Don't Just Learn from the 19th-Century West: Civilizational Centrism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Public Responsibility of Young Leaders

Created on June 03, 2026   ·   -- views

2026   ·   political-philosophy   china   technology   leadership   ·   thoughts

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Lately I’ve been thinking about a question: how should the future of Chinese political philosophy be imagined?

This question sounds distant, but it actually turns up around us every day. On social media, in classroom discussions, and in public narratives, we are increasingly accustomed to describing the world as zero-sum competition: civilizations are camps, national interest is the highest morality, and most external criticism is attributed to hostility. Much of this is packaged as confidence in tradition, but I always feel something is off. It borrows the name of tradition in order to accept a thoroughly untraditional logic of power.

Liu Qing once made a sharp judgment when discussing “tianxia” and “new cosmopolitanism”: the way some Chinese people imagine the world today looks instead like “imitating a discarded, barbaric West of the late 19th century.” That sentence struck me. The danger lies not in learning from the West, but in the fact that we have learned only the crudest side of Western history: national interest above all, the law of the jungle, colonial competition, social Darwinism, and the victor proving everything.

If this is all China ends up learning, it can hardly be called surpassing the West. It would merely reproduce, in a different language, the very phase of Western modernity that most deserves to be reexamined.

The Danger of Civilizational Centrism

Much of what is called civilizational confidence today actually stops at civilizational centrism.

That is not what civilizational self-awareness means. Civilizational self-awareness means knowing where one comes from, knowing one’s historical experience and spiritual resources, and also knowing that these resources are not perfect and must undergo the test and transformation of the modern world. Civilizational centrism, on the other hand, imagines one’s own civilization as a whole that is naturally correct, naturally superior, and naturally exempt from external criticism. Civilization ought to be a process of learning and self-correction; here it is compressed into a closed identity.

I see roughly a few forms this takes.

One is treating the length of a history as a moral credential. It is as if the older a civilization is, the more automatically it possesses the authority to interpret the modern world. But a long history shows only that there is a great deal of experience; it does not automatically show that institutions are legitimate, that values are superior, or that judgments are more reliable.

Another is treating cultural difference as a firewall. As soon as external criticism appears, it is called “not understanding China,” “Western bias,” or “cultural colonialism.” Eurocentrism does of course exist, and the colonial experience cannot be brushed aside. But if every criticism can be deflected by cultural difference, civilization is no longer a resource for reflecting on itself; it becomes an excuse for refusing reflection.

Yet another is imagining the world as a contest of winners and losers among civilizations. Chinese civilization, Western civilization, Islamic civilization, and Indian civilization are placed in the same great arena, as if history ultimately cared only about who overwhelms whom. This kind of claim looks grand, but it is in fact very narrow. It merely scales identity competition between individuals up into identity competition between civilizations.

A civilization with real self-assurance should not fear foreign ideas. It should be able to digest what comes from outside and then articulate what is its own in a better way. A culture that cannot encounter the other is only repeating itself; a civilization that cannot accept critique is only a larger tribe.

Which West Did We Learn From

The question, therefore, is never simply “whether to read Western philosophy.” The more specific question is which West we have been reading.

There is one West: the West of 19th-century imperialism, colonialism, realpolitik, and social Darwinism. In this West, the state is the highest entity, force is the final arbiter, the elimination of the weak is cast as a law of history, and the civilizing mission is often just a wrapper for expansion and domination. This is certainly part of Western history, and it cannot be downplayed.

But Western thought has also been reflecting on these things from within. It reflects on colonialism, on racism, on capitalist inequality, on the violence of the nation-state, on the tyranny of the majority, and on the domination of human beings by technological rationality. Modern Western thought contains theories of realpolitik and sovereignty, as in Hobbes and Schmitt, but it also contains traditions of freedom, dignity, public reason, recognition, and cosmopolitanism, as in Kant, Mill, Rawls, Arendt, and Taylor.

If we learn only from the former West, the result will be incongruous: anti-Western in word, but in practice imitating the most barbaric phase of Western history; committed to Chinese tradition in word, but in practice discarding the more expansive breadth of mind that “tianxia” carries within that tradition.

This is also how I read Liu Qing’s remark. He is not saying that China should naively give up national interest, nor that China should accept any form of colonialism and domination. Escaping domination is of course a basic precondition. But now that China has sufficient national strength, the question cannot keep stopping at “how not to be bullied.” The harder question is this: once we are no longer bullied, are we still able to understand the world only in terms of bullying and being bullied?

