Anthropology 220/History 220 CONTEMPORARY CHINESE CULTURE (Spring 1998)
THE PAST IN CHINA'S PRESENT Richard J. Smith Rice University (Draft; 12/20/97)
For most Chinese in the PRC, history, like geography, is a deep- seated cultural value. The monumental man-made structures, awesome natural features, and spectacular beauty of the Chinese landscape, together with the colorful accounts of China's legendary heros that circulate in both popular media and elite writings, have contributed substantially to the formation of a distinctively "Chinese" identity. The vast majority of Chinese on the Mainland are proud of their stunning and expansive territory, their historic achievements, and their long, "unbroken" cultural tradition--all of which continue to be celebrated in books, songs, motion pictures and television shows. The Yellow River, for example, has inspired at least two major musical compositions, a thirty-part Sino-Japanese documentary, and a highly controversial TV series titled "River Elegy" (Heshang). Similarly, historical figures, from emperors and concubines to knaves and knights-errant, loom large in both the elite and the popular consciousness. The Empress Dowager Cixi alone has been the subject of countless books and articles, as well as a thirty-six-part television series.
Of course not all Chinese find satisfaction in their history. Some, particularly young, Western-oriented intellectuals, view the past critically, seeing it not as a source of national or personal pride but rather as an impediment to China's rapid "modernization." In the minds of these individuals, Chinese "tradition," however glorious it might have been in earlier centuries, has no place or purchase in the modern world. Prior to the "liberalization" of Chinese intellectual life in the PRC as a result of the "Open Policy" of 1978 (see below), most of the criticism of traditional China was undertaken by the state authorities, who considered old-style beliefs and practices to be a threat to socialism. Confucianism, for example, came under particularly harsh and persistent attack. But from 1978 onward, as Chinese intellectuals increasing identified traditional attitudes as the source of China's current problems, the state ironically found itself defending the very traditions it had previously been assailing.
These two conflicting attitudes toward the past--romantic pride and modernist criticism--surface in virtually every Chinese conversation and debate about the problem of "culture" in the PRC. The interesting feature of these conversations and debates is that each side usually displays a certain ambivalence toward the other. Despite vigorous claims for one or another position, few Chinese see their culture in terms of simple either/or choices.
The Land and the People
The most important point to remember about contemporary China is that it is still a predominantly rural society. Approximately seventy-five percent of the Chinese people are peasants (nongmin), who live on, and make a living off, the land. Their values are in many respects unlike those of either herdsman or city dwellers. Fei Xiaotong, the well-known Chinese sociologist, has written:
Agriculture differs from both pastoralism and industry. Farmers are necessarily connected to the land, whereas herdsmen drift about, following the water and the grass, and are forever unsettled. Industrial workers may choose where they live, and they may move without difficulty; but farmers cannot move their land or the crops they grow. Always waiting for their crops to mature, those old farmers seem to have planted half their own bodies into the soil.
For most of Chinese history the term "peasant" has not been a term of contempt or abuse, as it has been in many other civilizations of the world, past and present. And the Chinese Communist revolution itself was an overwhelmingly peasant movement, undertaken in the name of China's rural masses. Nonetheless, despite a number of state-sponsored efforts since 1949 to eradicate the "three great differences" in Chinese society (between city and countryside, worker and peasant, and mental and manual labor), a large and growing gap separates the lifestyles and world views of urbanites and rural inhabitants.
Other significant features of the Chinese landscape are its vast spread, its climatic and geographical diversity (including its great mountain and river systems), and its uneven distribution of people. At present, the People's Republic of China boasts a land area of approximately 9.6 million square kilometers. The Han (Chinese-speaking) majority, comprising about ninety-three percent of the total population of the PRC (well over 1.2 billion "mouths," as the Chinese say), occupy less than half of this expansive and diverse territory (most of it in the fertile eastern part of the country). The remaining seven percent of the population, most of whom live in the far northern and western regions of China, are designed "minority nationalities" (shaoshu minzu).
Aside from the sharp contrast between the rich agrarian areas of China Proper (below the Great Wall and east of Xinjiang) and the pastoral periphery (including Tibet and Inner Mongolia, as well as Chinese Central Asia), the most striking contrast in the PRC is between North and South China, with the dividing line at about the thirty-third parallel. These differences can best be represented in chart form.
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North China |
South China |
|
Limited, uncertain rainfall Frequent floods and droughts Unleached, calcareous soils 4-6 month growing season 1-2 crops per year; relatively low yields; frequent famines Major crops: gaoliang, millet, wheat Work animals: donkeys and mules Mud-walled houses with heated brick beds (kang) Wide city streets Smooth coastline with poor harbors; little fishing Foreign intercourse by land Longtime residence; the nuclear area of Chinese culture Comparatively uniform ethnic makeup Mandarin dialect (guoyu) Weak clan (lineage) system Relatively weak religious traditions |
Abundant rainfall Adequate water year-round Leached, noncalcareous soils 9-12 month growing season 2-3 crops per year; relatively high yields; prosperity Major crops: rice and beans Work animal: water buffalo Woven-bamboo-walled and thatch-roofed houses Narrow city streets Rough coastline with many good harbors; much fishing Foreign intercourse by sea Populated mainly by southward migrations since Tang times Numerous ethnic groups Many different dialects Strong clan system A more substantial belief in "ghosts and spirits" |
These North-South distinctions have produced markedly different outlooks and identifications on the part of Northerners and Southerners, as we shall see.
Another way the Chinese conceive of their country is in terms of a half-dozen or so major geographic areas defined primarily by river drainage systems. One common conception divides China into the Northeast (the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning--formerly known as Manchuria), Northern China (Hebei, Henan, Shandong, northern Anhui, and northern Jiangsu), the Northwest (Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai, Shanxi, and the northern part of Shaanxi), Southern China (Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, southern Anhui, southern Jiangsu, and northern Zhejiang), the Southeast (southern Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Taiwan, and Hainan), and the Southwest (Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan). In each of these areas, as we shall see, differences in dialects, climate, resources, population density, and settlement patterns have contributed to markedly different regional identifications and lifestyles. Spoken dialects are often especially significant markers of local and ethnic identity. Although these differences are seldom as striking as those between Han Chinese and aborigines, Tibetans, Mongols, or Turkic peoples, in many respects the Cantonese, Hakkas (Kejia), and Hokkienese of South China are as distinct from one another as, say, Spaniards are from the French or Italians.
Administratively China is divided into twenty-five provinces (including Taiwan, which presently exists as an independent political entity known as the Republic of China [ROC]), four municipalities (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing), five autonomous regions, and one special administrative region (Hong Kong). Each of these areas has a stereotype, which is widely shared within China. [details also on cities and autonomous regions?] Below is a chart of some Chinese provincial stereotypes which have prevailed for literally hundreds of years:
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Province |
Physical Traits |
Non-Physical Traits |
|
Hebei |
Tall and strong |
Frank, honest, good mannered and simple |
|
Shandong |
Tall and heavyset |
Frank, honest, simple and upright |
|
Shangxi |
Tall |
Business-minded, simple, honest and resolute |
|
Shaangxi |
Strong and medium to tall |
Honest, sincere, resolute and enduring |
|
Gansu |
Tall to medium |
Enduring, honest and simple |
|
Henan |
Tall and strong |
Honest, straight, and mannered with violent tempers |
|
Jiangsu |
Medium to small and delicate |
Cunning, crafty and versatile |
|
Anhui |
Medium size |
Good in business, simple, frugal and clever |
|
Zhejiang |
Medium to small |
Profit-hungry and scheming; not as good as friends |
|
Hebei |
Medium to small |
Scheming and unreliable |
|
Hunan |
Medium to small |
Emotional, heroic, military and upright |
|
Sichuan |
Medium to small |
Violent temper; too much talk |
|
Fujian |
Small to medium |
Petty-minded, cunning, risk-taking and clannish |
|
Guangdong |
Small |
Innovative, risk-taking and clannish |
|
Guangxi |
Small |
Enduring, hard and culturally backward |
|
Guizhou |
Medium |
Frugal, straight, poor, and overdeveloped |
|
Yunnan |
Medium to small |
Barbaric, enduring and frugal |
As with such stereotypes in most other parts of the world, these images are considered to be both true and false. But whether factual or fundamentally misleading, they unquestionably influence the self-conception of local residents, just as they affect the way local people respond to "outsiders" and outsiders respond to them.
