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Utopia, Empire, and Harmony in 21St-Century International Theory

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Utopia, Empire, and Harmony in 21St-Century International Theory Remembering the Future — Utopia, Empire, and Harmony in 21st-Century International Theory WILLIAM A. CALLAHAN University of Durham Using a comparative approach to international relations theory, this article examines how ancient ideas are being recycled to describe world order in the 21st century. In particular, it provides a thick description of three models of utopia in global politics — Great Harmony and Harmony- with-difference from China, and Empire from Hardt and Negri. Using an unexplored set of Chinese-language texts, the article first excavates how Communist Party intellectuals in China have been writing about the ancient Confucian ideal of Great Harmony as a way of promoting the People’s Republic of China’s role as a Great Power in the 21st century. Second, it uses Hardt and Negri’s deterritorialized concept of Empire to criticize Great Harmony discourse as a transcendent and state-centric model of world order. Hardt and Negri’s notion of immanent utopia is elaborated in the third section using another set of Chinese texts that describe the flexible methodology of ‘Harmony-with-difference’. The article concludes that Harmony-with-difference provides a practical logic for achieving Hardt and Negri’s immanent utopia. The article contributes two things to international relations theory — (1) using Chinese- language texts, it broadens the reach of comparative international relations theory and (2) it uses the concept of Empire to challenge Chinese concepts of harmony, while using Chinese theory to elaborate on Hardt and Negri’s utopia. In this way, the article shows how key texts have productively recycled the classical concepts of utopia, empire, and harmony as a way of remembering the future for the 21st century. KEY WORDS ♦ China ♦ empire ♦ harmony ♦ international relations theory ♦ utopia Hegemony in the world system is not just a product of material power, either in terms of military strength or economic prosperity. World leadership European Journal of International Relations Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications and ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research, Vol. 10(4): 569–601 [DOI: 10.1177/1354066104047849] European Journal of International Relations 10(4) demands an ideology to order the globe symbolically, according to many normative international relations (IR) theorists. Pax Britannica was ordered by the concepts of ‘civilization’ and ‘free trade’, and the current Pax Americana by the big ideas of ‘democratic peace’ and ‘globalization’. Each hegemon aims to put its stamp on the world, seeking to universalize its particular national culture. Hardt and Negri’s Empire (2000) also talks of world order, but offers a detailed critique of such state-driven utopias, arguing that in the shift from imperialism to Empire there is a shift from a centralized world order to the decentralized logic of postmodern sovereignty. Hence universal Empire is not transcendent, but immanent — a utopia continually produced in the here and now by the multitude, rather than being imposed from above. This utopia, they argue, is the constitution of an unbounded network that does not divide and conquer; it works to incorporate, differentiate, and manage multiple singularities. While these two models of utopia are both Euro-American, now China is getting into the act to propose its own version of a moral world order. As a result of its dramatic economic growth since 1978, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has a new confidence in international affairs. China is not merely trying to use its new economic power to transform its political status from that of a third world country to that of a Great Power. In addition to catching up to the West economically, China now aims to narrow the ‘normative gap’ in international relations theory (Deng and Gray, 2001: 6–7; Geeraerts and Men, 2001: 271–2). Criticizing globalization as Eurocentric, Liu Kang (1998: 164) asks — ‘As the last remaining socialist country, with perhaps the fastest economic growth in the world today, China presents a challenge to critical thinking about globalization . Will China offer an alternative?’ Many Chinese intellectuals believe that China can offer an alternative, and have been doing ideological work to develop an authentic Chinese model of world order for the 21st century. As an emerging Great Power, they feel it is only right and proper for China to contribute to IR theory (see Song, 2001; Geeraerts and Men, 2001; Liu, 1992: 226). Beijing’s foreign policy elite, for example, now calls on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to solve the South China Sea disputes in an ‘Oriental way’. As we will see, this Oriental way is not just for the East — it is presented as an alternative, universalizable ‘world order’ by scholars and policy-makers in China. As Harvard philosopher Tu Weiming (1990: 60) wrote in a Chinese journal: It is true that Cultural China reflects the implications of territory, nationality, race and language, but its essential defining characteristic is that it exceeds the particularities of territory, nationality, race and language. What it signifies is the construction of universal values of global significance. 