The Long East Asia The Premodern State and Its Contemporary Impacts 9811987831 9789811987830 Compress

GOVERNING CHINA
IN THE 21ST CENTURY
The Long East Asia

The Premodern State and Its
Contemporary Impacts
Edited by
Zhengxu Wang
Governing China in the 21st Century
Series Editors
Zhimin Chen, School of International Relations and Public Affairs,
Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Yijia Jing, Institute for Global Public Policy & School of International
Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Since 1978, China’s political and social systems have transformed signifi-
cantly to accommodate the world’s largest population and second largest
economy. These changes have grown more complex and challenging as
China deals with modernization, globalization, and informatization. The
unique path of sociopolitical development of China hardly fits within
any existing frame of reference. The number of scientific explorations
of China’s political and social development, as well as contributions to
international literature from Chinese scholars living and researching in
Mainland China, has been growing fast. This series publishes research by
Chinese and international scholars on China’s politics, diplomacy, public
affairs, and social and economic issues for the international academic
community.
Zhengxu Wang
Editor
The Long East Asia

The Premodern State and Its Contemporary
Impacts
Editor
Zhengxu Wang
Department of Political Science
Zhejiang University
Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
ISSN 2730-6968 ISSN 2730-6976 (electronic)

Governing China in the 21st Century
ISBN 978-981-19-8783-0 ISBN 978-981-19-8784-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7
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Contents
1 The Long East Asia: The Premodern State and Its

Contemporary Impacts 1
Zhengxu Wang
2 The Edge of Civilizations: The Chinese Civilization
and the Development of World Civilizations 21
Tongdong Bai
3 War and State Formation in Ancient Korea and Vietnam 45
Tuong Vu
4 The Sovereign’s Dilemma: State Capacity and Ruler
Survival in Imperial China 69
Yuhua Wang
5 “The Great Affairs of the States”: Man, the State
and War in the Warring States Period 99
Ke Meng and Jilin Zeng
6 Understanding Nation with Minzu: People, Race,
and the Transformation of Tianxia in Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries China 143
Zhiguang Yin
v
vi CONTENTS
7 Unipolarity, Hegemony, and Moral Authority:

Why China Will Not Build a Twenty-First Century
Tributary System 175
Kyuri Park and David C. Kang
8 East Asian Monarchy in Comparative Perspective 199
Tom Ginsburg
9 Legalist Confucianism: What’s Living and What’s Dead 231
Daniel A. Bell
10 The Minben Meritocratic State’s Impact
on Contemporary Political Culture 249
Zhengxu Wang
11 Conclusion 273
Zhengxu Wang
Index 279
List of Contributors
Tongdong Bai School of Philosophy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

Daniel A. Bell Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam,
Hong Kong
Tom Ginsburg University of Chicago Law School, Chicago, IL, USA
David C. Kang School of International Relations and the Marshall
School of Business, University of Southern California (USC), Los
Angeles, CA, USA
Ke Meng School of Public Policy & Management, Tsinghua University,
Beijing, China
Kyuri Park The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
(APARC), Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Tuong Vu Department of Political Science, University of Oregon,
Eugene, OR, USA
Yuhua Wang Department of Goveronnece, Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA, USA
Zhengxu Wang Department of Political Science, Zhejiang University,
Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
vii
viii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Zhiguang Yin Department of International Studies, Fudan University,

Shanghai, China
Jilin Zeng School of Government, Peking University, Beijing, China
List of Figures
Fig. 4.1 Two ideal types of elite social terrain 75

Fig. 4.2 Timeline of China’s state development 82
Fig. 8.1 Constitutionalized monarchy over time 227
Fig. 8.2 The return of absolute monarchy 227
Fig. 10.1 Trust in the central and local governments across time 264
Fig. 10.2 Trust in the central and local governments
across provinces, 2019 265
Diagram 5.1 Reigns of dukes during the Warring States 133
ix
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Number of rebellions in South China’s commanderies 54

Table 3.2 Revolts or wars in Jiao, first to tenth centuries 55
Table 3.3 Wars involving Sila (first to seventh centuries AD) 59
Table 5.1 Variables in the panel data 116
Table 5.2 The impact of the number of interstate wars initiated
on the chancellor’s family background 120
Table 5.3 Dyadic dataset 122
Table 5.4 The impacts of internal ruling crises on the initiator’s
decision to wage war 125
Table 5.5 The impacts of internal ruling crises on the initiator’s
decision to wage war (robustness test) 126
Table 5.6 The impact of the interaction between ruling crises
and power gap on the initiator’s decision to wage war 129
Table 10.1 Level of trust in the central government 2001–2019 261
Table 10.2 Hierarchical political trust in East Asia 262
xi
CHAPTER 1
The Long East Asia: The Premodern State

and Its Contemporary Impacts
Zhengxu Wang
Is there a coherent model of state making and governance in East Asia

before the modern period? What are the ideas and institutions that
made such a state? How did such a state form, and with what cross-
time and cross-country variations in the East Asia region? How does
this premodern state still stay with the contemporary East Asia and the
contemporary world? How can scholars discover interesting and profitable
research questions from this subject? These are some of the questions that
drove the making of this volume. This introduction chapter will lay out
the intellectual and conceptual framework that brings the various chapters
together, and also provide a synthesis of each of the chapters.
The book’s argument or thesis is three-folded. First, a coherent state
gradually emerged in and unified the central area of the East Asian main-
land during the second half of the first millennium before the Christian
Z. Wang (B)
Department of Political Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang,
China
e-mail: wangzhengxu@zju.edu.cn
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
Z. Wang (ed.), The Long East Asia, Governing China
in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_1
2 Z. WANG
Era. A state name Qin unified the whole “Central Plain” of the East
Asian mainland in 221 BC. The “Central Plain” (zhongyuan) has both a
geographical and a cultural meaning, but at that time it largely referred to
the area inside today’s China that spans the Yellow and the Yangtze Rivers.
Later on, the term Central Plain became more a cultural concept that
referred to the state that is China. The polity also obtained the name of
“Central Magnificence” or zhonghua, which eventually became the name
of contemporary China—zhongguo, i.e., the country or state of zhonghua.
The same state established in 221 BC, i.e., the state of zhonghua,
together with its intervals of breakdowns and re-establishments by a series
of dynasties in the East Asia region, would endure until the arrival of
European challenges in the later half of the nineteenth century. There-
fore, there was a predominant model of state making and political and
social system in the main parts of East Asia for roughly two millennia
before the region was faced with the somewhat imposed transition into a
modern form of political and social system. During the same time frame, a
society of states also existed, different from the modern Westphalia system
of nation-states but for most part ensure peaceful relations among the
states—interstate wars erupted much less frequently comparing to Europe
prior to the eighteenth century, for example.1
Second, and this is implied in the conception of this premodern state as
an East Asian instead of Chinese phenomena, is that the ideas and institu-
tions related to the making and reproduction of this state, including the
cultural institutions such as its written language and social and political
rituals, became an East Asia property, forming a pan-East Asia cultural or
civilizational zone. For sure, the term “East Asia” is used loosely here.
If we take the adoption of the Chinese written language as the defining
character of whether a certain polity should be referred to as a member of
this “East Asian” society, then for most of the premodern period, it would
include what some refers as the “Sinographic Sphere.”2 Alternatively, most
people agree with the existence of “East Asian Culture Sphere.” Either
way, we are talking about China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, and several
kingdoms, such as Ryukyu. Other parts of what is contemporary East
Asia, such as Mongolia, the rest of the Indochina Peninsular, the rest of
Southeast Asia were less direct “members” of this international system,
1 Kang (2010).
2 Denecke and Nguyen (2017).
1 THE LONG EAST ASIA: THE PREMODERN STATE … 3
but trade and exchanges of ideas and culture were nonetheless always
intensive in the region, resulting in deep cultural links for centuries.
For polities in the Sinographic Sphere, it was clear that their making
of state and the ensuing political and social systems are highly influenced
by the Central Plain state, or what is referred to as the ancient Chinese
Confucian-Legalist State.3 The important part of the story is that the
Confucian-Legalist state carried with it a model of state-society relation,
leading to social institutions such as education and community associa-
tions acquiring the role to help reproducing the state. The social elite in
different countries—in Korea and Vietnam most notably—also acquired
the same set of ideas regarding good government, good society, and good
personhood, because the education system was based on the study and
interpretation of a similar body of classic texts. This meant the social elites
of different countries in the East Asian cultural sphere came to form a
trans-border epistemological community, greatly facilitating cross-border
amenity and amical interstate relations.
Thirdly, the ideas and institutions of this premodern state still play
important roles in shaping the social and political practices, including the
governance activities and conduct of interstate affairs, of various coun-
tries in contemporary East Asia. Many social and political patterns found
in the premodern time East Asia can still be found there today. These
may include, for example, a strong state tradition, an emphasis or heavy
reliance on the bureaucracy part of the state (vis-à-vis the legislative
and judicial parts), a merit-based system of upward mobility, and strong
emphasis on education for purpose of upward mobility, among others.
The separation or detachment of religion from state affairs and politics
and the lack of racism and identity politics can also be attributed to the
Confucian-Legalist tradition.4 In terms of interstate relations, more and
more people are seeing premodern East Asia as an order highly different
but equally if no more viable from the European Westphalia system.5 The
long history and contemporary continuation of this premodern East Asia
state and its influences today leads to the idea of a “Long East Asia” of
this book.
3 Zhao (2015).
4 Ibid.
5 See a review by Acharya (2022).
4 Z. WANG
In the rest of this introductory chapter, I first elaborate on several

aspects of the premodern state of East Asia. These include the emer-
gence and pattern of this premodern state, its main belief system of
“minben” (People-Rootedness), and its contemporary relevance. The
next is a “structure of the book” section, which outlines the content of
each chapter and explains how they come together. Then it is a short
conclusion and the reader can proceed to the individual chapters.
The Making and Patterns of the East Asian State

While historians have studied ancient China and attempted to explain
how its political system worked, the premodern state in East Asia remains
largely an untouched subject of sociology and political science. Schol-
arship of international relations might be able to claim some inroads
in looking at the IR thinking and institutions in the China-centered
premodern East Asia system, and Confucianism, Taoism, and other
schools of thought may also take a decent position in the study of philos-
ophy and ethics, but the premodern East Asian state rarely features in
social science’s vast literature of state formation, political order, bureau-
cracy, state-society relations, among others. Some recent work, however,
has greatly expand our knowledge regarding how the long-lasting bureau-
cratic state origin in ancient China, and how this state shape or define
the patterns of Chinese history during the two millenniums in which it
existed.6
While the various schools of political philosophy started to flourish
during the Spring and Autumn period, it was toward the latter part of
the Warring States they became practically affecting state making and
statecrafts. In the period of “total war,” absolutism proved to be the
most effective concept of political organization in a country. The Legalist
school, which emphasized the efficiency and economic productivity, the
state’s ability to mobilize the society and extract taxes, and the mili-
tary’s fighting capability, finally achieved great success in the state of Qin
and prepared the institutional conditions for the unification of the whole
country by Qin.
The unification of China by Qin marked the victory of Legalist political
ideas and political practice that represented pragmatism and efficient state
6 Most notably, Zhao (2015).

and military organization. A state relying solely on coercion, however,

is not stable. After the rapid collapse of the Qin Dynasty, the Western
Han Dynasty experienced the prosperity brought by the early Emperor
Wen and Emperor Jing under the influence of Huang Lao philosophy and
suffered the feudal crisis again, Emperor Wu fully established the ruling
ideology of Confucianism and rebuilt the imperial bureaucratic system.
A series of new and practical governance systems were established, and
China’s Confucian-Legalist State was finally formed. In such a system,
Confucian ideas and doctrines provide legitimacy for state power, while
Legalist forms of institutions enabled a system of effective governance
over social, economic, and military affairs.
The formation (Qin and Han) and consolidation (from Han to Tang
and Song) of the unified Confucian-Legalist State in ancient China led to
a range of so-called patterns of Chinese history. In a sense, these “pat-
terns” are what made premodern China different from, say, Europe or
the Middle East, and they often dominate scholarly inquiries of Chinese
history. According to Zhao Dingxin’s milestone study, the Confucian-
Legalist State can provide convincing answers to these questions. The
grand divergence between the Chinese and the European paths of social,
economic, and political development can be manifested in several impor-
tant historical patterns. For example, why did capitalism fail to rise
in China? Zhao shows that the Confucian-Legalist state is the struc-
tural cause to the absence of industrial capitalism in China, despite the
country’s long-existing market economy. Under the Confucian-Legalist
state, the merchant class could not gain political and military power, so
the merchant and manufacturing class could not bring breakthroughs
in industrial capitalism, while in Western Europe, the merchants and
the emerging urban manufacturing class could compete with political
power. This class possessed strong bargaining power vis-à-vis the polit-
ical authority, and members of them entered political institutions such
as parliaments, joined overseas colonial expansion, and at the same
time cultivated bourgeois philosophers who provided a set of legitimacy
discourses for high profits and personal freedom. These combined to give
rise to the industrial capitalism that eventually became the invincible mode
of economic production spreading to other parts of the world.
Another example regarding the long-lastingness of the premodern state
is found in Confucianism’s dominance as a sociopolitical ideology, or
a kind of secular religion in traditional China. In the early period of
6 Z. WANG
twentieth century, Confucianism was blamed by Western-influenced intel-

lectuals in China as the cause to China “backwardness,” and its prolonged
“rule” imposed on China’s society became a troubled puzzle. Why did the
late Ming ideological trend not bring about Western-European religious
reforms, breaking the dominance of Confucianism in China? Indeed,
scholars have long debated about the emergence of new schools of Confu-
cianist thinking, led by Wang Yangming, Li Zhi, and others in the late
Ming Dynasty. But, these “reforms” failed to break the unifying status of
Confucianism. On the one hand, Confucianism is only an ethical system,
and the controversy caused by Li Zhi and others is only controversies
in the “private domain” and does not involve the ultimate truth contro-
versy like Christianity. More importantly, it is due to the huge differences
in political models between China and Western Europe. At that time,
Western Europe was composed of many smaller countries and lacked a
unified state power. This enabled religious reforms to be implemented in
some countries, and many countries also intended to promote religious
reforms to increase the state’s control over the church, while China’s
unified Confucian-Legalist state power can completely oppress any theory
that it considered to be dangerous, and the new learning in the late Ming
Dynasty cannot be transformed into a force for social change at all.
Similarly, why there was no emergence of an autonomous civil society
in premodern China, can also be attributed to this Confucian-Legalist
state. Region wide, the long-lasting Confucian-Legalist state on the main-
land of East Asia, also shaped the state making in areas north, east, and
south of China. Zhao shows his theory can provide the answer include
why nomadic people to the north of China were able to organize a series
of empire, a phenomenon not seen in other parts of the Eurasian conti-
nent, and others. In this volume, Zhao and Bai’s chapters continue to
explore this theme too. Other scholars, notably Kang and Vu, have in
recent years looked into state making in East Asia’s other societies, such
as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.7 Much remains to be discovered, however.
Several chapters in this volume show, in fact, how promising the study of
this premodern East Asia states can be—Meng and Zeng’s chapter shows
how the Warring State period events can be contributed to institution-
alist study of politics, and Wang’s chapter shows the long history of the
Confucian-Legalist state provided vast data for examining changing elite
7 Huang and Kang (2022), and Vu’s chapter in this volume.

network within the state, and how such changing structures affect state
capacity.
In terms of international relations, the study of the peace and pros-
perities achieved through such a “Confucian society” in East Asia before
the European-originated Westphalia nation-state system has now formed
a sizable literature too. Zhang gives a rich account regarding the organiza-
tion of this inter-state society,8 while Kang has most provocatively argued
that the East Asian tianxia system was responsible for five hundred years
of peace and trade at a time when European states were engaged in fierce
warfare.9 The contribution of premodern East Asian international rela-
tion thinking to global order and contemporary IR theories appears to
be a highly active field, and we might have a lot to expect in the years to
come.10
Organizing Concept: Minben Meritocracy

Much has been written about Confucianism and other schools of Chinese
philosophy. Yet most of the work was most done by colleagues in the
discipline of philosophy and was rarely featured in the discussion of
contemporary political theories. Chan, Bell, and Bai, among others,
however, have taken the inquiry into the area of political theory and polit-
ical institutions.11 Bai and Chan’s work brings to us the most focused
formulation of a Confucianism as a type of political theory, with the direct
implications regarding to what is good government and how to achieve it,
while Bell has been the most outspoken regarding meritocracy as a viable
principle of political organization. Furthermore, the political science and
sociological study of the premodern state in East Asia include related areas
of inquiry—how were the various Confucianist ideas and norms actually
translated into political and governmental institutions, how well did these
institutions perform in achieving the political and governmental purposes
they were supposed to achieve, and how did ideas and governmental prac-
tices shape each other, among others. While Zhao’s Confucian-Legalist
8 Zhang (2020).
9 Kang (2010).
10 Archarya (2022).
11 Bai (2020), Bell (2016) and Chan (2013).
8 Z. WANG
State is a prime example of how the Confucian-Legalist ideas of govern-

ment were selected and turned into actual institutions, and how such
institutions defined the many patterns of the premodern East Asia, there
are still vast space for latecomers to engage in this area of inquiry, as some
of the chapters in this volume will show.
While Confucianism offers a vision of a good government for
Chan,12 in a recent piece of work, Bai is more interested in showing how
Confucianism as a political theory can be pit against some of the key ideas
and institutions of liberal democracy. To be sure, we should appreciate
the fundamental differences in Confucian understanding of political legit-
imacy, i.e., the role of government, who should rule, and how the rulers
should be selected, as comparing to Western liberal democratic and indi-
vidualist understanding. That the government is a necessary good, and
that government’s responsibility should include not just socioeconomic
welfare but also moral well-being (i.e., morality or virtue) of the people
determine on what criteria a person should be selected to serve in a polit-
ical office and to what standards he/she should be held accountable—the
government should be a government “of the people”—the people are the
ultimate owner of the state, and “for the people.”
The contemporary challenge is the Schumpeterian procedural defini-
tion of democracy (and people’s sovereignty) with the institution of “one
person, one vote” in choosing political leaders. We can argue that the
whole modern political science is built upon this formulation, whether
it is theoretical inquiry of democracy (such as Robert Dahl’s definition
of “polyarchy), or empirical analyses of political development and cross-
country comparison. In fact, the basic thinking of categorizing countries
around the world according to “regime types,” such as using a Freedom
House of Polity IV measurement, shows how the field is limiting its
perspectives to this Schumpeterian definition of democracy.
Bai argues that seeing people being the owner of the state cannot
be interpreted as Confucianism’s endorsement of people’s sovereignty,
if popular sovereignty has to be expressed through one person, one
vote. Confucian proposal of good government, as articulated by Mencius,
differentiates people that rule from people that are ruled for the following
reasons: the need for division of labor for any society with a reasonable
level of complexity; the superiority in terms of knowledge, skills, and most
12 Chan (2013).
importantly, compassion of the former over the latter; the inability of the
latter, with its energy consumed by the need to make their own living,
to mount enough attention to political affairs. Bai argues that although
Confucianism believes that all people are potentially equal (maybe that is
also to say that all human beings are born as equals?), it also takes it “as
a fact of life that the majority of the people cannot actually obtain the
capacity necessary to make sound political decisions and participate fully
in politics.”
On top of Mencius’ separation of those who rule and those that are
ruled, Bai gave four reasons why one person one vote is a flawed institu-
tions of political selection: it basically leads to suspicion or even hostility
of government and political leaders; it cannot ensure the interests of
nonvoters, such as people of the future generation, and citizens of the
global community, are protected; it tends to trump the interests of the
powerful while silencing the powerless; and even the ability of voters to
make best judgment regarding their own interest are doubtful. It is in
this line that we should take the Confucian-Legalist meritocratic beliefs
and ideas seriously. Daniel Bell has attempted to show how the contem-
porary Chinese political system can be interpreted through a model of
meritocracy.13
In another, more recent piece, Bell and co-author Wang go on
to examine how a “Legalist Confucian” ideal of political meritocracy
informed not only the premodern Chinese politics, but also “political
reform in China over the past four decades or so.”14 A ranked system
ensures those with the talent and virtue are placed in more important (i.e.,
higher) positions of a political/bureaucratic hierarchy, and the Confucian
rules and beliefs ensure such a hierarchical order, including the person
with the highest power-the emperor or the ruler, aims to serve the people.
This way, it is a just form of hierarchy because its existence and operation
increase the welfare of those in the lower levels of the hierarchy. It is just
also because such a hierarchy allows role changes among those at different
levels—commoners have channels to be admitted into the meritocratic
system, and once in the system they enjoy the prospects of promotion.
By softening the boundary between the meritocratic state—by expanding
public participation at the grassroots level and by introducing sortation
13 Bell (2016).
14 Bell and Wang (2022, p. 72).
10 Z. WANG
in the admission of officials, for example, and by promoting a culture

that value and reward other career choices other than joining the public
services, such a hierarchical meritocratic state system can gain more
legitimacy.
In this Introduction as well as in my own chapter in this volume,
I refer to the premodern East Asian state as the “minben meritocratic
polity.” Minben, which literally means people-rootedness or people-as-
base, developed out of the Mencian doctrine that treats people, as
comparing to the state and the ruler, as the base or foundation of the
political community. For the state of premodern East Asia, its merito-
cratic nature was much better known, but the minben dimension has,
until recently, been largely overlooked by most political scientists. Chu
Yun-han first used survey data to show the minben-based popular legit-
imacy of the Chinese state,15 and Pan Wei is probably the first political
scientist to refer to the Chinese state as a minben regime.16 Put it simply,
minbenism represents the Confucian conception of good society, good
government, and good life, and how they are made possible through
morality, i.e., virtue. The moral virtue of societal members, government
officials, and the ruler and the ruling elite are all required alongside the
rational meritocratic design of bureaucracy and other social and political
institutions. The Legalist contributed by bringing in institutional designs
that incentivize and regulate citizens’ behaviors, with harsh enforcement
of rules if necessary.
Fundamentally, minben doctrines put strong moral demands on the
state, which exists only for the purpose of bringing a better life to the
people and caring for them. The “mandate of heaven” comes with the
moral requirement to care for the people and will be taken away if the
state fails to be upright. Asian states, therefore, assume the heavy respon-
sibility to be morally impeccable, a kind of Confucian perfectionism as per
Joseph Chan. The meritocratic state is not just meritocracy, but a meri-
tocracy with a soul. It was a meritocratic state for just purposes, a Just
Meritocracy, to paraphrase the Wang and Bell’s term “just hierarchy.”
Advocating the importance of the Confucian/Mencian ideas of good
government and effective institutional designs, however, does not negate
the importance of democracy as an ideal. For example, Bai’s proposal of
15 Chu (2013).
16 Pan (2009).
the good type of government is a hybrid design that aims at achieving the
Confucian middle way that balances between equality and hierarchy and
between mobility and stability. While recommending a fully democratic
design for the community-level governance, his proposal for legislature
institutions at upper levels combined election and meritocracy—a leveled
selection regime, as he puts it. Similarly, Chan also believes in a form
of parliamentary democracy that integrates the Confucian ideas of good
government and good society.
Contemporary Relevances
No need to say, studying the premodern East Asian state is not simply
examining things of the past. In fact, when in the 1980s and 1990s,
political economic scholars paid great amount of attention in the devel-
opmental state in the East Asian economic miracle, they would have done
better understanding of the state had they been led into the premodern
roots of strong state in East Asia.17 The meritocratic elements should
clearly bring useful lessons to state building and pursuit of good govern-
ment around the world, as some later chapters in this volume will show.
In fact, the ideas and institutions of the premodern East Asia can help
enlightening the reader’s thinking of many contemporary political and
governance issues, and many other challenges facing human kind of today.
For example, the challenge of as climate change demonstrates the imper-
atives of reviving Confucian ideas and designs, and Confucian ideas can
be taken to attend thorny questions such as ethnic relations in China and
in the US and the Taiwan-Mainland question.18
Besides domestic governance, the premodern East Asia state also
carries important ideas regarding inter-state relations. Often called a
“tributary” system, it means a pair of states, with one larger or more
powerful than the other, can establish relations to the benefits of both
parties, and therefore achieving equality or mutual benefits on another
level. Today, the challenge is to build peaceful and mutually supportive
international relations in a world of great disparities, where states differ
tremendously in their size, population, military, and economic strength,
and the desire for and willingness to accept a certain level of esteem and
17 Vu (2007).
18 Bai (2020).
12 Z. WANG
status. The premodern East Asia’s inter-state society gives an example how
such a goal can become obtainable.19 A system of “strong reciprocity”
between states generates a sense of community among states and produces
significant amount of public good for the society of states—the tianxia.20
Structure of the Book

After this introductory chapter, in Chapter 2, Bai, whose recent treatise
on Confucian political theory is certainly a must-read for people inter-
ested in this book’s subject,21 outlines the emergence and evolution of
the Chinese civilization between its earliest time of origin through the
contemporary era. What is most interesting is that the Chinese civiliza-
tion, in its evolutionary form, is counterposed to what the author refers
to as the “center” of human civilization throughout the history, i.e., the
Mediterranean and the Middle East region. Bai takes the domestication
of horse, the adoption of wheels for transportation, metallurgy (bronze),
and the written language as the “four great inventions” that made the
advancement of human civilization possible. With the only possible excep-
tion of the written language, the early Chinese civilization obtained these
inventions from the “central civilization,” instead of being the inventor
of them.
The late-starter status of the Chinese civilization, however, did not put
China on a permanent position of “backwardness.” Instead, due to some
unique advantages it enjoyed by being at the “edge” of the world civiliza-
tion, the Chinese civilization in fact made important achievements in the
two to three millennia starting from the Zhou period, contributing tech-
nological and institutional innovations to the world—such as inventing
the world’s earliest bureaucracy. The special environment in which the
Chinese civilization was in also led that civilization to develop a number
of major “problems,” as comparing to the “central” civilization. The long
physical distance that kept China far away from the “central” civilization,
for example, made the Chinese civilization the dominating one in the
“world” it was in, i.e., the East Asia region, so that for centuries China
was not met with major civilizational challenges, but neither was able
19 Kang (2010).
20 Bell and Wang (2020).
21 Bai (2020).
to benefit from sophisticated civilizational exchanges, partly contributing

to its inability to adapt Western ideas and institutions after the rise of
Europe in the modern period. In the end, the chapter is a call for a kind
of “fighting pluralism” among the world’s countries and people, in order
for humankind to continue to deal with the common challenges we face.
The several chapters that follow will bring detailed studies that illus-
trated the scholarly potential of this subject, as well as how it connects to
and inform contemporary social science. Chapter 3, by Tuong Vu, shows
how the premodern East Asia case can contribute to contemporary social
science scholarship, in this case that of state making. Focusing on ancient
Korea and Vietnam, Vu examines a key issue in anthropology, sociology,
and political science on the relationship between war and state formation.
Despite their apparently identical conditions at the beginning, Chaoxian
and Jiao (names in Chinese language of ancient Korea and Vietnam,
respectively) diverged in the first century AD with Chaoxian witnessing
constant and intense warfare in contrast with the relative tranquility in
Jiao. A primary cause of the divergence, he argues, was the different
geopolitical environments of the two Han frontiers and the various ways
Chaoxian people and polities were connected to the steppe and its people.
The steppe and its people between China proper and the Korean penin-
sula disabled the hegemonic state on the central plain of East Asia from
achieving direct rule over the peninsula, as well as spreading war making
culture, means, and technology to the polities on the peninsula, leading
to fierce wars, which supposedly contributed to state making there. The
higher degree of connectedness between the Central Plain (China Proper)
and the region that is contemporary Vietnam, by contrast, made it much
easier for the state on the Central Plain to maintain its rule of Jiao. The
divergence ultimately led to stunningly different outcomes by the seventh
century: Chaoxian achieved self-rule and unification under a kingdom led
by native elites, whereas Jiao remained part of the Chinese empire but
local governments were dominated by immigrant families.
In Chapter 4, Yuhua Wang’s focus is on elite networks’ impact on the
strength of the state vis-à-vis the security of the autocrat, i.e., the emperor
of ancient China. Wang shows that China’s state development was shaped
by elite network structures that characterized state-society relations, rather
than representative institutions or bellicist competition. For the 2,000
years of its existence, its rulers faced the sovereign’s dilemma: a coherent
elite that could take collective action to strengthen the state could also
overthrow the ruler. When elites were in geographically broad and densely
14 Z. WANG
interconnected networks—the “start” type of network—they preferred a

strong state capable of protecting their far-flung interests, and their cohe-
siveness constituted a threat to the ruler’s survival. In contrast, when
elites relied on local bases of power and were not tightly connected—
the “bowtie” type of network—they instead sought to hollow out the
central state from within; their internal divisions enabled the ruler to play
competing factions against each other to secure his personal survival. This
capacity-survival tradeoff explains China’s historical state development
and highlights the importance of elite social relations in understanding
alternative paths of state development outside Europe. Wang’s study
is based on rich datasets generated from a various bodies of historical
records, showing the tremendous great promises the historical data of
ancient China hold for researchers.
Chapter 5 continues with such theory testing exercise using premodern
East Asian data. Examining wars as the locus where domestic meets
with international politics, Meng and Zeng challenge the conventional
wisdom that a ruler’s freedom of action is conditioned by the coalition
structure he is in, and the general tendency in international relations to
treat states as unitary actors. The conventional explanations of war, based
on the selectorate theory, argue that leaders with larger winning coali-
tions tend to be more selective about the wars they fight. This argument
assumes that the winning coalition is exogenously given and therefore
not subject to change. The authors challenge this assumption, arguing
that interstate warfare can be a way for leaders to rearrange the winning
coalition and thus secure their power. It then follows that threat posed by
winning coalitions can give leaders an incentive to wage war abroad. To
test this argument, the authors rely on original panel and dyad datasets
on domestic politics and international affairs of major states in China’s
Warring States period (476–221 BCE). The cross-level theory of war,
which intertwines domestic and international levels of analysis, receives
empirical support from historical inquiries and quantitative analysis. As
a result, the chapter advances an institutional explanation that points
to the domestic origins of interstate warfare, as well as bringing a new
perspective to the unification of China by the state of Qin.
Chapter 6 links two important subjects regarding the study of
premodern and contemporary China—the premodern idea of tianxia and
the contemporary assertion of Chinese nationalism. On the one hand,
it is a detailed study of how Chinese intellectuals made the transforma-
tion from a tianxia worldview, which does not categorize people into
races or nations, to the worldview of independent nation-states. On the

other hand, it is a critique of European way to define nationalism against
an ethno-centric ideal China represents a clear case in that meaning of
nationalism in the non-Western world emerges through the long history
of anti-imperial and anti-colonial domination. It demonstrates how minzu
in Chinese becomes a non-hegemonic, and non-ethnic-centric notion in
the process of pursuing an anti-imperialist modernization. It is very infor-
mative in that it first presents a brief etymological development of the
word minzu and other related concepts such as people, race, and nation-
alism in the context of nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when China
encountered Western colonial expansion. It shows how the development
of minzu understanding in China was closely related to the political expe-
rience of China being subjugated to the global expansion of imperialism
at the time. By doing so, it also challenges the Eurocentric interpreta-
tion of the Chinese notion tianxia, taking it as a hegemonic order and
in contrast with modern state-centric world system. By bringing in the
revolutionary experience in the making of the connotations of minzu in
China, in the later part it elaborates on why minzu in Chinese deviates
from the Westphalian connotation of exclusiveness and emphasizes on the
issue of equality through liberation of the oppressed peoples in the world.
Chapter 7, co-authored by Kyuri Park and David C. Kang, looks
at how the premodern East Asia was an international system with a
hegemon, which is China. They argue that a unipolar world is possible
because there is a cultural dimension of hegemony. The historical record
in East Asia reveals that East Asia was an enduring hegemonic system
with one unipolar power within a multi-state system: China. The China-
derived historical tribute system of East Asia depended crucially on moral
authority. Despite China’s rise and fall over the centuries, for almost two
millennia Chinese hegemony was attractive, not compellent. The Chinese
role in that system should inform greatly our contemporary discussion
regarding the rise of China and how China’s rise will change the world
order. The East Asian history shows, they argue, that China’s increasing
economic, and possibly military power, will not bring real challenges to
the existing order. While China might be becoming big and rich, it has no
moral authority—its culture, values, and norms do not attract. This view
of hegemony leads to a clear prediction about the twenty-first century: no
matter how big or rich China becomes, until it has crafted a moral and
cultural vision for itself and the world that is attractive, it will not be a
genuine challenger to the United States. The same discussion also leads
16 Z. WANG
to the question about the United States: no matter how big or rich the
United States remains, can it retain moral authority in the twenty-first
century? From withdrawing from various multilateral economic institu-
tions to the domestic troubles, they argue, the answer to this question is
not clear at this point.
Chapter 8 takes up a similar topic that looks at East Asia’s transition
from the premodern into the modern era, and it takes up a highly under-
studied institution, i.e., the monarchy. This transition meant either the
termination or continuation of the institution in various East and South-
east Asian countries, therefore the study of it expands our understanding
of both the past and the present. The theoretical locus, furthermore,
is at the bargaining between the monarch and the political elite during
the time of transition, therefore the various country cases form a kind
of structured comparison of the elite political interaction when the
international and domestic situations put the old political setting on a
challenging position. The chapter starts from general ideas about the
origins, legitimation, and frequency of monarchy, including the functions
of monarchy, as well as the key issue of succession. Then, drawing on stan-
dard bargaining models in political science, it explains how kings bargain
with elites to try to survive in a changing world. The results of these
bargains depend in part on material and normative resources the kings can
bring to bear. Here, premodern ideas served as beliefs that conditioned
the survival of monarchy in the face of major social and political upheavals.
Therefore, in the late nineteenth century, Chinese ideas about dynastic
replacement meant that the late Qing had difficulty rallying support when
its material capacities were clearly in decline. During the same period,
Japanese ideas of an unbroken imperial line presented the then-weak
emperor as an available solution to collective action problems among
elites. Precisely because he had no prior power, the Meiji emperor could
unify the diverse coalition that overthrew the Tokugawa in the 1860s.
Japan’s Emperor integrated the country, while China’s disintegrated it.
The chapter goes on the give a comprehensive survey of the various
monarchies of Southeast Asia. The Thai monarchy was able to navigate
the challenges of the twentieth century through deft coalition building,
while those of Laos and Vietnam fell. Cambodia and Malaysia’s monarchs
were able to provide symbolic legitimation for elites and so restored
as constitutional figureheads, occasionally playing a political role. While
monarchy has now existed in very small number of countries around the
world, this chapter does lead us to first pay more attention to this form
of state making and second think more broadly about the state making
process each country needs to go through.
Chapter 9 is a contemporary examination of China’s premodern
political tradition, what the author Daniel Bell refers to as Legalist Confu-
cianism. It gives a brief summary of the main arguments of the two
schools of political thought (Confucianism and Legalism) as related to
issues such as the human nature, the ends and means of politics, the
understanding of family and the state, and the foreign policy of a state,
among others. It also gives a review of how the two schools became part
of the Chinese political practice, beginning from the Zhou period and
through the end of the imperial time. In this regard, the first half of the
chapter serves as a handy guide to the main ideas of the two schools,
how they were employed in actual politics, and how they defined the
patterns of traditional politics and governance in China—and for that
matter, political patterns of other East Asian polities that emulated the
middle kingdom’s political and cultural institutions. The combination
of the two schools in premodern China’s statecraft and politics leads
the author to give this tradition the name of “Legalist Confucianism”—
pursuing Confucian ideals with Legalist institutions and tactics, so to
speak.
The second part of the chapter first lays out the “dead” ideas related
to the Legalist Confucian state and social system. No doubt, some of
the ideas and beliefs of that model is no more viable in the contem-
porary world, such as the Legalist belief in using ruthless coercion and
aggressive warfare. Yet, given some of the still highly attractive social
and political ideals of Confucianism and Legalism’s contribution to effec-
tiveness in achieving social and political goals, the chapter goes on to
show three examples in which the Legalist Confucian model can serve
good purposes today. These are China’s effort to limit or even eliminate
drunk driving, its effective response to the first wave of the COVID-19
pandemic in late 2019 and early 2020, and the state’s strong effort in
cracking down government corruption since 2012. Coming from a keen
observer of China’s contemporary society and government from within
China, the chapter should prove a highly eye-opening one.
In Chapter 10, I show how the premodern Chinese state’s important
legacies are still significantly shaping politics in society in China today.
Specifically, its belief in the search of a people-rooted meritocratic govern-
ment has endured. This belief system continues to reproduce itself in
the form of political and literary texts, public discourse, and policy and
18 Z. WANG
political debates. Therefore, this belief system remains a vibrant factor

affecting the public’s political beliefs and attitudes. The study of political
psychology of the public, i.e., political culture, therefore, must take this
into account. This chapter provides a case study of how the contempo-
rary Chinese public’s political attitudes are shaped by this belief system
inherited from the premodern Chinese state.
This premodern minben-, or people-rooted meritocratic state emerged
and evolved with its minben-meritocratic belief system. This chapter will
show how a theory of political culture developed out of the minben-
meritocratic belief system holds stronger explanatory power to political
trust in China—i.e., how and why the Chinese public show such a
high level of trust in their government, especially the central/national
government. The analysis of large-N survey data finds that a minben-
meritocratic political culture theory can well explain the main empirical
findings in China’s political trust research—namely China’s sustained high
level of political trust and the phenomenon of significant differential
political trust. At the same time, this theoretical framework can better
accommodate the empirical phenomenon that it cannot explain—that is,
the phenomenon of a certain degree of decline in the level of political
trust in China in the past two decades. In both regards, it outperforms
the conventional liberal-democratic theories of cultural changes such as
Inglehart’s postmaterialism theory and Norris’s “critical citizens” thesis.
The chapter’s implication is that, as comparing to the liberal-democratic
belief system, the minben meritocratic belief system represents a viable
alternative as we strive to build good society and good government.
References
Acharya, A. (2022). Before the “West”: Recovering the Forgotten Foundations
of Global Order. Perspectives on Politics, 20(1), 265–270.
Bai, T. (2020). Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case. Princeton
University Press.
Bell, D. A. (2016). The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of
Democracy. Princeton University Press.
Bell, D. A., & Wang, P. (2020). Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter
in China and the Rest of the World. Princeton University Press.
Chan, J. (2013). Confucian Perfectionism. Princeton University Press.
Chu, Y. H. (2013). Sources of Regime Legitimacy and the Debate over the
Chinese Model. China Review, 13(1), 1-42.
Denecke, W., & Nguyen, N. (2017). Shared Literary Heritage in the East Asian
Sinographic Sphere. In W. Denecke, W. Li & X. Tian (Eds.), The Oxford
Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE–900 CE) (pp. 510–532).
Oxford University Press.
Huang, C. H., & Kang, D. C. (2022). State Formation in Korea and Japan, 400–
800 CE: Emulation and Learning, Not Bellicist Competition. International
Organization, 76(1), 1–31.
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Tribute. Columbia University Press.
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and Sociological Analysis of the China Model. In W. Pan (Ed.), The China
Model: Interpreting the Sixty Years of People’s Republic (pp. 3–85). Central
Translation Bureau Press.
Vu, T. (2007). State Formation and the Origins of Developmental States in South
Korea and Indonesia. Studies in Comparative International Development,
41(4), 27–56. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02800470
Vu, T. (2010). Studying the State Through State Formation. World Poli-
tics, 62(1), 148–175. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887109990244
Wang, Y. (2022). The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State
Development. Princeton University Press.
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Zhao, D. (2015). The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History.
Oxford University Press.
CHAPTER 2
The Edge of Civilizations: The Chinese

Civilization and the Development of World
Civilizations
Tongdong Bai
On the New York Times ’ Opinion page, two scholars who teach at the
philosophy department at American universities argue that in the USA
(and in the West in general), what is mainly taught at a philosophy
department is actually Western philosophy. If it refuses to diversity itself,
they argue, it should call itself as what it really is, that is, “Depart-
ment of European and American Philosophy” (Garfield and van Norden
2016). One of them later has written a book with the title “Taking Back
Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto” (van Norden 2017). As the title
suggests, they urge the philosophy department to teach philosophies from
a multi-cultural perspective, including Chinese, Indian, Islamic, African,
Native American philosophies. There are a few questions that need to be
addressed here. First, how should we make divisions of philosophy, or
T. Bai (B)
School of Philosophy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
e-mail: baitongdong@fudan.edu.cn

22 T. BAI
more broadly culture and civilization? Is the continent a good indicator?

India, China, and much of the Islamic world are in Asia, but is there a
unified “Asian philosophy” or “Asian civilization”? Was the ancient Greek
philosophy really European? As we will see in this article, “Europe” was
not even a political and cultural entity in the time of ancient Greece.
This question is not only about divisions within philosophy, but about
other subject matters. For example, in teaching world history, what would
be the proper units in the grand world stage? If these units are states, why
don’t we teach histories of individual states and put them together? There
should be civilization circles instead of merely states for world history to
be a meaningful endeavor. Then, how do we divide civilizational (and
political) circles or units? Second, do all peoples have philosophies? If they
do, are all philosophies and civilizations created equal? In the last a few
centuries, when the West dominated the world, the majority of both West-
erners and non-Western peoples considered non-Western civilizations as
inferior to the Western civilization. In today’s world of multi-culturalism,
this view is politically incorrect. Still, in the clashes of civilizations, some
are winning, and some are losing. In what sense are they winning or
losing, and why is it the case? These issues need to be addressed, politi-
cally correct or not. Reflections on these questions may also help us orient
ourselves in an era when globalization is more and more challenged, and
clashes of civilizations seem to have a comeback.
All these grand questions are what I intend to address, if only prelimi-
narily, in this short chapter. As an America-trained political philosopher
who is Chinese and who uses a lot of Chinese materials in research,
I’ll use China as a crucial point of reflections. I dwell on the origin
and some characteristics of the Chinese civilization and the interactions
between the Chinese civilization and the other world civilizations through
human history to arrive at my conclusions in light of the grand ques-
tions I summarize above. To begin with, I will argue that a key condition
for the development of civilization is the adequate exchanges among
enough number of leisurely people. After humans developed agriculture
that could sustain city life in the Neolithic age, four great inventions are
needed for the next big step of transition: written language, bronze, (the
domesticated) horse, and wheel. For much of the human history, only
three civilizational circles, the pan-Mediterranean, the Indian, and the
Chinese civilizations, as well as the connective corridor among them, i.e.,
the Eurasian Steppe, possessed these inventions. The other civilizations
2 THE EDGE OF CIVILIZATIONS: THE CHINESE … 23
that were outside of these circles never made the transition until they
encountered these civilizations.
A main line of argument of mine is that, among the “central civiliza-
tions,” the Chinese one was on the edge and relatively isolated, and was
the sole leader in East Asia, the Chinese “world,” which could explain its
apparent long-lasting continuity. It may not be as rich and diverse as the
pan-Mediterranean civilizations, but it had its unique features, some of
which were leading the rest of the world. A fair evaluation of the merits
and demerits of the developments of world civilizations needs to take
the Chinese (and the pan-Mediterranean) civilizations into account. After
discussing some patterns of the Chinese civilization as well as how it was
able to benefited from its interactions with the other world civilization,
I take a global view and argue that for humans to develop further, a
fighting pluralism, that is, an open, non-violent but fierce competition
among different civilizations is needed.
Key Condition for Civilizational

Development: Humans, a Lot of Humans, a Lot
of Well-Connected and Leisured Humans
Doing field studies in New Guinea, Jared Diamond was asked by a local:
Why it was the West that conquered (militarily and economically) New
Guinea (as well as Australia and Americas), and not the other way around
(Diamond 1999, 13–15)? This question was the inspiration for Diamond
to write his influential book: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Obviously, for
humans to develop, we need humans. In fact, a “critical mass” is needed
for humans to develop, even to maintain, civilizations. An interesting
example in Diamond’s book is about the Tasmanian natives (Diamond
1999, 312–313). Before they were “discovered” by Western colonialists,
there were about 4,000 people on the island of Tasmania. Though an
island people, they didn’t even have such basic tools as fishhooks. More
strikingly, archeologists discovered these tools underground. Where did
the ancient settlers on this island get these tools, then? It turns out that
before the end of the last ice age, the island was connected to the main-
land of Australia. After the ice melt and the sea level rose, it became a
real island and was disconnected from the mainland. This suggests that
a people of a few thousand cannot even maintain simple tools such as
fishhooks. It is only in Hollywood movies, perhaps thanks to the modern
24 T. BAI
Western (and American) sense of individualism, where a handful of people

after some dystopic events could still use guns and automobiles, if not
something even more sophisticated. The reality is that we human beings,
as fundamentally social animals, can only maintain our present technolog-
ical achievements when there is a large number of us, perhaps in the scale
of tens of millions, if not more.
The number of humans by itself, however, is not a determining factor
in civilizational development. If a group looks populous but its members
are in isolated sub-groups, these people still can’t develop their civi-
lizations through communications and competitions.1 For civilizations
to develop, it is also necessary for there to be “idlers” or people of
leisure. Both requirements, communication and leisure, are met when
cities emerge. Compared to hunter-gatherer and agrarian groups, the
emergence of cities means that there is wealth that is beyond subsis-
tence, freeing some of the population from the almost animalistic activities
that are aimed at mere survival. In cities, there is also the concentration
of people, making communications convenient. Grand buildings, poetry
and literature, and technological and military advancements are all related
to big cities. Put it in another way, what represents an advanced civi-
lization is all in its cities, not in its rural areas or grassland. Until the
industrial revolution, the agrarian and nomadic life of humans changed
little. Of course, the emergence of cities is a result of the development
of agriculture, which makes excessive production possible, compared to
hunter-gatherer communities.2 That is, although agriculture and rural
areas do not represent the achievements of a civilization, they are the
foundations of these achievements. But agriculture is an almost universal
development in various human societies. In contrast, the “four great
inventions” that are crucial for the next stage of the development of
human societies were unique to certain regions for a very long period,
and thus are crucial for the differences of development among human
societies.
1 To be clear, the terms used in this chapter such as “development,” “advanced,”

“progress,” and even “civilizations” are meant to be value-neutral, and they are only
referred to being farther away from the “natural” stage of human existence and being
more sophisticated. But sophistication could be bad for human beings, as thinkers such as
Lao Zi (the alleged author of the Lao Zi or the Dao De Jing) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau
would argue.
2 It doesn’t mean that the development of agriculture would inevitably lead to surplus
of production, even if it is technically possible (Carneiro 1970, 734).
To early humans, communications within and among different groups

are done by one’s feet. For humans’, animals’, plants’, and even germs’
migrations and spread, similar latitudes, weather, and environments offer
convenient conditions. On this, the Eurasian continent plus North Africa
(EANA) are unique in that there is a long “conveyor belt” that is
stretched from Western Europe, North Africa, the Mesopotamian region,
Iran, Central Asia, and all the way to Manchuria. Human inventions and
new germs that are the result of dense human population can be quickly
spread and further developed on this “belt.” After paying a huge price of
human lives, for example, Eurasians have developed immunity to certain
germs that were instrumental to wipe out much of the native American
population when Europeans tried to colonize the Americas, a reason for
Diamond’s book to have the term “germ” in it.
In addition to this long belt, there is another geographical advantage
in EANA, the Eurasian Steppe. It is stretched from today’s Hungary all
the way to Manchuria, and it is a relatively flat “highway” for human
movements, especially when horses were domesticated and utilized by
humans. Here we also see that, for the development of civilizations, luck
often plays a big role. Modern humans originated in Africa, but there
are no animals in Africa that can be used for long-distance transporta-
tion. Zebras may look like horses, but they are of different species and
are almost impossible to domesticate (Diamond 1999, 157–175). More
interestingly, as Diamond points out, there are big animals in the Americas
and Australia that could have been domesticated. In particular, wild horses
actually originated in the Americas. But humans who migrated there
carried with them hunting—but not domestication—techniques from the
old continents, and as a result, these animals were killed off by humans
before they could be domesticated.
Other than these large-scale environmental factors, there are also
“small-scale” environmental factors—“small” only in comparison with
aforementioned factors. As Robert Leonard Carneiro pointed out, early
states often emerged from “areas of circumscribed agricultural land,”
each of which “is set off by mountains, seas, or deserts” (Carneiro
1970, 734). In such an area, people from different villages, when in
conflict, have nowhere to run to, and wars among them lead to larger-
scale and more sophisticated political institutions. Ancient Egyptian, the
Mesopotamian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations all emerged in such an
environment.
26 T. BAI
In sum, key to the advancement of human civilization is large popu-

lation, people with leisure, and adequate exchanges among them. Agri-
culture lays the foundation for the food surplus, which leads to the
emergency of cities that meet the above requirements—let’s call them
the first set of conditions. Further developments also rely on geograph-
ical features (e.g., the long EANA belt) and available animal species.
Let’s call them the second set of conditions. Smaller-scale environmental
conditions, the third set, such as the aforementioned environmental
circumscription, also play a key role. Both the first and the third sets of
conditions are available in many areas all over the world, while the second
set is unique to EANA, which, as we will see, makes EANA the center of
human civilizations.
The Center, the Peripheral, and the Outside

of Civilizations; The Four Great Inventions
In contrast to EANA that has all the conditions for the advancement
of civilizations, sub-Saharan Africa, where modern humans originated, is
long in the north-south direction, but narrow in the east-west direction,
with the Great Rift Valley in between. As indicated, due to climate, plants,
and other environmental factors, it is much more difficult for humans to
move north-south than moving east-west, and there were no big animals
suitable to domesticate for transportation. This makes sub-Saharan Africa,
the place of origin of modern humans, not the leader of the following
advancements of human civilizations.
Egypt, the Near East, and Mesopotamia, being the first stop for
humans to move out of (sub-Saharan) Africa and onto the great belt
of EANA, are where many major advancements of human civilizations
were made. These included, in particular, what I call the “four great
inventions.” It is now commonly accepted that horses were first domesti-
cated in the Eurasian Steppe, and were quickly adopted in Mesopotamia
and Egypt. Wheels and carriages on wheels were also first invented or
widely adopted in the Sumerian civilization. These two advancements
made quick projection of power and thus the control of a vast area
possible. The earliest states were Sumerian city-states and the Egyptian
kingdoms. The former were small in size, and the latter relied on the
Nile for transportation. The introduction of horses and wheels made
land-based large states much more likely, promoting the sophistication
of state formation. The third major advancement of human civilization is
the development of metallurgy, especially bronze. Although it was likely

introduced in the Eurasian Steppe, again, among early civilizations, people
in the Mesopotamian region and Egypt were among the first to adopt
its wide use. Yet another, the fourth major invention of human civiliza-
tions, the written language, was also first made in ancient Egypt and
Mesopotamia in 3,000 BCE or even earlier.
These four great inventions are key for human civilizations to move
up one major step. Horses and wheels promote further communica-
tions (including wars), which are crucial for the sophistication of human
civilizations. The introduction of bronze and later iron leads to greater
production, explorations and exploitations of nature and manpower, and
the capacity of war. The invention of written language helps the cumu-
lative and communicative activities, further deepening the development
of civilizations. All four great inventions are either first made or widely
used in Egypt, the Near East, and Mesopotamia, which are all on the east
side of the Mediterranean sea. They are the real cradle and early center of
human civilizations.
Apparently simple, these four great inventions are actually extremely
hard for a populous but isolated group to make. First settlers of Australia
and Pacific Islands were almost completely separated from the EANA belt.
As a result, they could not develop any of these inventions until their
almost fatal encounter with the Europeans, although they could develop
their own agriculture and even cities. There were more native people in
the Americas, and there were also splendid civilizations there, such as
Maya, Aztec, and Inca. Nevertheless, there were no domesticated large
animals, and no wide use of bronze or other metals. Some American
civilizations did have wheels, but interestingly, they were used in chil-
dren toys, but never a part of real transportation. People of Inca had a
sophisticated string system for record-keeping, but no written language.
People of Aztec had some rather basic written language. The Mayans had
the most sophisticated written language among all native Americans, but
their language cannot be compared with those in EANA with regard to
sophistication. It is unlikely that these people could move up the ladder
of civilizational sophistication and progress on their own,3 and would
3 What philosophy is a philosophically highly controversial issue. If we understand

philosophy as a reflective enterprise, it is nearly impossible for a group of people to develop
a proper philosophy if the reflections are at best limited to an individual or people of one
generation. Written texts from the past are crucial for this enterprise to be constructed.
28 T. BAI
have remained a (very splendid) Neolithic civilization forever, without

the encounter with the Europeans. Unfortunately, this encounter with
the Europeans leads not to a major progress, but a near extinction of the
natives.
Against such a background, the Chinese civilization possesses a curious
place. It is not at the very center of early civilizations, but is not
completely outside of them, either. It is at the edge of the civilizations.
The Chinese civilization is connected to the center through the Eurasian
Steppe. Thanks to this connection, it acquired three of the four great
inventions, to say the least (whether written language was independently
developed in China is still controversial). To be clear, the acquisition
can be done directly or indirectly. For example, after hearing about the
wheel, a people could invent it on their own.4 No matter how they were
introduced to China, Chinese people adopted these four great inven-
tions a thousand years or more later than peoples of ancient Egypt and
Mesopotamia did.
In some other aspects, China was also behind the Eastern Mediter-
ranean civilizations. Large cities emerged in China a thousand years or
so later than in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The former were also smaller in
scale than the latter at the emerging stage, although they were larger than
cities that appeared much later in history in Central and South America
(Xu 2014, 96).
Therefore, in terms of the four great inventions that are crucial for
humans to enter the next stage of civilizational development, the Chinese
one was a latecomer compared to the eastern Mediterranean ones. It was
a major receiver of advanced civilizations. Again, I wish to emphasize
that “advanced” and similar terms are used in a neutral manner and are
referred to the sophistication of civilization. More importantly, a thousand
years or more head-start does not give a people permanent advantage.
Modern humans are so evolved that children of parents who lived in a
Then, maybe Garfield and van Norden (and many other multi-culturalists) have over-
reached when they claim that peoples with no written language have philosophies. They
surely have worldly wisdoms, sometimes different from other peoples’ and thus very valu-
able. We—and they, after they have acquired a written language—can also reflect on these
wisdoms and thus turn them into philosophy. But philosophy as I describe it belongs to
the literate civilizations.
4 For an example, see Puett (1998).
Neolithic civilization can quickly adapt themselves to the age of indus-

trialization and information technology if they are exposed to the latter,
while contemporary Egypt and Iraq are not leading human civilizations
anymore.
China as the Sole Continuous

Civilization? A New Division of the World
While perhaps not the oldest, the Chinese civilization is often described
as the sole continuous civilization among the four major early civiliza-
tions: the Egyptian, the Mesopotamian, the Indian, and the Chinese,
which is a source of pride for the Chinese. Whether the Indian civi-
lization is continuous or not is debatable, but clearly the peoples who
live in Egypt and Mesopotamia today hold no clear cultural heritage that
goes all the way back to the ancient civilizations. But the matter of fact
is that before 2,000 BCE, there were many competing civilizations in
what would become China. Nonetheless, from 1500 BCE on, the Shang
people and its successor the Zhou people had almost a monopoly of the
four great inventions in the China region. They were the only peoples
with a written language. Other than the San Xing Dui 三星堆 culture,
they were the first people and for a long time the only people who
mastered bronze making. The horses and wheels were also first utilized
by them. This may have had something to do with the fact that they
were closer to the Eurasian Steppe, the highway connected to the center
of early human civilizations, which made the inventions from the center
easily accessible to the Shang and Zhou peoples. Perhaps due to these
technological advancements, the Shang-Zhou peoples gradually assimi-
lated, drove out, or eliminated other earlier civilizations in today’s China
(minus the Tibet and Xinjiang regions). Through a period of infighting
among different political entities that belong to the Shang-Zhou civiliza-
tion, the Western Zhou feudal order was transformed to the Qin-Han
centralized bureaucracy, which laid the foundation of the Chinese polit-
ical regime for the following 2,000 years. Through Sima Qian’s Records of
the Grand Historian (shi ji 史记) and other historical works, the Chinese
(Shang-Zhou) civilization became the common cultural memory of all
“Chinese.” Memories of other civilizations, cultures, or peoples that once
thrived in China were either denigrated or simply erased. From politics to
history and to culture, the Chinese civilization became a unified whole,
and civilizations in early China became the Chinese civilization.
30 T. BAI
Therefore, the so-called continuous and unified Chinese civilization

was the result of a sometimes violent transformation from an earlier
stage of diverse civilizations before 2,000 BCE. These other civiliza-
tions were either assimilated into the Chinese civilization, or were driven
out and eliminated, physically or culturally. After this assimilation and
elimination, the Chinese civilization became the dominant one in East
Asia, or the “world” known to the Chinese, people of the “Central
Kingdom,” zhong guo 中国. This dominance might have had something
to do with the fact that the Shang-Zhou peoples were closer to the
center of early human civilization. Due to the fact that China as well
as East Asia are at the edge of civilization and China first entered the
next stage of civilizational development, thanks to its affinity to the early
civilizational center, China remained dominant in East Asia because it
lacked a serious competitor. The dominance of the Chinese civilization
also means, however, that it couldn’t quickly evolve even further though
communications and competitions among civilizations on similar levels.
In a chapter—with the title “The Chinese Character”—of his book
The Problem of China, Bertrand Russell (2004) made the point that
even if China was conquered by invaders, these invaders would be polit-
ically and culturally conquered by the Chinese civilization. This is why
although other ancient civilizations perished, the Chinese one persisted.
This description is rather moving, especially to the Chinese. But the fact
that the conquerors were assimilated into the Chinese civilization means
that there have always been changes, such as the ethnic make-up of “the
Chinese,” under the apparent continuity of the Chinese civilization. More
importantly, the cultural conquest and assimilation of the conquerors
happened frequently in the pan-Mediterranean civilizations as well. For
example, when the Hittite conquered the Old Babylonian Empire, they
were quickly assimilated into the Babylonian and old Mesopotamian civi-
lization. As the historian Henri Pirenne (2001) showed, the so-called
barbarians who were fighting with the Romans were also trying to
become culturally Romans themselves. The assimilation of conquerors
who were not as culturally sophisticated as the conquered is a rather
universal phenomenon.
Different from China, however, the pan-Mediterranean civilizations
are relatively open and pluralistic. In the early stage, there were already
multiple centers in this region, most importantly the ancient Egyptian
and the Mesopotamian civilizations. The speaking and written languages
were different between these two civilizations. Within the Mesopotamian
civilization, there were also different, competing, or successive (sub-)

civilizations. Although they all used the cuneiform, the written languages
were actually different among them. These languages were also used to
record their own legends, histories, and literature. In contrast, other civi-
lizations within China did not have their own written languages, and their
activities could only be recorded in the “Chinese” civilization that was
actually the civilization of the Shang-Zhou peoples. Such records were not
only scarce, but often biased. One telling fact is that those who did not
follow the Zhou feudal regime were called man yi 蛮夷, the barbarians.
Different from the Greek term “barbarians” (β άρβαρ oς ) that literally
meant those who make sound (“bar-bar”) that is unintelligible to the
Greeks, the Chinese term, man yi, was put in contrast to the term hua
xia 华夏, “the flowery xia people,” which is how the Shang-Zhou peoples
referred to themselves and is translated as “Chinese.” The term man yi,
therefore, carried the meaning that the barbarians were culturally infe-
rior to the Chinese. Of course, the ancient Greeks often looked down on
the barbarians as well. Nevertheless, language-wise, the term “barbarian”
does not carry any derogatory meaning. This suggests that to the Greeks,
the differences among different peoples were a matter of diverse civiliza-
tions that can be equally sophisticated, rather than between a higher and
a lower civilization, as the Chinese terms hua xia and man yi suggest.
After all, for the Greeks, the Egyptians, who obviously had an older and
more sophisticated civilization, were also “barbarians.”
Therefore, from very early on, there were many equally advanced civi-
lizations in the region east of the Mediterranean, the center of early
human civilizations, whereas in China, one civilization was so dominant
that it wiped out other earlier civilizations. The former were gradually
spread to ancient Persia, Phoenicia, Carthage, Greece, and Rome, even-
tually forming what I would call the pan-Mediterranean civilizations. The
communications among all these different civilizations promoted further
developments. To be clear, some of the communications and exchanges
were violent. Indeed, wars may be a more effective tool to promote the
advancement of civilization than peaceful exchanges. The multi-centered
violent competitions also mean that the successor of a civilization may be
ethnically and culturally different from the ancestor in this great Mediter-
ranean circle. In the Analects, Confucius claimed that the Zhou culture is
splendid because it has synthesized the two generations (dai 代) of earlier
32 T. BAI
civilizations (Xia and Shang) (3.14).5 But the Greek and the Roman
civilizations were splendid because they had synthesized even more civi-
lizations. It is rather revealing that Confucius used the term “generation”:
the legendary Xia and Shang civilizations were actually representations of
the one and the same civilization over different periods (“generations”).
But in the pan-Mediterranean circle, there were equally advanced civi-
lizations even in the same period or generation. Therefore, although the
Chinese civilization seems to be continuous inside of China, the civiliza-
tions within the pan-Mediterranean circle were also continuous. It is just
that within this big circle, the main leaders, bearers, or successors often
changed in a more apparent manner than the ones in China.
The above discussion can also help us to correct another common
misunderstanding. Many Chinese have thought that China was defeated
by the West, and the West really originated from ancient Greece and
Rome. Compared to these two civilizations, the Chinese one is much
older. But as we see, in terms of civilizational origins, ancient Greece and
Rome were not really part of Europe, but part of the pan-Mediterranean
circle. They were successors of civilizations that were actually much older
than the Chinese one. China’s almost fatal encounter with the West in
the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries is really a very comprehensive
encounter and clash of two groups of very old civilizations.
Indeed, in today’s world, we tend to divide peoples up based on which
continent they are from. But this is not very helpful, and even misleading.
As we see, early civilizations that mastered the four great inventions can be
divided into these groups: pan-Mediterranean civilizations, Indian Civi-
lization, Chinese Civilization, and the civilization of the “highway” that
connects all these civilizations together, that is, the Eurasian Steppe. The
Persian civilization is slightly more difficult to categorize: it was between
the Mesopotamian civilization and the nomads in the Eurasian Steppe,
and also had exchanges with the Indian civilization throughout history.
In the pan-Mediterranean circle, Alexander the Great unified all
different civilizations and even part of the Eurasian Steppe, ushering
in the Hellenization of much of the civilized world, with only China
completely untouched. Later, Romans solidified such a unity in the pan-
Mediterranean region. Still, there is a cultural divide between the Greek-
speaking east and Latin-speaking west. After the fall of the (western)
5 For an English translation of the Analects, see Lau (2000).

