Xi Jinping's Dream of Restoring the Tianxia

A Japanese warship is victorious in the battle off Dagu Mountain during the Sino-Japanese War. Image by Ogata Gekkō, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

On June 12, 2018, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Weihai, the port where the Qing Dynasty suffered its most humiliating defeats during the First Sino-Japanese War. It was here that the Dingyuan, flagship of the Qing’s Beiyang Fleet, was hit by a Japanese torpedo. Commander Liu Buchan ordered the ship to be scuttled and took his own life as the empire’s prestige sank with the vessel. At this site of historical sorrow, Xi remarked, “I have always wanted to come here, to learn and feel.” For Xi, learning had to come with action: “Chinese people must strive to build our country better and stronger.” His words revealed his underlying mission—not just to remember but to reverse the collapse of Chinese hegemony that began in 1895.

The Empire Humbled in Shimonoseki

The First Sino-Japanese War was a fight for hegemony in East Asia. In early 1894, a nationwide Korean peasants’ uprising, precipitated by corruption and over-taxation, threatened to overthrow the five-century-old Joseon Dynasty. At King Gojong’s request, Qing China sent troops to quell the rebellion. Japan, supposedly to safeguard its residents, followed suit. By June, both powers competed to fill the power vacuum in Korea. Japan moved quickly by occupying the royal palace in Seoul and attacking the Chinese warships off Pungdo on Korea’s west coast. War broke out to settle the regional dominant power. In a few months, modernized Japanese troops pushed China off the Korean peninsula, invading Manchuria and the Shandong Peninsula soon afterward. Qing Grand Secretary Li Hongzhang realized that continued hostilities would be catastrophic and called for immediate negotiations. The negotiation began in March 1895 in Shimonoseki, Japan. Yet, by then, China had clearly lost the war.

The Chinese were shocked when Japan, a country long regarded as Dōngyí, or Eastern Barbarians, defeated them. In retrospect, Chinese thinker Liang Qichao said, “China awoke from a 4,000-year dream.” To understand this dream, examining China’s self-perception is crucial. During the Zhou dynasty (c. 1046 BC - 256 BC), the Chinese referred to their civilization as Huaxia. This term combines Huá, meaning “splendid,” with their ancestral origin in the ancient Xia dynasty. In the Warring States period, this national identity evolved into Zhonghua, where China saw itself as the cultural center of the world. This self-concept further extended into a metaphysical worldview. The ancient Chinese believed in Tian, a heavenly force that determined the universe’s fate. From this belief emerged the Tianxia—Under Heaven—a world order in which Chinese civilization governed other nations by its cultural and moral authority. In this order, the Chinese viewed themselves as the Hua, the civilized core, while those outside were Yi, the barbarians they looked down on. For centuries, China imagined itself as the center of the world, expecting respect and tribute from neighboring countries.

The Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 shattered the Tianxia that the Chinese had lived in up to that point. China was forced to recognize Korea’s “complete independence and autonomy,” renouncing the tributary suzerainty over the country. This clause signaled that China had lost its superiority in the regional order, which was a crucial part of the Tianxia system. More devastating was the loss of the Formosa Islands—today’s Taiwan—which disintegrated the territorial space of the Tianxia. The Japanese Navy, recognizing the islands as a strategic chokepoint, coerced the Qing government into resignation. President Xi reflected on this moment as the “most painful chapter in the history of the Chinese nation,” as it divided Taiwan from the Chinese civilization and brought it under a foreign power. Indeed, the war hammered the final nail into the coffin of Chinese hegemony, ushering in a half-century of humiliation.

