The following excerpts are from “The Trouble With China’s Global Civilization Initiative” [GCI], by R. Evan Ellis/The Diplomat June 01, 2023:
The GCI is an attempt to win global buy-in for China’s principle of non-interference…The appeal of the GCI is enabled by its ambiguity. Xi’s address presenting it spoke of “common aspirations” (not rights) of humanity of “peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom.” At the same time, the GCI advocates against a world in which those concepts can have meaning through united efforts to call out and collectively act against those who violate them. Under the GCI, perceptions of such “common aspirations” are “relative” and thus countries must “refrain from imposing their own values or models on others.”
Despite such reasonable-sounding language, the GCI’s most insidious effect is that it is fundamentally a self-serving effort to disarm the “rules based international order.” By promoting the relativism of values and arguing against calling out bad behavior and seeking to stop it, the concept appeals to regimes that desire to do what they wish, from criminality and repression at home to the ruthless invasion of their neighbors under the spurious mantle of “legitimate security concerns.”
The GCI is rooted in a convenient “forgetting” of the origins of international law and institutions of global governance (however imperfect). The post-World War II order is rooted in the recognition that state sovereignty, while an important principle, is not the only principle. A world in which those who are able to appropriate control of physical territory can impose their will on their subjects and neighbors without external interference is not an adequate basis for global security.
Chinese authors approvingly discussing Xi’s GCI speech have invoked the names of philosophers such as Confucius and Socrates. The more appropriate reference is arguably Thomas Hobbes, who observed that, in the absence of governance, the strong take what they will from the weaker.
Xi proclaimed in his GCI speech that China would avoid the “crooked path taken by some countries to seek hegemony once they grow strong.” The statement must have seemed ironic to many of China’s neighbors, particularly those whose waters have been encroached by China’s “nine-dash line” maritime claim in the South China Sea. That claim was found to be in contravention of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, yet Beijing still pursues it through the militarization of reefs and shoals, reinforced by the activities of the China Coast Guard and Maritime Militia.
Xi’s statement that the Chinese “firmly oppose hegemony and power politics in all their forms” might also seem ironic to Taiwan, which suffers regular large-scale displays of military force aimed to intimidate them; Canada, which saw China detain two of its citizens in an attempt to coerce Ottawa into rejecting a U.S. extradition request for wanted Chinese executive Meng Wanzhou; or Australia, against whom China’s government imposed heavy economic sanctions after Canberra called for an investigation of the origins of COVID-19.
n addition to China’s external behavior, Xi’s CGI imperative that “countries need to uphold the principles of equality, mutual learning, dialogue, and inclusiveness among civilizations” is apparently not intended to apply within a country’s borders. China does not seem to acknowledge a duty to respect the civilization of more than 1 million Uyghur Muslims who have been interned in re-education and forced work camps in a concerted effort to eliminate their culture. Similarly, the CCP’s attempts at absolute control of the internet and public discourse within Chinese territory highlight that the GCI’s advocacy of a dialogue “between civilizations” is not intended to extend to diversity found within its own territory.
In addition to giving China and other illiberal actors greater space to pursue their will against their neighbors and those in their territory, the GCI also shifts the questions of whose communication is valued in international discourse, and on what basis, to China’s advantage. Xi’s GCI speech moves uncritically back and forth between references to “countries” and “civilizations,” reflecting China’s conflation of the two concepts. The emphasis on “civilizations” arguably prioritizes China, as well as other states with linkages to ancient empires, including Beijing’s current illiberal partners Russia and Iran (Persia), and Global South countries China is courting (Egypt and Turkey) while deprivileging the voice of the United States as a relatively new and heterogeneous actor in “civilizational” terms.
Xi speaks unproblematically about “modernization,” arguing that countries must “push for creative transformation and innovative development of their fine traditional cultures.” The GCI does not reflect that in much of the world, there is no consensus on historical legacy, how the “traditional” is to be incorporated in moving toward the “modern,” or even what “modernization” means and whether it is desirable. As China’s Uyghurs learned, in a totalitarian system, the party in power determines how a traditional culture is “modernized” – what elements are criminalized and what elements are safely “celebrated” in museums and folk festivals.
