Chinese Historical Institutions and their Contribution for Global Governance/Instituciones historicas chinas y su contribucion para la gobernanza global/Instituicoes historicas chinesas e sua contribuigao para a governanga global.
| Autor | Villa, Camilo Defelipe |
| Páginas | 1D(33) |
Introduction
During the XIX Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2017, Xi Jinping laid out his vision for the world: "The Chinese people have always paid close attention and provided unselfish assistance to people who still live in war, turmoil, hunger, and poverty... China advocates that all issues in the world should be settled through consultation. In order to facilitate these efforts, [...] China will contribute more Chinese wisdom, Chinese solutions, and Chinese strength to the world" (Kewalramani, 2018).
These statements echo the World Economic Forum's concerns on how the problem of receding international multilateralism can increase the risks of domestic and global poverty and polarization. The Forum recommends that for addressing these issues, global leaders need to be able to manage technological change, strengthen the global cooperation system, bring around economic growth, reform market capitalism, and contribute towards the development of a green economy (World Economic Forum, 2017).
The World Economic Forum, however, is regarded as a platform for global neoliberal governance that naturalizes the Eurocentric and transatlantic liberal ontologies of what Pigman (2007) calls the "Standard of Market Civilization" (pp. 123-124). Despite being widespread, neoliberal governance has been challenged because the failure of its universalist policies and methodologies to correct the inequalities in different parts of the developing world. Also, in the post-Cold War order, many of the ontological and normative assumptions of the Market Civilization have been debated, negotiated, or contested by emerging states like China (Dian & Menegazzi, 2018).
This contestation to neoliberalism suggests that China's non-western socio-historical legacies have not only responded to the standards of Market Civilization since the Reform and Opening-up of 1978, they will also play a key role as China reaches the status of global normative actor. China's independent foreign policy, its selective approach to multilateralism, and its historical and cultural self-representation imply that the country's offered solutions to pressing global issues, such as the ones defined by the World Economic Forum, will stem from both its command of norms and practices of international economic regimes and its indigenous institutional experiences. In this regard, either introducing new norms of development or reconfiguring the existing ones, will depend on how China tests its cultural institutions against the influence of standard global neoliberal values, standards, and practices.
With the formulation of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, Xi Jinping has turned to traditional Chinese cultural language and characteristics to give shape to ideal images of the world, integrating them with the spirit of Socialism. This vision has also been adopted as a starting point by different Chinese government officials and scholars in order to find alternatives to promote "exchanges and mutual learning between the Chinese and other civilizations". (1)
In this regard, Xi Jinping's Chinese or China's Dream puts together traditional Chinese philosophy, the idea of China's singularity, and the country's contribution to global governance. From a discursive perspective, a textbook interpretation of the expression of Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions implies that culture shapes values, norms, practices, and soft norms for global governance.
Objectives and Outline
Drawing from the logic of the two-way socialization process (Pu, 2012) and Blaney and Tickner's (2017) Wordling, this article takes a look at the case of how emerging non-western powers, which were not first movers in the development of global regimes, could now redefine global governance in accordance to their indigenous cultural dynamics. Thus, this article explores the possibilities for the redefinition of Market Civilization standards and draws on general but recurrent patterns of Chinese cultural institutions to form a judgment about China's future role as a norm setter in a global governance context. Therefore, its central goal is to provide some insights about the relevance of Chinese cultural institutions' resilience and bargaining potential around current internationally accepted standards of development. In order to do that, the document will examine the meaning and normative potential of the notion of Chinese wisdom and solutions, based on the essential premises of the New Institutionalist approach. The author's principal claim is that informal institutions are at the core of such a notion. For instance, the article argues that the idea of cultural institutions--which includes philosophy and political discourse--is a mutually reinforcing process dating back to the origins of Chinese civilization and that its continuity could lend credibility to the discursive power of the Chinese wisdom and solutions idea.
