Thread: Chinese Westernization/Modernization

Interesting article from ATimes and the Italian daily La Stampa. I just thought I'd have more chance of getting interesting input here than elsewhere...

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.

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CHINA'S MASSIVE WRENCH, Part 1
Change in the face of foreign devils
By Francesco Sisci

BEIJING - Libraries are filled with thousands of volumes explaining all the problems and intricacies of the momentous passage from agricultural to industrial society, from rural to urban life, from a world marked by huge gaps in time and space to another in which communications and telecommunications immensely narrow time and distance.

These changes still puzzle us and seem largely unexplained. Yet the changes, occurring over a span of 200 years, are minimal if compared to what has happened in China in the past 30 years.

The changes have been concentrated in a little more than a



generation. But this is just a small part of a larger phenomenon: in the past 150 years, China's complex cultural values have been under constant attack, forcing revision. That is, not only did China have to undergo the same structural changes as the West in a shorter period, at the same time it also underwent dramatic cultural changes.

The only similar development took place in Japan in the late 19th century. But to put it very briefly, Japan was at a much earlier phase of cultural evolution, so the breadth of the structural change was not as huge. It was in a society that claimed it had already absorbed and digested a foreign culture, that of China about a thousand years earlier. So the present digestion of Western culture was within the Japanese tradition and it could do so with great confidence because in the first phases of the reform it had military victories over the regional superpower China, in 1894, and a Western power, Russia, in 1905.

China, conversely, arrived to the fast phase of modernization pretty late, with a larger gap to fill in less time. China also didn't have much confidence, as it had been defeated by foreign powers, invaded and almost totally conquered by Japan, and had won only a small war against India. It managed to gain an almost honorable draw with America in Korea in the 1950s (with Russian support) and with Vietnam in 1979 (with some American assistance).

Furthermore, China had no affirmed tradition of digesting foreign culture into its own mold and changing itself in the process. It had the opposite tradition, of making anything foreign "Chinese", which occurred several times in Chinese history. The last time was with the minority Manchu invaders, who eventually were completely Sinified (or Hanized). One could argue that Buddhism vastly changed China, but the current perception is that, in fact, China changed Buddhism even more. Now, the situation is completely different, and there is no doubt that China is changing to adapt to a Western values-dominated world, rather than the contrary.

The country that faced the "foreign devils from the ocean", yang guizi, during the Opium Wars in the mid 19th century dramatically changed in the following century and a half - to the point that contemporary China can be regarded as only superficially similar to the country it was during the Opium Wars. In fact, the whole social and personal context, which defines and influences ideas, ambitions and world-views, has been totally transformed in these 150 years.

The new family
The change started with the family, the cell and basis for society and the state. The ideal family in the 19th century was unchanged from the times of Confucius, some 2,000 years before: three generations under one roof. The older man had many wives and even more children. Each male heir also had many wives and children, all living together in a large courtyard, resembling a small village of dozens of people.

In the courtyard, there were also many servants. The females of the clan were betrothed to neighbors, who then gained a closer relationship with the family. In this way, whole villages or even towns were under the control of one family. Each relative had a name indicating his precise relationship to the speaker. There were no vague appellations like "aunt", "uncle" or "cousin". There were terms such as "uncle, first younger brother of my father" (da shufu) or "uncle, second brother of my mother" (er jiufu), and so on. Cousins also bore different names, accordingly.

It was an intricate cobweb of relations in which each individual had his or her precise place. A male child grew up thinking that if he studied hard and if he were virtuous and filial, he would pass official exams, become a successful mandarin, inherit the family fortune and establish his own large family home. Then, he would pick the brightest of his heirs and support that child through his studies, continuing the glorious family tradition.

That was an ideal. Most men had only one wife, as they could not afford more. Some men, poor, had no wives; and some, just a little less poor, had to share a wife with their brothers. Yet, the ideal family was one man, many wives and many, many children.

For the emperor, this was an issue of state security. The emperor had many wives to make sure he had many children and could choose the fittest from them to succeed him. The successor had to be male, but not necessarily the first born from the first wife, as was the situation in Europe. The Chinese system tried to make sure the emperor was not incompetent, which could be the case with the European system where God chose the successor - namely, the first-born.

The issue of family and keeping only one wife was the stumbling block in the conversion of a Qing emperor to Catholicism. The Wanli emperor might have entertained the idea of converting to Catholicism, as many of his closest advisors were Jesuits, but he could not accept the idea of having one wife, as this would alter the rules for succession in China. However, the Jesuits in the 17th century knew that they could not compromise on the rule of succession: the king's many wives and their children had been the very issue that had caused a split between England and Rome the century before with Henry VIII and Elizabeth. Elizabeth died in 1603, seven years before Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci's demise in Beijing in 1610.

This ideal of the family persisted until the communists took over in 1949. After the May Fourth movement in 1919, the idea of one wife was introduced as progressive and modern. However, Kuomintang (KMT) leader Chiang Kai-shek had more than one wife, as did many senior KMT officials.

Conversely, the Communist Party broke the old mold and introduced puritanical rules imposing just one wife. This was already a major break with tradition, but an even greater break came in the 1980s with the one-child rule. This completely reversed the old pyramid of relations. A hundred years before, a grandfather could be served by scores of grandchildren all vying for his favor.

In 1980s, one couple, some of them being two single children of single-wife marriages, could have as many as four grandparents all hovering around their single child. Then, there would be six adults spoiling one child. This is the phenomenon of the "little emperors". The children were spoiled, but also under enormous pressure. They had the responsibility to succeed for their family's glory.

In larger families, this responsibility was spread among scores of siblings who first had to learn to live with each other. The one child born after 1980 had to be number one in his class to be sure to get into a good high school, which, in turn, guarantees a place at a good university in the extremely selective Chinese education system.

But this, of course, is impossible. What happens, then, in most families, if the one child fails to get into a good university and has no hope for a good job? How do the children reconcile themselves with their lot? Will they be frustrated and angry? They are no small number - millions of children fall into this generation. How will these people impact society, the state, the world and culture in the next 20 years?

One thing is sure, China has never experienced a generation like this, and neither has any society in the world, so it is difficult to forecast trends. Because the situation is so widespread, the Chinese government has realized the problem and is trying to address it. But before turning our attention to the answer, first we have to look at how the Chinese government itself has dramatically changed.

End to the emperor
Since unification in the late 3rd century BC, China was ruled by an emperor, a supreme head of state, ultimate source of power and decision-maker. Possibly, there were "emperors" even before then, such as the son of heaven (tianzi) of Zhou times, but he was likely more of a religious and ceremonial figure than a real political monarch.

The imperial system really started with the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty (221 BC-207 BC) - Qinshi Huangdi. The system underwent many changes, but there was always one constant: the emperor did not run the administration of the country. That duty was largely entrusted to a body of ministers and officials who were selected on the basis of merit. The emperor embodied the interests of the state, as the state was his. It was a mechanism similar to that of modern companies differentiating property and management. The owner, or major stock-holder, sets the goals and decides the broad direction and the interests of the company, such as its stability and welfare. The emperor's interests coincide with the interests of the population, or in our comparison, the employees in a company. The citizens want to lead comfortable safe lives, and creating this environment ensures a stable hold on power for the emperor.

In the middle, between the emperor and the people, there were officials who had the job of running the country and maintaining stability. It is easy to see how people recognized their interests as coinciding with those of the emperor, and as a result both the emperor and the people blamed officials if something minor went wrong. If something major was wrong, it meant the emperor had lost his marbles, he did not understand his and his people's interests, or heaven did not want him to rule - and that was the end for him and the dynasty. They would be replaced by a new

emperor and dynasty, setting new standards for the old stability game.

In the 20th century, Chiang Kai-shek and communist leader Mao Zedong also followed this pattern. Although they did not call themselves "emperors", they were the ultimate embodiment of the interests of the state and the ones who set the grand directions. Deng Xiaoping's rule (1978 to the early 1990s) was softer, but he still commanded great respect. Jiang Zemin (president from 1993 to 2003), was something in between.

