A recent essay by prominent PRC historian Tang Haoming 唐浩明 explores zhuōchéng, ‘artless sincerity’—a distinctively Hunanese virtue linking classical Neo-Confucian chéng-sincerity doctrine to the province’s outsized role in modern Chinese history.

Tracing a lineage from Song philosopher Zhou Dunyi 周敦颐 through Wang Fuzhi (王夫之, a.k.a. Chuanshan 船山) to Zeng Guofan 曾国藩 and Mao Zedong, Professor Tang argues that zhuōchéng—the rejection of clever opportunism in favour of patient, methodical perseverance—formed Hunan’s ‘spiritual background’, easing its 19th-century transformation from backward frontier to crucible of reform and revolution.

See my full translation in parallel text format of Tang’s essay here.

Against fashionable narratives privileging 敢为人先 (gan wei renxian, ‘taking the lead over others’ or 经世致用 (jīngshì zhìyòng, ‘practical statecraft’), Professor Tang positions zhuōchéng as Hunan culture’s foundational ethos: not raw ambition but disciplined stubbornness. He explains the Yugong yishan (‘the Foolish Old Man moves mountains’) myth at length, linked to late Qing dynasty scholar-official Zeng Guofan’s celebrated ‘扎硬寨、打死仗’ (zhā yìngzhài, dǎ sǐzhàng, ‘build solid camps, fight to the death’).

This ‘artless’—not to say ‘crude’—preference for incremental hard work over clever shortcuts explains why Zeng’s Hunan Army succeeded, argues Tang, where 40-odd other regional militias failed, and why Hunan would keep producing reformers and revolutionaries into the 20th century.

Let’s not forget that the list includes Mao Zedong and the fellow voluntarist friend of his youth, Li Shicen 李石岑 (1892-19350, whom we have looked into before.

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Broader resonance lies in Tang's implicit challenge to both liberal modernisation doctrine and CCP revolutionary teleology: zhuōchéng weighs modern political achievement, not in terms of ideological inculcation, but of moral-spiritual cultivation: close kin to the Neo-Confucian merger of 诚 (chéng/sincerity) with pragmatic action. Beijing Baselines has been exploring this from the outset.

Tang’s rehabilitation of Wang Fuzhi’s dyad of 仁 rén and 礼 lǐ (benevolence and ritual) as keys to social order, and his unflinching account of Zeng’s moral anguish over the Taiping suppression, offer rare nuance in contemporary PRC public intellectualism.

Note how Tang’s zhuōchéng works as an anti-luxury (levelling) doctrine—a virtue inaccessible to elites insulated from material consequences, requiring the ‘blood and sweat’ (血汗) of actual commitment. Scholars-leading-crude-peasants is a dynamic he celebrates in the Hunan Army. It embodies precisely the 表里一致 (biǎolǐ yīzhì, ‘inner-outer consistency’), projected as an ideal by the classical sincerity discourse .

Idealising zhuōchéng meanwhile entails a once-over-lightly depiction of what Bertrand Russell labelled ‘condign power’: if artless sincerity indeed entails ‘blood and sweat’ commitment with material consequences (anti-luxury belief), then:

1. Elite practitioners like Zeng Guofan could shelter from full consequences via their positional power: ordering mass killing while lamenting it philosophically (confessing to 造孽 zàoniè: ‘committing evil’; ‘amassing karmic sin’), with retribution only in the hereafter

2. Actual practitioners (some 3-400,000- Hunan Army soldiers) paid the material price of 死 (sǐ ‘dying, death’), while elite scholar-officials assumed chéng-sincerity for themselves

3. Victims (Taiping armies, civilians) experienced zhuōchéng’s condign obverse: systematic, methodical violence rationalised as necessary, tragic, regrettable—but executed nonetheless with Zeng’s ‘artless’ thoroughness

State policy dimension:

The resonance of this thread with PRC realities is hard to ignore: zhuōchéng rhetoric (patient nation-building, shíshì qiúshì: 实事求是 pragmatism, ‘Chinese-style incrementalism) may deploy condign power1 when regime stability requires it: viz.,Tiananmen, Xinjiang, Hong Kong. ‘Artless sincerity’ in long-term planning blends into ‘arduous struggle’ (jiānkǔ fèndòu: 艰苦奋斗). Threatened, its practitioners may deploy lethal force, framing it as heroic.

