China and the historical comparisons of state systems

According to the classic English School scholars, the core subject matter of international relations is international society.Footnote ⁵ The classic English School scholars' definition of ‘international society’ is basically the society of sovereign states, which originated in 16–17th century Europe and then expanded into a global international society. In other words, the society of sovereign states has always been at the centre of the English School's conception of international society. To some extent, the English School's notion of international society is just the ‘Westphalian conception of international society’, as David Armstrong claimed.Footnote ⁶ But in its conceptualisation of international society, the various kinds of ‘pre-modern international society’,Footnote ⁷ or the historical international systems in the pre-modern world, are the important cases for the English School's comparisons of historical international systems. The warring states system of ancient China and China-centred tributary system in East Asia, the two cases of the pre-modern international society, were included in the historical comparisons of states systems by the English School scholars. The warring states system of ancient China was described as a historical international system/society which resembled the modern international system/society, but the China-centred tributary system which was different from the territorial state-based modern international system/society and therefore neglected by the earlier English School scholars.

Warring states system in ancient China: a useful testing case

The period of Spring and Autumn and Warring States in ancient China (771 BC-221 BC) was widely regarded as a case similar to the modern sovereign states system. Hence it has been cited frequently by the English School scholars as an important case of the historical states systems, or one of the pre-modern international societies.

Martin Wight first referred to China, in his well-known ‘international theory’ lectures at LSE in the late 1950s.Footnote ⁸ Wight even made an interesting and insightful comparison between the European and Chinese political theories, by stating that there was also a triad of philosophical traditions in the period of Spring and Autumn and Warring States of ancient China. The Rationalist philosophy was provided by Confucianism, it had a broad resemblance to Western Rationalism. The Revolutionist strand was Taoism. And the Realist strand in Chinese philosophy came from Fa Chia, or the school of law (legalism).Footnote ⁹ It was obvious that Martin Wight tried to use the Chinese case to test his theoretical argument on the existence of three political traditions, namely realism, rationalism, and revolutionism.

In the early years of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, the committee members had devoted a lot of discussion to the theoretical conceptualisation of the international society which led to the publication of Diplomatic Investigation, an earlier English School classic, in 1966.Footnote ¹⁰ But at the British Committee meeting in January of 1964, Herbert Butterfield, the Cambridge historian and the Committee's first convener, argued that the committee should not be obsessed with the construction of theory, and he suggested the future research be concentrated on the historical comparisons of international systems, including the international systems in Europe, ancient Greece, Islamic world, and China.Footnote ¹¹ The other committee members, including Martin Wight, supported him. Therefore from 1964 to 1978, the Committee's discussions had been devoted to said research programme, and dozens of research papers were produced. The warring states system in ancient China was included as part of that research programme.Footnote ¹² Martin Wight, a key figure of the committee who succeeded Butterfield as its convener in 1967 till his death in 1972, already referred to the warring states system in ancient China, as one of the earlier states systems, in one of his first papers to the Committee in early 1960s.Footnote ¹³ He then submitted a series of working papers related to the historical comparisons of states systems from 1964 to 1972. These papers submitted by Martin Wight were later collected in his posthumous book System of States (1977), which was edited by Hedley Bull. In his book, Martin Wight regarded the warring states system in ancient China, along with the Western or modern international system, and the Hellenic-Hellenistic or Graeco-Roman states system, as some of the typical cases of states systems.Footnote ¹⁴ He further elaborated that three historical international societies, namely the ancient China, Graeco-Roman international society and the modern international society, all originated from the areas with shared cultures and languages. Or to use Wight's own words, ‘We must assume that a states-system will not come into being without a degree of cultural unity among its members. The three states-systems that we have taken as paradigms, the Greek, the Western, and the early Chinese, each arose within a single culture.’Footnote ¹⁵ Hedley Bull and Adam Watson echoed Wight's argument by treating the ancient China in the period of warring states as one of the ‘non-hegemonial’ regional international societies.Footnote ¹⁶