Roman empire, as Pirenne (2001) showed, Roman culture was still domi-
nant in the pan-Mediterranean region. It was only when Muhammad
established Islam and the Muslims conquered much of the Mediterranean
region (other than the northern part of it), was the pan-Mediterranean
world, unified by Alexander the Great and strengthened by the Romans,
disrupted and divided again. This leads to the creation of Europe—to be
precise, Western (and central) Europe—as an independent political and
cultural entity. This is the famous and now widely accepted thesis intro-
duced by Perinne a hundred years ago: no Muhammad, no Charlemagne
(who was the father of Europe) (Pirenne 2001).
Therefore, we should not understand Greek and Roman civilizations
as European civilizations. Rather, (Western) European civilizations should
be understood as successors of Greek and Roman civilizations that were
in turn successors of the pan-Mediterranean civilizations. This is not
merely for historical interest. The divisions of the world that are based on
different circles or centers of early civilizations are still present and signif-
icant in today’s world, if we wish to understand the political regimes,
cultures, and philosophies of different countries. In this sense, “Euro-
peans” and “Asians” can be rather misleading. In “Asia,” the Islamic
world in Asia is a successor of the pan-Mediterranean civilization. Coun-
tries on the Indian sub-continent are successors of the Indian civilization,
with some mixture from the Islamic and Persian civilizations. China and
much of East Asia are successor of the Chinese civilizations. Culturally
and politically, there is no such a thing as “Asia.” There are also regions
in between. For example, Southeast Asia has been under the influence of
both the Chinese and the Indian civilizations, with countries like Vietnam,
especially its northern part, mostly under the Chinese influence. As we see
from the chapter by Tuong Vu in this volume, the early political regimes
of Vietnam were an offshoot of the Chinese regimes, and although both
countries were under Chinese influence, Korea, being on the edge of
the Eurasian Steppe and thus suffering more wars than Vietnam did,
developed more sophisticated political regimes faster than Vietnam.
In the case of Europe, Eastern Europe was the buffer zone between
Romans and the nomads from the Eurasian Steppe, and Russia was as
much a successor of the nomadic empires on the Eurasian Steppe as of the
Eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire. As the challenges of the unification
of Europe through EU and Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 reveal,
the cultural and political divisions that could be traced to the early stage
of advanced human civilizations still play a role.
34 T. BAI
Problems of the Chinese Civilization

Despite the re-division of the pan-Mediterranean world, civilizations from
this world have continued to evolve through the communications and
clashes between the “Occident” (Western and Central Europa) and the
“Orient” (the Islamic world in Near and Middle East). Within Western
Europe, there were competing political and cultural centers that were
good for the preservation, cultivation, and development of cultural and
political “genes.” We all know the story of how many Greek classics were
preserved in the Islamic world and were reintroduced to Western Europe,
which led to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. As Diamond
mentioned (1999, 411–413), Christopher Columbus (1451–1506 AD),
who was born in Genoa, could go from one ruler to another, eventually
finding support of his plan after many failures, which led to the Great
Discovery and a new era of European history. In contrast, the Chinese
general Zheng He郑和 (1371–1433 AD) of China’s Ming dynasty had a
far large fleet with more advanced ships and technologies, but his explo-
rations were discontinued for good when the emperor changed his mind,
because there was only one unified political authority in China.
Generally speaking, being the sole leader in the “world” (East Asia)
for much of the history, the Chinese civilization lacked stimulations from
competitions of equally or more advanced civilizations that could lead to
fast evolution. In fact, some civilizational achievements were lost when
China was overrun by the “barbarians,” the nomadic invaders whose civi-
lizations were less sophisticated than the Chinese one. The lack of true
civilizational competitors may have been the deeper reason for China to
be defeated by the West in the nineteenth century.
To be clear, it is often said that this defeat is caused by the closed-
ness—in Chinese it is called bi guan suo guo 闭关锁国, literally “closing
the customs and locking the state”—of traditional China.6 In fact, people
who believe in this often refer to the Great Wall of China as a symbol of
the lack of openness of traditional China. This is highly misleading. As we
see, it is likely that China acquired most and maybe all of the four great
inventions from the center of early civilizations. Although China became
an exporter of technologies, institutions, and ideas in East Asia, many
religions from other major civilizations were spread to China. Buddhism
that was originally from India was even Sinicized and this version of
6 See Rofel (2017, 212) for a quick overview.

Buddhism was then spread to Korea and Japan. A major development

of Confucianism, the so-called Neo-Confucianism, was partly triggered
by the competitions and clashes with Buddhism. The Jesuits brought to
China not only Christianity but also European science. The main reason
for this exchange to be interrupted was not China’s closed-ness, but the
infight within the Catholic Church. Another common thesis about China
is that it has a super-stable system (Jin and Liu 1992), which is as wrong
as the China’s closed-ness thesis. After the Zhou-Qin transition (roughly
from 770 to 221 BCE), politically speaking, traditional China did evolve
slowly. But the reason is that there was no clear alternative of equally
sophisticated or more advanced political model in the known world. Even
when one dynasty collapsed, there was no obviously alternative in terms
of political regimes. Naturally, the next dynasty would go back to the old,
pre-existing “super-stable” social and political organizations.
Therefore, the main problem of the Chinese civilization is its lonely
civilizational dominance in the “world,” lacking exchanges and clashes
with civilizational equals. Although the four great inventions can be
spread through the great highway of Eurasian Steppe, more sophisti-
cated elements of advanced civilizations, such as philosophy and political
institutions, are far more difficult to spread by tradesmen and nomadic
conquerors on this highway. Nevertheless, Buddhism was introduced to
China. But perhaps due to some characteristics of the Chinese civilization,
its logic and metaphysics have been more or less marginalized.
Moreover, this lonely dominance means that for much of the past two
millennia, China was the main exporter of civilizational products. This
naturally affected the interest of the Chinese in the outside world. This is
just natural, and has little to do with mysterious and specious factors such
as “the national character,” “closed-ness,” or “super-stable structure.” As
late as 1600–1800 AD, in terms of trade, China was still a major exporter
of various goods, and the Europeans had little to offer other than guns.
The silver Europeans extracted from the Americas was sent to China (and
India) to trade for various products. Indeed, Americas were “discovered”
by the Europeans when they searched for a route to China and were
considered not a treasure, but an obstacle to China at first. An important
motivation for Europeans to colonize the Americas and Africa was also to
trade with China. The relatively lack of interest in Europe by the Chinese
was natural. I am not saying that it was right—it may have been wrong,
but it was rather understandable and was resulted from the cultural and
economic settings faced by the Chinese. The contemporary Americans
36 T. BAI
have only dominated the world for less than a hundred years, and they
already acquire the “Chinese national character” of close-mindedness and
lack of interest in the outside world.
There are also accidental reasons for China to be left behind by the
West in the past two centuries. As already mentioned, due to the lack
of competing centers, when China lost certain civilizational products
under the invasions and disruptions by the nomads, it could lose them
forever. In contrast, when Romans lost these products due to the barbar-
ians’ invasions, many of them could be preserved in Byzantine and the
Islamic world. A major traumatic event in the development of the Chinese
civilization is the Mongolian conquest. Many political institutions and
other civilizational products were lost for good in the dynasties after the
Mongolian dynasty, according to historians such as Qian MU (Qian 1996,
2005). The Song dynasty (960–1279 AD) was known for its openness,
tolerance, and commerce, and its arts were elegant, whereas the Ming and
Qing dynasties (1368–1911) were more despotic and agrarian. Still, if the
Eurasian Steppe were stretched all the way to Western Europe, and the
Mongols turned it into a “Western Khanate,” could Europe still maintain
its civilization and develop industrialization, capitalism, and constitutional
democracy? It is a geographical luck for the Western Europeans (and
maybe for the human race) that the Eurasian Steppe ends in Eastern
Europe.
No matter what the reasons or excuses are, the fact of the matter is
that China started falling behind the West 200 years ago, if not even
earlier, and there are things from the pan-Mediterranean civilizations that
were not easily available to the Chinese and are worth learning from
and competing with. It was a long and painful process for Chinese to
understand this, and the history of China in the past 200 years could
be characterized as an effort to become part of a larger world and a
more diverse civilization. In spite of the early hesitance, the Chinese
became quite enthusiastic about learning from and becoming part of
the world. But the world was divided into two world systems in the
twentieth century, and China joined the Soviet one in 1949, which was
an early globalization effort by the Chinese (Rofel 2017). But China
retreated from this socialist cosmopolitanism after the conflict with the
Soviet Union in the late 1950s and the 1960s (ibid.). Between this retreat
and the death of Mao in 1976, China was indeed extremely isolated and
closed, but it has little to do with the traditional Chinese civilization or
any alleged Chinese mindsets. Then, the socialist world system collapsed,
and China has joined the capitalist world system that has been led by the
USA. In spite of recent clashes and growing claims of de-coupling from
both sides of the Pacific Ocean, China has not yet developed an alternative
world system, and I doubt it ever will. Rather, the recent clashes can be
understood as the growing and integrating pain of China in the compre-
hensive exchanges with the pan-Mediterranean civilizations and joining
the greater civilized world. China never experienced such a great cultural
shock since the introduction of the four great inventions 4,000 years ago,
and naturally, the integration will take time and much pain. It also has to
be acknowledged that not only were the pan-Mediterranean civilizations
ahead of the Chinese civilization at the beginning of the post-Neolithic
age, but much of the contemporary world has been shaped by one of
their successors, the Western European civilization, such as how educa-
tional institutions and economy are run. Although the Chinese economy
has grown impressively in the past four decades, China still has a great
learning curve to overcome. It is not the time to say that it is China’s
century (yet).
Contributions of the Chinese

Civilization to the World
The Chinese civilization was a relatively young one, especially compared
with the pan-Mediterranean civilizations. It lacked diversity, and it lagged
behind the Western European civilization in the past 200 years. There
is a lot of catching-up for China to do. Nevertheless, it has had and
will have a lot to offer to other civilizations. After all, it mastered the
four great inventions and entered the next stage of civilizational advance-
ment, and thus has a wide range of shared civilizational concerns with
other advanced civilizations. Moreover, due to its relative isolation, it has
developed many unique features that would enrich the diversity of human
imaginations. The learning between China and the rest of the world is a
mutual process, although China may need to learn more from the rest
than the other way around.
For example, after first developing hieroglyphs, the pan-Mediterranean
civilizations and their successors all adopted alphabetic writings. This
form of writing is dominant in today’s world. Thanks to China, a non-
alphabetic writing is preserved. Moreover, it is not a dead or primitive
language, but a highly developed and sophisticated one. If not for the
38 T. BAI
Chinese written language, our understanding of language would be

significantly limited.
There are a few other interesting unique phenomena of the Chinese
civilization. In the tombs of all civilizations with written languages, to my
knowledge, only the ones in the Chinese civilization have books in them,
which is a major source of the rediscovery of long-lost texts. The only
other civilization that buried the dead with the book—yes, the singular
“book”—is the Egyptian one. But the book they buried with the dead is
the Book of the Dead, which is an instruction manual for the mummified
kings and nobles of how to come back to life.
All other three major early civilizations (Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and
Indian) have legends about the struggles between the omnipotent good
god and the omnipotent bad god, and many of them have also legends
of the wiping out of the human race by the gods due to their disap-
pointment and wrath about human beings. Gods who are absolutely and
purely good become the inspiration of the God in Abrahamic religions
and of ancient Greek metaphysics. In ancient China, there are no such
legends, and the Chinese culture and language were not metaphysical at
all until the encounter with Buddhism. The latter was the reason for the
sinologist Christoph Harbsmeier to introduce the terms “pre-Buddhist
Chinese” and “pre-Buddhist literature” (Harbsmeier 1995, 50n5).7 In
the Chinese civilization, what is somewhat equivalent in function to the
gods in other advanced civilizations is the role of ancestors and rituals.
As a result, the symbol of the state is ding 鼎, basically a cooking pot
that contains meat and wine for ancestors in state rituals. In contrast,
the symbol of the state in the pan-Mediterranean civilizations is often the
symbol of power. This difference may have had something to do with the
fact that the Chinese civilization has one dominant source and ancestry,
whereas the pan-Mediterranean states have different ancestries and have
to fight among equally civilized states through pure power.
It is hard to say China is more or less advanced than other civiliza-
tions because of all these features, but the Chinese one is unique in these
regards, which offers a very rich source of reflections on the universality
and diversity of civilized societies and states.
7 This paper by Harbsmeier also contains other examples of the relatively lack
of metaphysical thinking in early Chinese civilization, in comparison with the Greek
civilization.
In addition to these different but not necessarily advanced features,

there were other areas in which China was ahead of other advanced civi-
lizations. The small state of Zhou defeated the powerful Shang imperial
army around 1,050 BCE, and the Shang empire collapsed. We know little
of how the Shang controlled a large territory. But we know far more
about the succeeding Zhou empire. The regime is called feng jian 封建
in Chinese, which is often translated as “feudalism.” The English term is
used to describe the Medieval European regimes, but the Chinese one is
ahead of the European one for 2,000 years. The inadequacy of this term
to describe ancient Chinese and medieval European regimes aside,8 there
are indeed some fundamental features that are shared by both regimes.
In essence, the Zhou feudal regime is a form of military colonialism that
was invented or adopted by early Zhou rulers to take over the Shang
empire (Qian 1996; Li 2005). The king sent out his friends and rela-
tives to colonize areas that were not under the Zhou control, and the
feudal lords would do the same when they tried to control their feudal
states. As a result, the “world order” was built on a hierarchy of nobility,
and through the pyramid of nobility, a large empire was divided into
small, close-knit feudal communities. The noblemen ran their fiefdoms
with some autonomy, and the legitimacy of rule was based on the noble
pedigree.
During the so-called Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods
(SAWS, roughly from 770 to 221 BCE), the old regime collapsed.
Through wars of all against all, large, populous, well-connected, and
plebeianized societies of strangers emerged. There were a few de-facto
sovereign states that emerged in the newly globalized “world.” This tran-
sition may be a forerunner of the European transition to modernity and
even of the globalization in our times. Common to all these transitions
is the need to address three key political issues in this new world: the
bond of a large state of strangers, the principles of international relations
among independent states, and the selection of the ruling members of
the state and even the world (and the legitimacy of the selection) when
all are considered more or less equal, thanks to the collapse of nobility.
These issues were also faced by early modern European thinkers, and in
a sense, our contemporary world is but an enlarged version of Warring
States China.
8 See Brown (1974), Reynolds (1994), and Li (2005, 2008) for more detailed
discussions.
40 T. BAI
This is not the place to review all the major proposals by Chinese
thinkers in this period.9 One notable fact is that, what emerged from
this transition is a centralized rational bureaucracy. The American polit-
ical thinker Francis Fukuyama acknowledged the fact that, if we use the
German sociologist Max Weber’s criteria, the Qin empire that emerged
from this transition is the first political modern state in human history
(Fukuyama 2011, 125–126). In comparison, the Roman empire existed
around the same time of the Qin and Han empires, ruling over an
area with similar size and population. But especially in the early imperial
period, the Roman empire was run in a very crude manner, in contrast
to the highly organized and sophisticated system of bureaucrats in the
Qin and Han empires (221 BCE-220 AD). The Roman empire looked
like an overgrown baby in that Rome, starting out as a republic, a regime
suitable to a city-state, acquired something much bigger for the repub-
lican form of government to handle, but handled it through this “baby”
form of government anyways. It was not until the European Enlight-
enment and modernity that the knowledge of Chinese political regime
became available to some European thinkers, and this knowledge inspired
the development of European (including British) bureaucracy.
In fact, even before this period, oftentimes, the nomads on the east
side of Eurasian Steppe learned political organizations and other advanced
technologies from the Chinese or simply grabbed Chinese artisans, which,
together with being squeezed by the powerful and organized Chinese
empires, was crucial for their westward migrations and conquests. Indeed,
the simple fact that all nomadic empires in the past started from the East
where nomads were in close contact with the Chinese civilizations showed
the institutional and technological superiority of China over the polities
on the Western edge of the Eurasian Steppe.10 The trades with China
through the Silk Roads were also the financial source for the nomads to
go to war and to build large empires of their own. The discovery and the
control of the sea routes to China (and India) by the Europeans and thus
the depletion of this financial resource might have been an important
9 See Bai (2012) for a fuller picture.

10 Dingxin Zhao also points out the fact that “it was on the frontiers of China that
the largest, most complex, and most powerful nomadic or semi-nomadic empires, such as
Xiongnu, Turk, Mongol, and Qing, emerged” (Zhao 2015, 328), and his explanation is
similar to and more detailed than what I have offered here. I am also highly sympathetic
to his characterization of the post-Qin Chinese empires as “Confucian-Legalist.”
factor for the disarming of the threat from the nomads on the Steppe,
after they played the role of both a connector among and a disruptor of
other Eurasian empires for almost two thousand years.
Economically speaking, in China’s transition to early modernity during
the SAWS, China already developed free sale of land and agriculture-based
market economy. Financially, indirect tax, excise tax, credit-based public
financing, and so on, which are considered to be key to industrialization
or the second stage of modernity, are thought of being first introduced
in England and the Netherlands. According to Liu, Guanglin 刘光临
(Liu 2015, 2016), however, these financial institutions and tools were
already introduced in China’s Song dynasties (960–1279 AD). Unfortu-
nately, these institutions were destroyed in the Mongolian conquest and
were not reintroduced to China until the last years of the Qing dynasty
(1636–1911 AD).
As already mentioned, traditional China lacked competitions among
diverse but equally advanced civilizations that co-existed at the same time
but occupied different spaces. But traditional Chinese dynasties could be
understood as offering competitions among equally advanced civilizations
that existed in the same space, but occupied different times. In fact, tradi-
tional Chinese took history seriously, and thus were keenly aware the
diversity over time and tried to learn things from it. The successes and
failures of traditional (and yet politically modern) Chinese regimes could
still offer lessons to us today. In particular, even if the very unorthodox
thesis that China entered a form of modernity before the common era is
wrong, given the apparent similarities, we are forced to answer the ques-
tion: what is modernity? After all, according to Weber’s criteria that are
centered on rational bureaucracy, China since the Qin dynasty would be
considered modern. If traditional China was not modern, there has to
be something wrong with Weber’s criteria. Moreover, even if traditional
China since the Qin dynasty is not completely modern but shares some
fundamental features of modernity, and if Chinese thinkers and Chinese
dynasties offered different ways of governing a somewhat modern state,
we need to investigate all proposals of governing a modern state before
we claim that history has ended with a best model, a claim Fukuyama
may have made too rashly in the 1990s, without looking into traditional
Chinese alternatives (Fukuyama 1992).11
11 Bai (2019) is meant to be such an alternative that is based on early Confucian ideas.
42 T. BAI
Concluding Remarks
One general lesson from the discussion in this chapter is that we human
beings need to be humble. We need to realize that we are at the hands
of things that are beyond our control, such as geography and biolog-
ical diversity, and our creativity and imagination is rather limited (see
Zhao’s chapter in this volume as well). Though equally intelligent, natives
of the Pacific Islands, Australia, and even Americas could not develop
most and even all of the four great inventions that appear to be rather
simple for peoples in Eurasia. Before the deep encounter with the pan-
Mediterranean civilizations, it is nearly impossible for the Chinese to
imagine political institutions such as Athenian democracy and Roman
republicanism. For early modern European thinkers, it was extremely
enlightening to know that a large and populous state (China) could be
run without Christianity or a similar kind of religion. It is crucial, then,
for human development to cherish diversity, which is flourishing today
when different circles of advanced civilizations fully encounter with each
other in this truly globalized world.
It is truism that pluralism is good. For the development of human civi-
lization, all kinds of walls need to be torn down. But a mere tolerance of
diversity is insufficient. In human history, wars and life-and-death compe-
titions are often the most effective driver for development. One of the
most flourishing periods of Chinese thought is the Warring States period,
and the result was the first developed rational bureaucracy in human
history. The aforementioned “modern” financial tools were developed in
China’s Song dynasties and in the UK and the Netherlands because they
needed to respond to the pressure of war. In the twentieth century, Peni-
cillin and nuclear bombs were developed also because of the pressure of
war. Though effective, however, we also have to see that war is a brutal
means. Put the moral issue aside, war can be destructive to the sophistica-
tion of human civilization as well. When the Mongols conquered China,
many civilizational achievements were lost, some for good. The technolo-
gies we have mastered today can easily destroy the whole human race. In
his response to Charles Tilly’s thesis, the sociologist Zhao Dingxin 赵鼎新
shows that what drives development in the Warring States period of China
were frequent but inconclusive wars (Zhao 2015, 26). But even inconclu-
sive wars are too high a price for civilizational development. A moderate
proposal would be that under the condition of basic welfare (basic mate-
rials needs, health care, education) and the removal of different kinds of
walls, open, non-violent, but fierce competitions are encouraged. This

is different from tolerance-oriented pluralism, which often degenerates
into indifference, relativism, and nihilism or anarchy. The competition
is not the kind of clash of civilization in Samuel Huntington’s theory.
It is a fighting pluralism in the way of an ideal soccer match: one team
tries its best to defeat its competitor, but at the same time, it wishes the
competitor to exist and even help it to thrive. The sophistication of human
civilization needs such “clashes,” clashes of gods that are immortal in the
sense that they cannot be killed, but only grow stronger than ever.
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CHAPTER 3
War and State Formation in Ancient Korea

and Vietnam
Tuong Vu
Introduction
This chapter explores the relationship between warfare and ancient
state formation in the territories that would become today’s Korea and
Vietnam. The birth of state-level societies and modern states are consid-
ered critical milestones in the political development of human society.
From an evolutionary perspective, state-level societies are distinguished
from tribes and chiefdoms in their relatively higher degree of social
stratification and centralized territorial administration. As an ideal type,
modern states are further distinguished by centralized governments which
govern through a specialized bureaucracy and which monopolize the
means of violence over a designated territory.1
1 According to Max Weber (1947: 156), “The primary formal characteristics of the
modern state are as follows. It possesses an administrative and legal order subject to
change by legislation, to which the organized corporate activity of the administrative staff,
which is also regulated by legislation, is oriented. This system of order claims binding
T. Vu (B)
Department of Political Science, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
e-mail: thvu@uoregon.edu

46 T. VU
Scholars of anthropology, sociology, and political science have long

noted the role warfare played in state formation whether in primitive or
early modern societies. War, defined as open armed conflicts between poli-
ties, operates as a method for more powerful groups to annex weaker ones
and form larger polities. Carneiro, an anthropologist who studies prim-
itive societies, claims that “[f]orce, and not enlightened self-interest, is
the mechanism by which political evolution has led, step by step, from
autonomous villages to the state.”2 War is a necessary condition for state
formation in this view.3 Similarly, sociologist Tilly argues that war or
threats of war forced rulers in medieval Western Europe to prepare by
building up not only armies but also an infrastructure of administration
and taxation that often outlasted the particular wars they fought.4 Tilly’s
argument that war made states has been confirmed by the case of ancient
China but not by those of early modern Africa, the Middle East, and Latin
America.5
The debate on the relationship between war and state formation
inspires this chapter, which examines that relationship in ancient Korea
or Chaoxian (K: Choson) and Vietnam or Jiao (V: Giao).6 These two
cases followed divergent paths of state formation despite being in appar-
ently identical conditions at the beginning. In particular, near the end
authority, not only over the members of the state, the citizens, most of whom have
obtained membership by birth, but also to a very large extent, over all actions taking
place in the area of its jurisdiction. It is thus a compulsory association with a territorial
basis. Furthermore, today, the use of force is regarded as legitimate only so far as it is
either permitted by the state or prescribed by it.”
2 Carneiro (1970: 735).
3 War is not sufficient though. According to Carneiro (1970), other conditions include
environmental circumscription and resource concentration.
4 Tilly (1990: 20–21).
5 Hui (2005), Herbst (2000), Centeno (2002) and Fukuyama (2011).
6 To avoid teleology, I use “Chaoxian” for ancient Korea and “Jiao” for ancient
Vietnam. The term “Chaoxian” first appeared in Sanguozhi written by Pei Songzhi in
the fifth century (citing the lost source Weilue by Yu Huan written in the third century).
See Gardiner (1969: 10, 60–61) and Hong (2012: 457). “Jiao” refers to the whole region
that made up the southern half of the Lingnan region. Jiao, or Jiaozhou when it came to
be used officially under the Tang dynasty, referred to the three commanderies of Jiaozhi,
Jiuzhen, and Rinan that spread from the Red River plain to the area near modern Hue
in central Vietnam.
3 WAR AND STATE FORMATION IN ANCIENT KOREA … 47
of the Han dynasty (202 BCE-8 AD and 23–220 AD), which colo-
nized the northern halves of both today’s Korean peninsula and Vietnam,
Chaoxian witnessed constant and intense warfare in contrast with the rela-
tive tranquility in Jiao. A primary cause of the divergence, I will argue,
was the different geopolitical environments of the two frontiers and the
various ways Chaoxian people and polities were connected to the steppe
and its people. The divergence ultimately produced stunningly different
outcomes by the seventh century: Chaoxian achieved self-rule and unifi-
cation under a kingdom led by native elites, whereas Jiao remained part of
the Chinese empire but local governments were dominated by powerful
immigrant families. A key legacy of this divergence was the existence
of a powerful aristocracy with tribal roots that would persist for several
centuries afterward, and the absence of a similar group in Vietnam.
More broadly, the historical cases of Chaoxian and Jiao provide additional
evidence to support the hypothesis that war facilitates state formation and
state building. Yet the particular outcome among the Korean cases is not
expected by the theory: the ultimate victor in war (Silla) was not the
militarily strongest polity (Koguryo).
Below I will first discuss the historical and environmental contexts of
Chaoxian (Korea) and Jiao (Vietnam), and then review the key devel-
opments in the history of the two regions from the first to seventh
centuries.7 The third part of the chapter will discuss the questions
concerning the divergent paths of development in ancient Korea and
Vietnam and their legacies.
The Qin and Han Empires

Ancient Chinese civilization developed in the plains (hereafter called
Central Plain or zhongyuan) located along the western and middle
sections of the Yellow River in northwestern China today. As the earliest
and most sophisticated civilization in East Asia at the time, the Central
Plain came to have powerful influences on other human communi-
ties throughout the region, especially after Qin Shihuang (Ying Zheng)
succeeded in uniting the Central Plain under a single government by 221
7 While I made an effort to consult primary materials if having been translated into
Vietnamese or English—examples are Fan (1961), Ngo (1993), Le (2002), Ha and Mintz
(1972), Best (2006), Kim et al. (2011, 2012), this paper is based mostly on secondary
sources.
48 T. VU
BCE. This took place after more than two centuries of constant warfare
during the so-called Warring States period (403–221 BCE).
During this period, the Liaodong peninsula and perhaps even the
upper stretch of the Korean peninsula were part of Yan, one of the
warring states whose capital was located near modern Beijing.8 In the Red
River plain, which lies in today’s northern Vietnam, tribes and chiefdoms
appeared to be the main form of political communities.9
After its formation, the Qin empire was active in expanding its frontier
in the north and the south, but not toward east or west.10 Yet inter-
esting parallels can be identified in the developments of the Korean and
Indochinese peninsulas. In the south, the influence of the Central Plain
was initially limited to the Yangzi River delta, but by the end of Qin rule
in 206 BCE, Central Plain rulers had established outposts as far as modern
Guangdong and Guilin. A Qin official in Guangdong named Zhao Tuo
(V: Trieu Da) took advantage of the collapse of the Qin dynasty to
proclaim himself the King of Nan Yue; Zhao would expand his kingdom
by seizing control of the Red River plain in 208 BCE.11 In the north-
east, following a failed revolt against Qin rule in 196–195 BCE, another
official named Weiman (K: Wiman) led a group of followers from the
Liaodong area into northern Korean peninsula to found the Chaoxian
Kingdom based near today’s Pyongyang.12
Under Han Wudi (156–87 BCE), the seventh emperor of the Han
dynasty, the Central Plain’s domain was expanded in all directions.13 Mili-
tary conquests brought under Han rule much of the steppe in the north
and northwest. In the northeast, Han forces defeated those of Chaoxian
and established commanderies in southern Manchuria and the northern
part of the Korean peninsula. In the south, Han Wudi’s generals subju-
gated several kingdoms, including Nan Yue. Han rule then extended to
as far as the northern part of central Vietnam today. This is the starting
point of the comparison in this essay, when central rule was imposed by
8 Gardiner (1969: 8–9).

9 Taylor (1983: 7–23). For an archaeological study of society and polity in the Red
River plain prior to the conquest by Zhao Tuo, see Kim (2015).
10 Chang (2007: 45–64).
11 Le (2002: 220–224).
12 Lee (1984: 16–17).
13 Chang (2007: ch. 3).
northern rulers nearly simultaneously on both Chaoxian and Jiao. Prior to

this external imposition, only tribal societies and walled towns had existed
in both places.14
Northeastern vs. Southeastern

Frontier Environments
Ancient Korea and Vietnam belonged to widely different frontier envi-
ronments.15 At the time of the Han dynasty, the northeastern (NE)
frontier encompassed the eastern part of the steppe (modern China’s
Heilongjiang & Jilin provinces), the area surrounding the Yellow Sea (the
Korean peninsula and modern China’s Shandong, Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin,
and Liaoning provinces), and the Wa (Japanese) islands.
During the first 1,500 years AD, nomad or semi-nomad empires on
the steppe in central Asia and Manchuria frequently and sometimes for
centuries controlled the Central Plain and ruled over the entire Middle
Kingdom.16 For our purpose here, these nomad empires can be divided
into two groups. First were tribes from central Asia such as the fully
nomadic Xiongnus and the Mongols who relied on their military prowess
for their conquests. Second were semi-nomadic tribes on the NE fron-
tier such as the Xianbei, Tuoba, Khitans, and Jurchens who lived close
to or among the communities of sedentary farmers in the Liao River
delta and in the thick forests of east Manchuria. They were militarily less
powerful but as conquerors were no less successful than the Xiongnus and
Mongols.
Located slightly beyond what Barfield has called the “perilous fron-
tier,” the Korean peninsula is adjacent to Manchuria to the north but not
directly connected to the Central Plain. Ethnically most inhabitants on the
Korean peninsula (and in the entire NE frontier) had perhaps originated
from the steppe and Manchuria.17 Geographically, culturally, and politi-
cally, nomadic tribes were as important for ancestors of today’s Koreans as
14 Lee (1984: 12–16).

15 The distance between ancient Luoyang (capital of Zhou and Han dynasties for some
periods) and modern Pyongyang is about 700 miles, whereas Luoyang is about 1,000
miles from modern Hanoi.
16 Barfield (1989: 19).
17 Lee (1984: 1–5).
50 T. VU
was the Middle Kingdom. Their relationship with the Middle Kingdom
was deeply conditioned and mediated by the Xianbei, Tuoba, Khitans, and
Jurchens in Manchuria and in the Liao River delta, and less directly, by the
Xiongnus and Mongols. Changes in the relationship between the steppe
and the Central Plain also profoundly affected political developments on
the Korean peninsula.
For all the complexities in the triangular relationship ancient Korea had
with Central Plain and nomadic polities in the NE frontier and beyond,
the important fact is that the Korean peninsula is a kind of “cul-de-sac”
that was somewhat removed from the repeated battles over a millen-
nium between nomads and Central Plain rulers. The southern part of
the Korean peninsula is accessible by ships, but the distance either from
China’s Shandong peninsula (about 300 miles) or from Japan’s Kyushu
(about 120 miles) is not insignificant.
Some Wa (Japanese) polities were involved in politics on the Korean
peninsula from very early on (at about the same time with the rise of the
Samhan kingdoms in the peninsula in the second and third centuries).18
Wa pirates were a common threat to coastal inhabitants on the penin-
sula. Interestingly, Central Plain rulers were never interested in extending
their power to Japanese islands, except for the Mongols who sought to
invade Japan after having conquered the Korean peninsula in the twelfth
century.19
Another important characteristic of the Korean peninsula is its rela-
tively compact shape, small size, and difficult topography. The length
of the Korean peninsula extends about 700 miles from the Yalu River
(modern border with China); its width is about 150 miles from coast
to coast. The land area is about 85,000 square miles, but much of the
peninsula is mountainous. Lowlands are located mostly on the peninsula’s
western side and downstream major rivers along the western and southern
coast.
In contrast with its NE frontier, the Han empire’s southern fron-
tier was home to both sedentary farmers and mountainous tribes but
not nomads. It was a vast landmass spreading from the Yangzi River all
18 For an early history of Japanese kingdoms, see Piggott (1997).

19 Japan started to play more important role after it was unified under Hideyoshi
in the fifteenth century. Hideyoshi sought to conquer the Korean peninsula but was
unsuccessful. In the early twentieth century, Japanese rulers were able to colonize not
only Korea (1910–1945) but also Manchuria (1937–1945).
the way to the Indochinese peninsula. The region can be divided into
four sub-regions from north to south: the region immediately south of
Yangzi River, north Lingnan (Guangxi and Guangdong), south Lingnan
(Jiao or northern Vietnam), and the region further south. As Qin and
Han empires expanded, the area south of Yangzi River up to the Sino-
Vietnamese border today was gradually brought under Central Plain’s
rule.
The wars in the steppe and the Central Plain following the fall of the
Han dynasty forced thousands of Central Plain inhabitants to migrate
south. A series of “southern dynasties” were established by elites origi-
nating from Central Plain. These dynasties, which included Wu, Eastern
Jin, Liu Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen, may have claimed to inherit the
mandate of Han emperors but they often had effective control over only
parts of the southern frontier. Militarily, they were no match for nomadic
empires in the north but were normally more powerful relative to other
polities on the frontier.
The southwestern part of the frontier was occupied by many Tai
principalities, of which the most powerful was Nanzhao Kingdom (later
changed to Dali) based in today’s Yunnan province. In the southern part
of the Indochinese peninsula, beyond Han rule, were Linyi, Funan, and
other principalities of Cham, Khmer, and Tai groups.20 These groups
were influenced by Indic civilization in varying degrees.
The Jiao region contained the Red and Ma River plains where ances-
tors of today’s Vietnamese are believed to have inhabited. After the defeat
of Nan Yue Kingdom, the Han emperor divided this region into three
provinces: Jiaozhi (V: Giao Chi), Jiuzhen (V: Cuu Chan), and Rinan
(V: Nhat Nam). The administrative center of the whole region was near
today’s Hanoi. Until the late sixth century or so, the Red River plain
was more populous than the southern part of the Middle Kingdom. Over
time, the area received many immigrants from the Central Plain who ran
from the disorders and wars in the north.
The shape of the Indochinese peninsula is longer and much wider
than the Korean peninsula with its western side being blocked not by
sea but by mountains. The distance from Lang Son at the northern tip
of today’s Vietnam to its southern tip at Ca Mau is about 860 miles
in a beeline. With low mountains and highland plateaux dominating the
20 For a recent collection of essays on China’s relationship with this whole region
throughout history, see Anderson and Whitmore (2014).
52 T. VU
middle section of the peninsula, the Jiao region was connected with the
southern section of the peninsula by a narrow strip of land running along
the coast. The southern section is relatively flat and opens up in the west
to large plains along the Mekong and Chao Phraya rivers.
Below I will review how centralized rule developed in ancient Korea
and Vietnam, with frequent and intense warfare distinguishing the state
formation experience in the former from the latter. For the purpose of this
chapter, I will focus only on the eastern part of the Indochinese peninsula,
not its western part.
State Formation on the Eastern Indochinese

Peninsula, First to Seventh Centuries AD
The eastern Indochinese peninsula, especially in the Red River plain,
was under the rule of northern imperial powers for more than a millen-
nium. Here centralized imperial rule was imposed on tribal societies. Han
commanderies expanded over time with trade and with migration from
the north by Han people fleeing from wars.21 After a revolt by the local
tribal aristocracy (the Trung sisters) was crushed by a northern expedi-
tionary force, Han rule was robust enough to dominate the region for
about two centuries.
The southernmost province of Rinan experienced many revolts and
raids from polities further south in the second century AD.22 As the Han
dynasty collapsed in the early third century AD, important changes took
place in the Jiao region. The territory was still nominally under northern
rule, but ruling dynasties in the North were too busy with their own
problems and could maintain only infrequent contacts. Over time, impe-
rial rule existed only in name, but practically power rested with certain
prominent families who came from the Central Plain originally but had
grown roots in the region over several generations by that time. They
were northerners who actively fostered the sinicization of local tribal soci-
eties, while themselves developing a local base and a southern creole
identity.
The threats to these ruling families came from three sources. One was
rivalry among themselves. Another threat was intervention from afar by
21 Yu (1967: 177–178).
22 Taylor (1983: 60–70).
northern dynasties. Northern emperors were often willing to accept sons

who took over administrative positions from fathers, but sometimes they
appointed northern men to those positions who would pose a challenge
to the dominant families in Jiao. A final threat was from the far south in
the form of raids by Linyi, an Indic polity. In the second century AD,
Chinese records show the existence of Linyi (V: Lam Ap) and Funan (V:
Phu Nam). Linyi was founded by the son of a former imperial official
who seized control of the southernmost district of Rinan and established a
kingdom there around 192.23 Linyi’s population comprised local uplands
and coastal tribes besides Han renegades, and the kingdom was orga-
nized as a confederation of many Cham groups. Linyi was well organized
enough to become a major source of raids on the southern frontier of Jiao
well into the fifth century.24 South of Linyi was Funan, a Khmer-Cham
polity located in the lower Mekong River delta that thrived on trade.
Like Linyi, Funan was not a centralized state but rather a confederation
of many principalities.
Nationalist historiography of Vietnam today assumes a natural and
ancient tendency for local “Vietnamese” to rebel against “Chinese” rule,
but there were few revolts recorded throughout the centuries of imperial
rule (see Tables 3.1 and 3.2). Jiao was largely peaceful as central admin-
istration slowly expanded together with population growth. Every few
decades there was a conflict among the great families but these tended
to be brief.25 Raids from southern polities were more frequent, but only
affected the southernmost province of Rinan. Many times northern forces
entered Jiao either to back up a newly appointed governor in the face
of local resistance, or to repulse Linyi’s attacks.26 These forces would
withdraw after order had been restored.
By the middle of the sixth century, the dynasties ruling southern China
were in turmoil. A major rebellion led by Ly Bi, an imperial official
and a descendant of Chinese migrants, took place in Jiao in 541.27 Bi
proclaimed himself Emperor of Nan Yue after having chased away the
23 Taylor (1983: 60) and Cœdès (1966: 63–68).

24 Taylor (2013: 28–33) and Munoz (2006: 87–89).
25 See “author” for the pattern of conflicts in Jiao.
26 An example was when Lu Dai brought imperial forces into Jiao to overthrow Shi
Hui (Holmgren 1980: 74) and Ngo (1993: 165–166).
27 Taylor (2013: 34–37) and Le (2002: 276).
54 T. VU
Table 3.1 Number of

Commandery Number of Time span
rebellions in South
rebellions (years)
China’s commanderies
Rinan (V: Nhat Nam) 4 44
Jiuzhen (V: Cuu Chan) 2 21
Jiaozhi (V: Giao Chi) 1 1 (in
Hepu 2 178)
Nanhai – 62
Cangwu 2 –
Yulin 1 1
Lingling 1 1 (in
Guiyang 1 116)
Changsha 3 1 (in
Wuling 14 162)
Nan 1 1 (in
Jiangxia 2 164)
Nanyang – 5
Yizhou 4 110
1 (in
101)
11
–
100
Note Only the first three commanderies are located in today’s

Vietnam
Source Adapted from Holmgren (1980: 65)
imperial governor. It took four years for the Liang Emperor, whose capital
was based in today’s Nanjing, to send an imperial force, and Bi was
defeated and killed. After Liang lost to Chen which completely neglected
Jiao, Ly Phat Tu, a kinsman of Ly Bi, became the effective ruler of Jiao for
the next three decades. In the late sixth century, the Sui dynasty reunified
the Middle Kingdom. When a Sui army reached Jiao, Ly Phat Tu surren-
dered and the region was brought back again under imperial rule from
the north.
The brief review above suggested that two main forms of warfare
existed in Jiao and along the southern coast of the Indochinese peninsula
in the first seven centuries. One form was wars of conquest and pacifi-
cation by imperial armies. The other, more common, form was Linyi’s
raids on Jiao for booties. These raids posed serious threats to imperial
administrators but they were limited mostly to the southernmost districts
of Jiao. Jiao was protected only by small militias, and major disturbances
or threats were coped with by imperial armies sent in from the north.
Table 3.2 Revolts or wars in Jiao, first to tenth centuries
Period Jiao revolts or wars among frontier polities Time span
First century AD 40–43 CE: Trung sisters 4

Second century AD 100: Nhat nam 1
192: Lin Yi est 137: Khu Lien 2
144 Cuu Chan 1?
157: Chu Dat 1?
178–182: Luong Long 4
Third century AD 245–248 Lady Trieu 4
248: Lin Yi’s raid 1
263–271: Lu Hung 7
Fourth century AD 344–359, 399–405, 407, 413–420, 424, 435–446: 35?
wars with Lin Yi
Sixth century AD 542–547: Ly Bi 6
543: Ly Bi fought Lin Yi 1
571?-603: Ly Phat Tu 32?
Seventh century AD 685–687: Ly Tu Tien 33
Eighth century AD 722: Mai Thuc Loan 1
767: Sailendra’s raid 1
791–798?: Phung Hung 7
Ninth century AD 819–820?: Duong Thanh 3
862–865: Nanzhao’s invasion 4
Tenth century AD 938: Ngo Quyen’s victory over Southern Han 1
Source Author’s compilation based on Taylor (1983, 2013)
Even though wars were few and changes were slow, it would be a
mistake to assume that Jiao was a stagnant backwater. Significant devel-
opments in culture, economy, and demography took place in the region
under ambitious governors and capable administrators such as Shi Xie
and Tao Huang.28 Politically, the norm of centralized bureaucratic rule
appeared to gradually grow local roots after having been imposed by
an external force. Even as authorities passed from centrally appointed
administrators to locally based prominent families of northern descent,
the system did not revert to tribal rule or chiefdom. This trend was to
continue in the next four centuries after a brief revival of central rule
under Sui and early Tang dynasties.
28 Taylor (2013: 28–30), Le (2002: 169–170, 176–177) and Ngo (1993: 161, 169–
170).
56 T. VU
State Formation on the Korean

Peninsula, First to Seventh Centuries AD
Following the conquest under Han Wudi in 108 BC, four Han comman-
deries were established in Manchuria and northwest, central, and north-
eastern Korean peninsula. Within four decades, the latter two comman-
deries had been abandoned perhaps due to lack of security.29 Lolang, the
commandery overseeing Liaodong and northwestern Korea, was the most
important and prosperous center of Han rule. While central administra-
tors were able to mobilize corvée labor and collect taxes, their jurisdiction
was limited to northern Korean peninsula. In the rest of the peninsula,
autonomous tribal polities existed and occasionally challenged imperial
authority based in Lolang. Chinese records divided those polities into
three main confederacies [Samhan]: Mahan in the southwest (containing
55 polities or guo), Pyonhan in the center (12 guo), and Chinhan in the
southeast (also 12 guo).
Less than a century after Han rule had been established, Chaoxian
was already on the verge of collapse. We have seen that in Jiao the Trung
sisters rose up in 40 AD only to be crushed by a powerful Han army three
years later. The Central Plain’s control over Chaoxian was far more fragile,
especially following the rise of Wang Mang (9–23) who usurped Han rule
for 15 years. In 12 AD, local tribes in Gaoguli [K: Koguryo] rebelled and
killed the Han governor—this event apparently marked the birth of the
Koguryo kingdom, the first important native polity that appeared on the
Korean peninsula (more on this later).30 A raid on Lolang in 22 AD
by local tribes took away hundreds as slaves.31 Three years later, Wang
Tiao, a Chinese born in Lolang, killed the Han governor and seized the
commandery in 25; it took the Han emperor five years to suppress the
revolt.
From then on, effective central rule was maintained only in Lolang
but not the other commanderies where the central administrator merely
granted titles to tribal chieftains who had established themselves in the
29 Gardiner (1969 18).

30 Samguk Sagi recorded the date of Koguryo’s founding as 37 BCE (Kim et al. 2011:
19, 56–58).
31 Gardiner (1969: 21), citing Weilue. The exact number of captives as written in the
record was 1,500.
districts and towns nominally under imperial rule.32 We have seen a

similar phenomenon of nominal rule taking place in Jiao but there were
two differences here. First, the phenomenon took place much later in
Jiao. The second difference concerned the identities of the local chiefs.
In Jiao, Han migrant families ruled the region on behalf of the impe-
rial government, but in Chaoxian, it was native tribal chiefs who did. In
the southern half of the peninsula, Samhan polities were not subjected
to imperial rule, much as Linyi and Funan did in southern Indochinese
peninsula. Yet, as seen later, one of the Samhan polities went on to unify
the Korean peninsula under its rule, whereas Linyi could not.
The birth of Koguryo as a tribal kingdom in the first century AD
marked the beginning of the end of Han rule in Korea. At birth Koguryo
was a confederacy of tribes inhabiting mountain valleys in northern Korea
and southern Manchuria whose main activities of their clan nobility
were warfare and raiding.33 Throughout its existence from the first to
the seventh centuries, Koguryo was a constant threat to its neighbors,
including Han commanderies and Liaodong rulers to the east, the tribal
kingdom Fuyu (K: Puyo) to the north, and (since the fourth century)
Paekche and Silla kingdoms to the south—much as Linyi was to Jiao
during the same period.
Unlike the relatively peaceful situation in Jiao, the collapse of the Han
dynasty in 220 brought massive chaos to the Middle Kingdom and its
northeastern frontier. Three rivals, Wei, Shu, and Wu emerged and fought
for the mandate of Han over six decades, with the Middle Kingdom being
reunified in 280 under a fourth contender, the Jin House. A century later,
however, the Middle Kingdom was again broken up into two or more
regions ruled by different dynasties. This so-called era of Northern and
Southern dynasties was to last until 581 when the Sui dynasty reunified
China.34 During this period, the Central Plain was under the rule of a
series of nomadic tribes, and even Sui and later Tang dynasties traced
their lineages in part to those tribes.
On the northeastern frontier, the Gongsun warlords established them-
selves as new rulers of the Liaodong region, but were later vanquished
32 Gardiner (1969: 22).

33 For a cogent discussion of Koguryo, see Hwang (2010: 1–11).
34 Lewis (2009a).
58 T. VU
by the Murong clan of Xianbei tribes.35 The Murongs revived Yan, the
kingdom of the Warring States period, and Murong Yan fought with
Koguryo numerous battles over the control of former Han comman-
deries. Several times Koguryo appeared totally finished as a result of war.
In 204, Murong forces sacked Koguryo’s capital for the first time. In
244–245, an allied force of Wei and Murong again demolished Koguryo’s
capital in response to the latter’s raid, forcing Koguryo to move its capital
into the upper Yalu River plain. Hostilities in 342–343 again provoked
the Murongs into launching a massive invasion of Koguryo, taking “tens
of thousands” of captives back to Liaodong, and forcing Koguryo to
accept the Murongs’ suzerainty by the end of the decade. Yet by the
late fourth century, Koguryo had revived, thanks in part to the Murongs
having been vanquished by Tuoba Xianbei tribes. Under the talented King
Kwanggaet’o (391–413), Koguryo expanded its borders in all directions:
to Manchuria in the north, to the Liaodong River in the west, and to the
Han River in the south.36
The next two centuries witnessed near-constant and intense warfare
among Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla—the latter two were newly emerging
kingdoms in the south of the Korean peninsula. Paekche located in
the southwest came to dominate the former Mahan area, thanks to the
leadership of an exiled prince from Koguryo.37 In 371, Paekche forces
advanced north as far as modern Pyongyang, killing Koguryo’s king in
the campaign. In 475, Koguryo seized Paekche’s capital at Hansong (near
modern Seoul), capturing Paekche’s king. At first, Silla, which was located
in the Naktong River basin in the southeast, was the weakest among the
three. Paekche for much of this period was closely allied with Yamato
forces from the Japanese islands. Koguryo appeared the strongest of the
three and distinguished itself by repulsing not one but three massive land
invasions (598, 612, and 645 AD) by Sui and Tang armies. We saw above
that Jiao under Ly Phat Tu quickly surrendered to Sui forces, which went
on to destroy Linyi further south.
35 The most important source in English on the Murong Xianbei is Schreiber (1949);
for a cogent discussion see Hong (2012: 148–161).
36 Lee (1984: 38–40).
37 Best (2006: 27–29).
Table 3.3 Wars involving Sila (first to seventh centuries AD)
Polity 1BC 1AD 2AD 3AD 4AD 5AD 6AD 7AD Total
Paekche 0 8 8 12 0 1 4 44 77 (40%)
Wa 1 2 1 7 3 16 0 0 30 (15%)
Koguryo 0 0 0 1 0 10 2 16 29 (15%)
Malgal 0 0 5 1 1 1 0 4 12 (6%)
Tang 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 11 11 (6%)
Gaya 0 3 3 0 0 0 1 0 7 (4%)
Naklang 1 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 (2%)
Others 0 1 7 3 0 2 3 10 26 (13%)
Total 2 17 24 24 4 30 10 85 196 (100%)
Note The percentages in the far right column don’t add up to 100 due to rounding
Source Adapted from Kang (1995: 174)
The fortunes of the three kingdoms reversed quickly with the inter-
vention of the Middle Kingdom now reunified under Tang.38 By clev-
erly forming an alliance with Tang, Silla successfully defeated its rivals
Koguryo and Paekche in 671, then pushing Tang forces north to the
Taedong River in 676. For the first time, most of the Korean peninsula
(under the Taedong River) was under the rule of a single king. (Surviving
forces of Koguryo fled north to form a new kingdom of Parhae that would
last until the tenth century). By the late tenth century, the entire penin-
sula up to the Yalu River had become the territory of Koryo, the dynasty
that reunified Korea after the collapse of Silla in 927.39
Based on the two surviving sources about the period, one study counts
483 wars experienced by the three kingdoms during 51 BCE and 676
AD (725 years) (see Table 3.3).40 Silla saw one war every four years on
average for a total of 196 wars—most taking place toward the end of the
period. Nearly 40% of these wars were with Paekche, while about 15%
were with Koguryo and Wa each. There were also wars with other smaller
kingdoms and with Tang forces.
38 Lee (1984: 66–73).

39 Two fine studies of Koryo are Duncan (2000) and Breuker (2010).
40 Kang (1995: 173–177).
60 T. VU
Discussion
Although Chaoxian and Jiao started out in the first-century BCE in
roughly similar conditions, Chaoxian had gained self-rule by the fourth
century and unified government by the late seventh century. Despite
certain periods of de facto self-rule, Jiao did not emerge free from
northern rule until the tenth century. Unified government was achieved
in the eleventh century, but Dai Viet kings at this point ruled over a much
smaller territory than their counterparts did in the Korean peninsula. It
was not until the nineteenth century could a Vietnamese government
exercise its authority through the length of the Indochinese peninsula.
Without assigning any intrinsic values to “self-rule,” “unified govern-
ment,” and “centralized bureaucratic rule,” the different outcomes are
intriguing. Clearly, the divergent paths resulted partly from the more
compact shape of the smaller Korean peninsula.41 Yet the sharp contrast
between ancient Korean and Vietnamese state formation was no doubt
a direct consequence of the conditions of constant and intense warfare
in the Korean peninsula from the first to seventh centuries. Three issues
will be taken up in turn in this section. First, why did the Korean penin-
sula experience so much warfare while the eastern Indochinese peninsula
did not? Second, how did war contribute to state formation in ancient
Korea and what were the long-term legacies for Korea in comparison with
Vietnam? Finally, what do the Korean and Vietnamese cases add to the
general scholarship on the relationship between war and state formation?
Kang (1995) has argued that the desire for territory and people,
together with environmental stresses, were the primary causes of war
among the three Korean kingdoms between the first and seventh
centuries. This argument perhaps applies for the brief raids and wars Linyi
conducted against Jiao. The fact is that Linyi was the only enemy of Jiao,
and a relatively weak one that could never match the power of impe-
rial armies protecting Jiao. What, then, explains for the much greater
frequency and intensity of war in the Korean peninsula?
I argue that a key difference between Chaoxian and Jiao was Chaox-
ian’s connections to the steppe. The steppe functioned in two ways that
raised the frequency and intensity of warfare in the northeastern frontier.
First, the steppe was a vast and wild landmass that offered many nomad
41 Duncan (2000: 267) makes this argument for the reunification of the peninsula
under Koryo.
tribes and confederacies the base to organize raids and military conquests
against sedentary communities and polities. Tribes on the steppe from
the Xiongnu to the Xianbei at their peaks were capable of matching
or overcoming Chinese imperial armies. These two tribes in fact gained
control of the Central Plain for centuries after the fall of the Han dynasty.
The Xianbei Murongs seized the Han commanderies in Liaodong and
northern Korea and was a great regional power from the late third to
early fifth centuries. By battling Central Plain forces, nomad empires not
only gave Korean-based groups the opportunity to preserve or seek self-
rule from the Middle Kingdom but also forced them to defend themselves
from conquest by those tribes.
The second way the steppe affected Chaoxian was through the spread
of war culture (raids), means (horses), and technology (cavalry). Koguryo
and Paekche founders traced their origins to tribes in Manchuria, and at
its start Koguryo was a confederacy of tribes. It would be safe to assume
that Koguryo rulers were no strangers to the steppe’s way of war. In fact,
raids and conquests were the primary activities of Koguryo rulers whose
territory spread from southern Manchuria to northern Korean penin-
sula. One frequent activity of Koguryo was to raid the kingdom of Fuyu
in the north for slaves. The famous Koguryo king, King Kwanggaet’o
(391–413), is known for successful cavalry attacks that greatly expanded
Koguryo’s territory under his rule.42
One should not overstate the importance of the steppe’s way of war
for Korean kingdoms as they also employed defensive techniques such as
building fortifications. Silla built 56 fortifications in the fifth to seventh
centuries, and Koguryo successfully repulsed Sui and Tang armies thanks
to a formidable system of fortifications along the Liao River.43 It is not
clear whether the construction of these fortifications borrowed techniques
from the Central Plain, or it was simply a locally devised technique in
response to invasions by armies from the steppe and the Central Plain.
Interestingly, Jiao is not known to have constructed such fortifications—
which may have reflected the low level of security threats there.
While the causes of war were relatively clear, how war contributed
to state formation in the Korean peninsula is a more difficult question
due to the lack of references to such issues as taxation in the historical
42 Lee (1984: 38).

43 Kang (1995: 193), Wright (1978: 191–197) and Xiong (2006: 54–58).
62 T. VU
records.44 However, it is possible to describe gradual changes over time in

the authority of kings and queens vis-à-vis their subjects and in the admin-
istration of the realm. Although the three Korean polities of Koguryo,
Paekche, and Silla emerged on the basis of confederacies of tribal soci-
eties, over time they developed centralized kingdoms as evidenced in three
trends.45 One was the restructuring of administrative units in geograph-
ical terms (south, north, east, west, and center) as opposed to tribal
divisions. Second, succession rule changed from brother-to-brother to
father-to-son pattern. Third was the practice of taking queens from a
single house or lineage. This practice may have represented an attempt
by kings to keep power preserved within the royal household and not to
be spread out among a broader circle of aristocratic families.
According to South Korea’s preeminent historian Lee Ki-baik,
Koguryo witnessed the above changes under the reign of King
Kogukch’on (179–196).46 In Paekche, it was under King Kun Ch’ogo
(346–375).47 King Naemul (356–402) of Silla began the changes with
his change of title from isagum (successor prince) to maripkan (“ele-
vation”) and with the establishment of a hereditary kingship succession
system.48 Subsequently, under Silla’s King Chijung (500–514), the title
wang or king was first used instead of maripkan. The changes in the titles
were followed by other, more substantive changes. A code of administra-
tive law was promulgated in 520, and Buddhism was officially adopted as
state religion during 527–535 under King Pophung (514–540).49 Appar-
ently, these institutional changes were related to the fierce wars Silla was
fighting, yet it is not possible to point to specific causal ties between
events in part because changes may have lagged behind particular wars.
Analyzing Silla’s pattern of change, Kang concludes that it was gradual
with a few leaping stages, likely spurred by defense needs.50
44 The two earliest surviving Korean sources are Samguk Sagi and Samguk Yusa. For
translations and (in the case of Paekche) analysis, see Best (2006), Kim et al. (2011,
2012) and Ha and Mintz (1972). Lee (1984, chs. 2–4), offers a standard analysis of the
period.
45 Lee (1984: 36).
46 See also Kim et al. (2011: 105–111).
47 See also Best (2006: 252–258).
48 Lee (1984: 41), Kang (1995: 178) and Kim et al. (2012: 87–95).
49 Lee (1984: 43) and Kim et al. (2012: 117–122).
50 Kang (1995: 181–182).
In contrast with Chaoxian, state formation in Jiao proceeded slowly

without much warfare. As the Central Plain fell into chaos, centralized
rule in Jiao deteriorated into rule by local powerful families who had
earlier migrated from the north. Some talented governors such as Shi
Xie and Tao Huang oversaw important efforts to transform local culture
and expand administrative jurisdictions.51 One may infer that under these
able administrators bureaucratic rule according to the northern model
was gradually accepted by the Jiao elites and populace alike, even though
the form of bureaucracy at the time was still primitive. However, once a
locally based authority emerged in the form of a central monarch by the
eleventh century, centralized bureaucratic rule easily thrived.
Viewed in the long term and in comparison with Vietnam, the conse-
quences of war went beyond the earlier creation of more centralized
polities in ancient Korea. Imagine that the Trung sisters had succeeded in
resisting Han armies in 43, or that Linyi had conquered and unified the
entire Jiao. War gave rise to and helped consolidate states led by native
elites of tribal origins in the Korean peninsula. In Jiao, the absence of war
allowed northern immigrant families to consolidate power and eventually
lead the province to self-rule.
With a short period of Han imperial rule that gave way early on to
self-rule by native elites, tribal social structure was preserved in all three
Korean kingdoms as evidenced in the existence of powerful hereditary
aristocracies in Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla. The hallmark of this structure
in Silla was the so-called bone-rank system (kolp’um), which conferred
or withheld political privileges and social status to individuals according
to their hereditary bloodline. The system included “hallowed bone” rank
(songgol ) for members of the royal family who could become kings; “true-
bone” rank (chin’gol ) for those members who could not become kings
and members of a few other lineages; and “head-ranks” that included
six steps.52 The top three head-rank steps (six, five, and four) comprised
the general aristocracy. Government positions, scale of private residence,
household vehicles and horse trappings, etc. were tied to the status of
individuals in the bone-rank system.
The bone-rank system in Silla was modified somewhat after Silla
successfully unified the peninsula, but the aristocracy as a whole remained
51 Taylor (2013: 28–30).

