Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts: 'China' As Civilization, Not Ethnicity

Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts Author(s): Shuchen Xiang Source: China Review , May 2023, Vol. 23, No. 2, SPECIAL ISSUE What Does It Mean to Be or to Become Chinese? Interdisciplinary reflections on Chinese Identity (May 2023), pp. 165187 Published by: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48726996 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to China Review This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The China Review, Vol. 23, No. 2 (May 2023), 165–187 Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts: “China” as Civilization, Not Ethnicity* Shuchen Xiang Abstract This article argues that there are important similarities between Zhao Tingyang’s conception of tianxia and the decolonized, post-racial world envisioned by decolonial thinkers of the global south. Defined in terms of “internalization,” “relationality” and “amelioration,” the logic of tianxia that Zhao describes is comparable to the vision of a non-racialized world order of mutual, cultural synthesis of which decolonial thinkers have also spoken. Understanding tianxia in this way also allows us to better articulate the nature of “Chinese-ness.” Traditionally China or “huaxia” was identified with civilization per se and Civilization as “huaxia” was not defined through ethnicity and so not the preserve of any one group of people. Under this understanding of “huaxia,” to be(come) “Chinese” is merely to be civilized and civilization, in turn, is the ability to embrace the world in its totality. This paper expands on Zhao’s definition of tianxia by arguing that culture (wen) should also be included as a non-reducible component of tianxia. This article ultimately argues that being “Chinese” should mean the ability to embrace and actively synthesize world cultures. This is the true meaning of “huaxia,” a meaning that overlaps with important strands of decolonialism, and thus has more universal significance. Shuchen Xiang is Mount Hua Professor of Philosophy at Xidian University. Correspondence should be sent to shuchen.xiang@hotmail.com. * I would like to thank Jacob Bender for reading previous drafts of this article and for his always helpful advice. I would also thank Daniel Bell for inviting me to the conference and his comments on an earlier version of this article. This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Shuchen Xiang 166 One major criticism of Zhao Tingyang’s reconstruction of tianxia for the globalized world is that tianxia is merely a euphemism for Chinese hegemony.1 For its critics, despite the rhetoric, the Chinese metaphysical, political and cultural ideal of tianxia will be nothing more than a “pax Sinica.” This article seeks to address these misgivings by showing how tianxia shares important similarities with the vision of the world described by the most influential decolonial scholars. The Chinese conception of tianxia is better understood in terms of the post-racial, decolonized world that is central to the common ideals of the most significant decolonial scholars historic and contemporary. In his book All under Heaven: The Tianxia System for a Possible World Order, Zhao summarizes the three key concepts that constitutes the tianxia system. First is the “internalization of the world” understood as an inclusive world where no peoples on this planet are to be negatively excluded through the erection of various boundaries. Second is a “relational rationality” which, as I understand it, centers on a relational understanding of the human agent. Under this relational rationality, the human being is defined in communal terms, that is, as a creative work in process shaped through interaction with other persons, histories and cultures. The human being cannot be meaningfully defined apart from her relationships. Third and relatedly is a “Confucian amelioration” which means that “one is improved if and only if all others are improved.”2 Confucian amelioration rests on the assumption of a relational self. Under this relational view, as I am constituted by my relationship to others, I can only flourish when these others I am related to are also flourishing. It is thus in my own enlightened self-interest to support the flourishing of others.3 This is the heart of Confucius’s dictum in Analects 6.30, “the person of humaneness, in wishing to be established, establishes others, in seeking to be enlarged himself, enlarges others.” This article will proceed as follows. In section 1, I outline and clarify the hierarchical understanding of “order” that traditionally underlies western thinking about the international order. Under this understanding of order, each nation is distinct and independent. Different nations and their peoples are then (theoretically) ordered under a pre-established hierarchy (great chain of being) where traditionally European civilization was placed at the top of said hierarchy. This understanding of order is inherently ethnocentric. Following this, section 2 introduces the organicist (sheng sheng, 生 生 ) metaphysics that informs both Confucian and decolonial understandings of order. Under this organicist understanding This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts 167 of order, order is a coherence that emerges out of the interactions between particulars. The ideal of bringing coherence to the world in a non-hierarchical way, what Zhao terms “internalization,” is a sentiment shared by the Martinique thinkers Aimé Césaire and Édouard Glissant. Zhao, Césaire and Glissant’s view of human order and meaning as something that emerges out of human-to-human interaction presents a sharp contrast with the assumption of order underlying the nation-state and colonial model (as described in section 1). Section 3 highlights the commonalities between both the Confucian and decolonial (non-essentialist) conception of selfhood. For the decolonial philosopher, the fundamental aim of decolonialism is the releasement of the subject from the confines of “race.” Race, as an interpretation of nature/perceived difference, is an inherently non-relational concept in which the subject is defined according to her essence and her relationships with others (the non-self) has no impact on this putative essence. The Martinique thinker and revolutionary Frantz Fanon, Glissant and the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe prioritize opening, distension, gaps and relationships as constitutive of the self. This idea of the self as a creative work in process that emerges from ever-extensive (social) relationships resonates with the Confucian conception of selfhood. This model of selfhood as a nexus of relationships is reflected in the dominant Chinese view of how to be efficacious in international relations. It is also reflected in the Chinese understanding of virtue ( 德 de), which can be defined as competence in the cultivation of relationships, a concept that also applies to relationships on the international level. Section 4 argues that the future of humanity needs to be an integrated one. If we take seriously the implications of an organicist metaphysics, then central to the vision of human flourishing is the importance placed on culture and the need for cultural synthesis. Taking on the best aspects of our collective cultures is a precondition for the future flourishing of humanity. With a cultural understanding of persons, meaning and value are understood to emerge from relationships and interactions. Central to both the Confucian