Russell’s insight applied: Condign power’s writ depends on credible willingness to use it—precisely what Zeng demonstrated (and Tang’s essay obscures) beneath the zhuōchéng ideal. The ‘spiritual background’ isn’t mere patient perseverance; it is willingness to inflict and endure mass death for political objectives.

This critical framing thus asks whether zhuōchéng is an elite luxury belief—a virtue-signalling discourse available only to those whose position insulates them from having to choose between moral consistency and regime survival, or between philosophical lament and operational lethality.

Of course, ‘artless’ was not a descriptor to be applied arbitrarily, and our Hunanese dramatis personae had other, more artful, options…

The work of Ellen Rutten is a massive find for this message-bottle. My ignorance of Sincerity After Communism (Yale University Press, 2017; hereafter SAC) is yet another cost of living in Beijing between 1999 and COVID; the pulse of global writing and scholarship was muted for a neat 2 decades…

Until recently based at the University of Amsterdam, Professor Rutten is a Russianist (alternatively, a Slavist). The ‘'Communism” of her title is indeed of the Soviet variety. Making mention here and there of China and its its chéng 诚 (traditional form 誠) sincerity discourse, like the proverbial cobbler she sticks to her Russian/Slavic last. This leaves room for swathes of Chinese or Sinitic family resemblance to be filled in.

I started in cultural history by way of anthropology in pre-poststructuralist times. Introducing SAC, Rutten identifies a global “new sincerity” trend, focusing on “the unique interplay of cultural memory, market forces, and new media in the aftermath of Communism”.

Living in Beijing, it easily passed me by. As did the “post-postmodern” frame of reference in which Rutten, not without irony, locates herself. Yet her angle of approach is more than compatible to this pre-postmodernist.

One of SAC’s online blurbs explains that it

…examines present-day sincerity rhetoric and its global outlines by focusing on Russia, a country that has historically maintained an excessive interest in the concept of sincerity. Over the past few years, the phrase novaia iskrennost’—the Russian equivalent of “new sincerity”—has been used by bloggers, politicians, and cultural critics to explain nostalgia for the Soviet era, Vladimir Putin’s media policy, and the Russian interventions in Ukraine…

Using the analytical perspective of a cultural historian, [SAC] argues that in today’s Russia, debates on sincerity and its inevitable contemporary twin, postmodernism, are always and inevitably debates on sincerity after Communism. It focuses on one social stratum within Russian society, cultural workers or creative professionals, with special attention to those working in the fields of Russian new media, cultural criticism, and literature.

This is enough to start some preconceptions racing, rabbit-like:

• “Present-day sincerity rhetoric and its global outlines” is a thing (for aeons this was a challenge to imagine)…

• precise equivalents to “new sincerity” may well have passed us by. It was unlikely to be directly translated into, say, “新诚信” xīn chéngxìn; xīn translates “new” in a straightforward sense

  • chéngxìn, while among the most common bound forms of chéng/sincerity today, typically figures in the narrow legal sene of “honesty” or “trust”

  • thus as a term in the notorious social credit regime. Claude has words of wisdom on this: link

• “新真诚” xīn zhēnchéng looks glued together: possible but not promising.

• “Sincerity in the PRC” is better framed as under than after Communism. To ascertain this, readers need go no further back than “Observing China: the Chan Method” by Yan Lianke 阎连科 (Beijing Baselines, 5 September 2024).

• Russian “new sincerity” formed in the bowels of Stalinism; comparison with China must contend with Stalinism’s recombinant survival in the PRC.

Hence my reflection on Rutten’s work takes the heading ‘Sincerities after Communisms’: there’s surely more than one of each.

Whatever: Sincerity after Communism is highly recommended. Critical reviews that turn up on a casual search are gentle to the point of being praise with faint damns. Here are some:

Major Scholarly Reviews

Kevin M. F. Platt (Russian Review): “Sincerity after Communism is especially impressive for its transnational perspective and examination of globalised circuits of cultural interaction... In this age of postmodern politics, pervasive commercialisation, progressive digitisation of everything, and ever-increasing anxiety over a lack of sincerity, this book is a necessary reference for any consideration of contemporary Russian and global cultural life.”

