Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.9, 2020

 

Further Discussion of the Origin of Chinese Diplomacy

(Abstract)

 

Zhu Xiaolüe

 

The study of foreign relations has a unique disciplinary tradition. Following the late Qing and the Republic of China, historians and scholars of international law and diplomacy have put forward four different views on the origin of Chinese diplomacy, assigning it to the Xia, the Shang, the Spring and Autumn period, and the late Qing. With the increasing emphasis on the “sovereign state” in modern political studies, the ancient political activities of diplomacy has been increasingly confined and squeezed out by the concept of the sovereign state, to the extent that at a certain stage, they fell out of the purview of research on foreign relations. However, if we trace them back to their source, diplomatic activities in China obviously predated the Westphalian system; whether we look at it from a historical perspective or in terms of disciplinary traditions or the developmental direction of the current discipline, research on the origin of China’s diplomacy should not be overly influenced by sovereign state theory, but should rather be carried out in accordance with the definition of diplomatic activity provided by the foreign relations field itself. Starting from the Spring and Autumn period, China has developed a mature diplomatic tradition. Although exchanges between the states during the Spring and Autumn period are closely related to the symbol of “royal power” as a distinguishing structural feature, the Spring and Autumn League should be regarded as a powerful hypothesis for the origin of China’s foreign relations.