China Watch Vol. 5, No. 02, January 2025
The Peacefulness of Chinese Civilization: Value, Practice, and Enlightenment
Xiang Yong
Peaceful development is at the heart of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation; it is the direction of China’s modernization. China’s peaceful cultural gene, which has lasted for thousands of years, has become an important spiritual symbol and cultural essence for building the modern civilization of the Chinese nation.
On June 2, 2023, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized at the Symposium on Cultural Heritage Development: “The saliently peaceful nature of Chinese civilization has fundamentally determined that China has always been a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, and a defender of the international order. It has determined that China constantly pursues exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations instead of cultural hegemony. It has determined that China will not impose its own values and political system on others. It has determined that China insists on cooperation, not confrontation, and will never play the games of a small, narrowly partisan clique.” The saliently peaceful nature of Chinese civilization is of great significance in promoting cohesion on and practice of the concept of world peace.
The peaceful nature of Chinese civilization is the fundamental embodiment of the harmonious philosophy of the Chinese nation. It is a kind of ideological concept and value ideal for viewing the relationship between oneself and others, and between one’s own country and foreign countries.
The salient peacefulness of Chinese civilization is the fundamental embodiment of the harmonious philosophy of the Chinese nation. “Harmony” (he), a Chinese character with profound meaning in Chinese culture, expresses the ideal state and value pursuit of the Chinese people at different levels, whether physical condition, musical rhythm, spiritual balance, social construction, or spiritual belief. It contains the uniquely Chinese “concept of nature in which heaven (nature) and humanity are one, social concept of the harmony of differences, diplomatic concept of harmony among all nations, and ethical concept of an innate kindness in the human hearts,” which have lasted for thousands of years. The peaceful nature of Chinese civilization stems from the Chinese people’s sensible view of human relational order and ethnic structures. Since ancient times, the Chinese have had an embrace of the world and an ideal of “Grand Unity” (datong). In China’s traditional social structure, there is an ordering system of “family—country—world.” The Chinese people take the self as the seat of experience and understanding, starting from their lives and emotions, and then consciously and naturally extending that understanding to the ordering framework of family, country, and world. Fei Xiaotong (1910–2005), the renowned contemporary sociologist and ethnologist, believed that, viewed from within the society, the Chinese nation has a national form with a diverse and unified structure; looking out at the external world, the development of human society is aimed at building a better society. He believed that interpersonal relationships in traditional Chinese society have the characteristics of a differential structure, in which social relationships are developed one person at a time, “like the ripples that form when a stone is thrown into the water.” In modern Western society, meanwhile, relationships between people are group structures, like “bundles of firewood tied together.” Everyone has the same relationship with the group. The smallest unit in the group structure is the family, and the largest unit is the country.
The peaceful nature of Chinese civilization reflects the dialectical thinking of the Chinese people. Zhang Zai (1020–1077), the Neo-Confucianist thinker in the Northern Song dynasty, described the cognitive thinking of the Chinese people as a “Grand Harmony” (taihe). He pointed out: “If there are forms, there are also their opposites, and these opposites invariably oppose what they do. If there is opposition, there is strife, and if there is strife, there is invariably harmony and resolution.” In this regard, the famous contemporary philosopher Fung Yu-lan (1895–1990) believed that a society’s normal state is “harmony,” and that the normal state of the universe is, too, but that is what he called “Grand Harmony.” In Chinese classical philosophy, “harmony” is different from “sameness.” “Sameness” cannot tolerate “difference,” but “harmony” not only tolerates “difference,” but also requires “difference” before it can be called “harmony.” This is what is described as “harmonious but not the same.” Contemporary philosopher Zhang Dainian (1909–2004) proposed the concept of harmony as “physiological unity, group unity, unity of righteousness and destiny, and unity of heaven and man in motion” very early on, and gave a deep explanation of the statement, “If there is strife, there is invariably harmony and resolution.” He pointed out:
In dealing with others, there is not only mutual conflict; more usually there is the mutual dealing with the conflict. This is called harmony. Harmony is not sameness, and mutual harmony is not necessarily classed as sameness. Harmony is also not unity: although those in mutual harmony may draw connections among one another and become as one body, harmony still refers to a relationship with what is outside of that body. Harmony includes four aspects: one aspect is difference, that is, it is not absolute sameness; the second is the absence of mutual destruction, that is, no mutual negation; the third is a mutual fulfillment and mutual furthering, that is, mutual preservation; the fourth is the existence of a kind of interbalance.
