✪ Qiang Shigong | Peking University Law School
At the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics held not long ago, the theme song "Snowflake" sung by more than 100 children impressed many people. According to media reports, when Zhao Lin, the music director of the opening ceremony, issued a creative invitation to more than 30 composers, he conveyed the ideas of general director Zhang Yimou and gave the three keywords of "a snowflake", "community of human destiny" and "one family under the world". The lyrics of "Snowflake" "Thousands of you and me, gathered into a home", simple and powerful convey the spirit of "one family under the world". In fact, "one under one roof" is also a condensed expression of China's view of world order in the new era.
This article compares the global order constructed by the United States after World War II with China's imagination of a world order that has moved more and more toward the center of the world stage in recent years. The world imperial order constructed by the United States after World War II relies on the central-peripheral structure of trade-technology-finance in the economic field, the imperial hegemony supported by violence-ally-rules in the political and legal fields, and the historical end ideology of Christian-English-human rights mutual promotion in the cultural field.
Since the new century, information technology has promoted a new wave of globalization - the rapid development of "deep globalization", the "global village" has become a reality, and all mankind has become a true community of destiny. However, in order to consolidate the achievements of the Cold War, the United States has continuously strengthened the construction of world empires. The historical trend of "deep globalization" and the governance model of world empires have emerged in an unprecedented contradiction: the economic monopoly of empires hinders global economic growth, "America First" cannot cope with global risks in the context of a community of destiny, and the ideology of "end of history" is not conducive to the equal dialogue of different civilizations. In the face of the global governance dilemma caused by the encounter of "deep globalization" by the world empire, the author points out that China should inherit and surpass the "May Fourth" spirit, actively promote global democratic governance, explore new science of global governance, and revive the global governance concept of "one world under one roof".
This article was originally published in the 2021 Winter Issue of the Journal of Oriental Studies (No. 14), originally titled "One World Under Heaven vs. World Empire: Deep Globalization" and the Future of Global Governance, which is hereby compiled and distributed for your consideration.
"One Under Heaven" vs World Empire:
"Deep globalization" and the future of global governance
The covid-19 pandemic (COVID-19) that has swept the world has undoubtedly had a profound impact on the global landscape. Different scholars have begun to analyze the global pattern in the post-pandemic era based on different theoretical paradigms. Some european scholars have compared the new crown epidemic to the Black Death in the European Middle Ages, analyzing its far-reaching impact on human behavior habits and political order. The US "Foreign Policy" magazine predicts that the new crown epidemic will become the last straw to crush economic globalization, the world cannot return to the mutually beneficial and win-win globalization state of the early 21st century, nationalism will aggravate the trend of confrontation between major powers and strategic decoupling, resulting in a reshuffle of the international power structure, and the Sino-US strategic game has become the focus. However, in order to truly understand the nature of the Sino-US game, we cannot simply fall into the theoretical perspective of international realism, and simply regard the contest between China and the United States as a contest of power between major powers, thus simply boiling it down to the "Thucydides Trap". On the contrary, we need to shift our theoretical perspective from the paradigm of international relations based on the thinking of sovereign states to the imperial paradigm based on the global order, so as to fully understand the world imperial system constructed by the United States. Today's Sino-US relationship is a contradiction between the designers and leaders of the world imperial system and the participants and rebels of the world imperial system.
It is precisely based on the thinking of the global order that we must realize that the contradiction between the historical trend of "deep globalization" and the current world imperial system dominated by the United States is becoming more and more acute. The pandemic has shown this long-standing contradiction in an extreme form. The epidemic means that the advancement of globalization must rely on mutual cooperation, and mankind has formed a more closely related community of common destiny, and a new internationalist trend of thought is needed to overcome nationalism, populism and hegemonism. The world imperial system constructed by the United States that serves American interests constantly provokes conflict and hatred between countries, tearing apart great power cooperation and global cooperation. Thus, the current situation is particularly similar to the historical context of the period of great changes in the international order in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In that shock of globalization encountering anti-globalization, it was ultimately the two theoretical narratives of globalization of communists and liberals that liberated Europe and the world from monroeism, nationalism, populism, racism and even Nazism. Therefore, when we discuss Sino-US relations today, we cannot simply fall into the contest of power in the great power game under the realist thinking, but should pay attention to the global governance system laid down since World War II (especially since the end of the Cold War) and the problems it faces from the perspective of a community with a shared future for mankind.
It is from the perspective of the global order and global governance that the COVID-19 pandemic has not fundamentally changed the direction of the evolution of the global order since the end of the Cold War, but has accelerated this historical process with new problems. We cannot exaggerate the COVID-19 pandemic as the beginning of a historical period, but (should) combine it with the events of 9/11, the 2008 Western financial crisis, the rise of China, and the Sino-US trade war, and examine the contradiction between the accelerating historical process of "deep globalization" facing the global governance pattern since the end of the Cold War and the strengthening of the world imperial system by the United States. Specifically, "deep globalization" promotes the integration of all countries in the world and becomes a community with a shared future for mankind, which means that it is necessary to pay attention to global governance from the perspective of "one world under one roof", promote international cooperation, and let the United Nations and other international organizations play a greater role in global governance. However, since the end of the Cold War, the United States has taken advantage of the "unipolar world" to continuously disintegrate the United Nations system and strive to build a "new Roman Empire". This world imperial system, lacking the constraints of international political power and the constraints of international law, has degenerated into a wayward imperial dictatorship that refuses to assume international responsibility. We need to face this contradiction in a real way, the rise of China and the competition between China and the United States is a contest between two globalizations, two global governance systems and two governance methods, and a contradiction between China's commitment to building a community with a shared future for mankind and the United States continuing to maintain and consolidate its world imperial system.
▍ The legal order of the world empire
A global history is actually a history of imperial hegemony and constant evolution, from a regional civilization empire to a world empire. Even in the era of sovereign states promoted by modern Europe, the European powers were modern colonial empires in the form of sovereign states, because behind these sovereign states were a large number of occupied colonies. If we only look at the surface of the sovereign construction of European countries and ignore the back of their colonial empires, we will not only fail to understand the global history of European sovereign states since the rise of them, but also understand the real problems facing China in today's Sino-US trade war. For example, why is it that the trade war between China and the United States is launched, but It is Canada that detains Meng Wanzhou of the Chinese company Huawei? Why is it that the trade war between China and the United States is that the EU follows the United States to slander China's Xinjiang cotton and impose corresponding sanctions on China? Only from the theoretical and historical perspective of the imperial order can we truly grasp today's Sino-US relations, that is, the relationship between China and the United States is not simply the relationship between two sovereign countries with different strengths, but the relationship between China and a world empire, whether it is the "Indo-Pacific Strategy" that the United States has been strengthening, or the "Atlantic Charter" and the strengthened G7 "Democratic Alliance" signed by Biden and the United Kingdom after taking office. That is, the construction of modern empires is hidden behind international treaties, using formalized and legalized legal relations of equal sovereign states to cover up the domination of the imperial center over marginal vassal states or invisible colonies.
The construction of the United States has been an imperial construction from the beginning. In the American historical documents, Americans have always called themselves "empires", especially a "free empire" with a "destiny", not only has a vast land in the west to conquer and expand, but also with the acceleration and rapid rise of American industrialization after the Civil War, the United States began to continuously erode the territory of European colonial empires in the Americas and incorporate them into their own imperial territory, and the resulting "Monroe Doctrine" is a declaration that the United States and European empires compete for American colonies and redivide the scope of imperial power. With the Spanish-American War and the excavation of the Panama Canal, the United States changed from an Atlantic country to a two-ocean power facing both the Atlantic and the Pacific, thus entering the global hegemony war with the European powers. After experiencing two world wars, the United States took over the world empire system created by the British Empire and transformed it to build its own new world empire system. With the end of the Cold War, the world imperial system constructed by the United States has triumphed, and the discussion of the "New Roman Empire" in Western academic circles from the Kosovo War to the post-9/11 era is only to strengthen the world imperial system that has been established for a long time. The "Cold War" obscures the essence of the world empire in ideological discourse, but it is precisely the urgent situation of the "Cold War" that objectively helps the United States to complete the construction of the world empire, whether it is the "NATO" system that controls Europe or a series of treaties controlling Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, all of which are completed in the context of the "Cold War".
