L'Ancien Régime Legacy of the Chinese Governance: Grand Union and the Common Good

Abstract

Governance is essentially a dynamic mechanism to promote collective action for the common good. The Chinese concept of the public/common (gōnggòng) and its political philosophy of Grand Union governance provide an alternative perspective for understanding such dynamics from the unit of family through institutions to the state-embedded society. Three critical arguments with interconnected elements are analysed: governance as a dynamic mechanism; review of the historical, philosophical and political legacy of Chinese governance; and proposal of a framework for governance of the Grand Union. It concludes that ‘Chinese characteristics’, such as diverse adaptations, gradual flexibility, experimental pragmatism, and polycentric balance with a strong central state are all deeply rooted in its pre-revolutionary ancien régime. In order to understand these seemingly different institutions and values, we need to revisit their original functionality of governing for the common good.

When the Grand Union is pursued, a public and common spirit ruled all under tianxia.

(Confucius, [475 BC – 221 BC] The Classic of Rites)

Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.

(Rousseau, [1762] The Social Contract)

Introduction

Our understanding of the concept of the public sphere and the private sphere and its governance for common good is not much better than it was when Rousseau lived. The general will of the people as the common good should theoretically be the prime goal of the state. The difficulty that led Rousseau to give up Political Institutions, however, remains the difficulty of cooperation between individuals and states in the sense of a moral obligation to promote the common good of humanity.

Although the concepts of governance in China and the West have developed along different paths, both serve as tools for addressing challenging and complex social and public affairs. However, there are significant differences in the morphological approaches and philosophical origins of governance between China and the West. This article examines a primary problem, namely the understanding of these differences from their historical, political, and philosophical origins. The article has gone through three critical arguments with interconnected elements. The first argument concerns governance. Governance has become such a broad concept, even as an interdisciplinary research agenda, in which the state has suddenly lost its role. The term governance is essentially interpreted as a dynamic mechanism for tackling social dilemmas of sharing and cooperation for the common good. The second argument deals with the historical legacy of the Chinese governance system. Starting with the introduction of the crucial concept of public/common (gōnggòng), the paper asks how the public sphere coordinates with the private sphere in the governance structure and process in China. Dynamic polycentric governance goes beyond the simple distinction between the public and the private. This is where the interest of individuals, families and clans, communities, and governmental agencies meet to gain collective interest. The third argument in support of the primary thesis is putting pieces together to build the normative governance framework of the Grand Union. What does governance with ‘Chinese characteristics’ mean? These characteristics may include the flexibility, pragmatism, a highly experimental, adaptive, and polycentric balance of various forces with a strong central state, deeply rooted in their pre-revolutionary l’ancien régimes. Here, l’ancien regimes refers to the central political philosophy core built throughout the history that was based on a rich cultural tradition with its foundation in the Chinese bureaucracy. To understand these seemingly different institutions and values, we need to revisit their original functionality of governing for the common good.

Governance: a Dynamic Process for the Common Good

Governance in Retrospect

Governer, from the early eleventh-century French, refers to the rule with authority. Governance primarily signifies the governing power of the state, originally associated with the government. Therefore, governance is always discussed “within the state, by the state, without the state, and beyond the state” [14]. The Weberian state is the political organisation with the power of hierarchical control and violent coercion to maintain order and law.

As a structure, governance signifies the architecture of formal and informal institutions; as a process it signifies the dynamics and steering functions involved in lengthy never-ending processes of policy-making; as a mechanism it signifies institutional procedures of decision-making, of compliance and of control (or instruments); finally, as strategy it signifies the actors’ efforts to govern and manipulate the design of institutions and mechanisms in order to shape choice and preferences [14].

As an important term in social sciences, governance has become overwhelmingly popular in the fields of economics, politics, environmental studies, and many other disciplines in recent decades. In fact, governance has already been a fad in which governing-without-government is infatuated with some scholars who interpret governance as a new procedural method of governing, in contrast to the old meaning of government [6, 26].

With the rise of governance studies in Western academia, a distinction has been made between “government” and “governance”. The idea that the principal body responsible for governance is not necessarily the state, and hence governance does not inherently require the strong support of the state in order to function properly. Elinor Ostrom strongly criticized the simplified governance of two organisational forms in human society, state, and market. Apart from the Great Leviathan of the state (coercive force under the state authority) or the invisible hand of the market (imposition of private property rights and price mechanism), there is a third way of self-governance by local communities (internalisation of commitment as trust) [21, 23]. The self-governance of the commons is underlined by the establishment of sustainable polycentric institutions on shared resource systems. Polycentric governance indicates that the state is no longer the optimal organisational form for decision-making, nor is the market. Instead, there are various actors with different characteristics and positions that act with distinctive strategies in human situations, as illustrated in the Institutional Analysis and Development framework (IAD) [16, 22, 24]. Facilitated by substantial empirical evidence of human behaviour derived from meta-analysis of common-pool resource cases generated in laboratories and in the field, polycentric governance seemed to be directed against the state. It presents itself almost in the same fashion of James Scott’s strong antithetical argument to the government, as if one were to see communities like a state in a moral economy [29, 30]. So, is polycentric governance a good substitute for the state? And would governance without government be a fundamental paradigm shift in the twenty-first century? To answer these questions, we need to explore the myth of governance (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Governance framework (author’s work)

Governance is the complex and dynamic mechanism facilitated by various institutions and organisations, all of which are embedded in a particular value system. It deconstructs the simple demarcation of the state, market, and society by presenting the polycentric interactions of multiple institutions and actors with distinct powers and structures. The mechanism is complex, diverse, dynamic and interdependent, rather than the simple dichotomy of the top-down or bottom-up approaches.

Institutionalised governance is more delicate than the Great Leviathan in total power. Rather, it requires more complicated coordination of formal and informal institutions as well as perpetual adaptations and changes, along with its dynamic evolutionary mechanism. Institutional capability to govern depends not only on the competence and effectiveness of such an institutional arrangement, but also on its ability to adapt, learn, and innovate.

As a dynamic and complex process, governance refers to an evolving flow of objectives, procedures, and outcomes. This is the concept of good governance that the World Bank has adopted since the 1990s. World Bank even compiled a Worldwide Governance Indicator (WGI) project to quantify aggregated governance indicators for over 200 countries from six dimensions, namely voice and accountability, regulatory quality, political stability and absence of violence/terrorism, rule of law, government effectiveness, and control of corruption. China has seen a moderate increase in the scores for these six dimensions of governance over the past decades. China’s governance indicators present an obvious structural variance, that is, the index closely related to economic and social development but less related to ideology and polity; scores and rankings are higher and also show an evident growth trend; otherwise, the score and ranking are low, and the growth is relatively slow or even decline.

The existing international governance index, such as WGI, mainly reflects the centrality and rule-making power of the developed countries in the practice of global governance, and therefore it fully reflects their value orientation. China should continuously enhance and optimise its own governance theory and practice—do a better job of “telling China’s stories and conveying China’s voice”—through greater participation in international affairs and international organisations, better communications with all relevant parities in international community, and more provision of international public goods, so that China’s concepts of governance can integrate and transform the value system of global governance at a deeper level. More symbiotic aspects of the Chinese and Western concepts of governance should be explored, and the differences between the two need to be bridged with constructive attitudes and innovative approaches, for the purpose of avoiding vicious competition and conflicts in governance models.