It should be mentioned that, Geoffrey Hudson, a sinologist and fellow of St. Anthony's College, Oxford, provided related knowledge and insight to the other Committee members in the discussions of the warring states system in ancient China. He submitted two papers to the Committee in the early 1960s which were included in Diplomatic Investigation.Footnote ¹⁷ From 1964, Hudson wrote several papers on China for the Committee. In his paper ‘The Traditional Chinese Conception of International Relations’ which was submitted to the British Committee's meeting in October of 1964, Hudson elaborated on the doctrine of Chinese international primacy.Footnote ¹⁸ Martin Wight was quite impressed by that paper and got some inspiration from it.Footnote ¹⁹ Hudson wrote two more papers on China for the Committee in 1965 and 1972, and the 1972 paper was especially devoted to the warring states system of ancient China.Footnote ²⁰ Apparently, Geoffrey Hudson had largely influenced the other committee members' perception of China's relations with the international society, as he was the only China expert in the early years of the Committee.

Adam Watson's The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis (1992), profited greatly from the discussions and papers of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, especially Martin Wight's Systems of States. Footnote ²¹ But Watson's book moved far beyond Wight's Systems of States, by bringing into his survey Sumer, Assyria, Persia, India, China, the Islamic System, along with Classical Greece, the Macedonian System, Rome, the Byzantine Oikoumene, and the European international society. One of the three principal sections of that book is the main states systems of the ancient world which includes ancient China. Watson argued that, the warring states of ancient China, that operated from 770 to 221 BC consisted of independent and equal states or independences. Those independent states had had the ability to preserve one's territory, to wage wars, to change allies, and to make treaties. They agreed that war should be regulated by customary rules. Watson also pointed out, in the warring states system, the more powerful states aspired to hegemony, and the growing power of the hegemonic state led to an anti-hegemonial league in which the leader (the ba), conducted war and diplomacy on the league's behalf.Footnote ²² Finally, Watson supported Wight's argument that all of the historical international systems/societies were based on a common culture, by commenting that ‘the sense of cultural unity among the Chinese of the warring states was as strong as the Greek or Indian, and their inter-state society as distinctively Chinese.’Footnote ²³ In this sense, Watson actually treated the warring states system in ancient China as a regional international society.

The classic English School scholars referred to the warring states system in ancient China as an important and useful testing case to support the theoretical argument that an international society is composed of independent political communities and based on a common culture. The warring states system in ancient China was therefore invented and defined by the founding fathers of the English School as a historical regional international society.

China-centred East Asian tributary system as a suzerain-state system: an abnormal case

In comparison with the warring states system in ancient China, which was quite similar to the modern sovereign states system composed of sovereign or independent political communities, the China-centred tributary system in East Asia was treated as an abnormal case of states system or pre-modern international society, and relatively neglected by the English School, whether consciously or unconsciously. The China-centred East Asian tributary system lasted for about two thousand years, much longer than the modern states system. It was a unique regional international system or society, with its own organising principles, rules, norms and institutions, although different from the anarchical international society of sovereign states. Neither could it be simply categorised as a hierarchical empire.

The classic English School scholars did pay attention to the East Asian tributary system, but did not devote much research to it, because they simply regarded it as a hierarchical regional order and an abnormal case of historical states systems. Martin Wight named the China-centred tributary system as a ‘suzerainty-state system’, and differentiating it from the states system formed by ‘sovereign states’.Footnote ²⁴ He also explained why the China-centred tributary system did not become universal: ‘Obviously the states-system developed out of Western Christendom. But the Western Christendom it developed out of was itself a peculiar culture. It combined universalist claims with a missionary dynamic. Perhaps China, or Byzantium, may be considered as having had universal claims also, since they considered the rest of the world to be actually or formally in a tributary status; but they lacked the energy to give the claims effect.’Footnote ²⁵ In Anarchical Society, Hedley Bull regarded the China-centred tributary system or ‘suzerain-state system’ as neither states system nor international society, because it was a system in which only one state – the suzerain state itself – possesses sovereignty and maintains supremacy over the vassals.Footnote ²⁶ In The Expansion of International Society, Hedley Bull and Adam Watson did regard the China-centred tributary system as one of the regional international systems, but referred to its ‘hegemonial or imperial’ feature, because at the centre of the Chinese system was a suzerain, the Chinese Son of Heaven, ‘who exercised direct authority over the Heartland; and around this empire extended a periphery of locally autonomous realms that acknowledged the suzerain's overlordship and paid his tribute.’Footnote ²⁷ As a result, Wight, Bull and Watson did not treat China-centred tributary system as a comparable historical case of pre-modern international societies.