and decolonial vision of human flourishing is a need for cultural synthesis, perspectival humility, and the understanding that order is always in the making and never an antecedent and pre-established reality. This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Shuchen Xiang 168 1. The Dominant Western Understanding of Order and its Consequences for Pluralism In All Under Heaven, Zhao Tingyang argues that in western political thought the highest political concept is that of the nation. For the challenges that face our world, however, we need the world itself—tianxia, all under heaven— to have its own political agency.4 Under Zhao’s conception of tianxia, different parts of the world need to achieve an internal coherence with one another through a process of transforming alterity into “a shared order of coexistence.”5 The tianxia system aims at a “compatibility” under which enemies will be transformed into friends within “a pluralistically inclusive order of political security and peace.”6 Arguably and as I intend to show throughout this study, the term “order” ( 秩 序 zhixu) that Zhao uses is misleading. Whilst Zhao identifies order within the whole in terms of a cooperative compatibilism, the nationstate model of the world that Zhao criticizes has its own understanding of “order” within the whole. The conception of order underlying the nation-state (and colonial) model(s) is arguably not what is meant by Zhao. In contrast to the assumed order that pertains between different nation-states, and more faithful to the tianxia system, is to conceive of “order” as an ordering process and the ability to harmonize the particulars with the whole. In this section, I outline the defining features of what can be considered (as diagnosed and critiqued by decolonial philosophers) the dominant western account of order that informed (and arguably still informs) their practices in relationship to what they perceive as other cultures. The conception of order underlying the nation-state and colonial models can be understood through the concept of the “Great Chain of Being” (GCB). Since antiquity, the GCB has been the most potent and persistent idea in the West for the general order of things.7 Under this view, (1) There is a single ontological order in which all finite beings are fixed in an eternal order; (2) The world is completely rational, there is no room for contingency or novelty: it is metaphysically determined; (3) Things are not different due to the confluence of various circumstances, but as having been necessarily so for all eternity; (4) Difference is not understood as emergent but as ontological; (5) This ontological-ization of difference is also hierarchical; (6) The only relationship which pertains between the different stations of the hierarchy is domination of the lower by the higher; (7) Violent domination of difference is ontologically This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts 169 justified; (8) Relatedly, under the GCB, diversity is also tantamount to conflict. This gives rise to the idea of “just wars” that ontologically legitimates violent domination. This (western) conception of order is also reflected in the etymology of the term “universal.” According to The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, the term “universe,” from which “universal” is derived, comes from the Latin ūniversum, that is, the whole world. The Latin is derived from the Platonic and Aristotelian usage of the Greek “hólon” (τ ὅλον).8 According to F. E. Peters, “hólon” connotes as “whole,” “organism” and “universe.”9 In current usage, “universal” also connotes the idea of an order that exists everywhere and eternally. Peters points out that the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides was key in identifying wholeness with being, that is, the non-changing. Related to this, Plato’s conception of hólon identified wholeness with its parts having “a fixed spatial relationship to each other and to the whole.”10 The distinction between the whole and a mere sum lies in the fact that there was a predetermined coherence or ordered positioning (thesis) between the parts. Subsequent to Plato, Aristotle further developed the connection between teleology, wholeness, the fixity of the parts in relation to each other and the “whole.”11 In sum, for the Greeks, the whole is differentiated from the mere sum of parts because the whole is coherent or ordered. This coherence or order is, in turn, understood in terms of an antecedent, predetermined order. Following Aristotle, the Greco-Christian-Western tradition has increasingly seen this predetermined order in ontologically hierarchical terms. This association of the whole with a static and hierarchical order has its socio-political implications and underlies the nation-state and colonial model.12 (1) The peoples of this world form discrete noncontinuous groups. (2) The distinctions between these groups are permanent and will never be reconciled. As Kant once said, “Instead of assimilation, which was intended by the melting together of the various races, Nature has here made a law of just the opposite.”13 (3) The relationship between the different groups of people with permanent distinctions between them— races—is one of domination and subordination. As Hegel writes in his Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, “The question of racial variety bears upon the rights one ought to accord people; where there are various races, one will be nobler and the other has to serve it.”14 (4) Ultimately, the competition between the different races will result in one victor. Just as homo sapiens emerged as the sole species of archaic humans to have survived into the current age, ultimately, so will only one race emerge as dominant. This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Shuchen Xiang 170 (5) As there exists a hierarchy among the different races, it is then further assumed that racial intermixing leads to impoverishment of the better race and retards world progress. Under a metaphysics of “being,” meaning and value resides not in relationships but in the “thing” itself. Corresponding with this assumption about the source of meaning, under a metaphysics of being, (1) life is associated with keeping one’s integrity and (2) no value comes out of interaction. We see the former in the Greek tradition, where “being” has traditionally been understood in terms of achieving permanence or persistence through identity with itself. Whereas the Greek view understands being in terms of a persistence which requires that nothing changes, the Chinese view understands persistence or self-identity as the maintenance of harmony or equilibrium throughout change. The Greek view of self-identity as literally a self that is identical with itself is premised on a metaphysics of being which values completeness, independence, and non-change. An example of this can be seen in Plato’s Timaeus (33–34) in which Timaeus describes the demiurge’s creation of the cosmic body.15 The cosmic body being complete, in both senses of perfect and self-sufficient, would be spherical as this is the shape most like itself and thus most complete. It would have no sense organs or appendages as, being complete, it does not need to interact or engage with its environment. The only movement that the cosmic body makes is around itself, turning “in a circle, a single solitary universe, whose very existence enables it to keep its own company without requiring anything else. For its knowledge of and friendship with itself is enough.” (34b)16 In reality, what