In his recent end-of-year message, Chinese President Xi Jinping, about the conflicts that plague a large part of the world’s population, re-emphasized the now emblematic motto that guides the foreign policy of the Asian giant, which has become a world power: the “community of humanity’s shared future”.
Xi noted on the occasion: “At present, some parts of the world are still mired in conflict. The Chinese people know very well how valuable peace is. We are willing to work together with the international community, keeping in mind the future of humanity and the wellbeing of the people, for it to build the community of humanity’s shared future and make the world more beautiful.”
This assertion, which undoubtedly points unequivocally to the need for joint planetary resolution of difficulties that people still feel as local issues, is undoubtedly more than an advertising slogan or a decorative diplomatic phrase. It deserves, at the very least, reflection and profundity of debate.
Four years ago, we analyzed it in profundity concerning its implications for the future. The possible relevance of that note encourages us to republish it.
China’s vision of a “Community of Shared Destiny for Humanity”: a prelude to a universal humanist moment?
9/9/2019
by Javier Tolcachier
The seventieth anniversary (1/10) of the founding of the People’s Republic of China is approaching. An anniversary that will be celebrated by the Chinese people, now a world power. Far from claiming revenge for a past of hunger, humiliation and poverty, of bloody wars, of invaders and colonial impositions, China is today spreading, through its highest representative, a message of upward moral heights: the so-called “Community of Shared Destiny for Humanity”.
First mentioned in 2011 in a State Council Information Office document, the idea appears as an overcoming of the “dangerous hot and cold war mentality and all the worn-out ways that have repeatedly led humanity to confrontation and war.”[1] In that White Paper on Pacific Development, China’s “Community of Shared Destiny for Humanity” was first mentioned in 2011.
Already in that China White Paper on Non-violent Development, the alternative of finding “new perspectives from the angle of the community of common destiny, sharing progress and afflictions, seeking mutually beneficial cooperation, exploring new ways to enhance exchanges and mutual learning among different civilizations, identifying new dimensions of common interests and values of humanity, and seeking new ways to meet multiple challenges through cooperation among countries and achieve inclusive development is mentioned.”
The concept was made public in General Secretary Hu Jintao’s report to the 18th Communist Party of China Congress in November 2012. In his speech, the outgoing Chinese president called for building a “harmonious world of enduring peace and common prosperity”.
At the same congress, Xi Jinping took over and, from then on placed the idea of a shared destiny of humanity at the center of his country’s foreign policy, promoting the idea in multiple forums and visits.
The message first found a seat at the United Nations in 2017, in a resolution of the 55th Commission for Social Development, and was subsequently adopted in resolutions of the Security Council, the Human Rights Council, and the 72nd General Assembly’s First Committee on Disarmament and International Security.
The concept was upwardly upgraded by China to constitutional status in the October 2017 amendment adopted by the 13th National People’s Congress the following March. In that amendment, Xi Jinping’s thought on “socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era” was added in the preamble to the same level as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
Further on, the renewed Article 35 of the Constitution reads: “China’s future is closely linked to the future of the world. China pursues an independent foreign policy and adheres to the five principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit and non-violent coexistence, the path of development and strategy of mutual opening in the development of diplomatic and economic relations and cultural exchanges with other countries, pushing forward the building of a community of shared destiny for mankind.”
The most recent document (July 2019) China’s National Defence in the New Era [2], is practically dominated by this idea. However, this idea of peace and good intentions is relativized by the enormous arms build-up. Between 2010 and 2017 the country has doubled its military spending, continues to adhere unswervingly to the doctrine of “nuclear deterrence”, and is firmly committed to employing new technologies to the maximum for its arms industry.
As justifications for this incoherence, the analysis points to the US pursuit of military-technological hegemony alongside other nations’ efforts to advance in this field. Similarly, it argues that the need of defense, preventing separatism and terrorism, and increasing participation in peace missions, among others, make such policies irreplaceable.
China is well aware that its progress as an economic and geopolitical power makes it a direct enemy and target of the aggressive military might of the United States and its allies, who see in the Dragon a certain threat to the status of the West’s illegitimate world hegemony. A hegemony that, after more than five centuries, seems to be coming to an end.
Visionary or pragmatic concept?
The doubt, in a world charged with power intentions, is obvious. One might ask oneself: Is the proposal of a community of a shared human destiny a void discourse, a way to buy time until the ascent to the first rung of superpower status is complete? Is it a way to hide an elephant behind a screen, a way to prevent China from being attacked before it becomes a decisive pole? Or is it, on the contrary, a sincere proposal, which does not neglect the existing relations of force for its effective realisation.
According to Dr. Denghua Zhang, a researcher at the Department of Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University, “initially proposed by China to repair ties with neighboring states in the context of escalating territorial disputes, the concept constitutes part of China’s long-term strategy to maintain a non-violent period of “strategic opportunity” in the first two to three decades of the 21st century to continue its development.”[3] In his study, the scholar points out that the concept of “strategic opportunity” is a “long-term strategy”.
In his study, the scholar points out that the need for full development to avoid great-power encroachment is “a hard lesson learned by Chinese elites through the “century of humiliation” – referring to the period after the Opium Wars, around the middle of the 19th century and up to the proclamation of the People’s Republic in 1949.