However, the real radical change occurred at the beginning of this century, with the smooth transition of power from Jiang to Hu



Jintao, the current president. That transition confirmed that both men were not emperors. They are Communist Party officials promoted because of merit to become head of state, but they do not embody the ultimate interests of the state. They cannot make the ultimate decisions alone - they have to reach a consensus among top leaders.

And they cannot even choose their own successors: Hu's post was decided by Deng (Jiang might have preferred Zeng Qinghong), and Hu's successor Xi Jinping was not decided by Hu alone (who might have preferred Li Keqiang). Both Jiang and Hu are top managers, but this raises a new question: who embodies the interests of the state and of the people?

In democracies, those interests are represented by the electoral body, which votes for the head of state and other representatives. In modern China, there are no elections and the "legitimization" offered by the leaders is simple: we are in power because we are in power. If nobody topples us, then we are legitimized to stay. We can stay in power by granting economic growth and development that spreads welfare to the whole population, although unequally.

However, legitimization is only part of the issue. The larger issue is: who decides the broad direction for the country to take? What are the criteria and standards to judge the performance of officials and top managing-rulers? Here, there are two arenas that have a greater and lesser voice in deciding on performance and setting goals.

The less powerful arena (whose voice is growing) is public opinion, which is conveyed by a number of channels, such as local media, blogs on the web, social surveys and local elections. This does not form a black and white picture, but reveals in which direction general interests are moving, or not moving. For instance, on the issue of environmental protection, 10 years ago people were less responsive to it, now they are more receptive.

A more powerful arena influencing China's leaders is a pool of experts, old party cadres called on to discuss different policies. The opinion of experts is solicited when considering any given policy, and the opinion of retired cadres, who now have no vested interests, is also tapped to consider the promotion of party officials. Tens of thousands were consulted to set the program for the Communist Party Congress in 2007, and 5,000 helped write the draft.

Even after retirement, officials have access to some levels of internal news bulletins and maintain privileged channels of communication with the top leadership. Therefore, they influence the broad decision-making process.

But the system is not transparent, opening many avenues for corruption. For example, middle- and low-level party officials who are backed by companies can try to climb up the official ladder by distributing presents and favors to higher-ranking officials. Companies, especially if they are state ones, can try to move policies by offering gifts and favors to officials.

It was to counter this that the party moved toward appealing to academic experts, with no personal interest in the issues involved, and retired cadres, also without personal interests.

The whole process is secretive and thus not open to wide interference. But even this is not watertight, and the leaders know it. For this reason, they are now pushing for some form of democratization, although they are concerned about the shortcomings of that system as well.

The party faces a major dilemma over how to move forward, especially as, for many people, the ultimate goal is to be "emperor".

A crowd of emperors
At the southern end of Tiananmen Square in the capital Beijing, next to Zhengyang Men ("The Midday Gate") and about 200 meters from Mao's mausoleum, there is a spot where people take pictures of their children dressed as little Manchu emperors, sitting on a throne.

The place is symbolic: the ancient gate once opened on the nei cheng (inner city) and the buildings of the imperial government. Every day, there is a line of parents, mostly from the countryside, holding their children by the hand and waiting to take pictures as a sign of good luck. Each parent wants his or her only child to be successful - to become an emperor.

For centuries in ancient times there were only two ways to be successful. The first was to lead a rebellion or follow one - to topple a dynasty and become the emperor, or part of his circle. This was the method of Liu Bang (the founder of the Han Dynasty, 206 BC-220 AD), Zhu Yuanzhang (founder of the Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644 AD), and Mao Zedong ( founder of the "communist dynasty"). The path is extremely dangerous - one could easily lose his head - and the possibilities of success are very slim.

Second, an ambitious young man could pursue a career as an imperial official. He could take the challenging exams, and if he passed become even the top official of the empire. This path had no risk - nobody would kill the youth who did not pass his exam. And it was relatively easier. Although the official bureaucracy was tiny compared to the population, hundreds of officials were promoted every year, giving the average person a much better chance to succeed this way than by rebelling against the system. For this reason, most people first tried to become an official.

However, the exam system was not perfect, and many rebel leaders began as students who had failed the imperial examinations, like the famous Hong Xiuquan, who started the Taiping rebellion that in the middle of the 19th century almost toppled the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 AD). If these brilliant people had earned a post, perhaps there would have been no rebellion, or a much more modest one.

There is a less common path to try to make a fortune for oneself - clever people could go into business. This path, however, was not as glorious as the choice of being an official, the top of the social hierarchy. And although not as risky as being a rebel, it was far from secure. Officials could easily concoct all kinds of excuses to seize the property of rich merchants. Business, concentrated in cities, was tolerated but not exalted, and businessmen had to be careful not to eclipse the wealth of local officials, who had to remain officially the richest in the area.

Businessmen could protect their assets in two ways: befriending officials or having their son pass state examinations and become an official. The second choice was safer and considered more socially respectable than the first. The remainder of the people, the vast majority of the population, were peasants who were bound to the land and had all types of constraints to leaving their place and moving on.

Furthermore, officials and peasants were the stronghold of stable power, the guarantors that nothing would change and the imperial power would be unchallenged. Business, with its drive to accumulate wealth and invest in new ventures, was a force for instability and change. This had to be tolerated for several reasons, but the imperial power could not allow business and enterprise to grow to threaten the emperor's stability.

This situation has changed in the past 30 years. Officials are still selected through a complex party system, with courses and exams, but now business is exalted for the first time in Chinese history. Business is central to the drive for fast development, which is the paramount task for the nation to recover its former might and glory. This has many consequences.

On a personal level, being a businessman is now as glorious as - or perhaps even more than - being an official. When the best kids at university are chosen to join the party and have an official career, they feel it is an honor that they must accept. But this career is long, very difficult, full of traps and rewarding only at the end - if, at about age 50, one has managed to survive the political selection and become a senior official.

Most young people prefer to try to become businessmen. They can be successful early in their lives, they are freer since they are not subject to strict party discipline, and they can enjoy themselves with the money they make. A businessman can have his own enterprise and decide what to do with minimal official interference. In other words, each young person can become the little emperor of a small empire, a possibility that did not exist in the imperial past.

Besides, trying one's hand in business is easier and far less risky than trying to start a revolution to become emperor.

On a social level, the changes brought by business and enterprises must be "digested" at every level by the system. Formerly, the imperial system could stop businesses from threatening the status quo. Now the nation wants to improve the status quo, and therefore it has to push for new businesses and then factor in the constant changes to the social and political fabric of the nation. Moreover, business-driven growth means urbanization, depopulation of the countryside, decimation of the peasant class, the end of ancient rural China and the birth of a new, urbanized China. This course will follow the only existing pattern for urbanization - the Western one.

Most importantly, the overall system has discarded the ancient notion of stability and embraced the notions of change and

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CHINA'S MASSIVE WRENCH, Part 1
Change in the face of foreign devils
By Francesco Sisci

development. This is a deep cultural change, confirmed by the official Chinese rhetoric about stability. When the leaders stress the need for stability, they are looking for some balance in a situation that has inherently rejected it. And if everything fails, the government thinks, there must be something to appease the public. In the West, those appeasements were traditionally sports and religion.

A sporting life
Public sporting events, attended by both aristocratic and common people, have been popular since ancient times in the West. The tradition of the Olympic Games was that all Greek cities would suspend activities so that the entire population could enjoy the



events in the spirit of uniting all citizens through common cultural and mutual interests.

The spirit of the Roman circus was the same. Patricians and plebeians would attend to share in the common enjoyment of the show, in the process renewing the cultural bonds linking the two sections of society. The games had also a link with war, the other crucial occasion on which the high and the low stood side by side, this time to shed blood in defense of the common motherland. In Greece, war was suspended during the games; in Rome, games were a recreation of war with fights between gladiators.