Expert Endorsements

Mark Lipovetsky (University of Colorado-Boulder): “In her intellectually captivating and at times provocative book, Ellen Rutten analyses a discourse on sincerity as a self-sufficient narrative, with its inner logic, recognisable signifiers, rhetorics—in short, poetics... Sincerity after Communism contributes to the conceptualisation of Russian and global postmodernism by presenting the discourse on sincerity as the indispensable form of postmodernism’s self-critique, as its ferment of growth and the trigger for further renovations.”

Boris Groys (New York University): “In post-Communist Russia the requirement of the ‘new sincerity’ promised the liberation of art and literature from the ideological censorship but at the same time announced a new era of cultural marketing and rising importance of the blogosphere. In her groundbreaking book Rutten analyses this ambiguous role of ‘new sincerity’ using the recent examples from Russian literature and comparing them with analogous cultural phenomena in English and American literature and theoretical writing.”

Nancy Condee (University of Pittsburgh): “An enormous amount of thought, hard work, and research went into the tracking of the phenomenon of new sincerity. The topic is an extraordinarily complex one, the work is original and brave, and the scholarship is both sound and meticulous.”

Eliot Borenstein (New York University): “Sincerity After Communism is a major contribution to Russian studies, as well as to cultural studies more broadly.”

Academic Engagement

The book has been cited in various scholarly contexts examining:

• Post-Soviet cultural transformations

• New sincerity as a global aesthetic movement

• Relations in contemporary culture between irony, cynicism, and sincerity

• Digital media and authenticity

• Postmodernism’s evolution

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I finally stumbled on the (absurdly simple) solution to this substack’s dysfunction! It took one click of one button.

And MY WORD! Have I got a backlog of riveting posts to make up to my subscribers!

Deep thanks to all you who stayed subscribed. Especially those who never even got a single post—there cannot be a more sincere form of subscription…

I know, I know — I promised to write something from my own mastication, my decades of cud-chewing about sincerity and rationality in contemporary China.

And I will, I will— but not right now, OK? There’s this wonderful case study from Chinese writer Yan Lianke 阎连科, and I want it here in Beijing baselines.

The translator of the piece reprinted here, Carlos Rojas, writes,

Yan Lianke is a Chinese author and novelist and is also a professor of Chinese literature at Renmin University in Beijing and IAS Sin Wai Kin Professor of Chinese Culture at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is the winner of the Franz Kafka Prize and a two-time finalist for the Booker International Prize.

I would add that Yan, born in Henan in 1958, is author of Dream of Ding Village, in which an entire central Chinese community is decimated by a ‘fever’.” Another novel, Serve the People, was banned as subversive by the authorities.1

We’ve referred to Lu Xun’s True Story of A Q and its anti-hero’s archetypal ‘spiritual victory’, a classic examination of self-deception that is now part of world literature, transcending its deep value for Chinese culture. Lu Xun updated some much older cultural auto-critique; Yan is shows that the contemporary social order has delivered an even more shattering update.

Yan Lianke 阎连科

Translated by Carlos Rojas

Professor of Chinese cultural studies, Duke University

In discussions about China and its citizens, people often describe seeing a dark lake beneath a magnificent rainbow. The rainbow illuminates everything, inspiring everyone to compose poetry and sing songs in praise of it. At the same time, however, everyone is also painfully aware that beneath the rainbow the lake is slowly draining—as though the lake’s embankment were riddled with holes about to collapse, unleashing a catastrophic flood. Moreover, in these contemporary discussions, it is as though the flood has already arrived, and the impending catastrophe can be clearly seen, felt, and heard. However, if you ask any Chinese person whether the nation is currently in a state of crisis, he will simply smile and reply like a Buddhist master,

There are large and small roads, and there are sunny and cloudy days. 
—And what do you think China will be like tomorrow? 
My family still has rice. 
—What national issue concerns you the most? 
Look at how sturdy that stone next to you is. 
—And what disappoints you the most? 
The moon has already risen, and I need to return home. 