Governance is a process that has a clear a priori objective and a post hoc outcome of achieving the good governance. The governing process consists of actions and counteractions, generated by multiple actors’ behaviour and its outcome. It is a process of negotiations and compromises to address conflicts of interest and a collective action process focused on the long-term common good. Governance is essentially a mechanism to resolve the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ by promoting collective action on the commons and maintaining this long-term cooperation for the common interest of all. The Chinese concept of the public/common (gōnggòng) and its political philosophy of Grand Union governance offer an alternative perspective to understand this altruism from the unit of family, rather than from rational individuals, up to a humane state embedded in society. Grand Union, as stated in Confucius words, is the great principle to serve the common good prevailing throughout the whole world. This is the non-ideological equilibrium among forces from different parts of the system, for instance, forces of the state and the market within the system.

The pursuit of good governance is a global consensus, but its specific connotation and realisation path differ in various contexts. The successful practice of ‘Chinese governance’ in many aspects, such as poverty alleviation, combating climate change, is undoubtedly the best evidence of the pluralism of good governance. The modern concept of governance, mostly emerged from the West, reflects the response to the complexity of public affairs in postmodern society. Governance advocates pluralistic cooperation to reshape the relationship between government, market, and society, to transcend the modern bureaucracy and administrative system, and to achieve the ideal state of ‘polycentric governance without government’.

The concept and practice of governance developed in quite different contexts of occurrence and establishment in China. As far as the Chinese traditional politics is concerned, governance itself also implies the traditional Chinese way of politics and rule. Since the word ‘governance’ is derived from governing water, it has been associated with water in the writing of its Chinese character ‘zhi’. In contrast, the word ‘government’ has been associated with the word right (zheng), indicating the way of government needs to be right.

Specifically, there are at least three strains of meaning of governance in Chinese tradition: firstly, it refers to the usual sense of regulation or management; secondly, it refers to the theory of governance or the rationale for governing the country; finally, it also refers to all political affairs that can be governed according to their own laws, or that they can all achieve the goal or ideal of governance, and that everything can be governed in an orderly manner. Therefore, governance refers to both the general activities of regulation or management and the laws, rules, or principles that must be followed in the governance of political affairs. It also encompasses the aims, goals, or ideals to be achieved in governance.

The way of governance had been discussed and practised as a primary concern. On the basis of this, there have been a number of practicing principles formed, such as the rules of severity, punishment, and ritual and music. As Laozi recapitulated in Tao Te Ching: ‘When we can lay hold of the Dao of old to direct the things of the present day, and are able to know it as it was of old in the beginning, this is called (unwinding) the clue of Dao’. According to Chinese tradition, governance is not only the art of governance, but also the way of governance, which contains the fundamental principle of governance and politics. To govern means to rule, and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, the way of governance and the way of government are one and two sides. The polity (political or state system) in the western sense is usually regarded as the ‘system’ in the traditional Chinese context, which belongs to the political art of ruling, instead of the way of governance. Moreover, it has little value to talk abstractly about the system or the principles of the system, apart from the way of governance. There is no such thing as a naturally legitimate system. The legitimacy of any system lies in the way of governance and the way of government, in whether it can put an end to disorderly government and achieve reasonable order of governance. In the context of traditional Chinese governance thinking, in a sense, politics originates from governance, and the goal of politics is to govern.

The social dilemma of sharing limited resources highlights the general difficulty of achieving cooperative governance in human affairs. To serve the common interest is the ultimate goal of all civilisations. The assumption that Western modernity is the mainstay of contemporary discourse inevitably placed Chinese civilization into a subordinate position, which then gradually turned into a Chinese-style interpretation of Western values [34]. The core of the mainstream theories of governance, mostly developed in the West, is to centre for individual rights as the core of society is not suitable for analysis of governance in China, whose tradition attaches significant importance to the governance of power construction. For the Chinese tradition, the individual, the family, the state, and the world are originally one, and the word ‘governance’ is the thread that runs through them. Therefore, Chinese discussions on the way of government or politics are in fact discussions on the way of governance.

The following section examines the concept of gōnggòng, one of China’s essential untranslatable cultural essences, and other important historical legacies of governance in philosophy, culture, and politics.

The Untranslatable Public: gōnggòng

Languages are easy to translate, the difficult part are the untranslatable ones. When cultures and civilizations of different kinds come across with each other, there are always some messages awkwardly search for corresponding paraphrases that are either heavily abused or conveyed in parallel spaces. These are the essential values. The untranslatable codes are usually the fundamental cultural essences of symbolic systems in every civilization: in another word, harmony without homogeneity. The harmony without homogeneity (he’erbutong) refers to the cooperative coexistence of different cultures and civilizations, such harmony can only be achieved by continuous dialogues and negotiations. Understanding the untranslatable cultural essences of the others is the necessary first step.

The Public Versus the Common

The term ‘public/common’ (written 公共 in Chinese and gōnggòng in Pinyin) has two separate connotations in Chinese. 公 gōng links up with public authority and power, whereas 共 gòng refers to sharing in common or commonality.¹

The first character, gōng, refers to the non-private sphere, either public or collective, but one that is customarily related to the state, authority, and officialdom. This constitutes the vertical dimension of gōnggòng: public authority. The earliest record of the terms ‘public land’ (gongtian) and ‘private land’ (sitian) dates from the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE) and appears in the Book of Odes (Decade of Bei Shan, Minor Odes of the Kingdom): ‘may it rain first on our public fields, and then come to our private [ones]!’ (James Legge Version). Here, public fields owned by the state were communally cultivated land representing authority and privilege. During the Eastern Zhou (770–255 BCE), public land was created along with private land in well-field systems (jingtian zhidu), as described in The Works of Mencius (340–250 BCE). The peasants cultivated public land for the benefit of the emperor, aristocrats, and the army. Thus, in origin gōng (public authority) is directly linked to authority and power.

The second dimension of gòng means sharing-in-common. Gōnggòng was initially used as a repeated composition of the characters gōng and gòng to reinforce the meaning of both. Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historians (109–91 BCE; Herbert J. Allen Version) stated that the law shall be commonly shared and rules for both the emperor and all others under tianxia (all under heaven) must be kept, indicating that gōnggòng simply meant sharing-in-common, with reinforcement of the meaning by the repeated connotation of gòng. The vertical meaning of authority was suddenly assigned to gōnggòng by the lexical separation of the emperor and tianxia. Since the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), the term gōnggòng has been widely used to mean both vertical authority and horizontal sharing-in-common.

Sharing in common could take place within the family, clan, community, nation-state, or even tianxia. Tianxia is an ambiguous term with different interpretations. Its boundary expands beyond nation-state because tianxia was originated from the ‘all under heaven’ which refers to everything in the living world. Hereby, tianxia is a large-scale and multi-ethnic political community with uncertain borders, for instance, including overseas Chinese communities. Confusion between the terms gōng and gòng was deeply embedded throughout society. The notion of what is possessed by all was another sense of the things that were placed in the custody of authority. gōnggòng was frequently used together as a word, and in most cases, both gōng and gòng were inseparable and exchangeable. gōnggòng literally means what is public and common, with the connotations of gòngtong (together, jointly) and gōngzhong (the general public). It emphasized the public interest of common people in contrast to their private interests. This explained why the gōnggòng in the West was often translated as public affairs when the term was firstly introduced into China.

Lost in Translation

Civilisations survive and develop with the help of language. When one civilisation meets with another, translation becomes the bridge of both diachronic and synchronic transfers of significance [4, 13]. Translation has helped Chinese culture to interact with the culture of others. But it is equally true that some elements of such transfer of significance may have got lost during the translation process, due to cultural and historical constraints. The translation of the concept of gōnggòng in Chinese presents such a story of being lost in translation.

