Nothing New Under Heaven: Ancient Chinese Thought and the Modern Struggle for Global Hegemony

The summit between the world’s two pre-eminent powers was deeply symbolic. During his state visit to Beijing from 13 to 15 May, Donald Trump, the American president, stood alongside his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, who asked rhetorically at a joint press conference: could the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’ be avoided? Might global challenges be tackled jointly to bring greater stability to the world? The following day, Xi guided his guest through the former imperial gardens of Zhongnanhai, now the heavily guarded leadership compound of the Chinese Communist Party. It was a rare honour for a foreign head of state, and one that visibly flattered the American president.

Predictably, the Western press seized upon the phrase ‘Thucydides Trap’. The concept traces its lineage to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460–395 BC), who famously observed in his History of the Peloponnesian War: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made the war inevitable.” That conflict (431–404 BC) became an all-consuming fratricidal war between the city-states (poleis) of Athens, Sparta, and their respective alliances. Though it ended in a Spartan victory, it left the whole of Greece chronically exhausted.

Ancient Frameworks for Modern Geopolitics

Building on this ancient thesis, the American political scientist Graham Allison sought in the 2010s to extract a timeless principle of state behaviour, applying it directly to Sino-American relations. Synthesising his findings in his 2017 book, Destined for War, he identified two psychological drivers – or ‘syndromes’ – that fuel conflicts between great powers:

• The Rising Power Syndrome: A growing power’s heightened sense of self-importance, which brings a demand for greater recognition, respect, and a fundamental reshaping of geopolitical rules.
• The Ruling Power Syndrome: An established power’s deep-seated fear of decline, paranoia, and status insecurity, which leads it to interpret every move by the newcomer as an existential provocation.

According to Allison, the toxic symbiosis of these two syndromes inevitably ensnares superpowers in the ‘Thucydides Trap’. He cites 16 somewhat arbitrarily selected conflicts from Western history in which he claims to discern this pattern. Crucially, however, he concedes that war erupted in only 12 of those cases. In the remaining four, intense diplomacy managed to contain the friction before it could ignite an all-consuming conflagration – a blueprint Allison recommends for Washington and Beijing today.

«While history may not repeat itself, it famously rhymes.»

Criticism of Allison’s framework is well-established. Thucydides never intended to formulate an immutable law of global politics; he simply sought to analyse the tragic war that tore his homeland apart. Indeed, his famous line appears almost in passing. Others have pointed – rightly – to the obsession among American theorists with treating Greco-Roman classics as ultimate authorities (another case in point being ‘Sallust’s Theorem’), arguing instead that lessons should be drawn from Asian history. Constructivists would go further, concluding that since everything is merely a narrative, any historical comparison is futile and nobody can ever learn anything from anything anyway.

Yet while history may not repeat itself, it famously rhymes. And a vital detail has been overlooked in recent commentary: it was not the American guest, but the Chinese president himself who invoked the metaphor of the ‘trap’. Xi Jinping – one of the two pivotal players on the global chessboard – evidently believes firmly in the narrative potency of this concept.

Between ‘Conflict Avoidance’ and ‘Wolf Warrior’ Diplomacy

It would be easy to dismiss this as mere mimicry, assuming Xi adopted the term simply to speak to the Americans in their own conceptual dialect. But the rhetoric aligns seamlessly with the president’s long-standing intellectual framework. As early as 2014, he emphasised that US-China relations must be built on “mutual respect”, “no confrontation or conflict”, and “win-win cooperation”, warning that once China and the United States enter into confrontation, “it would surely spell disaster for both countries.”

By the late 2010s, however, the tone of Chinese foreign policy began to shift. Public pronouncements grew sharper, more assertive, and increasingly nationalist – a rhetorical shift that peaked during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–21. Named after a popular Chinese action film franchise, this aggressive style became known as ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy. Graham Allison would likely have viewed this as a textbook manifestation of the ‘Rising Power Syndrome’. In many capitals of the world – not least Taipei – this muscle-flexing caused profound alarm.

It is telling, then, that the ‘Wolf Warrior’ style was quietly shelved after 2021. Today, Beijing has returned to invoking the rules-based order, world peace, and the ‘common interests of humanity’. After all, we all live “under heaven”.

“All Under Heaven”

This pacifist rhetoric draws on an entirely different philosophical concept, one meticulously revitalised since the 2000s by the Beijing-based political philosopher Zhao Tingyang: Tianxia, which translates literally as “all under heaven”.

Zhao anchors his thesis to an idealised reconstruction of the hegemonial system that prevailed under the ancient Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC), which supposedly guaranteed stability and peace. The Zhou ruled over only a modest core territory in the North China Plain, yet they exercised a universal, moral authority known as the ‘Mandate of Heaven’. Their heartland functioned like a whirlpool, gradually drawing in neighbouring principalities through the sheer pull of this mandate and the cultural and material supremacy of the Zhou.

