Geopolitics is shaped by the history and geography of its participants. It is therefore worthwhile, when examining the state of the world, to pay close attention to these factors. What do we mean when we speak of the West, represented by the United States, and the East, represented by China? In times of upheaval and uncertainty, as we are experiencing today, it helps to look back at the origins, the deviations, and the achievements—often forgotten—that have shaped both civilizations.
For the West, to which we ourselves belong and whose history we know better, such a retrospective is easier—though we lack the distance that might make judgment clearer. Politically, we like to trace our origins to ancient Greece. The polis of Athens and the surrounding city-states are regarded as prototypes of Western democracy. On the great Athenian assembly square, the agora, citizens decided on the public affairs of their community. Overlooked by the mighty Acropolis, that ancient fortress which we still climb in awe today, it was the influential urban elite who exercised their voting rights under the open sky. The political, male individual—the Aristotelian zoon politikon—could, however, only realize his potential within the community. This figure shaped the archetype of Western democracy, which took form around 700 BCE and radiated influence across the Panhellenic world.
The deviations of that early form from what we today call “democracy” are, of course, striking. Only the urban elite could vote—a tendency not entirely foreign to us, given the long exclusion of women from suffrage. Also remarkable: council members and high officials were not elected by the assembly but chosen by lot, to prevent the rise of oligarchic or aristocratic structures.
The modern idea of “the West” has never lost its connection to this ancient Greek origin and its variants. It is telling how even the American Founding Fathers admired the Greek model and adorned Washington, D.C. with impressive public buildings in classical Greek style.
Today, however, the values of the West are increasingly being questioned—among other reasons, because it is said to contribute too little to the global commons, that is, to the welfare of the global community as a whole. That perception may seem justified in the present moment, but it overlooks the fact that the West—led by the hegemonic power of the United States—did, for decades after World War II, provide precisely such services in the form of openness, stability, and security, even if it also secured for itself “exorbitant privileges.” This was the famous rules-based order. The British historian Josephine Quinn, in her latest book, describes the West as a fiction—an “invention of the global world.” While she explicitly refers to Greek and Roman antiquity, she misses an essential point in her zeal: the most powerful element of Western civilization—the politically, economically, and culturally self-determining individual—remains formative and continues to give the “system” both identity and legitimacy.
This becomes particularly clear when we turn to China’s political origins. The starting point there was entirely different. The “beginning of politics” in China, as it is later called, occurred in the mid–11th century BCE during the transition from the Yin-Shang to the Zhou dynasty. The mighty Yin-Shang dynasty had long ruled the Chinese central plain, far superior in numbers and technology to its neighbors. Yet under its final, cruel, and unjust ruler, it lost popular support and, as the Chinese would say, “the Mandate of Heaven.” When the virtuous King of Zhou challenged him in battle, mass desertions in the Shang army ensured his defeat.
The small Zhou state suddenly found itself tasked with leading a diverse coalition into an uncertain future. Its allies—some far larger than Zhou—comprised dozens of states and countless clans. The new order, attributed to Duke Dan, the first premier of Zhou, became known as Tianxia (“All Under Heaven”) and has since been regarded as the Eastern, Chinese counterpart to the Western Greek polis.
The key difference is striking. While the Greeks, even in their philosophical reflections, focused on the political individual, the Chinese—some 400 years earlier—faced the far more complex challenge of offering an attractive perspective to a heterogeneous community of states and clans. Thanks to the Chinese antiquity researcher and philosopher Zhao Tingyang, we have a fairly clear picture of what the Tianxia model entailed.
Because military dominance was impossible for the small Zhou state—and would have resembled the hated old order—Premier Duke Dan and his advisors developed the first political system in Chinese history that encouraged mutual respect and cooperation instead of conquest and oppression. As Professor Zhao notes, this marked the first time the concept of “the political” entered Chinese—and perhaps human—history. In this new system, states and clans were nominally equal, protected from coercion or external interference, and expected to resolve conflicts through negotiation and mutual aid. It was, in a sense, the birth of a Chinese democracy—one composed of states and clans rather than individual citizens, as in Greece.