Although the concept of gōnggòng had long existed in China, without systematic theorization, the notion became blurred and was lost in its translation and reinterpretation in the modern epoch. Japan embraced substantial Chinese philosophies, many of which were later reinterpreted and reintroduced back to modern China. During the Ming dynasty, the concept of 公 was exported to Japan together with Neo-Confucianism. The gōnggòng was then widely studied, but it became deeply intertwined with the Japanese etymon 公 (gōng in Chinese, ooyake in Japanese), which reinforced the meaning of authority contained in the Chinese concept. A deeply ingrained idea of authority could also be traced to the modification of Confucianism when it was firstly introduced into Japan—placing loyalty in the centre of Japanese Confucianism and cutting out the idea of benevolence. This was exceptional because in Chinese Confucianism benevolence is considered to be the core of humanity, which brings harmony to society. But the re-interpretation of Confucian values by the Japanese in the early stages of military influence emphasized loyalty instead. Even the essential meaning of loyalty changed from ‘being true to one’s own conscience’ in China to ‘a sincerity that aimed at total devotion to one’s lord’ in Japan. ‘Japanese Confucianism is remarkably nationalistic’ because ‘the whole people owed loyalty to the Emperor either directly or indirectly (pp. 14–15)’ [17].

Until the seventeenth century, Ito Jinsai expanded the concept of 公共 by contrasting authority and dao—conformity with the common interest of all. Dao has much larger connotation in China than in Japan, ranging widely from the origin of the universe to the natural law, from social trends to political ethics. Its original meaning was used to demonstrate the relationship between individuals and others (including other individuals, nature, and the universe). The ultimate fulfilment of dao is the harmonious unification between human values and the universe. Although complying with dao is essential, mechanical and formalistic obedience to concrete rules is not. Obedience to dao should be dynamic and interactive because the dao is flexible and is attached to no fixed practice. Laozi argued, ‘the dao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging dao’. The ‘placid and contented nature’ of dao requires wuwei, which is letting things taking their own course rather than passive non-action. Wuwei suggests reducing risks and uncertainty to the lowest level with the smallest costs. Unfortunately, due to misinterpretations not just in Japan but also in China, the terms dao and wuwei depicted the mysterious Laozi as preoccupied with religious sphere, which subsequently undermined his philosophical thoughts.

From the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries onwards, Japan adopted a great number of Western concepts. Meiji scholar Yokoi Shonan reinterpreted 公共 as representing the horizontal dimension of the term, the public, although he never abandoned the vertical dimension of authority contained in the term. Until 1874, 公共 was officially taken to be the translation of the public (horizontal dimension) in Japan. Fukuzawa Yukichi defined 公共 as the public, derived from the Japanese translation of the term ‘public works’ in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. This new development gradually departed from the vertical dimension of authority and control.

After the Western imperial invasion of the nineteenth century in China, a train of thoughts emerged there too, reflecting the realities of that particular time. The concept 公共 was reintroduced from Japan as the ‘return graphic loan’.² Liang Qichao discussed gōnggòng in the Theory of New People as consisting both of the general public’s consciousness and state control, obviously influenced by its Japanese meaning. Liang argued in 1902 that the absence of gōnggòng awareness made it impossible for new people with the sense of citizenship in the nation to exist and the general public’s lack of a common or public awareness was a fatal shortcoming in China.

L'Ancien Régime Heritage of Chinese Governance

Political Philosophy of the Public

Confucian Ideology

The Confucian concept of the Grand Union is the key to the Chinese gōnggòng. In pursuit of the Grand Union, self-cultivation is key to the regulation of the family and the governance of the state, eventually bringing about the ‘kingdom tranquillity and happiness’. To be more specific, the ‘cultivation of the person depends on rectifying the mind’ and being ‘sincere in thought’, as well as extending to the greatest possible extend of one's knowledge via the exploration and investigation of things (Confucius, [475 BC – 221 BC] The Classic of Rites, The Great Learning). We should neither pessimistically accept our rational and selfish human origin nor entirely defy it. The best way lies in between: people may be self-interested but they should not necessarily be egoistical. People are capable of cooperation for the common interest via the cultivation of moral, legal, or economic values. Confucianism advocates the regulation of society using benevolence, correct conduct, and responsibility, instead of through the concept of individual rights. Unlike a creation of a unity of the opposites between responsibility and right in law, a sense of responsibility is more important than that of rights in Confucianism.

Both Confucius and Mencius believed that benevolence originated from the good nature of man, particularly love for one’s family members. Mencius clearly defined four kinds of man’s mind (xin) residing the Confucian concept of humanity, namely, ren, yi, li, zhi (benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and knowledge): ‘men have these four principles just as they have their four limbs’ (Mencius, [340 BC – 250 BC] The Works of Mencius, Gongsun Chou I). Those four virtues of xin are the foundation of good human nature. However, they may be hidden or deceived by material desire and surrounding environment, which is why individuals turn to vice. Losing the self through negligence indicates that the existence of xin requires cultivation. In seeking xin, we engage dynamically in self-fulfilment and self-transcendence. Although Xunzi held an opposite view that human nature is fundamentally evil, while goodness is a secondary manifestation that is cultivated and acquired with effort, his theory is actually in agreement within the Confucian framework. First, they both suggest that altering one’s human nature, which is not unchangeable, needs self-cultivation. Second, all debates on human nature lead to the ultimate goal of creating benevolence.

Generally speaking, benevolence consists of a love for all men (Confucius, [475 BC – 221 BC] Analects, Yan Yuan). Yet, this love can be deconstructed. The love of the self is the starting point and foundation of all love, but it is not the centre of benevolence. The second level is love of the family. As Confucius said, filial piety and fraternal submission are at the root of all benevolent actions (Confucius, [475 BC – 221 BC] Analects, Xue Er). From the love between family members, benevolence and tolerance are extended to other people in the community. Eventually, benevolence expands to the largest level that includes ‘all under tianxia as a family’ (Confucius, [475 BC – 221 BC] The Classic of Rites, Ceremonial Usages).

According to Confucius, a combination of extended love, morality, and universal benevolence is only way to reach Grand Union. ‘When the Grand Course was pursued, a public and common spirit ruled all under [tianxia] … In this way [selfish] scheming was repressed and found no development … this was what we call Grand Union’ (Confucius, [475 BC – 221 BC] The Classic of Rites, Ceremonial Usages). Confucius emphasizes regulation by benevolence, correct conduct, and taking responsibility, but he avoids a discussion of the individual self. The governance of gōnggòng thus sketched is mostly based on custom—leaving decisions to officials who, with their more developed moral codes, were more capable of acting for the common good. So gòng works with gōng to serve the common interest of people.

As a conservative ideology, Confucianism offers a strict hierarchy of values in both the political and social spheres. In an ideal harmonious society, correct conduct dictates that one position oneself correctly in society, involving and complementing the complicated relations of family, state, and other organizations. Contrary to the emphasis of individual rights in Western individualism, Confucianism emphasizes the individual positioning in the social network rather than the self, that is, social identity is more important than personal identity. Chinese philosophical thought considers people and substances within a unit but not on an individual basis. Hence, all Confucian doctrines are based on regulating people in social networking and building supportive networks of personal ties with surrounding connections. In such a hierarchical and unified philosophy, the common interest is easier to achieve due to the weakening of the notion of a discrete individual existence. The lack of a micro-level unit of individuals makes it difficult to build a Western type of civil society. ‘Chinese see themselves more as parts of specific webs of relations than as common members of a single nation’ [15]. China’s unified history has repeatedly demonstrated how attending to the common interest can determine the way in which the economy and society is organized. The Confucian ideology undoubtedly played an important role, from its official status of imperial ideology to its overwhelming permeation throughout the society.