In this way, questions are asked and responses are proffered. You may feel the speaker hasn’t responded to anything at all, but he would claim that each of his responses has a clear referent. When you look more closely, you realize that these responses are but mist-filled kōans, as the speaker expresses his meaning without making any specific points. 

This is the situation in contemporary China. In restaurants, taxis, tea houses, cafés, and other sites where people can meet and talk about things, virtually everyone is interested in national affairs. Just as passengers on the Titanic could clearly see the iceberg in the ship’s path, everyone in China is aware of the impending crisis—including why it exists and how it could be resolved. It is as though everyone were the legendary Han dynasty statesman and fortune teller Zhuge Liang. However, if you ask these same people to state their opinion in a different context—for instance, in a classroom, if they are professors; in their writings, if they are intellectuals; or in a meeting, if they are Party members and patriotic cadres—they inevitably adopt a very different tone. We could, therefore, conclude that their hypocrisy and duplicity are best suited for a schizophrenic practice of laughing when on stage and crying when off stage. Indeed, when walking home alone, they invariably begin to curse the nation, the government, political leaders, and anyone else with whom they don’t get along. 

Inspired by Lu Xun’s famous eponymous story, we use the phrase “Ah Q spirit” to explain this sort of self-mockery, and inspired by the Boxer Rebellion, we use “Boxer spirit” to refer to Chinese people’s practice of shifting from arrogance to humility, just as we use “self-protection” to describe the people’s efforts to resolve their day-to-day needs in an environment of terror. There are countless principles that could be used to demonstrate someone’s integrity, honesty, and hopelessness, thereby earning them sympathy and understanding. However, once we begin to peel away this veneer of emotion, understanding, and rationality, we discover that the notions of an Ah Q spirit, Boxer spirit, and practices of self-protection are simply insufficient to explain the current situation. Ah Q and the Boxers would always shout when confronting reality, but now everyone is silent. As for a practice of self-protection, it produces only silence and lies, as people invariably sacrifice others to protect themselves. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution represented the pinnacle of the practice of pursuing self-protection in an environment of terror, as people either deliberately exposed others or else chose to remain silent to protect themselves. Scandals flourished like mushrooms in the sun after a rain or spring willows along a river, while the east and west wind were subject to critiques and compliments on behalf of the revolution. Today, however, people are concerned that the situation may revert to the Cultural Revolution, for which there are already countless omens.

At the same time, others doubt this would even be possible, given the decades of reform and the emergence of the internet, which allows users to learn about the world.

Accordingly, we now find that on one side there is silence, while on the other side there is sound; on one side there is quiet observation, and on the other side there is open discussion. Those who choose silence are particularly attuned to when and how they should remain silent, while those who choose to speak are similarly attuned to when and how they should speak. 

Moreover, in the current post-Covid era, Chinese people are often more focused on observing China’s distinct reality, and consequently virtually no one remains trapped in a state of terrorized self-protection. People are no longer limited to having an Ah Q or Boxer spirit; instead, they have learned their new skills. They have mastered the school of Buddhism known as Zen in Japan and Chan in China—which includes the precepts of knowing without speaking, speaking without exposing, and using mountains as lakes and mulberry trees as locust trees. Throughout contemporary China, this has yielded a widespread, enlightened, but also deeply mysterious Chan practice that everyone recognizes but no one truly believes.

Unsurprised by favor or disgrace, one calmly watches blossoms bloom and wilt in

front of the courtyard. 

Unconcerned with whether to stay or leave, one casually follows the clouds in the

sky as they clump and unfurl. 

This is contemporary Chinese people’s complacency and self-praise, as they know without speaking, or speak without communicating. It is as though everyone were a legendary Daoist master like Laozi, Zhuangzi, or Tao Yuanming. 