Gerrit Gong, a Chinese American scholar and member of the British Committee in the late 1970s and early 1980s, seemed to regard the tributary system as a regional international society in times of Chinese weakness. Gong stated ‘The Chinese world order thus established a China-dominated tributary system in times of Chinese strength and a regional (for China, universal) international society in times of relative Chinese weakness.’Footnote ²⁸ However, he did not elaborate on the China-centred tributary system in much detail. In one of his recent articles, Yongjin Zhang, an English School scholar of Chinese origins, provided a much vivid and persuasive account of the regional international systems/societies in both the ancient China and imperial China, including the China-centred East Asian tributary system.Footnote ²⁹

In summary, the China-centred East Asian tributary system was treated as an abnormal case which was different from the European historical experience. Therefore it was basically excluded by the first generation of the English School scholars from the historical comparisons of international systems or pre-modern international societies. But some of the English School scholars, especially those in the post-Cold War period, did try to bring China-centred tributary system in, by challenging the ethnocentric bias, or Eurocentrism, as Barry Buzan, Richard Little and Yongjin Zhang and some other contemporary English School scholars tried to reduce that bias in their writings on the historical comparisons of international systems/societies.Footnote ³⁰

China and the expansion of international society

In late 1970s and early 1980s, the expansion of international society was at the center of the English School's conception of international society when the British Committee concentrated its discussion on that research theme. When China's relevance to the expansion of the West-dominated international society became an important part of that inquiry, and the English School scholars produced the most important publication directly related to China during the Cold War years. The integration of China into the international society has also been on some of the English School scholars' research agenda since the end of the Cold War. In the English School's narratives of the expansion of the modern international society, China was first described as an outsider, then part of the revolt against the West, and finally a country which has been taking great efforts to integrate itself into the West-dominated international society.

Standard of ‘civilization’ and China's entry into the international society

The China-centred East Asian tributary system collapsed due to the West's expansion and then dominance in that region in the 19th century. China and most of its neighbours became either colonies or semi-colonies of the Western colonial powers, in order to be admitted into the modern international society, they had to meet membership standard set by the West, or ‘reverted to the sovereignty they had lost’.Footnote ³¹ The standard of ‘civilization’ is therefore the key to understand the non-Western countries' entry into the Western-dominated international society in late 19th century and the second half of the 20th century. The English School has devoted much research to this topic.

In late 1970s, in a research proposal for the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, Hedley Bull raised that research topic on the standard of ‘civilization’ and its relationship with the expansion of international society.Footnote ³² Gerrit Gong elaborated on that theme in much detail, producing one book and a book chapter on the standard of ‘civilization’ and China's entry into the international society. Gerrit Gong, a Chinese American Rhodes Scholar, was educated in Oxford and received master and doctoral degrees from Oxford. Hedley Bull was his supervisor first for B.Phil. and then D.Phil in international relations. Gong was inspired by Hedley Bull's pioneering work on the expansion of international societyFootnote ³³ and started to attend the British Committee in late 1970s, taking part in the research programme on the expansion of international society, which was led by Hedley Bull, the last convener of the British Committee from 1978 to 1985. Although Gerrit Gong was not the first one to touch upon the standard of ‘civilization’ in the international society,Footnote ³⁴ it perhaps was he who made the standard of ‘civilization’ a widely-cited concept of the English School. As a Chinese American, Gong focused his work on standard of ‘civilization’ and China's entry into the international society. He submitted a paper entitled ‘China's Entry into the International Society’ for British Committee meeting in the April of 1980, which elaborated on the standard of ‘civilization’ and China's entry into the international society, and led to heated discussions at that meeting.Footnote ³⁵ His paper was later included in Expansion of International Society edited by Hedley Bull and Adam Watson.Footnote ³⁶ Gong expanded his discussion on the standard of ‘civilization’ and the entry of China, Japan, and Siam, into the international society, in his influential book The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society.Footnote ³⁷ The standard of ‘civilization’ and its relevance to the expansion of international society has since then been a reoccurring intellectual hot discussion topic.

