Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea

Shuchen Xiang's book "Chinese Cosmopolitanism" argues that China's cultural tradition was a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit, creating a dynamic identity out of difference. She challenges the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese and offers a new way to understand todays multipolar world through the ideas of Chinese philosophy.

Format: Hardback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 26 September 2023
Publisher: Princeton University Press

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 the relationship between identity and difference.

Xiang's book is a valuable contribution to the study of identity and difference, offering a fresh perspective on a culture that has often been misunderstood in the West. By challenging the Western notion of Chinese identity as a racial or genetic construct, Xiang demonstrates that Chinese culture was a dynamic and cosmopolitan phenomenon that synthesized a wide range of cultural influences.

Her ideas about efficacy and order offer a new way to think about the relationship between different cultures and the ways in which they can interact and influence one another. Xiang's book is a must-read for anyone interested in the study of identity, difference, and the complex relationship between cultures.

Weight: 554g
Dimension: 165 x 244 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691242729