried on as the obligation of the more advanced, or “developed”, countries to assist in the modernization of the “less developed” or “developing” countries. These rankings are now firmly embedded in the United Nations system. Since closing the development gap has proved much more difficult and slow than anticipated after the Second World War, it remains a durable feature of GIS. Liberal values also drove the development of multilateral diplomacy and IGOs. Some of the early moves in this direction during the 19th century did not have specifically liberal motives. The concert of Europe was substantially driven by conservative monarchies; the Hague conferences were sponsored by the Russian Tsar. But the early IGOs in the decades before the First World War was mainly functional affairs, and functional differentiation might be counted as part of the secular, rationalist, liberal approach to politics. And there is no denying the strong liberal impulses behind the mainly United States-driven sponsorship of both the League of Nations and the United Nations, not to mention the economic institutions of Bretton Woods. It counts as one of the great contributions of the United States to world politics that it made multilateralism and standing IGOs central features of GIS, not only for trying to manage conf lict, but also for

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providing the necessary coordination to deal with collective management problems ranging from the global economy to health. Linked to this was liberal inf luence on international law, which was again not an intrinsically liberal institution of GIS. The functional, secular impulses of liberalism are visible in the shift from natural to positive international law that gathered pace during the 19th century. Positive law was strongly tied to both the rational, national, sovereign states and the functional IGOs that were emerging during the 19th century, providing a more liberal contractual way of doing business. There is no doubt that liberalism has made a wide range of often quite profound changes to GIS over the past two centuries. But it is still a question how durable these changes might be once the liberal powers lose their dominating position within GIS. Quite a few of them do look durable. Most obviously, nationalism, popular sovereignty, human equality, and development all have deep and widespread support that stretches well beyond liberal beliefs. All four are compatible with authoritarianism, and also draw strength from resentments against colonialism and racism that are still very much alive and politically inf luential in much of the non-Western world. Given the strength of these four institutions, it seems highly unlikely that either dynasticism or human inequality will return as institutions of GIS. They also support the shifts to multilateral diplomacy and positive international law, which therefore also look durable. China is very keen on the United Nations system, and has taken initiatives both itself, and with its BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) partners, to found new IGOs. As Stuenkel argues, China and other rising powers are more interested in increasing their status and inf luence within the existing system of IGOs than in tearing that system down and replacing it with something else.28 It looks to be a reasonable bet that the shift from mercantilism to the market will also prove durable. All the main powers are capitalist now, both democratic and authoritarian, and global capitalist at that. There seems little appetite for, or possibility of, autarchic capitalism, either in one country, or in some form of an imperial or regional sphere. The global market does seem to have proved through fierce competition that it is the most effective way to achieve wealth and power. That said, however, there is a lot of room left for how to strike a balance between global markets and degrees of national protection. Those arguments will be ongoing, but probably mainly within a general framework of economic liberalism rather than as an alternative to it. Bigger question marks surround the idea that global civil society actors should have a major voice in global governance. While the number, variety, and inf luence of INGOs have increased dramatically since the 19th century, it remains the case that the INGOs of global civil society are principally based in the West and ref lective of Western values.29 This legacy might therefore be vulnerable to a relative decline in the power and inf luence of liberal states in GIS. Authoritarian states such as China, where the Chinese Communist Party remains paranoid about any form of organized opposition, discourage the development of their own NGOs. Non-Western INGOs are gaining inf luence,30 but whether it’s

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sufficient or not to sustain this legacy in the face of authoritarian opposition remains an open question. Given that capitalism has become widespread, it seems likely that corporations will remain inf luential actors even if more purely social and political INGOs lose ground. Liberalism never won the battles to sideline religion. Nor did it get democracy and the liberal notions of political and civil human rights accepted as global primary institutions of GIS. The relative decline of the liberal core will probably slow or stall any further advance on all of these fronts. Religion seems politically resurgent despite being opposed by both liberals and communists. The struggle between democracy and authoritarianism remains balanced globally, and if the authoritarians can make capitalism work within their political framework, then their position looks entirely sustainable. An interesting question is to what extent progress towards gender equality has been linked to the liberal bandwagon, and will therefore weaken or go into reverse as liberal hegemony wanes.

No As already argued above, the main argument against the survival of the liberal order hinges on the present relative weakening of the Western core as the principal sponsor and driver of the liberal teleology, especially the Anglosphere. This weakening is both material, (economic and military power) and ideational (the increasing authority and legitimacy of illiberal cultures, and the widening rejection of neoliberalism in the core). The diffusion of wealth and power is in principle not contradictory to the liberal order, and has indeed been one of its major aims and claims to legitimacy. But when attached to a diffusion of cultural authority, there is highly likely to be increasing pushback against at least some parts of the liberal agenda, and perhaps a certain differentiation of the GIS into cultural zones. It seems almost inevitable that the hegemony of the liberal teleology in GIS will give way to more pluralist visions of GIS and its future. From the perspective of world order, one of the bleakest parts of the deep pluralism scenario is that the group of great powers that will dominate GIS in the decades ahead will be inward-looking to the point of being autistic. In people, autism is about being overwhelmed by input from the surrounding society, leaving them much more internally referenced than shaped by interactions with others. In states it can be understood as where reaction to external inputs is based much more on the internal processes of the state – its domestic political bargains, party rivalries, pandering to public opinion (whether it be nationalist or isolationist), and suchlike – than on rational, fact-based assessment of and engagement with the other states and societies that constitute international society.31 To some extent, autism in this sense is a normal feature of states. It is built into their political structure that domestic factors generally take first priority, whether because that is necessary for regime survival, or because the government is designed in such a way as to represent its citizens’ views of their interests. But great powers are in part defined by their wider responsibilities to what Watson labeled raison de

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système, defined as “the belief that it pays to make the system work”.32 This stands as a counterpoint to the idea of raison d’etat, which is explicitly central to realism, and implicitly to much Western IR theory and practice. To the extent that states, and especially great powers, have autistic foreign policies, they not only fail to uphold raison de système, but also lose touch with their social environment, and are blind to how their policies and behaviors affect the way that others see and react to them. In such conditions, a cycle of prickly action-overreaction is likely to prevail, and building trust becomes difficult or impossible. Everyone sees only their own interests, concerns and “rightness”, and is blind to the interests, concerns, and “rightness” of others. If this diagnosis of autism turns out to be correct, then we are unlikely to see great powers responsible enough to generate embedded pluralism. Instead, the absence of responsible great powers will lead to a contested pluralist GIS, which is weak and possibly quite fractious. Autism will be strong in the current and near future set of great powers for two reasons. First, the old, advanced industrial great powers (the United States, the European Union, and Japan) are not going to go away, but they are exhausted, weakened both materially and in terms of legitimacy, and are increasingly unable or unwilling to take the lead. No clearer illustration of this could be desired than the surprising 2016 successes in attracting voter support of both the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom, and Trump’s “America first” campaign in the United States. The European Union has weak foreign and security policy institutions anyway, and is too mired in its own local problems of the Euro, Brexit, migration, Turkey, and Russia to have much diplomatic energy or legitimacy left for raison de système. It is barely maintaining raison de région. Japan is preoccupied with recovering its status as a “normal country” and trying to deal with the rapid rise of a China that seems committed to historical hostility against it. The rising great powers (China and India, possibly Brazil) are very keen to claim great power status, and might provide new blood to the great power camp. But they are equally keen not to let go of their formal status as developing countries. They want to assert their own cultures against the long dominance of the West, and some, notably China, are cultivating a nationalism based on historical grievance. China is often seen, especially in the United States, as the main possible challenger to the existing order. Yet despite its recent rhetoric in favor of free trade, its engagement with IGOs, old and new, and its substantial contributions to peacekeeping operations, it is far from clear that China is either able or eager to take on wider leadership responsibilities. Many argue that the “China model” now faces a difficult transition from fast growth based on exports, domestic infrastructure, and housing, to more intensive growth based on domestic consumption, innovation, and efficiency. This transition threatens the Chinese Communist Party in various ways likely to intensify its political and social control over China’s society and economy, and limit its ability to challenge or replace the United States as leader of the global order.33 China’s main foreign policy priority seems to be to consolidate its position in Asia, rather than bidding for global leadership. There

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is some consensus that China’s behavior as a great power is mainly dominated by its own domestic concerns, and not much committed to international norms and shared values.34 Likewise, India has acquired a considerable reputation for being obstructive at global negotiations on trade and the environment. It refuses to compromise in defending the interests of the poor, both its own and in the third world more generally, and appears reluctant to provide global public goods.35 It does not hesitate to jeopardize global agreements, as when in July 2014, India torpedoed at the last minute the ratification of the WTO deal struck at Bali rather than reduce its domestic subsidies for food (The Economist, August 9, 2014). India puts its own development priorities first and refuses to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions while so many of its people need better access to electricity and while its per capital emissions remain low by global standards.36 Narlikar characterizes India as an irresponsible great power, good at creating blocking coalitions to veto global collective goods agreements on agriculture, trade, and the environment, but not at providing alternative ideas itself.37 But in a later work, she sees some signs that India under Modi might be beginning to develop a vision of environmental stewardship rooted in India’s cultural values.38 It did not disrupt the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, and played a constructive as well as a critical role in those negotiations. While they know what they are against, the rising powers seem to have little clear idea about what kind of alternative GIS they want. That combination leads them to give priority to pursuing their own status claims and development. They argue, not unreasonably, that their own development is a big and difficult job for them, and that developing their own big populations is a sufficient contribution to GIS in itself. Because they are still developing countries, they resist being given wider global managerial responsibilities. Russia is not a rising power, and is too weak, too unpopular, too self-centered, and too stuck in an imperial mindset to take a consensual global leadership role. The cycle of prickly actionoverreaction relations characteristic of autistic great powers is already visible in the United States–China, Russia–European Union, United States–Russia, and China–Japan relations. If the likely set of great powers that will dominate GIS in the coming decades are all autistic, then the possibility of deep pluralism taking embedded form shrinks sharply. The liberal powers will be not only relatively weaker, but also less inclined to promote, or perhaps even practice, liberal values themselves. Illiberal cultures will be both relatively stronger and perhaps keen to assert their own cultural values, if not globally, at least regionally.

Conclusions The liberal international order has unquestionably had massive shaping effects on the institutions of GIS. A good case can be made that many of these will endure because they have been internalized even by non-liberals (e.g. nationalism, human equality, development, popular sovereignty, the market). But liberalism’s

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teleological claim to own the future more generally is weakening fast due to internal contradictions and external resentments. If the emerging international order of deep pluralism is dominated by autistic great powers, then the pointer is towards contested rather than embedded deep pluralism. The one glimmer of light in this picture is the possibility that the rising powers will be more concerned with defending their own cultural values on their own turf, rather than with promoting them as another form of universalism. When the West was dominant, it defined liberal values as universal, and tried to impose them on the rest of GIS through various forms of the standard of “civilization”. Liberalism presents a curious Janus face in this respect. It is often understood by its adherents as a tolerant doctrine, open to difference and multiculturalism. Those on the receiving end of it, however, are much more aware of how intolerant liberalism is. Liberalism’s claims to own the future, make it hostile to any values or practices that question its teleology. This divided character of liberalism poses a puzzle for the analysis in this paper. Would embedded liberalism be an instance of liberal values of tolerance for difference, or is contested pluralism the more liberal outcome because of the need for liberals to oppose illiberal values? There is some evidence that China and India are not thinking in this universalist mode. The much-used phrase in Beijing’s diplomacy of “Chinese characteristics” points strongly towards an inward-looking understanding of cultural difference. China wants the right to be itself culturally and politically. In contrast to the United States, which still thinks of itself as the cultural and political model for the rest of humankind, China does not seem to think that the rest of the world can or should become like it. A similar interpretation can be given to India’s promotion of Hindutva. Support for this view can also be found in the fact that many of the rising non-Western powers actually support much of the current, largely liberal, normative order, though with a few hotly contested exceptions such as liberal views of democracy and human rights. What they mainly contest is their status and inf luence within the current GIS.39 This position is also implicit in the literature that tries to portray China as a status quo power.40 If that is the case, then much of the normative legacy of liberalism may be under less threat than it at first appeared to be. One of the big questions for this interpretation is whether Islam will follow more along the United States line of thinking that the world needs to conform to its view, or the Chinese one of wanting a pluralist, multicultural world. At the moment, the Islamic world seems to be profoundly divided on this question, with militants wanting to impose Islam on others, and moderates seeking more to defend their own cultural rights and practices within their sphere. Since Islam does not have a great power, this struggle is being fought out as much in the transnational and interhuman domains as in the interstate one. My argument is that we get deep pluralism whether we like it or not. The choice within that is between contested and embedded deep pluralism. If the newly empowered illiberal cultures take an inward-looking, defensive, parochial view of themselves, then there is some hope for embedded pluralism to develop.

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A continued Western, and particularly American, liberal universalism could easily become the biggest threat to embedded pluralism by denying the necessary respect and tolerance to other cultures. Paradoxically, that most illiberal figure, Donald Trump, showed some signs of understanding this problem. In his generally hatefilled and paranoid speech to the United Nations in September 2017, he also said: We do not expect diverse countries to share the same culture, traditions, or even systems of government. But we do expect all nations to uphold these two core sovereign duties: to respect the interests of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation … Strong, sovereign nations let diverse countries with different values, different cultures and different dreams not just coexist, but work side by side on the basis of mutual respect.41 These excerpts are by no means a clear manifesto for embedded pluralism. There is plenty of wriggle-room in phrases like “to respect the interests of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation”, and later in his talk Trump used this to reassert universalist standards. “Mutual respect” also falls short of the embedded pluralist standard that cultural and political differences should not just be tolerated, but actually valued as both parts of the legacy of human history and as the basis for a cooperative coexistence. But it is, perhaps, a start. Imagine a culturally and politically diverse set of autistic great powers that were culturally and politically defensive; not seeking to impose their own culture and politics on others; and not competing for dominance over GIS – though they might be seeking primacy in their regions. Such a group might just be able to form some kind of diplomatic concert. They would be more culturally diverse than the great powers that formed the concert of Europe during the 19th century, but more tied together by the shared substrate of modernity. If they were not competing with each other either ideologically, or in an attempt to dominate the whole of GIS, and if they were not trying to fend off a liberal or other teleology, they might just be able to agree on collective functional responses to the pressing set of shared-fates in which they are all enmeshed. That in itself would help to sustain those parts of the liberal legacy that looks durably rooted in GIS. This will not be a smooth ride. There are still a lot of status and inf luence issues to be worked out in the restructuring of global IGOs. Yet the ability to agree on a collective responsibility for environmental stewardship at the Paris conference in 2015 is an indicator of what might be possible under embedded pluralism.42 Contested pluralism, and the prickly politics of disrespect and historical memory, might still be the more likely outcome. But it is not the only possibility.

Notes 1 Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World and the Rise of the Rest, London: Penguin, 2009. 2 Barry Buzan, “A World Order Without Superpowers: Decentered Globalism”, International Relations 25, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1–23; Barry Buzan and George Lawson,

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“Capitalism and the Emergent World Order”, International Affairs, 90, No.1, 2014, pp. 71–91. In Chinese in Journal of International Security Studies, 32, No.1, 2014, pp. 78–100; Barry Buzan and George Lawson, The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015; Barry Buzan and Laust Schouenborg, Global International Society: A New Framework for Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, The Making of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of IR at its Centenary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Buzan and Lawson, The Global Transformation; Buzan and Schouenborg, Global International Society. Amrita Narlikar, “India’s Role in Global Governance: A Modi-fication?” International Affairs 93, No. 1, 2017, p. 101. Buzan and Lawson, “Capitalism and the Emergent World Order”. Phil Cerny, “‘Plurilateralism’: Structural Differentiation and Functional Conf lict in the Post-Cold War World Order”. Millennium 22, No. 1, 1993, pp. 27–51. James Der Derian, “The Question of Information Technology”, Millennium 32, N0. 3, 2003 pp. 441–456. Peter J. Katzenstein, “Many Wests and Polymorphic Globalism”. In Anglo-America and its Discontents: Civilization identities beyond West and East, edited by Peter J. Katzenstein, chapter 9. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. Charles A. Kupchan, No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Brantly Womack, “China’s Future in a Multinodal World Order”, Pacific Affairs 87, No. 2, 2014, pp. 265–284. Amitav Acharya, The End of American World Order. Cambridge: Polity, 2014. Buzan, “A World Order Without Superpowers”; Buzan and Lawson, The Global Transformation. Trine Flockhart, “The Coming Multi-order World”, Contemporary Security Policy 37, No.1, 2016, pp. 3–30. Buzan and Schouenborg, Global International Society; and Acharya and Buzan, The Making of Global International Relations. Robert H. Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 23. Robert Jackson, “Martin Wight, International Theory and the Good Life”. Millennium 19, No. 2, 1990, pp. 261–272; Molly Cochran, “The Ethics of the English School”, The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, edited by Christian ReusSmit and Duncan Snidal, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 286–297; John Williams, Ethics, Diversity, and World Politics: Saving Pluralism From Itself?, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. See Buzan and Lawson, The Global Transformation, pp. 102–107. E.g. Daniel Deudney, and John Ikenberry, “The Myth of the Autocratic Revival’, Foreign Affairs, 88, No. 1, 2009, pp. 77–93. Buzan and Lawson, The Global Transformation. Orville Schell and John Delury, Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the TwentyFirst Century, London: Little, Brown, 2013, p. 381; Frank N. Pieke, Knowing China: A Twenty-First Century Guide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, locs, pp. 222, 486–642, 3674–3790. Buzan and Lawson, “Capitalism and the Emergent World Order”. For a full theoretical and historical discussion of primary institutions, see Barry Buzan, From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Barry Buzan, An Introduction to the English School of International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Barry Buzan, “Revisiting World Society”, International Politics 55, No. 1, 2018a, pp. 125–140.

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24 Yongjin Zhang and Barry Buzan, “China and the Global Reach of Human Rights”, China Quarterly (forthcoming). 25 Buzan, “Revisiting World Society”. 26 Peter Willetts, ed., The Conscience of the World: The Influence of Non-Governmental Organisations in the UN System, London: Hurst, 1996; Mark Mazower, Governing the World, London: Allen Lane, 2012; Thomas Davies. NGOs: A New History of Transnational Civil Society, London: Hurst, 2013; Buzan and Lawson, The Global Transformation, pp. 89–91, 93–95. 27 Buzan and Lawson, The Global Transformation, pp. 125. 28 Oliver Stuenkel, Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers are Remaking Global Order, Cambridge: Polity, 2016. 29 Andrew Hurrell, On Global Order: Power, Values and the Constitution of International Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 111–114; Ian Clark, International Legitimacy and World Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 183. 30 Thomas Davies. NGOs: A New History of Transnational Civil Society. London: Hurst, 2013. 31 Dieter Senghaas, “Towards an Analysis of Threat Policy in International Relations”. In German Political Studies, edited by Klaus von Beyme, London: Sage, 1974, pp. 59–103; Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear, Colchester: ECPR Press, 2007 [1991]: pp. 277–281; Edward N. Luttwak, The Rise of China Vs. the Logic of Strategy., Cambridge MA.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012, pp. 13–22. 32 Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society, London: Routledge, 1992, p. 14. 33 Arthur R. Kroeber, China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Minxian Pei, “The Rise and Fall of the China Model”, in Will China’s Rise be Peaceful? Security, Stability and Legitimacy, edited by Asle Toje, New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 163–183; Ruizhuang Zhang, “Despite the ‘New Assertiveness’, China is Not Up for Challenging the Global Order”. In Will China’s Rise be Peaceful? Security, Stability and Legitimacy, edited by Asle Toje, New York, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 231–250. 34 Henry Kissinger, On China, London: Allen Lane, 2011; David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Kindle, pp. 7, 152–155; John W. Garver, China’s Quest: The History of the Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016; Liselotte Ogaard, “Coexistence in China’s Regional and Global Maritime Security Strategies: Revisionism by Defensive Means”. In Will China’s Rise be Peaceful? Security, Stability and Legitimacy, edited by Asle Toje, New York, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 253–275. 35 Amrita Narlikar, “India’s Role in Global Governance: A Modi-fication?” International Affairs 93, No. 1, 2017, pp. 97–99. 36 Scott Moore, “India’s Role in the International Climate Negotiations”. Washington DC: Brookings, 26 November 2014. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/planetpol icy/2014/11/26/indias-role-in-the-international-climate-negotiations/ Accessed 26 December 2017. 37 Amrita Narlikar, “Is India a Responsible Great Power?” Third World Quarterly 32, No. 9, 2011, pp. 1607–1621. 38 Amrita Narlikar, “India’s Role in Global Governance: A Modi-fication?” International Affairs 93, No. 1, 2017. 39 Oliver Stuenkel, Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers are Remaking Global Order. Cambridge: Polity, 2016. 40 Alastair Iain Johnston, “Is China a Status Quo Power?” International Security 27, No. 4, 2003, pp. 5–56; Yaqing Qin, “Nation Identity, Strategic Culture and Security Interests: Three Hypotheses on the Interaction between China and International Society”, SIIS Journal No. 2, 2003. http://irchina.org/en/xueren/china/view.asp?id=863, accessed 4 December 2008); Huiyun Feng, “Is China a Revisionist Power?” Chinese Journal of International Politics 2, No. 3, 2008, pp. 313–334; Zhongqi Pan, “China’s Changing

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Image of and Engagement in World Order”. In Harmonious World and China’s New Foreign Policy edited by Sujian Guo, Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, New York/Lexington: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, pp. 39–63; Barry Buzan, “China’s Rise in English School Perspective”, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 18, No.3, 2018b, pp. 449–476. 41 Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump to the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly”. 2017. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-sta tements/remarks-president-trump-72nd-session-united-nations-general-assembly/ [Accessed 1 January 2018]. 42 Robert Falkner and Barry Buzan. “The Emergence of Environmental Stewardship as a Primary Institution of Global International Society”, European Journal of International Relations DOI: 10.1177/1354066117741948, 2017, pp. 1–25.

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Falkner, Robert, and Barry Buzan. “The Emergence of Environmental Stewardship as a Primary Institution of Global International Society”, European Journal of International Relations, 2017, pp. 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066117741948 Feng, Huiyun. “Is China a Revisionist Power?”, Chinese Journal of International Politics, vol. 2, no. 3, 2008, pp. 313–334. Flockhart, Trine. “The Coming Multi-Order World”, Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 37, no.1, 2016, pp. 3–30. Garver, John W. China’s Quest: The History of the Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Hurrell, Andrew. On Global Order: Power, Values and the Constitution of International Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Jackson, Robert H. “Martin Wight, International Theory and the Good Life”, Millennium, vol. 19, no. 2, 1990, pp. 261–272. Jackson, Robert H. The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Johnston, Alastair Iain. “Is China a Status Quo Power?” International Security, vol. 27, no. 4, 2003, pp. 5–56. Katzenstein, Peter J. “Many Wests and Polymorphic Globalism”, In Anglo-America and its Discontents: Civilization Identities beyond West and East, edited by Peter J. Katzenstein, Chapter 9. London: Routledge, 2012. Kissinger, Henry. On China. London: Allen Lane, 2011. Kroeber, Arthur R. China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Kupchan, Charles A. No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Luttwak, Edward N. The Rise of China Vs. the Logic of Strategy. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012. Mazower, Mark. Governing the World. London: Allen Lane, 2012. Moore, Scott. “India’s Role in the International Climate Negotiations”, Washington: Brookings, 26 November 2014. http://www.brookings.edu/blog/planetpolicy/ 2014/11/26/i ndias -role -in-t he-internationa l-cli mate-negot iations/, Accessed 26 December 2017. Narlikar, Amrita. “Is India a Responsible Great Power?”, Third World Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 9, 2011, pp. 1607–1621. Narlikar, Amrita. “India’s Role in Global Governance: A Modi-Fication?” International Affairs, vol. 93, no. 1, 2017, pp. 93–111. Ogaard, Liselotte. “Coexistence in China’s Regional and Global Maritime Security Strategies: Revisionism by Defensive Means”, In Will China’s Rise be Peaceful? Security, Stability and Legitimacy, edited by Asle Toje. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 253–275. Pan, Zhongqi. “China’s Changing Image of and Engagement in World Order”, In Harmonious World and China’s New Foreign Policy, edited by Sujian Guo and Jean-Marc F. Blanchard. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, pp. 39–63. Pei, Minxian. “The Rise and Fall of the China Model”, In Will China’s Rise be Peaceful? Security, Stability and Legitimacy, edited by Asle Toje. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, 163–183. Pieke, Frank N. Knowing China: A Twenty-First Century Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

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Qin, Yaqing. “Nation Identity, Strategic Culture and Security Interests: Three Hypotheses on the Interaction Between China and International Society”, SIIS Journal, no. 2, 2003. http://irchina.org/en/xueren/china/view.asp?id=863, Accessed 4 December 2008. Schell, Orville, and John Delury. Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century. London: Little Brown, 2013. Senghaas, Dieter. “Towards an Analysis of Threat Policy in International Relations”, In German Political Studies, edited by Klaus von Beyme. London: SAGE, 1974, pp. 59–103. Shambaugh, David. China Goes Global: The Partial Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Kindle. Stuenkel, Oliver. Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers are Remaking Global Order. Cambridge: Polity, 2016. Trump, Donald. “Remarks by President Trump to the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly”, 2017. http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-stat ements/remarks-president-trump-72nd-session-united-nations-general-assembly/, Accessed 1 January 2018. Watson, Adam. The Evolution of International Society. London: Routledge, 1992. Willetts, Peter, ed. The Conscience of the World: The Influence of Non-Governmental Organisations in the UN System. London: Hurst, 1996. Williams, John. Ethics, Diversity, and World Politics: Saving Pluralism From Itself? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Womack, Brantly. “China’s Future in a Multinodal World Order”, Pacific Affairs, vol. 87, no. 2, 2014, pp. 265–284. Zakaria, Fareed. The Post-American World and the Rise of the Rest. London: Penguin, 2009. Zhang, Ruizhuang. “Despite the ‘New Assertiveness’, China is Not Up for Challenging the Global Order”, In Will China’s Rise be Peaceful? Security, Stability and Legitimacy, edited by Asle Toje. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 231–250. Zhang, Yongjin, and Barry Buzan. “China and the Global Reach of Human Rights”, China Quarterly, vol. 241, 2020, pp. 169–190.

9 A REFORMIST, NOT A REVISIONIST The emerging global role of China* Yun-han Chu

Introduction: will Pax Sinica succeed a receding Pax Americana? With China pursuing a much more ambitious global agenda under Xi Jinping, there has been growing apprehension among Western political leaders about its potential threat to the post-Second World War liberal international order and, in particular, the values and norms that undergird a Western-led world order. The outgoing German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel fired a parting shot during the recent Munich Security Conference by slamming China’s Belt and Road Initiative with the allegation that it stands for “the attempt to establish a comprehensive system for shaping the world in Chinese interest”. He warned that, “it is no longer just about the economy: China is developing a comprehensive system alternative to the Western one, which, unlike our model, is not based on freedom, democracy and individual human rights”.1 French President Macron in his recent address to the United States Congress also issued a similar warning in a more subtle way: “The weakening of those institutions [including the United Nations and NATO] will allow other rising powers that don’t share values with the US and Europe to step into the vacuum”. He didn’t mention those powers by name, but it was clear he was talking about China. Donald Trump and his national security team have taken a step further. Trump administration’s first National Security Strategy mentioned China 23 times and * An earlier version of this paper was delivered at an international conference “From the WesternCentric to a Post-Western World: In Search of an Emerging Global Order in the 21st Century”, co-organized by Taiwan Research Foundation and Fair Winds Foundation, Taipei, June 2–3, 2018. I thank Peter Katzenstein, William Kirby, Yves Tibinghein, and Yongnian Zheng for their helpful comments.

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concentrated on identifying the mounting threats posed by China and pledged that the United States would push back against them. The document also officially identified China as one of two “revisionist powers” that are challenging United States interests – along with Russia – trying to “shape a world antithetical to US values and interests”. The document also affirms that “it is the United States’ responsibility not only to compete against those strategies but also to stop China from imposing its will on smaller countries all over the world and interfering in their political systems”. Is this growing apprehension toward China’s emerging global inf luence justifiable? To what extent does it ref lect a parochial way of making sense of the complex and multi-faceted implications of China’s growing inf luence over the global agenda and the daunting challenge that lies ahead? Is there enough evidence to back up the claim that China’s global strategy stands for an attempt to replace the United States-led one with an alternative system? This chapter tries to decipher and untangle this thorny issue, which could easily ignite an emotionally charged policy debate in any Western society. I proceed in four steps. First, by applying a conceptual framework first introduced by Oran Young, I offer reasons why China has the potential to be a credible international leader and that it will be able to partially succeed the American international leadership role, especially if the United States turns increasingly jingoist and unilateralist. Next, I provide an analysis of the contours of China’s emerging global agenda and explore the broader implications for globalization and the global governance of China’s growing global inf luence. Third, I engage head-on the ongoing debate over whether or not China is a revisionist power determined to topple the Western-centric world order. Last, in conclusion, I argue that the post-hegemonic world order will be too complex and too polymorphous for either Pax Americana or Pax Sinica to hold. If the Western political elites are really sincere about preserving the legacy of the post-Second World War liberal world order, the sensible and perhaps the only viable option for them is to recognize the imperative of re-balancing interests and responsibilities between dominant and emerging powers and to constructively engage China (and other key emerging economies) over safeguarding and reforming the existing multilateral institutions as well as undertaking multilateral collaborative initiatives to tackle new challenges threatening the social sustainability of the global community. In this chapter I use the term “Pax Americana” to signify the “post-Second World War United States-led world order” and use the two terms interchangeably. Pax Americana is oftentimes defined as a “liberal hegemonic order”. It was a hegemony in the sense that the United States used to enjoy predominance in every important arena of the international system, the military, the economic, the financial and the monetary, the science and technological, and the cultural and ideological. According to its normative construction (which does not always correspond to the murky realities nor reveal its internal contradiction), it was liberal in that the United States sought to transform the international system

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into an open and rules-based order regulated by multilateral institutions. The hegemon was refrained from exploiting the lopsided power asymmetry for shortterm unilateral gain. The United States used its leverage to coalesce the diverse and sometimes contentious interests of other major powers and their common interests into achieving larger goals, such as a durable peace and shared prosperity. Again, in the sense of normative construction, the use of military power is highly regulated through the United Nations Security Council or regional collective security mechanisms, war and aggression are no longer recognized as a legitimate means to resolve inter-state conf licts or advance state interests, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was tightly controlled. Furthermore, according to the theorist of “hegemonic stability”, the hegemon performs an important role of guaranteeing an adequate supply of international public goods, which is required for sustaining a stable world economy. These public goods include not just peace and security and an open trading system but also cross-border property rights protection, free navigation, standardization of the rules of international business transactions, and stable reserve currencies. The hegemon also performs the role of a stabilizer in times of crisis, acting as a lender of last resort by discounting or otherwise providing liquidity in a financial crisis and a buyer of last resort, i.e. providing countercyclical fiscal stimulus and maintaining a relatively open market for distress goods in times of global recession.2 Scholars like Charles Kindleberger, a pioneer of “hegemonic stability” theory, believe that a steady supply of these goods often requires a hegemony, which shoulders the major responsibility and burden. Only the hegemon has the political and economic clout to compel other major stakeholders to abide by the rules and pay their dues. Many mainstream international relations scholars questioned whether maintaining a liberal international order necessarily requires a hegemony, but they may agree that it was probably a necessary condition for its creation before other key responsible stakeholders emerge.3 Even the staunchest defender of international liberal order recognizes that the post-Second World War United States-led international order is still essentially a “hierarchical order with liberal characteristics”.4 Norms and institutions are established to impose strategic constraints on other state actors as a systematic effort to formalize hegemony and legalize power-based hierarchy. Many privileges were reserved for the hegemon and other major powers that constitute the core. Not all participants are treated equally, and the rules are created or applied oftentimes in favor of the interests of the dominant actors. Last but by no means least, the order is always vulnerable to the creators’ transgressions and opportunist moves that could disrupt and even undermine the system. Today, many observers believe that we are approaching the end of Pax Americana. Not only does the United States no longer enjoy the predominance in many domains of global political economy but also its domestic political foundation for upholding the liberal characteristics of a United States-led world order has seriously eroded. The center of military, economic, and ideological gravity, mostly brought about by the rise of emerging nations and the concomitant

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regional interests, has resulted in a natural shift away from a singularly dominant United States position.5 The demise of United States-led world order is bound to accelerate under Donald Trump. His administration not only abdicates the throne as an international leader, but his ill-conceived United States-centric unilateralism and jingoism is undermining many multilateral institutions that it helped create. As John Ikenberry lamented, “orders built by great powers have come and gone – but they have usually ended in murder, not suicide”.6 But will a China-led world order succeed a receding Pax Americana? Should the Western political elite be alarmed by this prospect?

The leadership succession: the future is here? Just a few years ago, the discussion of Pax Sinica, or a China-led world order, was primarily an academic exercise among a few inquisitive forward-looking international relations scholars or mega-trend analysts,7 not a working assumption that frames the policy debate among Western political leaders and policy analysts perching at think tanks.8 This isn’t the case anymore. Many policymakers in the West (while they may not welcome this prospect) suddenly feel compelled to grabble with this emerging reality seriously. Either they are mobilizing domestic and international support to confront with this threatening paradigm shift, or to figure out how to reposition their country’s policy orientation and priorities to wrestle with the challenges and opportunities that this imminent leadership transition might bring about. Historians might identify several watershed events that clearly marked the transition from Pax Americana: the 2008–2009 global financial crisis and the subsequent handover of the baton of global economic governance from the G7 to the G20, and most stunningly, the futile effort by the Obama administration to dissuade its closest Western allies from joining the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2015. Observing the successful launch of the AIIB notwithstanding the American arm-twisting obstruction, Larry Summers observed: “this past month may be remembered as the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system”.9 There is no question that the transition has accelerated with the election of Donald Trump and especially his decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Iranian nuclear deal. Just as the foundation of the post-Second World War liberal international order is being torn apart by political implosion – with Donald Trump abdicating America’s international leadership and attacking existing multilateral arrangements, and with many mainstream political forces in Western Europe being washed away by the tidal wave of radical anti-globalization movements on the left and anti-European Union populist uprising on the right – China emerges paradoxically as a beacon of stability and predictability as well as a major source of impetus propelling the world growth and economic integration forward.

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When global business elites met at the annual winter retreat in Davos in 2017, which was the first time Chinese President Xi Jinping was invited to deliver a keynote to the World Economic Forum, they grudgingly recognized that China is perhaps the only viable candidate on the horizon if the world is looking for a successor to the United States to sustain the momentum of globalization, protect the multilateral arrangements from the rising parochialism and protectionism, and shoulder the major responsibility of coalescing contentious national interests and collective interests towards the achievement of long-term goals, thus avoiding diverting the global policy agenda away from the realities of global interdependence and the urgent need to refurbish the legitimacy of economic openness and cope with its political, social, and economic consequences. To what extent has China acquired the necessary capability and caliber to be a viable alternative? If one applies Oran Young’s framework for measuring the effectiveness of international leadership, the answer might surprise most Western observers.10 In his original formulation, Young distinguishes three forms of leadership required to solve or circumvent collective action problems that undermine the potential to achieve joint gains: structural leadership, entrepreneurial leadership, and intellectual leadership. Structural leadership is the translation of prevailing material power, such as coercive, productive, and financial power into bargaining leverage in international negotiations that lead to new collaborative measures or give birth to multilateral agreements or institutions. Entrepreneurial leadership involves agenda setting, the invention of policy options, and alternative measures to compensate stakeholders in the achievement of a higher goal in international collaboration, whereas intellectual leadership relies upon the power of ideas and knowledge to shape the thinking behind the principles underpinning institutional arrangements, guide the shared understanding of the issues at stake, and orient policy towards better alternative options. Young posits that all three forms of leadership were evident in negotiations over the establishment of diverse international regimes ranging from the environment to nuclear nonproliferation in the second half the 20th century. China is not yet a widely recognized international leader and the European Union leaders so far only view China under Xi Jinping as a hedge against Donald Trump. So China has not yet given a lot of opportunities to prove itself to be capable of performing these three forms of leadership. Suffice it is to say that China today has already acquired most of the elements required for exercising effective international leadership. Furthermore, within a very short time and across multiple arenas, China has already demonstrated its potential in quite a few telling cases, such as the establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS, the China-Africa Cooperation Forum, the AIIB, and the launch of the One Plus Six Roundtable in September 2017, a new multilateral platform for forging common ground on promoting an open, invigorated and inclusive world economy between China and six key international economic organizations (namely, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund [IMF], the International Labour Organization [ILO], the Organisation

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for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], the World Trade Organization [WTO], and the Financial Stability Board). The prerequisite of performing structural leadership is the possession of necessary structural power that defines, creates, and consolidates power asymmetry. By several measures, China has already either overtaken or achieved parity with the United States on this score. According to the IMF, China overtook the United States as the world’s largest economy in terms of purchasing-power adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) (and in terms of nominal GDP, this is due to happen from around 2025–2030). China surpassed the United States as the number one trading state in 2017 according to the WTO. By 2015, China was already the biggest export market or biggest source of imports for 92 countries, while the United States had only 57 such trading partners. Even before the launch of the AIIB and the BRICS New Development Bank, China had already overtaken the Western donors and United States-led multilateral lending agencies combined as the largest source of soft loans to Africa and Latin America between 2001 and 2015. China has become one of the major South–South development partners in the world, providing by the end of 2015 some $63 billion worth of development assistance to 166 countries, both directly and through regional and international organizations.11 The volume of China’s retail sales will approach $5.8 trillion according to the Mizuho Security of Japan in 2018. This will allow China to achieve parity with the United States as the world’s largest consumer market and thus it will be equally capable of performing the role of the buyer of last resort for the distressed goods in the world market. Most significantly, China has acquired the unprecedented productive capacity and financial resources to meet the growing demand for turnkey infrastructure facilities – from power generation, smart grids, deep-water seaports, railroads, freeways, mass rapid transit, high-speed trains, to digital communication – of the entire developing world concurrently. No superpower has ever acquired such kinds of empowering capacity, much less the willingness to help out the less-developed countries. The skeptics might hasten to point out that the United States still enjoys the predominance in military power and a commanding lead in science and technology, while the Dollar hegemony remains entrenched. On the other hand, China’s capability of power projection, despite its rapid military build-up in the last two decades, is rather limited and the renminbi is still far away from being an internationalized reserve currency, much less the dominant reserve currency (although it was recently included in the Special Drawing Right [SDR] currency basket by the IMF). In fact, China is catching up rapidly with the United States in the area of basic scientific research and the dissemination of cutting-edge scientific knowledge, while the level of output by the European Union and the United States has leveled off. According to an analysis by the National Science Foundation, by 2016 China had surged to become the world’s largest producer of scientific research articles, while the United States still outpaces China when it comes to articles that are in top the 1% cited.12

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On the other hand, to an international leader aiming to move forward with new collaborative initiatives within any existing multilateral institution beyond the security domain, or foster a new global deal on climate change, disease control, cyber security, or protocols of e-commerce, a gigantic nuclear arsenal, and hundreds of overseas military bases are of very limited value because they don’t give you much bargaining leverage. At the same time, one could argue that Dollar hegemony might be the single most important source of the recurring global economic imbalance and financial instability, and stands in the way of a wider use of a supranational currency, such as the SDR, as a global reserve currency, which provides a better solution for overcoming the inherent conf lict between the global function and national priorities of a global reserve currency.13 China has been a strong advocate for the creation of a supranational reserve currency by way of upgrading the role and function of the SDR14 and became the first country that has started issuing SDR-denominated bonds since 2016. China demonstrated its effective exercise of structural leadership during the treacherous and protracted multilateral bargain leading to the Paris Agreement. At the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21), China gingerly used its doubleedged leverage, i.e. being the single largest source of greenhouse gas omission on the planet and putting on the table the single most significant and credible pledge to fulfill its 2030 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), and emerged as one of key interlocutors that helped seal the Paris Agreement in 2015.15 According to a recent report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), China is now the global leader in solar, wind, and hydro energy capacity, investing more in renewable energy each year than the United States and the European Union combined. In 2017, China increased this commitment by pledging to invest an additional $360 billion in renewable energy prior to 2020. This means that China will exceed by wide margin of its pledged target by 2030. China is helping many developing countries to reach their 2030 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) target by expanding its renewable energy transition overseas, especially along the routes of the Belt and Road, and has already invested $32 billion in renewable energy projects abroad.16 China now is also the world’s leader in the market of green bonds, accounting for 30% of the global share in 2016–2017. As China exemplifies a convincing case demonstrating how a developing country can turn NDC requirement into an impetus for upgrading the economic structure and fostering the development of new business models, it enables the COP to set a more ambitious global target in the future. Chin’s record of supplying entrepreneurial leadership should also be seriously reckoned with. China emerged as a forward-looking consensus-builder when it hosted the G20 Summit in Hangzhou. Working behind the curtain, China has helped redefine the G20 mission, and in the process has given it a long-term vision. China effectively “reoriented the group’s role away from putting out fires to one of spearheading measures that will encourage development and stability around the globe”, according to Nadia Radulovich and Maria Cecilia Peralta,

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co-founders of the consulting group Asia Viewers. Under China’s initiative, the G20 Hangzhou Summit has, for the first time, drafted an action plan on implementing the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, agreed to in advance of an early ratification of the Paris Agreement, and launched the G20 Initiative on Supporting Industrialization of Africa and Least Developed Countries, as well as the Global Infrastructure Connectivity Alliance Initiative, delivering tangible benefits to the people of developing countries. By so doing, China facilitated the G20’s transition from a crisis-management mechanism to one focused on long-term governance aimed at orienting global economic growth and international economic cooperation. China’s exercise of entrepreneurial leadership is also impressive in the case of establishing AIIB. China has gone out of its way to make this new multilateral lending institution credible. For instance, China is willing to forego its vetopower status despite its 31% subscription (and 26.6% vote share),17 reserves space for India to give this giant neighbor a sense of ownership, and designates three director positions for non-Asians member states to make it more inclusive. AIIB also cultivates a partnership with the World Bank, adopts the global best practices of development financing, and issues the bank’s loans and bonds in United States dollars. China has also exercised an incredible act of entrepreneurial leadership by building up BRICS not just from scratch but also under many inauspicious conditions – such as a potential geopolitical rift between China and India, disagreement over the issue of reforming the United Nations Security Council between Brazil and India on the one hand and China and Russia on the other, and the weaker partners’ own economic malaise. Within a decade, China has overcome the sensitivity of the growing power asymmetry and steadily strengthened the common ground and built up the grouping from a talking shop to a significant institution for effective collective actions with the stated objective of becoming a key force in promoting global multi-polarization, economic globalization and the democratization of international relations.18 Currently, more than 50 BRICSrelated activities take place, ranging from agriculture, national security, health, and international finance.19 The establishment of a New Development Bank and BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement is no small achievement. Also, at the Xiamen Summit of 2017, China introduced an innovative scheme to upgrade the BRICS Summit from an annual presidential meeting among exclusive members to a more inclusive platform. Under the auspices of BRICS Plus, other significant emerging economies can be invited as guest countries without formally expanding the membership or changing its identity. Under this initiative, BRICS Plus is poised to become the most pivotal policy-coordination platform of the developing world by engaging all principal stakeholders-to-be. Most Western observers tend to think that providing intellectual leadership is China’s weakest f lank, or even its perennial Achilles heel. China’s authoritarian political system could always be its liability. They argued that despite its recent effort to prop up its soft power, it remains doubtful that Beijing can convince the

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world that China is a benign and benevolent power and attract others to Chinese culture, its way of life, and vision for the global community.20 But they better think twice. First of all, simply by reaffirming its strong commitment to the widely shared global vision manifested through the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and backing it up with dedicated resources and concrete programs, China is able to position itself as a champion of inclusive growth and equity. By consistently registering its objection to any unilateral military attack on other country’s soil without the authorization of the United Nations Security Council, and at the same time shouldering an ever greater share of the burden of the United Nations peacekeeping operation, China can credibly position itself as a champion of defending the United Nations collective security institution.21 Xi Jinping’s articulation of “building a human community with shared destiny”, which was adopted by the 55th United Nations Commission for Social Development in its resolution by consensus in February 2017, bode well throughout the Global South. This message, while being criticized by Western commentators as being vague and empty, resonates well with a communitarian vision for the global community, which is not only in stark contrast with Donald Trump’s “America First” but also one notch above the Western-led liberal international order on normative ground.22 American and other Western observers oftentimes fall into their own trap of assuming that freedom, civil liberties, and democracy are more desired than effective governance, social stability, and economic prosperity. Francis Fukuyama was astute to observe that, on the eve of 2016, “an historic contest is underway, largely hidden from public view, over competing Chinese and Western strategies to promote economic growth. The outcome of this struggle will determine the fate of much of Eurasia in the decades to come”.23 In an era of economic uncertainty, slow upward social mobility, growing economic inequality, and the rising number of stressed and displaced laborers and office workers, the Chinese model of development will become more attractive to leaders and social elite in many parts of the world. In the meantime, the Western model of liberal democracy is losing its appeal. As Edward Luce put, the return to the staggering scale of economic inequality which was last seen during the Gilded Age is produced by the vast amount of political power the wealthy hold to control legislative and regulatory activity. In turn, the concentration of resources at the top of the distribution leads to an even more disproportionate inf luence of wealthy elites over public life, fueling further discontent at the gap between public policies and public preferences. Elected representatives are increasingly unable to represent the views of the people, and politics has become a game for the rich and powerful.24 Robert Foa and Yascha Mounk have provided all the empirical evidences to suggest that in many Western established democracies the representative democracy is facing its most serious legitimacy crisis since the 1930s.25 Apparently, if Western political leaders want to defend the superiority of liberal democracy, they should start their rescuing task at home.

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In 2017, China hosted 0.48 million international students. It will soon overtake both the United Kingdom and Australia as the second most popular destination for students studying abroad. About two-thirds of them are from the countries along the Belt and Road Initiative and 88% of them are self-financed. A large number of developing countries (in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia in particular) send their mid-career and senior officials and professionals to China for advanced training. China nowadays trains more than 10,000 African officials each year. They come to learn not just the nuts-and-bolts of the Chinese system of governance or state-led growth model but also more readily applicable knowledge in the areas of rural development, agricultural assistance, urban planning, public housing, crime control, poverty reduction, e-commerce, sharing economy, green energy, etc. Many scientists and engineers also come to China to receive training in Chinese technological standards as China is now exporting its standards across a wide range of industries – from nuclear power, clean energy, high-speed rail, and 5G mobile phone to artificial intelligence – especially through its investment in countries along the route of the Belt and Road Initiative. Senior Chinese experts also occupy more and more key positions in international organizations developing and accrediting standards – including International Organization for Standardization (ISO), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).26 In a nutshell, China has accumulated an impressive array of structural capability and the know-how to channel them into potent leverage over the exercising of an international leadership role. But, despite of the aforementioned credential, China still views either the concept of a China-led world order, not to mention the more provocative concept of Pax Sinica (which comes with all kinds of baggage), with caution and reservation. At best, one can infer that across an increasingly wider range of policy domains – from trade, development assistance, regional infrastructure, multilateral lending, financial stability, environment, and green energy to United Nations peacekeeping operations – China is ready to exercise an embedded international leadership role commensurate with its national priorities and its current status of being the largest middle-income developing country. I will substantiate this inference with a succinct analysis of the contours of China’s emerging global strategy, to which we now turn.

The contours of China’s emerging global strategy Chin’s emerging global strategy is designed to, first of all, support its aspiration for a great national rejuvenation which entails achieving the modernization goal of China becoming a fully developed nation and restoring its proper place in the world by the mid-21st century. So China’s emerging global strategy should work toward maintaining and creating a peaceful, stable, and conducive environment for achieving this utmost long-term goal. Next, China’s global strategy anchors on its resilient and effective political– economic system, in which a strong and highly centralized party-state organizes

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the society it governs and steers the economy it creates. The party-state gives coherence and sense of direction to the overall state apparatus and fosters societal consensus among different domestic constituencies and stakeholders over achieving the country’s long-term objectives. Under the so-called socialist market economy, the market is given the fundamental role in allocating resources, but the government plays a decisive role in creating the framework for the market and steering the process of reform, restructuring, and institutional innovation. The country’s global strategy should go hand-in-hand with enhancing the legitimacy and resiliency of this political system. Chin’s global strategy also emanates from its historical experiences and knowledge that the Chinese people have accumulated over several millennia and the Chinese political elite’s vision of the emerging global order of the 21st century and its proper role in it. China foresees and welcomes an emerging multipolar world, in which no global power can unilaterally dictate the norms and rules, nor capriciously transgress these norms and rules with impunity. Chinese political elite also visualize an emerging global community that is tied together with economic globalization and the shared interests in securing peace, fostering development, and protecting the global commons. Nevertheless, the economic and social fabric of this nascent global community is still vulnerable to the rupture of geopolitical confrontation, popular backlash against staggering inequality, the clash of civilizations, and the divide between the Global North and the Global South. So, the emerging global order will not (and probably should not) be Chinacentric or evolving around Chinese interests. China’s rational and pragmatic choice is prepared to be a principal (but not the only) underwriter of multilateralism, which is the only viable path to sustaining an open, invigorated, and inclusive global economy and coping with all the new challenges that pose threats to the social sustainability of the global community. China is willing to shoulder greater responsibility within the existing multilateral institutions, comanaging the global economy, building up new institutions and mechanisms for deepening economic partnership with major regions of the world, but China should step up and broaden its commitment to global stewardship in areas where it feels more confident and at a measured pace, i.e. compatible with its capability and commensurate with its status as a most populated developing country on a rising track. While still in the process of unfolding, in recent years under the leadership of Xi Jinping, the contours of China’s emerging global strategy became more recognizable. Basically, it consists of four key components: First, pursuing “constructive engagement” with the incumbent hegemon. The Chinese version of constructive engagement was promoted under the label of New Type of Great Power Relations. Chinese leaders understood well that the China–United States nexus is the single most important bilateral relationship of the 21st century. It hopes to develop rapport at the top level, build up trust and mutual respect through regular strategic dialogues, seek cooperation over

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regional and global issues, manage trade friction and other economic disputes, work out modus vivendi to contain and ameliorate strategic conf lict and confrontation and to cajole the United States to respect China’s core interests, and try everything within reasonable bounds to prevent the worst-case scenario, i.e. a strategic showdown between China and the United States that could push the world into a second Cold War and tear apart the fabric of a globalized world economy.27 Second, safeguarding, refurbishing, and reforming multilateralism. Chinese leaders recognize that its emerging global role needs to be built on the foundation of the post-Second World War multilateral arrangements. However, this foundation is now teetering, so they need to be refurbished, upgraded, and / or reformed to be more in tune with the rapidly changing world. China views today’s system of global governance as imperfect and inadequate. While it agrees with most of its liberal characteristics, but it doesn’t always agree with its implicit or explicit frozen hierarchy, much less the frequent transgressions by its creator. China has moved to forge common ground among major developing countries to put forward a reform agenda under the central theme of “multi-polarization and the democratization of international relations”, in particular pushing for a more representative governance structure that gives more voices and responsibilities to emerging economies and strengthening the principle of equality not just in the norms and rules but also their implementation. China also proposed to upgrade the function or scope of existing institutions so that they can take up new challenges brought about by climate change, global economic imbalance, monopolistic power of dominant multinational firms, the explosion of the world population, and technological revolution. China seeks to fully utilize two key policy-coordination platforms to advance its agenda of reforming the current system of global governance. Under the auspices of the BRICS Plus, which was initiated at the 2017 Xiamen Summit to engage other significant emerging economies such as Mexico and Indonesia, China seeks to use this platform for forging common ground among the emerging economies and articulating the collective interests of the Global South. China values G20 as the key platform for dialogue, negotiation, and coordination between two major de facto caucuses in this global grouping of elite members, G7 (the caucus representing the developed world), and BRICS Plus (the caucus representing the developing world). China also shows its resolve to build up new multilateral institutions or arrangements, such as the BRICS New Development Bank and the AIIB, to address the shortfall of the existing global and regional multilateral institutions. In so doing, China is able to exert greater pressure on the existing multilateral institutions for a timely reform and for upgrading. For instance, by establishing multilateral contingent currency swap arrangements, such as the Chingmai Agreement and the BRICS Contingent Reserve Fund, participatory countries can collectively prevent predatory hedge funds from instigating currency crises in vulnerable members and igniting a contagious regional financial crisis, and

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at the same time, to compel the IMF to revisit its draconian conditionality and adopt new institutional views on the need to regulate international capital f low.28 However, China is pushing for cautious reform of the global order, not rupture. Many believe the China-led BRICS grouping shows no signs of seeking to overthrow or destabilize international order. The BRICS Xiamen Declarations (like previous declarations) reaffirms their support of the status quo, without any intentions to weaken existing institutions or setups.29 In its declaration of the 2017 Summit, BRICS leaders affirmed that “we will stand firm in upholding a fair and equitable international order based on the central role of the United Nations, the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and respect for international laws, promoting democracy and rule of laws in international relations”. BRICS leaders also pledged that, “valuing the G20’s continued role as the premier forum for international economic cooperation, we reiterate our commitments to the implementation of the outcomes of G20 summits, including the Hamburg Summit and the Hangzhou Summit”. Third, deepening South-to-South economic cooperation. As China moves up the ladder of industrial upgrading, the country identifies huge potential for deepening and institutionalizing its economic partnership with a vast majority of developing countries since their strengths and weaknesses are intrinsically complementary to China’s own and the issue of ideological divide and / or geopolitical friction usually is not standing in the way. Many of these countries are well endowed with natural resources and arable soil while China becomes more dependent on imported oil, mineral, grains, and other commodities. Most of these countries face chronic shortage of investment capital and foreign reserves while China has abundant surplus savings and has piled up a huge foreign reserve. Most of these countries still have a young and growing population and with great potential for hosting the relocated labor-intensive manufacturing activities from China, while China’s manufacturing sector faces surplus capacity, labor shortage and rising wages and is pressured to move up the ladder of industrial upgrading. Most of these countries are facing the severe bottleneck of lacking modern infrastructure while China possesses the unprecedented engineering and financing capability to deliver world-class turnkey infrastructural facilities at reasonable cost and within a short time span. Most of these countries’ indigenous entrepreneurial class is weak, state’s capacity is minimal, and the quality of governance is low while China has accumulated rich experiences in state capacity building, technocratic planning, and how to create an enabling environment for the growth of small enterprises, micro firms, and independent operators, especially in the digital age. Over the last two decades, China has established a comprehensive system of “region-plus-one” institutions to expand and deepen economic partnerships, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-China Summit, the China-Africa Cooperation Forum, the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, the 16-plus-1 Leaders Meeting (which involves 11 Central and Eastern European Union Member States and five Balkan countries), the Forum of China, and the

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Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. Most of these “regionplus-one” institutions have spurred the development of policy working groups, business councils, regional infrastructural projects, and dedicated investment funds. The Belt and Road Initiative represents an even more ambitious plan for accelerating the integration of the Eurasia Continent and beyond. Under the Belt and Road Initiative, China aims to build a global infrastructural network that will be extended to Latin America and include an Arctic sea route to Europe. The primary goal is to deepen the trade, investment, technological, and cultural ties with the countries along the route and provide new economic impetus to sustain the momentum of globalization and regional integration. The scale and scope of the infrastructure investment under the auspices of the Belt and Road Initiative is staggering. It will be at least seven times larger than the post-Second World War United States Marshall Plan (measured in 2017 dollars). China also propels cautiously the enlargement of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was set up initially to enhance the security environment of its western border and ward off cross-border radical Islamist secessionist threats. After two decades of its founding, India and Pakistan were invited to be members in 2017. SCO now becomes a geopolitical foundation for the success of China’s Belt and Road Initiative as China would like to invite other important trading parterns along the route, such as Mongolia, Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey, to be members. Fourth, protecting the country’s economic lifelines. As China becomes intimately enmeshed with the world economy, it also becomes more vulnerable to all kinds of potential threats that could disrupt or cut off its trade route, energy supply, cross-border financial transaction, and information f lows. For instance, former President Hu Jintao had pointed out China’s “Malacca dilemma”, referring to the Malacca Strait, a choke point where 80% of the country’s energy needs passed en-route from the Middle East. To hedge against a worst-case scenario, China has built up a full range of back-up systems, or multiple alternatives, as well as rapidly upgraded its naval forces for overseas missions. China has built several alternative shipping and energy supply routes through Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Central Asia, and Russia. It has developed its own BeiDou Navigation Satellite System as an alternative to United States-controlled GPS. China is building up a newer version of global internet infrastructure based on IPv6 in which the United States no longer monopolizes the control over root servers. China has upgraded its own UnionPay to make it a global payment processing system parallel to Visa and MasterCard, and upgraded its own Cross-Border Interbank Payment System as a back-up to SWIFT. China also incubates local digital titans behind its digital firewall, such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu, to rival Amazon, Facebook, and Google. These alternatives, or back-up systems, serve three purposes: hedging against security risks, spurring the growth of new business sectors and new technologies, and giving China an edge in establishing itself as another custodian of essential global commercial infrastructure as a fullyequipped economic giant.