570 Callahan: Remembering the Future Likewise, a key European IR theorist feels that Chinese civilization can provide an alternative model for global politics — ‘The most obvious candidate for an independent IR tradition based on a unique philosophical tradition is China, though very little independent theorizing has taken place’ (Wæver, 1998: 696). The evolution of Zhang Yongjin’s (1991, 2001) arguments demonstrate this transition from understanding China as a victim (an outsider in a Eurocentric international society) to understanding China as the site of an alternative world order. In this way, the Chinese intellectual debate is moving beyond the issues of ‘narrow nationalism’ and ‘absolute sovereignty’ that characterized the 1990s to promote utopian Chinese views of world order for the 21st century (see Callahan, 2003a). In this article, I will compare three notions of utopia for the 21st Century (Chinese party intellectuals on Great Harmony, Hardt and Negri on Empire, and Chinese public intellectuals on Harmony-with-difference) as a way of examining how utopia works in world politics. In the first section, I will outline how the ancient idea of Great Harmony (Datong)1 is satisfying Chinese desires for a universal utopia — Great Harmony is the next big idea. Tradition is being recycled for the 21st century as the Chinese expression of Marxian utopia, most prominently by Communist Party intellectuals. I will examine whether this utopia is presented as unique to China (as a national Great Harmony society for the PRC) or whether it constitutes a model appropriate for world order (for a global Great Harmony). Second, I will ask if Great Harmony is a transcendent utopia based on idealist logic or scientific method, or whether it is an immanent utopia growing out of human history. This analysis will bring to light a set of Chinese-language texts that have yet to be analysed, and thus serves to broaden the reach of comparative international relations theory. The distinction between transcendent and immanent power will be developed in the second section, which uses Hardt and Negri’s Empire (2000) to deconstruct critically notions of world order. At first glance, pre- modern Chinese philosophy and postmodern Italian political thought constitute a very odd juxtaposition. But, as we will see, both are deployed in the service of reviving the ethico-politics of Marxist utopia. ‘Empire’ is a useful heuristic device for deconstructing the transcendent models of world order used by the Chinese texts. Moreover, Hardt and Negri push us to question utopias that are tied to a particular place. Rather than having to choose between an American-centric and a Sino-centric world order, they argue for a logic of liberation that works in decentralized and deterritori- alized ways. Unfortunately, though their analysis of world politics is acute, Hardt and Negri fail convincingly to provide a way to work through the problems and possibilities of Empire to the promised liberation. 571 European Journal of International Relations 10(4) In the last section, I will return to Chinese texts to argue that they provide the flexible methodology for liberation that is missing from Empire. Chinese philosophy also has been involved in a struggle between transcendent power and immanent power. While Great Harmony is a centralized ‘One- Worldism’ that seeks to abolish difference, another type of harmony (Harmony-with-difference) constitutes a flexible logic and methodology that allows for the immanent utopia proposed by Hardt and Negri. This will be shown through an analysis of Harmony-with-difference, first in classical Chinese philosophy, and then in contemporary Chinese texts. Indeed, while party intellectuals concentrate on the transcendent utopia of Great Har- mony, we will see how university-based philosophers and IR theorists are more interested in how Harmony-with-difference can be used as a problem- solving methodology. I will conclude that while normative IR theory calls for an internationalization of Chinese national values through Great Harmony, Harmony-with-difference constitutes a normative logic that is not limited to China, and works well with Hardt and Negri’s immanent utopia. In this way, a critical comparison of Great Harmony and Empire is useful for considering how Marxism is being revived in unexpected places for a new politics of utopia. Both discourses are themselves
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