Today, with the rise of China, the United States began to worry about the Chinese Civilization Society threatened Western civilization.(Reuters)
Not long ago, Skinson, director of the Policy Planning of the United States State Department, talked about the relationship with China at a forum in Washington: This is a struggle between a completely different civilization and different ideology. The United States has never experienced before.She also said: This is the first time we have faced a powerful competitor.Skinner's words led to the criticism of American media and netizens, and they said that this was racist speech.Naturally, her words were also rebounded by China at the other end of the Pacific Ocean because her remarks were specifically targeted at China.
In the early 1990s, Harvard professor Samuel Phillips Huntington published a book of civilization conflict and a reconstruction of world order, which officially proposed the theory of civilized conflict.Soon after, the Nine 11 terrorism incidents occurred in the United States. The terrorist incident seemed to confirm the correctness and predictability of Huntington theory. After that, this theory spread to all walks of life and far surpassing academic and policy research.However, in the academic and policy circles, there have been objections to this, and there are many criticisms.Many scholars believe that their theory cannot stand on their feet, and it is also harmful and unhelpful in actual policies.
According to experience, many wars and conflicts in history are carried out in the same civilization.For example, large -scale conflicts in Europe include World War I and World War II, and most of them are conflicts within European civilization.The double death brought by these wars is more than the war between different civilizations.In the words of Marx, these wars are all disputes between interests, or the embodiment of class contradictions.
At the same time, no war between different civilizations may occur often.Southeast Asia is a good example.Southeast Asia has gathered countries based on different civilizations, such as Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos belongs to Buddhist culture; Vietnam and Singapore are mainly Confucianism and Taoism culture; Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei are mainly Islamic culture; the Philippines and East Timor are Catholicism.Culture, but Southeast Asia has basically not erupted any major conflicts.
After the establishment of the Asian'an, based on the consensus politics of various countries in Southeast Asia, it played a great role in coordinating the regional affairs. Instead, Europe, which belongs to the same civilization, has encountered many troubles including Brexit referendum, including Brexit referendum in recent years.The conflict between the peaceful coexistence between different civilizations between Southeast Asia and the same civilization between Europe and the same civilization formed a sharp contrast.The question raised by people is: Is the conflict between the country be a conflict between civilization?
In Northeast Asia, Japan and North Korea's war against China and North Korea are also difficult to say that it is a conflict of civilization.These countries belong to the same civilization.However, Huntington classified Japan and China into two different civilizations. This is mainly because Japan has a democratic system and China does not have it.But this random classification method also proves the weakness of Huntington theory.
There are too large -scale conflicts between different civilizations
However, Huntington's proposal that this theory is not a simple moaning.Historically, there are indeed large -scale conflicts between different civilizations. The most famous is the Nine Crusades Eastern Expeditions that occurred between 1096 and 1291.What Huntington wants to explore is also an academic issue, that is, the unit of analyzing the war, which is the role of the war in different individuals, nationals, society, religion, civilization or others?Historically, war happened between each unit.
Before modern times, war often occurred between different religious groups and empire groups, and also occurred between different localized regimes.Since modern times, with the formation of national nations, war has occurred between nation -nation or national groups.In this sense, Huntington's theory of civilization conflict is just a unit of war that wants to war back from the national state to the civilization of religious or cultural.
If this is the case, it is understandable to analyze civilization as a unit.But Huntington must make it clear that there will be no conflict between the two different civilizations. The occurrence of the conflict is mobilized by civilization as a war resource; or in other words, civilization is just a war tool.Therefore, with the support of the Catholic Catholic Pope, the Crusades of the Crusades were the war launched by the Western European Lord and the Cavaliers to the East Coast of the Mediterranean Sea where Arab Muslims.Wars of nationalism and national interests.Even in the war in Islamic State, religion is just a tool and means.
But more importantly, Huntington is actually worried that the problem is racial. He proposed that civilized conflict theory mainly concerned about the recognition and condensation of Western civilization.Who is this in his later book?It can be seen clearly in the challenges of the US national identity.In this book, Huntington was very worried about the decrease in the number of white people in the United States and regarded this as yes.Indeed, as the population of African, Spanish, and Asian people continues to increase, white people in the United States will become a minority.So he asked anxiously: Who are we?He found that the future crisis may not be between the country and the country, but between different ethnic and different cultures within one country, so his problem consciousness requires him to naturally raise his vision to a civilized perspective.
It is not difficult to find that behind the theory of civilization, in fact, the subtext of white civilization superiority is actually implied.The civilization of the Bai people is better than other civilizations and represents universal nature. Compared with white civilization, other civilizations are inferior and barbaric, and they should be eliminated and accept white civilization.This is also the meaning of Western people who often call white people.