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In stark contrast with the United States’ global strategy, developing military alliances is not a component of China’s global strategic. China still firmly commits itself to its long-standing non-alliance and non-interference policies. Chinese leaders believe that military alliances oftentimes aggravate, rather than reduce, hostility and confrontation in the troubled regions. Furthermore, if China develops alliances, potentially with Russia, American hostility toward China will only heighten and the bilateral relationship will become more volatile.30 Another stark contrast with the United States global strategy lies in the fact that China has not been able to buttress its leadership position with an extensive and cohesive array of strategic and economic partners on the basis of geographic proximity or cultural affinity due to the strong presence of a United States-led hub-and-spoke system in maritime East Asia, and its enduring animosity with Japan. However, China has managed to maintain a limited hub-and-spoke system in mainland East Asia along its border, and desires to seize opportunities to forge closer economic partnership with Japan and South Korea. Ironically, Donald Trump has just provided the impetus needed for the Northeast Asia trio to overcome their political differences and work together to negotiate a Northeast Asia free trade agreement. To hedge against an increasingly protectionist United States, the Trio can use this trilateral free trade pact as a pivotal hub for building up a global free trading hub-and-spoke system linking up the European Union, ASEAN, South Asia, and other regions. This is a vision that the “China–Japan–Korea + X” formula alluded to when Chinese Premier Li Keqiang officially proposed it at a recent trilateral meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Tokyo. Finally, in Chinese leaders’ minds, the thrust of its global strategy will not only sustain China’s own further development but also work toward sustaining, rather than undermining, globalization to which China owes its miraculous economic growth. However, China is also keen in harnessing and redirecting globalization with stronger national, regional, and global regulatory regimes to control its disruptive (or even destructive) social, political, and environmental consequences, and reserve its trickle-up (instead of trickle-down) tendency.

Is China a revisionist power? Is China a revisionist power attempting to establish a comprehensive system as an antithesis to the Western-led world order? It depends on how one defines the essence of the post-Second World War liberal international order and whether you look at the multi-faceted implications of the rise of China (and for that matter the rise of the non-Western world as a whole) from a “Western-centric” view, or the view of the global community. Western opinion leaders who feel threatened by the prospect of Pax Sinica usually entrap themselves in one of the two Westerncentric conceptions about the post-Second World War liberal world order. First, they tend to conf late three liberal elements together: political liberalism (in opposition to authoritarianism), economic liberalism (in opposition to

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economic nationalism or mercantilism), and liberalism in the sense that international relations theorists use it (in opposition to realism and other theories of international relations).31 They assume that the three elements should always go together. They fail to recognize the inherent tension and contradiction among the three. In reality, the neo-liberal turn of the economic liberalism since the 1980s has brought about what Dani Rodrik termed “hyperglobalization”, and as a consequence, it is undermining democracy, eroding national sovereignty, and destroying social solidarity.32 They also fail to recognize that the neo-liberal turn of the last three decades has created an unprecedented concentration of economic power in a handful of giant firms that are able to capture huge economic rents by wielding their monopolistic power and unduly political inf luence.33 In addition, there is only f limsy historical evidence suggesting that Western liberal democracies are more credible supporters of open rule-based multilateral trading system or rule-based international relations more generally. If history is to be a guide, one should not forget which democracy triggered the escalation of protectionism and the total collapse of world trade during the 1930s. The SmootHawley Tariff Act of 1930, which was signed by President Herbert Hoover into law against the advice of more than 1,000 economists, plunged the world into the Great Depression. The volume of United States foreign trade contracted by almost two-thirds and world trade shrank by almost 40% between 1929 and 1934. For a contemporary reference, according to WTO statistics, on average the developed markets are just as likely as emerging markets to impose non-tariff barriers between 2001 and 2016.34 In terms of launching military attacks on a foreign country without the United Nations Security Council’s authorization, the United States (plus France and the United Kingdom, the two willing allies) has registered ostensibly the worst record of trashing the authority of the United Nations. It is presumptuous to assume that countries that are governed under nonWestern political systems are necessarily of less quality to be responsible stakeholders of multilateralism. Many Western politicians have overlooked the simple fact that the prerequisites of being a responsible stakeholder of multilateralism do not entail being a Western-styled liberal democratic state. Instead, the most essential requirement is threefold: first, a functioning modern state that can make credible international commitments within the framework of multilateral arrangements and acquires all the necessary administrative, monitoring, regulatory, fiscal, coercive, and law-enforcing capabilities to fulfill its multiple obligations and burden-sharing responsibilities in the a globalized world economy and highly interdependent global society; second, a resilient political system that is buttressed by an institutional and / or cultural foundation of legitimation which can help it effectively cope with domestic conf lict over economic (re)distribution and withstand the stress of external economic shocks; third, robust domestic political and economic institutions capable of coping with the socio-economic consequences of intensified economic competition and structural adjustment that inevitably come with economic globalization and regional integration, and

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consequently work to sustain a broad-based social support for economic openness and the imperative of being an integral part of an open and rule-based international system. Whether Western-styled representative democracy is necessarily better equipped than the Chinese-style socialist one-party state in terms of fulfilling these requirements is increasingly questionable as time goes by. Second, they tend to conf late the existing hierarchical order with its liberal norms and rules. If one presupposes liberal international order can last only with the United States and Western Europe constituting its core and preserving their coveted status and privileges under existing arrangements, then the entering of a rising superpower as gigantic and non-Western as China’s into this core will necessarily be viewed as a revisionist threat. This reasoning applies to any other significant emerging power that does not conform to the model of a Western liberal state but aspires to be a core member of this privileged club and have an equal voice with them. So the reasoning goes, as the core is less “Western” the international order becomes less “liberal”, or vice versa.35 Apparently, Christian Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, has a better sense of separating the two. She reminded her audiences in July 2017, that there is a built-in mechanism for orderly succession at an international conference and that “the International Monetary Fund could be based in Beijing in a decade if growth trends for China and other big emerging markets continue and if these are ref lected in the Fund’s voting structure”.36 The IMF last revised its quota system, or voting structure, in 2010 and it set to launch another review in 2019. In her mind, such a move is a “possibility” as the IMF’s institutional norms do not preclude upward mobility and / or a stepwise reconfiguration of its leadership. These two kinds of Western-centric conceptualizations are very much pro-Europeanist and make many Western European political leaders uncritical defenders of the status quo and, at the same time, give them the unduly sense of self-righteousness. They fail to the see the imperative of finding ways to construct and maintain an open and norm-based international relations among sovereign states that are all deeply embedded in complex interdependence and intimately enmeshed with the rest of the world but are governed under various forms of political systems, traveled down different paths to nation-state-building and modernization, and are endowed with dramatically varying sizes and very diverse cultural and religious heritages. In today’s world, this Western-centric way of conceptualizing liberal international order is a sure recipe for a clash of civilizations. Furthermore, these two kinds of conceptualizations become increasingly anachronistic. Since the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, China and other emerging economies have been the locomotive of the world economy accounting for more than 70% of the world’s GDP growth. According to a recent research paper issued by PricewaterhouseCoopers, in terms of purchasing-power adjusted GDP, the Emerging Seven (E7), namely China, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, and Indonesia, were half of the size of the G7 in 1995, around the same

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size as the G7 in 2015, and could be double the size of the G7 in 2040.37 So if this trend continues, the “core” will be inevitably diluted and reconstituted. If we move beyond these two Western-centric conceptualizations and strip the post-Second World War liberal world order off its historical specificity, one can convincingly argue that China is a rising global power with a reformist agenda.38 It is a reformist (rather than a revisionist) in the sense that China’s emerging global role might help strengthen and refurbish many important principles that undergird the post-Second World War liberal international order. First of all, China subscribes to a norm-based, not power-based, world order. It upholds the institution of the United Nations collective security system, which privileges the P5 on the Security Council and outlaws aggression and war as means of pursuing state interests. China signed up all major international regimes on nonproliferation and has been instrumental in their enforcement, including its active involvement in brokering the Iranian nuclear deal and its critical role in defusing a simmering nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, something Donald Trump openly acknowledges. China embraces a free and open trading system under the principles of inclusion, nondiscrimination, reciprocity, and transparency. It favors open regionalism and endorses a multilateral approach to trade liberalization. It upholds the norm of providing special assistance to, and preferential treatment for, less-developed countries under the WTO or through multilateral development-assistance agencies. It is now widely regarded as a champion of regional integration and globalization with the larger aim of preserving peace, promoting inclusive growth, and enhancing social sustainability. It contributes its fair share in the protection of global commons through multilateral agreements and global collaborative efforts. It has shown ever stronger willingness to take up greater responsibility in either the existing multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations, IMF, and World Bank, or tackling the emerging global challenges through reforming the mechanisms of global governance. To a large extent, many Western countries should congratulate themselves for successfully socializing China into a liberal world order based on multilateralism. However, the socialization process increasingly becomes a two-way street. Just as Chinese officials have been socialized into or came to internalize the identity, policy orientation, and norms and procedures that characterize global institutions, they have come with a reformist agenda. They have been actively working to move these multilateral institutions beyond some of their established endogenous norms and practices, and in some cases, push for changes in their governing structure.39 For instance, China has successfully pushed the IMF to tighten its surveillance on “major developed countries”, whose current account imbalances were generating financial and exchange rate instability, instead of just focusing on significant developing countries. China also has had some success in initiating a regular review of the Fund’s quota system (or voting structure) and incorporating China’s RMB to the IMF’s SDR basket.

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What makes most Western leaders really anxious is the fact that China has become more confident about its own development model and has shown a stronger desire to share its experiences with other developing countries. Indeed, the growing popularity of the Chinese model is challenging the universalism of many Western values and institutional fixtures, which have been enshrined by the West as the only game in town for establishing a legitimate political order or pursuing economic modernization. The Chinese model contests the superiority of Western liberal democracy or the free-market system over delivering responsive government and socio-economic modernization. Its political system prioritizes social empowerment and economic development over political rights, and gives priority to effective governance and social stability before individual freedom. In addition, China favors an alternative path to deepening economic partnership and regional integration. It gives the state, multilateral policy-coordination mechanisms, multilateral lending institutions, and state-owned enterprises a much bigger role in fostering economic development and regional cooperation than the United States-led donor organizations are willing to endorse under their neo-liberal policy guidelines. Unlike the European Union model or the trans-Atlantic partnership, the Chinese approach to regionalism and economic partnership does not take security alliances and democratic solidarity as prerequisites for deepening economic integration. This formula, however, was not invented by China, as the ASEAN (and other non-Western regions) has practiced it for decades. However, it is unlikely that China will persuade the developing world to adopt its model of development uncritically or on a wholesale basis because this predisposition runs counter to its own long-standing policy motto and accumulated experiences. Out of its own experience, China opposes the one-size-fits-all approach under the so-called Washington consensus and does not believe in the teleological convergence under the end-of-history thesis. As a typical practice, Chinese instructors for training officials from developing countries repeatedly remind them that an important lesson of the Chinese model is that there is no standard textbook that can provide the right and full answer to addressing their country’s socio-economic challenges. At each stage of socio-economic modernization, the best solution emerges from learning-by-doing when a country’s political elite try to adapt the relevant knowledge and practices to its own historical condition and country-specific circumstances. They also often emphasized that “the socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics” might be not readily transportable to other socio-cultural contexts; after all, China has traveled down a rather unique trajectory of anti-imperialist struggle and nation-state building, not to mention its continental size, distinctive historical memory, and cultural heritage. Last but by no means least, there is little evidence to suggest that China’s foreign assistance programs are tied to specific ideological requirements, although the allocation of China’s soft loans and assistance in kind might well be motivated by geopolitical considerations and other foreign policy priorities.

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Many Western political leaders also worry that China is ready and eager to fill up all of the vacuum that has been left behind by a retreating Pax Americana. This is a typical pseudo question as it does not resonate well with the way Chinese leaders perceive the world and the country’s proper role in it. First of all, China has little desire, nor the predisposition, to create another hegemony exerting its military, political, economic, and ideological predominance around the globe, stretching its security needs at the farthest reaches conceivable, and fending off any potential challenger over the horizon. So, in a post-hegemonic world, much of the so-called strategic vacuum may not be “vacuum” at all. As American hegemonic presence recedes, it is simply a return to “normalcy”, i.e. the prevailing historical conditions with diminishing inf luence of the American military, political, economic, and ideological hegemony. These historical conditions and logics of the local dynamics may not always produce a collective outcome worse off than under the American tutelage and self-invited custodian stewardship in power balancing. After all, the American neoconservative clique’s project of “democratic imperialism” has brought disastrous outcomes to much of the Arab world.40 The neoliberal policy prescription under the Washington consensus has made many developing countries much more vulnerable to asset bubbles, financial crises, and the f looding of poisonous financial derivatives, while much of the capability and policy instruments of most national governments to provide social protection for its most vulnerable constituencies has been curtailed or dismantled. The “regime change” policy under George Bush junior clearly aggravated, if not precipitated, the nuclear crisis in Iran and the Korean peninsula. In many regions, China is not expected (nor welcome) to become another self-invited international cop or political tutor. Besides, under its long-standing non-alliance and non-interference policies China has had no desire to do so, either. On the other hand, China is expected to and even welcome to shoulder greater responsibility within the existing multilateral framework by a great majority of developing countries. Given its weight, China will inevitably play a bigger role in co-managing the global economy through the G20 and other multilateral institutions and policy-coordination platforms. China has already significantly increased its fiscal and in-kind contributions to the United Nations, the Security Council’s peacekeeping mission, and a wide range of specialized agencies of the United Nations family, just as the United States is cutting down its annual contribution to the United Nations budget and has pulled itself out of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In other instances, China is expected and welcomed by most developing countries to provide supplemental international public goods when these goods are seriously in short-supply under the existing multilateral arrangements. The AIIB turns out to be very popular because neither the private sector finance, nor the public-sector budget of the host countries or the existing United States-led multilateral lending agencies could possibly meet the huge demand for infrastructure financing in the region.

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In a recent Asian Development Bank report, the Bank warned that Asia needs to invest $26 trillion between 2017 and 2030 to resolve a serious infrastructure shortage that threatens to hold back some of the world’s fastest-growing economies. However, the report offered no concrete solution or proposals of how to overcome this bottleneck except by repeating the mantra that the governments need to mobilize more resources and make infrastructural investment more attractive to private investors.41 In other instances, China is expected to and welcomed to supply new international public goods when their pent-up demands have been neglected by the United States-led multilateral institutions or Western donors. For example, regional public goods in developing countries are severely under-funded despite their potentially high rates of return compared to traditional country-focused investments. Regional public goods only receive about 2.0–3.5% out of total official development assistance annually. The rate of return on regional investments is likely to be high, especially in Africa, where investments in regional infrastructure and institutional integration would reduce the high costs imposed by the region’s many small economies and many borders.42 China has picked up this void in giant stride over the last decade under the auspices of the ChinaAfrica Cooperation Forum. A notable example is China’s initiative for the Africa Information Superhighway, which was launched in 2015. This pan-Africa project will deliver a $15 billion high-speed fiber-optical network that links up 82 major cities across 48 countries and makes high-speed internet connection readily accessible to several hundred-million Africans when it is completed in 2023. This epoch-breaking initiative has already precipitated several African countries to devise and implement their own national plans for developing information and communications technology-related sectors and digital commerce. From the Chinese political elite’s point of view, what Western political leaders really need to worry about is twofold. The first is how to refurbish the social foundation at home for sustaining economic openness and multilateralism. Second, there remains a serious “real vacuum” across a wide range of global issues that have been left unattended. For the sake of the social sustainability of the global community, for instance, the world is badly in need of a global regulatory regime on taxation to crackdown the rampant practices of tax havens and tax avoidance and to compel multinational corporations and the superrich to fulfill their minimum social responsibility, i.e. to ensure that multinationals pay their fair share of tax in the countries where they make their profits and / or conduct value-added activities. Otherwise, the fiscal crisis of most sovereign states will not be salvageable and the lopsided distribution of income and wealth will eventually bring about devastating social and economic outcomes.43 The list of the “real vacuum” is a long one, from protecting the global commons, safeguarding the basic human rights of immigrants, regulating the abuse of monopolistic power by a few high-tech titans, and a ban on artificial intelligence-based lethal autonomous weapons (killer robots) to new global rules for e-commerce to help define

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basic standards for electronic contracts, digital payment systems, and consumer protection.

Conclusion: the way forward The United States’ predominance so characteristic of the post-war world order must give way to a more truly multilateral order, in which no global power can unilaterally dictate the norms and rules, and all key players have to be perceptive to differing viewpoints and the concerns of other great powers. If the Western political elites are really sincere about preserving the legacy of the post-Second World War liberal world order, they have to recognize the imperative to rebalance interests and responsibilities between dominant and emerging powers within the existing multilateral arrangements and learn to live with and work with a China that does not live up to their full expectations and certainly is not to their liking. The concept of “responsible stakeholder” is often understood by American policy elites as sustaining in an international order built by the United States and designed to privilege American interests, norms, and values. But it is presumptuous to assume that China and other emerging economies will embrace this view. For them, being a “responsible stakeholder” entails making the existing global institutions more aligned with the rapidly changing world and, in particular, with the interests and needs of the developing countries albeit they should do so at a measured pace to avoid upsetting the existing Western-centric hierarchical order in a disruptive way. The most sensible and perhaps the only viable option for Western political leaders is to constructively engage China (and other key emerging economies) over safeguarding and reforming the existing multilateral institutions as well as undertaking multilateral collaborative initiatives to tackle many new challenges that threaten the social sustainability of the global community. The Western political leaders should not be carried away by some misguided perceptions about China being a revisionist power. Yes, China is pursuing a more ambitious global agenda and is ready to undertake more global responsibility, but in the foreseeable future its international leadership role will be limited and embedded. By most measures, this does not amount to a fully-f ledged Pax Sinica, or a China-led world order. China’s international leadership will (and is intended to) be limited in the sense that it is ready to provide a leadership role in areas where its resources, capability, and responsible stewardship are clearly called for. It will (and is expected to) be embedded in the sense that its leadership role will be circumscribed by a myriad of structural, institutional, and political constraints – domestic priorities, the emerging multipolar order, the existing and emerging multilateral arrangements, a highly polymorphous global social space in which supranational agencies, nation-states, sub-state regions, multinational firms, mega banks and financial institutions, international NGOs, and transnational social movements are entangled with each other, and a highly

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interdependent and digitalized global economy woven together by the internet, seamless global supply chains, dense commercial and financial webs, transnational elite networks, complex interlocking-ownership and joint ventures, and instant financial connectivity. Welcome to a much more perplexing post-hegemonic world order, which is too complex and too polymorphous for either Pax Americana or Pax Sinica to hold.

Notes 1 Speech by Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel at the Munich Security Conference, February 17, 2018. https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/rede-m uenchner-sicherheitskonferenz/1602662. 2 Charles Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929–1939, University of California Press, 1973; Charles P. Kindleberger, “International Public Goods without International Government”, The American Economic Review Vol. 76, No. 1, Mar., 1986, pp. 1–13. 3 Robert Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy, Princeton University Press, 2005; Duncan Snidal, “The Limits of Hegemonic Stability Theory”. International Organization, 39, 1985, pp. 579–614. 4 John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis and Transformation of the American World Order, Princeton University Press, 2012. 5 Amitav Acharya, The End of American World Order. Cambridge: Polity, 2014. 6 John Ikenberry, “The Plot Against American Foreign Policy”, Foreign Affairs, May– June, 2017. 7 For example, Peter Katzenstein ed. Sinicization and the Rise of China: Civilizational Processes Beyond East and West, Routledge, 2012; Martin Jacques; When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, Penguin Books, 2009. 8 A notable exception is Arvind Subramanian, Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance, Institute of International Economics, 2011. 9 Larry Summers, “Time US leadership woke up to new economic era”, April 5, 2015. http://lar rysum mers.com/2015/04/05/time-us-leadership-woke-up-to- new-e conomic-era/ 10 Oran Young, “Political Leadership and Regime Formation: on the Development of Institutions in International Society”. International Organization 45(3), pp. 281–308, Summer 1991. 11 Nicholas Rosellini, “Multilateralism and the Chinese Dream”, UNDP China Office, Apr 19, 2017. http://www.cn.undp.org/content/china/en/home/ourpe rspective/ourperspectivearticles/2017/04/19/multilatera lism-and-the-chinesedream.html. 12 Peter Dockrill, “China Just Overtook the US in Scientific Output for the First Time”, Science Alert, January 23, 2018. This article cites The Biennial Science and Engineering Indicators Report published by the United States National Science Foundation, https://www.sciencealert.com/china-just-overtook-us-in-scientificoutput-first-time-published-research 13 Report of the U.N. Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, September 14. The Commission was chaired by Joseph Stiglitz. 14 The clearest statement was the March 23, 2009 speech by Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan entitled “Ref lections on Reforming the International Monetary System”. 15 Liang Dong, “Bound to lead? Rethinking China’s role after Paris in UNFCCC negotiations”, Chinese Journal of Population Resources and Environment, Vol. 15 No. 1, 2017, pp. 32–38.

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16 IEEFA Report: China in 2017 Continued to Position Itself for Global Clean Energy Dominance, January 9, 2018. http://ieefa.org/ieefa-report-china-continues-positionglobal-clean-energy-dominance-2017/ 17 According to the Articles of Agreement of AIIB, China could have exercised veto power for decisions that require super majority of at least 75% of voting shares. Chinese authority, however, has promised to reduce its voting shares to below 25% if India requests an increase in its capital subscription and / or Japan decides to join the AIIB later on. In contrast, Washington still keeps its veto power over the major decisions by IBRD and IFC, the two lending arms of the World Bank, with only 16.89% voting share. 18 Oliver Stuenek, The BRICS and Future of Global Order. Lexington Press, 2015. 19 Oliver Stuenkel, “The BRICS Leaders Xiamen Declaration: An analysis”, postwesternworld.com, September 7, 2017, http://www.postwesternworld.com/2017/09/07/ leaders-declaration-analysis/ 20 Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World, Yale University Press 2008. 21 From providing roughly 3% of total financial contributions in 2013, China currently contributes 10.25% of the United Nations peacekeeping budget, and Beijing has provided more peacekeeping troops than all of the rest of the Permanent Five combined since 2012. See, Logan Pauley, “China Takes the Lead in UN Peacekeeping”, The Diplomat, April 17, 2018 https://thediplomat.com/2018/04/china-takes-the-lead-in -un-peacekeeping/ 22 Amitai Etzioni, From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations. New York: Palgrave, 2004. 23 Francis Fukuyama, “Exporting the Chinese Model”, Project-Syndicate, January 12, 2017. https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/china-one-belt-one-road-stra tegy-by-francis-fukuyama-2016-01?barrier=accesspaylog 24 Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017. 25 Robert Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Signs of Deconsolidation”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 28, No. 1, January 2017, pp. 5–16; Robert Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Democratic Disconnect”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 28, No. 3, July 2017, pp. 5–17. 26 Su Yinbiao, “Accelerating the going-abroad of Chinese standards; Facilitating the development of BRI”, People's Daily, May 3, 2017, p. 10. 27 The worst-case scenario is vividly described by Michael Lind in his recent essay, “America vs. Russia and China: Welcome to Cold War II”, The National Interest, April 2018. 28 Indeed, IMF has revisited its past practice of emergency lending and adopted a new institutional view on regulating international capital f low. For instance, Capital Flows: Review of Experience with the Institutional View, IMF Policy Paper, November 2016. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Policy-Papers/Issues/2017/01/13/PP 5081-Capital-Flows-Review-of-Experience-with-the-Institutional-View 29 Oliver Stuenkel, “The BRICS Leaders Xiamen Declaration: An analysis”, postwesternworld.com, September 7, 2017. 30 Zhou Bo, “The US is Right that China has no Allies – Because it Doesn’t Need Them”, South China Morning Post, June 13, 2016. 31 Hans Kundnani, “What is the Liberal International Order?”, German Marshall Fund of United Nations, Police Brief, March 3, 2017. 32 Dani Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy, W.W. Norton, 2012. 33 Richard Kozul-Wright and Stephanie Blankenburg, “The Rentiers Are Here: Rise of Global Rentier Capitalism”, Project-Syndicate, September 25, 2017. 34 Erik R. Peterson and Paul A. Laudicina, Global Economic Outlook 2017–2021: The All-Too-Visible Hand. Global Business Policy Council, 2017: Figure 5. 35 Lagarde said at a Center for Global Development event in Washington on July 24, 2017. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-imf-china-lagarde-idUSKBN1A922L

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36 She is referring to Article XIIII.1 of the Articles of the Agreement of IMF. It states that, “The principal office of the Fund shall be located in the territory of the member having the largest quota”. 37 PricewaterhouseCoopers, The World in 2050: The long view: how will the global economic order change by 2050? 2017. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/economy/the-worldin-2050.html 38 From a somewhat different angle, Michael Mazarr argued that, broadly speaking, China should be viewed not as an opponent or saboteur of the post-war international order but as a conditional supporter. See Summary of Building a Sustainable International Order Project, Rand Corporation, 2018, p. 14. 39 Gregory Chin, “Two-way Socialization: China, the World Bank, and Hegemonic Weakening”, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. XIX, Issue 1, Fall 2012. 40 Omar G. Encarnación, “The Follies of Democratic Imperialism”, World Policy Journal, Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring, 2005, pp. 47–60. 41 ADB, Meeting Asia’s Infrastructure Needs, February 2017. https://www.adb.org/publi cations/asia-infrastructure-needs 42 Nancy Birdsall, “Underfunded Regionalism in the Developing World”, Center for Global Development, Working Paper Number 49, April 2004. https://www.cgdev.org/ publication/underfunded-regionalism-developing-world-working-paper-number-49 43 In the communiques of the 2016 G20 Summit in Hangzhou, the G20 had committed to work for a “fair and modern international tax system”, in particular by combating tax avoidance to ensure that multinationals pay their fair share of tax in the countries where they make their profits.

References ADB, Meeting Asia’s Infrastructure Needs, February 2017, http://www.adb.org/publications/ asia-infrastructure-needs. Accessed on 8 November 2019. Amitai Etzioni, From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations, New York: Palgrave, 2004. Amitav Acharya, The End of American World Order, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014. Arvind Subramanian, Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance, Washington, DC: Peterson Institution for International Economics, 2011. Barbara Finamore, “Epilogue: China in the Driving Seat,” In Will China Save the Planet? edited by Barbara Finamore. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018. Capital Flows: Review of Experience with the Institutional View, IMF Policy Paper, November, 2016, http://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Policy-Papers/Issues/2017/ 01/13/PP5081-Capital-Flows-Review-of-Experience-with-the-Institutional-View. Accessed on 8 November 2019. Charles Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929–1939, Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1973. Charles Kindleberger, “International Public Goods Without International Government,” The American Economic Review, vol. 76, no. 1, 1986, pp. 1–13. Dani Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy, New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Duncan Snidal, “The Limits of Hegemonic Stability Theory,” International Organization, vol. 39, no. 4, 1985, pp. 579–614. Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017. Erik R. Peterson and Paul A. Laudicina, Global Economic Outlook 2017–2021: The All-TooVisible Hand, Global Business Policy Council, 2017, Figure 5.

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Francis Fukuyama, “Exporting the Chinese Model,” Project-Syndicate, January 12, 2017, http://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/china-one-belt-one-road-strategyby-francis-fukuyama-2016-01?barrier=accesspaylog. Accessed on 8 November 2019. Gregory Chin, “Two-way Socialization: China, the World Bank, and Hegemonic Weakening,” Brown Journal of World Affairs, vol. 19, no. 1, 2012. Hans Kundnani, “What is the Liberal International Order?” German Marshall Fund of United States, Policy Brief, May 3, 2017. IEEFA Report, China in 2017 Continued to Position Itself for Global Clean Energy Dominance, January 9, 2018, http://ieefa.org/ieefa-report-china-continues-posi tion-global-clean-energy-dominance-2017/. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis and Transformation of the American World Order, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012. John Ikenberry, “The Plot Against American Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 96, no. 3, 2017, pp. 2–9. Johnson Steve, “Rise of the Renminbi is ‘Story of the Next Cycle’,” Financial Times, April 26, 2019. Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Lagarde Said at a Center for Global Development Event in Washington on July 24, 2017. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-imf-china-lagarde-idUSKBN1A922L. Larry Summers, “Time US Leadership Woke up to New Era,” April 5, 2015, http://lar rysummers.com/2015/04/05/time-us-leadership-woke-up-to-new-economic-era/. Accessed on 8 November 2019. Liang Dong, “Bound to Lead? Rethinking China’s Role After Paris in UNFCCC Negotiations,” Chinese Journal of Population Resources and Environment, vol. 15, no. 1, 2017, pp. 32–38. Logan Pauley, “China Takes the Lead in UN Peacekeeping,” The Diplomat, April 17, 2018, http://thediplomat.com/2018/04/china-takes-the-lead-in-un-peacekeeping/. Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, New York: Penguin Press, 2009. Michael Lind, “America vs. Russia and China: Welcome to Cold War II,” National Interest, April 15, 2018, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/america-vs-russia-chinawelcome-cold-war-ii-25382. Accessed on 8 November 2019. Michael Mazarr, Summary of Building a Sustainable International Order Project, Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2018, p. 14. Nancy Birdsall, “Underfunded Regionalism in the Developing World,” Center for Global Development, Working Paper, No. 49, 2011. Nicholas Rosellini, “Multilateralism and the Chinese Dream,” UNDP China Office, April 19, 2017. http://www.cn.undp.org/content/china/en/home/ourperspective/ ourperspectivearticles/2017/04/19/multilateralism-and-the-chinese-dream.html. Accessed on 8 November 2019. Oliver Stuenkel, The BRICS and Future of Global Order, Lanham, MD: Lexington Book Company, 2015. Oliver Stuenkel, “The BRICS Leaders Xiamen Declaration: An Analysis,” Post Western World, September 7, 2017, http://www.postwesternworld.com/2017/09/07/leadersdeclaration-analysis/. Accessed on 8 November 2019. Omar G. Encarnación, “The Follies of Democratic Imperialism,” World Policy Journal, vol. 22, no. 1, 2005, pp. 47–60.

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Oran Young, “Political Leadership and Regime Formation: On the Development of Institutions in International Society,” International Organization, vol. 45, no. 3, 1991, pp. 281–308. Peter Dockrill, “China Just Overtook the US in Scientific Output for the First Time,” Science Alert, January 23, 2018. Peter Katzenstein ed., Sinicization and the Rise of China: Civilizational Processes Beyond East and West, New York: Routledge, 2012. Price Cooper Waterhouse, “The World in 2050: The Long View: How Will the Global Economic Order Change by 2050?” 2017, http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/eco nomy/the-world-in-2050.html. Accessed on November 8, 2019. Report of the U.N. Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, September 14. The Commission was chaired by Joseph Stiglitz. Accessed on 8 November 2019. Richard Kozul-Wright and Stephanie Blankenburg, “The Rentiers Are Here: Rise of Global Rentier Capitalism,” Project-Syndicate, September 25, 2017, http://www. project-syndicate.org/commentary/rise-of-global-rentier-capitalism-by-stephanieblankenburg-2-and-richard-kozul-wright-2017-09?barrier=accessreg. Accessed on 8 November 2019. Robert Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Democratic Disconnect,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 27, no. 3, 2016, pp. 5–17. Robert Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Signs of Deconsolidation,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 28, no. 1, 2017, pp. 5–16. Robert Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Su Yinbiao, “Accelerating the Going-Abroad of Chinese Standards; Facilitating the Development of BRI,” Peopl’s Daily, May 3, 2017, p. 10. The Biennial Science and Engineering Indicators Report, http://www.sciencealert. com/china-just-overtook-us-in-scientific-output-first-time-published-research. Accessed on 8 November 2019. The World in 2050: The Long View: How Will the Global Economic Order Change by 2050? 2017, http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/economy/the-world-in-2050.html. Accessed on 8 November 2019. Zhou Bo, “The US is Right That China has No Allies – Because It Doesn’t Need Them,” South China Morning Post, June 13, 2016, http://www.scmp.com/comment/insightopinion/article/1974414/us-right-china-has-no-allies-because-it-doesnt-need-them. Accessed on 8 November 2019. Zhou Xiaochuan, “Ref lections on Reforming the International Monetary System.” http:// theory.people.com.cn/BIG5/49154/49155/9039034.html.

10 TAILORED MULTILATERALISM China’s grand strategy in search for great rejuvenation Yongnian Zheng and Bojian Liu

Introduction On May 21, 2014, at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), the Chinese State President Xi Jinping addressed neighboring countries and emphasized that the issues and problems that Asian countries are confronted with should be resolved by Asians themselves. In the West, what Xi said was somehow interpreted as a signal of China’s own vision of the Monroe Doctrine. However, what was selectively neglected in the West is, in Xi’s speech, it was underscored that either China or Asia would not build exclusive alignments against any third party. It seems that the rising China, especially in Xi’s terms, has reached a threshold where clashes of tangible interests with the United States has been ineluctable, while it is certain in the mind of Chinese leaders that China should by no means forthrightly challenge the vested political clout of the United States, since such a challenge may lead to the disastrous “Thucydides Trap” augured by Graham Allison.1 In other words, with regard to the Sino–United States rivalries in issues related to the South China Sea, trade imbalance and global governances on nuclear nonproliferation, cybersecurity, climate change, and others, the tenet of a peaceful rise, cautiously held by Chinese leaders as a strategic principle in the past three decades, has growingly been under attack from an external origin, and its instructive values for practitioners of China’s foreign policy have been faded to a large extent. Indeed, the conceptual feasibility of a peaceful rise as a grand strategy would be certainly weakened, although it will still be a prospect as well as a principle for China.2 In fact, particularly since China entered Xi’s era, what preoccupies Chinese leaders more has been upholding well the peaceful environment for China’s growing interests dispersed globally, rather than underlining solely on

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the preservation of domestic economic growth. In the meantime, mainly due to China’s rapidly modernizing military power, the security dilemma between China and the allies of the United States in the region has been more acute, where several issues that had been relatively tranquilly laid aside, such as the disputes of the Diaoyu / Senkaku Islands with Japan and of the South China Sea with Vietnam and the Philippines, have ascended as quite perilous f lashpoints stirred by the fiercer inter-state misperceptions mainly in the wake of China’s rise. Moreover, in tandem with the global financial crisis in 2008, along with the cliché of the relative decline of the United States as well as the undersupply of United States-led global public goods, a more conservative, pragmatic, and vigilant inclination has emerged in the United States’ foreign policy against its primary competitor, China. From President Barack Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” to “America First” crafted by President Donald Trump, the external pressure imposed from the United States’ active engagement has forced China to seriously re-evaluate its ever low-key and humble doctrine which was set by the late Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. As expected, since 2012, shortly after Xi Jiping succeeded as the president, in a heyday of territorial and maritime disputes between China and its neighbors including Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines,3 a great debate in China on reforming China’s foreign policy had spread between hawkish and dovish strategists, which essentially signified a milestone of China’s fine-tuning grand strategy that was nuancedly different from Deng’s path. The debate primarily concentrated on how to weigh the well-known quotation of Deng Xiaoping given in the early 1990s, i.e. “taoguang yanghui, yousuo zuowei”.4 In general, the first part (taoguang yanghui, literally, don’t show off one’s strength while continuing to improve one’s weakness) was interpreted as China’s low profile foreign policy. In practice, keeping a low profile means humbly devoting to economic growth and refraining from either taking international leadership or directly confronting the West. The second half (yousuo zuowei, literally, trying to accomplish something) implies that China should play some role and take some initiatives in world affairs, in which the early endeavors comprised acceding the World Trade Organization, participating in international peacekeeping and nuclear non-proliferation, and so on. Before 2012, it was quite clear that Chinese foreign policy had been cautiously adherent to the first half of the Deng’s doctrine, even if there were some criticisms from overseas against China’s unsatisfying responsibility-taking in participating in global governance. However, since Xi succeeded as president in 2012, more and more scholars in academic and policy circles have argued that China will have to rethink whether or not it should consider highlighting the second half of the doctrine in its foreign policy. In the meantime, with regard to the new stage of China’s outbound investment officially termed as the “going out” strategy, another ephemeral but also far-reaching debate among Chinese pundits is further underpinning the transformation of China’s grand strategy, which is about which direction, i.e. to the west or the south, China should head to give a larger scale of “going out”, and this has become increasingly impending.

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For established scholars such as Wang Jisi at Beijing University who asserts that China should decisively go west, i.e. the broader Central Asia, they hold that areas like the Middle East and Central Asia have more opportunities for China to materialize its greater vision of “going out” at a lower cost, where there is more potential for cooperation between China and the United States in terms of counterterrorism, nonproliferation, and peacekeeping, while strategic layouts in Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia are relatively riskier, provided by the emerging zero-sum competitions going on there between China and the United States.5 In contrast, some scholars such as Yang Yi in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) advocated that the southern direction, especially the southwest Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, should be the priority of China’s geopolitical strategy, while China should maintain a robust cooperative partnership with Russia in the north and generally stabilize the peaceful environment in the western borders neighboring Central Asia.6 Opposing the proposals of going west, military scholars believe that heading to Central Asia would probably hurt the bilateral trust between China and Russia, and it is by no means less risky in the Middle East given the region’s fiery inter-state rivalries as well as relentless animosities between religions and races. Intriguingly, in hindsight, what the Xi leadership finally implemented, as the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative revealed, is somewhat a synthesis of two camps, which is logically closer to the more eclectic viewpoints raised by scholars such as Justin Lin Yifu, an important economic policy advisor to Chinese leaders. For example, Justin recommended that China should extend aid and capital to those underdeveloped countries and regions, which would help low-income countries to accelerate industrialization and expand markets for China’s capital goods and intermediate goods exports.7 Meanwhile, in 2016, three years after China inaugurated the gigantic initiative of OBOR, the United States strategic retrenchment from its role as a globalist leader had been more salient when Donald Trump was elected as the United States President, and his isolationist and anti-multilateralism inclination left China’s embryonic role in furthering globalization unexpectedly more prominent. So many questions need to be answered. How should we understand China’s practices of grand strategy that were historically transformed in the recent decade? How should we conceptualize China’s strategic move of embracing globalization and multilateralism? What are the implications of China’s current grand strategy to the evolving world order? Rather than simply construing modern China’s strategic approach as a seemingly oxymoron of two halves in Deng’s doctrine, this chapter attempts to answer the above puzzles by sorting out more concrete strategic concepts, i.e. tailored multilateralism inside of the generalized strategic principles proposed by Chinese leaders. By doing so, this paper will illustrate on the basis of a deductive exploration of China’s strategic objectives that multilateralism is not only an inherent part of modern China’s strategic thought since the fall of the Qing

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dynasty, but further transforming into a more tailored pattern in achieving those grand visions of rejuvenating the Chinese nation. The chapter proceeds in the following four sections. The first section attempts to delineate an ontology of China’s grand strategy, by distinguishing between grand strategy and military strategy, between autonomy and national rejuvenation as two grand strategic visions, and between security and rise as two concrete strategic objectives. The second section lays out the conceptualization of tailored multilateralism and its strategic importance for modern China. In particular, this section attempts to answer the following four questions. What are major obstacles thwarting China’s implementation of its grand strategy in various stages? How has the role of multilateralism played in modern China’s strategic practices? What is tailored multilateralism? How can tailored multilateralism well-connect China’s evolving strategic practices with China’s pursuit of its grand strategic visions? The third section gives vivid analytical examples of China’s OBOR initiative and cybersecurity governance to illustrate how tailored multilateralism works in China’s strategic practices. The final section qualifies the explanatory power of tailored multilateralism and summarizes the implications of tailored multilateralism as a grand strategy.

Fundamentals of modern China’s grand strategy Grand strategy and military strategy For quite a long time, when studying Chinese foreign policy, most pundits did not attach too much importance upon distinguishing between tactical strategies in a military sense and grand strategies in a national security sense. For example, as one of the pioneering works studying China’s grand strategy, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History, Alastair Iain Johnston drew on Chinese military classics to decipher China’s strategic tradition.8 In fact, not just international relations scholars, even for policy practitioners, they are unconsciously indifferent to the boundaries between these two strategies. For example, in the second half of his career more as a political leader than a military leader, Mao Zedong basically equated national strategy with military strategy, and he prioritized preparing to defeat invasions from superpowers more than fulfilling China’s statecraft and social well-being, which perhaps acted as a driving factor resulting in serious blunders such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. In general, there are two patterns in explaining how significant the distinction of two strategies is, especially in the case of China. First, the boundary between two strategies may vary depending on how the paradigm of international relations changes. Since after the Second World War, the culture of international politics has been evolving into a generally less realpolitik paradigm than the previous times, where the legal concept of state sovereignty had almost been unanimously accepted suddenly in areas that would otherwise be situated still

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in far less institutionalized orders such as feudal kingdoms, empires, or tributary systems. As debates among realists demonstrated, the differences of international politics before and after the Second World War are theorized with the rigid dichotomy between offensive realism and defensive realism, where the former incarnates more Hobbesian world politics, while the latter is not as pessimistic, if not having Kantian optimism. Applying the theoretical dichotomy into these differentiating two strategies, in the world of offensive realism where military containment is more pervasive in inter-state relations, it is certainly desirable for decision makers to practice military strategy over other national agendas. Although it can still be more or less seen in a small number of garrison states such as today’s North Korea, Israel, and Myanmar, prioritizing military strategy in statecraft is far less prevailing in the period after the Second World War than the periods before, while the Cold War is typically seen as a transitioning stage departing from a Hobbesian world toward the world of more defensive realism. Therefore, while it is somewhat reasonable for Johnston to explore China’s strategic behavior based on China’s military tactics in history, when it comes to defensive realism, the complexity of China’s grand strategy probably goes far beyond military strategy. Another reason that it is necessary to sort grand strategy out of military strategy that underpins China’s relations with international structure. In fact, although Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China implied a great change in China’s relations with the West, China’s grand strategy had not gone too far beyond the scope of the military until 1978, when China finally decided to embrace the market economy. Moreover, in the early 1980s, rectifying Mao Zedong’s mega pessimism that a periodical world war among great powers was compelling,9 Deng highlighted that there would be a generally long peace in the world, and that economic development was becoming the most important global issue. Therefore, since China’s reform and opening policies in the late 1970s, it is plausible that China’s grand strategy has growingly come to incorporate the purposes of facilitating peace and development, while the military modernization since then has been increasingly required to serve or even guarantee the fulfillment of those non-military purposes. Above all, given the nature of the zero-sum game in battlefields, military strategy is naturally realistic. However, the national grand strategy is more complex, while compared with military strategy, a grand strategy not only incorporates those intentions to uphold national security but also comprises the purposes of maintaining peace or beneficial collaborations. In a nutshell, the former highlights more the defeating of enemies, while the latter underlines the purpose of better self-survival as a sovereign state. Therefore, the grand strategy, namely tailored multilateralism, that this chapter will discuss, is not equivalent to those for military purposes, although the security concerns in neoliberal terms do constitute a part of it.

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Should grand strategy have universality? As defined by Barry Posen, grand strategy is a “nation-state’s theory about how to produce security for itself ”, and it is a “set of concepts and arguments that need to be regularly revised”.10 In other words, grand strategy not only ref lects a state’s evolving relationship with the international structure, but usually also has strong indigenous characteristics of “self ”, which may depend on a state’s geographic position, or ethnic and cultural background. And sometimes even a state itself may practice various grand strategies as time goes by. For example, given its location, Great Britain’s grand strategy has salient traits of offshore balancing, which is distinctive to numerous continental states’ preference for seeking regional primacy in history. In particular, stirred by the prospect of the melting Arctic which has resulted from global warming, Russia’s traditional grand strategy has been incorporating visions including securitizing the Arctic, while it would otherwise be unexpected given Russia’s continental-based strategic layout, which was ironically demonstrated by the Russian Empire’s ill-conceived sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867. In the case of China, as an evolving civilization rather than a strictly-defined nation-state, as following discussion on the two grand visions will show, the bumpy process of rebuilding the nation and the state of Chinese since the Republican (Xinhai) Revolution of 1911 implies that modern China’s strategic practices are not as rigid as countries such as Britain and the United States that have accomplished building states and nations earlier and more smoothly than China. In other words, among different stages of its state and nation building, China’s grand strategies were quite distinctive, despite their general similarities in the grand mission, as what will be discussed in the following subsection. In fact, as a pioneer initializing the process of building modern China, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen had struggled staggeringly throughout the procedure of exploring feasible grand strategies in rebuilding China and the Chinese nation. During the process, he had strategically departed from aligning with the United States to nuancedly leaning toward Russia in order to better save China out of the then extremely malicious international environment. Shouldered upon Dr. Sun’s strategic practices, Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-Shek had utterly antagonized against each other in terms of selecting the right grand strategy for China; while the former tended to fully embrace Communist revolutions sponsored by Russia, the latter firmly allied with the United States. Moreover, after Chiang and his Kuomintang f led to Taiwan in 1949, the split camps of China’s strategic choice had not undergone tremendous change until when Richard Nixon visited China in 1972. In sum, despite the point that grand strategy may not necessarily be universal, given analogous geological and economic conditions and cultural values and so on that are shared among some states, a certain amount of middle-level grand strategies are indeed transnationally applicable. For example, known as an approach of ameliorating the inter-state security dilemma, reassurance can be a choice grand strategy for states that are easier to be regarded as threatening,

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although they barely intend to be so. As argued by Paul Midford,11 the fact that Japan had spared no effort to uphold a reassuring posture to its East Asian neighbors as well as to its chief ally, i.e. the United States, had helped to shape the generally benign perception of major stakeholders toward Japan’s rise in the second half of the 20th century. Hence, the tailored multilateralism that this paper attempts to conceptualize may not be necessarily the same as those particular multilateralist approaches employed by other states.

Autonomy and rejuvenation as China’s grand visions Actually, from the Gulf War in 1991 to the United States missile strikes against Syria in 2018, the constant focal point of Chinese debates may not necessarily be the questionable legitimacy of the United States use of force, but rather how those frail regimes being bullied embodied heartrending images of how China was treated by imperialists during the so-called “Century of Humiliation”, during which there was no reliable assistance that a weak state could resort to other than supplicating superpowers’ expensive and sometimes wily mediations. Quite distinctive from major developed counterparts in the West, modern China, still regarding itself as a developing nation, was built through revolutions and resistance against foreign invasions and colonialism. Therefore, it might be palatable for the United States or Britain to uphold containment as a major national grand strategy, but for states that were built after trophies in anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist wars, it is far more imperative, in the long run, to nurture national power than to confront the establishment of superpowers. Therefore, China’s long-term strategic vision focuses far more on how to improve and develop itself simply urging for absolute gains rather than how to achieve relative gains to outperform its peers. In this paper, for better analyzing modern China’s strategic practices, we suggest the two most primary grand visions constantly prioritized throughout modern China’s evolving strategic calculations, which are autonomy (duli zizhu) and rejuvenation ( fuxing).12 In general, not until the end of the Cultural Revolution, had accomplishing full-grown autonomy been the most imperative task for China since the Opium War in 1840. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) defeated the Kuomintang and established a new regime in 1949, rejuvenation has increasingly been prioritized as the most important mission of modern China. However, as a caveat here, by delineating their varying importance since 1840, we do not mean that only one of them should be listed as grand objective of China during the period respectively from 1840 to 1949 and from 1940 to date. For example, both Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek had actually highlighted the national rejuvenation in their revolutionary discourse, while autonomy is still endowed with great importance today, typically in advancing China’s science and technology. Since 1842, humiliated by series of unequal treaties that typically contained provisions of imposing tariff-lowering, extraterritoriality, and consular

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jurisdiction, the Chinese government had not been able to exert full autonomy over its territory until 1945, when the Second World War ended and all of the Western powers revised their unequal treaties with China. When founding the Peoples’ Republic of China in 1949, manifested by Mao’s iconic claim that “Chinese people have stood up”,13 China entered a new era of pursuing national rejuvenation, while safeguarding the hard-won autonomy was largely secondary yet also a part of it. Demonstrated by Mao’s decision of sending troops to the Korean peninsula and fighting against the United States military in the 1950s, as well as Mao publicly breaking with Stalin in the 1960s,14 the strategic objective of China’s unyielding positions against two superpowers was primarily to defend national autonomy.

Security and rise under two grand strategic visions In fact, until the end of the 1990s, uncertainties over China’s economic future had not fully defused out of the sanction regime led by the United States since the Tiananmen Pro-Democracy Movement in 1989, and, for Chinese leaders, the urgency of defending autonomy has not been exceeded by pursuing rejuvenation. Admittedly, complete autonomy, if there ever was any, had not been fully achieved in some particular fields such as high technology, and, taking crippling sanctions from the United States most impressively in 1989 by the George H. W. Bush administration and the high-tech exporting ban threatened by the Donald Trump administration for instance, it still requires quite a long period before achieving full-f ledged autonomy in both industrial and technological terms, notwithstanding China’s decades of economic rise. However, stepping out of the shadows of the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1996 and the United States bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, entering into the 21st century, considering the easing peaceful environment, a rapidly rising China with stronger hard power and economic interdependence with the United States has accorded with far more improved self-perceptions of general autonomy as well as security. And since 1997, as Figure 10.1 illustrates, the CCP has increasingly regarded the pursuit of national rejuvenation over defending autonomy as a fundamental tenet of statecraft, and President Xi further conceptualized it as the “China Dream”, where he set the mid of the 21st century as a time for a milestone for China to accomplish the great rejuvenation.15 Analyzing modern China’s evolving strategic behavior, it is particularly necessary to articulate how pursuing the rights of rising16 has outweighed the goal of simply ensuring national security. In essence, as Figure 10.1 shows, although they are all indispensable ingredients of both autonomy and rejuvenation, the scope of rising17 is much broader than security per se, and safeguarding rising peacefully is much more complex and challenging than just ensuring security. Particularly, security requires hedging and f lexible strategies of both deterrence and reassurance, but safeguarding rights of the rise or development of the state entails more reassuring policies than deterrence. Obviously, dealing relations with smaller

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FIGURE 10.1

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The grand visions and strategic objectives of modern China. (Compiled by the authors).

states, to get international support as widely as possible, emerging great powers like China would not well guarantee its globally scattering interests without local states’ trust. However, policies of deterrence or coercing that mostly generate fear, sometimes forcibly attaining smaller states’ deference at best, would probably stir up an undesired security dilemma, especially when powerful third parties, such as the United States, interfere. To help understand the evolving priorities of China’s strategic objectives and grand visions, summarized as Figure 10.2, since 1949 and before 1979 when the Third Indochina War ended, under Mao’s strategic judgment of preparing for the next world war, China had weighed defending its security against foreign invasions with a higher priority than developing state power, in which the line between the enemy and the ally were clearly drawn, and deterring puppet regimes supported either by the Soviet Union or by the United States were also necessary ingredients for China’s security. However, after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping made more highlights of economic development than of military modernization in China’s statecraft, so “rising” became more important than guarding security. Obviously, given the difference between rising and rejuvenation, the timing of when the priority of rising overtook security was earlier than when rejuvenation surpassed autonomy, and hence the two most critical transformations of China’s grand strategy occurred in the early 1990s and in the early 2010s, which will be analyzed in the following sections.

Tailored multilateralism: a secured path to peaceful rise Now we turn to answering the following questions. What are major obstacles thwarting China’s implementation of its grand strategies in their various stages? How has the role of multilateralism played in modern China’s strategic practices? How are we to define tailored multilateralism? How could tailored

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FIGURE 10.2

Evolving priorities of modern China’s grand visions and strategic objectives. (Compiled by the authors).

multilateralism well-connect China’s evolving strategic practices with China’s pursuit of its grand strategic visions?

