Dave, bravo. I don’t agree with 100 percent of your analysis, and I think you (like most scholars of today, both Chinese and Western) underestimate the role religion has played (like for thousands of years) in the different developments of China and Europe. (I’m thinking especially of the Ancient Greek Miracle – or so I call it – which, contrary to the hordes of knee-jerk cultural relativists, WAS sui generis in all of world history, which accounts considerably for the relatively advanced development of Europe – and not just in the Modern Age, but for over 2,000 years, notwithstanding the dimming (dim, not “dark”) of c 400-800). Sorry but I’m just not overly impressed by China’s repeated claims to having invented paper (they didn’t, the Egyptians did), and that means even less now that so much Chinese paper is printed with mindless trash.

ANYway (see, Dave, when you’re at your best you inspire me to rise to my best), a more focused remark vis a vis your closing lines: Yes Marxism IS “Western”, but the Chinese buggered it up just like they bugger up virtually every other attempt to adapt anything Western, they buggered it almost beyond recognition. Far more than the Russians did, by the way. China’s version of “Marxism” resembles Western Marxism about as much as Chinese bread resembles Western bread, ie, in a way that repels any Westerns who really appreciate Marx or bread.

Discuss…

October 10, 2006 @ 2:06 pm | Comment

Dave, you rock. Keep this up and we won’t even need Richard.

(Just kidding, Richard. You know we miss ya! ;-))

And I liked that you concluded with a statement affirming the need for indigenous philosophical traditions. Because ultimately, despite his penchant for nationalism and statism (not to mention his disappointingly unenlightened take on the concept of individual rights), that’s what Liang believed too. His works are suffused with the vocabulary of Confucian (and even Buddhist) thinkers.

October 10, 2006 @ 2:23 pm | Comment

@Ivan: I actually brought up the Greeks in a previous post. My argument is not so much about how great the Greeks were, but that Westerners still consider the Greeks pretty great. That, I argue, is part of the secret to Western success – we don’t dump all over ourselves and we try to create some continuity between our ancient and modern thought. Chinese Marxism and all other 20th century Chinese philosophy, on the other hand, basically says “follow this instruction booklet published in Japanese/German/Russian/English because those guys know what their doing. Who? Laozi? What does he know, he’s Chinese!” As for religion, sure it plays a role but all I want to focus on here is the self-negation present in China that is distinctly different from Europe. The religion angle can be done another time.

After reading this again, I’ve decided to attempt the short version:

Western man and Chinese man walk down the street. Western man says “I am superior, and I have devised a means of measuring just how much more superior I am to you. Because I am superior, this theory is obviously right.” Chinese man says “Since you can beat the shit out of me, everything you say must be superior and right. Therefore I will take your theory that measures my inferiority compared to you and base my entire concept of modern society on it!” Chinese man goes home and tears his hair out for one hundred years, while Western man eats a sandwich and drinks a glass of warm milk.

The End

October 10, 2006 @ 2:24 pm | Comment

Dave, that last comment is the best summary I’ve ever seen of China’s national chip on the shoulder. Bravo!

October 10, 2006 @ 4:14 pm | Comment

Dave, to be fair, China is not the only country in the modern world that dwells on the politics of humiliation. Even Lincoln and Gandhi were said to have used the politics of national humiliation to invoke a sense of national salvation.

For me though, what is most disturbing is the way in which this sense of collective humiliation also dictates how Chinese people see themselves and the world around them. Its influence stretched from politics to everyday social life. It’s just like an impenetrable wall that guides many Chinese nationals (particularly those self-professed patriots) every time when topics such as Taiwan, Tibet and human rights find their way into a conversation. Lately I also discovered that questions about renewable energy, sustainable environmental policies and even the role of NGO in China will land an innocent Aussie into all sorts of trouble. The Guard (which I also refer to as the Great Wall) would immediately pop up at the drop of a hat. And then the blame game would start …. I eventually gave up. I did try and I tried very hard. But I just couldn’t make the connection another more.

October 10, 2006 @ 4:57 pm | Comment

Uh, I responded to Fat Cat but I think it got caught in the filter. Lisa or Richard, take out the duplicates if you could, thanks!