52 Lee (1984: 49–54).
64 T. VU
powerful even as monarchs became more authoritarian over time.53 With

the rise of a local gentry from the ninth century on,54 and following
the centralizing efforts by monarchs in the Koryo dynasty (918–1388),
the bone-rank system gradually yielded to a land-based aristocracy called
yangban, a central institution in medieval Korea until the beginning of the
twentieth century.55 Still, yangban did not appear in the tenth century
out of nowhere but grew out of and incorporated a significant part of the
bone-rank system.56
In Jiao, the rise of strongmen from powerful immigrant families such as
the Shis (V: Sı̃) and the Dus (V: Ðỗ) should be distinguished from seem-
ingly similar phenomenon in the Central Plain dynasties where a small
number of great families formed an aristocracy around monarchs.57 The
families in Jiao were mere local rulers whose clan networks and Chinese
roots helped them gain and maintain their power. They were not an aris-
tocracy. When Jiao achieved self-rule, the pattern continued and medieval
Dai Viet (Vietnam) never had an aristocracy. Among dynastic clans that
came to rule Dai Viet, several traced their roots to the north such as the
Ly, Tran, and Ho.
The great frequency and intensity of warfare on the Korean peninsula
during the first to the seventh centuries should not obscure the fact that
kings and queens there devoted significant efforts to diplomacy. It was
a common practice for smaller polities to pay tribute to more powerful
kingdoms throughout the period. Koguryo sided with Wei, then with Wu,
and then back to Wei again during the Three Kingdoms period in China.
Military alliances were formed between Paekche and Yamato, between
Paekche and Silla, and between Silla and Tang. The latter alliance proved
to be decisive: it helped Silla to rise from a position of relative weakness
to become the power that unified the peninsula under its rule.58 Warfare
clearly pressured polities to consolidate and expand, or perish. Yet it was
diplomacy as much as war that determined the outcome in the ultimate
53 Ibid., 73–75.
54 Ibid., 94–95.
55 Palais (1975: 11-12).
56 Duncan (2000: esp. 59) and Eckert et al. (1990: 67–74).
57 Lewis (2009b: ch. 2). This aristocracy would be destroyed during the wars at the
end of the Tang dynasty. See Tackett (2014).
58 Lee (1984: 66–67) and Hwang (2010: ch. 2).
victory of Silla. It was not the fittest (Koguryo) but the best connected
(Silla) that won the competition.
Conclusion
This chapter contrasted political evolution in ancient Korea and Vietnam
from the first to the seventh centuries AD. This period saw the decline and
eventual collapse of the Han dynasty in the Central Plain and the breakup
of China into several polities with those in the north being under the rule
of nomad empires. By the end of the sixth century, the Middle Kingdom
was reunified under the Sui, and then Tang dynasties.
From a roughly similar initial condition of being mostly subjugated
under imperial rule by the Han dynasty, ancient Korea and Vietnam
diverged greatly in the next six hundred years. Korea achieved self-rule
and unified government over nearly the entire peninsula by the end
of the period, whereas Vietnam remained under imperial rule. I have
argued that warfare contributed decisively to divergent outcomes, and
the great frequency and intensity of warfare on the Korean peninsula
were largely due to the various ways the Korean peninsula and its people
were connected to the steppe and the nomads. A critical consequence of
the specific way Korea evolved is the preservation of a powerful aristoc-
racy that had native tribal origins and that would exert its influence for
centuries afterward. In contrast, such an aristocracy was destroyed early
on in Vietnam under imperial rule. Sino-Vietnamese strongmen and their
families would for centuries stand at the helm of the country long after it
had achieved self-rule.
This chapter notes the positive relationship of warfare to state forma-
tion, but hopes to offer two additional insights into the debate through a
comparison of ancient Korea and Vietnam. First, while the general trend
favored the militarily strong, diplomacy was as important as warfare in
determining the outcome of the competition among polities. Second, the
lack of warfare needs not mean lack of political development. Ancient
Vietnam continued to evolve in peace, acquiring northern (Sinic) insti-
tutions and culture while growing locally based identities. An ironical
outcome of warfare was the survival of the native tribal aristocracy in
ancient Korea well into the medieval period. Korean monarchs for subse-
quent centuries would be restrained by a powerful aristocracy. When
Vietnam emerged from imperial rule, in contrast, it seemed much easier
for monarchs to centralize power.
66 T. VU
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1967.
CHAPTER 4
The Sovereign’s Dilemma: State Capacity

and Ruler Survival in Imperial China
Yuhua Wang
Why do some states endure for centuries, while others fall years after they
were founded? Why are some strong, and others weak? Generations of
remarkable social sciences scholarship have explored these questions.
Yet, much of our understanding of how the state as an organiza-
tion develops is based on how states evolved in Europe. The centuries
after the fall of the Roman Empire laid the foundation for Europe’s
distinctive path of political development. Political fragmentation led to
a dual transformation. On the one hand, rulers’ weak bargaining power
vis-á-vis domestic elites gave rise to the creation of representative insti-
tutions, which provided an arena in which elites could bargain with the
ruler nonviolently. This institutional bargaining mechanism lengthened
ruler survival and made European states more robust. On the other
Y. Wang (B)
Department of Goveronnece, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
e-mail: yuhuawang@harvard.edu

70 Y. WANG
hand, frequent (and increasingly expensive) interstate conflicts incen-

tivized rulers to centralize state bureaucracy and tax effectively. Together,
these developments made European states stronger and more durable.1
Representative institutions and bellicist competition, however, were
born in a political geography that was unique to Europe. For most of
human history, the majority of the world’s population has not been
governed by a European-style state. Much of the literature, however,
treats the European model as the benchmark and asks why states in
other regions have failed to follow suit. Rather than treating non-
European states as underdeveloped cases that will eventually converge
to the European model, we should take these alternative patterns of
state development seriously in their own right. Departing from the Euro-
centric approach reveals new state development patterns and provides a
new lens through which to analyze the processes involved.
I examine the case of China to develop such a new approach to under-
standing alternative paths of state development. China accounts for a large
share of the world’s population and economy, and was a pioneer in state
formation millennia ago. The Chinese state thus constitutes a useful, yet
understudied, alternative to the Euro-centric literature.
Using original data I collected on historical taxation and ruler dura-
tion in imperial China, I first establish empirical patterns that suggest
a fundamental difference between European and Chinese state devel-
opment: While European states had increased their capacity to collect
taxes and become more durable by the modern era, the Chinese state
seemed to have gained durability at the expense of state capacity. Chinese
emperors became increasingly secure, and their dynasties long-lasting. For
example, from 1000 to 1900 CE, Chinese emperors on average stayed
in power as long as European kings and queens. With the exception
of the Yuan (1270–1368), every Chinese dynasty in the second millen-
nium lasted for roughly 300 years—longer than the United States has
existed. But China’s fiscal capacity gradually declined during this period.
In the eleventh century, for example, the Chinese state (under the Song
Dynasty) taxed over 15% of its economy. This percentage dropped to
almost 1% in the nineteenth century (under the Qing Dynasty).
Exploring how the state maintained its durability despite declining
capacity helps broaden our understanding of alternative paths of state
1 For discussions of European political development, see Tilly (1992), North and
Weingast (1989), Dincecco (2011), and Stasavage (2020).
4 THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER … 71
development. China’s different, but durable, patterns of state devel-

opment demand a new approach that goes beyond simply testing
Europe-generated theories in a non-European context.
I argue that rulers of states without representative institutions face a
fundamental tradeoff that I term the sovereign’s dilemma: a coherent elite
that can take collective action to strengthen the state is also capable of
revolting against the ruler.2 This dilemma exists because strengthening
state capacity and enhancing ruler duration require different elite social
terrains,3 which are the ways in which central elites connect to local social
groups—and each other. When central elites are in geographically broad
and densely interconnected networks, they prefer to have a strong state
that can protect their far-flung interests, but their cohesiveness constitutes
a threat to the ruler’s survival. When elites have a local power base and
are not tightly linked, they will instead seek to hollow out the central state
from within and prefer to provide order and public goods locally. Yet their
internal divisions will enable the ruler to play competing factions against
each other to secure his personal survival.
Building on social network theories, I characterize two ideal types
of elite social terrains. A star network, which features coherent and
geographically dispersed elite connections, promotes a strong state but
threatens ruler survival. A bowtie network, characterized by fragmented
and geographically concentrated elite connections, undermines state
capacity but helps rulers stay in power for longer.
I evaluate the implications of the sovereign’s dilemma in the context
of China’s state development during the imperial era. I use what Robert
Bates, Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Barry
Weingast call “analytic narratives” to provide an overarching description
of the development of the Chinese dynastic state.4 I draw on histo-
rians’ work as well as archival materials. I argue that China started
with a star network and transitioned to a bowtie network. Medieval
China was governed by a national elite embedded in a star network. A
2 I borrow the term from Huntington (1968, 177), who dubs the tradeoff between
success and survival the “king’s dilemma.” The sovereign’s dilemma also echoes what
Geddes (1996) calls the “politician’s dilemma,” in which strengthening the state
jeopardizes the ruler’s chances of survival.
3 My inspiration for the term “social terrain” comes from Bates (2017, 61), who uses
political terrain to describe whether a polity is centralized or decentralized.
4 Bates et al. (1998).
72 Y. WANG
semi-hereditary aristocracy that consisted of several hundred noble clans

monopolized government positions and formed a close-knit marriage
network, which connected different corners of the empire. In the ninth
century, a climate shock triggered mass violence, which eliminated the
medieval aristocracy. Emperors in the subsequent dynasty exploited the
power vacuum and reshaped the elite social terrain into a bowtie network.
Sons of locally embedded landowning families entered central politics
through the civil service examination system.
The emperors pitted elite factions against each other to consolidate
their absolute rule. The bowtie network thus became a self-enforcing
equilibrium in late imperial China. It contributed to the rulers’ excep-
tional durability, but also weakened the state’s capacity to extract
resources. I complement my historical narratives with descriptive statistics
that highlight broad historical patterns. I have collected and compiled
a large amount of original data—most notably a dataset of all Chinese
emperors and a longitudinal dataset of taxation from the seventh to the
early twentieth centuries.
As a synthesis of my book The Rise and Fall of Imperial China,5 the
primary goal of this article is to take a preliminary step toward creating
a framework to analyze China’s long-term state development, which will
enrich our understanding of varieties of state-building paths. I corrobo-
rate this framework with narrative and descriptive evidence, which, given
the long time span covered in the study is both feasible and desirable.
The evidence, however, is admittedly Spartan. I leave out many details
from any particular time period. Yet what my narrative lacks in specificity
regarding individual dynasties it makes up for in generality allows me to
highlight fundamental relationships between the state and society over the
long run.
My findings contribute to three literatures. First, the dominant
perspective in analyzing long-term state development is still state
centered. This literature generally treats the state as a unitary actor that
is independent of society.6 The bellicists, for example, consider states as
actors in the international arena and link external war with state building.7
In the same vein, institutionalists equate the state with the ruler and
5 Wang (2022).
6 Evans et al. (1985).
7 Tilly (1992).
examine how ruler–elite bargaining determines state-building outcomes.8

I join state–society scholars and consider state–society interactions to be
a driving force of state development.9 However, I also advance the tradi-
tional state–society approach. While it assumes that the state and society
are separate and competing entities, I emphasize the blurred boundary
between the two and analyze how state–society linkages through elite
networks drive state development. In this sense, I join an emerging
elite-centered literature on state building.10 While most of these studies
emphasize elite competition, I focus on elite social relations.
Second, my findings also contribute to the recent literature on author-
itarian politics. While the dominant view is that formal institutions
bolster authoritarian durability, I highlight the importance of state–society
relations in prolonging rulers’ tenure. While popular arguments often
associate state capacity with the stability of authoritarian regimes,11 I
examine the conditions under which state capacity and regime dura-
bility are incompatible. As an ancient autocracy, and probably the most
durable one in human history, imperial China did not develop any of
the political institutions, such as legislatures and parties, that past studies
argue help autocrats hold onto power.12 Faced with economic and fiscal
decline, Chinese emperors at the time could not claim “performance
legitimacy” either.13 Its extraordinary durability instead relied on an elite
social structure that facilitated rulers’ “divide-and-conquer” strategies and
collaboration between the state and social groups.
Lastly, I contribute to the literature on China’s historical state develop-
ment. A static origin story has dominated popular understandings of the
Chinese state. Starting with Karl Marx, and popularized by Karl Wittfogel,
this story features an “oriental state” that was formed to control floods
and manage irrigation.14 Historians’ earlier work, by contrast, exam-
ined China’s political development through the lens of dynastic cycles.
8 Levi (1988).
9 Migdal (1988).
10 Geddes (1996), Kurtz (2013), Soifer (2015), Garfias (2018), and Beramendi et al.
(2019).
11 E.g., Slater (2010).
12 See, e.g., Magaloni (2006), Gandhi (2008), and Svolik (2012).
13 Zhao (2009).
14 Wittfogel (1959).
74 Y. WANG
According to this view, Chinese history simply exhibited repetitions of

recurring patterns.15 Recent social science scholarship on China’s state
development has focused on either the beginning or the end—state
formation during the Qin era (221–206 BCE) or state collapse during
the Qing (1644–1911 CE). The scholars who study the beginning treat
China’s early state formation as finite, completed process without exam-
ining how the state was sustained and how it changed over the next two
millennia.16 The scholars study the end focus on China’s declining fiscal
capacity without discussing the system’s exceptional durability.17 It is time
to account for the entire trajectory of China’s state development and to
consider these seemingly contradictory trends—longer ruler duration and
declining fiscal revenues—not as paradoxes, but as interconnected mani-
festations of an underlying political equilibrium. Only when we take a
holistic view can we start to explore the conditions that led to different
outcomes in the country’s political development.
The rest of the article is organized as follows. The next section elab-
orates on the central arguments that elite social terrains shape state
development, and exogenous shocks provide opportunities for rulers to
reshape this terrain. The third section uses descriptive statistics to illus-
trate some stylized facts about China’s state development, focusing on
changes in ruler duration and fiscal capacity. The fourth section offers a
narrative on the two phases of China’s state development. The first phase
features strong state capacity but short ruler durations; the second phase
is characterized by long ruler durations and low state capacity. An exoge-
nous shock led to mass violence, which facilitated the transition from the
first to the second phases when the ruler was able to exploit the power
vacuum to reshape the elite social terrain. The last section concludes by
discussing the broader implications of my findings.
The Argument
I argue that the network structure of state–society relations shapes the
level of state capacity and how long a ruler stays in power. I focus on
one aspect of state–society relations, the elite social terrain: the ways in
15 For discussions and critiques of the dynastic cycle theory, see Skinner (1985) and
Fairbank (1983).
16 E.g., Hui (2005) and Zhao (2015).
17 E.g., Bai and Jia (2016).
(a) Star Network (b) Bowtie Network
Fig. 4.1 Two ideal types of elite social terrain
which central elites connect to local social groups (and each other). I
draw on social network analysis to analyze two network structures—i.e.,
stereotypical ways in which individuals in a hierarchy are connected with
each other: a star network in which a coherent core connects everyone in
the periphery18 and a bowtie network in which members of a fragmented
core connect their own peripheral communities.19
Figure 4.1 illustrates these two ideal types of elite social terrains. The
central nodes are state elites, defined as politicians who work in the central
government and can influence government policies. Each peripheral node
represents a local social group, such as a clan, in a specific geographic
location.
The edges denote connections, which can take multiple forms, such as
membership, social ties, or family ties.20
Central elites are agents of their connected social groups; they seek to
influence government policies to provide the best services to their groups
at the lowest cost. Each central elite is only interested in the welfare of his
or her connected groups, not necessarily that of the whole nation. Central
elites can use a variety of governance structures to provide services to their
18 Wasserman and Faust (1994, 171).

19 Broder et al. (2000, 318).
20 The number of nodes and ties in the graphs is plotted for aesthetic considerations
and does not carry theoretical significance.
76 Y. WANG
connected social groups. The most popular such structures are public-
order institutions, such as the state, and private-order institutions, such as
clans, tribes, or ethnic groups. Whether elites cooperate with each other
or clash over their preferred policies depends on the type of networks in
which they are embedded.
In a star network, each central elite directly connects all social groups
located in dispersed geographic areas. The central elites are also connected
with each other: because elites link various social groups, their networks
are likely to be overlapping, generating lateral ties between the elites. In
a bowtie network, each central elite is connected to a set of social groups
in a concentrated geographic area, but not to any social groups in distant
areas. Nor are the central elites connected with each other: because elites’
social relations are localized, they are also less likely to be in each other’s
social networks.
The two forms of elite social terrains are archetypes; the reality is
messier. The vertical dimension of elite social terrains (geographic disper-
sion vs. concentration) conditions elite preferences regarding the ideal
level of state capacity, while the horizontal dimension (cohesion vs. divi-
sion) conditions ruler survival. Together, they capture the basic charac-
teristics of elite social structures that can produce important implications
for state development outcomes.
The Star Network

Central elites embedded in the star network have a strong incentive to
use the state (rather than private-order institutions) to provide services to
their connected social groups. Two considerations drive elites’ choices.
The first is an economic consideration. In the star network, elites are
connected to multiple social groups that are geographically dispersed. It
is more efficient to rely on the central state to provide services because
it enjoys economies of scale and scope. With a strong central state, it
is much cheaper to cover an additional territory in which a connected
social group is located than to rely on the social group to provide its own
security and justice.
The second consideration that drives elites’ choices is social. Tribes,
clans, and ethnic groups that are concentrated in a certain locality often
care a lot about their local interests but little about national matters.
They oppose paying taxes to the central state, because the state will
use these funds to provide services to all parts of the country, so these
specific social groups would end up paying for services that benefit others.
These geographically defined social groups hence create regional cleav-
ages that produce distributive conflicts. Nevertheless, if central elites can
connect multiple social groups that are geographically dispersed, as in a
star network, this social network will cross-cut regional cleavages.21 These
cross-cutting cleavages incentivize the central elites to aggregate the inter-
ests of multiple localities and groups and scale them up to the national
level. The star network therefore transcends local interests and fosters a
broad state-building coalition.
The star network, however, represents a centralized and coherent elite
that threatens ruler survival for two reasons. First, the elites are embedded
in a centralized structure in which they can use their cross-cutting ties to
mobilize a wide range of social forces across regions. Second, the cooper-
ative relations among elites make them a coherent group—and thus able
to overcome collective action and coordination problems if they decide to
rebel against the ruler. Therefore in this scenario, the ruler is more likely
to be challenged by the elites.
The Bowtie Network

In the bowtie network, where elites only need to service a few groups
in a relatively confined area, private service provision is more efficient
because the marginal costs of funding private institutions to service a
small area are lower than the taxes that elites would be required to pay
to support the central state. In addition, social networks in this case rein-
force existing regional cleavages. The central government then becomes
an arena in which these elites compete to attract national resources to
serve local interests. Elites in the bowtie network would oppose strength-
ening the central state because such policies would divert resources from
social groups to the state and weaken their local power bases.
The bowtie network, however, facilitates ruler survival. Central elites
can mobilize some (regionally based) social groups against the ruler. But
it is easier for the ruler to quell challenges that are concentrated in certain
areas. In addition, the lack of a dense network among elites provides what
the sociologist Ronald Burt calls “structural holes” that allow the ruler
to divide and conquer. As Burt argues, if parts of a community are not
21 For a seminal discussion of cross-cutting versus reinforcing social cleavages, see Lipset
and Rokkan (1967).
78 Y. WANG
directly connected with one another (i.e., structural holes separate them),
an outside player can gain an advantage by playing the clusters against
each other.22 In this scenario, the ruler is more likely to establish absolute
rule to dominate the elites.
Social Terrains Make the State, and Vice Versa

For each network type, the central elites find it in their best interest
to maintain the status quo. Elites embedded in the star network prefer
to strike a Hobbesian deal with the ruler to pay taxes in exchange for
centralized protection. The central state provides an institutional commit-
ment device between the elites and their social groups. Supporting state
building allows the elites to credibly commit to protecting their group
members because it is harder for the central state, compared with private-
order institutions, to exclude specific members as beneficiaries from a
distance. The star network also strengthens the bargaining power of
the elites vis-á-vis the ruler because elites embedded in cross-regional
networks can credibly threaten the ruler. The ruler, facing a nationally
connected elite, must commit to using the state to provide public goods
rather than to prey on the society. In the bowtie network, however, elites
prefer to delegate state functions to their social groups, which can provide
private services at a much lower price than paying taxes to the national
government. But the elites in the bowtie network still have an interest
in keeping the state “afloat.” A state with a minimum level of capacity
can help protect social groups from existential threats such as external
invasions and large-scale natural disasters.
The ruler, however, faces the sovereign’s dilemma: state capacity vs.
personal survival. He seeks to maximize state capacity, which can best be
achieved by facilitating the creation of a star network. But he also seeks
to maintain his grip on power, which is easier if elites are fragmented,
as in the bowtie network. Depending on the initial conditions, the ruler
either attempts to strengthen the state or to maximize personal survival,
but not both. A coherent elite helps strengthen the state, but threatens
his survival.
Exogenous shocks, however, can disrupt an equilibrium and provide
opportunities for the state to reshape elite social relations. I assume the
22 Burt (1992, 47).

ruler has a “first-mover advantage,” which he can exploit to reshape elite

social terrain in his favor to ensure his own survival—even if this involves
creating an elite network that is detrimental to state strength.
A polity can suffer from various exogenous shocks. Over the long term,
the most important shock to dynasties is climate change, which leads to
large-scale conflict.23 Cold weather, for example, increases the likelihood
of mass violence, since famine becomes more likely.24 Large-scale violence
can in turn destroy or weaken the old elite. If the old elite threatens the
ruler’s personal survival, he may take advantage of this power vacuum
to recruit a new elite that is more fragmented and less threatening. A
fragmented elite, however, will lead to a weak state.
In sum, social terrains make the state, and vice versa. While elite social
terrains generate certain state development outcomes, the state (led by
the ruler) can exploit exogenous shocks to reshape them, which can create
new types of networks.
Capacity vs. Survival in Chinese History

In my book, I collected original data on taxation and rulers to high-
light the sovereign’s dilemma in China’s state development. I identify
the turn of the first millennium as a watershed moment that signaled
a change in political development patterns. In the first phase, the state
became stronger at the expense of ruler duration. In the second phase,
the opposite occurred: rulers stayed in power longer, but state capacity
declined.
Fiscal Capacity
We can analyze state capacity by examining either fiscal policies (where
they designed to strengthen or weaken state capacity) or the actual
amount of taxes collected (the most popular measure of state capacity). To
levy taxes, the state needs accurate information (e.g., on land, economic
production, and population), a bureaucracy to collect the taxes, and an
infrastructure to transport the tax payments, all of which require a certain
23 Burke et al. (2015).

24 Zhang et al. (2006).
80 Y. WANG
level of capacity.25 Data on fiscal policies and per capita taxation demon-
strate that China’s fiscal capacity peaked in the eleventh century, started
to decline afterward (with transitory increases), and diminished toward
the end of the period.
A popular argument that can be traced back to Adam Smith and was
more explicitly stated by Thomas Malthus is that China’s development
failure in the late imperial era had demographic roots: its population
was too large for its economy to support.26 Indeed, the population
tripled from 150 million in 1700 to 450 million in 1900.27 This Malthu-
sian narrative, however, cannot fully explain the low taxation in the late
imperial era because while the population growth mainly occurred after
1700,28 China’s per capita taxation started to decline much earlier—in the
Song and Ming times. Nor can this demographic theory explain why the
imperial state failed to adjust its tax policies accordingly. Recent estimates
show that Chinese real personal incomes between the mid-eighteenth and
mid-nineteenth centuries remained relatively stable, despite a dramatic
increase in population.29 This suggests that there were more people from
whom the Chinese state could have extracted, if it had been able to adjust
its fiscal policies.
Ruler Duration
As Lisa Blaydes and Eric Chaney demonstrate, how rulers ended their
reigns is an informative indicator of political stability and ruler–elite rela-
tions.30 Here, I rely on an original dataset I collected on all Chinese
emperors from 221 BCE to 1912.31
Of all 282 Chinese emperors, half died peacefully, while the other
half exited office unnaturally. Of these unnatural exits, about half were
25 See Levi (1988) and Besley and Persson (2009).

26 Malthus (1992 [1806], 41, 183–184).
27 Lavely and Wong (1998, 719).
28 According to Lavely and Wong (1998, 719), China’s population grew by 29% in the
fifteenth century, 40% in the sixteenth century, and 0% in the seventeenth century.
29 Rosenthal and Wong (2011, 48–49).
30 Blaydes and Chaney (2013).
31 My primary sources are Chronologies of Chinese Emperors and Their Families edited
by Du (1995) and The Complete Biographies of Chinese Emperors edited by Qiao et al.
(1996).
deposed by the elite (murdered, overthrown, forced to abdicate, or forced

to commit suicide).
In my book, I show the moving average of the probability of being
deposed by elites. Emperors from the tenth century onward were signif-
icantly less likely to be deposed—an indication that the rulers had
strengthened their power vis-á-vis the elite.
China achieved a remarkable level of political durability in the second
millennium. Comparing the moving average of ruler duration in China,
Europe, and the Islamic World shows that Chinese rulers were just
as secure as European rulers, and both outperformed their Islamic
counterparts.
An Analytical Narrative
of Chinese State Development
In this section, I provide a narrative account of China’s state develop-
ment, drawing on primary and secondary sources. In the first phase of
state development, from roughly the beginning of the common era to
the ninth century, a star network was created. An aristocracy gradually
emerged during the Han Dynasty (202 BC–220 CE) and consolidated its
power. During the Tang times (618–907 CE), the aristocracy dominated
central politics. This aristocracy was a semi-hereditary caste that consisted
of several hundred noble clans.
These families formed a close-knit marriage network in which status
endogamy persisted for centuries. Through marriage alliances made in
the capitals, the aristocracy connected different corners of the empire.
The social terrain that formed among the Tang aristocratic families hence
resembled a star network—a coherent center connected to the periphery.
The Tang aristocrats had a vested interest in strengthening the state to
protect their kinship networks, which spanned the entire empire. They
nearly unanimously implemented a historic fiscal reform—the Two-Tax
Reform—which influenced the country’s fiscal development for the next
millennium. Aristocratic interests constituted a credible check on monar-
chical power by institutionalizing the office of the chief councilor (宰宰相),
which was almost on a par with the emperor. It was a rare time in Chinese
history when the emperor ruled with the elites.
In the late ninth century, severely cold weather induced a mass rebel-
lion that stormed the capitals and physically destroyed the aristocracy,
leading to the second phase of state development, which lasted for almost
82 Y. WANG
Fig. 4.2 Timeline of China’s state development
a millennium after the mid-tenth century. Starting in the Song era (960–
1276 CE), the emperors exploited the power vacuum left by the Tang
aristocracy to reshape the elite social terrain. They expanded the civil
service examination system to identify bureaucratic talent on a relatively
meritocratic basis. With their competitiveness and focus on learning, the
examinations brought selected members of local gentry’s families to the
center and prevented them from forming a new aristocracy. The national
elites in this era thus resemble a bowtie network, representing local inter-
ests. They sought to influence central policies to benefit their home
societies and kin groups. Despite severe external threats from the steppe
nomads, the elites in this era sought to maintain a state with mediocre
strength. The emperors exploited the fragmented and localized elite to
establish an absolute monarchy at the expense of a much-contracted state.
Figure 4.2 summarizes the timeline of China’s state development.
The Star Network Before the Tenth Century

A star-like network emerged during the Han Dynasty. Han emperors’
policy of recruiting Confucian scholars into the bureaucracy created a class
of scholar-bureaucrats who exploited their political power to strengthen
their economic power. They invested these resources into educating their
sons and further consolidating their families’ political power.32 In 220
CE, the new ruler of the Wei regime introduced a political selection
mechanism called the nine-rank arbiter system (九九品中正) to gain the
cooperation of powerful families.33 The arbiter—a local notable—clas-
sified candidates for office into nine ranks of character and ability. The
system rapidly became an instrument to perpetuate the power of a narrow
32 See Yu (2003 [1956]).

33 Ebrey (1978, 17).
social class. Birth, status, and office holding became inseparably bound,
and many aristocratic families began to form.
In the late fifth century, the nomadic ruler Xiaowen (471–499) placed
elite Chinese clans into one of four classes, depending on their ancestors’
ranking.34 Government positions were awarded based on the ranking of
the applicant’s clan, which consolidated the self-perpetuating aristocracy.
These eminent families were similar enough to aristocracies elsewhere,
such as the medieval European nobility, to merit the description “aris-
tocrat.” But their eagerness to be associated with the imperial court in
order to perpetuate their social status countered any tendencies for aris-
tocratic families to become feudal lords with proprietary control over
sections of the country.35 Many of the great clans managed to maintain
their elite status for five, six, or even seven hundred years. The secret to
their success was family practices that sustained a continuous descent line.
While the medieval European church engaged in a vigorous campaign
against aristocratic reproductive behavior by prohibiting endogamy, adop-
tion, polygyny, concubinage, divorce, and remarriage,36 men in imperial
China could take as many concubines as they could afford.37 Wealthier
elites reproduced faster than their poorer counterparts because they could
afford more concubines and support more children. The most successful
clans therefore reproduced more quickly, allowing them to occupy an ever
greater share of government positions.38 While in Europe a 50% rate of
attrition among aristocratic families every century was common,39 the
same group of great clans dominated China for centuries.40
By the Tang period, the aristocratic families had become a status group
that was sustained by marital exclusiveness. The core male members
of the aristocratic clans congregated in the capital cities of Changan
and Luoyang and often held office for successive generations.41 Their
34 These four categories were labelled simply A (甲), B (乙), C (丙), and D (丁), and
known collectively as the “Four (categories of) Clans” (四姓). See Johnson (1977, 28).
35 Ebrey (1978, 2).
36 Goody (1983, 123).
37 Ebrey (1986, 2).
38 Tackett (2014, 44).
39 Stone (1965, 79).
40 Ebrey (1978).
41 Tackett (2014, 84).
84 Y. WANG
geographic proximity to the emperor certainly helped them obtain desir-

able positions. But as the historian Nicolas Tackett pointed out, the key
to their political success was their social network. The geographic concen-
tration of dominant political elites in the two capitals both reinforced
and was reinforced by a tightly knit and highly circumscribed marriage
network. Members of this network constituted the dominant political
elite who monopolized power during the late Tang era. The social capital
embedded in the capital-based elite marriage network allowed these elites
to control both bureaucratic recruitment and appointment to the highest
posts.42 For example, there are countless examples of chief councilors
intervening to promote a clansman, son-in-law, or sister’s son.43
With capital elites moving throughout the empire to serve in top local
positions, the Tang political center maintained a colonial-like relationship
with other parts of the empire. Capital-based bureaucrats were sent to
all corners of the empire, monopolizing all of the top civilian posts for
3–4 year tenures.44
The marriage network that was facilitated by capital interactions and
regional rotations also created a colonial-like relationship. A central family
located in the capital connected through marriage ties with multiple
families with home bases in the provinces to form a star network.
State Strengthening and Rule

Survival in the Star Network
State Capacity Before the tenth century, most of China’s fiscal poli-
cies were designed to increase central taxation, and taxation continuously
increased during this period. A key fiscal reform during this period was
the Two-Tax Reform in the Tang era. This reform, introduced in 779
to address the fiscal shortfall after the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763),
aimed to change a flat tax based on public land tenure into a progres-
sive tax that recognized private property. The central state imposed a new
land tax, collected based on the amount of land under cultivation, levied
in two installments (in summer and autumn).45
42 Tackett (2014, 25–26).

43 Tackett (2014, 133–134).
44 Tackett (2014, 182).
45 Twitchett (1970, 40).
The tax was costly for the political elites expected to implement it,
but only three of 141 major officials publicly expressed opposition to
the reform.46 Why did the overwhelming majority of political elites, big
estate owners themselves, support (or at least acquiesce to) a reform that
increased their tax burden?
The answer lies in the social terrain of the Tang elites, who formed
aristocratic clans. Their dispersed kinship network allowed them to inter-
nalize the gains of state strengthening to others from regions far from
their own. The central state could dramatically reduce the marginal costs
of servicing larger areas by exploiting economies of scale. The dispersed
network therefore transcended elites’ personal interests and aligned the
incentives of a broad coalition in favor of the fiscal reform.
Ruler–Elite Relations Contrary to the popular view that a despotic
monarchy dominated China for thousands of years, for a long time the
Chinese ruler was weak vis-á-vis the central elite. The medieval aristoc-
racy effectively checked the monarchy’s power. From the fall of the Han
Dynasty to the founding of the Tang, Chinese emperors shared power
with the dominant aristocratic families: the rulers exploited aristocratic
social capital to govern society.
During the Tang times, the aristocracy institutionalized its power. Offi-
cial genealogies identified the empire’s most prominent clans, guided the
nobility’s marriage choices, and provided the emperors with a list of fami-
lies from which bureaucrats were chosen. These genealogies, compiled by
state officials, consistently ranked the imperial clan lower than the most
prominent aristocratic families.47 Infuriated, Tang emperors banned the
most prominent clans from intermarrying, which only made them more
sought after.48
The coherence of the Tang aristocracy checked the ruler’s power.
For example, the office of the chief councilor was elevated during this
period. It started as an informal body of advisors to the emperor; chief
councilors were drawn from the central ministers. In the early eighth
century, the office became a formal government organ that competed
46 Li (2002, 124, 283, 327).

47 Wechsler (1979, 212–213).
48 Tackett (2014, 35).
86 Y. WANG
with monarchical power.49 According to my data, Tang rulers were the

most likely among rulers in all dynasties to be overthrown by the elite.
The Tang aristocrats’ interconnectedness and geographic concentration
facilitated collective action and coordination against the throne. Official
histories recorded multiple coup attempts, some of which succeeded.50
In my dataset of Chinese emperors, 5 of the 12 late Tang emperors who
ascended after the An Lushan Rebellion were toppled by a coup.51
Transition from Star to Bowtie

During the late Tang period, China—and much of the Northern Hemi-
sphere—experienced an unusually severe period of cold, dry weather.52
The prolonged period of drought ignited rebellions in multiple places.
Huang Chao, a salt merchant, gradually united disparate rebel forces and
captured the capital city of Changan in 880.53 During two years of occu-
pation, the rebels killed all the aristocrats in the city.54 After the central
nodes were removed, the star network collapsed.
The succeeding Song emperors seized the opportunity to reshape
the elite social terrain. They began to rely on an expanded civil service
examination system to recruit bureaucrats.55 Candidate numbers grew
dramatically, as did the exams’ competitiveness. E. A. Kracke and Ping-ti
Ho have demonstrated the meritocratic nature of the examination system
and how it increased social mobility.56 While in the Tang era several
hundred aristocratic clans held all the offices, the exam system during
the Song period significantly broadened the social basis of bureaucratic
recruitment. Although locally powerful families enjoyed an advantage in
49 Dalby (1979, 590–591). The aristocratic effort to increase bureaucratic power did
not fully succeed. See Dalby (1979, 591).
50 Dalby (1979, 601, 634).
51 These five were Xianzong (805–820), Jingzong (824–826), Wuzong (840–846),
Zhaozong (888–904), and Aidi (904–907). According to the official histories, eunuchs
played an important role, with aristocratic acquiescence, in leading these coups. See Dalby
(1979, 635).
52 Tackett (2014, 240).
53 Somers (1979, 745).
54 Tackett (2014, 218).
55 Chaffee (1995, 16).
56 Kracke (1947) and Ho (1964).
grooming their sons for the exam, they still needed to compete with thou-
sands of other families across the country to obtain the advanced scholar
degree required to gain entry to the highest echelon of the bureaucracy.
Naito Konan dubbed the changes during the ninth and tenth centuries
the “Tang–Song transition.”57 Historians have reached a near consensus
that the turn of the millennium marks a watershed in Chinese history.58
This transition was so significant that historians usually divide China’s
imperial period into two eras: the early imperial era from Han (202 BCE–
220 CE) to Tang (618–906) and the late imperial era from Song (960–
1216) to Qing (1644–1911).59
The Bowtie Network After the Tenth Century

The Tang–Song transition first and foremost involved the transformation
of the elite social terrain.60 During the Tang Dynasty, office holding
was the single most important determinant of family status. All elite
families sought to place as many of their sons in the bureaucracy as
possible. Building a marriage coalition with other powerful families at the
national level provided insurance against uncertainties (such as the death
of an important family patron) and represented the most effective way to
exploit the patronage system.
During the Song era, the expanded exam system made it more compet-
itive to obtain a bureaucratic position. Thus, pursuing a bureaucratic
career became a risky investment with uncertain returns. Meanwhile,
rising trade, marketization, and urbanization gave men more occupational
options. Consolidating a local power base with solid properties and close-
knit networks with other powerful neighbors became the best way to
perpetuate elite families’ status.
When the elites scattered and married locally, multiple communities
emerged with their own centers connected to their own neighbors but not
with other parts of the network.61 The historian Beverly Bossler remarks
57 Naito (1992 [1922]).

58 See Chen (2017) for a recent review of the literature.
59 See, for example, Ebrey (1978, 1).
60 For a more detailed discussion, see Hymes (1986, 115–117).
61 Historians call the localization process “the localist turn” among Chinese elites. See
Hartwell (1982) and Hymes (1986).
88 Y. WANG
that in the Song era the “center had disappeared, and the network had
instead numerous regional nodes.”62 This resembles a bowtie network in
which each central node connects with its own community, but different
communities are not connected.
State Weakening and Ruler

Duration Under the Bowtie
State Capacity Starting in the eleventh century, most fiscal policies
started to weaken the state’s capacity to extract revenue. This is puzzling,
given the growing external threats. The Northern Song Dynasty faced
existential threats from the Khitan and Tangut nomadic tribes in the
North. Faced with a situation in which a war could break out at any
moment, why did the elites not “make the state?”
They tried to, but failed. In 1069 the Song ruler introduced the New
Policies, which were the brainchild of one of his cabinet members, Wang
Anshi. These policies, which became known as the Wang Anshi Reform,
had the goal of “enriching the nation and strengthening its military
power.”63 The philosophy of the New Policies was to expand the scope
of state power to intensify its participation in the market economy, which
would generate a surplus that the state could use to meet its fiscal and
military needs.
In the first decade of the New Policies, the Song state’s revenues
dramatically increased. This led to a brief peak in China’s fiscal revenue
around the year 1086. The bowtie network, which was gradually formed
during the early Song era, created a strong anti-reform sentiment.
The state-building coalition was not strong enough to sway a signif-
icant number of the Song central elites who were embedded in local
vested interests. Many politicians opposed the reform. They viewed local
elite families as competing with the state to provide various services.
They considered kinship institutions to be the most efficient way to
protect their family interests. Politicians also feared that a stronger state
threatened their family interests because state strengthening increased the
personal costs to them, through taxation.
62 Bossler (1998, 93).

63 Liang (2009 [1908], 165).
After Wang Anshi’s retirement and the death of the emperor, the oppo-
sition leaders completely abolished the reform. Before long, the Northern
Song state was significantly weakened and defeated by the Jurchen in
1127.
The state remained relatively weak after the Song era. As the central
elites became more locally oriented, centralized state-strengthening
reforms became politically impossible. The government, however, still
made periodic attempts to improve its tax collection methods. In the mid-
Ming period (circa 1570s), a powerful grand secretary advocated a new
method called the Single Whip, which simplified taxation by combining
the labor levy and land tax.64 But the Single Whip was implemented
decentralized manner, delayed by a coalition of local elites and their
representatives in the national government.65 The policy took more than
100 years to roll out throughout the country, and was still incomplete
when the Ming Dynasty collapsed.66
The Manchu conquest in the mid-seventeenth century brought in a
new class of elites—the Manchu Eight Banners. The Eight Banners was
a unique Manchu military organization that emerged during military
campaigns; it was sustained by a close-knit elite network.67 Early Qing
rulers achieved a level of centralization that was unusual in late impe-
rial China. They enforced policies to diminish the gentry’s power and
privileges, simplified tax collection by merging land and labor taxes, and
delineated central and local revenues.68 This explains the brief surge in
state revenues in the late seventeenth century.
The state-strengthening momentum, however, did not last. With the
deterioration of the Eight Banners and the increasing corruption and
ineptitude of the Manchus, later Qing rulers increasingly relied on the
civil bureaucracy, which was staffed by members of the narrowly interested
gentry.69 Due to political opposition from the bureaucracy, the Qing
government did not carry out any cadastral surveys during its 267-year
64 Huang (1974, 117–118).

65 Huang (1974, 45).
66 Liang (1989, 485–555).
67 Elliott (2001).
68 Zelin (1984).
69 Elliott (2001, 40) and Xi (2019).
90 Y. WANG
rule; it relied on the late Ming records with infrequent and minor revi-
sions carried out by officials at the provincial and local levels.70 As a result,
the Qing revenues could not keep up with the rapid population growth
and the growing external and internal threats after the First Opium War.71
When local military groups declared independence in 1911, the Qing
government was too broke to hold the country together.72
Ruler–Elite Relations The demise of the medieval aristocracy changed
the relationship between the ruler and the central elites. If the Tang
emperors were first among equals, rulers after the Song started to domi-
nate the central elite. The rise of absolute monarchy was a key element of
what Naito Konan termed the “Tang–Song transition.”73
Song emperors filled the post-Tang power vacuum by relying on
expanded civil service examinations to select bureaucrats. Landowning
elite families enjoyed a human capital advantage, but there were so many
participants in the examinations that the process was competitive and
the outcome uncertain. Even the most powerful families struggled to
ensure one member per generation obtained office.74 The establishment
of palace examinations, in which the emperor ranked top candidates
after a face-to-face interview, further strengthened the monarch’s personal
authority to select bureaucrats.75
The transition from a star network to a bowtie network marked the
fragmentation of the central elite during the Song era. Robert Hartwell
observed “the diminished cohesiveness among the elite lineages” in
Song times.76 With a fragmented elite, the emperor used a “divide-and-
conquer” strategy to dominate the bureaucracy. For example, the Song
emperors fragmented military control by separating the Military Affairs
Commission (枢枢密院), which maintained monarchical control over mili-
tary matters, from the Ministry of War (兵兵部), a civilian-controlled organ
in charge of military policy making.77 The Song rulers also reorganized
70 Wang (1973, 27).

71 Shi and Xu (2008, 55).
72 Kuhn (1970) and Wakeman (1975).
73 Naito (1992 [1922]).
74 Kracke (1947) and Ho (1964).
75 Chaffee (1995, xxii).
76 Hartwell (1982, 405).
77 Smith (2009, 461).
the top echelon of the bureaucracy by dividing the authority of the office
of the chief councilor, which centralized executive power during the Tang
times, into three executive branches.78
During the Wang Anshi Reform, Emperor Shenzong kept both
reformers and opponents of the reform in court to play them against each
other. “Although the Emperor did not seriously doubt Wang [Anshi]’s
loyalty,” James Liu speculates, “he was probably afraid that by giving
Wang too much power he might arouse the disloyalty of other leading
officials.”79 For many years during the New Policy era, the emperor
retained Wen Yanbo, Wang’s firm opponent, as head of the Military
Affairs Commission, and ignored Wang’s complaints about him.80 Shen-
zong used the same strategy for other major opposition leaders. As the
personnel minister Zeng Gongliang advised the emperor: “it is important
to have people of different opinions stirring each other up, so that no
one will dare to do wrong.”81 Keeping the critics and dissenters close,
the emperor stated, would “broaden what he hears and sees.”82
The Wang Anshi Reform was a watershed event in Song history. After
its failure, Song central politics became increasingly factionalized. The
monarchy was the biggest beneficiary of elite fractionalization. As James
Liu argues, “The more bitter the power struggle among the bureau-
crats became, the greater was the probability of their depending upon the
support of the emperor, of their playing into the hands of those around
the emperor and in the palace, and of their helping, by design or by force
of circumstances, the growth of absolutism.”83
As a result, political factions were a prominent feature of Song political
life. Although earlier dynasties also had political factions, they were more
persistent in the Song era and more closely integrated into the dynasty’s
political structures.84
Ming emperors further consolidated their absolute power. In 1380,
the Ming founding emperor abolished the entire upper echelon of the
78 Smith (2009, 462).

79 Liu (1959, 92).
80 Liu (1959, 92).
81 Li (1979 [1177], 213: 5169).
82 Smith (2009, 367).
83 Liu (1959, 60).
84 Hartman (2015, 46).
92 Y. WANG
central government, including the chief councilor, and concentrated

power securely in his own hands. He then brought the ministries under
his direct supervision.85
China’s autocratization was completed during the Qing era. The Grand
Council (军军机处), which was established in the late seventeenth century
and evolved into a permanent privy council, expanded its sphere of
authority to all arenas of imperial policy. The council remained a personal
“star chamber” or “kitchen cabinet” granting private advice to the throne.
Its members were overwhelmingly Manchu and were often drawn from
the emperor’s closest circle of relatives and friends.86
Why Was the Bowtie Self-Enforcing?

The bowtie network proved to be exceptionally durable. If we charac-
terize state–society relations under the Tang Dynasty as a state-dominant
direct rule, the Song era facilitated a state–society partnership in which
entrenched local elites bargained, but also collaborated, with the state.
This partnership became a self-reinforcing equilibrium that contributed
to the exceptional durability of imperial rule in the second millennium.
The civil service examinations played a crucial role in shaping this part-
nership between the state and society. As Peter Bol points out, during
the Song era the examination system was transformed from an institu-
tion for recruiting civil officials into one that allowed local elites to claim
the privilege of belonging to a relatively homogenous social elite. When
most sons of existing gentry’s families neither passed the examinations nor
gained official rank, they needed a new mechanism to prove they were
still part of the elite. The examination system gave the gentry throughout
the empire a universal mechanism for educating the next generation in
what it meant to be a literati, perpetuating their families in the local elite,
and controlling the membership therein.87 The examinations therefore
created a channel of state legitimation and a myth of meritocracy that
kept the bowtie together.
To maintain their membership in the elite over generations, local
gentry’s families invented a new form of organization. In 1050, Fan
85 Hucker (1998, 75).

86 Rowe (2009, 40–41).
87 Bol (1990, 168–171).
Zhongyan—a Northern Song politician—created the first trust-based

lineage. Wealthy members of the Fan lineage donated 1,000 or so
mu (approximately 90 soccer fields) of paddy fields. The annual rents
provided Fan’s relatives and their descendants with regular support: equal
daily grants of grain and annual winter clothing, housing, an education
for the boys, financial support for examination candidates, and marriage
and funeral expenses. A designated clan member served as the manager of
the landed trust endowment, its revenue, and its grant distribution. The
trust was intended to be permanent, and its property inalienable.88
The trust-based lineage increasingly crowded the countryside of
southern China and became the model large kinship organization from
the late twelfth century onward. Such lineage organizations helped secure
the long-term survival of gentry’s families as a unified kinship group. With
their entrenched local power base and local interests at heart, the gentry
elite from the Song era onward became what Robert Hymes calls “local
advocates.” They intervened directly and openly with local and central
officials to influence the course of local events and government actions.89
Nevertheless, the gentry also depended on the state and could not
afford to separate from it. Sukhee Lee shows that connectedness to—
rather than independence from—the state granted the gentry prestige and
safeguarded their local prominence. Some families occasionally obtained
offices, which brought privileges, including exemption from taxes and
services. This partnership with the state emerged under the Song Dynasty
and was reinforced in the Yuan era, when the gentry elite had to collabo-
rate and bargain with an ethnically alien regime.90 The partnership, when
it finally consolidated during the Ming and Qing eras, was key to imperial
China’s durable rule.
Conclusion
Europe and China pursued different paths of state development from the
seventh to the twentieth centuries. In Europe, the fall of the Roman
Empire created a large number of small kingdoms. Political fragmenta-
tion gave rise to representative institutions and interstate competition,
88 McDermott (2013, 134).

89 Hymes (1986, 127–128).
90 Lee (2009, 207).
94 Y. WANG
which made European states stronger and more durable. China started
as a centralized state. Violence, rather than making the Chinese state,
destroyed its centralized social network. Chinese rulers reshaped the elite
social terrain by recruiting localized elites into the bureaucracy. The rulers
were able to dominate these localized elites, but China’s fiscal capacity
started to decline. The Chinese state thus gained durability at the expense
of state capacity.
Social science research has generally assumed there is a positive link
between state capacity and state durability. According to this logic, a
strong state enables the ruler to quell mass rebellions, defeat outside
enemies, and provide public goods. However, as I have shown, most
rulers were toppled by elites. In states without representative institutions,
there is an inherent tension between state capacity and state dura-
bility because strengthening capacity and lengthening durability require
different elite social structures. An elite that can take collective action to
strengthen the state is also capable of revolting against the ruler.
I document this capacity–survival tradeoff and use it to explain China’s
long-term state development. My findings shed light on important issues
related to state building in the developing world. Many countries in
Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East have weak states. The
policy interventions carried out by the international community, such as
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, focus on strength-
ening state capacities.91 But the Chinese experience implies that rulers
may need incentives to build state capacity, as doing so where institutions
are weak may compromise their personal survival. Lessons from Chinese
history indicate that state building should go beyond a narrow focus on
strengthening capacities to reshape elite social structures to make them
more compatible with a strong state.
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CHAPTER 5
“The Great Affairs of the States”: Man,

the State and War in the Warring States
Period
Ke Meng and Jilin Zeng
Introduction
As Ancient Greece was to the Western world, China’s Warring States
period (476–221 BCE) witnessed the emerging thoughts and practices
of international relations.1 During this period, Qin defeated the other
six states and unified China, contradicting the conventional wisdom
about the balance of power generated from the Western experience.
1 Chan (1999), Ye (2005a, b), Yang and Wang (2005), Yan and Xu (2008), Deng
(2015), Downs and Rocke (1994).
K. Meng (B)
School of Public Policy & Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
e-mail: kemeng@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
J. Zeng
School of Government, Peking University, Beijing, China

100 K. MENG AND J. ZENG
Investigating the origins of these interstate wars can, on the one hand, re-
examine and modify international relations theories of war in a premodern
non-Western context and, on the other hand, shed light on a new
approach to understanding Qin’s unification.
Currently, the relevant literature either considers the expansion of Qin
as a natural result of successful legalist reforms at the domestic level2
or examines the diplomatic strategies of states at the systemic level.3
However, both lines of literature fail to address the interplay between the
two levels. One reason is that they assume each state as a unitary player
in the interstate arena and warfare as the only concern of the dukes. In
this article, we highlight the domestic ruling crisis posed by recalcitrant
old nobilities and propose a cross-level approach to analysing the causes
of interstate wars.
Our approach first draws on and then diverges from the mainstream
institutional explanations of war, with which much of the recent literature
on the relationship between international conflicts and internal structures
is concerned. As a typical institutional explanation, the selectorate theory
uses the size of the winning coalition to examine each state’s internal
political system and to explain interstate wars. Here, the size of the
winning coalition is determined by the size of the winning coalition (i.e.
those constituents whose support is essential to keep a leader in power)
relative to the selectorate (i.e. those with at least a nominal say in choosing
leaders).4 Then, regimes can be classified along a spectrum of coalition
size, from democracies (with large winning coalitions) to autocracies (with
small ones). The place on the spectrum will determine the constraints on
the leaders of the states while they are deciding whether to wage war
abroad. Unlike autocratic leaders, democratic leaders need to manage a
large winning coalition, and are therefore under more constraints. This
tends to make them more cautious about declaring an external war.5
Further development of the institutional explanations applies other defi-
nitions and measurements of the winning coalition6 and uses a variety
2 Hui (2005), Zhao (2009).

3 Wei (2003), Mei (2007), Xin and Zeng (2010).
4 Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003).
5 Bueno de Mesquita et al. (1999), 2004), Bausch (2015).
6 Clarke and Stone (2008), Kennedy (2009), Gallagher and Hanson (2015).
5 “THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE … 101
of calculation matrices of the costs and benefits of wars.7 Nonetheless,

all institutional explanations of war base their analyses on the assumption
that the sizes and members of winning coalitions of a state are exoge-
nously given and are not easily be challenged by wars; they also share an
obsession with supporting the democratic peace theory which tends to
categorise states into democratic and autocratic ones.8
When it comes to wars before the birth of modern democracy,
however, the institutional explanations need to be modified and extended.
As we will show in our case of the Warring States period, the winning
coalition may be emboldened to replace the leadership, hence posing
threats to the incumbent. In turn, leaders facing such threats, instead of
simply responding to the needs of the winning coalitions, may restruc-
ture it by expelling disloyal members. When this happens, going to war
against a foreign state becomes a good opportunity for the leaders to
restructure their winning coalition, especially if the external enemy is
much weaker and the chances of victory are good. Here, restructuring
refers to enlarging the candidate pool to replace people who show signs
of disloyalty or insubordination. To avoid being replaced, members of
the winning coalition will intensify their loyalty.9 This new context then
necessitates the relaxation of the assumption that the winning coalitions
of a state are exogenously given.
Therefore, by allowing the possibility of a winning coalition to make
structural changes, this paper constructs a cross-level framework to patch
the theoretical gaps of literature and test proposed hypotheses through
statistical regression. Our framework considers the dukes of each state
during the Warring States period as the leaders in the selectorate theory,
and the nobles holding high-ranking positions as the initial members of
the winning coalition. Learning from numerous precedents, the Warring
States dukes felt threatened by recalcitrant nobles who were plotting
against them, members of the literati and gentry were selected to replace
the established nobility and join the restructured winning coalition.
When we looked at this history from “the second image reversed”,10
we found that wars created new channels for upward social mobility,
7 Chiozza and Goemans (2004), 2011), Carter (2017).

8 Kant (1972), Russett and Oneal (2001), Reiter and Stam (2002).
9 Weber (1978), Bueno de Mesquita and Smith (2011).
10 Gourevitch (1978).
allowing ordinary people with military talent to climb the social ladder.
Thus, a new class of military upstarts emerged to counterbalance the old
nobility. Moreover, wars created opportunities for the dukes to change the
winning coalition. While the dukes would not face grave consequences for
losing a war,11 the benefits of winning a war were tempting. A duke who
defeated a foreign state frequently acquired new lands; more land meant
a larger labour force and a larger army. Thus, winning a war helped the
dukes to accumulate military and economic strength and to outcompete
the rest of the nobility.
From the perspective of the second image, the more constraints from
the winning coalition dukes face, the more serious ruling crises is. To
overcome these constraints, the dukes are incentivised to wage coalition-
changing wars, especially those with the greater chances of victory. In
other words, the seriousness of ruling crises within each state determines
the importance of “the chances of victory” when the duke is deciding
whether to wage war. The interaction between domestic politics and inter-
national practices explains the causes and evolution of wars during the
Warring States period.
Unlike the mainstream institutional explanations of wars, this paper
presents a new framework that breaks the assumption of an exogenously
given and fixed winning coalition and identifies the possible restructuring
power that wars have on winning coalitions. Thus, our framework goes
beyond the contemporary dichotomy of democracy versus autocracy and
initiates a discussion on a broader history of international relations. For
the international relations studies of the Warring States period, we do not
restrict ourselves to the few wars aiming at a balance of power. Instead, we
study the entire period to find the roots of wars and comprehend Qin’s
unification from a new angle. Our research is the first to build a panel
database on the Warring States period that contains all the interstate wars
and the domestic political condition of each state. We also created a dyadic
dataset that pairs the initiator and target states in interstate wars, which
allows the comparison of states in terms of important indicators such as
their power gaps. As a result, it is possible to test the proposed hypotheses
for our new framework.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows. First, we review the
literature on institutional explanations of war based on the selectorate
11 Zhao (2004).
theory and highlight their assumptions of a fixed and exogenously given

winning coalition. We suggest that this literature has logical limitations
in analysing the causes of wars and in comprehending the interaction
between internal and international conflicts. Next, drawing data from
Warring States China, we relax the assumption and construct a cross-level
framework that utilises both ideas from the second image and the second
image reversed. We then propose our hypotheses and test them through
panel and dyadic data analysis. In the final section, we present our findings
and explain how the Qin state broke the balance of power and emerged
as a unified empire with our cross-level framework.
Leaders, the Winning Coalition and Interstate

wars---An Institutional Explanation
Why do wars happen? Waltz’s second image theory attributes one of the
main causes of war to the internal structure of separate states.12 Although
initially criticised as reductionist,this theory was reconsidered after the
Cold War ended, and globalisation started.13 In theory, the internal struc-
ture of states could be defined in several ways. In practice however,
with the popularisation of democratic peace theory, the dichotomy of
democracy versus autocracy became the primary basis for classifying state
structures. Following such a dichotomised framework, the institutional
explanations of war that emerged in the late twentieth century introduced
the perspective of leaders’ rational choice to explain causes of war. This
new approach takes participation in wars as a means of protecting the
interests of the leaders. The underlying assumption is, faced with institu-
tional constraints, leaders wage an external war if and only if the war is in
their interest. Thus, it is essential to consider how the interests of leaders
will be affected by interstate wars, before we can examine the causes of
any given war. If we comprehend the domestic roots of interstate war
from the second image, we must first look at how interstate war affects
domestic politics from a “second image reversed” point of view.14 This
raises the following questions. What implications does making a war deci-
sion have for leaders of different types of governments? Is initiating wars
12 Waltz (2001).
13 Legro and Moravcsik (1999), Kapstein (1995).
14 Gourevitch (1978).
abroad a threat to the political survival of state leaders, or a final resort to

distract the population’s attention from conflicts at home? The answers
will determine how leaders calculate the costs and benefits of war and
their final decisions to wage or avoid an interstate war.
Focusing on the “loss aversion” that leaders make in the course of
decision-making,15 scholars providing institutional explanations for war
are primarily concerned with the potential risks and consequences of
war.16 James Fearon proposed the audience-cost theory and emphasised
that political attrition is a public event being observed by domestic polit-
ical audiences. These audiences constantly evaluate the performance and
ability of the leaders. State leaders incur audience cost by being crit-
icised, condemned, or even dismissed should they back down during
a public confrontation with another state or break a promise. Thus,
in democracies where decision-making processes are more transparent
and stronger domestic audiences are more capable of generating audi-
ence costs, leaders are more cautious when signalling selective threats.
Given such caution, democracies can signal their intention, including war
threats, more effectively and credibly, triggering a deeper fear in their
rivals and forcing them to concede. In either case, democracies under
more public scrutiny and subject higher audience costs are less likely to
engage in open confrontation than their authoritarian counterparts.17
Unlike the audience-cost theory that looks at bargaining period and
the pre-war environment within individual states, the selectorate theory
proposed by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al. focuses on the costs of mili-
tary defeat.18 This theory divides domestic audiences into two groups:
the selectorates who nominally participate in leadership selection and the
winning coalition whose support eventually translates into the victory of
a candidate. To stay in power, leaders need to retain the support only of
the winning coalition. Empirical research backing the theory suggests that
facing a large winning coalition, democratic leaders use public goods that
reach more people to retain the loyalty of their winning coalition. When-
ever war is considered, only winning would allow democratic leaders to
15 Levy (1996, 1997).

