Doing Justice to Others 39China and the Wider World
With the unifi cation of the various Warring States into a single central-
ized empire, the creative period of Chinese thought in the international
relations fi eld came largely to an end. Th is took place in 221 bc, under the
aegis of the state of Chin. With this, the whole question of foreign rela-
tions within the Chinese world became obsolete. China would make no
further important contributions to the science of international law. Th e
very idea of a multistate system, in which the states were on anything re-
sembling an equal footing, was, from this time onward, fundamentally
alien to Chinese thinking. International relations henceforth took on a
radically diff erent character, since the concern was now with relations be-
tween Chinese society as a whole and the various non- Chinese nomadic
states in inland Asia.
Th e Chinese had a ready contempt for these peoples. In the Chinese writ-
ten language, many names of foreign peoples had radicals for animals in
their designations, indicating the low esteem in which these peoples were
held. We must beware, however, of too hastily assigning to the Chinese (or
to any ancient peoples) racist attitudes of the kind that are now all too famil-
iar. Th e disdain for the barbarians was not— or at least not strictly or
theoretically— racial in character. It was cultural. In principle, there was
nothing to bar a person from one of the Central Asian tribes from educating
himself in the Chinese classics and adopting Chinese ways. It was the life-
styles and cultures of the nomads that were held in such contempt.
Th e prevailing Confucianist outlook prevented the Chinese from regard-
ing the various nations as in de pen dent equals or as fellow members of a
global moral community based on universal values. Th e eff ect was to make
the very idea of international law— meaning a law between in de pen dent
states— not merely diffi cult to entertain, but even impossible in principle. In
a world that is regarded as containing, ultimately, only one country or one
single system, there can hardly be any such thing as international law.
When the Chinese did have contact with their Asian neighbors, they
sought to enfold these foreign communities into their own national system—
even if that necessitated the imposing of certain legal fi ctions onto incon ve-
nient reality. Foremost among these useful fi ctions was the receipt of “trib-
ute” from the barbarians. Th is took the form of gift s from the nomads in