The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

cover for the Chinese leaders to protect their authoritarian
rule in China, but not a genuine design for a
new world order.
In addition, the harmonious world construct, a
natural extension of China’s long-held Five Principles
of Peaceful Coexistence, requires the practice of Confucius’
“self-cultivation” as a starting point for those
who want to put all-under-heaven in good order. As
Confucius’s “backward logic” goes, if you want to
bring peace and order to the world, you should start
with putting peace and order in your country, your
family, and most basically and fundamentally, you
should first “purify” yourself, and make yourself
peaceful and in good order (修身, 齐家, 治国, 平天
下). Since men are not angels nor transformable, it is
difficult to put this highly altruistic harmonious world
construct in operation, or put another way, to expect
statesmen in the world to follow Confucius’ teaching
to practice this ideal statesmanship. This is also
a reason why China’s Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence
and all those “unselfish and mutually beneficial
expectations” have largely been just goodwill
calls but not operable or enforceable mechanisms in
international relations (Chinese claims to the contrary
notwithstanding). 42
This critique may be hard for the Chinese leaders
to swallow. But they have no need to be upset with
lacking a sound and workable agenda for the world at
this point. Their priority, after all, is still at home but
not abroad. Indeed, as Deng Xiaoping puts it, making
good on China’s modernization is the CCP’s overarching
mission. Bringing 1.4 billion Chinese, close to a
quarter of the world’s population, to a higher level of
human endeavor is a great contribution to the world.
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