Can China’s ‘ecological civilisation’ paradigm stabilise liberal democracy?

What started off as China’s new blueprint for an “ecological civilisation” is fast morphing into a new paradigm to address uncertainties in the beleaguered liberal international order.

A year ago, in November 2016, Donald Trump was elected President.

America’s global influence has dwindled, and may be hard to restore.

Early this month, China’s President Xi Jinping, now the world’s most influential leader, hosted Trump for dinner in the “Forbidden City”, the former imperial palace—now a museum—at the heart of Beijing in what seemed like the passing of the baton of global leadership.

VELVET GLOVE

President Xi is a man with an iron fist in a velvet glove. Last month, on October 18-24, he presided over the 19th National Congress of the world’s largest party, whose five-year agenda is likely to shape the destinies of China and the world.

Despite presiding over the world’s most powerful communist nation, Xi seems to be touching the right buttons in the West.

Trump is pursuing his “America First” doctrine, Xi has declared “humanity first” or “world first.”  

During the World Economic Forum in the January, he left no doubt that he is the strongest defender of globalization. 
An assertive China is not concealing its global leadership ambitions. Its leadership is moving China “closer to centre stage” and making “all-round efforts” towards “great power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.”

In his newly released second volume of his book, The Governing of China (Beijing, 2017), Xi appears to be proclaiming China as humanity’s best hope, replacing America—which Abraham Lincoln once declared as “the last best hope on Earth.”

While communism and democracy may appear like an oxymoron, China is championing a new form of ‘democratic centralism’ as an alternative to doddering liberal democracy.

DEMOCRACY

In an article published by Xinhua News Agency, Chinese journalist, Li Laifang, triumphantly hoists “enlightened Chinese democracy” as demonstrated in the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China as a stable alternative to “the endless Political backbiting, bickering and policy reversals in Western kind of democracy, now wobbling (October 17, 2017). 

In the West, liberal democracy has its own grave diggers: a toxic mix of resurgent populists, Euro-centric bigots bankrolling human rights extremists in civil societies and regime change schemes in developing countries.

In Africa, this support is undermining democracy and the rule of law and has given rise Frantz Fanon’s ‘ethnic aristocrats’ in opposition parties now radicalizing and weaponizing specific ethnic identities to capture power through insurgent violence countries like Kenya and Nigeria.

Chinese rulers have always shied from exporting ‘a Chinese model’. Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997), who opened China to far-reaching market-economy reforms, once said that China was not a model for anyone. 

Today, China sees itself as “blazing a new trail for other developing countries.” Its model, a fine blend of market reform and ‘democratic centralism’ is held as model of “social unity”.

It was Karl Marx who said that: “The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”

President Xi, weaned on Marxist doctrine, is retracting from the theory of conflict as the motor of development.

PEACEFUL RISE

He is espousing China’s peaceful rise. His party has popularized the idea of “Ecological Civilization” as a new paradigm of change and a pathway to sustainable global peace and progress.

Ordinarily the ecological civilization blueprint is China’s commitment to global treaties to curb climate change, including the Paris Accord—from which Trump has pulled America.

But its scholars and pundits are holding out the concept of ‘ecological civilization’ as new paradigm to undergird China’s efforts in the remaking of a new world order rooted in oriental values.

In his speech to the United nations in Geneva in January, where he launched the idea of a “community of shared future for mankind”, President Xi made four value propositions to underpin ‘ecological civilization’.

These include building a world of peace through dialogue and consultations; common security for all through joint efforts; common prosperity through win-win co-operation; an open and inclusive society through exchanges and mutual learning; and a clean and beautiful world through green and low-carbon development.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), that Xi launched in 2015, offers a framework for realizing these goals.

The concept has provoked debate in scholarly and policy circles. It was a subject of in-depth discourse in a recent international symposium on the implications of the 19th CPC Congress for China and the World held in Beijing on November 16.

CIVILIZATION

“The ecological civilization is part of eastern wisdom”, said Sudheendra Kulkarni, the Indian author of Music of the Spinning Wheel: Mahatma Gandhi’s Manifesto for the Internet Age (2012).

According to Elena Avramidou, a Historian at Peking University, the concept is rooted in Chinese culture and civilization, especially the idea of benevolence, universal goodness, flexibility and tolerance.

As an emerging concept in International relations and global governance, the idea of “ecological civilization” draws from China’s idea of “a community of shared destiny for humanity.” But it is gaining universal appeal.

“This approach is radically new”, said Professor Nkolo Foe, Cameroonian Philosopher and Vice-President of CODESRIA.

Ecological civilization is a force of stabilization in the liberal world order. According to Pan Wei, a professor of international studies at Peking University, it rejects conflict as inevitable in human progress and polarizing concepts such as the “class struggle” and the “clash of civilizations”.

Rather, it espouses dialogue, openness and cooperation within and between nations and civilizations as the basis of sustainable peace and shared prosperity. 

However, make no mistake: China is not preaching pacifism—the willy-nilly repudiation of war or the naïve view that all disputes can be settled by peaceful means. Its plans are underway to build the world’s most advanced national defense and military by 2035.

China is simply taking to heart the wisdom of one of the icons of its 5000-year civilization, Sun Tsu, who, in Art of War advised that: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”.

In every sense, Africa stands to gain from the ‘ecological civilization’ project.

Prof Kagwanja is a former Government Adviser and currently heads the Africa Policy Institute.

Notes and excerpts of a keynote speech delivered at the International Think-Tank Symposium on “The 19th CPC National Congress: Implications for China and the World”, November 16, 2017, Beijing, China.