Both within China's provincial boundaries and beyond are a number of "autonomous" areas--regions, prefectures, counties, cities and townships--where non-Han citizens are in the majority. China presently recognizes fifty-five minority nationalities, among whom the most statistically significant are the Zhuang (concentrated primarily in Guangxi and Yunnan; c. 1.4%), the Manchus (Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning, c. .90%), the Hui or Muslims (Gansu and Shaanxi; c. .75%), the Miao (also known as Hmong; Guizhou, Yunnan, and Hunan; c. .65%), the Uighurs (Xinjiang, c. 65%), the Yi (Sichuan and Yunnan, c. .60%), the Mongolians (Nei Meng or Inner Mongolia, c. .40%) and the Tibetans (Xizang or Tibet, c. 40%).
According to the Chinese State Constitution (1982, with various modification since then), the PRC's autonomous areas can enact special regulations "in the light of the political, economic and cultural characteristics of the nationality or nationalities in the areas concerned." Organs of self-government in these areas, headed by minority officials who are required "to employ the spoken and written language or languages in common use in the locality," have the power to "independently administer educational, scientific, cultural, public health and physical culture affairs in their respective areas," and to "sort out and protect the cultural legacy of the nationalities and work for the development and prosperity of their cultures.
A significant gap exists between the theory and practice of minority policy, however. The Chinese state, representing the dominant Han culture, celebrates its minority peoples in its official rhetoric, but often looks down upon them for their failure to meet "Chinese" standards of "civilization" (wenming). In the minds of most Chinese, regardless of their social class, non-Han peoples are culturally inferior to the Han. From the state's standpoint, rule over minority areas by Han Chinese commisars thus represents a "civilizing" project. And when the prevailing religion of a minority population, such as the Lamaism of the Tibetan Autonomous Region or the Islam of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, poses a political challenge to the State, PRC officials often respond with fear, and occasionally with force.
Somewhat ironically, but hardly surprisingly, some Chinese dissidents have found in ethnic minorities a source of political, literary and artistic inspiration denied by their own culture--especially after the government decided in the 1980s to embrace "tradition" in its own political interest. In the words of a well known Chinese art critic, Li Xianting, in 1987: "we see [the Han] approach to the question [of Tibetan culture] with a sense of overwhelming superiority. It's all well and good to say that the very elements of primitive color, strength, mystery and even barbarism, are just what is lacking in Han civilization. [. . .] But what is happening, in fact, is that these Tibetan elements of the primitive are being used in China as a spiritual raft during a transitional period of weakness, frustration, and vacuity. They enable the oppressed self to be temporarily liberated from the constraints of society."
China's Premodern History
One of the most powerful cultural constraints in China has been the weight of history. For literally thousands of years the Chinese have viewed the past as a record of unparalleled cultural achievement and as a guide to both the present and the future. Historical writings have not only documented China's greatness and self-sufficiency but also served as a moral drama, in which human beings exemplify qualities of goodness and evil. In other words, historically significant individuals are either worthy of praise (bao) or deserving of blame (bian). Virtually all prominent Chinese, past and present, have been evaluated this way, although sometimes the judgments have been mixed--particularly in modern times. For example, Mao Zedong is generally considered to have been "70% good and 30% bad." Deng Xiaoping will probably receive a similar evaluation now that he has passed from the scene.
Ironically, this focus on the historical importance of individuals does not square well with the emphasis on impersonal economic forces required by Marxism, which is still considered "orthodox" by the Chinese state. According to orthodox Marxism, human history must advance through several stages of development, each driven by the dynamics of class struggle. These stages are: (1) primitive society, (2) slave society, (3) feudal society, (4) capitalist society, (5) socialist society and finally communism. This scheme of progressive improvement, derived from Western history, does not fit the facts of China's historical experience very well.
Here, for instance, is a chronological table of pre-modern Chinese history according to the official catalogue of the Museum of Chinese History in Beijing (1996):
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The problem with this chronology is that it simply does not reflect historical reality. Putting aside the knotty question of whether the Shang and early Zhou economies were, in fact, based primarily on slavery, as Marxist periodization requires (many Western historians describe the Zhou as a "feudal" period), it seems a gigantic stretch to consider the major regimes of the imperial era (221 B.C. to 1912 A.D.) to be "feudal" in any meaningful sense. A brief historical sketch of this long period of empire may indicate why.
In the first place, the founder of the militaristic Qin dynasty officially abolished late Zhou "feudalism," invented the title and role of "emperor," and brought unprecedented unity to China through the centralization of administration, weights and measures, coinage, and communications. The subsequent Han dynasty, drawing on Qin institutions but espousing an explicitly Confucian ideology, set the style and pattern for most later dynasties in the realms of government, scholarship, art, literature, economic policy, and even foreign relations. For this reason the Chinese still proudly refer to themselves as "the Han people," and consider their writing to be "Han characters."
The fall of the Han ushered in a period of disunity and the revival of certain "feudal" institutions, but the Sui dynasty reestablished strong, centralized bureaucratic rule in China. The Tang dynasty, which patronized both Buddhism and Confucianism, brought the Chinese civil service examination system to its full development and introduced a comprehensive law code, both of which served as models for all later regimes. Like the Han, the Tang was expansive, cosmopolitan, creative, and self-confident. It was also a period of intellectual vitality and inventiveness.
From Tang roots emerged the Song, stigmatized by its eventual capitulation to the Mongols, but glorious beyond compare in its heyday. Song China was the most populous and most urbanized country in the world, with over 100 million inhabitants, at least six cities with populations in excess of one million, and more than fifty cities with 500,000. The Song was an age of economic growth and prosperity unequaled in Europe until the eighteenth century, as well as a period of advancement in science, technology, art and literature. These advances did not produce a scientific, industrial or commercial revolution, however, for by Song times China's highly evolved political, social, and economic institutions could accommodate internally generated change without fundamental disruption.
The Mongol (Yuan) conquest in 1279 stifled much of Song economic growth and brought rising despotism and military rule to China. But it did not fundamentally alter inherited institutions, nor did it undermine China's well-nourished sense of cultural superiority. In fact, foreign conquest only reinforced this attitude, since the alien invaders found it necessary to adopt Chinese culture in order to rule effectively. This was true not only of the Mongols, but also of the Manchus, who began the process of borrowing Chinese culture well before their successful invasion of the Middle Kingdom in 1644. Patterned after the native Ming dynasty, the Manchu-dominated Qing state claimed legitimacy as the self-conscious protectors of China's cultural tradition against the depredations of late Ming rebels.
In all, China from the Qin dynasty onward was in many ways the very antithesis of Zhou-, European-, or Japanese-style feudalism. It is true that at various times in China's imperial history there were limited forms of enforcement; and that some peasants were indeed forced into serf-like bondage by oppressive tenancy arrangements. But from the Tang period through the Qing, social and bureaucratic status in China was largely a function of achievement in the civil service examinations (rather than birth), and land ownership was either based on a freehold system or on an elaborate system of state control and allocation.
Of course not all Chinese view their history using rigid Marxist categories. Many contemporary intellectuals, especially those trained abroad, employ far more sophisticated analytical techniques for understanding their own past. Nonetheless, the Chinese system of education continues to promote a decidedly Marxian version of history, while at the same time emphasizing, in a more traditional fashion, the great heros and despicable villains of discrete dynasties. The result is a an extremely judgmental approach to the past--one that critiques entire epochs as well as individuals in terms of Marxist standards and a Marxist vocabulary.