The statement, “if there is strife, there is invariably harmony and resolution,” eliminates the antagonistic thinking in international political concepts. Holding to this idea is the only way to promote the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.
The saliently peace-loving nature of Chinese civilization demonstrates an ideology and value ideal for viewing the relationship between oneself and others, and between one’s own country and foreign countries. The Chinese people uphold the idea of harmony between heaven (nature) and humanity, and the connection among individuals in an Eastern-style differential pattern enables harmony and coexistence among people. “The inequality of things is the nature of things”—Chinese people respect the differences among people. “Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you,” and “If you want to establish yourself, establish others, and if you want to succeed, ensure that others succeed.” Chinese people have the concept of “extending one’s own thoughts to others,” as well as the communication ethic of “valuing harmony.” This is a fundament agreement between the “humaneness” (ren) of the Confucians’ way of loyalty and forgiveness on the one hand and the principles of communication between people on the other. In Confucius’ view, social life in the human world is rich in diversity, and this diversity only requires minimum compatibility, rather than maximum unity. As the Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong) said of Confucius: “He may be compared to Heaven and Earth in supporting and containing all things, or in covering and curtaining all things. . . The myriad things are nourished together without their injuring one another. The paths [of heavenly bodies] are followed without any collision among them.” Therefore, the international order for human coexistence must be compatible with the various lifestyles of different ethnic groups, so as to realize the ideal world of “harmony and unity.”
The salient peacefulness of Chinese civilization surpasses the Western-centric view of international order. The Western view of international order is based on a philosophical concept of “subject-object dichotomy” and a way of thinking in terms of opposites—something has to be “either this or that.” It believes that the relationship between people is one of “either friend or foe,” and that the interactions between countries in the world are bound to be in a Hobbesian “law of the jungle” state of conflict. Therefore, cooperation and conflict, peace and war are the either-or states of interaction between countries in the international order. The Western view of international order is self-centered, establishing an international political system of “individual-community-nation-state.” The Chinese concept of world order originated from what the ancient Confucian thinker Xunzi called “group cooperation,” which is a universal peace and harmony among all people and all things. “When great virtue prevails, the world is for the public.” The world of Grand Unity (datong) is a safe, peaceful, mutually trusting, and mutually supportive world. It is the ideal world envisioned by Kang Youwei (1858–1927), where “there are no classes, and all are equal.”
The salient peacefulness of Chinese civilization reflects the Chinese people’s vision of order that describes themselves and the outside world as a “world system.” The Chinese people uphold the concepts of an international order in which “family and country are one” and “the world is one family,” which “logically excludes the concept of irreconcilable mortal enemies, absolute aliens, or spiritual enemies, that is, the concept of pagans.” Zhao Tingyang, a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, further explained: “To understand the world from the perspective of ‘all under heaven’ means to analyze problems with the entire world as a thinking unit, so as to be able to imagine a political order that matches the reality of globalization.” Zhao Tingyang believes that the individual has become the ultimate explanation for the structure of the Western international political order, and the world has become the ultimate explanation for the structure of the Eastern international political order. The political system of “individual-community-nation-state” and the political system of “world-country-home” have formed a gear-like misaligned fit, resulting in complementarity in results. The peaceful nature of Chinese civilization is the fundamental manifestation of the Chinese people’s “cultural self-awareness.” Fei Xiaotong proposed the important concept of “cultural identity” when exploring the relationship between globalization and different civilizations. He believed that “cultural self-awareness” means that people have “the illumination of self-knowledge” of the traditional cultural on which they depend on for survival, meaning the self-knowledge, mutual understanding, mutual tolerance, and diverse coexistence of different cultures, and ultimately the attainment of “universal peace” (literally, “Grand Unity under heaven”).
Since the founding of the New China, the Party and state leaders have used the peaceful nature of Chinese civilization to explore the practice of peaceful diplomacy.
