Xiang Lanxin (born 1956, zh, c=相蓝欣, p=Xiāng Lánxīn) is a Chinese scholar of international relations and the history of modern China. He is an expert on relations among China, USA and Europe, an emeritus professor of history and international relations at the

Geneva Graduate Institute The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (, abbreviated IHEID), commonly referred to as Geneva Graduate Institute, is a graduate-level research university in Geneva, Switzerland dedicated to international relations, dev ...

and director of the ''Center for

One Belt, One Road The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI or B&R), known in China as the One Belt One Road and sometimes referred to as the New Silk Road, is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the government of China in 2013 to invest in more t ...

Studies'' in

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

Early life and career

Xiang was born in

Nanjing Nanjing or Nanking is the capital of Jiangsu, a province in East China. The city, which is located in the southwestern corner of the province, has 11 districts, an administrative area of , and a population of 9,423,400. Situated in the Yang ...

, Jiangsu in 1956. He attended college at

Fudan University Fudan University (FDU) is a public university, national public university in Yangpu, Shanghai, Yangpu, Shanghai, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education (China), Ministry of Education and is co-funded with the Shanghai Municipal ...

in Shanghai before moving to the United States to earn an MA and PhD from the Johns Hopkins

School of Advanced International Studies The School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is a graduate school of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C. The school also maintains campuses in Bologna, Italy and Nanjing, China. The school is devoted to the study of int ...

in 1990. Translated with commentary by David Ownby of the Reading the China Dream project fro
the original
(in Chinese). He served as a professor of International History and Politics

in Switzerland from 1996 to 2021. Xiang has spent the majority of his career working outside of China, though he still maintains Chinese citizenship.

Views

Xiang falls within the liberal spectrum of Chinese political thinkers. He considers himself patriotic, but is also critical of the ruling

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

(CCP) and believes the country should embrace democracy. In his book ''The Quest for Legitimacy in Chinese Politics, a New Interpretation'' he compared CCP leadership to the tsars of Russia leading up to the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

, "with charlatans and sycophants running amuck." Xiang is also highly critical of

Montesquieu Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (18 January 168910 February 1755), generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French judge, man of letters, historian, and political philosopher. He is the principal so ...

and his view of democracy, which he sees as racialist and ignorant of China's historical structures of power and governance. Xiang instead advocates a view of democracy informed by

Confucianism Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China, and is variously described as a tradition, philosophy, Religious Confucianism, religion, theory of government, or way of li ...

and

direct democracy Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which the Election#Electorate, electorate directly decides on policy initiatives, without legislator, elected representatives as proxies, as opposed to the representative democracy m ...

. Xiang argues that China had a relatively stable system of governance pilloried by many European thinkers—such as Montesquieu,

Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...

, and

Adam Smith Adam Smith (baptised 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the field of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as the "father of economics"——— or ...

—who understood Asia only as a negative example, unworthy of study in its own right. Xiang is critical of "

Wolf Warrior diplomacy Wolf warrior diplomacy is a confrontational form of public diplomacy adopted by diplomats of the People's Republic of China in the late 2010s. The phrase is derived from the Chinese action film franchise ''Wolf Warrior'' (2015) and its Wolf Warr ...

", the moniker given to more aggressive and confrontational diplomatic behavior by the People's Republic of China in the 21st century, which he considers unproductive and the result of influence of

Martin Jacques Martin Jacques (born 1945) is a British journalist, editor, academic, political commentator and author. Early life and education Jacques was born in October 1945 in the city of Coventry, then in Warwickshire, now in the West Midlands, th ...

' book ''When China Rules the World''. In a 2020 interview with the blog publication ''Reading the China Dream'', Xiang mocked the association of colleague Zhang Weiwei with the unaccredited and discredited Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, in Switzerland.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Xiang, Lanxin Liberalism in China Chinese historians Chinese political philosophers Fudan University alumni 1956 births Johns Hopkins University people Academic staff of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Living people Educators from Nanjing