16 Filson and Werner (2004), Jackson and Morelli (2007), Baliga et al. (2011), Ramsay
(2018).
17 Fearon (1994), Schultz (2001).
obtain and provide more public goods to the coalition, hence ensuring
support from the coalition. Thus, democracies would make sure that
they will win the war before they engage in one. In contrast, autocratic
leaders need only a few private goods to garner support from the winning
coalition. Thus, the amount of support these leaders receive will be less
affected by the outcomes of war abroad. Hence, the autocratic leaders
may be less selective about engaging in wars.19
However, the selectorate theory, as Hein Goemans suggests, only
acknowledges that leaders who fail to meet the needs of the winning coali-
tion will be forced to resign but does not consider what will happen to
these former leaders afterwards.20 Goemans finds that if autocrats lose a
war, they are more likely to resign through irregular processes, such as
exile, imprisonment, or even execution after stepping down. In contrast,
the cost of defeat is much lighter for democratic leaders. Most of them will
step down through a regular process and enjoy a decent life after leaving
office. As a result, leaders of democratic countries are more emboldened
to compromise and avoid international war, while leaders of autocratic
countries will “fight for survival”.21 Several scholars have also noted that
countries do not pay for war only after they have been defeated. Instead,
they start to incur heavy costs as soon as mobilisation begins. In democ-
racies, social spending helps to buy majority support from the winning
coalition. However, when preparing for a war, the surge in military expen-
diture will inevitably cause social spending to plummet. Thus, democratic
leaders, fearing the loss of support from their winning coalition, are more
cautious when making war-related decisions.22
In every case, going to war is risky. How state leaders calculate and
take these risks is determined by different institutional conditions and
constraints. In institutional explanations, state leaders seem to be always
at the receiving end where they can only try to avoid the audience cost,
respond to the winning coalition’s requests, or worry about what will
happen to them after they have left office. These stories repeat the ideas
underlying the false dichotomy of democracy versus autocracy, and never
go beyond the boundary set by the democratic peace theory.23 Moreover,
19 Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2004), Morrow et al. (2008), Bausch (2015).

20 Goemans (2000, 2008).
21 Chiozza and Goemans (2004), Debs and Goemans (2010).
22 Carter (2017).
23 Gallagher and Hanson (2015).
these explanations that stress the costs of war or institutional constraints

frequently explain only why a specific type of country tends not to wage
or engage in wars but does not explain why some leaders choose to start
a war.
In fact, wars can be beneficial for leaders. Some scholars have already
offered, beyond institutional explanations, some ideas. The diversionary
theory of war suggests that when state leaders are threatened by domestic
political turmoil or economic downturn, they may initiate an international
conflict to distract their people’s attention and improve their political
standing. Such a strategy was adopted in various historical situations
ranging from the Roman Empires to the two world wars and to post-
war United States.24 There are two mechanisms for leaders to ensure
their political survival using diversionary conflicts. The rally-around-the-
flag effect causes an increase in national fervour and support for the
political leader. By creating an out-group that poses an external threat,
the leaders urge members of the state to stop criticising the malfunc-
tioning government to blame domestic failure on outside forces.25 The
second mechanism highlights the final opportunity for leaders to “gamble
for resurrection”, where political leaders in dire domestic conditions and
facing forced resignation are willing to take high-risk foreign policy deci-
sions including starting wars. Here, desperate leaders will wage war in a
last-ditch effort to restore domestic support, whereas a defeat will not
cause anything worse than a resignation that was already expected.26
Following the logic of the diversionary theory of war, many empir-
ical studies scrutinise the impact of domestic turmoil on war decisions.
However, these studies have not yielded satisfactory results and obtained
weak or even no correlation in quantitative tests.27 Just as many scholars
correctly criticise, the diversionary theory of war, while seeming plausible,
needs a set of strict conditions and assumptions before it can be used to
explain real-world scenarios.28 There are many counterexamples to this
theory. Some countries have waged wars of colonisation or expansion.
24 Bodin (1955), Mayer (1969), Mueller (1970).

25 Levy (1989).
26 Downs and Rocke (1994), Richards et al. (1993), Smith (1996).
27 Chiozza and Goemans (2003), Meernik and Waterman (1996), Leeds and Davis
(1997).
28 Levy and Thompson (2010).
In others, external confrontations intensified domestic conflicts. Thus, to

make their arguments more convincing, and influenced by the institu-
tional explanations, scholars supporting the diversionary theory of war
prefer to integrate their analysis with more institutional restrictions. This
approach is taken to analyse the differences between democratic and auto-
cratic countries that wage diversionary wars,29 or to explain the rise of
nationalism during democratisation.30
This paper believes that the most insightful contribution of the diver-
sionary theory of war is its recognition of leadership’s ability to use
international conflicts to solve domestic problems, hence shifting the
discussion on causes of war to the individual. These leaders’ ability to
defend their interests through manipulation of the international environ-
ment proves that they are not mere recipients of institutional pressures.
However, more insightful discussion is limited by the democracy versus
autocracy dichotomy and the resulting democratic prejudice in institu-
tional explanations. Because of the popularisation of democratic peace
theory and scarce data, these institutional explanations easily assume
that the structure of the state (democracy or autocracy) is exogenously
given and cannot be changed by war. However, if we could integrate
the perspectives of the diversionary war theory and the institutional
explanations, we would be able to break the assumptions embedded in
institutional explanations.
Just as Daron Acemoglu mentioned, in weakly institutionalised coun-
tries, like autocratic states, the institutional environment, including
forming the winning coalition, is not exogenously given. Instead, such
an institutional environment emerged from political competitions within
the state.31 In these competitions, the members of the winning coalition
will accumulate power, consolidate their positions, and even attempt to
replace the incumbent leaders. Hence, their presence becomes not only
constraints upon, but even threats to the leadership. Petros G. Sekeris
suggests that, in such cases, leaders frequently do not choose to accede to
a winning coalition’s requests.32 Instead, they can restructure the winning
29 Miller (1995), DiLorenzo (2019).

30 Mansfield and Snyder (1995, 2002, 2005).
31 Acemoglu et al. (2008).
32 Sekeris (2011).
coalition to minimise their costs and retain their power. Several such situa-
tions occurred before the birth of democracy. Were there any better ways
than wars to reorganise the winning coalition before democratic states
were established? This paper relaxes the assumption of an exogenously
given winning coalition and draws data from China’s Warring States to
construct a cross-level analytical framework. By applying this framework,
we explain how leaders use interstate war to restructure the winning
coalition and how ruling crises caused by the threats from the winning
coalition within separate states embolden leaders to go to war.
Analytical Framework: The

Dukes, Courtiers, and Wars
“The great affairs of a state are sacrifice and warfare.”33 This quote from
Zuozhuan (左传), or the Commentary of Zuo, an ancient Chinese narra-
tive, guides the construction of an analytical framework for this study.
Highlighting sacrifice and warfare, the quote inspires us to construct
a cross-level analytical framework that looks at the interaction between
internal politics (focusing on the patriarchal system and sacrifice) and
international warfare (focusing on armed attacks). Liu Xiang, a litterateur
from the Western Han dynasty, noted in the preface of the Strategies of the
Warring States (Zhanguo Ce, 战国策) that “after Confucius’s passing, the
Tian family replaced the Lyu family and became the ruler of the Qi; its six
courtiers dismembered the State of Jin; the virtue of morality had been
forgotten, and the hierarchical division was no longer honoured. When
Duke Xiao of Qin took power, people abandoned the rite and started to
promote wars …”34 This quote reveals two plights facing the dukes of
the Warring States. On the internal level, the pecking order between the
dukes and the courtiers started to collapse. Thus, the dukes were haunted
by the fear that some disloyal nobles may overthrow the crown and were
trying every method to hold power. On the international level, comity
and rite were no longer the principles of interstate interactions. Instead,
people began to value power and strength. As a result, a Hobbesian
and Machiavellian international system started to emerge.35 These two
33 Zuozhuan (1981), “The Thirteenth Year of Cheng”.

34 Zhanguo Ce (1991), “The Preface”, 1991.
35 Hui (2005).
plights together defined the Warring States period, so we are prompted

to build a cross-level analytical framework that integrates internal political
conditions with the international behaviour of individual states.
However, current research on the attacks initiated by the dukes during
the Warring States period tend to concentrate on one of two levels.
Based on the second image that emphasises internal politics, Victoria
Tin-bor Hui follows Charles Tilly’s idea of states making war and
argues that the “self-strengthening reforms” of individual states fuelled
the coercive transformation in the international system and eventually
urged the formation of a Leviathan system.36 In other words, the “self-
strengthening reforms,” especially those in the state of Qin, promoted
and exacerbated interstate wars. However, other scholars, including Zhao
Dingxin and Qi Haixia, criticised the logic of self-strengthening reforms
as reverse causation.37 The reforms of individual states did not aim at
self-strengthening. Instead, these reforms only became self-strengthening
after they enhanced state capacity and created impulses for a reform of the
international system. Hence, we need to question the reasons for these
reforms and how they were related to the outbreak of interstate wars.
Hui’s answer to this question is simplistic. She attributes the emergence,
success, and resulting consequences of the “self-strengthening reforms”
to individuals’ leadership abilities. She assumes that a wise leader will
attract and be able to rely on capable and loyal followers, and a bad ruler
will have only cunning subordinates. However, there is a set of histor-
ical and institutional conditions to be met before the wise leaders rely on
capable advisors. For example, the Lord of Xinling (信陵君) in Wei was
the brother of the Duke of Wei, and Lian Po (廉颇) in Zhao was one of
the greatest generals of the Warring States period. However, they both
lost the trust of their dukes and were dismissed when the ambassador of
Qin plotted against them. These anecdotes demonstrated how the trust
between leaders and followers could be easily destroyed.
While studies based on the third image criticised Hui’s overem-
phasis on the characteristics and strategies of the constituent units in
the international system, these studies, as well, focus merely on one
level. To be specific, these studies argue that the greater the pressure
on the system level, the more rational the individual units will be. The
36 Hui (2005).
37 Zhao (2011), Qi (2015).
internal reforms urged by system-level pressure would also make the units
more homogenous.38 Thus, the wars during the Warring States period,
whether outcomes of a grand unification agenda,39 responses to poten-
tial threats,40 or the product of “anti-balance of power” expansion,41
were all influenced by international norms and the international inter-
actions at the system level.42 However, most of the research based on the
third image regards warfare as the single most important topic during the
Warring States period and ties the rational choices made by the dukes to
the success or failure of the wars. By doing so, they ignore the fact that
internal politics were evolving and mattered. As Zhao Dingxin reveals,
most of the wars during the Warring States period were not fatal for the
big states, and posed little threat to the ruling dukes.43 The real threats
came from internal ruling crises caused by disloyal nobles, as suggested
by Zhanguo Ce.
Such ruling crises had institutional causes. Bueno
de Mesquita et al. assert that the winning coalition is made up of
nobles who inherited their power in a strictly hereditary system.44
Hence, in ancient China, the ministers (qin dafu, 卿大夫) appointed
under the patriarchal system naturally became members of the winning
coalition. According to the patriarchal system in the Spring and Autumn
period, these ministers inherited their political power and wealth and
dominated high-ranking positions in each state. The legitimacy of their
power originated entirely from their blood lineages and could not be
challenged by the dukes. Therefore, although the patriarchal system
outlined the obligations of the dukes and the nobles, it also embold-
ened the disloyal nobles and brought hidden troubles to the dukes.45
Contrary to the assumption of an exogenously given winning coalition
underlying the institutional explanations, as time went by, the winning
38 Liu (2019).
39 Xin and Zeng (2010).
40 Qi (2015).
41 Liu (2019).
42 Wang and Qi (2013).
43 Zhao (2004).
45 Yang (2014).
coalition could evolve and be influenced by endogenous forces. Gradu-

ally, the strength of the noblemen in the winning coalition grew, and the
dukes became less able to provide enough private goods to bribe these
noblemen in exchange for their support. As a result, these noblemen
became more ambitious and even wished to overthrow the incumbent
leadership, precipitating ruling crises during the mid- and late-Spring
Autumn period.
Take the State of Lu as an example. The three Huans (三桓)—the
Jisun family (季孙氏), the Shusun family (叔孙氏), and the Mengsun
family (孟孙氏) were the most distinguished noble families. Many of them
had been appointed to ministerial posts. After helping the duke solve the
crisis of Qingfu and after expelling the Dongmen family, the power of
the three Huans was consolidated. They controlled politically impor-
tant positions including Sikong and Sikou.46 Militarily, the army were
divided into four parts, with the Jisun family taking two, and the Shusun
and Mengsun families taking one each.47 Economically, the three Huan
families collected taxes and kept the revenue for themselves. Hence, the
taxpayers were subordinated to the Huans, and the power of the state
declined.48 When the time came to the Duke Dao of Lu, the duke’s
power was hardly comparable to that of the Huans.49 The case study
of Lu demonstrates how the power relation between the ruler and the
ruled could be reversed, and how the old nobility who were also minis-
ters and members of the winning coalition could challenge the hereditary
leadership. In fact, there were many times during the Spring and Autumn
period when a noble became powerful enough to overthrow the crown.
Sima Qian noted that the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu, 春秋)
recorded that during this period, 36 dukes were killed, 52 states collapsed,
and many more dukes were forced to exile.50 Zhanguo Ce made the
exaggerated claiming that Chunqiu had recorded hundreds of regicides.
Behind the scenes, it was always the ministers who planned these betrayals
46 Sikong and Sikou were two of the five most important political positions in the
Western Zhou.
47 Zuozhuan (1981), “The Fifth Year of Zhao”.
48 Chunqiu Zuozhuan Zhengyi (1990), “The fifth to sixth year of Zhao”.
49 Shiji (1997), “Biography of the Duke Zhou of Lu”.
50 Shiji (1997), “Taishigong Xu”.
and killings.51 Thus, just as Chen Lai argues, the Spring and Autumn
period was “an era of ministers”.52
The start of the Warring States period coincided with the end of the
era of ministers. While the results of the ruling crises in each state became
clear, the succession system through which power and wealth were inher-
itable continued to exist. More nobles turned against their dukes. With
these complicated domestic conditions, states could not be generalised
as units with standardised internal systems which behave rationally in
the international system. Meanwhile, history had taught the dukes that
power relation between themselves and their ministers could be easily
reversed–some of the dukes themselves had previously been nobles.53
For them, it was more urgent to overcome the internal threats posed
by disloyal members of the winning coalition than to expand externally.
Hence, it becomes understandable that these dukes did not behave in
accordance with the predictions of institutional explanations, where they
had to appease the old patrimonial nobility in the winning coalition and
wait for the nobility to expand their power and influences. Instead, the
dukes of the Warring States carried out bureaucratic reforms, restructured
and weakened the winning coalitions, and enhanced the centralisation of
power. These actions were popularly welcomed by the rising commoners.
Specifically, the legalist reforms abolished the succession system
through which power and wealth were inheritable and revoked the aris-
tocratic privileges. Moreover, these reforms established a set of principles
that rewarded contributions and punished wrongdoing. These principles
granted a large number of privately educated commoners, literati, and
outstanding soldiers with opportunities to enter politics. Consequently,
the candidate pool for the winning coalition was expanded, and members
in the coalition became more substitutable. Fearful of being replaced, the
members of the winning coalition became more loyal to the dukes.
Ever since Li Kui’s legalist reform in Wei, reorganising the winning
coalition became a crucial part of reforms in each state.54 Consequently,
chancellors (zai xiang, 宰相) from grass roots backgrounds moved to
51 Yin (1987).
52 Chen (2009), 247.
53 Zhao (2011).
54 Du (1990).
the centre of the political stage.55 Being the head of the administrative
organ in each state and the superior of all other government officials,
the position of chancellor used to be monopolised by old nobility. These
chancellors’ aristocratic backgrounds emboldened them to criticise and
even dismiss dukes who constantly made the same mistakes. In contrast,
the chancellors, coming from humble backgrounds and lacking a solid
power base, depended on the dukes. When the dukes ignored their
suggestions and advice, all they could do was leave the state.56 Thus,
the backgrounds of the incumbent chancellors could explain how well
the dukes restructured the winning coalition within each state. Looking
at the chancellors’ backgrounds therefore offers a perspective to study the
internal affairs of each state.
What does applying the second image reversed theory tell us about
the relationship between the interstate wars and bureaucratisation, which
restructures the winning coalition? Clausewitz claimed that “war is the
continuation of politics by other means”.57 In fact, reforms could not
happen overnight and might be attacked by the old nobility. The process
of reform might raise many conflicts of interest. For example, Wu Qi,
the leader of the legalist reform in Chu, was assassinated. Shang Yang,
the engineer of Qin’s legalist reforms, was persecuted and decapitated.
Hence, to hasten the reshuffling of the winning coalition, an external
war was a last-ditch way to create new opportunities for the dukes. Some
sources have argued the conflicts of the Warring States facilitated the
bureaucratisation of individual states.58 For instance, war opened new
channels for upward social mobility. During the Warring States period,
the infantry replaced the chariots that had been dominated by nobles
and became the mainstream mode of warfare. Meanwhile, the legalist
reforms awarded noble titles based on military achievements instead of
blood. This system encouraged ordinary soldiers to fight hard.59 Under
such a system, many commoners were able to earn a noble title and enter
politics. Some military strategists were admired by their dukes. Cho-yun
Hsu has pointed out that the fierce wars of the Warring States period
55 Chao (1998), Hsu (1965), He (1996).

56 Mengzi (1992), “Wanzhang Xia”.
57 Clausewitz and Graham (1990).
58 Kiser and Cai (2004), Zhao (2011), Chen (2021).
59 Hanfeizi (1998), “Xian Xue”.
created a desperate need for military strategists, tacticians, organisers, and

warriors.60 Some historians call this group of people “the class of military
upstarts”.61 Given their backgrounds, they unquestionably supported the
reforms that restructured the winning coalition. These military upstarts
countered the influence of the old nobility.62 For instance, in Qin these
upstarts were able to petition the Duke of Qin, who had ordered the
execution of Shang Yang, to continue Shang’s legalist reforms. This leads
to our first hypothesis:
H1 The higher intensity a state encountered during external wars, the

more likely its duke is to appoint a chancellor (zaixiang ) of humble
parentage.
Given that waging external wars would help the dukes to create a new
winning coalition and following second image, it is more likely for the
dukes to wage interstate war when they felt threatened by the members
of the winning coalition. For example, King Zhaoxiang of Qin felt threat-
ened by his uncle, Wei Ran. The latter, Empress Dowager Xuan’s brother,
was extremely powerful both in the military and in politics. Fan Sui, a
commoner, told the king that since he had the bravest warriors and the
most chariots and horses, Qin could have easily defeated other states.
However, Qin remained in the Hangu Pass for 15 years because Wei Ran
was not loyal to the king and was reluctant to contribute to his unifica-
tion agenda.63 The king agreed with Fan, and Fan was admitted into the
office. Thus, for any kings or dukes who felt threatened, waging an inter-
state war could be their excuse to solve the internal problems. By waging
interstate war, the dukes could attribute the failure to achieve previous
strategic goals to the members in the winning coalition.
If the state won the war, the newly conquered lands could be
distributed to those responsible. The winning coalition could be legiti-
mately restructured through this process, and the ruler’s position could be
consolidated. Further, traditionally, for a commoner like Fan to become
a chancellor, he needed military victories.64 Thus, in the face of ruling
60 Hsu (1965).
61 Li (2000).
62 Zhu (2017).
63 Shiji (1997), “The Biography of Fan Sui and Cai Ze”.
64 Huang (2002).
crises, dukes who wished to add new nobles to their coalition had to wage
interstate war and ensure that they were going to win. But how could they
know? The Art of War by Sun Wu concluded that to improve the odds of
winning, a leader had to be confident that he was stronger than his rival.65
In Qin, Fan Sui’s proposal was like what Sun Wu suggested. Fan criticised
Wei Ran’s strategy of bypassing Qin’s neighbours, including Han and
Wei, and attacking Qi and proposed the strategy of “befriending a distant
state while attacking a neighbour”.66 Fan also used the example of how
Zhao defeated and annexed the Kingdom of Zhongshan to illustrate the
idea that one should only attack because it was sufficiently strong. The
King of Zhaoxiang accepted Fan’s proposal. Qin then defeated Wei and
occupied Wei’s Huaicheng and Xingqiu. Through proposing the right
strategy and helping Qin to win the wars, Fan Sui gained the credentials
required to become a chancellor. Therefore, the king could then appoint
Fan as the chancellor and dismiss Wei Ran as Fan suggested. The case of
Qin proves that attacking weak neighbours made it possible for the duke
to win a quick war and restructure the winning coalition. We therefore
propose the following hypotheses.
H2a The more serious the ruling crisis within a state, the more likely its
duke is to wage external war.
H2b The more serious the ruling crisis within a state, the more the odds
of winning mattered in its duke’s decision to wage external war.
In conclusion, this research provides a cross-level framework to explain

the attacks and interstate wars during the Warring States period. From
the second image reversed point of view, waging external war could facil-
itate the restructuring of the winning coalition. According to the second
image’s viewpoint, to resolve ruling crises within the individual states, the
dukes were tempted to wage external war, especially if they were confident
of winning. In the next chapter, drawing evidence from our database, we
will test the hypotheses.
65 Sunzi Bingfa (2007), “Xingpian”.

Empirical Studies: A Quantitative Analysis

on Internal Politics and Interstate
War in China’s Warring States Period
This paper uses different structural data to test the hypotheses. To test
H1, we have constructed a panel dataset that describes the internal poli-
tics and interstate wars of major powers during the Warring States period
Table 5.1 Variables in the panel data
Variable name Measurement Sources
Family background of the Commoners and ordinary A dictionary of all

chancellor people = 1, ministers = 2, chancellors in the
members of the ducal clan Chinese History,68
(the duke’s immediate and A list of Warring States
collateral families) = 3 Chancellors 69
Number of interstate wars Average yearly number of Chronology of Chinese
initiated external wars initiated in every Wars Writing group of
ten years Military History of
Distances of interstate wars Average yearly marching China (2002)
distances (in km) every ten Historical Sources of the
years Warring States Period
Number of defensive wars Average yearly number of edited in chronological
defensive wars initiated in ten order 70
years The Historical Atlas of
China 71
Region—the South (Nan Whether the state is in the Statistical Analysis on
Man) South. Yes = 1, No = 0 Correlations of Interstate
Region—the North (Bei Di) Whether the state is in the Wars during the
North. Yes = 1, No = 0 Spring–Autumn and the
Ducal family name—Ji Whether the surname of the Warring States Period 72
ducal family is Ji. Yes = 1,
No = 0
Ducal family name—Ying Whether the surname of the
ducal family is Ying. Yes = 1,
No = 0
(476–221 BCE)67 with the analytical unit as a country year. Table 5.1
presents the measurements and sources of data.
The dependent variable of H1 is the chancellor’s family background.
Based on blood lineage, the background variable is categorised as
commoners and literati, ministers, and members of the ducal clan (the
duke’s immediate and collateral families). The three categories are given
a score of 1–3. Members of the latter two categories are the nobles. As
mentioned in the last chapter, the family backgrounds of the chancellors
could reflect how well the dukes were restructuring the winning coali-
tion. Having chancellors from humble backgrounds indicates that the
dukes had expanded the candidate pool for the winning coalition, and
had therefore made the members of the coalition more loyal.
To make the coding more comprehensible, we want to highlight some
points. To get a list of all the recorded chancellors and their tenure in the
Warring States history, we cross-referenced the Dictionary of all Chan-
cellors in Chinese History and A List of Warring States Chancellors and
validated the data against the Zhanguo Ce and the Records of The Grand
Historian (Shiji). If the time of assuming and leaving office for a chan-
cellor was not specified in these books, we would take the time scope
in which all the events related to this chancellor were mentioned. If
one chancellor succeeded another in a specific year, this year would be
regarded as the first year in the new chancellor’s tenure. If more than
one chancellor appeared each year in these books, we would consider the
positions of each chancellor mentioned and take the one directly involved
in administrative matters. If there were no specified differences in the
positions held by these chancellors, we would take the chancellor with
the humbler background. We made this choice because the emergence
of a humble chancellor would suggest that the duke had made a signif-
icant effort in changing his coalition. In addition, when quantifying the
background variable, if we could not trace a chancellor’s background, we
67 Major powers refer to the seven warring states and the Jin state before being
partitioned into three parts.
68 Zhang (2004).
69 Qi (1981).
70 Yang (2016).
71 Tan (1996).
would assume that he was not from a noble family, as history writers
would always record down his/her background if a person were coming
from a notable family. Also, if there are any disputes over a chancellor’s
family background, such as that of the Lord Chunshen of Chu’s, we
would give a score of 1. We would then recode these disputed units in
the robustness test. Lastly, we omit years in which there were no records
of any chancellors.73
The most important independent variable for H1 was the number of
interstate wars initiated by each state. This data is gathered from the
Chronology of Chinese Wars and is cross-referenced against the Histor-
ical Sources of the Warring States Periodedited in chronological order.74
According to H1, as wars became more intense, the possibility of moving
up the social ladder based on merit and military prowess increased. The
intensity of wars could be measured not only through the number of
wars but also from the distances marched by the armies. For ancient
wars, distance was a natural barrier. An army needed food and military
supplies before it could undertake a march.75 Thus, a well-prepared, long-
distance march proved that the state had made a significant investment in
the war.76 Such effort also created channels and opportunities for the
dukes to change their winning coalition. Hence, this paper borrows Zhao
Dingxin’s methodology in the Historical Atlas of China to use distances to
interstate wars as another dimension of the intensity of these wars.77 Since
the data would be sparse if a war were only counted for one year, and the
influence of wars frequently lasted longer, we measure the average yearly
distances of interstate wars for every ten years for the baseline model.
Meanwhile, we also consider the average yearly number of interstate wars
for every five years in the robustness tests.
73 We must admit that the data on the family background of chancellors during the
Warring States period is too insufficient to build a complete panel data set. There are also
possible selection biases. However, our data set is sufficient to support this study.
74 This study does not consider the military alliance emerged during this period for
two reasons. First, the incentives and the nature of the wars differed significantly for the
members in the military alliance and could be affected by multi-level cofounding factors.
Second, the contribution of each member in the military alliance is hard to gauge, hence
affecting the accuracy of the test results. Thus, we only count the number of wars engaged
by the initiators of the alliances.
75 Wei Liaozi (2007), “Zhanwei”.
76 Fan (2003).
77 Zhao (2004).
This paper considers three control variables: the number of defensive

wars, the geographical location (region) of each state, and the ducal family
names. According to Chen Yuxin’s studies of the wars during the Spring
and Autumn period, defensive wars might pressure the dukes to hire more
nobles. These nobles usually had more consistent goals and wished to
defend their inherited land and population.78 This logic could also apply
to the Warring State period. The ducal family name and region vari-
ables control the regional differences, as well as the geographical, cultural,
and behavioural differences associated with them. Specifically, most of the
states belonged to the central Xia region; the state of Chu was part of
the South, and the state of Yan was in the North. The states of Yan, Han,
and Wei shared the ducal family name of Ji, and the states of Qin and
Zhao shared the ducal family name of Ying.
Since cross-state panel data is used for this study, we apply the Panel-
Corrected Stand Error method to estimate the baseline model. This
method corrects the AR1 autocorrelation and panel-level heteroskedastic
errors and addresses the issues that has arisen in cross-section and time-
series models as well as heteroscedasticity.79 Table 5.2 presents the
estimated results.
In Table 5.2, Model 1 and Model 2 are baseline models. The former
controls only the state/year dummy variables and the latter considers
all the control variables. We find a strong negative correlation between
the number of interstate war initiated and the chancellors’ family back-
grounds. In other words, the more interstate wars initiated, the more
likely the dukes were to appoint chancellors from humble families, thereby
restructuring the winning coalition. The result is consistent with H1. The
rest of the models are robustness tests for the results mentioned above. In
Model 3, to avoid measuring errors, we redefine the independent variable
to consider the average yearly number of interstate wars initiated every five
years (instead of ten). In Model 4, we take the total marching distances
during wars as another dimension to measure the intensity of the wars and
find that the longer the marching distance, the humbler the chancellor’s
background. This finding verifies H1. Next, since the dataset does not
pass the Hausman Test, we use the random effect model in Model 5. For
78 Chen (2021).
79 Beck and Katz (1995).
Table 5.2 The impact of the number of interstate wars initiated on the
chancellor’s family background
Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6

(PCSE) (PCSE) (PCSE) (PCSE) (RE) (OL)
Number of −0.782*** −0.757*** −0.757*** −3.100***

interstate wars (0.119) (0.120) (0.137) (0.461)
initiated
(N = 10)
Number of −0.551***
interstate wars (0.116)
initiated (N =
5)
Distances of −0.0015***
interstate wars (0.0003)
Number of 0.274 0.304* 0.385** 0.274 0.935
defensive wars (0.178) (0.179) (0.177) (0.214) (0.808)
Region—South −0.378*** −0.348*** 0– −0.378*** −1.135***
(0.088) (0.088) 0.356*** (0.108) (0.359)
(0.089)
Region—North 0.052 0.123 0.071 0.052 0.547
(0.142) (0.146) (0.142) (0.212) (0.787)
Ducal family −0.077 −0.092 −0.075 −0.077 −0.251
name—Ji (0.060) (0.062) (0.060) (0.105) (0.292)
Ducal family −0.929*** −0.936*** −1.006*** −0.929*** −4.128***
name—Ying (0.080) (0.080) (0.079) (0.097) (0.417)
Dummy Y Y Y Y Y Y
variable—
country
Dummy Y Y Y Y Y Y
variable—year
Constant 2.623*** 2.556*** 2.529*** 2.508*** 2.556***
(0.267) (0.268) (0.269) (0.269) (0.392)
Observations 749 749 749 749 749 749
Adjusted 0.520 0.521 0.508 0.516 0.365
R-squared
Note Standard Errors in parentheses, *p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01
Model 6, we apply the ordered logit model considering that the depen-
dent variable is ordinal. All four models support the results obtained from
the baseline models. Hence, recalling the second image reversed, waging
interstate wars could restructure the winning coalition during the Warring
States period. This empirically proven result breaks the assumption under-
lying the institutional explanations of wars that the winning coalition is
exogenously given and would have affected the decision-making of the

ancient dukes on whether to wage interstate war.
To test H2a and H2b and following the operational standard set by the
MID Data in the Correlates of War programme,80 this paper constructs
a dyadic dataset that contains the paring of initiator and target states
in interstate wars, which allows state dyads to be compared in terms of
important indicators such as their power. The analytical unit of this dataset
is the directed-dyad year. This dataset also allows us to distinguish the
initiator and target of each pair. The measurements and sources of data
are listed in Table 5.3.
The dependent variable for both hypotheses in H2 is the war strategy
of the initiator, which describes whether the initiator waged war against
the target in the given year in a specific directed pair. The source of
the data is consistent with that of the number of interstate wars in H1.
The key independent variable for both the hypotheses is the ruling crisis,
measured by the reign of the previous duke in the initiator state. There
are three reasons to use this measurement. The first reason is that the
reign can be viewed as dependent on the probability that the duke was
not subject to such important indicators of political stability as coups,
unrest, and assassination.81 Therefore, a longer reign of the previous
duke indicates his ability to maintain internal stability and grants the
incumbent duke a stronger sense of security. The second reason is that
in ancient China, the patrilineal inheritance system followed either the
agnatic seniority principle or the primogeniture principle. The adoption
of the former principle frequently led to succession crises. According to
the Records of the Grand Historian, when Duke Xuan of Song died, his
throne passed to his younger brother instead of his sons. The younger
brother died soon after his succession and returned the throne to the
sons of his late brother. Consequently, the sons of the younger brother,
thinking that they were the rightful heir to the throne, killed the sons
of Duke Xuan. The state fell into disorder and suffered from a persistent
crisis.82 In contrast, following the primogeniture principle, which started
in Western Zhou, the Mandate of Heaven helped prevent unwanted
80 Ghosn et al. (2004).

81 Blaydes and Chaney (2013), Wang (2017).
82 Shiji (1997), “House of Prince Xiao of Liang”.
Table 5.3 Dyadic dataset83
Variable names Measurements Sources
Decision of the initiator Whether the initiator waged Chronology of Chinese

war against the target. Yes = Wars,
1, No = 0 Historical Sources of the
Warring States Period
edited in chronological
order
Ruling crises—the reign of Reign or the previous duke Historical Sources of the
the previous duke for the initiator Warring States Period
Ruling crises—unnatural Whether the previous duke edited in chronological
death of the previous duke died unnaturally. Yes = 1, order
No = 0
Power gap—war distance Average yearly marching Chronology of Chinese
ratio distances in ten years (km) Wars,
for the initiator: Average The Historical Atlas of
total marching distances of China
both sides in ten years
Power gap—number of Number of counties in the General History of
counties initiator: total number of Chinese Administrative
counties in both sides Divisions Overview and
pre-Qin dynasty 84
Target experience of Whether the target had Chronology of Chinese
conquering other states conquered other states within Wars,
ten years. Yes = 1, No = 0 Historical Sources of the
edited in chronological
order,
The Historical Atlas of
China
Target experience of Whether the target had
occupying others’ lands occupied others’ lands within
ten years. Yes = 1, No = 0
(continued)
83 The missing values in the variable “Ruling crises—the reign of the previous
duke” were the result of missing historical records for the early dukes of the
states of Han and Wei.
The missing values in the variable “Ruling crises—unnatural death of the
previous duke” are because of the three dukes/kings resigned before they passed
away, including the King Huai of Chu, King Hui of Yan, and King Wuling of
Zhao. The missing values for the variable “Power gap—number of counties” are
the results of insufficient historical evidence.
84 Zhou and Li (2009).
Table 5.3 (continued)
Geographic proximity Whether the initiator and the

target shared a border
Same region Whether the initiator and Correlations of Interstate
target were in the same Wars during the
region Spring–Autumn and the
(continued)
Table 5.3 (continued)
Shared family name Whether the initiator and the

target had the same family
name
competitions for the throne.85 These anecdotes demonstrate that the seri-
ousness of ruling crises felt by the incumbent duke is positively correlated
with the possibility of the brothers of the previous duke fighting for the
throne. Thus, the longer the previous duke was in power, the older his
brothers would be and were, therefore, the less they were able to threaten
the incumbent. Meanwhile, if the previous duke stayed in power for a
long period, his sons were more likely to enter adulthood and more likely
to have smooth and legitimate succession through the primogeniture
system. The third reason is that a longer reign granted the previous duke
more time and resources to assist his heir to prepare for the throne and
earn the respect of the officials who served the former duke. Hence, the
reign of the previous duke can reflect the seriousness of the ruling crises
felt by the incumbent duke. In the robustness test, this study measures
the ruling crises of the initiator based on whether its previous duke died
unnaturally. In other words, we scrutinise whether the previous duke had
been assassinated or overthrown. With this indicator, Zhao Dingxin has
discovered that the power of nobles was highly positively correlated to the
85 Wang (2009).
unnatural death of the dukes during the Spring and Autumn Period.86
Zhao’s finding suggests that if the previous duke died unnaturally, the
ruling duke would be alerted by the increasing nobility power and feeling
more threatened by the internal ruling crises.
The other independent variable in H2b is the power gap between the
initiator and the target. There are no direct indicators of state power
available in the historical literature. We therefore take the average yearly
marching distance as an indicator of such power. A longer distance
suggests a greater capacity of the state to mobilise resources, hence
proving the power of the state. Moreover, dukes usually set up coun-
ties that were under their direct control on the newly conquered lands.
Meanwhile, the population and taxes collected from these counties could
be used by the dukes, which hints at the power of the state.87 Hence, to
ensure the robustness of the results, this paper takes the number of coun-
ties in each state as another measurement for state power. To measure the
power gap and drawing on the international convention, we use the ratio
of initiator’s state power to the sum of state powers of the two states.88
If both states scored 0, the value would be considered missing.
We also consider a series of control variables. According to Qi Haixia,
waging war might be the result of feeling threatened. Except for power
gaps, other factors, including the target’s intention to conquer other
states and the distance between the initiator and the target, also influ-
enced the duke’s decisions on whether to wage war.89 The intention is
measured by whether the target had conquered other states and occupied
others’ lands within ten years. Whereas based on the Historical Sources of
the Warring States Periodedited in chronological order and The Historical
Atlas of China, the latter is measured by whether the initiator shared a
border with the target. Moreover, according to Wang and Qi, sharing a
family name and living in the same region may also affect the outcome of
86 Zhao (2004).
87 Creel (1964).
88 Anderson and Souva (2010).
89 Qi (2015).
Table 5.4 The impacts of internal ruling crises on the initiator’s decision to
wage war
Variables Model 1 Model 2
Ruling crises—reign of the previous duke −0.018*** −0.021***

(0.007) (0.007)
Power gap—war distance ratio 1.749***
(0.247)
Target experience of conquering other states 0.616*
(0.316)
Target experience of occupying others’ lands −0.105
(0.193)
Geographic proximity 1.660***
(0.274)
Same region 0.975***
(0.283)
Shared family name −0.214
(0.356)
Constant −4.482*** −6.530***
(0.281) (0.389)
Observations 11,847 8,452
a war.90 Hence, this paper controls these variables. Given the data struc-
ture, this paper uses panel logit regression to estimate the baseline model
and obtains the results demonstrated in Table 5.4.91
As indicated in Table 5.4, both Model 1, which only considers the
independent variable, and Model 2, which considers other control vari-
ables, suggest that the previous duke’s reign is strongly negatively related
to the initiator’s decisions to wage war. The shorter reign of the previous
duke suggests a more serious ruling crisis. As a result, the incumbent
would decide to wage external wars. Thus, H2a is confirmed. We follow
up by doing robustness tests and obtain results, as demonstrated in Table
5.5.

91 The results of Hausman’ test (not given in the paper) suggest that the panel logistic
regression for testing H2a should use a fixed-effects model, but for testing H2b, only a
random-effects model is sufficient. To facilitate analysis and presentation, the models listed
in the tables in this paper all use random-effects model. Even if the fixed effects model is
used, the results still support the hypotheses of this article, which can be obtained from
the author.
Table 5.5 The impacts of internal ruling crises on the initiator’s decision to wage war (robustness test)
126
Variables Model 1 (All Model 2 (All Model 3 Model 4 (Seven Model 5 (The Model 6
samples) samples) (non-balance-of-power Warring States total war period (Pre-collapse of
war samples) samples) samples) Eastern Zhou
samples)
Ruling −0.021*** −0.023*** −0.015** 0.018**

crises—reign of (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007)
the previous duke
Ruling 0.453*** 0.436**
K. MENG AND J. ZENG
crises—unnatural (0.165) (0.174)

death of the
previous duke
Power gap—war 1.654*** 1.837*** 1.787*** 1.817*** 1.801***
distance ratio (0.253) (0.258) (0.251) (0.257) (0.266)
Target experience 0.475 0.616* 0.553* 0.576* 0.768**
of conquering (0.340) (0.329) (0.326) (0.328) (0.324)
other states
Target experience −0.216 −0.113 −0.152 −0.076 −0.139
of occupying (0.203) (0.199) (0.195) (0.198) (0.202)
others’ lands
Geographic 1.658*** 1.663*** 1.688*** 1.616*** 1.709***
proximity (0.291) (0.282) (0.269) (0.277) (0.315)
Same region 0.880*** 0.923*** 1.053*** 0.846*** 1.090***
(0.310) (0.295) (0.257) (0.290) (0.302)
Shared family −0.453 −0.202 0.263 −0.100 −0.299
name (0.395) (0.371) (0.338) (0.362) (0.378)
Constant −5.009*** −6.971*** −6.656*** −6.430*** −6.479*** −6.746***
(0.254) (0.398) (0.403) (0.377) (0.393) (0.430)
Variables Model 1 (All Model 2 (All Model 3 Model 4 (Seven Model 5 (The Model 6
samples) samples) (non-balance-of-power Warring States total war period (Pre-collapse of
war samples) samples) samples) Eastern Zhou
samples)
Observations 11,807 8,345 8,396 7,681 7,356 7,535

5
Note Standard Errors in parentheses, *p < 0.1, **p< 0.05, ***p < 0.01
“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …
127
Table 5.5 presents the results of the robustness test. In Model 2, we

take the unnatural death of the previous duke as an indicator of the ruling
crisis in initiator states. The result suggests that if the previous duke died
unnaturally, the state would experience more serious ruling crises, and
a greater likelihood of the incumbent duke waging external war. This
conclusion is consistent with the baseline model. We get similar results
for Model 2, which considers other control variables. From Models 3
to Model 6, we examine the results for different subsets. First, while a
few wars with military coalitions aims at balance of power, the conven-
tional expansion wars follow the “counter balance of power” logic.92 To
avoid the complications arising from divergent war logics, we exclude all
the samples recorded as balance-of-power wars in literature.93 Second,
before it was split, the state of Jin experienced slower bureaucratisation
than other states. Thus, its duke might lack the capacity to restructure
his coalition. Hence, we exclude all the Jin-related samples in Model 4.
Third, according to Zhao Dingxin, the years 419–211 BCE were a period
of total war. The wars of this period lasted longer and required more
manpower and resources. Moreover, grabbing land became the overriding
goal of each state.94 Such changes in the incentives and nature of the
wars might have affected the dukes’ war strategies. Thus, in Model 5,
we exclude the samples before 419 BCE and scrutinise the total war
period. Lastly, after the collapse of Eastern Zhou, the states were no
longer bounded by Zhou’s patriarchal system.95 Hence, they might have
different decision-making process regarding the war as during the Zhou
era. Thus, we exclude the samples after the collapse of Zhou in 256 BCE
in Model 6. All these robustness tests support our hypotheses.
This paper next looks at the interaction between ruling crises and
power gap to test H2b. To avoid the collinearity caused by the inter-
action, the variables that produce the interaction are centralised in this
part of the analysis. The results are presented in Table 5.6.
In Table 5.6, Model 1 contains only two independent variables and
their interaction term. The coefficient estimate of the interaction term is
92 Liu (2019).
93 According to Qi Haixia, these balance-of-power wars included eight wars such as the
war to conquer Wei and rescue Zhao and the war against Wei to rescue Han.
94 Zhao (2011).
95 The Qin king’s great-grandson Yin’s prayer to the spirits of the Mount Huatai.
Table 5.6 The impact of the interaction between ruling crises and power gap
on the initiator’s decision to wage war
Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Ruling crises—reign of the previous duke −0.009 −0.012 −0.002

(0.008) (0.008) (0.007)
Power gap—war distance ratio 1.558*** 1.665***
(0.239) (0.247)
Reign of the previous duke x War distance −0.036** −0.038**
ratio (0.018) (0.018)
Power gap—number of counties 1.299***
(0.456)
Reign of the previous duke x number of −0.127***
counties (0.026)
Whether the target had conquered other 0.606* 0.298
states (0.316) (0.311)
Whether the target had occupied others’ −0.098 −0.215
lands (0.193) (0.189)
Geographic proximity 1.654*** 1.512***
(0.273) (0.282)
Same region 0.972*** 0.506
(0.280) (0.314)
Shared family name −0.200 −0.102
(0.353) (0.400)
Constant −4.500*** −6.080*** −5.693***
(0.213) (0.326) (0.344)
Observations 8,497 8,452 8,476
negative, indicating a negative correlation. That is to say, the longer the

reign of the previous duke, the less serious the ruling crisis. As a result, the
power gap between states and the decision to wage external war becomes
less positively correlated, proving H2b. The results remain robust when
adding in a series of control variables, as demonstrated in Model 2. In
Model 3, we again use the number of counties each state had as an indi-
cator of state power and obtain a similarly negative coefficient estimate
for the interaction term. By far, all three hypotheses are confirmed.
Conclusion: A New Perspective

for Understanding Qin’s Unification
Looking at the leadership’s rational choice under different incentive struc-
tures and institutional constraints, the institutional explanations of war
give us a glimpse of the interaction between internal politics and external
wars. However, these explanations are oriented around the democratic
peace theory, so they are vulnerable to democratic prejudice. Such expla-
nations assume that institutions, including the winning coalition, are
exogenously given in democratic and non-democratic countries alike and
fail to consider those that can make a change to winning coalitions.
As previous sections have argued, the winning coalition was constantly
evolving and posing threats to the leadership when we look at human
history. Meanwhile, war was a matter of life and death for both the
warriors and their countries. Wars also influenced the evolution of the
institutions within these states. Some leaders might be constrained by
the winning coalition and hesitate to declare war. Others might take
the initiative to restructure the winning coalition, making the coalition
members more loyal to the leadership and thus consolidating the regime.
Hence, should the assumption of an exogenously given winning coalition
be relaxed, we can better interpret the leader’s desires and actions. In
so doing, the institutional explanations on the second image and second
image reversed theories could be expanded, providing new perspectives
for us to comprehend the relationship between man, the state, and war.
This paper uses data from the Warring States period and adopts quan-
titative analysis to examine the mechanism empirically. This paper also
demonstrates how the dukes were trying to keep a balance between the
internal ruling crises and the external conflicts when “bad government
prevailed, and the lord and marquis dominated ceremonies, music and
punitive military”.96 Intensive wars created channels for upward mobility,
assisting in the restructuring of the winning coalition. As a result, upstarts
countered the influence of the old nobles. Moreover, the more severe the
ruling crises the dukes were facing, the more incentive they had to wage
external war, especially those with the best chances of winning. Conse-
quently, these dukes could rely on the military upstarts to consolidate
their power.
96 Lunyu (1992). “Jishi”.

Unlike other studies of the Warring States period, this paper presents
a cross-level analytical framework instead of a single-level analysis. We
believe that to understand the warfare among the states, we must link
the external wars to internal great affairs such as sacrifices and patri-
archal practices. During the Warring States period, the internal politics
centred on the patriarchal system were constantly under the threat of
ruling crises. Institutionally, the old nobles who inherited their wealth
and power through blood lineage had never been challenged. Under such
circumstances, when deciding whether to wage external war, the dukes
had to consider domestic politics first. A degree of selective affinity was
present for these dukes between their wish to restructure the winning
coalition and their expansionist ambitions. Hence, this paper examines
the selective affinity and brings a new perspective to understanding why
dukes waged external war during the Warring States period.
It is worth noting that we do not reject the existing analyses on the
causes of wars during the Warring States period but respond to these anal-
yses with control variables in our models. For example, the tests carried
out for our dyadic model prove that variables including target experience
of conquering other states and geographic proximity increased the possi-
bility of war, as Qi Haixia predicted in her model.97 At the same time,
we also find that the war initiators did not follow the balance of power
logic and waged war against rising powers. Instead, the initiators usually
preferred to go to war against and annex the weaker states. We also find
that being in the same geographic regions was positively correlated to the
decision to wage war, but having the same family name was not. These
findings are consistent with previous studies.98
We also need to deal with a few alternative explanations of the causes
of wars. First, did dukes wage war for external expansion or for domestic
stability? In fact, we do not deny that many interstate wars directly
resulted from the desire for expansion, but our statistical analysis does
reveal that the timing and target of war were not randomly chosen and
that the domestic ruling crisis played a significant role. Second, did the
dukes appoint a commoner as prime minister because they simply respect
the talents or because they wanted to restructure the winning coalition?
Although the discourse prevailed in the Warring States period that rulers
97 Qi (2015).
should promote the talents, we also want to note that aristocrats enjoyed a
much higher level of education and visibility than commoners on average.
Therefore, we legitimately assume that if a duke recruited a commoner
instead of an aristocrat, restructuring the winning coalition should be
one of his motivations. Third, did the external wars also influence internal
stability, causing reverse causation? To avoid the problem, we measure the
ruling crisis through the reign of dukes’ predecessors, which was already
determined before the wars took place.
With the proposed theoretical framework and empirical research, our
findings provide a new angle to another question that has been long
debated among the historians of Chinese history. While both the Warring
States China and early Europe experienced an era of constant wars, why
China eventually emerged as one unified empire under Qin, while Europe
was fractured into several territorial states? Many scholars have suggested
answers to this question. Some attribute the unification of Qin to unit-
level causes such as the Qin’s successful legalist reform, a favourable
terrain, and the absence of nationalism.99 Other scholars have looked at
the balance of power and state expansions at the system level.100 This
paper integrates the two types of explanations and adds to the cross-level
analysis. We argue that the Qin state had more serious ruling crises than
other states. These crises forced the dukes of Qin to wage external wars.
Also, since it was more likely to win a war and occupy the conquered
lands if the target was close to Qin’s territory, the dukes of Qin adopted
the strategy of befriending a distant state while attacking a neighbour and
eventually unifying China. Our argument diverges from the classical theo-
ries on Qin’s unification which emphasised the weak nobles. The classics
argue that given Qin’s long distance to China’s cultural centre, people
from Qin were less constrained by patriarchal values. As a result, the legal
reforms in Qin were smoother and more thorough, making Qin a war
machine that strictly acted according to rules and orders regardless of
blood lineages. However, if we take a closer look at Qin’s politics, we
will realise that the history suggests story that contradicts to the classical
argument as summarised in Diagram 5.1.
As shown in Diagram 5.1, compared to the other six states, the average
years of reign for Qin’s dukes was low, whereas its total years of reign for
99 Hui (2005), Zhao (2009).

100 Wei (2003), Qi (2015), Liu (2019).
30 100
whose predecessors died unnaturally

Total years of reign for all dukes
Average year of reign for all dukes
80
25
60
40
20
20
15 10
Qi Chu Yan Qin Zhao Wei Han

Average year of reign for all Total years of reign for all dukes
dukes whose predecessors died unnaturally
Diagram 5.1 Reigns of dukes during the Warring States
all dukes whose predecessors died unnaturally was the highest. Qin did
not face fewer ruling crises with its weak patriarchal system and successful
legal reforms. In fact, the recent archaeological and historical evidence
showed that Qin did not have any sign of a weaker patriarchal system but
instead had a more stubborn one.101 Just as Yan Gengwang suggested,
historically, Qin’s dukes frequently clashed with the nobles. While other
states had their ups and downs and kept a weak nobility with frequent
regime changes, Qin had a strong and long-standing noble class.102 As a
result, the nobles in Qin were more capable of threatening the incumbent
dukes than were their counterparts in other states.
Moreover, benefiting from people’s grudging obedience to the patri-
archal values, Qin could carry out more through bureaucratisation and
consolidate power in the hands of the duke. However, centralised power
also caused officials with close personal ties with the duke to take on
important positions and grab power for themselves. As a result, the rela-
tives of the queens (usually with a different ducal family name) emerged
101 Pines (2005), von Falkenhausen (2006), Zhao (2014).

102 Yan (2009).
and made Qin the first state in Chinese history to be threatened by

the queens’ families.103 As mentioned before, King Zhaoxiang’s maternal
uncle Wei Ran had dominated the military and politics for 40 years under
King Zhaoxiang’s reign. The king was only able to launch his expan-
sionist agenda after he dismissed Wei and destroyed the last country that
was militarily comparable to Qin in the battle of Changping.104 Even Ying
Zheng, the first emperor of China, was threatened early in his reign by his
mother, Queen Dowager Zhao and her secret lover Lao Ai. Witnessing
how people from other states could emerge to threaten the crown after
Lao Ai’s failed coup, the remaining nobles urged the king to expel all
foreign scholars and officials. However, the king accepted Li Si’s proposal
and did not expel the foreigners. Eventually, with assistance from these
commoners and foreign scholars, the king was able to counterbalance the
old nobles and expand his power. Thus, ruling crises inside the state and
the King’s expansionist agenda made it possible for Qin to emerge as the
hegemon and unify China.
Other states, however, were becoming increasingly incapable of initi-
ating wars to counterbalance Qin as Qin grew stronger and expanded
its influences. As a result, even when facing their own ruling crises, the
dukes in these states would not risk war against Qin but attacked weaker
states instead. In the end, Qin inevitably emerged as the sole hegemon
and unify China.
Qin’s unification resulted from a combination of good timing, strategic
location, popular support, and hard work. Qin’s success could not simply
be explained in terms of its strength from a unit-level viewpoint, nor its
strategic plans and unique opportunities from a system-level viewpoint.
Instead, the interaction between internal structure and interstate conflicts
offers another perspective for us to understand the choices made by the
dukes of Qin and other states and help us to comprehend Qin’s eventual
unification. In other words, both Qin and the other six states together
made unification possible.
In conclusion, this paper relaxed the assumption of an exogenously
given winning coalition and demonstrates how dukes of the Warring
States broke free of the institutional constraints and restructured their
winning coalition. This paper proposes a new perspective to understand
103 Li and Qin (2017).

events during the Warring States, especially the unification of Qin. We

hope to inspire future explorations on the causes of unification during in
other phase of Chinese history, so that we arrive at a better understanding
of why China emerged as a unified country from an international relations
perspective.
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CHAPTER 6
Understanding Nation with Minzu: People,

Race, and the Transformation of Tianxia
in Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
China
Zhiguang Yin
Introduction
China is a ‘civilization pretending to be a nation-state.’1 This claim
made by Lucian Pye in 1993 was later made even more popular by
Henry Kissinger in his account on the rationale of Chinese foreign policy
making. The questions leading to this claim is more revealing than the
claim itself. Since China is only pretending to be a nation-state, as this
premise suggests, the contemporary social science theories must be ‘recal-
ibrated’ when applying to the study of China. Hence, Pye came up
1 Lucian Pye, “Social Science Theories in Search of Chinese Realities,” China Quarterly
132 (1992): 1162.
Z. Yin (B)
Department of International Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
e-mail: ZYin@fudan.edu.cn

144 Z. YIN
with the term Confucian Leninism, suggesting that the uniqueness of

contemporary communist China is the result of the marriage between
‘long-standing Chinese cultural traditions’ such as its patrimonialism and
imported modern ideas such as Leninism. Alternatively, one should simply
accept, like Henry Kissinger suggests, the singularity of China and try to
make sense of China from within its own ‘civilization’. However, by advo-
cating the uniqueness of China, we are implying that the universalism
of social theories stands firmly and strong. It is China that has prob-
lems. Henceforth, we often could hear the judgement that China is not a
‘conventional nation-state’ that needs to be treated with care or even as
an abnormity. However, could it be that the theoretical framework, the
conceptual foundation we use to comprehend China is problematic?
Nation-state in Chinese is translated as minzu guojia (民族国家). It
consists of two crucial modern concepts, namely minzu (民族, nation)
and guojia (国家, state). The focus of this paper is on minzu. Existing
scholarship associates the emergence of the notion of minzu in China
with global anti-colonial movements at the turn of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. This process, henceforth, is described as a
‘concept-formation and intellectual reorientation’, which in turn gener-
ates momentum for political movements.2 Therefore, this paper looks at
minzu and its associated concepts such as nationalism (民族主义 minzu
zhuyi), nation-state, and sovereignty with a particular attention to their
applications outside the European historical and socio-political contexts
in which they were formed. It takes a historical materialist approach to
the study of idea and looks at the formation of a modern Chinese national
unity in the context of twentieth-century Chinese revolution. It does not
want to repeat a postcolonial problematic, trying to discover the subjec-
tivity of the non-Western world by ‘provincializing Europe’.3 Instead, this
paper is interested in a story of entanglement, in which the meaning of
nationalism in the non-Western world emerges through the long history
of anti-imperial and anti-colonial domination. It demonstrates how minzu
in Chinese becomes a non-hegemonic, and non-ethnic centric notion in
the process of pursuing an anti-imperialist modernisation. To borrow the
expression of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference (AASC) in Cairo in
2 Rebecca E. Karl, Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth
Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 5–9.
3 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical
Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
6 UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, … 145
1957, the discussion of the rise of nationalism in the non-Western world

is about the ‘breaking free’ from the ‘imperialist monopoly’ of modern
ideas.
How do we understand such a monopoly of ideas? The modern polit-
ical knowledge formed in the historical context of nineteenth-century
global expansion of colonialism and nation-state world order is exercising
its Foucauldian power of discipline. As Lydia H. Liu indicates that the
transnational moving of concepts is far from being merely a creation of
‘equivalent synonyms’ in different languages.4 The transnational travel of
ideas was far from being a simple story of intellectual transfusion or even
diffusion. Particularly in the case of the spread of ‘nationalism’ from the
dominant to the oppressed, it ignites a global process in which gener-
ations of intellectuals begin to aspire the future of their own nations
through rewriting, crossbreeding, interpreting, adapting, criticising, and
resisting those discourses of dominance.
The paper consists of four main parts. This first part presents a brief
etymological development of the word minzu and other related concepts
such as people, race, and nationalism in the context of nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, when China encountered Western colonial expansion.
The following part then focuses on how Japan served both as a crucial
theoretical resource and an anti-thesis for the Chinese intellectuals’ under-
standing of minzu in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
It particularly focuses on how the development of minzu understanding
in China was closely related to the political experience of China being
subjugated to the global expansion of imperialism at the time. By doing
so, this part also hopes to challenge the Eurocentric interpretation of
the Chinese notion tianxia (天下 literally means, everything under the
heave), suggesting it is a hegemonic order and in contrast with modern
state-centric world system which emphasises on sovereign equality. The
third and final parts bring forward the importance of revolutionary expe-
rience in the making of the connotations of minzu in China. It elaborates
on why minzu in Chinese deviates from the Westphalian connotation of
exclusiveness and emphasises on the issue of equality through liberation
of the oppressed.
4 Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated

Modernity—China, 1900–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 3–10.
146 Z. YIN
Minzu and Minzu Zhuyi: An Etymology

In modern Chinese, the term minzu indicates a two-fold connotation.
On one hand, it means ‘ethnicity’, which defines the racial difference in
a biological taxonomic sense. On the other hand, it is similar to the use
of ‘nation’ in Marxist texts, which, as a political concept, strongly empha-
sises the broader historical connection among social groups. Comparing
to the implications of this word rooted in Western cultural and historical
experience, ‘nation’ follows a drastically different path in China. Such a
variation not only appears in the formation and practice of ethnic policy in
People’s Republic of China (PRC), but also exists in its historical trans-
formation in the late nineteenth century when China as an empire was
struggling to cope with the rapidly changing global order featured with
the expansion of European legal principles.
A common understand is that the Chinese terms minzu and minzu
zhuyi in their modern senses have a strong Japanese influence. Recent
studies also show that German missionary Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff
(郭士立, 1803–1851) had already used the word minzu in the periodi-
cals and books he published in Chinese in the early 1830s.5 According
to Huang Xingtao’s research, the early use of minzu in Chinese is close
to the German concept of Nation, which signifies a naturally occurred
unity of people. The word min (民) in Chinese refers to the general
public, whereas zu (族) focuses on the gathering of families or tribes.
Until the late nineteenth century, minzu in Chinese texts was used almost
exclusively in this sense.6
From the first Sino-Japanese war in 1895 to the late 1910s, reformist
intellectuals began to use minzu more closely to its contemporary
connotation. In 1896, Shiwu Bao (时务报, Current Affairs), a Chinese
periodical in Shanghai edited by Wang Kangnian (汪康年, 1860–1911)
and Liang Qichao (梁启超, 1873–1929), published a Chinese translation
of a Japanese newspaper article on ‘Turkish Empire’. The article was trans-
lated by a long-term collaborator of Liang Qichao, Japanese sinologist
5 Xingtao Huang, 重塑中华: 近代中国 “中华民族”观念研究 (Reshaping Zhonghua: The

