THE ORTHODOX PROSOPON AND THE GLOBAL CIVILIZATION INITIATIVE OF CHINA

The Global Civilization Initiative: An innovative Powerful Tool for a New Era in the Study of International Relations, the Shaping of the International System and the role of Hellenic Civilization for the creation of a more Rational Global System

Dr. Konstantinos Grivas

Dr. Pelagia Karpathiotaki*

Introduction

On March 15, 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech during the “Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting”, in which he officially launched the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI).  According to China Global Television Network (CGTN), the GCI, is a framework for international relations based on cultural dialogue and cooperation rather than geopolitical confrontation. It calls for a new era where civilizations “blossom together” through dialogue and “make progress together” through mutual learning, ultimately contributing to a “Community with a Shared Future for Mankind.”

The Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) represents a crucial effort to introduce into the evolving dynamics of the new international system a geopolitical factor of immense potential, capable of preventing global actors from becoming trapped in intolerant and irrational interpretations of international developments, and consequently in adopting correspondingly irrational behaviors.

More broadly, culture remains an underestimated element in the formation of international relations within Western geopolitical thought, which tends to emphasize tangible and material factors. Yet this is a profoundly mistaken reading of reality. Particularly in the Western world, geopolitical behavior is, to a great extent, the product of hidden elements stemming from the deep cultural core of Western geopolitical identity. To ignore these hidden elements is equivalent to ignoring the unconscious in psychology, namely an act that inevitably leads to paranoid conditions.

Accordingly, the GCI provides the methodological framework for a more realistic interpretation of the international system, while also offering the West a unique opportunity to achieve the kind of geopolitical self-awareness that will be critical for its future.

In recent years, China has taken impressive steps in its effort to design an institutional framework for international civilizational dialogue. On June 7, 2024, during the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) a resolution to establish an International Day for Dialogue among Civilizations that proposed by China unanimously adopted. The resolution, which designates June 10 as International Day for Dialogue among Civilizations, calls for “equal dialogue and mutual respect” among different civilizations, fully reflecting the core essence of the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI). In an exclusive interview with CGTN, Fu Cong, China’s permanent representative to the United Nations, stating that China’s proposal is to fully leverage the importance of civilizational dialogue in “eliminating discrimination and prejudice, enhancing understanding and trust, promoting people-to-people connectivity, and strengthening solidarity and cooperation.”

In this framework, the GCI places cooperation and the creative dialogue of civilizations at the heart of international relations. In doing so, it mitigates the persistent Western tendency to view the interaction of global civilizations exclusively in competitive terms—a tendency that has led to monolithic, intolerant, and demonstrably flawed theories, such as Samuel Huntington’s deterministic “Clash of Civilizations.”

In a commentary for CGTN, Ni Feng, director of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noting that modernity carries inherent tensions and as nations develop economically, politically and socially, they inevitably seek to develop their cultures and the powerful internal forces of different civilizations strive to “break away from the singular and exclusive binary narrative that centers on Western superiority.”

In conclusion, the GCI inaugurates a new historical era, in which cultural self-awareness, a positive understanding of other civilizations, and ultimately their synthesis into a unified whole—referred to by the authors of this study as the “Civilization of the Human Being”—will lead to a safer world. Not a world without competition or conflict, nor an idealized utopia, but rather a world free from unnecessary confrontations born of misread realities. A more rational world, in which all international actors will recognize that they share a Shared Future—a future grounded in the principles of Global Civilization.

More analytically, in the early decades of the 21st century, humanity is confronted with challenges that transcend borders, nations, and civilizations. The emergence of a global geopolitical rivalry with innovative characteristics points to a reality in which the international system cannot be understood solely in terms of material power. Beneath power and interests lie deeper layers of culture, identity, and imagination. How civilizations perceive themselves and others shapes their geopolitical behavior as much as calculations of material strength.

