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The Center for Strategic Translation provides statesmen and scholars with the tools needed to interpret the Chinese party-state of today while training a new generation of China specialists with the skills needed to guide our relations with the China of tomorrow.

The Center meets this need through initiatives in translation and education. The Center locates, translates, and annotates documents of historic or strategic value that are currently only available in Chinese. Our introductory essays, glossaries, and commentaries are designed to make these materials accessible and understandable to statesmen and scholars with no special expertise in Chinese politics or the Chinese language.

Complementing the Center’s published translations are the Center’s training seminars. Starting in the summer of 2023 the Center will host a series of seminars to instruct young journalists, graduate students, and government analysts in the open-source analysis of Communist Party policy, introduce them to the distinctive lexicon and history of Party speak, and train them how to draw credible conclusions from conflicting or propagandistic documentary sources.
    
The Center is an initiative of the American Governance Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that studies and promotes the betterment of American public institutions and publishes the quarterly magazine Palladium. The Center is directed by Tanner Greer, a noted essayist, journalist, and researcher with expertise interpreting China in the context of American foreign policy.

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How to See and Recognize Great Changes Unseen in a Century

如何认识和理解百年大变局

Introduction

Even in Chinese, “party speak” reads turgid and terse. The rhetoricians of Chinese communism delight in compact slogans that signify a large constellation of ideas to readers who are familiar with the history of a given phrase yet which remain opaque to everyone else. We observe the process by which these terms accrue meaning whenever a new slogan is introduced to the party lexicon. First a senior leader will introduce a phrase whose broadest meaning can be inferred from its original context, but who’s finer details remain vague and hazy. Cue a bureaucratic frenzy, as officials, propagandists, and state affiliated scholars compete to fly their banner under the aegis of the new term. Some of the winners see their ideas and bureaucratic priorities incorporated into official explanations of the phrase; other winners see their ideas become part of the more informal and ambiguous web of ideas that informs the implementation of the new concept.1 

Ambiguity has its uses. China is large; its conditions are diverse. Detailed diktats would reduce the flexibility cadres and officials need to respond to an evolving crisis. Capacious guidelines, in contrast, allow cadres to adapt policy directives to the specifics of their locale. Ambiguity is also useful whenever a clear declaration of the Party’s policy aims might provoke controversy or opposition. Those who have ears to hear will hear. The rest do not need to.2

Such is the case with the term “great changes unseen in a century.” The phrase, along with the other tenets of Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy, was officially codified in a 2018 Central Conference on Foreign Affairs. There Xi instructed the collected leadership of China’s diplomatic corps and state security apparatus that they must 

Grasp [China’s] role and its position in the evolution of the international landscape in order to scientifically formulate our state’s foreign policy.  China now finds itself in the best period for development it has seen since the advent of the modern era; [simultaneously], the world faces great changes unseen in a century. These two [trends] are interwoven, advancing in lockstep; each stimulates the other. Now, and in the years to come, many advantageous international conditions exist for success in foreign affairs.3

Where Washington officialdom tends to conceptualize strategy as the art of aligning ways, means, and ends, Chinese strategic planners emphasize a fourth element. For them grand strategy begins with assessing the “overall layout” (全局) of the operational space. Planners must identify the “contradictions” (矛盾), “inherent tendencies” (大势), or “the great trends” (大趋势) of the historical moment in which they operate. The far-sighted statesman does not fight these tides of history—he rides them.4 When Xi declared that “the world faces great changes unseen in a century” he was alerting the Chinese foreign policy apparatus that the Party Center had freshly assessed the trajectory of world history, and that their actions must be informed by this assessment.5

But what exactly were the “great changes” Xi foresaw? In 2019 two state think tanks, the State Council’s Asian-African Development Research Institute and Nanjing University’s Collaborative Innovation Center for South China Sea Studies, assembled a panel of prominent Chinese scholars to address the question. These scholars did not speak for the government so much as to it. Their words cannot be viewed as authoritative statements of state policy. They should be treated as representative of the range of scholarly views that inform thinking on the concept. Intellectuals who aim to shape policy must find a way to align their ideas with their understanding of the Party’s position. Assumptions, perceptions, or proscriptions shared by a diverse cast of scholars point to a foreign policy consensus that these scholars either agree with or believe they must appeal to.   