Wealth and power matter. Without them there is no basic security, and no practical basis for talking about higher ideals. But wealth and power are not the endpoint of civilization. Once a country is strong, how its power is constrained becomes a question; once a civilization is confident, how it treats others becomes a question; once intellectuals have influence, they too must ask clearly what worldview they are bringing into society.

“Tianxia” Is Not an Answer, but a Question

Many would say that the Chinese tradition already contains a conception of tianxia, harmony in diversity, seeking common ground while reserving differences, and mutual appreciation of beauty. These are certainly important resources. But I am now more wary of taking these terms directly as answers.

Tianxia has at least two sides.

Its good side is that it provides a scale beyond the nation-state. The modern nation-state divides the world into sovereign units, each calculating its own security, interests, and development first. But the problems of the era of globalization can hardly be fully handled by such units. Climate, AI, war, finance, supply chains, biotechnology, and cybersecurity are not things any single country can solve alone. In this sense, tianxia reminds us that the world itself should be an object of political philosophy.

Its troublesome side is equally obvious. Historically, tianxia often carried a structure of center and periphery, Huaxia and barbarian, civilizing instruction and submission. Without critique, tianxia can easily become a gentler, more attractive new centrism. On the surface it speaks of embracing all quarters, but in practice it still assumes that it stands at the center, and that others are merely outsiders waiting to be taken into this order.

So I am reluctant to describe the future as “new tianxia-ism.” By comparison, Liu Qing’s “new cosmopolitanism” is more accurate. It retains the world scale of tianxia but rejects Sinocentrism; it acknowledges the intellectual resources of the Chinese tradition but does not sanctify them; it opposes Eurocentrism, and it equally opposes replacing Eurocentrism with Sinocentrism.

What I would rather pursue is a world that different civilizations build together, in which they correct one another and bear the consequences together. Such a world should not be defined by China alone, nor should it continue to be defined by the West alone.

Why Universal Values Need Local Roots

Liu Qing mentions Charles Taylor, and I think there is no getting around him here.

When ideas enter China only in the form of external principles, they are easily taken as alien. Freedom, rule of law, dignity, rights, equality, and public reason, if always labeled “Western values,” will be psychologically placed outside China. Those who support them are easily seen as not Chinese enough, while those who oppose them can easily present themselves as the authentically Chinese ones.

This is actually very bad.

For a political idea to persuade people, it must not only hold up logically but also enter a society’s self-understanding. What Taylor calls the social imaginary refers precisely to the background picture people have of their shared life. We live by theory, but also by stories, identities, memories, and familiar moral language.

This is why Chinese people should not only read Western philosophy but also re-understand the Chinese tradition. The purpose is not to prove that “ancient China already had everything,” but to give modern values comprehensible roots within China. For example, “rights” cannot simply be replaced by “people as the foundation,” but the tradition of people as the foundation can help us understand why power should be responsible to the people; “cosmopolitanism” cannot simply be equated with tianxia, but the tianxia tradition can help us understand why national interest should not be the highest morality; “dignity” is not a direct product of traditional ritual governance, but the Confucian view of human moral agency can be brought into dialogue with the modern conception of dignity.

The problem is not a binary choice between China and the West. What I care more about is how to transform the still vital parts of the Chinese tradition into a normative language that can constrain modern power, protect modern individuals, and respond to global risks.

The Responsibility of Intellectuals Is Not Self-Justification

These questions look like the work of political philosophers, but I now place them on every intellectual as well.

Knowledge has never been a mere tool for individual advancement. A person who reads, does research, writes, or works in technology will certainly gain career opportunities and social position; but the most valuable thing about knowledge is not where it takes a person, it is how it changes the way that person understands the world. Taylor’s notion of the social imaginary fits well here, I think. A society is governed not only by its institutions but also by how it imagines itself. How people understand the state, civilization, freedom, strength, and dignity will ultimately determine what realities they can accept.

It is precisely for this reason that intellectuals inherently carry a responsibility to transform society.

But by transforming society, I do not mean lecturing others from above, nor forcing a theory onto reality. The more concrete work is to state confused problems clearly, to make visible again the people flattened by grand narratives, and to take up judgments that look self-evident and ask them over again: Why does this hold? What does it obscure? Will it lead society toward openness, or toward a more refined form of closure?