In line with the work of Mahoney (2014), the notion of Chinese Wisdom and Chinese solutions is situates within a historical context in which the narrative of a "Chinese Dream" takes place. The "Chinese Dream" is a framing discourse that keeps a consistent historical narrative while addressing the difficult challenges that arise from development, party unity, and discipline (Mahoney, 2014). Methodologically, rather than following a philosophical or analytical discourse stance, this article borrows from Mahoney's assumptions and suggests a complementary institutionalist approach that considers the endurance of socio-cultural institutions as sources of the idea of Chinese Wisdom and Solutions. In order to do that, this manuscript will introduce and analyze concepts gathered from a literature review on New Institutionalism and Chinese practices.
This article is divided into four parts and a conclusion. The first section will describe China's discrepant relationship with neoliberalism and introduce Peter Katzenstein's concept of Sinicization in order to place China's cultural institutions within its unique civilizational dynamic. The second section traces the origins of China's relational institutions and provides an institutionalist framework to illustrate the historical continuity. The third section considers the conflict between these institutions and the effects of the market reforms in China. The fourth section explores some local cases of successful collaborative governance based on cultural practices; the final section concludes with a reflection of the demonstrative role of Chinese historical institutions.
Framing the Chinese Historical Institutional Model
China's modern institutional blueprint has followed a consistent historical pattern. Kirby (1994) and Fukuyama (2011) argue that centralism and authoritarianism have been at the core of China's political institutions in a roughly consistent way from pre-modern up to present times. The continuity of China's cultural and political traditions is what Katzenstein (2012) labels as a process of Sinicization.
Radical variants of Sinicization, holding beliefs about the supremacy of an authoritarian model of governance over a liberal one, emerged among intellectual and policy circles in China after 2008. Some of these authors sustain that Confucianism and Chinese socialism contradicted Fukuyama's idea of the End of History and reclaim cultural superiority over the "the Enlightenment features of European modernity such as political rights and free speech" (Mayer, 2018, p. 1227). Martin Jacques' (2012) controversial work suggests that a new version of a Sinocentric system will return in the twenty-first century on a global scale, making straightforward predictions on how China will replace the West.
The "Chinese development model" is probably the most widely discussed process of Sinicization. China's economic development is, to no small extent, the result of its integration with global markets and its commitment to the multilateral institutions that regulate them. However, the country's allegiance to developmental goals, economic liberalization, and globalization policies does not necessarily mean that China is fully committed to intrinsic neoliberal values and norms. The idea of a "Beijing Consensus", a term coined in 2004 in the mainstream media and think tank circles in the United States, has been used to pinpoint the Chinese development experience "miracle" within a neo-mercantilist system whose fiercest opponent is the neoliberal "Washington Consensus" model itself. However, a "Beijing Consensus" model has not been able to convey the actual existence of an economic system with Chinese characteristics (Hongyi, 2016, p. 25; Breslm, 2011, p. 1329).
Among the misconceptions about the Chinese development model, are the presence of Neoliberal traits. According to Nonini (2008), conceptually speaking, it is challenging to classify China within an all-encompassing definition of what makes a country Neoliberal. These misconceptions stem from the belief that the term "neoliberalism" is not monolithic and that there are instead different varieties of neoliberalism that are interpreted and put into practices relative to specific political goals. China's increasing economic reforms are deemed to be following a logic of neoliberal governance rather than the neoliberalism one. As an ideology and a process, Neoliberalism does not apply to Chinese policies because of the dominant role it places on rational, self-interested, entrepreneurial individuals. Instead, the Chinese model represents the kind of mixed economic system that is criticized by neoliberal thought, in which the distributive role of markets does not take place without state intervention.
Since the institutions prevailing at the center of the global system spread to other parts of it, as it is put forward by the Institutional Isomorphism approach (Di Maggio & Powell, 1983), the actual operations of these institutions differ from country to country, often involving severe...
Para continuar leyendo
Solicita tu prueba