Western scholars have had a great deal of discussion about the world imperial order constructed by the United States, but these discussions are from the perspective of a professional discipline, focusing on the description of certain specific characteristics, and lacking a complete understanding of the entire system. In fact, the world empire constructed by the United States has become a complex polyhedra, and what can effectively construct these polyhedra is some fundamental forces, and the combination of these forces constitutes the legal order of the world empire, thus presenting three dimensions.
1. Economic field: trade-technology-finance world system
At present, the academic community has widely adopted the concepts of "information empire", "trade empire", "business empire" and "financial empire" to describe the characteristics of world empires in the economic field. For example, Immanuel Wallerstein used the concept of a "world system" of center-periphery structures to summarize the global economic order. The expanding division of labour in trade facilitation has drawn the globe into a system of interaction that meets each other's needs. As trade goods shifted from natural products to industrial manufactured goods, the Western powers adopted mercantilist and protectionist strategies, resulting in the continuous expansion of trade inequality between Western and non-Western regions, industrialized countries and agricultural countries in global trade, so that after the Industrial Revolution, global trade products formed a hierarchical chain from naturally produced raw materials to industrial products with different scientific and technological content. This is what we call the "industrial chain" today. The industrial chain formed according to the different scientific and technological content means that the distribution of commercial trade profits is different, and it is precisely this difference in the distribution of profits and wealth that leads to the formation of rich-poor, strong-weak, center-periphery imperial hierarchical domination relationship in the global geographical space in the process of becoming one. The concept of a "world system," although used to emphasize differences in economic power, forms the basis of a world imperial order in which the strong dominate the weak. Therefore, the world imperial order has always revolved around the issue of trade, and the various debates between mercantilism and free trade, free trade and fair trade, trade in goods and trade in services are actually centered on the distribution of interests within the world imperial order.
However, the inequality of trade profits is ultimately an inequality of technological power. The center-periphery structure of the world system is actually based on the development of science and technology-driven industries – the Archimedesian point of modern Europe's rise and empire-building. A scientific and technological power can easily become a trading power, so the center of the world empire often shifts with the transfer of scientific and technological innovation centers and trade centers in the global geographical space. Science and technology is the fundamental driving force for the development of human history. On the one hand, the power of science and technology allows human beings to unite from scattered corners of the earth into a community, but on the other hand, the nation or country that masters the power of science and technology can easily use this power to build an empire, so that the traditional civilization empire scattered on the earth will move towards a modern world empire. The reason why the United States can establish a world empire lies in its leading global scientific and technological development, and it has become a leader in global scientific and technological innovation and industrial transformation, so that it has always monopolized high-profit industries in the division of labor in the global industrial chain, and this scientific and technological advantage will quickly transform into military advantages.
If technology is the driving force behind trade, then trade undoubtedly requires a currency that acts as an intermediary for transactions, and the trading powerhouse undoubtedly has the greatest possibility of providing a benchmark currency. Because any country that wants to trade with this country must use the country's currency. When global commerce gradually formed a global currency, the basis of the economic order of the world empire was formed. In the debate over the world system, one opinion advocates that the tributary trade system of China in the Ming and Qing dynasties as the only world system is that the global trade line was formed to sell African black slaves to the Americas to dig for silver in order to meet China's demand for silver, in this sense, silver is the global universal currency formed around China's tributary system. In the centuries that followed, the pound sterling, based on the gold standard, replaced silver as the universal currency for global commercial trade. In the Bretton Woods system after World War II, the institutional design of the dollar pegged to gold directly gave the dollar the privilege of being the world's currency. Although gold was decoupled from the US dollar in the 1970s, with the formation of the "petrodollar" mechanism, especially with the electronic settlement of the US dollar across borders, the international monetary function of the US dollar was further strengthened, which made any country and multinational corporation an island excluded from the world system once it was separated from the US dollar payment system. The issuance of the U.S. dollar as an international currency and the exchange rate changes of the U.S. dollar with other sovereign national currencies directly affect the development of global trade and the global economy.
However, international money itself can continue to appreciate in exchange, even seriously out of the real global wealth it represents as use value, triggering cyclical financial crises. In this sense, global financial activity as "upper capitalism" actually controls and affects the development of the global economy. As a result, the United States can use the hegemonic advantage of the US dollar as an international currency to strengthen its technological industry development and trade advantages. For example, the United States, faced with the challenges of Japanese manufacturing in global trade, signed the Plaza Accord to force the yen to appreciate sharply against the dollar, resulting in a sharp increase in the export price of Japanese industrial goods. For example, in 2021, the United States will plunder global wealth by triggering global inflation through large-scale over-issuance of dollars.
It can be said that in the world system, trade-technology-finance is a triangular relationship of mutual support, trade volume promotes the development of science and technology, scientific and technological advantages are transformed into trade advantages and thus have financial advantages, and financial advantages can continuously consolidate scientific and technological advantages, and then strengthen trade advantages. It is precisely because the United States firmly controls its superiority in the field of global trade-technology-finance, and this world system of center-periphery structure lays the economic foundation for its becoming a world empire. However, competition in trade, science and technology, and even finance inevitably leads to conflicts between countries, so this world order needs to establish a political and legal order that is compatible with it.
2. Political sphere: Violent-ally-rule-supporting imperial hegemony
The formation, maintenance and change of political order are often manifested through violence. War and violence create the most fundamental law, namely the demarcation of territorial boundaries that dominate. This violent conquest continues to merge small communities into larger ones, and even promotes the formation of several long-term stable regional civilizational empires in different geographical spaces around the world. With the great discovery of geography, violence also expanded globally with trade, and the market expansion and competition promoted by European trade was usually not done through the "invisible hand" of market competition, but through military war and plunder. Without the conquest of gunboats, the Western powers could not open the door to the East through trade, not because the Eastern Empire was closed to the country, but because the rules of trade in the East were based on the tributary trade system, which was completely different from the private trade system of Western capitalism. This expansion of the capitalist private trading system has led to the rise of this peculiar form of organization of the modern sovereign state in the West. When this trade was closely integrated with markets, wars, and finance, it promoted the rise of the "military-financial state." Since then, the form of war in human history has undergone fundamental changes, that is, war has become normalized with the competition for markets and interests, and a "mixed war" has been formed around economic interests in which trade wars, industrial wars, scientific and technological wars, financial wars and military wars are intertwined, and military wars have become "political extensions".
It is the rise of this hybrid warfare that has given traditional violent warfare a more moderate, everyday, and neutral name—"competition" or "struggle." The "competition" between private and private in the commercial market promotes the "struggle" between parties and parties in political life, and eventually evolves into a high degree of organization of private individuals in the "power container" of the sovereign state, and the "struggle" between countries is carried out. Struggle or war is the norm of the capitalist order, and peace is the interval after the conquest of war. In this way, we can understand the various types of wars that have occurred frequently in the rise of modern Europe. These wars fueled the rise and fall of empires and the transformation. It was with this hybrid warfare that the British Empire destroyed India's cotton textile industry, thus establishing Britain's central position in the global cotton textile industry, thus establishing a "free trade empire", that is, what can be defeated by trade is not militarily, and what cannot be defeated by trade needs to be waged. Behind the global maritime trade has always been the navy and sea power, capitalist trade always needs the protection of military violence, if it can not occupy a dominant position in trade, then directly through violent conquest, land-cutting indemnity to plunder, thus forming a modern colonial empire system.