October 10, 2006 @ 5:34 pm | Comment

@davesgonechina

So are you saying China should quit measuring itself against the the West? So why bother measure human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of press or freedom of religion or any of those “western standards”? If that’s the case what’s progress in your book? Since a truely objective accessment of progress would relegate the above to some sort of pursuit of foreign measure like you said.

Also, not getting the shit beaten out of is extremely important to a culture if you ask me. Sure, even African slaves had lores and songs, a tradition that was unfortunately lost to even the present day African Americans. Every culture has literatures and poems and drawing blah blah blah, hardly an achievement if you ask me. In the end the culture has to facilitate the survival of the civilization.

So how could the Chinese have created the “continuity” you sought when the dominant culture itself was blatantly failing during the 19th century. Why put the best minds to studying the Analect when they really should be studying Math and Science to build guns, ships and cannons? What’s the use of a culture that helplessly allowed genocide to happen to its people? I don’t think many people were thinking how great a culture we had in China during 1939.

Was there really an organic path toward modernity for China where all the wars and violence could be avoided? So if you had a time machine going back to the 19th century, what would you have said to the Chinese people at the time?

I do agree though that being Chinese today has nothing to do with the whatever ancient culture we had and more about this history of shame and humiliation. The ancient culture has largely relegated to customs and have little relevance on the dominant chinese world view. Chinese do need to re-discover the past but I don’t think they’ll be relevant anymore in the problems that will be facing our civilization.

October 10, 2006 @ 5:37 pm | Comment

@Falen: My personal belief is that if China examined the wisdom it already has, you’d find alot of similarities to what the West calls human rights, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Not being a tyrant is a very common theme in alot of Chinese philosophy – of course, there’s other ideas as well. That’s the point; it’s a rich tradition that can encompass debate on most issues, like the ethics of jailing journalists, lying about history or treating workers like shit, as well as creative thought and naturalism. Look at Western Man in my little analogy: he’s an arrogant prick who uses circular logic, and I think there’s some room to criticize Western lecturing as well as Chinese insecurity.

As for not getting the shit beaten out of you, the choice is often stated the way you put it: either study the Analects and be defenseless, or study math and be safe. This is a false choice. Patton loved philosophy – guns and sages are not mutually exclusive.

What would I have said to 19th century Chinese? Put down the Darwinian thought and back away slowly. I’m not saying things weren’t a mess, Confucius had all the answers, or guns weren’t important. But framing it as losing a race war due to an inherent flaw in your own civilization is a terrible mistake.

October 10, 2006 @ 6:13 pm | Comment

Dave, if you don’t mind, please post your response again. It still hasn’t come up. Thanks.

October 10, 2006 @ 6:32 pm | Comment

I’ll summarize it for you Fat Cat, as I have to catch the bus to Zhuhai in an hour (anybody down there, welcome to drop me a line – I’ll be in Macau playing Bacarrat).

– The Callahan essay I linked is from a group doing Humiliation studies, and he points out Lincoln and Gandhi in that paper. Check it out.

– Lincoln never framed humiliation in terms of racial nationalism. In fact, it involved no external enemy, but only Americans vs. Americans, while China’s narrative of humiliation centers on how they have been wronged by the “Other”.
– The U.S. never interpreted its entire modern historical identity in terms of humiliation.
– Lincoln’s speech called for humility before God, not the British. (Hey Ivan, here’s where religion starts showing up!)
– Gandhi did not preach any sort of racial hierarchy or competition, nor did he define Indian identity in terms of inferiority.
– Gandhi practiced Sartyagraha, which Gandhi described as:

“Satyagraha is utter self-effacement, greatest humiliation, greatest patience and brightest faith. It is its own reward. Satyagraha is a relentless search for truth and a determination to reach truth.”

October 10, 2006 @ 6:43 pm | Comment

Excellent post, Dave.

I might suggest a few books along these lines. The first one is a classic and I still think one of the best works on Yan Fu and the 19th century dilemma: Benjamin Schwarz’s Yan Fu: The Search for Wealth and Power. It’s still commonly available and I believe there are a few Chinese versions floating around. The other two are more recent, Ruth Rogaski’s Hygienic Modernity: Preserving Health and Preventing Disease in Treaty-Port China which argues that the Chinese internalized Western criiticisms of the ‘dirty Chinese’ in the creation of their own ideas of science, medicine, and what it meant to be modern. Along the same lines is John Fitzgerald’s Awakening China
Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution which takes a similar look at the internalization of Western ideas of what it meant to be a strong and powerful state.