Confucianism’s depiction of the ideal governance of ethics and morality also prioritized an institutional environment that was able to regulate people’s self-interest.

People are born with desires, thus one cannot live without pursuit if the desires are not obtained. Yet if there are no regulation and limits on such pursuits then conflicts shall arise, once there are conflicts the disorder would occur, which then leads to predicament … To ensure that people’s desires are not discontent due to material constraints, while on the other hand the material resources would not dry up because of human desires. May desire and material interact in a balance growth.

(Xunzi, [475 BC – 221 BC] The Works of Xunzi, Lilun).

Hanfeizi (Legalism) argued that although improving individual ethics and morality is essential, moralization alone does not offer enough incentives for spontaneous cooperation. Therefore, Hanfeizi suggested using compulsory institutions to modify people’s behaviour and to build a more cooperative society. ‘Human nature generates likes and dislikes, thus rewards and punishments should be applied. By using rewards and punishments, prohibitions are established and governance is complete. The emperor who controls political power can then deal with all conditions, and thus every order and prohibition can be executed by strict enforcement’ (Hanfeizi, [475 BC – 221 BC] The Works of Hanfeizi, Bajing,). Legalism, even Taoism needs to be contextualized in the larger framework of Confucianism as a social ideology. The enriched system of Confucianism has determined the roles of law and religion in China and ‘produced strong social cohesion and extraordinary equilibrium’ [25].

People-Oriented Philosophy

People-oriented philosophy is the core of Chinese political philosophy, which is centred on the unity of opposites between the imperial power and the common people.

As for people (renmin), ren does not necessarily mean min, because min corresponds to the emperor and authority, while ren was contrasted with things and nature. Originated from the ren-oriented concerns of inner cultivation and harmonious coordination with the others and nature, min-oriented governance became inevitable through the early construction of a centralized bureaucracy. The people were treated as the root of for the purpose of maintaining the emperor’s reign and the deep imprint of his authority. Bureaucratic officialdom is an extension of the emperor himself and the means by which authority penetrated deeply into society. The term ‘people’ (renmin) does not refer to the Chinese in the strict sense of the members of the nation-state, but to an entity consisting of various traditional cultural elements and inheritances that exceeds a single culture and nation-state, and is dynamically transformed into a new system of values.

Serving the common interest of the people is the source of China’s legitimacy, not necessarily in the model of Western democracy. Zuo Zhuan ([468 BC – 300 BC] commentary to the ancient Chinese chronicle Chunqiu) stated that the common interest of the people should be prioritized over the emperor’s interest. The most famous Confucian proposition is the ‘people are the most important element in a nation; the spirits of the land and grain are the next; the sovereign is the lightest’ (Mencius, [340 BC – 250 BC] The Works of Mencius, Jin Xin II). Also—‘the beginning of dominant overlord is people-oriented, if this root is in order, then the country is solid, if this root is in trouble, then the country is in danger’ (The Book of Guanzi, [475 BC – 220 BC] Bayan). ‘It was the lesson of our great ancestor: the people should be cherished, and not looked down upon. The people are the root of a country, when the root is firm, the country is tranquil’ (The Book of Documents, [772 BC – 476 BC] Songs of Five Sons). ‘The emperor is the boat, the common people are the water; the water can support the boat and also can upset it’ (The Works of Xunzi, [475 BC – 221 BC] Wangzhi). Ancient political philosophies state that the only way to maintain the emperor’s reign is to meet the common aspirations of the people, to consider their appeals and to eliminate their hostility.

People-oriented philosophy emphasizes the people’s subjectivity, independence, and proactivity. Maintaining order for the family and society relies on people’s self-discipline and self-cultivation, rather than on an external God. To enrich people was as important as enlightening them by the means of laws and moral rules. While emperors should cultivate the qualities of the internal sage and external king, officials should aim for absolute public and common interest and suppressing self-interest, and the people’s aim is for a good nature and inclination. In all, self-cultivation is both critical and achievable. People’s self-cultivation supports them in resisting material desires and developing integrity. Therefore, a people-oriented philosophy is neither God-worshipping nor material-craving. What is people-orientation is not people-centred, particularly in the relationships between humans and the natural world, for it prioritizes tian and dao. Therefore, understanding people-oriented philosophy is essential for understanding the Chinese concept of gōnggòng and its governance.

Revitalisation of Public Philosophy in East Asia

In recent decades, public philosophy has been revived in East Asia. One particular focus has been on the distinction between the public and the private spheres. In China and other East Asian cultures, the public (gōng) and the private (si) are not necessarily antithetical. In addition to its meaning of private, si also means iniquitous and depraved. Correspondingly, gōng has a positive ethical connotation of anti-egoism. ‘[R]evitalizing the private sphere and empowering the public sphere’ is to respect the range of players from individual to the universal level in order to address the common interest of humanity [11].

Asian scholars like Sasaki Takeshi and Kim Tae-chang used a ‘world-state-locality’ model to construct a public philosophy framework, re-introducing the traditional concepts of qi (force), li (principle) and chang (locality), to balance the public and private spheres. This new framework is extensive because it includes space, time, and locality. The public world in this framework consists of larger space and locality and a longer timeline of present and past. It also denotes a ‘responsive, multidimensional and responsible’ relationship between the self, others, and the public. It is responsive because it takes into account people’s relationships and where they are located, as well as their existence in history. The world-state-locality is structured by responsive communication. The recognition that it is multidimensional is particularly important in the era of globalization, when people’s identity becomes complicated. Not only is the self-composed of overlapping and multiple identities, but others and the public are also multidimensional.

The idea that the private sphere may be sacrificed for the public sphere has long roots in Chinese history irrespective of whether society was ruled by law or by ethics and aims to constrain selfish desire and the scope of self-interest. When ancient Chinese philosophers encountered the difficulties of minimizing tension between the private and public realm, they created the much larger, inclusive concept of tianxia. As Zhu Xi demonstrated, ‘the commons between heaven and earth (tiandi gōnggòng)’ represents the vertical dimension of the commons that justifies the exercise of authority over tianxia by those such as the emperor, the state, and the bureaucracy, while ‘the commons among the people (zhongren gōnggòng)’ signifies the horizontal dimension of the commons which emphasizes relationships among all the people [35]. Therefore, the justification of patriarchal governance can be integrated with the consciousness of individual existence. A philosophy that prioritizes the public over the private realm then developed in Japan, particularly during the Edo/Tokugawa period and the Meiji Era. The vertical meaning of gōnggòng as a hierarchical authority was amplified in the Edo concept ooyake, which refers to a community leader of various smaller entities, such as the Mikado and his government.

Later, Western public philosophy, ranging from the European philosophy to Anglo-American studies of the public sphere, was introduced to Asia. Then Asian thought was split into Eurocentric and conservative directions. On one hand, people completely abandoned the traditional notion of the gōnggòng and embraced Western utilitarianism and contractarianism. On the other hand, people also adhered to traditional values and rejected all reforms. This is because two dimensions of gōnggòng were separately reinforced in each school. A more balanced approach is to learn from Western notions while still maintaining the abstraction of empirical evidence of Asian values.

Cultural Intimacy of the Society

The public and common spirit is defined by cultural sentiments. Cultural intimacy is the common ground of a nation-state and a living source of its ideology.³ By creating cultural intimacy through social power structure and its checks and balances, the power of the nation-state is reinforced and people bind together in cultural or national ways. The intangible nexus of sentiments based upon family is the key determinant of collective commons and internal bonds to maintain interest relationship in China. The guanxi society with ‘pattern of difference sequences’ [9] is where the individual emerges from the social network of guanxi that gives individuality its meaning and secondary place in Chinese culture, and this is how Chinese society and state is constructed.

