THE ACHILLES' HEEL OF RED CHINA
Quigley, Harold S.
The Achilles' Heel of Red China by HAROLD S. QUIGLEY npWO PROPHECIES of China's future are rivals for acceptance today. One foresees a complete conquest of her culture and civilization by...
...In order to advance science and scientific method the Communist government is encouraging study not only of Soviet Russian materials but also those of the Western democracies...
...They will take their time about it...
...There is no sign other than localized and sporadic uprisings of nostalgia for return of the Kuomintang from Formosa...
...No one can say what effect a great war would have...
...While this concession to their sense of dignity may prompt an immediate reaction favorable to communism, it can hardly fail, in combination with the spread of education and the improvement of economic conditions, to lead gradually to the development of a sense of civic responsibility...
...Evidence now available indicates that the Communist government is firmly established...
...Its brutalities and confiscations and even its collectivization of the land have not aroused serious opposition on the mainland...
...let them govern...
...Whether or not "Emperor" Mao is worthy of that mandate will depend, in their eyes, upon how well he protects them from floods, and famines, not upon his political pronouncements...
...The Russians also appealed to the Chinese populace by taking advantage of its desire to be free from humiliating treaty controls on tariffs, administrative services, foreign residential areas, and territorial jurisdiction...
...Certainly it did not betoken admiration for communism...
...They were not interested in politics until it became so corrupt or inefficient that their economy suffered or their national security was threatened...
...Government has had no deep roots in the people...
...Is there a possibility of change from within the Communist system...
...The other relies upon her ages-old traditions, rooted in Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, to reassert themselves...
...It has emphasized the balancing of rights with duties...
...In either event the wounded Achilles will not die quickly...
...In fairness to the Chiang regime it must be recalled that in 1924 the Kuomintang announced a comprehensive program of reform measures...
...He wanted a government for the people but not by the people...
...Before that sense could mature and find exercise in the practice of government, totalitarian communism and prolonged war strangled it...
...This look at the record explains why Sun Yat-sen described China as "a sheet of loose sand...
...As an old farmer said to a missionary in the latter days of Empress Dowager Tsu Hsi: "The mandarins are paid to govern...
...Unhappily this was not done...
...Sun Yat-sen must share the responsibility for the failure of the Nationalist government to place greater confidence in the people...
...Many dynasties had been overthrown by revolution, others by invasion, only to be succeeded by new dynasties...
...Our sources of information are scanty...
...While none of these thinkers conceived the idea of popular government, neither did any of their Greek contemporaries except Aristotle, who warned against it...
...But at this juncture international communism entered China, ostensibly to assist the Kuomintang to overthrow internal militarism and to implement its promise of a better life for the peasants and urban workers...
...He was visiting professor in Pelting for several years and served for a year as president of the Far Eastern Association...
...Only after a period of "tutelage" would they be ready to govern themselves...
...Military restoration of the Kuomintang is now generally accepted as impossible...
...But the Russian propaganda of 1926-27, urging the peasants to dispossess their landlords, outran the Kuomintang program, inciting the peasants in a number of southern provinces to cast off their usual moderation...
...They are long-time risks, latent in the appeal of the doctrines of democracy and of democratic socialism which education will demonstrate to be choices available to the disillusioned or the captive Communist...
...Mencius, the principal interpreter of Confucius, went so far as to advocate revolution against a corrupt or tyrannical ruler...
...To them the revolt and success of Mao Tse-tung, a man of humble origin, are, as earlier revolts followed by new dynasties were to their ancestors, proof that the second Republic had "lost the mandate of Heaven...
...The great sage himself enjoined the kings of the many Chinese states of his day to justify their rule by setting examples of just and merciful conduct for their subjects...
...The Chinese peo-~ pie were better prepared in 1928 to exercise political power than they were in 1911...
...Like the invitation to American reporters which was so questionably declined for them, not by them, these gestures may be no more than evidence that the Communists now feel secure...
...The Chinese people often have rebelled against decadent rulers, but until the present century they have not begun to develop a sense of their own civic responsibility...
...Here again they appeared in the sheep's clothing of deliverers, not as exponents of absolutism...
...They are now sampling communism...