What is always fascinating to me, as Dave noted, is how this dilemma persists. How China can be a strong and wealthy nation on its own terms still occupies such a huge part of the Chinese mentality. Or to put the question another way, How to be both modern and Chinese? (And what those two concepts even really mean to the Chinese.) We’ve seen several formulations over the years from Zhong ti Xi yong to Marxism, but so far it seems none have been truly satisfying. One wonders what’s next.

October 10, 2006 @ 11:20 pm | Comment

There is a very simple answer which I fear not enough Chinese have grasped. The self-evident primacy of power. The acquisition of power is and ends in of itself and there need not be any other. The human urge towards collectivism and dominance is unavoidable and it saddens me that my fellow Chinese don’t seem to realize this and instead waste time on frivoloties such as discussing what it means to be Chinese or how to become “modern”. I can’t believe it hasn’t dawned on them that the idea of modernity is simply the result of present western hegemony in the intellectual sphere which dictates that to be considered a success, one must ape them.

I have always been an admirer of the classics and 2000 year old wisdom never goes out of fashion. As Sun Tzu noted, the pinnacal of human society is to wage war. And as the Melians came to know, the strong will do as they will, the weak will suffer as they must.

Which is why the path that China should take is to simply seek military and economic might for its own sake. The facile intellectual self-justifications of greatness will naturally fall into place afterwards.

October 11, 2006 @ 12:44 am | Comment

@davesgonechina

I think alot of people say all kind of things through out the ages, but that hardly makes it part of “Chinese Wisdom”. One can probably assemble the greatest tome on Capitalism by selecting quotes from Mao. We shouldn’t we denying the fact that the relative importance of some “wisdom” over others is what makes the culture unique. Just because some American scholar formulated colletivism in society makes it one. Make no mistake, American culture are high individualistic.

And many choices a society makes are zero-sum; you are either more collectivist and less individualistic or the reverse, sliding along a scale. How does rule of law prevail over rule of “virtuous man” like the old Confucius thought when Legalism is explicited rejected? What about the very concept of nation state? That wasn’t a Chinese concept at all. Where was the national army during the Qing dynasty?

Also remember that Europeans didn’t just suddenly appear during the Opium War. The Western advances were noted in China then summarily rejected because they were incompitable with Chinese culture.

As for your answer to the 19th century Chinese? I think you basically gave a non-answer. All you basically said is nothing is going to work. There’s really no solution. Might as well just lay down, give up and just let whoever with a gun walk right over and take whatever they want, like the American Indians.

I think there is definately a time and place where a culture just say “this shit ain’t going to work, the house is coming down!”

October 11, 2006 @ 12:58 am | Comment

By the way, Marx was very much a Darwinist, and in fact he considered his political/economic theories to be applications of Darwinism to political-economy.

Thus, Marxists have a hell of a lot more in common with social-Darwinist capitalists (or today, “free-market” boosters) than most acknowledge. All of them are stuck in the obsolete (and scientifically disproved) pseudo-scientific garbage of the 19th century.
(And yes I know I’ve made similar arguments before here, but this is an appropriate thread on which to repeat them.)

One good resource about this: “Darwin, Marx, Wagner” by Jacques Barzun.

October 11, 2006 @ 4:13 am | Comment

And a marginal note about America and “humiliation”: Dave is correct about Lincoln, whose rhetoric was more about national “redemption” from a kind of collective original sin (slavery) than about having been humiliated by any foreign power.

However, actually there is one considerable part of America which DOES have its own peculiar narrative of “humiliation”, and that’s the South. The Southern states DID suffer defeat at the hands of a perceived “foreign” power in the Civil War, and much of the Southern subculture has involved a yearning for restoration of lost dignity and lost power. “The South Will Rise Again.”
But the Southerners didn’t bash themselves nearly as much as the Chinese have done. But still, a yearning for some kind of, not revenge but
rather vindication and restoration of lost power, has run very deep in the American South to this day – and the rise of the South’s “Christian” Fundamentalists (in a very organised political way) has been one of its effects.

October 11, 2006 @ 7:33 am | Comment

I don’t know what people think more than a century ago in China, but I think today’s Chinese don’t feel inferior to the west because of race, but mainly because of technology.