Multilateralism and modern China During most of the post-war period, given China’s relatively weak situation in the world and due to domestic turbulences, China’s grand strategy was less consistent and hence was not easily generalized in a conceptual manner, but there were still clues of multilateralism in modern China’s evolving strategic practices. By and large, it probably was the two superpowers’ unilateralism that made Chinese leaders recognize the urgency of supporting non-alignment campaigns, along with the countries that were just liberated from colonialism and imperialism. Therefore, collaboration through prospering multilateral means naturally

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became a strategic choice guaranteeing security in the wake of intensive geopolitical contests between the United States and the Soviet Union. For example, in the 1960s, Mao finalized and implemented his grand strategy which was summarized as the theory of “three worlds”. According to Mao, the First World was comprised of only two superpowers, i.e. the United States and the Soviet Union, the Second World was constituted by the developed countries mainly in Western Europe, and the Third World included underdeveloped countries most widely located in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.18Accordingly, expanding the Leninist doctrine widely used in communist revolutions that formulate the broadest united front thereby boycotting the common opponent, Mao appealed to international collaborations, especially among those in the Third World, against hegemonism of the Soviet Union. Building a united front among the Second and Third Worlds to counter the superpower’s hegemonism embodied China’s “pre-modern” thoughts of multilateralism. However, from 1949 to 1978, despite the stout aspirations for multilateralism fulfilling China’s needs for security and modernization, and given the overarching security threats and feeble state power, China never had any initiative positions in those multilateral organizations it had accessed, while few f lashy practices of China’s multilateral diplomacies in the 1950s, such as the Geneva Conference, were very marginal in terms of sustainability and strategic implications. So, the question is: why had China failed to embrace multilateralism or make it into a catalyst furthering its modernization from since the very beginning from 1949? One reason is that the People's Republic of China was basically insulated outside of multilateralism because of either the blockades by the West, or due to China’s domestic political disaster. In fact, the regime built by the CCP had not been widely recognized by the West as a legal entity representing China until 1971 when the People's Republic of China reclaimed the membership in the United Nations by replacing the Republic of China. However, even after being endowed with United Nations membership and establishing diplomatic relations with the United States, China had not fully embraced the intuitions of multilateralism until 1978 because of the Cultural Revolution, during which the radical ideology of ultra-leftism had greatly wrecked normal decision making and policy implementation in the foreign affairs of China. Above all, mostly owing to the strikingly difficult political and economic situation in the domestic front, Mao’s strategic blueprint had not been successfully implemented, and the strategy based on his theory of “three worlds” was less productive than he expected from a purely cost-benefit perspective, especially during the Cultural Revolution when Mao appealed for exporting communist revolutions from China to the Third World, during which China extended a large amount of aid despite the nation-wide famine and disturbance within China. In hindsight, Mao’s strategic layout driven by radical ideological missions had left a haunting entanglement for post-Cold War Southeast Asian countries to develop political trust with China as robust as what they had with Japan or the United States, even though the post-Cold War China has entailed costly favoring

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policies to show Beijing’s goodwill, as typically demonstrated by China’s nondevaluation claim of Renminbi during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Another reason is that most international organizations during the Cold War had more or less been covered by the shadow of the wrestling going on between the United States and the Soviet Union, and few of them could be operated as transparent or fair as those bona fide multilateral institutions that arose after the Cold War. Taking the United Nations for instance, it had not performed as it was expected to as the institution facilitating peace during the Cold War. Besides, probably serves as the most ironic fact to some liberalists, most well-functioning multilateral institutions during the Cold War such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact were those underpinning military alliances, and the predecessor of today’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), namely, the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA), was primarily motivated by fears of spreading communism. Moreover, rightly alerted by the Cold War motivation behind multilateralism at the time, China did not show much enthusiasm toward joining seemingly multilateral institutions during the Cold War because of its fear of losing hard-won autonomy. More intriguingly, what is largely overlooked by the scholarly literature is that, although China lopsidedly supported the socialist camp during the 1950s, fully standing outside of the Warsaw Pact, unlike other Asian socialist countries, China reluctantly participated as just an observer in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance initiated by the Soviet Union. In sum, given defending security and autonomy against the so-called hegemonism were set as the most important agenda items by Chinese leaders at the time, perhaps it is because China held too utopian and idealistic a view on multilateralism as ref lected by Mao’s theory of “three worlds”, China was either stuck out of major multilateral institutions or radically antipathetic to those international organizations overshadowed by the grips of the two hegemons. Moreover, notwithstanding its vigorous ardor for a fairer world order and multilateral collaborations of the Third World, China lacked the necessary power to really take initiatives. As expected, after the early 1980s, those factors that had tremendously curbed China to embrace multilateralism had gradually disappeared, and China had participated with and been accepted gradually by major Western-based international institutions such as accessions to the International Monetary Fund in 1980, to the Non-proliferation Treaty in 1992, and to the World Trade Organization in 2001. Nevertheless, along with China’s more rapid rise, especially after the 2008 financial crisis, Beijing’s relationship with some Western-based multilateral institutions has almost reached a threshold where the rights that those institutions could accord may not well-meet China’s growingly sophisticated demands, or the comparable demands by other emerging candidates of great powers, such as India and Brazil. Meanwhile, after 2008, China, in general, stepped onto a new stage. On the one hand, China’s continuous growth, as analyzed previously, has been

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growingly dependent on global markets and peace. In particular, since roughly 2016 when China became a net exporter of capital for the first time in history, the pattern of China’s rise has been transformed from the procedure of power growth, mainly focusing on the domestic arena, to an ascendingly mature stage with a much more clear-cut emphasis on external rising. On the other hand, China has to survive new geopolitical quagmires to ensure that it can achieve a great rejuvenation before 2050. In particular, requiring China to lay out a welltailored grand strategy to manage, there are compelling geopolitical risks that may handicap China’s external rise, such as the “Thucydides Trap”, i.e. military conf lict with the United States – the established hegemon, and uneasy neighbors with lingering perceptions derived from China’s rise, as well as various simmering global issues with the potential of inf licting inter-state conf lict like climate change, terrorism, and poverty. Without a doubt, the sustainable development of China desiderates peaceful coexistence with the United States and prevailing trust-building with neighboring countries, and multilateralism naturally implies great significance for China due to its effectiveness in biding states together by the norm of reciprocity and through coordinating interests based on established rules. However, traditional multilateral platforms, such as the United Nations and International Monetary Fund, are typically operated in a way underscoring the great powers’ interests in the name of global peace or economic well-being, and they basically lack f lexibilities and efficiencies in solving concrete issues that only particulate the number of states that are stakeholders.19 Accordingly, to balance well the fortuitous conf licts of interests when pursing international justice without hurting autonomy and aspirations of rejuvenation, a well-tailored, highly f lexible, and scalable multilateralism should have significant strategic implications for China.

Tailored multilateralism: defnition and implication Robert Keohane regards multilateralism as the practice of coordinating national policies in groups of three or more states, through ad hoc arrangement or by means of institutions.20 John Gerard Ruggie sorts out the institutions of multilateralism by distinguishing them from multilateral institutions, in which Ruggie has abstracted three principles embedded in institutions of multilateralism, i.e. indivisibility, nondiscrimination, and diffuse reciprocity.21 Keohane and Ruggie have laid a conceptual framework for making sense of post-war multilateralism, and their thoughts on post-war multilateralism highlighted its new features such as the situational interests of members and the f lexibility of cooperative forms. Accordingly, tailored multilateralism is of course not fundamentally different from most other practices of post-war multilateralism, while its distinctiveness, if any, lies only on variances of the initiator’s or of the initiating group’s strategic objectives. It is the subject of initiating multilateral cooperation that makes the cooperation become a tailored multilateralism. In tailored multilateralism, different

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initiating subjects may have different strategic concerns, and hence the initiating subject’s specific interests largely shape the distinctive type of multilateralism. Therefore, without fixed or universal codes of conduct, China’s tailored multilateralism could be defined as practices of post-war multilateralism specifically designed and implemented based on the strategic calculations of China as an initiator or China within initiating groups. Indeed, the United States during its rise in the early 20th century had been the driving force of shaping multilateralism, most notably through the creation of the League of Nations promoted notably by Woodrow Wilson.22 Moreover, in the early 1920s, the United States had efficiently protected its rights to rise by holding the Washington Naval Conference and thereby multilaterally institutionalized the non-discriminatory open door policy, which not only transiently facilitated maintaining fairer trade and political order in East Asia, but also showed its benign intention as a rising power and its refrainment from colliding against the contemporary peers of great powers. Besides this, in the late 20th century, Japan, as another peacefully risen power, had also resorted to multilateralism as a grand strategy23 and thereby quite successfully placated fears from its neighbors, with the unremoved memory of Japan’s imperialist past, over Tokyo’s breathtaking economic might. Generally, in the particular case of China, given Beijing’s current strategic objectives and those potential obstacles facing it, there are three features that make tailored multilateralism particularly significant to its grand strategy. First, the multilateralism with Chinese characteristics can be tailored by targeting member states and stakeholders. Unlike some typical multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and NATO, tailored multilateralism is not featured necessarily with the same principle of indivisibility as how it is defined by Ruggie. It is the indivisible interests or concerns shared among its members that are featured in tailored multilateralism, rather than strictly indivisible responsibilities of collective responses to any issues. In a nutshell, the indivisibility in tailored multilateralism is more softened than that in traditional multilateralism, and it is highly f lexible and non-compulsive, which ensures the necessary extent of openness for prospective member states that they would otherwise be refrained from taking too much rigid liability. Not only can the criteria of membership accession be highly f lexible and inclusive depending on the timing or the scalability of the multilateral institution, but collective responses to any member’s request are not necessarily set as fixed rules. Actually, Mao’s practices of the “three worlds” theory also contain this principle of f lexibly-tailored stakeholders in the institutions of multilateralism, where China transferred targets of cooperation from ideologically defined socialist comrades to all countries, including those of developed countries in West Europe, that were unsatisfied with either the United States’ or the Soviet Union’s hegemonies. Second, the multilateralism with Chinese characteristics can be tailored by commonalities in the geographic sense or with the concerns of issue areas.24

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Particularly for China, peripheral and good-neighborhood diplomacies are officially regarded as two essential principles of foreign policy, so one can see that the earliest multilateral organizations that were initiated by China started from cooperating with neighboring countries. For multilateral arrangements such as ASEAN+1 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, it is the geographic affinities that allow states involved to share certain common interests, in particular in issue areas, in which most of them focus only on a small set of policy issues. Third, the multilateralism with Chinese characteristics can be tailored by institutional structures. A constant problem perplexing members within a multilateral organization is how to mediate the status stratification among the members. For vast global-wide organizations, usually great powers enjoy much more privilege than small states, such as the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council that are constituted by the five most inf luential powers. Accordingly, in terms of the objective conditions for China to implement tailored multilateralism, comparing the situation before 2014 when China was not far less than a capital exporter and not capable enough to take initiatives at the global level, China today has been endowed with more favorable opportunities, provided that China is continuingly rising with widening global interests and inf luences. In fact, demonstrated by President Donald Trump’s loathing of globalism, the subjective willingness and real leadership of the United States in maintaining post-war global governance have been declining, which leaves the rest of the stakeholders such as European and Asian countries with more converging interests of guarding globalization. Besides, represented by most recent global issues such as climate change, cybersecurity, drones, and even the proliferation of robotics, more issue-oriented multilateral organizations with concrete focuses and niches are increasingly needed, while most post-war international institutions are not f lexible and efficient enough to deal with those new global problems. Notably, the tailored multilateralism that China takes is not devised based on zero-sum calculations as systems of alliance set by superpowers in the Cold War. As mentioned previously, it is the motivation of reassuring the United States of China’s non-offensive intentions that entails cautiously institutionalizing multilateral cooperation while reserving seats of membership for any potential parties, including the United States, that are interested. Such an approach is a little different from neoliberalists’ recently raised concept of contested multilateralism, which explains how emerging powers including China attempt to establish or to harness multilateral institutions to challenge the established West-based norms.25 Above all, although there are growing conf licts of geopolitical interest in tandem with China’s expanding global investments, avoiding confrontations against the United States should still be a necessary condition for the following rounds of China’s peaceful rise. Regarding the feasibility of the strategy in dealing with challenges of the strategic containment of China from the United States, unlike pre-war

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multilateralism based dominantly on indivisibly coordinating interests in cleatcut exclusive manners, tailored multilateralism is more efficient than passively reassuring but far safer than building alignment. Similarly, tailored multilateralism is less costly to operate than traditional multilateralism. Tailored multilateralism is also more proactive, and it usually requires that the acting agent takes initiative. It focuses more on safeguarding a state’s rise or retaining a state’s vested power status, while traditional multilateralism tends to highlight defeating common enemies or maximizing collective defense power. To sum up, there are four necessary conditions that mostly attribute to the formation of China’s tailored multilateralism. First, among grand visions of China, national rejuvenation outweighs but does not exclude state autonomy; otherwise, China ought to be less willing to take initiatives in preserving globalization. Second, among the key strategic objectives of China, particularly since the early 2000s, safeguarding the rights of rising or development has become more prioritized than simply seeking security. Third, in the foreseeable future, the most compelling threat of China’s rise to rejuvenation is possible waves of provocative containment launched by the United States or volatile impulsions of regional alignments that are balancing against China and stirred by the United States. Fourth, global markets and peace and economic prosperity have become growingly crucial for China’s continuing rise.26 Accordingly, we suggest that there should be at least three kinds of multilateralism tailored to deal with three types of relations, respectively. The first set of targets is made up of the great and regional powers such as the United States, Russia, and Japan since those states may have the strongest incentives to contain China. The second set includes most of the Third World that mainly constitutes those underdeveloped countries such as Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa since China’s continuing growth requires their emerging markets, natural resources, and moral support. The third set of targeting countries are East Asian countries neighboring China, and they are the most crucial for China to rise continuously with the peaceful geopolitical environment. However, as the principle of f lexible accessions in tailored multilateralism illustrates, the boundaries between any two of those three sets of targeting countries are certainly not rigid, and, in the long run, especially when China’s grand visions change, those divisions of tailored multilateralism might either be converged or reorganized.

Tailored multilateralism and global governance: cases studies The OBOR initiative Since the concept of the “Silk Road Economic Belt”27 initiated by Xi Jinping during his visit to Kazakhstan in 2013, even in the officially finalized prospectus of OBOR, i.e. the “vision and actions on jointly building Belt and Road” issues in 2015,28 China has kept considerably murky descriptions of any clear

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geographical areas refining OBOR.29 By doing so, China has actually left quite some f lexible leeway as to what tailored multilateralism indicates, only defining the routing directions rather than the exact boundaries. As the most frequently quoted statements used in Chinese official discourse, China underscored that it only proposed the initiative of OBOR while not intending to dictate how it works, and more importantly, OBOR “is not China’s solo performance but a chorus of all participating countries”.30 At least at the rhetorical level, in contrast to the United States Marshall Plan, a quite distinguishable trait of OBOR is its fundamental tenets of jointly building contributions by all states involved rather than the leadership of China, indicated as principles of “wide consultation (gongshang), joint contribution (gongjian), and shared benefits (gongsxiang)”.31 The OBOR can probably be regarded as a series of institutions of China’s tailored multilateralism that will incorporate numerous multilateral institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Free Trade Agreements with the Eurasian Economic Union. Also, as what China has unveiled about its vision for the “Polar Silk Road” across the Arctic, issue areas that OBOR may cover are highly scalable so as to allow the attraction of a more significant number of state stakeholders. Although OBOR does not underline any geopolitical concerns, like a tailored strategy aiming to guarantee China’s continuing economic rise toward national rejuvenation, the initiative, as claimed, will help modernize those countries involved and thereby nurturing long-term reciprocities and reshape value chains with China. Such an approach is expected to allow China’s economic rise to operate more autonomously and to rely less on the supply chains mostly dominated by the United States. In general, OBOR vividly demonstrates at least three principles of tailored multilateralism that China has been practicing. First, as mentioned, OBOR is tailored to be based on f lexible membership accession. Even countries like the United States and Japan which have been very critical about this initiative so far are in-principle welcomed by China to join. Besides, the structure of joint venturing AIIB has vividly demonstrated how China tailors its aspiring multilateral organizations, in which the major United States allies in NATO, such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, have opted to join the AIIB. In fact, OBOR per se is not even an institution in the strict term. Hence it does not require formal approvals of membership accession, and, by and large, OBOR is underscored by China as a developing plan jointly pushed by states that are willing to be involved. So OBOR could be considered as a de-institutionalized joint work of multilateralism, which might also explain why some literature terms it as a framework rather than an institution or organization. Second, OBOR not only caters well to China’s chief concerns of circumventing the “Thucydides Trap” while peacefully coexisting with the United States, but also strengthens beneficial interdependence between China and underdeveloped region. Despite skepticisms mainly from the United States, institutionalizing OBOR in a multilateral manner tremendously reduces risks of being interpreted as a threat in comparison with its predecessor, i.e. the “go-out policy”

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raised in 1999. In particular, China’s appeals to India and European countries such as Germany, France, and Britain to join the AIIB. Moreover, although India was wary over the OBOR’s projects in the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Corridor, ironically, India is not only the second largest shareholder in the AIIB, but, in the year of 2017, had actually benefited the most and became the top borrower from the AIIB with over $1 billion worth of loans financing its infrastructure projects,32 even though India and China had experienced quite perilous border tensions in 2017.33 Third, OBOR is tailored to regions that are the thirstiest for infrastructure construction as well as outbound investment. Moreover, those regions involved in the OBOR initiative have already received decades of investment and aid from China under its “go-out policy”, through which China could not only expand the market of its exporting goods as Justin Lin appealed, but also be helpful to gain wider international support from countries in those regions in China’s other urgent agendas of global governance which were unwelcomed by most Western powers, especially in issues such as dealing with climate change, the Arctic development, and reforming the global cyberspace order.

Multilateralism and the evolving cyberspace order Since 2008, China has become the largest Internet population and hence the leading digital economy in the world, which means that cyberspace increasingly acts as a crucial infrastructure in China’s economy. Not surprisingly, given China’s exceptional understanding over the issues of Internet sovereignty, cyberspace has actually been integrated into its concerns of economic autonomy, and strategic governance over cyberspace is sharing more stakes in pursuit of its national rejuvenation. For example, in order to better integrate cyberspace into the framework of national autonomy, introducing the concept of cyber sovereignty, China not only tightens its reign of Internet data within borders, notably by enacting the Cybersecurity Law in 2017, but also by further integrating its resources of cyberwarfare into more legitimate and formal institutions such as the Strategic Support Force established in the end of 2015. However, as with the devastating damage to ZTE when the United States planned to ban circuit supplies in 2018, regarding those most crucial technologies in either operating systems or integrated chips, there are huge gaps between China and the United States. Moreover, partially revealed by the leakages of the United States cyber-surveillance program, PRISM was accused by Edward Snowden in the year of 2013; the United States holds overarching advantages over China regarding sheer deterrence power in cyberspace. Therefore, as manifested in “Made in China 2025”, reducing dependence on supply chains led by far more advanced countries such as the United States in terms of critical technology (hexin jishu) is also critical to China’s cyber autonomy, and representative endeavors include China’s development of semiconductors and quantum computing and communication technologies.

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Notably, as the fundamental infrastructure is shoring up daily operations of the global Internet, the root servers’ domain name system (DNS) had long been gripped dominantly by the inventor of the modern Internet as a global public good, i.e. the United States.34 Admittedly, the United States has somehow recognized the fact that there are more state actors arising with greater interests and appeals for more power through reforming governing structure of global cyberspace. Nevertheless, as with what Chinese side worries about, the United States has insisted that the global governance of cyberspace should be practiced based on the principle of multistake-holders, through which the United States can actually preserve its supreme status in global cyberspace because by combining those non-state actors together, such as the leading multinational Internet corporations that are under the United States jurisdiction, the United States will certainly hold the largest stake in the total pool of global cyberspace for a long time. In contrast, due to its particularly steady concern of autonomy and state power, China sees the governance of cyberspace as a state-centered matter rather than a borderless objective, mainly charged by non-governmental organizations as to what the United States holds. China spares no effort, mainly by means of multilateralism as it claims, to promote the international legalization of a statecentered regulatory framework on cyberspace. For instance, joining the camp comprised of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, and others, China has been pushing for the Internet to be included in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), an inter-governmental organization that is regulating traditional telecommunications such as international phone calls. Apparently, on the multilateral platform of ITU, with members confined to state rather than to nonstate entities, China attempts to counterbalance the less state-centered Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an organization still actually run under the aegis of the United States government, which is the supreme institution ensuring the reliable operation of the global Internet.35 Regarding the improvement of China’s cyberinfrastructure and cybersecurity overall, for instance, to ensure significantly its cyber autonomy instead of the lopsided relying on root servers of DNS controlled by the United States, primarily through international collaborations, China is ramping up the deployment of the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)-based network into broader use. Given the fact that the current IPv4-based global Internet has almost reached its theoretical limit on the number of IP addresses allowed to be registered, China sees the technological transformation as a strategic opportunity. Accordingly, as what Xi Jinping highlighted as jointly building by all states involved, similar to that in OBOR, the strategy that China employs in reforming international cyberspace order is its typical tailored multilateralism. Indeed, IPv6 is promoted through the typical approach of tailored multilateralism that is compatible with China’s strategic objectives in reforming the global order of cyberspace governance. For example, it’s tailored based on China’s concerns of cyber autonomy and sovereignty, underscoring means of multilateralism as an initiating state,

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and in 2013, China participated in the planning of the Yeti DNS Project, and had completed the construction of 25 units of IPv6 root servers in the world, of which four of them were deployed in China, which was the first time for China to collect the power of owning Internet root servers.36 As claimed by China, the implementation of the Yeti DNS Project lays quite a solid foundation for China’s blueprint for establishing new global cyberspace governance based on multilateralism.

Concluding remarks As a caveat, by advocating a grand strategy of tailored multilateralism, we do not mean that the strategy is universally applicable in every corner of China’s foreign policy in general, and its security policy in particular. In fact, for China, multilateralism may not always be the first choice to find solutions to a certain amount of issue areas. For instance, when it comes to issues related to disputed sovereignty between China and other countries, such as those related to the Diaoyu / Senkaku Islands and the South China Sea, Beijing has conveyed clear proposition that the disputes should only be resolved through bilateral means between states involved. The approach has been revealed in China’s considerations on accessions of Pakistan and Indian into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. However, taking territorial disputes in the South China Sea, for instance, the multilateral approach still takes effect after bilateral negotiations. For China, this is to help institutionalize the outcome of what the bilateral approach has achieved. In fact, according to China’s official statement, the so-called “TwoTrack Approaches”37 essentially comprise the multilateral approach by relying on ASEAN countries to jointly guarantee the achievement of bilateral negotiations between countries in dispute. But this does not apply to the issues that by nature are highly sensitive domestic discussions in China that will usually spill over and somehow have international inf luence. For such an issue, China will not agree to resolve through the traditional approaches of multilateralism, nor could it be well disentangled though traditional multilateral means, particularly regarding international security issues that are closely connected with Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Above all, the strategic value of tailored multilateralism to China is mainly a natural offspring of the historical path that China has led to since the collapse of the Qing dynasty, and the inherent ethos of tailored multilateralism had been embodied in China’s strategic practices throughout the process of seeking national autonomy against imperialist invasion, security against extraneous containment, and rising toward national rejuvenation out of the lost global status has fallen in the so-called “Century of Humiliation”. Moreover, since the rapidly rising China has led to misperceptions about it in the international community, the dynamically inclusive and f lexible institutions set up in tailored multilateralism are quite helpful in placating suspicions and fears by potential rivals and neighboring small states.

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It is also noteworthy that, although the rapidly rising China shows quite a steep learning curve in operating institutions of multilateralism, the scale of China’s multilateral initiatives are still far from full-f ledged as compared to what the United States had achieved in its prime after the Second World War. OBOR still looks like a regionalist initiative at the very beginning. Finally, regarding the prospect of China’s self-tailored multilateralism and its role in the evolving global governance, perhaps much more meaningful questions may not necessarily be about how possible it is for China to be successful, but how necessary it is. After all, the most recent dynamics between the two most inf luential powers, i.e. China and the United States, have seemingly transferred from wrestles ahead of the “Thucydides Trap” focusing on who wins over who, toward a more sophisticated split over how to deal with globalization and multilateralism spawn from it. Because, just four decades ago, their positions on the question of globalization were strikingly opposite, and what’s most attractive in this dynamic is that, in the end, their strategic approaches to the question of globalization might have tremendous impact on the outcome to the myth of their “Thucydides Trap”, which is probably the most profound issue to the current world order.

Notes 1 Graham Allison, “Thucydides’ trap has been sprung in the Pacific”, Financial Times 21, 2012, and Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?, New York: Houghton Miff lin Harcourt, 2017. 2 Similar to the global pre-eminence as a grand objective to the grand strategy of the United States. 3 Where most Chinese officials and strategists believed that those neighbors were emboldened by the United States. 4 Which means keeping a low profile while trying to accomplish something. 5 Wang Jisi, “China's Search for a Grand Strategy: A Rising Great Power Finds its Way,” Foreign Affairs 90, 2011, pp. 68. 6 Yang Yi, “Zhoubian Anquan Xuyao Quanfangwei Zhanlue [Periphery security requires all-round grand strategy],” 26 October 2012, Global Times, http://opinion. huanqiu.com/opinion_world/2012-10/3216696.html, accessed 17 March 2018. 7 Justin Yifu Lin, “China and the global economy,” China Economic Journal 4, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1-14. 8 Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. 9 Mao’s thought on the situation was summarized as “Fighting an Early, Large Scale and Nuclear War”. See Yuan Dejin, “Mao Zedong and the Thought of ‘Fighting an Early, Large Scale and Nuclear War’”, Junshi Lishi, Military History, No. 5, 2010, pp. 1–6. 10 Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for US Grand Strategy, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2014, p. 1. 11 Paul Midford, “The Logic of Reassurance and Japan's Grand Strategy,” Security Studies 11, No. 3, 2002, pp. 1–43. 12 Sun Yat-Sen and Chiang Kai-shek use “Zhenxing” more than “Fuxing”, while actually the general meaning is the same. The term sometimes is also translated as “the Great Renaissance of the Chinese Nation”. 13 For an analysis of nationalistic implications of this particular quote see Suisheng Zhao, “A State-Led Nationalism: The Patriotic Education Campaign in Post-Tiananmen China”, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 31, No. 3, 1998, pp. 287–302.

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14 Mao was alert to the Soviet Union’s intervention into the Prague Spring, which was perceived by Mao as threatening China because of Moscow’s de facto defiance of Socialist allies’ autonomy. 15 Xinhua News Agency, “Xi highlights national goal of rejuvenation,” 30 November 2012, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-11/30/content_15972687.htm, accessed 2 March 2018. 16 Also termed as “rights of developing” ( fazhan quan) in some Chinese official statements. Xinhua News Agency, “Shuxie shixian renmin fazhan quan de xinpianzhang” (Writing a new chapter for the people’s right of development), 1 December 2016, http://www. xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-12/01/c_1120031061.htm, accessed March 12, 2018. 17 In fact, the pursuit of rising is also different with that of rejuvenation. Rising or development is a general term meaning a forward procedure of social progress, while rejuvenation contains a more concrete goal of reviving a state’s reputation to be as prime as in a certain time in world history. 18 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, “Chairman Mao Zedong’s Theory on the Division of the Three World and the Strategy of Forming an Alliance Against an opponent”, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/ziliao_665539/ 3602_665543/3604_665547/t18008.shtml, accessed on April 12, 2018. 19 Arthur A. Stein, “Incentive compatibility and global governance: Existential multilateralism, a weakly confederal world, and hegemony”, in Alan S. Alexandroff, ed, Can the World be Governed? Possibilities for Effective Multilateralism, Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008, pp. 139–159. 20 Robert O. Keohane, “Multilateralism: An Agenda for Research”, International Journal 45, No. 4, 1990, pp. 731–764. 21 John Gerard Ruggie, “Multilateralism: the anatomy of an institution”, International Organization 46, No. 3, 1992, pp. 561–598. 22 Stewart Patrick, The Best Laid Plans: The Origins of American Multilateralism and the Dawn of the Cold War, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008. 23 See, for example, Dennis T. Yasutomo, The New Multilateralism in Japan’s Foreign Policy, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995; Nobuo Okawara and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Japan and Asian-Pacific Security: Regionalization, Entrenched Bilateralism, and Incipient Multilateralism”, in Peter J Katzenstein, ed, Rethinking Japanese Security: Internal and External Dimensions, London and New York: Routledge, 2008, pp. 118–146. 24 It is noteworthy that, by definition, there seems to be overlapping between tailored multilateralism and regionalism, but for countries like China that have global interests, by raising tailored multilateralism, we assume that it is going to be expanded in the long run given the f lexibility of membership accessions. 25 See, for example, Julia C. Morse and Robert O. Keohane, “Contested Multilateralism”, The Review of International Organizations 9, No. 4, 2014, pp. 385–412. 26 In a Chinese official statement, one of the most unwanted situations when China’s economic rise halts is “the Middle Income Trap”. 27 The full name is the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which generally includes three major routes: (1) from northeast China to central Asia, Russia, Europe, and the Baltic Sea; (2) from northwest China to central and western Asia, to the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea; (3) from southwest China to Indochina Peninsular and to the Indian Ocean. See Xinhua News Agency, “Essential guide to understanding Belt and Road Initiative”, May 13, 2017, http://www.xinh uanet.com/english/2017-05/13/c_136279142.htm, accessed on April 28, 2018. 28 Xinhua News Agency, “Full Text: Vision and actions on jointly building Belt and Road”, March 28, 2015, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2015-03/28/c_ 134105858_2.htm, accessed April 28, 2018. 29 For an analysis of the OBOR, see, Zheng Yongnian and Zhang Chi, “The Belt and Road Initiative and China’s Grand Diplomacy”, China and the World: Ancient and Modern Silk Road, Vol. 1. No. 3, September 2018, pp. 1–26.

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30 Xinhua News Agency, “Essential Guide to Understanding Belt and Road Initiative”, May 13, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-05/13/c_136279142.htm, accessed on April 28, 2018. 31 Xi Jinping, “Work Together to Build the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road”, May 14, 2017, Xinhua News Agency, http://www. xinhuanet.com/english/2017-05/14/c_136282982.htm, accessed April 3, 2018. 32 “India benefits from AIIB loans despite China tensions,”18 March 2018, Financial Times, https://ww w.ft.com/content/da2258f6 -2752 -11e8 -b27e-cc62a39d57a0, accessed 18 April 2018. 33 In fact, the decisive cornerstone of easing bilateral tensions was also enabled by an institution of multilateralism, i.e. the 2017 9th BRICS Summit held in Xiamen. 34 Essentially, spawning from the United States fears of the Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik into space, the modern Internet is a part of the United States security strategy in the earliest period. Even today, the United States still holds most of the DNS root servers of 13, let alone many other cutting-edge hardware technologies that are dominantly controlled by the United States companies. For the detailed distribution of root servers, see “List of Root Servers”, https://www.iana.org/domains/root/s ervers, accessed April 12, 2018. 35 P.W. Singer and Allan Friedman, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 182–185. 36 Xinhua News Agency, “’Xueren jihua’ zai quanqiu jiashe IPv6 gen fuwuqi, zhongguo bushu 4 tai [‘Yeti DNS Project’ builds IPv6 root servers in the world, four deployed in China]”, November 27, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/tech/2017-11/27/c_ 1122016888.htm, accessed April 25, 2018. 37 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, “Wang Yi: Solving South China Sea Disputes Through ‘Two-Track Approaches’”, August 9, 2014, accessed on April 18, 2018, http://www.mfa.gov.cn/chn//pds/wjb/zzjg/yzs/dqzz/ dnygjlm/xgxw/t1181457.htm.

References Allison, Graham. “Thucydides’ Trap Has Been Sprung in the Pacific,” Financial Times, 21, 2012. Dejin, Yuan. “Mao Zedong and the Thought of ‘Fighting an Early, Large Scale and Nuclear War’,” Junshi Lishi (Military History), 5, 2010, pp. 1–6. Johnston, Alastair Iain. Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History, Princeton University Press, 1995. Keohane, Robert O. “Multilateralism: An Agenda for Research,” International Journal, vol. 45, no. 4, 1990, pp. 731–764. Lin, Justin Yifu. “China and the Global Economy,” China Economic Journal, vol. 4, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1–14. Midford, Paul. “The Logic of Reassurance and Japan’s Grand Strategy,” Security Studies, vol. 11, no. 3, 2002, pp. 1–43. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. “Chairman Mao Zedong’s Theory on the Division of the Three World and the Strategy of Forming an Alliance Against an Opponent,” http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/ziliao_665539/3602_ 665543/3604_665547/t18008.shtml. Accessed 8 November 2019. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. “Wang Yi: Solving South China Sea Disputes Through ‘Two-Track Approaches’,” 9 August 2014, http://www. mfa.gov.cn/chn//pds/wjb/zzjg/yzs/dqzz/dnygjlm/xgxw/t1181457.htm. Accessed 08 November 2019.

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Morse, Julia C. and Keohane, Robert O. “Contested Multilateralism,” The Review of International Organizations, vol. 9, no. 4, 2014, pp. 385–412. Okawara, Nobuo and Katzenstein, Peter J. “Japan and Asian-Pacific Security: Regionalization, Entrenched Bilateralism, and Incipient Multilateralism,” In Peter J Katzenstein, ed. Rethinking Japanese Security: Internal and External Dimensions, Routledge, 2008, pp. 118–146. Patrick, Stewart. The Best Laid Plans: The Origins of American Multilateralism and the Dawn of the Cold War, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2008. Posen, Barry R. Restraint. A New Foundation for US Grand Strategy, Cornell University Press, 2014. Ruggie, John Gerard. “Multilateralism: the Anatomy of an Institution,” International Organization, vol. 46, no. 3, 1992, pp. 561–598. Singer, P.W. and Friedman, Allan. Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 182–185. Stein, Arthur A. “Incentive Compatibility and Global Governance: Existential Multilateralism, a Weakly Confederal World, and Hegemony,” In Alan S. Alexandroff, ed. Can the World Be Governed: Possibilities for Effective Multilateralism, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008, pp. 139–159. Wang, Jisi. “China's Search for a Grand Strategy: A Rising Great Power Finds its Way,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 90, 2011, p. 68. Xi, Jinping. “Work Together to Build the Silk Road Economic Belt and The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road,” Xinhua News Agency, 14 May 2017, http://www.xinh uanet.com/english/2017-05/14/c_136282982.htm. Accessed 08 November 2019. Xinhua News Agency. “Essential Guide to Understanding Belt and Road Initiative,” 13 May 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-05/13/c_136279142.htm. Accessed on 28 April 2018. Xinhua News Agency. “Shuxie shixian renmin fazhan quan de xinpianzhang, Writing a New Chapter for the People’s Right of Development),” 1 December 2016, http://www. xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-12/01/c_1120031061.htm. Accessed 12 March 2019. Xinhua News Agency. “Essential Guide to Understanding Belt and Road Initiative,” 13 May 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-05/13/c_136279142.htm. Accessed 08 November 2019. Xinhua News Agency. “Full Text: Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Belt and Road,” 28 March 2015, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2015-03/28/c_ 134105858_2.htm. Accessed 08 November 2019. Xinhua News Agency. “Xi Highlights National Goal of Rejuvenation,” 30 November 2012, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-11/30/content_15972687.htm. Accessed 08 November 2019. Xinhua News Agency. “Xueren jihua’ zai quanqiu jiashe IPv6 gen fuwuqi, zhongguo bushu 4 tai [‘Yeti DNS Project’ builds IPv6 root servers in the world, four deployed in China],” 27 November 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/tech/2017-11/27/c_11 22016888.htm. Accessed 25 April 2018. Yasutomo, Dennis T. The New Multilateralism in Japan's Foreign Policy, St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Yi, Yang. “Zhoubian Anquan Xuyao Quanfangwei Zhanlue [Periphery Security Requires All-Round Grand Strategy],” Global Times, 26 October 2012, http://opi nion.huanqiu.com/opinion_world/2012-10/3216696.html. Accessed 17 March 2018. Zhao, Suisheng. “A State-Led Nationalism: The Patriotic Education Campaign in PostTiananmen China,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 31, no. 3, 1998, pp. 287–302. “India Benefits from AIIB Loans Despite China Tensions,” Financial Times, 18 March 2018, http://www.ft.com/content/da2258f6-2752-11e8-b27e-cc62a39d57a0.

PART III

Asia’s rise and the emerging global order

11 CAN ASIA RESHAPE GLOBAL GOVERNANCE? Kishore Mahbubani*

Can Asian and Western minds agree on the state of our world today and the nature of the world order underlying it? If we could secure an agreement, we would head towards a more stable world order. Yet, as we know well, Asian and Western perspectives are diverging in critical areas. The goal of this chapter is to bring out a greater convergence in Asian and Western worldviews ref lecting the spirit of my book on global governance, which is titled The Great Convergence. To achieve this convergence, both sides will have to make significant amendments to their worldviews. To explain how this can be done, I will use three keywords in this essay: order, power, and rules. If we can drive greater convergence in our understanding of these three areas, we will achieve a greater consensus between Asian and Western minds on the issues of world order.

Order The first area in which we need to seek a greater consensus is the nature of our current world order. There is no doubt that our current world order is a gift from the West. After fighting two suicidal world wars, in the first half of the 20th century, the Western powers reached a sensible conclusion that we could create a better world by creating a rules-based order guided by some key multilateral institutions. Some key institutions were the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), which later became the World Trade Organization (WTO). * Kishore Mahbubani is Professor in Practice of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, and is the author of Has the West Lost It? (UK: Allen Lane, 2018) and Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy (New York: Public Affairs, 2020). The Taiwanese edition of Has China Won? will be translated and published by Commonwealth Publishing Group.

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This essay will not specifically discuss the whole family of institutions (like the WHO, UNICEF, WIPO, and so on) but many of the observations about the Western-created world order also apply to the family of United Nations institutions. The multilateral economic institutions of the Western-created world order, including the IMF, World Bank, and WTO, have fostered investment and business relationships and propelled household income growth around the world1 under the protection of its rules and the privileges of its membership. As Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, has proposed, one good way to visualize how the rules-based order has benefited the world is to think of it as a club. Like any club, he writes, members must share a set of common beliefs. These include the beliefs that: the ability to export to, import from, and invest in markets around the world should not be determined by military power or alliance structures; other countries' economic growth should be welcomed, not treated as a threat; property rights should be secure from invasion, expropriation, or theft; and technical knowledge should f low freely, subject to the enforcement of patents and trademarks.2 Of course, membership does not come free. Extending that metaphor of a club, Posen explains that to enjoy its “shared facilities”, member states must pay their dues. He demonstrates just how comprehensive these “facilities” are, beyond the familiar Bretton Woods institutions of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO: the rules-based order “maintains common systems for settling transactions, converting currencies, invoicing in widely accepted units, and applying tariffs and customs rules”, “establishes forums where experts can meet to discuss specialized topics and groups that set international standards, such as ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)”, and also provides important “frameworks for settling international commercial disputes”. 3 Posen also highlights the importance of the “insurance” that the rules-based order provides all its members. Although it might seem that these economic institutions primarily benefit developing nations through development assistance and emergency aid, in the current global economy, all our fates are tied together. The rules-based order and global multilateral organizations are crucial in providing a framework for cooperation in times of financial crisis or economic depression. As Posen warns, “both of [these] can spread if the entire community does not work together to fix problems, even if they initially affect only one member”.4 Therefore, the first point that Asian and Western minds should agree on is that the post-Second World War Western rules-based order has worked. It is now 73 years old. The past 73 years, and especially the past 30 years, have been among the best years that humanity has experienced. This undeniable fact comes as a shock to many Asian and Western minds as we are fed daily doses of pessimism by Western media. However, as Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has demonstrated in his latest book Enlightenment Now, we are currently living in the most peaceful era of human history. No major war has broken out. The number of human beings killed annually in interstate wars has plunged, from

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almost 300 battle deaths per 100,000 in the Second World War, to 22 during the Korean War and nine in the Vietnam War. By 2016, the number had fallen to 1.2.5 Thanks to the Western-created world order, humanity has never been more peaceful. And in every other critical measurement of broader human welfare, we have never been better off: in poverty reduction, life expectancy, literacy, food, shelter, and education. Oxford economist Max Roser has documented how dramatically poverty rates have plunged since 1950. That year, “three-quarters of the world were living in extreme poverty”, while “in 1981 it was still 44 per cent”. However, by 2016, “the research suggests that the share in extreme poverty has fallen below 10 per cent”.6 It is no wonder that President Barack Obama wisely observed in 2017 that “if you had to choose a moment in human history in which you'd want to be born you'd choose today, because the fact is that the world is healthier, wealthier, better educated and more tolerant, more sophisticated and less violent”.7 There is one key reason why the human condition has improved so much: the economic rise of Asia, whose citizens make up the majority of the global population. Out of the world’s 7.3 billion people, around 4.5 billion8 of them live in Asia. Several Asian societies have made spectacular progress in recent decades: the Four Asian Tigers, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economies, China, and India. China’s success has been particularly phenomenal. In 1980, its gross national product (GNP), in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, was one-tenth that of the United States. By 2014, it had already surpassed the latter.9 Noah Smith wrote in October 2017 that if current trends continue, China’s economy will be double that of the United States in less than two decades.10 As Asian societies have benefited the most from the Western-created world order, we ought to be seeing a growing agreement between Asian and Western societies that we should work together to strengthen our current world order. That is what a future historian would have expected our era to agree on. Instead, the exact opposite is happening. On one hand, many Western societies, especially the United States, are losing faith in the Western-created rules-based order. On the other, virtually no Asian society has acknowledged that the time has come for Asians to take the lead in protecting our current world order. Clearly, the Asians understand how much they have benefited from the Western world order, as well as how precarious it is. One example will demonstrate this. After 1945, when the United States was globally dominant, it pushed for trade liberalization through the GATT, and subsequently the WTO. Americans tried hard to convince the world that the road to prosperity was through opening up economies. Initially, the Asians resisted. However, after the spectacular success of Japan and the Four Asian Tigers, many other Asians joined in. This inspired China, in 2001, to join the WTO as well. As I document in my latest book, Has the West Lost It?, China’s admission to the WTO changed everything. As predicted by the legendary European

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economist Joseph Schumpeter, increased competition from China has led to what he calls “creative destruction”. As he explains, “[t]he opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic”, is but one form of the creative destruction inherent to capitalism, which “incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one”.11 Jobs were lost in the West. According to American economist David Autor, by a conservative estimate, “more than a million manufacturing jobs in the United States were directly eliminated between 2000 and 2007 as a result of China’s accelerating trade penetration in the United States … [A]s much as 40 percent of the drop in United States manufacturing between 2000 and 2007 is attributable to the trade shock that occurred in that period, which is really following China’s ascension to the WTO in 2001”.12 This shock has fed the public backlash in the West – and helped elect Donald Trump. As political scientist Andrew Nathan noted last year, “China’s increasingly pervasive economic inf luence has contributed to the populist and antiglobalization movements that are now taking hold in many countries in the West, including in the US with Donald Trump”.13 Trump has no faith in the WTO. Former Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken has further observed how disastrous Trump has been for free trade, multilateralism, and the rules-based world order: “The Trump administration has belittled the United Nations, withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, jettisoned America’s commitment to the Paris climate accord, tried to renege on the nuclear deal with Iran, questioned America’s core alliances in Europe and Asia, disparaged the World Trade Organization and multicountry trade deals, and sought to shut the door on immigrants”.14 While Trump has closed America’s borders, withdrawn from partnerships, and alienated allies, Xi Jinping has taken China in a different direction: “He has grabbed leadership of the climate-change agenda, embraced the World Trade Organization’s dispute-resolution system and increased China’s voting shares at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Beijing is forging ahead with a trade pact that would include the major Asian economies plus Australia and New Zealand, but not the United States. China is now one of the leading contributors to the United Nations budget and peacekeeping operations”.15 Sadly, many within the larger American political and intellectual establishments have also lost faith in the virtues of free trade. There is strong political support for Trump’s unilateral trade protection measures, especially against China. A trade war has broken out between the United States and China. Inevitably, both sides will lose. The rest of the world, including many in Asia, will also suffer the adverse consequences. Fortunately, the European Union, a leading trade and geopolitical partner, does not share the protectionist views of the Trump Administration. Many leading voices have also pointed out the fallacy of Trump’s views on trade. Pascal Lamy is a former Director-General of the WTO. He has said emphatically that Trump’s unilateral actions “ref lect a vision of trade, which in my view is wrong,

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both in theory and in practice. Mr. Trump believes that imports are bad and exports are good. This is wrong. He has launched a series of protectionist initiatives, notably targeting China or the EU, which are in breach of the WTO rules. So this is the dangerous development, which needs to be addressed by WTO members, so that Mr. Trump does not contaminate open trade in this world, which has benefited so many people, while recognizing that the way open trade works is creating efficiencies, which is big gains, but to the price of big pain for some people”. We need to build a positive narrative to overcome the dominant negative narrative on the WTO and trade in America. In the era of the global economy, Trump’s protectionism will only serve, as Blinken puts it, to make America “the champion of the 20th-century economy”. Even as China’s WTO accession has led to United States job losses, Andy Rothman points out in a Financial Times column that it has also had positive effects on American lives. As he notes, “US exports to China directly and indirectly supported 1.8m new jobs in just one year, 2015”. Moreover, he argues that the lower prices of manufactured goods imported from China have been a boon for American households.16 Hence, the first step we need to take is to reach a new global consensus that both the West and Asia must work together to protect and strengthen the postwar Western rules-based order. Fortunately, President Xi Jinping has spoken out clearly on the need to preserve the current world order in the two speeches he gave in Davos and Geneva in January 2017. While isolationism has gripped the West, “in a striking reversal, it was Chinese President Xi Jinping rather than a European or American leader who delivered a strong defense of globalization at the January 2017 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos”.17 Xi has since reiterated this commitment in his keynote speech at April’s Boao Forum in Hainan, where he stated: We live at a time with an overwhelming trend toward openness and connectivity. Human history shows that openness leads to progress while seclusion leaves one behind. The world has become a global village where our interests are intertwined and our economic and social progress interconnected. To promote common prosperity and development in today’s world, we have no choice but to pursue greater connectivity and integrated development.18 Sadly, few other Asian or Western leaders have echoed his points. Nor has the Chinese government followed up by launching a global diplomatic drive to rebuild political support for global multilateral institutions, especially the WTO. Princeton’s Christina Davis has highlighted the important role China now needs to play: With the Americans rejecting a leadership role and the Europeans mired in a populist backlash, China has an opportunity to step forward. In a trade war, countries that depend most on exports will lose, and exports remain

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central to Chinese economic growth. And the Chinese should remember that it was their own export success that laid the grounds for a turn against the trading system. It would be the biggest loser from the death of the WTO. This week, Japan led 11 countries to sign an ambitious new TransPacific Partnership, despite US withdrawal. Now it is China’s turn to show its commitment to free trade.19 Christina Davis is knocking on an open door when she calls on China to show its commitment to free trade. China is the world’s biggest trading power. It has the most to lose if the open rules-based trading order created by the West post1945 breaks down. Hence, it is in China’s national interest to take the lead in defending this order. Hitherto China has been reluctant to take on a leadership role within an international multilateral organization. It had a sound geopolitical reason for this modest posture. It was reluctant to send a political signal to American body politic that it was challenging America’s self-assigned leadership of the global order. This approach was a reasonable one to take in the pre-Trump era. However, in the post-Trump era, several key assumptions on which this modest policy was premised have disappeared. First, Trump has explicitly denounced the premise that America, as the world’s number one power, should provide altruistic leadership for the world order. Trump has explicitly said that he stands for “America first” policies. He has even threatened to withdraw from the WTO. In response to this threat, Pascal Lamy has observed that there are two possible ways of interpreting what Trump said, so we have to be prepared for two possible situations. Perhaps he wants to withdraw his country from the WTO, as he did with the Paris climate agreement. Generally speaking, he would venture to strike out any international discipline that limits the sovereignty of the United States and its ability to go back to bilateral relations. In terms of international trade, that's called mercantilism – up with exports, down with imports! Trade is seen as being all about power relations between sovereigns rather than about optimizing production systems based on the comparative advantages of all parties. This doctrine has gradually disappeared over the past three centuries … It may [also] be a negotiation tactic. He’s telling the rest of the world: I demand that you change some WTO rules that I consider detrimental to the United States. If you don’t, I quit. You could call that a form of blackmail. The second assumption that has disappeared is the Chinese belief that if they did not challenge America’s global leadership, China would not be viewed as a threat to America. Instead, the opposite has happened. Future historians will observe that sometime around the middle of 2018, a broad-based bipartisan consensus developed in the American establishment that China was a threat to America. Even though most of Trump’s actions have been criticized by Democrats and

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centrist political figures in America, his trade war against China has won him broad mainstream support. Fareed Zakaria has stated that “on one big, fundamental point, President Trump is right: China is a trade cheat”. While rejecting Trump’s zero-sum view of trade that America can only “win” by beating China in a trade war, Tom Friedman nonetheless agrees with him that China is guilty of “stealing intellectual property, massive government interventions, ignoring WTO rules, lack of reciprocity and forcing Western companies to pay to play inside China”, writing, “that’s why it’s a fight worth having. Don’t let the fact that Trump is leading the charge distract from the vital importance of the United States, Europe and China all agreeing on the same rules for 2025 – before it really is too late”. Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer has also gone on record to say that “when it comes to being tough on China’s trading practices, I'm closer to Trump than Obama or Bush”. A low profile in global multilateral organizations will no longer save China from America’s ire. Hence, the time has now come to take a greater leadership role in some multilateral organizations. The best international organization to start with would be the WTO, since virtually no country in the world supports the mercantilist views of President Trump on international trade. The mild-mannered former Prime Minister of Singapore (which is a good friend of America), Mr. Goh Chok Tong, has observed that President Trump “is pulling the carpet from under the feet of the multilateral world order which the US has helped to create. This is disruptive diplomacy unfolding before our eyes”.20 China would therefore win strong global support if it provides effective leadership to strengthen the WTO. However, if China is to succeed in providing leadership to the WTO, it must, like America, in the past, be prepared to take on additional obligations and responsibilities. Pascal Lamy has provided some helpful suggestions on how China can contribute more to the WTO. When China joined the WTO in 2001, it deserved to be treated as a “developing country” as its per capita income was $1,053 and it was the sixth-largest economy in the world in nominal market terms.21 In 2017, its per capita income had gone up to $8,827 and it had become the second-largest economy in the world. Clearly the trading concessions that had been designed for poor developing countries like Bangladesh and Chad should no longer apply to China. Lamy has advised that “the level playing as it was 20 years ago when China joined the WTO needs to be releveled … China of today is very different from what it was in 2001 … And the reality is that the WTO's rulebook has not changed since 1990, whereas the world has changed a lot”.22 China would gain a tremendous amount of goodwill if it were to unilaterally offer to give up some of the concessions it enjoys as a developing country. China’s economy would not suffer if it were to unilaterally give up these developing country concessions. Indeed, China is emerging as one of the world’s most competitive economies. China ranked 28th out of 140 countries on the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index.23 According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “measured in terms

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of purchasing power, China produced roughly $21 trillion worth of goods and services in 2017, almost $3 trillion more than the US and $16 trillion more than Japan. Although the relationship between market size and productivity is multifaceted, the demand for Chinese goods has been at the heart of China’s economic success story”.24 China has already offered unilateral concessions when it negotiates trade agreements with developing countries. Hence, when it negotiated and concluded the ASEAN-China FTA in 2002, it offered an “early harvest” of unilateral concessions to the ASEAN countries. This won China significant goodwill among the ASEAN countries. Similarly, China can offer an “early harvest” of unilateral concessions to its fellow WTO members. It can also offer to gradually restructure its economy. As Pascal Lamy has said, “we have to keep pushing China to keep shrinking its state-owned enterprise sector, which is too big now for an economy of its size and level of development. It’s not sustainable that China keeps more than one-third of its economy under state command. That’s why the investment treaty negotiated in the EU to treat Chinese investments reciprocally is the way to go”.25 A grand gesture of significant concessions by China in the WTO would win China an enormous amount of goodwill among WTO members. The European Union, for example, is a strong believer in the WTO. It will be happy to work with China, as well as Japan and ASEAN, to try and preserve and strengthen the WTO. In short, China can and should provide effective leadership to preserve the global rulesbased order that has enabled China and many Asian economies to grow and thrive.

