This outstanding book is the latest to consider how international relations theory may be brought to bear on China's history of war and peace. It consists of seven chapters: the first two on theory; then two, of admirable clarity and analytical insight, dealing with the Northern and Southern Song dynasties. These are followed by two examining the Ming dynasty, first in its policies near to home, as in the campaigns of the Yongle emperor deep into Mongolia, and second in its manifestation of power and influence much further abroad, above all in the voyages of Zheng He. The last chapter deals with the contemporary scene.
Wang's problem is the same as that addressed by Iain Johnston nearly twenty years ago (Johnston, Cultural Realism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), but his approach is different. Thus he attempts to quantify Confucian influence by counting officials who were jinshi, finding that, for example, their numbers in the Song were greater by a factor of six or seven than in the Tang. Such data, along with the clear predominance of Confucian thought through many periods of Chinese history, lead Wang to ask: how could truly cultural reasons account for policies of realpolitik? In a genuinely Confucian society where would the culture in cultural realism come from?
To be sure the military classics were known and read, even by emperors, but their influence was by comparison minor. Dismissing my repeated suggestion (e.g. Arthur Waldron, “Cultural Realism, Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in China” China Quarterly 147 (September 1996): 962–964) that what the political scientists are discovering as realism is in fact legalism, Wang adopts the orthodox political science answer that Chinese realism is a product of international anarchy.
This is a clearer formulation than Johnston's, which is forced to dismiss Confucianism as a kind of smoke screen—“an habitual discourse”—that masked what was really going on. But it has problems nevertheless, many of Confucian origin.
The Classic of History long ago established the model of zones, in which the influence of the Son of Heaven was to be felt everywhere, albeit to different degrees. That implies, in Peter Lorge's words (quoted by Wang on p. 39), that the mission of the Song ruler would be to “establish the real or ritual dominance of the Song dynasty over every polity with which it was in contact.”
Wang describes, superbly, how the Song nurtured its resources and conquered a number of relatively small states in the closing decades of the tenth century until “most of China was under Song control.” Song was not conquering but rather recovering “lost” territories—that is the implication in any case. Its confidence and wealth bolstered, the Song then turned to “an offensive grand strategy” against the Liao that ended in tears. But surely all of these campaigns, including that against the Liao, were of a piece. They sought to “unify the country” not, in official eyes, to acquire territory that did not already legitimately belong to them.
In fact, like the Harvard graduates of the ancient joke who never “read” books but rather only “reread” them, China rarely owns up to conquering new territories, but rather only “recovers” them. Thus today she is not “asserting” but “reasserting” her influence in the South China Sea. Her preparatory work classifying Goguryo as “Chinese” rather than “Korean” may well portend a “reassertion” of Chinese influence in that peninsula should North Korea fail.
The Confucian-enunciated view was that “Once the Song had regained power, the emperor should lead an expeditionary force to annihilate the enemies and ‘burn down their leader's place of worship.’ When that day came, ‘all under heaven would then be obtained and pacified’” (p. 48).
Likewise the conquest of Northern Han was justified as a punitive expedition. “Hedong [Northern Han] disobeyed our command. Its crime should be punished” (p. 41).
Confucianism is not limited in its ends, which are universal and maximal, or even ultimately in its means. The difference in comparison with most other philosophies is a genuine belief that moral influence can accomplish what is ordinarily the work of armies. But even armies are not beyond Confucian approval, providing their cause is just, as in the case of punitive expeditions.
Furthermore, as Wang admits, under Confucianism no foreign ruler could be the ritual equal of the Chinese. There were exceptions to be sure, especially during the multi-state period that he describes in his two chapters on Song, when Liao, and not Song, was most powerful. This is not realism but it is the source of many unnecessary conflicts. In this connection his account of how the Song changed aggressive sounding place names after the treaty of Shanyuan is most interesting. One example: “Polu [“Breaking up the Caitiffs”] was changed to Xinan [“faith and peace”]” (p. 55).
Confucianism has plenty of concepts and vocabulary for doing the things other states do. There is no need to call what China does “realism” unless one is going to show how the precepts of realism are concealed somehow in the Confucian canon, which is the real cultural source of behavior.
Furthermore, key aspects of Confucianism and of Chinese policy such as universalism and insistence on status are not aspects of realism. As expressed in Chinese history they are no more realpolitik than was the Mongol attempt to conquer the whole world. This second was based on the disputed instructions of the sky god to Chinggis; the first on Confucian universality as expounded in the classics.
In dealing with the early Ming, Wang neglects the powerful influence of Mongol models on the early rulers. True, Zheng He (a Muslim from Nanzhao) accomplished extraordinary maritime feats, having no parallel in the subsequent history of the dynasty. But they have precedent, for example, in the Mongol dispatch of punitive expeditions to what is now Indonesia.
The same is true of the Yongle emperor's failed attacks on Karakorum. These were not necessary to keep safe Ming China, as she then existed. But if the goal was to reconstruct the Mongol state, they were essential.
Wang makes a major contribution (buried in a footnote) in using newer data and retranslating and recoding data on Chinese initiation of conflict as Johnston first did. He notes that the character ji 擊 denotes not an attack but a counterattack in which e.g. Mongols are defeated. This reduces somewhat Johnston's alarming figures on how often Chinese adopt the offensive.
Realism, to a historian like myself, seems to exist at too high a level of abstraction to explain the sorts of specific events that Wang chronicles. Moreover it cannot be tested. Absent a “control” Song dynasty one cannot say that the use of violence was greater or lesser, except than in a hypothesized alternative. As method, this seems fatally flawed.
Despite these various criticisms, however, this is a superb book. It is thoroughly researched, and clearly presents some of the most complex periods in Chinese history. As such it is highly informative and full of insight. As for the differences over theory, those are the differences between history and political science.