And to think that China today is abandoning its culture and embracing west philosophy is quite laughable in my opinion. We don’t really see average Chinese Joe on the street solving their daily problems by following philosophies/cultures of the west, do we?

October 11, 2006 @ 7:39 am | Comment

@wawa

If you examine different Chinese society from mainland to HK to Taiwan, etc, is anyone studying the Analect in anything more than within the context of studying the Chinese language? I don’t believe so. Isn’t it funny how the content of Sun Tsu’s thought are much more well known to the world where as Confucius is relegated to dark corners of few college campus humanity program?

Maybe someone can enlighten me, but during the 19th century, was there a “Confucian” path to modernity? No? The old thoughts did not provide a solution and therefore they were abandoned.

Even today, I don’t see any sort revisionist formulation of Confucian world view. Is there an Confucian approach to organizing a modern society? Confucian approach to international relation? Confucian approach to economic development? What’s the relevance of Confucius thought in the age of space exploration and colonization?

October 11, 2006 @ 8:44 am | Comment

Davesgonequixote, I wonder if you haven’t gone galloping off in the wrong direction on this post.

Let me first say that your knowledge in these areas far outstrips mine, yet I can’t help but think that very few Chinese were ever interested in or affected by the ideas of Liang Qichao. Most of the Chinese of his time, as now, were too busy scratching a living out of the earth. The tiny class of intellectuals and their heirs who took any notice were largely killed off by Mao and the other peasant rulers.

And today? Heh-heh. I think that the total number of Chinese who care very much about Liang Qichao, Marxism, or social Darwinism could easily fit – with you – in a Chery QQ. 🙂

Also, Dr. Hanafin’s conclusions appear wildly off mark:

“Dr John Hanafin, a specialist in Chinese philosophy at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics … has surveyed philosophy postgraduates at 22 Chinese universities, finding Marxism continues to dominate.”

Is “specialist” Dr. Hanafin not aware of even the basics of China’s education system? Chinese students do not choose their majors – their majors choose them! Citing the number of students studying Marxism is meaningless. How many chemistry majors in China are interested in chemistry? From my experience, I would say about 20%. Why would students majoring in Marxism be any different?

Maybe western students studying Marxism hang out in cafes until wee hours discussing the kinds issues you raised in your post, but I don’ t think that’s true at all in China. Think of all those engineering majors who spend their time learning theory, mainly memorizing answers to pass examinations. Upon graduation, a dismayingly small percentage of them are actually qualified for an entry-level position in an engineering firm. I don’t think Marxism majors are any different.

I bet most of those Marxism majors are like everyone else – upon graduation, they take jobs selling computers, working for a trading firm, or end up drinking tea and reading newspapers in a government agency. Dr. Hanafin’s conclusions based on that simple enrollment figure strike me as remarkably naive.

The questions you raise in your post are interesting ones, but personally, I think the impact of the thinking of Marx and Liang Qichao on the modern Chinese consciousness are probably insignificant in comparison to the impact of, say, black and white 1950s war movies about the Japanese invasion.

October 11, 2006 @ 10:07 am | Comment

Falen –

I agree with much of what you said, especially: “I think alot of people say all kind of things through out the ages, but that hardly makes it part of “Chinese Wisdom”.

There is just one minor point where I have to disagree:
“Might as well just lay down, give up and just let whoever with a gun walk right over and take whatever they want, like the American Indians.”

Many Native American societies fought the white colonials with effectiveness and great bravery. They adopted to new types of warfare and weapons, such as guns. In the end, they simply could not match the powerful, well-equipped and highly organized US miltary. When most American Indian societies “gave up”, I think usually it was only after a ferocious struggle against impossible odds.

October 11, 2006 @ 10:27 am | Comment

@Shanghai Slim

But I think the resistance of Native American compared to the larger trend of history is at best very minor factor. Even if American settlers were such saints and the US goverment took a peaceful approach towards the Native Americans, I think it’ll merely delay the destruction of their culture by a few decades.

October 11, 2006 @ 10:51 am | Comment

Falen wrote:
“Even if American settlers were such saints and the US goverment took a peaceful approach towards the Native Americans, I think it’ll merely delay the destruction of their culture by a few decades.”

Oh, I agree with your larger point!