The six scholars are remarkably frank in their assessment of the international scene: most explicitly identify the election of Donald Trump, Brexit, the rise of populism in Europe, and the emergence of identity politics as symptoms of Western decline. Western weakness has precedent: all six scholars see “great changes unseen in a century” as a reference to the collapse of imperial hegemony following World War I, and the concurrent rise of the United States and the Soviet Union as the predominant powers in world politics. They believe that the cycle of decline and rise now repeats: five of the six scholars juxtapose waning Western power with the vitality of the developing world. In all this their view of the world order accords with a judgment Xi Jinping would articulate two years later: “The East ascends; the West declines.”6 

Yet if these panelists agree that declining American power and growing global wealth herald a new era of international relations, the six scholars offer widely different assessments of how difficult it will be for China to guide the evolution of the emerging global order towards a better future. Some, such as Jin Canrong, celebrate the opportunities this historical moment offers China; others, such as Zhu Feng, fixate instead on the risks, dangers, and uncertainties inherent to changing global order. They all agree, however, that wise foreign policy begins with the recognition that the global order is changing. Their message to the Party is that China now must carefully choose which aspects of the crumbling Western order it will preserve, and which it will overturn, on its road to national rejuvenation.  

  1. Zhang Yunling (张蕴岭),How to Understand the Great Changes to Come in this Century
  2. Yang Guangbin (杨光斌),How To Understand Great Changes Unseen in a Century
  3. Wei Ling (魏玲),China and the International System in the Context of the Great Changes Unseen in a Century
  4. Zhu Feng (珠峰),Characteristics of the New Cycle in the Development of International Relations”
  5. Jin Canrong (金灿荣), The Uncertainty of the International Situation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution”
  6. Xie Tao (谢涛), From the Rise of Populism to the Return of History


1 Zeng Jinghan, Xiao Yuefan, and Shaun Breslin, “Securing China’s Core Interests: The State of the Debate in China,” International Affairs 91, no. 2 (2015): 245–66. See also Nadège Rollad, China’s Vision For a New World Order (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2020), 25-51 for a recent study that traces this process in the field of foreign policy.
2 The classic English language studies of ambiguity in Chinese sloganeering are Michael Schoenhals, Doing Things with Words in Chinese Politics: Five Studies (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, 1992), 10-12 and Perry Link,  An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics (Cambridge,Harvard University Press, 2013), 247-260.
3 习近平 Xi Jinping, 《习近平谈治国理政》 [Xi Jinping: On the Governance of China], 第三卷 [vol 3] (Beijing: Foreign Language Press [外文出版社]),2020), 428.  For the official English translation of the same passage see, Xi Jinping, The Governance of China, vol. 3 (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2020), 496.
4 Tanner Greer, “The Theory of History That Guides Xi Jinping,” Palladium, 8 July 2020.
5 For a discussion of the role this slogan has played in Chinese foreign policy, see Sheena Chesnut Greitens, "Internal Security & Chinese Strategy," hearing on "The United States' Strategic Competition with China," § Senate Armed Services Committee (2022); Taylor Fravel, Hearing on “US-China Relations at the Chinese Communist Party’s Centennial” § US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (2022); Rush Doshi, The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order  (New York: Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001), 261-272.
6 In Chinese this is 东升西降. Chris Buckley, “The East Is Rising’: Xi Maps Out China’s Post-Covid Ascent,” New York Times, 4 March 2021.

Author
Zhang Yunling; Yang Guangbin; Wei Ling; Zhu Feng; Jin Canrong; Xie Tao
张蕴岭;杨光斌;魏玲;珠峰;金灿荣; 谢涛;
original publication
Asia Pacific Security and Maritime Affairs
张蕴岭;杨光斌;魏玲;珠峰;金灿荣; 谢涛;
publication date
March 3, 2019
Translator
Tianyu Fang; Dylan Levi King; Samuel George
Translation date
November 2022
Tags
Tag term
Tag term
National Rejuvenation
民族复兴
Great Changes Unseen in a Century
百年未有的大变局

The phrase “great changes unseen in a century,” sometimes translated by official party media as “profound changes unseen in a century,” was first used by Chinese academics following the Great Recession. The phrase is associated with the dangers and opportunities posed by American decline, and has been adopted by THE CENTER as a programmatic assessment of the trajectory of the current world order. The trends which can be feasibly linked to this trajectory are diverse. Commentators have described everything from the rise of populist political parties to breakthroughs in artificial intelligence as falling under the "great changes" label. What unites these different trends is the perception that they pose a mortal threat to Western leadership of the international order.

“Great changes” was officially elevated into the party lexicon in 2017, when then-State Councilor Yang Jiechi described it as a guiding tenet of Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy. Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy was formally adopted by the Party in a 2018 Central Foreign Affairs Work Conference, where Xi informed the collected leadership of the Chinese diplomatic corp and state security apparatus that

China now finds itself in the best period for development it has seen since the advent of the modern era; [simultaneously], the world faces great changes unseen in a century. These two [trends] are interwoven, advancing in lockstep; each stimulates the other. Now, and in the years to come, many advantageous international conditions exist for success in foreign affairs (Xi 2020).