In both academic and everyday usage, for instance, the Chinese term "feudal" (fengjian) has become a synonym for "backward" or "old-fashioned," often with the implication of being autocratic, oppressive or exploitive. Individuals or entire groups (the "ruling class") can be stigmatized as having a "feudal outlook," just as institutions and belief systems (for instance, "popular religion") may be denounced for having a "feudal character." The judgmental tone of Marxist history appears repeatedly in the museum handbook cited above. Thus we read: "During the middle period of the Ming Dynasty, the mounting crises and unrest in the feudal system became grave. Laws went unenforced and the style of work of local officers degenerated. Land annexations increased, class contradictions became more acute and peasant revolts incessantly broke out."
Among the most common culture traits associated with Chinese "feudalism" are: (1) A conception of China as a highly centralized unitary state, with a long, unbroken history; (2) a preoccupation with social control and ideological orthodoxy; (3) a strong emphasis on ritual, propriety, self-cultivation and moral suasion over codified law as the primary means of maintaining social order and harmony; (4) the centrality of ethics, not only to political and social life but also to other realms such as music, art and literature; (5) a powerful urge to "serve society;" (6) a highly developed, patriarchal family system based on the principle of filial piety (devotion to parents, or xiao); (7) the general subordination of the individual to the larger social group, and the corollary principle of mutual responsibility and mutual surveillance; (8) a highly refined status-consciousness and dependence on authority; (9) the privileged position of men over women; (10) a bureaucratic administrative mentality, which encouraged state supervision over most major aspects of political, social, economic and religious life; (11) an emphasis on particularistic, personalistic social and political relations or "connections" (guanxi) in the absence of a tradition of either protective law or a concern for "rights;" and (12) a powerful sense of China's distinctiveness and superiority over all other peoples and cultures, institutionalized in, and reinforced by, the so-called tributary system of foreign relations.
Many of these cultural traits endure in contemporary China, complicating the question of how to interpret and evaluate Chinese "tradition." Other complications have to do with the idea of historical stages of development.
The question of "capitalism" has been an especially difficult one for Chinese Marxists, since China became a "socialist" state in 1949 without having ever experienced a full-fledged capitalism--the stage from which socialism was supposed to emerge, according to Marxist theory. Orthodox Marxism condemns the bourgeoisie for its exploitation of the worker, and denounces imperialism as the ultimate expression of full-blown capitalism. Yet since 1978 the current regime has embraced a number of capitalist market mechanisms and has openly acknowledged the utility of borrowing certain "concepts, models and methods of contemporary bourgeois economic theory."
How does the PRC handle this awkward problem? An article in the overseas edition of the People's Daily (Renmin ribao), dated February 24, 1992, suggests the state's basic approach. On the one hand, it states:
Modern world history . . . informs us that economically backward nations, especially those that have labored for a long period of time under feudal rule, must make correct use of capitalism rather than rejecting it outright. [. . .] The use of capitalism [in China] includes development, to an appropriate degree, of a domestic capitalist economy to serve as a supplement to the socialist economy. . . . Capitalism is an extremely important stage in the historical development of mankind, and it follows its own pattern of appearance, development and destruction. [. . .] [An] accurate recognition and use of capitalism can promote our nation's socialist modernization, encourage the advancement of mankind and society, and boost civilization to a new and higher stage.
On the other hand, the article clearly points to the dangers of "blindly worshiping a [foreign] social model of this type." "The whole of modern Chinese history," it asserts, "leaves us with this conclusion: China can only follow the path of socialism, not the path of capitalism. [. . .] [If the Western nations try] to influence us with their capitalist and ideological systems, then we must as a matter of course fight a resolute war of resistance."
In order to understand these conflicting views, and to appreciate these fine distinctions, a brief look at China's first encounters with Western imperialism is necessary.
Modern China and the Problem of the "West"
Where does "modern" China begin? This is not a new question, although it continually yields new answers. Much depends, of course, on one's definition of modernity. For some, "modern" is synonymous with "recent," as in the Chinese term, jindai. Others emphasize the Latin root of "just now" (in Chinese: xiandai), which implies the notion of "up-to-date," in contrast to archaic or old-fashioned. For many people--Chinese and non-Chinese alike--the term "modern" refers to a series of specific changes in the realms of technology, ideas and institutions that originated in Western Europe about five hundred years ago and have now gained a certain attractiveness throughout much if not most of the world. These transformations are generally associated with the Commercial, Scientific, Democratic and Industrial Revolutions; and their consequences--whether for better or worse--can be seen in virtually every nation on earth today, including China.
For the past century and a half or so, Chinese intellectuals have tended to measure China's "modernity" by "Western" standards of scientific, technological, economic, institutional and ideological "progress." It is important to remember, however, as Paul Cohen and others have repeatedly pointed out, China's modern history can by no means be understood as simply a Chinese "response" to the Western "impact." Although for thousands of years China has been influenced by various "foreign" cultures, including the West, the motive force behind Chinese history has always been internal.
During the late Ming dynasty, for instance, Catholic missionaries in East Asia--notably the Jesuits--brought a raft of "modern" Western scientific, technological, and religious knowledge to China. By learning the Chinese language, changing to Chinese clothes, mastering Chinese social customs, appreciating Chinese culture, and making certain theological compromises, the Jesuits were able to win a number of high-level converts and even to achieve positions of considerable responsibility within the Ming bureaucracy. But they never came close to achieving any significant political power or cultural influence. Although anxious "to change China" (the title of an illuminating book on the subject by Jonathan Spence) through evangelical effort, they ended up becoming transformed themselves. Christianity never took root in Chinese soil.
Far more important than the Jesuits to China's "modern" development were a series of indigenous changes in the late Ming period, which Chinese scholars have identified as "the sprouts of capitalism." These seventeenth century changes included: the urbanization of the lower Yangzi River area, the rapid growth of regional trade, the emergence of a national market in bulk commodities, increased geographical mobility, the expansion of popular literacy, an increase in the size of the "gentry" (elite) class, and the professionalization of local managerial activities. Taken together, these domestic developments contributed to dramatic transformations in the style of Chinese local politics, in patterns of personal and intellectual affiliation, and ultimately in modes of thought.
As a result, the eighteenth century in China was a period of great prosperity, vitality, and creativity--a time, according to Qing chroniclers, "unparalleled in history." Until the late Qing period, China had no reason to question its time-honored self-image as the "Middle Kingdom," the center and apex of world civilization. But Western (and later, Japanese) imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries destroyed China's traditional self-image, and with it, a large measure of Chinese self-confidence. Agonizing self-doubt and chronic insecurity replaced China's well-nourished feelings of cultural superiority.
From an orthodox Marxist standpoint, therefore, the history of "modern" China begins with a Western event: the Opium War of 1839-42. As a consequence of this unprecedented conflict, Great Britain--followed by a number of other foreign powers, including France, Russia and the United States--imposed a series of "unequal treaties" on China. According to the terms of these humiliating treaties, which were not completely abrogated until 1943, the Western powers gained the right to establish dozens of self-governing settlements for Western residence and trade in various parts of China. Westerners in these areas, and indeed, throughout all of China, enjoyed immunity from Chinese law, naval access to the interior, and many other non-reciprocal privileges, including substantial commercial advantages, such as the limitation of Chinese customs duties Later patriots would claim that the economic oppression endured by China under such circumstances was so great that their sacred land was not simply a simply a colony but a "hypo-colony." that the Chinese were "not just slaves of one country but the slaves of many countries."