I just wanted to point out that that the Indians did not simply passively accept the inevitable. Very many gave their lives defending their civilizations. So, I don’t think it’s fair to say that the Indians “just laid down and gave up”.

October 11, 2006 @ 11:39 am | Comment

I am an overseas Chinese

So I am more aquainted with Greek philosophy then the deep Confuciius teachings but the basics are there still. I would say that Chinese at it’s most basic level is centered around the family and nationalism is a disposable add on. So in that sense we are individualistics while retaining some communalism but in a very small circle ie the family , then the village , then the dialect group but that is about it. Until recently there is no sense of being patriotism to the Greater China. BUt in the inner core of the Chinese psyche the family comes first above all else. That has been the race greatest strength and also it’s collective weakness which is exploited by races with the ability to sacrfice this familiar interest for the greater collective good. The Chinese in China is at the economic stage where they are trying to obtain financial ad social security for the immediate family. They do not have much time to cater all these high sounding philosophy of LIng Chio and what not. They have just recently been freed to pursue these economic ends by the thugs that have been in power. So it is every family for themselves.
Unfortunately that is the situation now , it may change when they get to another economic phase. It has not been so for thousand of years.

@davegonechina and Ivan

I am just thinking if China had the technological know how to fight back those who sought to colonialised us and then went on from there to dominate the world like the British and the Spanish had. Would we be talking about superiority of Greelk philosophy etc. and the adoption of Marxism philosophy and the use of shame etc. As we have known for the longest time as Mao who understand all these very well , ‘power comes from the barrel of the gun’ and ‘might is right’. We know it is not but you can stuff it down the weaklings throat anyway. There is Darwin for you.

October 11, 2006 @ 12:46 pm | Comment

Mao was wrong. Political power does not come from the barrel of a gun, because guns don’t create themselves, and neither does technology. Political power (and technology) come from Human Minds, and those kinds of powers do not flourish in the minds of craven slaves who do not think for themselves.

October 11, 2006 @ 4:21 pm | Comment

I’m not dave, Shanghai Slim, but I just want to address a few points you made:

[quote]Let me first say that your knowledge in these areas far outstrips mine, yet I can’t help but think that very few Chinese were ever interested in or affected by the ideas of Liang Qichao. Most of the Chinese of his time, as now, were too busy scratching a living out of the earth. The tiny class of intellectuals and their heirs who took any notice were largely killed off by Mao and the other peasant rulers. [/quote]

Liang Qichao is one of China’s most influential modern political thinkers, for better or worse. His works helped to define the tradition within which early Chinese discourse on democracy and later discourse on Marxism took place – and as dave’s post points out, nationalism (and racial nationalism in particular) played a big part in his thought. As a politician within Yuan Shikai’s puppet Republican government he was largely ineffectual, yes, but without Liang, the trajectory that Chinese politics took in the last century would not be what it is. So in that sense, his ideas affected *all* of the Chinese of his time, and of ours.

He was both liberal and conservative, a cosmopolitanist and a nationalist. Brilliant, but foolish. Correspondingly, his legacy is very, very mixed.

[quote]The questions you raise in your post are interesting ones, but personally, I think the impact of the thinking of Marx and Liang Qichao on the modern Chinese consciousness are probably insignificant in comparison to the impact of, say, black and white 1950s war movies about the Japanese invasion.[/quote]

I’m afraid you are being somewhat myopic here, Shanghai Slim. For one, most Chinese political “thinkers” nowadays (or at least the ones not censored by the government) subscribe to the neo-Marxist/Gramscian view on hegemony (see Jing’s post above to see what I mean.)

To Falen: I think y’all are missing the point. The point isn’t that China should quixotically cling on to all of its ancient cultural and philosophical tradition, but that it should see them as being part of a larger, universal tradition, and not Apart from (purposely capitalised) and inherently inferior to the European tradition.

To Dave: any thoughts on the Meiji era and how the Japanese dealt with their trauma of modernity?

October 12, 2006 @ 9:07 am | Comment

Nausicaa –

Thanks for the, as usual, thoughtful response. Maybe I have not understood Dave clearly. Is he writing about Liang’s effect on Chinese political thinking, or on Chinese national consciousness? I assumed the latter. If so, I’d still say Liang is not much on the national mind.