Family and Patriarchy

Guanxi, as an extended network over the family and lineage clan, is an inherent feature of Chinese society. In patriarchal society, lineage clans obtained a strong sense of common interest; moreover, the ‘traditional family pattern seems to have made individuals even more inclined to seek security through conformity than was the case in less family-bound society of the West’ [25]. The family-centred guanxi network is the reflection of Confucius’ model of extended love, which begins with the most cohesive love of the family nucleus as the foundation of ethics and benevolence and progresses to a much looser intimacy of guanxi.

Confucius reasoned that the relationship between the family, state and self-cultivation was a fundamental social mechanism:

The ancients, who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge.

(Confucius, [475 BC – 221 BC] The Classic of Rites, The Great Learning).

The mechanism of family-state-tianxia clearly placed the family as the basic unit of society, and the nation-state and tianxia are both enlarged versions of the family. ‘China’s whole ethical system thus tended to be family-centred and particularistic, not universalistic and oriented toward God or state, as in the West’ [25]. At the micro-level, the family is an effective unit for achieving the common interest of its members, and in turn, the clan serves the common good of communities.

Family, in a larger sense as the kin with common lineage, is always the basic unit of Chinese society. Unlike in the West, the basis of family is not the husband-wife relationship, but the patriarch-offspring lineage, maintaining which is the primary purpose of marriage [9]. It is the ranking of precedence between the elderly and the young and male and female that organizes the family. Individuals within the family do not have distinct identities, and so they can be abstracted into the family unit. The family relationship is prioritized over law, which is also considered as the origin of a society ruled by man, not by law.

The family, relying on their affiliation to their lineage, manage property and common resources. The family, as the smallest unit that possessed property, represented ‘private’ ownership. The family patriarchs exercised absolute authority over the family property (land, house and money), and they represented all family members when discussing issues of common resource with other patriarchs and village chieftains.

Diffused Religion

Ancient Chinese civilization developed a sophisticated bureaucratic system and a diffused religion of functional supernatural beliefs to structure and regulate its secular society. Religion did not play a formal part in politics due to the absence of a concrete doctrinal system, fixed religious representatives, and strong cohesion of followers. But together with other cultural and philosophical qualities, the diffused religion built on an intangible nexus of Chinese cultural intimacy, in which the state and bureaucracy developed into a unique formation.

The seemingly absence of religion contradicts the widely prevailing temples and ancestral sacrifices throughout the whole of China. In Yang’s view, in ‘institutional religion’, there is an independent organization of values and rites, and its belief system is strongly supported by well-organized entities and a professional clergy. But in ‘diffused religion’, there is no such independence because it is deeply embedded in secular society [33]. Diffused religion is rooted in a family and lineage network, as well as in the official bureaucracy and local elite organizations. A belief in the supernatural lies at the base of Chinese religion—people believe there are unknown forces that determine their fate in mysterious ways. Diffused religion is an informal facilitator of social cohesion. It plays an important role in maintaining social order and stability.

Widespread temples and ancestral worship not only provided for religious expression, but also acted as an informal organizer of collective action safeguarding the common interest of communities. The whole village built temples together, pooling their financial and physical resources. Many rural temples were used for solving conflicts and meting out punishments. They were an informal constraint on rule breaking. Sometimes this had a more important impact on behaviour than formal bureaucratic rules. Chinese religion was carried out in combination with spiritual and secular beliefs by means of the family and local cohesive activities, with strong communal features. Even in Confucius’ hierarchical society, patriarchal clans shared a common interest in ancestral worship in spite of their distinctive economic status. Educated clan elites were responsible for developing the genealogy to maintain patriarchal cohesion. The income generated by communal ancestral property was used for building schools or supporting disadvantaged family members.

The State and Beyond

Governance is a dynamic system rather than government in the modern sense, which in China is ‘finely balanced and well tempered to preserve an equilibrium among three strata – the monarch and his officials, the landlord-scholar-gentry class, the illiterate but cultured farming populace’ [9].

Formation of the State

State formation in China was different from that of Europe. Since the Xia Dynasty or even earlier, the state developed from reinforced patriarchal clan power. There occurred a key social transformation from primitive tribal family to the patriarchal clan family [32]. This major change resulted in economic polarization and hierarchal status. The patriarchal clan system became the foundation of later socioeconomic institutions. Such a patriarchal agricultural society required more obedience and authoritarian control because monarchical power was religious and military and based upon hierarchal clan power. The kings had arisen from the patriarchs of dominant clans, who were usually later deified as legitimate rulers. The state was born during the process of social stratification along with polarization and frequent wars. Such a patriarchy-based state was different from an armed public force, for it was hierarchical in origin.

A centralized state was the guiding force governing the commons, but their objectives needed to be represented via the participation of the local elites and by building systems to penetrate and influence local communities. The state used minimal effort to govern the commons by relying on other informal institutions. Besides compulsory force and economic incentive, the state also relied on education in ethics and morality to govern local communities. A notable example is the rural binding (xiangyue) system, which is the organization at local level to educate and discipline people via the rural elites and clan chieftains.

China experienced challenging times struggling with the gōnggòng of tianxia and the gōnggòng of the nation-state. Imperial China was firmly entrenched in the gōnggòng of tianxia until the invasion of Western imperialist forces. The modern awakening of nationalism grew with the gōnggòng of the nation-state, particularly after the foundation of the new China in 1949. Along with China’s rise and vigorous globalization, the demand to return to the gōnggòng of tianxia became compelling. It is difficult for outsiders to understand gōnggòng and the ambiguous boundary between the public sphere and the private sphere. In China, the boundary between the private and the common or public is ambiguous, and sometimes even it is hard to identify the boundary between private and public property. The cooperative and mutual beneficial guanxi network originated from the patriarchal family and the communal sharing of property. This long-embedded tradition made it easy for modern China to find both communism and socialism naturally acceptable.

Furthermore, tianxia is a flexible concept with vast application, representing sharing in the best possible way, because tianxia exceeds the political boundary of the nation-state and refers to an infinitude of common space, which obtains general rule of justice for harmonious coexistence. There are two ways to understand the relationship of the government and the nation-state. The first approach is to consider the state private using the horizontal dimension of gōnggòng (sharing-in-common). The second is to interpret the state as public, using the vertical dimension of gōnggòng (public authority). From the first perspective, the imperial state and the emperor were private within the much larger context of people-oriented tianxia. If the state and the emperor were to lose the people’s trust and act against the mandate of tianxia, then their private imperial governance should be censured. The legitimate power and authority that the emperor and their ‘private’ family claimed originated from tian, which symbolizes the common good of all people. The state in this sense wields a relatively private authority compared to tianxia in the governance of the Grand Union. The people (as an indivisible entity rather than the coalition of individuals) under tianxia are the ‘common’ while the state is the ‘private’.

Alternatively, if we look at the issue from another perspective—the common or public as authority—then the state immediately switches to representing the ‘common or public’, while people and the family switch to being ‘private’. This is the normal understanding of the concept of the public in the East Asian tradition. Japan is the most prominent example because it developed the understanding of gōnggòng as authority, but abandoned its first part of the concept: that of sharing in common. The Chinese emperor as the governor placed his ruling legitimacy on representing just tian and gōnggòng so he was obliged to obey the universal rule of Grand Union. In contrast, the Japanese Mikado was himself the gōnggòng, representing authority and power, without the constraints of tian and dao. Chinese emperors had family names because they were ‘private’ in their origin, but the Japanese Mikado never had a family name because he represented absolute authority and abstract power. Therefore, 公 and 私 in Japan often refer to the contrast between the state and authority and the individual and personal.