Therefore, the world system of the center-periphery structure in the economic field is built on this mixed war of economy and violence, and then breaking this structure will undoubtedly require the help of a mixed war of economy and violence. The two world wars were in fact a struggle around the distribution of trade profits and for the dominance of the world system, which led to the shift of the center of the world system from Britain to the United States, from the British-led world empire to the United States-led world system. Thus, the world imperial system was never a natural formation, but the result of human effort. The Industrial Revolution in Europe was not a natural process of development in which technology and resources accumulated, but rather a product of fierce competition between military-financial states and the struggle for trade interests based on violent wars. Behind mercantilism and the Industrial Revolution was the brutal colonialism of the European Empire around the globe and its long war of life and death.
The founding of the United States was in fact the product of a series of wars of hegemony between European colonial empires. France, which had lost the global struggle with Britain, retaliated by supporting the division of North America from the British Empire. The United States, which won the war against colonial empire and independence, also quickly joined the ranks of the French Revolution. Thus, the American Revolution and the French Revolution brought about a new political order, that is, the destruction of the colonial empire under the hereditary monarchs of the old European monarchs, and the establishment of new states based on the political principles of freedom and equality. The globalization of capitalist commercial trade is still advancing, and the colonialist imperial struggle for hegemony is still continuing, but a new political order began to lay the foundation on the basis of the American Revolution and the French Revolution, that is, the international law order based on the equality of sovereign states, thus pushing the Westphalian system from European public law to international law. In this sense, the rise of the United States has always had two sides in global politics, on the one hand, inheriting in reality the legacy of colonialism in the old European order, and on the other hand, opposing European colonialism in concept. Whether it is the territorial expansion of the United States to the west or the annexation of Mexican territory through war and the expansion of power into Latin America, it has always been accompanied by military violence, so the United States calls itself a "dangerous country". Americans have always lived in war, most recently two world wars, the Cold War, the "war on terror" since the end of the Cold War, and today's threat of war against China's rise. In his farewell speech, Eisenhower once proposed to be wary of the "military-industrial complex" of the United States, which is just a copy of the "military-financial state" in European history. In this sense, on the one hand, the world imperial order created by the United States inherits the legacy of the colonial imperial order in European history, which has always been based on the European Christian civilization order as the basis of its ideology; on the other hand, the American imperial order contains a very strong revolutionary nature, which actually stems from the republican and cosmopolitan heritage in European history, that is, the establishment of a world empire with republican democratic political principles, so as to achieve permanent peace. This intellectual legacy also profoundly influenced the communist trend in Europe. It can be said that it was Wilson's cosmopolitan idea of permanent peace and Lenin's communist ideal that together destroyed the colonialist system established in old Europe and thus promoted the national liberation movement, and the result of the joint cooperation of these two political forces was the United Nations system established after the Second World War.
Thus, after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union rose, the entire European colonialist system collapsed, and the United Nations system based on the equality of sovereign states was established. However, in the "Cold War", both the Soviet Union and the United States abandoned the United Nations system and turned to the pattern of imperial hegemony in European history. But both the Soviet Empire and the American Empire at least claimed to be based on the legal principle of equality of sovereign states, based on political ideas and interests. As a result, the ally system became a replica of the colonial system. If the colonial system was a form of direct control, the system of allies must be constructed with the help of the rules of international law. For example, the United States has controlled the global economy through the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the Petrodollar Agreement, the Wassenaar Agreement, and various free trade area agreements, and through NATO, the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, and various military garrison agreements signed with many countries and regions, it has brought Europe, Japan, South Korea, and other countries under the control of its imperial system as "vassal states.", which is called the "alliance system." The difference is that under the planned economic system, the Soviet Union's control of its allies can only be controlled by means of violence and direct political domination, and its approach is more primitive and crude. This kind of imperial rule is contrary to its professed political principles and is easily resisted and resisted. However, in the global capitalist system, the control of the United States over its allies certainly has direct military and political domination, but it is more indirectly controlled through the "invisible hand" of economy, finance, law and ideology, so that its imperial color is relatively weak, and the means of imperial rule are more modern and refined.
Therefore, when we call this soviet model of direct control "empire", this indirect control model of the United States is often called "hegemony", that is, a domination based on approval and consent. Compared with the "empire" of the Soviet Union, "hegemony" is a positive word. After World War II, the United States never shied away from the hegemonic order it established, and even proudly called it "the liberal hegemonic order" or "liberal Leviathan". It was not until after 9/11 that the United States dominated almost the entire world that it revealed its true face as a world empire. The international political science circles criticize the "unilateral action" of the United States precisely because the United States has abandoned the United Nations system and even the system of allies, interpreting the aggression of invading other sovereign countries as a security law enforcement action within the world empire. In fact, the United States did not shy away from its intention to build a "new Roman Empire" to rule the world. Backed by global military violence, the world empire constructed by the United States ostensibly retains the legal form of sovereign states, but maintains control over the global trade-technology-financial system through various treaty systems and the U.S. domestic legal system, thus using this economic and legal control power to turn other countries into their "quasi-colonies" or "vassal states".
3. Cultural sphere: The historical end ideology of the Christian-English-human rights mutual promotion
Political order implies domination, and the solidity of political domination requires laying the foundation of legitimacy. In Weber's theory, pure violent domination can only have "power", and only the domination of ideological legitimacy has "authority". Therefore, the construction of the imperial order has always taken the construction of the cultural and educational system as the highest state. The classical imperial order often required religious ideas to justify it. Christianity allowed the collapsing Roman Empire to last for thousands of years, thus evolving into a Roman-Christian Empire. However, with the great geographical discoveries and the rise of the sovereign states of Europe, the struggle for secular and religious power has become increasingly fierce. The European Christian imperial order was challenged by these secular sovereign states, the most intense and enduring of which was the systematic rebellion of Protestant states against the Roman Catholic order triggered by the Reformation. The Protestant Revolution was originally a revolution within the Christian Empire, but it not only destroyed the order of the Christian Empire in Europe for thousands of years, but also opened a new imperial era, an imperial era formed on the basis of Protestantism and based on the liberal and scientific Enlightenment ideas to lay the foundation of legitimacy and authority. Since then, not only has the European Christian imperial order declined, but any classical regional civilizational imperial order based on religion as a legitimate authority also collapsed.
It can be said that a series of major global historical events such as global capitalist commercial trade, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of modern sovereign states and colonial empires have jointly destroyed the global regional civilized imperial order and integrated the fragments of these empires into a new imperial order, which is the "free trade" world imperial order built by the British Empire in the 19th century at its peak. We call this imperial order a "world empire" not only because it connects global economic and social life based on maritime trade and technological developments, and only a few inland areas have not been integrated into this global economic order, but these places are only some insignificant islands in the entire era of economic globalization; more importantly, the basis of the legitimacy of the world empire has gained universal recognition — modern "civilizations" based on scientific rationality, industrialization, liberal democracy, and pre-modern societies. "Barbarism" is a stark contrast, and this division between civilization and barbarism is potentially religious and racist, thus branding the Christian (Protestant)-white race supremacy, which is the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) presented in the construction of the United States. It was under the influence of this cultural and religious order that the ancient regional civilization empires of the East were subjected to external shocks from European empires, but more importantly, a cultural and educational revolution that challenged the legitimacy of the imperial order broke out within it.
Although the modern order has emerged in the form of fierce anti-tradition, the emergence of the modern order in the West undoubtedly has its historical and cultural roots, and this root is the Protestant revolution of Christianity. The Protestant Revolution completely shattered the bond between the other world and the world on the other side, threw man into a meaningless materialized world, forced man to look at the world around him with an "exorcism" eye, and saw the world with a calm, non-emotional, scientific eye, so that the world became an object of objectification to be conquered by mankind and served by mankind. This concept has given birth to modern science and technology, but it has also led to the continuous conquest of the world by human beings since the Industrial Revolution, and the contrast is that the ancient regional civilization empire is limited to religious "civilization" and restricts the development of science and the application of technology, resulting in becoming a "stagnant empire". In the same way, it is in the Protestant conception that there is the concept of human rights in which God created mankind so that all men are equal, that there are natural rights, the social contract, constitutional democracy, and all other ideas about the authority of the legitimacy of human political life.