From 1860 onward, the so-called treaty ports provided conduits for the transmission of Western cultural influences. Foreign merchants, missionaries, diplomats and military men gathered in port areas, bringing to China new ideas, products, practices and skills. Initially, reform-minded Qing officials in these regions sought foreign military equipment in order to suppress internal rebellion and to contend with foreign aggression. Later they acquired industrial machinery and other technologies in the hope of meeting the foreign economic challenge. Some officials established schools for the teaching of foreign languages, and a few even sent limited numbers of students abroad. Meanwhile, Chinese newspapers and journals began to arise in treaty port areas, carrying stories about the West and translations of Western writings. All of these trends accelerated in the 1880s and 90s as foreign imperialism grew in both scope and intensity.
But most Chinese elites in the nineteenth century saw little if any need to investigate foreign ideas or institutions. Their attitude, reinforced by the explicitly Confucian content of the Chinese civil service examination system, was that all meaningful realms of traditional Chinese culture were superior to those of the West; that the foreign powers had only technology in their favor. As the conservative reformer, Zhang Zhidong (1837-1909), put the matter in a famous aphorism: "Chinese learning for the foundation, Western learning for the practical application." By contrast, the Japanese, who had a long history of cultural borrowing from the Chinese, began enthusiastically to embrace all realms of Western learning in the 1860s, rapidly replacing China with the West as a self-conscious developmental model. During the Meiji Restoration of 1868-1912, the Japanese systematically built a vibrant, modern nation-state, drawing freely and creatively upon European and American models of government, law, economics, education and military organization.
Japan's overwhelming success against China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 traumatized the self-styled Middle Kingdom. This cataclysmic event not only marked the total destruction of the Chinese world order by a one-time tributary, but it also resulted in the loss of Chinese territory (the entire province of Taiwan) and the imposition of a costly and humiliating unequal treaty (the Treaty of Shimonoseki, 1895). The upshot was the dramatic rise of Chinese nationalism--a widespread recognition that China's alleged cultural superiority and the emperor's hoary claim to rule "all under Heaven" had absolutely no weight in the new world order. China was now simply one of a number of competing nation-states, and an "inferior" one at that.
Chinese nationalism, in turn, ushered in a period of concerted institutional reform, and Japan, with its enthusiasm for Western learning and its ability to adapt foreign knowledge successfully and rapidly, quickly became a modernizing model for China. The imperial reforms of the early twentieth century, although designed to preserve the Qing dynasty, had revolutionary consequences. Abolition of the traditional examinations in 1905, for instance, undermined the Confucian concept of rule by virtue and eliminated the institutional reinforcement of orthodox Confucian values. Rudimentary representative government at the capital and in the provinces radicalized the Chinese elite, giving them a new political awareness and a new base of power. And newly organized provincial armies, whose officers and men were increasingly exposed to, and influenced by, nationalistic revolutionary propaganda, became revolutionary instruments. Despite their reform efforts, the Manchus became increasingly scorned and despised for their inability either to resist imperialism or to protect elite interests. Chinese nationalism no longer permitted alien rulers to claim legitimacy as the protectors of China's cultural heritage, for Chinese intellectuals increasingly saw the need to differentiate between politics and culture in order to achieve the modern goals of 'collective achievement and dynamic growth.
In 1911-1912, revolutionaries under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan, 1866-1925) overthrew the Manchus and established the Republic of China. Unfortunately, the hastily constructed system of representative institutions that had been established during the first decade of the twentieth century could not hold the political center. Military might prevailed over parliamentary government, and the newly established Republic rapidly degenerated into warlordism. The warlord period, which lasted from about 1915 to 1928, produced profound political and economic difficulties, widespread social unrest, deep demoralization, and a renewal of foreign imperialism.
In response to this unprecedented national crisis, China became highly politicized. Intellectuals, students, merchants, industrialists, and workers, all motivated by patriotic sentiments, learned how to express their concerns through mass demonstrations, strikes, and boycotts. On May 4, 1919, some 3,000 Chinese college students gathered at Tiananmen Square in Beijing to protest their government's decision to grant special privileges to Japan during World War I. When the police moved in to quell the demonstration, dozens of students were arrested; a number of others were injured and one was killed. More student strikes and mass arrests followed. This, in turn, produced a wave of national sympathy for the students. In Shanghai, for instance, an estimated 60,000 workers staged some sort of work stoppage or sympathy strike in support of the students, Eventually, three of the diplomats responsible for capitulating to the Japanese were forced to resign. This week of protests, known as the May Fourth Movement, lingered in public memory and became a turning point in modern Chinese history.
Meanwhile, Chinese intellectuals had begun searching for more fundamental solutions to China's pressing problems. Their quest, informed by new periodicals and newspapers, motivated by nationalism, undergirded by the concept of Social Darwinism, and strategically centered at newly established Beijing University, was unprecedented in its iconoclasm as well as in the range of its political, social, and philosophical options. It became known as the New Culture Movement, sometimes also called the May Fourth Movement. On the whole this movement was an urban phenomenon; most New Culture iconoclasts had little contact with, or understanding of, the Chinese peasantry, who constituted eighty percent of the population.
Virtually every aspect of Chinese "tradition" came under attack during the period from 1915 to 1925. Nothing was sacred: not Confucian values, not traditional religion, not even the classical Chinese language. Everything was therefore assailable. In the words of two of the most influential figures of the New Culture era, Chen Duxiu (1880-1942) and Hu Shi (1891-1962): "The old literature, old politics, and old ethics have always belonged to one family; we cannot abandon one and preserve the others."
Dr. Hu, educated in the United States at Cornell University and Columbia University, based his call for a "critical attitude" toward China's past not only on the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey ("Can traditional institutions, beliefs and practices survive in today's world?," Hu asked) but also on Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of the need for a fundamental "reevaluation of values." Mr. Chen, the French-educated editor of a highly influential journal known as the New Youth (Xin Qingnian; La Jeunesse), justified his iconoclasm in terms of Social Darwinism--specifically the French philosopher Henri Bergson's theory of "creative evolution." As early as 1915, Chen wrote passionately: "I would much rather see the past culture of our nation disappear than see our race die out now because of its unfitness for living in the modern world."
Like Hu and Chen, many New Culture advocates were educated in Japan, Europe or America. Understandably, a number of them looked to the West for political, social, literary, artistic and intellectual inspiration. Some genuinely admired Western ideas and institutions; others sought a vantage point from which to step outside their own tradition in order to criticize it more effectively; virtually all esteemed the abstract virtues of science and democracy. Drawing upon translations of Western works, and often translating such works themselves, they explored a wide range of philosophies and methodologies, and experimented with a variety of new artistic and literary forms. The New Culture era was alive with talk of Western "isms:" Darwinism, nationalism, socialism, anarchism, liberalism, individualism, pragmatism, utilitarianism, skepticism, idealism, utopianism, realism, formalism, romanticism, symbolism, cubism, and so forth.
Admiration for the West, together with their despair over the capacity of Chinese tradition to "save the nation," led a number of these New Culture intellectuals, including Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu, to advocate the "total Westernization" (quanpan Xihua) of China. Significantly, however, this concept, first advocated by the radical reformer, Tan Sitong in 1898, meant different things to different people. In truth, few Chinese were able to sever themselves entirely from their cultural roots. On occasion both Hu and Chen, for example, found things to admire in China's heritage, and neither went so far as to advocate the abandonment of the Chinese language and its replacement by European languages or Esperanto--as some New Culture intellectuals did. In fact, later, more radical advocates of "total Westernization" criticized intellectuals of the New Culture era, including Hu and Chen, for failing to go any further than simply worshiping the twin idols of "Mr. Science" and "Mr. Democracy."