...If so, what form will it take...
...These are attributes of free men...
...But with success their illiteracy has barred them from a new status...
...The Nationalist government did not revive the parliamentary system...
...But a political fissure far deeper and wider than the Straits of Formosa bars any possibility of compromise between Chiang and Mao or their respective followings...
...Lacking both, he failed, and with him the first Republic...
...that the people could not depend upon tutors but must learn by doing...
...To the unlettered ninety or more per cent, the Republics of 1912 and of 1928 differed from the Empire only in the lesser panoply of Republican officials...
...He thought that • democratic government had worked badly in the West because too much reliance had been placed on the common man...
...That they are now permitted to say yes or no to nominees for advisory councils presented to them by the elite of the party may seem to them an introduction to citizenship, when viewed in the light of Chinese history...
...Recent reports of prospects for liberalism there are favorable...
...Since that time the Kuomintang or Nationalist Party, now a refugee regime on Formosa, has given only lip service to his principles...
...One finds some evidence, however, that while Mao continues to "lean toward" the U.S.S.R., he eschews, at least outwardly, the role of a Chinese Stalin...
...They were not prepared for the Republic...
...in crowded, illiterate China, hunger has made the expression of individualism a luxury which is far out of reach of the peasant and the coolie...
...Through this action and by its repudiation of the reform program of 1924 the Kuomintang and its leader lost popular confidence and alienated a considerable segment of the scholar class...
...This conclusion is not mere wishful thinking...
...But the fundamentals of Chinese personality and culture are as vital as ever...
...They are less myopic toward Soviet Russia than they are painted, but time is needed for an understanding of the contrast between Nineteenth Century imperialism and Twentieth Century internationalism...
...Chinese nationalism flared in response to Russian urging that the treaties be abrogated, the Westerners and all their works repudiated, and their Chinese friends denounced as "running dogs of imperialism...
...Individualism and hunger are always and everywhere at odds...
...His contemporary, Mo Ti, taught that government must benefit HAROLD S. QUIGLEY, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Minnesota, has taught, written of, and traveled in the Far East for more than three decades...
...One who pretends certainty in attempting to answer this question is foolhardy...
...The eclectic Chinese have sampled various Western doctrines: Christianity, republicanism, capitalism, fascism, and others, many of them in a variety of forms, during the course Of revolution...
...Civil war, the Japanese attack, and the losing struggle with communism have, together with the authoritarian tendencies of the Kuo-mintang, smothered the liberal leadership...
...Had this program been carried out gradually and sincerely the first Republic might well have taken on new life...
...International as well as internal factors will influence the prospect of a turn toward liberalism...
...If, as may be hoped, these attributes reassert themselves politically, with a resultant gradual breakdown of totalitarianism, there is good ground for the long-run prospect that China may yet become a part of the free world...
...But he might well have given more weight than he did to the high cultural qualities of simple men and women, qualities more essential to good citizenship than book knowledge...
...This long succession of imperial rulers demonstrates that the Chinese were satisfied with their monarchy-bureaucracy so long as it functioned in their interest...
...With this unavoidable reopening of the book of knowledge the restraint upon discussion and criticism has been lessened (Of some relevance to our essay in optimism is Peking's use of a slogan from the Chinese classics in announcing its indulgence: "Let hundreds of schools crow in competition...
...Had the Kuomintang been able to keep its Russian advisers within reasonable bounds, so that a program of purchase and redistribution of land could have been worked out, together with legislation in the interest of urban labor, there might have been no communist revolution...
...Instead of handling the situation with true Chinese moderation he carried out a bloody program upon untold numbers of Chinese peasants and laborers who had followed the Russian lead on the assumption that it was authorized by the Kuomintang...
...The government of China, until the Republican revolution compelled the Manchus to abdicate in 1912, was an absolute monarchy administered by a bureaucracy of scholars...
...For practical purposes the Kuomintang turned away from democratic models and ruled the country through a central executive committee dominated by the Generalissimo...
...In the West the concept of democracy advanced at a snail's pace, as larger and larger segments of the citizenry forced their claims to representation...
...They may be doing this with more fervor than sincerity, to keep in the good graces of Moscow...