It is precisely under this Protestant concept that the United States regards the founding of its country as the establishment of a "city on a mountaintop", and it has become its historical mission to promote the values of Christianity to the whole world and establish a free and equal regime for all. Thus, the establishment of a world empire is a "manifest destiny," just as the imperial poet Joseph Kipling saw imperial expansion as the "white man's burden" that brought barbarians into the civilized world. This notion of the legitimacy of the political order was popularized with the global expansion of European empires, especially in the transition from the British Empire to the American Empire, which together defeated the French, German, and Soviet Empires, effectively associating this ideology with the global spread of the English language and culminating in the end of the Cold War. Since then, freedom and human rights have become the so-called "universal values", English has become the international common language, Christianity has become the spiritual pillar of the modern concept of freedom and democracy, and "color revolutions" and humanitarian intervention based on the concept of human rights have become the reasons for the expansion of world empires, so that world empires are often called "human rights empires" or "democratic empires". From the perspective of the construction of world empires, the question of the legitimacy of political rule has been resolved at the philosophical level, forming an ideology of "end of history"; the so-called "clash of civilizations" has always been at the "political" level and cannot rise to the philosophical level. Therefore, the political concepts of "the end of history" and "clash of civilizations" jointly serve the "inside" and "outside" of the world empire constructed by the United States: the "end of history" has been achieved inside the empire, and there is a "clash of civilizations" outside the empire; it can be said that the construction of the world empire is promoted to achieve the "end of history" through the "clash of civilizations".
▍ The inherent contradiction between "deep globalization" and the world empire
From the beginning of the 20th century, when the United States entered Asia and stepped onto the stage of world history, the entire 20th century can be said to be the "American Century" to some extent, and the United States has worked hard to establish a world empire that rules the world after a century. After entering the 21st century, the use of the Internet, big data and artificial intelligence has promoted a new wave of globalization, which we can call "deep globalization". Information dissemination and the movement of people have enabled globalization to develop from the field of business economy to the exchange of personal emotions and the deep experience of life, and the "global village" is no longer a metaphor, but a reality. "Cosmopolitanism" is no longer an abstract concept or a distant political ideal based on rational reflection, but more and more has the basis of realistic emotions and life experience, so that all mankind can truly move towards "one world" and become a community of destiny. However, in the 21st century, in order to consolidate the achievements of the "Cold War" victory, the United States has continuously strengthened the construction of world empires. In particular, after 9/11, the United States launched a global security clearance operation against terrorism under the rule of a world empire. This kind of clearance operation is not only reflected in the traditional field of ground warfare, but also through the comprehensive review and monitoring of global information flows through the Internet and big data, and the comprehensive supervision of global economic activities through judicial "long-arm jurisdiction". The governance model of the world empire constructed by the United States runs counter to the historical development trend of building a community with a shared future for mankind promoted by this "deep globalization". That is why since the end of the Cold War, the world's feelings about the United States have increasingly changed from the "liberators" of yesterday's world to the "bullies" of today's world. The historical development trend of "deep globalization" and the governance model of the world imperial system have emerged in an unprecedented contradiction.
1. The contradiction between the economic monopoly of the empire and the growth of the world
"Deep globalization" continues to promote the integration of the global economy and promote the sustained growth of the global economy, but the inequality created by the financial monopoly and hegemony of the world empire hinders the growth of the global economy. "Deep globalization" has led to the formation of a global division of labor system under comparative advantage in the global economy, and this division of labor system needs to be regulated by the "invisible hand" to promote its continuous change. However, comparative advantage is not limited to natural differences in natural conditions and resource endowments, with the development of industrialization and the advent of the post-industrial era, especially in the era of knowledge economy, comparative advantage often depends on acquired learning and efforts, which means that the acquired learning and creative ability can completely change the innate comparative advantage. If the center-edge order of the world system is formed based on the division of labor between scientific and technological advantages and industrial advantages, and the basis of this division of labor is comparative advantage, it means that with the change of comparative advantage, the spatial layout of the center-edge in the world system is constantly adjusting and changing. Such adjustments and changes are undoubtedly efficient and can bring universal benefits to all humankind. In this sense, the changing position of the center-periphery of the world system is precisely to encourage the strengthening of acquired learning and creativity through sound policies, thereby promoting economic development and creating more and better wealth for all mankind. This is undoubtedly the essence of Adam Smith's classical liberalism, that is, the wealth and welfare of the whole nation should take precedence over the wealth and welfare of the industrial and commercial monopoly class, and the wealth and welfare of the world should take precedence over the monopoly wealth and welfare of certain powers.
From Adam Smith's theoretical perspective, in the 500 years since the discovery of geography, the center-periphery of the world system has been largely fixed, which in turn reinforces a racist theory that only Western culture, civilization, and ethnography are good at acquired learning and thus have the ability to create, and non-Western peoples lack the acquired learning ability and creative ability in culture, civilization and race. However, as we have pointed out earlier, the center-periphery structure of the world system is not established solely on the basis of a division of labour of comparative advantage, but through a mixture of military, political, and even cultural wars. When Germany began to rise, surpassing Britain and France in Western Europe technologically and economically and even culturally, thus showing a historical trend at the economic level to change the spatial layout of the center-periphery, Britain and France would use the political, economic and military power of the United States and even Russia (the Soviet Union) to destroy the rise of Germany, thus defending the established center-periphery structure. Therefore, once the center-periphery world economic order becomes the world imperial order, it means the emergence of a monopoly, that is, the center of the world empire will use all kinds of forces to defend this spatial pattern, and fix, perpetuate, and even perpetuate this pattern.
Similarly, in the Cold War era, when Europe and Japan rose in the field of science and technology industry to challenge the central position of the United States in the economic field, the United States used its military, political and financial advantages to successfully curb the development momentum of Europe and Japan and maintain the central position of the United States in the world system. Today, China uses its strong acquired learning and innovation capabilities to promote industrial development, and constantly breaks the Monopoly of the West on global industries, so that the high monopoly price of Western companies in the international market has fallen to the "cabbage price" due to competition in Chinese products. It can be said that it is the growth of China's economy that has promoted the continuous expansion of global trade and the substantial growth of global wealth. As a result, there is an unprecedented contradiction between the increase in welfare brought by China's industrial technological upgrading to all mankind and the monopoly profits formed by the United States controlling the technology. Faced with this contradiction, the United States used the advantages of the world empire it dominated to launch a hybrid war against China. Therefore, the Sino-US trade war is not only a conflict of interests between China and the United States, but also a conflict between the interests of the United States and the interests of the world, and the United States suppresses the rise of China, in fact, it is also suppressing the general welfare brought by the rise of China to all mankind. The United States puts the interests of its domestic monopoly capitalists above those of the American people and, more importantly, over the interests of all mankind. Therefore, the Sino-US trade war is essentially a class war, a war between the global big capitalists led by the United States against the entire "Third World" and a war against all the lower classes of the people, including the American working class.
Today, the so-called "manufacturing hollowing-out" problem that has led to the unemployment of the lower working class in the United States has precisely originated in the 1970s, when American financial capital relied on the monopoly formed by military and political power, and constantly plundered global wealth through financial means, thus promoting the United States from the real economy to the virtual economy. The United States used the advantages of the world empire to maintain the high welfare of American society as a whole, so that American society was pampered in the prosperous and prosperous world, and had long lost the ability to learn and create, lost the spirit of labor supported by the Protestant ethics that Weber had admired, and could only rely on immigrants to attract the world's excellent and creative minds, and attract lower-class immigrants to the United States for manual labor. In this context, the transfer of manufacturing to developing countries such as China is precisely the natural history process driven by global comparative advantage. If the U.S. is trying to revive its manufacturing sector, it should also attract chinese governments and entrepreneurs to invest in the U.S. on a large scale, using each other's comparative advantages to promote economic cooperation between the two countries and around the world, as reflected in "American Factory, which U.S. President Barack Obama supported." However, the United States has taken advantage of its world empire to wield the stick of sanctions on the grounds of "America first", used various means to prevent the rationalization and adjustment of the world division of labor system, and even did not hesitate to promote the "decoupling of China and the United States", curb the flow and transfer of high and new technologies, funds, and knowledge to the post-developed countries, and promote the return of manufacturing to the United States by suppressing China's economic development. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has used the financial levers of quantitative easing to launch a series of plans to revitalize the US economy, and this line of thinking has undoubtedly come at the expense of curbing global economic growth. As a result, the system of world empires constructed by the United States has become the biggest obstacle to global economic growth, and even to the common welfare of all mankind.