For Hong Liu and Yuxuan Zhang, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the world has entered a new era of shared risks and benefits. “[4]
“A country- or region-specific issue can attract worldwide attention and become a global preoccupation. One country alone can hardly gain an absolute sense of security or long-term benefits in a turbulent world.” Hence the need for a new kind of human community.
With significance, scholars point out that a “shared future is a development trend that combines universal manifestations with particular interests” and “advocates the liberation of nation-states from traditional international relations to renew the world order towards common development in the spirit of achieving common ground with respect for differences.”
As is de rigueur in China, innovative proposals go hand in hand with references to the deep roots they have in the wider Chinese culture. Indeed, beyond any historical shift, social harmony has been a constitutive element of this culture.
Moreover, pragmatism is also a characteristic element of Chinese thinking and doing. Although from a certain orthodox or critical perspective in the West, it may appear as a “betrayal” of principles, the Confucian side of Chinese philosophy – predominant in state affairs for most of its history – has been preoccupied not so much with metaphysics but with the morality of concretizing virtue in public life.
The well-known phrase of Deng Xiaoping, leader of the opening-up era since 1978, sums up this look perfectly: “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, the important thing is that it catches mice”. A look that, with its flaws and shortcomings, has certainly served to fulfill China’s goal of socio-economic development over the past four decades.
Resolving the riddle of how far the slogan of “a community of shared future” is a self-serving publicity stunt or an honest vision of a new world system is not easy. Of course, for the Chinese vision, disinclined to the absolutes of dialectical binarism, the answer may be: both.
Humanist moments in history
In all cultures, there have been moments when a humanist attitude permeates the social environment. Moments when discrimination, wars, and violence in general are repudiated. The freedom of ideas and beliefs is given a strong impetus, which in turn encourages research and creativity in science, art and other social expressions. These are times in which tolerance prevails, human universality is affirmed, social consciousness spreads and root changes are sought. These are revolutionary times.
A humanist attitude gains force in these periods, an attitude that “outside of any theoretical approach, can be understood as a “sensitivity”, as a positioning in the human world in which the intention and freedom of others is recognized, and in which commitments are made to a non-violent struggle against discrimination and violence.” [5]
If it is possible to trace these moments in the history of each culture with their respective nuances, the current scenario of the interconnectedness of peoples and cultures invites us to think of a globalized phenomenon, a perspective in which a humanist moment could take on global characteristics. This kind of aspiration is what the thinker Mario Luis Rodríguez Cobos – better known by his pseudonym Silo – has called the “Universal Human Nation”.
In the book Letters to My Friends, Silo will say: “To emerge from the field of necessity into the field of freedom through revolution is the imperative of this age in which the human being has become closed. Future revolutions, if they are to go beyond barracks coups, palace coups, class, ethnic or religious demands, will have to assume an inclusive transforming character based on human essentiality. Hence, beyond the changes they bring about in the concrete situations of countries, their character will be universalist and their objective globalizing”.
How far from the Universal Human Nation?
The general situation of the world shows us a panorama far removed from the one described above. Far from seeking convergence, solidarity, or at least reciprocal understanding, nationalism, fanaticism and secessionism are gaining the support of large groups of people. Such adherence is dictated by popular suffocation. Vast segments of the population are unprotected in the face of a technological revolution that destabilizes and threatens to exclude and leave behind the already segregated majorities. Inequality and the elimination of alternatives to overcome it produce a desperate rebellion artfully manipulated by the elites in the context of the terminal crisis of a system governed by capital. This is how retrograde leaders appear, which take up the malaise through stereotypes and hatred of those who are different. Leadership that embodies regression, division, disintegration, and violence.
In the face of this corrosive scenario, China’s proposal for a “Community of Common Destiny for Humanity” appears as a geopolitical balm, as a demonstration that human intelligence is always capable of finding a way out of crossroads.
This proposal of inclusion and multilateralism constitutes a dialectical element in the face of economic wars, sanctions, blockades, unipolar interests, and the assertion of superiority based on an alleged and unprovable “manifest destiny”, topics that today animate the geopolitical practice of the current US government.
The total failure of the dictatorship of financialised capitalism and its main ideological support, individualism, will increasingly lead to a rethinking of the need for new horizons for human existence.
The idea of a complementarity of peoples based on their best virtues and experiences, with a look at the common well-being of all humanity, could be a path leading, as a synthesis, to a massive adherence to the image of a Universal Human Nation.
That the world moves in this new direction will not be the sole responsibility of governments, nor China, much less of the current leaders of a West in decline. Something will have to be done by people and individuals about the reality in which we aspire to live and with ourselves.
References:
[1] China’s Peaceful Development, Information Office of the State Council, The People’s Republic of China, September 2011, Beijing. Retrieved 08/09/2019 from http://www.gov.cn/english/official/2011-09/06/content_1941354.htm
[2] China’s National Defense in the New Era, Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China, July 2019. Retrieved 08/09/2019 from http://eng.mod.gov.cn/news/2019-07/24/content_4846443.htm
[3] Denghua Zhang. The Concept of ‘Community of Common Destiny’ in China’s Diplomacy: Meaning, Motives and Implications. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd and Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University, retrieved 1/9/2019 from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/app5.231
[4] Hong L., Yuxuan Z. Building a community of shared future for humankind – an ethnological perspective. International Journal of Anthropology and Ethnology, volume 2, Article number: 7 (2018)
[5] Silo, Dictionary of New Humanism, Magenta Ediciones (1996) Buenos Aires.