Timaeus describes is something that is already dead. Only a non-organic thing can be truly identical with itself. Corresponding with this metaphysics of “being” is the idea that interaction and relationships between different peoples does not lead to enrichments in meaning or value. In other words, alongside this historical western understanding of order and “being” is an inherent ethnocentrism. At the height of its days of global exploration, when a wealth of information about heretofore unknown cultures was pouring into Europe, it is significant that rationalists like Descartes and Spinoza took no interest in other cultures. The thought went that since reason is singular, there is no point in engagement with other cultures, as we would all arrive at the same views if we used reason correctly. Such a view is espoused by Descartes in part one of Discourse on Method when he writes: This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts 171 “[ … ] the power of judging well and of distinguishing the true from the false (which is, properly speaking, what people call “good sense” or “reason”) is naturally equal in all men, and that the diversity of our opinions does not arise from the fact that some people are more reasonable than others, but solely from the fact that we lead our thoughts along different paths and do not take the same things into consideration.”17 Another similar view is espoused by Spinoza when, in response to how he knows someone somewhere else in the world might not have found a better philosophy, he writes, “[Your question] I might with much greater right ask you; for I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, but I know I understand the true philosophy. If you ask me how I know this, I reply that I know it in the same way that you know that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. [ … ] For truth is an index of itself and the false.”18 For both Descartes and Spinoza, (cultural) progress has nothing to do with (cultural) exchange. Given that meaning is pre-existing and not a result of interaction, there is no need to have a relationship with the world or other humans. This account of the pre-existence of meaning and value evokes the paradigm of the slave boy in the Meno who had innate knowledge of geometry and only needed to recollect (anamnesis) this already innate knowledge. The more worrying consequence of the assumption that meaning already exists “out there” and interaction with others does nothing to contribute to the enrichment of meaning is the practice of assuming that this pre-existing meaning is the preserve of a certain “race.” For the racialized worldview, civilization is not a dynamic work in progress that is a result of interaction and exchange. Rather, civilization is the ontological endowment of the highest race. An example of this view can be seen in Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit when he writes, “It is in the Caucasian race that spirit first reaches absolute unity with itself. It is here that it first enters into complete opposition to naturality, apprehends itself in its absolute independence, disengages from the dispersive vacillation between one extreme and the other, achieves self-determination, self-development, and so brings forth world history.”19 The ethnocentrism that is so prevalent in the history of western philosophy is in large part due to their understanding of order, “being,” and the human capacity to understand and even “mirror” reality as it is “in-itself.” Contrary to this ethnocentrism is a perspectivism informed by an organicist metaphysics that This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Shuchen Xiang 172 can be seen in both the Confucian and decolonial worldviews. In the next sections, we will see how the organicist metaphysics more readily lends itself to pluralism and the idea that (cultural) difference is valuable and enriching. 2. The Metaphysics of Becoming and Change Confucian moral thought is informed by an organicist metaphysics. In this section, I introduce this organicist metaphysics and further clarify how decolonial philosophers similarly argue that this particular world view is preferable to the colonial and dominant western philosophical one that helped contribute to their domination of the globe. Perhaps one of the best examples of the Confucian moral attitude comes from Analects 7.22 where Confucius says, “when walking in the company of two others, I am bound to learn from them. The good points of the one I copy; the bad points of the other I correct in myself.” This moral attitude, one in which we learn embedded in a particular perspective and in light of the perspectives we encounter, is informed by Chinese metaphysical assumptions. This Confucian perspectivism only makes sense under the assumptions of an organicist metaphysics. Under this organicist metaphysics, meaning and value (and the possibility of novelty and creativity in the ways we value) are understood as arising from interrelationships. When the ancient Chinese viewed nature, what they saw was nature’s ability to support (increasing) diversity and they attributed this to nature’s ability to bring difference together and relate difference in a way that is conducive to the flourishing of all. The idea that the greatest virtue in the world is an ability to support the diversity of growth is pervasive in the Doctrine of the Mean.20 In passage 30 we read, He [Confucius] modeled himself above on the rhythm of the turning seasons, and below he was attuned to the patterns of water and earth. He is comparable to the heavens and the earth, sheltering and supporting everything that is. [ … ] All things are nourished together without their injuring one another. The various ways [ 道 dao] travel together without them causing injury to one another [ 相悖 xiangbei].21 The ability to support all things in an all-inclusive way is tantamount to the power of heaven and earth or dao. Following this, the passage suggests the idea that order (dao) emerges from the activity of the myriad things and is therefore emergent and plural. This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts 173 The same organicist metaphysics underlies the Chinese valorization of harmony. Key to the concept of harmony is the insight that it is only difference that brings forth meaning and value. Sameness, in the sense of being, is tantamount to death and nullity. Very early on in the Chinese tradition, in the Warring States period, we already see mature expressions of this view. In the Zhengyu ( 鄭 語 ) chapter of the Guoyu ( 國 語 ), Shi Bo ( 史 伯 ) in conversation with Duke Huan of the state of Zheng explains the importance of harmony—the lack of which led to the decline of the Zhou dynasty: Harmony [ 和 he] indeed leads to fecundity [ 生 物 shengwu], identity [ 同 tong] means barrenness. Things accommodating each other on equal terms [ 平 ping] is called harmony, and in so doing they are able to flourish and grow, and other things are drawn to them. If identical things [ 同 tong] are used to supplement identical things then, once they are used up, nothing will remain.22 Shi Bo goes on to counsel how the former kings attained the utmost harmony by harmonizing the five phases, the five flavors, the four limbs, the six musical notes, taking consorts from different clans, and allowing for a plurality of different opinions. The passage ends with the injunction, “There is no music in a single note, no refinement/culture-civilization [ 文 wen] in a single item, and no taste in a single flavor, no comparison with/ reconciliation [ 