Appunti - International Relations of East Asia

International relations of East Asia

The evolving Asian system

In recent times, many scholars have tried to understand whether it is possible to talk about international relations of East Asia. Are IR of East Asia completely independent from IR? Or can and should they be seen as a branch of the discipline of IR? Eventually, nobody has succeeded in replying to these questions. However, IR of East Asia have become prominent. Many scholars have devoted their academic life to the study of different topics which can eventually be understood as part of IR of East Asia. Of course, we basically try to adopt different lenses that, in principle, belong to different schools of IR. When analysing IR, it is very important to perfectly know the history of the country that you study, and knowing the language of that country is considered a plus, because it gives you the possibility to understand primary resources and make your analysis more accurate.

This said, IR of East Asia have seen distinct patterns of change over the thousands of years of their evolution. Today, scholarship considers these patterns as a series of international orders. In 2020, the Chinese scholar Huang defined an international order as “a set of authority relations among States that shapes and works on a structure of power distribution among the States, and the institutional arrangements and normative practices that support, moralise, and transmit the effects of the power relations on States,” although international orders were at first more imaginary than real.

All the following examples are pretty much meaningful in order to understand how the Asian region and international order shaped by Asian countries has developed. Since the emergence of early States in continental East Asia, IR of East Asia has experienced:

• The period of Warring States, meaning the existence of different States on the same territory making war one to the other for supremacy, which is a crystal-clear example of Realism.
• A Chinese world order, which is the best example to understand how Asia has evolved.
• The European colonial treaty port system: At a certain point, Europeans got to Asia and were responsible for the overall modification of the system itself. Of course, China was surprised by their arrival and was unable to react. This lack of reaction was basically dependent on the same ideological position that China had with regard to the international order that it had contributed to shape.
• The Japanese sphere of influence, meaning the collapse of the Chinese system and the appearance of the Japanese imperial power. Eventually, we entered into a complete transformation with new actors, new strategies, etc., and the international order as it was seen by Asian is completely renovated;
• The Cold War bipolar order: The Cold War contributed to a new modification. The first thing that it brought was a bipolar confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union. It is absolutely wrong and limiting to consider the Cold War merely from a Western point of view. It should also be considered from an Asian point of view, as Asia was probably one of the most important hotspots when it comes to the unfolding of the Cold War. In Europe, there was no conflictual situation, whereas in Asia, there were two major wars — the Korean War and the Vietnam War. If we do not consider Asia, it would be as looking at the Cold War with an eye closed.
• The post-Cold War US hierarchical hegemonic order: If we want to complete this approximate view of the Asian continent, we should also look at the position of the US, which is not a minor power in Asia. The US needs to be understood as an Asian power and considered as one of the most important protagonists in the political and economic life of the Asian continent. Washington politically contributed to reshape the Asian international order.

These international orders appeared consecutively and swung between two general types: the multi-State system and the hegemonic hierarchical system. We are going to start by analysing the second one, meaning the China-centric system. If we take into account Asia as it is today, are we still talking of a hierarchical system? Can we still consider China a hegemony? Can we still consider the Asian international system as a hegemonic hierarchical system?

We are going to use wrong definitions. When talking of imperial China, we should not use at any time the definition of nation. We will probably use it for the sake of clarity, but we are not dealing with a nation State. It is a modern term which cannot be applied when analysing imperial China.

The post-Cold War debate

If we understand IR of East Asia as a new field of analysis, we immediately understand that the academic debate that we are going to introduce started more or less around the Nineties and was in the hands of specialists of IR — and not of specialists of East Asia — who looked at Asia and treated it as they could have treated any other continent or single nation in the world. This is completely wrong.

The academic debate was driven by Neo-realists — I assume that you all know the main features of their thought — who started to understand some countries in Asia, and especially China, as a potential threat. They looked at China and asked themselves what would have happened if China would have grown. The debate started to focus around different questions:

• Does history repeat itself in Asia? They were specialists of IR and had studied Europe. Eventually, they started to look at Asia and wonder whether history would have repeated itself in Asia.
• How will the future of Asia be shaped? Will the future of Asia resemble the past? At that time, China was a growing country from an economic and political point of view, and they started to wonder whether the future of Asia would have resembled the past, meaning be hierarchical.
• What kind of past? Asia’s past or Europe’s past? Will they create a kind of hierarchical system or will Asia be prone to continuous conflicts?

At a certain point, there was a split between two different positions: 1) On the one hand, those scholars who belonged to the Realist school — the Realist paradigm. 2) On the other hand, all Asia started being involved in this academic debate and gave a different reading of what was published at the time — the Sino-centric paradigm.