From the beginning Tianxia had a world dimension as it encompassed “everything under heaven,” meaning “the known world,” bounded by deserts, mountains, and seas. There was therefore no “outside.” The system’s focus was on the common good and mutual benefit; it had to remain advantageous for all participants to stay voluntarily within it. The Zhou dynasty, which lasted about 800 years (Western and Eastern Zhou), became the longest in Chinese history—a remarkable indication that a political order based on shared interests and mutual respect, rather than coercion, can endure.
Of course, China also saw many wars over the millennia, including the turbulent times from the late Spring and Autumn period to the Warring States period that exasperated even Confucius. Dynasties later expanded and conquered neighboring territories. Yet it is noteworthy that these expansionist ones—the Northern Wei, Liao, Jin, Yuan, and Qing—were founded by northern nomadic peoples who first conquered China and then expanded outward. The Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), established by Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, was unique in making China part of a foreign world empire stretching from western Russia to the Pacific. The annihilation of the Southern Song— probably the most authentically Chinese of dynasties—remains a little-discussed tragedy.
Alongside the Song, the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) is seen as a quintessential expression of imperial China. It opened to the world as its population doubled, seeking trade and exchange with the West. The seven great voyages of Admiral Zheng He, between 1405 and 1433—decades before Columbus—are legendary. Commanding fleets of around 100 massive ships and 28,000 men, Zheng He sailed across the Indian Ocean to East Africa, inviting trade but establishing no colonies. The emperor’s instructions were for economic exchange and anti-piracy operations, not conquest.
Even in modern times, China has limited military action to its borders. It fought in the Korean War (1950) to prevent unification under the South, and its last major conflict was a brief punitive expedition against Vietnam in 1979, lasting just three weeks. Since then, China has fought no wars, maintaining only UN peacekeepers and an anti-piracy base in Djibouti. All in all, we come to the most astonishing conclusion that over its entire 5,000-year history, China has never waged war or carried out military intervention far beyond its borders—out of area—not even during centuries when it was the world’s largest economic power and could have imposed a pax sinica. Even in the Ukraine war, China—like India—pursues strategic interests without sending troops or arms, and it does not recognize Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, echoing the Zhou dynasty’s principle of noninterference.
Viewed across vast historical spans, China has, with remarkable consistency, followed the foreign-policy guidelines of its founding Zhou dynasty and retained its world concept, even as it encountered distant regions. Today’s Chinese foreign-policy positions strikingly resemble that ancient model. The richer China becomes, the more it seems to rediscover its roots.
Recent global initiatives from Beijing reinforce this impression—initiatives for global development, security, and civilization. They call for economic cooperation, rejection of confrontation and bloc formation, and peaceful exchange among peoples. Most explicitly, the “Global Governance Initiative,” announced in early September, advocates equality among sovereign states, international rule of law, multilateralism instead of hegemony, focus on people’s welfare, and practical results. All these goals could be realized within the existing global order—if one sets aside the exclusive hegemonic leadership claim of the West and the U.S. An order, incidentally, from which China has greatly benefited during its remarkable rise. Interestingly the dialectic of this global transformation lies in the fact that China’s return to the top was made possible only when it embraced the Western system’s core value: the legally protected performance of the free individual, for the first time recognized during its reform and opening policies.
The crucial question for the West—one it increasingly asks with anxiety—is whether China seeks leadership in a future world order shaped by polis and tianxia. In all official statements, Beijing affirms its support for the United Nations as the only truly global organization and consistently calls for adherence to the UN Charter. It rarely mentions, however, how the permanent veto powers paralyze the UN’s ability to achieve its founding goals.
In keeping with the ideals of the two great civilizations—Greek and Chinese, polis and tianxia—one could envision the following model: a reformed United Nations with two headquarters, in New York and Shanghai (or Beijing), and 193 equal nations (tianxia). Every two years, 15 countries would be chosen by lot (polis) to serve on the Security Council, eventually with no immediate re-election permitted. Permanent veto powers would be abolished as inherently undemocratic (polis and tianxia). Economically strong states could contribute more to UN development programs, while militarily ambitious ones could earn prestige by supporting peacekeeping missions. Finally, the world concept (tianxia) would have to be extended to new domains—outer space, cyberspace, artificial intelligence, and beyond—covering all areas of human activity. In this way, the nations of the world could continue to see participation in the UN system as advantageous.
Editor: LQQ