Power The second necessary point of agreement between Asia and the West is the need to reform global multilateral institutions. When times change, institutions, too, have to adapt. Humanity has not experienced as much change in the past 3,000 years as it has in the past 30 years. Former United States policymaker Jake Sullivan has described well how much the world has changed in recent decades: The United States-led order was built at a unique moment, at the end of World War II. Europe's and Asia's erstwhile great powers were reduced to rubble, and a combination of dominance abroad and shared economic prosperity at home allowed the United States to serve as the architect and guarantor of a new order fashioned in its own image. […] This precise state of affairs was never going to last forever. Other powers would eventually rise, and the basic bargain would one day need to be revisited. That day has arrived, and the question now is, do other countries want a fundamentally different bargain or simply some adjustments?26 The answer to that question is that the rest of the world – including China – should, and indeed wants to, build upon the existing world order. Emerging powers like Brazil want a seat at the table, not to destroy it altogether. Sullivan

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makes the astute assessment that “emerging powers' quest for a greater voice in regional and global institutions is not a repudiation of the order but evidence that they see increasing their participation as preferable to going a different way”.27 This is certainly the case with China, which recognizes how much it benefits from the current world order. In theory, both Asia and the West agree that global institutions need to be reformed. In practice, the Europeans and Americans have resisted change. One example will demonstrate this. Since the creation of the World Bank and the IMF in 1944 and 1945 respectively, there has been an unwritten rule that the head of the IMF should be European and the head of the World Bank American. No Asian, African, or Latin American was qualified to run these global institutions. This rule is obviously anachronistic. After suffering the shock of the 2008/9 Global Financial Crisis, the Western economies realized that they should allow other states to become custodians of the IMF and the World Bank as well. The G20 thus declared in its April 2009 meeting that the leaders of the IMF and World Bank would henceforth be chosen by merit and not by nationality. The G20 said: “We agree that the heads and senior leadership of the international financial institutions should be appointed through an open, transparent, and merit-based selection process”.28 Despite this explicit commitment, the subsequent heads of the IMF and World Bank, Christine Lagarde and Jim Yong Kim, were nonetheless selected on the basis of nationality. When the previous World Bank President Robert Zoellick stepped down in 2012, both Democrats and Republicans went on record to state that his successor should be another American,29 and they got their wish in Kim’s appointment. How did the West get away with this? The answer can be captured in one key word: power. At the end of the Second World War and at the dawn of the post-colonial era, the Western states, even after the economic damage of the war, were still much more economically powerful than the rest of the world. Hence, they wrote it into the constitution of the IMF and the World Bank that voting shares should ref lect a country’s share of the global GNP. In theory, the constitutions allowed changes of voting shares to ref lect shifts in global economic power. In practice, the Western states, especially the Europeans, have fought hard against giving up voting shares and therefore power. As a result, although Asia’s share of the global GNP has risen, its share of votes in the IMF do not ref lect this. Asia’s share of global GDP is about 44%,30 whereas its share of votes in the IMF is less than 30%.31 This reluctance to give up voting shares of the IMF and World Bank (and thereby give up control of these institutions) is a major strategic mistake that the Western states are making. They are sacrificing their long-term interests in a stable world order (which will also protect the long-term interests of the West) in favor of their short-term interest in preserving their power over the two global institutions. A simple metaphor will explain the folly of this. It is now virtually undeniable that the world has shrunk immeasurably and that all of humanity lives in a global

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village. All villages need village councils. The only effective village councils are democratic ones: those that give voice to everyone in the village, not just to the voice of a tiny minority. The West only provides 12% of the world’s population. Yet, its voting share of the IMF and World Bank is over 50%, even though its share of the global GNP has shrunk below 50% and will continue to shrink even further. To extend the global village metaphor, it is clear that the world now faces many global challenges that cannot be solved without universal cooperation. These challenges include global warming, pandemics, terrorism, and financial crises. All these challenges require the village to work together. If the West tries to dominate global village councils and not share power, this will prevent the emergence of truly effective global village councils that could protect the longterm interests of the West. A key test of world order will therefore be whether or not the Western states are prepared to give up their decades-long domination of key global institutions. However, the Asian states are also not blameless when it comes to reforming global institutions. The one global institution that is more powerful than the IMF and the World Bank is the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), because its decisions are mandatory and binding on all states of the world. In theory, the UNSC is governed by 15 equal members: five permanent members (P5), namely China, France, Russia, the UK, and the USA, in addition to ten elected members. In practice, the P5 run the UNSC. I have documented this at some length in The Great Convergence. The P5 can do this because they have the right to veto UNSC resolutions. Many UNSC observers have called for the veto to be abolished because it is undemocratic. I disagree. While the veto is undemocratic, it plays a vital role in entrenching the great powers in the United Nations system. This is the key reason why the United Nations has not collapsed and disappeared like the League of Nations. The framers of the United Nations Charter were therefore wise in creating the veto to keep the great powers in. However, they were unwise in not creating a mechanism for changing the list of permanent members. In theory, the permanent members should represent the great powers of today and tomorrow. Yet, clearly, some of the P5 represent the great powers of yesterday. If the UNSC does not include the new great powers, it will lose its credibility. If its credibility diminishes, some states might choose to ignore its decisions. If that day comes, the UNSC will become toothless. This is why reform is needed. In theory, most of the 193 United Nation member states support reform of the UNSC. In practice, many of the key member states, including the five current permanent members, are quietly and effectively subverting reform. Having served as Singapore’s Ambassador to the United Nations for over ten years, I know from first-hand experience that there is a lot of hypocrisy and deception when United Nations member states speak up in favor of UNSC reform. The process by which UNSC reform has been pursued is deeply f lawed as several

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states have put themselves forward as potential new permanent members without first getting agreement on the principles for selecting new permanent members. A more effective method of securing UNSC reform would be to take a threestep approach. The first step would be to secure a new strong political consensus among the great powers of today, not yesterday, that UNSC reform is valid to preserve the credibility and effectiveness of the UNSC. The second step would be to obtain broad agreement among the 193 on the principles for UNSC reform. The third step would be to create a formula that would serve the interests of both the major and middle powers on UNSC reform because many middle powers have also effectively blocked UNSC reform in recent years. In theory, the first step should be easy to take. Three of the five permanent members, namely America, China, and Russia, face no danger of losing their permanent seats because they are recognized as today’s and tomorrow’s great powers. Hence, their real worry is the loss of credibility of the UNSC. By contrast, the UK and France know in their heart of hearts that they represent great powers of yesterday, not tomorrow. Several British Ambassadors have admitted to me privately that the UK has to earn its permanent membership seat daily through its performance. Similarly, the most inf luential British columnist Martin Wolf has said that it would be absurd to see a UNSC in the 21st century that had UK as a member and not India. UNSC reform will only come about if America, China, and Russia recognize that their interests in preserving the credibility of the UNSC are different from those of the UK and France. Hence, these three should provide leadership in securing the entry of the new great powers into the UNSC. They should do so because the privileges they enjoy as permanent members would disappear if the UNSC is no longer able to implement its decisions. Two political entities are big enough to defy the mandatory decisions of the UNSC. The first is India. It is already the world’s third-largest economy in PPP terms and will soon become the world’s most populous country. India could create a political explosion of nuclear proportions if it were to suddenly declare that it will no longer abide by UNSC decisions. No power is strong enough to force India to do so. Similarly, a united Africa could also declare that it will no longer abide by UNSC decisions since its voice is not represented there. Indeed, this is exactly what the Organisation of African Unity did in 1998 when it announced that it would not implement UNSC sanctions on Libya. As I was the Singapore Ambassador to the United Nations then, I know this caused a huge scare among the P5. And it could happen again. The continent that has the most to lose from a defiant Africa is Europe. A simple statistic will explain why. In 1950, Europe’s population was twice of Africa’s. Today, Africa’s population is more than twice that of Europe. By 2100, Africa’s population will be ten times larger than that of Europe. Imagine a world where Africa’s population is ten times that of Europe’s but Europe still has 40% of the UNSC’s P5 seats (with UK and France) and Africa has none. Clearly, no one will pay attention to such a UNSC then. This is why America, Russia, and

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China should first reach a strong political consensus that they are undermining their own political interests by blocking UNSC reform. Who should be the new permanent members of a reformed UNSC? In my book, The Great Convergence, I have explained why there should be seven permanent members: The US, China, and Russia would retain their historical claims. The UK and France would logically give up their seats to a single European seat representing Europe’s common security and foreign policy. The three remaining seats would then be allocated to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It would be fair for Asia to get two out of seven seats since Asia provides 55 percent of the world’s population. Because China and India each have more than one-seventh of the world’s population, it would make logical sense for both to get one seat each out of seven permanent seats. Securing agreement on how to allocate the seven permanent seats would not be difficult to work out. The logical seven candidates would be the EU, US, China, India, Russia, Brazil, and Nigeria.32 The second step is to reach an agreement on some key principles to help secure broad agreement among the 193 member states on UNSC reform. Currently, many countries are reluctant to give new states “veto powers” because they believe that these privileges come with no equivalent responsibilities. Hence, a simple way to reduce opposition to conferring new “veto powers” is to attach significant responsibilities to these enormous privileges. Two such responsibilities are easy to mention. First, while all the permanent members should continue to pay their United Nations dues on the well-established principles of “capacity to pay”, each permanent member should pay a minimum additional sum to ref lect their privileged status. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, “Great power involves great responsibility”. Hence, each permanent member should pay a minimum of 5–8% of the United Nations budget. Second, the permanent members should also agree to serve as the ultimate “police departments” and “fire departments” of the world in the field of international peace and security. Hence, if genocide were about to break out in Rwanda or Burundi, Sudan or Syria, the new permanent members should see it as their constitutional responsibility to prevent such genocides. The natural resentment of their privileged status will dissipate when it is made clear that permanent members also bear heavy burdens.33 The third step to take is to address the concerns of the middle powers that will become losers through UNSC reforms. Indeed, one key reason that the United Nations has not been able to secure agreement on UNSC reform is that for every potential winner in a new formula of allocating new permanent seats, there will be losers. To put it simply, if India gets in, Pakistan will be aggrieved; if Brazil gets in, Argentina and Mexico will be aggrieved; and if Nigeria gets in, South Africa and Egypt will be aggrieved. To solve this problem of “near-losers”, we

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can create a new category of seven “semi-permanent” seats that are open to competition only among a limited number of member states that again qualify on the basis of their relative weight in the three principles already spelled out. This new category would then make all the near-losers winners in the new formula as they would thus have to compete for seats among a limited pool rather than having to compete among the 188 non-permanent member states.34 How will these seven semi-permanent seats to be allocated? As I explain in The Great Convergence, if we give weight to both share of global population and share of global power, then we could pick out, say, 28 states that might compete for these seven seats. Since each semi-permanent member would serve a two-year term, this would give these states a chance to return to the council every eight years instead of having to wait several decades.35 The list of the geographically diverse 28 United Nations members that will qualify to become semi-permanent members include: Japan, Germany, France, Indonesia, United Kingdom, Italy, Mexico, Canada, Spain, Pakistan, South Korea, Banglades, Turkey, Philippines, Iran, Egypt, Thailand, Vietnam, South Africa, Poland, Ethiopia, Argentina, Columbia, Venezuela, Congo, Algeria, Tanzania, Kenya. These 28 countries were selected on the basis of their relative population size and GNP. These states will then support, not oppose, UNSC reforms. The remaining seven seats will be elected among the remaining 158 members. In theory, this means that smaller states would be disadvantaged because their allocated seats would go down from ten to seven. In practice, the small states would be better off because they would no longer have to compete with the middle powers who have regularly been reelected to the UNSC. Hence, since the UNSC was set up, the following middle powers have served several terms: Japan (11), Brazil (10), Argentina (9), India (7), Pakistan (7), Colombia (7), Italy (7), Germany (6), Belgium (6), Canada (6), the Netherlands (6), and Poland (6).36 By contrast, Singapore has only served once on the UNSC since it joined the United Nations in 1965. This is why the proposed 7-7-7 formula is a win-win-win solution for all three key constituencies within the United Nations. It is a win for the great powers of today and tomorrow because it would preserve the credibility and legitimacy of the UNSC. It is a win for the middle powers that will no longer have to expend a lot of material, and political and human resources to get re-elected every decade into the UNSC. It is also a win for the small states that will no longer have to compete with the middle powers. Since one of the constant complaints that many Western states make about China and other emerging Asian powers is that Asians do not produce new ideas, the Asian states should put across this 7-7-7 formula as a new idea for ref lection and discussion.

Rules To reform global institutions, we need to agree on rules for doing so. Fortunately, there is one region that has set the gold standard for creating rules-based international organizations. This region is the European Union. Indeed, in terms of

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volume and scope, no other region has created as many rules as the European Union has. This rule-making tendency is a result of many factors, including history, geographic proximity, and culture. No continent suffered as much from the two world wars as Europe did. Surprisingly, this passionate European attachment to regional rule-making has not been carried forward to global rule-making. Here again, the reasons are complex. No one answer is satisfactory. However, one obvious reason is that the European Union states decided, from the days of the Cold War, that they would allow the United States to take the lead in providing global leadership. During the Cold War, Europe’s security depended on American military protection. It was wise for the European Union to live under American leadership. After the Cold War ended, it would have been wiser for the European Union to have been less subservient. By going along with some unwise policies, including the thoughtless expansion of NATO and the disastrous American invasion of Iraq, the European Union has to some extent jeopardized its own long-term security. As I explain in my book Has the West Lost It?, America’s and Europe’s strategic interests have diverged. While America faces the challenge of China’s rise, Europe must deal with the Islamic world at its doorstep. Hence: Both America and Europe would be better off if they were to become more strategically cunning in defending their respective interests. For Europe, it is clear that the primary threat is not going to come from Russia. Unlike during the Cold War, no Russian tanks threaten Europe. Russia is now a secondary challenge. Hence, Europe should make peace with Putin. Nor is Europe threatened by Chinese Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Instead, China’s economic development is good for Europe’s interests. Why? Europe’s primary threat is spillover instability from the Islamic world. As long as North Africa and the Middle East are populated with struggling states, migrants will come into Europe, stirring populist parties. However, if Europe helps North Africa to replicate the successful economic development stories of Malaysia and Indonesia, Europe will have built a strategic bulwark against unmanageable migrant f lows. In short, it is in Europe’s strategic interest to import the East Asian economic success stories into North Africa. Hence, Europe should work with China, not against China, to build up North Africa.37 Fortunately, some wiser European voices are noticing that American global unilateralism could damage European interests. In March 2018, as Trump slapped tariffs on aluminum and steel and made provocations toward a trade war, the Le Monde editorial director, Sylvie Kauffmann, wrote in a New York Times column: “last week’s assault from the White House, like a bolt from the blue, is a taste, for Washington’s European and Canadian allies, of how low the trans-Atlantic relationship can go under President Trump. Western partners of the United States cannot expect to be treated any better than China”. As Kauffman recognizes, “the very history that the United States built, the foundation of the Western alliance” is being undone by Trump’s actions.

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The European reluctance to stand up to the United States is understandable. The policy of deferring to American power has become deeply embedded in European political culture. There is also some gratitude for American support of Europe in the difficult years. Paradoxically, the best way for Europe to show its gratitude now is to stand up to American unilateralist policies and to explain why they are bad for the rest of the world, including Europe. The Europeans should explain that we now have no choice but to work together with the rest of the world. A 2015 RAND report has observed that multilateral solutions are necessary in “today’s hyperlinked world”: Partnerships are essential. Coalitions are the norm. One cannot afford to be too choosy about the company one keeps. Russia is needed to help prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. China is needed to restrain North Korea. Iran is needed to fight ISIS. Both Russia and Iran will be needed to end the war in Syria. Stemming climate change will require almost global efforts. Partnerships in this era are not just about friends confronting enemies.38 These threats make up what political scientist Anne-Marie Slaughter has called the “networked world”. She argues that the world has fundamentally changed since the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 recognized the sovereignty of individual states. Today, she writes, we must now see the world not as a chessboard of competing state interests, but as a web of interconnected global ones: “a world not of states but of networks”: It is the world of terrorism; of drug, arms, and human trafficking; of climate change and declining biodiversity; of water wars and food insecurity; of corruption, money laundering, and tax evasion; of pandemic disease carried by air, sea, and land. In short, it is the world of many of the most pressing twenty-first-century global threats.39 It is thus necessary to reform the global multilateral institutions to ref lect this new world. Slaughter has called for reform that would allow for the f lexibility needed to adapt alongside the “shifting power relationships” in the world. She has rightly pointed out the current rigidity of institutions like the UNSC, World Bank, and IMF, which serve the interests of the Western powers, not the rest of the world. However, she also recognizes, as I have argued in this essay, that we can build upon the current world order by better incorporating the emerging powers into the leadership of these organizations: The institutions built after World War II remain important repositories of legitimacy and authority. But they need to become the hubs of a f latter, faster, more f lexible system, one that operates at the level of citizens as well as states. That means finally tackling the job of opening up the postwar institutions to newer actors.40

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As Slaughter argues, we need a more open international system that can “[respond] to new inputs and disruptions” and “ride out the volatility caused by changing power relationships and incorporate new kinds of global networks”.41 I have proposed such a system with my 7-7-7 formula, which would create the mechanisms for constant renewal currently absent from the UNSC. The Europeans should also add, as good friends, that American unilateral policies are bad for American long-term interests, as well. The one American who has explained this well to his fellow Americans was Bill Clinton. In a speech at Yale in 2003, he said: If you believe that maintaining power and control and absolute freedom of movement and sovereignty is important to your country’s future, there’s nothing inconsistent in that [the US continuing to behaving unilaterally]. [The US is] the biggest, most powerful country in the world now. We’ve got the juice and we’re going to use it … But if you believe that we should be trying to create a world with rules and partnerships and habits of behavior that we would like to live in when we’re no longer the military political economic superpower in the world, then you wouldn’t do that. It just depends on what you believe.42 The Europeans could begin their counsel to the United States by declaring that they agree with the wise advice of Bill Clinton. Clinton was boldly advising his fellow Americans to begin preparing for a world where America is no longer number one. It was brave for him to do so, as it is almost taboo in America to speak of America becoming number two (although it will inevitably become number two). So what is the best outcome for America when it becomes number two? The best outcome would be a number one power (namely, China) that respects “rules and partnerships and habits of behavior” that America could live with. And what would be the best way to slip on these practices of “rules and partnerships and habits of behavior” onto China? This is where Clinton was being cunning. He was advising his fellow Americans to adopt these practices themselves first. Once America has created a certain pattern of behavior for the world’s number one power, the same pattern of behavior would be inherited by the next number one power, namely China. The good news is that China, for its own reasons, is happy to live in a world dominated by multilateral rules and processes. Xi Jinping explained why in the two brilliant speeches he gave in Davos and Geneva in January 2017. As Xi said in Geneva: Economic globalization, a surging historical trend, has greatly facilitated trade, investment, f low of people and technological advances. […] 1.1 billion people have been lifted out of poverty, 1.9 billion people now have access to safe drinking water, 3.5 billion people have gained access to the Internet, and the goal has been set to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.43

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However, what Xi did not say is that China, unlike America, does not have a messianic impulse to change the world. If order abroad facilitates order at home, China would be happy. Hence, by following Bill Clinton’s shrewd advice, America would be laying the foundation for a more orderly world. In short, the whole world, including China and the United States, Asia, and Europe, would benefit from the strengthening of a rules-based order. Fortunately, we don’t have to start from scratch. The post-Second World War rules-based order gifted by the West to the world has provided us with a good foundation. Upon this foundation, we can build a 21st century rules-based order that will serve the interests of Asia and the West, as well as those of Africa and Latin America. We should also be aware that in today’s changing world, this is the wisest route to follow. As Anne-Marie Slaughter observes: Rising powers will not wait forever. They will simply create their own orders, with their own regional institutions and security networks. If the current international order proves too brittle to change, it will simply crumble. Like the once great European dukedoms, it will keep the buildings and the pageantry, but the power will have moved on.44 Both the Americans and Europeans have been unwise in recent years in walking away from the rules-based order that they created. As the newest and biggest beneficiaries of this rules-based order, it is now in the long-term interest of the Asians to walk the Americans and Europeans back to a rules-based order. We can then create a new world order that works for both the West and the Rest.

Notes 1 Adam S. Posen, “The Post-American World Economy: Globalization in the Trump Era”, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ united-states/2018-02-13/post-american-world-economy 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, London: Allen Lane, 2018, pp. 159–160. 6 Max Roser, “Proof that Life is Getting Better for Humanity, in 5 Charts”, Vox, December 23, 2016, https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/12/23/14062168/hi story-global-conditions-charts-life-span-poverty 7 Ruth Umoh, “Barack Obama: 2017 has been a tough year, but here’s what to look forward to in 2018”, CNBC, December 31, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/ 29/barack-obama-heres-what-to-look-forward-to-in-2018.html 8 Mid-year population, 2017. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, “World Population 2017”, https://esa.un.org/unpd/w pp/Publications/Files/WPP2017_Wallchart.pdf 9 International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, October 2017, https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2017/02/weodata/index.aspx.

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10 Noah Smith, “Who Has the World's No. 1 Economy? Not the U.S.”, Bloomberg, October 18, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-18/who-hasthe-world-s-no-1-economy-not-the-u-s 11 Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York: Harper, 1975, pp. 82–83. 12 Stephen J. Dubner, “Did China Eat America’s Jobs?” Freakonomics, January 25, 2017, http://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-eat-americas-jobs/ 13 Andrew J. Nathan, “The Chinese World Order”, New York Review of Books, October 12, 2017, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/10/12/chinese-world-order/ 14 Antony J. Blinken, “Trump Is Ceding Global Leadership to China”, New York Times, November 8, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/opinion/trump-china-x i-jinping.html. 15 Ibid. 16 Andy Rothman, “China’s accession to WTO has been a boon, not an error”, Financial Times, February 16, 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/9ebf9e36-1271-11e8-940e08320fc2a277 17 Nathan, “The Chinese World Order”. 18 Xi Jinping. “Transcript: President Xi Addresses the 2018 Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan”, US-China Perception Monitor, April 11, 2018, https://www.uscnpm.org/bl og/2018/04/11/transcript-president-xi-addresses-2018-boao-forum-asia-hainan/ 19 Christina Davis, “It is up to China to save the global trading system”, Financial Times, March 9, 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/6d85636e-22ca-11e8-8138-569c3d7ab 0a7 20 Goh Chok Tong, Opening Address at ANZ Finance and Treasury Forum, Singapore, Nov 14, 2018, https://bluenotes.anz.com/posts/2018/11/Goh-US-faces-credibilitytrap-as-China-looks-a-century-ahead 21 IMF World Economic Outlook 2018. 22 Interview with Pascal Lamy, itv PL 21st Century Business Herald, China, 2018, pp. 21–12. 23 http://reports.wefor um.org/global-competitiveness-repor t-2018/competit ivene ss-rankings/ “The Global Competitiveness Index 4.0 assesses the microeconomic and macroeconomic foundations of national competitiveness, which is defined as the set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country”. 24 https://chinapower.csis.org/china-economy-competitiveness/ 25 https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2177509/trump-will-achieve-n othing-tariffs-former-wto-head-blasts-us 26 Jake Sullivan, “The World After Trump: How the System Can Endure”, Foreign Affairs 97, No. 2, March/April 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/201803-05/world-after-trump 27 Ibid. 28 International Monetary Fund, “London Summit – Leaders’ Statement 2 April 2009”, https://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2009/pdf/g20_040209.pdf 29 Lesley Wroughton, “World Bank's Zoellick to step down, U.S. eyes spot”, Reuters, February 15, 2012, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-worldbank-zoellick/worldbanks-zoellick-to-step-down-u-s-eyes-spot-idUSTRE81E1A120120215 30 International Monetary Fund, “GDP based on PPP, share of world”, World Economic Outlook, April 2018, https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPSH@WEO/ OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD/AZQ/APQ 31 International Monetary Fund, “Fact sheet: Asia and the IMF”, October 7, 2013, http:// www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/asia.htm 32 Kishore Mahbubani, The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World, New York: Public Affairs, 2013, p. 240. 33 Ibid, pp. 240–241. 34 Ibid., p. 241.

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35 Ibid., p. 241. 36 https://web.archive.org/web/20181208032314/http://www.un.org/en/sc/mem bers/elected.asp 37 Kishore Mahbubani, Has the West Lost It? A Provocation, London: Allen Lane, 2018, pp. 65–67. 38 James Dobbins, Richard H. Solomon, Michael S. Chase, Ryan Henry, F. Stephen Larrabee, Robert J. Lempert, Andrew Liepman, Jeffrey Martini, David Ochmanek, Howard J. Shatz, Choices for America in a Turbulent World: Strategic Rethink, RAND Corporation, 2015, p. 116. 39 Anne-Marie Slaughter, “How to Succeed in the Networked World”, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/201610-04/how-succeed-networked-world 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 William J. Clinton, “Transcript of 'Global Challenges’”, YaleGlobal Online, October 31, 2003, https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/transcript-global-challenges 43 Xi Jinping, “Work Together to Build a Community of Shared Future for Mankind”, January 18, 2017, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-01/19/c_135994707.htm 44 Slaughter, “How to Succeed in the Networked World”.

References Blinken, Antony J. “Trump Is Ceding Global Leadership to China.” New York Times, November 8, 2017. http://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/opinion/trump-china-xijinping.html. Accessed 08 November 2019. Clinton, William J. “Transcript of 'Global Challenges’.” YaleGlobal Online, October 31, 2003. http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/transcript-global-challenges. Accessed 08 November 2019. Davis, Christina. “It Is up to China to Save the Global Trading System.” Financial Times, March 9, 2018. http://www.ft.com/content/6d85636e-22ca-11e8-8138-569c3d7ab0 a7. Accessed 08 November 2019. Dobbins, James, Richard H. Solomon, Michael S. Chase, Ryan Henry, F. Stephen Larrabee, Robert J. Lempert, Andrew Liepman, Jeffrey Martini, David Ochmanek, and Howard J. Shatz. Choices for America in a Turbulent World: Strategic Rethink. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2015. Dubner, Stephen J. “Did China Eat America’s Jobs?” Freakonomics, January 25, 2017. http:// freakonomics.com/podcast/china-eat-americas-jobs/. Accessed 08 November 2019. International Monetary Fund. “London Summit – Leaders’ Statement.” April 2, 2009. http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2009/pdf/g20_040209.pdf. Accessed 08 November 2019. International Monetary Fund. “Fact Sheet: Asia and the IMF.” October 7, 2013. http:// www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/asia.htm. Accessed 08 November 2019. International Monetary Fund. “World Economic Outlook Database.” October 2017. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2017/02/weodata/index.aspx. Accessed 08 November 2019. International Monetary Fund. “GDP Based on PPP, Share of World.” World Economic Outlook, April 2018. http://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPSH@WEO/ OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD/AZQ/APQ. Accessed 08 November 2019. Mahbubani, Kishore. The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World. New York: Public Affairs, 2013. Mahbubani, Kishore. Has the West Lost It? A Provocation. London: Allen Lane, 2018.

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Nathan, Andrew J. “The Chinese World Order.” New York Review of Books, October 12, 2017. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/10/12/chinese-world-order/. Accessed 08 November 2019. Pinker, Steven. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. London: Allen Lane, 2018. Posen, Adam S. “The Post-American World Economy: Globalization in the Trump Era.” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2018. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/unitedstates/2018-02-13/post-american-world-economy. Accessed 08 November 2019. Roser, Max. “Proof That Life is Getting Better for Humanity, in 5 Charts.” Vox, December 23, 2016. http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/12/23/14062168/his tory-global-conditions-charts-life-span-poverty. Accessed 08 November 2019. Rothman, Andy. “China’s Accession to WTO Has Been a Boon, Not an Error.” Financial Times, February 16, 2018. http://www.ft.com/content/9ebf9e36-1271-11e8-940e08320fc2a277. Schumpeter, Joseph A. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper, 1975. Slaughter, Anne-Marie. “How to Succeed in the Networked World.” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2016. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2016-1004/how-succeed-networked-world. Accessed 08 November 2019. Smith, Noah. “Who Has the World's No. 1 Economy? Not the U.S.” Bloomberg, October 18, 2017. http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-18/who-has-the-wor ld-s-no-1-economy-not-the-u-s. Accessed 08 November 2019. Sullivan, Jake. “The World After Trump: How the System Can Endure.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 97, no. 2, March/April 2018. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-0305/world-after-trump. Accessed 08 November 2019. Umoh, Ruth. “Barack Obama: 2017 Has Been a Tough Year, But Here’s What to Look Forward to in 2018.” CNBC, December 31, 2017. http://www.cnbc.com/ 2017/12/29/barack-obama-heres-what-to-look-forward-to-in-2018.html. Accessed 08 November 2019. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. “World Population 2017.” http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2 017_Wallchart.pdf. Accessed 08 November 2019. Wroughton, Lesley. “World Bank's Zoellick to Step Down, U.S. Eyes Spot.” Reuters, February 15, 2012. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-worldbank-zoellick/worldbanks-zoellick-to-step-down-u-s-eyes-spot-idUSTRE81E1A120120215. Accessed 08 November 2019. Xi, Jinping. “Work Together to Build a Community of Shared Future for Mankind.” January 18, 2017. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-01/19/c_135994707.htm. Accessed 08 November 2019. Xi, Jinping. “Transcript: President Xi Addresses the 2018 Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan.” US-China Perception Monitor, April 11 2018. http://www.uscnpm.org/blog/ 2018/04/11/tr anscr ipt-president-x i-add resse s-2018-boa o-for um-asia-ha inan/. Accessed 08 November 2019.

12 GLOBALISM, NATIONALISM, AND REGIONAL ORDER IN ASIA A Japanese perspective Keiichi Tsunekawa

Few people will argue with the observation that the world is changing rapidly. Neither will they deny that the decline of economic vitality and ideational inf luence of the West and the concomitant rise of the inf luence of emerging-market states (EMSs) are among the main symptoms and causes of the change. As a result of this change, the basic principles of the existing world order (such as liberal regimes for international economic transactions and international concert for global issue resolution) have been severely shaken. The purpose of this chapter is to explore how deep the transformation of the world order is, where the world and its regions are heading, and how Japan is trying to respond to the situation. However, as uncertainties are higher than ever with regard to the behavior of major actors (especially the United States and China) and the possible results of their interactions, this chapter will be highly speculative and exploratory rather than empirical and verifiable. In the first section, I will brief ly review literature addressing the world order and its transformation. Such a literature review will show that order building by leader countries requires not just material capabilities but also normative legitimacy based on the provision of public goods and satisfaction of the ideational aspirations of peoples in the world; in consequence, the post-Second World War world order tolerated illiberal (protectionist and statist) practices in individual countries. In the second section, I will examine President Trump’s highly deviational actions against that order and the immediate consequences. In the third section, I will change the focus to regions and explore what the regional order is changing to in Asia. I will speculate on two possibilities: consensus-based hegemonic order and force-based imperial order, both under Chinese domination. In the fourth section, I will argue that political leaders in Asian countries face popular pressures for better well-being and, as a consequence, their choices of external policies are increasingly constrained by their domestic survival strategies. This in

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turn will have an impact on the nature of the regional order. In the fifth section, I will focus on Japan and elucidate a dilemma it has fallen into with regard to its relations with the United States and China. In the final section, I will summarize the paper by mentioning four major observations concerning the current situation and future prospects of the world and regional orders.

Transformation of the world order Literature As the world entered the 21st century, especially after the world was hit by the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008, scholars and practitioners began their debate on the crisis of the world order. From the discussion emerged two contrasting views: the first view argues that the world order is in danger and will be transformed substantially or face great uncertainty; and the second view expects that the existing world order will be persistent enough to maintain its main features. As an example of the first view, Ian Bremmer extended the earlier work by Mearsheimer and presented a rather sober image of the future.1 Although the world increasingly needs cooperation among nations to solve global issues, it is losing leader states that can and will precipitate such cooperation. Many countries can veto order-building initiatives by others, but no country has the capability to remake the world alone. In consequence, the most probable scenario for the future is a breakdown of the existing world order and the division of the world into regions. Michael Mastanduno presented a similar realist view and argued that the GFC became a “catalyst of the unraveling of the US-China grand bargain”.2 Previously, China was the key supporter of the United Statesled world order because it needed open access to global (especially American) markets and the United States-guaranteed security environment to prioritize economic development. However, the United States is becoming less tolerant toward China’s trade- and investment-restricting practices, whereas China is becoming more assertive and fearless as its military capabilities continue to expand. Mustanduno predicted that the world, especially Asia, will be characterized by a “mix of wary cooperation, competition and significant conf lict”. In contrast with these pessimistic views, Ikenberry argued that the “liberal internationalism” or “liberal hegemonic order” will not be easily replaced by a new order.3 First, Ikenberry repeated his early argument that any world order needs not only material capabilities to force other states to accept order but also normative legitimacy and “functional returns to participating states”.4 According to Ikenberry’s observation, EMSs, including China, may be expanding their capabilities but are failing to offer a new vision of world order or to provide sufficient public goods. Second, he believed that the post-Second World War order is historically unique in the sense that its open and rule-based institutions “encourage and facilitate networks that allow states and other actors to

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engage in collective action and tackle common problems”. He concluded that the demand for liberal internationalism is growing despite the decline of American hegemony.5 Kishore Mahbubani presented a similarly optimistic view of the future; however, his reasoning involves not the superiority of liberal institutions but rather a great convergence of expectations in the world.6 As the non-Western parts of the world, especially Asia, have experienced economic modernization, they have seen a rapid expansion of middle-class people who hold material and ideational aspirations similar to Western ones. They hope to benefit from convenient lifestyles brought by modern equipment and services. They do not want to see their comfortable lives jeopardized by violence and chaos, and they consequently hope to have a stable rule of law. Therefore, rather than the ideological promotion of democracy, the pragmatic engagement with any political regime and the maintenance of peace and stability for the sake of economic development are crucially important. Amitav Acharya shared Mahbubani’s optimism based on his conviction regarding the importance of ideational consensus.7 Observing the long-term maintenance of peace in the ASEAN region, he argued that nations can build a peaceful order on the basis of consensus (self-restraint) among state leaders. Just like Mahbubani, he believed that socialization through engagement is the weapon that weaker states use to lessen the significance of physical power.

Basic questions The literature review shows that the following key questions should be asked when we consider the future of the world order: First, if we accept the liberal and constructivist view that not only the magnitude of the physical capabilities of leading nations, but also the way in which such capabilities are used, affect the features of world and regional orders, we need to examine whether powerful countries use their capabilities in a conf lictive or peaceful manner and why they do so. To answer this question, we need to see whether the EMSs, as potential challengers against the existing order, are really dissatisfied with the liberal internationalism or, as Ikenberry contended, they still regard it as better than any conceivable alternative. We also have to examine the impact of the weakening commitment of the United States (the initiator of the post-Second World War order) to the existing world and regional orders. Second, many liberal and constructivist views emphasize that a hegemonic state needs to limit its power exercise to accommodate national and local ideas, institutions, and practices. Furthermore, the democratic-peace approach draws attention to the importance of national politics and institutions to explain the external behavior of national leaders.8 We need to ask whether powerful countries, including the United States and China, are ready to accommodate other nations’ necessities and aspirations, as well as how domestic politics and institutions in powerful countries can affect their external behavior.

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In short, the basic direction of the transformation of world and regional orders will be determined by interactions among global, regional, and national forces and practices. The global aspect will be treated in the following section, whereas regional and national aspects will be analyzed in the two sections following the next.

Nature of the transformation of the world order Liberal internationalism The post-Second World War liberal internationalism is ideally characterized by a free-economic-transaction regime, respect for human rights, and the application of universal rules limiting sovereign autonomy.9 Institutionally, these principles are supposedly embodied in worldwide organizations such as the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, and GATT / WTO. In practice, as many liberal and constructivist writers point out, the United States needed to make many compromises to accommodate regional and national necessities and aspirations during the process of order building. Liberalism needed to be embedded in welfare-oriented societies in Western Europe,10 whereas it tolerated the mercantilism strongly embedded in Japan and other Northeast Asian polities.11 In consequence, the GATT admitted exceptions and safeguards that contradicted the general call for free trade. GATT / WTO also accepted regional trade agreements concluded by a limited number of member countries, contradicting the non-discrimination principle. Discrepancies between principles and reality are also noticeable in the political aspects of liberal internationalism. In the United Nations, every member country is supposed to have an equal voice. However, the five permanent members of the Security Council hold privileged veto power with respect to conf lict-related decisions. In addition, the United Nations Charter admitted the formation of alliances for collective security by a limited number of member countries. The United Nations has also created many functional bodies that deal with specific problems.12 These functional bodies are not necessarily composed of all United Nations members, as the withdrawal of the United States from the UNESCO demonstrated. In addition, compared with issues such as food and health, politically sensitive issues such as human rights and democracy have never been popular subjects of debate in the United Nations. In no small number of cases, regional or sectoral regimes have been more authoritative and effective than their corresponding world bodies. For instance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Warsaw Treaty Organization, and many bilateral security agreements including the Japan–United States Security Treaty were, or still are, much more effective than the United Nations as guarantors of national security. The European Community / European Union, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and some other free trade arrangements contain stipulations more advanced (in respect to market openness) than the GATT / WTO.

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It is clear that liberal internationalism was neither liberal nor universal. It contained many illiberal elements. This spotty character of liberal internationalism is congruent with Katzenstein’s view (in his chapter) that it embodies not a single but plural ideas and institutions and these ideas and institutions have changed to ref lect historical and regional conditions. In short, in spite of the liberal and universal claims of liberal internationalism, liberalism and internationalism were limited from the beginning because the post-Second World War world order has been complemented by ideas, necessities, and aspirations of the participating countries, especially non-Western countries, as Acharya demonstrated in his recent work.13 It is true that there remain many issue areas (such as intellectual property rights, agricultural trade, global climate, and representation in the international organizations) in which nonWestern countries (especially EMSs) want to transform current arrangements. However, there seems to be no reason to believe they will aspire to build a completely new world order to replace the limited liberal internationalism. The potential costs of new-order building seem to be much higher than those of the attempts to partially reform the current order.

Trump’s deviational actions Ironically, a greater challenge against liberal internationalism came from the United States, which was the initiator and main guarantor of the post-Second World War world order. In fact, President Trump signed orders on March 8, 2018, unilaterally imposing a new 25% import tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminum. He based his orders on Article 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, which allows the president to restrict imports for the sake of national security.14 However, the new orders Mr. Trump signed on March 22 and effected on April 3, based on Article 301 of the Trade Act (stipulating import restrictions to demand the rectification of unfair trade practices of other countries), showed that China is the most important target of the unilateral trade restrictions. President Trump, dissatisfied with the slow progress of the United States–China negotiation, activated the April orders in July and August, subjugating $50 billion imports from China to the 25% tariff. In September, he expanded the tariff imposition to another $200 million imports from China, although the tariff rate was to be kept at 10% until the end of 2018.15 China responded by announcing retaliatory trade-restricting measures of a similar scale and amount.16 Although the negotiation is in progress, the situation increasingly looks like a trade war between the United States and China. It is worrisome that President Trump has demonstrated his willingness to apply the same kind of trade restrictions not only to China but also to United States allies including Japan. In addition to having actually imposed the 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports from the countries that did not agree to engage in immediate negotiation, he expanded the threat of tariff sanctions to automobiles and auto parts in May 2018. The Trump administration had eventually

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abandoned the multilateral framework (including the WTO) as being antithetical to the United States’ national interests and has taken the policy of prioritizing bilateral trade deals. It uses the tariff threats to force the trade partners into bilateral trade agreements. His tactics seem to be working. In September, South Korea signed a revised bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States that would impose new limitations on the Korean export of pickup trucks and steel to the United States market and expand the import quota of American vehicles in the Korean market. Mexico and Canada agreed to revise the NAFTA agreement and signed a new United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) in November. In addition to these countries, the European Union agreed in July to start trade negotiations with the United States; Japan followed suit in September.17 The USMCA seems to give United States-based auto makers and workers discriminately large benefits. A more serious problem, however, is the fact that it contains the stipulations that heavily constrain the policy autonomy of member countries. First, it prohibits them from implementing policies that artificially affect exchange rates (Article 33.4). Since many policies could affect exchange rates, member countries will find their choice of financial, fiscal, and monetary policies tightly constrained even if these policies do not aim at exchange rate manipulation. Second, the USMCA contains a so-called poison pill. It allows any member country to terminate the agreement if another member country concludes an FTA with a non-market country (Article 32.10).18 It is widely accepted that the non-market country mentioned in this article eventually indicates China. The Trump administration has announced its intention to include these restrictive stipulations in any new bilateral agreement.19 The trade-war-like situation between the hegemonic country and an emerging challenger is somewhat like déjà-vu for an observer of Japanese experiences of trade frictions with the United States. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, the United States government frequently used the threat of enforcing Article 301 of the Trade Act and Article 232 of the Trade Expansion Act to restrict Japanese exports to the United States for a variety of merchandise ranging from steel, aluminum, semiconductors, and auto parts to machine tools and supercomputers.20 Different from China today, the Japanese government during this period never took counteractive measures against United States unilateralism. It did not dare to even suggest retaliatory actions.21 Instead, it always negotiated with the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and almost always reached deals in which Japan promised to promote imports from the United States and impose “voluntary” self-restraints on exports to the United States. Against the Trump offensive, Japan has so far taken a similar posture of avoiding a trade war with the United States. Today, China is by far more resistant to American pressures. Different from Japan, China is not dependent on the United States with regard to its national security. Economically, however, China’s stake in its United States connections is not significantly smaller than Japan’s stake 30 years ago. In 1985, the share of

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the United States market in total Japanese exports was 37.1%,22 whereas the same share in total Chinese exports as of 2016 was 18.4%.23 These figures may give the impression that China’s economic dependence on the United States market is much smaller than Japan’s. However, the dependence of the national economy on exports is higher in China (19.6% of GDP in 2016) than it was in Japan (14.1% in 1985), which somewhat reduces the difference between Japan and China in their degrees of respective dependence on the United States market. In addition, it must be noted that the Chinese dependence on the United States market increased from 17.7% to 18.4% between 1996 and 2016, whereas its dependence on the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) markets declined from 32.2% to 22.8% during the same period.24 What has deepened China’s difficulties is the deterioration of its relations with the United States in the field of information and communication technology (ICT). Since before Mr. Trump came to power, the United States government and Congress had been worried that a loss of the hegemonic position of the United States in the field may weaken the competitiveness of the United States economy and threaten its national security. Taking these concerns seriously, the Trump administration started to launch a series of policies targeting Chinese ICT companies. For three months (April–July 2018), the United States government prohibited United States-based firms from making commercial transactions with ZTE Corporation, one of the biggest producers of communication equipment and smartphones in China, on the grounds that the company violated economic sanctions against Iran. Being unable to import core semiconductors and other parts from the United States, ZTE suffered serious damages against its business.25 The United States government and Congress believe that China’s unfair trade practices (such as property-right violations, forced technology transfers, and massive government subsidies and other assistances for the Chinese companies) not only undercut United States firms’ competitiveness but also have serious security implications. The United States government insists that the Chinese government can approach the security-related information of the United States and its allies and strengthen cyberattack activities against them by taking advantage of equipment-embedded “holes” for information extraction. These concerns are shared by the broad policy-making community of the United States, as demonstrated by the bipartisan endorsement of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 in August 2018. Section 889 of this Act stipulates that the government organizations cannot procure “any equipment, system or service” that uses “telecommunication equipment or services” provided by the five Chinese companies, including ZTE and Huawei Technologies.26 It is further reported that from August 2020, public procurement by the United States government will be closed not only to the abovementioned products but also to all the goods produced by the firms that internally use the Chinese equipment and components.27 The United States requested that its allies take similar measures to exclude the Chinese products, including the 5G equipment.

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Since the United States demands eventually amount to the dismantling of China’s state-centric system of economic promotion and management, the Chinese government will not be able to make an easy compromise. This situation increasingly looks like a war of attrition between the two countries. However, since the trade-restricting measures of the United States are highly damaging to Chinese firms (and consequently to China’s economy), as shown by the ZTE predicament, China will be forced to make certain, if not substantial, compromises for the short run, such as the expansion of imports from the United States and the new legislation prohibiting forceful technology transfers by Chinese firms.28 For the medium and long runs, however, the Chinese government will not give up its goal of making China “a global leader in innovation” and of modernizing its military to be “fully transformed into world-class forces”, both under “overall leadership over all areas of endeavor in every part of the country” by the Communist Party.29

Still being global or going into block formation? It is highly uncertain how far the Trump administration is ready to go to put pressures on China. Although the trade dependence of the United States on China is smaller (11.9% of total exports as of 2016) than the Chinese dependence on the United States market, its trade-restricting measures against China are hurting United States firms (such as producers of electronic parts and components) and United States farmers (such as soybean growers). Different from the Chinese government, which is not subject to electoral pressures, President Trump must be sensitive to repercussions of the escalated trade war on his electoral fortune. It is not clear if he will be re-elected in 2020. This is one of the factors that induce the Chinese government to take the “gaining time” strategy in its negotiation with the United States. Whatever results from the United States–China negotiation and whoever will be the next United States president, everybody is now sure that the United States’ commitment to liberal internationalism has been and will be fading out in the long run. Consequently, every country will be required to arrange an alternative mechanism to mitigate damages and bring their own economies back to growth trajectories. Nobody is sure about what an alternative mechanism could be or which kinds of policy and negotiation are needed to realize it. An uncontrollably large uncertainty is anticipated. Here, we need to recall that the liberal internationalist world order was largely circumscribed from the beginning by varieties of domestic protection measures. In addition, its roles were theoretically complemented or practically superseded by issue-specific and / or regional regimes. Considering the high costs stemming from both material losses and future uncertainties, many nations, including China, will try to preserve as many current arrangements as possible through negotiations, at least in the short run. However, their reliance on the worldwide institutions will decline, whereas issue-specific and regional regimes will

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gain importance. China, whose economic size is expected to exceed the United States economy in the near future, will certainly strengthen its efforts to build a regional economic (if not security) bloc led by itself if the United States continues to try excluding China from its own effort for bloc formation characterized by a hub-and-spokes network of bilateral economic and security arrangements.

Regional order in Asia Importance of Asia for regional order building When we consider regional orders (or “blocs” if their nature is highly exclusive) in the future, focusing on Asia is crucial for several reasons. First, Asia is economically the most vital region in the world and holds many EMSs. In addition, as mentioned above, China’s rise prompted the resurgence of American protectionism, which will inevitably press China and other EMSs in the region to look for alternative frameworks that could help sustain stability and prosperity. Second, Asia contains the world’s second- and third-largest economies (China and Japan) and the first- and second-most-populous countries (China and India) in the world. China is the primary target of the recent United States economic offensive, whereas Japan is a security ally of the United States, and India is regarded as a potential ally in the Indo-Pacific area. Still, Japan and India are not exempted from the United States protectionist measures. How these three countries will accommodate one another for the sake of regional order-building will provide a test case for other regions, which similarly need cooperation among major regional powers. Third, Asia potentially provides an organizing principle that can serve as an alternative to the discredited Western liberal internationalism. As Acharya eloquently discussed concerning the “ASEAN way”,30 the Southeast Asian countries successfully maintained peace among themselves according to consensus-based decision-making, mutual non-interference, shared leadership, and elite restraint. Katzenstein concurred by referring to Michael Haas’ view that regionalism in Asia is characterized by informal discussions, consensus-based decision-making, and pragmatic incrementalism.31 This characterization somewhat resembles the concept of “tailored multilateralism” presented by Zheng and Liu in this volume. What is not yet clear is whether the “ASEAN way” can spread beyond ASEAN member nations and truly become an Asian way. For this to happen, the regional powers – such as China, Japan, and India – must truly accept the ASEAN way’s principles and restrain themselves from taking unilateral actions.

Regional hegemony or regional empire The best candidate for a regional leader is China. It is economically much larger than India. China is also catching up to Japan so rapidly that it is even superior to Japan in certain high-tech sectors. In addition, Japan’s military (Self-Defense Forces [SDF]) does not have independent capabilities to fight a war beyond areas

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near to Japan itself due to its small size, and has operational and technological dependence on the United States military, and domestic constitutional constraints. In consequence, the nature of the post-liberalist regional order in Asia will be primarily affected by policies adopted by China. In his World of Regions, published in 2005, Katzenstein treated Japan as the central player in the interconnected world of the United States imperium and the Asian region. However, for the United States government, it is no longer Japan but China that it must negotiate with to reconfigure global and / or regional arrangements concerning security and economic transactions. China’s initiatives for order-building could reach beyond the Asian region, as President Xi Jinping has announced his government’s intention to continuously commit to liberal economic world order and the Paris agreement on climate change. Furthermore, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) intends to cover not only the Asian region but also Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and even Latin America. However, due to the close geographical and economic ties that China has built with its Asian neighbors, Asia will be the core of any world order that China envisions. Now, the question is whether China can be an order-builder, not only as a physical power but also as an ideational leader. This chapter distinguishes a regional hegemony from a regional empire. The former is a political order based on the ideational consensus of the subordinate nations, whereas the latter is supported either by the exercise of military power or the threat thereof. As the Western international relations theorists argued, and many nonWestern authors concurred with (on this point at least), in order to build a stable hegemonic order, a leader country needs to provide public goods, such as easy and safe access to economic resources and markets, and self-restrain unilateral actions by submitting itself to common rules of conduct. If it fails to satisfy these conditions, other countries will not accept its leadership and, therefore, the leader country will be required to affect or threaten the exercise of military power to impose a regional order of its choice. Whether China’s rise can be peaceful and the “great conversion” à la Mahbubani can bring perpetual peace to the region partially depends on regional countries’ diplomatic efforts of socializing China through engagement and dialogues. In view of China’s behavior in the South China Sea, it will not be easy. However, I anticipate that greater difficulties may stem from domestic politics within China itself, of which diplomatic efforts from outside cannot necessarily control.

National politics in Asia Popular pressures on leaders Regional consensus-building will be easier if decisions can be made by the top leaders of a limited number of countries. However, such an elite concert seems

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to be increasingly difficult today because leaders are subject to stronger popular pressures at home, demanding improvement or at least maintenance of economic well-being. Table 12.1 shows some of the results from the Asian Barometer surveys, which were conducted in several Asian countries in four waves between 2001 and 2016. In all of the countries listed in this table, the majority of the surveyed population chose “economic development” when asked if democracy or economic development is more important. People who prefer economic development are especially numerous in Taiwan and Malaysia. However, the same table demonstrates that those who prefer economic development did not necessarily agree with the following statement: “If you have political leaders who are morally upright, we can let them decide everything”. People who negate enlightened political leadership are most numerous in Taiwan. The majority of the sample population did not accept enlightened political leaders unconditionally in China, Japan, Taiwan, or Malaysia. Among the Asian countries, those who simultaneously prefer economic development to democracy and obey enlightened leaders unconditionally are relatively numerous only in Thailand and Singapore. All of this data suggests that people’s support of national leaders is largely contingent upon people’s economic conditions. China and the United States are no exception. Continuing economic success is of paramount importance for stable rule by these countries’ national leaders. Although China has been experiencing much higher economic growth than the United States, the resources it can use for national and regional purposes are not limitless. In the process of regional order-building, it will inevitably face a difficult trade-off between national well-being and regional public goods. To provide regional public goods to establish consensus-based hegemony, it needs to offer financial resources at lower-than-market rates and enhance market openness to its Asian neighbors. On the other hand, the Chinese government (similar to its United States counterpart) needs to increase employment opportunities and protect uncompetitive sectors at home.

Survival problems at the national level Although the contention made by the democratic-peace protagonists that the states in regime transition are more belligerent than democratic states is highly controversial, its reference to the importance of domestic politics in explaining the external behavior of national leaders is relevant. This is because the ability to survive politically – sometimes even physically – is crucial for political leaders. Without staying in power, they will not be able to realize their preferred policy goals. In whichever political regimes they rule, survival is the first priority. However, the mere exercise of coercive power will not be effective in countries in which social and economic structures have become complex and people’s political attitudes have been diversified due to rapid economic growth. Rulers need people’s support, whether active or tacit, to survive as political

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TABLE 12.1 Public view of democracy, economic development, and leaders (%) Democracy or economic developmenta China 2011 Obey enlightened leadersb

Yes No Total

Economic development

Democracy

Total

22.1 28.7 53.1

9.6 13.3 23.5

42.4 50.5

Democracy or economic developmenta Japan 2011 Obey enlightened leadersb

Yes No Total

Economic development

Democracy

Total

24.9 29.4 55.7

13.8 23.6 37.6

40.5 56.1

Democracy or economic developmenta South Korea 2015 Obey enlightened leadersb

Yes No Total

Economic development

Democracy

Total

29.8 24.3 54.6

12.2 10.9 23.3

55.9 42.8

Democracy or economic developmenta Taiwan 2014 Obey enlightened leadersb

Yes No Total

Economic development

Democracy

Total

16.5 56.4 75.0

2.2 17.1 19.4

19.7 76.6

Democracy or economic developmenta Thailand 2014 Obey enlightened leadersb

Yes No Total

Economic development

Democracy-

Total

41.8 10.5 53.8

16.3 10.8 28.1

66.3 24.3

Democracy or economic developmenta Malaysia 2014 Obey enliglitened leadersb

Yes No Total

Economic development

Democracy

Total

31.0 38.8 71.1

8.5 10.1 19.0

43.6 53.6

Democracy or economic developmenta Singapore 2014 Obey enlightened leadersb

Yes No Total

Economic development

Democracy

Total

36.7 21.1 59.7

11.5 7.9 19.7

58.8 35.8

Notes: a The original question is “If you had to choose between democracy and economic development, which would you say is more important?” b The original statement is “If you have political leaders who are morally upright, we can let them decide everything”. Source: Asian Barometer, Waves 3 and 4.

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TABLE 12.2 Survival strategies of political leaders

Consensus-building actions

Confrontation-creating actions

Domestic

Catch-all policies

Abroad

Altruistic contributions to peace or development

Domestic enemies (e.g. corruption, drug trafficking) External enemies (e.g. foreign countries, immigrants, and refugees)

Source: Constructed by the author.

leaders. Even in countries such as China, where the regime is autocratic and leaders are not subject to the direct inf luence of popular elections, they still need to ensure the loyalty of their immediate subordinates who are indispensable as executioners of the leaders’ policy goals. The strength of support from these subordinates is affected by public opinion (or moods) regarding leaders’ popularity. The survival strategies of political leaders can be broadly categorized into two types: consensus-building actions and confrontation-creating actions. Both types of action can be taken inside and / or outside a country (see Table 12.2). Domestic actions for consensus-building usually take the form of “catch all” policies. The Japanese policies of accommodating interests of both internationally competitive and non-competitive sectors and satisfying both active producers and pure social-welfare beneficiaries are the typical example.32 However, catch-all policies cannot be maintained forever because of the fiscal burdens they incur on the national coffers – as shown by Japan’s accumulated national debts, amounting to more than 200% of its GDP. Confrontation-creating actions at home aim to single out a certain group of people as enemies of the society and to publicly attack them. Such actions can be popular when the targeted groups or people are disliked by broad sectors of the population. For example, anticorruption campaigns have been quite popular in China, South Korea, Brazil, and many other countries. People who were accused of corruption and self-enrichment were prosecuted in these countries. The government campaign against drug traffickers in the Philippines is another example of a popular confrontation-creating action. Consensus-building actions abroad are those that aim at appealing to national pride and identity by working for altruistic international causes. Japan’s promotion of the antinuclear weapons movement in the world had been one such action, although it lost appealing power through the Japanese government’s decision in 2017 to not sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Official development assistance (ODA) was also very popular in Japan during the 1990s, when Japan was the largest ODA provider in the world. Confrontation-creating actions against foreign countries or people also try to appeal to national identity. However, in contrast to consensus-building actions,

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confrontation-creating actions single out foreign countries or people (such as immigrants or refugees) as national enemies and attack them with words and/or force. Examples include President Putin’s antagonistic actions against Ukraine, and President Trump’s and some European leaders’ actions against immigrants and refugees. The current top leaders of China will use all or some of these survival strategies, as any political leader in the world might.33 However, as I pointed out previously concerning Japan, domestic catch-all policies are costly. If China extends catch-all policies beyond its borders by increasing international development assistance (including the BRI), such policies will contribute to raising the international reputation of the country and thus satisfying people’s sense of national pride. However, the use of national resources for foreign countries may collide with the necessity of catch-all policies at home. Confrontation-creating actions are economically less costly and seem to be more effective in the short run. In fact, the anticorruption campaign by President Xi Jinping has been highly popular and contributed to consolidating his power. At the National People’s Congress held in March 2018, the presidential term, which had been limited to two five-year terms, was abolished. This reform, together with the virtual disappearance of his political rivals, contributed to alleviating Mr. Xi Jinping’s survival problem at home in the short run. In the long run, however, the problem could become more serious, as persecution of domestic rivals can heighten the fear of being retaliated against. If such fear becomes stronger, the current leaders may be tempted to enhance confrontation-creating actions abroad to survive domestically. As President Xi has appealed to and fostered the nationalist sentiment of Chinese people by repeatedly mentioning the “Chinese dream of national rejuvenation”,34 he always needs to look tough against external actors who allegedly obstruct the achievement of the goals that he himself proclaimed to be of China’s most important interest. This is because the nationalist sentiment among the population, once aroused by the political leaders, turns back to the leaders and demands them to continuously take nationalistic actions. If the Chinese government uses military force for the sake of these self-proclaimed goals, the regional order in Asia will never be a consensus-based hegemonic order but rather will be an imperial order forcefully imposed by China.