The common denominator of virtually all advocates of "total Westernization" was Chinese nationalism, marked by a fervent desire to build a strong and self-sufficient China. But radicals certainly did not have a monopoly on patriotic feelings. Traditionalists of the New Culture era were also often powerfully nationalistic, and at least some of them had a deep knowledge and understanding of the West. Take, for example, Gu Hongming (1857-1928), who taught European literature at Beijing University and could read several foreign languages, including English, French, German, Latin, and ancient Greek. In Gu's opinion, Western "utilitarian culture" was utterly incapable of developing the "inner mind," while China's "spiritual civilization" was so perfect that it could not only save China but also rescue the West from its materialistic malaise. Gu also chastized New Culture intellectuals for their arrogance and aloofness from the masses whose interests they claimed to be serving.
Most Chinese intellectuals of the New Culture era had ambivalent feelings about both China and the West. In part these feelings stemmed from the simple fact that neither the Chinese nor the Western traditions could be considered either flawless or completely flawed. Even the most pro-Western radicals could hardly ignore the destructive, self-interested imperialistic tendencies of the West, and even the most ardent advocates of a return to Confucian values had to admit that that Chinese tradition had not served very well as a bulwark against Western aggression in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, a number of thinkers saw fundamental contradictions between different sets of prized cultural values--for instance, the liberating and uplifting impulses of individualistic Western philosophy and literature, and the need for some sense of traditional Chinese "spirit," coupled with a sense of political and social stability. An essay by the self-style "liberal," Wu Mi, published in 1923, reflects this sort of ambivalence:
The result of these ambivalent feelings was that many intellectuals ended up advocating a synthesis between Chinese and Western culture, hoping to strike an effective balance between Western "materialism" and Chinese "spirituality." Liang Shuming provides one example. Although he appreciated Western individualism and science, he condemned wholesale imitation of the West as impractical and undesirable. (He also chastized New Culture advocates for their arrogance, urban preoccupations, and self-interestedness.) In Liang's view, Confucianism, with its emphasis on harmony and moderation was the strength of traditional Chinese culture. It should therefore be "renewed" and "brought to the fore."
Similarly, a group of ten university professors in 1935 called for "Cultural Construction on a Chinese Basis," which drew upon the best traditions of both China and the West. Their view was that China had its own unique geographical characteristics, history and culture, as did the various Western nations. Therefore:
Of course, the question of exactly what should be preserved or absorbed remained a subject of intense debate, as it does to this day.
Culture and Politics
Some New Culture intellectuals argued only about theories, but others attempted to put their ideas into immediate practice. During the 1920s, two major political parties arose in China--the Nationalist Party (Guomindang or GMD) under Sun Yat-sen and his successor, Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi; 1888-1975), and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), under Mao Zedong (1893-1976). Both parties were motivated by patriotic feelings and both sought to achieve national wealth and power by drawing in a highly selective way from the wide range of New Culture options. Both Chiang and Mao esteemed the abstract concept of "democracy," but neither saw it as an institution to protect individual rights and liberties. In fact, under the influence of the Soviet Union, both men gravitated to one party rule ("democratic centralism") and both railed against the twin evils of liberalism and individualism.
In his rise to power from 1925 onward, Chiang Kai-shek represented himself as a Western-oriented modernizer in the mold of Sun Yat-sen. Reflecting the iconoclasm of the New Culture Movement, and espousing Sun's "Three Principles of the People" (Nationalism, Democracy and Equitable Livelihood), Chiang ordered the abolition of official Confucian rites in the name of "modernity." His rationale was that "the principles of Confucius were despotic. For more than twenty centuries they have served to oppress the people and to enslave thought. As to the cult of Confucius, it is superstitious and out of place in the modern world. China is now a Republic. These vestiges of absolutism should be effaced from the memory of citizens."
But in the face of rising domestic and foreign challenges, Chiang turned to Chinese tradition. In 1934, Confucius was officially recanonized and Chiang inaugurated his so-called New Life Movement, which called for a return to the four ancient Confucian virtues of ritual, righteousness, honesty, and a sense of shame. According to Chiang, the single greatest cause of China's weakness and inability to contend with foreign imperialism was not weapons but "the loss of our traditional spirit and fine morality." As Chiang put the matter:
By reaffirming time-honored Confucian values, the New Life Movement sought to restore China's reputation as "the land of ritual and righteousness," and, in so doing, to build national strength. The GMD devised ninety-six specific rules to achieve this end. Fathers were admonished to instruct their sons, elder brothers to teach their younger brothers, and husbands and wives to encourage one another. All people were expected to be prompt, polite, thoughtful, refined and considerate to others. They were to use courteous language and proper greetings. There would be no pushing and shoving in crowds, and no spitting, sneezing, or urinating in public. People were urged not to dance, not to have extravagant wedding and funeral ceremonies, and not to swear, smoke tobacco or opium, gamble or visit prostitutes. These stipulations reflected Chiang Kai-shek's steadfast belief that adherence to specific standards of external behavior would help change the "inner person."
Of course the New Life Movement did not involve only Confucian moral admonitions. Chiang consistently urged the development of a modern Chinese economy in order to improve the people's livelihood and to enhance national strength. By supporting commercial and industrial development, the Guomindang brought a measure of modernity to China's major cities. New power stations supplied electricity to urban centers; new roads, railways, steamships and air transportation systems improved communications countrywide; and Chinese medical care became more sophisticated. Despite the conservative and nationalistic tone of GMD propaganda, Western fashions became ever more popular, along with movie theaters, radios, phonographs and cigarettes. Western art and music also flourished in these urban centers. Chiang himself occasionally held up Westerners and the Japanese as models of successful modernization, despite their imperialistic tendencies and decadence. "All the activities of foreigners," he once proclaimed, "are in complete accord with the demands of modern citizenship."
Despite certain limited successes in the urban sector, the Guomindang faced insurmountable obstacles in attempting to build a modern nation state between 1928 and 1949. Suffering from internal dissention, widespread corruption, inadequate revenues, and incomplete control over many parts of China, including most of the countryside, the GMD also had to contend with a rising chorus of criticism by Chinese intellectuals, the political challenge of the Chinese Communists after 1927, and military invasion by the Japanese in the 1930s. Together, these problems doomed the Nationalists to defeat at the hands of the CCP in 1949.
Although the New Life Movement continued to receive official support into the late 1940s, it had already lost virtually all of its momentum by the late 1930s. Graham Peck offered the following evaluation of the Movement in his book, Two Kinds of Time:
The New Life Movement has often been criticized for its preoccupation with petty details and philosophical superficiality. Most intellectuals in Nationalist China were openly scornful of Chiang's "Return to Confucius" movement, and even young people took little heed of it. The authorities did, however, achieve some limited success in the realm of public health in conjunction with other campaigns. Furthermore, despite its manifest weaknesses, the Movement helped lay the foundations for a government-sponsored approach to the "revival" of traditional Chinese culture that continues, more or less, to this day on Taiwan. This approach sees Confucian values as fully compatible with science and democracy, and conducive to economic growth as well. At present in the Republic of China (ROC), traditional rituals and religious practices continue to flourish alongside more "modern" aspects of material culture borrowed from Japan and the West.
Ironically, the PRC seems to be moving in this same direction. It was not always so, however. In many respects Mao Zedong's approach to the modernization of China was the antithesis of Chiang's. To be sure, Mao's revolutionary movement grew out of the same deep patriotism and esteem for science, democracy, and social justice that had motivated Sun Yat-sen. But Mao laid his wager on the Chinese peasantry, developing a kind of populist Marxism-Leninism that stood in sharp contrast to the urban-centered elitism of the Nationalists. In both theory and practice, Mao emphasized the importance of ideological indoctrination, human will, mass political campaigns, egalitarianism, and radical social and economic experiments.