Rejuvenation as Restoration

A century has passed, and Xi Jinping, who became the President of China in 2013, has spent the last ten years revitalizing the Tianxia and strengthening China’s national power. The China he aims to restore is not rooted in Stalinist-style communist expansion or an imperial ambition to impose Chinese culture on others. Instead, his vision focuses on the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation." During his 2014 speech on the First Sino-Japanese War, Xi declared rejuvenation as China’s historical mission. For Xi, rejuvenation is not economic or military—it is historical. It seeks to revive the once-mighty Chinese empire, and more specifically, the dominance that China held in East Asia before 1895. Given these elements, China’s maritime assertiveness and expanding global influence are necessary to reclaim its position at the center of a harmonious and unified order. Xi’s vision, thus, is a modern reinterpretation of the Tianxia, one that fuses tradition with modern hegemony to craft a resurgent China.

The most important step towards the Tianxia is the reunification of Taiwan. Xi argues that China must reconcile the suffering it endured under foreign domination. He considers the separation of Taiwan after the First Sino-Japanese War a “wrenching pain in the heart” for the Chinese nation. Accordingly, Xi rejects Taiwanese separatists who seem to glorify Japanese colonial rule and even visit the Yasukuni shrine—a site where Japanese war criminals who invaded China are buried. Xi insists that Taiwan and the mainland are bound by blood and history, which “share the same destiny.” This belief prompts Xi to believe that Taiwan, separated from China due to national weakness, must be reunited as the nation rejuvenates. He declared in his 2025 New Year's address that “no one can stop the historical trend.” Some analysts anticipate Beijing could pursue military action against Taiwan within a few years. Xi has not ruled out using military force to achieve his vision of a reunited Tianxia. If military intervention occurs, he will regard such action as correcting the illegitimate break by Taiwan from the nation.

For Xi, the Senkaku Islands represent another new frontier for his quest to restore the Tianxia. A chain of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea controlled by Japan since it occupied them during the Sino-Japanese War, the Senkakus represent national trauma. Xi has promised to end this legacy of foreign domination, and he made this clear early in his rule. In December 2012, a Chinese Marine Surveillance aircraft conducted a joint patrol with four marine surveillance ships in the Senkaku Islands. The following year, Beijing established an Air Defense Identification Zone in the East China Sea, encompassing the Senkakus. This action was another attempt to restore China’s rightful control over its traditional sphere of influence. During the 2024 U.S.-Japan-Philippines summit, China’s Foreign Ministry warned it would not let foreign interference with the “indisputable sovereignty” of the islands. Xi is determined to prevent a return to foreign domination, viewing Japan as a proxy for U.S. influence over its territory.

Reviving the Zongfan System

Xi’s goal to revive Tianxia extends to neighboring states. His vision stems from the zongfan system of the Western Zhou dynasty: a hierarchy where the emperor (zong, suzerain) granted titles to royal relatives (fan, vassals) in return for loyalty. Over time, the zongfan evolved into a regional order. Neighboring states like Korea became fan, and their kings received investiture from the Chinese emperor. The Ming emperors gave robes made for their princes to Korean kings, symbolizing a father-son relationship. Korea was not just a tributary but an extension of the Tianxia. Xi has adopted this worldview. At a 2017 summit with U.S. President Trump, he reportedly argued that “Korea has belonged to China for millennia of history and war.” This historical bias was evident when the Chinese Foreign Ministry denounced South Korea’s deployment of a U.S. missile defense system, asking, “How can a small country dare challenge a big country?” In 2022, China’s ambassador criticized then-presidential candidate Yoon Suk-Yeol for his pro-American stance. This diplomatic overreach reflected Xi’s Tianxia rationale of restoring Korea as a vassal.

