China in the World: Culture, Politics, and World Vision by Ban Wang (review)

Review© 2024 by University of Hawai'i Press Ban Wang. China in the World: Culture, Politics, and World Vision. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022. 215 pp. E-book 26. 95, ISBN 978-1-4780-1084-5. China in the World seeks to understand China's foreign relations since the late nineteenth century through the perspective of China's world vision. The book examines the nature and changes of China's worldviews over more than a century, during which a tributary system in Asia collapsed and a Chinese "empire" was dragged into an international system of nation-states. On the one hand, the transformation from a Chinese "empire" to a Chinese "nation-state" inevitably corresponded with the rise of nationalism. On the other hand, the notion of tianxia (all under heaven) in Confucian universalism, "internationalism" in the Chinese revolutions, and China's Cold War engagements with the Third World all make cosmopolitanism an essential element of China's worldviews. Consequently, the relationship between and the relative importance of nationalism/cosmopolitanism has become crucial for scholars to understand China's foreign relations. With an emphasis on the importance of these questions, this book examines the worldviews of Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and Mao Zedong and demonstrates how China's worldviews shaped its foreign policy during the Chinese revolution, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War/globalization era. Wang emphasizes that a deep-seated desire for a cosmopolitan world to prevail over assertions of nationalism. As a research monograph, the book makes three original contributions. First, it addresses a question regarding the relationship between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Nation-states are not only political entities but also results of ideological constructions. The current scholarship on China's foreign relations emphasizes the former over the latter. On the ideological front, it is true that Chinese Communist leaders, such as Liu Shaoqi, addressed the relationship between nationalism and internationalism. However, policymakers and scholars Chinese Studies International: Vol. 28, 2024 Review have not addressed this question adequately and systematically, let alone conducted a comprehensive analysis of how the question could be understood in the context of the evolution of China's worldviews. Wang's book fills a crucial gap in scholarly literature and suggests important policy implications. Second, this book addresses the above question through an examination of an extended historical period, with an emphasis on the continuity, mutation, and ruptures of China's worldviews. Since the late nineteenth century, constitutional monarchists (e. g. , Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao), republican revolutionaries (e. g. , Sun Yat-sen), Chinese nationalists (e. g. , Chiang Kai-shek), and Chinese Communists (e. g. , Mao Zedong) have offered different historical interpretations of Chinese modernization and visions of modernity. Affected by these interpretations, scholars of Chinese history tend to examine China's worldviews and ideologies in the context of different historical periods. Of course, relevant research is significant as it provides the foundation for further discussions based on comparative studies. However, the traditional approach has two major limitations: the period under examination is too short for scholars to identify longterm historical changes, and scholars are more likely to emphasize the unique features of each period under examination and thus underestimate historical continuity across different periods. Based on existing scholarship, Wang's book demonstrates important legacies in an extended historical period and therefore enables scholars to better understand historical continuity. For example, the importance of datong in Kang Youwei's works shaped the worldviews of both Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong. Therefore, as the author convincingly argues, similarities in their thinking suggest continuity among the worldviews of Chinese leaders, which existing scholarship tends to ignore. Third, this book adopts a novel approach based on both literary and historical analysis, examining the political aspects of worldviews in China's foreign relations and their entry into the modern world. Only a scholar who combines breadth of knowledge and depth of thinking can advance interdisciplinary understandings in such an impressive way. For example, Wang addresses ideological features of Chinese Communism based on literary course development in Yan'an in the 1930s. The author also examines how films transmitted ideological messages in the 1950s and 1960s. The interdisciplinary approach (across literary, historical, and political studies) allows Wang. . .