According to Hedley Bull, the international society grew up in Europe, first emerging as the Christian international society in the 16th and 17th centuries, and then as the European international society in the 18th and 19th centuries, which included both the European secular states and Europe's offshoots in north and south Americas, and finally becoming a global international society in 20th century.Footnote ³⁸ As the European powers expanded to non-European parts of the world and encountered the other civilisations, or the ‘barbarous’ and ‘savage’ worlds, the Europeans set and promoted the standard of ‘civilization’, to protect European ‘basic rights’ (such as life, liberty and property) in the sometimes hostile non-European countries, and determined which non-European countries deserved the membership of the Western-dominated international society.Footnote ³⁹ Gong argued that the standard of ‘civilization’ was deeply rooted in the historical experience of the European Christian international society or Christendom. But it emerged as an explicit legal concept at the end of the 19th century when the interaction between the European and non-European worlds required that they be spelled out explicitly. It can be traced in, and documented by two historical records: the 19th century treaties which Europe signed with the non-European countries, and the international legal texts written by the leading international lawyers of the era. A few conditions must be met by a non-European country to be recognised as a legal member of the Family of Nations, such as being a ‘civilized’ state, abiding by the international law, etc.Footnote ⁴⁰ But the fact of the international environment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was that the European powers or ‘civilized states’ made the European particular standard of conduct an universal standard, and enjoyed the final say in deciding and judging whether a non-European country met the standard of ‘civilization’. Or in other words, ‘European military superiority left non-European societies no choice but to come to grips with the European standard of “civilization”.’Footnote ⁴¹

China in the second half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century was just such a typical case of this kind of non-European society. Before the invasion of the West, China occupied a central place in East Asia for about two thousand years, and the Chinese rulers regarded their country as the only ‘civilized’ in the world, and dealt with other countries according to the China-centred standard of ‘civilization’. As Adam Watson argued, ‘The Chinese classified all their non-Chinese neighbours as “barbarians”, and regarded them as culturally inferior.’Footnote ⁴² Gerrit Gong explained that the Chinese standard of ‘civilization’ was symbolised by the ritual kowtow, and led to its confrontation with the West's standard of ‘civilization’.Footnote ⁴³ The 1839–1840 Opium War, a turning point in Sino-Western relations, smashed China's arrogance and cultural self-confidence. China was compelled by the British superior military force to accept unequal treaty provisions, first with Britain, then with France and the US, followed by a series of other unequal treaties. According to those unequal treaties, the Western powers enjoyed fixed and low tariff rates, extraterritorial jurisdiction and other privileges associated with their standard of ‘civilization’, which infringed on China's sovereignty. The Western powers also took concerted action for policing and ‘civilizing’ China, such as when they cooperated in crushing the Boxer Uprising ‘in establishing the standard which that society considered necessary in the vast and increasingly chaotic Chinese Empire’ in 1900.Footnote ⁴⁴

After the Opium War, China was widely regarded as an uncivilised, even barbarous country,Footnote ⁴⁵ and excluded from the modern international society. China passively accepted the new rules of behaviour set by the West, by gradually conforming its governmental institutions, legal system, and international practices to the interests, rules, and values of the ‘civilized’ international society.Footnote ⁴⁶ But as Gong argued, ‘The Middle Kingdom's size, inertia, and adherence to its own standard of “civilization” made China slow to implement the European standard […]’.Footnote ⁴⁷ Therefore, China was accepted as a ‘civilized’ country in the international society far after Japan and Siam. Although China did attend the Hague Peace Conference in 1899 and 1907, and even became a member of the League of Nations after the end of the World War I, but it was still a ‘semi-civilized’ state, rather than a full member of international society before 1943. China did not enjoy full recognition and membership in the Family of Nations until 1943 when extraterritorial jurisdiction was finally abrogated through its treaties with the US and Great Britain.Footnote ⁴⁸