1) The Realist paradigm:

The Realist paradigm foresaw a conflictual future spurred by major power competition, relative power gains — i.e. the rise of China — and the destabilising political dynamics associated with power transitions. One of the most proficient scholars in this field was Aaron Friedberg, who belonged to the pessimistic Realist school. With regard to the future of Asia, he thought that “Asia’s future will resemble Europe’s war-prone past”. He was totally persuaded of the fact that, in the future, China would be as gigantic as it has become, that this would mean a threat to other Asian countries, and that it could have eventually spared a confrontation between the Asian superpower — China — and the US. In my opinion, he was wrong, but he was totally convinced of the fact that the future of Asia would have been punctuated of conflicts originating in the same continent and eventually leading to frictions between the regional hegemony — China — and the superpower — the US.

2) The Sino-centric paradigm:

After Friedberg, there was a couple of very clever scholars who contributed to this debate. One of them was Samuel Huntington, who did not think that Asia would be prone to wars or that there would be major conflicts in Asia. He thought that China would resume its place as regional hegemony as it used to be in the past, and that other States in the region would accept the Chinese hegemony and recognise the possibility that this kind of situation would be beneficial to them. He applied the “clash of civilisation” theory to the rise of China, arguing that Asian countries will be more likely to bandwagon with China than to balance against it. Asia’s Sino-centric past — and not Europe’s multipolar past — will be Asia’s future.

Another very important scholar is David Kang. The positions of Huntington and Kang are not that different. Kang is more prepared than Huntington on the history of Asia and the institutions of Asian countries. He argues that Asian international relations have historically been hierarchic, more peaceful and stable than those in the West, owing to the region’s historical acceptance of a hierarchical world order with China at its core. So, according to him, there will be no conflicts. He does not think that China would have to make any kind of effort in convincing other States that they need to accommodate China’s position, as accommodation of China was the norm in East Asia during the Ming and Qing eras.

The most striking difference between Samuel Huntington and Kang is that Kang recurs to history and does a brilliant analysis of East Asia, and specifically of China, during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) eras, until the end of imperial China and the beginning of the Republic in 1911.

Systemic transformations in East Asian international order

We were talking about the different developments in the East Asian international order or the East Asian system. We are going to focus on:

• The Chinese tribute system, meaning the Sino-centric system, from the Opium War to the Sino-Japanese War;
• The Japanese imperial system, from the end of the Sino-Japanese War to the end of World War II — Pacific War in 1945;
• The Cold War system.

We need to understand what impact each of these transformations had on the entire region. We can talk of systemic transformations that have contributed to reshape the Asian international relations in the post-Cold War.

The first transformation: the Chinese tribute system

With regard to the first transformation, we have to refer to Fairbank, a giant in International Studies. In 1968, Fairbank published a book in which he started to talk about China’s foreign relations. It was something that nobody had done before. It was a brilliant attempt, because he did not want to know about present China, but actually referred to Chinese foreign relations during the Qing Empire (1644-1911 or 1912, depending on whether we take the end of the imperial system or the beginning of the Republic as turning point). Of course, China had many relations with different countries in East Asia and was used to exert its role in different ways — not only through military means, as China never used them. It had an infinite number of possibilities, but was not prone to use any kind of military means when starting relations with other States or foreign entities. Fairbank highlighted how important ideology and attractive means — meaning cultural means — were in Chinese foreign policy during the Qing era in order to connect with other States. China used only soft powers. Of course, it entertained this kind of relations in order to satisfy its own interests.

According to Fairbank, at that stage, China was focused on three different concentric zones of bilateral relations:

• The Sinic Zone, which included Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, which had become neighbouring States of People’s Republic of China;
• The Inner Asian Zone, meaning the Asian plateau, which included Mongolia, Tibet, and Central Asia;
• The Outer Zone, which was broader than the other two zones. Actually, you have to understand it in a relational way, establishing relations with other countries and regions of the outer world — Russia, European countries like Portugal, Holland, and Great Britain.

We also need to focus on institutions. In this period, China was seen as the Middle Kingdom. By this definition, you understand how Chinese conceived their position — at the centre of human civilisation. The Middle Kingdom, meaning China, was ruled by the Empire. The three zones mentioned by Fairbank were concentric around the centre, which connects Heaven — at the top — and anything under Heaven, and the Emperor was named Son of Heaven. This is the structure of power and authority underlying the Chinese world order (Confucian order). The hierarchical political structure determined the authority relations among States in the domain and was legitimised through the moral power of Heaven transmitted in the deeds and acts of the Emperor, the Son of Heaven. In other words, the authority of the Empire came out of the moral power of Heaven, and the Son of Heaven was the only one having the possibility to govern, as he had been chosen by Heaven.