This school of thought breaks radically with Western political concepts, which historically trace back to the atomised structure of the Greek city-states (poleis). Tianxia recognises no separate nation-states; instead, it conceptualises the world as a single, indivisible community, elevating the globe itself to the primary political actor. Zhao demands a radical shift in thinking: the world must no longer be viewed as a mere geographical object to be conquered and exploited by imperial powers.

In Zhao’s philosophical blueprint, the Tianxia system relies on a rigorous ‘world internalisation’. It is conceived as a system that possesses only interiority and, in principle, no ‘outside’. Consequently, the distinction between ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’, or ‘us’ and ‘them’ – so foundational to Western political thought – loses all validity. While modern Western politics rests on division, border-drawing, and national egoism, Tianxia aims to integrate every culture and nation into a single, inclusive order of coexistence, systematically transforming hostility into hospitality. Within this logic, war is never a legitimate tool of statecraft, but  proof of its failure.

Methodologically, Zhao contrasts Western individual utility-maximisation with ‘relational rationality’. The priority is not self-interest, but the minimisation of mutual harm to make cooperation possible in the first place. Deeply rooted in Confucian philosophy, this approach operates on the principle of collective improvement: an actor may only optimise their own position if doing so simultaneously improves the lot of everyone else. Only when the world is understood as a global Tianxia, Zhao argues, can transnational scourges like war, pandemics, or climate change be effectively tackled.

«The Tianxia system relies on a rigorous ‘world internalisation’. It is conceived as a system that possesses only interiority and, in principle, no ‘outside’.»

For the governance of Tianxia, Zhao proposes an epistocratic constitutional model inspired by the ancient advisor Jizi. Arguing that democracies invariably degenerate into a ‘tyranny of the majority’, he advocates for a ‘Smart Democracy’. This system would feature a representative assembly divided equally between representatives of ‘the people’, the natural sciences, and the humanities. While the popular representatives retain the right of initiative to put forward ‘desirable options’, the academic cohorts function as an elite filter – testing, weighing, and, if necessary, rejecting proposals. Only the wisest decisions become law.

The People’s Republic of China occupies the central role in this construction. Because the concept is of ancient Chinese origin, Beijing is seen as holding a conceptual vanguard position, tasked with expanding Tianxia as a new, cosmopolitan order across the entire globe – drawing the world into its new whirlpool. Under this logic, a genuine global community can only be realised if Beijing extends material support to other actors for the collective good, while deploying digital networks to gradually convince the world population of their ‘shared interests’. National policies pursued in defiance of this collective will would become increasingly untenable, easing the world into a Tianxia state.

«China’s global infrastructure projects and digital networks – most notably the Belt and Road Initiative and platforms like TikTok – form the modern whirlpool. Beijing entices partners with material backing while algorithms shape the worldviews of a global youth.»

One might dismiss Zhao’s ideas as mere academic daydreaming. Yet there are unmistakable signals that China’s foreign policy under Xi Jinping actively pursues this very logic. Official communiqués from the Chinese Communist Party – and, since 2018, the Chinese Constitution – call for the creation of a ‘Community of Common Destiny’, a concept that overlaps heavily with Zhao’s theory. China’s global infrastructure projects and digital networks – most notably the Belt and Road Initiative and platforms like TikTok – form the modern whirlpool. Beijing entices partners with material backing while algorithms shape the worldviews of a global youth. The deeper the world sinks into this current, the more difficult independent national politics becomes. The global community is not being conquered; it is being drawn in and transformed.

The Impotence of Small States

What does this renaissance of classicist concepts in 21st-century imperial power politics mean for third-party small states like Switzerland? Both the American preoccupation with the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and the Chinese counter-model of Tianxia carry fundamental risks for unaligned small nations. While Allison’s model reduces the international system to a binary, merciless duel between Washington and Beijing – in which third states are degraded to mere diplomatic ballast – Zhao’s Tianxia eliminates the very concepts of the nation-state and sovereignty altogether. Where there is no longer an ‘outside’, classical neutrality loses its foundation in international law.

«Both the American preoccupation with the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and the Chinese counter-model of Tianxia carry fundamental risks for unaligned small nations.»

Crucially, international organisations like the United Nations, which traditionally serve as shields for smaller states, are dismissed as ineffective or obsolete by both schools of thought. Zhao, for instance, distinguishes between the ‘international politics’ of the UN and its members – which he characterises as laudable but ultimately impotent – and the ‘world politics’ within a future Tianxia. For Switzerland, as a custodian of multilateral international law and a prominent diplomatic hub, a world ordered along these lines would be catastrophic. Geneva’s diplomatic bedrock loses its meaning if global issues are decided either in a nuclear stalemate between two giants or within a collectivised, epistocratic world community tailored to Beijing’s tastes.

If history is indeed rhyming and classicising concepts are being invoked, small states must listen closely. It is no longer enough to analyse the rhetoric of great powers solely through a Western, Eurocentric lens. To maintain strategic agency in tomorrow’s geopolitics, one must understand the philosophical foundations of both sides – and prepare for a future world order negotiated somewhere between the battlefield and the imperial garden.