The process of China's entry into the Western-dominated international society demonstrated that only the Western powers could decide when China had met the criteria. As one scholar commented, ‘But the unequal treaties that exploited China were not abrogated until the height of the Second World War in 1943 – when the Chinese demands were not as much of a concession from Britain and America since Japan controlled the treaty ports covered by these treaties. Thus China actually entered International Society not as the result of a gradual process of ethical civilizing to European norms but through pragmatic diplomacy that was spurred by the contingency, uncertainty and violence of war.’Footnote ⁴⁹

China and ‘the revolt against the West’ in the international society

Although China was recognised as a full member of the international society in 1943 and even became one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council in 1945, it was still not able to become a real power on the international stage in the 1940s because of the civil war which erupted shortly after the end of the World War II. The Chinese communists took power and founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 which led to a great transformation of Chinese state and society. The new China declared that the treaties forced upon China over the past ‘one century of humiliation’ were unequal and illegal. At the same time, with the rise of communist China, the ideology raised new questions about China's relations with the international society.Footnote ⁵⁰ The new China was just born in the context of the East-West Cold War, and as an ally of the Soviet Union during the early Cold War years, the PRC was regarded by the West as a grave threat to the international society, and even named as an aggressor in the Korean War (1950–1953). Most of the Western countries denied diplomatic recognition to the communist China, a ‘revolutionary state in the international society’,Footnote ⁵¹ and imposed economic sanctions on it before 1971. China had therefore been alienated in the international society for decades.

The rise of the revolutionary China coincided with the rise of the Third World after the end of the World War II. As a large number of the former colonies of the Western powers in Asia and Africa declared their independence, the international society expanded at a rapid pace, and the majority of the international society membership was no longer the Western countries. The newly independent countries became the backbone of the so-called Third Word, which was formed in the 1950s and grew in the 1960s and 1970s. The Third World countries posed a great challenge to the West in the international society, both in economic and political terms. To some extent, the Third World revolted against the standard of ‘civilization’ set by the West. The PRC regarded itself as an ally to and even a part of the Third World. The Chinese premier participated in the Bandung Conference of 1955 which was one of the early indicating signs of the formation of the Third World.

The rise of the Third World let the English School scholars turn their eyes to the new independent states' impacts on the international society. Beginning in late 1960s, Hedley Bull paid increasing attention to the expansion of international society and the so-called Third World's revolt against the West.Footnote ⁵² In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, directed by Hedley Bull, focused its research on the Third World and produced a collection of working papers that was published in 1984. Bull contributed a chapter entitled ‘The Revolt against the West’ to the collection, which he and Adam Watson coedited. Bull pointed out, after the end of the World War II, with the emergence of an increasing number of new independent states, the Third World consisting of a group of Asian, African and Latin American and other non-Western countries, was leading a revolt against the West-dominance in the international society, through struggling for self-determination, racial equality, economic justice and cultural autonomy. The Third World states grouped together with one another in the Afro-Asian movement, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the Group of 77, and commanded majorities of votes in the political organs of the UN. Some of the Third World countries even gained the support of the Soviet Union, the communist superpower.Footnote ⁵³

The revolutionary PRC seemed to be defined by Bull and his British Committee colleagues, as part of the ‘revolt against West’, because the Communist China participated in the Bandung conference of 1955, and had a great influence on Afro-Asian nations, etc.Footnote ⁵⁴ At the same time, Bull also noticed that, since the early 1960s, China had been mobilising Third World sentiment against the Soviet Union.Footnote ⁵⁵ According to Bull, the nuclear and underdeveloped China was one of the ‘revisionist’ and ‘Have Not’ countries in international society, struggling against the ‘Have’ countries.Footnote ⁵⁶ Even worse, China at the height of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1968) was regarded by Coral Bell as ‘the most determined and implacable revolutionary enemy of the existing international order’.Footnote ⁵⁷