Concept of ‘Zhonghua Minzu’ in Modern China) (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2017),
70–73.
6 Guantao Jin and Qingfeng Liu, 观念史研究: 中国现代重要政治术语的形成 (Studies in
the History of Ideas: The Formation of Important Modern Chinese Political Terms) (Hong
Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008), 531.
Kozyo Satakichi (古城貞吉, 1866–1949). It mentions six ‘minzu under

the governance of the Turkish Empire’, including ‘Tuerqi ren, Alabiya
ren, Xila ren, Yaerminiya ren, Lamu ren, and Yaerbaniya ren (literally
means Turkish people, Arabic people, Greek people, Armenian people,
Romani people, and Albanian people)’. The article claims that ‘minzu of
ancient state’ (古国民族, guguo minzu) does not understand the ‘art of
leadership and rule’ (统御之道, tongyu zhidao), and has to rely on tribal
and religious unity to govern. However, other minzu under its rule have
been under the influence of cultural and material development of Western
Europe. Consequently, they began to demand ‘self-rule’ (自主).7
This text draws a distinction between the old and the new minzu.
The former relies on tribal and religious ties to build its political unity,
whereas the latter, although not clearly stated in the article, forms its
political agency under the influences of the West European material and
cultural progresses. The story about the Ottoman Empire being the ‘sick
man of Europe’ was widely known by the then Chinese reform-minded
intellectuals. Particularly after 1895, the possibility that China could be
broken up by European powers and the rising Japan became an eminent
concern to Chinese intellectuals and officials. It is particularly intriguing
to notice that this early use of minzu has very little ethnocentric implica-
tion. Surely, it refers to unity of people with similar ethnic background,
in which case the Chinese notion ‘ren’ (人, people) was used. However,
it can also be used in the context such as ‘guguo minzu’ which indicates
a political unity formed under different principles of governance (tongyu
zhidao). A unity can form or dismantle as the result of politics rather than
ethnicity. Ethnicity as the foundation of tribalism, which is recognised as
a form of political unity, is backward and no match for the advanced West
European nations. Hence, it needs to be transformed.
The Chinese word resembling the ethnocentric notion of nation, or
more specially ‘race’, is ‘zhong ’ (种). In an article published in Zhejiang
Chao (浙江潮, Tidal Wave in Zhejiang), a periodical published in Japan
by Chinese overseas students, ‘minzu zhuyi’, is defined as ‘unifying same
zhong and alienating different zhong to build a state for the minzu’.8
However, in the early 1900s, terminologies used to elaborate the notion
7 Satakichi Kozyo, “土耳其论 (On Turkey),” Shiwu Bao (Current Affairs) 11 (1896):
24.
8 Yuyi, “民族主义论 (On Nationalism),” Zhejiang Chao (Tidal Wave of Zhejiang) 1
(1903): 3–7.
148 Z. YIN
of nationalism were in flux. Liang Qichao, for example, considers nation-

alism as a rejection to the ‘freedom of invasion’. It deters ‘other zu
from invading us’, and ‘us from invading others’. Hence, nationalism
is ‘the fairest principle in the world.’ It is a modern state theory began
‘at the turn of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’. Liang refers to the
Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen de 1789 as one of the intel-
lectual foundations of nationalism with a focus on its advocacy of ‘guomin
duli’ (国民独立, literally independence of national people) in the world.9
Comparing to the article in Zhejiang Chao, which focuses on nationalism
sustaining the rise of main European powers, Liang Qichao’s attention
was on nationalism being a force of mobilisation in the anti-imperialist
and anti-colonial movements among the small and weak nations. He
combed through historical events such as European resistances against
Napoleonian expansionism, Irish independence movement, Anglo-Boer
War, and anti-Spanish resistance in Philippine as examples to argue that
nationalism could be a force to deter ‘new imperialism’ (新帝国主义)
and promote equality among states around the world.10 Liang was more
interested in nationalism being a force to facilitate ‘equality’ (pingdeng,
平等) among nations. Such an equal status could only be achieved if
people across the world with the ‘same ethnic, linguistic, religious, and
customary backgrounds could organise themselves into autonomise, well-
structured governments, working towards the public good and defending
themselves from other nations’.11
Undoubtedly, Japanese intellectual discussions had a tremendous
impact on the development of modern notions of nation and nation-
alism in Chinese. In comparison, the Japanese ethnocentric view on
minzu functions as the justification for the Japanese to lead the ‘yellow
race’ in competition for dominance against the ‘white race’. However,
it is clear that from an early stage, Chinese discussions on minzu zhuyi
was more interested in taking it as a state theory, providing the volonté
Générale capable of unifying individuals into a collective, from which a
9 Qichao Liang, “国家思想变迁异同论 (The Transformation of State Theory, Similarities

and Differences),” in 梁启超全集 (The Complete Works of Liang Qichao), ed. Pinxing
Zhang (Beijing: Beijing Chubanshe, 1999), 459.
10 Liang, “国家思想变迁异同论 (The Transformation of State Theory, Similarities and
Differences),” 459–60.
11 Qichao Liang, “新民说 (On the New Citizen, 1902),” in 梁启超全集 (The Complete
Works of Liang Qichao), ed. Pinxing Zhang (Beijing: Beijing Chubanshe, 1999), 656.
modern state could emerge. Only after this transformation, can China
be a ‘nation-state’ and Chinese people be the ‘master’ of ‘building their
own nation into a full-fledged member of the modern world’.12 Conse-
quently, the Chinese discussions of minzu, from its inception, were largely
associated with envisioning of a new world order featuring with national
self-determination (zizhi, 自治) and equality.
Nationalism and the Imagination

of a New World Order
Being treated as a state theory, Chinese discussions of nationalism have
always been closely associated with its imagination of a new world order.
Transferring China from a universal empire into a modern state also
means taking China out of the traditional Confucius tianxia order and
resituating it in a modern interstate order. A common understanding of
this notion is that it denotes a universal kingship associated with a widely
shared sense of participation in higher culture. However, such a cultural
recognition was also accompanied by an overarching authority achieved
mainly through military and political campaigns over large areas. It makes
almost no difference from pax orbis as an aspiration for global unity, which
is no stranger to the European Christian empires. One of the most influ-
ential interpretations in the English-speaking world comes from Joseph
Levenson. He suggests that tianxia is a ‘regime of value’ in contrast with
guo (国 nation), which is a regime of power. He argues that based on
tianxia worldview, the Chinese Empire is the world. He then famously
proposed the culturalism-to-nationalism thesis, which suggests that by the
nineteenth century, the Chinese cultural recognition of tianxia began to
give way to a nationalist recognition.13
The dichotomy between tianxia and nationalism is Eurocentric. The
notion of nationalism here depicts a common process starting from
Europe and then across the world since the early nineteenth century,
aiming at state-making, rights to self-government and excise the right
organization of a society of states in the name of a unity of a certain
12 Yuyi, “民族主义论 (On Nationalism),” 5; “国家学上之支那民族观 (View on Chinese

Nation from the point of State Theory),” 游学译编 (Translations of International Studies),
no. 11 (1903): 11–23.
13 Joseph R. Levenson, “T’ien-Hsia and Kuo, and the “Transvaluation of Values”,” The
Far Eastern Quarterly 11, no. 4 (1952): 447–51.
150 Z. YIN
population. In the European context, nationalism retrospectively provides

legitimacy to a union against European territorial empires and transna-
tional religious authority. It depicts a sovereign status established in the
Peace of Westphalia among European protestant nations. It connects to
the modern European notion of sovereignty which is fundamentally an
extension of private land ownership. By emphasising the exclusive right
to a piece of land by its inherited residence with the same ethnic origin, a
modern European nation-state sovereignty came into existence. In today’s
discussions of nationalism, such an ethnocentric exclusive right to land
ownership forms an underlining criterion. Consequently, the application
of nationalist rhetoric is constantly risking of re-enforcing the imagination
that the world is nothing but an ‘inherently fragmented space’.14
The ethnocentric ideal of nationalism, however, can rarely translate
into a political reality. Instead, it usually has a blurry line with racism and
xenophobia. Since the late nineteenth century, we can often see ethno-
centric nationalism being used to justify expansionism or ethnic cleansing
in Europe and many parts of the world. In this sense, nationalism and
imperialism in the modern historical context form the ‘opposite sides of
the same coin’.
The transnational travel of ideas was far from being a simple story of
intellectual transfusion or even diffusion. Particularly in the case of the
spread of ‘nationalism’ from the dominant to the oppressed, it ignites
a global process in which generations of intellectuals begin to aspire
the future of their own nations through rewriting, crossbreeding, inter-
preting, adapting, criticising, and resisting those discourses of dominance.
It also interacts with the notion of tianxia. The entanglement of the
ideas creates new momentum and conditions which inevitably brought
the concept such as ‘nationalism’ outside its European origin and lead it
on a truly global path.
In China, early discussions of nationalism, minzu and shijie (世界,
the world), often appear together. Expressions such as ‘zhonghua minzu’
(中华民族, Chinese nation), ‘shijie minzu’ (世界民族, world nations),
‘minzu guojia’, and ‘shijie guojia’ (世界国家, world states) are regularly
seen in discussions forming crucial contexts for us to understand the
connotations and implications of the Chinese understandings of nation
and nationalism.
14 Timothy Oakes, and Patricia L. Price, ed., The Cultural Geography Reader (London
and New York: Routledge, 2008), 61.
A common misconception about nationalism is that it always risks of

leading towards Chauvinism. The foundation of such a misconception is
the premise that only dominance by a hegemonic power could constitute
the optimal situation for ensuring and maintaining an open and stable
world economy. The decline of one hegemon means confrontations and
conflicts, and will always lead to the rise of another.15 Based on this
premise, nations in the non-Western world established during the wave of
the anti-imperial national independence movement in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries could only replicate the European historical
experience and go on a path of either expansionism or self-destruction.16
A state will either strive to become a regional or global hegemon and
success or being placed under the dominance of a rising hegemon.
The contemporary Western scholarly interests in tianxia in fact re-
enforces such an anxiety. Such an anxiety was noted bluntly in William
Callahan’s review on Zhao Tingyang’s discussion on tianxia system.
Callahan argues that Zhao’s new scheme privileges order over freedom,
ethics over law, and elite governance over democracy.17 It almost repeats
the decades old thesis that China is not ‘conventional’, or normal.
This Eurocentric and teleological view of the world order is re-enforced
by cases such as the rise of Japan in the late nineteenth century. The
Japanese understanding of minzoku (民族) also combines the notion
of people and race. A crucial component in the forming of Japanese
understanding of minzoku was the civilisation theory with a twist of state-
centrism. In 1875, Fukuzawa Yukichi (福沢諭吉, 1835–1901) introduced
the Civilization as a singularity into Japanese. His Bunmeiron (文明論)
depicted in his widely circulated book Bunmeiron no Gairyaku (文明論
之概略, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization, 1875, hereafter refers as
15 Robert O. Keohane, “The Theory of Hegemonic Stability and Changes in Inter-

national Economic Regimes, 1967–1977,” in Change in the International System, ed.
Ole R. Holsti, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alexander L. George (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1980), 131–62; Robert Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation:
The Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment (New York: Basic Books, 1975);
Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981); Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World
Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Charles P. Kindleberger,
The World in Depression, 1929–1939 (Harmondswworth: Pelican Books, 1987).
16 Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (London: Hutchinson & Co. Publishers Ltd., 1961).
17 William A. Callahan, “Chinese Visions of World Order: Post-Hegemonic or a New
Hegemony?” International Studies Review 10, no. 4 (2008): 749–61.
152 Z. YIN
Outline) aims to provide a path for Japan in the time of great transforma-
tion to become a ‘civilised nation’ (文明国) like the ‘most civilised nations
in Europe and the United States of America’. His teleological view on the
development of Civilization is made very clear with the title of the second
chapter in the Outline, which says ‘taking the Western (西洋) Civilization
as the destination’.18 He accepted the popular three-tier hierarchy order
in the Western theory of civilization and divided the nations of the world
into categories of ‘the civilised’, ‘the semi-civilised’, and ‘the savage’.
Fukuzawa’s categorisation of Civilization has a subtle but crucial differ-
ence from its Western source. The Civilization theory popular in the then
Euro-American world was deeply rooted in the study of ethnography.
The three-tier division was a categorisation of the world’s people. This
ethnocentric view of civilization can be understood as the raison d’état
of an empire. It always emerges when an empire is on an expansionist
trajectory, providing justification for the domination of one race over the
others. The standard of civilization forms the foundation for the justifi-
cation of a European expansionism. It originated in eighteenth-century
France.19 Later it was made popular with the global expansion of the
British Empire. In his famous lecture series on the history of the expan-
sion of England, John Seeley’s interest is to connect the development of
Britain as a global empire with the ‘general drift’ and ‘goal’ of the entire
human civilization. To him, the expansion of England is inevitable as it
is determined by the uniqueness of English environment and biological
evolution of the Anglo-Saxon race. The expansion of the ‘English State’
is fundamentally the ‘diffusion of our race’ and will transform the other
races morally and socially to an advanced stage.20 This rhetoric at the turn
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries quickly sunk into political and
popular discourse in the Anglo-American world. As a superior race, the
white man, or to be more specific in the eyes of Anglo-American imperi-
alists, the Anglo-Saxon, has the moral duty to carry the other races to the
top of human civilization. The main way to achieve this goal is through
both indirect dominance of the semi-colonies in Afro-Asian world and
18 Yukichi Fukuzawa, 文明論之概略 (An Outline of a Theory of Civilisation), vol. 1

(Tokyo: Fukuzawa Yukichi, 1875), 21.
19 Brett Bowden, The Empire of Civilization, the Evolution of an Imperial Idea
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 27–28.
20 J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, Two Courses of Lectures (London: Macmillan
and Co., Limited, 1914), 4–10.
building ‘White Man’s country’ in settlement colonies such as the US,

Canada, Australia, and South Africa.
However, to Fukuzawa, his vision of transforming Japan into a
‘civilised nation’ would not work with such an ethnocentric view of
civilization placing the White race at the top of human civilization and
evolution. Therefore, Fukuzawa downplayed the centrality of race in his
version of civilization theory. Instead, he placed kuni (国, state) rather
than ‘people’ as the fundamental unit to evaluate the level of develop-
ment. In this way, the hierarchical order only denotes the different levels
of development of state. A semi-civilised state could transform into a
civilised one if applying the modernisation model proved to be useful by
the success of the civilised Western countries. Unlike the ethnocentric civi-
lization theory, which suggests the other races need to be enlightened by
the White race, the Japanese take on civilization theory gives importance
to self-transformation through reform and learning.
To Fukuzawa, for Japan as a ‘state in the East’ (東洋の一国), the
source for modernisation comes from teachings offered by ‘seiyō bunmei’
(西洋文明, Western Civilization), which was ‘already introduced to Japan
over a hundred years ago’.21 This notion of modernisation by trans-
forming Japan less like an Eastern nation but more like a European state
was later coined famously as ‘leaving Asia and joining Europe’ (脱亜入
欧).22
Fukuzawa’s vision of modernisation by ‘leaving Asia’ does not imply
detaching from Asian geopolitical affairs. Asia in his civilization theory
mainly implies a Sino-centric regional order sustained by a narrowly
defined Confucianist hierarchical moral structure. Fukuzawa considered
China as an intellectually barren place under authoritarian theocracy,
whereas Japan was much more vibrant with potential to develop an
21 Yukichi Fukuzawa, “蘭学事始再版序 (Forward for the Reprint of The Origin of

Dutch Studies),” in 福沢諭吉全集 (The Complete Works of Fukuzawa Yukichi) (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1962), 770.
22 For the discussion of this idea, see: Urs Matthias Zachmann, “The Foundation
Manifesto of the Kōakai (Raising Asia Society) and the Ajia Kyōkai (Asia Association),
1880–1883,” in Pan-Asianism, A Documentary History, ed. Sven Saaler and Christopher
W. A. Szpilman (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011), 53–60. Hirakawa
Sukehiro, “Japan’s Turn to the West,” in Modern Japanese Thought, ed. Bob Tadashi
Wakabayashi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 30–97.
154 Z. YIN
advanced civilization. The advanced state consequently has a moral obli-

gation to supress the backward nation in the development of human
civilization through trade competition and warfare.23
By the early 1880s, Fukuzawa began to actively express the idea that
‘Asia should work together to fend off the Westerns’ bully and inva-
sion’. This marks the emergence of his civilization theory has matured
into a geopolitical strategy later known as ‘Nihon meishu-ron’ (日本盟
主論, literally means Japan as the leader in the union).24 In the early
twentieth century, the growing power of the Japanese nation-state and
growing Japanese self-confidence, emerging as a consequence of growing
power, eventually militated against a return to Asia, but led instead to
ever-strengthening Japanese claims of superiority over Asia and leadership
in Asia culminating in the ‘new order’ of the 1930s and the ‘Greater East
Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’ of the early 1940s.
Although in the late nineteenth century, Chinese intellectuals were
attracted to both the pan-Asian ideal and discourses of nationalism.25
However, instead of accepting the statist narrative of Japan being the
leader of the Asian yellow race, the Chinese elites were particularly inter-
ested in the idea that Asia could work together to fend off the growing
Western penetration. The US occupation of Philippine in 1898 and the
Anglo-Boer War in 1899 were two major global events reminding the
Chinese about the real possibility of China being broken up by the
Western expansionism. Growing number of Chinese elites also quickly
became disillusioned of the Japanese rhetoric of ‘the Orient for the Orien-
tals’ (東洋は東洋人の東洋なり) and the unity of the yellow race in the
Orient based on shared cultural identity (Dōbun, 同文, literally means
same language)26 and the ethnic relationship among the Asian races
23 Fukuzawa, 文明論之概略 (An Outline of a Theory of Civilisation), 1, 36–39.

24 Songlun Zhou, “Wenming ‘Ruou’ yu Zhengzhi ‘Tuoya’: Fuze Yuji ‘Wenminglun’ de
Luoji Gouzao (Civilisation ‘Joining Europe’ and Politics ‘leaving Asia’: The Logic Struc-
ture of Fukusawa Yukichi’s ‘Civilisation Theory’),” Ershiyi shiji (Twenty-first Century), no.
142 (2014): 29–41.
25 For a brief overview of pan-Asianism’s influence in Asia, see: Sven Saaler and Christo-
pher W. A. Szpilman, “Introduction: The Emergence of Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian
Identity and Solidarity, 1850–2008,” in Pan-Asianism, A Documentary History, ed. Sven
Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.,
2011), 20–26.
26 This expression refers to the fact that Chinese character is the cultural lingua franca
among the educated people in Asian countries such as Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and China.
(Dōshu 同種, literally means same ethnicity). In 1894, during the First
Sino-Japanese War, Japanese expedition force conducted a massacre at
Port Arthur (in Chinese lvshunkou, 旅顺口). The killing lasted for four
days, leaving more than 20,000 Chinese unarmed service men and civil-
ians dead. This atrocity was among the first widely reported massacres
in Western media in modern history. When the news about the massacre
appeared in the US media, Japan turned from the ‘light of civilization’
in the ‘darkness of the Far East’, to just another ‘Asian barbarian’. As
the Kansas City Journal observed, ‘[t]he barbarities perpetrated by the
civilized Japanese at Port Arthur are just as revolting as if they had
been committed by the uncivilized Chinese.’27 Fukuzawa was extremely
upset by the American media reaction towards the Japanese action at
Port Arthur. He continued to defend that the Japanese military action in
China was a war to advance world civilization by eliminating the backward
forces. China should be thankful for the Japanese as a civilising leader.
He also condemned the reports of massacre as false, which originated
from the long-lasting bias and arrogant disbelief towards the fact that a
‘backward nation could transform itself into prosperity’.28
It did not take very long for the intellectuals from other Asian nations
to realise that the Japanese idea of Asianism was firmly centred on
the Japanese domination of Asia. Dr Sun Yat-sen once warned Viet-
namese anti-colonial revolutionary Phan Bô.i Châu (1867–1940) that
Japan was interested in ‘power’ (qiangquan, 强权) rather than ‘human-
ity’ (rendao, 人道). Therefore, Japan would not be a reliable ally in
Regarding Chinese as the lingua franca in the anti-colonial movements in Asia, see:
Jingwen Luo, “东亚汉文化知识圈的流动与互动——以梁启超与潘佩珠对西方思想家与日
本维新人物的书写为例” (Transfers and Interactions among the Intellectual Communities
of East Asian Chinese Character Culture Sphere: The Description of the Western Thinkers
and the Meiji Restoration Intellectuals by Liang Qi Chao and Phan Bô.i Châu,” Taida
Lishi Xuebao (Historical Inquiry) 48 (Dec. 2011): 51–96.
27 Quoted from Jeffrey M. Dorwart, “James Creelman, the “New York World” and the
Port Arthur Massacre,” Journalism Quarterly 50, no. 4 (1973): 697–701.
28 Quoted from Shunbo Dong, “Lun Fuze Yuji dui Lvshun Datusha Shijian de Pinglun
(Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Comments on the Port Arthur Massacre),” Sheke Zongheng (Social
Sciences Review) 29, no. 7 (Jul. 2014): 107–09.
156 Z. YIN
the cause of global anti-colonialism.29 Instead of relying on the hierar-

chical civilization theory, Chinese intellectuals were more interested in
seeing Asia as a union against imperialism. In 1898, Qingyi Bao (清议
报, The China Discussion), a reformist periodical published in Yokohama
by Liang Qichao, Mai Menghua (麦孟华, 1875–1915), and Ou Jujia (
欧榘甲, 1870–1911) published a short article titled ‘New Monroeism
from the Far East’ 《极东之新木爱罗主义》
( ). It claims to be a transla-
tion of a news article published in the U.S. The article calls the New
Monroeism as a ‘new imperialism excised by the U.S. and Britain to domi-
nate the world’. Such a new imperialism is different from the ‘Roman
imperialism’ as it calls for ‘justice and peace, self-determination and rule
of law’. The international order under such a new Monroe doctrine is
‘under the governance of an international arbitral institution, jointly led
by Britain, the U.S.A. and Netherland’. This world order advocates ‘open
door policy’ and ‘free trade’. It will also prevent the colonial expansion
of European powers in China and ‘take China under the joint protection
provided by the U.S.A., Britain and Japan’.30
There is no further comments associated with this article, showing how
the Chinese reformists think about the ‘new imperialism’ from the U.S.,
Britain, and Japan. However, other texts published in the same period
by intellectuals in the inner circle of these Chinese reformist thinkers are
helpful in piecing together a comprehensive picture of Chinese attitude
towards Asianism. One of the significant feature is that the ethnocen-
tric view among Euro-American advocators of social Darwinism such
as Benjamin Kidd and Walter Bagehot was either omitted or altered in
Chinese translations and introductions of their works.
A famous interpretation of Benjamin Kidd comes from Liang Qichao,
which focuses on the importance of cooperation in the national progres-
sion. In Liang’s reading, Christianity, which Kidd placed in a crucial
position in his narrative, was omitted. Instead, Liang elaborates on the
general function of ‘religion’ in ‘combating against the inherited evil of
mankind’, ‘promoting the unification of different groups’, and ‘serving
29 Xianfei Liu, “东游运动与潘佩珠日本认识的转变 (The Changes in Phan Boi Chau’s

Understanding of Japan after the Movement of Traveling about Japan),” Dongnanya
Yanjiu (Southeast Asian Studies), no. 5 (2011): 72.
30 “极东之新木爱罗主义 (New Monroeism from the Far East),” Qingyi Bao (The China
Discussion), no. 2 (1898).
the future interests of the entire mankind’.31 Liang believes that Kidd’s
theory moves a step further from the natural selection theory of Charles
Darwin. Although a single organism can perish, the development of the
entire species is eternal. Liang therefore argues that ‘death’ serves an
important evolutionary function as long as ‘each individual could die
for the benefit of the entire race and the current generation of a race
would die for the future generation’. In this sense, death becomes a form
of sacrifice, which aims to ‘give birth to the future’. Different from the
Western reception of Benjamin Kidd, Liang believes that it is the philo-
sophical thinking about death that establishes Kidd as a ‘revolutionary
figure in the development of evolutionism’.
To Liang Qichao, Kidd’s discussion on the relation between indi-
vidual and society is intriguing. Liang argues that within a species group,
the number of individuals who hold the spirit of ‘sacrificing now in
exchange for a better future’ determines the group’s level of evolution.
He believes that the path of evolution is always forward looking. The
past and present are merely ‘gateway to the future’. Therefore, Liang
suggests that Kidd is reminding readers not only to focus on seeking
for the well-being now but also think about the ‘bigger picture for the
future’. To Liang, ‘nation’ is a present-facing institution which is only
responsible for looking after the interests of a certain group. ‘Society’, on
the other hand, beholds the future general well-being of the entire human
kind. However, Liang did not envision a clear solution for humankind’s
transformation from fragmented nation to a universal global society. He
simply rejects Herbert Spencer’s conviction which argues for the destined
abolishment of national boarder and arrival of a cosmopolitan world.
In Liang’s reading, by embodying presence with future-looking destiny,
Kidd manages to save the present from its temporality. This makes Kidd’s
thought more valuable. Chinese intellectuals should also respond to this
development and recognise that any discussions about the present has to
have a future-facing purpose. Only by doing so, we can then transcend
from the nineteenth century, an ‘era focusing only on the present exis-
tence’ (现在主义之时代) and make the ‘thinking about current society,
31 Qichao Liang, “进化论革命者颉德之学说 (Introducing Bejamine Kidd, a Revolu-

tionary Thinker on Evolutionism),” in 饮冰室文集点校 (Collection and Anotation of Liang
Qichao’s Works) (Kunming: Yunnan Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 2001), 424.
158 Z. YIN
nation, and morality’ more ‘meaningful and valuable’.32 Through Liang’s

interpretation, Kidd’s justification for Anglo-Saxon global economic and
military expansionism became a philosophical enquiry of a series of more
dialectic and universal relations, namely life and death, presence and
future, nation and society, and individual and community.
Most Chinese intellectuals in the early twentieth century show
concerns about imperialism. In 1901, Kai Zhi Lu (开智录, Enlighten-
ment Recording) published an article titled ‘On the Development of
Imperialism and the Future of the 20th Century World’. The author
suggests that the Afro-Asian cooperation against imperialism will reshape
the course of the twentieth-century historical development. The author
takes imperialism as an ‘expansionism (膨胀主义)’, an ‘ism advocating
territorial acquisition (版图扩张主义)’, a ‘militarism (侵略主义)’, and a
‘Dick Turpinism (狄塔偏主义)’. The rise of imperialism leads to an ‘era
when liberty decays’. Imperialism began in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries when ‘the European powers recovered from revolu-
tions’. It feeds upon the ‘inequality of national powers across the global’.
The author, using the pseudonym Zi Qiang (自强, literally means self-
strengthening), specifies that imperialism refers to the ‘expansionist global
doctrine of Britain, the USA and Germany’. It is different from the
‘territorial expansionist policy that Russia and France always embraced’.
Japan should also be viewed differently, as it ‘merely follows the Euro-
pean powers’. The author emphasises that combating against imperialism
should rely on ‘waving the flag of self-reliance and liberty, encouraging
national people’s spirit of independence and love of freedom’. The resis-
tance against imperialism and the pursuit of national independence and
self-reliance (自由自主) will have the momentum, which is ‘tens and
hundreds times larger than the one driving the European revolutions’,
and eventually transform ‘Asia and Africa’ into a ‘big battlefield of the
twentieth century’.33
Such a criticism against imperial world order and an awareness of
achieving independence through some forms of cooperation among the
32 Liang, “进化论革命者颉德之学说 (Introducing Bejamine Kidd, a Revolutionary

Thinker on Evolutionism),” 426–27.
33 “论帝国主义之发达及廿世纪世界之前途 (On the Development of Imperialism and
the Future of the 20th Century),” in 近代中国史料丛刊三编·第十五辑·清议报全编
(Collection of Modern Chinese Historical Documents, Volume 3, Number 15, Complete
Collection of Qingyi Bao), ed. Yunlong Shen (Taipei: Wenhai Chubanshe, 1985), 178–84.
weak and the small nations can be spotted at the time across many Third
World intellectuals. Probably to the surprise of the nineteenth-century
Anglo-Saxon imperial elites, the hierarchical world order they envisioned
based on the dichotomy between centre and peripheral, advanced and
backward, and developed and underdeveloped achieved its ‘universality’
in their most unintended manner. The empire and its knowledge become
the ‘Other’ in the ‘peripheral’ and ‘semi-peripheral’ world. By writing
back against and writing through the imperial knowledge, the broader
Third World create its own modernisation experience and modern world
view.
Nationalism in the Context of

Internationalism: A Communist Narrative
In the Manifesto of the Communist Party of China (CCP) passed in the
First National Congress of the CCP in July 1921, it states that any indi-
vidual ‘regardless of gender and nationality’ can join the party. The only
existing copies of this document are the Russian version archived by the
Communist International and an English version found in Chen Gong-
bo’s (陈公博, 1892–1946) monography The Communist Movement in
China. A Chinese translation of the document is now in the Museum
of Chinese Revolutionary History (中国革命历史博物馆) in Beijing, in
which the word ‘nationality’ is translated as ‘minzu’. The common trans-
lation of ‘nationality’ in contemporary Chinese is ‘guoji’ (国籍). It is
unclear which Chinese expression was used in the original Chinese copy.
However, this is a meaningful ambiguity. It indicates the basic Marxist
understanding of the ‘national question’ (in Chinese 民族问题, minzu
wenti). On a normative level, the Communist ideal of a transnational and
trans-class unification of the world is not compatible with nationalism
which divides the world into mutually excluding fragments. However,
in practice, national liberation movements against the imperialist global
order played a crucial role in facilitating the communist revolution across
the world.
When Karl Marx was completing the Communist Manifesto, the
modern nation-state recognition was also spreading across Europe with
the rising national revolutions in 1848.34 In the Manifesto, the word
34 See Connor, Walker (1984). The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and
Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. 5–7.
160 Z. YIN
‘Nationalität ’ (and the relating words such as Nationalen and Nation)

is used to indicate the political unity of people with the same consan-
guineous relation. Such a political unity is also related to the geographic
condition of people’s place of residence. Being isolated in their own
physical space forms the condition of ‘lokalen und nationalen Selbst-
genügsamkeit und Abgeschlossenheit ’ (local and national seclusion and
self-sufficiency) among different nations. However, this was transformed
by the bourgeoisie need for a world market. The condition of fragmen-
tation and isolation turned into a ‘universal inter-dependence of nations’.
This also transforms the intellectual creations of individual nations into
‘Gemeingut ’ (common property). It is under such a complexity of inter-
connectiveness that the ‘national one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness’
was shattered. To Marx, the destiny and nature of a nation is associated
with the world order shaped by the changing method of production. The
hierarchical relation between the civilised ‘Länder’ (state) and uncivilised
and semi-civilised states was in itself a global manifestation of a domestic
exploitive relation generated in the process of the bourgeoisie ‘need of a
constantly expanding market for its production’.35
When translating Marx’s German text, we can see three interconnected
words being used to form the complex notion of minzu in Chinese.
The word ‘das Land’ and the suffix ‘-völkern’ were used to indicate
the territorial affiliation of a group of people with legal responsibilities
and rights. When discussing the relationship between different groups
of people and their historical development, the Manifesto uses the word
‘Nation’. The German text of the Manifesto uses ‘Land’, ‘Volk’, and
‘Nation’ to describe the complexity of the formation and transformation
of nation. It states that the development of the method of production
terminated the fragmented status of population, capital, and means of
production. The ‘loosely connected provinces’, consequently, have to
relinquish their differences and form a united, singular nation, or in
German, ‘eine Nation’. We could understand the global order based on
nations formed during the development of the bourgeoisie methods of
production as a World System. However, in its English translation, some
35 All German, English, and Chinese texts of the Manifesto are based
on Marxists Internet Archive. Chinese: https://www.marxists.org/chinese/marx/01.
htm; English: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manife
sto/ch01.htm#007; and German: https://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/marx-eng
els/1848/manifest/0-einleit.htm. Last access: 28 October, 2021.
of the crucial differentiations are missing. For example, when translating

‘die Bauernvölker’, the English text reads as ‘nations of peasants’. The
connotation of ‘people’ as a political unity expressed in the German word
‘Volk’ is absent in the English text.
To Marx, forming of a singular ‘eine Nation’ fits the interest of the
bourgeoisie. It is a world order with a clear hierarchy, in which the bour-
geoisie occupies the centre and the proletariat as the peripheral. In the
context of nineteenth century, the hierarchical order was countries ruled
by the bourgeoisie (den Bourgeoisvölkern) extending their dominance to
the pre-industrial agricultural countries (die Bauernvölker). Such a hege-
monic unity needs to be demolished through the ‘national liberation’
(der nationalen Befreiung ). It is a resistance against the bourgeois hege-
monic socio-political order (Gesellschaftsordnung ) rather than a rejection
of the interconnected status of all nations. Eventually, through the unity
of ‘working men of all countries’ (Proletarier aller Länder) a new world
order could come into being.
The Chinese communists develop their understanding of minzu in
the dynamic of national liberation and internationalism. Li Dazhao
(李大钊, 1889–1927), one of the founding fathers of the CCP, was
among the first to understand Chinese national liberation in this context.
In 1912, Li Dazhao and his colleagues at the Peiyang Law and Poli-
tics Association (北洋法政学会) translated Nakajima Hata’s (中島端,
1859–1930) The Destiny of China Being Divided (支那分割の運命) with
annotations and commentary. In the commentary, Li and his colleagues
considered Japanese ‘Asian Monroeism’ (亚洲孟罗主义) as the equiva-
lent of ‘pan-Asianism’ (大亚细亚主义), which was ‘merely a synonym
of Japanese ambition of dominating Asia’.36 To Li Dazhao, ideas for
regional domination in the forms of ‘Pan…ism’ are fundamentally ‘in
conflict with democracy’. It is ‘nothing more than the cant term for
despotism’.37 Regional domination in forms of ‘pan-Europeanism’, ‘pan-
Americanism’, ‘pan-Asianism’, ‘pan-Germanism’, and ‘pan-Slavism’ are all
selfish hegemonic ambition, seeking to subjugate other people.38
36 Dazhao Li, “支那分割之命运驳议 (Against the Destiny of China Being Divided),” in

李大钊全集 (Complete Works of Li Dazhao), ed. Shiru Zhang et al. (Shijiazhuang: Hebei
Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 1999), 479.
37 Dazhao Li, 李大钊全集 (Selected Works of Li Dazhao) (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe,
1959), 109.
38 Li, 李大钊全集 (Selected Works of Li Dazhao), 105.
162 Z. YIN
In comparison, Li Dazhao proposed his own ‘New Asianism’ (新亚

细亚主义) as a counter argument to the Japan-centric pan-Asianism. Li
considered that ‘pan-Asianism’ was not aiming to promote national self-
determination. Instead, it was ‘an imperialism aiming to absorb the small
and weak nations’.39 A true Asianism, according to Li Dazhao, should
come from a unified action against imperialism. All the Asians under
oppression should work together, striving for ‘justice (gongli, 公理, liter-
ally means truth acknowledged by the public) and equality (pingdeng, 平
等)’, even ‘at the cost of armed resistances’.40
Through ‘New Asianism’, Li Dazhao has envisioned a spatial order
which does not involve hegemonic domination of space. Instead of having
a dominating power filling the geopolitical ‘void’, Li believes that the
national independence movements in Asia will transform the nations
formerly dominated by hegemonic powers. Only with self-determined
nations filling up the space of Asia can a true union of equality could
form. This will then turn Asia into a ‘larger union’ on equal footing with
Europe and America, leading the world into a ‘federation of equals’ that
could ‘advance the wellbeing of humankind’.41
Li Dazhao believes that the future of Asianism is the union of
the world. It should not be understood as a regionalism or even
narrow-minded nationalism which opposes the ideal of ‘globalism’ (Shijie
zhuyi, 世界主义). Differing from the state-centric view in Japanese pan-
Asianism, Li Dazhao sees the future of China in the context of a broader
liberation of all oppressed Asians. Our ‘common enemy’ is ‘hegemony’
(qiangquan, 强权). Our ‘common friend’ is ‘justice’ (gongli).42 Mao
Zedong (毛泽东, 1893–1976) expressed a similar opinion. In a letter to
Zhang Guoji (张国基, 1894–1992), who at the time was already living in
Singapore, Mao states that Hunan people living abroad should take the
position of ‘globalism’, which ‘wishes the best for ourselves and others
as well’. It is different from ‘colonialism’ which ‘based the wellbeing
of one nation over the sacrifice of the others’.43 These early discussions

43 Xianzhi Pang et al., eds., 毛泽东年谱, 1893–1949 (The Annotated Chronicle of Mao
Zedong, 1893–1949), 3 vols., vol. 1 (Beijing: Zhongyang Wenxian Chubanshe, 2002), 71.
on the relation between Chinese revolution and a transformation of the

global order form the foundation for the later discourses sustaining the
imagination of an Afro-Asian solidarity order in the PRC.
Li’s depiction of a new ‘Asianism’ adds another layer to the complexity
of this transnational diffusion of ideas in modern time. It entails an inno-
vative understanding of the dialectic relation between nationalism and
internationalism (or in Li Dazhao’s word ‘globalism’), reminding us that
concepts as such could only acquire their limited universality in certain
socio-historical contexts. In this case, it reminds us that the contradiction
between nationalism and internationalism is only true in the European
historical context. In the non-European world, the nationalist agenda
of independence would only be possible when it became a transnational
movement. Mao gave a clearer narrative of this dynamic. He claims that
instead of ‘transforming the Orient’, it is better to think about ‘trans-
forming China and the world’. The focus on the world (shijie, 世界)
clarifies that ‘our proposition is for the world’, and the ‘beginning of
our transformative practice starts from China’.44 Revolutionary leaders
and progressive intellectuals in Asia came to this understanding when
they began to understand that hegemonic powers were already oper-
ating on a global level. To the CCP, liberation as a transformation for
the oppressed world only gains its momentum in the modern history
of anti-imperialism.45 It is a ‘part’ of a global transformation associated
with the historical development of imperialist warfare and anti-imperialism
across the world.46 Henceforth, liberation could not just be a nation-
alist transformation. It is, by nature, a universal mission rooted in the
shared experience of suffering from the imperialist hegemony among the
world’s peoples, particularly peoples from what is later known as the
‘Third World nations’. This narrative of a shared historical experience
caused by the nineteenth-century global expansion of imperialism conse-
quently becomes the foundation for the understanding and practices of
sovereignty among the Third World nations.
44 Pang et al., 毛泽东年谱, 1893–1949 (The Annotated Chronicle of Mao Zedong, 1893–
1949), 75.
45 Mao Zedong, “Xin Minzhuzhuyi Lun (On New Democracy),” in Mao Zedong Ji
(Collected Writings of Mao Tse-Tung), ed. Minoru Takeuchi (Tokyo: Hokubōsha, 1983),
148.
46 Mao, “Xin Minzhuzhuyi Lun (On New Democracy),” 147–55.
164 Z. YIN
Nationalism in Chinese Revolution

In its early years, the CCP had made a distinction between ‘modern
national liberation movement’ and ‘primitive national xenophobia’.
During its debate against the statists in Xinshi group (醒狮派, literally
awakened lion school), the CCP considered the state-centric nationalism
as a ‘nationalism of the bourgeoisie’ which only ‘interests in libera-
tion of one nation’.47 During the same period, the Fourth National
Congress of the CCP passed a resolution on national liberation move-
ment, stating that the ‘policy on assimilating Mongolians and Tibetans’
in China is hegemonic politics similar to the ‘pan-Turkism in Turkey’. It
is ‘oppressing the small and weak nations in the name of national glory’.
Instead, ‘the nationalism of the proletariat’ emphasises on the right of
self-determination. It is a ‘nationalism of equality’.48 Therefore, instead
of focusing on the tension between the right of secession and policy of
assimilation, the CCP advocates the right of self-determination among
different ethnic groups in China under the political goals of achieving
the liberation of ‘Chinese nation as a whole’ (中国整个的民族) and the
‘unification of China’.49
The CCP’s understanding of nationalism also contained the early
reformists’ focus on establishing political subjectivity of guomin (国民,
national people) through actions of liberation and reform. This element
became more pronounced after the 1927 party purge when the CCP was
driven underground and became active in the rural and remote areas.
At the time, the so-called base areas (根据地) under the CCP control
were located in areas with great ethnic diversity. The economic devel-
opment in these inland areas was also significantly belated comparing to
the coastal cities. In this context, the CCP began to acknowledge that
liberation cannot be a top-down, one-size-for-all initiative. Instead, it
47 Chunv Xiao, “显微镜下的醒狮派 (The Awakened Lion School under Microscope),”

中国青年 (The Chinese Youth) (October 1925).
48 Zhonggongzhongyang Tongzhanbu, ed., 民族问题文献汇编 1921.7–1949.9 (Collec-
tion of Documents on National Questions, from July 1921 to September 1949) (Beijing:
Zhonggongzhongyang Dangxiao Chubanshe, 1991), 32.
49 “中国共产党第六次代表大会底决议案 (The Final Resolution of the Sixth National
Congress of the CCP),” in 六大以来: 党内秘密文件 (Since the Sixth National Congress:
Secret Documents of the CCP), ed. Zhonggongzhongyang Shujichu (Beijing: Renmin
Chubanshe, 1980), 2. Tongzhanbu, 民族问题文献汇编 1921.7–1949.9 (Collection of
Documents on National Questions, from July 1921 to September 1949), 96.
needs to recognise the socio-economic diversity among regions. In this

sense, recognising the ‘right of self-determination of the Manchurian,
Mongolian, Hui, Tibetan, Miao, and Yao people’ is to recognise that
areas populated by these ethnic groups should have the right to determine
the pace and policy of liberation suitable for their own regional socio-
economic conditions. Recognising the right of self-determination does
not mean the absence of a unified party leadership. The CCP is clear that
the territorial unification and the establishment of a ‘people’s sovereignty’
within the territory inherited from the Qing Empire has always been the
goal for liberation and national self-determination. In the 1928 party
manifesto, the CCP emphasised the party leadership in conducting works
in different ethnic regions. It states that ‘an ethnic minority work office
needs to be established in party regional headquarter.’ This is to make
working among ‘the proletariat from other ethnic groups’ easier, as when
working in these regions, ‘ethnic minority languages need to be used’.
However, all works need to be ‘under the supervision and guidance of
the local party headquarter’.50
In practice, particularly during the war against the Japanese invasion
from 1931 to 1945, the Communist revolutionary agenda of creating a
proletarian state and eventually a communist world order is embedded
in the language of achieving a national liberation against imperialism. To
both the Nationalist Party (Guomindang, 国民党) and the CCP at the
time, Zhonghua minzu (the Chinese nation) was an ‘oppressed nation’
(被压迫民族). No ethnic groups in China could be isolated from the
reality of Japanese invasion. Since the Second United Front beginning
in 1937, the CCP had always been developing the notion of nationalism
based on Dr Sun Yat-sen’s narrative. The Chinese national liberation as
a whole and the equality among all ethnic groups within China were
the two cornerstones in the CCP’s understanding of nationalism in this
period. To the CCP, the goal of national liberation could be jeopardised
by the external influence of imperialism trying to drag China into the
imperialist conflicts by allying with a certain imperialist country. It could
also be negatively impacted by internal factors such as the hegemonic
Han Chauvinism, selfishness of certain classes, and collaborative elements
in China to protect their own interests by sacrificing the national interest
50 Tongzhanbu, 民族问题文献汇编 1921.7–1949.9 (Collection of Documents on National

Questions, from July 1921 to September 1949), 88.
166 Z. YIN
(minzu liyi, 民族利益).51 In the context of imperialist invasion, cooper-

ation and unification are the only way to safeguard the nation. Chinese
nationalism and internationalism are ‘not in conflict against each other’.
Internationalists could only ‘achieve the goal of Chinese independence
and liberation’ by ‘firmly excise Chinese nationalism’. At the same time,
Chinese nationalists have to ‘sympathise and cooperation with interna-
tionalist movement, in order to overthrow the hegemony of imperialism
and achieving real national equality on the global stage’. Only by then, the
‘Chinese nation can be thoroughly liberated’. In this sense, the notions
that ‘nation is supreme’ (民族至上) and ‘state is supreme’ (国家至上)
are ‘revolutionary’ in all colonies, semi-colonies, and weak and small
nations under invasion. Whereas in ‘all the capitalist states, such notions
are counter-revolutionary’.52
The CCP considers that the nationalist agenda of independence would
only be possible when it became a transnational movement in the non-
European world. Liberation as a transformation for the oppressed world
only gains its momentum in the modern history of anti-imperialism.53 It
is a ‘part’ of a global transformation associated with the historical devel-
opment of imperialist warfare and anti-imperialism across the world.54
Liberation does not only mean gaining the Westphalian sovereignty.55
Without the capabilities ‘which enable governments to be their own
masters’, states could at most be recognised as possessing the ‘nega-
tive sovereignty’.56 Henceforth, liberation could not just be a nationalist
transformation. It is, by nature, a universal mission rooted in the shared
experience of suffering from the imperialist hegemony among the world’s
51 Zhou Enlai, “民族至上与国家至上 (On Nation Is Supreme and State Is Supreme),”

新华日报 (Xinhua Daily) (Chongqing) 15 June 1941.
52 Zhou, “民族至上与国家至上 (On Nation Is Supreme and State Is Supreme),” 新华
日报 (Xinhua Daily) (Chongqing) 22 June 1941.
53 Mao, “Xin Minzhuzhuyi Lun (On New Democracy),” 148.
54 Mao, “Xin Minzhuzhuyi Lun (On New Democracy),” 147–55.
55 Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1999), 73–104.
56 Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States:: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third
World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 27. Jackson also uses the term
negative sovereignty to describe a formal legal condition of a state enjoying the freedom
from external interference. It is resonates with Krasner’s categorisation of the Westphalian
sovereignty.
peoples, particularly peoples from what is later known as the ‘Third World
nations’. This narrative of a shared historical experience caused by the
nineteenth-century global expansion of imperialism continues to influ-
ence the People’s Republic of China’s (RPC) nation-building narratives
and foreign conducts with the Third World nations since 1949.
This idea that sovereignty could only emerge through an act of libera-
tion by the people against all forms of oppression, foreign and domestic
alike, is deeply rooted in the modern Chinese experience of social revo-
lution. It was given constitutional status in the Common Programme of
the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (hereafter refers as
the Common Programme) in 1949. As the first constitutional document
of the PRC, it proclaims at the beginning that the ‘glorious triumph of
the Chinese people’s liberation war and the people’s revolution’ marked
the ‘end of an era under imperialist, feudalist and crony capitalism in
China’. With the establishment of the PRC, an old nation of China is
made anew. Its hallmark is the transformation of the ‘Chinese people’
from being oppressed into the ‘master of the new society and the new
nation’.57 All its state power ‘belongs to the people’.58
The Common Programme pays more attention to defining the
centrality of the people in all the state institutions. Such a position is not
received a form of empowerment but a result of their own revolutionary
struggle. This notion is reflected in the narrative of the 1949 Common
Programme. It defines the newly formed nation in the historical dynamics
of socio-political transformation. The ‘will of the people’ to establish the
PRC is a consensus reached through this historical process and becomes
the political foundation’ of the new nation.59 History does not stop with
the establishment of the new republic, with the territorial transference
57 “Zhongguo Renmin Zhengzhi Xieshang Huiyi Gongtong Gangling (Common

Programme of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference),” in Zhonggong
Zhongyang Wenjian Xuanji (Collection of the Documents of the Central Committee of the
Chinese Communist Party), ed. Zhongyangdanganguan (Beijing: Zhonggong Zhongyang
Dangxiao Chubanshe, 1992), 584. The Common Programme of the Chinese People’s
Political Consultative Conference was passed at the first Plenary Session of the Chinese
People’s Consultative Conference on September 29, 1949.
Programme of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference),” 586.
168 Z. YIN
between the old rulers and the new sovereign. The protection of the terri-
torial sovereignty by the ‘military force of the people’ is certainly a major
responsibility of the newly formed government.60 However, it is more
important for the new regime to carry out the missions of the people’s
sovereign and ‘strive for independence, democracy, peace, unity, pros-
perity, and strength of China’.61 The means of achieving this mission is
by ‘developing new democracy people’s economy’, ‘transforming China
into an industrial nation’, promoting the ‘public morality’ (gongde 公德)
among the ‘national people’ (guomin 国民), and ‘defending the perpetual
peace of the world’ and ‘friendly cooperation among peoples of all
nations’.62 Until the recently 2018 Amendment, the Chinese Constitu-
tion has always maintained this historical approach and placed the history
of revolutionary struggle of the Chinese people since 1840 at the central
of its source of law.63
The PRC’s understanding of the Afro-Asian solidarity reflects its own
domestic experience of liberation through revolution. It is viewed as a
segment in a long history of the ongoing struggle for national and social
liberations in the Third World, which stretches back to the early twentieth
century and forms the post-WWII Afro-Asian and later the Tricontinental
solidarity movement.
This solidarity movement embodied the hope for a new world order
envisioned by the former colonised world. It challenges the traditional
Eurocentric diplomacy that resonates on the notion of the balance of
powers. The newly formed nations and nations seeking for independence
were actively pursuing a democratic and equal international order that
did not discriminate against the weak and poor nations. The confidence
in the possibility of achieving such an idealistic global order contextualises
the nation-building practices in many of those nations. To the PRC, this

Programme of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference),” 586 and 95.
63 Xinhua Net. “Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Xianfa (Constitution of the People’s
Republic of China).” Xinhuanet.com. http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2018lh/2018-
03/22/c_1122572202.htm (accessed September 3, 2018).
international call for an egalitarian global order signifies a historic moment

in which the weak nations could unite and make their own fate.
As Zhou Enlai stated in his Bandung Speech in 1955, with more
and more ‘Afro-Asian nations freeing themselves from the constraint
of colonialism’, the ‘Afro-Asian region’ has transformed tremendously.
The Afro-Asian peoples’ rising awareness of ‘regaining control of their
own fates’ after a ‘long struggle’ against colonialism symbolised that
‘yesterday’s Asia and Africa’ being made anew. The common histor-
ical experience of suffering and struggle enables the Afro-Asian peoples
to envision their volonté générale to achieve ‘freedom and indepen-
dence’, and to ‘change the socio-economical backwardness caused by the
colonial rule’.64 In this long historical process of transformation, the Afro-
Asian peoples have developed a sense of ‘empathy and solicitude’ that
enable the Afro-Asian nations to peacefully coexist and achieve ‘friendly
cooperation’.65
The historical narrative in Zhou’s Bandung speech contextualises the
proposal of Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence recognised in the Final
Communique of the Afro-Asian Conference. Sovereignty does not only
convey principles of non-intervention and territorial integrity, it also exists
in the context of the recognition of a set of collective international respon-
sibilities. These responsibilities, as coined in the Final Communiqué of the
Asian-African Conference of Bandung, are ‘recognition of the equality of
all races and … all nations large and small’, ‘promotion of mutual inter-
ests and co-operation’, and using ‘peaceful means’ ‘in conformity with
the Charter of the United Nations’ to settle ‘all international disputes’.66
64 Zhou Enlai, “Zai Yafei Huiyi Quantihuiyi shangde Fayan (Speech delivered to the
Plenary Session of the Bandung Conference)” in Zhou Enlai Waijiao Wenxuan (Collec-
tion of Zhou Enlai’s works on Foreign Affairs), ed. Zhonghuarenmingongheguo Waijiaobu
and Zhonggongzhongyang Wenxianyanjiushi (Beijing: Zhongyang Wenxian Chubanshe,
1990), 112–14.
65 Zhou, “Zai Yafei Huiyi Quantihuiyi shangde Fayan (Speech delivered to the Plenary
Session of the Bandung Conference),” 120.
66 Final Communiqué of the Asian-African Conference of Bandung (Djakarta: 1955),
161–69.
170 Z. YIN
Conclusion
In the closing remark at the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Conference,
Guo Moruo, the chairman of the Chinese Delegation, gives sincere
regards to the Egyptian people, as they ‘defeated the joint imperialist
aggression’.67 Guo quotes Mao’s words and says ‘unity is power’. The
imperialists have ‘a consistent policy of dividing us’, hoping to ‘conquer
us one by one’. Hence, we need to ‘unite together’.68 The final decla-
ration of the conference takes the similar line and suggests the capability
of ‘solidarity and mutual support among the Afro-Asian people’ is key in
defeating imperialist order and achieving perpetual peace of the world.69
Guo’s remark corresponds closely with the slogan ‘Long live the
People’s Republic of China, Long live the unity of the World’s people’,
painted on the façade of Tiananmen (the Gate of Heavenly Peace).
Comparing to the hegemonic view, which sees the world space as empty
void being filled by dominant powers, the world order coming from the
oppressed believes that the world space should be filled by the liberated
people. The former believes that global stability comes from the balance
of powers, whereas the latter envisions a world federation formed by the
autonomous people through acts of liberation.
The image of an international unity against imperialism was deeply
intertwined in the PRC’s domestic exercises of nation-building. The
knowledge about the ‘struggles’ in the Third World helped the Chines
general public to image the Chinese national liberation in the context of
a major transformation of the global order. The genesis of the PRC in this
context is more than just a creation of a Westphalian sovereign. It is seen
67 Guo Moruo, “Zhongguo Daibiaotuan Tuanzhang Guo Moruo de Fayan (Speech

of Guo Moruo, the Chairman of the Chinese Delegation),” in Yafeirenmin Tuanjiedahui
Wenjian Huibian (Collection of Documents of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference)
(Beijing: Shijiezhishi Chubanshe, 1958), 187–91.
68 Guo, “Zhongguo Daibiaotuan Tuanzhang Guo Moruo de Fayan (Speech of Guo
Moruo, the Chairman of the Chinese Delegation),” 190.
69 “Yafeirenmin Tuanjiedahui Xuanyan: Gao Shijierenmin Shu (Declaration of the Afro-
Asian People’s Solidarity Conference: An Open Letter to Peoples of the World),” in
Yafeirenmin Tuanjiedahui Wenjian Huibian (Collection of Documents of the Afro-Asian
People’s Solidarity Conference) (Beijing: Shijiezhishi Chubanshe, 1958), 219. An editorial
about the conference in the People’s Daily adopts the similar line. See “亚非团结大会的
伟大成就 (The Great Achievement of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference).” 人民日报
(People’s Daily), January 4, 1958.
a step towards a creation of a new world order and ultimately the liber-
ation of humankind. It is also situated in the creation of a new time, in
which the transformation of the world from ‘old’ to ‘new’ is happening.
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CHAPTER 7
Unipolarity, Hegemony, and Moral

Authority: Why China Will Not Build
a Twenty-First Century Tributary System
Kyuri Park and David C. Kang
Introduction
It has become conventional wisdom in the United States that China
has rising and extensive ambitions including hegemony or transforming
the entire global order. Former U.S. National Security Adviser H.R.
McMaster, for example, writes that “Chinese leaders aim to put in place a
modern-day version of the tributary system that Chinese emperors used to
establish authority over vassal states.”1 Rush Doshi, a key architect of the
1 H.R. McMaster, 2020. “How China Sees the World.” Available at https://www.the
atlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/mcmaster-china-strategy/609088/.
K. Park (B)
The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford
University, Stanford, CA, USA
e-mail: kyuripar@usc.edu
D. C. Kang
School of International Relations and the Marshall School of Business,
University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, USA
e-mail: kangdc@usc.edu

176 K. PARK AND D. C. KANG
Biden administration’s China policy, writes that China “wants to displace

the United States as world leader.”2 Bradley Thayer and Lianchao Han
write that the Chinese Communist Party’s “ambitions are to remain in
power — its permanence cannot be questioned — and those ambitions
include global hegemony.”3 Doshi claims that, “US-China competition is
primarily over regional and global order as well as the ‘forms of control—
coercive capability, consensual inducements, and legitimacy—that sustain
one’s position within that order.”4 Elbridge Colby claims that China aims
to be a regional hegemon in East Asia. He argues that “Readers will
not find here any discussion of how to compete with China econom-
ically…this is a book about war…China has a most potent interest in
establishing hegemony over its region. Denying China hegemony over
Asia is therefore the cardinal objective of American grand strategy.”5
As Allan Vucetic and Hopf summarize the central issue in the contem-
porary debate about the future of hegemony: “how strong is the US-led
Western hegemonic order and what is the likelihood that China can or
will lead a successful counterhegemonic challenge?”6 For example, Iken-
berry argues that the Western liberal order can accommodate China’s rise
because it is open and based on “fair” rules.7 Yet, Charles Kupchan argues
that Beijing does not show “any signs of readiness to play by Western
rules and norms.”8 Kupchan argues that China is only influential in a
“Sinicized sphere of influence,” while Acharya explores the “end of the
2 Rush Doshi, The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order
(Oxford University Press, 2021), p. 51.
3 Bradley A. Thayer and Lianchao Han, July 14, 2021. “China’s Cente-
nary Address Recalls Stalin’s Declaration of Cold War,” The Hill. Available
at https://thehill.com/opinion/international/562675-chinas-centenary-address-recalls-sta
lins-declaration-of-cold-war.
4 Doshi, The Long Game, p. 298.
5 Colby, The Strategy of Denial (Yale University Press, 2021), location 114 (Kindle
edition XYZ).
6 Bentley Allan, Srdjan Vucetic, and Ted Hopf, “The Distribution of Identity and the
Future of International Order: China’s Hegemonic Prospects,” International Organization
72 (Fall 2018): 839–869.
7 John Ikenberry, “The Future of the Liberal World Order: Internationalism After
America,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 3 (May/June 2011): 56–68.
8 Charles Kupchan, “The Case for a Middle Path in U.S. Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy
(January 15, 2021).
7 UNIPOLARITY, HEGEMONY, AND MORAL AUTHORITY: … 177
American world order.”9 As Allan et al. argue, “if hegemony is simply

leadership of a rule-based order conditions by elite beliefs, then in the
abstract it can incorporate any rising power. But if hegemony is a thick
phenomenon…then the substantive ideational content of the order, rather
than its abstract form, is crucial.”10 Perhaps, the most relevant argument
comes from Schweller and Pu, who argue that “the current international
system is entering a deconcentration/delegitimation phase…China [is]
the most viable contender for a hegemonic challenge.”11
Order, unipolarity, and hegemony as concepts are interrelated. In
this chapter, we define unipolarity as an intentionally truncated concept
of hegemony—truncated because it includes only material, and not
ideational, elements. A true hegemon, by contrast, would not only have
unipolar capabilities, but also moral authority—the civilizational purpose
that the dominant power projects. Historical East Asia was an enduring
hegemonic system with one unipolar power: China, and historical China
was indeed a hegemon that existed within a multi-state system. For
over two thousand years, China as civilization was attractive to many
of its neighboring societies. Chinese ideas about domestic and interna-
tional order were widely emulated. The China-derived multi-state tribute
system of East Asian international relations depended crucially on moral
authority. Despite China’s rise and fall over the centuries, for almost two
millennia Chinese hegemony was attractive, not compellent.
However, almost no scholarship about China’s potential challenge to
the contemporary, Western liberal order explores what a China-centered
order would look like. From this perspective, it becomes clear how little
China today actually challenges the existing order. Today, China is big
and rich. It is increasingly integrating around the world on economic and
diplomatic arenas, mostly within the current Western international order,
not outside of it. But, China has no moral authority—its culture, values,
9 Charles Kupchan, “The Normative Foundations of Hegemony and The Coming

Challenge to Pax Americana,” Security Studies 23, no. 2 (2014): 219–257; Amitav
Acharya, Constructing Global Order: Agency and Change in World Politics (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
10 Allan et al., “The Distribution of Identity and the Future of International Order:
China’s Hegemonic Prospects,” p. 843.
11 Ranchall Schweller and Xiaoyu Pu, “After Unipolarity: China’s Visions of Interna-
tional Order in an Era of U.S. Decline,” International Security 36, no. 1 (Summer 2011):
41–72, 44–45.
and norms do not attract. This view of hegemony leads to a clear predic-
tion about the twenty-first century: no matter how big or rich China
becomes, until it has crafted a moral and cultural vision for itself and the
world that is attractive, it will not be a genuine challenger to the United
States, nor can it establish hegemony, either in East Asia or globally.
Hegemony, Unipolarity, and International Order

A system exists when units regularly interact; an order structures how
those units interact. Three terms occupy us here: hegemony, unipolarity,
and international order. Although they are often conflated or used inter-
changeably in the scholarly literature, we view these as discrete concepts.
Unipolarity and hegemony are types of roles that a state can occupy within
a particular order.
Monteiro uses a particular definition of unipolarity. He defines unipo-
larity as “the concentration of military power in one state, the sole great
power”12 and consciously excludes the role of ideational factors such as
authority in the system. According to Monteiro, unipolarity is not the
same as hegemony or empire, because “the organizing principle of a
unipolar world is anarchy,” not hierarchy, so it has limited amount of
authority over other sovereign states. He adds that “[i]f the unipole’s
power augments to the point at which it can control all external behaviors
of all other states, then hegemony has replaced unipolarity.”13 Under this
narrow conceptualization of unipolarity, Monteiro claims that post-Cold
War U.S. unipolar era was a unique period that was properly unipolar, and
comparison to other historical cases such as ancient Egypt, Persia, Rome,
and China are flawed because they were empires.14 In short, Monteiro
appears to equate hegemony with empire, a definition we will challenge
in this paper.
Emphasizing the relationship between the distribution of military
power and the durability of unipolarity, Monteiro argue that “the
nuclear revolution is a condition of possibility of a durable unipolar
12 Nuno P. Monteiro, Theory of Unipolar Politics (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge

University Press, 2014).
13 Ibid., pp. 41–42.
14 Ibid., p. 47.
world…Without it…a unipolar world would quickly disappear.”15 The

underlying logic of this argument is that the durability of unipolarity
depends on the expected costs of war between the unipole and a rising
challenger, and nuclear revolution makes the expected cost of great power
war prohibitive.16 To say, Monteiro employs squarely materialist approach
to explain the absence of a systemic balance of power against the unipole.
Our definition is broader. Although, the contemporary international
order’s fundamental organizing principle is sovereign equality among
states, many international orders have been hierarchic and have recog-
nized a wide variety of units as legitimate members. There are many
different understandings on international order: what it is, what it is
composed of, and who builds it, and how it gets maintained and changes,
for example. The simplest definition of an international order is that: it is
an arrangement made between units in the international system on how
they wish to interact with each other.
Our starting assumptions are threefold. First, the construction of inter-
national order depends on cultural context (ideational/normative factors)
as much as distribution of material capabilities. We are building on from
Reus-Smit’s conception of international orders that highlights the rela-
tionship between culture and order. He writes, “culture is understood as
a coherent whole, an integrated and bounded system of values and prac-
tices that is both a necessary background condition for the emergence of
an international order, and the principal determinant of that order’s insti-
tutional structure and processes.”17 For example, contemporary liberal
international order (LIO) which enshrines ideas such as openness, rule-
based governance, and Westphalian sovereignty (states are formally equal
and independent, possessing the ultimate authority over their people and
territory) are artifacts of two centuries of Anglo-American dominance.
Ikenberry writes that “Western Christendom, the European state system,
the Industrial Revolution, the rise of Western liberal democracy, and
the eras of British and American hegemony provide the foundations for
modern liberal international order. Put differently, liberal internationalism
has emerged and gained dominance within a historically unique political
formation.”18
15 Ibid., p. 50.
16 Ibid., p. 4.
17 Christian Reus-Smit, “Cultural Diversity and International Order,” International
Organization 71 (Fall 2017): 856.
18 Chapter 7 Liberal Internationalism and Cultural Diversity (from Part III—The
Modern ‘Liberal’ Order) in Culture and Order in World Politics (eds., Andrew Phillips
Second, international orders are neither neutral nor inherently moral,

they are always built by actors for a purpose.19 International orders
promote a set of material, ideational, and normative interests, and values
that the order-makers care about. Often, dominant powers in the system
play the role of order-makers. Robert Gilpin writes, “In every interna-
tional system the dominant powers in the international hierarchy of power
and prestige organize and control the processes of interactions among
the elements of the system…These dominant states have sought to exert
control over the system in order to advance their self-interests…To some
extent the lesser states in an international system follow the leadership
of more powerful states, in part because they accept the legitimacy and
utility of the existing order.”20 In the similar vein, Ikenberry and Nexon
write, “Hegemonic powers pursue these policies not out of altruism but
rather a desire to mold and maintain an international system that serves
their interests and values…Hegemons face major challenges in estab-
lishing order without, at minimum, the complicity of a small group of
secondary states who support their leadership, as well as the rules and
institutions of international orders.”
Third, the architecture and the infrastructure of international orders
are dynamic and malleable. International orders evolve through continued
contestation, adjustment, and negotiation between units in an interna-
tional system. Bull defines international order as “a pattern of activity
that sustains the elementary or primary goals of the society of states,
or international society.”21 Building on from Bull’s definition of inter-
national order, Goh argues that international orders are “underpinned
by an inter-subjective consensus about the basic goals and means of
and Christian Reus-Smit). https://www-cambridge-org.libproxy1.usc.edu/core/books/

culture-and-order-in-world-politics/liberal-internationalism-and-cultural-diversity/952FA0
CD93E60F88E3989B8ADC7A875E.
19 David A. Lake, Lisa L. Martin, and Thomas Risse, “Challenges to the Liberal Order:
Reflections on International Organization,” International Organization 75 (Spring
2021): 247.
20 Robert Gilpin, War & Change in World Politics (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge
University Press, 1981): 29–30.
21 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 1997, p. 4.
conducing international affairs. These shared understandings are histori-

cally contingent, evolving, and grounded in practice.”22 Tourinho argues
that international orders are co-constituted through recurrent bargain
between great powers and relatively weak actors, those often consid-
ered as rule-takers. He writes, evolution of an international order “is
not…a unilateral hegemonic move…It is a contested process in which
weaker parties resisted hegemonic orders practically, legally, or diplomat-
ically…Great powers engaged that resistance with concessions because
they could not create a new, stable global order alone.”23 Alex Cooley
claims that an international order is an ecology produced from both
hegemonic and counter-hegemonic activities, and that this ecology, in
turn, creates opportunities and constraint for contestation over order.24
Ikenberry and Nexon write, hegemonic orders, which is a variety of inter-
national orders, are “means, mediums, and objects of cooperation and
contestation.” Hegemons are “not simply order makers but also order
takers whose domestic political processes significantly interact with the
dynamics of international order.”25
Ji-young Lee defines hierarchy as “authority exercised by the ruler
over the ruled.” Feng Zhang similarly defines hierarchy as an “inter-
national relationship of legitimate authority.”26 Seo-hyun Park agrees;
international hierarchy, she writes, is determined not only by “the mate-
rial capability of states but also by their relative social standing based on
prestige and authority.”27 Key to this definition is the social nature of
hierarchy. For one actor to be at the top necessarily implies that others
must be below. Just as important, then, as understanding the role of
the hegemon is exploring whether or not secondary actors consider its
authority as legitimate. In this way, all three authors are building on
22 Evelyn Goh, The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy, and Transition in Post-
Cold War East Asia, p. 7.
23 Marcos Tourinho, “The Co-constitution of Order,” International Organization 75
(Spring 2021): 260.
24 Alexander Cooley, “Ordering Eurasia: The Rise and Decline of Liberal Interna-
tionalism in the Post-Communist Space,” Security Studies 28, no. 3 (June–July 2019):
588–613.
25 G. John Ikenberry and Daniel H. Nexon, “Hegemony Studies 3.0: The Dynamics
of Hegemonic Orders,” Security Studies, 28, no. 3: 395–421.
26 Lee 2016, 9 and Zhang 2015, 6.
27 Park SH 2017, 8.
a widely shared definition of hierarchy, one that incorporates rational

calculations as well as social and ideational factors.28
Hegemony is a type of hierarchy and arises when units accept the
leadership and influence of another unit. Crucially, this is different
from Monteiro’s definition. Hegemony does not involve controlling the
behavior of other units, but instead is about the attractiveness of the
values and ideas the hegemon holds and projects. The simple fact of mate-
rial preponderance connotes only primacy or unipolarity, and hegemony
implies more than mere size. As Zhang defines it, hegemony is the “con-
junction of material primacy and social legitimacy…a system of primacy
is not necessarily one of hegemony. Hegemony entails a social recogni-
tion by other states that the leading state’s material dominance and its
consequent international rules and behaviors are broadly legitimate.”29
Lee concurs: “a country does not automatically become a hegemon by
virtue of preponderant power but instead needs legitimation of its identity
as such…an important aspect of hegemonic power is about using cultural
resources for strategic purposes, ‘rendering some activities permissible
while ruling others out of order.’”30 In this way, Zhang and Lee are at
the forefront of theoretical scholarship on international order and hege-
mony. Scholars are increasingly looking beyond materialist or cost–benefit
calculations of hierarchy and hegemony and recognizing the social bases
of these concepts.31
Regarding the contemporary order, we focus most centrally on
Schweller and Pu’s arguments about delegitimation. Schweller and Pu
argue that contenders or rivals to the United States will first attempt to
delegitimize the United States, and will begin to contest and resist in ways
that “fall short of balancing against the unipolar power.”32 They argue
that rising powers will adduce competing visions of global order, “the
discourse of resistance,” as well as cost-imposing strategies, “the prac-
tice of resistance,” to challenge the unipolar power. These cost-imposing
strategies are defined extraordinarily widely, including:
28 Mattern and Zarakol 2016.