Possibility of joint hegemony One way to alleviate the survival problem of the Chinese leaders is to help facilitate their consensus-building actions at home and abroad. Catch-all policies at home will require that the Chinese economy continues to attain at least a moderately high growth rate and create fiscal resources for distributive and redistributive purposes. To achieve this goal, the Chinese government itself needs to make efforts to solve the financial difficulties of local governments and state-owned

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companies and direct greater resources to the rectification of social disparity rather than to the expansion of armaments. However, other countries can also supplement Chinese efforts by joining forces with China to maintain and expand regional and global arrangements (including the WTO) that have facilitated economic transactions and the development of the Asian countries. The cooperation with China for smooth economic transactions will serve to not only help China’s economic growth but also satisfy nationalist sentiment among the population because Chinese leaders can claim that their actions, in contrast with Mr. Trump’s deviational actions, contribute to salvaging the international economic regime and, in consequence, to enhancing the international reputation of their country. Another area of cooperation between China and other regional countries that can heighten China’s international esteem is the provision of regional (and even global) public goods, such as assistance to less-developed countries. Sharing burdens and responsibilities for this purpose will reduce China’s financial burdens and bring a kind of joint hegemony. Because Japan has the third-largest economy in the world and the secondlargest economy in Asia, its role in any cooperation with China is expected to be important. In fact, the Japanese government’s posture has changed from negative to positive with regard to Japan’s participation in the China-led BRI projects. Prime Minister Abe sent Toshihiro Nikai, secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, to the international BRI conference hosted by China in May 2017. It is reported that Mr. Nikai handed over Abe’s personal letter to President Xi in which Abe offered a supportive comment on the BRI vision.35 A few weeks later, Mr. Abe stated in Tokyo that the BRI would have great potential in connecting regions between the East and the West and that he wanted to cooperate with the Chinese initiative.36 In December 2017, the Japanese government decided to financially support Japanese enterprises (through case-by-case decisions) that intend to participate in BRI projects.37 Although the Abe administration is still negative regarding Japan’s participation in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), it does not oppose increasing co-financing by the AIIB and the Asian Development Bank, whose presidency has been held by former Finance Ministry officials of Japan since its establishment. The Japanese government was also keen to restart the annual trilateral summit of Japan, China, and South Korea, which had been interrupted twice (in 2012 and 2016) due to the deterioration of Japan–China and Japan–South Korea relations. The summit was finally held in May 2018 in Tokyo, and Japan and China agreed to foster private-sector cooperation in the third countries, which means Japan virtually accepted the BRI. They also agreed to make efforts to maintain open trade regimes and cooperate to precipitate negotiation for the regional comprehensive economic partnership (RCEP) and the trilateral free trade agreement.38 In October 2018, Prime Minister Abe visited Beijing and reconfirmed his will to deepen economic cooperation with China.39

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Great dilemma for Japan However, the recent rapprochement between Japan and China is a small starting point. There are two main obstacles against its development into full cooperation: uncertainty about China’s future actions and United States pressure to exclude China.

Uncertainty about internal and external behavior of China Since it is difficult for most Japanese people to assess the real intention of Chinese leaders, they evaluate it by looking at the internal and external behavior of China. As for internal affairs, the news coming out of China has recently frightened the people in Japan. The Xi Jinping government looks extremely intolerant to even a minor amount of dissent, as shown by the arrest and prosecution of dissident lawyers and others. Many cases of sudden arrests or “disappearances” in Mainland China have also been reported. In addition, the Chinese government seems to be strengthening its system of surveillance over the population by using modern ICT. All of this news reminds the Japanese of their own totalitarian past of which that they never want to experience again. On the 40th anniversary of the reform and opening-up policy, President Xi Jinping emphasized the importance of the Communist Party’s leadership without mentioning any concrete measure for political reform. On the 30th anniversary, the then President Hu Jintao listed the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, the establishment of New China in 1949, and the beginning of the reform and opening-up policy in 1978 as three crucial events in modern China. President Xi Jinping replaced the Xinhai Revolution with the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. This incident is interpreted in Japan as another indicator that President Xi Jinping intends to strengthen one-party dictatorship.40 Many Japanese also feel threatened by China’s external actions. Entering the 21st century, China started to use its newly gained economic and military capabilities in the East China Sea, in which Japan and China have conf licting claims concerning territorial seas and the geographical median lines. Since around 2004, China has unilaterally constructed and operated offshore work platforms for natural gas exploitation in the East China Sea, neglecting repeated protests from the Japanese government. In December 2008, two Chinese ocean exploration ships suddenly entered the area near the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, which Japan claims to be its territorial sea, and stayed there for nine hours. It was the first intrusion of China’s government vessels in the area.41 In September 2010, a Chinese fishing boat, pursued by Japan Coast Guard ships in the area surrounding the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, bumped against a Japan Coast Guard ship, and the captain of the Chinese ship was arrested.42 Although he was released in accordance with the strong demand from the Chinese government and the ship was returned, Chinese government vessels started to frequently intrude in the areas that Japan claims to be its contiguous zones. Such intrusions

Japan in the changing world and regional orders

FIGURE 12.1

275

Number of vessels identified within Japan-claimed territorial seas and contiguous zones. Source: Original data was extracted from the homepage of the Japan Coast Guard, http://www.kaiho.mlit.go.jp/mission/ senkaku/senkaku.html, accessed 4 April 2018.

definitely increased after the Japanese government “nationalized” the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands in September 2012. The nationalization was a painful decision made by the Democratic Party of the Japanese government –which wanted to avoid the islands being bought by the Tokyo metropolitan government, whose then governor was the ultra-right-wing politician and novelist Shintaro Ishihara. Ishihara had made clear his intention to construct structures on the islands. Such construction, the government feared, would have brought antagonistic reactions from China.43 However, the government’s judgment proved to be wrong. Its attempt to avoid the escalation of confrontation with China was in vain. As Figure 12.1 shows, the number of intrusions of Chinese government vessels into Japan’s “territorial seas” and “contiguous zones” sharply increased in 2013 and has stayed high since then. In June 2016, a Chinese battleship entered the contiguous zones near the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands for the first time. Furthermore, Chinese navy ships (occasionally including an aircraft carrier) frequently passed through the “first island chain” between the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean or entered the Sea of Japan. China’s Air Force has also been active near Japan. China set up its air defense identification zone (ADIZ) above the East China Sea in November 2013 that partially overlaps Japan’s and South Korea’s ADIZ. However, even before 2013, Chinese Air Force planes frequently entered the Japan-claimed ADIZ, and the number of intrusions surpassed 800 in 2016. Since 2015, Chinese Air Force planes, including bombers such as H-6K, have been frequently observed in the

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FIGURE 12.2

Impressions of each other (%). Source: Genron NPO (2018). (Genron NPO, Dai juyonkai nicchuu kyodo yoron chosa,The 14th Japan–China Joint Public Opinion Survey,Tokyo: Genron NPO, 2018).

Western Pacific. After January 2016, Chinese Air Force planes even entered the zone above the Sea of Japan.44 The deterioration of the public image of China, stemming from people’s observations of the internal and external behavior of China, has forced the Japanese political leaders to be cautious about their rapprochement with China. The public opinion polls conducted annually and jointly by Genron NPO (one of the most inf luential nonprofit organizations in Japan) and the China International Publishing Group show (in Figure 12.2) that, in as early as 2007, the number of Japanese and Chinese peoples who had a “good impression” of each other was lower than the number of those who had a “not good impression”. After 2008, the number of “not good” impressions increased in the two countries. In Japan, the deterioration of China’s public image was especially noticeable in 2008 and in 2011–2014, when the abovementioned incidents happened in the East China Sea. It is noticeable that the Chinese impression of Japan improved after 2014, whereas the Japanese impression of China did not change much. This may be partially explained by the different nature of mass media in the two countries. In Japan, the internal affairs of China and the activities of Chinese military ships and aircrafts near Japan are freely and constantly reported. In China, the government control over media reports is much stronger than in Japan, and, consequently, the people’s impression of Japan may be inf luenced by the way in which Japan-related matters are reported in mass media. This means that the recent improvement of the Chinese impression of Japan may be deceptive. The Chinese sentiment may easily turn sour again if the Chinese leaders decide to publicly treat Japan as an enemy of the nation. Facing the difficult situation caused by the strained relations with the United States, the Xi Jinping government seems to be taking more moderate behavior toward Japan to avoid complicating the situation

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by heightening regional tension. However, if political survival is at immediate stake, it may be tempted to take an antagonistic policy toward Japan again. In view of the great uncertainty of China’s external actions and the overwhelmingly anti-Chinese feeling among the public, Prime Minister Abe (or any leader who wanted to survive politically in Japan) could not have done anything other than strengthening Japan’s military ties with the United States.45 It successfully revised security-related laws in 2015 to weaken the constraints that had obstructed the SDF’s cooperation with the United States military. Previously, the SDF’s cooperation with the United States military had been limited to the cases in which Japan would be directly attacked or Japan’s security would be seriously inf luenced in the “areas surrounding Japan”. After the 2015 reforms, geographical limitations were removed and replaced by “situations”. Now Japan– United States cooperation is allowed in “situations that will have an important inf luence on Japan’s peace and security”. The SDF will provide the United States military with logistics, ammunition, and other goods and services. In addition, the SDF can now carry out the mission to protect the military and other equipment of the United States forces if they are engaged in activities that contribute to the defense of Japan.46

Japan facing the United States–China confict The second difficulty Japan faces in its policy decision on China is the United States pressure to exclude China from global information and communication networks and from free trade arrangements. If Japan refuses the United States demands, Japanese high-tech firms will be excluded from the United States market, and Japanese goods will be imposed disadvantageous tariffs. Furthermore, the United States military will become much more cautious about sharing security-related information with Japan, which will hamper effective Japan–United States military cooperation. Responding to this pressure, the Japanese government decided to consider “national security risks” when it procures equipment and services related to the 5G networks. Different from the United States government, the Japanese government did not specifically mention Chinese firms as policy targets. However, it is clear that this decision by the Japanese government is concerned with China.47 The Japanese government will soon face another United States demand in its free trade negotiation with the United States. The United States government will demand that the “poison pill” be included in the agreement to prohibit Japan from concluding a free trade agreement with a non-market country (i.e. China). It is not clear if this “pill” applies to the RCEP agreement. However, it will definitely make it difficult for the Japanese government to sign a Japan– China–South Korea FTA. Unless the Chinese government accepts some of the United States demands by reducing government intervention for the promotion of domestic high-tech industries, Japan may be placed in a difficult position in which it must choose

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either the United States or China as its main economic partner. Such choice will be agonizing. The trade-restricting measures of the United States against China are already hurting Japanese firms because production networks spread beyond borders. The ratio of Japanese exports to the United States and the ones to China are at a similar level (around 19% of all Japanese exports as of 2017), but the domestic market is larger and is expected to grow faster in China than in the United States. However, government regulations over economic activities and public procurement are heavy and disadvantageous for foreign firms operating in China. Furthermore, Japanese firms operating in China face the risk that a sudden surge of anti-Japan movements will seriously hamper their businesses, as demonstrated by the mass riots in 2005 and 2012.

Coping with the dilemma The expectation that engagement policies would benefit the economic development of China and transform China to be internally more democratic and externally more conciliatory seems to have faded out in the United States, as shown by the bipartisan endorsement of the National Defense Authorization Act 2019. The policy balance is shifting from engagement to containment, and this trend seems to be a long-term one. For now (in early 2019), the Japanese government attempts to reduce bilateral tensions with China as much as possible by enhancing economic cooperation between the two countries as well as in the third countries. Cooperating with China to promote liberal economic order and economic development in the Asian region and beyond may help induce China’s consensus-building actions inside and outside China and eventually benefit both Japan and China in the long run. However, how much such measures could help improve the bilateral relationship is unforeseeable. The possibility of Chinese leaders choosing confrontation-creating actions abroad to elude domestic dissatisfaction cannot be neglected. Facing such uncertainty on the one hand and strong United States pressures on the other, Japanese leaders cannot take a step forward for full cooperation with China. As long as the security threat from China continues to be felt in Japan, its dependence on the United States will be its core policy. However, Japan is located so close to China, and is a formidable economic and military power. Whether it likes it or not, Japan needs to find a way to peacefully coexist with China. For this purpose, it needs to search for every measure to keep bilateral relations as stable and amicable as possible by somehow dodging the United States pressures.

Final remarks It is impossible to draw definite conclusions about the future forms of the world order and regional order in Asia. However, I can present several observations based on my review of related literature, examination of the actions that the

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United States and China have been taking, speculative discussion concerning impacts from domestic politics, and observation of the dilemma faced by Japan. First, the Asian countries, including Japan and China, have achieved high economic growth thanks to their participation in global economic transactions. Anticipating that negotiating any viable alternative mechanism is costly and timeconsuming, they will attempt to preserve the current global frameworks for economic transactions as much as possible, dodging Mr. Trump’s deviational actions. Second, in comparison with global frameworks, issue-specific and regional regimes will gain importance not only in practice but also in principle. As for the regional order-building in Asia, China’s role will be of paramount importance in view of its expanding economic and military capabilities. Whether China can build a consensus-based hegemony in Asia will partially depend on China’s capability of providing regional public goods, such as greater access to domestic markets and concessional foreign aid. It will also depend on whether China is ready to accept regional codes of conduct that may constrain China’s own actions in the future. If China’s effort toward hegemony-building in Asia fails, the possibility of China behaving more as an imperialist power through the use of military force or the threat thereof will increase, as we have already observed in the South China Sea. Third, whether China becomes a hegemon or empire in Asia will also be heavily inf luenced by the domestic survival problem of its top political leaders. They can attempt to secure domestic support through consensus-building activities at home and abroad. However, these activities need huge government resources and may face difficulties in keeping balances among various domestic interests and between domestic necessities and external assistances. Chinese leaders may then be tempted to take confrontation-creating actions at home and abroad, which might open the way to a more imperialist (rather than hegemonic) order in Asia. Fourth, to encourage China to take the hegemony (not imperialist) path, it is important for the regional countries to cooperate with China to help its consensus-building activities at home and abroad by strengthening global and regional frameworks for smooth economic transactions and by jointly providing resources for the economic development of less-developed countries. However – in view of the rapidly expanding activities by Chinese government ships and naval ships in the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean in recent years, limitations of the autonomous military capabilities of the SDF, the deteriorating public image of China (or Japan) in Japan (or China), and great uncertainties about the repercussions of the US–China conf lict and their impacts on the problem of leaders’ survival in China – the Japanese government cannot avoid taking an ambivalent stance of hedging against China by strengthening its alliance with the United States and simultaneously engaging with China by enhancing economic cooperation bilaterally and in the third countries. Globalism will shrink. Regions will gain importance, but region-building endeavors in Asia are full of uncertainties. The best case will be a consensus-based

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regional order in which China, Japan, and other member countries jointly bear the costs in fostering economic transactions and assistances. The worst case will be a vicious cycle of force-based Chinese actions and equally force-based reactions from the countries that are not ready to see a Chinese empire established in Asia.

Notes 1 Ian Bremmer. Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2012; John Mearsheimer. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2001. 2 Michael Mastanduno. “Order and Change in World Politics: The Financial Crisis and the Breakdown of the US-China Grand Bargain”. In Power, Order, and Change in World Politics, Ed. John Ikenberry, pp. 162–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 3 G. John Ikenberry. “The Future of the Liberal World Order: Internationalism After America”. Foreign Affairs, May/June, 2011; G. John Ikenberry. “The Logic of Order: Westphalia, Liberalism, and the Evolution of International Order in the Modern Era”. In Power, Order, and Change in World Politics. Ed. John Ikenberry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 4 G. John Ikenberry. After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001. 5 G. John Ikenberry. “The Logic of Order: Westphalia, Liberalism, and the Evolution of International Order in the Modern Era”. In Power, Order, and Change in World Politics. Ed. John Ikenberry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 104–105. 6 Kishore Mahbubani. The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. New York: Public Affairs, 2008; Kishore Mahbubani. The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World. New York: Public Affairs, 2013. 7 Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order. London and New York: Routledge, 2001; Amitav Acharya. “Foundations of Collective Action in Asia: Theory and Practice of Regional Cooperation”. In The Political Economy of Asian Regionalism. ed. Giovanni Capannelli and Masahiro Kawai, Springer, 2014, pp. 19–38. 8 Bruce Russett. Grasping the Democratic Peace. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993; John M. Owen. “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace”. International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1994, pp. 87–125; Edward D. Mansfield and J. Snyder. “Democratic Transitions, Institutional Strength, and War”. International Organization, Vol. 56, No. 2, 2002, pp. 297–337. 9 G. John Ikenberry. “The Future of the Liberal World Order: Internationalism After America”. Foreign Affairs, May/June, 2011. 10 John G. Ruggie. “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic System”. International Organization, Vol. 36, No. 2, 1982, pp. 379–415. 11 T. J. Pempel. Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. 12 Robert O. Keohane. “International Institutions: Two Approaches”. International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 4, 1988, pp. 379–396; Oran R. Young. “Institutional Linkages in International Society: Polar Perspectives”. Global Governance, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1996, pp. 1–23; Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Kokusai rejiimu to gabanansu. International Regimes and Governance, Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 2008. 13 Amitav Acharya. Constructing Global Order: Agency and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

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14 The New York Times, March 9, 2018, late edition-final. 15 Later, the deadline was extended to March 1, 2019, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, December 27, 2018, evening edition. 16 The New York Times, April 2, 2018; Asahi Shimbun, April 4 and April 5, 2018; Nihon Keizai Shimbun, July 7, August 24, and September 19, 2018. 17 Jota Ishikawa. “Beikoku tsusho seisaku to sekai keizai” [Commercial Policy of the United States and the World Economy], International Affairs, No. 677, 2018, pp. 6–16. 18 Office of the USTR (United States Trade Representative), “Agreement between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada Text”, 2018, http:// ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-ag reement/agreement-between, accessed on December 20, 2018. 19 Asahi Shimbun, December 23, 2018. 20 Hideo Sato. Nichibei keizai masatsu 1945–1990. Japan–US Economic Friction, Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1991; Glenn S. Fukushima. Nichibei keizai masatsu no seijigaku, Political Analysis of Japan–US Economic Friction, Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha, 1992; Leonard Schoppa. Bargaining with Japan: What American Pressure Can and Cannot Do. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997; Satoshi Oyane. “Nichibeikan handotai masatsu: tsusho kosho no seijikeizaigaku” Semiconductor disputes among Japan, the United States, and South Korea: Political Economy of Trade Negotiation, Tokyo: Yushindo, 2002. 21 Bob Davis. “In Trade Fight, China Today Differs From 1980s Japan”. Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2018. 22 Yano Tsuneta Kinenkai. “Suji de miru Nihon no hyakunen” One Hundred Years of Japan in Figures, Tokyo: Yano Tsuneta Kinenkai, Table 8-41, 2013. 23 Calculated by the author on the basis of UNCTADSTAT data, accessed April 3, 2018. http://unctadstat.unctad.org/wds/ReportFolders/reportFolders.aspx 24 Calculated by the author on the basis of World Development Indicators data, accessed April 3, 2018. http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-deve lopment-indicators. 25 Nihon Keizai Shimbun, July 18, 2018. 26 House of Representatives of the United States Congress. “John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019”, 2018, http://www.congress.gov/b ill/115th-congress/house-bill/5515/text, accessed on December 19, 2018. 27 Nihon Keizai Shimbun, December 7, 2018. 28 Asahi Shimbun, December 24, 2018. 29 Xi Jinpin. “Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in all Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”. Speech delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. October 18, 2018, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/special/201711/03/c_136725942.htm, accessed on March 30, 2018. 30 Amitav Acharya. Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. 31 Peter Katzenstein. A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in the American Imperium. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. 32 Keiichi Tsunekawa. “Japan: Political Economy of Long Stagnation”. In Two Crises, Different Outcomes: East Asia and Global Finance, Ed. T. J. Pempel and K. Tsunekawa, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015, pp. 185–215. 33 He, 2016 also regarded political survival as the most crucial factor that explains external policy choices made by Chinese leaders during international crises. He presented four policy choices: full accommodation, conditional accommodation, diplomatic coercion, and military coercion. Chang Liao, 2016, in contrast, emphasized the importance of the state leader’s preferences rather than pressures from the international system or domestic politics. 34 For instance, refer to his speech to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi 2017.

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Nihon Keizai Shimbun, May 26, 2017. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, June 6, 2017. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, December 31, 2017. Asahi Shimbun, May 10, 2018. Asahi Shimbun, October 27, 2018. Asahi Shimbun, December 26, 2018. Asahi Shimbun, December 9, 2008. Asahi Shimbun, September 8, 2010, evening edition. Asahi Shimbun, September 26, 2012. Japan Ministry of Defense. Defense of Japan 2017. Tokyo: Ministry of Defense, 2017, pp. 98–103, http://www.mod.go.jp/e/publ/w_paper/2017.html, accessed on December 27, 2018. 45 Another important security problem for Japan is concerned with North Korea. Japan needs the alliance with the United States to protect itself from possible attacks from North Korea’s middle-range missiles. 46 Japan Ministry of Defense. Defense of Japan 2017. Tokyo: Ministry of Defense, 2017, pp. 242–244, http://www.mod.go.jp/e/publ/w_paper/2017.html, accessed on December 27, 2018. 47 Nihon Keizai Shimbun, December 11, 2018.

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References Acharya, Amitav. Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order. London: Routledge, 2001. Acharya, Amitav. “Foundations of Collective Action in Asia: Theory and Practice of Regional Cooperation.” In The Political Economy of Asian Regionalism. Ed. Giovanni Capannelli and Masahiro Kawai, Tokyo: Springer, 2014, pp. 19–38. Acharya, Amitav. Constructing Global Order: Agency and Change in World Politics. Cambrdige: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Bremmer, Ian. Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2012. Davis, Bob. “In Trade Fight, China Today Differs From 1980s Japan.” Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2018. Fukushima, Glenn S. Nichibei keizai masatsu no seijigaku, Political Analysis of Japan–US Economic Friction. Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha, 1992. Genron NPO. Dai juyonkai nicchuu kyodo yoron chosa, The 14th Japan–China Join Public Opinion Survey. Tokyo: Genron NPO, 2018. House of Representatives of the United States Congress. “John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019.” 2018, http://www.congress.gov/b ill/115th-congress/house-bill/5515/text, Accessed on 29 December 2018. Ikenberry, G. John. After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Ikenberry, G. John. “The Future of the Liberal World Order: Internationalism After America.” Foreign Affairs, May/June, 2011. Ikenberry, G. John. “The Logic of Order: Westphalia, Liberalism, and the Evolution of International Order in the Modern Era.” In Power, Order, and Change in World Politics. Ed. John Ikenberry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 83–106. Ishikawa, Jota. “Beikoku tsusho seisaku to sekai keizai” [Commercial Policy of the United States and the World Economy]. International Affairs, 677, 2018, pp. 6–16. Japan Ministry of Defense. Defense of Japan 2017. Tokyo: Ministry of Defense, 2017, http://www.mod.go.jp/e/publ/w:paper/2017.html, accessed on 27 December 2018.

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Katzenstein, Peter. A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in the American Imperium. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. Keohane, Robert O. “International Institutions: Two Approaches.” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 4, 1988, pp. 379–396. Mahbubani, Kishore. The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. New York: Public Affairs, 2008. Mahbubani, Kishore. The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World. New York: Public Affairs, 2013. Mansfield, Edward D. and J. Snyder. “Democratic Transitions, Institutional Strength, and War.” International Organization, vol. 56, no. 2, 2002, pp. 297–337. Mastanduno, Michael. “Order and Change in World Politics: The Financial Crisis and the Breakdown of the US-China Grand Bargain.” In Power, Order, and Change in World Politics, Ed. John Ikenberry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 162–191. Mearsheimer, John. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. Office of the USTR (United States Trade Representative). “Agreement Between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada Text.” 2018, http:// ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-ag reement/agreement-between, accessed on 20 December 2018. Owen, John M. “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace.” International Security, vol. 19, no. 2, 1994, pp. 87–125. Oyane, Satoshi. ‘Nichibeikan handotai masatsu: tsusho kosho no seijikeizaigaku’ Semiconductor Disputes among Japan, the United States, and South Korea: Political Economy of Trade Negotiation. Tokyo: Yushindo, 2002. Pempel, T. J. Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Ruggie, John G. “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic System.” International Organization, vol. 36, no. 2, 1982, pp. 379–415. Russett, Bruce. Grasping the Democratic Peace. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Sato, Hideo. Nichibei keizai masatsu 1945–1990. Japan–US Economic Friction. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1991. Schoppa, Leonard. Bargaining with Japan: What American Pressure Can and Cannot Do. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Tsunekawa, Keiichi. “Japan: Political Economy of Long Stagnation.” In Two Crises, Different Outcomes: East Asia and Global Finance, Ed. T. J. Pempel and K. Tsunekawa, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015, pp. 185–215. Xi, Jinpin. “Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in all Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” Speech delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. October 18, 2018, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/special/201711/03/c_136725942.htm, accessed on 30 March 2018. Yamamoto, Yoshinobu. Kokusai rejiimu to gabanansu. International Regimes and Governance. Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 2008. Yano, Tsuneta Kinenkai. ‘Suji de miru Nihon no hyakunen’ One Hundred Years of Japan in Figures. Tokyo: Yano Tsuneta Kinenkai, 2013. Young, Oran R. “Institutional Linkages in International Society: Polar Perspectives.” Global Governance, vol. 2, no. 1, 1996, pp. 1–23.

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The world order of post-1945 is being challenged and is crumbling at the edges while being soft at its center. The era of having a single superpower looks to be short if not brutish after President George W. Bush’s fateful decision to attack Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It became obvious soon after that no single power, however strong, could manage the system that was left behind at the end of the Cold War. There is no simple way for the United States to lead its allies against the “enemy” without immeasurable cost. The price is one that the United States cannot shoulder alone, and is also a burden that its people no longer want to bear. President Obama did begin to re-group American partners and other players to try to restore United States dominance, but the financial crisis in market capitalism of 2008 crippled his efforts to make the geostrategic rebalancing more effective. In the end, he was not able to give the world a clear idea of what his revised order might look like. By 2016, the American people revolted and turned to President Trump to regain American pre-eminence by other means. The new scenario is still unfolding as the world adjusts to what appear to be new ways to put America First in all interstate transactions. There is much less talk about the high moral ground of a liberal world order where democracy, human rights, and the rule of law provided the rhetorical weapon against countries that were not in favor, especially those that the United States could declare as having defied universal values. Under President Trump, the emphasis has shifted to negotiations based on national interests as well as to deep skepticism towards multilateral agreements. It is too early to say if this will be the American position hereafter in what remains of the world order that President Trump seems to prefer. There are those in the United States and outside who still hope that his methods will not last beyond his presidency. Some foreign leaders like Xi Jinping in China, however, seem prepared to adapt to such a transactional world order but,

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to the world’s astonishment, he chose at Davos and elsewhere to support the post-1945 order and has affirmed that the globalization promoted by that order has helped to bring peace and prosperity to China and many parts of the world. In that context, he has put himself forward as an upholder of the earlier system of interstate relationships, albeit one that can and should be improved. All the same, Xi Jinping cannot be sure if the Trump agenda is not just a brief aberration; therefore, he is wise to stay on the side of the angels. A similar revolt is afoot when America’s cousins in the United Kingdom, the country that had been the fountainhead of imperial liberalism, shocked everyone by choosing to leave the European Union. This has now been followed by a series of aftershocks throughout Europe that have left the world wondering whether there is about to be a total turnaround where no one seems to have a clear sense of direction. In the looming uncertainty, there are those who hope that a rejuvenated Asia might be able to light up the path ahead. With President Trump resorting to more conventional challenges of military strength and no longer calling for universal values like “the rule of law”, Asian leaders in particular are wondering what they should now do. After all, if the president is prepared to make deals that are primarily in United States interests, that approach is familiar in Asian history and is not one that they would reject. Indeed, that would be closer to what most Asian leaders were used to and can probably understand. However, they know that such an approach would be largely based on relative power and wealth. It is also not one that they would have expected to hear from the American leadership, at least not for a long time. The world thus faces new challenges. It is beginning to look as dangerous as the world the Europeans had left behind a couple of centuries ago when the Enlightenment Project offered a future of unlimited progress. The 18th century was also the time when new nation-states with their capitalist empires had promoted a system of international law that drew primarily on their own Christian heritage. That was done with the conviction that it was the only way to stop the endless wars that had plagued Europe for centuries. But the way the system was manipulated by the Great Powers ensured that the continent was subjected to fewer but more devastating wars. In the end, their own struggles for dominance brought high casualties to the world, not least to Europe itself when those Great Powers nearly self-destructed in two World Wars in the 20th century. The series of disastrous conf licts eventually led to a consensus in Paris in 1919 that Europe was ready to learn new ways of interstate cooperation. They set out to build the League of Nations as an institution explicitly to end future wars, and recognized it as a necessary route to global peace and prosperity. The First World War had been fought before nuclear weapons and had used deadly but simpler weapons. But that was not to be for the Second World War, when it needed two atomic bombs to bring it to an end. Today, protagonists have access to ever increasing scientific and technological inventions to pursue the total destruction of the

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enemy. Powerful countries can now be engaged within seconds, and much could be obliterated in a matter of minutes. There is, of course, still hope that the human instinct for survival is not lost and that our world will ultimately be able to stop before the brink. The prospects are not clear. The pursuit of safer alternatives against the possibility of a total breakdown followed by nuclear war is continuing. Among the alternatives would be to encourage and enable a group of increasingly confident and active Asian states like China, India, Japan, and possibly Indonesia as well, to come together and provide some answers. It could perhaps work out a more stable set of institutions that would assure Russia and the divided Islamic forces that it could prevent the resumption of American hegemony and would not itself become serious threats to global peace. However, the idea that indefinite United States global supremacy might be replaced by a set of Asian powers dominating the future of the world is highly improbable. But the very thought that this could happen would be so distasteful that it alone might reawaken the American genius to reinvent itself and revitalize its role in the world. That is something that cannot be ruled out. However, given that the scenarios of threats could emerge as some combination of the “Asian”–Islamic, Chinese, and Sino–Russian, it is also likely that the United States would choose to lash out in alarm to play out their Thucydides Trap script: stop the rising power in its tracks! America still has the military upper hand, and the temptation to use it before it is too late must be very strong for those who fear that the United States would totally lose its supremacy if they did not act soon. In that scenario, it is best to have a target whose destruction would provide the most effective lesson to the others and, for now, the most obvious target would be a resurgent China. I pause here to mention that three other major players are important because they have histories that have kept them separate from both the West and China. One is the Islam world that has shared a monotheistic past with the Christian West but did not accept the Greco–Roman secularization that together produced the hybrid the modern West became. The second is Russia as the continental response to Western European maritime empires, and it has represented a kind of heretical challenge to the West, but is really part of the ancient Mediterranean civilization that expanded north and east into Central Asia. The third is the Hindu core of an India that has reinvented itself to face the challenges from the West, from Islamic forces as well as from a resurgent China. All three, the Islamic world, Russia, and India, have distinctive heritages although, at least for now, they do not seem to offer credible alternatives to the current world order. Certainly, in the eyes of the United States, the serious challenger to its hegemony is China whose reinvigorated political system stands out as one that has put it on the defensive. Looking ahead from the perspective of Asia, I see no power foolish enough to think it could replace the United States as a dominant force, whether for good or evil. Newly rising powers like China and India could at best hope that a multipolar order might eventually emerge, one that the world might accept as

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the basis for a durable peace. If they and other rising powers could persuade a less confident American superpower that they would be content with a multipolarity in which America’s rightful place in the world as well as their own would be equally respected, there should be no need for unnecessary alarm. But that would require them to overcome the instincts of a defensive superpower that is unwilling to accept a lesser hegemony. If the United States should choose to identify a potential evil enemy and effectively play the role of the caring leader who would do anything to save its helpless allies, it could demonstrate that the idea of multipolarity has no future. It could then argue that such a development would only lead back to the global anarchy that all countries have been trying to escape from for decades. That is, of course, the kind of worst-case scenario that strategists spend much time playing with. The peace of the world, however, cannot be left to them alone. The world needs to believe that politics and power depend on leaders who have mastered the art of the possible and know when and how to seek the middle way of compromise and thus allow the world to attain less undesirable outcomes. History suggests that there are only un-ideal endings to beautiful dreams. Nevertheless, I believe that hopeful dreams should be encouraged. One that is worth examining more closely assumes that the United States will not abandon its ideals and turn to transactional gut reactions for quick solutions. The dream focuses on the hope that, staying with the globalization built by liberal market economies, China and the United States could be stakeholders, if not partners, in an enterprise that they could agree on. That would rest on the hope that the two would stay with the goals of the current world order and be ready to consider how that order could be reformed and modified.

Law and heritage With that in mind, the rest of the chapter looks at the gulf that divides the United States and China and examines one of the key factors that has caused that gulf to be especially deep. I refer to their respective understanding of the rule of law as the foundation of the international legal system. There has long been a distance between the ways that the system is understood. For China, its encounter with the system had an unpromising beginning. It began when Britain was no longer prepared to let Chinese law be used to punish British subjects and allowed that issue to be a cause célèbre in the AngloChinese wars of the mid-19th century. Despite the fact that China has, with the help of Anglo-Americans and other European legal scholars, reformed and modernized its legal system during the past hundred years, the gulf has remained and continues to fuel an underlying lack of trust. The issue became even more sensitive when the Western powers made it clear that their legal ideals were meant to cover the relations between civilized states and China had been found wanting. Here the divide stemmed from the European assumption that international law was built on a common Christian

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heritage. The issue surfaced soon after the first Opium War between Britain and Qing China in 1840–1842. The several treaties that followed China’s defeat led to extraterritorial jurisdictions that proliferated among most Western powers (plus Japan) and they greatly humiliated China for being so uncivilized that such provisions were necessary for the protection of civilized people. The set of practices that diminished China’s sovereign rights remained a major source of irritation and anger for 100 years and has colored Chinese attitudes towards Western references to “the rule of law” down to the present. The different values given by China and the West to the role of law in their respective societies has deep roots and goes back to their early history. It originated from the different premises made about the relationship between man and nature, between those who moved from believing in many gods to faiths in one God, and those who moved from the power of gods to worldviews that allowed people to live without reference to any god or gods. The former singlegod world emerged in the Mediterranean region (whether Jewish, Christian, or Islamic) while the mixed often-godless realm has been the Sinic cultural zone in eastern Asia. When traced far back, what is significant is that, while there were great differences in conceptions, both godly and godless traditions paid respect to the role of law, albeit each in its own way. There was no question of not depending on law for securing order, especially the controls needed for political order. Whether the laws reached into private and family affairs, or were in the main varieties of civil and criminal law, all those in authority gave much thought to formulating them to bring out what was fair and most efficacious. And both the European and the Chinese rulers paid particularly close attention to laws pertaining to governance, and specifically to their relations with their subjects. Where their respective heritage parted significantly was the way their rulers institutionalized their legal codes. Those in Europe explicitly believed that “the rule of law” was a higher principle that stood above other considerations, one that was sanctified by the supernatural and therefore accepted as sacrosanct. Such ideas had grown out of customary law observed by tribal organizations as well as royal and canon laws promulgated in princely states or kingdoms, and came to be extended to cover larger political units like nation-states or empires. Law was therefore at the center of all governance and remained steadfast whether the rulers were each strong men, or a group of oligarchs, or leaders who were democratically chosen. Whoever they were and wherever they came from, they could only rule through regulations and statutes that were seen as parts of God’s law. Thereafter, that conception of the rule of law led to fundamental questions being asked as to what kind of law would best serve all those who are equal in the eyes of God. That in turn led to people asking what kind of law should be developed to protect the people from abusive rulers. The key point was that behind this respect for the law was religious doctrine and the Church. In certain contexts, God’s law had the power to send even the strongest leaders to the fires of hell. When this authority shifted following the

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Reformation from the Pope to a variety of priests, Christian Europe still maintained that each church embodied the spirit of God’s law. The shift had come about as the product of long struggles beginning in the 13th century that then took off following the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The classics of the Greco–Roman period were then given a new lease on life, and the renaissance of ancient learning stimulated revolts within the church. The Protestants reinterpreted the Christian heritage and provided the conditions whereby new ideas were allowed to grow. As a result, the advent of skepticism, rationalism, and the scientific mind enabled an intense questioning of past assumptions that eventually led to a secular view of the world. Thus, Western Europe largely moved away from church-determined ideas and went on since the 19th century to develop laws that have been described as rational and modern. That saw the beginning of a powerful legal system under which the ruler gave up most of his powers so that his subjects would have more say. Of course, who actually had a say was another matter. It took the British more than 100 years to let ordinary men have the vote, and the women did not get theirs until the 20th century. The British were unapologetic about that pace of development. They thought that the only people who should be allowed to vote were people who owned property and who were well-educated. Nevertheless, the principle that people could control their own destiny was confirmed. In one form or another, law was obeyed in good conscience by god-fearing people and rational scientific-minded people alike. But, even when these laws were manmade and could be cruelly implemented, whether by kings, judges, or elected legislators, it continued to be understood that a higher spirit rested behind their making. That belief gave the laws a special moral standing and placed “the rule of law” at the heart of Western political culture. In short, the ruler was always subject to God’s law. In comparison, the Chinese have also long acknowledged that law should be respected but for them, the idea that there should also be a principle akin to “the rule of law” was only implicitly understood. Everyone was much more conscious that the way their laws demanded absolute obeisance was more akin to the fear of the ruler’s wrath. When such draconian laws were given centrality by the state of Qin during the Warring States period, and the Legalists who drew them up succeeded in enabling the Qin ruler to defeat all other contending states and unite all of China, their set of laws was institutionalized to support the ruler in his efforts to control, dominate, and dictate in every respect. What was understood, and sometimes made explicit, was that the ruler would employ the laws to stay in power. The idea that clearly-stated rules accompanied by harsh punishments would always be needed attracted many of the warring lords from the 5th to the 3rd century BCE. The idea soon began to challenge the Zhou dynasty’s conventional rhetoric that good governance depended on the genius and wisdom of model rulers of a legendary Golden Age. Traditionally, these rulers had embodied the principle that the right to rule had to be defined in moral terms. Ultimately, a

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ruler’s legitimacy had to be confirmed through rituals that demonstrate that he had received the Mandate of Heaven. After the 5th century BCE, the “Chinese” (Huaxia) people came under numerous feudal lords, and the Son of Heaven of the Zhou “dynasty” was powerless. Each of these lords fought to be the hegemon and the lords who carved out their own states on the frontiers were strongly armed. The state of Qin, employing Legalists who believed that power depended on total control through laws made by rulers, finally destroyed its rivals and replaced the Zhou by establishing a new dynasty. The Qin rulers firmly believed that the empire-state they created was successful because they made effective laws and were themselves above the law. In that context, law was a revolutionary instrument that was used to destroy a decrepit ancien regime. However, the Qin Legalists were so extreme in their rejection of traditional moral and social norms that people were galvanized to overthrow them. The rebellions enabled the Han dynasty to take over the Qin Empire; the new rulers then reformed the emperor-state system and experimented with other ideas. But they did not discard the body of Qin laws that they inherited. They retained the centralized and legalistic bureaucracy but merely restructured the system so that non-Legalists could administer the empire. In the end, Han Wudi employed men who still believed in the teachings of Confucius to come to serve him. These men were asked to balance the harsh laws on the books by subjecting them to the ancient moral ideals inspired by great kings. These Confucians had been persecuted by the Qin and had seen the writings of Confucius and his disciples torched and banned. Now, at last, they had the opportunity to practice what they preached. Grateful for the chance, they set about to reconstruct the five (of six) surviving Classics that Confucius had transmitted to them, especially the Book of Documents that most closely embodied the principles of good governance. What the Chinese of the time experienced was that reforms that were needed after a brutal and bloody revolution. From the 1st century BCE, the new ideal was to educate rulers in the Confucian Classics with teachings that extolled them to be guided by wise and responsible officials. The mandarins thereafter were chosen for their learning and high moral principles. But the Han rulers retained the Qin legal system; it was no longer upfront but clearly visible and ready to be used by the Confucian scholars whenever necessary. These laws were still fearsome but now implemented throughout the dynasty with a sense of judicial responsibility. That set the tone of imperial governance even for the Central Asian tribal successors of the Han during the 5th and 6th centuries. By the Tang dynasty in the 7th century, Confucian moral wisdom drawn from the historical records was further integrated with a complete set of revised laws and together they provided the foundations of the empire-state. In particular, the mandarins drew on the documents collected and evaluated in Sima Qian’s Shiji Records (1st century BCE) and those in Ban Gu’s Hanshu (Han Records, 1st century CE) that were compiled after the end of the Former Han dynasty. These two works provided

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a legitimacy framework for the guidance of future dynastic states. From then onwards, the zhengshi 正史 Standard Records of each dynasty served as depositories of the principles of governance that were enunciated in the jing 經 Classics. Together, the jing and shi Records thereafter provided the continuity needed to sustain the dynastic system until the beginning of the 20th century.

International law As outlined earlier, God’s law in its secular form came to stand at the heart of the universalism promoted by the United States and its European allies since the end of the Second World War. That is what we have come to know as modern civilization. In contrast, the idea of what was civilized in China had been particularistic, and its people are still defining what their modernization should eventually look like. That process seems to be in two parts: to connect with the experiences of over 100 years of learning from the West and, at the same time, to reconnect with two millennia of the shi Records (China’s total history) that had helped the elites keep faith with their governance heritage. The elites today know that the normative use of law that was extended by the West during the past 200 years to apply to all interstate relations provides a major challenge to China’s political culture. At the same time, from observing how those legal institutions had developed, they also know that their laws could not prevent the two modern wars that destroyed their supremacy. By studying the story of the rise and fall of European dominance, the Chinese are no longer confident in the value of some of the systems that the West has offered the world. Since 1945, the Chinese saw the rise of new powers like the United States and the Soviet Union. They saw them as advanced variants of European power and their leaders were divided between nationalists (like the Kuomintang) and communists (the Chinese Communist Party) who battled for decades to decide which of the two superpowers they should follow. After these two emerged as the victors of the Second World War, and agreed to construct a new international organization on top of the ruins of the League of Nations, the Chinese were proud that they were accepted as one of the five “global” nations with veto powers in the Security Council. They certainly looked to the United Nations Organization as a valuable asset for ensuring peace and looked forward to playing an important role in it. They further saw that the European empires were being dismantled and that the new nations created out of that decolonization process would now have a say in the world’s future. Understandably, China expected that this development could help them recover its prominence as a new power with a distinguished lineage. But the different heritage concerning the rule of law has remained; it helps to explain the gulf in the United States–China relations in the post-1945 world order. The Americans had followed the British heritage of law and the traditions that extended the respect for the law to interstate relations between civilized nations. When the United States was still a new nation in the midst of strong

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empires, they not only affirmed the rule of law as a governing principle but also, as seen in Henry Wheaton’s Elements of International Law published in 1836, showed a very keen understanding of how this law could be used to protect the interests of weaker states like theirs. It was this work, when translated into Chinese in 1864, that awoke the Qing Empire to the importance of mastering the public law (gong fa 公法) doctrines that now prevailed among civilized powers. China was nominally accepted into the 19th century order as the Manchu Qing Empire, and then again in 1912 as the Republic of China. In reality, the conditions of extraterritoriality had breached its sovereignty and the country saw itself being treated as “unequal” for many more decades down to the last years of the Second World War in 1943. The frustrations of being a second-class republic in the eyes of superior Europeans and Americans left a deep scar on at least two generations of leaders and their diplomats. Even when China was gifted with a superior position in the new United Nations in 1945, its position was not secure. Four years after the Republic of China became one of the five special powers of the Organization, the Nationalist government fell to Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Republic of China was established in its place. Instead of international acceptance, China’s new rulers were once again made to feel the legal hurt of exclusion. They saw the United States doing everything possible for another 22 years to keep the People’s Republic of China out of this United Nations world order. For Chinese leaders, it confirmed that this set of international laws was being used as another kind of political instrument. In some ways, that need not have been a problem because the political use of law was in line with China’s own heritage. Chinese rulers had always accepted the law’s political role and had played their part often enough to use the law to enhance their power. What they could not tolerate was how the West pretended that it was not so and continued to refer to the rule of law as universal and sacrosanct. They can recall their own interstate experiences when European trade was confined to Macao, and the Portuguese were given preference in commercial relations. The idea that only China’s rules mattered was not in question. When China was powerful and the traders represented nations thousands of miles away, it was normal for Chinese laws to dictate how foreign traders behaved. Later, they saw how the more powerful European powers decided that China was recalcitrant and backward and set out to force the Chinese to accept European laws on Chinese soil. They knew that this kind of extraterritoriality did not apply to Chinese subjects who broke the law in European jurisdictions, so it was China’s first taste of what international law devised by civilized European empires meant for a defeated country. They then witnessed how that world order destroyed what remained of the tributary rules that the Chinese had used for centuries to deal with “foreign” neighbors. Undermining those relationships left the Chinese elites exposed to the outside world. They had to recognize that modern legal institutions prevailed and that China had to change its attitude towards the law if it wanted to

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be treated as equal to all other countries. The lesson was hammered home after the disastrous Boxer Rebellion led to the international assault on Peking in 1900. Legal reforms began in earnest. Some of China’s brightest officials were sent to study all aspects of the law and professional diplomats focused on mastering the rules of the international system. The Republic of China in 1912 set out consciously to draw on a Western republican model so that the country could be integrated into the world order it sought to be part of. But this was not to be. Chinese leaders soon learned that this world order based on European ideas of how civilized states should behave was fragile and temporary. They observed how the Japanese successfully manipulated it to help them defeat first Qing China and Tsarist Russia, and then threaten European power itself. When the First World War enabled the Japanese to advance further onto Chinese soil in Shandong province and when the League of Nations established by the imperialist powers failed to stop the Japanese from taking Manchuria, and also failed to prevent the Second World War, China was no longer so impressed. By 1945, China saw how Western Europe was emasculated and how new powers had arrived to dominate the new United Nations world order with their rival ideologies. The People’s Republic of China also discovered how it too became one of the victims of the ensuing political struggle. That experience taught the Chinese that only the most powerful is able to enforce international law. This conformed to their understanding of law as something enforceable, like the way they practiced fazhi 法治 (establishing order by the use of law, or rule by law). As for the idea of “rule of law” where powers of enforcement may not be required, that is comparable to injunctions to good behavior among people with shared values. It is not clear when enough Americans and Chinese can become people with comparable values. In short, the series of events after 1945 underlined in Chinese minds the fact that international law is really an instrument of power politics and that China needed to study it carefully to ensure that its interests could be protected. This realization fits in with China’s own understanding of legal institutions as manmade to serve the interests of those who made it. Once this is agreed upon, the assumption would hold true that when conditions change and existing law is out of date and unhelpful it could be modified or replaced. As for international law governing the ideal relationships between equal nation-states, the Chinese leaders saw that they could live with it if it was broadly supported and not being used by any hegemonic power to keep China down. I believe that the Chinese understand how the rule of law is dealt with on the outside. They had set about to learn about international law and made use of any and every bit of it that they could, and have trained experts to do that well. They now know what to learn and master and, most of the time, have made the law work in China’s interest. But the underlying idea when the West says that you should observe the rule of law, that there is a rules-based order, strikes a different chord in the Chinese consciousness. In their imagination, this is actually an

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accusation that the Chinese do not respect the law. I do know that many Chinse do not particularly care for the law as understood in the West, but they are sensitive when phrases like “rule of law” and “rules-based order” are used to point at them. They regard that as hypocritical and offensive and do not conform to the reality that law is manmade, that you could remake it when it is not working, or is out of date.

What next? Some considerations Underlying the uncertainties in the United States–China relations today is how to understand where “rule of law” stands in international relations. When the Chinese believe that “rule by law” means that law is manmade and can be unmade, all Western references to “rule of law” as representing something universal and absolute in the world order would tend to arouse China’s suspicions. At times, such suspicions have turned into fear that Cold Warriors in the United States are using international law to set a modern version of the Thucydides Trap for China to fall into. By comparing China to Nazi Germany and militarist Japan before the Second World War, these strategists are trying to make the case that the United States must stop China now before it tries to dominate the region, if not conquer the world. Chinese leaders are not asking for a new world order, but are more like seeking room to review the liberal world order that seems to be rooted in a value system contrary to their heritage. They are concerned that this United Statesdominated world order is being used to make China conform to United States standards as to what is acceptable behavior and what is not. There are indeed times when they would be justified in thinking that this is the American goal. If that continues, it is not a condition that China could live with indefinitely. What can China do as it plans for the future if they do not wish to replace the existing world order but prefer to look for means to have it modified? The following are some of the actions that their strategists may have placed on the table: a. Concentrate on gaining support from other countries to join China to constrain United States hegemony, including throwing further doubt about the legitimacy of what the United States itself is doing. b. Prioritize the negotiations with the United States for better terms in the world order for rising economies like BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). c. Confront the United States and demand that it stops forcing its values on others. d. Reconsider the contours of the “China dream” and play by the rules of the United States-led world order. Given its heritage of using the law to ensure a secure political order, China is likely to give preference to courses (a) and (b), and might try to pursue both at the

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same time. For the moment, the emphasis on the role of the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank and the Belt and Road Initiative suggests that economic strategies following course (a) is the top priority. But several other ventures like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Paris meeting on Climate Change have allowed China to appear more cooperative than many other powers in the international arena. Thus, course (b) may also be given higher attention. As for other actions, China’s leaders have shown themselves to be practical and realistic. They are most likely to do their utmost to avoid course (c) and would only respond if forced to. This does not preclude them from actively preparing for that course because of what they see as possible American military provocations. They are already feeling the heat of United States fears, especially the American fear of losing supremacy as the world’s sole superpower. Under the circumstances, the Chinese have to assume that hardliners hostile to China could decide to act sooner rather than later. In the end, it cannot be ruled out that the United States still has the military might to prevail as leader of the world order that it had created. China may yet have to choose realism and take course (d) for now in order to maximize its own chances to become richer and stronger in the future. The Chinese people have always believed that change is normal and can choose to tailor their China dream accordingly.

References Ang, Yuen Yuen. How China Escaped the Poverty Trap. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. Barbieri-Low, Anthony J. & Robin D.S. Yates. Law, State, and Society in Early Imperial China [Electronic Resource]: A Study with Critical Edition and Translation of the Legal Texts from Zhangjiashan Tomb NO. 247. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Brown, Kerry. China's World: What Does China Want? London: I.B. Tauris & Co, Ltd., 2017. Carty, Anthony & Janne Nijman, eds. Morality and Responsibility of Rulers: European and Chinese Origins of a Rule of Law as Justice for World Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Cohen, Jerome Alan & Hungdah Chiu. People's China and International Law: A Documentary Study. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974. DeLisle, Jacques. “China's Approach to International Law: A Historical Perspective.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting (American Society of International Law), vol. 94, 2000, pp. 267–275. DeLisle, Jacques & Avery Goldstein, eds. China's Global Engagement: Cooperation, Competition, and Influence in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017. Gao, Min. Qin Han shi luncong, Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou Ancient Books Press. 1998. Guo, Baogang. China’s Quest for Political Legitimacy: The New Equity Enhancing Politics. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010. Heilmann, Sebastian & Elizabeth J. Perry, eds. Mao’s Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Jiang, Yonglin, trans. The Great Ming Code: Da Ming lü. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2005.