講 jiang] in a single thing.” For the Confucian, difference is understood as the precondition for the possibility of value and meaning, and this applies to both the material, organic world as well as the normative human world of culture and civilization. The organicist metaphysics that provides Chinese philosophy with its normative orientation is also noted by Zhao Tingyang. Zhao writes that for the Chinese worldview, “Being seeks sustainability [ 存在是為了永在 cunzai shi weile yongzai]. This is the established pattern of being itself.”23 For the Chinese worldview, the first truth is the continuation of (organic) life itself. The metaphysical basis of the Chinese conception of civilization, tianxia or “China” is the metaphysics of procreativity of the Yijing encapsulated by the phrase “let all beings be in their becoming” ( 生 生 sheng sheng).24 The central metaphor behind such a metaphysics is the fecundity of nature itself, the measure of which is its dynamic ability to support increasing diversity and growth. The Chinese view is that the self, like an organism, always exists in a relationship with the myriad things of the world. The self is the non-self in the sense that the self depends on all that is the non-self in order to exist. For example, materially, I depend on water, food, air, and This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Shuchen Xiang 174 socially on human relationships in order to sustain my existence.25 This understanding that the existence of an organism is dependent upon exchange with difference is encapsulated by Xici 1.5: “in its capacity to produce and reproduce, we call it change ( 生 生 之 謂 易 sheng sheng weizhi yi).” The very source of life is change itself and the existence of difference. Change is not a threat to life but rather the source of life. Key to the Confucian understanding of nature is the importance of harmonizing differences and the capacity to bring differences into productive relationships. Likewise, this understanding of difference as enriching informs many decolonial philosophers’ thinking about “order.” In his definition of the “universal,” Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), Martinican poet, author, politician and founder of the Négritude movement, disassociates wholeness from ideas of an antecedent, predetermined order. Under his account, order within the whole is essentially an event that arises through the parts interacting with each other things. In other words, the “whole” is the functional order that emerges as a result of the interaction of the parts: I’m not burying myself in a narrow particularism. But neither do I want to lose myself in an emaciated universalism. There are two ways to lose oneself: walled segregation in the particular or dilution in the ‘universal.’ My conception of the universal is that of a universal enriched by all that is particular, a universal enriched by every particular: the deepening and coexistence of all particulars.”26 Césaire borrows the language of “universals” and “particulars” to subvert the dominant, conventional western understanding of the relationship that pertains between them: a unilinear relationship in which particulars are subordinated by a universal. Césaire’s subversiveness is due to how he redefines the universal as emergent from the interaction of particulars. That is, instead of the universal defining the particular, the activity of the particulars defines the universal. The writer and poet Édouard Glissant (1928–2011), also from the French overseas department of Martinique, speaks of the “universal” in much the same way as his Martinique predecessor Aimé Césaire:27 What I consider as a conceivable universal is the realized quantity of all differences, and this alone. I do not postulate that this realized quantity would lead to a kind of unity that would abolish the peculiarity of each of the differences. And therefore this realized quantity is the opposite of a certain universal. The universal is the ideal that can be realized on the basis of several This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts 175 real givens. What I defend is that the idea of beauty springs from a quantity realized as and when. The ideal that lies in the notion of universal is abolished in the notion of realized quantity.28 Glissant contrasts this highly exclusive conception of “a certain universal” against his conception of the universal as “the totality-world” whereas the former is “a lure, a deceitful dream” and “a value sublimated from particular values” the latter is “a realized quantity.”29 The latter is a universal that is a totality of concrete, empirical particulars. Glissant’s conception of the universal is not a mere aggregate of concrete particulars, but is instead the “interpenetration,” “contamination,” and “creolization” of these particulars. In contrast to the United States conception of “multiculturalism” in which cultures are segregated from and “absolutely impervious” to each other, Glissant speaks of the “resonance” between cultures. “The United States will become a great land of creolization the day these cultures can resonate with each other, with unexpected results.”30 In practical terms, for Glissant, his conception of the universal is realized in the interpenetration of all cultures or the hybridity of cultures. “Multiculturalism” in the (liberal), American mode is tantamount to cultural ghettoization and is not seen in positive terms by Glissant. For these decolonial philosophers, and similar to Chinese organicist metaphysics, what is of utmost importance is the creation of new meanings and values from the free-flowing interaction of (cultural) differences. Common to the reconstruction of the “universal” of both Césaire and Glissant is a reimagining of what a coherent whole might be without the attendant hierarchical, pre-established order that the Greek traditional conception associates with “universalism.” Further, like the tianxia concept, the coherence that is envisioned by both Césaire and Glissant would be the result of a process of what Zhao would call “internalization.” This “internalization” is based on the assumption that “[n]o persons can be construed as unacceptable foreigners, and no specific nation-state, ethnicity, or culture can be regarded as an incommensurable enemy.”31 With this assumption in place, the “universal” as both totality and order must necessarily encompass all particulars. Elsewhere,32 I have reconstructed an alternative, Chinese model of “universalism” as the totality of interactions between embodied particulars that Césaire and Glissant speaks of via the concepts of qing ( 情 ), gan ( 感 ) and tong ( 通 ). Under the concept of tong that I have This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Shuchen Xiang 176 translated as the “universal,” the (embodied) interaction (gan) between particulars leads to creativity or the free-flowing exchange between particulars: tong. It is this process that leads to tong, and tong, as I have argued, is the Chinese conception of universalism. The metaphysics of the Chinese “universal” under tong (as I have reconstructed it) requires interaction. Universalism, under this conception, can only result through the existence and mutual interaction of all of the particulars. This model of “universalism” is based on the relationship between the Chinese concepts of “feeling” (qing), interaction and the unimpeded free-flow (tong) that results. This model of universalism—tong—answers on a metaphysical level how the Chinese tradition would interpret the concept of “universal.” That is, as