From the perspective of theory, the conflict of civilization can be traced back to the social Darwinism with a strong racial color generated by the West.Social Darwinism applies the ideas of natural selection and survival of Darwin's theory of Darwin to human society. From the 19th century, it has continued to become popular to the end of World War II.Before Darwin, the theory of social evolution and cultural evolution was also common in the European ideological community.For example, German philosopher Hegel believes that the progress of human society has gone through different stages of development.Early thinkers also believed that struggle was a natural characteristic of social life.
The difference between Social Darwinism and other social change theories is that it applies Darwin's theory of biological evolution to social research.In Darwin, evolution is a natural phenomenon and does not have moral concepts, but in the society of Darwinism, evolution has become progress, progress has become superior, and it has evolved into a moral concept.
Social Darwinism has a huge impact on western social theories.The racial superiority and competition thought of the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century were directly related to Social Darwinism.Internally, this theory is used by its supporters to demonstrate the inequality of society, oppose helping the poor, and advocate the inequality of different ethnic groups.At the international level, this theory is the theoretical basis of colonialism and imperialism.
To put it simply, in the western environment at that time, Social Darwinists believed that white races must be based on civilized education.Darwin's theory of evolution was based on gene babbing and natural selection theory.The genetic bifurcation refers to the separation of a set of species to separate each other, thus developing its own unique genetic characteristics. This theory applies to all creatures including humans.It is precisely because of genes that there are different races and ethnic groups in the future.
The popular views of the end of the 19th century were that the Germans in Northern Europe were excellent races, because they evolved in the cold climate, forcing them to develop higher survival skills. In the present era, they are now keen to expand and adventure.Compared to Africa's warm climate, naturally choose to eliminate individuals with weak and low intelligence in the cold north at a faster speed and more thoroughly.
Social Darwinism claims that a race must be aggressive for survival.White people are regarded as the greatest race, because of the causeHave a sense of superiority and conquest for them.White people conquered barbarians in some places, and they simply extinct them in other places, just as Americans did in North America and British in New Zealand and Australia.Inside Europe, Hitler ruled Germany, and the racism of the superior theory of the Germanic nation caused a massacre of the Jews.
In terms of experience, the West believes that Social Darwinism and the progress and achievements of the Western world have also been directly related to the Western world.Both the modern industrialization and the transformation of politics occur in the West first, and then extend and spread to all parts of the world.Industrialization has created the rapid economic development of the West and has become the richest country in the world.Politically, the sovereignty nation -state in modern forms also first produced in the West, and then democratization also occurred in the West.Western pride's sense of pride is self -explanatory.
Hegel once declared the end of history and believed that the national state can have the last (best) state form that human society can have, and Fukuyama also declared the end of history. It is believed that Western free people can be owned by human society.OK) A form of government.
The issue of racial governance in the West
Social Darwinism is obvious to the disaster caused by human society.After World War II, with the rise of non -Western nationalism and anti -colonialism, this doctrine converged.After that, with the rise and development of the internal black people's rights movement, the West (especially the United States) gradually produced a political correct concept, that is, no discussion on some sensitive issues, including racial issues.
However, it is clear that discussing whether one race is superior to another race is political incorrect, but not discussing does not mean that this concept completely disappears.On the contrary, this concept exists deeply in people's subconscious, and constantly expresses the behavior of people in different forms in different forms.
Obama is the first black president of the United States. After being elected, the United States discussed publicly on the governance issues facing the United States.Dissatisfaction with Obama becomes President of the United States.After running the presidential process and elected president, Trump has never concealed his dissatisfaction with ethnic minorities such as African and Spanish.He was very targeted by abolition of Obama's medical reform.
On the international stage, although the Western -style imperialism and colonialism have ended since World War II, the United States (and West) has never stopped spreading western civilization to other countries, that is, to promote the Western -style political and economic system to non -Western countries.The United States spent a lot of property in this regard, but after the local country accepted (voluntary or compulsive) Western system, it not only could not establish the order of Western way, but became anarchy.And not to mention long -distance, the chaos in the Middle East today is the result of the United States' implementation of the Democratic Plan of the Greater Middle East in this region.Nevertheless, the United States is still happy.
The United States has also been worried about the rise of other nations and civilizations. Some people worry that the civilization of white people will eventually be conquered and replaced by the inferior national civilization they see.Today, with the rise of China, they began to worry about the Chinese Civilization Society threatened Western civilization.From this perspective, it is not difficult for people to understand the motivation of today's Sino -US relations with the theory of civilized conflicts at the beginning of this article.In fact, the Chinese policy of the entire United States (Western) contains the factors of Western civilization to Chinese civilization, but it only uses different concepts to make different packaging, such as democracy and freedom of slavery.
From a historical point of view, people or civilizations are unremarkable and normal to be proud of their nation and civilization.However, if it contains a submarine word with racial or civilized superiority, it will evolve into a civilized faculty, and it will move towards irrational internal and external behaviors, which will eventually lead to human tragedy.With the deterioration of Sino -US relations today, I hope history will not be briefly reproduced.
The author is a professor at the East Asia Research Institute of Singapore's National University
The article only represents personal point of view
