Lately, there has been increasing interest among international relations (IR) scholars in Chinese thought, both as an alternative to Eurocentric IR, and because the PRC as an emerging power will soon have the institutional power to promote its view of the world. Rather than look for suitable Chinese parallels to “international,”“security,” or other mainstream concepts, this article will examine the concept of “Tianxia All‐under‐Heaven” to understand Chinese visions of world order. Tianxia is interesting both because it was key to the governance and self‐understanding of over two millennia of Chinese empire, and also because discussion of Tianxia is becoming popular again in the twenty‐first century as a Chinese model of world order that is universally valid. After outlining a popular discussion of the “magnanimous” and all‐inclusive Tianxia system, the article will examine some of the theoretical problems raised by this reading of Tianxia, in particular how its approach to “Otherness” encourages a conversion of difference, if not a conquest of it. It will conclude that Tianxia’s most important impact will not be on the world stage, but in China’s domestic politics, where it blurs the conceptual boundaries between empire and globalism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism. Hence rather than guide us toward a post‐hegemonic world order, Tianxia presents a new hegemony where imperial China’s hierarchical governance is updated for the twenty‐first century.

The line separating good from evil passes not through states, nor between political parties-but right through every human heart.-Aleksandr SolzhenitsynUse the past to serve the present.-Mao Zedong While I was researching the South China Sea disputes between China, Vietnam, and the Philippines, I came upon an unlikely refer ence. In an otherwise hard-nosed analysis of the issue, a noted Chi nese expert cited a book called the Atlas of Shame. This odd juxta position of security studies, territoriality, and emotion piqued my interest, and I asked a friend in Beijing to track down this curious book. Once I got a copy of the Atlas of the Century of National Humiliation in Modern China, the correct title, I was fascinated by what seemed to be a unique feature of Communist Chinese historiography and identity: the very deliberate celebration of a national insecurity. But the more I looked for national humiliation discourse, the more I found. Though they do not receive much attention in West ern analysis, it turns out that there are textbooks, novels, museums, songs, and parks devoted to commemorating national humiliation in China. I continued looking for examples of such national inse curity in other countries. I found that such activities are not lim ited to some exotic political culture of "the East." Humiliation is a common and recurring theme in domestic and international poli tics, being invoked far and wide in a diverse set of circumstances. Humiliation has thus joined guilt, victimhood, and apology as a

Joseph Nye concentrates on the positive attractive aspects of soft power as a foreign policy tool. This article will argue that the Chinese discussion of soft power is interesting because it does the opposite: soft power is negative rather than positive, and is employed as a tool in domestic policy more than in foreign affairs. It will use Chinese President Xi Jinping's new ‘China Dream’ discourse to explore China's ‘negative soft power’ strategy. Rather than take for granted that we understand what the ‘Chinese values’ are that inform the PRC's soft power, it argues that soft power discourse is a useful heuristic device for understanding how Chinese policy makers and public intellectuals are actively constructing a ‘China’ and a ‘world’ to promote regime legitimacy. The Chinese case thus suggests that we need a more complex view of power that considers the contingent dynamics of its hard/soft, positive/negative, foreign/domestic aspects.

Chinese nationalism has ignited much debate among academics and the general public in both China and the West. Rather than search for the true core of Chinese nationalism, this essay will examine the curious custom of National Humiliation Day as an oblique entry into the politics of identity. The nation is not simply a question of people or territory, the author contends, but of time: the national time scripted by events such as National Humiliation Day. By comparing the differing practices of the holiday as it was celebrated in the early twentieth century and is observed in the early twenty-first century, the author argues that in the early twentieth century the political performances aimed to produce a proper Chinese nation out of the clashes between the Qing dynasty, northern warlords, and foreign empires. The goal was to construct a "China" worthy of being saved. When National Humiliation Day was revived in China at the turn of the twenty-first century, the political performances were more focused on containing the nation through a commemoration of the various crises of the early twentieth century. Thus the essay will argue that the nation does not arise from the ideology of its leaders, as much as through popular performances such as National Humiliation Day. Hence it shows how politics is best analyzed as a series of performances, not just by state actors in official sites like the Foreign Ministry, but also through the cultural governance of less official sites in art, film, literature -and public holidays. In this way, National Humiliation Day activities go beyond producing and containing nationalism; Chinese people are also consuming nationalism as part of a symbolic economy that generates identity.

I offer a critical view of the social capital thesis, which frequently argues that more is better (and less is worse), by examining the ethics of social capital, using Pierre Bourdieu's understanding of networks as defined by their limits. I argue that social capital only assumes conceptual coherence when distinguished from its complementary opposite. I illustrate these theoretical points with a discussion of political reform in Thailand and the 2001 general election. The election exemplifies the benefits of the circulation of social capital: voter turnout and party membership were up, and civil society was active. Yet democratic achievements in Thailand were intimately tied to political corruption. In Thailand, democracy and vote buying are intimately related as examples of the productive dynamic of social capital and corruption; the civil and the uncivil often produce each other. This essay thus expands social capital theory's focus on the relations of people by examining the relationality of concepts. One has to examine the quality of social capital and the ethics of each network's inside/outside distinction. Thus rather than being a political solution, social capital is a theoretical problem, warranting further comparative research that examines how civil social capital interacts with the uncivil social capital of corruption, ethnocentrism, and sectarianism.William A. Callahan is a professor of international politics at the University of Manchester, England. He worked in Thailand for five years as a journalist and a lecturer at Rangsit University (Bangkok). His most recent book is Contingent States: Greater China and Transnational Relations. For sharing information and commenting on this essay, the author thanks Gothom Arya, Michael Kelly Connors, Kevin Hewison, Laddawan Tantiwittayaphitak, Naruemon Thabchumpon, Duncan McCargo, Sukanya Bumroongsook, Sumalee Bumroongsook, Somchai Phatharathananunth, Frederic Schaffer, Teera Vorrakitpokatorn, Thavesilp Subwattana, Viengrat Netipho, and Stephen E. Welch. Special thanks to Jennifer L. Hochschild, the Perspectives reviewers, Frederic Schaffer, and Andreas Schedler for encouraging me to think about corruption and social capital in a new way.