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Chinese Cosmopolitanism

The History and Philosophy of an Idea

Shuchen Xiang author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Princeton University Press

Published:26th Sep '23

Should be back in stock very soon

Chinese Cosmopolitanism cover

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference

Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism, Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike the West, which cast its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference. The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism.

Xiang explains that “Chinese” identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy—described as “harmony”—with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one’s position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today’s multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race.

"Honorable Mention for the Asia and Asian America Section Book Award, American Sociological Association"
"Eye-opening. . . . [Xiang] offers a deeply informed perspective to confront our own often half-understood or misunderstood beliefs about ourselves and others."---Alex Lo, South China Morning Post
"Chinese Cosmopolitanism is compelling in its stringent critique of Western worldviews rooted in racism, colonialism, and Eurocentrism. . . . [A]n illuminating and inspirational book."---Ban Wang, Chinese Studies International
"Provacative. . . . [T]here is still no diminishing the value of what Shuchen Xiang has achieved through Chinese Cosmopolitanism. Given its longstanding knowledge of foreign lands and peoples, many of which were ripe for exploitation, and its recognizable capacity over the ages for imposing its will especially in far-flung places beyond Inner and East Asia militarily whenever it could have elected to, exactly why China chose not to do so is a conundrum. Xiang has isolated and explicated in depth one reason for Chinese restraint that may prove more compelling, determinative, and influential on our understanding of this noninterventionist attitude than any other."---Don J. Wyatt, Journal of Chinese History

ISBN: 9780691242729

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

272 pages