The Theoretical Value And Practical Significance Of Marx's Treatise Of The Relations Between China And Britain

With the promotion of China's international status and the change of its international role,the theory of China's international relations should be build has become one of the most important issues in the academic world of international relations in China.Unquestionably,Marx's view of international relations is an important basis to support China's theory of international relations.Therefore,this paper tries to study on Marx's international view,searching its perspective on international issues and comment on the its historical and practical significance through the discussion on Sino-British relations of Marx.These efforts will contribute to China international relations theory.On the basis of sorting out Marx's literature,three perspectives were extracted from those articles.First,International trade perspective,Marx reviewed the long-term imbalance trade of Sino-British and under the financial crisis,opium trade policy had been adopted by Britain.It showed that trade,which is symbolizing economic factors,is the root cause of the ups and downs in China-UK relations.Second,International conflict perspective.The conflict between China and Britain is the result of the change of trade between China and Britain,the essence was the conflict between feudal agricultural country in the East and industrial capital country in the West.China and Britain are their most prominent representatives,besides,Marx also talked about moral issues and constraints in international relations.Third,The perspective of civilizations between eastern and western.Based on Marx "China-UK relations",first put forward the view of interaction between eastern and western civilizations,points out that Britain' s military and trade practices to accelerate China's political and social change,and then China's revolution and greatly influenced the British trade and ultimate role in the British and even the western political and social level.This paper argues that there were three points of the historical significance of Marx's study of Sino-British relations.First,Marx's discussion of China was mostly based on the framework of China-UK relations,which promoted Marx's understanding of China.Second,the analysis method of the Sino-British relationship embodies the basic features of Marx's understanding of international problems: pay attention to economic factors,practical and historical factors analysis method,the long-term dynamic view of international issues.Third,Marx sublimated the international political problems to the philosophical level of "unity of opposites",and his vision was beyond the scope of general international relations.At the same time,Marx's study also enlightens us that when we construct International Relations Theory of China,we should keep the Marxist epistemology tradition,aims to the viewpoint of practice and economy as the starting points,combined with the research methods of positivism and empirical analysis methods,then construct China's international relations theory of macro theory and all kinds of medium theory.