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Johnson, Wallace, trans. The Tʻang Code, Vol. 1, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979. Langer, Lorenz. “The South China Sea as a Challenge to International Law and to International Legal Scholarship.” Berkeley Journal of International Law, vol. 36, no. 2, 2018, pp. 383–418. Liu, Yongping. Origins of Chinese Law: Penal and Administrative Law in Its Early Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. MacCormack, Geoffrey. The Spirit of Traditional Chinese Law. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Miyake, Kiyoshi. Zhongguo gudai xingzhishi yanjiu, translated by Yang Zhenhong. Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2016. Naughton, Barry M. & Kellee S. Tsai, eds. State Capitalism, Institutional Adaptation, and the Chinese Miracle. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pils, Eva. Human Rights in China: A Social Practice in the Shadows of Authoritarianism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018. Ren, Xin. Tradition of the Law and Law of the Tradition: Law, State, and Social Control in China. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997. Rühlig, Tim. “How China Approaches International Law: Implications for Europe.” European Institute for Asian Studies -- EU-Asia at a Glance, May 2018. Sandby-Thomas, Peter. Legitimating the Chinese Communist Party Since Tiananmen: A Critical Analysis of the Stability Discourse. London: Routledge Press, 2011. Sornarajah, M. & Wang Jiangyu. “China, India, and International Law: A Justice Based Vision Between the Romantic and Realist Perceptions.” NUS Law Working Paper 2018/030, November 2018, www.law.nus.edu.sg/wps/. Tan, Andrew T. H., eds. A Handbook of US-China Relations. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2016. Tsai, Kellee S. Capitalism Without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. Wu, Guoguang. China's Party Congress: Power, Legitimacy, and Institutional Manipulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015a. Wu, Guoguang. Paradoxes of China's Prosperity: Political Dilemmas and Global Implications. New Jersey: World Scientific, 2015b. Wu, Guoguang. Globalization Against Democracy: A Political Economy of Capitalism After Its Global Triumph. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Xing, Yitian. Anbang: Fazhi, Xingzhengyu Junshi. Beijing: Zhonghua, 2011. Yang, Yifan, eds. In Zhongguo gudai falü xingshi yanjiu. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press (China), 2011. Ye, Xiaoxin & Chien Guo, eds. Chinese Legal History Society, 3rd ed. Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 2017. Yin, Zhiguang. “Heavenly Principles? The Translation of International Law in 19th-century China and the Constitution of Universality.” European Journal of International Law, vol. 27, no. 4, 2017, pp. 1005–1023. Zou, Keyuan. China-ASEAN Relations and International Law. Oxford: Chandos, 2009.

14 GLOBAL AND LOCAL CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR TAIWAN Lawrence J. Lau

Introduction As an economist, this chapter is written from an economist’s point of view, focusing on the challenges and opportunities faced by the economy of Taiwan. There are both global and local challenges for Taiwan for the next several decades. Taiwan must think, plan, and act long term. It must adopt a rational and sustainable strategy that takes into account changes in the world (for example, the rise of mainland China), focus on its own long-term best interests, and transcending short-term domestic political differences. Long-term thinking is important because what one does today can have a lasting, and often irreversible, impact on the future. Moreover, developments are also often path-dependent. Climate change (global warming) is one such example. If we do not do something about it today, we shall regret it sometime in the future; but by the time we regret it, there is nothing that we can do to change the (bad) outcome. There are also opportunities for Taiwan. In order to assess these opportunities, it is useful to consider the likely global developments over the next several decades. What will the world look like then? Taiwan must decide where it wants to be, and where it expects to be, in say 2035 or 2050, and act accordingly.

The evolving world We begin by considering where the world economy will be by the middle of this century. The world has changed dramatically since 1970. The Soviet Union and the Eastern European Communist bloc are no more. The United States has become the sole hegemonic power. The cell phone has supplanted the fixed-line telephone and the internet is now ubiquitous. During this same period, the economic center

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FIGURE 14.1

The distribution of world GDP, 1970, $.

of gravity of the world has been shifting from North America and Western Europe to East Asia, and within East Asia from Japan to mainland China. The “Washington consensus” has not worked out well for developing economies. The “Big Bang” shock therapy has failed miserably, as witnessed by the experiences of the former Soviet Union and Eastern European Communist countries. The “Washington consensus” also faces a challenge posed by the “Beijing consensus”. The center of gravity of the global economy has been shifting (see Figures 14.1 and 14.2). In 1970, the United States and Western Europe together accounted for almost 60% of world gross domestic product (GDP). By comparison, East Asia (defined as the ten Association of Southeast Asian Nations [ASEAN] countries [Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam] plus three [China including Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan; Japan; and the Republic of Korea]) accounted for only approximately

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FIGURE 14.2

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The distribution of world GDP, 2017, $.

10% of world GDP. (Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan are also known collectively as the East Asian “Newly Industrialized Economies” [NIEs].) By 2017, the combined share of the United States and Western Europe in world GDP has declined to approximately 40% whereas the share of East Asia has risen to almost 28%. The share of the United States shrunk to 24% from over 36%. The Japanese share of world GDP declined from a peak of almost 18% in the mid-1990s to 6% in 2017 while the mainland Chinese share of world GDP rose from 3.1% in 1970 and less than 4% in 2000, to over 15.1% in 2017 (see Figure 14.3).

Long-term projections of the mainland Chinese and the United States economies It is assumed that between now and 2050, the mainland Chinese economy will continue to grow at around 6% per annum for a few years, and then slow down gradually to between 5% and 6%, and that the United States economy will grow at an average rate of 3% per annum, approximately the same as its long-term average rate of growth since 1950. It may be thought that the mainland economy will be unable to sustain an average annual rate of growth of between 5% and

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FIGURE 14.3

The shares of East Asia, China, Japan, and South Korea in world GDP, 1960–present.

6% for such a long time and that the United States should be able to grow faster. However, our assumed rates are based on the actually-achieved rates of growth during the past two decades. In Figure 14.4, a scatter diagram of the rate of growth of real GDP versus the real GDP per capita of four economies – mainland China, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States – is presented. While it is clear that the rate of growth of real GDP will decline with real GDP per capita, and mainland China is no exception, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States all had higher rates of economic growth when their economies had real GDP per capita in the range between $10,000 and $30,000 (in 2017 prices). This is precisely the range of projected real GDP per capita for mainland China between now and the early 2040s. In addition, mainland China still has a relatively low tangible capital per unit of labor. Moreover, there is still and will continue to be significant surplus labor in the mainland Chinese economy. The share of employment in the primary sector of mainland China is slightly below 30%, whereas the share of GDP originating from the primary sector is below 10%. For the United States, given its already very high level of real GDP per capita, it is unlikely that its economy will be able to grow much faster than 3% per annum in the long run. Figure 14.4 also shows that the United States has had a systematically higher rate of growth

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Growth rates vs. levels of real GDP per capita: mainland China, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States.

than Japan at the same level of real GDP per capita, and this can be attributed to the higher innovative capacity of the United States. By comparison, the rate of growth of the Taiwanese economy has under-performed that of the United States and Japan at comparable levels of real GDP per capita. The projections of mainland China and the United States’ real GDPs and real GDPs per capita and their rates of growth between now and 2050 are presented in Figures 14.5 and 14.6. Our projections show that by 2032, mainland China’s real GDP will surpass the United States’ real GDP ($31.2 trillion versus $30.2 trillion), making mainland China the largest economy in the world. However, in terms of real GDP per capita, mainland China will still lag behind significantly, with $21,134 compared to $84,543 for the United States. By 2050, mainland Chinese and US real GDP will reach $82.5 trillion and $51.4 trillion respectively, accounting for approximately 30% and 20% of the world’s GDP, which is projected to be $280 trillion. In terms of real GDP per capita, mainland China will reach $52,870, still more than 10% below the current level of United States’ real GDP per capita, compared to $134,071 for the United States. It will not be until the end of the 21st century that the mainland Chinese real GDP per capita can catch up with the United States’ real GDP per capita. The distribution of world trade has also been shifting (see Figures 14.7 and 14.8). In 1970, the United States and Western Europe together accounted for almost 47% of world trade in goods and services. By comparison, East Asia

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FIGURE 14.5

Actual and projected levels and growth rates of mainland Chinese and United States real GDP (2017 trillion $).

FIGURE 14.6

Actual and projected levels and growth rates of mainland Chinese and US real GDP per capita (thousand 2017, $).

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FIGURE 14.7

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The distribution of international trade in goods and services, 1970.

accounted for 9.6% of world trade. By 2017, the share of the United States and Western Europe combined in world trade has declined to 37.1%, whereas the share of East Asia has risen to almost 28%. The mainland Chinese share of world trade rose from 0.6% in 1970 to 10.2% in 2017. The growth in Chinese international trade may be attributed in part to the adoption of current-account convertibility of the Renminbi by China in 1994, accompanied by a significant devaluation of the Renminbi, and to Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. Since 2015, mainland China has also been the largest trading partner of the United States, surpassing Canada. The United States is also the largest trading partner of mainland China. During the past decade, the average annual rates of growth of the international trade of mainland China and the United States were respectively 8.6%

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FIGURE 14.8

The distribution of international trade in goods and services, 2017.

and 3.2%. If these rates persist, which appears likely given the rise of protectionism in the United States, mainland China is likely to surpass the United States to become the largest trading country in the world by 2020. Mainland China and the United States will each account for between 11% and 12% of world trade at that time. By 2050, the United States share of world trade will be in the single digits. It is likely that mainland China will maintain an approximately 10% share of world trade on the strength of its large and growing domestic demand for imports and its exports of new manufactured products (Figure 14.9). The distribution of wealth in the world has also been shifting in the same way: from North America and Western Europe to East Asia and South Asia. Data on the world distribution of wealth is not readily available on a time-series basis. However, a reasonable proxy is the distribution of the market capitalization of the stock exchanges in the different regions. This is presented in Figure 14.10, which shows that the East Asian and South Asian stock exchanges combined surpassed the European stock exchanges in market capitalization in 2006, and is within striking distance of the market capitalization of the United States stock

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FIGURE 14.8

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Continued.

exchanges. In 2017, the number of known United States Dollar billionaires in mainland China is reported to have exceeded the number in the United States, both with more than 600. The number of unknown United States Dollar billionaires in mainland China is probably on the same order of magnitude as the number of known ones. Total Asian wealth is likely to surpass the total United States wealth within the next decade. There is, and has always been, quite a bit of concern in the Western press as to whether the mainland Chinese economy is stable enough to survive. Mainland China has a very low overall dependence on exports. Exports as a percentage of mainland GDP has been declining over the past decade and currently stands at 20%, compared to 12% for the United States (see Figure 14.11). Going forward, the export share of the mainland Chinese economy is likely to decline further, approaching the same level as Japan and the United States. Moreover, mainland China has shown itself to be relatively immune to external economic disturbances. While the rates of growth of its exports and imports f luctuate just like other Asian economies (see Figures 14.12 and 14.13), the rate of growth of its

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FIGURE 14.9

FIGURE 14.10

Chinese and United States international trade and their respective rates of growth since 1970 ($).

The distribution of the market capitalization of world stock exchanges (by region, percent).

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FIGURE 14.11

Exports of goods and services as a share of GDP in selected economies.

FIGURE 14.12

Quarterly rates of growth of exports of goods: selected Asian economies.

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FIGURE 14.13

Quarterly rates of growth of imports of goods: selected Asian economies.

real GDP has remained quite stable (see Figure 14.14). The mainland Chinese economy survived the East Asian crisis, the internet bubble, the global financial crises, and the European sovereign debt crisis relatively unscathed. This is due to both the scale and the diversity of its economy, which is today mostly driven by the growth in its own domestic demand. The fact that the mainland Chinese economy has been able to keep growing at more than 6.5% per annum since the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 lends credence to the partial de-coupling hypothesis, namely, that the East Asian economies can continue to grow even as the North American and Western European economies go into recession. While the mainland Chinese economy may have some financial vulnerability because of the non-performing loans resulting from its excess production capacities, its high national savings rate, in the mid-forties, should make any such financial crises manageable. Can India, which will have the world’s largest population sometime after 2030, be a possible economic counter-weight to mainland China? While India has been growing in recent years even faster than mainland China, its GDP in 2017 was only $2.6 trillion, or a little more than one-fifth of mainland China’s $12 trillion (see Table 14.1). Indian real GDP is likely to surpass Japanese GDP in another decade, but it will take a long time for India to catch up to mainland

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Quarterly rates of growth of real GDP,YoY: selected Asian economies.

TABLE 14.1 Comparisons of the economic indicators (2017) of selected economies

Mainland Taiwan United States India 2017 GDP ($ billion) 2017 year-end population (million) 2017 GDP per capita ($ thousand) 2017 real rate of growth (percent) 2017 total exports ($ billion) 2017 total imports ($ billion)

Japan

12,014.6 1,390.1

573.2 23.6

19,390.6 325.9

2,611.0 4,872.1 1,316.9 126.7

8.6 6.9 2,422.9 2,212.2

24.3 2.9 395.0 322.8

59.5 2.3 2,331.6 2,900.0

2.0 6.7 488.1 561.4

38.4 1.7 875.3 837.6

China in aggregate terms, and even longer in per capita terms, given that its rate of growth is at most only a couple of percentage points higher than that of the mainland Chinese. India will be a major player in the world economy, but not until after the middle of the 21st century. Thus, the “Indo-Pacific Quartet”, consisting of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, is unlikely to become a major economic force any time soon. Neither is the “Trans-Pacific Partnership” without the United States and China. The European Union, with a 2017 GDP of $17.1 trillion, is a possible economic counterweight to and perhaps a partner for mainland China on the global economic scene if it can remain united (less the United Kingdom of course).

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FIGURE 14.15

Patents granted in the United States: selected economies.

The innovation race However, the United States, despite its relatively slow growth, is still the most innovative economy in the world. One indicator of the potential for innovation is the number of patents created each year. In Figure 14.15, the number of patents granted in the United States each year to the nationals of different countries, including the United States itself, over time is presented. The United States is the undisputed champion over the past 40 years, with 140,969 patents granted in 2015, followed by Japan, with 52,409 patents. (Since these are patents granted in the United States, the United States may have a home advantage; however, for all the other countries and regions, the comparison across them should be fair.) The number of patents granted to mainland Chinese applicants each year has increased from single-digit levels prior to the mid-1980s to 8,166 in 2015. The economies of South Korea and Taiwan granted 17,924 and 11,690 United States patents respectively in 2015, and were far ahead of the mainland Chinese. Mainland China has been strongly promoting innovation itself. The number of patents granted in mainland China is today the highest in the world. Mainland China has also stepped up its enforcement of intellectual property rights in recent years by setting up permanent special courts for intellectual property rights disputes with jurisdiction over the entire nation. The high number of patents granted to United States nationals is in part a ref lection of the fact that the United States has consistently invested a high percentage of its GDP in research and development (R&D), averaging 2.5% over

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R&D expenditures as a share of GDP and their target levels in 2020: selected economies.

the years (see Figure 14.16). The mainland Chinese R&D to GDP ratio has risen very fast in recent years, but still lags behind Israel, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Germany, the United States, France, and Singapore. It is targeted is to reach 2.5% in 2020. The R&D capital stock, defined as the cumulative past real expenditure on R&D less depreciation of 10% per year, is a useful indicator of innovative capacity. R&D expenditure should quite properly be treated as investment since R&D efforts generally take years to yield any results. The R&D capital stock can be shown to have a direct causal relationship to the number of patents granted (see Figure 14.17, in which the annual number of United States patents granted is plotted against the R&D capital stock of that year for each economy). Figure 14.17 shows clearly that the higher the stock of R&D capital of an economy, the higher the number of patents granted to it by the United States each year. In order to have a chance to make a breakthrough discovery or invention, there must be significant and sustained investment in basic research. Basic research is by definition patient and long-term research. The rate of return of basic research, at any reasonable discount rate, will be low. It must therefore be financed by the government or non-profit institutions and not by for-profit firms. The atomic and hydrogen bombs, the nuclear reactors, the internet, the packets transmission technology, and the browsers are all outcomes of basic research done many years ago. However, mainland Chinese investment in basic research has remained low

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FIGURE 14.17

United States patents granted and R&S capital stocks: selected economies.

relative to other economies (see Figure 14.18). Mainland China devoted only 5% of its R&D expenditures to basic research, compared to the more than 15% for the United States, Germany, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, and Russia that were all devoting a higher percentage of their R&D expenditures to basic research. Thus, it should be no surprise that Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netf lix, and Google (FAANG), and Microsoft and Uber all originated in the United States. Mainland Chinese internet giants, Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent have all benefited from the protection against foreign competition in mainland China. However, Tencent’s WeChat and Alibaba’s Alipay are genuinely original innovations which fit the conditions in mainland China, where few have fixed landline telephones or desk computers, and no one has personal checking accounts. Unfortunately, it is ingrained in the East Asian culture to respect age and established authority, so it is therefore more difficult to have breakthrough discoveries or inventions of a revolutionary nature in East Asia, including China. While mainland China has made great progress in science and technology, and has caught up with the United States in a number of fields such as super-computers, quantum communication, and fifth generation wireless systems (5G), it still lags far behind the United States in many other fields, for example, in semiconductor manufacturing. It will take a while, in some cases up to a couple of decades, before mainland China is able to fully match the United States’ technological capability.

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Basic research expenditure as a share of total R&D expenditure: selected economies.

Military power In terms of military capability, mainland China is currently no match for the United States. If a war breaks out between mainland China and the United States today, there is no question that the United States will readily win, but it will possibly also suffer a significant loss of lives. Mainland China has a minimally sufficient second-strike capability as a deterrent to a potential nuclear attack by the United States (or any other country). Mainland China is committed to a “no first use” policy as far as nuclear arms are concerned. However, the potential outcome of a war between mainland China and the United States is so unthinkably devastating to both sides that it is most unlikely to occur. It is therefore in the best interests of both mainland China and the United States to avoid the so-called “Thucydides Trap”.1 But a war between an established power and a rising power is not inevitable – an example was the rise of the former Soviet Union since the Second World War, which only resulted in a cold war, even though the Soviet Union’s rise did not last long.

Will Pax Americana be succeeded by Pax Sinica? Given continuing American superiority in innovation and military power, it is premature to talk about a post-Western world, even though a gradual transition

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may begin to take place around the middle of this century. It took the United States more than a generation, from the First World War to the early 1950s, to finally assume undisputed leadership of the Western (or non-Communist) world. It will likewise take more than a generation before the world becomes more pluralistic, that is, not solely dominated by the West. However, as mainland China’s economic power grows, it is likely to become a more active participant in international rule-setting, as it did in making the unanimous passage of the Paris Climate Accord in 2015 possible. It is still far too early to be able to see mainland China playing the same active role as the United States on the world scene, to see Pax Americana succeeded by Pax Sinica. If there is ever such a transition, it is unlikely to be totally peaceful, but hopefully a hot war may be avoided. It is inevitable that the two largest economies of the world will compete commercially, economically, and technologically, especially as the Chinese economy moves up the value-added chain. The current China– United States trade war is only a manifestation of the underlying competition which is much broader and more encompassing than trade alone.2 However, it is possible to envisage mainland China and the United States learning to live peacefully with each other, respecting each other’s core interests, collaborating and cooperating when their national interests align, and agreeing to disagree when their national interests differ, but without getting into a war. For example, it is unlikely that mainland China will privatize its centrallycontrolled state-owned enterprises any time soon. Historically, neither China nor the United States have treated a friendly nation as an equal, so both of them have to learn. For China, it was either the center of the universe, or a defeated country at the mercy of the victors. For the United States, it won the two World Wars for the Western world, occupied both Germany and Japan, and defended Western Europe from the Soviet Union. The only country it considered equal was probably the former Soviet Union, but it was an adversary, not a friend.

The global challenges There are many global challenges, for example, global warming, cyber-security, geo-political conf licts and uncertainties, truth decay, epidemics, terrorism, and the rise of artificial intelligence. They will all affect Taiwan. Here we shall consider only the challenges which have a much more direct and immediate impact on Taiwan’s future. We shall discuss in turn the following global challenges: economic de-globalization, the relative decline of United States economic power, the risks of the “Thucydides Trap”, and intensified global competition.

Economic de-globalization The growth of both world trade and cross-border direct investment has essentially halted since the global financial crisis of 2008 (see Figures 14.19 and 14.20). They have met headwinds coming from isolationism, nationalism, populism, and

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FIGURE 14.19

Total world trade in goods and services as a percentage of world GDP since 1960.

FIGURE 14.20

Total world foreign direct investment since 1970, $ billions.

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protectionism. Can economic globalization be revived and continued? Mainland China (and Taiwan before it) have been major beneficiaries of economic globalization. (Mainland China’s economic growth trajectory became noticeably steeper after its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001.) Mainland China is thus most likely to continue to support continuing economic globalization, working together with the similarly-minded European Union and other developed and developing economies, including Taiwan. From its own experience, mainland China fully understands the benefits of an open economy. Its Belt and Road Initiative is a recognition that connectivity and openness can create enormous economic benefits to all participants in the world economy. Given Taiwan’s high degree of dependence on international trade (see Figure 14.11), isolationism and protectionism are likely to hurt Taiwan much more than mainland China. Unlike mainland China, Taiwan’s economy cannot prosper by going it alone. For Taiwan, the optimal strategy is to be as open as possible. Its economy is too small to achieve efficient scale if it pursues a protectionist trade and direct investment policy, which will certainly be countered by a similarly protective policy elsewhere. Populism, which tends to favor isolationism and protectionism, must be carefully managed in Taiwan.

The relative decline of the United States economic power United States’ economic power is based on a number of factors. First of all, it is the largest economy in the world. Second, it is also the largest market. Third, it is the largest foreign direct investor in the world. Fourth, it is the provider of the principal international medium of exchange and the only safe haven currency, the United States Dollar. Fifth, it is the leading source of innovation in the world. Of course, the United States’ economic power is also simultaneously buttressed and supported by the military might of the United States. All of this confers on the United States leverage that it can use to enforce sanctions through banking, import controls, and other means against countries deemed unfriendly, such as Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, successfully. With the relative decline of the United States’ economic power, it will become more difficult for the United States to exercise such power unilaterally. The question is: will similar leverage be available and used by another country with rising economic power?

The risks of the “Thucydides Trap” Is a war between an established power and a rising power inevitable? A war between mainland China and the United States cannot be good news for Taiwan. Taiwan is in the best situation if mainland China and the United States relations are good. Taiwan is actually worse off if relations between mainland China and the United States turn sour. Can mainland China and the United States manage their potential conf lict and maintain good relations despite differences? Taiwan should avoid taking sides or being used as a pawn in big-power games.

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Some in the United States are not yet willing or ready to accept the possibility that in terms of aggregate GDP, mainland China will be number one someday. However, mainland China’s economic growth is unlikely to be stopped. If it ever stops, it is due to internal, rather than external factors. A war between mainland China and the United States will be unthinkably devastating, with a huge spillover of negative effects. The United States will probably win if a war breaks out today, but there will be no real winners, only losers. However, whether mainland China and the United States will be friends or foes in the future depends on the mutual long-term expectations, which can be self-fulfilling. If both sides expect to ultimately be friends, and act accordingly, they will be friends. If both sides expect to be foes, and act accordingly, they will be foes. Thus, it is the responsibility of leaders on both sides to carefully manage the mutual expectations. The truth is that the degree of mutual economic interdependence between mainland China and the United States is already very high. ZTE, among the top five cell phone manufacturers in the world, relies on the United States for more than 30% of its critical components. The closure of ZTE will hurt both mainland China and the United States enterprises and workers. Apple not only assembles its iPhones in mainland China, but sells one-quarter of its iPhones in mainland China as well, which accounts for a significant proportion of its profits.

Intensifed global competition The real threat to the Taiwanese economy is the obsolescence of its technology. The Hsinchu Science Park, founded in 1980, was critical in Taiwan’s transition from an exporter of light manufactured products to an exporter of high-technology products and components. However, comparative advantages are not static. Taiwan must continually upgrade its technology to maintain its competitiveness. The key is to encourage, promote, and support R&D, especially basic research; to try to always be one step ahead of potential competitors; and to make new investments. It is also important to improve the business environment. The overall competitiveness of the Taiwanese economy has declined recently. The 2018 International Institute for Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness Rankings show that mainland China has risen to 13th place from 18th place but Taiwan has slipped down to 17th place from 14th place (see Table 14.2). Persistent tension between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait cannot be good for business or for new investment in Taiwan.

The local challenges The two principal local challenges to Taiwan are first, the rise of mainland China’s economy and second, how to manage its economic dependence on mainland China and to create economic interdependence with mainland China.

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TABLE 14.2 The top 20 2018 IMD world competitiveness

rankings (2017 rankings in parentheses) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

USA (4) Hong Kong SAR (1) Singapore (3) Netherlands (5) Switzerland (2) Denmark (7) UAE(1O) Norway (11) Sweden (9) Canada (12) Luxembourg (8) Ireland (6) China Mainland (18) Qatar (17) Germany (13) Finland (15) Taiwan (14) Austria (25) Australia (21) United Kingdom (19)

Source: IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2018, Lausanne: International Institute for Management Development, 2018.

The rise of the mainland Chinese economy Since the beginning of its economic reform in 1978, mainland China has been growing at an average annual rate of just under 10% per annum. It is already the second largest economy in the world and the second largest trading nation. It will become the dominant economic power, certainly in Asia today, and in time in the world. In 1978, Taiwan’s GDP was $65 billion (2017 prices), compared to a mainland Chinese GDP of $369 billion. The Taiwanese economy was almost 18% of the mainland Chinese economy. Taiwan was among the earliest and the most important direct investors in mainland China in the 1990s and has made significant contributions to its economic development. However, by 2017, while the Taiwanese GDP grew to $573 billion (2017 prices), the mainland Chinese GDP surged to $12.7 trillion. The Taiwanese economy has become less than 5% of the mainland Chinese economy. The economic bargaining power of Taiwan has been greatly eroded (see Figure 14.21). In 1978, the real GDP per capita of Taiwan was $3,814 (2017 prices), ten times mainland China’s $383. By 2017, the real GDP per capita of Taiwan grew

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FIGURE 14.21

319

Actual and projected mainland Chinese and Taiwanese real GDPS and their rates of growth.

to $24,335 (2017 prices), only approximately two-and-a-half times mainland China’s $9,138 (see Figure 14.22). By 2050, Taiwan’s real GDP will be approximately $2 trillion (2017 prices), compared to a mainland Chinese real GDP of $82 trillion. The Taiwanese economy will be less than 2.5% of the mainland Chinese economy. However, Taiwan’s real GDP per capita will be approximately $66,000 (2017 prices), still higher than the mainland Chinese real GDP per capita of $52,870 by 20%. In these projections, the rate of growth of the real GDP of Taiwan is assumed to be similar to the actual rates of the past decade. It is assumed to be lower than that of mainland China because the Taiwanese real GDP per capita is higher (see Figure 14.4). In 1978, Taiwan’s international trade was $26 billion, more than that of mainland China’s international trade of $20 billion. Mainland China’s international trade did not surpass Taiwan’s international trade until 1996. Mainland China’s international trade increased by leaps and bounds after its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. By 2017, the total mainland Chinese international trade had increased to $4.64 trillion, almost seven times the total Taiwanese international trade of $0.68 trillion. Over the past ten years, the average annual rate of growth of mainland China’s international trade was 8.6% compared to Taiwan’s 3.4%. The disparity in the rate of growth of international trade is likely

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FIGURE 14.22

Actual and projected mainland Chinese and Taiwanese real GDPS per capita and their rates of growth.

to persist given that the demand for imported consumer goods is likely to grow rapidly with the rising middle class in mainland China. Since 2002, Taiwan has been running a huge trade surplus vis-a-vis mainland China (see Figure 14.23). Today, mainland China is Taiwan’s most important trading partner. Taiwan is mainland China’s fifth most important trading partner. Mainland China has, since its accession to the World Trade Organization, replaced the United States as Taiwan’s most important export destination, and its most important import origin (see Figure 14.24). The relative importance of the United States as a trading partner of Taiwan has greatly declined. In 1985, almost half of Taiwan’s exports were destined for the United States; today, less than 15% are. In 1990, Taiwanese exports to mainland China were virtually zero; for the last decade they rose to almost 30% of the total exports of Taiwan (see Figure 14.25). Many economies count mainland China as their most important trading partner. Taiwan is the third most important trading partner of Hong Kong, the fourth most important trading partner of Japan, and the fifth most important trading partner of mainland China, Singapore, and Vietnam (see Table 14.3). Taiwan should manage cross-strait economic relations carefully to avoid marginalization in the long run. The experience of the mainland Chinese economy before its economic reform and opening in 1978, and those of the Cuban, Iranian, and North Korean economies up until now are cautionary tales. Taiwan should

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FIGURE 14.23

Mainland China and Taiwan’s international trade and their rates of growth.

FIGURE 14.24

Taiwan’s exports to and imports from mainland China and the United States since 1981.

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FIGURE 14.25

Taiwan’s exports to and imports from mainland China and the United States as percent of total exports and imports.

attempt to create economic interdependence with mainland China, taking advantage of the complementarities between the two economies. For example, Taiwanese enterprises supply many critical electronic components to mainland China. They should continue to invest to upgrade so that their products will always be needed. This will require significant new investment in human capital and in R&D, especially basic research.

The opportunities Development into a “Silicon Island” Given the already high levels of human capital in Taiwan, as well as its existing high-technology industries, Taiwan should increase its investment in R&D and technology to make Taiwan into a “Silicon Island”. These investments will pay off much more easily with access to the large mainland Chinese market. This strategy requires both continuing investment in research at the technological frontier and cooperation with mainland China, taking advantage of the technology-intensive market complementarity. If successful, this should transform Taiwan into a high-value-added service economy, specializing in basic research, applied research, development, pilot production, and commercialization.

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TABLE 14.3 The ranks of mainland China and Taiwan as trading partners of selected

countries / regions and vice versa, 2017 Country/Region

Mainland Rank as Trading Partner of Country/Region

Rank of Country/ Region as Trading Partner of the Mainland

Taiwan Rank as Trading Partner of Country/Region

Rank of Country/ Region as Trading Partner of Taiwan

Mainland China Taiwan Australia Brunei Cambodia Hong Kong Indonesia Japan Korea Laos Macau Malawia Myanmar New Zealand Philippines Singapore Thailand United Klngdom United Stales Vietnam

NA 1 1 4 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1

NA 5 7 125 63 3 17 2 4 85 81 9 44 41 20 14 13 15 1 8

5 NA 12 10 12 3 10 4 7 28 11 6 10 11 9 5 12 30 11 5

1 NA 11 65 46 4 14 3 5 119 88 7 64 36 10 6 12 17 2 9

Energy research and exploration There are a number of possibilities for cross-strait collaboration and cooperation. There is significant interest as well as efforts in fusion energy research on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. I believe this can be a real game-changer for the world, especially in view of the risks of global warming. There can be joint research on, as well as joint application and implementation of, renewable energy, especially wind energy, which is gaining prominence in Taiwan. The Taiwan Strait is supposed to be ideal for wind power because of its high winds. Joint exploration for oil and gas in the Taiwan Strait and possibly in the Spratly Islands on a shared revenue and cost basis is another possibility.

E-commerce Taiwan has the world’s highest rate of internet utilization in the world. E-commerce has the ability of making small and medium enterprises (SMEs) just as competitive as much larger enterprises. Taiwan excels in having many SMEs developing and producing innovative consumer products appealing to consumers

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in special niches (nougat candies and cookies are one example). Distribution via e-commerce will expand the market and lower the costs for SMEs. It should lead to a mushrooming of internet-savvy SMEs. What Taiwan needs to do is to facilitate cross-border e-commerce through the simplification of export and import, remittance, and tariff procedures, and allowing delivery services to operate both inbound and outbound in Taiwan, thus opening new markets for its SMEs.

The green economy Taiwan has an excellent record of environmental protection, preservation, and restoration. It can provide lessons and services to other economies. For example, it leads the world in the pre-sorting of waste so that it can be appropriately treated and recycled. It also emphasizes individual voluntary participation in environmental protection and preservation. It can serve as a model for the rest of the world.

Tourism Tourism is also something that should be promoted. As I often emphasize, with economic globalization, any job that can be moved away will be moved away. Tourism generates jobs that cannot be moved away. People who want to see Sun Moon Lake will have to come to Taiwan. Another source of “long-term tourists” is higher education. Taiwan should consider opening its tertiary educational institutions to students from all over the world. Taiwan has more than sufficient capacity to serve its own college-aged students. But it can also generate a great deal of revenue and create many jobs by using the excess capacity to serve nonlocal students. When these students graduate and return home, they become Taiwan’s goodwill ambassadors in their respective home communities. And if they stay, they become a source of talent for Taiwan.

The alternatives for Taiwan: confrontation or accommodation? The Taiwanese economy risks being increasingly marginalized in the face of a rapidly growing mainland China with rising economic inf luence. In the same way that the United States was able to keep Cuba, Iran, and North Korea poor, mainland China could in principle do the same to Taiwan in the future. Taiwan should not and cannot be seen as a threat, or aiding and abetting a threat, to mainland China. Moreover, it is unlikely that the United States will ever go to war with mainland China over Taiwan. The United States also has strong economic interests in maintaining stable relations with mainland China. Mainland China and the United States are each other’s most important trading partners. Taiwan is only the 11th most important

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trading partner of the United States. Many United States companies, such as Apple and Qualcomm, derive significant shares of their revenues from sales to mainland Chinese. There are many communalities between mainland China (especially the province of Fujian) and Taiwan. There are the common cultural, ethnic, historical, and linguistic ties. There is economic complementarity, and the two sides have similar positions on the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea and the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. There are many possible opportunities for crossstrait economic collaboration and cooperation, as described above. Successful collaboration and cooperation can generate goodwill and mutual trust, which both sides need for an eventual peaceful resolution.

Concluding remarks It is necessary for Taiwan to think and plan ahead for 20 or 30 years. Where can, and where will, Taiwan be in Asia and the world at that time? What can be achieved and what cannot be achieved? What is in the long-term best interests of the people of Taiwan? It is best to focus on developing the economy and promoting peace.

Notes 1 For a discussion of the “Thucydides Trap” as it applies to China–United States relations, see Graham T. Allison, “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?”, The Atlantic, September 24, 2015. Allison argues that a China– United States war is eventually inevitable as a rising power challenges the dominance of an established power. 2 See the discussion in Lawrence J. Lau, The China-U.S. Trade War and Future Economic Relations, Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2019.

15 TOWARDS AN ASIAN REGIONAL ORDER LED BY CHINA AND INDIA Daniel A. Bell

A morally justified hierarchy within a state involves a conception of service: the rulers are supposed to serve the people.1 The rulers needn’t be pure altruists, but the state’s policies should aim mainly to benefit the people rather than the rulers, and such policies are more likely if the rulers are at least partly motivated by the desire to serve the people. Morally justified hierarchies between states are different. The rulers of states owe their first obligations to their own people, and they cannot be expected to systematically sacrifice the interests of their own people for the interests of people in other states. Hierarchical relations between states must be reciprocal: they must benefit people in both powerful and weaker states. In other words, they must be “win–win”. But there are two kinds of reciprocity. One kind – let’s call it “weak reciprocity” – is the ideal that hierarchical relations between states should be mutually advantageous. Each state thinks from the perspective of its own state (more precisely, the rulers think of the interests of their own people), and they strike deals or make alliances if they are beneficial to (the people of ) both states. But weak reciprocity is fragile. Once the situation changes and the deal is no longer advantageous to one of the states, that state can simply opt out of the deal, just as the Trump administration seems to have decided to renegotiate or scrap free trade accords (and even security alliances) on the grounds that those deals no longer benefit the United States (if they ever did). Weaker states are particularly vulnerable under the terms of weak reciprocity because they are subject to the whims of the stronger states that can decide to change the terms of the deal. Another kind of reciprocity – let’s call it “strong reciprocity” – is the ideal that both states come to think of their alliances from the perspective of both states, no longer simply from the perspective of their own state. The rulers no longer think simply in terms of benefiting their own people, and they are willing to stick with deals or alliances even if (temporarily?) the

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deals may be more beneficial to the people of other states. Moreover, what counts as the interest of each state itself comes to be inf luenced, at least partly, by the interests (and culture and history) of the other state: there is mutual learning that affects how people think of their own interests and conceptions of the good life. A former enemy state can come to be seen as a friendly state with shared interests and values. One example might be the relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States. Strong reciprocity is more demanding (and perhaps rarer) than weak reciprocity, but it is more stable and more beneficial for the weaker states. Does the ideal of reciprocity, whether strong or weak, between hierarchical states still matter in the modern world? Not on the ( juridical) face of it. We are supposed to live in an age of equal sovereign states. The Peace of Westphalia treaties in 1648 set in stone the ideal of equality between sovereign states that are supposed to respect each other’s sovereignty and refrain from interfering in each other’s domestic affairs. This ideal started in Europe, and slowly spread to the rest of the world. In 1945, the United Nations generalized the one-person-one-vote principle to the level of states, with each state given equal representation regardless of size and wealth. Much theorizing in (Western) international relations is based on this ideal of formal and juridical equality between sovereign states. In reality, however, states are neither equal nor sovereign. As David A. Lake puts it, “sovereignty is a bundle of rights or authorities that can be divided among different levels of governance and different rulers … Treating sovereignty as divisible allows authority between states to vary along continua of lesser or greater hierarchy”.2 It takes only a moment’s ref lection to realize that the global order consists of a hierarchy between different states, with some states having more de facto power than others. Nobody really cares about the fact Nicaragua didn’t sign up to the Paris climate change accord, but President Trump’s decision to withdraw from this accord may be a global disaster because of the United States’ disproportionate power to set the global agenda. Even the United Nations expresses the fact of global hierarchy: the most important decisions are often taken at the level of the Security Council which distinguishes between permanent members, non-permanent members of the Security Council, and ordinary member states. That’s why rising powers such as India and Brazil fight hard (thus far unsuccessfully) for recognition as permanent members on the Security Council. If theorists of international relations aim to develop theories that explain the behavior of states and (more ambitiously) predict outcomes in the international system, then theorizing should be more attentive to the reality of hierarchy between states. There may also be good normative reasons to justify hierarchies between states. If it’s just a matter of strong states bullying weaker ones to get what they want, normative theorists can just step aside. But strong states do good things for the global order as a whole. However much we worry about “rogue” leaders in strong states who sabotage global agreements, it would be much harder to forge agreements for dealing with global challenges such as climate change

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in an international system characterized by states with equal power to shape and withdraw from global accords.3 Hierarchical systems can also contribute to international peace: as Yan Xuetong puts it, “if we examine recent international history, we can see that in those areas that implemented hierarchical norms, international peace was better maintained than it was in areas that had norms for equality. During the Cold War, the equal status of the United States and the Soviet Union was such that they undertook many proxy wars in order to compete for hegemony, while their special status in NATO and the Warsaw Pact, respectively, enabled them to prevent the members of those alliances from engaging in military conf lict with one another”.4 Moreover, hierarchical arrangements can actually benefit weaker states because this sense of dominance means that states have extra responsibilities. Security hierarchies, for example, reduce the level of defense expenditure in subordinate states.5 Unequal economic power can also benefit weaker states. Rather than insisting on equal reciprocity with weaker states, strong states can gain their support by allowing differential international norms that work in their favor: for example “in the cooperation of the 10+1 – the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China – China is required to implement the norm of zero tariffs in agricultural trade before the ASEAN states do. This unequal norm enabled the economic cooperation of the 10+1 to develop more rapidly than that between Japan and ASEAN. Japan’s demand for equal tariffs with ASEAN slowed the progress of economic cooperation with the ASEAN states, which lags far behind that of China and ASEAN”.6 With extra powers come extra responsibilities, and it’s not completely utopian to suggest that strong states do occasionally act on those responsibilities and should be held accountable if they fail to do so. At the very least, we need theories that can help us distinguish between good and bad forms of international hierarchies and help us think of how to promote the good forms and avoid the bad ones. Hence, as Lane puts it, “like a Gestalt shift picture … refocusing on hierarchy reveals an alternative reality that has always been with us if we would but choose to see it”.7 But we don’t need a “Gestalt shift” as much as a return to ancient ways of thinking. In both classical India and classical China, political thinkers developed rich and diverse theories of international politics that took hierarchy between states for granted. We can mine these ancient theories for contemporary insights. Some political thinkers in ancient India and China defended the ideal of weak reciprocity between hierarchical states, and others argued for strong reciprocity. This chapter leads off with a discussion of (some) ancient Indian views of hierarchical global order, followed by a discussion of (some) ancient Chinese views of hierarchical global order. The final section will argue for an ideal of “one world, two hierarchical systems” that may be appropriate for future forms of global order.

Hierarchical ideals of global order in ancient India In ancient India, the most systematic work in inter-state relations is Kautilya’s Arthasastra: the English translation runs over 400 pages, more than half of which is

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devoted to foreign policy and war.8 Kautilya probably f lourished in the first century CE and tradition identified him as the shrewd minister who brought the king to power and established the Maurya dynasty. He makes Machiavelli look like a sentimental idealist; had his work been more inf luential in Europe, we’d be using the term “Kautilyan” rather than “Machiavellian” to describe amoral realism in international politics. Writing in a time of small kingdoms ruled by monarchs, he assumed a state of warfare as the norm. The ruler should do his best to expand his territory, without moral or religious constraints. Quite the opposite – he should go out of his way to prey on people’s superstitious beliefs to further his own ends. Consider the following list of tactics for assassinating the enemy: During a pilgrimage for worshipping a divinity, there are numerous places that (the enemy) will visit to pay homage according to his devotion. At those places, he should employ trickery on him. Upon him, as he enters a temple, he should make a false wall or a stone fall by releasing a mechanical device; or set off a shower of stones or weapons from an upper chamber; or let a door panel plunge; or release a door bar attached to a wall and secured at one end. Or, he should make the statue, banner, or weapons of the god fall upon him. Or, in places where he stands, sits, or walks, he should arrange for poison to be used against him by means of the cow dung that is smeared, the scented water that is sprinkled, or the f lowers and powders that are offered. Or, he should waft over to him lethal smoke concealed by perfume. Or, by releasing a pin, he should make him plunge into a well with spikes or a pitfall that is located beneath his bed or seat and whose top surface is held together by a mechanical device.9 Kautilya’s most important contribution to inter-state political thinking is the theory of mandala, the circle of kingdoms. As Patrick Olivelle explains, “A king is surrounded in a circle by other states, and because they have common boundaries with him, they are his natural enemies. Around these enemy kingdoms is a second circle of kingdoms. Because they about the territories of enemy kings of the first circle, they become his natural allies: my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Those forming the third outer circle would, by the same logic, be the enemies of his allies, and thus his own enemies – and so on”.10 The theory of mandala assumes rough parity between states in the sense that all states can wage wars against each other, but, to repeat, there is no “modern” proviso about the need to respect the territorial integrity of states, hence no theorizing that assumes equality of states. Quite the opposite: the constant quest for expansion of territory means that the size, wealth, and power of states shift in accordance with the gains and losses of territory that result from a near constant state of warfare. But the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend can also lead to mutually beneficial outcomes: to help justify the Chinese Communist Party’s alliance with the Kuomintang in the struggle against Japanese imperialism, Mao Zedong famously said, “We should support whatever our enemies oppose and oppose whatever our enemies support”.11 This principle also helped to justify

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rapprochement with the United States when both countries had the Soviet Union as a common enemy. Kautilya himself affirms that kings should strive for mutually beneficial peace pacts: “When the gain is equal, one should conclude a peace pact”.12 Even weaker kings can initiate peace pacts with stronger powers: “When a weaker king is overwhelmed by a stronger king with a superb army, he should quickly submit with a peace pact by offering his treasury, his army, himself, or his land”.13 But “weak reciprocity” in the form of a mutually beneficial peace pact is temporary at best. For one thing, a peace pact cannot fundamentally challenge the ally / enemy configuration specified by the theory of the mandala. A peace pact formed by two natural enemies with contiguous boundaries is possible but deeply unstable. And boundaries can change, so that one’s natural ally can become a natural enemy if conquests result in two formerly friendly states with contiguous boundaries. More fundamentally, a ruler can – and should – disregard the peace pact when it’s no longer in his or her interest to maintain it. Kautilya takes this point to its profoundly cynical extreme: “When he wishes to outwit an enemy who is corrupt, hasty, disrespectful, and lazy or who is ignorant, he should tell him ‘We have entered into a peace pact’ without fixing the region, time, or task. Through the confidence generated by the peace pact, he should find his vulnerable points and attack him”.14 Hence, a Kautilyanstyle “peace pact” should be viewed as nothing more than a strategy designed “to outsmart, outmaneuver, and finally overpower the king with whom he has concluded the pact”.15 Rulers should never lose sight that the ultimate aim is territorial conquest: bigger is better, and too bad for the smaller states that end up on the losing side. Some states become so large that they are outside the mandala theory of ally and enemy: large states led by powerful kings can be neutral. And what happens when a powerful “neutral” king conquers much of the (known) world? At that point, is it possible to move from “weak reciprocity” to a more stable “strong reciprocity” between hierarchical states? Kautilya does speak of the “righteous king” as a protector of social harmony,16 but it’s Ashoka who shows the way. Ashoka Maurya, commonly known as Ashoka and also as Ashoka the Great, was a successful conqueror who ended up ruling almost all of the Indian subcontinent from circa 269 BCE to 232 BCE. He relied on Kautilyan-style methods to conquer territories, including the brutal war against the Kalingas (today’s Orissa) with 100,000 killed and 150,000 taken away as captives. At the height of his power, however, Ashoka had a conversion to Buddhism that radically changed his outlook from warmongering to peace-loving (his experience is perhaps the most striking counter-example to the dictum that power corrupts). He expressed profound regret for the Kalinga war and propounded a commitment to dharma, which can be roughly translated as the moral way, in Rock Edicts throughout his empire. But this commitment to spreading morality was not restricted to his own empire: “In the imperial territories among the Greeks and Kambojas, Nabhakas and Nabhapanktis, Bhojas and Pitinikas, Andras and Parindas, everywhere people follow the Beloved of the Gods’ instruction in Dhamma. Even

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where the envoys of the Beloved of the Gods have not gone, people hear of his conduct according to Dhamma, his precepts and his instructions in Dhamma, and they follow Dhamma and will continue to follow it. What is obtained by this is victory everywhere, and everywhere victory is pleasant. This pleasure has been obtained through victory by Dhamma”.17 This vision seemed to express an ideal rather than a reality, but Ashoka sent his “envoys of the Beloved of the Gods” to faraway lands to spread the moral way. What is the content of the moral way? At minimum, it means a commitment to peace and non-violence. The commitment to life, Buddhist-style, extends to all forms of life, not just human beings: “I have enforced the law against killing certain animals and many others, but the greatest progress of righteousness among men comes from the exhortation in favor of non-injury to life and abstention from killing living beings”.18 It includes the provision of medical knowledge to foreign countries, prompting Patrick Olivelle to comment that “the intention of Ashoka in sending these missions is very clear: it was a missionary effort to spread his dharma philosophy, to get rulers of these countries to adopt Ashoka’s moral philosophy in their internal administration and external affairs … This is very similar to the way Christian missionaries acted in countries they were attempting to evangelize”.19 But Ashoka’s moral way refers to the idea of building a common morality that draws on different moralities while respecting difference. In that sense, his “envoys of the Beloved of the Gods” were not like Christian missionaries who tried to spread what they considered to be the truth and (implicitly or explicitly) downgraded other moral systems. Consider what Ashoka said about intercommunal relations. Ashoka’s aim was not just peaceful co-existence among deeply divided communities: he also aimed for mutual learning which requires restrained and respectful speech on the part of the “Beloved of the Gods”: There should not be honor of one’s own sect and condemnation of others’ sect without any common ground. Such slighting should be for specified grounds only. On the other hand, the sects of others should be honored for this ground or that. Thus doing, one helps his own sect to grow and benefits the sects of others, too. Doing otherwise, one hurts his own sect and injures the sects of others. For whosoever honors his own sect and condemns the sects of other wholly from devotion to his own sect, i.e. the thought “How I may glorify my own sect” and acting thus injures more gravely his own sect on the contrary. Hence concord alone is commendable, in this sense that all should listen and be willing to listen to the doctrines professed by others, this is, in fact, the desire of His Sacred Majesty.20 If envoys refrain from excessive self-glorification and immoderate criticism of the other sects, they can maintain the peace and avoid humiliating other sects. But they must also strive to transform their own views: as Rajeev Bhargava explains, “Ashoka says that those seeking improvement in their ethical views should not only communicate with others with different perspectives in order

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to learn from them but even follow their precepts, ‘obey’ them. Thinking as if you were in someone else’s shoes may not on occasions be sufficient; you have to act with their shoes on. This practical ethical engagement brings an experiential dimension that could be ethically transformative”.21 Clearly, the aim is close to what we termed “strong reciprocity”: both sides respect each other’s differences while attempting to learn from each other and forge a common morality that draws on the morality of both sides. There may be unequal power relations and hierarchies between states – Ashoka sends envoys to less powerful states, not the other way around – but we are a long way from Christian missionaries who aim to spread the gospel to morally backward natives. In today’s world, what most grates intellectuals in India (and China) is moralizing sermons by modern day envoys – hectoring politicians, crusading journalists, NGO activists, culturally insensitive tourists, not to mention card-carrying religious missionaries – from Western countries with a dark track record of racism, colonialism, and imperialism. Surely relations between unequal powers could be improved if representatives from great powers exercised Ashokan-style restrained and respectful speech in dealing with weaker countries. This is not to deny the possibility of genuine (economic or security) conf licts of interest between states, but such conf licts would be easier to solve if modern day states adhered to Ashoka’s guidelines. Ashoka may be dead, but let his ideals live on! It could be argued that Ashoka put forward these edicts on respectful and restrained speech primarily as guidelines for domestic policy, that is, for the sake of peaceful and harmonious communal relations in his own empire.22 But surely Ashoka believed in the universality of his Buddhist-inspired edicts and they also provide useful guidelines for foreign policy. As it turns out, his ideals resonate with ideals of strong reciprocity between countries put forward by political thinkers in ancient China as well. Let us now turn to proposals for morally justified hierarchies that were developed by Xunzi, perhaps the greatest theorist of international relations in ancient China. Xunzi, as we will see, proposed a mechanism – ritual – that can help to underpin strong reciprocity between hierarchical powers.

Hierarchical ideals of global order in ancient China As in ancient India, ancient Chinese thinkers took for granted the idea of hierarchy in social life. Xunzi (ca. 310–219 BCE) most explicitly extolled the virtues of hierarchy. He is widely regarded as one of the three founding fathers of Confucianism (along with Confucius and Mencius). He has been tainted because of his supposed inf luence on the Legalists – the Kautilyans of ancient China 23 – but his ideas had great inf luence on the actual politics of East Asian societies. His writings are clear and systematic, and he deliberately avoids utopian assumptions about human nature and society. In fact, he begins with the assumption that “Human nature tends toward badness” (23.1).24 If people follow their bodily nature and indulge their natural inclinations, aggressiveness and exploitation are

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sure to develop, resulting in cruel tyranny and poverty (19.1). Fortunately, that’s not the end of the story. Human beings can be “made good by conscious exertion” (23.1). They can learn to contain their natural desires and enjoy the benefits of peaceful and cooperative social existence.