I’d say the same thing about, say the Federalist Papers. I’m sure we’d both agree that they had a monumental impact on American political thinking, but I would also say that few Americans have much awareness of them. Ask 100 randomly-chosen Americans to tell you everything they know about the Federalist Papers. Even though Americans live in a political landscape largely shaped by the ideas in those writings, I suspect most of those 100 could write everything they know about them on a Post-It.

That’s why I say grainy 1950’s b/w films about the Chinese defeating the invading Japanese have a much larger impact on the national consiousness in terms of humiliation, nationalism, etc. So would, say, high school textbook descriptions of the Opium Wars. But Liang Qichao? Barely a blip on the screen, no?

Now, if Dave (and you) are talking about Chinese political thought, then, yes, I’d say Liang must be a major figure. But outside of those tiny circles of Chinese political theorists, academics and analysts, I would think he is not terribly significant. Am I over-parsing Dave’s idea?

And yes, I am terribly myopic, have been all my life. 🙂 What’s worse is, now that I’m getting on a little, I find I am also losing my near-vision! When those two conditions eventually intersect, I’m gonna need a much larger screen on my cell phone. 🙂

October 12, 2006 @ 11:22 pm | Comment

Hey Slim! I get what you’re saying, and no, we’re not really in disagreement here. If we’re talking about *knowledge* and awareness of Liang’s thinking among the Chinese population as a whole, then yes, it’s not there. Popular culture (i.e. anti-Japanese cinema, as you’d mentioned) and textbooks have done much more to form their surface consciousness of the narratives of national humiliation, modernity, etc. (And I will say, as someone who’d been weaned on those very things, that their effects are truly disturbing and I have to be vigilant against succumbing to them to this very day.)

What I wanted to point out, however, was that there is strong continuity between the intellectual traditions of Liang, Marxism, etc and popular culture in China. It’s filtered downwards. And, just because students don’t major in Marxism (is that even a degree?) doesn’t mean that Marxist and neo-Marxist thought isn’t at the heart of curricula in the humanities and social sciences . (I think sinosplice wrote recently about how he had to study Marx and Gramsci and Althusser for a degree in, of all things, applied linguistics.)

So, to borrow from Marxist terminology, the political thinking can be thought of as part of the “superstructure”. (Ugh. And I’m gonna go smack myself now.)

Anyway, sorry for being long-winded. And oh noes – are bifocals in your future? 🙂 😉

October 13, 2006 @ 1:41 am | Comment

Hey everybody, Macau was cool. Anybody ever go to the Museum of Communications? Very hip in a geek tech education way.

I’ll try to respond to everybody:

@J: Sweet. Books. I wonder if I can get them shipped here…

@Falen: “We shouldn’t we denying the fact that the relative importance of some “wisdom” over others is what makes the culture unique.” Huh? Ideas are ideas, Falen. They are not points in a competition between cultures. That’s the point you seem to keep missing.

“Just because some American scholar formulated colletivism in society makes it one. Make no mistake, American culture are high individualistic.”

What? Just because an American scholar said something it’s true? Am I misunderstanding or are you acting out the role of Chinese Man in my short analogy above?

“The Western advances were noted in China then summarily rejected because they were incompitable with Chinese culture.”

How about the astronomy brought by Jesuits? The Emperor liked that fine, hold the Catholicism thank you very much.

“As for your answer to the 19th century Chinese? I think you basically gave a non-answer. All you basically said is nothing is going to work.”

Wow, that was so not what I said. Please, don’t give the “non-answer” excuse. Try reading it again.

@Slim:

“Most of the Chinese of his time, as now, were too busy scratching a living out of the earth. The tiny class of intellectuals and their heirs who took any notice were largely killed off by Mao and the other peasant rulers.”

This is a discussion of political and societal issues, which is usually limited to the privileged and empowered. Everybody else is trying to survive as you rightly point out. But the education system that everybody in China participates in, the political slogans, the nationalist fevers, are all based on the ideas of that intellectual elite, whether they be scholars or government propaganda artists. Those elites have had this baggage in their concepts of Chinese modernity for over a century. So while most Chinese may not consciously care about such things, it’s ingrained in post-1949 society by fiat.

To put it in the terms you suggested, I think “national consciousness” is shaped by “political thought”. Or perhaps you could say “national unconsciousness”. As I said before, I don’t think most Chinese people see this way consciously. But I do think that it lodged in their fundamental assumptions, and you see it manifest every time a Chinese person exercises aggrieved nationalism a la “Why do you criticize China?!”

