Review on The Perceptions to Confucian Thinking from The Perspective of lnternational Relations

马子博

（Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary, Budapest, 1093）

Abstract：Confucian Thinking has fundamental influence in shaping Chinese culture as well as politics. Besides setting the mentality, Confucian Thinking had direct impact on Chinese’s world view, which significantly influenced China’s foreign policy too. The world has different views on Confucian Thinking from the perspective of International Relations, and the study on this topic became more prominent with the growing presence of China on the world stage.

Key word：Confucian Thinking；International Relations；Foreign Policy

一 、Shifting Attitudes towards Chinese Thoughts

Due to the lack of multi-party democracy system and adherence to communism, the world seems to take the presumption that China cannot find legitimacy in the international order. Especially after China has won success in its rising-up after 1980s, the West’s vigilance and hostility towards China in the field of ideology seems to have further increased. Based on paradigms in mainstream Western IR theories, China cannot be peaceful or has less peaceful nature compared with its Western democratic peers. Politically,China was pushed to the dilemma： a lack of integration proves China’s “incompatibility”, while a step outwards signals Chinese threat. Academically, Western scholars seem to dismiss voices from China, as Chinese IR was an outsider amongst Western hegemony and people don’t believe communist China would offer anything authentic or valid (Rosita, D. 2011)

Thanks to effortless attempts by both Chinese scholars who wish to raise voice for Chinese philosophy on the world stage and international scholars who studied China from an impartial posture amid all the barriers and uncertainty, Chinese inputs to IR is being more and more discussed and recognized. By example, the Chinese view on “non-military ‘export’of strength”, was once marginalized. Then one of the leading Chinese IR scholars, Yaqin Qin elaborated how Chinese culture determined Chinese way in building international order by“dialogue, negotiation, and consensus building”. Together with the support of fact –e.g.,peaceful manners were demonstrated throughout the“Belt and Road Initiative”, Chinese philosophy on IR obtained closer investigation and examination internationally. Until today, Chinese philosophy on IR has shown to be productive in terms of soft power and international institutions, by its fruitful contribution in process-based methods under certain conditions.

二、Misinterpretation of Confucianism

It’s not difficult to find different interpretation of Confucianism due to preconceptions as well as cultural & linguistic barriers. This part lists few examples in existing literature.

“It is conceivable that China’s leadership may become more nationalist than internationalist Confucian in the future, especially if mutual (correlative)trust does not take root. Thus the predictive quality of a ‘harmonious world’philosophy based on Confucian(and other Chinese) philosophies for the positive development of global governance is not assured”(Rosita, D. 2011). The notion of combining“nationalist”and “internationalist” with “Confucianism” sounds strange to Confucius advocates. Covering both domestic and international politics though, Confucianism is not divided by boarder lines. And it’s worth mentioning that even what is considered “foreign policy”today,is within Confucian’s range of“governance”– all under heaven. If there is any division within the world Confucianism depicts, it’s the separation between“Ren”governance and Non-“Ren”governance. So to deploy Confucianism only to nationalism is a dangerous idea, and it’s not the true Confucian spirit.

三、Conjectures on Rising China

Numerous scholarships portrayed the implications of rising China, being an utter threat to the world or somewhere in between with both danger and benefits. To sum up, the majority of the assessments on the manner of China’s rising fall to the following three categories： hot peaceful rise, warm peaceful rise, and cold peaceful rise. Here all terms are equipped with“peace”because the process is not and will not (in near future) be conducted in the form of outright war.As how Barry Buzan puts it： Hot peaceful rise would be conducted in the terms of the behavior appropriate to a security community, and aim for that as an outcome.Warm peaceful risewould be conducted in terms of the behavior appropriate to a security regime and aim for that outcome (a security regime is a pattern of security interdependence still shaped by fear of warand expectations of violence in political relations, but where those fears and expectations are restrained by agreed sets of rules of conduct, and expectation that those rules will be observed). Cold peaceful rise would be conducted in raw power political terms using threat and intimidation, but avoiding hot war (Barry,B. 2014)

Confucianism does not tie itself with any of the three. First of all it’s not a philosophy designed for“rising-up”； secondly, Confucianism demonstrates tendency instead of hard determinates which makes it incompatible to examine it through the established Western lenses.

四、Summary

Chinese IR development shifted from“learning from West”to “promoting its own heritage and incorporate its own culture to a force in IR field”. After systematically importing Western IR scholarship, Chinese scholars start to add their own color, if not fully reject Western presumptions. When the growing China attracted attention as well as anxiety worldwide and caused de-facto change in existing world order, Chinese voice on its true intention needs to be heard,and heard correctly. It relies on Chinese scholars to precisely convey Chinese message, bridge it with Western scholarship thus Chinese perspective can be accepted as a convincing expression of Chinese views which makes sense in this world. One difficulty lies in the interpretation of Chinese literature – China never had distinctive IR scholarship. Thus the clarification of Chinese perspective itself even before transforming it to an “international”way, is down to interpretation. There is a long way to go before China’s perspective (Confucian Thinking) can be truly articulated and harmonized with the world.