BEIJING - Globalization in the West started with the Greeks - with the Anabasis
told by Xenophon, a disciple of Socrates. Then, 10,000 Greek mercenaries
marched to Persia to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try to take the
throne from Artaxerxes. This occurred between 401 BC and March 399 BC.
About half a century later, Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) followed almost
the same route, not to serve the Persians but to battle and defeat them. He
wanted to conquer and discover new lands, following the legend of the trials of
Hercules. Alexander and his conquests then became the model for great Roman
conquerors: Caesar and the emperors following him.
Exploration, conquest and plunder were the trademarks of the Mediterranean
world, where the line between commerce and pirating was often blurred.
Exploration and conquest were the driving forces pushing Spanish and Portuguese
ships across the Atlantic in search of new sea-lanes to the Indies. The
Atlantic was an extended version of the Mediterranean [1]. It was a space to
conquer and win - seeing it as a limit would be an admission of defeat.
The colonial era and present globalization are modern adaptations of the old
principle of expansion. In each era, the idea was that economic welfare could
be achieved through goods from new conquered lands, which were obtained through
plunder, exploitation or simple commerce. Security was best achieved by
attacking enemies first and invading their lands, before they did the same, an
action that was also rewarded by the booty of plunder.
In China, though, everything was different. Desert and mountains in the north
and the west, jungles in the south, and the ocean in the east were the natural
limits of conquest. In 200 BC, the first unification of China defined what is
still the reach of Chinese civilization. The first emperor had conquered what
is now northern Vietnam and had probably gone as far as present North Korea.
The conquest of the wild south proceeded slowly and methodically, in a spirit
of systematic incorporation into the empire.
The empire stretched out to fight the warring barbarians and moved several
times as far as the Caspian Sea or northern Siberia, but it always withdrew
from it. The idea was that the security of the empire would be guaranteed by a
belt of buffer vassal states. In return for their "service", these states
received from the empire more than what they offered as homage.
The world outside was known and could be explored, as in the famous 15th
century Zheng He expeditions, but it was of no major consequence for the
empire, which had to produce security and economic welfare from within.
Agriculture was fundamental to the growth of necessary industry, but there was
no trust in the benefits of bouts of plunder and conquest. This was the way of
the northern population or eastern pirates, but both did not make a stable
living out of these activities and often survived on the verge of
extermination.
It appeared much better for the empire to improve domestic agriculture,
industry and trade. Industrial and agricultural surpluses in ceramics and tea
drew in furs and horses (the latter necessary for the industry of defense) from
the north or gold and silver from the western traders. China could easily
ignore the rest of the world, because it was not relevant.
This changed dramatically after the Opium Wars (1839 to 1842 and 1856 to 1860),
when Britain tried to sell the only goods China would consume and import -
drugs, specifically opium - to make up for a massive trade deficit that was
draining Europe of all its American silver and gold. When China restricted the
trade of opium on the grounds that presently seem more than reasonable - it was
a drugs trade, after all - Britain forced the trade to continue by fighting and
winning a short but momentous war.
Over a century later, the lesson China learned is that even defeat in a
small-scale war can trigger a deep political crisis, which in turn can topple a
government.
Most importantly, the wider lesson is that China cannot ignore commerce and
must be part of the global economic cycle, which now is highly industrialized
and demands more resources than can be found internally. Therefore, China must
go around the world looking for all kinds of resources and energy as well as
new markets for its growing industries. In other words, China as a state [2]
recognizes the same economic necessities that Western countries have addressed
for centuries, if not millennia.
Western states have refined, through centuries of experience and mistakes, the
methods and practices for dealing with foreign countries that are used even
now. China's methods for dealing with foreign lands are largely useless. It
cannot rebuild a belt of vassal states - neighbors would bitterly resent China
and turn against it. China then had to go to places where it traditionally had
no foreign policy, for instance Africa and Latin America, without knowing well
how to handle these people. In other words, the old foreign policy must be
rejected, and there is no culture or experience for the new foreign policy.
It is a brave new world for China. And for the world, it is a brave new China.
Chinese theories about globalization
Military thought is an integral part of the Chinese philosophical tradition.
Among the ancient classics, "military thinking" is present not only in Sunzi
Bingfa's The Art of War, but also in the works of Mozi (470 BC ca - 391
BC), China's first really systematic philosopher and the first to mount
opposition to the Confucian school.
Here we have three chapters on feigong (against offensive war), which
explain why a state should not conduct offensive wars, but only defensive ones.