In the eighth century CE, a figure named Mazu appeared among China’s Chan Buddhists and established a practice known as “gradual cultivation with sudden enlightenment, and sudden enlightenment but with gradual cultivation,” and its tenet was “touching like the Way, while letting the mind be cultivated.” Raising eyebrows, darting eyes, laughing, chortling, thinking, staring, answering without questions, and questioning without needing answers—all for the sake of Buddhist matters and Chan practice. One of the key manifestations of this sort of Chan practice is enlightenment, and more specifically a post-enlightenment state of “not speaking”—because if one speaks, it will not be for the sake of Chan and enlightenment. The result is like a truth that everyone recognizes and understands—but if that truth is spoken aloud, it becomes merely a type of common sense, and not a basic truth. Often, when young monks ask their master about self-cultivation, the master simply gazes back at them and laughs: “Look at how the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.” The young monks gaze up at the sky, then look down at the ground, whereupon they have an epiphany. When asked what they have understood, the young monks reply, “The universe is but grain and grass.” If they were to answer otherwise, it would indicate that they have not yet achieved enlightenment, but instead must continue to ask questions. In that case, the master would kick and slap them, whereupon they would suddenly understand the sublime significance of “not speaking.”  

In 1920, Bertrand Russell visited China, and people attending his lectures often asked him, “What is truth?” This question inevitably left Russell angry and depressed, given that he could not easily answer it. When Russell later met Hu Shi at Peking University, Hu Shi told him, “If you listen to my discussion of Chan, you’ll be able to answer your questioners.” With this, Russell learned the significance of the Chan principle of not speaking. 

Keeping silent is a kind of Chan epiphany, but it is also a kind of Chan practice. Contemporary China is pervaded by this practice of “seeing but not speaking.” Cadres, intellectuals, scientists, and soldiers, and even students and peasants, and taxi and delivery drivers—it sometimes seems as though literally everyone knows contemporary reality’s fundamental problem, yet no one is willing to state it out loud. Portentous national problems and social issues relating to economics, politics, international relations, and culture—if you listen to the orations of a typical Beijing taxi driver, it is as though Russell were patiently explaining what truth is. You have no choice but to acknowledge that Beijing taxi drivers are society’s most perceptive interpreters, but after you pay your fare and get out of the car, the driver will remark, “Earlier, I was just babbling, but now I’m telling you that I didn’t say anything at all!” At this point, you will realize that the taxi driver is but one of Mazu’s Chan disciples. 

It is said that there are very few Chinese who do not have opinions about national affairs or the future of the world—including America and Europe, as well as Asia’s Japan and Korea, not to mention Elon Musk’s futurology. For instance, if you ask a Chinese person a specific question about China, such as why the price of gas has risen, they will claim it is the result of an American plot. However, if you ask them instead to discuss the universe, satellites, and Starlink, they will simply say, “The universe is but grass and grain.” This response is philosophical and mysterious, while also being closely linked to issues of individual survival in contemporary China, such as securing food, clothing, housing, and employment. 

As for what tomorrow may bring, many people who have considered this question would note the countless fissures that have formed in the lake’s embankment. When people worry about the nation, they worry about their own situation, and when they become anxious about their own situation, they become anxious about the nation. For numerous historical and contemporary reasons, this kind of worry and anxiety makes virtually everyone fall into a Chan game of not speaking, in which the entire nation ultimately reaches a consensus. Unemployment has become so serious that the nation’s Bureau of Statistics doesn’t dare to calculate unemployment figures, or else it calculates the figures but doesn’t announce them. However, when the Bureau announces that it will no longer announce the unemployment figures, people around the country simply laugh—as the practice of not speaking has already become a national game. As the real estate crisis has already become a national calamity and the Evergrande Group has become a black hole that has swallowed nearly a trillion yuan in investments—these are unspeakable bell tolls, as the populace merely shouts and cheers. 

Not long ago, the city of Nanyang in Henan Province held a Midi Music Festival, as countless young people (some claim there may have been over a hundred thousand) poured in from around the country, trudging through rain and knee-deep mud to dance wildly on-site—as though this entire event had, at some point, become simply a Chan game within an epiphany of raising eyebrows, moving eyes, laughing, and chortling. 

A cellphone video becomes a filthy performance stage where billions can laugh and chortle while experiencing emptiness and delusion.  

To care about daily necessities such as salt and oil, one must first love the nation. 

To worry about employment and the future, one must first care about what contemporary Chinese call “lying flat” (similar to what Americans now call “quiet quitting”), after which one will not care about anything. 

