"Zhao's fresh ideas, arguments, and methods are important and well done.""—Stephen C. Angle, Wesleyan University

"This book allows Western readers to participate in important current discussions in China about globalization and world order."—Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame

"Our broken world might be healed and made whole only when nations and people overcome nation-state animosity and learn to cherish common aspirations beyond parochial agendas. Such a resounding message, conveyed by tianxia, finds a refreshing expression in this English rendering of the work of the Chinese philosopher Zhao Tingyang. Updating ancient Chinese philosophy by relating it to Western cosmopolitanism, this well-translated volume brims with insights into crisis-ridden global politics and will intensify the debate about how different nations and cultures can cultivate visions of coexistence and coevolution as a human community."—Ban Wang, Stanford University, editor of Chinese Visions of World Order

"Zhao Tingyang offers us a new conception of the political in the form of a world society in which no one is excluded, everyone is respected, and win-win cooperation is the order of the ages. His is a comprehensive vision for a future society inspired by ancient Chinese models. Cynics will say that it is impractical, but idealists will find much to work towards in creating a new tianxia system of global governance."—Salvatore Babones, University of Sydney



In this succinct yet ample work, Zhao Tingyang, one of China’s most distinguished intellectuals, provides a profoundly original philosophical interpretation of China’s story and also develops a Chinese worldview for the future. Over the past few decades, the question W here did China come from? has absorbed the thoughts of many of China's best historians. Zhao, keenly aware of the persistent and pernicious asymmetry in the prevailing way scholars have gone about theorizing China according to Western concepts and categories, has tasked both Chinese and Western scholars to "rethink China." Zhao introduces what he terms a distinctively Chinese centripetal "whirlpool" model of world order to interpret the historical progression of China’s tianxia (All under Heaven) identity construction. In this book, Zhao forwards a compelling thesis not only on how we should understand China, but also on how China until recently has understood itself.