The Tianxia System And China’s World Ideal

The world ideal is a kind of strategically conceptionalconstruction based on the rational knowledge of the real world and akind of holistic and prospective envision and planning of the world.Following this lead, this paper aims to comb through the world idealof ancient China, which refers to the idea of Tianxia and the tributarysystem, in order to explore the basic principles on constructing theideal of the world for current China from historical prospective. Thispaper is composed of the following four chapters.The first chapter analyses the origin and development of the ideaof Tianxia and reveal its contents on this basis. Thought andknowledge of ancient people on the‘Tian’ is the direct theoreticalsource of Tinaxia idea. It is quite a long time before this idea wasconstructed. From the original development in Dynasties of Xia andShang to the innovation of this idea in Zhou Dynasty, and to theendurance of it in Spring and Autumn Period, its content finallyflourished in the Qin and Han Dynasties. The idea of ‘Tianxia’contains many aspects including spatial orientation, politics, cultureetc, but its core part mainly focuses on the relations between Chinaand ‘Si-Yi’.The second chapter tries to comb the development of thetributary system. Pre-Qin period forebodes the coming of thetributary system. It was initially established in Qin and Han dynastiesand turned mature in Sui and Tang dynasties. It expanded rapidly insea route in Song and Yuan dynasties and reached its climax in Mingand Qing dynasties, but it soon declined after that. The third chapter analyses the collapse of the tributary systemand the change of Tianxia idea. With the coming of capitalism, thetributary system soon collapsed under the invasion of western powers,and its guiding philosophy ‘Tianxia’ was greatly impacted andgradually changed. However, this didn’t necessarily mean China lostits capability to think about the world. With Chinese deepening theirunderstanding of the outside world, they soon came up with a newkind of philosophy ‘The unity of the world’ on basis of innovation ofits traditional culture.The fourth chapter proposes several principles for China toconstruct its world ideal on the basis of rational thinking of the realworld and taking into account of the positive factor of China’straditional ‘Tianxia’ idea and tributary system. These principlesinclude holistic principle of ‘we are the world’, peaceful principle of‘harmonious coexistence’, inclusive principle of ‘harmony indiversity’ and progressive principle of ‘keeping abreast of the times’.