If one’s heart is full of anger and restlessness, one should express it by thinking about whether to get married and have children. 

All thought and attention involve standing in the present and gazing out at an uncertain past and future while also looking abroad. Patriotism must be loudly summoned and cannot be invoked with mere sighs and tears. Intellectuals treat silence as a sign of pride, and they view critique as a sign of idiocy. Authors and artists simultaneously created a kind of stupidity, while recognition of society and politics becomes a kind of nobility and success. Civil servants and intellectuals—their intelligence, wisdom, and emotion are replaced by a Chan practice of not speaking. The entire nation and its people are engaged in a practice of self-cultivation to achieve enlightenment, as they gradually become Buddhist masters. It seems that virtually everyone on this ship can see the iceberg up ahead, but because of their Chan practice and enlightenment, no one shouts out in warning, “Iceberg! Iceberg!” 

The music is still playing, the lights are still shining, and the passengers are still toasting one another. Meanwhile, the danger represented by the iceberg up ahead is merely a laboratory for Chan techniques and Chan cultivation. Therefore, workers, peasants, merchants, scholars, and soldiers, reformers and dissidents, revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries—which is to say, everyone who could be called clear-headed—are all simply watching and waiting. They are all thinking without speaking, knowing without saying, and are engaged in an uneasy game of not speaking. They all believe they are among those who will survive the collision with the iceberg and that it is others who will perish. Therefore, they continue to dance their Chan dances as the music plays on.

To transform anxiety into enlightenment and unease into a state of not speaking—this is contemporary China’s most anxiety-producing anxiety and its most unsettling unsettlement. Throughout the nation, people are playing Chan games and are enlightened figures engaging in the Chan practice of not speaking. Everyone is also watching wide-eyed as the Titanic cruises inexorably toward the iceberg, but they also appear completely oblivious to this reality. Not long ago, I returned to my family’s home village and was discussing contemporary China’s rural society with a handful of villagers in their 60s and 70s. One of the villagers was a former soldier who had seen Titanic, and he interjected, “Why didn’t anyone speak up? If someone had spoken up, the ship might have collided with the iceberg more slowly. And if it had collided more slowly, then as it was sinking, those who could escape would have quietly disembarked, while those left on the ship would have been ordinary people like us. Boom! Bang! When the ship collided with the iceberg, most of us left on board would have fallen into the ocean and drowned, but those who managed to survive the collision—those who were rescued and taken ashore—should kneel and thank all of those who had disembarked first.”

Ye Wenjie (heroine of The Three Body Problem)

Hello everyone!

You haven’t heard from BB for a while, but I’m unrepentant—we took a needed winter break in wonderful Kuranda, Queensland, where wifi coverage doesn’t.

I know the Third Plenum (of the 20th Central Committee) was held this week, and China Policy has been covering it.

But this is Beijing Baseline’s third anniversary. Our original mission is to track how sincerity and rationality hinge on each other in the contemporary PRC. I have been building a head of steam on this, thanks not least to Implicit Motives1, a really nerdy book, technical beyond belief, but helpful in placing the sincerity/rationality coupling high above tribal, etc., myths and prejudices.

But first to cover some useful data points. In this post, we hear from widely-published nationalist law professor Tian Feilong 田飞龙.2

My view, just to be clear, is to accept, for the sake of argument, Professor Tian’s contention that ‘the West can bring neither true human moral autonomy nor international rule of law: hope of salvation must lie elsewhere’.

But that elsewhere is not, unhappily, the People’s Republic of China. More to the point, much of Tian’s fault-finding with the West is projection, largely explicable in terms of ‘implicit motives’—of which more in due course.

Tian Feilong. associate professor, School of Law, Beihang University

Tian Feilong

Transcending clash, dialogue of civilisations is the moral salvation of the West and the world

The world's first International Day for Civilisation Dialogue, 10 June 2024 was set by a resolution adopted at the UNGA’s 78th session 7 June 2024, by consensus and moved by the PRC.

