The Tribute System Isn’t Returning to China

Ray Dalio says the world is reverting to China’s ancient order of kowtows and hierarchy, the tribute system.1 In his account, it runs on deference, not force: lesser powers acknowledge a dominant center, and in return get trade and protection. It’s an order held together by prestige and pressure, not war. He has the system right and the capital wrong.Look at how the tribute system was actually theorized, and how it actually worked, and the labels turn out to be in the wrong places. The power now collecting tribute looks like Washington. The power now writing the contracts looks like Beijing. The tribute-versus-treaty binary that John King Fairbank (费正清) built in the 1940s to explain how China met the modern West, has quietly rotated. It now points the other way.This is a claim about posture, not about national character. And the posture is not a fixed one. It is a practical, flexible choice.Subscribe for deep, weekly essays on the complexities of China's past and present.(Left) the…