Selling culture

ancient Chinese conceptions of "the other" in legends

Qing Cao

pp. 202-221

in: Stephen Chan, Peter Mandaville, Roland Bleiker (eds), The zen of international relations, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001

Abstract

For over two millennia,2 the Chinese considered their country to be the Middle Kingdom (Zhongguo), the terrestrial focal point of "all under heaven" (tianxia) and the source of all civilisation. They had never faced a rival strong enough to challenge their cultural supremacy until the midnineteenth century when British gunboats broke through their "isolation". China's conception of the Other was deeply imbedded in this tradition. However, apart from this "isolation", there are other factors that determine the Chinese sense of their position in the world and their relations with the Other. The following two are important. First, unlike Europe, Africa and other parts of Asia where kingdoms and empires rose and fell to form different nations, China has sustained what Wang Guangwu terms a "historical oneness".3 This "oneness' is a unity of the largest ethnic group on earth, the Han Chinese,4 with their sinicised peripheries, an extensive settled land, and a consistent and continuing culture. The unit of this "oneness' is the so-called civilisation-state. Second, China as an empire was not established by conquest of other nations5 like other great empires, such as the Greek, Roman, Persian, or, in modern times, British and French. Recent imperial conquests stretched over long distances, even across oceans. They survived as long as their military power could sustain them. No armies ever marched out of the confines of the traditional "Middle Kingdom"6 in China's two thousand years of "imperial" history. Given these traditions and characteristics, China's conceptions of the Other operate in a very different framework fromthat of theWestwhereaWestphalian systemwasestablished in 1648.