My Take | Is China the only civilisation state?
- As countries such as Turkey, India and Russia have laid claims to similar ideas, the notion may well serve as a model in international politics to explain rising competition between states in a multipolar world
China often complains about its lack of “discourse power” in international politics. But there is one crucial idea where it is taking a lead, and suddenly everyone seems to want to claim it as its own, even some Canadians. That’s the notion of a civilisation state as opposed to the modern nation state.
Okay, I exaggerate a bit about the Canadians, but not by much, as you will see.
Certainly, China has been most vocal in promoting such an idea of itself. It’s not just a communist state, but one based on a millennial civilisation founded on Confucianism. Other countries with grand ambitions on the world stage today are not far behind. Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to recall the glory of the Ottomans. Vladimir Putin’s Russia increasingly considers itself apart from the West. Rather it is the embodiment of an orthodox Christian civilisation that emerged from classical Byzantium.
And India? As an op-ed in the Hindustan Times put it last year, “India is not a nation-state, or a state-nation. It is a civilisational-state.”
It says: “At present, most of the geographically contiguous parts of India are united under a single political authority and this political unification derives its justification from a shared civilisational heritage.
“And this political unity under a single state is what can be termed as a civilisational-state. A civilisational-state doesn’t just represent an ethnic or linguistic community or a single religious community, but a unique civilisation distinct from others.”
Meanwhile, right-wing thinkers and politicians in Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia want to create something called the CANZUK nations. As CANZUK International, an independent NGO puts it in its mission statement, the goal is to “facilitate migration, free trade and foreign policy coordination between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom”.