the unimpeded free-flowing interaction or relationship between sensate particulars. In the words of Glissant, the “interpenetration,” “contamination,” and “creolization” between particulars lead to their tong which is the universal (as both the whole and order).33 3. Non-essential Self in Confucian and Decolonial Philosophy For both the Confucian and the decolonial philosopher, the self needs to be understood as a non-essentialist or relational self. Elsewhere,34 I have argued that the racial conception of personhood is fundamentally antithetical to the Confucian-Chinese conception of personhood. The Confucian-Chinese self is anti-essentialist; the self is constituted by its historical, environmental and social relationships and therefore cannot be defined a priori. In his most recent work Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics, Roger Ames details this Confucian relational conception of personhood. Ames writes of how, under the Confucian view of personhood, each human agent is conceived as a dynamic focal point of multiple overlapping narratives. Under this view, the answer to the question of what a person is, is to give a narrative account of where they came from and in expanding concentric circles, accounts of people related to her and phenomena that impacted her. The account of persons in this mode is “irreducibly contextual and generative.”35 Ames, following A. C. Graham, reflects on the metaphysics that underlies the teleological, essentialist conception of personhood against which his relational account of personhood is contrasted. For both Ames and Graham, it is the characteristic of substance ontology to reify processes in a way that both spatially and temporally This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts 177 decontextualizes the cause of events.36 In contrast to this deterministic conception of personhood, under which the racial conception falls, Ames argues for a relationally constituted conception of persons. Under this view, the self is a constantly evolving narrative, a narrative which is in itself a focal point of overlapping narratives. Under this view that personhood is not defined by a fixed essence but is rather a dynamic work in progress constituted by relationships, the way that we narrate the stories about ourselves defines who we are. This relational, dynamic view of the human personality that Ames attributes to Confucianism, one which gains robustness through social interaction, is coherent with the fundamental assumption of selfhood in the decolonial discourses explored in this section. Paralleling Ames’s Confucian account of the relational nature of persons, in his book A Relational Theory of World Politics, Yaqing Qin gives an account of international relations theory by prioritizing relations. Instead of the conventional ontological assumption governing international relations whereby the discrete individual is assumed as a priori, Qin takes relations as a priori. This relational a priori makes much sense of the traditional Chinese worldview as it relates to gaining influence and power. If the self is understood as existentially dependent upon the other, “then power may well come from relations among actors and is more the ability to co-empower rather than to coerce.”37 The most power accrues to the self which has no self. As Qin writes, this relational view of self and its concomitant understanding of the nature of power, as co-empowerment, is inspired by “the long practice of Confucian communities.”38 The Confucians assume a “co-embedded inclusivity” in which all things are “immanently inclusive.” 39 Under this Confucian metaphysics, creatively realizing others is to realize oneself as we are all constitutively related to one another. Similarly, in his book Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers, Yan Xuetong shows how the display of moral virtue gains influence in international relations. As Yan writes, traditional international relations theory dualistically takes utilitarian calculations of interest to be mutually exclusive with moral considerations.40 However, according to his account of moral realism (a term which joins concepts conventionally deemed antithetical in IR discourse of “morality” and “realism”), a state loses real power or influence if they are consistently unable to act morally. Moral behavior results in real, material authority and influence: power. “Power enforces behavior through coercion, while authority entices others to follow an idea based on trust in it.” 41 This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Shuchen Xiang 178 Underlying Yan’s account of moral behavior as bringing capital to the moral agent for influencing others is the Chinese understanding of virtue as competency in the cultivation of relationships. Virtue in the Chinese tradition is understood relationally. The Chinese term for morality and virtue is homonymous with power and efficacy. Further, both are understood as the “ability to influence charismatically but without overt effort the behavior of others in the same direction; esp. associated with sages, ideal rulers, exemplary figures who live in harmony with all elements of existence.”42 De is the “innate power,” “potency,” “efficacy” “projection of the dao, the Way and its Power (Force, Working, Process)” as well as “moral power.”43 The virtuous agent is not one who most diligently submits herself to a transcendent moral law and thereby acts with efficacy in the world. Rather, virtue and efficacy are a result of the actions of the agent being able to cultivate relationships with the social other. The most beloved leaders are the ones who have unselfishly and competently promoted the wellbeing of her citizens. In sum, the Chinese tradition understood virtue in terms of the ability to cultivate relationships. On a personal level, the self is enriched through her ability to cultivate relationships with the social other. On the socio-political level, virtue and power is understood to lie in the charisma that emerges from one who is able to cultivate social relationships. The relational conception of personhood is fundamentally coherent with the decolonial conception of personhood: a dynamic, creative work in process that is realized through ever expanding relationships with others. Paralleling the non-essentialist conception of personhood in the Chinese tradition, a central concern of decolonialism is a similarly nonessentialist conception of personhood. For the decolonialism movement, the concept of race epitomizes the essentialist conception of personhood. Under this concept, there are fixed boundaries on the kinds of changes that a person can undergo while still being what she is. Quoting Fanon, Mbembe writes that Fanon’s great dream for humanity and for the decolonial project is the subject’s releasement from the enclosure of race. In the words of Frantz Fanon: “[w]hat we want to do is to go forward all the time, night and day, in the company of Man, in the company of all men.”44 Race being the zone of nonbeing in which persons are denied the agency to determine their own becoming and denied the right to be defined according to their own achievements and social relations. Instead, in the sterile and arid region in which the categories and “gaze of the other” traps the subject, she is ontologically specified to only ever be a This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts 179 specific “thing” and denied the creative realization of herself. To get rid of the idea of race is to reject distinctions, separations, borders and closure