It is within this framework that we propose the concept of the Civilization of the Human Being. This is an attempt to articulate a universal principle. That as every human being is a person in relation, the same way the civilizations flourish not by negating one another but by entering into dialogue, recognition, and creative coexistence. It is for this reason that the Global Civilization Initiative is of paramount importance, as they create the necessary framework and common room for the realization of the Civilization of the Human Being. The application of the “being as communion” forms a new geopolitical entity The Civilization of the Human Being as the communion between the different Civilizations. To understand why such a proposal is necessary today, we must first turn to the cultural and epistemological roots of Western civilization, since it is still the dominant actor in shaping the frameworks of modern international relations.

1.Western Epistemological Roots: From Theology to Secular Modernity

Western civilization has been profoundly shaped by a specific vision of time and history. Christianity introduced a linear and teleological understanding of human existence: a beginning in creation, a fall through sin, and an end in redemption and salvation. History was no longer cyclical, nor an endless repetition of rise and decline, but a drama with direction, meaning, and ultimate fulfillment.

When this theological framework was secularized in the modern era, the same structure endured in new forms. The Enlightenment and modern science transformed the eschatological horizon of salvation into a secular horizon of progress. Instead of awaiting divine redemption, humanity was to achieve perfection through reason, science, and the liberation of the individual. The logic of the modern West thus retained its Christian skeleton even when it abandoned its Christian flesh: a linear vision of time, a teleology of improvement, and the conviction that history moves toward a definite and irreversible goal.

This vision, however, has created a paradox. The same teleological structure that gave the West its confidence and optimism has, in the postmodern age, generated profound crises of identity. When the promise of progress falters, when modernity fails to deliver the happiness it promised, the result is not neutral disillusionment but cultural despair. Western societies today face what we may call a void of identity: traditional sources of meaning — nation, people, family, gender, even the very idea of the human being — are deconstructed or questioned. The past is condemned as racist, imperialist, patriarchal and consequently the present appears fragile and fragmented. The future is overshadowed by ecological collapse, technological domination, and geopolitical conflict.

In psychoanalytic terms, this void functions as a void that demands compensation. And the usual way to fill such a void is through the construction of a Dark Other — an imagined enemy, both dangerous and all-powerful, onto whom anxieties and guilt can be projected. In this sense, the epistemological heritage of the West — teleology, linear time, the search for ultimate redemption — has not disappeared. It continues to shape geopolitics, but in distorted and pathological ways.

2.The Cold War and the Eschatology of Power

The Cold War was the historical moment in which the West’s perception of history reached its most dramatic expression. For the first time, humanity possessed the ability to destroy itself completely. Nuclear weapons transformed the apocalypse from a myth into a concrete possibility. The eschatological narrative of history was mirrored in the terrifying reality of nuclear annihilation.

The doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) embodied this paradoxical eschatology. Security was maintained not by eliminating danger but by institutionalizing the possibility of absolute destruction. This was not merely a strategic calculation but also a metaphysical structure: salvation through the permanent threat of damnation. The Cold War thus institutionalized an apocalyptic imagination at the heart of international relations.

When the Cold War ended, the West believed it had reached the “end of history.” Liberal democracy and the free market were no longer simply political or economic systems. Τhey were sanctified as the telos of human existence. Time appeared to have been frozen in a permanent present, in which no alternative future was conceivable. This triumphalism, however, contained the seeds of its own crisis.

Without a positive narrative of the future, Western civilization increasingly turned to the condemnation of its own past. Colonialism, patriarchy, and racism became the dominant lenses through which history was viewed. Progress requires self-confidence, but guilt undermines confidence. The paradox of the post-Cold War West is that it continues to claim moral superiority even as it sinks into cultural self-denial.

This dynamic has direct geopolitical consequences. When a civilization cannot articulate a positive sense of itself, it tends to construct its identity negatively, through the demonization of others. Thus, in the post-Cold War period, Russia and China have been imagined not as different civilizations with their own logics and aspirations, but as reincarnations of Western sins. In the Western imagination China became the repetition of the darkest aspects of the European imperialistic powers of the past. By projecting its own historical sins onto Others, the West paradoxically helps to bring about the very unity of its rivals that classical strategists such as Kissinger would have considered a grave mistake.