29 Zhang 2015, 6.
30 Lee 2016, 64–65.
31 Example, Allan, Vucetic, and Hopf 2018, 845 and Mastanduno 2003, 145.
32 Schweller and Pu, 48.
Diplomatic friction or foot-dragging; denying U.S. military forces access to

bases; launching terrorist attacks against the United States; aiding, abetting,
and harboring terrorist groups; voting against the United States in inter-
national institutions; preventing or reversing the forward-baseing of U.S.
military forces; pursuing protectionism and other coercive economic poli-
cies; engaging in conventional uses of forces such as blockades against U.S.
allies; and proliferating weapons of mass destruction among anti-Western
states or groups.”33
Enduring Premodern Chinese Hegemony:

A Trans-dynastic Idea of China
Monteiro excludes premodern China from his set of cases that fit his defi-
nition of unipolar power. However, Monteiro’s dismissal of China as an
empire is empirically flawed. China existed since at least the fifth century
AD within a multi-state system—it was by far the most powerful country,
and it had a civilizational influence across the known region. Over this
long span of time, China did not attempt to control other units in the
system, or even attempt to impose its values and ideas on them. The key
difference between historical Europe and East Asia is that East Asia was
a hegemonic system, while Europe was a multipolar balance of power
system. From the time of the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), although
Chinese power waxed and waned over the centuries, East Asia was a hege-
monic system; not a multipolar balance of power system as existed in
Europe. As MacKay observes:
For more than two millennia…a relatively consistent idea persisted of what
Imperial China was or should be. When China was ascendant, as during
the Han and Ming dynasties, this identity justified Chinese regional domi-
nance. When China was in decline, it provided a source of aspiration.
When foreigners occupied the country, as did the Mongols under the Yuan
dynasty and the Manchus under the Qing dynasty, they justified their rule
by claiming the Mandate of Heaven (tianming ) for themselves.34
33 Schweller and Pu, 48–49.

34 Joseph MacKay, “The Nomadic Other: Ontological Security and the Inner Asian
Steppe in Historical East Asian International Politics,” Review of International Studies
42, no. 3 (July 2016): 474.
Every other political actor that emerged in the past two thousand
years emerged within the reality or idea of Chinese power. Korea, Japan,
Vietnam, the peoples of the Central Asian steppe, the societies of South-
east Asia—all had to deal with China in some fashion and decide how
best to organize their own societies and to manage their relations with
the hegemon.
That is, the biggest evolution over time was the gradual emergence of a
multi-state international system in which China was the hegemon, existing
in a system comprised of many different units. The Qin dynasty from
two millenia ago had no other recognizable counterparts. By the fourth
to sixth centuries CE, however, recognizable countries—institutionalized,
territorially delimited, centrally administered—had begun to emerge in
Korea and Japan.35 As Richard von Glahn describes it:
The might and wealth of the Sui–Tang empires (618–907) at their peak
deeply impressed China’s neighbors. Japan, the Korean states, and even
(briefly) Tibet imitated the Sui–Tang imperial model, and to a greater
or lesser degree adopted the Chinese written language, Sui–Tang political
institutions and laws, Confucian ideology, and the Buddhist religion. It was
during this era that East Asia – a community of independent national states
sharing a common civilization – took shape in forms that have endured
down to modern times.”36
By the tenth century, Vietnam, Ryukyus, Tibet, and other actors had
emerged as well, creating a truly “international” system. Not only were
there new and different actors across time, the sophistication, complexity,
and interconnectedness of the region changed and deepened substan-
tially over the centuries. Thus, while there were enduring cultural and
institutional threads that run across two thousand years, there was also
substantial change, as well.
The reality of Chinese power, Chinese ideas and debates about the
proper role of government and state-society relations; and different ways
to conduct foreign relations were a fact of life in East Asia. Surrounding
peoples could choose to embrace or reject the idea and fact of China, but
they had to engage it no matter what they chose.
35 Chin-hao Huang and David C. Kang, State Formation through Emulation: The East
Asian Model (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
36 Von Glahn 2016, 169.
When China did fail, and fall apart, it was almost always for internal
reasons. As Yuri Pines writes, choosing particular starting and end points:
The Chinese empire was established in 221 BCE, when the state of Qin
unified the Chinese world…the Chinese empire ended in 1912…for 2,132
years, we may discern striking similarities in institutional, sociopolitical, and
cultural spheres throughout the imperial millennia. The Chinese empire
was an extraordinarily powerful ideological construct. The peculiar histor-
ical trajectory of the Chinese empire was not its indestructability…but
rather its repeated resurrection in more or less the same territory and with
a functional structure similar to that of the preturmoil period.37
Walter Scheidel (2007, 8) writes about the Han dynasty, delimits the
centuries between its fall and the eventual reunification under the Tang,
and concludes that sixth-century CE China restored a bureaucratic state
that succeeded, “albeit with substantial interruptions, in maintaining a
core-wide empire under Chinese or foreign leadership until 1911 and, in
effect, up to the present day.”38
Some of this literature treats two thousand years of Chinese history
as stagnant, repetitive, and unchanging. There is, unfortunately, a hoary
stereotype of stagnant and endless dynastic cycles that should have been
excised long ago from any serious scholarship on East Asian history. There
was no enduring Chinese state. In fact, far from being an “endless cycle
unbroken up to the twentieth century,” East Asian history was far more
vibrant, creative, and contingent. It is important to take both trends into
account: some astonishing continuity, and some remarkable change, as
well. East Asia grew, changed, evolved, and innovated as much or more
than any other region on the planet, and scholarship on war and violence
should reflect that historical reality. China spent much of its history in
disunity and divided, as well as at other times being powerful and hege-
monic. Furthermore, the challenges it faced, and the wars that occurred
across time, were not simply a cycle—the East Asian region evolved over
time, and the challenges facing the various countries evolved, as well.
However, there was a trans-dynastic idea of both China and the inter-
national order. All Chinese dynasties since the Qin and Han of 200 BC
37 Yuri Pines, The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its
Imperial Legacy (Princeton University Press, 2012), 2.
38 NO CITATION.
existed within an unquestioned worldview that took for granted the idea
or vision of the “traditional” Chinese homeland. Conventionally, scholars
view the formation of national identity as a Western, nineteenth century
creation. But countries in East Asia have had well over a millenia of a
corporate identity. Yet, Nicolas Tackett has argued forcefully that tenth-
century Song China was a “nation” in the modern sense of the word,
a trans-dynastic entity that viewed itself as a homogenous cultural and
ecological zone. Key to this was the attraction the Chinese civilization
had to other emerging societies.
Attraction and Emulation, not Compellence

In historical East Asia, state formation occurred in a region in which war
was relatively rare. There was no balance of power system with regular
existential threats—the longevity of the East Asian dynasties is evidence
of both the peacefulness of their neighborhood and its internal stability.
Instead, emulation and learning from China—the hegemon which had a
civilizational influence across the known world—drove the rapid forma-
tion of centralized, bureaucratically administered, territorial governments
in Vietnam, Korea, and Japan.39
State formation in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam occurred
1,000 years earlier than in Europe, and for reasons of emulation, not
bellicist competition. These countries did not engage in state-building
in order to wage war or suppress revolt. Despite Charles Tilly’s famous
dictum that “war made the state, and the state made war,”40 neither war
nor preparations for war were the cause or effect of state formation in
Korea, Japan, or Vietnam. However, scholars of international relations
have not sufficiently investigated how the system affects the units, and
in particular how hegemonic systems may differ from balance-of-power
systems. Moreover, how small, weaker actors support or resist large hege-
mons has been largely undertheorized in the study of authority relations,
power, and legitimacy in the extant literature.41
39 Huang and State Formation through Emulation.

40 Charles Tilly, The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 42.
41 Chin-Hao Huang, Power and Restraint in China’s Rise (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2022, in press).
State formation occurred through conscious, intentional emulation

and learning. A regionwide epistemic community existed, composed
mainly of Confucian scholars and Buddhist monks, who interacted, trav-
eled, and learned from each other from Vietnam and Tibet to China,
Korea, and Japan. So intertwined is the history of China with its neigh-
bors that Charles Holcombe concludes that “the early histories of both
Korea and Japan would be incomprehensible except as parts of a larger
East Asian community”42 In his magisterial history of Vietnam, Keith
Taylor concludes that “Vietnamese history as we know it today could not
exist without Chinese history. The manner in which Vietnamese history
overlaps with and is distinguished from Chinese history presents a singular
example of experience in organizing and governing human society within
the orbit of Sinic civilization that can be compared with Korean and
Japanese history.”43
The impact of Chinese civilization was comprehensive, including
language, education, writing, poetry, art, mathematics, science, religion,
philosophy, social and family structure, political and administrative insti-
tutions and ideas, and more. Individual strands of emulation are almost
impossible to understand outside this larger civilizational context. As
Batten describes it, “Japan, like other regions of East Asia, can be
regarded in many periods as a periphery of China. Not only were the two
countries part of the same political/military network, but power relations
took an unequal, hierarchical form, with China playing the role of core
and Japan playing that of periphery.”44
State formation—such as taxes, meritocratic bureaucracies, and the
military—was a key element of broader Sinicization and is inseparable
from that larger Chinese civilizational influence. What is most obvious is
the slow, gradual, and uneven transformation of these countries. Chinese
civilization, Buddhism, and Confucianism were used for legitimacy and
prestige within a domestic context, yet those elements of state formation
were only effective within a larger intellectual, philosophical, and religious
environment in which those ideas were not only valued and desired, but
were considered almost “inevitable.”
42 Charles Holcombe, A History of East Asia: From the Origins of Civilization to the
Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 109.
43 Keith Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2013), p. 4.
44 Batten 2003, 228.
Key elements of the state-building were Buddhism, Confucianism, and

the Chinese language and writing system, which fundamentally trans-
formed religion, philosophy, government, society, and political life in both
Korea and Japan. Batten sums it up: “China, Korea, and Japan all share a
common cultural heritage centered on Buddhism, Confucianism, and the
use of the Chinese writing system.”45 Lewis and Wigen emphasize that,
the “distinctive” Chinese writing system “became the crucial vehicle for
spreading Chinese notions of philosophy, cosmology, and statecraft to the
neighboring peoples of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.”46
There was clearly a degree of learning, in that the body of knowledge in
Chinese sciences, mathematics, architecture, and calendar were far more
developed beyond anything in Korea and Japan. Chinese learning was so
advanced that being conversant with it was prestigious and impressive to
Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese elites.
During the fourth to sixth centuries, the “Korean states regularly sent
tribute missions to the states in China … in exchange, Korean rulers
received symbols that strengthened their own legitimacy and a variety of
cultural commodities: Ritual goods, books, Buddhist scriptures, and rare
luxury products.”47 By 503, the Silla dynasty had adopted Chinese titles
such as “king” and abandoned native Korean titles. Ebrey and Walthall
note that “Silla kings took steps to institutionalize their governments …
they made Buddhism the state-sponsored religion, and collected taxes
on agriculture.”48 They also note that “The newly created board of
academicians had specialists in medicine, law, mathematics, astronomy,
and water clocks.”49 All of this was indicative signs of emulation and
nearly wholesale adoption from China.
In Japan, this first wave of Chinese influence was comprehensive
importing of Tang-style institutions, language and writing systems, and
education, including Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, geomancy and
divination, law, literature, history, mathematics, calendrics, and medicine,
not to mention art and architecture. Indeed, all three Japanese writing
45 Batten 2003, 66.

46 Lewis and Wigen 1997, 144.
47 Seth 2016, 45.
48 Ebrey and Walthall 2014, 104.
49 Ebrey and Walthall 2014, 106.
systems—hiragana, katakana, and kanji—were derived from Chinese char-

acters. “The Yamato court adopted many features of the superior Chinese
civilization, included a reorganization of court ranks and etiquette in
accordance with Chinese models, the adoption of the Chinese calendar,
the opening of formal diplomatic relations with China, the creation of
a system of highways, the erection of many Buddhist temples, and the
compilation of official chronicles.”50
As with the Korean and Japanese states, during the scattered early
attempts at creating a Vietnamese state, rulers used many Chinese prac-
tices simply because it was the civilizational universe in which they
existed. One of the defining features of Vietnamese emulation in its
state formation was the introduction and adoption of the civil service
examination system. By the eleventh century, the Vietnamese civil service
examinations—along with the role of scholar-officials and the use of
classic Chinese texts—had become consequential in the governing of the
country and the formation of the state. The scholar-officials were “pro-
fessional elites … whose hierarchies were created by public competition
as much as by social class.”51 In 1075, the Vietnamese ruler Lý Nhân
Tông ordered three levels of examination, “to select senior graduates
familiar with the classics and broader learning.”52 The exams for civil
servants were largely based on China’s syllabus and focused on key aspects
of Chinese history, literature, and classical studies, all meant to train a
new crop of officials and administrators to concentrate the power of the
central court, and to introduce a tax and legal code modeled after the
northern neighbor.53 The top scorers over the centuries have become
national heroes, and many are remembered today. For instance, the title
of tra.ng nguyên (top scorer, c: zhuangyuan, 狀元) was first awarded to
Lê Văn Thi.nh (1038–1096) for ranking first in that first exam. Lê had a
storied career, and eventually rose to the position of chancellor and nego-
tiated the border with the Song in 1084. The term tra.ng nguyên is still
used today to describe the best performer in a competition.
50 De Bary et al. 2001, 40–41.

51 Woodside, Lost Modernities, 18.
52 Kiernan, Viet Nam, 160.
53 Truong Buu Laam, New Lamps for Old: The Transformation of the Vietnamese
Administrative Elite (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1982).
In 1070, the Temple of Literature (Văn Miếu, 文廟) was built as a

dedication to Confucius. It also housed the first national university, the
Quốc Tu, Giám (國子監), which opened in 1075. A subsequent exami-
ĳ
nation in 1077 tested officials on “letters and laws.”54 By 1086, again in

direct borrowing from Chinese practice, the government held a literary
exam to select a hàn lâm ho.c sı̃ (academician). In Tang and Song govern-
ments, “such men were assigned to what was called the Hanlin Academy
where erudite men were called upon for various tasks.”55 Often consid-
ered the most elite group of scholars, they managed the courts and were
responsible for interpreting the Chinese classics for the kings.
In sum, deeply institutionalized and territorially defined states in
historical East Asia emerged and developed under the shadow of a hege-
monic international system through a combination of emulation and
learning, not bellicist interstate war. Many of these institutions lasted
over 1,000 years in Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. Chinese hegemony was
not only unquestioned, it was remarkably durable. Even in times, when
China was divided or in chaos, a trans-dynastic idea of “China” persisted,
as did the norms and ideas and institutions of both international relations
and domestic governance. This is enduring hegemony within a multi-state
system. Hegemony endured for cultural reasons even as China’s material
power waxed and waned over the centuries.
China Today---Crafting
an Economic, Not Hegemonic Order
Today, is China a challenge to the Western liberal order? Does it seek
hegemony within that order? Or, is it simply a potential unipole—
powerful but without any attractive civilizational core? The world has
changed—China—like all contemporary countries—exists within a West-
phalian, Western-derived international order that it does not question.56
China is often called one of the most ardent defenders of the sovereign
nation-state. China has made no attempt to bring back the historical East
Asian tributary system. Indeed, we find almost no evidence of any of the
contestation or delegitimation strategies that Schweller and Pu described
54 Kiernan, Viet Nam, 160.

55 Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese, 87.
56 Allen Carlson, XYZ.
earlier. China is not launching terrorist attacks of denying forces access

to bases nor pursuing protectionism nor engaging in blockades against
United States allies nor proliferating weapons of mass destruction.
And yet, the degree to which China is playing by the rules and not
changing them is hotly debated. There is clearly evidence that in some
areas, China is working within global norms. There is also probative
evidence that China plays by many of the rules of the contemporary inter-
national order. For example, economists Chad Brown and Douglas Irwin
note that “China has complied with findings from the WTO surprisingly
often.”57 David Welch and Kobi Logendrarajah of Waterloo University
monitored China’s compliance to the 2016 ruling from the Tribunal in
the Hague over the South China Sea dispute between China and the
Philippines, finding that “China has been cooperating surprisingly well”
with the rulings.58 Chin-hao Huang has surveyed ASEAN summit state-
ments and Chinese behavior in the South China Sea from 2012–2018.
Huang finds a positive relationship between ASEAN’s summit state-
ments that exhibit strong consensus on the South China Sea and China’s
restraint.59
Far from pursuing protectionism, China is pursuing a clear economic
strategy toward the region and itself, as well. China and fourteen other
East Asian states signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Part-
nership (RCEP) in November 2020—Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, the
Philippines, and Korea are among the signatories. Significantly, the
United States chose not to participate. RCEP is the first trade agreement
that includes all three China, Korea, and Japan. RCEP arose as a regional
initiative of ASEAN, and is aimed at lowering tariffs, increasing invest-
ment, and allowing freer movement of good s around the region. RCEP’s
focus on cutting tariffs and increasing market access makes it seems less
comprehensive than CPTPP.
Another regional initiative was the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Originally a Japanese initiative, TPP was a high-quality trade agree-
ment that would have included the United States and eleven other Latin
57 Chad P. Brown and Douglas A. Irwin, “Trump’s Assault on the Global Trading
System: And Why Decoupling From China Will Change Everything,” Foreign Affairs
(September/October, 2019).
58 David Welch and Kobi Logendrarajah 2019.
59 Chin-hao Huang, Power and Restraint in China’s Rise (Columbia University Press,
forthcoming).
American and East Asian countries such as Vietnam and Singapore, but
without Korea or China. The original TPP was considered of high quality
than RCEP because in addition to trade and investment provisions,
TPP also includes provisions that emphasized labor rights, environmental
and intellectual property protections, and dispute resolution mechanisms.
President Trump withdrew from the agreement, and the other 11 coun-
tries continued to sign a modified agreement in March 2018, calling it the
Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership
(CPTPP).
China applied to join the CPTPP in September 2021. This is signif-
icant—Alex Lin and Saori Katada argue that that China “wants” to
join the TPP is not new—this has been happening since 2013, where
Chinese leaders have consistently made aspirational statements about TPP
entry.60 Chinese Premier Li Keqiang gave a keynote speech at ASEAN in
September 2013, one of the first times a high-ranking Chinese official
openly said they’d entertain the CPTPP:
China is willing to join hands with ASEAN to advance talks of Regional

Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and discuss exchanges
and interactions with frameworks such as Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
Agreement, so as to create an open, inclusive, and mutually beneficial
climate to ‘make two wheels of regional and global trade roll together.’61
China’s geoeconomics endgame was always engaging both RCEP and

TPP (and they’ve told us in plain sight). In 2013, this seemed highly
unlikely to happen, and most Western observers dismissed the possibility
that China could improve and reform its legal, institutional, and commer-
cial institutions and infrastructure to meet the requirements of TPP.
However, that was almost a decade ago, and China’s domestic economy
and legal institutions continue to change and evolve in ways—and at
speeds—totally unexpected. In terms of the pace of change, China in 200
As recently as 2008, China had zero kilometers high speed rail. Since
then, it has built over 37,000 kilometers (23,000 miles) of high speed
60 Alex Yu-Ting Lin and Saori Katada, “Striving for Greatness: STATUS ASPIRA-
TIONS, RHETOrical entrapment, and Domestic Reforms,” Review of International
Political Economy (forthcoming).
61 Quoted in Lin and Katada, “Striving for Greatness.”
rail, with trains traveling up to 350 km/hr.62 The train from Beijing to
Shanghai, for example, takes little over four hours. In contrast, the United
States has only one rail line, Acela, that qualifies for high speed status. The
Acela’s top speed is only 240 km/hr, and it can only attain those speeds
on 55 kilometers of the route. In 2001, Chinese per capita GDP was a
little over $1,000 US; by 2010, per capita GDP was $4,550. By 2020,
that had grown to $10,500. China’s per capita GDP is far behind that
of the United States, but it is also a bit premature to predict that China
a decade from now will not be even wealthier, and its economy more
rationalized and institutionalized, than it is today. All the evidence points
to the opposite: despite setbacks, the Chinese economic and legal envi-
ronment continues to evolve in the direction of greater transparency, not
less.
With the conclusion of RCEP, and with the CPTPP application, China
has moved much closer to this endgame. There are multiple reasons
for this. One of them is that China—and everyone else—understood
that it would be difficult for China to actually join the TPP because of
the mismatch between TPP’s entry requirements and China’s domestic
economic practices, for example, on property rights.
What does this mean? It means that China realized (since around
2013) the CPTPP is a club good, but one which will require signifi-
cant reforms to access, for which China was not ready for at the time.
Unless, China is applying to get denied (not impossible), a formal appli-
cation means that China now considers itself willing and able to meet
the requirements. Or, at a minimum, it now considers itself as moving
much closer to this bar than ever. As an indication of intentions, China’s
application to join CPTPP is significant. China has changed domesti-
cally far more rapidly than anyone envisioned even a decade ago. Its
domestic economic practices and institutions may not yet be sufficient
to join CPTPP, but it is moving in that direction more rapidly than most
had believed.
As for economic relations abroad, in 2000, every major country in
East Asia traded more with the United States than China.63 By 2010,
62 Ben Jones, “Past, Present and Future: The Evolution of China’s Incredible High-
Speed Rail Network,” CNN (May 26, 2021). https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/
china-high-speed-rail-cmd/index.html.
63 Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam,
Australia.
every major country in the region traded more with China than the
United States. In other words, often the speed at which China’s domestic
economy is both growing and becoming more institutionalized and stable
is often under-appreciated. AIIB, World Bank, Belt, and Road Initiative.
These are economic strategies; despite the excessive hyperbole linked to
them in the Western press, close inspection often reveals that they are
not debt-traps and that they are not military initiatives. As Deborah
Brautigam and Meg Rithmire summarize: “The debt-trap narrative is just
that: a lie, and a powerful one. Our research shows that Chinese banks are
willing to restructure the terms of existing loans and have never actually
seized an asset from any country, much less the port of Hambantota [Sri
Lanka].”64
A fair amount of research suggests that China is trying to maintain
the economic aspects of the global liberal order, yet shift other parts of
it closer to its national interest, principally human rights and sovereignty
issues. For example, Ted Piccone’s Brookings report points out on how
China and Russia are working together at the UNHCR to insert the
right to economic prosperity into the list of human rights, so China can
call itself a leading human rights defender.65 In fact, many activists and
scholars in the West regularly include economic rights as human rights.
To be fair, as Rob Schmitz puts it:
What China — its government and its people — have achieved is unprece-
dented in human history: Around 700 million Chinese have worked their
way above the poverty line since 1980, accounting for three-quarters of
global poverty reduction during that period. (According to the World Bank
more than 500 million Chinese lifted themselves out of poverty as China’s
poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 6.5 percent in 2012).66
And, to be fair as well, it is precisely because of the lack of atten-

tion to economic rights that many Western scholars and activists criticize
North Korea. Fahy points out that many scholars and activists have
64 Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire, “The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth,” The
Atlantic Monthly (February 6, 2021).
65 Ted Piccone, China’s Long Game on Human Rights at the United Nations
(Brookings Institute, September 2018).
66 Rob Schmitz, “Who’s Lifting Chinese People Out Of Poverty?” National Public
Radio (January 17, 2017).
criticized North Korea because “access to food is a human right,”

while Marcus Noland has written extensively on “North Korea and the
Right to Food.”67 Erin Baggott Carter and Brett Carter’s chapter on
Chinese propaganda narratives about international politics shows that
China advances precisely these arguments: the global free trade order is
important, but that the international order needs to downplay human
rights and emphasize non-interventionism. Thus, there is a debate, but it
is far from clear that China is necessarily any worse than other countries
in this regard.68 What is inconsistent is to criticize China for claiming
economic right are human rights, and then to criticize North Korea for
precisely the opposite reasons: that economic rights are, actually, human
rights and North Korea should provide them.
Yet fundamentally, can Chinese society or culture or moral authority
be attractive to regional countries and the international community at
large? Clearly, China faces a challenge of projecting a global image based
on Western liberal democratic values such as human rights. Today China
is often seen as closed and authoritarian—its one-party political system,
its “Great Firewall” that blocks flow of information, and its censorship
regime that restricts freedom of media and freedom of speech, among
others, are often targets of Western criticism. Indeed, global media and
many Western governments are constantly criticizing China for numerous
human rights abuses, from Xinjiang to Hong Kong and Tibet. However,
it remains to be debated whether China can establish itself as morally
appealing to other countries.
Conclusion: Can American

Moral Authority Continue?
One can argue that China today is becoming rich and strong. But it is
doing so largely within the existing order. It is not at all clear that China
has any ideas about a non-order.
67 Sandra Fahy, Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the
Record (Columbia University Press, 2019), Chapter Two; Marcus Noland, “North Korea
and the Right to Food,” Testimony before the United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry on
Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Public Hearings (October
30, 2013).
68 Brett Carter and Erin Baggott Carter, Propaganda in Autocracies (Book manuscript,
USC, 2021).
As to pure hegemony, China is not attractive today. It is compellent.

There is little possibility about a China taking over the world because it
does not put forth a civilizational purpose that is attractive. Its economic
policy is attractive to many countries. It is increasingly bold, engaged,
and building and participating in multilateral economic institutions most
centrally in East Asia, but also around the world. But this is largely within
the prevailing order, not against it. Contra Schweller and Pu, China is not
delegitimating the order, it is replacing the United States. Even in politics,
China accepts the norms of the prevailing order. Although China is clearly
an authoritarian country, it now claims that it is democratic. There is no
alternative worldview from China.
The argument put forth in this paper leads to questions about the
United States, as well. One of the most attractive aspects to American
hegemony is not its size or wealth, but its values. American values are
crystal clear: democracy, capitalism, and human rights. Yet U.S. decisions
in the past few years have increasingly raised into question whether the
United States still strives to follow its values, either at home or abroad.
In foreign affairs, it is the United States, not China, that is backing out
of regional trade regimes. The Biden administration has clearly signaled
that it has no intention to rethink Trump’s decision to withdraw from
RCEP and CPTPP. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in March 2021
that, “Some of us previously argued for free trade agreements because we
believed Americans would broadly share in the economic gains and that
those deals would shape the global economy in ways that we wanted…But
we didn’t do enough to understand who would be negatively affected.”69
Furthermore, American moral authority—its ability to call out human
rights and other standards—is seriously impeded by the actions of the past
few years. This is not false equivalence, this is American hubris. Indeed, it
is not clear that the United States ever had moral authority, given its calcu-
lated support of many authoritarian dictators around the world during the
Cold War. But, as Kelly Zvobgo points out, “many foreign policy issues,
such as human rights, are also domestic policy issues. In order to be an
effective champion of rights – for example, those of religious and ethnic
minorities in China – the Biden administration will need to address the
69 Quoted in Yuka Hayashi, “Japan Wants U.S. Back in the TPP. It Will Likely Have
to Wait,” Wall Street Journal (April 16, 2021).
United States’ own checked past and perhaps especially, its present.”70
This is not simply state policies, such as the 2017 ban on immigration
from several Muslim-majority countries, or the separation of young chil-
dren from their parents on the US-Mexico border. These are the most
obvious issues, but rather it is deeper than that. Adkins and Devermont
point out that:
it has been difficult to square the United States’ image as the global
standard-bearer for human rights, individual freedoms, and democratic
governance with recent images of militarized police forces and armored
vehicles taking to U.S. street; of peaceful protesters being met with rubber
bullets, tear gas, and batons, and of senior government officials calling for
us to “send in the troops” and “dominate the battlespace” by which they
mean the public square of towns and cities across the nation where citizens
exercise their rights to assemble and protest.71
As Sohrabh wrote in 2021 about the United States foreign policy

establishment:
The internal decay has only accelerated since [2013], and yet the
foreign-policy apparatus—liberal and “conservative,” governmental and
nonprofit—still publishes annual reports judging other nations on a dozen
silly metrics; champions this or that foreign dissident who may or may not
be worth championing; issues urgent appeals about “democratic backslid-
ing” in Central Europe and LGBTQ rights in Uzbekistan. More than once
in the past few years, I’ve felt an urge to grab these men and women by
the well-tailored lapel, shake them and scream, Look around you!
To conclude, this chapter invites debate on the role of ideational

and normative factors in the future of international order and hege-
monic transition. Historically, ideational sources of power played a crucial
role in China’s maintenance of its hegemonic position in modern East
Asia, especially in the context of the tributary system. But does China
have something equivalent today? Vice versa, the United States’ rise as
70 Kelebogile Zvogbo, “Foreign Policy Begins at Home,” Foreign Policy (January 15,
2021).
71 Travis Adkins and Judd Devermont, “The Legacy of American Racism at Home and
Abroad,” Foreign Policy (June 19, 2020).
a unipolar power after the Cold War was not met with balancing behav-
iors because various countries were attracted to democratic values and
liberal ideas presented by the United States and accepted the Western
liberal order. Is the United States doing a good job of guarding the prin-
ciples that have allowed the United States to maintain the position of
unchallenged hegemony today?
Hegemonic orders created by compellence may erode as soon as the
hegemon declines in material power, but attractive and morally appealing
orders may last longer despite the change in the distribution of material
capabilities. This paper raises the need for an in-depth discussion on the
role of ideational factors in the stability of hegemonic orders in future
research.72
72 Sohrab Ahmari, “An Apology To Richard Haass: The Case for Putting America’s
House in Order Before We Try to Remake the World Is All Around Us,” The American
Conservative (August 18, 2021).
CHAPTER 8
East Asian Monarchy in Comparative

Perspective
Tom Ginsburg
Introduction
Monarchy is a universal phenomenon found all over the world, and
the subject of a vast and rich historical literature. Yet economists, legal
scholars, and political scientists sometimes think of it as an anachro-
nism. This is odd, because 22% of countries today are monarchies, as
Figs. 8.1 and 8.2 show.1 Casual observation suggests that constitutional
monarchies are an extremely successful type of government: According to
the Economist Intelligence Unit 2020, eight of the world’s top fifteen
democracies are constitutional monarchies. And many of the richest
countries in the world are monarchies, including both the constitu-
tional monarchies of Europe and Japan, as well as the oil-rich absolute
1 See Appendix.
T. Ginsburg (B)
University of Chicago Law School, Chicago, IL, USA
e-mail: tginsburg@uchicago.edu

200 T. GINSBURG
monarchies that survive. Rather than being treated an anachronism, the

continuing endurance of monarchy deserves explanation.
In this chapter, I examine East and Southeast Asian monarchy in
comparative perspective.2 Monarchy survives at the national level in five
countries in East and Southeast Asia: Brunei, Cambodia, Japan, Malaysia,
and Thailand. Brunei’s sultan is an absolute monarch, one of only eight
remaining in the world today,3 but the others are all considered to be
constitutional monarchies (although Thailand is increasingly ambiguous
in this regard).
I first present some ideas about the origins, legitimation, and frequency
of monarchy in general. Working from contemporary conceptualizations,
I discuss the functions of monarchy, as well as the key issue of succes-
sion. Then, drawing on standard bargaining models in political science, I
explain how kings bargain with elites to try to survive in a changing world.
The results of these bargains depend in part on material and normative
resources the kings can bring to bear. In this regard, traditional East
Asian ideas served as beliefs that conditioned the survival of monarchy
in the face of major social and political upheavals. For example, in the
late nineteenth century, Chinese ideas about dynastic replacement meant
that the late Qing had difficulty rallying support when its material capac-
ities were clearly in decline. During the same period, Japanese ideas of an
unbroken imperial line presented the then-weak emperor as an available
solution to collective action problems among elites. Precisely because he
had no prior power, the Meiji emperor could unify the diverse coalition
that overthrew the Tokugawa in the 1860s. Japan’s Emperor integrated
the country, while China’s disintegrated it.
The various monarchies of Southeast Asia provide further evidence
of the plausibility of the mechanisms we identify. The Thai monarchy
was able to navigate the challenges of the twentieth century through
deft coalition building, while the monarchies of Laos and Vietnam fell.
Cambodia and Malaysia’s monarchs were able to provide symbolic legit-
imation for elites and so were restored as constitutional figureheads,
2 I exclude the Pacific Islands partly for lack of expertise but also because it lacks the
longstanding and routinized exchanges with China that characterize the countries of East
and Southeast Asia.
3 The eight are Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain,
and Kuwait. Eswatini is the last absolute monarchy outside the Muslim world and lacks
oil.
8 EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE 201
occasionally playing a political role. Finally, Brunei’s absolute monarchy

emerged as a result of its protectorate status.
Theories of Monarchy and Its Survival

Monarchy is a form of political organization that ties groups together
beyond kinship relations, allowing for more diverse polities, of greater
geographic scope, than did its predecessors. Scholars have attributed
various valuable functions to monarchs, including social and cultural
integration, conflict resolution, and establishment of a stable basis for
long-term investments. This section discusses some of this literature.
Social and Cultural Integration

Integration is perhaps the single most important function a monarch can
play. Gerring et al. point out that monarchs become more attractive as
size of the polity increases.4 It is the very diversity of society that, para-
doxically, increases the value of a single individual as a coordination point.
The ruler in some sense creates fictive kin status for her subjects, allowing
her to resolve any conflicts that do arise among them, and facilitating
cross-group transactions. The ontological unity of the nation thus reduces
intergroup conflict, in turn contributing to economic stability.
Integration frequently involves appeals to religion. Indeed, since
ancient times, monarchy has been sacralized, tied to guaranteeing welfare,
good harvests, and productivity. Yet typically, kings are not themselves
priests—there is a division of labor between the two offices. In the
Western tradition, this is embodied by the biblical story of the emergence
of monarchy as a replacement for governance by judges and prophets,
going back to the Book of Samuel. The priest anoints the king, who
is chosen by divine command, and rituals of investiture take on cosmic
significance. This distinction survived in the medieval Catholic church,
which claimed the authority to legitimate temporal power.
Another important theme in the study of monarchy is that ancient
kingships were rooted in complex ideas of purity, pollution, caste, and
4 Gerring, John, Tore Wig, Wouter Veenendaal W., Daniel Weitzel, Jan Teorell and
Kyosuke Kikuta. 2021. “Why Monarchy? The Rise and Demise of a Regime Type,”
Comparative Political Studies 54(3–4): 585–622.
202 T. GINSBURG
integration. In a famous volume called The Golden Bough, anthropolo-

gist and folklorist James Frazer sought to understand the symbolic and
ritual aspects of kingship, treating it as more than a mere political office.
Instead, the King in his conception is a ritual actor, a sacred figure under
a form of house arrest. He is “hedged in by a ceremonious etiquette, a
network of prohibitions and observances.”5 He keeps the cosmic order.
But Frazer notes that if the king fails in this duty, he is killed and replaced
by one who can restore cosmic order. Thus, the king is also the scapegoat
for society. Scholars of East Asia will already sense the potential overlap
with the idea of the Mandate of Heaven, to which we will return shortly.
Frazer’s themes are updated in an important anthropological exami-
nation of monarchy by Graeber and Sahlins.6 They characterize kings as
imitations of gods, who frequently emerge as strangers from outside the
polity. Graber and Sahlins also discuss the locus of sovereignty as resulting
from a war between king and society. They distinguish between divine
kingship, which emerges if a monarch exerts effective control over the
people, and sacred kingship, which emerges if the people win against the
king. One might see the sacred king as the prisoner-scapegoat in Fraz-
er’s terms, a constrained figure rather than a true power holder. There is
perhaps no better tragic figure to illustrate this feature of monarchy than
Empress Masako of Japan, the Harvard-educated diplomat whose failure
to conceive a son was the object of national obsession during the 1990s
and early 2000s.7
Limited and Absolute Monarchies

These interpretative frames from anthropology are complemented by
the dominant theory in political science, which views the monarchy as
engaged in a bargaining process with society. The relative power of
5 James Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890) at 138–39.

6 David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins, On Kings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2015).
7 Princess Toshi was born in 2001, but that led to national debate over whether the
Imperial Household Law of 1947 had to be revised in order to allow a female to take
the throne. When the Masako’s brother-in-law Akishino and his wife gave birth to a
son Hisahito in 2006, the controversy was laid to rest. Somewhat uncomfortably for the
Graeber-Sahlins theory, Hisahito is believed not to be merely sacred but a descendant of
the divine.
monarch and society is not fixed but can vary over time. Many assume
a kind of teleology in which society will eventually win out, leading to a
constitutional monarchy or even a republic (In other work, I contest this
view, seeing a powerless monarch as a stable equilibrium).
Constitutional monarchy is a concept with no precise definition in the
literature, but for our purposes can include governments (i) in which
the Head of State is a monarch, either appointed or hereditary, but (ii)
the actual head of government is not the monarch. In modern times,
another condition applies: (iii) the powers of the monarch are laid out in
a constitution or set of constitutional texts. In pre-modern conditions, a
constitutional text is not essential, so the key element is that the bulk of
effective power lies outside of the royal house.
Classical thinkers in the Western tradition understood their own
monarchies to be constrained by institutions, even if not the electoral
institution emphasized today. In De L’Esprit des lois (1748), Montesquieu
identifies three basic types of government: “republican government is
that in which the people as a body, or only a part of the people, have
sovereign power; monarchical government is that in which one alone
governs, but by fixed and established laws; whereas in despotic govern-
ment, one alone, without law and without rule, draws everything along
by his will and his caprices.”8 The Ottoman Sultan was the definition
of a despot in Montesquieu’s orientalist construction; the monarchies of
Europe, including England, were monarchs who governed by “fixed and
established laws.” He saw them as constrained by small-c constitutional
rules.
Relatedly, Hume (1752: 58) emphasized the importance of a monarch
as a constraint on the legislature:
It is possible so to constitute a free government, as that a single person, call

him doge, prince, or king, shall possess a large share of power, and shall
form a proper balance or counterpoise to the other parts of the legislature.
This chief magistrate may be either elective or hereditary; and though the
former institution may, to a superficial view, appear the most advantageous;
yet a more accurate inspection will discover in it greater inconveniencies
8 Montesquieu believed that the ideal was “a constitution that has all the internal
advantages of republican government and the external force of monarchy. I speak of the
federal republic.” Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws 1748 [1989]: Book 1. 10.
204 T. GINSBURG
than in the latter, and such as are founded on causes and principles eternal
and immutable.9
A Digression on Succession
Hume introduces us to the problem of succession a critical one for insti-
tutional design. All monarchies confront a coordination problem around
succession—if there is uncertainty about the successor, then there may
be wasteful competition among potential contenders. The basic political
logic of succession is that a ruler wants to appoint a successor who is
strong enough to protect elite bargains after his death, but not so strong
as to depose the ruler in her lifetime.10 Choosing one’s own child will
minimize (though not eliminate) the chance of the Crown Prince over-
throwing the monarch. At the same time, there is a risk of the child being
too weak for the job, which might induce challengers from within or
without the family. One might imagine that a monarch would choose
the strongest among her children, but this in turn will induce compe-
tition among them.11 Hereditary primogeniture has emerged as a focal
point solution to the coordination problem, reducing potentially wasteful
conflict among possible claimants to a throne, while also providing more
security and predictability for elites. There is a political and economic
logic to succession in general and to primogeniture in particular.
But we also observe countervailing evidence in which some systems
preserved elective kings. Examples include Anglo-Saxon England, where
the king had to be approved by the magnates assembled in the Witan; the
Holy Roman Empire, in which the emperor was elected by the princely
electors (Kurfürsten); and the Mongol Empire, in which the ruling khans
of each horde were chosen from among descendants of Chinggis Khan.12
The elective principle means that the best possible leader can be selected,
but also introduces the possibility of costly fights among contenders.
9 David Hume, Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations (1752).

10 Gordon Tullock, On Autocracy (Springer, 1985).
11 The early Ottoman sultanate engaged in the practice of murdering all males in the
family save one, once the heir succeeded to the throne. But Favereau notes this precise
maneuver by the Mongol khan Batu introduced an unraveling of his rule. Marie Favereau,
The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
12 Marie Faverau, ibid. One could add the Vatican since the eleventh century to the
list.
A final possible principle is agnatic succession, in which siblings take

the throne in sequence. The House of Saud, in which current King
Salman is the sixth son of the dynasty’s founder Ibn Saud to hold the
throne, is an example of agnatic succession, but one which has featured
constant turmoil since the founding of the Kingdom. Ibn Saud had 35
sons that survived to adulthood, and decreed that his sons would serve
in sequence. This scheme creates what he economist Alvin Roth called
an unraveling problem.13 Because the number of sons in the first gener-
ation was limited, it was inevitable that there would have to be a switch
to a new generation at some point. Knowing that such a switch would
occur, sons taking the throne later in the sequence would have an incen-
tive to defect on the original decision, and instead establish their own
line by appointing a son as the successor. In turn, knowing that later
sons have such an incentive, earlier sons would seek to make the move
first. Indeed, Ibn Saud’s two first successors, Saud and Faisal, engaged
in a fierce power struggle when the former sought to designate his own
son as Crown Prince; eventually King Saud was deposed and exiled. Faisal
was later assassinated by a member of the family. More recently, of course,
the agnatic line was broken by the current King Salman. Salman initially
made his youngest brother Crown Prince, only to renege three months
later and appoint his nephew Mohamad bin Nayef as the first member
of the next generation to be so designated. But in 2017, Salman’s son
Mohamad (MBS) was named Crown Prince, and Mohamad bin Nayef
was deposed, with his wealth confiscated. In 2020, he was arrested and
charged with treason. The inner workings of the House of Saud are hardly
harmonious, and readers can bless their good fortune for not having been
born into it.
13 Alvin Roth and X. Xing. 1994. “Jumping the Gun: Imperfections and Institutions
Related to the Timing of Market Transactions,” American Economic Review 84: 992–
1044.
206 T. GINSBURG
Political Equilibria
As the discussion so far has demonstrated, bargaining among elites is a
theme in both anthropological, economic, and political science accounts
of monarchy. A simple bargaining model commonly employed in polit-
ical science can explain the dynamics.14 We present an informal version
here. Consider a game with two players, an absolute monarch and a set of
civilian elites with whom she must bargain over government formation.
The monarch provides services to civilian elites, taxing them in exchange
for military protection and other services. Civilian elites have some power
as well, perhaps based on independent sources of revenue not controlled
by the monarch. As civilian elites develop forms of wealth not depen-
dent on the monarchy, they will demand a greater share of control over
government and taxation (In bargaining theory, this is called a change in
their threat point). Demand for monarchic services falls, and the civilian
elites can choose to challenge the monarch. On the other hand, as civilian
wealth is threatened, either from external predators, or perhaps from
internal challengers, demand for the monarchic services increases, and the
monarch can take a greater share of power.
Changes in the relative levels of power over a long period can result in
a series of gradual adjustments. But if one of the increases or decreases in
power is large and not anticipated in an accurate way by both players, then
we have a problem of asymmetric information, which can lead to fighting.
This occurs if the players have wildly different expectations of how an
event affects their power. For example, if the monarch believes its power
had decreased a small amount over a given period while the elites think
the decrease is much larger, then the highest offer the monarch is willing
to offer may be lower than the lowest the elites are willing to accept.
In this case, at least one of the parties will initiate a fight. Under some
conditions, the elites will eliminate the monarch entirely, either replacing
her or turning the country into a republic.15 In others, the monarch will
repress the challengers and take more control.
14 James Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization 49(3):

379–414 (1995); See George Tridimas “Constitutional Monarchy as Power Sharing,”
Constitutional Political Economy 32: 431–61 (2021) for an application to monarchy.
15 Adam Przeworski, et al. “The Origins of Parliamentary Responsibility.” Chapter.
In Comparative Constitutional Design, edited by Tom Ginsburg, 101–37 (Cambridge
Absolute monarchy results when the king wins this contest, or in which
there is no meaningful challenge to the power of the monarch, either
from below, outside, or from relevant elites. Republicanism results when
the King tries to fight but loses. Constitutional monarchy results when
the King concedes in the face of sustained challenge by parliament.
Much of the English-language literature on constitutional monarchy
draws on the paradigmatic case of the United Kingdom, in which
allegedly weak kings had to bargain with powerful landed nobles in order
to raise taxes. The need to make war drove fiscal bargaining that grad-
ually led to the emergence of parliament as the lawmaking authority.16
While this account has come under some recent criticism as to its empir-
ical basis,17 the basic image of a monarch bargaining with elites seems
consistent with recent history in many parts of the world. As the economy
became more complex in the nineteenth century, the monarchy’s rela-
tive power declined in many societies. This required renegotiation over
power, typically with parliaments. When the underlying economic change
was incremental, the monarchs could yield gradually—a process that took
hundreds of years in England. But where changes were sudden and sharp,
the monarch typically could not yield in time. The Russian Revolution is
one prominent example. Kings who resisted demands for reform often
found themselves deposed, while those who yielded kept their thrones
with great reductions in power. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries
are therefore crucial for understanding which monarchies survived into
our current era, and a notable example of failure is China.
Services Rendered: Why Keep a Monarch Around?