Xi’s comments followed a tradition laid out in innumerable Party documents, speeches, and regulations, which present declarations of  policy, especially foreign policy, as following from an assessment of the “overall landscape” [全局] “inherent tendencies” [大势], or “the great trends” [大趋势] of the historical moment in which the Party finds itself. “Great changes unseen in a century” is a shorthand for the central leadership’s current assessment of the future trajectory of the international order.

The slogan invokes a slew of great changes that shook global politics one century ago: the collapse of British hegemony and the European imperial system following WWI and the concurrent rise of the United States and the Soviet Union as the predominant powers of world politics. The slogan implies that a similar power transition is now underway, with America playing the role of faltering hegemon, and China the rising  power.  

More substantive discussions of the slogan by Chinese academics and state affiliated scholars trace this power transition to myriad causes: the growing wealth of the developing world, the rise of right-wing populism in Western countries, the debilitating effects that neoliberalism and identity politics have on American power, the resurgence of nationalism across the globe, advances in novel technologies not pioneered by the West, and the proliferation of non-traditional security threats (such as pandemics and terrorist attacks) are all common explanations for the crumbling of the American-led international order. 

Though the phrase was introduced in a rather triumphal tone, the slogan has taken on a darker valence as Sino-American relations have worsened and China has grown more isolated in the international arena. Party propagandists and Chinese academics alike now pair the phrase “great changes unforeseen in a century” with increasingly dire warnings about the unique risks and dangers China faces in the final stage of NATIONAL REJUVENATION. Thus the slogan has come to also signify a warning that China sails into uncharted waters. As Xi Jinping reported in his address to the 20th Congress:

Great changes unseen in a century are accelerating across the world… the once-in-a-century pandemic has had far-reaching effects; a backlash against globalization is rising; and unilateralism and protectionism are mounting… The world has entered a new period of turbulence and change… [where] external attempts to suppress and contain China may escalate at any time.

Our country has entered a period of development in which strategic opportunities, risks, and challenges are concurrent and uncertainties and unforeseen factors are rising... We must therefore be more mindful of potential dangers, be prepared to deal with worst-case scenarios, and be ready to withstand high winds, choppy waters, and even dangerous storms (Xi 2022).

See also: ADVANCING TOWARDS THE CENTER OF THE WORLD STAGE; COMMUNITY OF COMMON DESTINY FOR ALL MANKIND; GREAT REJUVENATION OF THE CHINESE NATION;  NEW ROUND OF TECHNO-SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIAL UPGRADING; PERIOD OF STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITY.

Cite This Article

Center for Strategic Translation, “Introduction to ‘How to Understand and Recognize Great Changes of the Century.’” San Francisco: Center for Strategic Translation, 2022.

Related Articles

How to See and Recognize Great Changes Unseen in a Century

如何认识和理解百年大变局

Author
Zhang Yunling; Yang Guangbin; Wei Ling; Zhu Feng; Jin Canrong; Xie Tao
张蕴岭;杨光斌;魏玲;珠峰;金灿荣; 谢涛;
original publication
Asia Pacific Security and Maritime Affairs
张蕴岭;杨光斌;魏玲;珠峰;金灿荣; 谢涛;
publication date
March 3, 2019
Translator
Tianyu Fang; Dylan Levi King; Samuel George
Translation date
November 17, 2022

Introduction

Even in Chinese, “party speak” reads turgid and terse. The rhetoricians of Chinese communism delight in compact slogans that signify a large constellation of ideas to readers who are familiar with the history of a given phrase yet which remain opaque to everyone else. We observe the process by which these terms accrue meaning whenever a new slogan is introduced to the party lexicon. First a senior leader will introduce a phrase whose broadest meaning can be inferred from its original context, but who’s finer details remain vague and hazy. Cue a bureaucratic frenzy, as officials, propagandists, and state affiliated scholars compete to fly their banner under the aegis of the new term. Some of the winners see their ideas and bureaucratic priorities incorporated into official explanations of the phrase; other winners see their ideas become part of the more informal and ambiguous web of ideas that informs the implementation of the new concept.1 

Ambiguity has its uses. China is large; its conditions are diverse. Detailed diktats would reduce the flexibility cadres and officials need to respond to an evolving crisis. Capacious guidelines, in contrast, allow cadres to adapt policy directives to the specifics of their locale. Ambiguity is also useful whenever a clear declaration of the Party’s policy aims might provoke controversy or opposition. Those who have ears to hear will hear. The rest do not need to.2

Such is the case with the term “great changes unseen in a century.” The phrase, along with the other tenets of Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy, was officially codified in a 2018 Central Conference on Foreign Affairs. There Xi instructed the collected leadership of China’s diplomatic corps and state security apparatus that they must 

Grasp [China’s] role and its position in the evolution of the international landscape in order to scientifically formulate our state’s foreign policy.  China now finds itself in the best period for development it has seen since the advent of the modern era; [simultaneously], the world faces great changes unseen in a century. These two [trends] are interwoven, advancing in lockstep; each stimulates the other. Now, and in the years to come, many advantageous international conditions exist for success in foreign affairs.3