This is the eschatology of power. A geopolitical imagination in which the Other is not an actor to be engaged with rationally, but a projection of the West’s own unresolved fears. It is no accident that concepts such as “hyper-evil,” “axis of evil,” or “existential threat” dominate the Western lexicon. These are not neutral descriptions but metaphysical categories rooted in a centuries-old tradition of interpreting history as a cosmic struggle between good and evil.

3.Eastern Visions of Time, History and Harmony

In contrast to the linear, teleological vision of the West, the civilizations of the East have long cultivated a more cyclical, process-oriented understanding of time. Chinese philosophy, rooted in Confucian, Daoist, and later Buddhist traditions, emphasizes continuity, balance, and adaptation rather than rupture, guilt, or final redemption. History is not a drama moving toward an ultimate end, but a flow in which harmony must constantly be maintained and restored.

This orientation toward balance rather than eschatology shapes China’s civilizational approach to politics and international relations. The idea of tianxia (“all under heaven”) is not simply a geopolitical project but a cosmological vision. Within the framework of this notion, order arises when relationships are aligned, not when an enemy is destroyed. Harmony does not mean uniformity; it means the coexistence of differences within a greater whole.

In the modern era, this worldview has found new expression. Initiatives such as the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) reflect a civilizational confidence that sees diversity not as a threat but as a resource. The GCI rejects the “clash of civilizations” thesis by proposing a dialogue of civilizations, in which each cultural tradition contributes its own vision of humanity.

Where the West often freezes time — declaring the “end of history,” or seeing the future only through the repetition of its past traumas — China allows time to flow. Instead of conceiving of the Other as a metaphysical enemy, it tends to see relations in terms of adjustment, coexistence, and long-term process.

This difference is not merely academic. It has profound geopolitical consequences. The West, interpreting China through its own eschatological lens, imagines it as a future empire repeating the sins of Western colonialism. China, however, interprets itself as returning to a natural position of centrality after a period of historical interruption. What the West sees as a threat of domination, China sees as a restoration of balance.

The contrast, then, is stark:

– The West often projects its fears onto others, locked in a manichaean imagination of good and evil.

– China and the East emphasize process, balance, and harmony, where difference is not annihilated but integrated.

In this light, the challenge of the 21st century is not only a balance of power but also a balance of temporalities. Namely, the ability of civilizations to recognize and engage with one another’s different understandings of time, history, and human destiny.

4.Orthodox Christianity as a geocultural factor and the Ontology of the Person (Prosopon)

Between the Western and Eastern visions lies a tradition that has often been overlooked in global debates but may hold a unique mediating role. The tradition of Orthodox Christianity. Rooted in the Greek patristic tradition, Orthodoxy developed a distinctive ontology of the human being, centered not on the isolated individual, nor on the absorption into cosmic cycles, but on the person (prosopon) understood as being-in-relationship, or better being – as a communion.

According to the great theologians of the early Christian Church, such as the Cappadocian Greek Fathers, the deepest truth of reality is communion. God is not a solitary monarch but Trinity: a communion of persons in love. To exist, then, is to be in relation, to be in communion. Human beings find freedom and dignity and finally identity not in isolation, but in communion with others. This vision was later articulated by modern Orthodox thinkers such as John Zizioulas, who described existence itself as being as communion.

This ontology of the person challenges both Western pathologies. Namely, against the West’s temptation to define identity through opposition to a Dark Other, Orthodoxy insists that identity is fulfilled through relation, not negation.

In this way, the Orthodox perspective offers a bridge. It can speak to the West about the dangers of manichaean dualism and the idolization of power. It can speak to the East about the dignity of the person within harmony. Most importantly, it can offer to the global conversation a vision in which freedom, difference, and communion are not enemies but mutually constitutive dimensions of human existence.

For geopolitics, this perspective has concrete implications. If the West is tempted to demonize and the East is tempted to homogenize, the Orthodox tradition offers a third way: a civilization of persons in relation, where the deepest source of security lies not in domination or assimilation but in mutual recognition.

This is why the Civilization of the Human Being draws heavily on this Orthodox heritage. It is not a call to convert the world to Orthodoxy, but to recover a vision of humanity that recognizes that true freedom is relational, and that difference is not a threat but a gift.

