The Chinese Claim for Universality

Over its very long history, China has been claiming some sort of universality which has been inseparable from a certain idea of civilisation, with a centre shining upon surrounding regions. The geographical embodiment of this radiating influence is what is commonly – albeit controversially – called the sinicised world, which would include the entire East Asian region surrounding China itself: Korea, Japan, Vietnam, all cultures which have been influenced by China to different extents and at different moments in history. Conversely, each time China itself was encroached upon or invaded by “outsiders”, it was always assumed that the latter would end up being transformed and adopting Chinese civilisation. Imperial China thus depicted itself not only as the centre of the world, but even more simply as “the world” (in Chinese, tianxia, “all under heaven”), and it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century, under attack from Western powers, that it was constrained to consider itself as just one nation amongst others. It is the same universality of “China-as-world” which, after being jeopardised by colonial powers (including Japan) at the end of the nineteenth century, is today once again becoming a type of nostalgic self-representation and a unifying factor in the revival of the ancient notion of “all under Heaven”, an ideological construct which needs to be re-examined in a critical light. It is indeed high time that China should come to realise in its own interest that posing as a domineering super-power will not ensure it a sustainable influence in the region, nor in the world for that matter.