The root of tianxia is in the state. The root of the state is in the family. The root of the family is in the person himself.

(Mencius, [340 BC – 250 BC] Li Lou I)

Ancient Chinese political philosophy was built on the apparatus of tianxia-family, while Western society rested upon the structure of the state-citizen. The society of tianxia is infinite and flexible and capable of incorporating other cultures and cultural elements. The he (harmonious integration) of tianxia can create optimal cooperation while maintaining diversity and heterogeneity, which is entirely different from the tong (homogeneous integration) of tianxia.

Along the ‘logic of collective action’, Mancur Olson postulated that due to the existence of free-riding behaviours, the rational, self-interested individuals often do not contribute to the pursuit of collective interests. Collective action is, in fact, not easy to achieve. When the collective number is small, collective action is easier to occur. However, it becomes increasingly difficult to generate collective action, as the size of groups grows. This is because it is more difficult to negotiate for the cost and benefit sharing brought about by collective action in large groups. It is the presence of a large number of special interest groups urging to free-riding that has led to stagnant growth in some countries. In any society as long as it is easier to plunder than to construct, then the plundering would reduce constructive activities such as investment, division of labour, and cooperation, leading to an underdeveloped economy and impoverished society. Therefore, while market is indispensable to economic prosperity, its mere existence is not a guarantee of prosperity. There should be a market-enhancing government to ensure the functioning of the market mechanism, and the conditions for such government is ‘encompassing interest’ [19, 20]. Since the late twentieth century, China has made the transition from a planned economy to a market economy and has made tremendous achievements that marked by four decades of sustained economic growth and national prosperity. In the future, China will have to adhere to the invisible hand of market that has brought economic prosperity, as well as the visible hand of government to safeguarding the common good.

Bureaucracy

The essential concept of the gōnggòng in bureaucracy is the harmony between tian and man (tianrenheyi), in which the term tian has several connotations. First, tian exists to determine people’s destiny, thus it should be worshipped with awe. Second, tian has a mysterious relationship with man, while rulers were supposed to be the legitimate representatives of tian. Their ability to fulfil their duty to rule the country must be judged to its pragmatic result, the existence of fewer natural disasters, and an improvement in living conditions.

When the people all identify themselves with the Son of Heaven but not with Heaven itself, then the jungle is still unremoved … to procure benefits and eliminate adversities to the people, and to enrich the poor and increase the few, and to bring safety where there is danger and to restore order where there is confusion – it was for this that the political leaders were appointed, and so the ancient sage-kings administered their government accordingly.

(Mozi, [490 BC – 221 BC] The Works of Motse, Book 3: Identification with the Superior)

Only when people’s common interest is fulfilled can the ruler’s mandate be justified. So, in extreme cases, people rebelled to overthrow dynasties because of their unbearable living conditions and disasters, which were interpreted as tianqian (punishment from tian).

A highly centralized hierarchical management system of bureaucracy was efficient because national government controlled the subordinate personnel (bureaucrats nomination), and tributes, taxation, and fiscal affairs. Bureaucracy reached its maturity in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, which had sufficient official systems at the national level and comprehensive sub-systems in the regions (the counties, provinces, townships, and villages). Until the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the bureaucracy was already a sophisticated institution capable of adapting to local conditions and with relative flexibility between the region and the state. The bureaucracy is central to Chinese politics—as evidenced by its highly defined offices, merit-based appointments, clearly articulated reward structures, considerable specialization in functions, highly developed formal systems of communication, detailed rules concerning proper lines of authority, regularized reporting obligations, and formalized structures for monitoring compliance and deviance [15].

Confucian ideology and the imperial examination system encouraged social mobility and fairer social stratification,helping to nurture a class of meritocratic scholar-bureaucrats with an excellent education and deeply imbued sense of duty and ethics. Providing people with the equal opportunity for education and access to upward mobility is a lubricant for maintaining a hierarchical society, and this needs to work with an imperial examination system. The imperial examinations, although criticized for rigidity and inflexibility, have been praised for nurturing a scholar-bureaucrat class from various family backgrounds and social statuses, thus providing hope for those in the lower ranks of society. It played a considerable role in promoting social education and knowledge, although people’s primary motivation in taking the examination was to enter the officialdom. Therefore, it stabilized hierarchical society by mitigating inequality and injustice and providing avenues for dynamic social mobility, as well as a cohesive social ideology.

Although the bureaucrats were supposed to be the most moral of people, monitoring them remained a challenge to bureaucracy and the governance of the common interest because it was mostly self-regulated within an ethical/moral system. Systems of performance-oriented assessment and supervision and discipline were the main institutional constraints for bureaucracy. Performance assessment provided economic and political incentives for officials by rewarding their performance with promotion or punishment. The monitoring system of supervision and discipline was bidirectional—an investigation censor was used for monitoring officials and an imperial censor for monitoring the emperor. Those two systems acted together to monitor the bureaucratic system. However, the lack of law and normalized institutional constraint turned supervision and discipline into self-seeking and corruption after many rounds of gaming and bargaining.

Nevertheless, the bureaucracy was not totally out of control. Besides Confucius’ ethical bonds, the cruel control of Legalism was another outstanding feature of Chinese bureaucracy. Legalism advocated rule by law and established severe punishments, complementing the idealistic Confucian notion of bureaucracy. Harsh punishment for ill-disciplined officials became the core of the bureaucracy.

[3] Struggles Between Local Elites and the State

China had a powerful class of local elites, who supplemented state control, but at times, they could be potentially threatening to the state. When elites obtained more legitimate recognition, their power grew rapidly. In a positive sense, this meant they were a strong extension of central government, beneficial to the nation’s unification and stability, and necessary for in supporting public responsibilities (e.g. in the provision of public goods). Until the nineteenth century, responsibility for maintaining grain barns and preparing for famine relief were largely organized by local elites. Building schools along the lower Yangtze River was supposed to be a state responsibility, but in practice, the work was mostly carried out by local elites. Local elites were powerful forces as a result of their personal background, upward mobility, and role in local society. These political dynamics were not only in more developed coastal cities and big cities but also in rural areas and rural–urban interactions. However, a negative concern was that their growing power and willingness to engage in self-governance might threaten a national regime and state involution.

All Chinese dynasties and regimes prioritized rural governance because it tested the state’s competence to run the country. In the ‘dual-track politics’, as the governance of top-down bureaucratic control combined with bottom-up initiatives, it is the rural gentry (xiangshen), who controlled a strong cultural network of lineages and also symbolized state power, bridging the two [8]. Tension between local gentry and the central state was alleviated by the two-way interaction of political forces and economic sponsorship within the elite class. Those educated local elites possessed great socio-political power and were mostly from better-off families like local landlords. Thus, their economic influence was intertwined with their political authority, while the political power was used to protect the economic power (political patronage), yet the economic power financially supported early stage’s education as a precondition of obtaining honour in scholarship and official rank [7]. Even officials assigned by the central state could govern localities only with the close cooperation of the local gentry. The vast territory the state ruled and the variations in local conditions made it impossible for the state to govern without using the local elites. Therefore, it was a permanent struggle between officialdom and the regions to maintain the art of balancing and rebalancing political forces.

Politically, xiangshen helped to spread or carry out official regulations in rural society, but they also acted as local leaders in activities to protect farmers’ interest. Thus, they shouldered two opposing responsibilities, extending the informal reign of the official bureaucracy and sustaining local independence against the central state [15]. Economically, the xiangshen usually controlled the village economy because their land holdings were generally larger than that of ordinary farmers. Consequently, they could mobilize people and resources to build roads and water system and initiate disaster relief. By learning from previous experiences, or by being educated in traditional ethics, those elites realized that they had to take care of the common interest to sustain their own interest, especially in times of disaster. In safeguarding the common interest, they are safeguarding the power and wealth of their own class.