Adopting such a vision is not utopian. On the contrary, it is a practical necessity. Nuclear weapons have already made absolute victory impossible. Climate change, pandemics, and technological disruptions make isolationist strategies obsolete. The world will either learn to build a civilization of persons in relation, or it will sink into cycles of paranoia, demonization, and potentially catastrophic conflict.

The Global Civilization Initiative offers an important step toward this direction. But for it to succeed, it needs partners who can articulate bridge-concepts — concepts that unite rather than divide, that reveal common ground rather than deepen suspicion. The application of the Orthodox paradigm of the prosopon (the being as a communion) is such a concept.

We are referring of course to this concept as a cultural factor only. We are interesting at the geopolitical footprint of the Orthodox Christianity only and not at the Orthodoxy as a religion.

In conclusion Greece has a unique role to play in this endeavor to create a global mechanism of positive interactions through different civilizations based on the Global Civilization Initiative of China and the Hellenic – Orthodox Civilization. As the cradle of philosophy, democracy, and rational inquiry, and as the soil from which Christianity in general and Orthodoxy in particular drew their conceptual language, Hellenic civilization embodies the dialogue between West and East. The Mediterranean can once again become a space of meeting, not of confrontation.

Greece can contribute to building a new narrative for Europe, one that avoids both nihilistic self-denial and arrogant triumphalism. It can help Europe rediscover a positive identity, grounded not in superiority over others but in relation with others.

The application of the ontology of the person in international relations, in the authors’ view, can serve as a methodological tool for China’s Global Civilization Initiative (GCI). The GCI aims at the creative dialogue of the world’s civilizations in order to generate a commonly accepted global vision of a single and indivisible humanity, transcending the rivalries among individual states. A “Shared Future” for the diverse human civilizations, nations, peoples, and countries. The concept of the person (prosopon), namely existence through relation and existence in otherness, is precisely the methodological tool that allows for the convergence of the GCI and Chinese philosophy more broadly with European civilization. The notion of the prosopon and the geopolitical entity referred to by the authors as the Civilization of the Human Being constitutes a common identity that emerges out of relationship, without individual entities losing their distinctiveness, autonomy, uniqueness, or independence. Otherness is the very element that generates relation, not commonalities, and certainly not the imposition of one’s elements over another. The prosopon recognizes equal entities in relation, just as the GCI envisions relations among civilizations that retain their full identity and do not seek to impose their principles, values, or views on one another. There is complete equality and mutual respect. And it is precisely through differences that unity is achieved.

This worldview of the prosopon stands in opposition to hierarchical readings of civilizations and the logic of imposing Western-derived principles, ideologies, and perspectives on others. Yet the conception of the prosopon arises from within the very heart of Western civilization, and therefore it can serve as a key that unlocks Western culture for a creative and equal dialogue with Chinese civilization and the rest of humanity. Such a dialogue would lead to a more rational, secure, and peaceful world.

Conclusion:
The future of international relations will be determined not only by weapons and wealth, but by imagination and identity. If civilizations continue to imagine the world as a battlefield of absolute good against absolute evil, they will turn that imagination into reality. If they rediscover themselves as cultures of persons in relation, they will open new possibilities for peace, cooperation, and human flourishing.

The GCI thus offers the international system a powerful methodological tool which, if properly employed, can lead the West toward deeper geopolitical self-knowledge and a more cooperative geopolitical behavior—one emphasizing humanity as an integrated whole rather than a battlefield of competing civilizations, states, and blocs doomed to clash under a paranoid conception of time and history that stems from the West’s own cultural core, yet remains unrecognized by it.

{*) Dr Konstantinos Grivas is Professor of Geopoltics and the Director of War Theory and Analysis Sector at the Hellenic Military Academy. He also teaches Geography of Security at the Department of Turkish and Modern Asian Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Dr Pelagia Karpathiotaki is a Senior Advisor and Academic expert in EU – China relations. Since 2016 she has been a Foreign Expert Associate Professor, and Senior Researcher at University of International Business and Economy (UIBE) in Beijing.