What resources does a monarch bring to the bargaining table in circum-
stances in which her material power has declined, as occurred for most
over the last two centuries? We return to the idea of integration discussed
above. A monarch can serve to help divided elites resolve collective action
problems; by providing ontological unity she can integrate diverse popu-
lations. Besides ethnic minorities, monarchs can play a role in reassuring
16 Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast. “Constitutions and Commitment: The

Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,” The
Journal of Economic History 49(4): 803–32 (1989).
17 Deborah Boucayannis Kings as Judges (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
208 T. GINSBURG
conservatives that their interests are protected. In a series of papers, Wein-

gast along with co-authors argues that democratic constitutions endure
when they successfully reduce the stakes of politics.18 When people’s core
interests, be they religion, language or property, are threatened, it trig-
gers what he calls the rationality of fear. This in turn can lead to political
disruption and even constitutional replacement.
Constitutional monarchs serve as a stakes-reducing mechanism for
conservatives. First, monarchies sound in tradition, and tend to be asso-
ciated with conservative politics. Conservatives favor property rights and
religion. A long history of political thought considers the threat posed by
democracy to property holders, with constitutions as a device to codify
a social arrangement between the wealthy few and the populous poor.
Property owners can feel protected and empowered when monarchy is
preserved. Relatedly, monarchs often take on a special role in religious
ritual. The Queen of England is the head of the Anglican Church; similar
roles can be found for many European monarchs. The Japanese Emperor
is the living descendent of the Sun Goddess and plays a central role in
Shinto ritual. The retention of a religious role means that monarchs send a
signal to the faithful that their symbols will not be eliminated. Again, this
reinforces conservative politics and reduces the rationality of fear. Contrast
the contemporary United States where conservatives have an irrational
fear that their interests will be destroyed. This leads to hyperbole, polar-
ization and, perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy in which democratic erosion
is the only way to protect ones core demands.
A final service we may see monarchs provide is what I and co-authors
call crisis insurance. Even without any power, monarchs can play a special
role in providing focal points during times of true crisis. This means that
at a last resort, a constitutional monarch can serve to prevent the surren-
dering of democracy. A central example is when Juan Carlos of Spain
helped stand down a coup d’état launched in his name in 1981. He went
on television wearing his military uniform, and ordered the armed forces
to return to barracks, even as he was communicating individually with key
generals, which helped prevent them from coordinating themselves and
threatening the survival of the young democracy. The next elections were
won by the Socialist Party, and the monarchy gained an enormous amount
of legitimacy. While Juan Carlos’ later philandering and tax avoidance
18 Barry Weingast, “Self-Enforcing Constitutions: With an Application to Democratic

Stability In America’s First Century.”
sullied his personal reputation, the institution of constitutional monarchy

has survived with Spanish democracy.
East Asia
The next section considers East Asian monarchy in light of these themes.
We start, in each case, with ancient ideas, which we argue provided
normative resources for the monarchs and elites to deploy in their
conflicts over the last two centuries.
China
The Chinese idea of the Mandate of Heaven (tianming) encapsulates
cosmic legitimation of a charismatic ruler. Going back to the Zhou
dynasty, rulers were legitimated by a deity that had lost favor in the
previous Shang dynasty. As this force became abstracted into “Heaven,”
it was conceptualized as making moral assessments of human rulers, upon
whom it bestowed or withheld favor. In the case of the latter, the deci-
sion would be objectively evidenced in natural phenomena—famine, war,
and bad crops—as well as in human dissatisfaction in the form of popular
revolt.
As scholars have long recognized, the loss of the Mandate of Heaven
did not quite amount to a right to rebellion. The people did not have
epistemic power to identify violations of the moral duties of rulers. That
power was beyond human reach and resided in heaven. Nor was there any
idea of explicit consent of the governed, even if there are hints that some
sort of implicit consent was required for continued legitimacy.19 The
monarch emerges as a result of a contest for power, but once enthroned,
has the right to rule through his descendants until such time as disorder
ensues.
This system provide a conceptual framework for understanding
dynastic change, including the possibility of integrating stranger-kings in
the form of non-Han dynasties. In addition, it created the possibility of
political order as a distinct end in itself.20 Politics was a distinct sphere,
19 Joseph Chan, “Democracy and Meritocracy: Toward a Confucian Perspective,”

Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34: 186 (2007).
20 Loubna El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).
210 T. GINSBURG
in which monarch and people had mutual duties, and their interaction
would ultimately determine who would rule. The possibility of dynastic
replacement, one might argue, creates a coordination problem among
elites. The monarch provides a focal point for intra-elite bargains. But if
enough elites have private beliefs that the dynasty is not likely to endure,
they may defect, or at a minimum be less likely to provide the monarchy
with resources. This could produce a feedback effect: the monarch may
have fewer resources to tackle social problems, accelerating more defec-
tions, and a rapid loss of support. To prevent his from happening, a
monarch might seek to undermine elite coordination and channels of
sharing information.
On the key question of succession, the Mencius speaks directly and
characterizes hereditary monarchy as a later development. Early rulers
were legitimated by “sagely, particularistic assessment of who was most
qualified to rule, coupled with the endorsement of Heaven, as viewed
through the actions of the people.”21 Mencius then identifies hereditary
succession as arising later.22 In contrast with Mencius’ view that heaven
would determine the succession, Xunzi argued that the critical factor was
the merits of the successor in the early period. In terms of normative
theory, Xunzi’s emphasis on ritual led him to argue heredity had become
a more appropriate mechanism for selection over time.23
The earliest documented throne transitions were recorded in the
Records of the Grand Historian, as well as the Bamboo Annals.24 One
of the most famous cases was the abdication of Emperor Yao and his
yielding of the throne to Emperor Shun, who was unrelated to Yao by
blood. According to the Records, Yao knew that his son Dan Zhu lacked
sufficient ability to manage state affairs, and decided to give the throne to
Shun (The Bamboo Annals indicate the transition from Yao to Shun was
in fact a forced abdication). Thus, merit-based succession was a possibility.
Among Chinese historians, there is a consensus that the law for succes-
sion by primogeniture became formally established during the Zhou
Dynasty, and is generally attributed to the Duke of Zhou (Zhou Gong
21 Stanfurd https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-social-political/#Bib.
22 El Amine, ibid. at 39–41 she argues that the Mencius prefers hereditary succession.
23 Sungmoon Kim, “Confucian Constitutionalism: Mencius and Xunzi on Virtue,
Ritual, and Royal Transmission,” Review of Politics 11: 73 (2011).
24 Records of the Grand Historian (Shi Ji 史记); Bamboo Annals (Zhu Shu Ji Nian 竹
书纪年).
周公). It was during this time that Chinese society became morally and
legally bound around a formal distinction between the primary wife and
secondary or lesser wives. The eldest son of the monarch’s principal wife
would be the default heir to the throne.25 Various ancient texts capture
this primogeniture law in practice, most famously the Gongyang Commen-
tary on the Spring and Autumn Annals (公羊传). The first chapter
documents an incident occurring in the first year of the rule of Duke
Yin of the Kingdom Lu. In that passage, a son takes the throne upon
his father’s death, but yields when the rightful son of the principal wife
reaches majority, a decision described as being in accord with the ancient
Way. Further, the Commentary makes clear that, whatever the objective
merits of individual rulers, the primogeniture norm is superior in that it
provides for stability.
By the Han dynasty, the emperor was to be hereditary. Of course, there
were some Confucian thinkers who still wished to “restore” the practice
of the most virtuous person taking over, emphasizing the Yao abdication
in favor of Shun. Sometimes usurpers relied on the discourse of merit to
justify their seizure of power. For example, the short-lived “New Dynasty”
founded by Wang Mang in 9 A.D. drew on these ideas, but he was in turn
overthrown and the meritocratic line of Confucian thought lost favor.
Primogeniture did not always occur in practice, of course. One way of
getting around it was the system of retired emperors. The title of retired
emperor was first created as a way to honor the living emperor’s father,
a practice deeply rooted in the culture of filial piety. This was the main
rationale during the Qin and Han Dynasties. During the Western Jin and
the Later Liang Dynasties, the title of retired emperor had more func-
tional purposes, either as a way to ensure a successful transfer of power
by primogeniture before the emperor’s death, or to preserve continuity
of the dynasty after a coup. In the Northern Wei Dynasty, some retired
emperors gained political power, mainly because the succeeding heirs
were too young to reign. From the Northern Wei Dynasty on, the role
of retired emperors involved a mix of these purposes of ensuring fictive
continuity or alternatively helping resolving succession problems.
There is general scholarly consensus that primogeniture was nomi-
nally the formal inheritance law until the Qing Dynasty under Emperor
Yongzheng, when the principle was formally abolished in favor of a secret
25 Dí Zháng Zî 嫡长子.
212 T. GINSBURG
reserve system. In this system, the emperor would carry a secret scroll with
the name of his chosen heir, sometimes with a copy in the main palace.
The content of the scroll would be revealed only upon the emperor’s
abdication, as in the case of Emperor Qianlong, or upon the emperor’s
death, such as in the case of Yongzheng.26
Western thinkers such as Hegel and to a lesser extent Montesquieu
tended to emphasize the absolutist character of the Chinese monarchy.
But in fact, the power of the Emperors rose and fell in various periods.
Even from the earlier period, aristocratic families had a good deal of
power, and in many periods played a central role in determining the
position of the Grand Chancellor.27
Another distinct feature of the Chinese system was the existence of the
set of scholar-officials who exercised governing power on behalf of the
Son of Heaven. The autonomy of these officials takes an early justifica-
tion in a passage from Mencius. When summoned by the King, Mencius
refuses to go:28
A prince who is to achieve great things must have [officials] he does not
summon. If he wants to consult with them he goes to them….Today there
are many states, all equal in size and virtue, none being able to dominate
the others. This is simply because the rulers are given to employing those
they can teach rather than those from whom they can learn.
The idea is that the virtuous prince will hire people who he can learn
from and will pay respect to them by approaching them for advice. These
virtuous officials are selected on the basis of merit, and so deserve the
26 Zhen Yang, “On the Power of the Crown Prince in Qing Dynasty,” Studies in Qing
History 4 (2002). The four main principles of the secret reserve system are: (1) The
emperor has total control over whom to choose (2) The emperor considers both merit
and primogeniture (3) The emperor is secretly fostering and evaluating the chosen heir.
(4) The chosen heir must be kept from knowing his position. This latter provision was
necessary both to prevent unraveling, in which the heir might seek to hasten the emperor’s
death, and also to prevent infighting, because no one would know the heir until the day
that they assume the throne. It bears remarkable similarity to the modern system of the
dedazo, by which Mexican presidents in the PRI chose their successors.
27 Yuhua Wang, The Rise and Fall of Imperial China (Princeton University Press, 2022)
provides novel evidence for the gradual substitution of officials who were appointed on
merit, on the basis of an examination, for those who came from noble families.
28 Mencius 2B.2; see El Amine 2015: 56.
delegation of power, and the selection of officials the most important

task of rulers.29
The role of ministers is further elaborated in the Xunzi. The ruler’s
cosmic duty cannot only be achieved through running the day-to-day
affairs of government; instead his duty is to perform rituals as well as
to recreate and engage in “ease and repose.” The Xunzi contemplates
the appointment of a kind of Prime Minister figure, a single person with
“universal authority to lead the government.”30 This act of delegation,
then, is the single biggest decision the emperor can take: “The way of a
ruler lies in knowing men, that of a minister in knowing affairs of state.”31
Thus, although it often considered to be absolutist in character, the
Chinese tradition from an early date contemplated a distinction between
reigning and ruling.32 Retired emperors who exercised actual power is but
one example. More continuously, the large scale of governance and the
self-perpetuation of the bureaucracy made it tricky to maintain control.
This itself suggests limits on a ruler’s appropriate deployment of his own
power. The royal examination system meant that the scholar-officials had
control over entry into the bureaucracy. The Confucian scholars had
duties to lecture the emperor on norms of governance, and the National
Historical Office chronicled good and bad actions of the leader. An
emperor must have felt like something of a trustee for a dynasty, but also
quite hemmed in by the large structures around him.
Even, if this was never instantiated effectively in a formal human
constraint, the system still suggests a theory of governance under which
a ruler could err by exercising too much power over day-to-day affairs,
creating a kind of quasi-constitutional division of labor. The much
analyzed duty of remonstrance reflects the idea that good governance was
a joint responsibility for the ruler and the ministers. Ministers were to
play the role of criticizing unwise behavior of the rulers, a duty designed
to overcome a particular kind of agency problem endemic to authori-
tarian government, namely the lack of information on likely consequence
29 Tongdong Bai, “How Has China Become a Despotic State?” (中国是如何成为专制

国家的).
30 Ela Amine 119.
31 Xunzi 27.69.
32 Rosemont, State and Society in the Xunzi.
214 T. GINSBURG
of policies. Yes-men can lead the ruler to make bad decisions with ruinous
consequences, not only for the particular ruler, but the society itself.
Of course, none of these ideas were sufficient to save the late Qing. The
crisis of the late nineteenth century reached a culmination with the defeat
by Japan in 1895. Reformers around Kang Youwei and his student Liang
Qichao were not shy about rethinking the system, and a central element of
their proposal was to change the formal structure of the government into
a constitutional monarchy. During the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898,
they were able to introduce a number of proposals. But the Dowager
Empress Cixi engineered a coup d’etat on behalf of conservatives. Kang
and Liang were exiled to Japan, while other reformers were executed.
The Boxer Rebellion followed, and in response Cixi implemented
some of the earlier proposals, as what are known as the New Policies.
A broad debate about constitutional monarchy emerged, and the Qing
sought advice from Japan and elsewhere in thinking about how to restruc-
ture their government. In 1908, the imperial government promulgated
a “Constitutional Outline,” which included provisions for elections of
certain bodies, and laid out a nine-year timeline for transition. But it did
not have provision for a legislative assembly. And in the aftermath of Cixi’s
death, large-scale demands for representation emerged with great vigor.
Indeed, in May 1911, a Prime Minister was appointed as formal head
of government, meaning that China did in fact have a formal constitu-
tional monarchy of sorts for a few months until the Xinhai Revolution of
October 1911. That event ended more than two millennia of the imperial
system. And the foreign house of Qing—the stranger-kings—became the
scapegoat for failure.
Historians differ on the reasons for the failure of late-Qing reforms.33
For our purposes, we need not wade into these fields except to make two
points. First, a reform coalition did not coalesce around a single model for
coordination purposes. Second, repeated rounds of bargaining between
the Manchu rulers and other forces in society did not succeed. And the
upheavals of the late nineteenth century clouded all parties’ ability to
determine possible solutions. Some, no doubt, saw the weakness of the
33 Merideth E. Cameron, The Reform Movement in China, 1898–1912 (1974); Meien-

berger, Norbert, The Emergence of Constitutional Government in China (1905–1908):
The Concept Sanctioned by the Empress Dowager Tz‘u-hs (1980). Jie Cheng. “Why Late
Qing Constitutional Reform failed: An Examination from the Comparative Institutional
Perspective,” Tsinghua China Law Review 10(107): 108–44 (2017).
Qing as an opportunity to advance their particular interests, defecting on

earlier bargains.
The slow response of the Qing meant that the monarchy played a role
in the country’s disintegration through territorial losses that lasted from
the first Opium Wars through the establishment of the People’s Republic.
But the basic setup of Chinese monarchy, in which dynasties end and are
replaced, may also have contributed to bargaining failure by the stranger-
kings.
Japan
The Japanese Imperial House is distinct in the continuous (if fictive) rule
of a single family, descended from the Sun Goddess. Legend holds that
two deities descended from heaven and created the Japanese islands as
well as the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Omikami, whose grandson Jimmu
became the first emperor. This means that the grandmother of the impe-
rial line was co-created with the Yamato nation itself. This essentialist
unity has a mystic quality not found in China and contributes to a quasi-
familial vision of the state.34 It also imbues the monarchy with religious
duties. One of the earliest words for government, matsuri-goto, means
“affairs of worship.”35 And the various Shinto rituals around rice give the
emperor the responsibility for the harvest.36
The distinction between reigning and ruling is an ancient one in
Japan.37 Indeed, Japan provides a counter-example for Sahlins and Grae-
ber’s idea that divine kingship reflects the victory of the monarch over the
people, for the emperors have for long periods held only nominal power.
The unbroken line of divinity has required nimble shifts in a non-
monotheistic society with distinctly syncretic religious traditions. The
34 Cecil Brett, “The Priest Emperor Concept in Japanese Political Thought,” Indian
Journal of Political Science 23: 17–28 (1962).
35 Nobushige Hozumi, Ancestor Worship and Japanese Law (Tokyo: XX Press, 1912)
at 73.
36 Emiko Ohnukii-Tierney, “Japanese Monarchy in Historical and Comparative Perspec-
tive,” in Declan Quigley, ed. The Character of Kingship (New York: Berg, 2005),
209–32.
37 Emiko Ohnukii-Tierney, “Japanese Monarchy in Historical and Comparative Perspec-
tive,” in Declan Quigley, ed. The Character of Kingship (New York: Berg, 2005),
209–32.
216 T. GINSBURG
theory of monarchy was initially deeply enshrined with Shinto ritual, but
also took on the beliefs and symbols of Confucianism and Buddhism as
well. Thus, the monarchs have at some periods been the protector of
the three jewels of Buddhism, and at others have been viewed as the
literal sons of heaven, in a way that Chinese emperors could only invoke
metaphorically. Confucian ideas of ancestor worship were also a natural
fit in a context in which the imperial household embodied the nation.
Monarchs tend to engage in a bricolage of techniques for legitimation.
Buddhist ideas of ideal monarchy entered Japan with Prince Shotoku’s
promotion of Buddhism in the sixth century. He drew on Chinese forms,
including the widely known “constitution,” a written document of 17
articles, which consisted of exhortations to officials to treat the people
well.38 Some of the provisions of this document, including restrictions
on corvee labor, have Chinese antecedents and seem to constrain the
government, but do so in a way that empowers the people against arbi-
trary action of officials. He also sought to establish a merit-based civil
service.
Shotoku’s statecraft emphasized a particular sutra, that of Vimalakirti,
which articulated the good ruler as one who:
should be above all differences of dispositions and interests of the people

and yet care for them all, not for the sake of their individual benefits
but for their ultimate welfare in fellowship and spiritual communion. The
ruler leads the people by his ideal aims and the people follow him not in
mere submission but in the full realization of the high aims and through
mutual participation in the spiritual values embodied in the State. This
participation is possible on the basis of the universal immanence of the
Buddha nature, on the part of both the ruler and the ruled.39
Japan’s monarchy thus reflects a layering of legitimation, drawing on the

ancestor of the Yamato race, as well as traditions of the Boddhisatva and
38 Hajime Nakamura, History of Japanese Thought: 592–1868: Japanese Philosophy Before

Western Culture Entered Japan 8 (2002).
39 Masaharu Anesaki, “The Foundation of Buddhist Culture in Japan: The Buddhist
Ideals as Conceived and Carried Out by the Prince Regent Shotoku,” Monumenta
Nipponica 6: 1–12 (1943). Other sutras emphasized in Japan included that of the Golden
Light, promoted by the Emperor Temmu in 673. He instituted national practice of
Buddhism and subsequent emperor Shomu undertook image building programs that fused
government and religion.
the Son of Heaven. The fusion of temporal and spiritual authority is ever
a powerful tool, when available.
Yet, the Japanese monarchs were the first in the region to lose temporal
authority. The bureaucratic model of Chinese governance did not succeed
in Japan, and even during the Heian period, imperial power was formal
rather than real. The Fujiwara clan of hereditary regents exercised real
power during this period. Even when Emperors regained the upper hand
in the eleventh century, they initiated a practice called “cloistered rule” in
which real power would be held by a retired predecessor emperor, while
the sitting emperor played the ritual role.
Central authority disintegrated during the late Heian period in the
twelfth century. A dispute over monarchic succession led rival claimants
to align with militarily powerful clans, the Taira and the Minamoto. The
Minamoto victory led to the establishment of the Kamakura bakufu, the
military government that was nominally appointed by the emperor, and
the most developed system under which imperial power was not even
formal. Japanese feudalism gave real power to warlords, but also the
creation of quasi-constitutional arrangements in which central rulers of
the shogunate were formally constrained through independent adjudica-
tive bodies.40
The tradition of reigning without ruling provided a useful resource for
the Meiji reformers, of course. They seized on the emperor as a symbol
of national integration, and through his “Restoration” were able to
construct a strong centralized government. The oligarchy ruled, while the
emperor reigned, and a national cult of state Shinto was created, fitting
in perfectly with the dominant European logic of ethnically homogenous
nation-states. The Constitution of 1889 states clearly that “The Sacred
Throne of Japan is inherited from Imperial Ancestors.” And that “the
Empire of Japan shall be reigned over and governed by a line of Emperors
unbroken for ages eternal.”41 “The Emperor” it notes, “is sacred and
inviolable.”
The precise conceptual fit between these ideas and contemporary
European ideas of sovereignty was contested. One school, formed around
the legal scholars Hozumi Yatsuka and Uesugi Shinkichi, developed what
40 Jeffrey Mass, The Kamakura Bakufu (1976); Tom Ginsburg, “Constitutionalism:

East Asian Antecedents,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 88: 11–33 (2012).
41 Const Japan (1889), preamble; Art. 1.
218 T. GINSBURG
became known as the conservative theory that the emperor was prior to
the state and constitutional order, and the sole source of sovereign power.
The state was a legal person whose source was ultimately the natural
will of the Emperor. Any constitutional limitation on the powers of the
monarch was simply a self-limitation on the part of the sovereign, which
could in principle be withdrawn.
Against this view was the so-called organ theory of Minobe Tatsukichi,
which held that the Imperial institution was simply one among many
organs of the state, along with the Diet, the government and the courts.
Because the state embodied sovereignty, any claim of imperial power as
extraconstitutional could not be maintained. This theory led to Minobe’s
being purged by militarists in the 1930s, but was conveniently accessible
for revival by Occupation authorities in the 1940s, and seems to be the
accepted position of mainstream legal scholarship today.
Today, Japan is clearly a constitutional monarchy, one whose survival
has depended on the normative resources available to powerful parties
at key junctures in history. Another theme illustrated by this account was
the role of the monarchy in reassuring conservatives. General MacArthur’s
decision to preserve the emperor induced conservatives to cooperate with
the Occupation authorities and allowed the successful reconstruction of
Japan. The process included massive land reform, which would not have
been possible without Occupation pressure, and might have triggered the
rationality of fear. Keeping the emperor, however, reduced the threat of
right-wing violence in this process.
Japan’s monarchy also embodies the prisoner-scapegoat model of king-
ship. The emperor is a national hostage, bound to perform an endless
stream of sacred rituals. As in the United Kingdom, we have seen young
members of the household seek to escape its onerous strictures: Princes
Mako, oldest child of the Crown Prince, gave up her royal titles to marry a
commoner in 2021. And, as already mentioned, Empress Masako’s strug-
gles with mental health have been a topic of public concern for three
decades.
∗ ∗ ∗
Summarizing the contrasting fates of the Japanese and Chinese (i.e.,

East Asia) monarchies in the late nineteenth century: Japan’s monarchy
survived, precisely because it started the period powerless, and then
provided an opportunity for insurgent elites seeking to integrate the
nation. After World War II, it was retained by Occupation authorities as

a kind of hostage-king. At both junctures, ancient ideas about monarchy
and succession were important to the survival of the institution. China’s
Qing, on the other hand, was powerful (if not as absolutist as sometimes
characterized). The complexity of the problems of China, combined with
poor decisions by the monarchs themselves in resisting early proposals for
reform, accelerated not just the fall of the dynasty, but the end of the
entire system. It is speculation, but the cyclical nature of Chinese dynas-
ties may have played a role in this process, since prior dynasties had all
had an end-point. Monarchy survived through weakness in Japan, and
was doomed by its own power in China.
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asian ideas of monarchy are diverse, drawing from several
different religious traditions, especially ideas from South Asia.42 In the
Hindu conception of monarchy, ascension to the throne reverses the
process of the foundation of the universe. In the beginning, legend has
it, a sacrifice of a god-man led to the creation of four kinds of human
beings. The installation ceremonies of a Hindu king (the last instance
of which was King Gyanendra in Nepal in 2001) involve the monarchic
establishment of a new unity by partaking in all four kinds.
Buddhist ideas of kingship draw on Hindu conceptions and focus
heavily ideal of the dharmaraja, the King who upholds the dharma,
turning the wheel of dharma while sitting in the wheel of power. The
King upholds religion; religion legitimates the king.43 In addition, the
Hindu idea of a chakravartin, a universal ruler, also appears in Buddhist
political idiom. The fictionalized image of the great Buddhist emperor
42 Robert Heine-Geldern, Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia (Cornell

University. Southeast Asia Program. Data Paper. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program
Publications, 1993).
43 Andrew Huxley, “The Buddha and the Social Contract” Journal of Indian Philos-
ophy 24: 407 (1996). Collins, Steven, “The Lion’s Roar on the Wheel-Turning King: A
Response to Andrew Huxley’s ‘The Buddha and the Social Contract’,” Journal of Indian
Philosophy 24: 421–46 (1996).
220 T. GINSBURG
Asoka provides an ideal type here, and the ideas developed there also
influenced Chinese ideas of kingship.44
Thailand
The Thai monarchy draws its legitimacy heavily on Buddhist ideas of
the dhammaraja, the wheel-turning King who preserves the dhamma
and governs righteously.45 Traditionally, this theory was popularized by
Jātakas, tales of the former incarnations of the Buddha, of which the most
famous is the Vessantara Jātaka. The tale involves a prince who gives away
everything he owns, including his own children, thus embodying perfect
generosity. The story has been a major element of popular Buddhism
for centuries. During the nineteenth century reign of King Mongkut,
however, the story was de-emphasized, as he sought to enshrine a partic-
ular form of Buddhism as the favored national tradition. But the image
of a wise Buddhist King remained available to his descendants.
Modernizing jurists in Thailand fused European legal categories with
Buddhist concepts to create the current frame for governance. In the
Three Seals Code of the early nineteenth century, one component was
the Phrathammasat (“sacred treatise on the dharma”), allegedly derived
from the Hindu Code of Manu. It provided normative limits on authority,
requiring the King to observe the “10 Virtues of the righteous king”
(totsapit-rajadharma). Interestingly, the King was only to have adjudica-
tive powers, rather than legislative ones.46 As Mérieau notes “his role was
to apply the Thammasat, not to modify it.”47
The Phrathammasat also draws on a Buddhist notion of
mahāsammata or great elected kings. The mythic origin of kings
emphasizes a close link with judges. A bodhisattva was incarnated as a
44 Qin Zhi Lau, Ideals of Buddhist Kingship: A Comparative Analysis of Emperors Asoka
and Wen of Sui, UC Santa Barbara working paper, available at https://www.history.ucsb.
edu/wp-content/uploads/Ideals_Buddhist_Kingship.pdf; James A. Benn and Stephanie
Balkwill, Buddhist Statecraft in East Asia (Brill, 2022).
45 Patrick Jory, 2016. Thailand’s Theory of Monarchy: The Vessantara Jataka and the
Idea of the Perfect Man (Albany: SUNY Press).
46 Lingat 1941: 26–31; Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, “Thammasat, Custom,
and Royal Authority in Siam’s Legal History,” Thai Legal History: From Traditional to
Modern Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
47 Eugénie Mérieau, Constitutional Bricolage 36 (Brill: 2022).
great man, and was chosen by the people in a great meeting to resolve
their conflicts. This idea of a popularly elected, virtuous king remains
an ideal. This proto-contractual theory of the origins of Kings predates
Hobbes by millennia, but as Mérieau points out, the theory was de-
emphasized from the mid-nineteenth century onward, as the House of
Chakri adjusted to modernity. Instead, they emphasized a document
called the “Palace Law,” heavily influenced by Khmer ideas, which insti-
tutionalized and justified royal temporal power.48 In their versions, the
nineteenth-century Thai monarchs emphasized legislative power.
Mérieau’s recent magisterial study of Thailand’s monarchy emphasizes
bricolage.49 By this she means the deployment of various and shifting
political idioms, as the monarchy developed and consolidated its power
into the twentieth century, then formally lost it in 1932, but rene-
gotiated its way to the center of Thai society during the long reign
of King Bhumibol Rama IX. Besides Buddhist ideas, Japanese notions
of constitutional monarchy, and Soviet and Prussian ideas of statecraft
informed formal constitutionalization. And Chinese influence has shaped
the bargaining environment for monarchs. The crown’s longstanding
alliance with Chinese capitalists predates the establishment of the consti-
tutional monarchy in 1932.50 At that point, a coalition of military
and civilian elites combined in the People’s Party to take over effective
power, and since then, the system of government has been described as
“Democratic Regime with the King as Head of State.”51
The People’s Party had two factions, a civilian group around Pridi
Banomyong, and a military faction led by Plaek Pibulsongkram. These
two factions distrusted each other, and in deliberations among themselves
decided to retain the monarchy, without power, as a symbol of national
unity and independence. The powerless monarchy played the symbolic
function of integration in a diverse country, in which Chinese elites held
most economic power. The largely Muslim population of the South by
and large has expressed loyalty to the monarchy as an institution. Ethnic
Chinese subjects proudly displayed photos of the King as the highest
48 Mérieau at 38.
49 Eugénie Mérieau, Constitutional Bricolage (Brill: 2022).
50 Wasana Wongsurawat, The Crown and the Capitalists: The Ethnic Chinese and the
Founding of the Thai Nation (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019).
51 Const. Thailand Art. 2.
222 T. GINSBURG
on the wall. The diverse Buddhist populations of Isaan and the former
Lanna kingdom around Chiang Mai have been effectively integrated into
a unified whole.52
Thai politics for the subsequent nine decades after 1932 has reflected
continuous distrust between civilian and military factions, with two dozen
coups and coup attempts, and 20 constitutions. In this endless cycle,
the monarchy plays a crucial role. No coup succeeds without immediate
submission to (and sometimes prior clearance by) the King, who provides
a focal point for society’s response. At moments of extreme violence
(which are rare but not unknown), the King has been known to inter-
vene publicly. Perhaps most famously, in 1992 King Rama IX called the
coup leader General Suchinda Kraprayoon and protest leader Chamlong
Srimuang to the literal carpet: a video of him excoriating both men caused
a de-escalation and an eventual return to democracy. This is what I have
elsewhere called a form of crisis insurance, in which the King reset the
bargain after a breakdown between two rival factions.
This effective deployment of power by Rama IX drew not only on the
formal constitutional strictures, but also deep ideas of a wise Buddhist
king, preserving the order of society, and standing above the mundane
world of politics. The Thai monarchy not only survived the transition to
modernity but by any account thrived.53
To be sure, all is not well in Bangkok today. Throughout his many
years as Crown Prince, rumblings about the character of Rama X led to
some speculation that he may never take the throne at all. But take it
he has, and he immediately made his mark on the system. He took back
the holdings of the Crown Property Bureau into his personal control and
management, preserving his status near the very richest of monarchs in
the world, without owning a single drop of oil. He has removed public
works and taken over buildings that belonged to other institutions. He
took over direct command of the military units guarding Bangkok, essen-
tially ensuring that no coup could be organized without him. And he
spent much of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany with a large harem.
All but the last of these steps reek more of absolute than constitutional
52 Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped (University of Hawai’i Press, 1994).

53 Søren Ivarsson Ivarsson, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, and Lotte Isager. Saying
the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand. NIAS Studies in Asian Topics
(Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2010); Paul Handley, The King Never Smiles: A Biography
of Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
monarchy, and the country is taking an increasingly authoritarian turn.

Any attempt to shift back toward an absolute form of monarchy must
be done carefully, as history does not have many examples of such shifts
actually enduring.
Cambodia
The Khmer monarchy is an ancient one, dating back to 882 C.E., which
(like its Thai and Burmese counterparts) was heavily influenced by Hindu
and Buddhist notions of kingship. The founder of the dynasty declared
himself a chakravartin, the Buddhist notion of a universal king.
Soon after Cambodia gained Independence from France in 1954, King
Norodom Sihanouk resigned the throne in favor of his father, and became
Prime Minister. He presided over constitutional changes to empower
the Prime Minister and ensure that the monarch’s powers were limited.
The next three decades were a period of war, coups and revolution,
and the monarchy was abolished in 1970. But in 1993, the United
Nations brokered a rapprochement between the royalist political parties
and strongman Hun Sen, leading to the restoration of constitutional
monarchy. The office was to be quite weak, but it served a symbolic func-
tion of reassuring liberals that a period of unity would ensue. Four years
later Hun Sen took over the government in a kind of coup d’etat, but left
the constitutional monarchy in place.
The monarch is one of the few remaining elective monarchies in the
world. The king is selected from among members of the royal family
by a Council of the Throne that includes the Prime Minister, leaders
of parliament and two senior monks, but in the context of Cambodia’s
authoritarian state, this means that the Prime Minister chooses the King
rather than the reverse. In such a context, the monarchy plays a very
limited function: the monarch has no power or ability to win in any
conflict with Hun Sen. The slightest assertion of actual power would lead
quickly to a republic.
Laos
The Laotian monarchy descends from the princedom of Luang Prabang
and was constitutionalized at independence from France in 1953; like
that of Cambodia, it was unable to survive the Vietnam war. Indeed,
three half-brothers from the royal line sided with different factions in the
224 T. GINSBURG
post-World War II period. One of the brothers aligned with the commu-
nist Pathet Lao, which took over the country in 1975, and made him
President after abolishing the monarchy. Laos illustrates that communism
is almost always fatal to monarchy; ideas matter and there are no more
distant ideas in political theory than Marxism and monarchy.
Vietnam
As in Korea, the monarchy in Vietnam was part of the greater Chinese
tributary system. This meant that it governed independently but recog-
nized the Chinese emperor as the Son of Heaven, of higher status.
Vietnam’s monarchies have risen and fallen over many centuries, with
territory expanding and contracting as a result of wars with neighbors.
The last monarchy, the Nguyen, ruled the country from 1802 until the
French established a protectorate, at which point the monarchy became
a constitutional monarchy. That lasted through the Japanese occupation,
but the anti-colonial Viet Minh established a republic in 1945. As in Laos,
communism provided the death blow.
Malaysia and Brunei

Malay ideas of monarchy draw on Islamic and local traditions and remain
in effect in the nine peninsular Malay states, each of which has a hered-
itary ruler. These monarchies were preserved by the British in part to
provide symbolic primacy for the Malays, who had been subject to mass
immigration from China and India during colonial rule.54 The monarchs
were given only a few reserve powers and were, from independence in
1957, always “constitutional monarchs” in our sense.
Islam does not contemplate the notion of a social contract, in the sense
of allowing the people to rebel against a tyrannical ruler. The rulers derive
their legitimacy as defenders of the faith, implying military might, and
have a religious obligation to rule justly. The doctrine of siyasa sharia
provided that the King could take discretionary actions to build an Islamic
society, justifying the broad exercise of power. But there is no earthly sanc-
tion for failing to use this power justly. To the contrary, there is a duty to
54 G. Braighlinn, Ideological Innovation under Monarchy: Aspects of Legitimation

Activity in Contemporary Brunei (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1992). Contemporary
Asian Studies Monograph No. 9, at 4.
obey rulers, save for commands in conflict with Islam. This positions the
ulama—the community of religious scholars—in an authoritative posi-
tion of sorts, with some ability to exercise remonstrance; but sanction is
reserved for heaven.
These ideas find very different expression in Brunei. As the British
prepared the territory for independence with a 1959 constitution, the
Sultan was given significant power over state finances, and control over
the executive council, with whom he did not even have a duty to consult.
An indirectly elected legislature was first elected in 1962. The British were
concerned about a radical party (the PRB) emerging under the leadership
of A. M. Azahari, and that party won all the seats in the legislature in
1962. Rather than bargain with the absolute monarchy for a share of
power, the PRB exploited concern about a forced merger with Malaysia,
and rebelled against the British in 1962. This rebellion was quickly shut
down by British forces from Singapore, leaving Sultan Omar Saifuddin III
as the unchallenged power holder. Rising nationalist sentiment was thus
directed against the British rather than the monarch. The Sultan subse-
quently banned the PRB and abolished the constitutional provision for
elections. This case easily fits the resource curse model of an absolute
monarch defending a jointly controlled oil field with the British colonial-
ists. The monarchy survived precisely because of its weakness during the
key period of challenge by civilians, leaving it unchecked in the next stage.
The Sultan abdicated in 1967 in favor of his son, who remains in power
today. The official national ideology is konsep Melayu Islam Beraja (MIB),
which combines a Malay ethnic nationalism with the divine blessing of
Islam.55 This ideology took root only very recently, and rests on a social
construction of a long-enduring royal line. But this is also false—the line
was saved by the British in 1905, and then again in 1962. The British
would leave matters of religion and sometimes custom to the rulers, while
exercising effective power. But Brunei’s official narrative has constructed
the British as mere protectors, not interrupting sovereignty in any funda-
mental sense. It has also manipulated historical records, including the
claim that the founder of the Malacca Dynasty in Malaysia granted the first
Brunei sultanate,56 and sometimes linking the regime back to the non-
Muslim founder of Malaysia, Sri Tri Buana. Some of the official discourse
55 Braighlinn, note 54, at 19.

56 Braighlinn note 54, at 30.
226 T. GINSBURG
refers to a social contract of sorts but did not allow rebellion against the
monarch, except in cases of “shame” which presumably was directed to
elites rather than the public.
Conclusion
We see in these preliminary sketches a set of stories of monarchic replace-
ment (China, Vietnam and Laos), survival (Japan, Brunei, and Thailand)
and revival (Cambodia). In all cases, the actual power of monarchs waxed
and waned over time, and the idea that only European monarchs were
historically constrained is clearly a false one. Survival of monarchy into the
modern era depends on a bargaining process, in which monarchic power
is determined by the services it can provide to other elites in the system.
National myths of monarchic origins are a resource here, and if deployed
skillfully can facilitate survival in a world of change. East Asian monarchs
were able to leverage normative resources to maintain their thrones, even
when they lost effective power.
For the paradigm case of Japan, it was precisely the presence of a
powerless monarchy that led to its elevation as a symbolic focal point
in the Meiji era. In China, in contrast, the monarchy’s attempt to hold
actual power sealed its fate and led to republican transformation. Weak-
ness also facilitated the survival of monarchy in Brunei, as well as its revival
in Cambodia.
Where monarchs can play an integrative role, they stand a chance of
survival; where they divide the society, they write their own fates. This
stylized account has implications for contemporary monarchs engaged in
active bargaining processes with their societies, such as in Thailand today.
An equilibrium can be a delicate thing if one side moves too quickly. But
the ability to mix metaphors, to draw on ancient ideas, and to duck and
weave has given monarchs resources with which to bargain.
Appendix
See Figs. 8.1 and 8.2.
Fig. 8.1 Constitutionalized monarchy over time (Source Data from the
Comparative Constitutions Project)
Fig. 8.2 The return of absolute monarchy

228 T. GINSBURG
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CHAPTER 9
Legalist Confucianism: What’s Living

and What’s Dead
Daniel A. Bell
Confucianism and Legalism are the two most influential political tradi-
tions in Chinese history. They are diverse and complex traditions with
different interpretations in different times (especially in the case of Confu-
cianism), but there are continuities and commonalities and ongoing
themes in each tradition. Although the two traditions contrast with each
other at the level of philosophy, they were combined in different ways
in Chinese imperial history and some form of Legalist Confucianism
continues to be influential in the twenty-first century. In this essay, I will
identify the main traits of the Confucian and Legalist traditions and show
how they were combined in Chinese history. I hope the reader will forgive
the broad brushstrokes that simplify a complex history. My aim here is
to set the stage for the normative question: Which aspects of Legalist
Confucianism should be promoted in the future and which parts should
D. A. Bell (B)
Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong
e-mail: dabell@hku.hk

232 D. A. BELL
be consigned to the dustbin of history? I will illustrate my response with

examples from contemporary China to suggest it is both possible and
desirable to promote a form of Legalist Confucianism today and in the
foreseeable future.
Confucianism and Legalism: The Main Ideas

In terms of ideas, the two traditions radically contrast with each other.
Such differences help to explain why Han Feizi was unrelentingly hostile
to Confucianism, to the point of advocating the killing of Confucian
“vermin.” Again, both traditions are diverse and complex. But let me
draw out the main points of contrast. In the case of the Confucian tradi-
tion, I will draw mainly on the ideas of its most influential interpreters
in pre-imperial China—Kongzi, Mengzi, and Xunzi. In the case of the
Legalist tradition, I will rely mainly on the ideas of Han Feizi, who
systematized the Legalist tradition.
Conceptions of Human Nature

In the case of Confucian thinkers, humans can be improved whatever
the starting point. Kongzi thought exemplary persons (君子 junzi) can
set a good model of how to practice other-regarding morality. Mengzi
specified that we learn other-regarding morality the family which can then
be extended to the political community. He thought we have a tendency
to goodness that needs to be nourished by society. Xunzi argued that we
have a tendency to badness but that humans can be improved by means
of reading the classics and rituals that make us more sociable.
In the case of Legalist thinkers, they thought we are born selfish, base,
and untrustworthy. The family is not the sphere of love and care. In poli-
tics, the rulers need to be especially wary of family members who have
an interest in taking over our positions. Humans cannot be improved
by means of education or rituals or moral exhortation but if material
resources are plentiful it is possible to reduce competition and friction
in society.
9 LEGALIST CONFUCIANISM: WHAT’S LIVING AND WHAT’S … 233
The Ends of Politics

For Confucians, the purpose of politics is to promote the well-being of
the people.
The humane ruler should be motivated by the desire to serve the
people and should implement policies that serve that aim. If the ruler
harms or exploits the people, he is not a legitimate ruler.
For Legalists, the purpose of politics is to maintain and expand state
power even if it goes against the interests of the people. Even the ruler
may not benefit from the political system because he should not act on
his desires for fear of showing his preferences and being manipulated by
his ministers.
The Means of Politics

For Kongzi, the humane ruler rules by virtue. The ruler looks to the past
for inspiration and should set a good model for others to follow. Mengzi
argued that the ruler should also promote land reform that ensures people
are well-fed and develop caring relations among themselves. Xunzi argued
that the ruler should rely first and foremost on informal rituals that benefit
the people, with laws as a last resort.
For Legalists, the means are amoral: Whatever works to maintain and
increase state power is acceptable. The country needs a strong military
and farmers that grow food, with no room for activities that undermine
the strength of the state. Virtue at the top is ineffective. The ruler should
rely first and foremost on harsh laws to secure social order. Only fear
of punishment works, especially in times of warfare and material scarcity.
The ruler should look to the present situation for guidance of how to
strengthen the state.
The Family and the State

For Confucians, especially Kongzi and Mengzi, the first obligation is to
the family. The state should strengthen and promote family relations,
especially the virtue of filial piety. In cases of conflict, family ties should
often have priority over ties to the state.
For Legalists, the first obligation is to the state. The state should
weaken family relations if they interfere with service to the state. In war
time, the soldiers owe their obligation to the state, even if they have needy
family members at home.
234 D. A. BELL
Foreign Policy
For Confucians, the humane ruler should rely on moral example and ritual
when dealing with other state. Foreign policy should benefit both the
people in one’s state and the people in other states. Warfare and violence
should be used only as a last resort and must be morally justified.
For Legalists, the international arena is amoral. Each state pursues its
self-interest and seeks to maximize its power at the expense of other states.
International relations are a zero-sum game and aggressive warfare is fine
if it works at strengthening the state.
Notwithstanding these philosophical differences, the contrast between
Confucianism and Legalism was not so stark in Chinese history. In impe-
rial China, were often combined and Legalist Confucianism worked in
different ways in different times.
Legalist Confucianism in History

Pre-imperial China was characterized by fierce military competition
between small warring states. After the late fifth-century BCE, however,
“a synergism of the necessities of war, the power of the state, and Legalist
ideology held sway: increasingly the power of ferocious warfare favored
those states that were more instrumental in organization and action; the
warfare of ordinances imposed by the Legalists enhanced state capacity to
harness aristocratic power and exact resources from the population; and
the states that were more able to act instrumentally by more thoroughly
implementing Legalist regulations were likely to triumph in the fierce
military competition.”1 The Qin state proved to be the most efficient at
centralizing power and promoting a ruthlessly efficient military meritoc-
racy (soldiers were promoted based on the number of decapitated heads of
enemy soldiers),2 and the Qin successfully unified China under the one-
man rule of Qin Shi Huang, the self-proclaimed First Emperor of Qin.
Qin Shi Huang, however, rejected the Confucian ideal that the purpose of
1 Zhao Dingxin, The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History

(Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 13.
2 Yuri Pines, “Between Merit and Pedigree: Evolution of the Concept of ‘Elevating
the Worthy’ in Pre-imperial China,” in The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political
Meritocracy in a Comparative Context, ed. Daniel A. Bell and Chenyang Li (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 161–202.
the state is to serve the people.3 In line with Legalist thinking, Emperor
Qin Shi Huang aimed to increase state power and employed ruthlessly
efficient means for that end.4 He developed the world’s first sophisticated
bureaucracy, unified the Chinese script, and built an advanced transporta-
tion and communication system, but still went down in history as a cruel
dictator. The Qin empire lasted for only fifteen years—the shortest-lived
major dynasty in Chinese history—at least partly because it lost sight of
the state’s moral mission.
The next dynasty—the Han—found the normative solution that lasted
for nearly two thousand years. The Han dynasty was still willing to use
ruthless officials: The Book of Han even had a chapter titled “Biog-
raphy of Cruel Officials.”5 But the Han adopted the political thought
of Confucianism as the governing ideology. Emperor Wu Di adopted
Dong Zhongshu’s (179–104 BCE) interpretation of Confucian thought
to educate the people and train officials with a unified Confucian ideology.
Emperor Wu Di did not forsake the use of Legalist-style severe laws and
punishments—five out of fourteen ministers during his fifty-year reign
were executed—but he used Confucian thought to provide legitimacy for
his rule, setting the dynamic for subsequent imperial political history. As
Zhao Dingxin explains,
In the Confucian-Legalist state, the emperors accepted Confucianism

as the ruling ideology and subjected themselves to the control of a
Confucian bureaucracy, while Confucian scholars both in and out of the
bureaucracy supported the regime and supplied meritocratically selected
officials who administered the country using an amalgam of Confucian
ethics and Legalist regulations and techniques. This symbiotic relationship
between the ruling house and Confucian scholars gave birth to what is
by premodern standards a powerful political system – a system so resilient
3 Contrary to popular legend, however, Qin Shi Huang did not bury Confucian scholars
alive. Recent research suggests that the First Emperor ordered the killing of alchemists
after having found out they had fooled him (http://ulrichneininger.de/?p=461).
4 To be fair to Legalist thinking, Qin Shi Huang went beyond the dictates of Legalism
by constructing tombs of mock soldiers known today as the terracotta warriors in an
effort to secure his own immortality. Legalists would regard such expenditures (not to
mention the brutal means employed) as a waste of state expenditure.
5 Wang Pei, “Debates on Political Meritocracy in China: A Historical Perspective,”
Philosophy and Public Issues (new series) 7, no. 1 (2007), pp. 63–71.
236 D. A. BELL
and adaptive that it survived numerous challenges and persisted up until

the Republican Revolution in 1911.6
The Legalist legacy is less evident because Legalism largely disap-

peared from official discourse for nearly two thousand years—there were
no card-carrying Legalists from the Han dynasty until Mao’s invoca-
tion of Legalism in the Cultural Revolution.7 But Legalist ideas were
employed to improve the state’s capacity and ensure administrative effi-
ciency. Whatever the official rhetoric, the political system often relied on
a Legalist standard for the selection of competent public officials, namely
the selection of officials with the ability to carry out strong and effective
execution and the willingness to use brute power to solve problems
for the emperor. But the Legalists were not overly concerned with the
question of whether the aim itself was just or moral. So Confucianism
set the aim of politics—to persuade the emperor to “Rule for All” (天下
为公). Confucians favored the selection and promotion of public officials
who could grasp the moral Way (道), implement benevolent policies that
benefit the people, and protect civilians from cruel policies. The Chinese
term for political meritocracy—the selection and promotion of public
officials with above-average (Confucian-style) virtue and (Legalist-style)
ability (贤能政治 xianneng zhengzhi)—well captures the ideal of the
public official with an ability to grasp practical issues with the aim of
efficiently implementing the principle of “Rule for All” well. In reality,
however, Legalism and Confucianism often pulled in different direc-
tions. From a Legalist perspective, Confucians often selected exemplary
men who lacked the ability to deal with practical politics and efficient
administration. From a Confucian perspective, Legalists often selected
capable villains with no desire for justice or morality. Legalists deferred
to the emperor’s wishes as the final court of appeal, whereas Confucians
relied on the moral Way to evaluate the status quo and, if needed, to
admonish the emperor who implemented immoral policies. Legalists
cynically dismissed the possibility of morality and criticized Confucians
as hypocrites who sowed political chaos, whereas Confucians doubted
6 Zhao, The Confucian-Legalist State, p. 14.

7 Mao’s invocation of Legalism was invoked to criticize Confucianism, but a genuine
commitment to Legalism would have translated into a commitment to political meritocracy
based on ability rather than virtue (yet, the opposite was true in the Cultural Revolution
that valued “red over expert”).
that a political system could survive for long without a moral foundation.
This kind of dynamic between Confucianism and Legalism, as we will
see, continues to influence Chinese politics today.
Whatever its internal tensions, the Legalist Confucian ideal of polit-
ical meritocracy not only informed Chinese politics for over 2000 years,
surprisingly, it has also inspired political reform in China over the last
four decades or so. A typical trope in the Western media is that there
has been substantial economic reform in China, but no political reform.
But that’s because electoral democracy at the top is viewed as the only
standard for what counts as political reform. If we set aside this dogma,
it’s obvious that the Chinese political system has undergone substantial
political reform over the last few decades and the main differences that
there has been a serious effort to (re)establish political meritocracy. Again,
political meritocracy is the ideal that the political system should aim to
select and promote public officials with superior ability and virtue. And
the best way to realize this ideal is a complex bureaucratic system that
puts public officials through a decades-long process of political educa-
tion, with the result that only public officials with a proven track record
of superior ability and commitment to serving the political community
reach the highest level of government. Political meritocracy was largely
abandoned, as well as fiercely criticized, in the Maoist period, culminating
in the Cultural Revolution that favored “red over expert.” In practice, it
meant downgrading the importance of ability and experience for public
officials and destroying the bureaucratic system that was supposed to
select and promote officials with experience and ability.8 But the ideal of
8 The Maoist ideal was to select and promote officials almost exclusively according
to virtue, as measured by revolutionary energy and commitment to Mao himself. If one
defines political meritocracy solely as the ideal that the political system should aim to select
virtuous public officials, the Maoist ideal can be seen as a form of political meritocracy.
In most of Chinese history, however, political meritocracy meant that public officials need
to be selected according to both ability and virtue along with the institutional implication
that a complex bureaucratic system should be put in place that increases the likelihood
such officials make it through the system. Given that the Maoist ideal lacked two out
of these three elements of political meritocracy, I do not think the Maoist ideal should
be regarded as a species of the ideal of political meritocracy. Another key difference is
that traditional Confucians emphasized that public officials should be committed to the
moral Way rather than the status quo or the preferences of rulers, hence, virtuous public
officials should express and exercise their own moral judgment when it comes to how
best to serve the people. So even if we limit the definition of political meritocracy to rule
by virtuous public officials, the Maoist ideal should be seen as a perversion of the ideal.
238 D. A. BELL
political meritocracy, along with its institutional manifestation in the form

of a complex bureaucratic system, has been revived since the late 1970s.
The country was primed for rule at the top by meritocratically selected
officials following a disastrous experience with radical populism and arbi-
trary dictatorship in the Cultural Revolution, and China’s leaders could
reestablish elements of its meritocratic tradition, such as the selection of
leaders based on examination and promotion based on performance eval-
uations at lower levels of government—almost the same system, in form
(but not content) that shaped the political system in much of Chinese
imperial history—without much controversy. And since then, political
meritocracy has inspired political reform at higher levels of government,
with more emphasis on education, examinations, and political experience
at lower levels of government. There remains a large gap between the
ideal and the practice, but the underlying motivation for political reform
is still the ideal of political meritocracy.9
What’s Living and What’s

Dead in Legalist Confucianism
I am generally sympathetic with the effort to revive Confucianism.10 But
I think Legalism is not completely dead from a normative standpoint.
Parts of the tradition can and should be incorporated with the Confu-
cian tradition. Let me first discuss what’s dead about Legalism and then
I will discuss which parts are living and compatible with the Confucian
9 In my book The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), chapter 3, I discuss in detail what political
merit means in China’s post-reform era: Ability refers to both IQ and EQ and virtue refers
to the motivation to serve the political community (the opposite of virtue is corruption,
i.e., using public resources for one’s own private interests). I discuss and evaluate various
ways of assessing these three standards of political merit designed to minimize the gap
between the ideal and the reality. I also argue that EQ, IQ, and virtue are all important,
but they should be valued differently in different times in a large, relatively undeveloped
country like China that seeks to modernize: Ability in the sense of EQ should matter
more in the early days of reform when the emphasis is mainly on poverty alleviation
and public officials need lots of good connections to get things done, virtue should be
prioritized when corruption poses an existential threat to the political system, and ability
in the sense of IQ should matter more once the country confronts many problems that
require scientifically-informed solutions.
10 See my book China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing
Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
ideal that the purpose of the state is to serve the people. I will end with
some examples of manifestations of Legalist Confucianism in contempo-
rary China to suggest that the ideal is both feasible and desirable today
and for the foreseeable future.
What’s Dead
The Legalist idea that people are permanently selfish. This idea has been
soundly debunked by social science studies that show that most people,
except for a tiny minority of sociopaths (like Han Feizi?), have a moral
conscience and an innate capacity to empathize with the suffering of
others.11 Things can go wrong in cases of extreme material scarcity and
harmful forms of education, but the tendency to goodness can and should
be nourished by appropriate social institutions.
The Legalist idea that the end of politics is to build a strong state. The
purpose of politics is to serve the people: A principle endorsed not just
by Confucians but by most of the world’s great ethical and political tradi-
tions. If the state does not serve the people—e.g., a strong totalitarian
state that brainwashes the people and leaves no room for freedom—it
should be resisted. And Confucian language should not be used to justify
Legalist-inspired policies that oppress the people.
The Legalist idea that states should pursue ruthlessly self-interested
foreign policies, including aggressive warfare. Unjust war needs to be
opposed, even if it is (temporarily?) successful. Today, we face common
global challenges such as climate change and pandemics and the need
to regulate weapons of mass destruction that Han Feizi could not have
imagined in his own day. States should work together to overcome these
challenges, even if it imposes a certain cost on political communities today.
What’s Living
The Legalist idea that we should not rely too much on the good will and
altruism of public officials. Even, if they are partly motivated by the desire
to serve the people, the power of public officials needs to be checked by
such Legalist-style practices as assigning public officials outside of their
11 For evidence from neuroscience in favor of Mencius’s view of human nature, see
Edward Slingerland, Trying Not To Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity (New York:
Crown, 2004), p. 117.
240 D. A. BELL
home towns to reduce the likelihood of nepotism and corruption. In

special circumstances such as morally justified warfare, the public interest
needs to have priority of Confucian-style commitments to the family.
The Legalist idea that laws should treat everyone equally regardless
of social status or family background, as well as the Legalist idea that
laws need to be publicly disseminated and easy to understand by ordinary
people. Confucian-style rituals can have an educative function, but so can
laws, especially in modern societies. If laws are too complicated or vague
they will not be effective.12
The Legalist idea that harsh punishments and constraints on freedom
may be necessary to deal with social chaos (such as civil war) or emergen-
cies (such as pandemics). But the government (and the people) need to
be clear that harsh measures are only short term and should be repealed
once normal (less chaotic) times resume again.
The point of normative political theorizing is to provide a standard to
evaluate the status quo and to provide guidance for improvements. Still,
we need to recognize that utopian political theorizing can be useless or
even counter-productive if it can’t be realized in practice. So let me point
to three examples of morally desirable forms of Legalist Confucianism
in contemporary China. The examples may be somewhat idealized, but
they are sufficiently embedded in social reality to alleviate the worry that
Legalist Confucianism cannot be realized in any morally desirable form in
modern-day society.
Examples of Legalist Confucianism in Contemporary China

I regret to report that there are plenty of examples of perverse forms of
Legalist Confucianism in contemporary China. The treatment of some
minority groups, for example, often relies on harsh Legalist-style repres-
sion that is difficult to justify even as policies meant to maximize the
long-term good of those people affected. But I’d like to point to three
examples of Legalist Confucianism that come close to realizing the
morally desirable form of this ideal in contemporary society.
12 See Kenneth Winston, “The Internal Morality of Chinese Legalism,” Singapore

Journal of Legal Studies (December 2005), pp. 313–347.
The Problem of Drunk Driving13

About fifteen years ago, nobody in China openly defended the practice
of drunk driving. At some level, people knew it was bad. But it was still
common to drive after a few drinks. It would have been almost rude not
to serve fiery white liquor (白酒 bai jiu) to guests in Chinese restaurants;
and the stronger the better, with 53% alcohol percentage preferred to the
measly 38%. Drunk drivers would head back home, with predictably disas-
trous consequences. Alarmed by data that showed at least 20% of serious
road crashes were alcohol related, the Chinese government decided to
crack down on drunk driving. Educational campaigns meant to change
people’s selfish habits clearly had no effect. Almost overnight, the author-
ities set up frequent random sobriety checks. At first, the penalties were
not so harsh: Drivers were fined and not permitted to drive for three
months. That didn’t work much either. Then punishments were increased
to compulsory jail time for first offenders with zero tolerance of any
alcohol and an automatic six-month driving ban, followed by a need to
retake a driving course and pass practical and written exams for those
who planned to drive again. Fear worked. Eventually, things loosened up.
Attitudes changed, and drinking and driving became universally frowned
upon. Death rates caused by drunk drivers plunged nationwide,14 and
random checks, now few and far between, have become almost super-
fluous. Gone are the days when drivers would feel pressure to drink
alcohol in restaurants; and when they do drink, sober friends offer to
drive them home, and if that’s not possible, drunk drivers call the services
of paid drivers who wait outside restaurants with tiny bicycles that can be
folded into car trunks.
In short, the government tried to tame bad behavior by means of
Confucian-style education and ritual, and when that didn’t work, it tried
Legalist-style harsh punishments to enforce norms that people knew,
deep down, had social benefits. Eventually, the punishments closed the
gap between the norm and the practice and the government could rely
mainly on moral self-regulation instead of harsh punishment, but without
13 This discussion draws on 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. 80–81.
14 See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033350616304139 and
Wang Qian and Zhang Yan, “Drunken Driving Crashes, Injuries Declining,” China Daily,
October 10, 2014.
242 D. A. BELL
completely doing away with laws that serve as last resort checks on selfish
and dangerous behavior. More or less as Legalist Confucians would have
recommended: Best to rely on informal means of regulation that trans-
form bad behavior, and if that doesn’t work, use the strong arm of the
law.15
COVID-19 Control in China16

The COVID-19 scare started in Wuhan, China and the local government,
to say the least, did not handle matters well. After the initial debacle
in Wuhan, there was massive, top-down mobilization of state power to
contain the coronavirus epidemic. Once, the central government gave
clear directives in late January 2020, the whole country was put under
full or semi quarantine; each level of government strictly followed orders
to prioritize fighting the disease. The latest technology was put to use,
with hardly any concern for privacy or individual autonomy.
Such strong measures helped to contain the spread of the virus in
China within a few weeks. But Legalist-inspired draconian means cannot
fully explain success. The Confucian tradition also played an important
15 A similar story of “先礼后兵 xian li hou bing ” can be told of those who ignored
speed limits. The educational efforts in driving schools and elsewhere to make drivers obey
rules of the road had little effect. The government then decided to use traffic cameras that
fined drivers, with little room for discretion. That eventually worked to change driving
practices. Today, the cameras have less effect because almost every car has a GPS (导航)
that warns drivers of the presence of cameras, but still, most drivers have internalized the
need to obey speed limits without being forced to do so. The point here is not that
harsh laws per se can transform attitudes and actions. The fear of harsh punishment in
the short term can help to transform inner morality in the long term only if the initial
fear of punishment builds on a commonly held social value that is already internalized by
means of education and informal rituals (people knew that drunk driving and speeding
was bad, but such norms only affected behavior and became viewed as truly bad after they
were backed up by harsh punishments for violations). Regarding other rules of the road,
there is still need for progress. The government carries out public campaigns to promote
civility by means of signs on major roads with the characters “礼让 li rang,” which can
be translated as “ritual and deference.” It’s still quite rare, however, for drivers to show
civility by letting pedestrians proceed first in cases of conflict: The powerful cars usually
prevail and pedestrian crossways have little effect. Once the government issues strict fines
for incivility, it might help to improve things, and once civility will become second nature,
the government will no longer need to rigorously enforce the law.
16 This section draws on the new preface to the paperback edition of Bell and Wang,
Just Hierarchy.
role. Dutiful citizens largely complied with the constraints on privacy

and freedom because they had Confucian-style faith that the government
was acting in their best interests. Most Chinese love nothing better than
socializing in restaurants and parks and traveling at home and abroad (in
2019, 169.2 million Chinese traveled overseas, mainly as private tourists).
On this basis alone, we can safely assume that they would have been
unlikely to comply if they had thought such totalitarian controls on
everyday life were supposed to be permanent.
More specific Confucian values also contributed to success. Filial piety,
or reverence for the elderly, helps explain why East Asian countries took
such strong measures to protect people from a disease that is particu-
larly dangerous for the elderly (within families, adult children often wore
masks and asked children to do so to protect elderly relatives). Also, East
Asian countries’ relatively distant greeting practices such as bowing helped
minimize contagion when compared with, for example, the kissing and
hugging common in Italy, Spain, and France.
Perhaps most important, Confucian-inspired respect for expertise,
which is widely shared in East Asian countries, also increased the effec-
tiveness of scientifically-informed policies. In China’s case, when eighty-
two-year-old Dr. Zhong Nanshan, famous for leading the fight against
SARS, warned of the severity of the coronavirus on January 20, 2020,
the country listened and prepared for the worst. Such modern-day junzi
(exemplary persons) command great authority: They are trusted to use
their expertise to serve the common good. In countries like the United
States, which have a more anti-elitist ethos, conscientious experts do not
exert the same level of social influence. Dr. Fauci is perhaps more admired
in China than in the United States.
In short, Legalist top-down mobilization of state power, combined
by Confucian-inspired values such as trust in conscientious experts,
respect for the elderly, and distant greeting practices, help to explain
China’s success for two years after the debacle in Wuhan. That said, the
government failed to contain the more contagious Omicron variant in
2022 and eventually it was forced to exit somewhat chaotically from zero-
Covid, which may undermine trust in experts and govermental policies in
the future. Still, if the rest of the world had followed China’s approach,
244 D. A. BELL
we would be dealing with an epidemic that killed thousands rather than

millions.17
The Anti-Corruption Drive18

The anti-corruption drive is a more controversial example and it remains
to be seen if it will be successful in the long term. The means employed
owe much to the Legalist tradition. In conversation with public officials,
including high-ranking leaders, the language of Legalism is frequently
invoked to justify the anti-corruption drive. It has worked, at least in the
short term. When Xi Jinping assumed the presidency in 2012, corrup-
tion had reached a tipping point and Xi made combating corruption the
government’s top priority. The government launched what has turned
out to be the longest and most systematic anti-corruption campaign in
Communist Party history. As of 2018, more than one million officials
have been punished for corruption, including a dozen high-ranking mili-
tary officers, several senior executives of state-owned companies, and
five national leaders. Cynical observers claim that the whole thing is
a means of going after political enemies, but what distinguishes this
anti-corruption drive from previous ones is that it also creates many polit-
ical enemies, which seems irrational from the point of view of political
self-preservation.
Whatever the motivation, the effect is clear: The anti-corruption drive
has worked. Anybody who has dealt with public officials has noticed the
changes. Corruption practices are now almost universally frowned upon.
The profits of companies are up because there’s no longer a need to
pay extras to public officials. Ordinary citizens perceive the system as less
unfair because it’s now possible to access public services without paying
bribes and gifts to bureaucrats. Most surprising, the anti-corruption drive
has been successful without the mechanisms designed to limit abuses
of power in liberal democracies: competitive elections, a free press, and
independent anti-corruption agencies. China’s Leninist-inspired political
system rules out such mechanisms and allows for abuses such as indefinite
detention without trial.
17 In the case of Hong Kong, the COVID-19 calamity in early 2022 can be explained
at least partly because the city did not have the resources to mount a Legalist-style attack
on COVID-19 and the people lacked Confucian-style trust in the government.
18 This section draws on Bell and Wang, Just Hierarchy, pp. 81–84.
But the downsides of excessive Legalism are evident. It is not just that
public officials think twice before engaging in corrupt practices. They
think almost all the time about what can go wrong, to the point that
decision-making has become virtually paralyzed. The procedures for using
public funds have become bafflingly complex and punitive, and it’s safer
not to spend money. The costs are huge, and growing. China’s success
over the past four decades is partly explained by the fact that govern-
ment officials were encouraged to experiment and innovate, thus helping
to propel China’s reforms. But ultra-cautious behavior from the govern-
ment means that innovative officials won’t get promoted and problems
won’t get fixed.19
Equally serious, the anti-corruption drive has created huge numbers of
political enemies who may be cheering for the downfall of the leaders, if
not the whole political system. For every high-level public official brought
down by the anti-corruption drive, there may be dozens of allies and
subordinates who lose their prospects of mobility in an ultracompetitive,
decades-long race to the apex of political power. The “losers” in the anti-
corruption drive blame China’s rulers for their predicament. These real
enemies make the leaders even more paranoid than usual and lead the
government to ramp up censorship and further curb civil and political
rights. So it isn’t just the political outcasts who feel estranged from the
system but also intellectuals and artists, who object to curbs on what they
do, as well as business people who worry about political stability and flee
abroad with their assets.
With yet more social dissatisfaction among elites, leaders further clamp
down on real and potential dissent. Knowing that their enemies are
waiting to pounce, the current leaders are even less likely to give up power
(elderly leaders may not worry so much about their own fate because
they will soon “visit Karl Marx,” but they worry about children and
family members). So it’s a vicious circle of Legalist means and political
repression. Ironically, the most efficient and effective drive to limit abuses
of power in recent Chinese history (in the form of the anti-corruption
campaign) may also have led the leaders of the campaign to remove the
19 For an empirically informed argument that the anti-corruption drive has a deterrence
effect that lowers the average ability of newly recruited bureaucrats, see https://www.
cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/price-of-probity-
anticorruption-and-adverse-selection-in-the-chinese-bureaucracy/5CF35E3428FEE88814
270F861360D3B8.
246 D. A. BELL
most important constraint on their own power (in the form of term and
age limits).
In retrospect, it may have been a mistake to rely almost exclusively
on Legalist means to combat corruption. Legalism can bring short-term
political success, but it can also lead to long-term doom, similar to the
fate of the Qin dynasty. Chinese history does point to other possibilities,
including amnesties for corrupt officials. As the current anti-corruption
drive was getting under way, reformers argued that a general amnesty
be granted to all corrupt officials, with serious policing of the boundaries
between private and public, and resources provided to allow them to start
afresh. To deal with the买官 mai guan [buying of government posts]
problem, public posts could have been distributed by lot once officials
pass a certain level of qualification, as was done under Emperor Wanli.
But it’s too late to start over.
What can be done is to wind down the anti-corruption drive. Wang
Qishan—who led the anti-corruption drive—said that the anti-corruption
drive will need to move from an initial deterrent stage to a point where
the idea of acting corruptly would not even occur to officials as they went
about their business. The next stage can’t rely first and foremost on fear
of punishment. It must rely on measures that reduce the incentive for
corruption, including higher salaries for public officials and more clear
separation of economic and political power. It also matters what officials
do when nobody is looking: Moral education in the Confucian classics
can help to change mindsets in the long term. The central authorities
should put more trust in talented public officials with good track records
of serving the public. At the end of the day, however, the best long-term
solution for corrupt behavior is Confucian-style moral self-regulation on
the part of public officials.
Concluding Thought
The reader may be left wondering if Legalist Confucianism is distinc-
tive to China or if it can be exported to other contexts. There may be
some lessons for other East Asian countries such as South Korea that
have a long history of Legalist Confucianism and its institutional manifes-
tation in the form of a complex bureaucratic system designed to select and
promote public officials.20 But countries that lack this history and polit-
ical culture will not be inspired by the tradition of Legalist Confucianism
and its contemporary manifestations. If people outside of East Asia do
not rank Confucian values such as respect for conscientious public offi-
cials very highly or if the judicial system does not allow for the possibility
that civil liberties can be curbed even in short term responses to emer-
gencies, then we just need to accept that different countries and societies
will rely on different means to resolve urgent problems.
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CHAPTER 10
The Minben Meritocratic State’s Impact

on Contemporary Political Culture
Zhengxu Wang
The premodern Chinese state that existed in China between 221 BC and
1911 AD could not but left a large number of legacies that are still signif-
icantly shaping politics and society in China today. Specifically, its belief
in the search of a people-rooted meritocratic government has endured.
This belief system continues to reproduce itself in political and literary
texts, public discourses, and policy and political debates. Therefore, this
belief system remains a vibrant factor affecting the public’s political beliefs
and attitudes. The study of political psychology of the public, i.e. polit-
ical culture, therefore, must take this into account. Examining patterns
of political trust in China, this chapter provides a case study of how the
contemporary public’s political attitudes are shaped by this belief system
inherited from the premodern Chinese state.
Z. Wang (B)
China