The peaceful nature of Chinese civilization is a core value of China’s diplomatic thinking and a cultural gene that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has consciously inherited and used in order to innovatively develop Chinese civilization. China’s development must be examined through the historical perspective of the country’s rise and fall and the realistic perspective of international politics—this is a three-dimensional examination that integrates internal and external perspectives. Since the founding of the New China, the collective leadership of the Party and the State have assessed trends and taken advantage of them as the domestic and international situation has changed, so that China’s top-level diplomatic thinking has shifted from one of opposition-in-opposites to one of unity-in-opposites. They have always pursued an independent and peaceful foreign policy, constantly adjusted the realistic strategies and implementation pathways of peaceful diplomatic methods, formulated diplomatic thought and means with distinctive characteristics for different eras, and explored peaceful diplomatic practices, such as peaceful development and peaceful power.
The Chinese Communists, with Comrade Mao Zedong as their main representative, proposed and practiced the diplomatic principle of peaceful coexistence, which was a strategic extension of the concept of peaceful governance in dealing with international relations issues. In October 1954, during a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Nehru, Mao Zedong said, “Mencius, one of the ancient Chinese sages, once said, ‘The inequality of things is the nature of things.’ That is to say, the diversity of things is the reality of the world.” He fully respected the differences among countries and believed that countries should respect one another while maintaining their differences. In April 1955, when Zhou Enlai attended the 29-nation Asian-African Summit Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, he advocated “seeking common ground while reserving differences.” On the behalf of China, he proposed five principles: mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in one another’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. Since then, these “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” have become the basic norms for the New China to deal with relations with the world’s various countries. Later, they were gradually accepted by the vast majority of countries in the world and became an important norm for regulating international relations.
The Chinese Communists, with Comrade Deng Xiaoping as their main representative, putting forward their assessment of the international situation that “peace and development are the two major themes of the world today,” adhered to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, strove for all favorable external conditions to support China’s reform and development, insisted on “hiding one’s capabilities and biding one’s time” and “daring to take initiatives,” were highly vigilant about Western countries’ “peaceful evolution,” opposed the hegemony of superpowers, and established China’s national image as a major force in maintaining world peace. Comrade Deng Xiaoping grasped the international and domestic situation from a strategic perspective and believed that:
the goal of China’s foreign policy is to strive for world peace. On the premise of striving for peace, we should single-mindedly focus on modernization, develop our own country, and build socialism with Chinese characteristics. . . It is possible to strive for relatively long-term peace and war can be avoided. . . Socialist China should use actual practice to show the world that China opposes hegemony and power politics and will never seek hegemony. China is a firm force in maintaining world peace.
Since reform and opening up, China has been at the world’s forefront in terms of striving for a peaceful international environment and accelerating its own development, precisely because it has grasped and complied with the world’s great cause of peace and development. As a result, China’s comprehensive national strength was raised to a whole new level.
The Chinese Communists, with Comrade Jiang Zemin as their main representative, continued to pursue the international theme of “peace and development,” seized an important strategic opportunity period, and actively strove for a peaceful international environment for domestic reform and development; they highlighted the independent diplomatic spirit, the pragmatic style of seeking common ground while reserving differences, and the action strategy of peaceful development. Comrade Jiang Zemin pointed out that “a stable and prosperous China is a firm force in maintaining world peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region,” and, “The correct way of maintaining world peace and promoting common development is to follow the trends of the times and the wishes of the people of all countries, take advantage of the situation, and actively promote the establishment of a fair and reasonable new international political and economic order.” Comrade Jiang Zemin believed that we had to resolutely abandon the Cold War mentality and respect the world’s diversity, that since we live in a rich and colorful world, it is impossible for the whole world to accept a unified model. Each country has different national conditions, historical traditions, and cultural backgrounds. They can communicate with each other, but they cannot copy each other. They must always find a development path that suits their own national conditions.
The Chinese Communists, with Comrade Hu Jintao as their main representative, focused on the changing trends in the international order, drew wisdom on state governance from the idea of harmony in China’s traditional culture, and proposed to strive to build a harmonious world of lasting peace and common prosperity: “develop ourselves by maintaining world peace, and maintaining world peace through our own development.” In 2005, the State Council Information Office issued the white paper “China’s Peaceful Development Road,” which emphasized:
Peaceful development is the only way for China to modernize; it will promote world peace and development through its own development. Through its own development, world peace and development will be promoted. Relying on its own strength and reform innovation, development will be realized. With other countries, mutually beneficial and shared development will be realized, and a harmonious world of lasting peace and common prosperity will be built.