As for Marxism majors, good point that students don’t have much say in what they study. But my point still stands: it’s a Western philosophy with social darwinist overtones that dominates the academy, not a Chinese one.

@David Wong: “BUt in the inner core of the Chinese psyche the family comes first above all else. That has been the race greatest strength and also it’s collective weakness which is exploited by races with the ability to sacrfice this familiar interest for the greater collective good.”

You are providing a perfect example of how this racialized thinking is dominant. The “Chinese Race” exploited by “other races”. Is everybody paying attention? David Wong is giving us a live demonstration of how the ideas of Liang Qichao and others has “filtered downward”, as Nausicaa said. This applies to SO many trolls here it’s not even funny (though you’re a troll, D Wong, you seem a nice fellow).

By the way, Chinese is not a race. Human is, and I’ll even let Asian slide (different argument), but not Chinese. 55 minorities, David. Do we go around saying the French race or the Canadian race? Iranian race? Saudi race? Hell, Arab race? Nope, nope, nope.

@Nausicaa: Well put.

October 13, 2006 @ 8:36 pm | Comment

@Falen: “What about the very concept of nation state? That wasn’t a Chinese concept at all. Where was the national army during the Qing dynasty?”

Indeed. Clearly, Confucianism failed because it didn’t think up the nation-state, which is obviously the first step to being taken seriously. This reminds me of a great stand up routine by Eddie Izzard. Says the British conquerers of India: “No flag, no country. You can’t have one. That’s the rules that, uh, I’ve just made up!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djMFKYTrckA

“Maybe someone can enlighten me, but during the 19th century, was there a “Confucian” path to modernity? No? The old thoughts did not provide a solution and therefore they were abandoned.”

Did anybody celebrate the Double Tenth? Cuz Sun Yatsen certainly had some ideas on Confucian modernity. So did Liang Qichao. Hey, what about Lee Kwan Yew and Mahathir Mohammed? The whole “Asian Values” thing. Tu Weiming at Harvard:

http://www.marlboro.edu/about/news/pr/2006/2/16/tu_weiming

The guys at Columbia I linked to.

I bet there’s even room for the Korean soap opera Dae Jang Geum in there somewhere. Lots of people are making contributions to linking modernity and ancient traditions, Falen. Just not in Mainland China.

“Even today, I don’t see any sort revisionist formulation of Confucian world view. Is there an Confucian approach to organizing a modern society? Confucian approach to international relation? Confucian approach to economic development? What’s the relevance of Confucius thought in the age of space exploration and colonization?”

Fantasic questions! Now go answer them and begin with the assumption that ancient thought has relevance in the modern world instead of summarily dismissing it as outmoded. Which, my point this whole time has been, is the problem in the first place.

October 13, 2006 @ 8:55 pm | Comment

@Falen: “What about the very concept of nation state? That wasn’t a Chinese concept at all. Where was the national army during the Qing dynasty?”

Indeed. Clearly, Confucianism failed because it didn’t think up the nation-state, which is obviously the first step to being taken seriously. This reminds me of a great stand up routine by Eddie Izzard. Says the British conquerers of India: “No flag, no country. You can’t have one. That’s the rules that, uh, I’ve just made up!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djMFKYTrckA

“Maybe someone can enlighten me, but during the 19th century, was there a “Confucian” path to modernity? No? The old thoughts did not provide a solution and therefore they were abandoned.”

Did anybody celebrate the Double Tenth? Cuz Sun Yatsen certainly had some ideas on Confucian modernity. So did Liang Qichao. Hey, what about Lee Kwan Yew and Mahathir Mohammed? The whole “Asian Values” thing. Tu Weiming at Harvard, the guys at Columbia I linked to. I bet there’s even room for the Korean soap opera Dae Jang Geum in there somewhere. Lots of people are making contributions to linking modernity and ancient traditions, Falen. Just not in Mainland China.

“Even today, I don’t see any sort revisionist formulation of Confucian world view. Is there an Confucian approach to organizing a modern society? Confucian approach to international relation? Confucian approach to economic development? What’s the relevance of Confucius thought in the age of space exploration and colonization?”