Tianxia vs. Western Discourse

Western academic discourse interprets Xi’s move through the principle of equal sovereignty among nations, rooted in post-Westphalian Christian civilization. From this view, the West characterizes China’s growing influence as imperialist. Yet, such a perspective risks oversimplification. For centuries, Confucianism shaped China’s political identity, placing hierarchy as a pillar of social stability and harmony. Ruling elites were bound by benevolence, setting a moral example for the people. The same applies to the international order. The ancient philosopher Xunzi argued that China should act on wangdao, the “way of humane authority,” to win the hearts of foreign states. Traditional Tianxia had no fixed boundaries; its domain expanded when the Son of Heaven had benevolence and shrank when he lacked it. President Xi inherits this legacy. In 2013, Xi said that the CCP should follow the principles of wangdao. Similarly, in a 2017 speech in Geneva, he urged the world to “achieve fairness through wangdao.” China depicts Belt and Road Initiative investments in the Pacific Islands as a “gift” to show benevolence. Tianxia is thus not a world of equals but a moral order in which China, through its virtue, expands and claims the top of the hierarchy.

Realist scholars regard China’s expansion as reflecting that of all great powers, considering it a structural matter rather than a historical one. John Mearsheimer, an advocate of offensive realism, contends that China, as a great power, is structurally inclined to dominate the world. Yet, ignoring Tianxia as a secondary factor results in faulty generalization, which oversimplifies the differing contexts of great powers. Unlike Western expansionism, such as the Napoleonic era, Tianxia emphasized hierarchical harmony over world domination. This is visible in China’s “system of five services,” which categorized states more than 500 kilometers away as tributaries, not colonies. As Henry Kissinger noted, China believed the most valuable possessions were within themselves, leading them to “show little interest beyond its coast.” Reducing these unique dynamics to another great-power hegemony is not only deterministic but can result in policy failure due to misunderstanding their motives.

Wangdao or Bàdào

Although wangdao appeals to morality and virtue, its revival under Xi is inherently revisionist. The liberal international order after the Cold War was founded on the principle that all states, regardless of size, have equal rights under international law. Many Asian countries have benefited from this system, which promotes collective security, multilateralism, and sovereign equality. In such an order, nations desperately seek to avoid hierarchy. Xi’s intent to introduce a morality-based hierarchy with China as the superior center directly goes against this status quo. Whether China is benevolent or not does not matter. Wangdao, by its nature, demands inequality and loyalty among states, requiring the collapse of the existing global order. Even if China claims to bring harmony and virtue, the revisionist objectives beneath wangdao will invoke a strong backlash from its closest neighbors.

Moreover, Xi Jinping’s actions have signaled that China is moving toward bàdào—a hegemonic way of domination—rather than wangdao. In recent years, China has resorted to force and coercion to achieve its goals. After Seoul deployed a U.S. missile defense system in 2016, China launched harsh economic retaliation, causing South Korea losses worth tens of billions of dollars. The message was clear: smaller neighbors must align with China’s interests or face punishment. Since then, anti-China sentiment has risen in South Korea, with 81 percent of the population having a negative view of China. The hegemonic coercion is more straightforward in Taiwan. Beijing conducted a military blockade around Taiwan a month ago, surrounding the island with naval ships and fighter jets. More and more Taiwanese people fear an invasion from China. Meanwhile, China has built militarized islands in the South China Sea, which the Philippines and Vietnam view as a threat to their sovereignty. In 2022, Japan’s new National Security Strategy identified China's naval operations near its waters as a “grave concern” for national security. As Xi moves closer to Tianxia, China is increasingly heading toward bàdào—an image of fear and hubris that distances Beijing from its neighbors.

The dangers of bàdào are not new. In 1924, Sun Wen—the revolutionary leader honored as the father of modern China—stood in Kobe and asked the Japanese people: “Would you be the watchdogs of hegemonic culture or the stronghold of wangdao culture?” Imperial Japan chose the former, creating an empire through force, only to face tragic consequences twenty years later. Today, the same question confronts China: Will it become the enforcer of hegemony, or will it embody the wangdao? Xi Jinping promised in Weihai to “learn and feel” from history. His answer will tell whether he has truly understood the past or remains repeating it.

Kunwoo Kim (Cambridge ‘28) is an incoming history and politics student at the University of Cambridge. He previously studied at Sciences Po Paris, Campus du Havre, for one semester during his first year.