“The Report of the CCP to the 17th National Congress” pointed out:
Sharing development opportunities together and jointly coping with various challenges to promote the noble cause of peace and development of humanity concern the fundamental interests of the people of all countries and are also common aspirations of the people of all countries. We advocate that people of all countries work together to promote the building of a harmonious world of lasting peace and common prosperity.
China’s modernization is a modernization that follows the path of peaceful development. Since the “Report of the CCP to the 18th National Congress,” the Chinese Communists, with Comrade Xi Jinping as their main representative, have proposed “promoting the common values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom for all of humanity,” and “jointly building a world of lasting peace, universal security, common prosperity, openness, inclusiveness, cleanliness, and beauty.” They have been promoting mutual learning and exchanges and dialogues among civilizations, and practicing global development initiatives, global security initiatives, and global civilization initiatives, thus giving visible form to Xi Jinping’s diplomatic thought, which is rich in Chinese characteristics, embodies the values of the times, and guides the progress of humanity. This is a diplomatic concept not only for promoting the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation through Chinese-style modernization, but also for China to participate in global governance and promote the building of a community for all of humanity, with shared interests, values, and destiny. “The Report of the CCP to the 20th National Congress” pointed out:
Our party is determined to achieve the great cause of the Chinese nation for thousands of years and is committed to the noble cause of human peace and development. . . . The CCP and the Chinese people will provide more and better Chinese wisdom, Chinese solutions, and Chinese strength to solve the common problems facing humanity, and make new and greater contributions to the noble cause of human peace and development.
Since entering the new era, China has played a leading role in world peace, promoted coordination and benign interaction in bilateral and multilateral relations with the world’s major powers, and actively promoted the building of new types of major power relationship and global development pattern, featuring peaceful coexistence, overall stability, and balanced development.
Building a modern civilization for the Chinese nation is an important call and ideological blueprint for promoting the combination of the basic principles of Marxism with the excellence of traditional Chinese culture, advancing Chinese-style modernization, and building a new form of human civilization. Inheriting and promoting the peaceful nature of Chinese civilization is a creative transformation and innovative development of the culture of peace in China’s excellent traditional culture, an important measure for the deep study and interpretation of Xi Jinping’s diplomatic thought, and a profound insight into the times, as well as a historical response to them, for creating a new civilization for the international order. The peaceful nature of Chinese civilization provides spiritual guidance for the formulation of China’s diplomatic strategy in the new era, and fully demonstrates the Chinese people’s endless wisdom of peace and their future-oriented ideals of peace. Inheriting and promoting the distinctly peaceful nature of Chinese civilization will not only inject new contemporary significance into China’s excellent traditional culture, but also make China’s diplomatic ideas in the new era shine with the wisdom of Chinese civilization.
The peaceful concept of Chinese civilization has a timeless value and a world significance that transcends geography.
“Peace, amity, harmony and unity” is the cultural wisdom that the Chinese nation has contributed to the world. Jointly maintaining world peace and security is the essential requirement of China’s modernization and a common concern for promoting the development of human society. The peaceful thinking of Chinese civilization is both a unique value perspective of the Chinese people, but also a value logic universally followed by all of humanity. It has contemporary value that transcends time and world significance that transcends geography. It is the source of strength for maintaining world peace and development.
More than 200 years ago, German philosopher Kant, starting from the philosophical thinking of “universal agreement” and “spiritual consensus” in the moral world of human beings, proposed: “Establishing a universal and lasting peace is not only a part of the theory of law within the scope of pure reason, but also the entire highest goal of reason.” His article “Toward Perpetual Peace” deduces the ideal path and moral obligation for humanity to achieve perpetual peace. However, the countless brutal wars and massacres that have occurred in the evolution of human history have made Kant’s “perpetual peace” an illusory rhetorical myth and an abstract experiment in idealism.
