Strategic Culture Of Golden Age Formation Period In Ancient China

With the continuous development of constructivism, cultural factors are moreand more important in the study of international relations. Strategic culture has causedwidely public concern as a new research field. Strategic culture, a cultural method ofstrategic research, mainly argue that a country’s history, culture, ideology and otherinternal generated factors affect the country’s decision maker’s thoughts, ideas,cognition. Consequently, the country has almost the same strategic preference in along period of time, and then makes the strategy behavior correspondent with theirconcept of cognition. It can provide a cultural point of research method or theoryexplanation to understand the cognitive behavior of China’s foreign strategies.China has a long history of civilization for more than five thousand years. Thesages left behind many precious thoughts, which contains a large number ofexploration and research on the problems of security strategy, China’s strategic culturehas gradually formed and developed in the history. This paper, using the approach ofthe strategic culture analysis by the American Scholar Alastair Iain Johnston, andusing the symbols of cognitive map to analyze the strategic thought of pre-Qinscholars, sum up the strategic cultural orientation in ancient China. By analyzing theperception of the use of force of the Han, Tang, Qing Dynasties when dealing with theexternal threat, this paper has found that China has the strategic culture characterizedby Confucian-Mercian school that urges non-military solutions to conflict in ancienttimes. This kind of strategic culture has been used by the ruler to the actual strategicbehavior of golden age formation period in ancient China. The rulers, in the face ofthe situation with problems both at home and abroad, especially faced with theexternal threats, preferred to use defense policy instead of using force. They always inline with the thought of tolerance and unite to deal with the relationship with othernations. Under the influence of the Confucian-Mercian Strategic culture, the feudalrulers handled well with the relationship between internal and external relations, and then created a good internal and external environment for the golden age formation infeudal times.With China’s national strength growing, domestic and international situation isalso undergoing profound changes. Although peace and development have becomethe theme of today’s world, China still faced with very severe external environment.Therefore, Chinese traditional strategic culture should be re-carded and reviewed insuch a strategic context and made national security strategy in line with nationaldevelopment based on the principle of contradiction particularity. It mainly includesthe following aspects: Firstly, China should better understand the concept of theperiod of strategic opportunities, and have an objective and rational cognition aboutthe current situation both at home and abroad. This is the foundation to make thenational development strategy. Secondly, China should build national security strategyfit for its development needs at this period. On one hand, it is necessary to develop thestrategic thinking of “Keeping a low profile”. On the other hand, it also needs to takea more positive attitude and practical action beyond the geopolitics to promoteall-directional diplomacy strategy in a wider range of international society.