As China’s power and influence continue to grow in Asia and beyond, many analysts look to Chinese history to understand how a strong China will behave and view the world in the future. Many of these attempts to apply an historical lens engage in gross simplifications and misreadings of the relevance and meaning of hundreds of years of Chinese thought and behavior. China is often viewed, incorrectly, as if it existed as a monolithic whole over centuries, possessed the same political and security outlook at each stage of its development, and behaved as a modern nation state does today. In particular, some observers blithely assert that China always sought to dominate its world in hard power terms, often succeeded in doing so, and will naturally seek such a position of dominance in the future.
The reality is much more complex and nuanced. In the pre-modern era, Chinese security behavior varied enormously from dynasty to dynasty and between periods of strength and weakness. The variation was so extensive that some China historians believe it is impossible to make any meaningful generalizations about traditional Chinese foreign policy and security behavior, much less apply those lessons to the present and future. Indeed, many historians firmly believe that the emergence of nation states and the rise of nationalism in China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as the effort to build a strong, prosperous, and modern state and society together offer a far more relevant and reliable context for understanding current and future Chinese security behavior than does the pre-modern era.
So, how does history influence Chinese thought and behavior today, and how it might it do so as Chinese power and influence grow in the future? The lessons of history are reflected in three sets of attitudes: national pride alongside a strong fear of chaos; an inculcated image of a peace-loving and defensive polity alongside a strong and virtuous central government; and a unique, hierarchical yet mutually beneficial view of inter-state relations.
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