Achieving 'permanent peace' was Immanuel Kant's ultimate philosophical ideal and political aspiration, and indeed the essential pursuit of the UN institutions. Yet since the moral initiative of Kant's Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical Sketch,3 mankind has yet to find a practical system and method for permanent peace, Neither the coordinated order of the great powers in Europe in the 19th century, the League of Nations system engendered in World War I in the 20th century, or the UN institutions born in World War II, have been able to unite all humanity and achieve the peaceful development of all mankind.

Hence the creation of the International Day for Dialogue among Civilisations has a profound background in the times, and significance in exploring new forms of human civilisation.

Arelatively advanced and developed collective way of life, civilisation’s carrier is typically a nation or other ethnic grouping. Civilisation first has a national character; different civilisations in the world are born helped by various peoples’ independent practice and proliferation. It is intrinsically universal as well: a civilisation, provided it is of a certain scale and enduring, can not only resolve internal national differences and struggles, but also find proper ways to live in peace with other nations.

‘Civilisational dialogue’ results from 

• blending civilisations’ ethnic and universal nature, 

• adopting a philosophy of equality and diversity of civilisations

• adopting a pacifist ethics and liaison mode for solving differences and even struggles between different civilisations and nations. 

‘Civilisational dialogue’ embodies an ideal of civilisation ecology and democracy: a civilisation philosophy that truly conforms to the overall interests and existence of human society, and is also the basic philosophical vision and liaison mode of a community with a shared future for mankind.

The opposite of such dialogue is clash of civilisations. In realist terms, this clash seems to have strong explanatory power and influence. Self-centred, Western civilisation is based on pagan consciousness, seeing things in terms of a civilisation/barbarism dichotomy; in the process of modern colonisation and globalisation, it has constructed a Western-centric view of civilisation and institutions.

This West-centric concept is the spiritual foundation of colonialism and the deep cultural psychology of preserving the West’s spiritual and institutional hegemony, but is out of line with the primary interests of mankind as a whole, and is unable to build a genuine community with a shared future for mankind. Monolithic civilisation-centrism, regardless of its self-proclaimed civilisation, can only end up in a circular game of hegemony and subjugation, bringing about a world of general upheaval and confrontation.

In Western civilisation doctrine, Huntington's summary and refinement of the 'clash of civilisations doctrine'4 embodies the essential vision and practical method of Western civilisation, so the West has a fairly developed geopolitical and hegemonic system method. Fukuyama's 'final conclusion of history' proclaims the teleology of Western-centrism and the triumph of history. These 'big theories' about the macro-historical process and moral goals of mankind are not based on facts and logic, but on the basis of subjectivity and paranoia, and are the embodiment of the immaturity of human moral mind.

Under the guidance of such a doctrine, the 'hegemony' of the West is superimposed on the 'brute heart', creating a world that is 'on fire' everywhere. Looking at the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip, the confrontation in China's neighbourhood, the political and social decay wherever the 'colour revolutions' went, and the political polarisation, racial discrimination, power proliferation and moral fragmentation in Western societies all show that the West's self-satisfied 'clash of civilisations' and 'historical conclusion' cannot bring about sustainable world peace or universal security in the Western world.

Transcending the clash of civilisations via civilisation dialogue is the PRC's consistent proposition and logic of action on the way in which the UN system interacts with human civilisation. Dialogue among civilisations has the peace, goodwill and rational orientation of civilisations, and abandons the excessive subjectivity and overriding nature of a single civilisation. The doctrine of dialogue among civilisations, initiated by China, reflects not only China's international outlook on peaceful development, but also the characteristics of Zhonghua5 civilisation.

General Secretary Xi proposed the five characteristics of Zhonghua civilisation on 2 June 2023, at the Symposium on Cultural Inheritance and Development, namely continuity, innovation, unity, inclusiveness and peace. Throughout China's history, it has always been an organic combination of internal solidarity and cohesion with external tolerance and peace. The world that Zhonghua civilisation understands and pursues is not a Western-style hegemonic order, but a harmonious order in which the UN and the UN share the same world. The Zhonghua civilisation has nurtured a community of the Zhonghua nation, and on this basis, it has continuously sought exchanges and mutual learning with different civilisations and nationalities to jointly build a true community with a shared future for mankind.