The Sino-centric system

What do we mean by Sino-centric system / Sino-centric image of world order? If you have read the diary that Marco Polo presumably dictated to Rustichello da Pisa, you all know how modern China was at that time. China created new artefacts and technologies. This is important in order to understand China as a very advanced country, even more advanced than European countries at that point in history. This had a lot of consequences on the image of the world that Chinese had in mind — which does not mean that the world actually corresponded to the image that Chinese had of it, but it is important to understand what kind of projected image they had of their country and of its relevance and centrality for the entire world system. That was clearly what Chinese thought of themselves and China. Therefore, the traditional Chinese image of the world order was an extended projection of the internal order.

The internal order was hierarchical. On top of everything there was the Empire. The authority of the Empire was totally left untouched, because the Empire itself was legitimised by the fact that it had been chosen as the Son of Heaven. This hierarchical order was also projected to the outside order, meaning that the Chinese considered China at the very core of the world system. If we understand this, we have already understood what the Sino-centric system was: It was the centre of human civilisation. Chinese were aware of the fact that they were culturally superior to anybody else. So, they felt themselves at the very core of human civilisation. This implies that the Chinese looked at the external world in a particular way: If they considered themselves morally superior with regard to anybody else, it implies the fact that they considered everybody else inferior. There was a cultural division between superior — the Chinese sedentary agricultural society — and inferior — all the others, in particular the barbarian nomadic steppe societies — especially during the Qing dynasty. It is important to notice that this division was culturally produced, was an outcome of ideology, of the cultural superiority that the Chinese felt. Please notice that the Westphalian principles of State sovereignty and State equality were absent. There was only a deep cultural division. China’s cultural superiority was based on the belief that the Chinese imperial system and Confucian ideology preserved the domestic social order and political stability — allowing the Chinese to live in a very stable environment from a political point of view — and therefore extended to the surrounding areas.

When it comes to the Sino-centric system, the most important factor was the tribute system — or tributary system. The tribute system was at the very base of the Sino-centric system and was the only institution on which China’s external relations were deepened on. It means that all the external relations of Imperial China were supposed to take place within the tribute system, which served as an institutionalised expression of the Chinese image of the world order. What was the tribute system and how did it work? From a moral point of view, the tribute had and could only be paid to the Chinese Empire. All other civilisations outside of China could pay a homage to the Chinese Empire in order to enter the circle of the Chinese civilisation. Remember that this is not dependent on Westphalian assumptions, but has to be understood as culturally superior and inferior. If you pay tribute to the Chinese Empire, that puts you in a very convenient position, because you immediately become part of the Chinese civilisation. So, you leave your position of inferior civilisation and enter into the realm of the superior civilisations. On the other hand, you need to understand that all countries paying tribute or homage to the Empire — and therefore entering the tribute system — were culturally subservient to China and could not be considered equal.

Was the tribute system valuable for both? Yes, it was valuable for both the tribute receiver — the Chinese Emperor — and the tributary State. As we have just said, all the others entering into this relationship with China were subservient to it. On the one hand, the tribute system was valuable for China, because the ritual was the explicit acknowledgement of the superiority of the Chinese culture. On the other hand, the kingdoms who decided to pay tribute to China — the tributary States — received immediate legitimisation and validation of their political power by the Chinese Emperor in the form of patents of office and investiture. Once the kingdom was recognised by China, it obtained a huge degree of political legitimacy at home, because the citizens of the kingdom considered China superior. Therefore, entering that kind of relationship was beneficial to the country.

Example: The best example is Korea. Korea was a unified peninsula — the two territorial entities of North and South Korea did not exist. Korea became dependent on the tribute system. It paid tribute to China, and the Sino-Korean tributary relationship was very intimate, more political than economic. There is a Korean term — mohwa-sasang — which means “ideology of emulating Chinese things”. Actually, this term explicitly recognises the fact that, by paying tribute, Koreans left the barbarian condition and entered into a superior realm dependent on and belonging to the umbrella established by China. This was rooted in the minds of the Koreans. The ruling classes in Korea found the tribute system not only congenial ideologically — as expressed in the Korean term mohwa-sasang — but also politically in legitimating and perpetuating their own status and power by suppressing any popular or nationalistic movement at home. Therefore, the intimate relationship between modern North Korea (Pyongyang) and the People’s Republic of China (Beijing) depends on this legacy and stems from this historical context.