Opinion | China is seeking to promote its world view and roll back Westernisation. Can it succeed?
- Beijing’s pursuit of global infrastructure expansion, economic primacy and a compelling China narrative are all part of the same mission
- If China reclaims the title of the world’s top economy, Chinese civilisation will spread once again – the dawn of an era as golden as the Han dynasty
“Every civilisation sees itself as the centre of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.” So wrote Samuel Huntington in his seminal The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order.
Hard power begets soft power. Without the economic prosperity of Athens, Greek philosophy would not have taken root. Without the later Roman empire, Christianity would have remained a cult. The steam engine powered the universality of Western values.
When the West was doing well, everything was good; wars were just a mark of human progress. In the post-Cold-War era, the philosophical construct of liberal democracy has dominated the world’s polities. However, philosophical Westernisation is but the fruit of economic Westernisation, and it will wither with the decline of the West.
The global distribution of civilisations reflects the global distribution of power, according to Huntington. President Xi Jinping has stressed the need for China to develop a global voice proportional to its “comprehensive national strength and international status”.
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This is a call to roll back the frontiers of Western civilisation, and validate China’s rise. The more China modernises, the more the rest of the world should reduce its focus on Western culture and practices.