From the perspective of Marxist criticism of capitalism, whether it is Wallerstein's theory of the world system or Samir Amin's theory of dependency, the critique of Western capitalism mainly focuses on the issue of inequality. However, what is important is not inequality, but the center-periphery structure formed by the comparative advantage of economic development is still an inevitable part of human history. The problem is that human beings can change this structure by their own efforts, so that the center-periphery structure is in a state of flux that is compatible with human cultural and commercial activities. Once this structure is fixed, humanity will fall into a predestined situation, becoming a slave to the world's imperial system rather than a master. The long history of the past 500 years has given people an illusion of destiny, so that the Western left believes that all totalized rebellions can only be failure or bring about alienation, the "imperial" order is an insurmountable "iron cage" in the era of globalization, and the rebellion cannot subvert the world imperial order with a total scheme in political economy, but can only correct the direction of world empire development through various postmodern strategies, especially cultural means, within the empire, so as to pay more attention to temporary, fragmentation, scenario, Dramatic and everyday revolt. This understanding of the imprisoned fate of the world's empires is clearly a misreading of the past 500 years of history. The central-marginal structure of the world system is ostensibly economic, but in fact it is political, and economic inequality is only the appearance, and political inequality and inequality dominated by violence are the essence. The Western-dominated system of world empires uses all the monopolistic political forces of military, political, financial, and legal to dominate and distort the free flow of economic and cultural ideas around the world, thereby economicizing, ideologizing, and thus fixing and even perpetuating this unequal domination relationship. Therefore, if the post-developed countries want to change the fate of domination, they have to shift from the economic field of development to the political field of domination and struggle, and ultimately to subvert this world imperial system politically. This means that we must take seriously political issues, both the division between friend and foe in cultural politics and the violent domination of interest politics. Only when political issues are taken so seriously will the themes of class division, the subject of the people, party organization, political leadership, political education, political mobilization, violent revolution and the united front be re-established as themes of world politics.
In fact, the power of world empires is not only reflected in terms of violence, economics and politics, but most crucially, the ideology of the "West dominating the world" shaped by ideology. If the Western Left cannot escape its fear of the predestined forces of this imperial structure, it will be impossible to change from "the multitude" to "the people", and it will be impossible to move from a fluttering "escape" to a real "resistance" facing the test of death. If the post-developed countries cannot shake off their fear of this predestination, they will not be able to unite and unite into a true international political force. In this sense, only when the left forces of the world unite, especially the "third world" countries, and re-unite into a decentralized force, can it be possible to destroy the world imperial system and build a fair and reasonable new world order based on the community of human destiny. This is precisely the most valuable legacy that the communist movement has preserved from Europe to Asia, from the Soviet Union to China, through the lessons of victory and defeat. This is also the historical significance and mission of the rise of ancient China as a socialist country. Therefore, in theory, the political legacy of the socialist movement is revived, and the revival of the classical Chinese ideal of "one world under one roof" is one of the prerequisites for thinking about the fate of mankind, rebelling against the world imperial order, and building a community with a shared future for mankind. In this sense, the rise of "de-globalization" or "de-globalization" triggered by the Sino-US trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic is only to provide impetus for the next wave of globalization movements. Only after facing darkness and disaster will people abandon the common sense of the past and seek the truth, and it will be possible for the world to flash a new dawn. In the era of "deep globalization", Adam Smith's ideal of achieving the wealth growth of all mankind through free trade is close to being realized, and only the sinification of Marxism can turn Adam Smith's ideal into reality.
2. The contradiction between the "America First" of empire and the community of shared future for mankind
"Deep globalization" raises global risks that require international organizations such as the United Nations to play a greater role in responding to global crises, but there is an unprecedented contradiction between the "America First" of the world's imperial structure based on nation-states and the public interest of all mankind. The centenary of the "American Century" in which the world empire was built is also a century of accelerated development of human globalization. In the face of the development of "deep globalization", mankind has entered the "global risk society", not only the threat of isolation from each other scattered around the world has rapidly spread and spread to the world, but more importantly, the in-depth exchanges of all mankind and the acceleration of economic development will produce new problems, such as environmental problems, climate change, virus transmission, financial risks, network risks, space risks, nuclear weapons proliferation, terrorism, etc., which need to be jointly dealt with by all mankind. Therefore, with the deepening of economic globalization, it is inevitable to accelerate political globalization in order to shift public political life from a political structure centered on sovereign states to a political construction centered on international politics, and then promote international politics from the United Nations to the goal of world government. In this sense, the "cosmopolitanism" and Marx's "communism" in the long history of European thought share the same ideological and political roots as the concepts of "universal unity" and "one world under one family" in the Chinese cultural tradition.
However, why has mankind not been able to follow the path of "one world under one roof" and "one family under heaven", but has always faced constant conflict, division and war? In European history, many thinkers have pondered this question. From the theory of the sovereign state separated from church and state to the cosmopolitan and political conception of permanent peace, it is the product of thinking on this issue, and all of these reflections are based on the theory of sovereign state, thus providing three ways of exploring.
The first line of thought is rule of law. On the one hand, the separation of powers and the constitution within sovereign states are used to constrain the power of sovereigns; on the other hand, sovereign states form international law through equal consultation and negotiation in the Westphalian system, thus using international law to bind sovereign states. This rule of law doctrine, which combines domestic and international rule of law, formed the "permanent peace" theory of "permanent peace" between "republican governments" (later known as "democratic governments")," which became very popular. This rule of law approach contains a very strong idealistic normative color, but it faces several dilemmas in reality. First, the binding force of international law on sovereign States is very limited, and it is impossible for international law to really work without the establishment of a world government. Second, this normative overtones of idealism justify war by promoting revolution within sovereign states and transforming it into a democratic republic. Foreign wars and export revolutions have always been intertwined, from the Napoleonic Wars to the Export Revolution of the Soviet Union, to the "Greater Middle East Democratic Transformation Plan" promoted by the United States in the Middle East in a way that combines war and peaceful evolution, all of which follow the logic of this rule of law, and the result is not only to achieve world peace, but to bring the world into long-term turmoil. Third, this idealistic argument of a free-democratic state without war often presumes whether the state belongs to a liberal democracy based on the outcome. If there is a war between two countries, at least one of them does not belong to a liberal democracy, which leads to a just war tied to a liberal democracy that in fact revives the ancient religious wars in European history, justifies the wars, and makes the conflicts never reconcilable. It can be seen that this ideal of rule of law, far from laying the foundation for permanent peace, will lead to greater wars and conflicts.
The second line of thought is to construct a new federalist empire, that is, to form an empire by forming alliances or federations between sovereign states, thus overcoming internal differences and conflicts. If the idea of rule of law has idealistic normative overtones, then this federalist idea of a new empire is undoubtedly a realistic and feasible solution. However, the practice of federalism in European history has always been in a state of instability, until the emergence of American federalism, which really provided a useful exploration for the suspicion of ending war, conflict and even trade between sovereign states, that is, to build the federal government into a super sovereign government above the sovereign state. The success of federalism in the United States is not only due to the fact that the founders of the United States have always worked to strengthen the power of the federal government based on the lessons learned from the history of European federalism; more importantly, the unique geopolitical environment in which the United States is located relative to the original European powers has promoted the continuous growth of the Federal Government. This federalist idea of a new empire influenced not only the later "Soviet Union", that is, the formation of an imperial union in the form of a federal model through soviet republics. More importantly, after World War II, with the changes in the world pattern, European countries finally ended the thousand-year war between European countries and grew into today's European Union under the idea of federalism. However, this federalist line of realism lacks precisely the practical and feasible conditions for achieving permanent peace, because eternal contests between states are inevitable because of the existence of national sovereignty. Great powers of equal power competed with each other and found it difficult to form a federation, and federalism often consisted in promoting the formation of a contest between two federal empires. The Athenian and Spartan empires of the ancient Greek era are examples. In European history, the cross-cutting between the great powers also often led to a situation similar to the global confrontation between the Allies and the Allies. The United States and the Soviet Union could not unite, but formed two alliance camps. From this point of view, permanent peace can never be achieved, but only through strength and war to achieve a short peace, and to maintain this peace through constant war.
