the rise of china between cultural and civilizational rationalities: lessons from four qing cases Chih-Yu Shih National Taiwan University E-mail cyshih@ntu.edu.tw Chihyun Chang Shanghai Jiao Tong University E-mail chihyun@sjtu.edu.cn The rise of China is a major feature of global politics at the beginning of the twenty-first cen- tury, and one that raises the question of how a rising China and global politics will adapt to each other. This study argues that historical cases are also useful in addressing this question. Four cases are compared: two during the reign of Emperor Xianfeng and another two under the rule of Emperor Guangxu. Emperor Xianfeng’s view of China was that it possessed a unique culture that should be separated from alien forces, which he intuitively conceived as different, whereas Emperor Guangxu accepted exchanges with the West as a civilization and was willing to learn from them as a cultural resource. Despite this difference in their pol- itical perspectives, both emperors similarly faced constraints to their power in implementing their policies. Two cases are selected for each emperor to demonstrate how they acted differ- ently from a cultural orientation of estrangement and exchange on one hand as well as a pos- ition of strength and weakness on the other. This comparative study provides insights into how China in the twenty-first century adapts to its expanding influence. Keywords: Rise of China; Qing; War; civilizational politics; cultural memory introduction: global politics vs. china China’s rise is a major feature of global politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century that raises many questions. In the process of moving from a position of relative weakness to a position of relative strength, how will a rising China and global politics adapt to each other? Will China’s rise be a rational process or not? This article argues that in addition to current international relations theory, historical cases are also useful in answering these questions. Primarily, the article asks whether or not, and how, China is ready to learn from and adapt to global conditions and how a general frame of foreign policy moti- vations can evolve from a discussion on China. In the article, four cases are compared: two International Journal of Asian Studies, 14, 1 (2017), pp. 1–25 © Cambridge University Press, 2017 doi:10.1017/S1479591416000231 1 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479591416000231 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core . IP address: 54.161.69.107, on 13 Jun 2020 at 15:23:34, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms .