Telos 215 (Summer 2026): China and Sovereignty is now available for purchase in our store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are also available in both print and online formats.
China
remains the inscrutable elephant in the room for the world’s political
theorists and policymakers. Its growing importance to the world’s
economy and politics compels us to continue to analyze its ideological
currents and political conflicts. While scholars inside and outside of
China struggle with the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to censor
debate, it is all the more necessary to engage scholars in productive
discussions that provide real analysis rather than talking points. The
essays in this issue on China and sovereignty discuss how China has
engaged with Western thinkers, in particular Karl Marx, Michel Foucault,
and Carl Schmitt, to develop its own basis for sovereignty and its
vision for world order. Subsequently, our authors offer conflicting
perspectives on the nature of the Chinese government and how the United
States should respond to China’s rise.
We begin with two essays that attempt to understand the landscape of modern Chinese thought. Alexander Lukin
provides an overview of the reception of the Chinese Cultural
Revolution in China, the Soviet Union, and the West. Chinese theorists
have argued that it was either a left-wing aberration or a revisionist
(i.e., counterrevolutionary) movement. Yet there have also been recent
attempts to praise the Cultural Revolution for its left-wing purity and
its ability to criticize an existing bureaucracy. Lukin argues that the
Cultural Revolution was fundamentally an educational project, albeit a
brutal one. Because the masses and intelligentsia were insufficiently
communist in their thinking, cultural revolution was necessary in order
to educate people. As such, the Cultural Revolution was not linked to
Chinese traditions such as Confucianism but was rather a continuation of
Marxist ideas. It envisioned a purification of thinking and policy in
order to bring about the realization of a Marxist world that demands
from all according to their abilities and provides to all according to
their needs. This social justice goal required the continuation of
communal structures and centralized distribution that had been
delegitimated by the disaster of the Great Leap Forward. Consequently,
the Cultural Revolution was an attempt to promote those policies through
a forced education campaign that sought to create equality by
dissolving differences between urban and rural, workers and peasants,
and intellectual and manual labor. Lukin further argues that Western
critical theory was similar to the Cultural Revolution to the extent
that it focused, from the Frankfurt School onward, on an ideological
agenda that sought to mobilize the masses for a socialist project after
it became clear that they were not interested in such a project. The
“woke” movement thus has the task of finding oppressed victims to take
over the role of the proletariat and provide the ideological rallying
point for a socialist transformation. Lukin sees the primary
significance of recent Chinese thought as providing a haven for the
socialist project of creating equality of outcomes. China embraced
Marxism as a dominant ideology in the twentieth century, and the
Cultural Revolution was the culmination of this attempt to overturn
traditional modes of thinking.
By contrast, Guojun Jiang
argues that China’s mode of thought was long dominated by perspectives
that prevented such revolutionary moments. She focuses on the longer
trajectory of Chinese thought to argue that the Chinese cultural
tradition did not experience the shift from resemblance to
representation that Michel Foucault describes in the West. Jiang depicts
the process of naming in the Chinese Confucian tradition as an example
of a Foucauldian merging of power with knowledge. Names establish order,
both by providing the correct names but also by enforcing a particular
order and hierarchy. Rather than rejecting or overturning such order,
critique in China took a Daoist form that invoked a state of nature as
something that exists outside the naming process. Daoist critique does
not reject any particular order but points to the contradictory
character of order itself. This alternative mode of critique exists
within an order while “transforming the subject’s mode of perception
rather than merely denouncing the structures that shape it.” As opposed
to criticizing any particular structure, Daoism criticizes structure
itself, even as it maintains the possibility of transformation on a
subjective level. Jiang suggests that this form of critique has been the
dominant one in the Chinese tradition, though she does not speculate
about the reasons for the wholesale rejection of that tradition with the
move toward Marxism and the Cultural Revolution.
Recent Chinese political theory has engaged intensively with the work of
Carl Schmitt. In our special section on Schmitt in China, our authors
present different ideas about the reasons for this interest and the ways
in which Schmitt’s work intersects with that of key political theorists
in China.
Alvise Capria
argues that China’s turn to Schmitt results from the specific situation
in which China’s political theorists accept market structures that
preclude a return to the politics of class war but also reject the
political pluralism typically connected with economic liberalism.
Schmitt’s political theory offers a way of imagining how this
combination can maintain stability. From the Chinese Schmittian
perspective, his analysis of sovereignty is valuable because it treats
law not as a universal framework that might pose a challenge to
political power, but as a consequence of a particular conception of
sovereignty, whatever that conception may be. By prioritizing the
political over the legal, Schmitt’s theory offers different
possibilities for imagining a post-Mao yet anti-liberal trajectory for
China.
In a similar attempt to understand how the Chinese interest in Schmitt stems from the goal of supporting state power, Qi Zheng
argues that the Chinese reception of Schmitt has generally downplayed
his Nazi sympathies in order to focus on the connection between the
critique of liberal democracy and the goal of maintaining the stability
of the state. Chinese Schmitt scholars interpret his shift from support
for the Weimar Republic to collaboration with the Nazi Party not as an
opportunistic move but as a consequence of his belief that the pursuit
of individual rights and freedom had undermined the political unity of
the state by neglecting the importance of defining enemies. Accordingly,
the significance of Schmitt for Chinese communists has been to serve as
a warning against pursuing liberal democracy and an encouragement to
find alternative structures for Chinese political order that can
guarantee state power. Liberal interpreters of Schmitt in China,
principally Zhou Lian, have not challenged this reading of Schmitt’s
turn to Nazism. Instead, Zhou has largely taken over the narrative that
the sovereign decision on the enemy leads inevitably to a rejection of
liberal democracy, but he does this in order to reject Schmitt’s
thought. In contending that his decisionism is fundamentally opposed to
public debate and the rule of law, Zhou sees Schmitt’s work as both
inseparable from his Nazism and as a danger to attempts to shift China
toward liberal democratic values and structures.
By contrast, Joseph Bendersky
foregrounds Schmitt’s support for liberal democracy and antipathy
toward communism to refute the idea that his work is well suited for use
by Chinese political theorists to justify communism. While Schmitt
recognized in Mao someone who supported the idea of a fragmentation of
the world into a few large Großräume (super-regions), the
current Chinese use of this idea in fact tends toward an extension of a
unified Chinese sovereignty over the world, an idea that Schmitt
vehemently opposed. As Bendersky argues, Schmitt’s conception of Großraum
was fundamentally anti-universalistic. While his insights into the
nature of politics may have broad applicability, the focus on popular
sovereignty makes his work unsuitable for justifying Chinese
authoritarianism and messianic expansionism.
The origin of our section on China, Taiwan, and the United States
illustrates the current difficulties in sponsoring real debate between
different perspectives about China. The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute
organized a second China-themed conference in New York on March 20–21,
2026, on “The Chinese New Leviathan” as a follow up to its March 2025
conference on “China Keywords.” A number of academics from China,
Taiwan, Europe, and the United States participated, including Wang Hui
as the keynote speaker. The plan was to include as wide a variety of
perspectives as possible. Toward that end, the Institute sought to also
invite Gordon Chang and Miles Yu, key critics of the Chinese Communist
Party, to engage with its defenders. Unfortunately, many if not all of
the participants from China would have withdrawn from the event if Chang
and Yu were also going to be present. Rather than accept this
withdrawal, the Institute decided to stage two events. The conference in
New York went on as planned, but without the presence of Chang and Yu.
In addition, though, the Institute organized a separate conference at
the University of California, Irvine, on May 4, 2026, where Chang and Yu
could engage with other scholars with differing perspectives. We
present the initial results of this event here in a special section on
China, Taiwan, and the United States.
The first three essays, by Gordon Chang, Eric Hendriks, and me, attempt to describe the nature of the challenge from China to the United States and the world. Chang argues
that China’s communism needs terror in order to survive. The return to
strongman rule with Xi Jinping fulfills that need. Liberal democracy,
however, poses an ideological threat to China’s communists because it
offers an alternative vision that opposes such terror. Accordingly,
China’s communists seek to occupy Taiwan because it presents an example
of a successful democracy that grew out of Chinese traditions. Further,
China’s communists are fighting proxy wars all over the world against
the United States in order to sow the chaos that they believe can
eventually undermine liberal democracy worldwide.
Hendriks opposes the idea
that China’s political order can be summed up in a single term such as
“totalitarianism.” Instead, he argues that China combines three
different layers. First, China is a differentiated and sophisticated
society that is modern and global to the extent that it includes
autonomously functioning fields such as “commerce, science, media,
technology, sports, and law,” in which each field is an independent
system with its own frameworks that are adapted to global institutions
and practices. Second, China is a Leninist party-state in which all
institutions are integrated into and ruled over by the Chinese Communist
Party. Third, China has a civilizational legacy that provides a unique
set of perspectives and practices that shape current institutions.
Hendriks insists on this complexity of layers in order to counter
“polemical caricatures” of China as an evil other to liberal democracy.
My own essay
focuses on the way in which the Chinese Communist Party has been
attempting to rewrite the rules of global order. Contrary to the idea
that sovereignty and law are opposed to each other, I argue that any
establishment of sovereignty requires both power and a conception of
order. Moral considerations cannot be separated from the exercise of
power, and the rules of global order will reflect the character of those
who are able to establish a particular set of rules through sovereign
decisions that reflect their principles. In its rhetoric, the CCP
insists on the inviolability of state sovereignty and presents a
rhetoric of universality in the idea of a “shared community of human
destiny.” Yet the true meaning of CCP power reveals itself in its
actions, in which it uses economic and military coercion to dominate
East Asia and to suppress alternative perspectives on global order. In
its actions, the CCP is attempting to establish its own vision of global
order that protects totalitarianism and undermines popular sovereignty
as embodied in separate nation-states.
Miles Yu, Russell Berman, and John Graham provide recommendations for U.S. policy regarding China. Yu argues
that the conflict between China and the United States centers on an
ideological divide between totalitarian control and popular
self-government as the basis of political order. Though it opposes
liberal democracy, China still has access to global markets, capital,
technology, and educational institutions to an extent never achieved by
previous U.S. adversaries such as the Soviet Union. In addition, China
takes advantage of the openness of U.S. institutions to influence and
threaten those institutions with its United Front propaganda strategy.
Consequently, Yu argues that the United States must pursue a
comprehensive strategy that includes protecting its democratic and
educational institutions from foreign interference, re-establishing the
military power to maintain peace through deterrence, strengthening
global alliances, and rebuilding the U.S. industrial base.
Russell Berman argues
that the ideological and moral questions regarding China are secondary
to the strategic issues. However we classify its form of governance and
its degree of freedom, it is clear that China is challenging U.S. power
and its structuring of international order. Whether to classify China as
authoritarian or totalitarian does not change the analysis of how the
world should respond to its growing economic, technological, and
military power. Consequently, the focus should be on the strategic
responses to China rather than on an ideological battle. Berman agrees
with Yu that the focus of U.S. policy should be on developing military
deterrence, rebuilding the U.S. industrial base, and protecting the
integrity of its educational and political institutions.
Also downplaying the importance of ideology, John Graham
draws an opposite conclusion about policy. He argues that trade causes
peace and that China’s trading relationships with the rest of the world
will prevent war. As the world becomes more interconnected through
trade, he looks forward to the inevitable end of war. He challenges both
the United States and China to reduce their military spending and
nuclear arsenals. This would allow more money to be spent on the real
problems both countries face: improving social safety nets and
combatting climate change.
Finally, Salvatore Babones responds to the essays by Eric Hendriks and me in Telos 214, in which we responded to his initial critique of our introduction to Telos 213.[1]
Against Hendriks, Babones contends that the Chinese vision of a “human
community of shared destiny” is propaganda and not political thought. In
response to my essay, he argues that the term “authoritarianism”
denotes a discrete regime type and not an opposite to liberalism. He
also disputes the idea that the “rule of custom and law” is a good
characterization of liberalism.
Notes
1. Salvatore Babones, “Authoritarianism, Democracy, Legitimacy—and the Capacity of Regimes to Support Intellectual Production,” Telos 214 (Spring 2026): 127–38; Eric Hendriks, “Chinese Political Thought Is a Worthy Interlocutor: A Response to Salvatore Babones,” Telos 214 (Spring 2026): 139–51; David Pan, “Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism in China: Reply to Salvatore Babones and Eric Hendriks,” Telos 214 (Spring 2026):152–63.
David Pan is Professor of European Languages and
Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and has previously held
positions at Washington University in St. Louis, Stanford University,
Penn State University, and McKinsey and Company. He is the author of Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism (2001) and Sacrifice in the Modern World: On the Particularity and Generality of Nazi Myth
(2012). He has also published on J. G. Herder, Heinrich von Kleist,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Jünger, Bertolt
Brecht, Carl Schmitt, and Theodor Adorno. He is the Editor of Telos.
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