Sports thus played a crucial political and ritualistic function in creating a sense of common belonging. This was extremely important as both Greek and Roman societies were split into separate strata on the basis of birthright. In Greece, the aristocrats were concentrated in the upper portion of the city, the Acropolis, and the common people had the lower square of the "agora".

A similar structure could be found in Rome, where the aristocrats were centered on the senate and the plebeians would live in the lower strata of the "urbs". Upward movement was possible, but very difficult and uncommon.

This social difference, determined by birth, was very hard to overcome and created a huge social gap that the common attendance at games or participation in war helped to bridge.

The system was highly effective. Even now, there are families in Rome claiming a lineage back to Julius Cesar, living in the same area and the same buildings for millennia, despite many changes in the ruling elite of the land. The concept of aristocracy, of blue-blood privileges, was very strong for centuries in the West. Apart from the many crowned heads of state in Europe, Britain's House of Lords in London is a modern vestige of the old Roman senate: a group of grandees - largely chosen by the merits of their forefathers - ruling the nation of common people.

In ancient China, there were no games or circuses to bond the upper and lower stratas. However, there were also no birth-determined social divides, and upward mobility based purely on merit had been encouraged and idealized since very ancient times.

The Mozi (Mocius), by the philosopher Mozi (470 BCE ca - 391 BCE), possibly the earliest text of systematic philosophy in China, begins its earliest part (4th century BC) by discussing the importance of promoting capable people as high officials (Shangxian pian, or to venerate the wise). It is claimed this is an ancient tradition from the Shang Dynasty (2nd millennium BC), which in turn was taken from the most legendary ancient Chinese emperors - Yao, Shun, Yu and Tang - who selected their successors on the basis of merit, regardless of origin. Shun and Yu had very humble origins.

Confucius, about a generation older than Mozi but referring to the earlier cultural tradition of Zhou (starting around 1,000 BC), also stressed the paramount importance of education and upbringing over birthright in the promotion of officials.

The original and enduring Chinese cultural belief is of a self-made man - the senior official born out of a peasant family or the top general starting off as a foot soldier. In this sense, social mobility was encouraged, and this may have created a strong bond in society.

In fact, as we have seen, there were two channels for upward mobility: the selection of officials, which was open to all, and the revolution (geming). The second is particularly important in comparison to Western tradition. Since the early first millennium BC, there has been a tradition of change (ge) of the Mandate of Heaven (ming).

Essentially, the idea was that the dynasty would rule until it was overthrown. The toppling was seen as legitimate when it was successful, evidence that heaven had withdrawn its graces from one emperor and granted them to another. The emperor, Son of Heaven, had to hold onto its power. His success in so doing proved his ritual and religious legitimacy. Large natural disasters and social uprisings confirmed the waning of heaven's favors.

Besides selected officials, each dynasty had its court of aristocrats - relatives of the emperor or descendents of the closest comrades of the founder of the dynasty. They, and the relatives of the senior officials, had varying influence. But this influence faded with the decades, as the generations grew away from the original connection. Furthermore, each change of dynasty completely wiped out the former aristocracy and established a new one. The Mongols eliminated the Song aristocrats, so did the Ming with Mongols, the Manchu with the Ming, and the communists with the Manchu.

This created a situation in which there is no aristocratic continuity stretching back hundreds of years, as there is in Europe. At most, Chinese aristocrats can claim a lineage of 300 years. Presently, there is no official aristocracy, but the siblings of senior leaders are called taizi dang (princelings). However, even they can claim an aristocracy that is less than 100 years old. This means that social mobility is strong, and aristocracy has not played as conspicuous and continuous a role as it has in Europe.

Now the communists have started looking to sports - especially mass gatherings like the Olympic Games that are attended by both common people and senior officials - to create a new social bond. There are more occasions for the people to feel a sense of unity. There are also new and old systems for social mobility: promotion of officials, career opportunities in business, a weak aristocracy, and more occasions of coming together for sports.

The present attention to sports is still weaker than in the West, often because of extreme corruption in local tournaments. But there is also a phenomenon unknown in Western societies: great attention to sports from abroad. Chinese people love football (soccer) played in Italy, England, Germany and Spain, as well as basketball from the United States. This appreciation of foreign sports has also created positive attention for developments in the countries in which the favored sports are played, almost creating a kinship with the people of those nations.

Religious to a point
China traditionally has not had a religious system that is comparable to the monotheistic religions of the West or the polytheistic religions of India and other countries. There was Buddhist-Taoist lore full of metaphysical explanations for various phenomena. In addition, there was a system of civil values without any metaphysics, which we may call Confucian ethics.

Both of those systems were criticized by modernist intellectuals during 1919's anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement and were then smashed in Mao's times and replaced with an atheist religion that idolized Mao Zedong. In the early 1980s, at the end of the Maoist era, China was without any kind of values system, either religious or civil.

Since then, China has seen a marked return of the traditional Taoist semi-religious respiratory practice of Qigong (deep-breathing and meditation exercises). Chinese leaders eagerly practiced this discipline, which promises an earthly long life. They arranged the return of Qigong masters (who sometimes were just self-taught), organizing them as sports trainers and registering them under the Sport Federation. Many Qigong schools flourished all over the country.

Their popularity increased after the Tiananmen crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in 1989, when many young people became disillusioned with politics and went into meditation. Furthermore, in early 1995, Deng Xiaoping had a stroke and almost died. He was saved, according to Beijing's rumor mill, by the intervention of revered Qigong masters. This episode obviously helped increase the popularity of Qigong.

By the mid-1990s, police, soldiers, officials and students were all practicing various forms of Qigong. Among them, the most successful were members of the Falungong, a spiritual practice introduced to the public in China by Li Hongzhi in 1992.

It was well organized with cells, a central committee and a politburo modeled after the Communist Party. Its set of beliefs was a mish-mash of old and new: faith in the coming end of the world, the idea that extraterrestrial beings are among us and have taken the shape of men, the denial of modern science and medicine, and a strong xenophobic attitude. The last sentiment well suited the many aging leaders who had joined the party in their youth with nationalist sentiments.

The Falungong movement grew so strong that it demanded recognition as an official religion and to no longer be classified as a sport. When it failed to obtain that classification, followers organized a series of demonstrations in early 1999, with the support of senior Chinese intelligence and military officers. The government saw these demonstrations - backed by crucial officials - as a powerful threat, an attempted coup d'etat, and commenced a gradual yet merciless crackdown.

This moment was crucial in China for the return of religion. The whole Falungong episode convinced the party that what was formerly believed - that there had been too much opening up - was not true. In fact, there was too little opening up. This had made it

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CHINA'S MASSIVE WRENCH, Part 1
Change in the face of foreign devils
By Francesco Sisci

possible for millions of people to believe absurd theories about extraterrestrials or to refuse modern medical treatment.

Yet, it also revealed that Chinese people wanted religious values, and the government had to be open to them. Buddhism was favored: it was a religion that had been in China for hundreds of years, Chinese people were very familiar with it, and Buddhist monks had been among the first to denounce the dangers of the Falungong in 1998.

Furthermore, the Chinese leaders realized that the much-feared Christian faiths were not so dangerous after all. In 50 years of communist rule, despite ruthless oppression, Christian



Protestants and Catholics had never staged demonstrations in Tiananmen, as Falungong followers had. In 1989, during the Tiananmen demonstrations, then-bishop Zen from Hong Kong told students in Chinese seminars not to get involved with the demonstrations.

This created renewed goodwill among the Chinese leadership for traditional religions and made possible official overtures to the Vatican in 2001 for the normalization of ties with China. In 2001, senior party official Pan Yue wrote an article [1] that redefined theoretical concepts. He argued, essentially, that Karl Marx had said that religion is the opiate of the people, and thus religion is bad for revolution. But once revolution is successful, the government needs religion as an opiate to avert new revolutions. The reasoning is crude but fitting for Chinese political thought. It also changed the meaning of revolution from the original Marxist one, entailing a total change of political order, to the Chinese geming, a simple traditional Chinese change of political power. This brought the momentous change of 2007.

On December 18, the party's politburo, the highest ruling body in the country, held a plenary collective study session. It was the second one since the 17th Communist Party Congress that ended in October last year. For the first time in the history of the People's Republic, the party's top echelons met to discuss a once-taboo subject - religion.

The Chinese Communist Party, like many other communist parties, is patently atheist, to the point that religious affiliation is forbidden for party members. However, right in Congress there was the first sign that things could be moving in a different direction.

Broadcasting from the cavernous Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where the 17th Party Congress was in session, TV screens showed the slim and attentive face of the young Panchen Lama (the second-highest ranking Lama after the Dalai Lama), who was following the speech of party general secretary Hu Jintao. The badge on his chest said "guest".

Although there is dispute over the present (11th) incarnation of the Panchen Lama, with Beijing and the Tibetan government in exile favoring different people, the presence of the important religious dignitary from Tibet, supportive of the Beijing government, indicated that the party was reconsidering its stance on religion. Now religious personalities were invited guests; perhaps, in the not too distant future, they could become fully fledged delegates to the party congress. That is, the party could drop its ban against religious figures joining its ranks.

Indeed, Hu's keynote speech devoted a paragraph to religion [2]. He said religious people, including priests, monks and lay-believers, played a positive role in the social and economic development of China. Furthermore, Hu did not talk about religions as such, thus establishing a form of respect and non-interference in purely religious affairs. That is, the party is not interested in religion per se, but it values the positive social contribution of religious people.

At the study session on December 18, the politburo explored the issue. Two experts introduced the subject. One was Zuo Xinping, a specialist on Christianity from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the other was Mou Zhongjian, a scholar on Confucianism from the Central University of Nationalities in Beijing. It seemed the party wanted two perspectives, one about new Christian faiths coming from abroad and one from the country's own native traditions.

Hu presented some introductory remarks, reported in a Xinhua article in Chinese [3], and it was indeed an historic event. Two facts are extraordinary.

It was the first high-level meeting of the party fully devoted to religion. That was a sign that party leaders recognized the great political significance of religion in building a "moderate, affluent and harmonious society". Religion is no longer an issue of public security that can be handed over to the police - it is a top social and political issue involving all aspects of society, and therefore all politburo members must be aware of it.

Secondly, in all of the Xinhua reports, there were no negative, derogatory remarks about religion, as one would expect to find about the "opiate of the masses". There were not even "ifs" or "buts" to indicate that the party would handle religion with diffidence. The English version stresses that there must be freedom of belief, and in the Chinese version, Hu is quoted as saying that the party must mobilize the positive elements of religion for economic and social development. Thus, religion can play an important role in realizing the "harmonious society" that is the new political goal of the party.

Furthermore, Hu spoke at the session, meaning that he and the party deemed this issue of top importance and not simply something to be delegated to the United Front Department or the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the two bodies that deal with religious affairs for the party. His speech, which can be expected to circulate in internal meetings, will set the direction for handling religious affairs.

This does not mean the party has converted to some religious belief or is going to do so. Religion is an instrument for governance. As Pan Yue bluntly put it in his essay, the party wanted to learn how it could use religion to appease people, to enhance social stability, and to avert rebellions and revolutions.

The party understands this is a complex issue, but one with many potential positive social outcomes. In the late 1990s, an investigation carried out in some costal regions found that the areas with more people converted to a religious faith had a lower rate of criminality - more religion meant less crime.

However, Chinese history tells party leaders that religion is also an extremely volatile element. Major uprisings in the past were organized by religious groups. For instance, the Taiping, who almost brought to an end the Qing Dynasty in the 19th century, were pseudo-Christians. Similarly, extreme radical Islam now mobilizes millions worldwide. Religion has to be handled with care, but it cannot simply be ignored or looked down on like some kind of feudal leftover.

Notes
1. Pan Yue: "Marxist view on religion must keep in step with times", Huaxia Shibao, December 15, 2001. 2. Here is the entire passage, according to the official English translation: "4. Expand the patriotic united front and unite with all forces that can be united. Promoting harmony in relations between political parties, between ethnic groups, between religions, between social strata, and between our compatriots at home and overseas plays an irreplaceable role in enhancing unity and pooling strengths. Acting on the principle of long-term coexistence, mutual oversight, sincere treatment of each other and the sharing of wealth and woe, we will strengthen our cooperation with the democratic parties, support them and personages without party affiliation in better performing their functions of participation in the deliberation and administration of state affairs and democratic oversight, and select and recommend a greater number of outstanding non-CPC [Communist Party of China] persons for leading positions. Keeping in mind the objective of all ethnic groups working together for common prosperity and development, we must guarantee the legitimate rights and interests of ethnic minorities, and strengthen and develop socialist ethnic relations based on equality, solidarity, mutual assistance and harmony. We will fully implement the party's basic principle for its work related to religious affairs and bring into play the positive role of religious personages and believers in promoting economic and social development. We encourage members of emerging social strata to take an active part in building socialism with Chinese characteristics. We support overseas Chinese nationals, returned overseas Chinese and their relatives in caring about and participating in the modernization drive and the great cause of peaceful reunification of the motherland."
3. There are some differences between Xinhua's reports in English and in Chinese about Hu's speech at the politburo study session on December 18, 2007. For the English version, click here. For the Chinese version, click here.

NEXT: Going global

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.

Francesco Sisci, Asia Editor of La Stampa.

(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Page 1 of 4
CHINA'S MASSIVE WRENCH, Part 2
A new world under one Heaven
By Francesco Sisci

Part 1: Change in the face of foreign devils

BEIJING - Globalization in the West started with the Greeks - with the Anabasis told by Xenophon, a disciple of Socrates. Then, 10,000 Greek mercenaries marched to Persia to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try to take the throne from Artaxerxes. This occurred between 401 BC and March 399 BC.

About half a century later, Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) followed almost the same route, not to serve the Persians but to battle and defeat them. He wanted to conquer and discover new lands, following the legend of the trials of Hercules. Alexander and his conquests then became the model for great Roman



conquerors: Caesar and the emperors following him.

Exploration, conquest and plunder were the trademarks of the Mediterranean world, where the line between commerce and pirating was often blurred. Exploration and conquest were the driving forces pushing Spanish and Portuguese ships across the Atlantic in search of new sea-lanes to the Indies. The Atlantic was an extended version of the Mediterranean [1]. It was a space to conquer and win - seeing it as a limit would be an admission of defeat.

The colonial era and present globalization are modern adaptations of the old principle of expansion. In each era, the idea was that economic welfare could be achieved through goods from new conquered lands, which were obtained through plunder, exploitation or simple commerce. Security was best achieved by attacking enemies first and invading their lands, before they did the same, an action that was also rewarded by the booty of plunder.

In China, though, everything was different. Desert and mountains in the north and the west, jungles in the south, and the ocean in the east were the natural limits of conquest. In 200 BC, the first unification of China defined what is still the reach of Chinese civilization. The first emperor had conquered what is now northern Vietnam and had probably gone as far as present North Korea. The conquest of the wild south proceeded slowly and methodically, in a spirit of systematic incorporation into the empire.

The empire stretched out to fight the warring barbarians and moved several times as far as the Caspian Sea or northern Siberia, but it always withdrew from it. The idea was that the security of the empire would be guaranteed by a belt of buffer vassal states. In return for their "service", these states received from the empire more than what they offered as homage.

The world outside was known and could be explored, as in the famous 15th century Zheng He expeditions, but it was of no major consequence for the empire, which had to produce security and economic welfare from within. Agriculture was fundamental to the growth of necessary industry, but there was no trust in the benefits of bouts of plunder and conquest. This was the way of the northern population or eastern pirates, but both did not make a stable living out of these activities and often survived on the verge of extermination.

It appeared much better for the empire to improve domestic agriculture, industry and trade. Industrial and agricultural surpluses in ceramics and tea drew in furs and horses (the latter necessary for the industry of defense) from the north or gold and silver from the western traders. China could easily ignore the rest of the world, because it was not relevant.

This changed dramatically after the Opium Wars (1839 to 1842 and 1856 to 1860), when Britain tried to sell the only goods China would consume and import - drugs, specifically opium - to make up for a massive trade deficit that was draining Europe of all its American silver and gold. When China restricted the trade of opium on the grounds that presently seem more than reasonable - it was a drugs trade, after all - Britain forced the trade to continue by fighting and winning a short but momentous war.

Over a century later, the lesson China learned is that even defeat in a small-scale war can trigger a deep political crisis, which in turn can topple a government.

Most importantly, the wider lesson is that China cannot ignore commerce and must be part of the global economic cycle, which now is highly industrialized and demands more resources than can be found internally. Therefore, China must go around the world looking for all kinds of resources and energy as well as new markets for its growing industries. In other words, China as a state [2] recognizes the same economic necessities that Western countries have addressed for centuries, if not millennia.

Western states have refined, through centuries of experience and mistakes, the methods and practices for dealing with foreign countries that are used even now. China's methods for dealing with foreign lands are largely useless. It cannot rebuild a belt of vassal states - neighbors would bitterly resent China and turn against it. China then had to go to places where it traditionally had no foreign policy, for instance Africa and Latin America, without knowing well how to handle these people. In other words, the old foreign policy must be rejected, and there is no culture or experience for the new foreign policy.

It is a brave new world for China. And for the world, it is a brave new China.

Chinese theories about globalization
Military thought is an integral part of the Chinese philosophical tradition. Among the ancient classics, "military thinking" is present not only in Sunzi Bingfa's The Art of War, but also in the works of Mozi (470 BC ca - 391 BC), China's first really systematic philosopher and the first to mount opposition to the Confucian school.

Here we have three chapters on feigong (against offensive war), which explain why a state should not conduct offensive wars, but only defensive ones. Furthermore, in Mozi, we have fragments of technical chapters on the preparation of city defense, meaning that these philosophers were not only thinking about war, but preparing for it practically.

However, since the beginning of philosophical thought in China, war was not simply an episodic clash of arms or a parenthesis between the normal unfolding of politics and diplomacy, as Prussian Carl von Clausewitz would put it many centuries later. War was "a matter of life and death for the state", as Sunzi put it. In the military classics, there is an extended concept of war, which includes the overall state of preparation for war.

Shang Jun (Shang Yang) is the philosopher credited with helping to organize the Qin state (the state that eventually unified China in 221 BC) and inspiring Hanfei Zi, one of China's greatest thinkers. In Shang Jun's work, the author presents the organization of the tax system, the tilling of the land, and the military levy as a unified concept: they are all integral parts of state organization and military preparation.

In fact, war is the main function of the state. In Sima Fa, a volume on the philosophy of war compiled in the early Han Dynasty but reflecting previous ideas, the author begins by addressing the matter of the benevolence of the Son of Heaven. That is to say, that a good government or benevolent ruler is the necessary basis for waging a good war. He creates a system that citizens are ultimately willing to defend with their own lives. And a good government guarantees a good life for the families of those who die on the battlefield.

War in total is a concept that comprises what goes before and comes after the actual clash of arms. We can see the same attention to war in modern thinkers like Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui in Chaoxian zhan, (War Without Restrictions), or asymmetrical war. Here the two authors explain that war is political thought: strategy that goes beyond the use of weapons and tactics in the battlefield. This reasoning is echoed by Italian author and general Fabio Mini's La Guerra dopo la Guerra ("The war after the war"), in which he explains that one must not wage war without first considering the sort of peace one wants to achieve. These ideas also appear in Mao Zedong's thought, which deals with the issues of social contradictions and guerrilla warfare.
Seen through this lens, war - the conflict and competition of states - is larger than the shooting between soldiers. There is reason to argue that states are always at war. But by the same token, with respect to the Chinese principle of yin and yang, one can also argue that states can be always at peace, that actual clashes and bloodshed can always be avoided or minimized. In other words, if war is constantly being waged in many ways, then one can try to curb the wars in which millions die. Wars can be "waged" in the form of cold or soft wars, as American Joseph Nye would have it in his international relations theory neo-liberalism.

To resolve conflicts without bloodshed, communication is crucial. But even the understanding created by open channels of communication would still require, if not an impossibly unified world view, then a "lingua franca" of ideas.

This is, in a nutshell, the idea put forward by Zhao Tingyang in Tianxia Tixi (The System of All under Heaven): it is necessary for the world to have a common tianxia (all under Heaven) view. Tianxia is not precisely a shared culture so much as a shared sensibility; it is a common understanding that we all live in the same world, and we need to have some kind of tolerance of each other's ideas. It is different from the concept of empire.

Generally speaking, states and statesmen have differing worldviews. For instance, during the Cold War and World War II, states embodied strong ideologies, which compelled their people to fight for them. Or, in the case of World War I, warring states were motivated not by ideologies but by opposing national interests, and in the case of the citizens, by nationalism itself.

What is the situation now? Are we witnessing clashes of ideologies, worldviews and civilizations? Can war be avoided? Here we need not be delusional: war has been with us for millennia and will accompany us into the future. But a common tianxia would help smooth over conflicts and avoid the kinds of misunderstandings that lead to war. It could lead to agreements such as the ones that forbid the bombing of hospitals during wartime, or like the Geneva Conventions.

What would be the content of a tianxia system? We can sketch the minimal requirements: market economies and freedom of enterprise. These elements, though not implying deeply shared values, make it possible for goods to travel form one side of the world to the other every day. Russia has it to a certain extent. Other groups, such as radical Islamic movements or old-fashioned communist movements such as the new Red Brigades in Italy, appear to reject the concept of a common market.

Chinese tradition could ameliorate the present difficulties in the world. In ancient times, China was not "China" for the people living there; it was "all there is under Heaven". The rest, what was not part of the Chinese world, was simply not under heaven and beyond the sphere of this world. The West's encroachment has helped to form a new identity: that of China. This, in turn, has created a new relationship of the "Chinese" people with the rest of world.

However, the ancient sense of history lingers, creating new challenges as China is driven to become the largest economy in the world or to expand the scope of "all under Heaven".

During China's imperial past, order (zhi) was easy to understand.


It entailed the concept of peace, with all things in their appointed places. Disorder (luan) was chaos, disaster and death. Merchants and other businessmen began, over time, to cause luan. The price of their goods would change with time and place. Businessmen could become richer than the local mandarin and jeopardize the order of a society in which the official was supposed to be the richest and most powerful. But businessmen were a small necessary evil - containable, but impossible to eradicate - like secret societies or small-scale peasant uprisings.

But business is different in modern society and in modern China. If business itself becomes an integral part of peace, encouraged as the driving force of development, and military might leads to



greater stability for China in the international arena, then how can order and peace be said to exist at all? What kind of order and peace can be expected in a place of constant and growing business? How can we square this situation with the Chinese historical preference of zhi over luan?

In a world in which wars are minimized and pushed to the periphery, war becomes a form of large-scale policing. This new perception radically changes the idea of war. In conflicts such as World War I, the lines between peace and war were clearly demarcated. If war becomes a matter of policing rogues and criminals, then one is always at war, because there will always be criminals. For these matters, a different international framework is needed. The traditional United Nations will simply not work, as it is not working now. Yet, it is not clear what new structure should be established.

Similarly, if luan is an integral part of a new order that includes international business, we need a new political structure to manage this society, a structure that is different from the imperial past. Here things are somewhat easier: experience in the West has proven that democracy has been effective in preserving a large degree of order and stability while still encouraging economic growth. In China, there are many students of Karl Marx, who fervently believe that economics and politics go hand-in-hand.
Simply stated, if China wants to manage the turbo-capitalism it has ignited, it will need a major political change. What the future will be is certainly not clear, but some form of democratization might be unavoidable.

Culture reorganized
All of these changes clearly mean that China's whole cultural universe is being shaken up and reorganized. This started at the end of the 19th century with the massive arrival and translation of Western knowledge from the original languages or from Japanese translations [3].

At that point, the traditional organization and categorization of knowledge - dating to Sima Qian (ca 145-90 BC) and his first historic account in the Shiji ("historic records") of philosophers and literature before the Han empire - fell apart. That is, 2,000 years of tradition had to be reshuffled and re-systematized.

The study, for instance, of what were previously considered the "classics" (jing), "masters" (zi), and "historical records" (shi) had to be relabeled under the new code words coming from the Japanese: "philosophy" (zhexue), "historiography" (shixue and "literature" (wenxue). What's more, as Ge Zhaoguang put it:
It was as if what the past, which could not just simply be called the study of classics, masters, or historical records, could not longer hold the old grand unity. The study of the words and language of the classics became an independent subject, and it was granted the honorific title of "science" [another new, imported word] and other contents of the written legacy started going into historiography, philosophy, or literature, as if the wholly body of the classics was ripped apart in the execution by five horses tearing the limbs of a cadaver. The study of the masters followed the same destiny ripped apart into philosophy, ethics, logic, and even physics or chemistry. [4]
It is hard to fathom the depth of the change and the seismic waves that rippled through society and individual psychology. The colorful and passionate language used by Ge (born in Shanghai 1950, over one century after the first Opium War) reveals that this change still touches the very soul of the Chinese people, even now when libraries, mass media and education from primary schools have been following the new Western classification for about a century.

When reading the classics, the scholar still feels the holistic soul of the ancient Chinese world seeping through the pages. This vision, for instance, of the Yijing (The Classic of the Changes, also found transliterated as yi king or written as "I Ching") is almost impossible to ignore, whether or not one believes in the prophetic powers of the book.

Its language and way of thinking have pervaded centuries of cultural tradition and still pop up in proverbs. Its way of approaching problems, handling situations and considering issues resonates with truth in the soul of the Chinese reader. This truth is impossible to dismiss, as it would be for us to dismiss the Greek and Roman tradition. Even Christianity had to digest Greek and Roman culture to conquer the souls of that world, and Islam did so with Greek culture when it stretched into the then Hellenistic lands of Asia Minor or North Africa.

Then, we have a series of massive cultural problems. The Chinese have reclassified their cultural world according to Western criteria and are still digesting the problems and trying to find way to reconcile the old with the new - a process that will take centuries. Buddhism took half a millennium to be completely assimilated, and back then the pre-existing Chinese culture was not as complex as the culture now embracing the Western world. [5]

Now, it is clear to all Chinese that Western culture is the root of wealth, success, development and political survival - it is the essence of modernity. When China embraced Western culture, as it has been doing since Deng Xiaoping's times (de facto leader from 1978 to the early 1990s), it began growing; when it had closed down, as it had under Mao in the decades after 1949, China sank into defeat, utter poverty and political collapse.

So, there is only one road to modernity and success - Westernification. And the shorthand for Westernification is America. For this reason, over 200 million Chinese people are studying English (the results are often poor, but that is a different issue), and English is now being taught in primary schools. Meanwhile, their souls are torn between East and West, between old and new, and uncertain to which they should pledge allegiance. They are hoping that there is a way to have them both.
In the end the result will be that, as Chinese residents in the many Chinatowns of the world are showing, they will have both, one way or another. This is apparent also in the cultural language, which still uses old sayings like "ming zheng yan shun" ("when names are right speech is consequential"), drawn from the Analects of Confucius but also from "Pandora Box", a Greek myth.

This will create another problem, this one for us as Westerners. Since the Romans assimilated Greek culture in the 3rd century BC, the Western world has never met a massive cultural challenge. Even in colonial times, other cultures were dismissively branded as inferior and were never the object of wholesale incorporation, as the Romans did with the Greeks.

There has been piecemeal curiosity and interest, such as being incorporated into the conferences of geographic societies, carried out with great erudition and the careful "scientific" dissection of foreign texts - as if they were insects. But that was it.

However, China's economic and political growth is leading the growth of all of Asia, and there could be a time in the not too distant future when the economic and political might of Asia - or even just that of China - could be as great or even greater than that of the entire West. The West will then have to try to come to grips with the newly Westernized Chinese culture. This will shake Western culture to its roots and its soul, perhaps as it has shaken the Chinese culture.

We might remember that we were already Sinicized at one point in the 17th and 18th centuries, when China appeared to the West as a model for development. Europe was coming out of the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, and hyper-Catholic Jesuits provided inspiration to both camps with translations of Chinese classics and accounts of Chinese culture. Their work stirred massive changes in the West, in fields ranging from mathematics (German Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - 1646 to 1716 - invented the binary numbers inspired by the diagrams of the Yijing) to politics, the civil service and the idea of officials being promoted on grounds of merit, not birth). It's possible that even the idea of the abolition of monarchy through a popular revolution was inspired by Chinese ideas.

It might be helpful to remind the Chinese that the West they are conversing with was already Sinicized, in a way - some of the modern concepts they are adopting are remodeled versions of Chinese ideas. Conversely, the West, which could face a massive "Sinification", should remember that it was already Sinicized in the past, and that the present and future China is largely Westernized.

This Westernification is not just in the heads of a handful of pundits, it is also in everyday life, as those who have been to China have seen. The changes hit the sentiments and the basic feelings of the people. There are several examples.

Language changes
In the past century, China saw dramatic changes in the language, which is the one element that more than any other "made" and unified China. It is hard to overemphasize the importance of language in the making of Chinese civilization. Western civilization recognizes itself through a body of "literary lore" that has been translated from language to language, moving from Greek to Latin to national European languages. At each passage, the lore may be slightly adapted.

However, there are remaining monuments that hold present Westerners "accountable" to their past. These monuments, scattered all over Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, prove the continuity of the past into the present and impose architectural canons that can be reproduced in modern cities. The works give modern Westerners established ways to organize cities, their lives and even space or the concrete relationship between humans and nature.

In other words, even without the same language, even forgetting the body of classic literature, the columns and the domes of Washington DC's buildings make known to the passerby the uninterrupted continuity between the United States and the SPQR (Senatus Populus Que Romanus - The Senate and the People of Rome).

But China's evolution was different. Each dynasty made a point of tearing down all the buildings of the former masters to erect new ones. This was possible because of the greater wealth in China compared to Europe after the demise of the Roman Empire. Even in rich renaissance Rome, the popes extracted the marble for their palaces from ancient Roman relics - it was cheaper to dig stone from the Coliseum than from mountains in Carrara.

China does not seem to have had this problem and has many times chopped down entire forests to construct splendid residences for its princes. Continuity was guaranteed by a rich



body of literary works. Those works were passed down through a strict education system geared to producing the best administrators for the state. The hope of social advancement or preservation pushed all Chinese to try their lot with education. Therefore, even if they failed the harsh exams, everyone deeply absorbed the tradition and language. There was no advantage in illiteracy: government acts were written down all the way to the emperor who had to read and vet them.

Language did not play the same role in the West, where the tradition since Alexander and Caesar was for great political leaders to be great generals earning their power with the sword. True, the West recognized that the pen was mightier than the



sword (calamus gladio fortiori), but there were many illiterate kings in the Middle Ages who were assisted in matters of state by learned clerics. The Roman Empire was defeated by barbarians, highly literary Greece was won by semi-barbaric Macedonians, and less-developed Romans conquered sophisticated Hellenic kingdoms.

Chinese kings were masters of conspiracy and political plotting. They were devisers of strategies; they read extensively and were imbued with the Chinese literary tradition - but they were not fighting generals. Even Mao, famous for his interest in military strategy, left the actual command of operations to Zhu De and others.

Ideal generals were thinkers: bookworms willing to lend their literary talents to the battlefield. They were people like 14th century Luo Guanzhong's character Zhuge Liang in Romance of Three Kingdoms, a wise and knowledgeable schemer. Zhuge had read all the Chinese books and thus could assess the psychology of his enemy (born out of the same cultural tradition) and devise a strategy fit to defeat him. In this tradition, the continuity of physical monuments was not important; what counted was the language.

In the West, language was not unity. The Roman Empire was bilingual, with Latin and Greek. The division carried on in the Middle Ages, when the kingdoms were also bilingual, using Latin for their official business and local languages for everyday life. Unity in the political body was created by the idea of blood contiguity among one "people: - the bond of belonging to the same "ethnos" - at least among the top echelons. This was true of the people of the Akropolis, of the Senate, or of the Germanic aristocratic warriors of the Holy Roman Empire.

In China, unity came through the use of the same language, which carried a tradition and a system of education. Whoever could master the language and education was part of the "Chinese" polity, irrespective of ethnic origin. Thus, language was far more important than in the West. Furthermore, the largely ideographic written language was a fantastic instrument for keeping unity among people speaking very different natural languages.

Chinese characters, largely indifferent to pronunciation, could be used in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, southern China and northern China. People could keep their dialects and still understand each other. Written languages reflecting pronunciation, like Latin, faced considerable problems in adapting the written form once the oral form changed, as occurred in Europe during the Middle Ages. The Chinese language, conversely, could move along the centuries with only minimal change. And so did it, until the 19th century.

Early on, in the first centuries AD, a difference developed between literary Chinese (wen yan) and "colloquial language" (bai hua). The differences between the two, though quite important, are minimal compared with changes that occurred in the 19th century. Facing the massive inflow of foreign texts and the resulting adaptations in thinking, China changed its language. It introduced Western-style punctuation, including the previously unknown practice of dividing text into paragraphs. Syntax, trying to mirror convoluted Western thinking, became more complicated, a change that was possible thanks to a new system of punctuation, which made clear the structure of the sentence.

Other major changes soon followed. The binding of many books and magazines abolished the old order of writing first from top to bottom and then from right to left. China began to adopt the Western style, writing first from left to right and then from top to bottom. Furthermore, matching Western attempts to create standardized pronunciation, China developed various systems of sound transliteration for the characters. (This also meant having to teach adults Chinese from scratch.)

There are, for instance, the Bopomofo method (adapted from the Japanese hiragana and still used in Taiwan) and the pinyin system (which uses the Latin alphabet and has been adopted in the mainland). These systems froze the official pronunciation, preferring one elocution over another for the first time. It also officially divided the country into different dialects and accents. Before the standardization of pronunciation, it was perfectly legitimate for scholars to express themselves in dialect.

Even Mao, who promoted the standardization of pronunciation, spoke unashamedly with a very heavy Hunan accent. Radio and television have since contributed to unifying Chinese pronunciation, but important differences persist without much attention. In contrast, in many Western countries, proper diction is very important, and people speaking with a vulgar, base accent are reviled.

In his drive for reforms, Mao went even further, going to the very heart of his culture, the Chinese characters. After playing with the idea of using Latin script for Chinese, he gave the green light to a widespread simplification of the Chinese script. The break was so significant that for decades Chinese intellectuals outside of China pointed at simplified characters as evidence of Mao's total betrayal of Chinese tradition.

Even old texts are being reprinted with modern punctuation and paragraphs that, for many reasons, are not totally faithfully to the originals but are a partial "translation", Expanding on Ge Zhaoguang's feelings, we can say that this change to the language was like putting the parts of an executed body in a meat grinder.

The result is a totally different world. Yet, many things persist. In recent years, China has seen a surge in long TV series that have a narrative process similar to classic novels like Shuihu zhuan ("Outlaws of the Marsh," written in the 14th century by Shi Nai'an). Here, the story advances without a plot that leads to a cathartic moment of solution [6], a definitive end, as you find in Western novels, Greek tragedies and products of the modern film industry. These TV series can spawn new episodes forever without an ending, but always projecting into an open future, like human history.

It is a storytelling structure resembling Shuihu zhuan, with chapters that end while opening to the next development, and not like American TV programs, in which each episode is self-contained and self-concluded. It is as if the thing coming out of the meat grinder still remembers the original body. But what is this thing?

Houses-apartments
Tall belvederes and towers for the observation of enemies, hunting or religious purposes (like Buddhist stupas) have an ancient tradition in China. Yet, houses and living quarters were flat, rising two or three stores at most and ideally protected by surrounding walls. No house could be higher than that of the local mandarin or the residence of the emperor. Since ancient times, tall towers were considered extravagant and therefore restricted. The prohibition against buildings taller than those of officials reinforced this idea.

Even as late as the early 1990s, Chinese cities were flat. Beijing was an endless sprawl of houses, with the tips of a few old Song-dynasty stupas spiking the horizon here and there, as if only Buddha and his holy men could reach for the sky. A decade later, the skyline of Beijing - and of every Chinese city and even villages - has dramatically changed. Everyone is allowed to put up his own stupa or hunting tower. Skyscrapers have rapidly become a common feature in China, as if anybody can be higher than the officials or the emperor, anybody can be a Buddha, a holy man!

The philosopher Liezi in the 3rd century BC wrote:
The towers and belvederes built upon their heights were all made of gold and jade, the birds and beasts living there were all spotlessly white. Trees of pearl and coral bore thick masses of flowers; their fruit was delicious to the taste, and those who are thereof knew neither old age nor death. The inhabitants all belonged to the race of demi-gods and immortals, and in countless numbers they would fly across to meet one another within the space of a single day or night. [7]
In this case, the Western model played a strange trick with the backdrop of Chinese traditional culture. The West opened the floodgates of ambitions and desires stifled for thousands of years: reaching for the sky, something formerly possible only to immortals.

Now, literally, golden towers made of Italian marble, crowded with imposing "roman pillars" and guarded by monumental stone beasts - lions larger than mythical dragons - dot every city. Anybody can have an apartment in these immortals' abodes, if he can afford it. And even if he cannot afford it, he can still live in a more modest apartment block that stretches quite a few meters above the ground.

The psychological change is immense.

In the West, tall buildings were traditionally for poor people. In ancient Rome, there was a prohibition against building what we now call apartment blocks that were higher than seven stories. There were many cases of tall buildings that caved in or collapsed. In buildings, plebeians would lead crowded lives, while patrician senators and generals enjoyed the luxury of one-story villas with gardens.

The pattern was followed in future centuries in the West: the poor had small badly built homes where families would live dangerously on top of each other, and the rich had large estates. The issue was resolved with the invention of steel and concrete technology, allowing the safe construction of towers hundreds of meters high. This made it possible for people with lower incomes to have good, although cheap, houses. It also made it attractive for rich people to live in apartments, which could be as luxurious as villas. Essentially, this created a real sense of middle class with people living in the same neighborhood, maybe in the same apartment block, in apartments not too different from one another, despite large differences in income.

In other words, towers in the West had a leveling effect, cutting extreme differences and making everybody normal. In China, towers made everybody special and everybody immortal. One could say that in the end the result is the same: everybody is equal. But actually, it is not an identical result - it is very different.
In the West, towers humble the ambitions of everyone. In China, they stir up aspirations. In a way, towers in China are similar to suburban houses in the West. The houses may remind the inhabitants of the old villas, and it is like everybody has a villa, so everybody is well-off.

Being immortal is about being well-off, but it is more - it is also about being beyond any control, satisfied, happy and unrestrained. But the apartments are modern and imported from the West with the philosophy of the middle class still stuck to it.
Page 4 of 4
CHINA'S MASSIVE WRENCH, Part 2
A new world under one Heaven
By Francesco Sisci

Will the Chinese living in modern apartment blocks become more like suburban Americans, people living in Manhattan apartments, or the immortals of their ancestors' dreams?

Meanwhile, the traditional culture of flat houses has been bulldozed away. Most ancient cities, dating to early Qing times, have been demolished to make room for new towers. Curiously, the Chinese have preserved former colonial Western buildings - the houses of the British, French, Americans and even Italians - but not the houses of the Chinese. It looks as if, despite the official anti-colonial rhetoric, to modern China, the Chinese legacy



is less important than Western contacts.

Dresses and Chineseness
In India, a country that was under the foreign thumb for three centuries and an outright colony of the British, men and women pride themselves on their own dresses and clothes. Men sometimes wear a suit and tie, but not all the time.

In Africa, a continent partitioned by European invaders, men and women wear their traditional clothes, and even when they don't, they often have suits with bright colors reminiscent of their original taste for vivid tints. Even in Japan, a place that chose to modernize and Westernize to avoid colonization, although men have rigidly taken on the standard European three-piece suit, women still wear the traditional kimono for important occasions.

In China, a country that was never a colony, traditional dresses have just disappeared. Before Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, men used to wear a Western-style military uniform, and women would put on Western dresses or gowns inspired by the traditional Manchu women's dress, the qipao. But after World War II, even those women's dresses were forfeited. In China, women were encouraged to dress like men, with slacks and jackets covering their femininity, while men stuck to "Lenin suits".

With the reforms, men started wearing ties and suits, and women regained access to gowns and dresses. But traditional dress had disappeared. In the late 1990s, Hong Kong fashion designer David Tang invented a new line of products that adapted traditional Chinese designs to modern circumstances. But it has never become a fashion trend, because both Chinese and foreigners feel awkward wearing clothes that make them stand out in a crowd.

Conversely, peasants coming to work in cities proudly buy new suits and wear them to the construction site - without even taking the tag off the sleeve. Qipao, meanwhile, are just a curiosity found attractive mostly by Caucasian women.

Dresses are not superficial. They are complex statements that affirm identity, aspiration and integration into a group. No 1960s rebel would go to an antiwar demonstration in a suit, a tie, short hair and a bowler hat. Now, sporting long hair and jeans in a high-tech company means freedom and innovation, a look that is contrary to the suits and ties of Wall Street traders. Meanwhile, the orderly suits on Wall Street signify reliability.

Just looking at appearances, we see that Chinese people have forsaken their past and do not feel at ease going back to it. They want to become Westerners even more than the Japanese because they do not have a mother or a wife in a kimono reminding them of their origin from the mythical goddess Amataratsu, mother of the nation.

It is a superficial statement, but the Chinese believe that everything is on the surface. Everything about our characters and destinies is written on our faces. According to traditional shouxiang (reading of the face), a crease on the cheek or around the eyes reveals an aspiration and fate. But all that is unintentional. The intentional choice of dress is even more important and revealing because it is done to achieve a goal: to appear in a certain way for the purpose of looking Western and modern.

This abandonment of old "Chineseness" can be very Chinese. The concept and word for nation and nationalism (minzu zhuyi) came from the West. This is strong evidence that we are facing a very different concept of "nation" when we speak to Chinese people.

Even the names Chinese use for themselves are not consistent. They call themselves huaren, an old term meaning "civilized people". The term implies that those who can speak "Chinese" and behave "Chinese" are "Chinese". That is, they are "civilized people" (huaren), regardless of blood origin. The only other example we can find of this concept and attitude is in America, with its policy of integration of all immigrants.

However, that was an old concept, and it different from that of Zhongguo ren, the people of Zhongguo (the "Middle Kingdom"). This term is geographical, implying all people who in live in China, including Tibetans, Uyghurs and Mongols.

In China, the idea of an unparalleled civilization was so strong that it divided the world in civilized (hua) and uncivilized (yi). This vision came to an end with the maps of Italian Jusuit priest Matteo Ricci ( 1552-1610), which showed for the first time that China was not the whole world, that it was not even a great part of the world (tianxia), and that it was not the only civilization in the world.

The people who drew those maps belonged to a world that could justifiably claim to be a civilization on China's level On those maps, the Jesuits called the land, which was only one part of the whole world (tianxia), "Zhongguo".

The term was recovered from 2,000 years before, a move that significantly indicated that the states in the central plain hold the most ancient and truest form of civilization vis-a-vis the newcomers. Qin, Chu, Qi and other states sat on the rim of the central plains. Ricci also reshaped the Western world map, putting "Zhongguo" in the middle to make up for the downsizing of its dimension, a change that had hit at the country's pride and vision of itself in the world.

Curiously, this massive cultural shock for the elite, as Ge Zhaoguang points out, coincided with the Manchu invasion. The invasion also marked the arrival of a foreign domination that tried to adapt to Chinese customs and made extensive use of Chinese officials, but that also kept its own distinctive characteristics.

It is important to consider that, according to Chinese tradition, the Manchu Qing Dynasty came to power without usurping the existing power but by filling the void left from the failings of the previous Ming Dynasty. It was an ideological campaign of legitimization, which was as important for holding on to power as was the military conquest. It came at a time in the 17th century when the political-military power of kings in Europe was reshaping their relationship with the religious-ideological power of the church. Military and ideology, conversely, would remain the two levers of political power in China, a country in which, although the military remains the power of last resort, ideology commands military, and not vice versa.

There are also the Chinese abroad, who call their Chinatowns tangren jie, the streets of the Tang (another dynasty) people. This is a curious phenomenon, since the Tang ruled China from the 7th century AD, and they were partly foreigners - their aristocracy was of Turkic origin, from the Tujue people living in Central Asia.

Last, but certainly not least, there is the idea of han ren, the people of Han (a weird idea - a nation named after a dynasty, as if the British were to call themselves the Windsors, or the Americans the Washingtons, or the Italians the Caesars). This nationalist notion was invented and used before World War II to stress the idea of a national war against foreigners, be it the Manchu Dynasty, the invading Japanese, or Western colonialists.
Countering the idea of a grand Han nationalism and of other people living in the "Zhongguo", the communists adopted the Soviet strategy of recognizing ethnic minorities and granting them special status. This has created strange minorities like the "Hui", who are no different from the Han, except in their religious beliefs - they are Muslim. Should Christians and Catholics be granted the same status? Or should the idea of the Hui and the system of ethnic minorities be abolished? What would then happen to restive minorities who are uncomfortable with Han dominance, such as the Tibetans or the Uyghurs?

There cannot be just a piecemeal approach for China. China needs a broader set of values with which to think of itself and the world. These new values are currently non-existent. The Chinese economy has developed so far not because of a particular model, but because Chinese individuals are good at doing business and the government has not hindered this trend.

But management of the new wealth, the new world and the new developments needs a new set of values. Ethics must go beyond the popular salutation gonxi facai ("wish you strike rich") offered at Chinese New Year celebrations. Laws, though important, are the minimal level of social contract - normal personal and social intercourse must find a course well above the minimal legal restriction, rather than just bordering illegality.

China is now in the middle of a lot of things and can go many ways. The issue for the next 20 years or so should be how to "groom" them - living with us Westerners and us living with them. This, more than anything, will determine our common fate.

Notes
1. For an extensive treatment of the issue, see the first chapters of Feng Youlan's History of Chinese Philosophy (rev ed, 1952�53).
2. For centuries there were Chinese traders in Southeast Asia, or migrants to America, but their activities were of no concern to the Chinese state.
3. The following argument is largely drawn from Ge Zhaoguang's Zhongguo sixiang shi ("History of Chinese thought"). Shanghai, 2001, Vol 2, pp. 466-476.
4. Ge Zhaoguang, op cit, p 476.
5. One could argue that present advanced communications tools, including mass media and the Internet, can make contact easier and more widespread, thus shortening the time of assimilation. But challenging assimilation, there is the huge difference between Chinese and Western culture, a gap wider than the one that in Buddhist times divided Chinese and Indian tradition.
6. For these concepts, I am indebted to discussions with Dr Andrew Lo of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
7. Translation by Lionel Giles, A Gallery of Chinese Immortals.
8. For a detailed discussion of the subject, see Ge Zhaoguang's Zhongguo sixiang shi ("History of Chinese thought"). Shanghai, 2001, Vol 2, pp 360-412.

Francesco Sisci, Asia Editor of La Stampa.

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