Xunzi on hierarchical rituals25 The key to transformation is ritual (23.3).26 By learning and participating in rituals, people can learn to contain their desires, there will be a fit between people’s actual desires and the good available in society, and social peace and material well-being will result (19.1). Rituals provide bonds not based solely on kinship that allow people to participate in the benefits of social existence. But what exactly is ritual? Xunzi’s account of ritual contains features that are familiar to contemporary accounts of ritual: it is a social practice (as opposed to behavior involving only one person), it is grounded in tradition (as opposed to newly invented social practices), it is non-coercive (in contrast to legal punishments), and the details can be changed according to the social context. But Xunzi’s account of rituals is driven by normative considerations, and he highlights two considerations that may be less familiar to readers today. In English, the term “ritual” tends to connote paying behavioral lip service to social norms. The word “ritual” is often preceded by “empty”, meaning that it’s devoid of true emotions. But that’s not ritual in Xunzi’s sense: ritual must involve emotion and behavior. As Xunzi puts it, “Rituals reach their highest perfection when both emotion and formal are fully realized” (19.7). The main point of ritual is to civilize our animal natures, and if people are just going through the outward routines without any emotion, they are not likely to transform their nature. The ritual needs to involve, or trigger, an emotional response, so that it will have an effect on the participants during the ritual and beyond the ritual itself. Hence, rituals often need to be accompanied by music that helps to trigger those emotional responses (Xunzi devoted a whole chapter on the moral and political effects of music). Still today, in Chinese the word “ritual” is often followed by the word for “music” (禮樂), as though the two ideas are almost inseparable. Second, and equally important, Xunzi’s account of ritual involves social hierarchies: rituals that specify different treatment for different kinds of people, depending on rank (as opposed to practices that are meant to treat everyone equally). As Xunzi puts it, “The exemplary person has been civilized by these things, and he will also be fond of ritual distinctions. What is mean by ‘distinctions’? I say that these refer to gradations of rank according to nobility or baseness, differences between the treatment of old and young, and modes of identification to match these with poverty and wealth and relative (social) importance” (19.3). Rituals involve people with different power engaged in social practices that treat people differently. But why does Xunzi affirm that rituals must be hierarchical? At one level, he recognizes the social fact that hierarchy and rituals can help to secure social peace: by allotting different responsibilities, privileges, and goods

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to different individuals, rituals thereby help to prevent conf lict over these things among people with different social statuses.27 But it’s not just a matter of pacifying the potential malcontents and justifying a system that gives more goods to those with more power. Quite the opposite: hierarchical rituals are essential for generating a sense of community and the emotional disposition for the powerful to care for the interests of those at the bottom of hierarchies. Like other Confucians, Xunzi intended to persuade political rulers to adopt his ideas because such rulers had the most power to transform society in the desired way. In an ideal society, the wise and humane ruler would implement such rituals, and the whole of society would be harmonious and prosperous. But what about non-ideal society? Xunzi is famously sensitive to context and he advocated different prescriptions for different contexts. So the question is how to persuade the rulers who have yet to be morally transformed. For such purposes, Xunzi had to appeal to their self-interest. The problem, however, is that the powerful have the most to benefit from “uncivilized” society, where the strong can rely on brute force to exploit the weak. Those with power need to be persuaded that they benefit from a social system that seems to place constraints on their desires. Hence, much of Xunzi’s discussion of ritual is designed to persuade political rulers that it is in their interest to promote rituals in society. Ritual, he says, is the root of the strength of the state (15.8) and the right sort of music can strengthen its military forces (20.5). One would expect rulers to be receptive to this sort of advice. But rituals do not only benefit rulers. Both Marxists and liberal democrats have denounced hierarchical rituals because they seem designed to benefit the ruling classes of feudal societies and thus are inappropriate for modern times. But this is a misreading of Xunzi’s intentions. For Xunzi, hierarchical rituals also have the effect of benefiting the weak and the poor, those who would fare worse in a “state of nature”: “Without rituals, desires are unlimited, leading to contention, leading to disorder, and leading to poverty” (19.1). Of course, the tyrant himself won’t be the worst hit by a system where he can exercise power without constraints. It is the weak and vulnerable who are worst hit by disorder and poverty: in a situation without ritual civility, Xunzi says, “the strong would harm the weak as well as rob them” (23.9). Putting ritual in practice means “being kind to the humble” (27.17). But why does Xunzi emphasize rituals involving people with different power? Hierarchical rituals seem most attractive if they are contrasted with practices that exclude people of different status: the rich and powerful do their own thing, as do the poor and the weak (consider the stereotypical account of the Indian caste system, or the different rituals of the rich and the poor in highly stratified societies such as the United States). The choice, typically, is not between hierarchical and egalitarian rituals, but between rituals that involve the powerful and the vulnerable and two different sets of rituals for those with power and those without. Xunzi argues for the former. The village

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wine ceremony, for example, is praised because the (less powerful) young and (more powerful) old take a drink from the same wine cup, and “in this way we know it is possible for junior and senior to drink together without anyone being left out” (20.12). Rituals such as common birth, marriage, and burial practices also have the effect of including the poor and marginalized as part of the society’s culture and common understanding. As Patricia Buckley Ebrey puts it, “Confucian texts and the rituals based on them did not simply convey social distinctions. At another level they overcome them by fostering commonalities in the ways people performed rituals … [In early modern Europe, by contrast], over time class differences in the performance of family rituals seem to have narrowed rather than widened”.28 In hierarchical rituals, the powerful are made to think of the powerless as part of the group, and they are more likely to do things for them (or at least, to refrain from the worst parts of rapacious behavior). It is no coincidence that Xunzi devotes a great deal of attention to the proper treatment of the dead, notwithstanding his aversion to religious thinking and supernatural explanations for changes in the world of the living. The dead, for obvious reasons, are the least capable of protecting their interests. They are the worst off of the worst off. Hence, those with power – the living – need to be trained by means of certain rituals to treat them with respect. Xunzi carefully specifies the need to adorn the corpse because “if the corpse if not adorned, it becomes hideous, and if it is hideous, no grief will be felt” (19.12). He also specifies that the corpse must be gradually moved further away each time it is adorned because “if it is kept close at hand, one begins to scorn it; when having it close at hand makes it the object of scorn, one begins to weary of it; when one wearies of it, one forgets one’s duty to it; and if one forgets one’s duties, then one no longer shows proper respect” (19.12). The ritual should be gradually phased out so that it allows for a smooth transition to everyday life as well as an extension of the cultivated emotions of proper respect and mindfulness of duty to the needy in the world of the living: “With each move he takes it further away, whereby he ensures continued respect. With the passage of time he resumes the ordinary course of life, whereby he cares for the needs of the living” (19.12). The real moral value of hierarchical rituals, for Xunzi, is that they generate a sense of community among people with different power and status and benefit both the powerful and the weak. Put differently, they can help to generate a sense of strong reciprocity among members of a hierarchical relationship, with both the powerful and the weak coming to think of their fate as a common one.29 The bonds that hold them together are stronger than the f luctuating interests that underpin “weak reciprocity”. Xunzi did not only have “domestic policy” in mind. Hierarchical rituals can work their magic not just between people in one country, but also between people in different countries.30

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Xunzi is particularly critical of economic diplomacy between states on the grounds that it can, at most, generate a weak sense of reciprocity that can break down once the states’ interests are no longer aligned: If you serve them with wealth and treasure, then wealth and treasure will run out and your relations with them will still not be normalized. If agreements are sealed and alliances confirmed by oath, then though the agreements be fixed yet they will not last a day. If you cut off borderland to bribe them, then after it is cut off they will be avaricious for yet more. The more you pander to them, the more they will advance on you until you have used up your resources and the state has given over and then there is nothing left.31 If a rich country aims to gain friends just by throwing money at them, those friends will be fickle indeed. That said, Xunzi does not deny that “weak reciprocity” grounded in mutually beneficial self-interest between hierarchical powers can be relatively stable and long lasting. In an anarchic world of self-interested states, what Xunzi calls the “hegemonic state” can attain interstate leadership by being strategically reliable: Although virtue may not be up to the mark, nor were norms fully realized, yet when the principle of all under heaven is somewhat gathered together, punishments and rewards are already trusted by all under heaven, all below the ministers know what they can expect. Once administrative commands are made plain, even if one sees one’s chances for gain defeated, yet there is no cheating the people; contracts are already sealed, even if one sees one’s chance for gain defeated, yet there is no cheating one’s partners. If it is so, then the troops will be strong and the town will be firm and enemy states will tremble in fear. Once it is clear the state stands united, your allies will trust you … This is to attain hegemony by establishing strategic reliability.32 But strategic reliability must also have a basis in hard power for the hegemon to gain the trust of its allies. A very poor or weak country cannot be trusted to keep its promises. So with a combination of wealth, military might, and strategic reliability, a self-interested but honest hegemon can establish mutually beneficial interest-based relations with weaker states. If China’s Belt and Road Initiative provides material benefits both to China and to weaker countries in Central Asia, while China sticks to its contracts even in economically difficult times and shows that it’s a trustworthy partner, it can be successful in the short to medium term. Let’s call this relation “weak reciprocity plus” – grounded in nothing more than the self-interest of states, but more stable than Kautilyan-style peace pacts or naked economic diplomacy. The most stable (and desirable) kind of international leadership, however, is what Xunzi calls “humane authority”, meaning a state that wins the hearts of the people at home and abroad. At home, the proper use of rituals, combined with effective policies that secure peace and prosperity, is key to leadership success:

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“… one who cultivates ritual becomes a humane authority; one who effectively exercises government becomes strong”.33 Setting a good model at home is necessary but not sufficient. The humane authority can gain the hearts of those abroad by institutionalizing inter-state rituals: If you want to deal with the norms between small and large, strong and weak states to uphold them prudently, then rituals and customs must be especially diplomatic, the jade disks should be especially bright, and the diplomatic gifts particularly rich, the spokespersons should be gentlemen who write elegantly and speak wisely. If they keep the people’s interests at heart, who will be angry with them? If they are so, then the furious will not attack. One who seeks his reputation is not so. One who seeks profit is not so. One who acts out of anger is not so. The state will be at peace, as if built on a rock and it will last long like the stars.34 Moreover, the content of the rituals depends on the hierarchy of states: “The norms of humane authority are to observe the circumstances so as to produce the tools to work thereon, to weigh the distance and determine the tribute due. How could it then be equal?”35 The Western Zhou dynasty – regarded by Confucian thinkers as the ideal humane authority – set the model for hierarchical rituals with surrounding states with its system of Five Services: Therefore, the various Chinese states had the same service and the same customs, whereas the states of the Man, Yi, Di, and Rong had the same service but different regulations. Within the pale was the domain service and outside the pale the feudal service. The feudal areas up to the border area were the tributary service; the Man and the Yi were in the formal service; the Rong and the Di were in the wasteland service. The domain service sacrificed to the king’s father, the feudal service sacrificed to the king’s grandparents, the tributary service sacrificed to the king’s ancestors, the formal service presented tribute, and the wasteland service honored the king’s accession. The sacrifices to the father were carried out daily, to the grandfather monthly, to the ancestors by season. The tribute was offered once a year. This is what is called observing the circumstances so as to produce the tools to work thereon, weighing the distance, and determining the tribute due. This is the system of humane authority.36 The general principle, as Yan Xuetong explains, is that “the norm [ritual] of providing offerings at different frequencies was made according to geographic distance from the throne”.37 At one level, the principle of greater reciprocity among closer political communities was an accommodation to the practical reality of the difficulties of traveling long distances at the time. But also geography matters because territorial proximity generates more security threats. A large powerful country can afford to be “neutral” (to borrow in Kautilya’s terminology): it can provide security guarantees to surrounding states and peaceful

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conditions beneficial to all sides in the hierarchical relationship, hence meeting the requirements of weak reciprocity grounded in mutual self-interest. But territorial proximity between a strong state and its weaker neighbors also allows for more frequent rituals and interactions between people, hence providing the basis for long-lasting harmonious relations that help neighboring states weather the changing conceptions of self-interest. We are closer to strong reciprocity grounded in common values and mutual learning. Such speculation is not mere theory: the ideal of reciprocity between hierarchical political communities informed the tributary system in imperial China, with the Middle Kingdom at the center and “peripheral” states on the outside. In this system, the tributary ruler or his representative had to go to China to pay homage in ritual acknowledgment of his vassal status. In return, China guaranteed security and provided economic benefits.38 In Ming China, the surrounding political communities were divided into five zones, with each zone: similar to the “Five Services” system of Western Zhou, the frequency of ritual interaction (roughly) correlated with the degree of closeness of the center (capital) of China, which was also meant to map the cultural achievement. What’s interesting for our purposes is that the system allowed for both weak and strong reciprocity. The security guarantees to the surrounding states allowed for peaceful relations that benefited both China and the vassal states. Students of Korean and Vietnamese history will know that there were repeated incursions / invasions from China, but the big picture was relatively peaceful (again, in comparison to similar periods in European history): according to David Kang, there was only one war between Korea, Japan, and China in five centuries of the tributary system in the Ming and Qing dynasties.39 And what’s even more interesting is that borders were respected even without the notion of respect for the sovereignty of equal states: the borders between Korea, Japan, Vietnam and China were relatively fixed and did not significantly change during those five centuries. The comparison with European imperialism is even more striking in terms of the dynamic of economic relations. Whereas European imperialism was motivated partly, if not mainly, by the quest for profit, the tribute-trade system was a net loss for China and generally benefited the tributary.40 The imbalance between tribute received and gifts bestowed helped maintain the hierarchical East Asian political order centered on China because it made Chinese vassals understandably eager to have their inferior status recognized, thus entitling them to send tribute.41 Salvatore Babones comments that “the emperor could even punish vassals by refusing to receive tribute from them – a ‘punishment’ that makes sense only in terms of the disproportionate benefits accruing to the tribute-giver”.42 Clearly these hierarchical relations satisfy the conditions for weak reciprocity, since they were mutually beneficial, and in some ways even more beneficial to the weaker surrounding states. More controversially, the tributary system also allowed for a certain degree of strong reciprocity between hierarchically ordered states. China used moral power to spread Confucian norms, while allowing traditional ways of life and practices to f lourish.43 Korea, Vietnam, and (to a lesser extent) Japan willingly

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accepted Chinese ideas and institutions (such as the examination system) and sought to model themselves on China.44 This is not to deny that instrumental considerations motivated most of the interaction between states in the tributary system, but Zhang Feng’s empirical analysis found that the early Ming’s foreign relations with Korea, Japan, and Mongolia were motivated by expressive considerations in accordance with Confucian propriety – a form of what we term “strong reciprocity” – about one-fifth of the time.45 Of course, even weak reciprocity was frequently violated in practice. In a study on the Ming dynasty’s grand strategy against the Mongols, Alastair Iain Johnston is struck by “the prevalence of assumptions and decision axioms that in fact placed a high degree of value on the use of pure violence to resolve security conf licts”.46 Others argue that the tributary system itself is largely an invention of Western sinologists and cannot usefully explain China’s interaction with its neighbors over long periods of time.47 In historical practice, Chinese imperial courts did not usually use the idea of tributary relations to interfere in the internal affairs of neighboring states, and the states in China’s periphery often had complete independence to do as they wished: the tributary system, according to Zhuang Guotu, was an “unreality”.48 Even if there was a large gap between the ideal and the reality of the tributary system in imperial China, however, it doesn’t follow that the ideal is not worth defending today. On the face of it, the tributary system seems like a good recipe for hierarchical relations between a strong power and weaker surrounding states. The central power offers material benefits and security guarantees to weaker surrounding states, and the weaker states pay symbolic tribute to the leadership of the central power, with frequency of ritualistic interaction depending on geographical distance from the central power. Such an arrangement can be mutually beneficial and rituals can help generate a sense of community between the strong and the weak states: what we have termed strong reciprocity. So should China try to re-establish the tributary system with surrounding countries today? Yan Xuetong answers firmly in the negative: “… any effort to restore the tribute system will weaken China’s capability for international political mobilization”.49 But why not try?

One world, two hierarchical systems? Whatever its advantages in the past, the tributary system is problematic for the modern world, even as an ideal. The most obvious reason is that the tributary system, which symbolically enshrines the secondary status and moral inferiority of the vassal states, is incompatible with the idea of the equality of sovereign states. In reality, as mentioned, states are neither sovereign nor equal, but there may be a case for paying lip service to the ideal of equal sovereignty even knowing it’s far removed from the reality (and knowing it cannot become anywhere close to the reality in the foreseeable future). The argument for hypocrisy has a long history in political theory.50 For example, Plato (in) famously defended the

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idea of a “noble lie” to persuade those at the bottom of the political hierarchy to endorse an ideal republic run by philosopher kings and queens. The religious skeptic David Hume mounted a vigorous case in defense of an established church on the grounds that it is essential for social order.51 Xunzi did not believe that the human performance of rituals could have the power to affect supernatural beings such as ghosts or spirits, but he still defends religious rituals because of their positive psychological and social effects.52 Today, Straussian political theorists knowingly propagate what they consider to be falsehoods such as the idea of natural rights on the grounds that they are necessary to pacify the poorly educated masses who can’t deal with disturbing philosophical truths that cast doubt on the ultimate value of their ordinary way of life. Arguably, a similar case can be made for paying lip service to the ideal of the equality of sovereign states. Notwithstanding a history of informal bullying by powerful countries, it has served to constrain legal takeover of territory in the post-Second World War era. China itself has become distinctly obsessed with sovereignty in the form of noninterference in the internal affairs of countries precisely because it seeks to avoid a repeat of seeing its territory carved up by foreign powers. That said, there are limits to the idea of paying lip service to sovereignty. Most obviously, rulers lose the moral right to govern if they engage in massive abuses of basic human rights of their own people. Earlier Confucian thinkers such as Mencius defended the view that what we’d call today “humanitarian intervention” can be justified if the aim is to liberate people who are being oppressed by tyrants,53 and the Chinese government has recently signed up to the international accord that enshrines the “responsibility to protect” people from genocide and systematic violations of basic human rights.54 Secondly, the ideal of equality of sovereign states should not be used by powerful countries as an excuse to shirk their extra share of responsibility for dealing with global challenges. If we agree that justice requires political leaders to take into account the interests of all those affected by their policies, then political leaders in large powerful countries have a responsibility to consider how their policies affect not just the current generation of people in the home country, but also the effect on future generations, people in other countries, and the natural world. If large countries launch major wars or make “mistakes” on such issues as climate change and artificial intelligence, it can literally be the end of the world. As one author recently put it, China can “shake the world”;55 in contrast, nobody would write a book titled “Canada Shakes the World”. So it would be frankly immoral if leaders of large countries proclaim that they look out only for the interests of their own people; even United States President Trump claims that he defends the principle of “America first” rather than “America alone”.56 In short, it’s fine to pay (hypocritical) lip service to the ideal of sovereign equal states, but large states should not use that as an excuse to shirk what ought to be an extra share of global responsibilities. There’s another fatal f law with the proposal to re-establish the tributary system in the modern world: today, powerful countries are not necessarily the most civilized, from a moral point of view. The tributary system was founded on the

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assumption that China is the center of culture and morality, and that China can and should spread its superior civilization to the rest of the world. The closer the country (or “zone”) to Beijing (the capital in the Ming and Qing dynasties), the more civilized the territory, and conversely, the further away from Beijing, the more wild the barbarians. Nobody seriously holds this view today. That’s not to deny the value of proximity to powerful countries... Kautilya’s worry that territorial contiguity can generate conf licts still holds true today, so major powers need to establish mutually beneficial peace pacts with neighboring countries: for example, strong countries can provide nuclear guarantees to neighboring states on the condition that those states do not manufacture their own nuclear weapons. Proximity also allows for more frequent interaction, ritual and otherwise, hence providing the conditions for a stronger form of reciprocity grounded in common values, similar to Ashoka’s effort to promote Buddhist-inspired values to neighboring states and the spread of Confucianism from China to Korea and Vietnam. In short, the challenge is to reconstitute a de facto form of hierarchy between strong states and neighboring (weaker) states that provides the conditions for weak and (ideally) strong reciprocity while still paying lip service to the ideal of equal sovereignty of states. A modernized version of the traditional Chinese ideal of tianxia, conventionally translated as “all-under-heaven”,57 can inspire thinking about a hierarchical system of states that is both realistic and desirable. The term tianxia is a vague concept that has been defined differently in different times (and differently in the same times).58 In the Tang dynasty, for example, tianxia referred either to the area actually governed by Tang dynasty rulers or the whole world with Zhongguo (China) at its core surrounded by other countries.59 To further complicate matters, the term has sometimes been used in a descriptive sense meaning territory, and other times in a normative sense of an ideal that contrasts with the reality. In the Mencius, for example, the term is used 86 times60 and often refers to an ideal of a unified world without any territorial boundaries governed by one benevolent ruler, an ideal that is meant to contrast with the ugly reality of small states competing ruthlessly for territorial advantage in the Warring States period. In contemporary times, tianxia was famously revived by the philosopher Zhao Tingyang who gave it a normative definition. According to Zhao’s formulation, tianxia has three meanings: (1) a geographical meaning referring to the whole world; (2) a psychological meaning in the sense that the hearts of all the world’s peoples are unified, like a big family; and (3) an institutional meaning in the sense of a world government with the power to ensure universal order.61 Critics in the West have raised doubts about this project. William Callahan, for example, has charged that Zhao’s ideal of tianxia masks an effort to replace Western hegemony with Chinese hegemony.62 But Zhao is explicitly committed to a hierarchically organized cosmopolitan ideal. Institutionally, he argues for a world organization that would have more territory and resources than any one state (including the Chinese state): “The world government directly rules a land

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called King-land, about twice the size of a large sub-state, and four times that of a medium sized sub-state and so son. The military force controlled by the world government is greater than that of large, medium and small sub-states with a ration of 6 to 3, 6 to 2 and 6 to 1 divisions. This proportional design limits the King-land of the world government in its advantages over the sub-states either in resources or military power”.63 The problem, however, is that Zhao’s interpretation of tianxia is neither desirable nor realistic. Zhao claims that his ideal derives inspiration from the values and practices put forward by the founding fathers of the Zhou dynasty approximately 3,000 years ago – the same sage kings who inspired Confucius – but his ideal is radically inconsistent with the key Confucian value of graded love. Zhao’s global government is supposed to be supported by the world’s people which are psychologically bound like an intimate family,64 but this ideal owes more to Mohism and imported traditions like Buddhism, Christianity, Marxism, and liberal cosmopolitanism that aim to break down particularistic attachments. Every Chinese intellectual knows the famous passage from the Great Learning – a Han dynasty work subsequently canonized by the Song dynasty scholar Zhu Xi (1130–1200) as one of the four Confucian classics – that lays out the road to tianxia: “The personal life is cultivated, the family will be regulated; when the family is regulated, the state will be in order; and when the state is in order, there is peace throughout the world (tianxia)”. Starting from the moral ordering of the individual person and the family, an important goal of Confucianism is to bring order to the state and thereby spread peace throughout the world. The ideal is a harmonious political order of global peace. But nowhere does the Great Learning state that ties to the people outside of the state should be as strong as, or stronger than, ties to people within the state. The reason is simple: ties should be extended from intimates to others, but with diminishing intensity as we move beyond the circle of intimates. We owe more to intimates (starting with the family) than to strangers, both because they are the main sources of happiness and because we need to reciprocate for what they have done for us. In other words, the key social relations do not matter equally: our ethical obligations are strongest to those with whom we have personal relationships, and they diminish in intensity the farther we go from those relationships. We do have an obligation to extend love beyond intimates, but it is not expected that the same degree of emotions and responsibilities will extend to strangers. The web of caring obligations that binds family members is more demanding than that binding citizens, the web of obligations that bind citizens is more demanding than that binding foreigners, and the web binding humans is more demanding than that binding us to non-human forms of life. The ideal of graded love is not meant to deny that we have obligations to the wider world. Just as we should extend ties beyond the family, so too should we extend ties beyond the nation. Extending this concern to outsiders, although with less concern as they extend further and further from the political community, is also natural and right. Hence, Confucians should not just view special concern for fellow citizens

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as a politically necessary compromise or a second-best deviation from an ideal world. Nor is it just a necessary step on the way to the politics of global love and government. At least some sort of special commitment to the political community is required by the logic of graded love, a commitment that should be extended (in diminishing degrees) to outsiders. Zhao’s interpretation of tianxia, in short, has it backwards: attachments to particular political communities should have ethical and political priority over attachments to the world. We do need to think about obligations to the world, but not if it entails systematically overriding obligations to particularistic attachments. The second problem with Zhao’s interpretation of tianxia is that it’s not realistic. He doesn’t provide any plausible mechanism for realizing his ideal. As Zhang Feng puts it, “The critical f law of Zhao’s thesis is his failure to outline any clear pathway that might lead to the creation of the world institutions of the tianxia system … He insists on the priority of the world institution, yet surprisingly fails to provide any description of how it might come about … and [be] maintained”.65 Zhang wrote these words in 2010, and with the rise of nationalist populism that gap between the ideal and the reality has further widened, almost to the point of no return. But we can reformulate Zhao’s ideal so that it is both realistic and desirable, and it’s not so complicated: all we have to do is change “the world” to “East Asia” and defend the ideal of attachment to the East Asian region without the implication that this attachment needs to override ethical and political attachments to the state (or other “lower” forms of communal attachments, such as attachment to the family). So here’s the reformulation of the tianxia ideal: (1) a geographical meaning referring to East Asia; (2) a psychological meaning in the sense that the hearts of the East Asian peoples are unified, minimally in the sense of weak reciprocity, with an aspiration for strong reciprocity; and (3) an institutional meaning in the sense of a hierarchical East Asian political order led by China that pays lip service to the ideal of the equal sovereignty of states. On this modernized account of tianxia, China is the center of East Asia by virtue of its dominant economic status and increasing ability to project military power and it has both extra powers and extra responsibilities in the East Asian region. In practice, it might mean setting up East Asian regional institutions with China as the major power, similar, perhaps, to Germany’s role in the European Union. As a nuclear state, China can give security guarantees and economic benefits to weaker states such as North Korea in exchange for nuclear disarmament. It might mean common East Asian financial institutions (or even a common currency), with China as the major player accompanied by the responsibility to bail out weaker states in times of economic crisis. And the more f lexible (or hypocritical) approach to sovereignty might actually contribute to solving territorial disputes with China’s neighbors because China’s leaders might place less emphasis on the sanctity of territorial boundaries than is currently the case: as Allen Carlson puts it, “In a reconstituted tianxia system, the territorial and jurisdictional concerns which have so preoccupied China’s leaders over the course of the last century could be

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re-imagined as issues involving peripheral regions, not zero-sum disputes over sovereign recognition. In this sense, a tianxia order might pave the way for novel solution of such controversies, and as such lead to greater stability in within the region”. The problem, as Carlson recognizes, is that states along China’s periphery are likely to construe an attempt to impose (or even articulate) a new normative hierarchical order in the East Asian region as a threat: “Within such a system it is clear that China is to occupy the paramount position, while those along its margins are expected to accept such dominance and show fealty to the center”.66 But China’s “peripheral” states need not show fealty in any official sense (hence the key difference with the tributary system), as long as they usually defer to the major power (China) on issues of global significance. Such arrangements seem unlikely now, but stranger things have happened: who could have imagined the European Union in the midst of the Second World War? And, unlike Europe, the long history of an East Asian region with China as the center could provide a psychological basis for the re-establishment and maintenance of attachments to an East Asian region led by China. Still, it must be recognized that China’s neighbors such as South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam – the same countries that were tightly integrated in the China-led tributary system – seem distinctly worried by China’s growing economic and military might. So how could China regain the trust of its neighbors? Obviously a bellicose approach to solving regional disputes cannot be effective in the long term. At the end of the day, China must set a good model at home. As Yan Xuetong puts it, “For China to become a superpower modeled on humane authority, it must first become a model from which other states are willing to learn”.67 As a regional leader, China would also try to provide neighboring states with mutual benefits that underpin weak reciprocity. At a minimum, it means securing the peace. Whatever we think of China’s foreign policy, the fact that it has not launched any wars since 1979 should be a source of comfort. But China should aim for more. Ideally, it would provide the conditions for strong reciprocity by relying on such means as Ashoka-style respectful and restrained speech and Xunzi-style common rituals that generate a sense of community. Unlike the tributary system which involved China teaching the cultural and moral inferiors, the learning curve would work both ways, with “peripheral” states learning from Chinese culture and China learning from neighboring states. The deepest ties between states in a hierarchical system are underpinned by the strongest possible form of reciprocity. From a realpolitik point of view, the United States’ military hegemony in the East Asian region is perhaps the main obstacle to the development of an East Asian tianxia hierarchy led by China. But things could change. North Korea is the major military threat in the East Asian region, and it is possible that the divided Korean peninsula will unify over the next few decades in some form or other. At that point, there would be a weaker case for United States’ troops in the East Asian region and a unified Korea would fall under the “natural” inf luence of China due to its proximity and superior power in East Asia.68 China

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need not (and should not) send troops to Korea to replace the Americans, but it could provide security guarantees to Korea, such as protection against invasion by neighboring countries. This kind of scenario may not appeal to Koreans in favor of full sovereignty, but sometimes less powerful countries need to make the best of less-than-ideal solutions. Canada, for example, was invaded twice by its more powerful southern neighbor (in 1775 and 1812, before Canada became an independent country) and still today many Canadians take pride in being different from Americans. But Canadians know they are a small country (in terms of population and global inf luence) and the government usually refrains from doing things that antagonize the bigger and more powerful southern neighbor. Canada can occasionally object to United States foreign policy (for example, the Canadian parliament objected to the 2003 invasion of Iraq), but Canadians would never dream today of, say, inviting the British (or the Chinese) to build military bases in Canada as a buffer against the United States. Such arrangements also benefit the weaker party: good ties with the Americans are valuable for Canadians because Canada does not have to spend much on the military, with the consequence that the Canadian government can devote more resources to improving the welfare of the Canadian people. So, yes, Canadians are not the equals of Americans on the international stage, but what’s the problem if a bit of inequality under the umbrella of an American-led regional tianxia arrangement benefits the Canadian people?69 Still, it could be argued that American military bases in the East Asian region are really meant to check China’s rise. China may well become the biggest economic power in the world over the next few decades, with more demands for status and global inf luence, and perhaps the United States has no intention of reducing its military inf luence in the East Asian region. This kind of attitude can lead to a disastrous war between two major powers. Jonathan Renshon demonstrates empirically that states attributed less status than they are due based on material capabilities are overwhelmingly more likely (than “satisfied” states) to initiate militarized disputes.70 The policy implication should be obvious: “… conf lict may be avoided through status concessions before the escalation to violent conf lict occurs”.71 Renshon has Russia in mind, but exactly the same point applies in the case of China: if the United States genuinely wants to avoid war in the East Asian region, it should try to accommodate and make concessions to China’s desire to establish a regional hierarchy with itself at the head of the table. In the 1970s, the United States did courageously cut its official diplomatic ties to Taiwan in order to recognize the pre-eminent role of China in the East Asian region, and it should make more such concessions in the future. In short, the most viable path towards global peace in the region involves a bipolar world with the United States and China as heads of two regional hierarchies of states that also benefit the weaker states in the hierarchical relationships. Both China and the United States recognize each other’s leadership in their respective regions, and they work together to solve common global problems such as climate change. But why should other major regional powers such as the

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European Union and Russia accept such an arrangement? The most important reason is that too many global leaders would make it more difficult to coordinate peaceful relations and work on joint global projects. It is fine if Russia and the European Union are recognized as less-than-major powers with more say in their own neighborhoods, but they can’t be equals with China and the United States on the world stage. There must be a hierarchy of regional hierarchical systems. Perhaps the biggest challenge will be to accommodate India. The country’s rate of economic growth has recently overtaken China, and India may well achieve rough parity with China in terms of population and global clout over the next few decades.72 So how can the two countries work together? The situation may not look promising now (the two countries were on the brink of another border war in 2017). Again, we need to invoke Kautilya’s insight that two countries with contiguous borders often regard each other as natural enemies. China and India went to war in 1962, and they have yet to resolve their territorial conf licts (in contrast, China has peacefully resolved territorial conf licts with 11 of its other neighboring countries). But the two countries were both members of the non-aligned movement during the Cold War, and today China is India’s biggest trading partner, thus underpinning mutually beneficial relations of weak reciprocity. Ties between India and China have been improving since early 2018 – China’s President Xi Jinping suggested that “shared Asian values” should trump the geo-political differences between the two countries – and India has emerged as the biggest beneficiary of the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.73 Past history also points the way to a stronger form of reciprocity that underpins lasting peace.74 Buddhism spread peacefully from India to China, to the point that it has become far more inf luential in China. In the 1920s, the poet Tagore deeply marked Chinese intellectual culture when he visited China.75 The great Chinese intellectual Liang Shuming regarded Indian spiritual culture as the apex of human moral growth.76 And the learning was mutual: India benefited from China’s paper, gunpowder, and silk. Perhaps China’s greatest gift to India, according to Amitav Acharya, was the preservation of Buddhist texts. Chinese and Indian translators lived and worked in China and translated and preserved Buddhist texts. After Buddhism disappeared in India and the original Indian texts were lost or destroyed by invaders, these Chinese translations preserved Buddhist sutras and could be re-translated for Indians.77 Buddhism would have been lost to Indians without Chinese help, just as Arabs preserved Greek texts in science and philosophy that would otherwise have been lost. Of course, some differences between China and India, such as different ways of selecting political leaders, need to be respected. But such differences pale when compared to what ought to be deep mutual respect between two countries with thousands of years of history and such glorious and diverse civilizations. Given that India and China had ties of strong reciprocity in the past, how might it be possible to re-establish such ties in the future? Once again, we need to turn to the insights of ancient thinkers. If the leaders of the two great

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Asian powers follow Ashoka’s guidelines for respectful and restrained speech and implement Xunzi’s ideas for rituals that generate a sense of community, their diplomatic, cultural, and people-to-people interactions might well (re) generate a strong sense of reciprocity. It is not impossible to imagine a future world with an Asian hierarchical system jointly led and managed by India and China, to the benefit of both countries, surrounding smaller states, and perhaps even the whole world.78

Notes 1 See Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei, Just Hierarchy: From China to the World, Princeton University Press, forthcoming, ch. 2. This essay draws on chapter 3 from the same book. 2 David A. Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2009, p. 3. See also Jonathan Renshon, Fighting for Status: Hierarchy and Conflict in World Politics, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017 and John M. Hobson and J.C. Sharman, “The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics: Tracing the Social Logics of Hierarchy and Political Change”, European Journal of International Relations, 2005, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 63–98; and Alexander Wendt and Daniel Friedheim, “Hierarchy Under Anarchy: Informal Empire and the East German State”, International Organization, Sept. 1995, Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 689–721. 3 According to “hegemonic stability theory”, the international system is more likely to remain stable when a single state is the dominant power, Joshua Goldstein, International Relations, New York: Pearson-Longman, 2005, p. 107. Whatever the truth of this theory in the past, it is no longer an option given the rise of China. But perhaps the international system is more likely to be stable if two rather than several states are dominant global powers. 4 Yan Xuetong, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011, p. 105 5 Lake, David A. “Hierarchy in International Relations”, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2009, p. 138. 6 Xuetong, Yan. “Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power”, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011, p. 105. 7 Lake, David A. “Hierarchy in International Relations”, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2009, p. 178. 8 See Patrick Olivelle, trans., King, Governance, and Law in Ancient China: Kautilya’s Arthasastra, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013. 9 Olivelle, Patrick. trans., “King, Governance, and Law in Ancient China: Kautilya’s Arthasastra”, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 401–402. 10 Ibid, p. 48. 11 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/index.htm 12 Olivelle, Patrick. trans., “King, Governance, and Law in Ancient China: Kautilya’s Arthasastra”, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 302. 13 Ibid, p. 283. 14 Quoted in Patrick Olivelle, “Relations between States and Rulers in Ancient India: Asoka, Kautilya, and Manu”, p. 13. Paper presented at the workshop on “Classical Indian & Chinese World Views on Global Order: A Comparison”, Berggruen Institute, January 28–31, 2018, Bangkok. 15 Patrick Olivelle, “Relations between States and Rulers in Ancient India: Asoka, Kautilya, and Manu”, p. 9. Paper presented at the workshop on “Classical Indian & Chinese World Views on Global Order: A Comparison”, Berggruen Institute, January 28–31, 2018, Bangkok.

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16 Mark McClish and Patrick Olivelle, eds and trans., “Introduction”, The Arthasastra: Selections from the Classic Indian Work on Statecraft, Indianapolis: Hackett, 2012, p. xlix. 17 Quoted in Patrick Olivelle, “Relations between States and Rulers in Ancient India: Asoka, Kautilya, and Manu”, p. 13. Paper presented at the workshop on “Classical Indian & Chinese World Views on Global Order: A Comparison”, Berggruen Institute, January 28–31, 2018, Bangkok, p. 18. 18 Quoted in Theodore de Bary et al, eds. Sources of Indian Tradition, Delhi: Motilal Banardidass, 1963, pp. 153. 19 Quoted in Olivelle, “Relations between States and Rulers in Ancient India,” pp.18, 19. 20 Edict XII, quoted in Rajeev Bhargava, “Asoka’s Dhamma as Civic Religion: Toleration, Civility, Communal Harmony,” Paper presented at the workshop on “Classical Indian & Chinese World Views on Global Order: A Comparison,” Berggruen Institute, 28-31 January 2018, Bangkok, pp. 58-59. 21 Ibid, p. 47. 22 Rajeev Bhargava draws a parallel with the Confucian ideal of harmony. See Bhargava, “Asoka’s Dhamma as Civic Religion”. 23 Arguably, Xunzi’s student Han Feizi, who systematized the “Legalist” tradition in ancient China, is a more consistent amoral realist than Kautilya. See Daniel A. Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006, ch. 8. Han Feizi, however, went rogue. He systematically rejected key assumptions of his teacher’s theory – that human nature can be improved, that legal punishment should come second to rituals, and that “humane authority” should set the moral standard for evaluating rulers – and proposed cruel policies, such as killing Confucian thinkers, that would have resulted in the execution of his own teacher. 24 These translations of Xunzi draw on John Knoblock’s translation of Xunzi, Changsha: Hunan Publishing House, 1999, but they have been modified. 25 This section draws on Daniel A. Bell, China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, ch. 3. 26 Ritual per se is not sufficient. As we will see, rituals can engage and thus transform the emotions, but Xunzi also argues for extensive and life-long reading of great works to enhance the mind. Xunzi leads with chapter 1, “An Exhortation to Learning”, a work well known to Chinese university students because they are forced to memorize passages for the national university examinations. 27 Eric L. Hutton, “Introduction”, Xunzi: The Complete Text, trans. with an introduction by Eric L. Hutton, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014, p. xxvii. 28 Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals in Contemporary China, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, p. 228. 29 The one exception, of course, is the hierarchical relationship between the living and dead: the dead cannot be conscious about the common fate with the living and they do not have the ability to reciprocate in any way, assuming that ghosts are not real. 30 The next section draws on Yan, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, chapter 2, as well as Daniel’s introduction to this book. 31 Xunzi, 10, “Enriching the State”, quoted in Yan, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, p. 81. 32 Xunzi, 11, “Humane Authority and Hegemony”, quoted in Yan, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, pp. 88–89. 33 Xunzi, “On the regulations of a humane authority”, 9.5. Here we mark an area of disagreement with Yan Xuetong, who criticizes Xunzi’s notion of humane authority on the grounds that he neglects to mention that it also needs a foundation in hard power. Xunzi does have an extensive discussion of domestic policies, including the need for an extensive bureaucracy, see esp. books 9 and 13, designed to benefit the people and strengthen the state: policies that the humane authority should try to implement.

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34 Xunzi, “Enriching the state”. 35 Quoted in Yan, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, p. 96 36 Xunzi 18, “Correcting: A Discussion”. Quoted in Yan, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, pp. 96–97. 37 Yan, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, p. 98. 38 John K. Fairbank and Ssu-Yu Teng, “On the Ch’ing Tributary System”, in Ch’ing Administration: Three Studies, ed. John K. Fairbank and Ssu Yu-Teng, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960, pp. 112–113. 39 D.C. Kang, East Asia before the West: Five centuries of trade and tribute, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010, p. 105. 40 Ibid, p. 63, 114. See also Ge, What Is China? p. 138. 41 Wang G.W., “Ming foreign relations: Southeast Asia”, in D. Twitchett and F.W. Mote, eds., The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 8: The Ming Dynasty, part 2, pp. 1,368–1,644, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 301–332, quote on p. 320. 42 Babones, American Tianxia, p. 23. 43 Immanuel C.Y. Hsu, China’s Entrance into the Family of Nations, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960, pp. 8–9. Contemporary research shows that common Confucian values still inform the former “tributary states” of East Asia such as Korea and Vietnam. See, e.g., Nisbett, The Geography of Thought; The Cultural Foundations of Learning; and Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy. The Confucian values that were transmitted to Vietnam also helped the Vietnamese to resist foreign invaders in subsequent history, see Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, New York: Vintage, 1989. 44 Kang, East Asia before the West, pp. 8–9, ch. 3–4. 45 Zhang Feng, Chinese Hegemony: Grand strategy and international institutions in East Asian History, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015, pp.7, 177 46 Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. xi. As David Kang notes, however, Johnston’s study focuses mainly on nomads on China’s northern and Western frontier; Korean, Japan, and Vietnam shared China’s “Confucian” worldviews and had far more stable and peaceful relations with China, Kang, East Asia before the West, pp.10. 47 Zhang Feng, “Rethinking the ‘Tribute System’: Broadening the Conception Horizon of Historical East Asian Politics,” Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2009, 2, pp. 545-574. 48 Zhuang Guotu, “On the Illusiveness of Tributary System: A Case of the Tributary Relations between Ancient China and Southeast Asia” 《略論朝貢 制度的虛幻：以古代中國與東南亞的朝貢關係為例》， [An account of the unreality of the tributary system; An example of the relationships in tributary system in ancient China and East Asia], 南洋問題研究 Southeast Asian Affairs [Research on problems in Nanyang], 2005, NO.3, pp. 1-8. 49 Yan, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, p. 104. 50 For an argument that “untruths” can be useful despite knowing they are false, see Anthony Appiah, As If: Idealization and Ideals, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2017. 51 Dennis C. Rasmussen, The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship that Shaped the Modern World, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017, pp. 174–175. 52 Hutton, “Introduction”, Xunzi: The Complete Text, p. xxix. 53 See Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy, ch. 2. 54 Courtney J. Fung, “China and the Responsibility to Protect: From Opposition to Advocacy”, United States Institute of Peace, June 8, 2016, https://www.usip.org/publ ications/2016/06/china-and-responsibility-protect-opposition-advocacy 55 James Kynge, China Shakes the World: A Titan’s Rise and Troubled Future – And the Challenge for America, New York: Mariner Books, 2017.

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56 See President Trump’s speech at Davos on January 26, 2018, https://www.weforum. org/agenda/2018/01/president-donald-trumps-davos-address-in-full-8e14ebc1-7 9bb-4134-8203-95efca182e94/ 57 “Making the world”, to convey an active, non-static ideal, may be more appropriate, thanks to Roger Ames for this insight). 58 Yangfan, Li. “On the Concept of Tianxia” Research in International Politics, NO. 1, 2002. pp. 107, 111. 59 試論唐朝的「中國」與「天下」 Fang, Li. “An Analysis of ‘China’ and ‘tianxia’ in the Tang Dynasty” Research on the history and geography of China’s borderlands, June 2007, VOL. 17, NO.2. 60 Pines, Yuri “Changing Views of Tianxia in Pre-Imperial Discourse,” OE 43 (2002), 1/2, pp.108, http://www.oriens-extremus.de/inhalt/pdf/43/OE43-09.pdf. 61 Tingyang, Zhao “All-under-Heaven and Methodological Relationism: An Old Story and New World Peace” Contemporary Chinese Political Thought: Debates and Perspectives, eds. Fred Dallmayr and Zhao Tingyang, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2012. 62 William A. Callahan, “Chinese Visions of World Order: Post-hegemonic or a New Hegemony?” International Studies Review, 2008, 10, pp. 749-61. 63 Zhao, “All-Under-Heaven and Methodological Relationism: An Old Story and New World Peace”, in Contemporary Chinese Political Thoguht: Debates and Perspectives, pp. 73–74. 64 Ibid, p. 79. 65 Zhang Feng, “The Tianxia System: World Order in a Chinese Utopia”, Chinese Heritage Quarterly, March 21, 2010. 66 Allen Carlson, “Moving beyond Sovereignty? A Brief Consideration of Recent Changes in China’s Approach to International Order and the Emergence of the Tianxia Concept”, Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 20, No. 68, 2011, pp. 101–102. 67 Yan, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, p. 99. 68 For an argument that China and Korea should re-establish a Ming-like system underpinned by the principle that “Ritual lies in the deference of the small to the big and the caring of the big for the small” (春秋左氏傳) but without adherence to the formal tributary system, see Orun Kihyup Kim, “Korea’s Experiences with Big Neighbors”, paper presented at the Berggruen Institute workshop “What Is Tianxia?”, Peking University, June 16–17, 2008. 69 Salvatore Babones puts forward the idea of an “American tianxia” appropriate for the modern world, with Canada and other Anglo-Saxon allies in the zone of “internal barbarians”, Babones, American Tianxia: Chinese money, American power, and the end of history, Bristol: Policy Press, 2017, p.22. This proposal may work as a defense of an American-led tianxia hierarchical system in North America and Europe, but it is a complete non-starter if China and other “wild” barbarians are meant to endorse such an order. 70 Renshon, Fighting for Status, ch. 5. 71 Ibid, p. 270. 72 See Gideon Rachman, Easternization: Asia’s Rise and America’s Decline from Obama to Trump and Beyond, New York: Other Press, 2017. 73 Amy Kazmin and Ben Bland, “China and India use summit to push for improved ties”, Financial Times, April 28, 2018; Kiran Stacey, Simon Mundy, and Emily Feng, “India benefits from AIIB loans despite China tensions”, Financial Times, May 18, 2018. More generally, China has been seeking better ties with its neighbors, at least partly because the United States has been more aggressively working to counter China’s rise. 74 The point here is not that strong reciprocity should replace weak reciprocity: strong reciprocity that is not founded on common economic interests may not be very stable. In other words, the most stable form of reciprocity between states would be founded on both forms of reciprocity.

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75 http://english.cri.cn/12954/2016/05/05/2743s926586.htm 76 Liang Shuming, 東西文化及其哲學 [Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies], Beijing: The Commercial Pres, 2009; orig. pub. 1921. 77 Email sent to Daniel on February 24, 2017. 78 It’s worth speculating about the implications of an Asian regional order led by China and India bound by strong ties of reciprocity on the international political system. The global order might be less centered on liberal individualist values promoted by Western powers but that might not be a bad thing if the alternative value system is more communitarian in the sense of family and group-oriented values promoted by India and China. The relevant dichotomy might be individualistic-communitarian rather than liberal-authoritarian. I am grateful for written comments by Chu Yun-han and Zheng Yongnian as well as the oral comments by participants of the workshop.

References Appiah, Anthony. As If: Idealization and Ideals. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017. Babones, Salvatore. American Tianxia: Chinese Money, American Power, and the End of History. Bristol: Policy Press, 2017, pp. 22–23. Bary, Theodore de et al., eds. Sources of Indian Tradition. Delhi: Motilal Banardidass, 1963, p. 153. Bell, Daniel A. Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context. Princeton: Princeton University Press, chs. 2, 8, 2006. Bell, Daniel A. China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press, ch. 3, 2008. Bell, Daniel A. and Wang Pei. Just Hierarchy: From China to the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, chs. 2–3, 2020. Bhargava, Rajeev. Asoka’s Dhamma as Civic Religion: Toleration, Civility, Communal Harmony. Paper presented at the workshop on ‘Classical Indian & Chinese World Views on Global Order: A Comparison’, Berggruen Institute, 28–31 January 2018, pp. 47, 58–59. Callaghan, William A. “Chinese Visions of World Order: Post-hegemonic or a New Hegemony?” International Studies Review, vol. 10, 2008, pp. 749–761. Carlson, Allen. “Moving Beyond Sovereignty?” Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 20, no. 68, 2011, pp. 101–102. Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Confucianism and Family Rituals in Contemporary China. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, p. 228. Fairbank, John K. and Ssu Yu-Teng. “On the Ch’ing Tributary System,” in Ch’ing Administration: Three Studies, ed. John K. Fairbank and Ssu Yu-Teng. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960, pp. 112–113. Fung, Courtney J. China and the Responsibility to Protect: From Opposition to Advocacy. United States Institute of Peace, 8 June, 2016, http://www.usip.org/publications/20 16/06/china-and-responsibility-protect-opposition-advocacy. Goldstein, Joshua. International Relations. New York: Pearson-Longman, 2005, p. 107. Hobson, John M. and J.C. Sharman. “The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics: Tracing the Social Logics of Hierarchy and Political Change,” European Journal of International Relations, vol. 11, no. 1, 2005, pp. 63–98. Hsu, Immanuel C.Y. China’s Entrance Into the Family of Nations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960, pp. 8–9.

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Hutton, Eric L. Xunzi: The Complete Text, trans. with an introduction by Eric L. Hutton. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, pp. 27–29. Johnston, Alastair Ian. Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 11. Kang, D.C. East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010, chs. 3–4, pp. 5, 8–9, 63, 105, 114. Kazmin, Amy and Ben Bland. “China and India Use Summit to Push for Improved Ties,” Financial Times, 28 April 2018. Kim, Orun Kihyup. Korea’s Experiences with Big Neighbors. Peking University, 16–17 June 2008. Kynge, James. China Shakes the World: A Titan’s Rise and Troubled Future – And the Challenge for America. New York: Mariner Books, 2017. Lake, David A. Hierarchy in International Relations. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009, pp. 3, 138, 178. Li, Fang. “An Analysis of ‘China’ and ‘tianxia’ in the Tang Dynasty,” Research on the History and Geography of China’s Borderlands, vol. 17, no. 2, June 2007. Liang, Shuming. Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies. Beijing: The Commercial Pres, 2009, orig. pub. 1921. McClish, Mark and Patrick Olivelle, eds. and trans. The Arthasastra: Selections from the Classic Indian Work on Statecraft (Introduction). Indianapolis: Hackett, 2012, p. 49. Nisbett, Richard E. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently ... and Why. New York: Free Press, 2003. Olivelle, Patrick, trans. King, Governance, and Law in Ancient China: Kautilya’s Arthasastra. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 48, 283, 302, 401–402. Olivelle, Patrick. Relations between States and Rulers in Ancient India: Asoka, Kautilya, and Manu. Paper presented at the workshop on ‘Classical Indian & Chinese World Views on Global Order: A Comparison’, Berggruen Institute, 28–31 January 2018, Bangkok, pp. 9, 13. Pines, Yuri. “Changing Views of Tianxia in Pre-Imperial Discourse,” OE 43, 2002, vol. 1/2, p. 108, http://www.oriens-extremus.de/inhalt/pdf/43/OE43-09.pdf. Rachman, Gideon. Easternization: Asia’s Rise and America’s Decline from Obama to Trump and Beyond. New York: Other Press, 2017. Rasmussen, Dennis C. The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped the Modern World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017, pp. 174–175. Renshon, Jonathan. Fighting for Status: Hierarchy and Conflict in World Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. Sheehan, Neil. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. New York: Vintage, 1989. Stacey, Kiran, Simon Mundy and Emily Feng. “India Benefits from AIIB Loans Despite China Tensions,” Financial Times, 18 May 2018. Tingyang, Zhao. “All-Under-Heaven and Methodological Relationism: An Old Story and New World Peace,” in Contemporary Chinese Political Thought: Debates and Perspectives, ed. Fred Dallmayr and Zhao Tingyang. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2012. Tingyang, Zhao. The Possibility of ‘All-Under-Heaven’. Beijing: Citic Press, 2016. Wang G.W. “Ming Foreign Relations: Southeast Asia,” in The Cambridge History of China: The Ming Dynasty, Part 2, Vol. 8, ed. D. Twitchett and F.W. Mote. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 301–332, 1368–1644.

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Wendt, Alexander and Daniel Friedheim. “Hierarchy Under Anarchy: Informal Empire and the East German State,” International Organization, vol. 49, no. 4, 1995, pp. 689–672. Xuetong, Yan. Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011, pp. 81, 88, 89, 96–99, 104, 105. Yangfan, Li. “On the Concept of Tianxia,” Research in International Politics, vol. 1, 2002, pp. 107, 111. Zhang, Feng. “Rethinking the ‘Tribute System’: Broadening the Conception Horizon of Historical East Asian Politics,” Chinese Journal of International Politics, vol. 2, 2009, pp. 545–574. Zhang, Feng. “The Tianxia System: World Order in a Chinese Utopia,” Chinese Heritage Quarterly, 21 March, 2010. Zhang, Feng. Chinese Hegemony: Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015, pp. 7, 177. Zhuang, Guo-Tu. “On the Illusiveness of Tributary System: A Case of the Tributary Relations between Ancient China and Southeast Asia,” Southeast Asian Affairs, 2005, vol. 3, pp. 1–8.

