Thinking Globally in Post-Mao China

Abstract

For the first time in modern history, China has become an active, if somewhat still elusive, member of the global system. With this momentous transformation comes myriads of new linkages, new contexts, new demands, new opportunities and new costs and consequences for China/global interaction. Proceeding from the premise that what China does or does not do becomes part of the global problem or part of the global solution, the article seeks to situate post-Mao China in the global/local problematique. The article advances the concept of global learning as a way of exploring diachronic changes and shifts in Chinese global thinking. Global learning is conceptualized as a two-way interactive linkage process in which domestic actors' restructuring of their cognitive maps and the changing global reality mediated by positive participatory experience in the global system become reciprocal in terms of cause and effect, constituting mutually essential parts of the same global/local process. Global learning is applied as a guide to examining Chinese global policy in three issue areas - global peace; global development; and global human rights. Global learning is also suggested as a possible bridge linking Chinese global policy and global policy studies. The paper concludes that some changes and shifts in Chinese global thinking have occurred and explains them as interest-driven adaptive readjustments to the dual logic of modernization imperative and of the world situation. From a post-Tiananmen perspective, the paper also critically evaluates the nature and scope of Chinese global learning as well as its new possibilities and old limitations.