ABSTRACT
Nearly three decades of breakneck economic growth have profoundly altered China’s economic, social, cultural and political landscapes (Watson 1992; Tu 1993; F. Wang 1998; Tang 2005; Gittings 2005). Yet, despite these remarkable changes in China, many observers have identified evidence of major continuity. Domestically, the continuity is clearly reflected in the continued reign of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At the international level, it is related to a possible repetition of the recurring tragedy of great power politics (Mearsheimer 2001). Given that violent clashes between predominant status quo powers and their emerging challengers have been characteristic of international history, many realists believe that China’s rise is no exception to this pattern. Consequently, the image of a Chinese dragon as a ‘firebreather’, as former US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick (2005) puts it, is creating ‘a cauldron of anxiety’ among the rest of the world. Against this backdrop, partly in response to such widespread anxiety, China spelt out a strategy called ‘Peaceful Rise’ (heping jueqi) in late 2003.1
Apparently aimed at reassuring the international community of China’s peaceful intent, still this new strategy is greeted with much scepticism. As Zoellick (2005) notes, ‘Uncertainties about how China will use its power will lead the United States – and others as well – to hedge relations with China. Many countries hope China will pursue a “Peaceful Rise”, but none will bet their future on it’. For all its claim to a peaceful rise, China is thus seen by many as no different from previous rising major powers, notably Germany and Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Against such hunches about continuities, I suggest in this chapter that there
have been a lot more fluidities and changes in terms of both China’s domestic politics and international orientations, through a close examination of the ‘Peaceful Rise’ strategy. The notion of ‘Peaceful Rise’, I argue, denotes a new international contract,2 so to speak, being struck between the Beijing regime and transnational actors. Within this contractual framework, the Chinese government promises responsible and peaceful foreign behaviour in accordance with international norms, in exchange for a largely favourable and stable international environment in which China could continue its rise or economic development. China of course insists that it has always behaved peacefully
and responsibly in the international realm. But what is new in its ‘Peaceful Rise’ discourse, I argue, is Beijing’s growing acceptance of international responsibility as defined by mainstream transnational actors, rather than on its own terms (as was previously the case). This ready acceptance of obligation, largely externally defined, is linked to changes in broader arenas, as many transnational actors have become instrumental in China’s economic fortune and emerged as a new, if indirect, source of political legitimacy for the Chinese regime. Thus this new international contract, based on the changing meanings of state responsibility and legitimacy, reflects a transformation not only in China’s international relations, but also in the Chinese state itself. This chapter focuses on how such changes in the Chinese state have taken
place, as exemplified in the domestic-global nexus underlining the formulation of the ‘Peaceful Rise’ strategy. In her study of the constitutive relationship between national interests and international society, Martha Finnemore (1996: 136) suggests that ‘the particular form of the state is a result of both international and local factors’. This observation, I would say, applies also to the Chinese state in change. At one level, ‘Peaceful Rise’ was driven by domestic processes one of which was the regime’s desire to carve out a new national identity and maintain domestic legitimacy. At the same time, such domestic processes are intersected with processes outside China’s ‘boundaries’, so a better understanding of the change requires that the constitutive role played by the transnational society and its relevant components are addressed. Not only does transnational society often provide the backdrop of the ‘Other’ against which the Chinese state (re)defines its interests and identity, but, more importantly, multiple actors within transnational society, through their images, practices and interactions with Chinese ‘domestic’ actors, are constantly complicit in the production and reproduction of China as a state. As Gupta (1995: 377) points out, ‘any theory of the state needs to take into account its constitution through a complex set of spatially intersecting representations and practices’. Given the limitations of space, in this chapter I shall concentrate on the
transnational dimension when discussing the emergence of the ‘Peaceful Rise’ strategy and its revelation of a state in change. This does not mean that domestic actors do not play an important part or that their role can be neatly detached from the transnational processes. Rather, I contend that only by examining the transnational context – and by clarifying the interactions between the transnational and the domestic – can we better appreciate the role of multiple domestic actors. This chapter cannot, nor does it purport to, provide a comprehensive answer to the question of why the Chinese state undergoes change the way it does – regarding its choice of strategy in projecting an international image. Instead, it only serves to catch a glimpse of the discursive nature as well as the fluidity of China as a state (Li 2006b), which, like all states, should be understood as nothing more than ‘a historically constituted and constantly reconstituted form of political life’ (Walker 1993: 46).
