Quest for Modernity and the Tides of History } 771
the rule of law and universal norms provides reassurance to others that
it will bring the same approach to its international behavior, as well as
providing greater stability and growth for its own people.^18
As suggested by Steinberg’s acknowledgement of “some people” who
believed US concern for China’s internal governance was designed to “weaken
China,” a major difference in US and Chinese views had to do with the inten-
tions inspiring US concerns for China’s internal governance. In the American
view, individual freedom and democratic self-government were intrinsically
good things which, if implemented gradually and prudently, would strengthen
China’s status in the world and, not least, lay a basis for closer, more stable
cooperation between China and the United States. This optimistic view of
liberal institutions arose, of course, out of the US experience and worldview.
China’s experience and worldview were very different.
Several factors converged to shape China’s view of the “real,” sinister US
purposes that most Chinese believe are behind US advocacy of political
change in China.^19 Many Chinese had a strong perception of China as an
intrinsically peaceful, defense-oriented, and ethically minded country. The
United States and the West generally, on the other hand, were widely per-
ceived in China as militaristic, aggressive, and selfish. Since China cannot,
by cultural self-perception, give offense, conflicts with the United States must
arise out of US aggressiveness. These perceptions may have roots in China’s
centuries of management of barbarian powers in which China was the par-
agon of virtue and barbarian rulers were, or at least should be, humble stu-
dents of China’s superior ways, in the Chinese view of things. The lingering
influence of Marxist thinking also leads to the conclusion that the United
States seeks to dominate and exploit China along with the rest of the world.
The influence of US hard realist theorizing about international relations also
feeds sinister views of US intentions. Imbibed by Chinese analysts, many
with backgrounds in the PLA or security organs, via books or study at US
universities, this hard realist perspective postulated that states would seek
to control their security environment to the full extent that their capabili-
ties permit. It was thus to be expected that the United States would oppose
China’s rise, and seek to weaken and undermine it—although Washington
would seek to camouflage those aims with a sugarcoating of high-sounding
rhetoric. China’s own failed experiment with liberal democracy in the early
twentieth century—as interpreted by the CCP—was yet another taproot of
China’s sinister perception of US efforts to liberalize China. As laid out in
Beijing’s White Paper on Political Democracy:
In [the] movement to save China from destruction, some of the elite
turned their eyes to the West for a road that would save the coun-
try .... But the bourgeois republic, including the parliamentarian and
multi-party system that were ... established after the Revolution of 1911