and to affirm that humanity is realized through engagement, encounter, relationships, interface, and opening. Drawing on Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) and Édouard Glissant, Achille Mbembe has written of how, at its core, the essential philosophical meaning and aim of the decolonization project is that of “the disenclosure of the world.” By this disenclosure is meant the removing of various partitioning that have been erected between cultures and peoples.45 The removal of barriers would be simultaneous with free-flowing interaction between previously segregated parts, thus leading to creativity, novelty, and heretofore unimagined relationships and possibilities. In this desegregated world, relations, thresholds, and interfaces will become the defining concepts of our humanity. The philosophical essence of decolonialism is ultimately the essence of being human: the agency to creatively determine oneself through culture, to be recognized and defined by our own work as opposed to some putative essence attributed to us by inhumanity’s gaze. To be human in this sense involves partnership with others. The creative realization of the self comes from community with others. The truth about the self is a creative work in process that is the result of interaction. “This is why the Fanonian self is fundamentally opening, distension, and gap: the Open.”46 For Édouard Glissant, decolonialism and humanity means embracing the inextricable web of relationships that form our identities: it is a praxis of “putting in relation.”47 The decolonial self is a non-self that is instead constituted by relations. The Chinese and decolonial conception of personhood is non-racial and anti-essentialist. Instead, for both traditions, the self is understood as emergent from relationships. This means that, for both traditions, the richness of the self is proportionally correlated with the richness of the relationships she partakes of. 4. Pluralism, Perspectivism, and Cultural Synthesis So far it has been shown how both Confucianism and decolonial philosophy converge in their understanding of order as emergent from the dynamic interaction of particulars. Relatedly, both traditions share a nonessentialist understanding of selves, that is, one in which the self is constituted by its relationships, historical, social, etc. One way of characterizing how the self is constituted by its relationships is to say that culture plays a central role in the formation of the character of persons. This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Shuchen Xiang 180 As such, culture becomes a higher-order concern as it captures both of these two key features of Confucian and decolonial thought: the emergent conception of order and the non-essential self. This same organicist metaphysics that was discussed above also underlies the Chinese attitude towards seeing value in different cultures. As I explain in this section, Confucian philosophy embodies a pluralistic and cosmopolitan attitude towards other cultures. This attitude converges with many of the most important features of decolonial philosophy. In fact, it could even be said that with such similarities, Confucianism is inherently decolonial.48 With the Confucian understanding that material existence, meaning and values emerge from relationships and interaction, there is an intuitive predisposition to understanding that peoples create meanings in different ways. This would be especially the case for people in geographically divergent places. The idea that different peoples have different “customs” can be seen in the Record of the Rites. The “Summary of the Rules of Propriety Part I” ( 曲禮上 quli shang) of the Record of Rites says, When one is crossing the boundaries (of a state), he should ask what are its prohibitions; when he has fairly entered it, he should ask about its customs [ 俗 su]; before entering the door (of a house), he should ask about the names to be avoided in it.49 This conception of customs as something that develops in coherence with the differences in locale and climate is a constant throughout the imperial era. In the “Prevailing Atmosphere and Customs” ( 風 俗 篇 fengsu pian) chapter of the 6th c. C.E. Daoist text Liuzi ( 劉子 ), for example, we read that, Prevailing atmosphere [ 風 ] is qi and customs are habits [ 習 xi]. The earth and the spring, whether qi is slow or fast, whether sounds are high or low, are prevailing atmosphere. When people inhabit this particular land, habit becomes their nature [ 性 xing] and we call it custom [ 習以成性，謂之俗焉 xi yi cheng xing weizhi su yan].50 The customs of a people emerge out of their relationship to the constant context in which they are situated (both the practices that involve their material well-being and the higher order ideas that deal with values and worldviews). Under a Confucian organicist metaphysics, meaning and value emerge from relationships and interaction. Corresponding with this, on the socio-cultural level, meaning and value emerge from human interaction or relationship with the world and other humans. This organicist This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts 181 metaphysics lends itself to perspectivism or the idea that persons are intimately bound and conditioned by their environments and cultures (and, to an extent, always conditioned by and embedded in their environments). As different groups of people find themselves in different situations and so engage with the world in divergent ways, they construct different cultural norms and values.51 This perspectivism, however, does not trouble the Chinese tradition. Given its assumption that value emerges out of relating difference, the engagement with different perspectives can only produce value. Difference is understood as enriching. In Confucius’s example of being with two others, there is nothing bad that can come from the company of others. Confucius either learns from the positive example of the virtuous or he learns how not to act from the negative example of the unvirtuous. He will always learn something; engagement will yield a positive outcome. For Confucius, in isolation, he would have no chance to improve himself as the presence of others is the condition for amelioration. For the Chinese tradition, the interaction and relationship between different cultural systems produces meaning and value. In the example of Confucius with his two interlocutors, a large part of the meaning and value that would be created will be Confucius’s ability to learn from his interlocutors. If the other two participants were as open-minded as Confucius, we can imagine that the ultimate outcome of their prolonged engagement is a compatibilism whereby they each discard some of their previous views but take on some of the views of others. Arguably, this anecdote from the Analects is a microcosm of what has historically taken place in China. Similarly, as Zhao argues, China is a “‘microcosm’ of tianxia because China is a ‘world-patterned state’ that takes tianxia to be internal to its structure.”52 For Zhao, China was always a creative work in process that drew on the cultures of what were historically different groups of peoples. As Zhao writes, “from start to finish, China remained ontically open-ended. This is to say that China could only exist in a process of perpetual change, with ‘changing’ ( 易 yi) itself being its mode of existence.”53 Zhao’s conception of the history of China as the microcosm of tianxia parallels the vision of a global humanity—a tianxia— envisioned by decolonial scholars. In this world, no one group