But China's image changed from a revolutionary or revisionist country to a much normal country in the early 1970s, when it became a partner of the status quo powers (the US, Western European countries, and Japan), in the international society. China joined the UN and some other international institutions, and the US and the PRC even approached each other by establishing a de facto alliance against the USSR. The rapprochement with the US also led to the normalisation of China's relations with most of the Western countries, and therefore enhanced China's legitimacy as a member of the Western-dominated international society.

Some of the English School scholars in the 1970s followed the change of the PRC's relationship with the international society quite closely. Martin Wight, Geoffrey Hudson, and Coral Bell submitted related papers to the British Committee.Footnote ⁵⁸ Hedley Bull, then a professor of Australian National University, even took a three weeks group trip to China in September and October of 1973.Footnote ⁵⁹ It was the first and last time Bull visited China, and he described his trip in three diary note books and a detailed report. He seemed to be quite impressed by the Chinese friendly attitude towards the ‘foreign friends’, and the negative impact of the Cultural Revolution on the Chinese society, especially on the Chinese higher education. He also raised the question about the future ‘invasion’ of the foreign ideas into the Chinese social and political systems.Footnote ⁶⁰ Bull actually had another opportunity to visit China again when then Australian ambassador in Beijing invited him to visit China in 1974, but he declined the invitation.Footnote ⁶¹ In the introduction to a book on Asia-Pacific international relations published in 1975, Bull regarded China as ‘a regional great power’ and touched upon ‘the re-emergence of China as an active great power’.Footnote ⁶² He made similar remarks in Anarchical Society, one of the English School classics.Footnote ⁶³

Nevertheless, for most of the 1970s, while China was still in the Cultural Revolution and political chaos, and it kept its faith in the revolutionary potential of the Third Word by declaring itself as part of the Third World. To some of the English School scholars, China was still following a concept of international order incompatible with the usual Western assumption,Footnote ⁶⁴ or continued its ‘commitment to revolutionary struggle throughout the world’.Footnote ⁶⁵ In Anarchical Society, Hedley Bull argued, (in early 1970s) ‘China disavows entirely the role of a great power, and views itself as the champion of the Third World nations in their struggle against “super power hegemonism”.’Footnote ⁶⁶ In other words, China seemed to continue to be part of ‘the revolt against the West’, although the country was already less frightening and threatening than it was in the past decades. As Martin Wight wrote in early 1970s, ‘A triangular relations may yet develop between China, the Soviet Union, and the US. In any event, China's avenging ambitions and enormous population have made her the only potential external danger that might threaten the dominant Powers apart from one another.’Footnote ⁶⁷

China's ‘reform and open door’ policy and its integration into the international society

China started to adopt the ‘reform and open door’ policy in late 1970s and early 1980s while the British Committee devoted itself to the research programme on the expansion of international society. China has since then been in the process of integration into the international society, and the new policy has brought out dramatic changes in the Chinese society and China's relationship with the outside world.

Although Coral Bell, in her contribution to The Expansion of International Society, did notice some positive changes in Chinese foreign policy for serving the four modernisation drive in early 1980s, she did not seem to be optimistic about the future of China's relations with the international society, by stating that ‘Present Chinese concepts of the world order as-it-should-be presumably continue to embody the vague Marxist notion of the eventual withering-away of the state, a development which (if it ever occurs) will obviously make the notion of a society of states obsolete.’Footnote ⁶⁸ The other contributors, including the two editors (Hedley Bull and Adam Watson), could not even say a word about the potential change of China's relationship with the international society. In the early 1980s, the process of China's voluntary integration into the international society was just at the beginning and its future was not so certain. It seemed to be logical that the English School scholars were not so enthusiastic with that theme, and demonstrated a lack of interest in it, even expressed pessimism about its future. In his classic book Human Rights and International Relations published in 1986, John Vincent devoted one section to China's different conception of human rights rooted in Confucian teaching and Marxist theory, which emphasised collective rights, rather than individual rights.Footnote ⁶⁹

