Confucianism and China’s Encounter with the West in Historical Perspective.pdf

Confucianism and China's Encounter with the West in Historical Perspective YU Ying-shih* I. Introduction The thesis of a "dash of civilizations" has been much debated since Samuel P. Huntington published his famous article in Foreign Affairs in 1993. In The Clash of CMlizalions and the Rema~'ng of World Order (1996), he gives his original thesis a more detailed documentation and, at the same time, also somewhat modifies some of the sharp formulations in the earlier article. However, the book is es- sentially an elaboration on, not a revision of, the original argument. In order to avoid distorting Huntington, I would like to present the core of his argument by quoting him: In the late 1980s munist world collapsed, and the Cold War international system became history. In the post-Cold War world, the most important distinctions among people are not ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural.... People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institu- tions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, munities, na- tions, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. (Huntington 1996: 21) Then he explains to us why this "reconfiguration of global politics" is likely to lead to a "clash of civilizations." Again in his own words, Peoples and countries with similar cultures ing together. Peoples and countries with different cultures ing apart. Alignments defined by ideology and superpower relations are giving way to alignments defmed by culture and civilization. Political boundaries increasingly are redrawn to coincide with cultural ones: ethnic, religious, and civilizations. munities are replacing Cold War blocs, and the fault lines be- tween civilizations are ing the central lines of conflict in global politics. (Huntington 1996: 125) Now, how are we to evaluate such a grand theor