9 - The great disorder and the birth of the East Asian sovereign state system

Summary

The old literature, old politics, and old ethics have always belonged to one family; we cannot abandon one and preserve the others. It is Oriental to compromise and only go half way when reforming, for fear of opposition. This was the most important factor behind the failures of reform movements during the last several decades …

New Youth magazine, 1918.

Political power grows from the barrel of a gun.

Mao Zedong

In 1922, the Great Powers met in Washington to construct a new East Asian order. While remembered today primarily for its naval arms limitation agreements, the Washington Conference addressed a far broader range of issues, with the powers seeking to construct a new Pacific order within an unprecedentedly volatile international milieu. Globally, the schism between socialist and liberal understandings of popular sovereignty that had roiled European politics since 1848 was now playing out on a world stage, thanks to the Bolshevik revolution and the rise of Wilsonian internationalism. Within East Asia, the balance of power that had formerly provided some semblance of order had also now collapsed. With Germany defeated, Russia prostrate, and the European powers still reeling from the war, Japan and America now warily confronted one another as both pursued their ambitions within a radically changed regional setting. Finally, within the Sinic heartland of the traditional East Asian order, China had descended into chaos.