Yet, like Chiang, Mao reflected a certain ambivalence toward China's cultural heritage. In the 1920's, touched by the New Culture spirit and a recent convert to Communism, he assailed Confucian beliefs, popular religious practices and traditional social rituals. His 1927 "Report on an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan," for example, scoffs at those who place their faith in popular gods instead of revolutionary activism. And during the early 1940s, Mao wrote a number of essays and speeches denouncing China's "feudal" or "semi-feudal" culture--which he considered to be the handmaiden of "imperialist" culture. Mao put the matter this way in a famous essay titled "On the New Democracy" (1942):
Mao expressed similar notions at the Yan'an Forum on Art and Literature (1942):
Yet for all his revolutionary iconoclasm, Mao did not totally reject China's heritage. As early as 1938 he wrote: "Today's China is an outgrowth of historic China. We are Marxist historicists; we must not mutilate history. From Confucius to Sun Yat-sen we must sum it up critically, and we must constitute ourselves the heirs of all that is precious in this past. [. . .] A communist is a Marxist internationalist, but Marxism must take on a national form before it can be applied." Similarly, in his essay on the "New Democracy," cited above, he argued:
In the same eclectic spirit, Mao advocated borrowing from other cultures. In this same essay, he wrote that although China's new-democratic culture "belongs to our own nation, and bears our national characteristics,"
In short, Mao's attitude toward culture, at least in its theoretical form, was not far from the notion of "cultural construction on a Chinese basis" propounded by the ten university professors in 1935. In the end, Mao held the widespread view that China had its own special characteristics, which had to be taken into account in the formulation of any successful cultural policy. Reduced to a pair of famous aphorisms, his advice was simple and straightforward: "Let the Past Serve the Present," and "Let Foreign Things Serve China."
Mao's Approach to Culture in the PRC
From the "Liberation" of China in 1949 to his death in 1976, Mao exerted an enormous influence on all aspects of life in the People's Republic of China. In addition to promoting Marxist-Leninist values nationwide, and elevating the social position of traditionally disadvantaged groups (notably workers, peasants, women, and soldiers), Mao brought to the PRC a fundamentally different system of economic organization than China had known before--one based on the eventual nationalization or collectivization of agriculture, industry, and commerce. He also exploited the concept of "class struggle" as a means of undermining his enemies, linking alleged "counter-revolutionaries" within China to imperialist oppressors (particularly the United States, which had prevented the PRC from taking Taiwan in 1950 and also entered the Korean War against Chinese troops that same year) without. Relying on ideological indoctrination and a series of mass campaigns, he undermined the power of both the urban capitalists and rural elites (an estimated one million landlords were killed in the radical land reforms of the early 1950s) while establishing a new political and social hierarchy dominated by urban and rural authority figures ("cadres") who were loyal members of the Chinese Communist Party.
Ironically--at least in retrospect--many Chinese intellectuals viewed the birth of the PRC as a "glorious achievement," not only because it marked the end of corrupt and ineffective Guomindang rule on the Mainland (the GMD did much better on Taiwan with American assistance and support), but also because it brought the possibility of a great new beginning for China. In 1989, Wu Zuguang recalled:
But the official party line on culture provided little latitude for creative individuals. Art and literature, including film, had to meet stringent standards of political correctness under Mao. The standard of judgment during this period of heavy Soviet influence in almost every area of Chinese life was "socialist realism"--that is, works which explicitly denigrated capitalism and glorified communism.
During the first few years of the PRC, many intellectuals with class backgrounds that were branded "feudal," "capitalist," or "reactionary," had to undergo intensive "thought reform," a process of criticism and self-criticism designed to raise their consciousness and change their world view. Many individuals became demoralized and disillusioned under these circumstances. But in the Spring of 1956, a self-confident Mao announced the cultural policy of "letting a hundred flowers bloom, and letting a hundred schools of thought contend," hoping to build greater unity through open discussion and debate. Intellectuals were even encouraged to air their grievances against the CCP. When, however, criticisms of administrative ineptitude, official tyranny, widespread corruption, party privilege, and massive poverty began to flow in great torrents from the mouths and pens of dissidents, Mao cracked down hard. By the end of the year, more than 300,000 intellectuals had been branded "rightists," betrayers of the Chinese revolution. Most were sent to labor camps, prisons or exile. Many died of illness or committed suicide, and a great number were not released from their bondage until 1979.
Naturally this chilling event deadened artistic and literary creativity. It also enhanced class consciousness, and thus, encouraged class struggle. And since a good number of prominent "rightists" had been educated in the West, or at least held relatively favorable views toward Western notions of freedom and self-expression, the link between "bourgeois liberalism" and treachery seemed obvious to the Communist authorities. State-sponsored nationalism took the form of rabid anti-foreignism, and by the late 1950s and early 60s, the Soviet Union itself had become China's enemy, accused by Mao of "revisionism."
Mao's ultra-nationalistic and militantly self-reliant revolutionary approach can best be seen in the tumultuous Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), which lasted from 1966-1976. In a certain sense, this event hearkened back to the iconoclasm of the New Culture Movement some fifty years before--not least in its self-conscious attempt to "destroy the old and establish the new." But, unlike the New Culture Movement, Mao's Cultural Revolution entailed a virulent attack on Western bourgeois culture. And unlike its warlord era predecessor, it was not spontaneously generated by intellectuals. Rather, the intellectuals became an object of attack.
Mao initiated the GPCR for two main reasons. The first was to regain political power after the disaster of the Great Leap Forward (1958-61)--a radical economic experiment that failed spectacularly and caused the loss of an estimated twenty million lives. The second was to revive his long-standing vision of radical revolution in China after a period of pragmatic retrenchment, overseen by his long-time associates, Liu Shaoqi (1898-1969) and Deng Xiaoping (1906-1997), who sought to abandon and reverse the irrational policies that had resulted in the Great Leap. Taking advantage of his close ties with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) under Field Marshall Lin Biao (1908-1971), and still enjoying enormous popularity among the Chinese masses, Mao gained control of the CCP propaganda apparatus, solidified his strategic alliances with fellow radicals (including the "leftist" allies of his politically ambitious wife, Jiang Qing, 1914-198_), and developed a powerful "cult of personality." With these advantages, he began a systematic and highly effective campaign to stigmatize his political enemies, notably Liu and Deng, as "counterrevolutionaries" and "followers of the capitalist road."
Throughout the entire Cultural Revolution, Mao sought relentlessly to eradicate all "bourgeois tendencies" and "feudal attitudes" from China. From his standpoint, these two problems were closely linked, since representatives of the capitalist class were also carriers of "old ideas." In Mao's mind, the creation of a truly "proletarian" (i.e., worker's) culture was not the natural outgrowth of economic modernization, as orthodox Marxist theory would have it , but rather a precondition for economic development. Instead of building upon China's past, the past now had to be completely destroyed--or at least so it seemed. As Mao put the matter as early as 1964, "the thought, culture, and customs which brought China to where we found her [in 1949] must disappear, and the thought, culture, and customs of proletarian China, which do not yet exist, must [be made to] appear."
Mao and his "leftist" allies chose high school and college students to be their principal agents of change. Declaring these young revolutionaries to be "Red Guards" and Mao's "little generals," the Cultural Revolution radicals admonished students to "learn revolution by making revolution," assuring them that "to rebel is justified." Released from regular classes and provided with free transportation throughout the country, millions of Red Guards took to the streets in urban areas throughout China. They ransacked museums, temples, and private homes; they destroyed ancestral tablets, ancient artifacts, old books, and works of art; and they attacked citizens who dressed in the traditional fashion, followed old rituals, or possessed Buddhist or Daoist relics. They did the same for anyone whose tastes or possessions reflected "bourgeoise" values.
Thousands of intellectuals and other "class enemies" were beaten to death, and large numbers of innocent people committed suicide under relentless physical and mental abuse. Many individuals were imprisoned and tortured. Emotions of frustration, anger and animosity, long repressed, flared into flames of violence now that customary social restraints no longer operated. Factionalism pitted different groups of Red Guards against one another.