Furthermore, in Mozi, we have fragments of technical chapters on the
preparation of city defense, meaning that these philosophers were not only
thinking about war, but preparing for it practically.
However, since the beginning of philosophical thought in China, war was not
simply an episodic clash of arms or a parenthesis between the normal unfolding
of politics and diplomacy, as Prussian Carl von Clausewitz would put it many
centuries later. War was "a matter of life and death for the state", as Sunzi
put it. In the military classics, there is an extended concept of war, which
includes the overall state of preparation for war.
Shang Jun (Shang Yang) is the philosopher credited with helping to organize the
Qin state (the state that eventually unified China in 221 BC) and inspiring
Hanfei Zi, one of China's greatest thinkers. In Shang Jun's work, the author
presents the organization of the tax system, the tilling of the land, and the
military levy as a unified concept: they are all integral parts of state
organization and military preparation.
In fact, war is the main function of the state. In Sima Fa, a volume on
the philosophy of war compiled in the early Han Dynasty but reflecting previous
ideas, the author begins by addressing the matter of the benevolence of the Son
of Heaven. That is to say, that a good government or benevolent ruler is the
necessary basis for waging a good war. He creates a system that citizens are
ultimately willing to defend with their own lives. And a good government
guarantees a good life for the families of those who die on the battlefield.
War in total is a concept that comprises what goes before and comes after the
actual clash of arms. We can see the same attention to war in modern thinkers
like Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui in Chaoxian zhan, (War Without
Restrictions), or asymmetrical war. Here the two authors explain that war is
political thought: strategy that goes beyond the use of weapons and tactics in
the battlefield. This reasoning is echoed by Italian author and general Fabio
Mini's La Guerra dopo la Guerra ("The war after the war"), in which he
explains that one must not wage war without first considering the sort of peace
one wants to achieve. These ideas also appear in Mao Zedong's thought, which
deals with the issues of social contradictions and guerrilla warfare.
Seen through this lens, war - the conflict and competition of states - is
larger than the shooting between soldiers. There is reason to argue that states
are always at war. But by the same token, with respect to the Chinese principle
of yin and yang, one can also argue that states can be always at
peace, that actual clashes and bloodshed can always be avoided or minimized. In
other words, if war is constantly being waged in many ways, then one can try to
curb the wars in which millions die. Wars can be "waged" in the form of cold or
soft wars, as American Joseph Nye would have it in his international relations
theory neo-liberalism.
To resolve conflicts without bloodshed, communication is crucial. But even the
understanding created by open channels of communication would still require, if
not an impossibly unified world view, then a "lingua franca" of ideas.
This is, in a nutshell, the idea put forward by Zhao Tingyang in Tianxia Tixi
(The System of All under Heaven): it is necessary for the world to have
a common tianxia (all under Heaven) view. Tianxia is not
precisely a shared culture so much as a shared sensibility; it is a common
understanding that we all live in the same world, and we need to have some kind
of tolerance of each other's ideas. It is different from the concept of empire.
Generally speaking, states and statesmen have differing worldviews. For
instance, during the Cold War and World War II, states embodied strong
ideologies, which compelled their people to fight for them. Or, in the case of
World War I, warring states were motivated not by ideologies but by opposing
national interests, and in the case of the citizens, by nationalism itself.
What is the situation now? Are we witnessing clashes of ideologies, worldviews
and civilizations? Can war be avoided? Here we need not be delusional: war has
been with us for millennia and will accompany us into the future. But a common tianxia
would help smooth over conflicts and avoid the kinds of misunderstandings that
lead to war. It could lead to agreements such as the ones that forbid the
bombing of hospitals during wartime, or like the Geneva Conventions.
What would be the content of a tianxia system? We can sketch the minimal
requirements: market economies and freedom of enterprise. These elements,
though not implying deeply shared values, make it possible for goods to travel
form one side of the world to the other every day. Russia has it to a certain
extent. Other groups, such as radical Islamic movements or old-fashioned
communist movements such as the new Red Brigades in Italy, appear to reject the
concept of a common market.
Chinese tradition could ameliorate the present difficulties in the world. In
ancient times, China was not "China" for the people living there; it was "all
there is under Heaven". The rest, what was not part of the Chinese world, was
simply not under heaven and beyond the sphere of this world. The West's
encroachment has helped to form a new identity: that of China. This, in turn,
has created a new relationship of the "Chinese" people with the rest of world.
However, the ancient sense of history lingers, creating new challenges as China
is driven to become the largest economy in the world or to expand the scope of
"all under Heaven".
During China's imperial past, order (zhi) was easy to understand.
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