Governance of Grand Union

Dual Dimensional Framework of Chinese gōnggòng

The universal origins of the desire to achieve the common good and general welfare of humanity developed into different versions of political philosophy and democracy in the West and under the Grand Union in China. The Chinese approach to the commons was built upon a concrete bureaucratic structure developed upon the second dimension of gōnggòng: the power and authority of the state; and it was permeated with the invisible legitimacy of governance of tianxia.

Recognising the common good forms social ties and became the legitimacy basis of state sovereignty. So, the general will of the sovereignty is inalienable and indivisible. However, designing a Rousseauian social contract within a specific state formation to serve the common good is extremely difficult, which sometimes seems impossible in practice. Rousseau understood the key to the social contract to be the association that unifies the ‘common power’ by individuals who give up their rights to the community but ‘remain as free as before’ [27]. Common good only concerns the common interest but not the simple sum of private interests, because the latter is self-contradictory. The state could only be overthrown if it no longer acted in accordance with the common good. However, designing a social contract within a specific state formation to serve the common good is extremely difficult, which sometimes seems impossible in practice. The common good is a highly political concept, and identifying it is, Schumpeter claims, almost impossible, because ‘to different individuals and groups the common good is bound to mean different things (pp. 250)’ [28].

Despite the great importance of local institutions that has been drawn on the governance of the commons over the years, the equally important if not more, ‘institutional arrangements operating at other governance scales – such as national government agencies, international organizations, NGOs at multiple scales, and private associations – also often have critical roles to play in natural resource governance regimes, including self-organized regimes’ [2]. China has quite distinctive political regime that the authority penetrates throughout the commons governance apparatus. Even the small-scale self-generated commons are inevitably nested within such governance apparatus, ‘that labor migration is a critical but an intermediate variable affecting collective action through the other “direct” factors’ such leadership [31]. The particular institutional arrangements of villagers’ committee and rural party system are both carrying out the dynamics with ‘Chinese characteristics’.

As shown in Fig. 2, the gōnggòng understood from Chinese philosophical and historical perspective can be conceived as a dual dimensional model, with the key ‘embedded’ elements of gōnggòng sit in the core. The vertical dimension is gōng as public authority. On the top end, it represents order, power, and rule of governance, while on the other end, it symbolises the mandate and legitimacy of governance. Parallelly, the horizontal dimension gòng refers to the practise of common sharing, which exhibits the common good of all people as the goal on the left in the diagram and the rule of all by common spirit (Grand Union) on the right. It suffices as a circle. The public authority representing power, order, and rule guarantees its rule of all by common spirit; while such Grand Union rule offers mandate and legitimacy for the public authority; in return, only legitimate governance with justified mandate could safeguarding the commons good of all people, which then gives power to the public authority. In the centre of this circle sits the core actors of gōnggòng—family, state, and tianxia. The governance logic of gōnggòng is expanding from family to the state and then to tianxia, with increasing boundaries but similar governance structure.

Fig. 2

Dual dimensional conceptualisation of the Chinese gōnggòng (author’s work)

The conceptual framework of governance in China is multi-layered and multidimensional. The horizontal level concerns equal sharing, justice, and fairness. The vertical level concerns the penetration of authority and power, represented by the state and bureaucracy. The notion of sharing in common is rooted in all human civilizations. Sharing in different societies is for the same purpose—the reduction of external risk and the mitigation of uncertainty. Sharing requires general rules, even in its simplest form. The general rule of justice and fairness guarantees that individuals will participate in communal sharing despite differences in status, power, time, and location. This is not to deny the existence of selfish desire and self-interest. However, such selfish desire might damage communal sharing and eventually oneself. Therefore, selfish desire should be restrained by the constant self-cultivation of a high level of morality and ethics. Xunzi believed that people originally cooperated in order to survive. It starts with spontaneous cooperation and then the unequal sharing of the benefits of cooperation, which eventually led to conflict. So the conflicts were internal problems of the community rather than the struggles among dispersed individuals. Therefore, Chinese political philosophy prioritizes governance of society. Governance includes formal rules like laws and bureaucracy and soft institutions like culture and religion. Moreover, the demand for self-governance from the regions challenges the legitimacy of the state representing tian. Such demands encouraged the state to compromise and cater for various demands with the use of a flexible system. However, the active involvement of the local authorities did not succeed in nurturing civil society and the grassroots, but actually reinforced the power of the state, because the locality is also an integral part of gōnggòng, embodying authority and sharing in common.

Governing with the Grand Union Approach

As William Theodore de Bary urged, ‘that we are entering a new and severely constricted phase of our development that will, contrary to the thrust of modern life so far, compel us to attend first to our inner space – of self-reflection, family intimacy, neighbourly concern, and responsibility for our own bioregion – and only then to outer space (pp. 136)’ [5], for which Chinese tradition of governance and Grand Union can offer some profound insights.

Grand Union governance originated from the integration of a diversified ethnic population and an agricultural economy and gigantic political unification. Unified cultural intimacy involved spontaneous cultural belonging and self-identification with the Grand Union. The corresponding polity facilitated the process unification and eventually evolved into the core of governance in the Chinese civilization. For China, internal integration of a high level of diversity and the stability to resist risks and uncertainty were emphasized. The flexible understanding of tianxia faced no urgent external challenges, but it did face enormous difficulties of governing within the state. Therefore, tianxia had to incorporate all possible homogeneous and heterogeneous elements over a vast scale. Building a large and unified political system to govern domestic affairs was the only rational approach in light of the realities of a dispersed rural economy and the diversity of ethnic groups and cultures.

Governance was a matter of ‘public versus private’ delineation and the foundation of survival for the state and civilisation in ancient China. Thus, governance played a pivotal position in both theory and practice. Related concepts included governance techniques, governance tools, governance laws, and governance practice, all formed this remarkable strain of thoughts on governance. This is quite unique in the entire history of world civilisation. Therefore, the concept of Grand Union in the traditional context of China is not so much an empirical historical classification to describe the ideal state of the society, but rather, a political classification, which describes the ultimate state of governance achieved by following the way to govern the world. Its fundamental significance is to establish the goal for politics or to establish the goal of political way of governance, in other words, to establish a supreme ideal for the practical human art of politics.

The following figures sketch roughly about the Grand Union governance in China. The overall objective or the value of the system is rule of all by the common spirit under tianxia. The value has to be understood from the untranslatable gōnggòng. From there, we go directly into the state, which has been discussed with its capability and accountability to govern (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

Grand Union Governance approach – Actor (author’s work)

Capability of governance, different from the oversimplified authoritarianism, relies on system and power, such as bureaucratic organisation and state fiscal power. The accountability of such governance has to balance efficiency, equity, and sustainability. Achieving equilibrium of various goals means necessary trade-offs during the process and for the outcomes. For instance, in order to reduce impact to the environment, necessary compromise has to be made for the efficiency of economic growth.

The procedure of Grand Union governance is mainly a process of delivering the positive impacts for the shared prosperity, while mitigating the negative impacts generated by such delivery (Fig. 4). There are various pragmatic ways to manage such a dynamic equilibrium, such as strategic planning, adapting to local practical problems, and gradualist flexibility to cope with the changes.

Fig. 4

Grand Union Governance approach – Procedure (author’s work)

Institutions, on the other hand, can be interpreted as organisation of the governance process (Fig. 5). There are formal institutions, plans, and governmental documents are core in Chinese governance system, while the rule of law is progressing that the legal system act more important role. On the other hand, crisis or problem scanning with corresponding policy responses is another outstanding feature of Chinese governance. Informal institutions are also crucial. As discussed in the paper, those invisible institutions are intertwined within society, building, and modifying people’s guanxi and behaviours. Institutions are not static either. The formal and informal institutions both undergo small changes, make adaptations to coordinate, and co-evolve together with each other, as well as other system changes. As a normative framework, Grand Union governance described a sophisticated system beyond meritocracy and top-down authoritarian control. Although beyond discussion of this paper, an empirical application of case study of Grand Union governance would be of great interest, such as water governance system or provincial governors’ administration and supervision.

Fig. 5

Grand Union Governance approach – Institution (author’s work)

To sustain various localities within the Grand Union requires a high degree of flexibility and proper control for stability. Too much control might kill the system’s vitality, but too much freedom can compromise the system’s stability and continuity. A giant country like China has been struggling over the balance between stability and flexibility within the governing system for thousands of years. Benevolent governance is the preferred choice, but sometimes an overbearing government is chosen in order to avoid a worse outcome of political turmoil and the collapse of the state. The Grand union is unification but not necessarily authoritarianism. Maintaining a subtle balance between centralization and decentralization has always been the core of Chinese politics. Bureaucracy is designed to offer incentives to the ‘political man’ while constraining their self-interest as ‘economic men’. From the selection of the man of virtue, competence, and talent to the harsh punishment of corruption and wrongdoing, the primary purpose of bureaucracy is to ensure that the governance structure will serve the common interest. The institutional framework of the Grand Union governance, which aims to deliver positive impact on the public while also responding and mitigating the negative impacts generated as a result, is also featured with flexibility, a highly experimental and polycentric politics of balance and imbalance and endogenous state power.

Any mature modern governance system includes at least four key elements: values, system, organisation, and mechanism. This mainly involves the design and management of organisation, the arrangement of political system, the legitimacy foundation of rule, and its cultural and structural elements of the system. As a unified establishment of these four elements, China’s institutionalised governance system is able to make timely institutional responses to the emerging political, economic, and social changes, and the source of its reform mainly relies on its institutional structure and organisational capability.

Furthermore, reflection on China’s own institutional framework of governance would provide guidelines for the governance of the public and common in sub-regional and global contexts, for the concept of tianxia and Grand Union are culturally acceptable in the great Asian circle. China has much to offer the world its creative thinking and practice, deeply rooted in its long history and tradition, in dealing with complex governance issues. Understanding the logic of Chinese governance is not only theoretically important for a scientific survey of governance, but also for informing public policy in China and around the world.

The Grand Union was, is, and remains China’s core political philosophy. The key features of the Grand Union are flexible, polycentric governance and the state authority, respectively, corresponding to the horizontal dimension of sharing in common and the vertical dimension of public control. Therefore, governing the gōnggòng in China requires both state authority and polycentric cooperation among all stakeholders, in order to serve the common interest of all people within its specific sociocultural context.

Conclusion

The topic of governance has become a hot research field in Chinese academic circles, since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee put forward the assertion that ‘we should promote the modernisation of national governance system and the capacity of governance’. During the 20th National Congress of the CPC, which reiterated China’s long-range objectives through the 14th Five-year Plan and the Year 2035, the state governance system and capacity for governance were repeatedly mentioned. As when it comes to defining what governance is, scholars have primarily discussed the issues of governance and related topics based on modern governance theories that were largely developed in the West, while few have discussed the governance philosophy and associated issues from the Chinese tradition. The study of the value and origin of governance can provide various insights into the proper understanding of the China’s governance in the new era. For instance, the balance between equity and efficiency in governance should be properly managed. Excessive competition, especially unrestrained competition, does bring about a number of problems, including neglecting fairness and causing tensions between both people and nations, and even resulting moral decline in the society. The design and construction of the system and mechanism of governance should limit the power of the authorities and prevent them from using public power to pursue personal interests. The excessive expansion of public power and the abuse of power should be prevented, and certain degree of freedom and autonomy should be granted to the market and society. Only on the basis of giving full play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation and the role of social autonomy can the government play its role more effectively. On the other hand, the whole society should advocate a frugal lifestyle, oppose extravagance, conserve as much resources as possible, and live a life conducive to the harmonious coexistence of human and the natural world.

In the ancient Chinese tradition of governance, the way of governance has been the primary concern for the majority of discussions and practice. The way of governance stresses the principle of governing in accordance with the rules and trends—dealing with the situation as it arises and obtaining a solid grasp of political affairs. In all matters of governance, it is impossible to adhere to one and only prototype, but requires a comprehensive view of the overall situation and an understanding of current situation and trend. In addition, it is essential to pursue diverse skills and techniques by learning from others and to develop compatible and integrated way of governance.

A truly rational attitude is not to divorce politics—often modelled on the ancient Greek city (polis) as the prototype—from the way of governance and then set itself as the truth or ideal for politics. Rather, the search for a legitimate way of governance rests on the premise of the basic political fact of justifying the way of governance. The only legitimate way of governance that can be justified is that which brings about an order of reason, justice, and goodness. To accomplish this, there must be recourse to governance, to the ruling craft of Platonic political science. In this manner, we appeal to the morality or legitimacy of governance, rather than to the absence of a specific rule, rather than to a general abstract idea of politics that is divorced from the concrete practice of governance. As in the Aristotelian sense, the only polity that is justified is the one that brings about a just or good order of governance. If this is the case, we are back to traditional Chinese thinking about the way of governance—Grand Union.

In the modern world, tendencies like multipolarisation, economic globalisation, digitalisation, and cultural diversity have become irreversible. The complexity of global issues has increased due to increased interdependence and connectivity among nations and people. Emerging from the formation of the global market, global governance bases its value compass on safeguarding the common interests for mankind and the maintenance of social stability and development. In order to jointly manage global political affairs, it seeks to establish a governance mechanism based on coordination and international cooperation between the world’s major nations. The concept of global governance, however, urgently needs to be reshaped in the process of recognising and adapting to the changes, given the widening shortfall of global development, peace, and trust.

In the emerging era, clashes of civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace, and an international order based on civilizations is the surest safeguard against world war (pp. 372). [12]

(Huntington, [1996]. The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order)

As early as 2012, Graham Allison of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University issued a warning: ‘If leaders in China and the US perform no better than their predecessors in classical Greece, or Europe at the beginning of the 20^th century, historians of the twenty-first century will cite Thucydides in explaining the catastrophe that follows. The fact that war would be devastating for both nations is relevant but not decisive. Recall the first world war, in which all the combatants lost what they treasured most’ [1]. This precipitated discussions around China and USA into what academics called a ‘New Peloponnesian War’ between the USA and China [18]. At a time when the USA openly claimed that ‘we cannot rely on Beijing to change its trajectory. So we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open, inclusive international system’ [3]; how can China, as the largest developing country and the world’s second largest economy, escape this ‘Thucydides Trap’ and actively participate in the process of building global governance and reshaping the international order is a direction we need to explore in the future. In response to the current realities of the lack of global governance framework, frequent governance failures, we can greatly benefit from the essences of Chinese way of governance—namely preaching benevolence, emphasizing people-oriented approach, abiding by integrity, upholding justice, promoting harmony among people, and seeking common ground for collaboration. We need to actively seek new paths for global governance reform and to provide new driving forces for equity and justice in global governance. It is a challenge for today’s China to facilitate this new path. ‘Should China itself “repay injury with injury” (yi yuan bao yuan), “repay injury with kindness” (yi de bao yuan), or “repay injury with firmness” (yi zhi bao yuan)?’ [18].