250 Z. WANG
I refer to this premodern Chinese state as a minben-(people-rooted)

meritocratic state, and its belief and value system as the minben-
meritocratic belief system. This chapter will show how a theory of political
culture that puts the minben-meritocratic beliefs at the center holds
stronger explanatory power to two main patterns of political trust in
China, i.e. how and why the Chinese public show such a high level of trust
in their government, especially the central/national government, and why
they trust different levels of government differently.
The chapter firstly looks at the main theoretical and empirical puzzles
currently faced by the study of political trust of the Chinese public. Next,
it puts forward a minben-meritocratic “theory” of political culture—
theory defined as a set of propositions that predict empirical findings.
The empirical part will demonstrate how this theory shows explana-
tory power regarding political trust in China. The analysis finds that a
minben-meritocratic political culture theory can explain the main empir-
ical findings in China’s political trust research—namely China’s sustained
high level of political trust and the phenomenon of hierarchical political
trust. At the same time, this theory can better accommodate the empirical
phenomenon that it cannot explain—that is, the phenomenon of a certain
degree of decline in the level of political trust in China during the past
two decades. In both regards, it outperforms the conventional liberal-
democratic theories of cultural changes such as postmaterialism theory
and the “critical citizens” thesis. This is followed by some discussion.
Studying Political Trust in China

David Easton first began the study of political support as an important
element of the “input” side of a political system (Easton, 1965). He
distinguished political support into diffuse political support and specific
political support (Easton, 1975). Political trust, that is, citizens’ general
trust in the government, represents a kind of diffuse political support,
while specific political support regards support for specific government
agencies and government personnel, including politicians and leaders.
Later studies generally treat political trust as a specific kind of political
support, distinguishing it from citizens’ support for the polity and polity
principles (Norris, 1999). Political trust has become one of the most
important concepts in the study of political support.
The interest in political trust grew with a sense of urgency as a
number of Western democracies were showing quickly decreasing trust
10 THE MINBEN MERITOCRATIC STATE’S IMPACT … 251
in government. In the context of the competition between the Western

“democratic” regime and the Soviet-led socialist camp as the Cold War
went on, an important topic in Western academic circles is how democ-
racy emerges and continues. Lipset’s (1959) path-setting study of the
“social requisites” of democracy represents a typical case in searching for
factors contributing to the forming and endurance of democracy. In this
context, political scientists argued that public trust in government institu-
tions and support for democratic polities—that is, the public legitimacy of
a polity—is necessary for the continuation of democracy. Survey results of
low political trust in Western countries in the 1970s led to the alarming
call of “democratic crisis” (Crozier et al., 1975). Afterward, political trust
became an important subject of empirical research (see, e.g., Dalton,
2004; Norris, 1999).
After more than 30 years of research, scholars recognized that political
trust in Western countries is generally low. Regarding the consequences
of low political trust in the long run, however, no serious findings
have emerged (van de Meer, 2017). In other words, whether the long
existing low level of political trust represents a crisis of democracy or
not, the findings are still inconclusive. Meanwhile, studies of political
trust in developing countries have also multiplied, with Chinese scholars
also bringing the subject into the study of the Chinese public’s political
attitude and political culture in this context.
The level of political trust is usually believed to be determined through
either institutional or cultural mechanisms, which are also respectively
referred to as “endogenous” and “exogenous” factors that shape the level
of political trust (Mishler & Rose, 2001). One of the earliest pieces of
research pointed to traditional Chinese political culture as a key vari-
able affecting political trust in China (Shi, 2001). This can be regarded
as an “exogenous” or culturalist interpretation. It was also found that
media consumption negatively affects the level of political trust in China
(Chen & Shi, 2001), which amounts to an “endogenous” or institu-
tional explanation. Analyzing a 2001 dataset, I compared the influence
of cultural or value variables and institutional variables on political trust
in China, and found that institutional variables had a greater impact
on China’s political trust than cultural variables (Wang, 2005a). The
decreasing effect of socioeconomic modernization on political trust, as
expected by Inglehart’s (1990) theory of postmaterialism, was not in
operation in the Chinese society at that time (i.e. the year 2001 when the
data was collected). Li Lianjiang (2004) identified the hierarchical nature
252 Z. WANG
of political trust among rural residents in China, and attributed the varia-
tion in the level of political trust to institutional factors, i.e. government’s
performance. The hierarchical nature of political trust in China (Li, 2004;
Wang, 2005b), that is, residents hold the highest trust in the central
government, followed by the provincial government, and the prefecture,
county, and township governments, would become a notable puzzle for
more work to tackle later on.
In addition to studying political trust as a general concept, a very useful
pathway is to desegregate the concept, and operationalize it into various
“dimensions” of trust. Through in-depth interviews with residents who
have petitioned for a long time, Li Lianjiang (2013) found that their trust
in the government should at least be divided into two dimensions: trust in
government’s intention vis-à-vis its capability. Li found that, oftentimes,
even when people have lost trust in the government’s actual ability to
deliver the promised goods or policy implementation, they may still trust
the government’s good intention in serving the people’s interests. Simi-
larly, Li Yanxia (2014) conceptualizes trust as constituting a cognitive
process of “A trusts B to be able to do X.” This way, whether people
trust the government as being willing or prepared to serve the people’s
interests form a kind of “intention-based” trust; and whether they trust
the government as having the ability to serve the people’s interests forms
a “capability-based” trust. Capability-based trust includes trust in govern-
ment efficiency and its ability, while intention-based trust includes trust
in the government’s “democraticness,” integrity, and fairness.
Xiao Tangbiao and Zhao Hongyue (2019) argue that political trust
should be separated into four dimensions, namely to evaluate whether
the government (1) is a “good government that sincerely serves the
people,” (2) is a “determined” government that upholds justice for the
people, (3) is a “capable” government with the ability needed for solving
problems, (4) is an “learner” government that understands social condi-
tions and the actual situation of the people. Therefore, political trust has
four dimensions, trust in the intention, determination, capability, and the
learning ability of the government. Meng Tianguang (2014) distinguishes
the central government’s major organs as the “symbolic” state, as a class
of objects of political trust, while the police, the civil service, and local
governments are as the “implementer” state. This is a similar conceptual
differentiation I used earlier to distinguish the central government and
the Party’s “Center” as the “imagined state” and the local government,
the civil service, as well as the police, among others, as the “real state”
(Wang, 2005b).
In any case, by early 2000s, research on political trust in China (others
include Chen, 2004, etc.) resulted in four main findings: (1) the level of
political trust in China is high; (2) government performance positively
affects the level of political trust, i.e. this high-level trust comes largely
from government performance; (3) traditional culture and values posi-
tively affect the level of political trust; (4) residents’ trust in governments
at all levels are hierarchical—they trust the central government the most,
and trust lower level governments much less. The subsequent studies on
China’s political trust have expanded, and either re-confirmed the exis-
tence of these four patterns or attempted to identify the factors that lead
to them. This small field of studying political trust in China has, indeed,
resulted in very rich results and a group of outstanding scholars. Espe-
cially, what is not often available to the English-language literature are a
large number of empirical studies of political trust produced by scholars
in China, published in Chinese (some referred to above). Political trust
research has thus become a “cottage industry” in empirical research of
Chinese politics.
A Minben-Meritocratic
Theory of Political Culture
To have a discussion on Chinese people’s political trust, and polit-
ical attitudes more generally, it is important to put forward two basic
understandings. First, the values and beliefs formed and lasted during
premodern China still have profound impacts today. The main compo-
nents of premodern China’s belief system mostly originated during the
800-year Zhou period, and were greatly formalized during the Qin-Han
period (Zhao, 2015). It certainly went through revisions and changes
during the period between the Qin-Han (221BC-220AD) and the Qing
(1636–1911), but its duration and renewal were even more striking, and
have continued into the contemporary times.
Second, the political ideas and beliefs taking roots in the Qin-Han
period and continued beyond the Republic Revolution of 1911 formed
a unified and coherent belief/ideological system. This chapter refers to
this belief system as the combination of minbenism and meritocracy. A
comprehensive overview of Chinese and Western political values is beyond
the scope of this chapter. To examine how a minben-meritocratic value
254 Z. WANG
system shapes the Chinese public’s perception of state-society relation-

ship, however, it is possible to look at how patterns of political trust in
China can be attributed to the minben-meritocratic value system.
Until today, empirical study of political culture is still continuing the
civic culture tradition beginning from Almond and Verba (1963). Ronald
Inglehart’s postmaterialist theory (1990, 1997) and Pippa Norris’ “Crit-
ical Citizenship” thesis (1999) take postmaterialism or self-expression
values as a key explanatory variable of political trust—the rise of a post-
materialist public is believed to lead to a more assertive political culture,
and citizens will increasingly distrust the government and any agents
of authority in general. It becomes an important paradigm that shapes
the study of political trust in China. Since the 1980s, as China was
going through rapid socioeconomic modernization, postmaterialist, self-
expressive, or pro-democratic values were expected to rise, which were
expected to reduce or weaken the level of political trust, and also brought
about the emergence of “critical citizens” in Chinese society (Wang &
You, 2016).
But this theoretical formulation is closely tied to the study of (Western-
style) democracy. When studying political culture, scholars are mostly
concerned with what kind of political culture is conducive to the estab-
lishment, consolidation, and performance of the political system that is
called “democracy” in American and Western European political science.
Almond and Verba (1963) identified such a democracy-supporting
culture as a mixed form of “civic culture,” Inkeles and Smith (1974) link
“individual modernity” to modern society of the Western democracies,
and Putnam (1993) believes a culture of connectedness, solidarity and
reciprocity, among others, makes that political system (democracy) work.
The works of Lucian Pye and a few cultural scholars (e.g., Harrison &
Huntington, 2000) and others represent the other side of the same coin,
i.e. they are concerned with determining what kind of political culture
cannot provide the soil for democratic politics. Harrison and Hunting-
ton’s co-edited volume analyzes how the political culture of some parts
of the world are not conducive to economic and social modernization and
democratic politics, while the Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis
believes that non-Western and Western values and institutions (and inter-
ests) are irreconcilable. It is also common to classify the political culture of
regions outside North America and Western Europe as “traditional” and
“authoritarian,” which is equal to labeling these regions as not (at least
not yet) modern nor democratic (see Welzel et al., 2003). One cannot
help but realize more than a dose of Western centrism in such arguments.
Inglehart’s study of political culture was further developed into a study
of the evolution of political institutions. Many of his works demon-
strate that economic and social modernization will bring about political
democratization (i.e. establishment of American-Western European type
of political systems) by changing people’s political concepts and atti-
tudes (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005). The difference between Inglehart’s
theory and the conventional modernization theory (e.g., Lipset, 1959;
Prezworski & Limongi, 1997; Boix & Stoke, 2003) is that Inglehart’s
cultural theory of modernization (Inglehart, 1997) and human devel-
opment (Inglehart & Welzel 2005) take the change of people’s values
as a bridge or mechanism between economic development and polit-
ical democracy. For a “non-democratic” polity—that is, a political system
without multi-party elections—the Inglehartian theory naturally points to
the inevitable relationship between economic development and a decline
in the public’s support/political trust for the regime, before the public
eventually toppling the regime and turning it into a democracy (Welzel
& Inglehart, 2005). I call this a new modernization theory—economic
and social modernization brings changes in political values, and further
promotes the “democratic transition” as prescribed by the conventional
modernization theory.
The study of political culture as public beliefs and attitudes starting,
i.e. from Sidney and Verba (1963) to Norris (1999) and Inglehart
and Welzel (2005), has collectively resulted in what I refer to as the
“liberal-democratic theory” of political culture. The main characteristics
or the “ethos” of such a “theory” or paradigm consist of several themes
or assumptions. These include (1) political culture or a public’s belief
system is supposedly to evolve toward a situation where it helps with
the well-functioning of liberal democracy; (2) for people living under
a non-democratic regime (according to Western definition), they are
expected to acquire pro-democratic values and are expected to challenge
that non-democratic political system. Regarding political trust in China,
such a theory would predict two patterns. First, the level of political
trust in China, a non-democratic polity as defined by Western political
science standards, cannot be high, as non-democratic polities should not
enjoy popular support at all. Second, whatever the level of political trust
in China, with a sustained period of socioeconomic modernization, we
should see its decline taking place. But these two predicted patterns, so
256 Z. WANG
far, have not appeared in China: the level of political trust is high in China,
and has remained high for the last twenty years, during which time rapid
socioeconomic modernization has taken place. Furthermore, these liberal-
democratic theories of political culture cannot speak to the hierarchical
nature of political trust in China—no study has used any of these theories
to explain why Chinese people trust their central government more than
they do their provincial government, for example.
A Minben-Meritocratic Theory of Political Culture

This is not the place to engage in a debate regarding the Western-centrist
nature of the liberal-democratic theoretical tradition from Almond and
Verba’s (1963) civic culture thesis to Inglehart (1990, 1997) and Norris’
(1999) theories of postmaterialism, self-expression values, and critical citi-
zenship. Suffice to say that scholars arguing multiple modernities (Tu,
2000), indigenous psychology (Yang, 1996), and Confucian modernity
(Chan, 2015), among others, show that a different understanding of
modernity as well as democracy can be possible. In empirical research,
Shi Tianjian has repeatedly found that the higher level of political trust in
China is affected by cultural norms and values of Chinese society. He
(Shi, 2001) further proposes a general theory, arguing that the polit-
ical culture of a society is mainly determined by two dimensions of
values or norms, that is, a person’s understanding of the relation between
him/herself and the authority, and his/her definition of self-interest. Shi
Tianjian believes that Chinese political values emphasize the hierarchical
positioning of power or authority, which is different from the reciprocal
positioning between individuals and power in Western society. With such
deep-seated values and norms, Chinese residents tend to trust and obey
the government in their attitudes. At the same time, they pay less atten-
tion to examining government’s procedures or institutions, but judge the
government according to its policies and performance. Chu discovered
earlier that the Chinese government and political system have a high
degree of trust and legitimacy in the eyes of the public, and the reason for
this is the important “people-rooted” beliefs, i.e. minbenism of Chinese
people.
The ideas, theories, and institutional designs of the minben-
meritocratic state originated during the Spring and Autumn and Warring
States period (722–221BC), and became a unified guiding ideology
within the territory of the unified Qin and Han dynasties. The main
parts of minben-meritocratic beliefs originated from the various philo-

sophical schools active during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States
periods. The Confucianists argued for a government of people-rootedness
(minben) and respecting virtue and talent (zunxian). The Legalists’ state-
making proposal emphasized rewarding performance and promoting the
competent (luyougong, shiyouneng ), and the Mohists also argued for
“distinguishing those with virtue and talent (shangxian).” The core of
minben-meritocracy is legitimation of the state according to the minben
and meritocracy beliefs. Minben takes the people as sole origin or root of
state power, whereas meritocracy in the form of zunxian and shangxian
places the responsibility of government on people with the quality in
terms of virtue and talent (Bai, 2013). Therefore, minben and meritoc-
racy make up a two-part legitimation requirement for the state, involving
the state’s obligation to deliver governance for the people and for state
power to be exercised by those with virtue and talent.
This two-part understanding of minben-meritocracy is important, as
many people tend to see the premodern Chinese state through more
narrowly meritocratic perspective. The imperial examination system of
selecting literati-officials and the imperial bureaucracy that promoted and
rotated officials according to their performance, of course, easily fit into
a meritocracy ideal type. Yet, what is often overlooked is the “merit” part
of the examination, assessment, and evaluation of the examinees and offi-
cials included a strong emphasis on their “minben” virtue, i.e. whether
they demonstrate the belief in the people-rooted nature of state power
and the state’s obligations of delivering good governance for the people.
The study of Confucian cannons such as Confucius’ Analects, historical
accounts as well as past official-writers’ essays, poems, and treaties all serve
such a purpose. The system, therefore, was designed and practiced with
the purpose to ensure government is made up or/and run by people of
both virtue and talent, where virtue is defined as the genuine belief and
intention of using power for the good of the people (i.e. public good).
In this sense, the minben-meritocratic polity is vastly different from
liberal democracy in which the selection of government leaders is gener-
ally legitimated through the “one person, one vote” electoral norm.
On the one hand, anyone with sufficient “virtue” and “ability” can be
selected for the role of national governance. This norm is most clearly
manifested in Mencius’ argument that “anyone can be a sage king like
Yao and Shun,” and reflects the strong belief in political equality and
the belief in the value of any person. On the other hand, Confucius,
258 Z. WANG
Mencius, etc. emphasized the governing responsibility of gentlemen,

scholars, and sages. The literati-officials were indeed a political class within
the premodern East Asia society, whereas “ordinary” people, the illiterate
commoners were neither responsible for state affairs, nor should they play
too big a role in governance affairs beyond their household and locality.
Compared with liberal democracy’s stipulations on the rights of ordi-
nary citizens to participate in politics, meritocracy in fact opposes formal
equality (Bai, 2020). Instead, it recognizes differences in talent and virtue
and the resulting differences in political responsibilities (and rights).
While minben-meritocracy bases its claim of legitimacy on making
political power to serve the well-being and needs of the people, the
state’s reading of people’s hearts or needs is achieved through ways
highly different from what are referred to as “interest aggregation” in the
contemporary political science discipline (Pan, 2009). The state’s reading
of the people’s needs and formulating policy responses is especially
different from the contemporary ideas of “interest articulation,” “political
participation,” “political representation,” and “responsive government”
as discussed in contemporary political science. Minben-meritocracy placed
the responsibility on the meritocratic political class to actively observe
and understand the needs of the public in a comprehensive and balanced
manner. Pan Wei (2009) believes that the “people’s heart” in Chinese
political thought is a general grasp of the needs of the people, rather than
a mechanical aggregation of individual opinions. Minben-meritocracy is,
therefore, also opposed to interest group politics, which allows social
groups or individuals to make claims and demands to the state for the
benefit of local or special interests. It is even more opposed to groups or
individuals kidnapping the state apparatus and state policies, as it believes
amplification of group interests and sectoral voices will harm fairness and
justice at the whole societal level.
To summarize, the minben-meritocratic belief system contains values
of minben/people-rootedness and values of meritocracy (Bai, 2020; Bell,
2016). The minben value refers to the belief in people as the roots
or foundations of the state and the belief that politics requires polit-
ical power to serve the interest of the people. This means that political
power is legitimate and good power only when it proves that it serves the
people’s interests. This way, it places heavy responsibility on the state to be
accountable, responsive, and responsible. Minben or Confucian beliefs of
good government, therefore, in no way amounts to a challenge or contra-
diction to liberal-democratic values. The meritocratic ideas, on the other
hand, emphasize the virtue and effectiveness of the government and those
that serve in government. This way, however, there is clearly a hierarchical
relation between the state, statesmen, or political office holders and the
people as common folks. Politics and state affairs are considered to require
special talents, qualifications, competence, and skills, therefore, are dele-
gated to those that are meritocratically selected and promoted (Bell &
Wang, 2020). Together, minben-meritocratic beliefs give the autonomy
of managing state affairs to competent, effective, and virtuous (i.e. public-
minded, just, and incorrupt, etc.) state and political office holders. In
other words, effective political power is the basic public product of the
political community.
Against this discussion, a minben-meritocratic political culture would
be shaped by.
(1) the belief that political power exists and is exercised for the interests
of the people, which implies that,
(2) the power that effectively serves the people’s interests gains legiti-
macy, and is, therefore, trustworthy,
(3) the power that proves unable to serve the people’s interests loses
legitimacy and will, therefore, lose trust of the people.
Chu (2013) empirically shows that minbenist values play the decisive
factor for Chinese residents’ high trust in the government, and shows that
China’s state gains trust of the people because it proves itself a govern-
ment “for the people.” Shi (2015) also shows that the Chinese public
judge the government’s legitimacy less by processes and procedures, but
by its ability and performance results. As long as the government show
sufficient ability in delivering a certain degree of governance, the public
believes it carries the “mandate of heaven,” and is willing to accord it
with legitimacy. In fact, as long as the public believes that the govern-
ment holds true intention of serving the people’s interests, it is sufficient
for them to retain their faith in the government (i.e. even if they see
incompetence and corruption among some government officials or within
certain government agencies, branches, sections, etc. Li, 2013).
With such a minben-meritocratic political culture, therefore, as long as
the government is perceived to be a legitimate government, i.e. a govern-
ment that has not lost the intention to and ability in serving the interests
of the people, the public is ready to comply and offer consent. In normal
260 Z. WANG
situation, therefore, the relationship between the state and society, or

between the state and citizens, is not one of oppression vs. resistance
or control vs. challenge but one of cooperation, mutual support, and
the common pursuit of positive socioeconomic and political outcomes
(Wang & Zhao, 2021). Meanwhile, citizens do hold high standards when
evaluating the actual performance of the state, in that citizens often criti-
cize the specific officials, government agencies, and policies as well as their
actual implementation (Li, 2013). For the “real” state, i.e. agencies and
agents of the government, a culture of accountability is certainly in place
(Zhuang, 2020).
This discussion leads we to expect that, within a minben-meritocratic
political culture:
Hypothesis 1 (H1): The Chinese public generally holds a high level of
political trust across time.
Hypothesis 2 (H2): The Chinese public holds hierarchical levels of
political trust, i.e. while they generally hold high level of trust in the
central government, their trust in specific government agencies and agents
will depend on actually performances of these agents or agencies.
From this hypothesis, we can derive two sub-hypotheses:
Hypothesis 2.1 (H2.1) While the Chinese public’s trust in the central
government will remain high across time, its trust in the local government
might vary across time.
Hypothesis 2.2 (H2.2) While the trust in the central government is
generally high across provinces, the trust in the local government will
vary across provinces.
Empirical Data
The data of this chapter come from the Asian Barometer Survey between
2001 and 2019 (asianbarometer.org). Table 10.1 shows the level of
political trust in China from 2001 to 2019. The first line shows the
percentage of respondents who expressed trust in the Central govern-
ment, combining those who responded “trust a great deal” and those
who responded “trust somewhat.” One can see that from 2007 to 2011, a
certain percentage of residents changed their position from “trust a great
deal” to “trust somewhat.” If we give “trust a great deal” a score of 4, and
“trust somewhat” a score of 3, while giving “distrust somewhat” a score

of 2 and “distrust a great deal” a score of 1, then the average trust score
certainly decreased between 2001 and 2019. This way, the data seems to
confirm the thesis of the arrival of “critical citizens” (Wang & You, 2012).
But, based on the same data, we can also argue that political trust
in China has remained at a high level across this time. Firstly, trust in
the central government has remained above 93% throughout this period.
Secondly, in the three latest surveys (2011, 2015, 2019), there was no
clear pattern of decrease in the percentage of those giving the “trust a
great deal” option. That percentage was observed at around 50% in both
2011 and 2019, although it was as low as 38% in 2015. Therefore, the
degree of trust might have decreased between 2007 and 2011, but it
has remained at the same level afterward. Meanwhile, the general trust
percentage has even increased from 93% in 2001 to 98% in 2019. Based
on this data, Hypothesis 1 is confirmed.
Table 10.2 presents the level of political trust observed in the most
recent wave (2019–2020) of East Asia Barometer surveys. To save space,
this table only selects data of six major countries for comparison with
the data of China. The data is also compressed to only reporting the
combined percentages of those who responded either “trust a great deal”
or “trust somewhat,” in comparison with the combined percentage of
those reporting “distrust somewhat” and “distrust greatly.” The table
shows that, except for China, residents of these Asia–Pacific countries have
a higher proportion of trust in local government and the civil service than
in central government agencies—the central government and the national
Table 10.1 Level of trust in the central government 2001–2019
2001 2007 2011 2015 2019a
Percentage of Respondents Who Said They Trust 93 95 97 95 98

the Central Government
Of Which:
Trust a Great Deal 60 69 51 38 48
Trust Somewhat 33 25 45 57 51
Sample Size 3184 5098 3473 4068 4941
a In the 2019 survey, the respondent was given six options: trust fully, trust a lot, trust somewhat,
distrust somewhat, distrust a lot, distrust fully. “Trust fully” is coded as “Trust a great deal” here,
while “trust a lot” and “trust somewhat” are coded as “trust somewhat” here
Data Source Asian Barometer Survey (www.asianbarometer.org)
262 Z. WANG
parliament (India might be an exception). This shows the phenomenon of

the (reversed) hierarchical political trust in China that has been observed
by researchers since a long time ago. Chinese residents show significant
differences in their trust in the central government and their trust in local
governments—they trust the central government far more than they do
the local government and some specific government departments such as
the civil service.
Table 10.2 shows that in the data observed in 2019, although Chinese
residents’ trust in the civil service and in local governments is lower
than their trust in the Central Government, it is still higher than 80%.
What the Table does not show, however, is that among the 82–83% of
those responding “trust,” only about 14% chose “trust a great deal.”
This is far lower than the percentage reporting “trust a great deal” in
the Central Government, which is nearly 50% (Table 10.1). In addition,
the survey uses “local government” as a generic term to ask the attitude of
the respondents. Earlier studies found that with survey questions asking
respondents’ trust in the local government of various levels, it is generally
the case that their trust level decreases from the higher levels to the lower
levels. That is, among the several levels of local government, Chinese
residents trust the provincial government most (although less than they
trust the central government), the municipal or prefectural government
less, and the county and district government even less. And they trust
the township government, which is the lowest level local government in
China, the least (Li, 2004). Hypothesis 2 is confirmed.
Table 10.2 Hierarchical political trust in East Asia
Institutions Japan Korea Indonesia Malaysia Australia India China
Central Trust 34 32 87 72 28 74 98
Government Distrust 59 58 13 25 53 16 2
National Trust 31 12 75 68 26 73 98
Parliament Distrust 62 71 24 29 53 17 2
The Civil Trust 53 49 89 85 57 70 82
Service Distrust 44 47 11 13 35 19 17
Local Trust 69 47 90 81 37 70 83
Government Distrust 29 50 10 16 48 18 16
Data Source Asian Barometer, Wave 5 (2019–2020)

Hypothesis 2 holds that hierarchical political trust brought about by

the minben-meritocratic political culture is manifested as high level of
trust in the central government, i.e. the abstract “state” as a psychological
perception, and lower levels of trust in the “real” government, i.e. specific
government agencies, departments, and local branches. For example, Li
(2013) found that petitioners always believed that their problems were
caused by the specific agencies such as the Ministry of Education and the
Ministry of Agriculture, but they rarely questioned the intention or ability
of “the government” in addressing their concerns. For these people,
“the government” exists as something in their mind that will eventu-
ally come to their help. Similarly, for rural residents, local governments
such as provincial governments and municipal governments, and espe-
cially the county and township governments, are often believed to be the
wrong doers that distorted central government’s policies and deceived
both the residents and the upper level government (Li, 2004). Trust
in “The Center” or the “Central Government” or the “State” (guojia)
is more likely to come from the belief in the uprightness of the state,
which in a minben-meritocratic tradition is constructed as the power
that is serving the interests of the people. On the other hand, trust in
specific departments and agencies of the government is more likely to
come from citizens’ actual experience and assessment of the fairness, effi-
ciency, cleanness, effectiveness, and other aspects of government quality
and performance. Therefore, trust in government agencies (other than
the wholistic term of the state or the Center, the Central Government)
should vary across time and places.
For these reasons Hypothesis 2 is further developed into Hypotheses
2.1 and 2.2. That is, Chinese people’s trust in local government or
specific government departments may vary across time, locations, and
departments, as trust in them are more directly determined by their
actual performances and quality. Figure 10.1 shows that, from 2001 to
2019, the public’s trust in the Central Government stayed at a high level
and remained relatively stable. Meanwhile, the public’s trust in the local
government, referring to the specific local government of the respon-
dents’ respective localities or provinces, fluctuated throughout the same
period. Hypothesis 2.1 is confirmed.
Figure 10.2, meanwhile, shows that Chinese public’s trust in the
central government is consistently high across provinces in China. Trust
in the local government, however, is clearly highly different among
provinces. Before making and conclusions here, the differences in trust
264 Z. WANG
100
90
Central Government
80
70 Local Government
60
50
40
30
2001 2007 2011 2016 2019
Fig. 10.1 Trust in the central and local governments across time (Data Source
Asian Barometer 2001–2020)
in local governments between and among provincial units should be

discussed. These inter-provincial differences might be subject to other
explanations. For example, an earlier piece of research found that the level
of political trust in each province is negatively correlated with the per
capita GDP of each province (Su et al., 2016). This finding is in line with
the expectations of Inglehart-Norris’ theories, which links a distrusting
public with the socioeconomic modernization and material affluence.
Nevertheless, Fig. 10.2 clearly shows a low correlation between trust in
local governments and provincial per capita GDP levels. The provinces
showing lower level of trust in their local government, i.e. Hebei, Shanxi,
Jilin, Fujian, Hunan, Guizhou, and Shaanxi, are not the most economi-
cally and socially modernized provinces. The same study (Su et al., 2016)
also found that the gap between political trust in the central government
and trust in local governments tends to be smaller in economically more
developed provinces, but Fig. 10.2 does not support such a conclusion.
Therefore, we are led to conclude that, Fig. 10.2 seems to suggest
that, people’s trust in the Central Government follows the minben-
meritocratic belief in having and supporting a virtuous and legitimate
“state,” while their trust in the local governments comes more directly
from their perception and evaluation of the actual performance of local
governments. This “one center, many provinces” structure represents
a natural experiment of how people across the provinces perceive the
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
Fig. 10.2 Trust in the central and local governments across provinces, 2019
(Data Source 2019–2020 [China Survey Conducted in 2019])
Central Government and the local government differently. The result

seems to show that, because local governments across the country vary in
their quality and performance, the perception of them also varies across
the country.
Discussion and Conclusion

Political trust has been a “hot” topic in empirical political science research
on China, with a large body of literature produced by many scholars.
Comparing to most other countries around the world, China’s political
trust level is clearly high. At the same time, Chinese people’s trust in
their local governments and specific government departments or govern-
ment agencies is much lower than their trust in the central government.
Meanwhile, in recent years, the degree of Chinese public’s trust in the
government appears to be in decline. In terms of independent variables
that influence the level of political trust, scholars analyze the effectiveness
or socioeconomic performance as well as government’s quality in terms
of transparency, responsiveness, and cleanness, among others. At the same
time, political culture or values and beliefs of the public are also taken as
explanatory variables of political trust.
266 Z. WANG
Most of the empirical studies of political trust, however, have

constructed their conceptual and theoretical framework based on the
Almond and Verba (1963) and Inglehart-Norris tradition of political
culture and value changes—what I call a liberal-democratic theory of
political culture. The problem is that this research tradition has greatly
limited the space for theory building and theory testing on political trust
in specific contexts of state-society relations. In this chapter, I proposed a
minben-meritocratic theory of political culture—theory in the sense of a
number of propositions that predict empirical patterns. The core of this
theory points to three basic minben-meritocratic beliefs regarding polit-
ical power and the relationship between individual and the state. These
are (1) the belief that political power exists and is exercised for the inter-
ests of the people, which implies that, (2) the power that effectively serves
the people’s interests gains legitimacy, and is, therefore, trustworthy, and
(3) the power that proves unable to serve the people’s interests loses
legitimacy and will therefore lose trust of the people.
If we believe these long-lasting beliefs still shape Chinese people’s
political attitudes and the way the perceive government legitimacy and
trustworthiness, we can formulate hypotheses to be tested by empirical
data. In this chapter, I tested two main hypotheses, i.e. the Chinese public
generally holds a high level of trust in the government, and their trust
local government and specific government agencies less than they trust
the central government. My theory takes the high level of trust in the
central government as coming from the public’s general belief in the “cen-
ter” as representing the rightful political authority of the country/political
community, as well as both virtue and talents required for good gover-
nance. The “center” or the “state,” therefore, represents a moral ideal in
people’s mind, and cannot be wrong or corrupt. Their trust in the local
government as well as various specific government agencies, by contrast,
is more shaped by the actual performances of these bodies and is much
more subject to criticism and dissatisfaction.
In other words, the Chinese public’s trust in the central government
reflects the public’s belief in the “goodness” of the political community’s
ultimate source of political power, and their trust in the state’s intention
as the guardian and provider of governance. What is shown in the survey
data as political trust in China should be partially read as the public’s faith
in the political community’s moral ability in building and maintaining
good political power. It is, therefore, not trust in any specific organiza-
tion or body per se, but rather an expression of the faith in their own
collective self. The “state,” in this regard, is entrusted to carry out the
task of producing an acceptably good level of governance. This trust, of
course, is also reflexive, in the sense it also reflects the public’s general
assessment or satisfaction with the actual performance of the state. Given
the high level of trust in the central government for the past 20 years,
we can also conclude that, during this same period, the general belief
in the “goodness” of the state as the abstract center or source of the
political community’s political power continued, and the public’s general
assessment of the government’s performance in terms of socioeconomic,
political, cultural, environmental governances, etc. appeared to be posi-
tive. Their assessment in specific government agencies and government
performances in various policy sectors, of course, varies, and many a study
has attempted to track down how these assessments affect the public’s
trust in the central government, i.e. the abstract “center” of the political
community’s political power.
Regarding the mainstream/conventional theories of political culture
and cultural changes, i.e. Inglehart and Norris’s theories of postmateri-
alism, self-expression values, and critical citizenship, as well as Mishler and
Rose’s (2001) distinction of institutional (endogenous) vis-a-vis cultural
(exogenous) determinates of political trust, although they may prove less
effective in explaining the broad patterns of political trust in China, they
can still play meaningful roles in identifying causal factors that affect polit-
ical trust. In fact, many existing researches are in the search of various
cultural and institutional factors that may affect the level of political trust.
For example, it is still useful to examine whether corruption fighting,
rise in individual income, and building better environment (cleaning
up the rivers, e.g.,) increase political trust. Such research will surely
continue to deepen our understanding of the cognitive and psychological
processes of political trust as well as satisfaction with government, and
lead to policy suggestions for practitioners. But they are more meaningful
for understanding citizens’ attitudes regarding specific government poli-
cies, departments, and other agents. In the end, the actual performance
of specific government units/departments and/or government perfor-
mances in specific policy areas will have a larger impact on the public’s
trust in specific government bodies, but smaller impact on their trust in
the “Center,” i.e. the “central government” presented to them in survey
questionnaires.
Many of the social science concepts coming out of American and
European scholarship need to be carefully examined when transported
268 Z. WANG
into the studies of social phenomena in China, and more generally in all
non-Western social and cultural settings. This chapter suggests that the
concept of political trust needs such rigorous examinations. Chinese citi-
zens’ trust in the central government is, first of all, a reflection of the
general belief that political power exists as a positive good for the bene-
fits/interests of the political community. It is at the same time an indicator
of the public’s satisfaction with the performance in terms of serving the
benefits/interests of the political community. Meanwhile, because citi-
zens grant legitimacy to a regime or state according to its performance as
perceived by the public, political trust also serves as a proxy of measuring
the degree of legitimacy of the current order. But, given the hierarchical
nature of political trust in China, to understand the level of the state’s
legitimacy, it is insufficient to simply examining the public’s satisfaction
with government’s performance in various policy areas. What is most
important for understanding the minben-meritocratic belief is that the
Chinese mind seems to believe in the existence of an abstract state, which
is both benevolent and capable of governing the country and the people.
For it to lose this perception, the state has to show signs of serious decay,
incapability, and corruption. Therefore, for most of the time, the Chinese
public is ready to take the state in the abstract sense to be legitimate, and
benevolent, being willing to look after the public’s interest. This is largely
why the Chinese public generally expresses a relatively high level of trust
in the state—meaning the abstract “state” that serves as a symbol of the
political community and its ultimate center of political power. Meanwhile,
day in and day out, they may find the work of various government depart-
ments and other agencies or agencies unsatisfactory, and will not hesitate
to express distrust or discontent.
For some implications for the larger world, let us compare this minben-
meritocratic tradition with the liberal-democratic tradition. In a liberal-
democratic tradition, the state is conventionally taken as an object of
criticism and suspicion. The political culture of such a tradition means the
public is generally disposed to distrust the state or any political agency’s
intention and commitment to serving the public’s interest. This naturally
results in confrontational instead of collaborative relations between the
society and the state, and is often the source of many forms of societal
and political contentions. In this context, as per the “competitive plural-
ism” advocated by Bai in this book (Chapter 2), the minben-meritocratic
tradition or belief system should be treated as a viable alternative as we
strive to build good society and good government.
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CHAPTER 11
Conclusion
Zhengxu Wang
This volume brings together chapters authored by scholars of multiple

disciplines. These chapters collectively attempted to show several things.
First, there was a long-last model of state making and social orga-
nization that exited in an East Asian zone before the arrival of the
Europe-originated “modern” challenges of industrialization, capitalism,
and representative form of government. Second, the East Asia region, part
of which is sometimes referred to as the sinographic sphere, was histor-
ically connected, through commerce and warfare and others, but more
importantly through exchanges of ideas and institutions connectedness.
Third, that some of the ideas, institutions, practices of the premodern
period are still highly viable today and are still shaping the making of
government, society, and inter-state relations in today’s East Asia. Fourth
and last, as these chapters show, the premodern state in East Asia presents
itself as a promising subject for scholarly inquiry—some chapters in this
Z. Wang (B)
China

274 Z. WANG
volume show that rigorous social science research can be devised and
implemented in this subject area.
In this concluding chapter, I would like to lay out a few ideas as
implications to contemporary global issues and scholarly undertaking.
They are related to China and East Asia as a region in the globalized
world, the debate on the “China Model,” global discussion of democracy
and governance, and scholarship in social science and humanities, among
others. I continue to use “minben meritocracy” to refer to the ideas and
institutions of this premodern state and society-making of East Asia.
East Asia Regionalism

or the Reorganizing of East Asia
Comparing to 10–15 years ago, East Asian regionalization seems to facing
great challenges today. Post-2001, there was a time ASEAN + 1 and
ASEAN + 3 were highly energizing the economic integration of East
Asia, and the China-Japan-Korean trilateral integration project was also
highly promising. The expansion of China’s economic weight, however,
has resulted in a much insecure USA, which took upon itself to contain
the so-called rise of China. Part the USA’s recent effort to rebuild its
alliance systems in the Indo-Pacific region is, clearly, to prevent the
forming of an East Asian bloc with China as the center of economic
gravity. As a result, despite the signing of RCEP pact in 2020, the East
Asia’s prospects of economic and cultural regionalization are far from
certain.
The USA seems to both overestimate and misunderstand China’s
power ambition. And studying the minben-meritocratic state of China
and its ideas that continue from the premodern period to today is highly
helpful in mitigating such miscalculation and misunderstanding. Park and
Kang’s chapter (Chapter 7) in this book gives some useful hints regarding
how the region formed a kind of natural community, i.e., multilateral
order without member states suffering coercions from the order’s main
power. China of today understands this and is carefully promoting inter-
state linkages without becoming a security threat to the region. Some
if not all regional states understand this too—officials and politicians of
Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia, for example, often refuse to join
the USA in framing China as a security threat to their country or to
11 CONCLUSION 275
the region.1 What the USA might have underestimated, however, is the
strong legacies of connectedness and shared understandings among coun-
tries of the region. This book demonstrates part of these legacies and
shared understandings. They should contribute to the region’s commu-
nity building, and that, by helping with the making of a peaceful and
prosperous East Asia, will greatly benefit both the region and the world.
The “China Model,” Democracy, and Governance

Despite its wide usage, the term “China Model” has, as far as become
the subject of only one book, i.e., Daniel Bell (2015). Bell equates the
China model with political meritocracy, which distinguishes itself from the
Wester model of liberal democracy. I have argued that, the Chinese model
of meritocracy is not just meritocracy, but meritocracy with a minben
“soul” (see the Introduction and Chapter 7). The minben ideology or
value/belief system ensures the meritocracy is designed and practiced with
the goal to serve the people’s interest—political power and government
policies are tools to improve people’s living standard, to ensure a good,
equitable, and fair social order. The meritocracy has a purpose—it is a
just meritocracy. While Zhao (2015) gives a sociological account of how
the minben (he calls Confucian) ideology and legalist rational institutions
(mostly meritocratic) merged to produce the long-lasting premodern state
in China, Bai (2020) and Chan (2016) make the effort to systematically
analyze the minben belief system that state and its intellectual elites intend
to preserve.
In contemporary China, the Chinese Communist Party seems to
take this belief seriously—to ensure power is for the interest of the
people. In terms of its selection and promotion of government officials,
virtue, morality, and personal and professional integrity are very impor-
tant criteria. The “merit” as in “meritocracy” here certainly contains
both (moral) virtue and (professional) competence/capability. The party’s
spells no effort in terms of indoctrination and disciplining to ensure
government official live up to the moral standards. The minben beliefs
1 Magdalene Fung, “Indonesia Stresses ‘Asian Way’ for Resolving Challenges in a Multi-
polar Region.” Straits Times, 11 June 2022; Mercedes Ruehl & Oliver Telling, “Mahathir
Mohamad Urges Asean to Move Towards China After US’s Taiwan ‘Provocation’.” Finan-
cial Times, 30 August 2022; Nile Bowie, “Lee Shines Light on a US-China Middle Path.”
Asia Times, 7 April 2022.
276 Z. WANG
are also leading the party/state to devise institutions of policy-making

and implementation that aim at improving the state’s ability in under-
standing the public’s needs and looking after social actors’ interests.
Chinese government has made effort trying to explain the Chinese polit-
ical system as “people’s democracy” as well as a system of “whole-process
democracy.”2 In any case, it is no more viable to rely on the old concep-
tual analytical tool of “authoritarianism” or “totalitarianism” in trying to
understand the designs and working of the Chinese political system. The
cold-war political science of merely thinking of government systems in
terms of “democracy” vis-à-vis “autocracy” should be discarded. Maybe
there is no “China Model,” but at least we should be humbler in trying
to understand how the Chinese political system and social order work.
Civilizational Dialogues and Mutual Learning

In Chapter 2, Bai advocates a form of “fighting pluralism,” endorsing
civilizational competition as a way for humanity to thrive. Dialogues and
mutual learning might be another way to build a world of diversity,
inclusiveness, equality, and tolerance. The Chinese government might
not be apt enough in explaining itself, but I think its “community of
common destiny of mankind”3 in fact means such a global community—a
world of inclusiveness, equality, and harmony of diversity, among others.
For example, harmony of diversity, indeed, forms an important part of
the Chinese thinking and is still guiding Chinese foreign policies.4 By
presenting perspectives, ideas, historical accounts of a major non-Western
region in the world, this book means to drive home such a message too—
the world should do away with cultural and political privileges in favor of
any country or bloc of countries, and judices against any country or bloc
of countries. There are two layers here.
2 State Council of the People’s Republic of China. (2022). “China: Democracy that
Works.”
3 Some perspectives from Chinese authors can be Linggui Wang & Jianglin Zhao
(eds.). (2019). China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Building the Community of Common
Destiny. Singapore: World Scientific.
4 This volume that include authors from multiple countries is a good reference:
Chengyang Li, Sai Hang Kwok, & Dascha During (eds.). (2020). Harmony in Chinese
Thought: A Philosophical Introduction. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
11 CONCLUSION 277
The first is that countries in the region should promote the idea of East
Asia, or, an East Asian identity more vigorously, and in a somewhat more
coordinated way. East Asian countries had long history of colonial domi-
nance, and post-independence, great effort was put into nation-building.
Zhiguang Yin argues in this book that nationalism was promoted, and
understood, in China as part of the anti-imperial and anti-colonial domi-
nation project. That is appropriate, no doubt. But we are moving toward
a globalized world, and countries are so connected and interdependent.
The long history of shared culture, ideas, and institutions in East Asia
has not played enough a role in supporting the forming of a pan-East
Asia identity. In his chapter, Vu explicitly suggests changes in Vietnamese
national discourse, but in fact this is something all countries in East Asia
should consider undertaking. The difficulties in forming a pan-East Asian
identity have many causes. Partly, the traumas from the World War II
(including Japan’s atrocious invasion and occupation of China, Korea, and
most of Southeast Asia) and the Cold War period are still haunting, and
partly, the US-led security structure is driving the wedge. This has nega-
tively affected the economic project of regionalization. Many actions can
be taken to promote a more salient pan-East Asia identity. The school and
university curriculum in these countries, for example, can include more
pan-East Asia subjects. Pan-East Asia cultural events, such as film festivals,
concerts, performance tours. China, to take the lead, should downplay its
“national rejuvenation” narrative and turn its China story into an East
Asian story.
On the second layer, North American and European people and orga-
nizations should spend much more effort promoting cultural awareness,
greatly improve their appreciation of non-western civilizations. School
and university curricula in non-Western countries for a long time place
heavy emphasis on the Europe-originated “modernity” subjects, studying
the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the scientific and industrial revolu-
tions (Indeed, that is why China’s May Fourth Movement rallied around
the flags of Mr. De (democracy) and Mr. Sai (science). This is justified,
given non-Western countries faced serious technological and economic
challenges from the “modernized” Western countries. But now it is the
time the Western countries become much more active in understanding
non-Western civilizations in the world. As chapters in this book show,
much can be learnt and researched in East Asia’s ideas, institutions,
philosophy, politics, and history, among others. When American students
start to read texts from Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian (Shi
278 Z. WANG
Ji) or Spring and Autumn Annals (Chun Qiu), as university students

in China and around the world are reading Plato and Shakespeare, then
a world of mutual appreciation will have come into being. Meanwhile,
Chinese scholars and students should not just study American and Euro-
pean ideas, but also those of Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central and
Western Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Bell and Wang’s (2020) Just
Hierarchy, by bringing in ideas and materials from ancient India into the
discussion of social order, is a good example.
Clearly, this book aims at contributing to all three projects highlighted
above. We now leave it to the readers judge whether it achieves this goal.
Index
A Changping, The Battle of, 134

Almond, Gabriel, 254, 256, 266 Chan, Joseph, 7, 8, 10, 11, 209
America, 22, 23, 25, 27, 35, 42, 162 Chaoxian, 13, 46–49, 56, 57, 60, 61,
Art of War, The, 115 63
ASEAN, the, 191, 192, 275 Chen, Gongbo, 159
Asianism, 155, 156, 162, 163 China, 2, 4–6, 9, 11–18, 22, 28–42,
46, 47, 49–51, 53, 57, 64, 65,
70–74, 79–89, 92–94, 99, 103,
B
108, 110, 121, 132, 134, 135,
Bai, Tongdong, 6–12, 40, 41, 74,
143–147, 149–151, 153–156,
213, 257, 258, 268, 275, 276
162–165, 167, 168, 175–178,
Bandung/Bandung Conference, the,
183–197, 200, 207, 214, 215,
169
219, 224, 226, 232, 234,
Bell, Daniel, 7, 9, 10, 12, 17, 231,
237–246, 249–256, 259–263,
234, 241, 242, 244, 258, 259,
265–268, 274–278
275, 278
China Model, the, 274–276
Blinken, Antony, 196
Chinese Communist Party, the (CCP,
Bowtie network, 71, 72, 75–78, 82,
the), 159, 161, 163–166, 176,
88, 90, 92
275
Brunei, 200, 201, 224–226
Chu, Yun-han, 10
Cixi, the Dowager Empress, 214
C Cold War, the, 103, 176, 196, 198,
Cambodia, 16, 200, 223, 226 251, 277
Central Asia, 25, 49 Common Programme, the, 167
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 279
license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7
280 INDEX
the Comprehensive and Progressive F

Agreement for Trans-Pacific Fan, Zhongyan, 93
Partnership (CPTPP, the), Funan, 51, 53, 57
191–193, 196
Confucianism, 4–9, 17, 35, 187, 188,
216, 231, 232, 234–238, 240 H
Confucian-Legalist State, 3, 5, 6, 235 Han Feizi, 232, 239
Confucius/Kongzi, 31, 32, 108, 149, Hansong, 58
190, 232, 233, 257 Han, the dynasty/Han, the empire of,
COVID-19, 17, 222, 242, 244 5, 40, 47–52, 57, 61, 65, 81, 82,
85, 108, 183, 185, 211, 235,
236, 256
Han Wudi, 48, 56
D
huaxia/hua xia, 31
Dalton, Russell, 251
Hume, David, 203, 204
democracy, 8, 10, 11, 36, 42,
Hungary, 25
101–103, 105, 107, 108, 151,
161, 168, 179, 196, 208, 209,
222, 237, 251, 254–258,
I
274–277
Ikenberry, G. John, 176, 179–181
democratization, 255
Indonesia, 191, 193, 262, 274
Diamond, Jared, 23, 25, 34
Indopacific, the, 274
Inglehart, Ronald, 18, 251, 254–256,
264, 266, 267
E Iran, 25
East Asia, the, 1–4, 6–8, 10–13, 15,
16, 23, 30, 33, 34, 47, 176–178,
183–186, 190, 193, 196, 197, J
202, 218, 247, 258, 262, Japan, 2, 6, 16, 35, 50, 145, 147,
273–275, 277 151–156, 158, 184, 186–188,
economic growth, 11, 102 190, 191, 193, 199, 200, 202,
Egypt, 26–29, 178 214–219, 226, 262, 277
England, 41, 152, 203, 204, 207, Jiao, 13, 46, 47, 49, 51–58, 60, 61,
208 63, 64
Eurasia continent plus North Africa Jiaozhi, 46, 51, 54
(EANA), 25–27 Jinping, Xi, 244
Europe, 2, 5, 13, 14, 22, 32, 33, 35, Jiuzhen, 46, 51, 54
36, 69–71, 81, 83, 93, 132, 149,
150, 152–154, 159, 162, 183,
186, 197, 199, 203, 273, 277 K
Europe, the Western, 5, 6, 25, 34, Kang, David, 15
36, 46, 147, 254 Khitan, 88
INDEX 281
Koguryo/Gaogouli, 47, 56–59, minben meritocratic state, 10, 18,

61–65 250, 256, 274
Korea, 2, 3, 6, 13, 33, 35, 45–47, 49, Ming, the dynasty of, 6, 34, 36, 89,
50, 52, 56, 57, 59–61, 63–65, 183
154, 184, 186–188, 190–192, minzu, 15, 144–150, 159–161
224, 262, 277 Mohist, the, 257
Moruo, Guo, 170
Murong, 58, 61
L
Laos, 16, 200, 223, 224, 226
Legalism, 17, 231, 234–238, N
244–246 Nationalist Party, the, 165
Legalist Confucianism, 17, 231, 232, New Guinea, 23
234, 239, 240, 246, 247 nine-rank arbiter system, the, 82
Liang, Qichao, 88, 146, 148,
Norris, Pippa, 18, 250, 251,
156–158, 214
254–256, 264, 266, 267
Li, Dazhao, 161–163
Li, Lianjiang, 251, 252, 262, 263
Lingnan, 46, 51
P
Lipset, Seymour Martin, 77, 251, 255
Paekche, 57–59, 61–64
Li, Zhi, 6
political trust, 18, 249–256, 260–268
Lý Nhân Tông, 189
Pye, Lucian, 143, 254
M
Malaysia, 16, 193, 200, 225, 262, Q
274 Qian, Sima, 29, 111, 277
Manchuria, 25, 48–50, 56–58, 61 Qing, the dynasty of, 16, 36, 41, 70,
Mandate of Heaven, the, 10, 121, 74, 87, 183, 211, 253
183, 202, 209, 259 Qin Shi Huang/Qin Shihuang/Qin
Marx, Karl, 73, 159–161 Shihuangdi/The First
Mediterranean, the, 12, 27, 31, 33 Emperor/Ying Zheng, 47, 134,
Meiji Reform, the, 217 234, 235
Mencius/Mengzi, 8, 9, 210, 212, Qin, the dynasty of, 5, 41, 48, 184,
232, 233, 239, 257, 258 246
Mencian, 10 Qin, the state of/Qin the empire of,
Mesopotamia, 25–30, 32, 38 2, 4, 14, 40, 48, 51, 103, 109,
Middle East, the, 5, 12, 34, 46, 94 119, 132, 234, 235
minben, 4, 10, 18, 250, 254,
257–260, 263, 264, 266, 268,
275 R
minbenism, 10, 253, 256 Records of the Grand Historian,
minben meritocracy, 258, 274 the/Shi Ji, 29, 117, 210, 277
282 INDEX
Regional Comprehensive Economic V

Partnership (RCEP), 191–193, Verba, Sydney, 254–256, 266
196, 274 Vietnam, 2, 3, 6, 13, 16, 33, 45–49,
Rinan, 46, 51–54 51–54, 60, 63–65, 154, 184,
Russell, Bertrand, 30 186–188, 190–193, 200, 223,
224, 226
Vu, Tuong, 6, 11, 13, 33, 45, 277
S
Samhan, 50, 57
San Xing Dui, 29 W
SARS, 243 Wa (Japanese), 49, 50
Shang, the dynasty of, 209 Wang, Anshi, 88, 89, 91
Shenzong, (Song) Emperor, 91 Wang, Qishan, 246
Shi, Tianjian, 90, 256 Wang, Yangming, 6
Silk Roads, the, 40 Wang, Yuhua, 13, 72, 212
Silla, 47, 57–59, 61–65, 188 Wang, Zhengxu, 99, 249, 251–253
Sinographic Sphere, the, 2, 3, 273 Wanli, the Emperor, 246
Song, the dynasty of, 36, 41, 42, 70, Warring States, the period of, 14, 39,
82, 87–93 42, 48, 58, 99, 101, 102, 109,
Spring and Autumn 110, 112, 113, 115, 116, 118,
Annals/Chunqiu/Chun Qiu, 111, 120, 130, 131, 257
278 Weber, Max, 40, 41, 45, 101
Spring and Autumn, the period of, 4, Weingast, Barry, 70, 71, 207, 208
39, 110–112, 119, 124, 256 Welzel, Christian, 255
Star network, 71, 75–78, 81, 84, 86, Wittfogel, Karl, 73
90 Wuhan, 242
Sun Goddess, the, 208, 215
X
T Xianbei, 49, 50, 58, 61
Tang, the dynasty of/the period Xiao, Tangbiao, 252
of/Tang times, 46, 55, 57, 64, Xinhai Revolution, 214
65, 81, 83, 85–87, 91, 92 Xiongnu, 40, 49, 50, 61
Tasmania, 23 Xunzi, 210, 213, 232, 233
Tianxia, 7, 12, 14, 15, 145, 149–151
Tilly, Charles, 42, 46, 70, 72, 109,
186 Y
Tuoba, 49, 50, 58 You, Yu, 254, 261
Yuan, the dynasty of, 70, 93, 183
U
United States, the, 15, 70, 106, 152, Z
175, 176, 178, 182, 183, 191, Zedong, Mao, 36, 162, 163, 170,
196, 197, 208, 243 236, 237
INDEX 283
Zhang, Feng, 7, 181, 182 Zheng, He, 34

Zhanguo Ce/Strategies of the Warring zhongguo/zhong guo, 2, 30
States , 108, 110, 111, 117 zhonghua, 2
Zhao, Dingxin, 3–7, 40, 42, 73, 74, zhonghua minzu, 150, 165
100, 102, 109, 110, 112, 113, Zhou, Enlai, 166, 169
118, 123, 124, 128, 132, 133, Zhou, period of, 12, 17, 253
234–236, 253, 275 Zhou, dynasty of, 49, 209, 210
Zhao Tuo, 48 Zuozhuan/Commenary of Zuo, 108

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GOVERNING CHINA

IN THE 21ST CENTURY

The Long East Asia

The Long East Asia

ISSN 2730-6968 ISSN 2730-6976 (electronic)

Cover credits: Autumn Sky Photography/Alamy Stock Photo

1 The Long East Asia: The Premodern State and Its

7 Unipolarity, Hegemony, and Moral Authority:

Tongdong Bai School of Philosophy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

Zhiguang Yin Department of International Studies, Fudan University,

Fig. 4.1 Two ideal types of elite social terrain 75

Diagram 5.1 Reigns of dukes during the Warring States 133

Table 3.1 Number of rebellions in South China’s commanderies 54

The Long East Asia: The Premodern State

Is there a coherent model of state making and governance in East Asia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

In the rest of this introductory chapter, I first elaborate on several

The Making and Patterns of the East Asian State

6 Most notably, Zhao (2015).

and military organization. A state relying solely on coercion, however,

twentieth century, Confucianism was blamed by Western-influenced intel-

7 Huang and Kang (2022), and Vu’s chapter in this volume.

Organizing Concept: Minben Meritocracy

State is a prime example of how the Confucian-Legalist ideas of govern-

in the admission of officials, for example, and by promoting a culture

Structure of the Book

to benefit from sophisticated civilizational exchanges, partly contributing

interconnected networks—the “start” type of network—they preferred a

races or nations, to the worldview of independent nation-states. On the

political debates. Therefore, this belief system remains a vibrant factor

The Edge of Civilizations: The Chinese

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 21

more broadly culture and civilization? Is the continent a good indicator?

Key Condition for Civilizational

Western (and American) sense of individualism, where a handful of people

1 To be clear, the terms used in this chapter such as “development,” “advanced,”

To early humans, communications within and among different groups

In sum, key to the advancement of human civilization is large popu-

The Center, the Peripheral, and the Outside

the development of metallurgy, especially bronze. Although it was likely

3 What philosophy is a philosophically highly controversial issue. If we understand

have remained a (very splendid) Neolithic civilization forever, without

Neolithic civilization can quickly adapt themselves to the age of indus-

China as the Sole Continuous

Therefore, the so-called continuous and unified Chinese civilization

civilization, there were also different, competing, or successive (sub-)

5 For an English translation of the Analects, see Lau (2000).

Problems of the Chinese Civilization

6 See Rofel (2017, 212) for a quick overview.

Buddhism was then spread to Korea and Japan. A major development

Contributions of the Chinese

Chinese written language, our understanding of language would be

In addition to these different but not necessarily advanced features,

9 See Bai (2012) for a fuller picture.

walls, open, non-violent, but fierce competitions are encouraged. This

——— (2008), Bureaucracy and the State in Early China. Cambridge:

War and State Formation in Ancient Korea