Where Washington officialdom tends to conceptualize strategy as the art of aligning ways, means, and ends, Chinese strategic planners emphasize a fourth element. For them grand strategy begins with assessing the “overall layout” (全局) of the operational space. Planners must identify the “contradictions” (矛盾), “inherent tendencies” (大势), or “the great trends” (大趋势) of the historical moment in which they operate. The far-sighted statesman does not fight these tides of history—he rides them.4 When Xi declared that “the world faces great changes unseen in a century” he was alerting the Chinese foreign policy apparatus that the Party Center had freshly assessed the trajectory of world history, and that their actions must be informed by this assessment.5

But what exactly were the “great changes” Xi foresaw? In 2019 two state think tanks, the State Council’s Asian-African Development Research Institute and Nanjing University’s Collaborative Innovation Center for South China Sea Studies, assembled a panel of prominent Chinese scholars to address the question. These scholars did not speak for the government so much as to it. Their words cannot be viewed as authoritative statements of state policy. They should be treated as representative of the range of scholarly views that inform thinking on the concept. Intellectuals who aim to shape policy must find a way to align their ideas with their understanding of the Party’s position. Assumptions, perceptions, or proscriptions shared by a diverse cast of scholars point to a foreign policy consensus that these scholars either agree with or believe they must appeal to.   

The six scholars are remarkably frank in their assessment of the international scene: most explicitly identify the election of Donald Trump, Brexit, the rise of populism in Europe, and the emergence of identity politics as symptoms of Western decline. Western weakness has precedent: all six scholars see “great changes unseen in a century” as a reference to the collapse of imperial hegemony following World War I, and the concurrent rise of the United States and the Soviet Union as the predominant powers in world politics. They believe that the cycle of decline and rise now repeats: five of the six scholars juxtapose waning Western power with the vitality of the developing world. In all this their view of the world order accords with a judgment Xi Jinping would articulate two years later: “The East ascends; the West declines.”6 

Yet if these panelists agree that declining American power and growing global wealth herald a new era of international relations, the six scholars offer widely different assessments of how difficult it will be for China to guide the evolution of the emerging global order towards a better future. Some, such as Jin Canrong, celebrate the opportunities this historical moment offers China; others, such as Zhu Feng, fixate instead on the risks, dangers, and uncertainties inherent to changing global order. They all agree, however, that wise foreign policy begins with the recognition that the global order is changing. Their message to the Party is that China now must carefully choose which aspects of the crumbling Western order it will preserve, and which it will overturn, on its road to national rejuvenation.  

  1. Zhang Yunling (张蕴岭),How to Understand the Great Changes to Come in this Century
  2. Yang Guangbin (杨光斌),How To Understand Great Changes Unseen in a Century
  3. Wei Ling (魏玲),China and the International System in the Context of the Great Changes Unseen in a Century
  4. Zhu Feng (珠峰),Characteristics of the New Cycle in the Development of International Relations”
  5. Jin Canrong (金灿荣), The Uncertainty of the International Situation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution”
  6. Xie Tao (谢涛), From the Rise of Populism to the Return of History


1 Zeng Jinghan, Xiao Yuefan, and Shaun Breslin, “Securing China’s Core Interests: The State of the Debate in China,” International Affairs 91, no. 2 (2015): 245–66. See also Nadège Rollad, China’s Vision For a New World Order (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2020), 25-51 for a recent study that traces this process in the field of foreign policy.
2 The classic English language studies of ambiguity in Chinese sloganeering are Michael Schoenhals, Doing Things with Words in Chinese Politics: Five Studies (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, 1992), 10-12 and Perry Link,  An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics (Cambridge,Harvard University Press, 2013), 247-260.
3 习近平 Xi Jinping, 《习近平谈治国理政》 [Xi Jinping: On the Governance of China], 第三卷 [vol 3] (Beijing: Foreign Language Press [外文出版社]),2020), 428.  For the official English translation of the same passage see, Xi Jinping, The Governance of China, vol. 3 (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2020), 496.
4 Tanner Greer, “The Theory of History That Guides Xi Jinping,” Palladium, 8 July 2020.
5 For a discussion of the role this slogan has played in Chinese foreign policy, see Sheena Chesnut Greitens, "Internal Security & Chinese Strategy," hearing on "The United States' Strategic Competition with China," § Senate Armed Services Committee (2022); Taylor Fravel, Hearing on “US-China Relations at the Chinese Communist Party’s Centennial” § US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (2022); Rush Doshi, The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order  (New York: Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001), 261-272.
6 In Chinese this is 东升西降. Chris Buckley, “The East Is Rising’: Xi Maps Out China’s Post-Covid Ascent,” New York Times, 4 March 2021.

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