In the end, the effects of the GCI as a tool of strategic discourse will depend on the embrace of elites who believe it serves their self-interests, and who don’t focus on the contradictions within the GCI’s logic, or with China’s own behavior.
Western efforts to promote values and norms, concrete enough to be meaningful, enshrined in enforceable laws and international institutions, have been far from perfect. China’s GCI reminds us of the lesson that the world has repeatedly learned through tragedy: the alternative that sounds too good to be true, usually is.
More about China from The Economist:
https://www.economist.com/china/2023/07/06/chinas-message-to-the-global-south
President Xi Jinping recently unveiled a Global Civilisation Initiative. That builds on his argument that China’s growing strength and prosperity demonstrate that “modernisation does not equal Westernisation”. Under Mr Xi, Chinese officials and state media have taken to arguing that a declining West’s insistence on defending an “international rules-based order” amounts to a form of chauvinism. Chinese officials and scholars compare Western governments fussing about multi-party elections, independent courts or free speech to missionaries, as if the West is telling faraway peoples which god to worship.
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/07/04/why-china-should-be-friendlier-to-its-neighbours
China has an unsettling habit of using its economic clout to punish neighbours that rile it. That, too, did not start with Mr Xi. An early example came in 2010, when China banned exports of rare-earth minerals to Japan after a clash in the East China Sea. Mr Xi, however, has expanded the practice. This week he imposed new curbs on rare earths.
Mongolia was an early target for Mr Xi. After it hosted the Dalai Lama in 2016, China held up loans and customs clearances...South Korea [also] stands out as an example of ill-judged Chinese arm-twisting. After Park Geun-hye became president in 2013, she sought closer ties with China, even attending a military parade in Beijing. Yet in 2017 China instituted an economic boycott after America deployed an anti-missile battery in South Korea, intended chiefly to deter North Korea, but which China also saw as a threat.
Such campaigning may be legal in the countries the activists now call home, but one of the many controversial aspects of the national-security law is its extra-territoriality. Hong Kong claims the right to prosecute not only those who are charged within its own territory, but also anybody in any country—of any nationality—it deems to have broken its security law.
Ensuring that only those trusted by the party get the top jobs is clearly one of the party’s aims. In 2020 Ye Qing, a vice-chairman of the (party-controlled) All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, said that, as part of building a modern enterprise system, party branches in private firms should be given “guiding power” over personnel decisions.
… both the Yuan and Qing dynasties were overthrown by campaigns of the Han under exactly the same rallying cry: “Drive out the Tartar devils and recover China”…The Chinese enjoyed an assured sense of cultural superiority for thousands of years, until it was shattered by the British in the Opium War of 1840–1842
Zhang Binglin (1868–1936), an early nationalist revolutionary and accomplished linguist, …reinterpreted culture in terms of consanguinity by proposing that “common culture derives from common blood lineage.” …The Han came to be referred to as the “Han race,” and the Manchu the “Manchu race.” Indeed, the revolution that overthrew the last Chinese imperial dynasty was characterized by the revolutionary leader, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, as a “racial revolution” against the Manchus.
https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/06/20/can-australia-break-chinas-monopoly-on-critical-minerals
The risks of China’s dominance have grown, however. For Japan that became apparent in 2010, when China suspended exports of rare earths to it in reprisal for a spat over some disputed islets. Last year it threatened to withhold critical minerals from two American defence contractors, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies, in protest over America’s arms sales to Taiwan.
https://www.economist.com/china/2023/09/14/xi-jinping-builds-a-21st-century-police-state
Under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party is building the most ambitious police state in China’s history, with the legal powers and surveillance tools to bring order and ideological conformity to every corner of daily life.
Article 34 [of China’s Public Security Administration Punishments Law]…empowers police to fine or detain people for up to 15 days for words and deeds that “harm the spirit” or “hurt the feelings” of the Chinese people... To widespread public alarm, this proposed administrative-level law allows rank-and-file police to sanction not just unpatriotic acts, but also articles of clothing or symbols that they deem offensive to the public, as well as insults to party-approved heroes and martyrs.
China’s courts and police are explicitly under the party’s authority, and judicial independence is denounced as a dangerous Western notion. Vaguely-worded laws allow officials to define wrongdoing as they see fit.