The third line of thought is to build a world empire on the basis of a colonial empire. Wars between sovereign States in Europe were often sparked by a scramble for overseas commercial trade and colonies. In this process, although the sovereign states of Europe denied the "empire" in terms of political theory legitimacy, in practice they revived the "empire" under the framework of colonialism. The term "the great powers" is used to describe a mixture of sovereign States in Europe and colonial empires outside of Europe. The rise of Europe led to the resurrection of the imperial system within the theoretical framework of sovereign states, thus forming an imperial constitutional model of "sovereign state-colonial empire" that combined internal sovereign states with external colonial empires. It was to argue for the inevitability of this colonial imperial order that Europe invented the theories of "civilization" and "barbarism." However, this colonial imperial system is a historical, temporary, transitional system, which actually laid the groundwork for the subsequent colonial and semi-colonial democratic revolutions and national independence and liberation movements, that is, once these colonies have experienced enlightenment, received the scientific and rational education of the West and liberal ideas, and completed the transformation of the democratic revolution, they can build a free and democratic sovereign state like the West, thus joining the "international community" composed of civilized sovereign states. Entered the Westphalian system governed by international law.
The world imperial system developed on the basis of this colonial empire mainly controlled the world through the hidden underlying economic orders such as trade, science and technology, and finance, thus greatly weakening the political and legal control means established by traditional empires through violent conquest. As a result, we see the creation of numerous sovereign states on the ground floor of global economic integration, at least in form. These countries all have equal sovereignty in apparent legal form, yet in the underlying global economic order, a few of them occupy the center of the world system, while the vast majority of others are semi-marginal or marginal. These few countries gain indirect control over global politics through direct control of the global economy, thus constituting a world empire, like Britain and now the United States. In terms of legal form, these countries are sovereign states like other countries, but these countries control almost the whole world because they control the global economy. This de jure sovereign state, by controlling the world system and thus the whole world, constitutes the constitutional model of this unique world empire. If Britain's embryonic form as a world empire was formed on the basis of a colonial empire, then the United States basically abandoned the model of colonial empire and controlled the world economy and world politics through the model of signing a large number of international treaties between sovereign states and establishing international organizations. It is precisely because the United States has abandoned the traditional imperial model, neither adopting the territorial occupation and expansion model of the classical regional civilization empire nor the colonial governance model of the colonial empire, but establishing an invisible empire based on the anti-imperialist model of equality between sovereign states, which can be called "empire without empire".
And this transition from colonial empire to world empire lies precisely in the fundamental change in the way world empires grab profits, that is, they do not need to plunder wealth through direct colonial control, but only through investment, intellectual property trade and financial control of multinational companies to extract profits. If the empire's naked economic exploitation and resource plundering of the colonies in the era of colonial empires lack legitimacy and will eventually be overthrown, then this hidden method of profit extraction of the world imperial model is actually a neocolonialism, but this neocolonialism has gained legitimacy at the level of international law in which sovereign states sign international agreements equally, that is, the system of international law under the model of legal positivism only bases the legitimacy of the international order on the basis of formalism that lacks substance. It is precisely this formalistic theory of the legitimacy of the international rule of law that obscures and even justifies neocolonialism in world empires. The result is that the United States de facto controls the entire world as a world empire, but the United States can easily use the legal form of sovereign state as a pretext to shirk its moral and legal responsibility to the whole world. Thus, when there is a crisis in the global economy, the United States can call for "America First" in the name of sovereign countries, thereby continuously withdrawing from various international organizations, abandoning the responsibilities that should be assumed as a world empire, or issuing currency on a large scale in the name of sovereign countries, completely ignoring the disastrous consequences of the us dollar as a global currency for other countries. If the empires of history had to shoulder their moral and governance responsibilities for the periphery, and even the British Empire had to flaunt its imperial responsibilities when it retreated, however, the United States controlled the world and subverted the power of other countries through "color revolutions", thus plunging these countries into political decay and even becoming "failed countries", but never considered themselves responsible for the whole world and the occupied countries. That is what we see today, where the United States has collapsed from Afghanistan and has shifted the blame to the Afghan government.
Therefore, in this hidden world imperial system, the United States in the central control position on the one hand extracts resources through the world imperial system to promote the continuous prosperity and strength of the sovereign state of the United States; on the other hand, when there is a disaster on the fringes of the world empire or a crisis in the entire world economy, the United States demands that the sovereign countries on the periphery of the world bear the responsibility alone in the language of sovereign states, and the United States does not even bear moral responsibility for the disasters facing the whole world. In other words, with the rapid development of "deep globalization", this global governance model of world empire has created an unprecedented contradiction with the global common interest, that is, the world empire system is only a tool for the United States to extract profits, and the United States has the power to control the world and use the world imperial system to obtain benefits, but it does not need to take responsibility for the whole world. This is why, over the past 500 years, the global order shaped by the West has evolved from a sovereign-colonial imperial system to a sovereign-world imperial system, which has never been able to solve the problem of inequality between the West and the non-Western, and has constantly fixed or even perpetuated this inequality, which is rooted in the huge gap between the imperial power and the imperial responsibility of this capitalist world imperial system. Therefore, without analyzing the structure of this hidden world empire, the root cause of the problem cannot be found.
If you compare it with the constitutional structure of the classical regional civilization empire, you can immediately see the exquisite secret of the constitutional design of the modern empire. Classical empires seemed to have resorted to barbaric military conquests and territorial appropriations, accompanied by barbaric killings, but once established, empires often had to take responsibility for the governance of imperial affairs, not only to defend the frontiers of the empire, but also to maximize the general welfare of the empire's subjects. In this regard, the Chinese Empire invested huge financial power in the development and governance of the frontiers is exemplary, and the political logic of this governance lies precisely in the Confucian emphasis on the concept of "one family under the heavens", and it is the political responsibility of the imperial monarch to care for the well-being of all the people in the world and make them live and work in peace and contentment. From this, we see that in the late Qing Dynasty, in order to help the vassal states of Korea and Vietnam resist colonial aggression from Japan and France, the Chinese Empire used its last strength to throw itself into the Korean War against Japan and the War of Resistance against France in Vietnam, which directly accelerated the disintegration of the empire. If the Chinese Empire adopted the Western empire model, it would first turn Korea and Southeast Asia into its own colonies, thus rapidly expanding into a world empire. It is in this comparison that we can see how the system of world empires constructed by the United States can reap global benefits. Although the United States had invested a lot of resources in the "Cold War" to compete with the Soviet Empire to help other regions develop. However, since the end of the Cold War, in the face of global common problems, the United States has continuously disintegrated the United Nations and the international cooperation system, used the world imperial system to consolidate U.S. interests, and left global disasters and problems to the world. Whether facing the 2008 financial crisis or today's global epidemic, the United States has not played the role of leader and organizer, but has wielded the stick of sanctions to force the world to pay tribute to the United States. Now, the United States has transferred the responsibility for its failure to prevent and control the epidemic to China, slandering China in the media, planting the source of the virus in China, trying to make China compensate for the losses of its failure to fight the epidemic, attacking the World Health Organization, which promotes global cooperation against the epidemic, and trying to shirk its imperial responsibility in the failure of global governance and domestic governance.
