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With respect to China's international relations, the most explicitly agenda-setting moment of Xi Jinping's tenure as Communist Party General Secretary and State Chairman has been his September 28, 2015 speech to the UN General Assembly. During these remarks, Xi introduced to a global audience his administration's call for what was rendered into English as a "community of shared future for mankind" (renlei mingyun gongtongti ...).1 This terminology was first introduced in the 2012 speech that Xi's predecessor, Hu Jintao, used to conclude his tenure as Party leader. However, the broader concept, now usually rendered as "community of shared future" (mingyun gongtongti)-still subject to varying translations in various languages but ultimately based on the German term Schicksalsgemeinschaft, itself most often translated into English as "community of fate"- has a much longer global history. That conceptual genealogy, including its rather unexpected channels of transmission into Chinese discourse, sheds some light on the origins and implications of Xi's "new" idea.2
Despite its ambiguity, the concept is hugely influential and has, since 2015, been fully entrenched in the architecture of Communist Party ideology. It was swiftly adopted as a constantly invoked trope of official discourse, and indeed has now become synonymous with the full range of China's important foreign policy ventures, from the massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) program of developmental assistance and investment to intensified engagement in various UN institutions. The concept was also added to the Preamble of the PRC Constitution in 2018, along with several other significant Xi-era revisions.3 As described by the Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Department of Treaty and Law, China had legally made "a solemn promise to the world" through its fundamental law.4 Since its proclamation at the UN General Assembly, references to the concept in official and academic literature have, quite literally, exponentially exploded (Figures 1 and 2), in a way typical of so-called tifa (correct phrasings), such as "socialism with Chinese characteristics," which are elevated by political fiat into non-negotiable, but definitionally flexible, boundary lines for policy debates.5
Where, then, did the concept "community of shared future" come from, and what does it actually signify? As this article shows, the concept was not only derived from the German political trope of...