The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s led to the revival of the English School. At the same time, the reform and open door policy had resulted in great and obvious changes of China both in domestic and foreign policy domains, and therefore China drew more and more attention from the international community in general and the English School scholars in particular. In 1991, Adam Roberts, then Montague Burton professor of international relations, Oxford University, attended an international conference on China's IR studies in Beijing, China, organised by Institute of International Relations, Peking University. Professor Roberts, in his working paper for and presentation at the conference, introduced the concept ‘English School’ or ‘British School’ for the first time to his Chinese audience, and his paper was included in a Chinese book published in the following year.Footnote ⁷⁰ David Armstrong touched upon the integration of once revolutionary China into the international society by taking steps to ‘conform to the norms of the society of states’.Footnote ⁷¹ The intervention of English School scholar of Chinese origins, Yongjin Zhang, to some extent, filled that knowledge gap of the English School in this regard. He published two books on China's relations with the international society in the 1990s.Footnote ⁷² Zhang especially devoted most of his second book China in the International Society since 1949 to the interpretation of China's integration and socialisation into the international society and its limitations in perceptual, political and economic terms since the reform and open door policy was first adopted in late 1970s.Footnote ⁷³ Zhang contributed greatly to the English School's interpretation of China's integration into the international society. Therefore, in the post-Cold War era, China's status in the English School's conception of international society seemed to be much more positive than in the past.

The English School approached the ‘rising China’

In the process of China's integration into the international society, the ‘rise’ of China became a focus, perhaps a fashionable trend in IR scholarship, especially in the early 21st century. In the late 1990s, there were still debates on whether China was a big power, as Gerald Segal posed the question, ‘Does China Matter?’ in Foreign Affairs in 1999.Footnote ⁷⁴ But in the early 21st century, ‘the rise of China as a great power has become nearly conventional wisdom among most scholars, pundits, and policy-makers in the West.’Footnote ⁷⁵ The effect of a rising China on the international society has been taken into serious account by the Western analysts ever since. John Ikenberry elaborated on the rise of China and its impact on the future of the West in Foreign Affairs in early 2008.Footnote ⁷⁶ ‘Peaceful rise’, a concept articulated by some Chinese strategists and then expressed by the Chinese top leaders in 2003, has become a research topic itself in IR scholarship.Footnote ⁷⁷ Some of the Western observers found that with the increasing power, China has become much more confident and active on the world stage. A commentator argued that, ‘In the last few years, China's foreign policy has both become much more active and reached out to parts of the world where its presence was marginal in the past.’Footnote ⁷⁸ The irony here is that, as one China expert pointed out, China's own assessments of trends in comprehensive national power in comparative terms are quite pessimistic about its ability to catch up to the US.Footnote ⁷⁹

Some of the English School scholars, or the scholars who identify in some way with the English School's tradition, did approach the rising China and its potential impacts upon the international society in one way or another.Footnote ⁸⁰ But it is very difficult to summarise the English School scholars' perceptions of China and its potential impacts upon the international society, because they treated China in different ways and expressed different conceptions of international society. Some of them are pluralists, emphasising the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention, and respect for political and cultural diversity.Footnote ⁸¹ Some of them are solidarists, emphasising the universal values of human rights, humanitarian intervention, and democracy.Footnote ⁸² Some of them are pluralist-solidarists, trying to keep a balance between pluralism and solidarism.Footnote ⁸³ Although they perceived the ‘rise’ of China from different angles, they all took the ‘rise of China’ seriously, and devoted much attention to the possible challenges of the rising China towards the values, norms and institutions of the Western-dominated international society. It seems to me, their discussions about the ‘rise’ of China and its impacts on the international society are much related to the following two recurrent questions which the English School scholars have been trying to deal with after the emergence of a global international society.