Bringing Order to All-Under-Heaven

Abstract

Xi Jinping’s formulation of the Community of Shared Destiny was a key rhetorical device used in China’s regional and international policy during 2013–2014. It promised to ‘operationalise’ resuscitated, and long-debated ideas related to All-Under-Heaven tianxia, discussed in the Introduction to this volume. Non-mainland analysts and commentators generally have scant interest in Chinese party-state attempts to articulate new international relations or strategic concepts in a language that weds statist Confucian concepts with those of Marxist-Leninist modernity. Perhaps it is an affront that a derivative Marxist state lays claim to some unique approach to world affairs, even though its economic and global heft are undeniable. Status quo thinkers rarely want to make room for unorthodox approaches, especially those essayed by a one-party state that has been in an agonistic relationship with the West since the Second World War.