China on the basis of the community of the Zhonghua nation has been a state for thousands of years, not an empire or a nation-state of the West, but a civilised and unified multi-ethnic country, which is kind to others, harmonious with ethnic groups, and peaceful coexistence with other countries. In the contemporary ideal and practice of a community with a shared future for mankind, General Secretary Xi Jinping has proposed 'three major initiatives', profoundly significant for civilisation and the global order, namely the Global Security Initiative, the Global Development Initiative and the Global Civilisation Initiative: security is the essence of peace and the primary value pursued by all mankind; Development is the method of self-improvement of human civilisation, and it is also the dialectical process of resolving all contradictions and conflicts. Civilisation is the totality of security and development, and it is a form of overall planning and integration.

China's pursuit of national rejuvenation at home and its advocacy of the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) and a community with a shared future for mankind externally are a China that is consistent in civilisation and integrates knowledge and action. The West's view of the PRC’s national rejuvenation as the rise of hegemony, and the BRI it urges as the new Zhonghua imperialism is completely based on its own heart and the belly of others, a misreading and misjudgment of Zhonghua civilisation and humanity’s fundamental interests—an excessive civilisation-centrism and hegemonic order.

In essence a fantasy and projection of 'Western threat doctrine', Western 'China threat doctrine’ is the West's fear of another 'Western power' that they believe is homogeneous. [Harvard professor] Graham Allison's 'Thucydides Trap' and the US resulting intensive and indeed irrational moves in a new Cold War with the PRC are rooted in this fear, at the root of twhich is Western civilisation’s self-centeredness, its moral rejection of dialogue among civilisations on an equal footing.

The PRC-initiated and UN-endorsed 'Dialogue of Civilisations' is hence urgently needed, not only for world peace and a community with a shared future for mankind, but for the moral salvation of Western civilisation. Folk of insight in the West are ever more aware of the moral and institutional significance of Eastern culture and the China path to the West and the world; but the West’s overall process of self-reflection and moral redemption has failed to make a serious breakthrough: ‘West-centric’ moral myths and hegemonic practices still occupy the mainstream.

Launching the UNGA plenum’s draft resolution Fu Cong 傅聪, PRC Permanent Representative, said the PRC’s proposal to set up an International Civilisation Dialogue Day sought to give full play to civilisation dialogue’s great role in ending discrimination and prejudice, enhancing understanding and trust, promoting people-to-people bonds, and strengthening solidarity and cooperation

In the modern world, the greatest achievements of Western civilisation have been 

• emancipating the 'individual'

• activating and rejuvenating this emancipation and the immense  productive forces of capital creativity 

• tremendous value penetration with individual freedom and human rights as the core

• thus bringing about the West’s moral and institutional authority over the world. 

Yet the West abused this authority, exposing the shortcomings of its civilisation and political egocentrism and hierarchy, and exposing the normative opposition between the West and a community with a shared future for mankind.

The West can bring neither true human moral autonomy nor international rule of law: hope of salvation must lie elsewhere. In the Three-Body Problem series, Mr. Liu Cixin 刘慈欣, celebrated sciuence fiction philosopher, speaks via Ye Wenjie 叶文洁 to express the fundamental question of human moral autonomy,6 so as to seek the moral salvation of the 'Three-Body Man' of extraterrestrial civilisation. A basic irony and prophecy of eternal human peace, this aims to force humanity to mull the moral basis of the existence of the whole and the laws of interaction.

The clash of civilisations and the end of history are certainly not ideal solutions to the permanent human peace. Kant raised this key issue, but despite Western attempts, no solution is be be found in the scope of Western civilisation. The systematic solution from Chinese culture and practice and reverberation for all mankind under the great unprecedented changes

• transcending the clash of civilisations via civilisation dialogue

• adhering to civilisational diversity and democratising their interactions

• adhering to the harmony and unity of nationality and humanity

• upholding the core value of peaceful development

• maintaining harmonious coexistence of the community of the Zhonghua nation with the community with a shared future for mankind

 has aroused strong resonance.

We hope that setting up the International Day for Civilisation Dialogue and its extensive dialogue and practice will bring real hope and direction to the permanent peace of mankind and a new form of human civilisation.

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