...Chinese administration has been bureaucratic but enlightened by learning...
...Sun, of course, was thinking of the general illiteracy and of the huge and expensive job of education for citizenship...
...Chinese political thought from Confucius onward has reflected concern for the individual...
...But it exhibited the same doubt of the capacity of the people to participate in government that paralyzes much of Western thinking about China today...
...Neither is convincing to one who has lived in China long enough to realize that her people are highly individualistic...
...Their fine consideration for the self-esteem of others is matched by their sensitiveness to the attitudes of others toward themselves...
...Communism is a phase of revolution which Western missionaries and merchants unwittingly incited three centuries ago...
...Not until the Twentieth Century did the women of our own households attain suffrage...
...In the years since the infamous purge of 1951, his treatment of dispossessed landowners and private merchants has been less harsh...
...The risks obviously are not immediate...
...Available, that is, if one or the other is substituted for single-party authoritarianism by the Communist oligarchy, or if the change comes about under new leadership...
...Sun Yat-sen, its founder, understood the principles of representative government but he misjudged the difficulties it posed for the people...
...Leaving that eventuality out of consideration, will Formosa play a part in the process...
...He failed to see that political power, as John Stuart Mill so truly said, is never willingly shared...
...They have been subjects, not citizens...
...The innate dignity and self-respect of men and women of all stations are outstanding characteristics of the Chinese people...
...By permitting them to do so the Kuomintang might have assuaged in some degree their disappointment over the defeat of direct action for land and labor reform...
...The Western powers were aware of the danger but they were dilatory in meeting it...
...The individualism of the Chinese mind is the Achilles' heel of communism in China...
...But they must take the risks with the benefits of knowledge, whatever their motivation...
...History and the social sciences as well as the physical sciences are included within the new dispensation...
...The desire of the Chinese to be respected by other peoples is as keen as their sensitiveness to the opinions of their neighbors at home...
...The times called for effort to win the confidence and support of the people by associating them closely with the government...
...Political parties were not banned and a face-saving People's Political Council was permitted to debate but not to decide...
...The people would be expected to select qualified officials without themselves having experience in political affairs...
...Military power rather than popular elections has been the foundation of Kuomintang control...
...At this point General Chiang Kai-shek made the mistake of his life...
...It will be asked how Chinese individualism is to express itself in the face of the military power and the ruthless methods of the Communists...
...For thirty years a single figure, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, has dominated the Kuomintang...
...His death in 1925 left China without an outstanding liberal leader...
...Although many of the younger, Western-educated officials followed Chiang to Formosa, Peiping —renamed Peking by the Communists—appears to have a large and competent bureaucracy...
...Given a strong army and the confidence of the West he might have succeeded...
...It was in glaring contrast with the Japanese manhood suffrage law of 1925...
...It is attested by history, including the history of China...
...Then they have used the only weapon of poverty— violence—and with telling effect...
...One foresees a complete conquest of her culture and civilization by communism...
...Granted that the masses were not politically-minded, the educated classes were, and literacy was slowly spreading...
...Time is not of the essence to them...
...With the permeation of the minds of China's six hundred million morally mature and intelligent people by this sense, the foundation of totalitarianism will be weakened...
...No doubt this imitation of totalitarian systems could be explained as the realistic way to assure effective administration...
...Only when hunger has reached the starvation point have they rediscovered that they are men and women like their philosophers and emperors, their labor bosses and their landlords...
...Under Mao, as under Chiang and Yuan Shih-kai, and the emperors, they have been proud, self-reliant, humor-loving, morally responsible, culture-conscious hewers of wood and drawers of water...
...The family system has not been, as numerous Western commentators have failed to observe, destructive of self-consciousness...
...For a second time liberalism had succumbed to": forces too powerful for its inexperienced leadership...
...the people...
...Mao and his chief vocalist Liu Shao-chi continue to proclaim the goal of full-fledged communism...
...To sum up: Chinese political thought has tolerated paternalism but has condemned tyranny...
...Before the Kuomintang could firmly establish its new government at Nanking the peasant armies of Mao Tse-tung were in the field and the Japanese were attacking in Manchuria...
Vol. 21 • April 1957 • No. 4