Fantasic questions! Now go answer them and begin with the assumption that ancient thought has relevance in the modern world instead of summarily dismissing it as outmoded. Which, my point this whole time has been, is the problem in the first place.

October 13, 2006 @ 8:56 pm | Comment

I saw this T-shirt in Macau, but didn’t get a chance to ask the guy wearing it where he bought it:

http://tinyurl.com/yd8vml

Please, PLEASE, if anybody knows where I can get one or who makes it, let me know. I want to buy a whole bunch.

October 13, 2006 @ 9:08 pm | Comment

Thanks all for the informative posts!

Davesgone, I just want to know if you won or lost at the tables in Macau? 🙂

October 14, 2006 @ 6:11 am | Comment

@davegoneChina

Just to Wikipedia for convenience the concept of Race
The term race distinguishes one population of an animal species (including human) from another of the same subspecies. Many regard race as a social construct. The most widely used human racial categories are based on visible traits (especially skin color and facial features), genes, and self-identification. Conceptions of race, as well as specific racial groupings, vary by culture and over time and are often controversial, for scientific reasons as well as their impact on social identity and identity politics.

Since the 1940s, evolutionary scientists have rejected the view of race according to which any number of finite lists of essential characteristics could be used to determine a like number of races. For example, the convention of categorizing the human population based on human skin colors was used, but hair colors, eye colors, nose sizes, lip sizes, and heights were not. Many evolutionary and social scientists think common race definitions, or any race definitions pertaining to humans, lack taxonomic rigour and validity. They argue that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, have many exceptions, have many gradations, and that the amounts of races observed vary according to the culture examined. They further maintain that “race” as such is best understood as a social construct, and conceptualize and analyze human genotypic and phenotypic variation in terms of populations and clines instead. Some scientists, however, have argued that this position is motivated more by political than scientific reasons. Some others also argue that categories of self-identified race/ethnicity or biogeographic ancestry are both valid and useful, that these categories correspond with clusters inferred from multilocus genetic data, and that this correspondence implies that genetic factors might contribute to unexplained phenotypic variation between groups.

So your use of human race while Utopian in its ideal does not exist in reality.
Troll David Wong subspecies Chinese. I will not go further on this argument when you seem not to accept some one elses paradigm.

October 14, 2006 @ 5:51 pm | Comment

@David Wong: Ahem, no, my idea of race is not Utopian. I say race is about species (as does your Wikipedia quote). Chinese is not a species. Chinese is not, biologically speaking, a subspecies either.

Pray tell, David Wong, what is your “paradigm”? You said:

“BUt in the inner core of the Chinese psyche the family comes first above all else. That has been the race greatest strength and also it’s collective weakness which is exploited by races with the ability to sacrfice this familiar interest for the greater collective good.”

What, exactly makes someone a member of the Chinese “race”? Phenotype? There are 55 minorities… are the Uyghurs and Tibetans part of the Chinese “race”? I’ll accept Chinese “nationality” or “citizen”, but not “race”. And where do you get off generalizing about 1 billion plus people putting “family first”? This is not a meaningful statement. What allows you to describes in blanket terms what a billion people consider most important? What allows you to claim knowledge that the other 5 billion people in the world are in some substantial way different? What evidence could you possibly provide to support such sweeping claims? Where do you get off saying that other races can “sacrifice” this for a “collective good” (you should speak to Falen, since he seems intent on making sweeping generalizations about Chinese collective powers) to “exploit” the Chinese?

Tell me David Wong, by what measure do you label a group a race? Your wikipedia cut and paste neither explains your position nor supports your assertion that my view is “utopian”.

As for not accepting your “paradigm”, that’s how arguments go. We disagree, and make cogent and rational arguments for our position. When you can clearly explain your term for race in your own words, try again.

October 14, 2006 @ 7:44 pm | Comment

Race is a cultural construct, given unity by surface similarities (e.g., skin color), and some of the time those are misleading. I read somewhere that of all the earth’s peoples, Australian aboriginals and Africans (I forget which geographic region) are the least genetically similar.

Racism and nationalism are concepts which I wish could be left on the dustbin of history, though I’m not sure what would be left to replace them. Global corporate citizenship? Some more nuanced notion of national identity, I guess, one that does not lead to toxic imperial excesses.

October 15, 2006 @ 2:07 am | Comment