So the responsibility of intellectuals is not self-justification. It is not to prove that one is more clear-headed than the public, not to prove that one’s civilization is superior, and not to prove that one’s path will ultimately prevail. The hard part is to reflect first on the worldview one carries, before setting out to transform society. If someone sets out to transform society carrying civilizational centrism, a narrative of winners and losers, and a 19th-century logic of power, then the transformation is likely to produce nothing but new closure.

Young Leaders Must First Transform Their Own Worldview

If the responsibility of intellectuals is to state problems clearly, then young leaders simply magnify that responsibility.

I don’t much like understanding “young leaders” as those who succeed earlier, become famous faster, or command more resources. Those are just external positions. The point is this: when a young person begins to affect more people because of professional ability, a position in the times, and public influence, their judgments are no longer merely private. How they understand the world will influence how others understand technology, the nation, civilization, and themselves.

What young leaders should be most wary of is not a lack of ability, but a lack of reflection. Insufficient ability only limits what one can do; insufficient reflection lets a person carry out a mistaken worldview at greater scale.

Civilizational centrism is especially dangerous here. A young person who is capable, ambitious, and attuned to the times can easily bind their own experience of growing up to the national narrative: I have succeeded, so my path is correct; my country is rising, so my civilization is superior; my field leads, so my camp is bound to win. I understand this passion and don’t want to simply mock it. But it still has not escaped a 19th-century imagining of the world: the world is an arena, civilizations are camps, technology is a weapon, and victory is the final proof.

What I think is more worth pursuing is not this kind of victory.

China certainly needs to be strong, and Chinese youth certainly need a place of their own on the world stage. But the responsibility one level above that is not to replace Eurocentrism with Sinocentrism; it is to take part in building a world that is no longer defined by any single center. When Liu Qing speaks of moving from “tianxia” to “new cosmopolitanism,” this is where I take the emphasis to lie: national interest and real competition are not denied, but even after differences, conflicts, and interests are acknowledged, the world is still not reduced to zero-sum struggle.

From Professional Competence to Public Responsibility

This becomes far more concrete in the age of technology.

AI, computing infrastructure, life sciences, energy systems, cybersecurity, automation, and data platforms are no longer mere professional tools. They are reshaping social relations, and they are reshaping the world order as well. When a technologist genuinely reaches the front of some field, what they command has already gone beyond personal ability; it is also a public power.

Merton spoke of universalism and organized skepticism in the scientific community; Ostrom spoke of commons needing governance. Both point to the same thing: knowledge is not the private property of any camp, nor is unconditional openness enough on its own. An algorithm, a theory, a system should first be submitted to evidence, logic, reproducibility, and peer criticism; papers, code, data, models, standards, and evaluations should as far as possible enter a knowledge commons that is sustainable, open to oversight, and open to participation.

So, when I think about the responsibility of young leaders, I don’t want to understand it as “winning the world’s recognition on behalf of China.” That is still too narrow. What I would rather ask is: can I use my own knowledge, technical skill, and judgment to help form a world that is more open, more amenable to discussion, and more able to accommodate others? Once I have that capability, can I keep it from turning into a new arrogance and make it instead a condition for building something together?

So, back to the initial question: What is the future of Chinese political philosophy?

My current tentative judgment is: China’s most valuable intellectual contribution in the future is not to prove that Chinese civilization is superior to Western civilization, nor to prove that the Chinese model can replace the Western model, but to put forward a less narrow imagining of the world. It has to avoid Eurocentrism, and it has to avoid Sinocentrism as well. It acknowledges national interest but does not sanctify it. It values local tradition, and is also willing to let that tradition be reworked by modern equality, rights, and public reason.

The strong Chinese youth I hope for should certainly be able to compete in the world, but should also be able to change how competition itself is imagined: less self-justification, more building of shared standards; recognizing others, rather than only worrying about whether they themselves are recognized; counting the consequences of technology as part of their own responsibility, rather than treating technology merely as a tool for victory or defeat.

Perhaps this is the concrete meaning of what is today called “making a significant contribution to human civilization.”

References

Citation

If you need to cite this article, please refer to:

@article{zou2026civilizationalcentralism,
  title={不要只学习 19 世纪的西方：文明中心论、世界主义与青年领袖的公共责任},
  author={Zou, Jiaxuan},
  journal={Jiaxuan's Blog},
  year={2026},
  url={https://jiaxuanzou0714.github.io/blog/2026/civilizational-centralism-and-young-technical-leaders/}
}