A Chinese Political Sociology in Our Times

Stephen Chan

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

Since the Treaty of Westphalia and the advent of state personality, and since theFrench revolution and the advent of citizenship, and the idea that each personal-ity—state or citizen—had rights, political sociology has recognized and grappledwith individual personalities. They may be drawn into systems of states, but theyremain states; they may be socialized in an Hegelian progression into communi-tarian groupings and loyalties, but they remain citizens. Each personality hasright of freedom against violation by others and each personality has right ofredress against others. With the independence of most of the world since West-phalia, and with the spread of democracy after the fall of Communism, therehas been an apparent triumph for the idea of personality and its legal character.The key tenet here is that all the units of personalities may choose to aggregatethemselves to others, but they may also choose to be alone, even to an extentrenegade. Externally driven regime change is a highly controversial policy, andcitizens cannot be deprived of their individual freedoms except by elaborate dueprocess that demonstrates they have first impugned the rights of others. Auton-omy, individualism, and the rights of a legal personality were concepts that cre-ated both the sociology of citizens in society and the political sociology of statesin an international system. So triumphant did the cojoint concepts of individua-lism and rights seem, that it was easy to assert that their practice was merely theembodiment of some higher Kantian universe of rights.

However, the Treaty of Westphalia is just a little over 350 years old, and theFrench revolution almost 220 years old. These are youthful foundations for aninternational political sociology that seems historically fixed. What if, in that era,a Chinese as opposed to European hegemony of ideas and practice had sweptthe world—as, now in the twenty-first century, it conceivably might. Confuciuslived about 2,500 years ago. The doctrine of guanxi is credited to him, but hemerely articulated in one body of thought what had been elements of older Chi-nese behavior. His radical breakthrough was to insist that the state should alsohonor guanxi. The organized and literate legal state in China, although itselfarticulated by a succession of regimes and dynasties, is 4,000 years old. Even ifone takes Confucius as a starting point, the basic concept in Chinese politicalsociology is ten times older than the French revolution and almost eight timesolder than Westphalia and their germination of individual personality.

Guanxi is not a doctrine of individualism. It is a doctrine of binaries, of link-ages and sets of linkages. The key element of each linkage is reciprocity. As artic-ulated by Confucius, there were five binary sets: Emperor and subject; husbandand wife; father and son; older and younger siblings; and friend with friend.None worked without prescribed and ‘‘natural’’ reciprocities. The ‘‘naturalness’’was as cosmically metaphysical as Kant’s moral universe devolving through recht anatural set of norms on earth. A harmonious social order was one in which allfive sets of guanxi were honored and practiced. A harmonious state was one inwhich the Emperor and his subjects reciprocated each other, that is the Emperorhad obligations to his subjects, just as his subjects had the obligation of obedi-ence to the Emperor. The first part of that formulation, that the Emperor hadobligations, was revolutionary. Confucius was radical, and not at all the reactionaryhe is now painted as. What this meant was that the political sociology of China

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could not be depicted in the form of individual legal personalities, but in theform of sets of dynamic exchange and obligation. The expectation that therewould be reciprocation of obligation was the key ‘‘right.’’ A ‘‘right’’ emerged inthe practice of a relationship and was accorded by the other party in the rela-tionship. Guanxi, loosely translated as ‘‘reciprocity,’’ was the Chinese equivalentof recht. But guanxi means a very different form of political sociology and itmeans a very different form of Chinese international relations to that whichseems ‘‘natural’’ to the West. It is freighted with the usual duplicities and hypoc-rises in application, but the Chinese practice of front-loading their African tradearrangements with a huge array of immediate benefits for the African countryconcerned is not only canny business but is an expression of guanxi. ‘‘You arenow my younger brother [so there is an aspect of what we would call patroniza-tion involved] and it is proper that I should look after you. You are giving mesomething and it is obligatory that I give you very much at this moment as a signof reciprocity.’’ Western visitors to China seem often struck by what they view asthe naivety of the officials who begin their discourses on China in Africa withsuch a line. But it is the Western observer who needs to suspend disbelief. TheChinese really mean it, and it is not just a cover for much underneath; there ismuch underneath but guanxi becomes a layer without which other layers wouldbe immoral. In this kind of reciprocity, Chinese international political sociologybecomes a series of interactions and it is each action that proposes a balance.There is no balance of power in the normal Western sense of powerful statesachieving alliances that confront another alliance. There is a network of bal-anced interactions, each with many layers below the surface. The number of reci-procities, not the weight of alliances, determines the Chinese sense ofsatisfaction with their international relations. Power is important, but it is a signof tumult. The sage works for guanxi.