It can be said that the new crown epidemic has exposed the crisis of the global governance system in an extreme way that endangers the world, that is, the world empire built by the United States has disintegrated international organizations and international cooperation on the one hand, but on the other hand, it has not assumed the minimum responsibility for global governance, resulting in the lack of global governance subjects and the continuous deterioration of the global epidemic. In this sense, the world imperial system constructed by the United States has not only failed to assume the responsibility of global governance, but has become the source of various global risk outbreaks. Whether it is a climate problem, or a terrorist problem, whether it is a financial risk, a cyber risk, or a virus risk, its roots come precisely from the world imperial system built by the United States.
3. The contradiction between the end of history and the coexistence and dialogue of civilizations
"Deep globalization" urgently requires "dialogue among civilizations", and the ideology of "end of history" of world empires hinders this dialogue and exacerbates the estrangement and conflict between human civilizations. "Deep globalization" has promoted the intensive cultural exchanges of all mankind with unprecedented breadth and depth, which means that different ethnic groups, cultures and religions that were originally divided in the global geographical space are carrying out various exchanges at an unprecedented speed, from the historical strangeness of "looking at each other in the rivers and lakes" to the "mutual friction" that constantly produces daily friction. As a result, "deep globalization" will inevitably also trigger tensions and conflicts between nations, civilizations and religions. In particular, the large-scale immigration from North Africa and the Middle East into Europe has led to various conflicts between Islam and Christianity, the terrorist incidents of Islamic extremism have continued to occur, and the conservative forces in Europe have continued to grow, and even fascism has begun to rise. The United States has also divided its internal cultural identity due to mass immigration, and the differences between conservatism and liberalism in the cultural field have evolved into political differences. The polarization of global political interests has always been based on culture as a slogan for cohesion and political mobilization, so that the "clash of civilizations" has become a major political problem facing the world today. If the so-called "clash of civilizations" becomes a clash of religions, especially the historical religious war between Islam and Christianity, then human history can only retreat to the tragic situation of eternal war conquest and never being able to coexist.
Therefore, "deep globalization" inevitably needs to promote extensive dialogue among civilizations at all levels, so that each religion and civilization can reflect on its own limitations, so as to seek consensus and jointly build a "human family" of multicultural coexistence and mutual learning. However, the world empire constructed by the United States has always adhered to the ideology of "the end of history", and after the end of the ideological "Cold War", the United States has promoted the "end of history" in the way of "clash of civilizations", not only using the war on terror as an excuse to launch a "New Crusade" against the Islamic world, but also launching a comprehensive crackdown on China with the "Cold War" ideology and the posture of "clash of civilizations", and even trying to revive the racist argument of "Caucasians", which gave birth to fascism in the 19th century, to target China. If each nation-state has its own civilizational basis, then the sovereign state that constructs the world empire must understand the whole world and construct the world empire according to its own civilization, and use the world empire to promote this civilization around the world. In fact, the historical regional civilization empire was also established in this way. However, the establishment of civilized empires in history has often been led by a strong civilization to assimilate the weak and small civilizations around it, so the trend that has emerged is often the expansion of civilizations, rather than the clash of civilizations. The reason why this strong civilization is strong is not necessarily because of its military strength, but because it recognizes the excellent ideas of human beings themselves, which is why the human civilization in the "Axial Age" in different geographical spaces has made major breakthroughs in thinking, thus shaping the form of civilization in the regional space.
However, since the great geographical discovery, the rise of the West has destroyed the regional civilization empire at the same time, but also destroyed the classical civilization form and constructed a new civilization form, which is what we often call modernity or modern civilization. Since modern civilization grew up on the basis of classical civilization, it means that each regional civilization should find a path of modernization that matches its own civilization form, thus presenting a "pluralistic modernity". However, the world empire constructed by the United States has always regarded the liberal democratic system that grew up in Western Christian civilization as the only model for modern civilization, and regards the exploration of modernity by any other civilization as an enemy of deviance, even including communist theories that have also grown up in Western Christian civilization. Thus, the world empire constructed by the United States is not an order construction that transcends different religions and ideas, but closely links itself with Christianity, and the problem of the clash of civilizations based on religion becomes a question of rebellion against the World Empire dominated by the United States. In this sense, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the new war between terrorism and the United States, and the all-round competition between China and the United States, which is intensifying today, can be understood as a clash of civilizations, but it can also be understood as a struggle between the conquests of world empires and the resistance of nations. In this sense, to shift from the "clash of civilizations" to the "dialogue of civilizations", it is not only necessary to abandon the ideology of "the end of history" formed by Christian theory, but more importantly, to overthrow the world imperial system constructed by the West, to separate religion from political competition, and to truly carry out dialogue with the truth. From this point of view, of all the classical regional civilization empires, only the imperial civilization of classical China did not rely on religion, but relied on the Confucian philosophy of humanism and idealism, so it successfully solved the problem of religious conflict and enabled different religions to coexist harmoniously in social life.
When the United States stepped onto the world stage, it actively built the League of Nations and promoted the United Nations to form a global democratic governance system, thus ending the colonial imperial system established by the old world in Europe. For the people of the colonies or semi-colonies that had been oppressed by the European colonial system for centuries, the United States and the Soviet Union were undoubtedly liberators of the old European-dominated world order. However, with the development of the Cold War, the United States gradually abandoned the United Nations system and built a world imperial system, especially since the end of the Cold War, the United States has the absolute power of the "New Roman Empire", but due to the lack of international law and the constraints of international political forces, the United States has accelerated towards corruption and degeneration. With the accelerated development of "deep globalization," the U.S. world imperial system has become unsuitable for the trend of historical development. Today, the United States is confronted by the people of the world: economic financial plunder, political militaristic violence, and cultural ideology. The United States has increasingly gone from being a liberator of the world's beacon to being a selfish bully, so much so that Kishore Mahbubani points out that the United States today behaves more like the former Soviet Union, while China is more like the United States in the Cold War.
Although the world empire constructed by the United States faces internal contradictions, especially contrary to the historical development trend of "deep globalization", the world empire constructed by the United States still has its inherent vitality and strength. The decline of world empires is a long-term historical trend, just as we usually see 1840 as the beginning of the decline of the Qing Dynasty, until the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War and the invasion of China by the Eight-Nation Alliance, the Qing Dynasty really withdrew from the stage of history, and there were about 60 years in between, that is, the time of a jiazi. Therefore, the rise and fall of the empire emphasizes a historical trend, although the late Qing Dynasty had a short period of "Tongzhi Zhongxing", but the decline is an inevitable process. Similarly, in today's Sino-US competition, the United States, as a world empire, still has a huge advantage over China, so China has always opposed the "new Cold War" of "comprehensive decoupling," always maintained the strategic determination of "not decoupling," and promoted globalization with greater impetus, promoting the elimination of the strengths of the two sides in the mutual entanglement of "you have me" and "I have you." In this sense, as long as China maintains its strategy of facing the world and committing itself to promoting modernization and globalization, time will always be on the side of "one world under one roof". So how quickly the United States is declining depends on how quickly China is rising. Compared with Europe's historical experience in building a world imperial order for hundreds of years, China still lacks the historical experience, political energy and knowledge reserves for building a world order. This also dooms the decline of the U.S.-led world empire to be a long process.