Feeding the fires of revolutionary fervor were not only dark fears of "class enemies" but also the highly publicized military activities of the "American imperialists" in Vietnam and the "Russian revisionists" on the Russo-Chinese border during the late 1960s. Who could doubt that China was in mortal danger? And who alone could save the imperiled country? Once again, Mao emerged as China's great savior, skillfully placing Chinese nationalism in the service of his domestic agenda. And when the disorder of the Cultural Revolution became intolerable in late 1967, Mao called on the PLA to restore order. Millions of Red Guards were sent to the countryside to be "reeducated by the poor and lower-middle peasants."
Although the GPCR was officially declared at an end in 1969, party historians later extended the time period from 1966 until Mao's death in 1976. Throughout these "ten years of chaos," as they came to be called, Mao's wife, as the arbiter of culture, dictated what could be written, viewed, sung and said. Masterpieces of Chinese and Western literature were banned and destroyed with equal abandon. Tang poets and Elizabethan playwrights suffered the same fate; the ancient Confucian classics were gleefully burned alongside modern paintings and recordings of Beethoven. At the other extreme, only certain "revolutionary" dramas and ballets could be staged. For the better part of a decade, most writers could not write, most painters could not paint, and formal education was little more than memorizing the "Quotations of Chairman Mao."
But for all his revolutionary iconoclasm, Mao was in a certain sense a captive of the very tradition he sought to destroy. Although it was fashionable during the Cultural Revolution to attack "feudal" despotism, denounce traditional-style ceremonies and even abandon common courtesies, Mao allowed himself to be elevated to the position of an imperial-style demigod, worshipped as both a saint and savior. During l968, in particular, portraits, statues, buttons, and plaster busts of Mao appeared everywhere in endless proliferation. Many households boasted "tablets of loyalty" to Mao, around which family members gathered to pay reverence in the fashion of traditional Chinese ancestor worship. Exhibition halls built throughout the country to chronicle the Chairman's exploits were termed "sacred shrines" in the official press, and there were even reports that the waters of the Yangtze River, in which Mao took a much-heralded swim, had magical curative properties.
Although Mao never abandoned his theoretical commitment to the utopian goal of a "classless society," in practice his China, like that of his imperial and Nationalist predecessors, displayed the familiar characteristics of authoritarian, bureaucratic rule, state supervision of political, social, and economic life, an emphasis on political morality over law, a preoccupation with ideological, artistic, and literary orthodoxy, and a clear stress on collective responsibility, mutual surveillance, and the subordination of the individual to the group. Many of these tendencies were, of course, encouraged and reinforced by Marxist-Leninist ideology and practice.
Mao's deep sense of history and esteem for much of Chinese tradition can be clearly seen in many of his writings and speeches, which, even during the Cultural Revolution, bristle with historical allusions and references to traditional Chinese literature. Mao even had a certain vestigial admiration for Confucius. During 1964, for example, he praised the sage for being "self-taught" and "broadly accomplished;" and in a publication issued during the Cultural Revolution itself, he stated: We must not lose the Confucian tradition." In 1972, however, presumably with Mao's blessing, the CCP launched a nationwide movement to criticize Confucius. This campaign was bizarrely linked to an effort to discredit Lin Biao, Mao's heir apparent, who was accused of plotting to kill the Chairman in 1971 and who died mysteriously that same year.
The "Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius" movement dominated Chinese public life until the summer of 1974, at which time it began to peter out. During the previous year or so, hundreds if not thousands of articles, both "scholarly" and popular, vilified Lin, arguing that he, like Confucius, was a reactionary to the core. The significant feature of this movement was the use of history as a political weapon. Although no one had a good word to say about Lin or Confucius in public, rival factions attacked one another under the cloak of historical allusions. Debates surrounding issues such as the rehabilitation of cadres, educational reform, the social status of women, and the importation of foreign technology were all conducted in this fashion.
Following Mao's death in 1976, China began to change rapidly, and in fundamental ways. First, within weeks, Mao's wife and her associates, the notorious "Gang of Four," were arrested and charged with subverting the Cultural Revolution by pursuing "ultra-leftist" policies--thus taking much of the blame for this disastrous experiment off the shoulders of Mao. (According to official documents, Jiang and her cohorts were held responsible for the deaths of about 34,000 innocent people, although the total number killed during the GPCR probably exceeded 400,000.) Second, Mao's designated successor, Hua Guofeng, found it impossible to distance himself sufficiently from the Cultural Revolution and soon fell from power. Third, from about 1978 onward, Deng Xiaoping emerged as China's supreme leader and the chief architect of post-Mao reform, having survived both the Cultural Revolution and a purge in early 1976. Unlike Mao, however, he chose not to hold the highest position in either the party or the government.
Deng Xiaoping's "Second Revolution"
Deng's emphasis was on "socialist modernization." Although this term had been used before by the CCP, it acquired a new meaning during the late 1970s. Put simply, it meant economic development, first and foremost. The official goal of the Chinese state was to achieve the"Four Modernizations" (agriculture, industry, science and technology) by the year 2000. This meant, among other things, a Gross Domestic Product of of U.S. $800 in 1980 dollars, which would provide, in Deng's words, "a comparatively comfortable standard of living by the end of the century." According to Asiaweek (June 20, 1997), China's GDP per capita in 1996 was only U.S. $655, but when calculated in terms of international prices ("purchasing power parity") it averaged over $2,900--about four and a half times the official figure.
Deng Xiaoping was the right man to carry out such an ambitious program of economic development. Experienced, smart, pragmatic and well-connected, Deng built his power base carefully. In 1978, when it benefited him politically, Deng supported a "democracy movement," designed to encourage citizens to express their grievances about past policies through the medium of wall posters; when the criticisms came too close to home in 1979-80, he shut the movement down and jailed a prominent dissident, Wei Jingsheng, for fifteen years.
Deng's approach to economic development has had several noteworthy features. One was to encourage the decollectivization of agriculture, which had already begun at the local level in various parts of the country. The communes that had been established during the Great Leap Forward were dismantled, replaced by locally devised systems of "production responsibility." Under these diverse arrangements, peasants contracted land from local administrative units rather than working as paid laborers on collectively owned land. After fulfilling certain basic production quotas, they could sell their commodities in "free markets" at prices pegged to local demand rather than state fiat. A profit motive now existed. Theoretically the land was still collectively owned, but ever-longer contracts (some are now as long as seventy years) gave the peasants a sense that the land was, in effect, theirs.
In the cities, similar economic processes were at work. Large, state-owned and collectively-owned industries and commercial firms increasingly found themselves eclipsed by new, smaller and far more profitable family and cooperative enterprises. In order to compete effectively, the larger enterprises had to adopt systems of rationale management and to offer incentives for greater efficiency and productivity. The state tried to encourage these tendencies through legislation and exhortation, without, however, upsetting too many vested interests. After all, for thirty years state-owned enterprises and collectives had provided a "iron rice-bowl"--lifetime economic and social security--for their members. To remove this socialist safety net entailed significant risks.
Another important development under Deng was a greater emphasis on market mechanisms in both the production and distribution of commodities. The needs and desires of consumers became ever more important in the allocation of resources. New opportunities arose for local entrepreneurs. Privatization grew apace, and continues to grow. By the year 2000 the private sector in China will probably account for 25% of China's total Gross Domestic Product.
A third feature of Deng's approach was the opening up of the Chinese economy, with an emphasis on the importation of advanced technology. His so-called "Open Policy"--literally "openness to the outside," suggested a self-conscious effort to reverse Mao's long-standing policy of "regeneration through self-reliance." Opening China to the outside world brought new investment capital (especially in Special Economic Zones, where foreign firms enjoy favorable treatment), new technologies, new information and new business contacts to Chinese entrepreneurs in both the cities and the countryside. Opportunities for expanding industry, enhancing agricultural productivity, building social networks, and consolidating local governmental power increased dramatically. Social and political mobility also became greater. Decentralized control over foreign trade enhanced the power of local governments and led to expanded economic competition.