None of this precludes duplicity, wickedness and (ruthless) competition, butthere must be enough first layer of recognizable guanxi to give moral characterto the layers beneath, and even those layers must contain some discernible ele-ment of reciprocity, no matter how advantageously weighted toward Chineseinterests they may really be. Foreign policy will be articulated in the rhetoric ofguanxi and, certainly, in the client academies where ‘‘scholarship’’ is practiced, itwill be analyzed and depicted as guanxi. In China, international political sociol-ogy will be depicted in this manner, both with conviction and convincingly.

Now the question for Western International Relations and its own sense ofpolitical sociology becomes a simple one. The Western sense of internationalpolitical sociology arose from Western political achievement and thought (thethought was as much begotten by events as events were inspired by thought).Insofar as Western thought and achievement established a great hegemonicspace in the world, their sense of political sociology became normal, especially asa Western state system had been deliberately crafted and as, particularly now,democracy and individual human rights become transact able commodities forthe receipt of aid and approval. In Africa, Chinese expansionism effectivelyproposes a direct contrast to at least the individual human rights aspect of theWestern emphases. It is the rights of states and, by extension, governments thatoccupy the Chinese. It is those governments that must recognize and exerciseobligation to their subjects and citizens—not the Chinese. And, even the Chineseinsistence on recognition of existing individual states, and reciprocity with thosestates, is inflected with the sense of detaching state affiliation from reciprocitieswith the West to state reciprocities with China. Slowly, the international politicalsociology is appearing to have within it agents of change.

I have briefly indicated the example of China. Resurgent Russia, as it has dem-onstrated in Georgia, has its own version of the political sociology of its region.The ‘‘buffer state’’ has reappeared in international politics. Iran has its own

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version of regional sub-system that is able to lay down terms and challenges tothe international system—to the extent that the international system feels alarmand recognizes it is being challenged.

Everywhere, as the Chinese sage would say, there is tumult, and in the concep-tion of tumult—for none of this comes without philosophy, strategy and theskills of implementation.

I do not think Western international political sociology can live without recogni-tion that, slowly but surely, it is the center of a siege. Returning finally to China, Iwas in Beijing in 2007 advising African delegations on trade relationships withChina. The Chinese were amazed I sat with the Africans. Surely, as a Chinese, Ishould seek to help the Chinese. ‘‘After all, Professor Chan, what we are doing isonly seeking to help the Africans. If you worked with us, in that way you would behelping both.’’ In the new intersections of different international political sociolo-gies, there will be dreadfully familiar conceits. These are conceits that emanatefrom self-centeredness. Perhaps, notwithstanding all the recognitions I demandfrom the West, we are setting forth on another rotation of the merry-go-round.

Historical Sociology and PostcolonialTheory: Two Strategies for Challenging

Eurocentrism

Sanjay Seth

Goldsmiths, University of London

Nowadays being critical of Eurocentrism, or seeking to ‘‘provincialize Europe’’—-more generally, trying to dislodge Europe from its privileged place in ourthought—is no longer a marginal project, but one that engages growing numbersof scholars. Partly as a result, how this is done varies greatly. Schematically, it is pos-sible—as I have done in my title—to identify two distinct strategies that have beenadopted for challenging Eurocentrism. The aim of this brief essay is to contrastthese, clarify the intellectual presumptions and entailments of each, and thenbriefly—as one who writes squarely within postcolonial theory—to outline what Isee as the advantages of my own chosen path.

Works in historical or political sociology by Jack Goody (1996), Andre GunderFrank (1998), Samir Amin (1989), James M. Blaut (1993) and John Hobson(2004), all their significant differences notwithstanding, have a common agenda.They retell the history of the emergence of the modern world in such a way thatEurope no longer occupies a position of centrality; they challenge what we mightcall the ‘‘conventional narrative,’’ in which modernity begins in Europe andthen spreads gradually to the rest of the world through colonialism, trade andarmies. In the alternative version(s) that seeks to displace the conventional nar-rative, the development of capitalism and modernity is not a tale of endogenousdevelopment in Europe, but of structural interconnections between differentparts of the world that long predated Europe’s ascendance and, moreover,provided the conditions for that ascendance. Andre Gunder Frank writes,‘‘Europe did not pull itself up by its own economic bootstraps, and certainly notthanks to any kind of European ‘exceptionalism’ of rationality, institutions,

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