Abstract:

To explore 21st century discussions of China’s alternative world order, this lecture will argue that we need to not only consider traditional world orders (All-under-Heaven–tianxia, Great Harmony–datong, the Tributary System), but also examine the 20th century’s modern revolutionary world orders (Kang Youwei’s Great Harmony, Sun Yat–sen’s Three Peoples Principles, and Mao Zedong’s Three Worlds). Importantly, this is not simply a chronological “history of ideas” that traces China’s transition from traditional empire to modern nation–state. Rather it argues that in the 20th and 21st centuries tradition and modernity are entangled: Kang and Sun revived All-under-Heaven and Great Harmony to think about China’s global role in the early 20th century, Mao Zedong used Great Harmony and Kang Youwei to think about his communist utopia, and Xi Jinping mixes All-under-Heaven, Great Harmony, Marxism in his new ideology of “Socialism with Chinese characteristics for the New Era.” The lecture explores how 21st century world orders thus are not post-socialist, but “neo–socialist” in the sense of syncretically mixing Chinese tradition, capitalist modernity, and socialist modernity.

Speaker’s Bio:

William A. Callahan is professor of Political Science at Singapore Management University. Previously, he was professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research examines the interplay of theory, culture and politics in China, and visual global politics more generally. Callahan’s Sensible Politics: Visualizing International Relations (OUP, 2020) won the Best Book Award from the International Studies Association, IPS. Callahan’s recent film, “The Nose Knows: Foreignness and Fortune in China” (23min, 2024), has won Best Documentary Film at six film festivals in Asia and Europe, and will be screened at the British Academy’s Ideas Festival in June 2026.

Introduction by Tansen Sen, Director of the Center for Global Asia, Professor of History, NYU Shanghai.