How can social Darwinism help explain China’s current foreign policy?

Beijing’s increasing assertiveness in international affairs continues to worry a growing number of observers (Doshi 2021). For many decades, China has presented its strategic culture and background knowledge informing foreign policy as heavily influenced by Confucianism, with all its harmony-oriented, humanistic tenets as well as orientation towards cooperation and win-win deals (Zhang & Chang 2016; Qin 2016). The observed outright expansion in the international domain, be it in the form of territorial claims with respect to Taiwan and South China Sea or aggressive assimilation of ethnic minorities, contradicts this image. So do the appeals to the “solidarity of the yellow race,” voiced now and then by high-ranking Chinese officials and likely aimed at consolidating East Asian peoples under the leadership of China. There is also ample evidence of grass-roots popularity of nationalistic discourses, praising international assertiveness and might (Zhang 2020, 2024). Our recent work set out to search for the intellectual origins of this current approach. We argue that those can be found in social Darwinism, a legacy nearly unspoken in the literature on International Relations but exerting a seemingly strong impact on everyday politics.

The turn to social Darwinism in China’s foreign relations

To fully understand how social Darwinism possibly affects China’s current approach to the relations with other states, it is necessary to move back in time to the turn of the 20th century. Those were very turbulent times for the country, still ruled by the Qing dynasty. While China had been falling victim to the brute foreign economic and military expansion as early as the 1840s, the last decade of the 19th century saw the Middle Kingdom struggling to maintain its very existence as a sovereign state. The emergence of new ideational structures was a critical step behind the Qing empire’s efforts to confront threats coming from Western powers and Japan (Wojciuk 2021; see also Zarrow 2012, pp. 24–146). To make sense of those events, leading turn-of-the-20th-century Chinese intellectuals turned to social Darwinism, then surging in the West, where it influenced political thinkers from all sides of the ideological spectrum, including hard-line conservatives, liberals, and the Left (Hawkins 1997; Claeys 2000; Beck 2013; Bowler 1976). The Chinese wannabe reformers found in social Darwinism both an explanation and a remedy to the Middle Kingdom’s troubles (Jenco 2015).

In addition, social Darwinism was the first Western and the first so-called ‘scientific’ theory adopted in China and, more broadly, the first Western social ideology to exert a major impact in the Middle Kingdom. Although it was not an ideology officially subscribed to by the Chinese state, we argue that, in the late Qing period, it played a pivotal role as the trigger of the profound transformation of Chinese ideas on global politics. Notably, social Darwinism’s special place in the history of Chinese international thought is due to the fact that its introduction paved the way for various concepts and ways of thinking about international politics hitherto absent from the Chinese discourse. These included, in particular, concepts of sovereignty, power politics, and the ‘image’ of the international system in which no entity was destined to lead or enjoy a special status (Carrai 2019).

Focus on three iconic Chinese thinkers

In our search for the Darwinist influences on the Chinese approach to international affairs, we focus on three canonical Chinese thinkers of the turn of the 20th century: Yan Fu, Kang Youwei, and Liang Qichao. Each of them was distinct in many respects and, to an extent, the ideas pursued by each of these thinkers evolved over time. They nonetheless shared the view that the set of principles on which to found the Middle Kingdom’s foreign policy should be drawn from social Darwinism.

Yan Fu, Kang Youwei, and Liang Qichao emphasised the evolutionary principle of struggle for existence whereby the fittest survive and the weak are destined to extinction. Such a submission to evolutionism inevitably meant a departure from the harmony-oriented tenets of Confucianism or at least its radical reinterpretation. Simultaneously, the original Darwinist ideas were reshaped as well. For instance, unlike Western mainstream evolutionists (for other approaches see: Ó Tuathail 1996, pp. 17, 28, 36, 71; Heffernan 2000, pp. 45-46), Chinese thinkers argued that groups (societies), rather than individuals, were the true objects (vehicles) of the evolutionary process. Curiously, they also stripped the evolutionary process from its usual deterministic qualities. In their view, groups, the ‘’objects” of evolution, could creatively change themselves in order to sustain the pressures on part of the struggle for existence.

Armed with the intellectual “weapon” drawn from social Darwinism, Yan Fu, Kang Youwei, and Liang Qichao proposed a fundamental reform of the Chinese state, encompassing the government, the military, the educational systems, and numerous other domains. They emphasised that, in order to effectively deal with the expansion of the Western powers, China should pragmatically adopt Western ways. More precisely, they argued that the Middle Kingdom should put the principle of sovereignty in the position of the highest priority and mobilise its resources for the sake of its defence. Among others, they proposed the consolidation of the powers of the central government, expanding the army (trained according to the European standards), and nation-building by educational means. In particular, they pointed to the need to strengthen the solidarity within the nation, which practically meant a subjugation of ethnic minorities to the numerically dominant Han Chinese group. Because they viewed struggle for existence as a rivalry between groups, it was essential for them that each Chinese citizen identified with the nation. In the quest for strengthening this identification, Liang Qichao went as far as to propose a foundation of a republic which would replace a dynastic empire. He theorised that if the people feel that sovereignty is with them, rather than with the monarch, they will be ready to sacrifice a lot for the nation and the state representing it. Furthermore, in order to facilitate the cultivation of the national sentiment, the Chinese thinkers sometimes engaged in claims on racially based superiority of certain peoples and inferiority of others. This way, they also aimed to build a sense of common lot of Chinese with other East Asian (“yellow”) peoples (Büttner 2020, pp. 283-333; Gao 2018 pp. 142-50; Chang 1987).

From the past to the present of China’s foreign policy

Taking into account the main themes from turn-of-the-20th-century Chinese social Darwinism, briefly sketched above, as part of Chinese background knowledge guiding contemporary policy choices, one can more easily comprehend the current behaviour of China in the international arena. Tough power politics maxims as well as appeals to the solidarity of the ‘yellow peoples’ are now and then voiced by high-ranking Chinese officials. All this looks and sounds like a tribute to Yan Fu, Kang Youwei, and Liang Qichao. And those surprised by the fact that this is done by a regime officially subscribing to the teachings of Marx rather than those of Darwin should remember that, long before capturing the whole power in China, Mao Zedong confessed to the journalist Edgar Snow (1968, p. 137)  that “he read and reread” social Darwinist works “until he knew them by heart”.

Tags: China, Foreign policy, International Relations, Darwinism