7 The changing world order
The tenacity with which the Qing regime, even in terminal decline,
clung to the façade of its tributary system of foreign relations was a
matter for wonder at the time. For China, however, adopting a new
international relations culture as demanded by the Western powers
was not a matter simply of conducting diplomacy in a different way.
What was at stake was the whole cosmic, hierarchical and moral
underpinning of the Chinese world order, with the emperor as its
pivot. The Qing regime could not relinquish its conception of how
foreign relations should be conducted without placing its own legiti-
macy in question, for the two were facets of a single worldview.
It is well to be clear about the nature of the alternative world
order that China was being forced to join. Inter-state relations in
an age of strident nationalism and imperial competition existed in an
essentially anarchic environment in which power was the real deter-
minant of status. States might, in principle, be equally sovereign, but
they were not equally powerful and might assured right, despite inter-
national law. With arrogance and insensitivity, European nations had