As a result of Deng's reforms, the Chinese economy has developed with extraordinary rapidity over the past two decades. Since 1978 China's real annual economic growth has averaged about 10% per year. The Gross Domestic Product is about ten times what it was in the late 1970s. It is true, of course, that this growth has been uneven. China's coastal regions have developed much faster than inland areas, with Special Economic Zones (SEZs) leading the way. These zones, where foreign investors enjoy favorable treatment, boast twice the GDP per capita of Chinese coastal cities, which is, in turn, twice that of other cities.
But these disparities are not as great as those between the urban and rural sectors of Chinese society as a whole. Although Deng's economic reforms began in the countryside, a great gap still exists between the 25% of the people who live in the cities and the 75% who dwell in the countryside. This gap closed somewhat from 1978 to the mid-1980s, but it is now growing again. As Martin King Whyte and others have shown, urbanites have access to much better food, entertainment, medical services and education. The per capita GDP of the average Chinese city is about three times that of rural villages and towns. To put the matter in more concrete terms, the average per capita income of China's urban residents in 1995 was 3855 yuan (U.S. $465) compared to 1550 yuan (U.S. $186) in the countryside. And even in rural environments there are great disparities. The average income for peasants in eastern China, where agriculture accounts for only about a quarter of earnings, is more than twice that in western China, where agriculture accounts for more than half of rural earnings. These disparities have naturally produced rising frustration.
Another source of friction is the emergence of regional identifications and loyalties that challenge the central government's vision of national unity and northern leadership. The southern provinces in particular have begun to celebrate openly and vociferously their distinctive dialects, traditions, local heros, and, above all, their economic vitality. From a southern perspective, Beijing appears to be an isolated, somewhat backward place full of effete bureaucrats and big talkers who live off the people's wealth but give nothing in return. South China, by contrast, epitomizes openness, cosmopolitanism, energy, dynamism and economic progress. Thus, some Cantonese writers predict confidently that South China's "mass culture" will eventually triumph over the North's "elite culture."
It should come as no surprise to find that Chinese in other parts of the country have mixed feelings about the economic success and cultural pride of the South. On the one hand, they are openly resentful of the wealth, influence, and arrogance of southerners. On the other hand, many are attracted by southern fashions in clothes, music and entertainment. Northerners often buy goods with southern brand names, prefer beauty parlors advertising Cantonese styles, and identify the South with better paying job opportunities and a new and better future. And, as any recent visitor to the capital can attest, Beijing has witnessed the establishment of innumerable Cantonese restaurants as well as bars catering specifically to southern Chinese tastes. The recent "return to the Motherland" of Hong Kong, a source of great national pride, has only increased the allure of the South.
The revival of the traditional Chinese clan system in South China, a function of economic change, has led to increased corruption in the form of nepotism and other forms of kin-based favoritism. Even worse, clan rivalries have often led to widespread violence. Reports from Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan and other southern provinces in the 1990s indicate a great number of large and deadly conflicts, with several thousand people clashing for several days, armed with dynamite, homemade guns, and bombs. Most of these conflicts were precipitated by disputes over land and other economic resources. A commentary in the Jingji ribao (Economic Daily), dated December 9, 1993, explicitly identified the weakness of CCP organizations in these clan-dominated rural areas as an explanation for the rise of unrest.
As the influence of regional and local forces has risen, Beijing finds it can no longer exert the kind of political control over the provinces that it once did. From 1978 to 1995, for example, state budgetary revenues in China as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product declined from 35% to 12%--barely a third the proportion in most major "developed countries." Local leaders are selling off some of the most lucrative parts of state industry and commerce without consent from the center. In China's new, highly commercialized and increasingly decentralized environment, local powerholders and new interest groups are playing ever greater roles in determining the direction of political, social and economic change.
Even ordinary citizens have come to view the Chinese state as relatively powerless. A survey study published in 1994 indicates, for example, that more than 70% of all citizens in the PRC perceive of their government as having no effect on their daily lives, compared to a mere 10% of Americans who apparently feel this way.
To be sure, the authorities still have formidable military force at their disposal, as the brutal suppression of the student movement at Tiananmen Square in 1989 illustrated graphically. But the death of Deng Xiaoping in 1997 removed the last leader whose personal ties with China's military commanders were strong enough to assure a broad base of support.
Moreover, the People's Liberation Army itself has been transformed by market forces. The PLA now invests in a wide range of economic activities, including the domestic hotel industry, foreign trade, the production of food, equipment repair, transport, and mining. An entire generation of officers and enlisted men, like most of the rest of Chinese society, is being socialized into the workings of the market. The fact that the PLA runs training seminars on currency futures says a great deal about the new breed of soldier emerging in the PLA.
Socially, Deng's economic reforms have contributed to greater mobility and increasing stratification. They have also resulted in a decline in collectively organized social services. The work unit (danwei), which handled housing, health care, child care and many other such functions in the past, is breaking down. Privatization is taking over. The breakdown of the danwei system is one reason traditional clans have experienced such a revival in the South; they take care of collective needs which are no longer met by official organs. For example, before 1979, virtually all agricultural workers had medical insurance through the commune or state farm system; now only about 20% do.
One of the most dramatic social developments in China since 1978 is the rise of what is sometimes called the urban "middle class" (in Chinese, xiaokang; literally "small peace;" comparatively well-off; comfortable). Generally speaking, xiaokang families are described as having four main attributes:
These were the vague but basic basic standards that Deng Xiaoping had in mind when he announced his GDP per capita target of U.S. $800 by the year 2000.
Over time, however, "middle class" aspirations have risen. In the 70s, for example, the three most sought-after consumer durables (the "three bigs") were a bicycle, a sewing machine and a radio. In the 80s, they were a TV, a washer and a refrigerator. In the 90s, they have become a VCR, a motorcycle and a telephone. Increasingly valued are cell phones and personal computers. Private automobiles stand at the top of the most-wanted list for well-to-do Chinese.
There are no precise figures for the number of xiaokang families in China, but some estimates go as high as forty million or more. About half of these individuals are owners of so-called "household enterprises" (geti hu). The other half are managers of one kind or another employed in profitable state-owned enterprises, joint-ventures or wholly owned foreign companies,"semi-private" township enterprises, and foreign trade corporations, banks, insurance companies and stock brokerage firms.
Perhaps the most dramatic change that has occurred in China as a result of the new economic reforms is the enormous range of cultural choices open to the Chinese. Greater wealth has increased access to leisure travel and to local entertainment of all sorts, from restaurants and theaters to resorts and theme parks. The content of culture has also changed. Traditional art, literary, musical and theatrical forms are no longer stigmatized. A number of contemporary thinkers now openly advocate a selective revival of Confucian ideas. Buddhist temples and monasteries, first reopened in the late 1970s along with a few Daoist temples and some Christian churches, have attracted ever-growing numbers of worshipers--young and old alike. Other traditional beliefs and practices have likewise emerged from the shadow of the Cultural Revolution.
Meanwhile, the "Open Policy" has brought to China not only Western science and technology but also various elements of Western culture. In addition, it has also facilitated the flow of powerful cultural influences from Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Growing numbers of Chinese now find themselves exposed to new kinds of art, literature and music, as well as new indulgences, such as video games and golf, and new types of social and political values. Greater intellectual freedom has encouraged a surge of cosmopolitan creativity not seen since the mid-1950s, when the now-resurrected slogan "Let a hundred flowers bloom" was first promoted.
From the standpoint of the central government authorities, the opening of China since 1978 poses serious and difficult questions concerning the limits to freedom and creativity. What should (and can) the state do promote proper values? How much latitude can be given to critics of the regime? How many "feudal" vestiges and "bourgeois" influences can be tolerated by a "socialist" state? In short, how can China resist "spiritual pollution" and recapture China's "spiritual civilization?"