PART IV

Conclusion

16 ASIA'S RISE AND THE TRANSITION TO A POST-WESTERN GLOBAL ORDER Yves Tiberghien

Introduction: disruptions, power shifts, and the future world order This book explores the nature of our current world order and the possible transition to a new post-Western order. Admittedly, this is a tall order in the post-2008 period and particularly the post-Trump period. Indeed, what is most striking today is the amount of disruption, change, and fragmentation happening both at domestic and global levels across the world. Darrell West calls this a moment of mega-change encompassing technological change, social change, identity change, and change in international relations: “Something big is happening in the current period. Social, economic, and political patterns no longer are fixed but are generating rapid and transformative shifts. People need to be prepared for a scope of change that is grander than is typically envisioned”.1 The celebrated scientist Martin Rees argues that the speed of technological transformation ahead (biotech, cyber, artificial intelligence [AI], etc.) is such that it brings great potential risks. It requires an urgent new approach to governance so as to manage the great potential gaps in welfare and ensuing conf licts among regions.2 Focusing on the current artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, Kai-Fu Lee argues both that it can transform the social order through a winner-take-all economic model and rebalance the world order toward China and the United States.3 Meanwhile, the acceleration of climate change and associated planetary crisis has begun to force drastic changes at all levels, a foretaste of momentous disruptions ahead.4 Within many advanced economies and beyond, the social inequalities and regional disparities generated by technological change and globalization have led to the rise of anger, resentment, and populism. In turn, populist political entrepreneurs in key Western countries are advocating the unraveling of the liberal international order that has enabled globalization.5

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At the same time, the international relations system is going through major multi-pronged change, including the apparent failures of United States liberal hegemony since its apex in 1991–1992,6 the rise of China and other emerging nations,7 and the general multipolarization and complexification of world affairs with the rise of non-state actors and multi-nodal networks, even a possible “multiplex” theater.8 These are but a few of the current disruptions and changes hitting our social and global order. Think tanks and policy analysts talk of a period of non-linear change, volatility, and uncertainty. In order to guide the analysis of the impact of current disruptions on the Western liberal order, the debate among the diverse authors of this book can be broken down into five separate questions. First, what is the current state of the Western liberal order? What are its deep drivers and sources of resilience? What are its limits and gaps? How legitimate is it? The exchanges in this book have revealed a wide range of views and a great deal of variation within components of the order. Some areas are robust and even progressing (e.g. Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs], Paris Agreement). Other dimensions are decaying (e.g. trade and cyber governance), while yet others are muddling through (G20). For Cox, the West can still count on significant structural advantages at the heart of the current system, no matter where the current changes lead. We may be in a period of interregnum, but we are still far from a post-Liberal, post-Western order. Similarly, Buzan acknowledges that the West is losing ground, yet it remains at the heart of increasingly more pluralist system. Western liberal ideas remain embedded at the heart of international society. Katzenstein sees both an order that is “plural, complex, unpredictable”, yet also resilient. The West has nurtured a “polymorphic globalization”, but it is easy to overly focus on short-term disruptions, when disruptions have occurred at regular intervals. Wang reminds us that the Chinese mind sees a unique world order as unnecessary and meaningless. Instead, the China conceptualization accepts that two world orders (one Western, one Chinese) could live together, side by side. In contrast to these voices, Tsunekawa argues that liberal internationalism was never complete or liberal. Under President Trump, the United States’ commitment to liberal internationalism may be failing, triggering a possible search for new frameworks. Mahbubani goes further and argues that global power has shifted so fundamentally that major change is unavoidable. The fact that the United States is unwilling to reform international organizations and to cede power to the newly emerged nations (mostly in Asia) may well precipitate the erosion of these institutions. In acting in such a way, the United States is violating the precepts of the order it created. To these voices, we could add Kagan’s recent argument that the 2016 election in the United States and other ongoing tensions marked a profound shift against the liberal order created by the United States, putting this order in profound danger. He writes: “the liberal order is fragile and impermanent. Like a garden, it is ever under siege from the natural

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forces of history, the jungle whose vines and weeds constantly threaten to overwhelm it”.9 In the same vein, in a recent Brookings report, Jones and Taussig argue that the liberal order has entered a phase of great geopolitical struggle: “At the heart of the new era of geopolitical competition is a struggle over the role and inf luence of democracy in the international order”.10 Second, how resilient are the underlying universalistic ideas and norms of the liberal order? Pogge argues that the essence of liberalism was to advance three core ideas: the idea of rule of law; the idea of freedom (from violence, from needs, but also freedom of movement and freedom of participation to government); and the idea of equality. It may be possible to transition from an order based on power, he argues, to an order based on those core values. If this transition can be made, then the core values of liberalism will remain in place. Bell adds that these concepts could be further enriched into truly universal values, by adding the concept of harmony and the importance of respect for the community, in addition to individual rights. In other words, it may be possible to envisage a slightly hybridized version of the liberal order that would encompass other human values, making this enriched liberal order more resilient. Third, how resilient is the level of domestic support for the liberal order in Western countries themselves? Is this support crumbling in the face of rising inequality, the crisis of capitalism, and growing social anger? The authors of this book tend to converge on this question and acknowledge this growing crisis. Dunn discusses the crisis of liberalism. Streeck argues that globalization has outpaced the coping capacity of democracies and triggered a domestic revolt, ushering in a period of populism and great uncertainty. Schmitter states that liberal democracy faces its greatest crisis since the 1930s. The key link is the relationship between democracy and capitalism. In Katzenstein’s view, financial globalization is causing the crisis of democracy. Mahbubani points to a strange dysfunction in the global order: the West controls the levers of power and yet Western societies have become pessimistic, in large part because of the growing concentration of wealth among the richer class. Where authors may disagree is on whether this internal crisis within Western societies dooms the liberal order or whether the liberal order can generate solutions and renewal to this crisis. Fourth is the question of the changing balance of power and its implications. Can order and power be decoupled? If the West loses its dominance, will the liberal order crumble? Most authors tend to disagree. Pogge argues that the liberal order can transition from an order created by power to an order based on nonpartisan values. Buzan sees the liberal legacy of internal society as entrenched and likely to persist beyond the actual power of the West. Mahbubani agrees, showing that emerging nations have mostly accepted the liberal order. Yet, the transition process matters. Indeed, the West could well undo its universalistic norms by refusing to cede legitimate power, a point he also makes in his recent book.11 Fifth, even if we assume that we are in the midst of a transition from a Western liberal order to an Asian or Chinese order, what is China’s vision for a new order? Given that China successfully rose within this liberal order, is China actually a

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supporter of this order? Or will China prove to be a disrupting power, one that advances its own new approach? In this book, Zheng argues that China does not have a pre-ordained concept of world order, since China’s worldview always accepted the existence of other centers of civilization. Instead, China has pursued an approach of tailored multilateralism, an approach that is f lexible, constantly adaptive, and varied; but ultimately an approach that does not challenge wellestablished international institutions and norms. Similarly, Chu sees China’s agenda as still emerging and cautious, rather than a revisionist agenda. China may advance new initiatives and seek partial revisions, but the West has actually succeeded in socializing China into existing multilateral institutions. Chu sees a future post-hegemonic polymorphous world that will be shaped neither by a Pax Americana nor a Pax Sinica. This chapter focuses on one ultimate question in this multifaceted debate: what is the impact of the historic rise of Asia – and particularly of China – on the global liberal order? What is the most useful theoretical lens to understand the current process and gain some leverage over the possible scenarios ahead? There is no question that we have been living through a period of historic power shift since 2000. In nominal dollars, the share of advanced democracies (OECD countries) has dropped from 83% of world gross domestic product (GDP) in 1990 and 82% in 2000 to 61.5% in 2017, a shift of 20 points in the 17 years of the new millennium.12 In purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) share dropped from 62% of world GDP in 1990 and 60% in 2000 to 44% in 2017, putting the “West” (including Japan) in a minority position for the first time in over a century. Conversely, China’s share of world GDP increased from a mere 1.6% of the world in 1990 in nominal dollars (4% in PPP terms) to 4% in 2000 (8% in PPP terms) and 15.2% in 2017 (18.3% in PPP terms). Meanwhile, India’s share rose from 1.4% of world GDP both in 1990 and 2000 (4% in PPP terms) to 3.2% in 2017 (7.4% in PPP terms). The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) zone went from 2% of the world in 2000 to 3.4% (5% in PPP terms) in 2017 (6.2% in PPP terms). In sum between 1990 and 2017, over 20 points of world GDP in nominal dollars was accrued to emerging economies, of which 14 points went to China alone. Most of that transfer of world economic power took place between 2000 and 2020. This is a massive displacement in geo-economic terms. Naturally, growing economic power is the foundation for growing military power as well. The impact of China’s growing weight on the order also depends on its intentions. This begs the question of whether or not China has a grand strategy with respect to the global order. Two observations are in order. First, China is increasingly active in regional and global governance, especially since 2012. Recent high points of activity include the November 2014 hosting of the APEC summit and the f lurry of associated activity, the September 2016 G20 summit in Hangzhou, and the January 2017 speech by President Xi Jinping in Davos. Second, China’s global behavior is diverse. Sometimes, China acts in support

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of the current global order in cooperation with the United States, as in the G20 process. Sometimes, China works in cooperation with the European Union to help develop new dimensions in the global institutional order, as in the case of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) or in global environmental governance (climate, biodiversity, genetically engineered foods). Sometimes, China cooperates with fellow emerging countries (BRICS) in pushing for reforms of the current global order, as in the cases of global financial institutions or cyber governance. Yet in other cases, China carves its own new path, as in the case of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) or in energy governance. What can explain such variations in behavior? The existing literature offers a range of system-level explanations for the impact of the rise of China in particular on the global order. Liberal views are rather optimist and see the United States-led global liberal order as sufficiently resilient and f lexible to absorb rising powers within its rules and norms.13 In fact, the liberal order has enabled and supported the very rise of emerging powers, turning them into stakeholders of that order. The Great Financial Crisis of 2008 also brought established and emerging powers together in a joint sense of destiny, proving that the order is holding well. Realist views stand against such optimism. They argue that rapid power shifts can only accelerate competition, make the security dilemma more acute, and gradually erode the ability of established and emerging powers to cooperate over the global order.14 Emerging powers are bound to push for strategic space and voice in global institutions, while established powers have incentives to use the existing scriptures of the order to constrain the rise of new powers like China. The problem can be particularly acute when one fast-rising power is on the cusp to dethrone the hegemon in the global order, as is currently the case between China and the United States – the so-called Thucydides Trap.15 Worse still, the shift of power can be so threatening to the traditional hegemon that it may turn rogue against the order it created in order to protect its interest.16 Alternatively, constructivist scholars see a more complex landscape, where preferences and interests are shaped by learning, norms, and societal interactions.17 The gradual shift away from United States hegemony may usher a new decentralized “multiplex world”, where interactions among the established and emerging powers create a new kind of stability.18 This chapter disagrees with general systemic explanations and argues for a framework of mediated strategic interactions to understand the impact of the rise of China (and Asia) on the global liberal order. It sees the initial liberal order itself as a work in progress, with the perpetual need for adjustments, repairs, and enhancements in response to technological, political, natural, or political disruptions. Yet, the evolution of the different institutions and components of this overall order is likely to be the result of repeated interactions between emerging and established powers, where each move by one key player leads to a response by other players. This opens the door for an increasingly diversified and hybrid global order, in which some institutions may remain unchanged, while others

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appear de novo. In the process of institutional negotiation and creation, new norms may also appear and complement the traditional Western liberal norms. I also argue that entrenched domestic narratives, experiences, and frameworks mediate the understanding of actions taken by other key powers and shape the reactions to these initial steps. This domestic mediation of a high-stake strategic interaction among great powers over the global order is often misunderstood and opens the door to misperceptions, overreactions, and ruptures. This chapter builds on insights from recent historical work on China’s international strategy to extract key features of China’s domestic framing.19 One common paradoxical feature that these authors present about China is the enduring geographical and historical vulnerability experienced by China’s elites and how this shapes their perceptions of external signals. Applying this framework of mediated strategic interactions to China’s emerging role in the global order, this chapter argues that China’s approach does not follow any grand strategy toward world order. Rather, it is gradual, interactive, and hybrid. It combines sudden innovative accelerations with slow and prudent status quo-preserving behavior. China’s approach also varies according to policy domains and according to types of theaters (regional vs. global). It is inherently tied to its domestic strategic priorities and often operates as an offshoot of domestic policies. Where China finds significant systemic space in a permissive global order, it may act as a systemic stabilizer or systemic balancer, depending on domestic frames. Where China faces limited space or even threatening actions by traditional power, it acts either as a systemic innovator or as a systemic disruptor. Similar observations can be made about India’s interactions with the Liberal International Order (LIO). The remainder of this chapter proceeds in five steps. The first section evaluates the initial state of the liberal international order in the 21st century and discusses the current conundrum of global governance reforms. The second section presents the theoretical framework of mediated strategic interactions to analyze change in the global order. The third section turns to the China question in the global order and unpacks domestic frames prevalent in China toward the global order. The fourth section offers a brief discussion of empirical variations across several dimensions of current negotiations of change in the global order. The final section concludes and offers possible scenarios ahead.

Liberal international order and global governance in the 21st century What is the nature of the LIO? What are its fundamental organizing principles? How does it differ from earlier forms of international order? And what are key challenges facing this LIO today? Ikenberry defines an international political order as a system of accepted relations among states that can overcome differences in power20: “political order

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refers to ‘governing’ arrangements among a group of states, including its fundamental rules, principles, and institutions” (23). This requires “basic organizing arrangements” that provide rules of the game. Ikenberry defines three dominant types of political order throughout history: balance of power order (relying on the equilibrium of power among key states), hegemonic order (relying on the preponderance of power by one state), and constitutional order (relying on limits on the return to power) (24). In turn, Ikenberry analyzes the modern LIO as the result of a gradual evolution encompassing the legacy of the British Empire, Wilsonian liberalism of post-First World War, and liberal institutionalism of Bretton Woods (1944) and the post-Second World War period.21 He defines the generic Western LIO as “order that is relatively, open, rule-based, and progressive” (2). In its general sense, the LIO encompasses “open markets, international institutions, cooperative security, democratic community, progressive change, collective problem solving, shared sovereignty, the rule of law” (2). Ikenberry sees the post-Second World War version of the LIO as a distinctive form of LIO, namely “a liberal hegemonic order”, defined as “the provision of security, wealth creation, and social advancement” (xi). This order was not just a generic rules-based international order, but one with an active manager. Ikenberry calls the United States “owner and operator” of the LIO, “supporting the rules and institutions of liberal institutionalism but also enjoying special rights and privileges” (2). The LIO relies on “strategic understandings and hegemonic bargains” (2). In terms of the typology of international orders, this post-Second World War version of the LIO was a combination of a hierarchical order and of constitutional order, with a “loose system of multilateral rules and institutions” (7). As has been well analyzed in two recent historical books, the United States approach to the world has always embedded imperial ambitions, along with ideals of internationalism. 22 The tension between these two drivers has ebbed and f lowed, with different domestic currents coming to power in the cycle of presidential elections. Nevertheless, visionary idealist leaders did try to gradually enlarge and entrench the constraining power of internal law, rules, and norms on state behavior within the enabling environment of this LIO. 23 This fused order combining inherited liberal norms, hegemonic power, and newly created rules and institutions, has clearly been successful, offering space for wealth creation and system-level peace not seen before in human history. Kagan writes: “the creation of the liberal order has been an act of defiance against both history and human nature”.24 To Western policy-makers, the LIO appears as a sustainable set of global norms, rules, and institutions that support the spread of market-based open economics, along with freedom and democracy. Players such as Canada, Japan, or the European Union declare to following the principles of such a “rules-based international order”. Yet, the LIO only functions in such a durable way because of five distinct components:

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A security architecture centered on United States alliances; Mutually beneficial liberal interdependence of trade, investment, finance, tourism, and human f lows supported by the United States and a critical mass of other large countries; Global rules and institutions as anchors for this liberal matrix and guarantors against cheating and occasional crises; Globally accepted norms of economic openness and liberal political ideas; And domestic support within systemically important countries for these four levels of the LIO.

Within this system of interactive pieces, global rules and institutions have emerged as a sensitive frontier issue for the durability of the LIO. These global rules are essential to maintain commerce, support international exchange, and provide global public goods. These rules and institutions require regular updating and renovation in the face of technological, natural, and economic changes. Yet, this process of global governance reform always has distributional consequences and is thus fraught with conf licts, particularly in times of rapid shifts in power. As a result, the gradual expansion of markets through globalization has increasingly outpaced the capacity of global governance to generate sufficient rules of the game, generating increased levels of volatility and risk.25 With a series of financial crises, technological challenges, and environmental systemic risks, along with power shifts, global rules and regimes have been gradually stretched. The various key arenas of global governance have faced erosion and conf licts, as shown in Table 16.1 below. As shown in Table 16.1, unified global governance has become increasingly fragmented, with the possible exception of the global monetary system and global financial governance, even though these two arenas have been unable to develop sufficiently robust and legitimate rules. Climate change governance saw great progress with the Paris Agreement in 2015, only to face United States withdrawal after 2017. Trade was long seen as the most robust pillar of the global governance architecture with the 1995 World Trade Organization (WTO) creation. Yet, the global consensus has increasingly frayed, leading initially to a proliferation of free-trade agreements and eventually to a global trade war initiated by the United States in 2017. Key arenas, such as global investments, energy, and cyber security lack unified regimes of global governance and rely on competitive bilateral or regional agreements. Summing up, the LIO of the post-Second World War period is a hybrid order, combining liberal norms and interdependence with a security structure rooted in United States hegemony, and a set of global rules and institutions that undergird global economic activity. The liberal order has also supported democratic norms and the spread of democracy, ensuring a degree of interactive support between domestic politics and global politics. At the same time, the relation between domestic democracy and the liberal international order was never a simple one, given that both global institutions and United

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TABLE 16.1 The state of key pillars of global economic governance

Major Global Regimes

Overall Situation

Key Battle Fronts

Trade

Erosion of unified global regime (WTO)

Foreign Direct Investment

Lack of global governance (failure of Multilateral Agreement on Investment in 1996)

International Monetary System (Currency) Finance

$-centered global system without global governance Inadequate global regulations to handle systemic risks

WTO crisis, proliferations of Free Trade Agreements; competition of mega-FTAs; trade war after 2017 Reliance on Bilateral Investment Treaties, conf licts over global rules in strategic sectors or dealing with state-owned entities Competition with Euro and RMB

Development (funding and norms) Climate change

Erosion of Washington Consensus, competing visions After long delay, incomplete Paris Agreement Great tensions around cyber Limited elements of security and governance of AI internet governance, no agreed rules and norms on cyber security No global regime, International Energy Agency competition inadequate WTO vs. UN and national Genetically Modified Organisms rules battle

Cyber governance

Energy Food regulations

Limited G20 progress, creation of Financial Stability Board; further IMF reforms stalled by US WB/ADB vs. AIIB, NDB, BRI; along with new SDG consensus US withdrawal

States hegemony often intruded into the domestic democratic realms of many countries. In recent years, the LIO has faced multi-pronged headwinds from several concomitant disruptions: the gradual expansion of globalization beyond the underlying set of global rules; the gradual disruptive forces of globalization for domestic societies through the generation of great inequalities and dislocation; growing political discontent against both globalization and the general LIO in the United States and other key countries; and technological and climate shocks. In the United States, a key debate has arisen regarding the self-inf licted overstretch of the United States-led liberal hegemony. While relatively sanguine on the ability of the LIO to provide incentives for rising states like China to get

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somewhat embedded into the order, Ikenberry noted a key vulnerability introduced in the LIO when the United States reached a moment of unipolarity after the end of the Cold War. “The rise of unipolarity has altered – and to some extent diminished – the incentives that the United States has to bind itself to global rules and institutions”.26 This new set of incentives played a crucial role in the actions of the Bush administration with respect to the war in Iraq and the turn against many international institutions. Ikenberry calls this a “crisis of authority within the old hegemonic organization of liberal order, not a crisis in the deep principles of the order itself. It is a crisis of governance” (6). Walt goes further, arguing that United States liberal hegemony, carried by United States foreign policy elites since the early 1990s, has put the United States in great jeopardy and requires an urgent pulling back toward “offshore balancing” and more limited support for the LIO.27 Likewise, Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony has backfired and generated instability and conf lict, as it sought to override the core principles of international life, realism, and nationalism. He concludes: “states that pursue ambitious foreign policies, as the United States has done in recent years, end up making the world less peaceful. Moreover, they risk undermining liberalism at home, an outcome that should strike fear into the heart of every liberal”.28 Ultimately, given the reliance of the LIO on United States hegemony and a secondary web of close alliances, no disruption may be greater for the sustainability of the LIO than the rise of China, given that the rise of China is on course to bring about the end of United States hegemony. We turn to this fundamental question of power transition and the question of change in the LIO.

A framework to analyze change in the liberal international order Given the many concurrent disruptions outlined above and the observation of intense negotiation among systemic players over global rules, we need a new framework to analyze change in the global order. The current period is not one of gradual negotiations for marginal gains within stable rules, but a period of fundamental competition over the rules of the global order, even if at least some of the underlying norms remain accepted by most. The empirical analysis of key regimes listed in Table 16.1 also shows that change is not uniform across regimes, but appears to lead to a diversity of outcomes. As well, change is not linear, but follows irregular bursts and periods of stasis or reversals. In this context, structural models are not ideally suited to explain such change. We need a f lexible framework that is able to account for such diversity of outcomes across issues and over time. I advance here a framework of mediated strategic interactions. This framework broadly fits within a constructivist or social framework. It assumes that preferences and interests are not just the result of power and positioning (as realists would assume), but are constantly updated through interactions with systemically important opponents and partners in the system. The system itself evolves

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according to the actions and interactions among its key players. For a rising state, preferences will depend on the actions of the dominant power, particularly whether the dominant power uses its allies and control of the rules to close or open strategic space for the rising state. Conversely, the preferences of the dominant power will depend on the behavior of new emerging states, and whether they appear to challenge existing rules or support these rules. Further, the framework assumes that players update their preferences and behavior according to bounded rationality. Their own domestic experience, norms, and inherited frames mediate their understanding of the actions of other systematically important states and how they subsequently adjust their behavior. If a country has experienced painful episodes of trade imperialism at the hands of previous powers, it is likely to interpret subsequent episodes of intense trade negotiations through a very defensive framework. Learned experiences, traditions, and core historically induced ideas, as constructed by generations of elites, become focal points for current leaders to make sense of events and shape their responses to challenges.29 These domestic frames also shape the receptiveness of key domestic audiences to the actions taken by their leaders on the international arena and the legitimacy ascribed to those actions. Thus, well entrenched domestic focal points and ideas constrain the strategic options of leaders on the global scene and in their interactions with other leaders. Thus, the few systemically important states update their preferences in response to the actions taken by powerful peers, subject to the constraints of their receptive domestic frames and relevant domestic audiences. Under this framework, change in the global order depends on the combination of choices made by a small group of systemically important states in mediated interactions with each other. Occasionally, smaller states or various institutions can play the roles of rule entrepreneurs, mediators, or even spoilers in triggering interactions among larger players. Large groups of small states or regional groupings (such as ASEAN), or even non-state actors, may also affect the outcome for the global order in their collective decisions to follow or not follow innovations in the global order proposed by an established or emerging power. Ultimately, this is not an infinitely repeated game, since the negotiation of structural rules for the global order is a limited process with only a small number of finite moves that can lead either to reinforcement, retrenchment, collapse, or creation of new rules. The stakes are high and changes can be irreversible. This framework generates the following observable implications. First, we expect a highly f luid, interactive set of moves and countermoves among key countries in the negotiation for new global rules undergirding the global order. This includes surprise moves, sudden departures from traditional positions, and possible instability. Second, domestic frames and actions by key players are likely to vary across domains (such as trade, finance, environment, energy, cyber security). This can yield very distinct sequences of mediated interactions and distinct outcomes across domains.

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Third, understanding the domestic frames of key counterparts is not an easy task and is one for which traditional policy-makers in different countries are not well equipped for, particularly in countries that bestow leadership on single charismatic or directly elected leaders. In turn, this means that key players are likely to misread and misinterpret the actions taken by leaders of counterpart states. A common bias is one where a defensive move shaped by painful historical memories is likely to be misinterpreted as an offensive move. In that sense, the strategic interactions are taking place without good information, let alone perfect information. Fourth, multiple games and interactions are taking place at the same time across policy domains and lessons from some settings can inform the understanding of other settings. Fifth, states are usually divided among key interests and sub-state leaders who compete for setting outcomes. Domestic frames can also be multiple and beset by competition among incompatible frames in certain issue areas, making the decisions of leaders hard to read by leaders of a counterpart state. A great application of the framework of mediated strategic interactions and their impact on the global order can be found in the historical analysis of the events that led to the onset of the First World War on August 4, 1914, a mere 37 days after the seemingly minor event of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on June 28 in Sarajevo. As Clark shows, it is the rational decisions and interactions among “five autonomous players of equal importance – Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Russia, and Britain”, (xxvi) in the context of great uncertainty and in the presence of troublemakers or spoilers (particularly Serbia, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire) that led to war.30 Clark clearly shows that the war was not pre-determined by larger structural forces. The same players had managed earlier crises that were at least as dangerous as the Sarajevo crisis. War was the result of a chain of interactive decisions among them, on the basis of best information and judgment. Yet, none of the five key protagonists wanted war and all of them had enough rational information to anticipate a costly and destructive war. To elucidate this mystery, Clark shows how decision-makers evolved through the crisis and how their preferences changed in reaction to each other, as filtrated by their own beliefs. To make sense of the ultimate disaster, “We need to understand how those events were experienced and woven into narratives that structured perceptions and motivated behaviour” (xxx). “When decision-makers discoursed on the international situation or on external threats, were they seeing something real, or projecting their own fears and desires on to their opponents or both?” (xxxi). Calling this event a “tragedy not a crime”, Clark argues that the crisis was “multipolar and genuinely interactive” (561). Ultimately, the lessons from Clark’s magisterial unpacking of the 1914 crisis came down to this conclusion: We need to distinguish between the objective factors acting on the decision-makers and the stories they told themselves and each other about what they thought they were doing and why they were doing it. All the key

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actors in our story filtered the world through narratives that were built from pieces of experience glued together with fears, projections and interests masquerading as maxims (561). In the rest of the chapter, we apply the framework of mediated strategic interactions to the relation between the United States and China, ultimately the two most important systemic players in the elaboration of the future of the LIO. The first necessary step is to explore the domestic frames that shape Chinese reactions to American moves and how the United States may misunderstand Chinese actions as a result of these frames.

Chinese historical frames in relation to the global order The growing clash between the United States and China increasingly dominates the debate over the future of the global order. As a case in point, in an article titled “The Challenge of One World, Two Systems”, Martin Wolf wrote: A new great power has emerged, one that was never part of a westerndominated system. In response, many are trying to shift the world into an era of unbridled strategic competition. History suggests this is dangerous. What is needed instead is a combination of competition and cooperation with a rising China. The alternative will be deepening hostility and rising disorder. Nobody sensible should want that. So stop, before it is too late.31 The relation of China to the United States-created LIO has become increasingly paradoxical. On many dimensions, China appears to be a convert to the LIO and a good performer. Witness China’s support for United Nations peacekeeping operations, the SDGs, the G20, the Paris Climate Agreement, the Nagoya protocol on biodiversity, the Cartagena protocol on biosafety, the WTO, and even the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This growing acceptance of globalization and global institutions was epitomized by President Xi Jinping’s dramatic speech in support of global openness at the Davos World Economic Forum in January 2017. This attitude stands in great contrast to United States President Trump’s opposition to all institutions of the global liberal order and even to free trade. Of course, we must add the caveat that China does not accept the political dimensions of global liberalism (democracy and civic and political human rights) and is not supportive of the United States-dominated security architecture. Nonetheless, this overall situation creates a certain Chinese liberal order paradox. How can China turn liberal abroad and remain so illiberal at home? Additionally, how can China exhibit great variation in its approach to changes in the global liberal order, supporting the United States-created order at the G20 or at the WTO, working with Europe (and Japan) on improving global environmental governance, but opposing the West in cyber governance or the Law of the Sea? What can explain such variation in outcomes?

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According to the mediated strategic interaction framework, we need to identify key domestic filters and frames that mediate the interactions of China with the United States in the debate over the global order. We focus here on three key concepts: the importance of geographic and historic vulnerability; the trauma of the 200-year long search for Chinese modernity and rejuvenation; and the importance of domestic order, infrastructure, and development for leadership legitimacy. As deeply emphasized by Wang Gungwu, China is marked by its inherited geographic vulnerability. First, its inland frontiers have always been very vulnerable and China’s history has been shaped by struggles with invaders from the North. 32 Second, unlike the United States, China has many neighbors all around its periphery, leading to complex relations and multi-pronged threats. Third, China’s access to the Pacific Ocean is constrained by a maritime island chain that it does not control. Fourth, China’s access to the Indian Ocean and Middle East (recently important for access to energy) is limited by access through the Malacca Straight, with the Indian presence beyond. In other words, China fears encirclement, especially maritime encirclement. Finally, as noted by Wang Gungwu, China is fundamentally a continental power; yet “modern globalism is a maritime phenomenon” (162). So China needs a navy to be part of the modern world, but this has a steep learning curve. Similarly in his historical study of modern China’s grand strategy, Khan writes that China feels locked in by its geography. “Xi’s China is not just a rising power inspiring fear in an established one, nor is one whole sole ultimate purpose the revival of its lost glory. It is a country uncertain of how durable its power and integrity will prove”. 33 “Strategic geography” generates a sense of insecurity; and any effort by China to secure its border areas generates reaction from its neighbors that ends up decreasing its sense of security (7). Brown adds that this mindset of geographic and historic vulnerability creates a permanent disjuncture with the growing capacity of China. 34 In a wonderful analysis of the China conundrum, Huang writes: “China does not see itself as the unstoppable economic powerhouse that some Western observers have suggested. Its vulnerabilities will continue to constrain its behaviour on the international stage”. 35 A second key clue to understanding China’s frame lies in the trauma of its 200-year long “search for modernity”.36 Thus, Xi Jinping’s first words as the newly anointed General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 2012 were: “our responsibility is to unite and lead people of the entire Party and of all ethnic groups around the country while accepting the baton of history and continuing to work for realizing the great revival of the Chinese nation in order to let the Chinese stand more firmly and powerfully among all nations of the world and make a greater contribution to mankind”.37 The focus on rejuvenation and revival and the completion of China’s modernization (China’s dream) dominates the thoughts and words of Xi Jinping, with a goal to ensure that China “would never return to this state of vulnerability” experienced

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by China in and after the Qing dynasty (36). The combination of historical memories, current struggles, and social tensions are at the heart of China’s paradoxical anxieties in the midst of its great rise.38 Third, the legitimacy of leadership in China has traditionally been linked to the maintenance of order, water management (dykes of the Yellow River and other large infrastructure), and agricultural and economic prosperity. Internal unrest, fragmentation, f loods, or drought have all been connected to the fall of emperors and dynasties. These three historical frames play a role in shaping how China responds to United States actions in the global order.

China and the global order: explaining diverse outcomes China’s responses to United States moves and China’s approach to the LIO over the past decade are remarkably diverse. Table 16.2 presents a simplified typology of outcomes along two dimensions. This simplified table assumes that the actions of the United States-led order are either permissive or constraining. These signals are mediated by two different Chinese domestic frames: the deeply ingrained sense of historic vulnerability outlined above or the more globalist Silk Road spirit experienced by China in good times. Each policy arena tends to be associated with one dominant frame, but a shift from one frame to another is also possible, when conditions experience large-scale changes. The table outlines distinct ideal types. The first ideal type is the approach of China as a systemic stabilizer, when it faces a permissive approach by the United States and sufficient slack and endowment at home to face a globalist domestic frame. This corresponds to China’s behavior in the G20, where it experiences sufficient strategic space, a number of possible allies (especially BRICS countries) and even the capacity to take leadership as in the 2016 Hangzhou Summit.39 It is interesting to note that in most cases of divisive debates over regulatory reforms TABLE 16.2 Chinese positions on selected global governance dimensions

Domestic Frame

Permissive Global Order

Constraining Global Order

Globalist/open frame

1. Systemic Stabilizer G20 SDGs Climate 2015 Trade (until 2017) 3. Systemic Balancer (with strategic goals) GMOs rules Trade – 2018 Investment governance

2. Systemic Innovator Competitive liberalization and rule-setting AIIB, NDB BRI 4. Systemic Disruptor Climate – 2009 Cyber governance Energy governance UNCLOS (South China Sea)

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(such as reforms of the international monetary system, banking reforms, Tobin tax, G20 institutionalization, capital controls), China acted as a median player, while the United States mostly battled with the European Union. A fascinating case is the one of climate change governance, where China experienced a dramatic shift from a disruptor (Copenhagen 2009) to a systemic stabilizer (Paris 2015). While in Copenhagen, China felt ambushed and treated unfairly by both the Danish presidency and the United States, the preparation of the Paris conference saw both a highly cooperative United States position and significant space opened by the French presidency and the international system. Meanwhile, a new domestic understanding formed within China that addressing climate change was both a historic necessity within the national development trajectory and a global opportunity in the future. China’s chief climate negotiator Xie Zhenghua puts is as follows: “on climate change, the Chinese government and President Xi have made it clear that climate change is a challenge against all human beings, and it affects human being’s welfare. We must be responsible. It is not some else force us to do it, but we need to solve it (climate change). It is also the inner request of realizing sustainable development for China.”40 The cases of the AIIB or the BRI are directly connected to the launch of the United States pivot to Asia and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), as well as to the refusal by the United States to ratify the 2010 IMF reforms for over five years (until December 2015). Even though the development terrain was one where China was confident within its domestic globalist frame, China saw a United States hegemon seeking to block China’s legitimate voice in international institutions and seeking to tighten the pacific encirclement of China. This called for a burst of innovative responses and formed the basis for the launch of the BRI after 2013 and the AIIB in 2014. The creation of the AIIB in particular was a direct response to obstruction by the United States to the reforms of the IMF and World Bank and by Japan of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The trade war of 2018 triggered the high sense of domestic vulnerability linked to the memory of the Opium War, but China still faces a range of opportunities in the current LIO with many other partners. Should more opportunities close and the environment with the United States harden further, trade may well fall toward box 4 of Table 16.2 with even more defensive actions by China. Cases such as cyber security or the law of the sea ruling on the South China Sea are at the intersection of a constrained strategic move by the United States and a defensive domestic frame, hence the very protective and non-cooperative responses by China to United States moves.

Conclusion The LIO is facing multi-pronged disruptions, including an internal social crisis in response to the inequalities generated by globalization, an American crisis of liberal hegemony, and great power shifts. Liberal norms remain relatively entrenched, but global rules and institutions are facing a global contest. The rise of China and Asia as a whole represent a systemic displacement of epic

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proportions and require adjustments to the rules of the LIO. However, the chapter argues that the ongoing transformation of the global rules and institutions of the LIO follows a process of mediated strategic interactions between systemically important countries, especially the United States and China. China’s approach to global governance reforms is often feared to be a process of fundamental revisionism. Rather, this chapter has shown that China’s actions are surprisingly diverse, f lexible, and often in support of the current status quo. However, when facing adverse moves by the United States or an effort to close its strategic space or voice, and when its historical sense of vulnerability is triggered, China may indeed turn into a strategic disruptor. Couching the current tensions in the world as a crisis for the survival of democracy is misguided. China does not seek to export its political system. It is solely focused on its own development trajectory. Its current political system is the product of 200 years of struggles and is seen within China as the current anchor of stability, but certainly not the endpoint. In a way, China is holding on to its current political system as the only way to go through the current hard development process and power competition without falling apart. Xi Jinping is essentially a modern Emperor who is determined to complete China’s transition into modernity, which started so wrongly in 1840. And the Chinese may be more driven by a sense of vulnerability (including geopolitical vulnerability) than by an urge to confront democracies. Meanwhile, the current crisis of democracy in the United States and Europe has nothing to do with China. Global business elites overreached in their lobbying for an ever more integrated economic globalization that was not accompanied by domestic systems to share benefits and global rules to limit its risks. In turn, global capitalism has eroded social contracts and triggered a political identity crisis in nearly all democratic systems. This is an internal crisis to the Western liberal order. Understanding the negotiations over the future of the world order as a process of strategic interactions among large countries mediated by their own beliefs and domestic frames has several key implications. First, the key vulnerability in this interaction lies in the mutual misperceptions and misunderstandings about each other’s domestic frames. The future of human governance lies in increasing the mutual understanding of such domestic focal points and in defusing misperceptions. Second, the future of our word order is highly interactive and relational. Third, the outcome of such a transition in the world order is not pre-ordained, and a range of outcomes is possible, from a new hybrid negotiated order, to fragmentation and conf lict. It is most likely to be a plural and complex order.

Notes 1 West, Darrell. Mega Change: Economic Disruption, Political Upheaval, and Social Strife in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2016. 2 Martin Rees. On the Future: Prospects for Humanity. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018.

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3 Kai-Fu Lee. Ai Super-Powers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. Boston and New York: Houghton Miff lin Harcourt, 2018. 4 Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman. Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015; David Wallace-Wells. The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming. New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2019; John R. Wennersten, and Denise Robbins. Rising Tides: Climate Refugees in the Twenty-First Century. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2017. 5 Barry Eichengreen. The Populist Temptation: Economic Grievance and Political Reaction in the Modern Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018; Francis Fukuyama. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018; Robert Kuttner. Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2018; Raghuram Rajan. The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind. New York: Penguin Press, 2019; Dani Rodrik. Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018. 6 Robert Kagan. The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018; John J. Mearsheimer. The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018; Stephen M. Walt. The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of Us Primacy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. 7 Graham Allison. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? New York: Houghton Miff lin Harcourt, 2017; Oliver Stuenkel. Post Western World. Cambridge UK: Polity Press, 2016; Arvind Subramanian. Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance. Washington, DC: Institute of International Economics, 2011. 8 Amitav Acharya. The End of American World Order. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2014; Anne-Marie Slaughter. The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017. 9 Robert Kagan. The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018, p. 4. 10 Bruce Jones and Torrey Taussig. Democracy & Disorder: The Struggle for Influence in the New Geopolitics. eds., Bruce Jones. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2019. 11 Kishore Mahbubani. Has the West Lost It: A Provocation. Allen Lane, 2018. 12 Source: Worldbank World Development Indicators Database: http://databank.worl dbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators, retrieved on 2019/02/10; and author’s calculation. 13 Wendy Dobson. Partners and Rivals: The Uneasy Future of China's Relationship with the United States. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2013; Daniel W. Drezner. The System Worked: How the World Stopped Another Great Depression. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014; G. John Ikenberry. Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011; Edward S. Steinfeld. Playing Our Game: Why China's Economic Rise Doesn't Threaten the West. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 14 Aaaron Friedberg. A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia Norton and Company, 2012; John J. Mearsheimer. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics: Updated Edition. 1st edition, New York: Norton, 2014; Xuetong Yan. “The Instability of China-Us Relations.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2010, pp. 1–30. 15 Graham Allison. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? New York: Houghton Miff lin Harcourt, 2017. 16 Robert Kagan. The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018. 17 Jeffrey Chwieroth. Capital Ideas: The IMF and the Rise of Financial Liberalization. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009; Peter J. Katzenstein. The Culture of

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20 21 22

23 24 25

26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36

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National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Amitav Acharya. The End of American World Order. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2014. Kerry Brown. The World According to Xi. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018; Yukon Huang. Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom Is Wrong. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Klaus Muehlhahn. Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping. Cambridge, MA and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019; Kee Beng Ooi. The Eurasian Core and Its Edges: Dialogues with Wang Gungwu on the History of the World. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2015; Sulmaan Wasif Khan. Haunted by Chaos: China's Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2018. G. John Ikenberry. After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. G. John Ikenberry. Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011. Victor Bulmer-Thomas. Empire in Retreat: The Past, Present, and Future of the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018; David C. Hendrickson. Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro. The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World. New York, London, Toronto, Sidney, and New Delhi: Simon and Schuster, 2017. Robert Kagan. The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018, p. 9. Dani Rodrik. The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2011; Joseph E. Stiglitz and Members of a UN Commission of Financial Experts. The Stiglitz Report: Reforming the International Monetary and Financial Systems in the Wake of the Global Crisis. New York and London, 2010. G. John Ikenberry. Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011, p. 9. Stephen M. Walt. The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of Us Primacy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. John J. Mearsheimer. The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018, p. 12. Frank Dobbin. Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age. Cambridge [England]; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1994; Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane. Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs Institutions and Political Change. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993. Christopher Clark. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. New York: HarperCollins, 2012. Martin Wolf. “The Challenge of One World, Two Systems: Unbridled Strategic Competition between China and the West Would Be a Disaster”. In The Financial Times, London, 2019. Kee Beng Ooi. The Eurasian Core and Its Edges: Dialogues with Wang Gungwu on the History of the World. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2015, pp. 167, 236. Sulmaan Wasif Khan. Haunted by Chaos: China's Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2018. Kerry Brown. The World According to Xi. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018, p. 90. Yukon Huang. Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom Is Wrong. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 173. Jonathan Spence. The Search for Modern China: Third Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2012.

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37 Kerry Brown. The World According to Xi. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018, p. 29. 38 Klaus Muehlhahn. Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping. Cambridge, MA and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019. 39 Yves Tiberghien. “Fostering Bold and Innovative Ideas for Urgent Global Challenges: The V20 Contribution to the G20 during the China-German Transition”. Global Summitry: Politics, Economics and Law in International Governance, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2017, pp. 27–44. 40 Personal interview with Minister Xie Zhenghua (Vice Chairman of NDRC, former Minister of environment, Chief Climate Negotiator of the PRC since 2008) on May 17, 2017 in Beijing.

References Acharya, Amitav. The End of American World Order. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014. Allison, Graham. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? New York: Houghton Miff lin Harcourt, 2017. Brown, Kerry. The World According to Xi. London: I.B. Tauris, 2018. Bulmer-Thomas, Victor. Empire in Retreat: The Past, Present, and Future of the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. Chwieroth, Jeffrey. Capital Ideas: The IMF and the Rise of Financial Liberalization. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Clark, Christopher. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. New York: HarperCollins, 2012. Dobbin, Frank. Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Dobson, Wendy. Partners and Rivals: The Uneasy Future of China's Relationship with the United States. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Drezner, Daniel W. The System Worked: How the World Stopped Another Great Depression. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Eichengreen, Barry. The Populist Temptation: Economic Grievance and Political Reaction in the Modern Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Friedberg, Aaaron. A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2012. Fukuyama, Francis. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. Goldstein, Judith and Robert Keohane. Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs Institutions and Political Change. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. Hathaway, Oona A. and Scott J. Shapiro. The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017. Hendrickson, David C. Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Huang, Yukon. Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom Is Wrong. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Ikenberry, G. John. After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Ikenberry, G. John. Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. Jones, Bruce and Torrey Taussig. Democracy & Disorder: The Struggle for Influence in the New Geopolitics, ed. Bruce Jones. Washington: Brookings Institution, 2019.

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Kagan, Robert. The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018. Katzenstein, Peter J. The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Kuttner, Robert. Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2018. Lee, Kai-Fu. Ai Super-Powers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. Boston: Houghton Miff lin Harcourt, 2018. Mahbubani, Kishore. Has the West Lost It: A Provocation. New Delhi: Allen Lane, 2018. Mearsheimer, John J. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics: Updated Edition, 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2014. Mearsheimer, John J. The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. Muehlhahn, Klaus. Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019. Ooi, Kee Beng. The Eurasian Core and Its Edges: Dialogues with Wang Gungwu on the History of the World. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2015. Rajan, Raghuram. The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind. New York: Penguin Press, 2019. Rees, Martin. On the Future: Prospects for Humanity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Rodrik, Dani. The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011. Rodrik, Dani. Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018. Slaughter, Anne-Marie. The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. Spence, Jonathan. The Search for Modern China, 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2012. Steinfeld, Edward S. Playing Our Game: Why China's Economic Rise Doesn't Threaten the West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Stiglitz, Joseph E. and Members of a UN Commission of Financial Experts. The Stiglitz Report: Reforming the International Monetary and Financial Systems in the Wake of the Global Crisis. New York: the New Press, 2010. Stuenkel, Oliver. Post Western World. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016. Subramanian, Arvind. Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance. Washington: Institute of International Economics, 2011. Tiberghien, Yves. “Fostering Bold and Innovative Ideas for Urgent Global Challenges: The V20 Contribution to the G20 During the China-German Transition.” Global Summitry: Politics, Economics and Law in International Governance, vol. 3, no. 1, 2017, pp. 27–44. Wagner, Gernot and Martin Weitzman. Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2019. Walt, Stephen M. The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of Us Primacy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. Wasif Khan, Sulmaan. Haunted by Chaos: China's Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018. Wennersten, John R. and Denise Robbins. Rising Tides: Climate Refugees in the TwentyFirst Century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017.

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West, Darrell. Mega Change: Economic Disruption, Political Upheaval, and Social Strife in the 21st Century. Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2016. Wolf, Martin. “The Challenge of One World, Two Systems: Unbridled Strategic Competition between China and the West Would Be a Disaster.” Financial Times, London, 2019. Yan, Xuetong. “The Instability of China-Us Relations.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics, vol. 3, no. 3, 2010, pp. 1–30.

INDEX

Note: Page locators in “italics” refer to figures and “bold” refer to tables. 1MDB 142 the Aam Aadmi party 142 absolute gains 219 Acharya, Amitav 261, 263, 267, 346 Achilles Heel 193 active engagement 214 ad hoc federalisms 47 age of compression 38 AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) 2, 3, 189–191, 193, 197, 205, 229–230, 273, 346, 361, 365, 371–372 Allende, Salvador 131 Allison, Graham 5, 213 Ambedkar, B.R. 118 America First 50, 177, 194, 214, 244, 284, 340 Ankersmit, Frank 61, 63–65 Arbenz, Jacobo 131 Aristide, Bertrand 131 Asia Viewers 193 autonomy 10, 21, 25, 45–49, 51, 82, 150, 152, 170, 216, 219–221, 224–225, 228, 230–232, 262, 264 Autor, David 242 Babones, Salvatore 338 Barisan National 142 Barma, Naazneen 157 BDS (BeiDou Navigation Satellite System) 199

beggar-thy-neighbor policies 51 Bell, Daniel A. 11, 359 Bharatiya Janata Party 110 Bhargava, Rajeev 331 Blinken, Antony 242–243 BP (British Petroleum) 130–131 Bremmer, Ian 260 Bretton Woods 4, 50, 174, 240, 363 Brexit 7, 17–18, 25–26, 48, 50, 167–168, 171, 177 BRICS 2, 43, 175, 190–198, 361, 371 BRICS Plus 193, 197 Brookings 359 Brooks, Stephen 147 Brown, Kerry 370 Bush, George W. 3, 155–156, 205, 220, 245, 284, 366, 372 Buzan, Barry 9, 166, 171, 358–359 Callahan, William 341 Camus, Albert 158 Carlson, Allen 343–344 Cartel Party 42 Cartelsim 96 Castiglione, Dario 61 Chhibber, Pradeep 111 China-Japan-Korea+X 200, 270, 273, 277, 298, 300, 323, 338, 339, 344 China Unionpay 199 CIPS (Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System) 199

380 Index

civilization xii, xiii, 3, 7, 80, 89, 95, 139, 141, 149, 167–168, 174, 179, 196, 202, 218, 286, 291, 341, 346, 360 Clark, Christopher 368 Clinton, Bill 254–255 collective identity 63 concept-practice 170 Confederation of Indian Industry 119 confrontation-creating actions 271–272, 278–279 consensus-building actions 271–272, 278 containment 10, 217, 219, 227–228, 232, 278 contested pluralism 169, 179–180 the Contras 131 corporatist 47, 59, 65 cosmopolis 141 cosmopolitan instincts 174 the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance 224 CRA (Contingent Reserve Arrangement) 193 creative destruction 242 Dahl, Robert 76 Davis, Christina 243–244 Davos 190, 243, 254, 285, 360 decent interval 153 decentred globalism 169 deep engagement plus 147 demos 28, 174 Đilas, Milovan 98 diplomatic concert 180 domain name system 231 dukedom 255 Dworkin, Ronald 28 dynasticism 170–172, 174–175 Early Harvest 246 economic rent 201 The Economist 174, 178 egalité 148 embedded xiii, 9, 37, 63, 70, 76–77, 168–169, 171, 173–174, 177–180, 195, 202, 207, 225, 253, 262, 265, 358, 363, 366 embedded liberalism 179 embodiment 59, 60, 63, 69 EMSs (Emerging-Market States) 259–261, 263, 267 English School 166, 169, 171 entrepreneurial leadership 190, 192–193 entropy 158

Fairbank, John K. 78, 81–82, 86 Foa, Robert 194 Foreign Affairs 150 Four Freedoms 131 fraternité 148 Friedman, Tom 245 FSB (Financial Stability Board) 191, 365 Fukuyama, Francis 3, 194 fundamental revisionism 12, 373 The Future of Liberal International Order 157 Gabriel, Sigmar 186 GDP (Gross Domestic Product) 4, 108, 154, 191, 202, 247, 265, 271, 298–302, 305, 307–311, 315, 317–320, 360 GFC (Global Financial Crisis) 3, 5, 189, 202, 214, 247, 260, 308, 314 Gilded Age 194 the Global South 109–110, 172, 194, 196–197 global stewardship 196 globalism 10, 169, 227, 259, 279, 370 GNI (Gross National Income) 133 Gobal Barometer Surveys 106 good governance 86, 99, 167, 289–290 Good Neighbor Policy 149 Goulart, Joao 131 GPS (Global Positioning System) 199 Gramsci, Antonio 58 grand vision 216, 218–219, 221–222, 228 Haas, Michael 267 harmony of interests 170 Hayekian growth model 39, 41 Hazare, Anna 142 hegemonic teleology 167 heteropolarity 169 Hindutva 179 Hobbes 27, 158, 217 Hoover, Herbert 201 Huang, Yukon 370 Huntington, Samuel xii, 74 Hussein, Saddam 284 hyperglobalization 201 Ibrahim Index 109 ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) 231, 240 ICT-related sectors 206 ideational legitimacy 168 IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) 195

Index

Ikenberry, John 189, 260–261, 362–363, 366 ILO (International Labor Organization) 190 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 3, 51, 190–191, 198, 202–203, 224–225, 239, 240, 242, 248, 253, 262, 365, 369, 372 institutions of multilateralism 225–226, 233 intellectual leadership 190, 193 intergovernmental organizations 173, 231 interlocking-ownership 208 intermediation 59–60 International Telecommunication Union 195, 231 ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 195 ITU (International Telecommunication Union) 195, 231 Johnston, Alastair Ian 157, 216–217, 339 Jones, Bruce 359 Journal of Race Development 150 Kagan, Robert 358, 363 Kang, David 338 Kant 158, 217 Katzenstein, Peter 8, 146, 186, 263, 267–268, 358–359 Kauffmann, Sylvie 252 Kautilya 328–330, 332, 336–337, 341, 346 Keane, John 37, 61, 69–70 Keohane, Robert 225 Keynesian growth 39 Khan, Sulmaan Wasif 370 Kim, Jim-Yong 247 Kindleberger, Charles 6, 188 Kotoka, Emmanuel Kwasi 131 labor shares 41 Lagarde, Christian 202, 247 Lake, David A. 327 Lamy, Pascal 242, 244–246 Lau, Lawrence J. 11, 307 League of Nations 174, 226, 248, 285, 291, 293 learning-by-doing 204 Lee, Kai-Fu 357 Liang, Shuming 346 Liberal Internationalism 10, 150, 260– 263, 266–267, 358 liberal international order 4, 9, 12, 127, 146–148, 150–157, 166, 169, 171, 186, 188–189, 194, 200, 357, 362, 364, 366

381

liberté 148 Lieberman, Robert 157, 161 Lindblom, Charles E. 77 Lokniti-CSDS 106, 112 Luce, Edward 147, 194 Lumumba, Patrice 131 Machiavelli 158, 329 machine politics 62 Mahbubani, Kishore 10, 239, 261, 268, 358–359 Malacca Dilemma 199 Manin, Bernard 61 Mansbridge, Jane 61 mass franchise democracy 168 Mastanduno, Michael 260 MasterCard 199 Maurya, Ashoka 330–332, 341, 344, 347 Mearsheimer, John 260, 366 mediated strategic interactions 12, 361–362, 366, 368–369, 373 meritocracy 8, 74–76, 79–80, 85–86, 92, 170 messianic tradition 45 meta-functionalist 63–64 Michels, Robert 108 Midford, Paul 219 mixed economy 38 Mizuho Security 191 Modi, Narendra 111–112, 116, 117, 119 monitory democracy 69 Mounk, Yascha 23–26, 194 multilateral institutions 2, 10, 119, 147, 187–189, 196–197, 203, 205–207, 224–227, 229, 239, 243, 246, 253, 360 multilateralism 6, 9–10, 51, 154, 156, 160, 174, 196–197, 201, 203, 206, 213, 215– 217, 219, 221, 223–233, 242, 267, 360 multi-nodal network 358 multi-order world 169 multiplex 169, 358, 361 multipolarity 169, 287 Nathan, Andrew 242 National Election Study 106, 112 national rejuvenation 10, 195, 219–220, 228–230, 232, 272 National Science Foundation 191 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) 106, 152, 156, 186, 224, 226, 229, 252, 262, 328 NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions) 192 nexus 196

382

Index

Nikai, Toshihiro 273 NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) 109, 119 Nkrumah, Kwame 131 Nominal GDP (Nominal Gross Domestic Product) 108, 191 no one’s world 169 NSS (National Security Strategy of the United States of America) 186 OAS (Organization of American States) 149, 152 Oatley, Thomas 159n2, 164n2 Obama, Barack 3, 44, 54m 155–156, 189, 214, 241, 244, 284 ODA (Official Development Assistance) 133, 206, 271 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) 6, 42, 147, 191, 360 Olivelle, Patrick 329, 331 Olson, Mancur 96 Open Door Policy 226 Operação Lava Jato 142 Oxfam 108 Papandreou, Andreas Georgios 131 Pareto-optimal 70 partial decoupling hypothesis 308 Pax Americana 4, 186–189, 205, 208, 313, 360 Pax Sinica 186–187, 189, 195, 200, 207–208, 313–314, 360 per capital emissions 178 Peralta, Maria Cecilia 192 Peron, Isabel 131 Peterson Institute for International Economics 240 Pinker, Steven 240 Pinochet, Augusto 131 Pitkin, Hanna 59 planetary crisis 357 Pogge, Thomas 8, 129, 359 Polyarchy 76 polymorphic 169, 358 polymorphic globalization 358 Posen, Adam 340 Posen, Barry 218 post-democratic democracy 42 post-hegemonic polymorphous world 360 Price Waterhouse Cooper 4, 202 primary institutions 171–173, 176 principled unprincipledness 64 pro-Europeanist 202

profit rates 41 purchasing power parity 4, 108, 241, 360 Pútin, Vladímir Vladímirovic 252, 272 Radulovich, Nadia 192 raison de region 177 raison de système 176–177 Ratner, Ely 157 Raz, Joseph 145 real-existing democracies 58, 67–68 realpolitik 216, 344 reassurance 218, 220 Rees, Martin 373n2 regime 7, 10, 21, 28–29, 39, 44, 47, 49–52, 58, 63, 69, 74–75, 78–81, 89, 92, 130, 135, 153–154, 170, 176, 190, 200, 203, 205–206, 219–221, 223, 259, 261–262, 266, 269, 271, 273, 279, 290, 364, 365–366 region-plus-one 198 relative gains 219 Renshon, Jonathan 345 representation 7, 58–66, 70, 75, 77–79, 90, 92, 96, 100, 263, 327 re-presenters 59 responsible protectionism 51 retrenchment 147, 215, 367 Rio Pact 152 Rodrik, Dani 201 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 131, 144, 149, 151, 250 Rosanvallon, Pradeep 61, 66–70 Roser, Max 241 Rothman, Andy 243 Ruggie, John 225–226 Sandinistas 131 Schmitter, Philippe C. 7, 58, 77–78 Schumer, Chuck 245 Schumpeter, Joseph 242 Schweller, Randall 157–158 SDR (Special Drawing Right) 174, 191–192, 203 secret service complex 46 Seko, Mobutu Sese 131 Shah 130 Sharma, Ruchir 119 situational interests 225 Skinner, William G. 82 Slaughter, Anne-Marie 253–255 Smith, Adam 25, 133, 241 Smith, Noah 141 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act 201 socialist market economy 173, 196, 204

Index

socialist one-party state 202 socialization 203, 261 State of Democracy in South Asia 106, 112 state-administered capitalism 37–38 strategic objective 215–216, 220, 221–222, 225–226, 228, 231 strong reciprocity 326–328, 330, 332, 335, 341, 343–344, 346, 348–349 structural leadership 190–192 Stuenkel, Oliver 175 Sullivan, Jake 246 Summers, Larry 189 supranational superstate 48 SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) 199 systemic balancer 362, 371 systemic configuration 65 systemic disruptor 362, 371 systemic innovator 362, 371 systemic stabilizer 362, 371, 372 tailored 9–10, 213, 215–217, 219, 221, 225–231, 232–233, 267, 360 tailored multilateralism 9–10, 213, 215–217, 219, 221, 223, 225–229, 231–233, 267, 360 Taussig, Torrey 329 thinking the unthinkable or the crazy 158 Tieberghein, Yves 12, 357 TPP (The Trans-Pacific Partnership) 4, 372 troubled region 200 Trump, Donald J. 2–4, 6–8, 18, 20, 29, 44, 50, 146, 150, 156, 171, 177, 180, 183, 186, 189–190, 194, 200, 203, 214–215, 220, 227, 242–245, 252, 259, 263–266, 272–273, 279, 284–285, 326–327, 340, 346, 357–358, 369 Tsunekawa, Keiichi 10, 259, 358 turn-key 191, 198 United Progress Alliance 111 Urbinati, Nadia 61

383

value-commitments 170 Verma, Rahul 111 Walt, Stephen Martin 366 Wang, Gungwu 11, 284, 358, 370 Warren, Mark 61 The Warsaw Pact 224, 328 Washington Naval Conference 226 Watson, Adam 176 WB (World Bank) 51, 108, 140, 142, 190, 193, 203, 240, 242, 247–248, 253, 262, 372 weak reciprocity 326–328, 330, 335–339, 343–344, 346 Weber, Max 75, 82, 157 Weber, Steven 161n2, 162n2 West, Darrell 357 Western-global GIS 167 Wheaton, Henry 292 Whites only 149 Wohlforth, William 147 World Governance Survey 109 WTO (World Trade Organization) 119, 178, 191, 201, 203, 239–246, 262, 264, 273, 364, 365, 369 Xi, Jinping 190, 194, 196, 213–215, 220, 228, 231, 242–246, 268, 272–274, 276, 284–285, 373 Xie, Zhenghua 372 Xunzi 332–336, 340, 344, 347 Yan, Xuetong 328, 337, 339, 344 Yeti DNS Project 232 Young, Oran 187, 190 Zakaria, Fareed 245 Zelaya, Manuel 131 Zhang, Feng 339, 343 Zhao, Tingyang 341–343 Zoellick, Robert 247 Zuma, Jacob 142