Looking Back to Look Forward: Chinese Geopolitical Narratives and China's Past

Abstract

A prominent political and human geographer outlines a way of thinking about China's "place in the world" that is based on a penetrating examination of how influential Chinese thinkers and politicians use analogies to China's past historical practices and geographical forms as sources of inspiration for contemporary and future directions in Chinese foreign policy. Different venues within China, such as military academies, universities, and civilian think-thanks, are producing interpretive frames (geopolitical narratives) that are competing for influence within the leadership of the Communist Party and the state bureaucracy. The author distinguishes four such narratives, each with a different emphasis on China's past: (a) Pacific Rim, (b) Orientalist, (c) nationalist geopolitik, and (d) international relations with Chinese characteristics. He argues that rather than simply imposing Western narratives on China, investigators should be concerned with exploring the geopolitical narratives that are arising from within China and that will plausibly provide the justifications for future Chinese foreign policy.

Keywords:

• China
• geopolitical narratives
• policy entrepreneurs
• Pacific Rim
• Orientalism
• nationalist geopolitik
• Chinese exceptionalism
• China's history
• Confucianism
• Taiwan
• national humiliation
• syncretism