Using the past to (re)write the future: Yan Xuetong, pre-Qin thought and China’s rise to power

Abstract

To many in China, their country’s rise is not simply a hard power phenomenon; China’s new weight in international affairs demands that it also innovates culturally to offer new global norms to the world. Thus in recent years many prominent Chinese scholars have invested significant time and resources into searching for, or attempting to define, a distinctly Chinese approach to theorizing international relations. One of the potential sources often cited as a foundation for such an approach is China’s long and rich history of political theorizing and political/cultural leadership. This article considers one of the key contributions to that debate from a Tsinghua University scholar, Yan Xuetong. Despite his rejection of the ‘China school’ project, Yan has invested significant resources in a project that seeks to apply pre-Qin thought to contemporary international politics. Through a careful reading of this work, the article reveals a compelling narrative about China’s future rise. It argues that through discursively linking pre-Qin classical texts with China’s modern rise, Yan Xuetong is using China’s past to write its, and the world’s, future. The article critically engages with this future Yan is narrating, and considers some of the implications it might have for China and the world.