▍ "The World Under Heaven": Inherit and surpass "May Fourth"
In the context of the dilemma of the United Nations system and the lack of publicity of the world imperial system, global governance will face unprecedented difficulties in the future, and world history will enter a period of turmoil in the world order and a period of chaos in global governance. Within the United States, while liberals and conservatives are in a life-and-death struggle in bipartisan politics, the differences between the two parties are merely about the strategy of governing the world empire — whether to adopt Trump-style unilateral economic and political violence or to adopt the bilateral alliance strategy advocated by the Democratic Party. On the question of leadership and domination over world empires, the two parties in the United States are highly united. In order to maintain the world empire dominated by the United States, it is necessary to comprehensively suppress China's development and eventually integrate China into the world imperial system dominated by the United States. In this sense, the process of "Sino-US decoupling" promoted by the United States will inevitably accelerate, and the current scientific and technological decoupling of China and the United States in the field of culture and education has begun, and the Biden administration's unity of allies in ideological comprehensive smear of China has also begun, which seems to be preparing for the "Sino-US decoupling" promoted by the United States. Therefore, the world pattern will superficially revolve around the struggle between "decoupling" and "anti-decoupling" between China and the United States, but in fact it revolves around the conquest and resistance of world empires. As a result, two camps in the world, led by the United States, supporting the world empire and China as the leader of the rebellion against the world empire and supporting the Democratic System of the United Nations will be formed, just as the fascist camp and the anti-fascist camp that have appeared in history will be formed. Thus all the forces dedicated to promoting global economic equality and democratic progress, all the forces dedicated to promoting multicultural and civilized dialogue, will become a just force against the world imperial system headed by the United States. In this struggle between "decoupling" and "anti-decoupling", the process of globalization will not be "reversed", but may be "forked", showing a "block" structure of mutual integration. The United States is trying to reverse the historical trend of "deep globalization", trying to build a "closer semi-globalization" with its allies, shaping "globalization without China", while China is committed to promoting a more inclusive globalization. With the advancement of the historical process of rebellion against world empires, globalization will go deeper, and various forces rebelling against world empires will form a more closely united global progressive force, promoting globalization to further move towards "one world under one roof".
In the face of "deep globalization" and the global governance dilemma brought about by the world empire, it is the same as the question faced in the early 20th century: "What to do"? This issue is also an important theme in the "May Fourth" new cultural movement that debated China's world in the face of changes in the global pattern after the First World War. When we discuss this issue today, we must not only inherit the "May Fourth" tradition and carry forward the "May Fourth" spirit, but also go beyond the "May Fourth" and explore the future of global governance. The rise of China and the rejuvenation of Chinese civilization inevitably require China to assume the mission and responsibility of improving the global governance system in the era of "one world under one roof".
1. Inherit the democratic spirit of "May Fourth" and actively promote global democratic governance
The May Fourth Movement arose from a revolt against the colonial imperial system established globally by the European powers represented by the Paris Peace Conference. It just so happened that socialist Russia and the United States, which had experienced the "progressive era", came to the world stage, both of which appeared on the stage of history as critics and terminators of the old world created by the European powers, and thus naturally became China's political allies in promoting the democratic revolution. According to the geopolitical policy proposed by the American geopolitical scientist Alfred Mahan to the US government, the last chance for the United States to enter the world stage is in Asia, and the center of gravity of Asia is in China, and maintaining China's independence and "open doors" will help offset the expansion of power in Russia in the north and Britain in the south, so as to protect the interests of the United States to the greatest extent. On this basis, the United States should use Japan as a model student to promote cultural assimilation of China. Under the influence of this national policy, the United States put forward a national policy of public diplomacy or people-to-people diplomacy, and carried out political propaganda against China through business and cultural intellectuals, thus immediately gaining the natural favor and support of the "May Fourth" generation of Chinese intellectuals for the United States. It can be said that both the United States and China were participants in the Paris Peace Conference, and both were rebels and terminators of this old colonialist system. It is in this context that the people of Chinese and the People of the United States are united in their commitment to overthrow the colonial imperial system of old Europe and to end the imperialist wars that have arisen therefrom, and to jointly promote the formation of a new system of global democracy, the United Nations.
Therefore, in the face of the global expansion of the world empire created by the United States today, to carry forward the democratic spirit of "May Fourth" is to unite the people of all countries in the world, unite the democratic and progressive forces of all countries in the world, including the progressive forces within the United States, jointly defend the United Nations governance system established based on the democratic principle of equality of sovereign states, and resolutely oppose any authoritarian system that runs counter to the spirit of democracy, whether this system appears in the form of neo-colonialism, in the form of populism-fascism, or in the form of a world empire. In this sense, the historical significance of China's rise lies in closely uniting the progressive forces of all countries around the world, promoting the "great unity of the people of the world", opposing the new type of imperialism and the dictatorship of the world empire, defending and perfecting the democratic system in which the people of the whole world participate in global governance, and promoting the construction of a world government based on the concept of "one world under one roof".
2. Inherit the scientific spirit of "May Fourth" and explore a new science of global governance
In the process of promoting globalization, Europe has produced many theoretical ideas on global governance. In the past hundred years or so, the United States has promoted the scientific development of global governance, the core of which is to promote the international rule of law, that is, to establish a world based on rules governance, thus greatly promoting the historical process of globalization. The "May Fourth" New Culture Movement introduced the concepts of science and democracy from the West, and the so-called "science" here is not limited to the natural sciences and humanities, but also includes the sciences of social governance, national governance and global governance. If China wants to actively participate in global governance and make greater contributions to mankind, it must fully absorb the historical experience and excellent achievements of global governance in the past, including the governance experience of great historical empires, as well as the governance experience of European colonial empires, especially the historical experience of the United States in building a world empire. In the United Nations system with sovereign States as the mainstay, establishing and implementing rules through negotiation is undoubtedly a realistic and feasible path, and the resulting tradition of respecting rules and advocating the rule of law is undoubtedly conducive to actively promoting and improving the world governed by rules. In fact, while the Competition between China and the United States is competing, the Sino-US trade negotiations are negotiations around the rules. China and the United States may be able to negotiate rules to build a competitive but simultaneously cooperative world, providing new rules and experiences for global governance. In this sense, we in particular need to humbly learn the art of the United States in building a world empire— the rule of law, which can unite different peoples, cultures, and civilizations only on the basis of clear rule expectations. In this sense, the advantages of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics need to be gradually implemented in the rule of law, not only based on China's actual conditions, but also absorb the experience of other countries to build a socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics. However, we should also recognize that the world empire created by the United States and its rule governance have always been "capital-centric", while China's active participation in global governance requires the construction of a "people-centered" rule system. The global fight against the epidemic vividly shows two different governance scenes and two different global pictures of "capital-centered" and China's "people-centered" in Europe and the United States. Therefore, with the further development of "deep globalization", there is no doubt that in the future, global governance will be "based on the people", with legal rules and technical rules as the use, and actively construct a new science of global governance.
3. Surpass the "May Fourth" and revive the global governance concept of "one world under one roof"
The May Fourth Movement took a fiercely anti-traditional stance, abandoning China's ancient tianxia tradition and committing itself to building China as a sovereign state, thus joining the global Westphalian system. This historical task was not completed until the founding of New China in 1949. Since then, China has resumed its permanent membership in the United Nations, thus becoming an important member of the Westphalian system. In the United Nations, New China unites all progressive forces, especially the countries of the third world, and has always been committed to opposing hegemonism and colonialism, safeguarding world peace and promoting global prosperity. Today, with the rise of China and its active participation in global governance, we need to activate the classical Chinese tradition of Tianxiaism with greater "cultural self-confidence", "the old and the old, the young, and the young". Chinese people have accumulated historical experience from standing up to getting rich and becoming strong through hard work, so China has the responsibility to promote the post-developed countries to explore the path of modernization in line with their own historical and cultural traditions, and jointly oppose the world imperial system built by the United States. This means that China's classical Tianxiaism must promote each other with the cosmopolitan and communist traditions in Western thought, and jointly explore ways to oppose the world imperial system and build a community with a shared future for mankind. In the face of the historical trend of "deep globalization", Chinese should uphold the ancient belief of "one world under one roof" and adhere to the principle that "the world is the world of the people under the world", not the world of Westerners, let alone the world of Americans. Every country and civilization in the world has the right to explore its own path of development, and the diversity of development paths is rooted in the diversity of civilizations. Chinese people should work with the people of the world to build "one family under the heavens" and share the "unity of the world".
This article was originally published in the 2021 Winter Issue of the Journal of Oriental Studies (No. 14), and was originally titled ""One Under Heaven" vs. World Empire: "Deep Globalization" and the Future of Global Governance." Welcome to share personally, media reprint please contact the copyright owner.