In the Western view, the opposite of peace is war and conflict, killing and violence. Pacifism in Western civilization is a constructive strategy based on offensive realism in international geopolitics, including negative peace concepts and positive peace concepts:
After the baptism of modern warfare, most American peace organizations in the 1920s began to pursue a concept of “positive peace,” aiming to eliminate the root causes of conflicts between countries by building international peace mechanisms and carrying out domestic institutional reforms, so as to avoid the tragedy of the First World War from happening again. . . . However, by the mid-1930s, as the domestic and international situation changed, the ideas and courses of action of American peace groups had undergone significant changes. They gradually abandoned the internationalist orientation of maintaining the post-war peace system through international cooperation, and instead sought a pacifist orientation of eradicating the root causes of war within American society and maintaining strict neutrality in international crises. In other words, they retreated to the pursuit of a more “passive” concept of peace. Regarding this transformation, the academic community generally believes that it was the result of major crises, the deterioration of the international security situation, and the influence of domestic isolationist ideas.
The peaceful nature of Chinese civilization demonstrates an advanced, proactive spirit of peace. It builds a harmonious world political order between China and other countries and regions on the basis of the widely existing lifestyles, behavioral patterns, and value beliefs between the body and mind, between people, between people and society, and between people and nature. The peaceful nature of Chinese civilization can not only provide reference for the basic principles of international relations, but also contribute wisdom to the construction of international ethics and international morality. It is a major improvement to humanity’s peace culture and peace spirit.
Peace is a common value of all of humanity and a prerequisite and guarantee for the development and progress of human society. In September 2015, President Xi Jinping delivered an important speech at the general debate of the 70th UN General Assembly, stating that “peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom are the common values of all of humanity and the lofty goals of the United Nations. . . We must inherit and carry forward the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, build a new type of international relations with win-win cooperation at its core, and build a community with a shared future for humanity.” The common human values with “peace” as their content constitute the goal of building a community with a shared future for humanity. Zhao Baoxu, an international political scholar, has pointed out: “Diversification is an undeniable trend in the political development of various countries. But it is not a bad thing. More than 2,000 years ago, Confucius proposed the ‘harmonious but not the same’ idea and believed it to be the best state.” He also wrote: “Having been steeped in the traditional thought of the time and the painful lessons of national humiliation and war, the Chinese people cultivated the wisdom of ‘harmony is the most precious,’ and have been pursuing peace for a long time.” Peace is a prerequisite for realizing other common values of all of humanity, and it demonstrates China’s wisdom, determination, and courage to firmly safeguard world peace and development.
Peacefulness is a prominent feature of Chinese civilization, and it has formed the spiritual foundation and value essence of a community with a shared future for humanity. Since the beginning of the new century, especially the new era, China’s economy has developed rapidly, its comprehensive national strength has greatly improved, and it has reshaped the international political and economic order and the global pattern. “Building a community with a shared future for humanity” is the Chinese solution proposed by President Xi Jinping, based on his profound insight into the “world’s changes” and his scientific response to the “world’s issues,” in order to solve the global problems of the peace deficit, security deficit, trust deficit, and governance deficit. President Xi Jinping’s proposed initiative of building a community with a shared future for humanity embodies the distinctive peaceful connotation of Chinese culture and demonstrates China’s international responsibility as a major country:
Building a community with a shared future for humanity is the future of the people of all countries in the world. All things grow together without harming each other, and all paths run parallel without contradicting each other. Only when all countries follow the great path of the world, live in harmony and cooperate for mutual benefit, can prosperity be sustained and security be guaranteed.
This is a new era of globalization full of challenges in reshaping the international order, and also a new era full of hope for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. As a global value, peace is a common value for all of humanity that China is committed to promoting. The future development of human destiny is the greatest and deepest concern of each of us. It is also the greatest human responsibility for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. We should inherit and develop the saliently peaceful nature of Chinese civilization, promote the culture of “harmony” in Chinese culture, advocate the peaceful spirit of the Chinese nation, promote the theoretical innovation and practical exploration of the modern civilization of the Chinese nation, strive to build a community with a shared future for humanity, undertake initiatives for global development, security, and civilization, and build a new modern human order and civilization.
The author, Xiang Yong, is professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Arts, Peking University, and Dean of the Institute of Cultural Industries, Peking University. This essay was originally published in Renmin luntan (People’s Tribune) in late July, 2023.
Translated by Thomas E. Smith