of peoples are the sole inheritors of civilization. Civilization is multiple in origin and the truly universal philosophy of the future has to be able to bring meaningful coherence to the totality of world civilizations. In this whole in which all our particular identities are sublated, each of us will see This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Shuchen Xiang 182 reflected the unique contributions of the cultural work of previously disparate ethnic groups. As we have seen, Chinese metaphysics lends itself to the idea that meaning and value are produced from relationships. These assumptions, in turn, validate perspectivism and the diversity of cultures: different peoples interact with the world in different ways and so construct different meanings. Since the human relationship with the world is meaningful, the cultural worlds different peoples create as a result of human-world interaction necessarily involve a network of meaningful interrelationships. Culture is a human activity, a spiritual work that all human beings universally undertake or, in other words, characterizes human nature. Being a creative act (as opposed to an act that merely copies or represents an a priori set of patterns and relationships), different groups of people create divergent cultures. Culture is not a representation of a pre-existing reality but a symbolic creation that orders that reality. Our understanding of the world through culture is a dynamic one that is constantly in progress and divergent. We can define the relationship of culture to human nature as follows. The human being’s nature is to create the (cultural) world in which she lives. This created world (culture) is also the world that is appropriate for her, as it is the only place in which she can realize her humanity/become human. Just as a fish is most at home in the water swimming, we can think of the cultures that humans create to function similarly. Culture constitutes our human environment. Culture is the specifically human medium (created by human beings in society with other humans) in which we can become human. Culture is both the medium and the process which realizes our humanity. Take the example of language. Although language is a human (social) creation, we could not feasibly be human without language. Language, however, is constantly changing in tandem with our changing understanding of the world. To say that “culture” defines our humanity or that “culture” is human “nature” is to say that the symbolic world of our creation and the activity of creating and participating in culture, which in turn, constitutes our very “natures,” is the most essential definition of our humanity. This is a non-deterministic and non-fatalistic definition of the human being. The definition of the human being in terms of culture is antithetical to the definition of the human being in terms of race. This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts 183 5. Conclusion In contrast to the fixity between the parts that we see in the Greek idea of the universal, and the ontological hierarchy implicit in ideas of the nationstate, in the tianxia concept, the order of the whole is open-ended, dynamic and emerges from the interactions between peoples. As Zhao writes, “[w]e can predict that the future world will need a fitting ‘order of being’—an order that emerges realistically from the immanent transformation of the world. This order I call the tianxia system.”54 Significantly, the idea of a coherence without a pre-established, hierarchical order that typifies the nation-state model and the colonial world order is central to the visions of a decolonized future in prominent decolonial thought. It can be seen that common to the post-racial vision of Césaire, Glissant, Fanon and Mbembe is that of a relational self not defined by a putative essence. The “creolization,” “mestizaje” “post-racial self” of which these thinkers speak is ultimately a relational self, enriched by difference and one that sees growth in terms of sympathetically understanding other perspectives. The growth of a “post-racial self” is a cultural work that requires an accumulated history realized by mutual exchange. This paper has shown the similarities between Zhao Tingyang’s concept of tianxia with the vision of a decolonized, post-racial future as argued by prominent decolonial scholars. The Chinese concept of tianxia and the decolonized, post-racial vision of the world share the fundamental similarities of a relational understanding of personhood and a compatibilism in which interaction can only lead to growth. The self, like all cultures, is understood as a creative work in progress that is enriched through relationship with others. Finally, this paper has argued that the most coherent way to go forward with these characteristics of tianxia or the decolonialized vision of the world is the syncretization of world cultures. Notes 1 2 3 Tingyang Zhao, All under Heaven: The Tianxia System for a Possible World Order, translated by Joseph E. Harroff (California: University of California Press, 2021), p. 243. Zhao, All under Heaven, xv, pp. 250–251. It should be clarified that the relational self is not the complete negation or annihilation of the “self”, but is instead an understanding of the self as constituted by its relationships. Under the Confucian view, it is necessary to This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Shuchen Xiang 184 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 have an other-regarding attitude whilst maintaining self-interest because the relationship between self and other is not one of exclusivity but rather mutual interdependence. As a focal point of relationships, the Confucian relational self cannot flourish or achieve any value without also maintaining valuable relationships with the world and helping to promote the flourishing of others. Zhao, All under Heaven, p. 2. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 18. Arther O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. vii. Charles Talbut Onions, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 961. Francis E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon (New York: New York University Press, 1967), p. 84. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms, pp. 85. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms, pp. 85–86. I do not mean to imply that the idea of the nation-state was invented in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia. Although historically the model of the nation-state became the dominant paradigm of political organization only in the historical period subsequent to this historical event, the idea that people of common descent should rule over themselves has more ancient lineage and is reflected in Greek ideas about autochthony. Quoted in Charles Mills, “Kant’s Untermenschen” in Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy, ed. Andrew Valls (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), p. 175. G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 3 Vols., trans. and ed. Michael J. Petry (Boston: Reidel, 1979) quoted in Michael H. Hoffheimer, “Race and Law in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion,” in Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy, ed. Andrew Valls (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), pp. 194–216. Plato, Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper (Indianopolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997), p. 1238. Plato, Plato: Complete Works, pp. 1238–1239. René Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 4th Edition, Trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998), p. 1. Benedict De Spinoza, The Letters, Trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1995), p. 342. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, p. 57. Further examples are found in passages 1, 16 and 27. This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts 185 21 Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001). Some parts are my modifications. 22 https://ctext.org/guo-yu/zheng-yu/ens?searchu=%E7%94%9F%E7%89%A9& searchmode=showall#result. It is my own translation. 23 Zhao, All under Heaven, p. 25. 24 Zhao, All under Heaven, p. 120. 25 Drawing on the naturalistic metaphysics of Lao-Zhuang Daoism, Jacob Bender makes a similar argument from the Daoist perspective. Different organisms have different ways of “fitting” with their environment such that different qualitative experiences emerge. Jacob Bender, “The ‘Non-Naturalistic Fallacy’ in Lao-Zhuang Daoism,” Philosophy East and West, Vol. 71, No. 2 (2021), pp. 265–286. 26 Aimé Césaire, “Letter to Maurice Thorez,” Social Text, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2010), pp. 152. 27 Elsewhere, and relatedly, Glissant rejects a representationalist account of language, in which any one language can adequately represent reality or have privileged access to reality. Instead, Glissant speaks of the “Whole-World of Languages” in contrast to the “abstract universal of the language (structure or nation),” Alexandre Leupin, Édouard Glissant, Philosopher: Heraclitus and Hegel in the Whole-World, Trans. Andrew Brown (Albany: SUNY Press, 2021), p. 108. Against the representationalist conception of language that is a counterpart to the exclusivist conception of the universal, Glissant writes of how language is only constitutive “in its relation to other languages,” quoted in Leupin, Édouard Glissant, p. 89. 28 Quoted in Leupin, Édouard Glissant, p. 108. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., p. 20. 31 Zhao, All under Heaven, p. 3 32 “Decolonizing the Universal from a Chinese Perspective: Qing, Gan and Tong” parts 1 and 2 forthcoming in Comparative and Continental Philosophy. 33 Readers might object that much of Chinese international relations was historically hierarchical and thus contradicts the idealistic picture I have painted. It needs to be made clear that there are different types of hierarchy. What made the hierarchy of the Western colonial world-order so pernicious was that it was ultimately a racial hierarchy. A racial hierarchy is ontological. That is, certain groups of people are forever deemed to be inferior to others. The kind of hierarchy that governed the political relationship between the historical Chinese state and its neighboring states was a socio-political one. Under the Confucian social-political understanding of hierarchy, the sovereign fulfils his social role as a sovereign, the minister his social role as a This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Shuchen Xiang 186 minister, the father his role as a father and the son his social role as a son. (Analects 12.11) Intrinsic to the Confucian tradition is a meritocracy in which no one has a birthright to their place on a hierarchy. The sovereign is only a sovereign because he fulfils his duties as such. In negligence of the duties that constitute his role, he is no longer considered a sovereign, even if he was born into the ruling family. Likewise, a “father” cannot claim to be a father solely by virtue of his being a biological progenitor of his offspring. The definition of “father” lies not in some biological/ontological essence, but in the fulfilment of social roles, such as providing for his children. That the Chinese view of hierarchy I refer to is based on this social definition distinguishes it from the ontological/racial hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being that motivated and underlined Western colonialism. Under racial ontology, the higher-born races are essentially superior and by natural law can and should dominate the lower born. They need do nothing to prove this superiority; their superiority is proven by race. See Shuchen Xiang, “Why the Confucians Had No Concept of Race (Part I): The Anti-Essentialist Cultural Understanding of Self,” Philosophy Compass, Vol. 14, No. 10 (2019), pp. 1–11 , section “Confucian Conception of Being: Hierarchy and Human Enterprise” where I have already explained this difference. As Ji-Young Lee writes, the pervasive but misinformed historical view of China as a hegemon that exercised its power through the tributary system “rests on a misunderstanding of the tribute system; that is, on a mistaken belief that the tribute system was imperial China’s tool for projecting its power or culture onto others in the East Asian states system.,” Ji-Young Lee, China’s Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), p. 2. A large part of this misunderstanding is based on a misunderstanding of the Chinese view of the sociopolitical nature of hierarchy. One’s more elevated place in the social hierarchy comes with responsibilities towards those lower on the hierarchy. A teacher has obligations to secure the flourishing of her students, a father, the well-being of his child. Likewise, China’s historic central position in the East Asian world order came with duties of care towards its neighbors. As Jacques Gernet summarises, “Probably no other country in the world has ever made such an effort to supply its neighbours with presents,” Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization. Second Edition, Translated by J. R. Foster and Charles Hartman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). See Daniel A. Bell, and Wang Pei, Just Hierarchy Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), pp. 106–142 for a more detailed exposition of the Chinese understanding of hierarchy between states. 34 Xiang, “Why the Confucians Had No Concept of Race (Part I); Shuchen Xiang, “Why the Confucians Had No Concept of Race (Part II): Cultural This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tianxia and Its Decolonial Counterparts 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 187 Difference, Environment and Achievement,” Philosophy Compass, Vol. 14, No. 10 (2019), pp. 1–10. Roger T. Ames, Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics (Albany: SUNY Press, 2021), p. 36. Ibid. Yaqing Qin, A Relational Theory of World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. xviii. Ibid., p. xx. Ibid., p. 173. Xuetong Yan, Leadership and The Rise of Great Powers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), p. 6. Ibid., p. 16. Paul W. Kroll, A Student’s Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese (Leiden: Brill, 2015), p. 80. Ibid., p. 80. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1963), pp. 314–315. Achille Mbembe, Out of the Dark Night: Essays on Decolonization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021), pp. 61–62. Ibid., 63. Ibid., p. 64. For more detailed discussion, see my forthcoming monograph Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2023). https://ctext.org/liji/qu-li-i/ens. It is my own translation. http://www.gushicimingju.com/dianji/liuzi/21055.html. It is my own translation. See Xiang, “Why the Confucians Had No Concept of Race (Part I and II). Zhao, All under Heaven, p. 124. Ibid., p. 120. Ibid., p. 1. This content downloaded from 79.73.139.50 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:35:04 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms