Communism and Chinese Tradition
CHANG, C.M.
COMMUNIST CHINA: FACT AND MYTH By C. M. Chang Communism and Chinese Traditions TH E CHINESE Communist movement has already had a history of more than 35 years. Mao Tse-tung's "People's Republic...
...they are also the basic values of Confucianism and are opposed to Communist absolutism, fanaticism and messianism...
...But do they really prove anything...
...Beside its enormity the Legalists of ancient China fade into insignificance...
...If they could be left alone to pursue what they considered their interests, they would achieve certain things for themselves and their families...
...As a people the Chinese, until the advent of the Communist regime, had never been known to go to extremes...
...The control is total in its effect, extending to the innermost feelings and thoughts of every individual...
...This being so, it is foolish for Western policy-makers to "go maundering on" about how the Communists will be thrown out in the end...
...Because our state has been weak, we have come under the political and economic domination of foreign countries and have not been able to resist...
...In Confucianism, this deference to parental authority was extended to cover all sorts of social and political relations...
...The people were supposed to be the judges in this matter...
...The Confucian Classic of Filial Piety (Hsiao-Ching) devotes one of its 18 sections to the subject "Reproof and Remonstrance...
...After the Communist victory, Western intellectuals began to ask what was behind it...
...Family solidarity has always been the basis of all simple, pre-industrial societies...
...This policy of laissez-faire provided a much-needed antidote to the discipline and oppression of the Ch'ins...
...In the Confucian theory of the state, the common people are held to be the source of all political power...
...Moderation, tolerance, distrust of categorical imperatives, love of compromise^— these are the basic traits of the Chinese character...
...The traditional system was undemocratic in the sense that the people did not participate in the determination of policies...
...The Mohists were an organized body under the strict control of a leader known as the "Grand Master," who enforced absolute obedience to an exacting code of honor and self-sacrifice...
...The Chinese people felt no resentment against their emperors...
...The unanimous verdict of Chinese historians throughout the ages has been that its downfall was due to the abandonment of traditional values and its worship of brutal force...
...Shang belonged to a school of thought known as Fa Chia, or the Legalists, which invented the totalitarian theory more than two millennia before Lenin and Stalin were born...
...The Chinese people," he said, "have not been directly subject to the oppression of autocracy...
...Except among the upper classes of officials, daily life went on much as usual even under the worst emperors...
...He would submit to superior authority intelligently but not blindly...
...Various answers have been given, but the one currently in vogue is that the Chinese people are predisposed to Communism by reason of their cultural hisory...
...China in her long history developed no bill of rights and no parliament...
...Just as no American politician would think of running for public office on the basis of announcing his atheism, so no Chinese aspirant to Government honors would think of declaring that he was not a Confucian gentleman...
...The world's first Stalinist was a Chinese...
...The people were thought to be capable of knowing what was good for them without the aid of the state...
...Thousands of years of experience had taught them to abjure fanaticism and abide by the golden mean...
...The Confucian bureaucrats of former times were a professional elite who talked the same language as the Communist bureaucrats of today...
...Mao Tse-tung's "People's Republic of China," proclaimed in October 1949, will soon complete its seventh year of rule on the mainland...
...Legalism was rejected because it was far too extreme and absolute to fit in with the Chinese fondness for moderation and compromise...
...At the height of its power and glory, the Han Empire had, as shown by the census of 2 A.D., a total population of nearly 60 million—by far the most populous state in ihe ancient world...
...Yet, to this day Chinese Communism is but dimly understood...
...It afforded the people an opportunity to recuperate after long years of war and revolution...
...Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, leader of the Taipings, was mainly influenced by Christian missionaries in China...
...His dream was realized in 221 B.C...
...The "Confucian bureaucrats" who governed the provinces and districts in the name of the emperor had only limited managerial functions...
...who preached universal love and strict self-denial...
...Under the Communists, today, the state has become an end in itself—all for the state, nothing against the state, nothing outside the state...
...In its esteem for the past over the present and its accent on harmonious social relations, Confucianism was a powerful conservative force which promoted social cohesion and political stability...
...At one time, Mohism enjoyed considerable popularity...
...Sun Yat-sen expressed the opinion that the Chinese people had too much personal freedom, so much so that they were "a lot of separate particles of sand...
...The Confucianists condemned Mohism on the ground that it was against human nature—no one, they believed, could love a stranger as much as members of his own family...
...When the disciple Tseng said: "I would venture to ask if obedience to the orders of one's father can be pronounced filial piety," Confucius replied: "The father who had a son who would remonstrate with him would not sink into the gulf of unrighteous deeds...
...of every type of political speculation and every type of political practice...
...THESE ARE the "cultural facts" that have been dug up to prove that totalitarianism is deeply rooted in the Chinese ethos...
...The Chinese people are historically conditioned to accept Communist totalitarianism...
...But they completely disappeared from the Chinese scene several thousand years ago...
...rarely trying to meddle in the affairs of the people...
...Confucianism has enjoyed a far greater prestige among the Chinese literati and was the basis of the civil-service examinations...
...If he occupied an official position, he would serve his Icing or emperor in the same manner as he would serve his parents...
...their sufferings have come indirectly...
...The late Dr...
...If the people felt the ruler had forfeited his "mandate" by bad conduct, they had the right to overthrow him...
...And the people, for their part, were blissfully unconscious of state power...
...Surely it is a gross misreading of Chinese history to assert that the heritage of the old order facilitated, rather than retarded, the Communist victory in 1949...
...The role of the state was mainly that of an interested and benevolent onlooker...
...In the words of one writer, filial piety, the cornerstone of the Confucian ethical system, "in practice meant obedience, docility, and absolute submission to the superior authority, i.e., to the state, to the dynasty, to one's official superiors, to the potestas of one's father and one's elders...
...2. The Legalists did not content themselves with mere theorizing...
...4. Communism of a primitive type was not unknown in Chinese history...
...Men," said Confucius, "are near to each other by nature...
...Ultimately, the state would benefit by their exertions...
...However, if the people did not have much political freedom they certainly had a great deal of personal freedom...
...But in a country as vast as China and in the absence of modern means of communication, the impact of central control was rarely felt at the hsien or district level...
...It was for this reason, he believed, that the Chinese, unlike the Europeans who suffered direct oppression from their rulers, did not struggle against their emperors for political liberty...
...L'nder ordinary circumstances, they acted with unbureaucratic casualness...
...The Taoists condemned Mohism because, in the words of Chuang Tzu, it was "too harsh" and made life "a sad and dreary business...
...he had to act in accordance with the "mandate" he had received from "Heaven...
...For, in the words of the Confucian Book of History, "Heaven sees as my people see, Heaven hears as my people hear...
...Contrary to the belief of some Western intellectuals, Confucianism is essentially democratic in spirit...
...The Ch'in Empire was only an episode in China's political development—an episode without sequel...
...It was a tradition characterized by weak laws and weak institutions...
...who lived in the 6th century B.C., preached the doctrine of wu-wei or doing nothing...
...The nfw rulers, since the people had suffered from too much government under the preceding regime, deliberately adopted the philosophy of Lao Tzu as the basis of their policy...
...In a nation," said Mencius, "the people are the most important, the state comes next, and the prince is the least important...
...Lao Tzu...
...Now and then, they rose to the surface, revealing themselves in the nom de plume which he sometimes adopted in his old age and retirement...
...The basic weakness of the Confucian "government by goodness" is that it placed too much reliance on the personal conduct of the ruler and too little on the efficacy of law and institutions...
...As to "primitive Communism," the community founded by John Humphrey Noyes at Oneida, N. Y. in the last century was a far better example of that than the Taiping Rebellion...
...The leaders of the Taiping Rebellion—the peasant revolt of 1851-1864— practiced a sort of communal ownership of land which resembled Mao Tsetung's "land-reform program...
...The best kind of government was one whose "existence is barely noticed by the people...
...The Mohist standard of conduct was considered "contrary to the heart of the world, and the world at large could never endure it...
...whose rates were immutably fixed, and the maintenance of peace and order, they had practically no duties to perform...
...The common people had little direct contact with the Government...
...both have profoundly influenced China's subsequent development...
...The prince could not rule as he pleased...
...In a culture as rich and as complex as China's, it is easy to find the germ...
...It would be equally erroneous to equate the Confucian concept of "filial piety" with absolute submission to authority...
...Since remonstrance is required in the face of unrighteousness, how can obedience to the orders of a father be accounted filial piety...
...Still more characteristic was the rejection of the teachings of Mo Tzu, a great religious teacher of the 5th century B.C...
...The Taiping t'icn-kuo—"the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace"—was a sort of "primitive Christianity" rather than "primitive Communism...
...Clearly, Confucius did not "relentlessly impose" on the Chinese people the virtue of absolute submission...
...when the state of Ch'in unified the whole of China under the rule of Shih Huang-ti, the "First Emperor...
...3. Confucianism, for all its humanism, is essentially authoritarian in spirit...
...All the same, it must be admitted that the civil-service system, based on proved merit rather than imperial favor or aristocratic birth, was a democratic institution...
...In traditional China, learning was the key to Government office, and this required years of unremitting effort and application...
...Pragmatic and down-to-earth, they had never had any taste for abstractions or apocalyptic visions...
...And it was in terms of it, too, that the Confucian literati censured bad government and reproved the "Son of Heaven" when he deviated from the path of virtue...
...Briefly stated, the thesis runs like this: 1. China's past reveals that totalitarianism, which the world regards as alien to the Chinese genius, is in fact native to it...
...A cultivated Confucian scholar of the old school, in order to show his contempt for worldly ambitions and, in a literary sort of way, to offset the Confucian tendency to excessive dignity and formality, would often take on names with Taoist implications like "The Monk of the Eastern Hills," "The Lone Hermit," "The Old Rustic," etc...
...Under the Han Empire, there was also a revival of Confucian learning...
...In 247 BC, the powerful feudal state of Ch'in took into its service a Legalist called Li Ssu...
...Li's policy was the complete subjugation of all other feudal states...
...Herjce, all men, barring perhaps a small percentage of the lowest in intelligence, can be trained to shoulder great responsibilities and occupy important positions...
...Nonetheless, Taoist ideas often stirred restlessly in the depths of his consciousness...
...But it would be erroneous to suppose that Confucianism was based on a consistent pattern of authoritarian ideas which facilitated the Communist seizure and consolidation of power in 1949...
...A truly filial son would, it was believed, be a law-abiding citizen in the society of which he was a member...
...If the "Confucian bureaucrats" in later times seemed to constitute a "professional elite," it was because the opportunities were not the same for all men...
...One of its basic tenets is the equal teachability of men...
...The result was general prosperity and a phenomenal growth in population...
...We might even say that Plato and Rousseau are the real inventors of modern totalitarianism, because Plato's philosopher-king and Rousseau's doctrine of the general will are totalitarian in their implications...
...Though theoretically high Government offices were open to men of all classes, in practice only a favored few had the means and leisure to prepare themselves adequately for the rigorous civil-service examinations...
...All successful revolts in Chinese history were justified on the basis of this doctrine...
...it is learning and practice that set them apart...
...After a decade of war and revolution, China was unified for a second time under the Han Empire...
...Confucianism gained general acceptance because it suited the national temperament better than any other system of thought...
...Confucianism and Taoism (by Taoism 1 mean the body of principles enunciated by Lao Tzu and his school, and not the amalgam of magic, Shamanism and alchemy popularly referred to as Taoism), for all their differences, are supplements rather than rivals...
...We might just as well say that totalitarianism is deeply rooted in the Western cultural tradition, for Marxism, after all, is a Western product whose chief ingredients are the ethic and messianic vision of the Christian religion, 18th-century rationalism and 19th-century Darwinism...
...The Legalists represented an influential school of thought in ancient China, but at no time was their philosophy the mainstream of Chinese political thinking...
...Beyond the collection of the land tax...
...Both have gone into the making of the Chinese character...
...Therefore, when a case of unrighteous conduct is concerned, a son must by no means keep from remonstrating with his father, nor a minister from remonstrating with his ruler...
...Shih burned books, abolished private teaching, and liquidated the "counterrevolutionaries" of his time—men who upheld "the authority of the ancients to criticize the present government" or who held "open discussion on forbidden literature...
...The state was not regarded as an end in itself or as the bearer of any concrete social program...
...He would "remonstrate" with his superiors if they were clearly in the wrong...
...The Ch'in Empire, conceived in the belief that it would last "ten thousand generations," went to pieces in less than fifteen years...
...On the other hand, there was no theory of "the divine right of kings," no deification of the state, and no police...
...As such, it was favored by rulers of all ages in China...
...The injunction, "Honor thy father and mother," is found in Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Zoroastrianism, and practically all other holy scriptures...
...All too often, the ruler, instead of taking the advice of his wise men, ruled through his household and favorites...
...He was Lord Shang, who flourished 350 years before Jesus Christ...
...By doing nothing," he declared, "everything will be done...
...5. The conclusion is obvious...
...The result was personal government, with all its latent possibilities of oppression and caprice...
...This, then, was the Chinese political tradition...
Vol. 39 • September 1956 • No. 89
