A Thousand Pieces of Gold (7 page)

Swayed by Li Si’s eloquence and analytical logic, King Zheng rescinded his order and recalled Li Si. When His Majesty’s new dictum was announced, Li Si had already left Qin’s capital city and was halfway back to Chu. The king’s messenger finally caught up with him hundreds of miles southeast of Qin. Li Si was delighted to hear of King Zheng’s change of heart and returned to Qin immediately. Shortly afterward, Li Si was promoted to the rank of chief justice and in 221
B.C.E.
became prime minister.

Unlike King Zheng, who was dictatorial, impetuous, emotional, and deeply superstitious, Li Si was rational, methodical, cold, and calculating. Twenty-one years older than the monarch, Li Si acted as a father figure to the young king, who turned to the older man increasingly for advice after the downfall and suicide of Lu Buwei. Many of the great deeds attributed to the king alone were probably carried out with the able assistance of his minister. In a memorial written shortly before he died, Li Si enumerated his manifold services:

Li Si served the state of Qin for a total of thirty-nine years and was to play a pivotal role at the deathbed of his sovereign.

With hindsight, I have come to realize that resentment of foreigners is not peculiar to Qin, London, Hong Kong, or Los Angeles but is universal. Locals everywhere wish to preserve their own turf and reserve the best jobs for themselves and their children.

In the 1960s the United States had a special visa category for visiting scholars, called an exchange visa. At the conclusion of their work contract, foreigners who
entered America on this type of visa were obliged to leave America for at least two years before reentry. One of the unstated purposes of this type of special visa may have been to prevent foreigners from competing with locals for permanent positions at prestigious universities and other desirable technical institutions.

In Hong Kong today, despite the fact that most of the domestic jobs are filled by alien maids and butlers, there is a movement pending to prevent foreigners from working as chauffeurs. Drivers traditionally receive higher wages than domestic workers, and the locals wish to keep the more lucrative jobs for themselves. Throughout history, despite the fact that particular incidents may appear to differ in specific details, the same human impulses seem to repeat themselves over and over again.

Although the desire to keep out “foreigners” has led to exclusionary policies in many countries throughout history, Li Si correctly foresaw long ago that such conduct would be counterproductive. He likened it to
guo zu bu qian,
“binding your feet to prevent your own progress.”

“In the long run,” Li Si had predicted in his famous memorial to King Zheng, “your ordinance will harm your own people and benefit your enemies. It is definitely not the way toward stability and safety for your state.”

Gu Zhang Nan Ming

R
ecently, I read a wonderful example of the current use of the proverb
gu zhang nan ming,
“clapping with one hand produces no sound.” President Jiang Zemin, the seventy-five-year-old leader of mainland China, was asked about China-U. S. relations. He responded by quoting
, “Gu zhang nan ming,
‘it takes two hands to clap, or clapping with one hand produces no sound.’”

This proverb was written by the brilliant philosopher Han Feizi, extrapolated from a couplet that says, “Regardless of how fast you do it, clapping with one hand
will produce no sound.” The Western equivalent would be “It takes two to tango” or “One cannot negotiate alone.”

After the publication of my autobiography,
Falling Leaves,
I received many letters from readers. Among them was a Chinese psychoanalyst who wrote that my struggles with my family members fell into a recognizable pattern:

Han Feizi was born a prince in Haan. Burdened with a speech impediment, he turned to writing as a means of self-expression. He and Li Si were exactly the same age, and both studied under the Confucian philosopher Xun Zi. During their time together, Li Si grew increasingly jealous of his classmate. Li Si was born poor, whereas Han Feizi’s first cousin was the King of Haan. Although both were excellent students, Li Si recognized that his fellow pupil was more talented.

When they completed their studies, Li Si traveled to Qin to seek employment while Han Feizi went home. After losing a series of wars, Haan pursued a policy of appeasement toward Qin and was almost bankrupt. Concerned over the weakness of his home state, Han Feizi repeatedly urged his cousin, the King of Haan, to reform the government. His ideas were ignored. In his frustration, he wrote a book of essays outlining his programs.

He was a proponent of the Legalist School of philosophy. As such, he disagreed with the Confucian concept of regarding the past as the ideal and using the past to discredit the present. He wrote,

In order to rule effectively, Han Feizi listed three principles that the king had to adopt. The first was
shi
(absolute power). The second was
shu
(method). In this context, it is interesting to note that some of the
shu
(governing methods), such as
hukou
(system of requiring every household to be registered with the local government in Communist China), has been handed down virtually unchanged since the time of the Warring States. The third was
fa
(law).

Surprisingly modern in some aspects, the Legalist School made the rule of law the foundation of its new philosophy of government. The law was to be universal and was to be obeyed by everyone, regardless of rank or blood. This was far different from the feudal system during the Warring States, in which the king of each state was a law unto himself. He, his family, and the nobles they appointed had unlimited powers over those under them. Han Feizi was a fierce opponent of feudal privileges and their hierarchic social structure. He wrote,

He taught that the laws must be kept constant. All affairs could be carried out only within the scope of the law, and the law was to be the highest standard of behavior in the world. Laws should be established so as to do away with private standards:

His writings came into the hands of King Zheng, ruler of Qin and future First Emperor of China.

According to
Shiji,

Li Si replied, “These essays were written by my classmate. His name is Han Feizi.” At that time, Li Si had been in Qin for fourteen years and held the high post of visiting minister. Fearing that the brilliant Han Feizi would again overshadow him if he were also to work for the King of Qin, Li Si devised a devious plan.

Not long afterward, at the urging of Li Si, Qin attacked Haan on a pretext. As part of the peace negotiation, Li Si insisted that his classmate Han Feizi be dispatched to Qin as the emissary representing the state of Haan. Therefore, in the year 233
B.C.E
., Han Feizi went to Qin and was presented to King Zheng.

Shiji
continues:

While in Qin, Han Feizi submitted a petition to King Zheng. In eloquent terms, he asked Qin to desist from continuing its military campaign against Haan and to attack Zhao instead. Hearing of this, Li Si submitted a counter petition to the king, urging him not to agree to the suggestions of Han Feizi. He suggested that he himself be sent as Qin’s emissary to see the King of Haan and make an attempt to lure the latter to visit Qin. In one stroke, Li Si hoped to imprison the King of Haan in Qin and place Haan at the mercy of Qin.

King Zheng duly sent Li Si to Haan, but the King of Haan would not grant him an interview. At great peril to himself, Li Si submitted a petition to the King of Haan in which he tried to dissuade the king from granting safe passage to the army of Zhao, which was threatening to invade Qin. This was the petition in which Li Si quoted the proverb
chun wan chi han,
“when the lips are gone, the teeth are cold.” Li Si claimed that the war of Qin would become the war of Haan because Zhao would eventually invade them both. In the 1960s Chairman Mao used the same proverb and the same argument during the Vietnam War.

Despite his best efforts, Li Si was not granted an interview and returned to Qin empty-handed.
Shiji
continues:

Han Feizi died at the age of forty-seven as a result of his classmate’s envy and treachery, but his thinking was to exert an enormous influence on the future policies of King Zheng and Li Si himself. There was a prevalent belief then that a mythical golden age had existed in the past during an indeterminate period of history. Although nobody had evidence that there ever really was such a Garden of Eden, all the great philosophers were in agreement that society had degenerated since that time. Confucius himself was always quoting the ancient sage rulers and exhorting his followers to turn back and learn from that bygone era of ideal government.

Instead of following the Confucian philosophy of using the past to criticize the present, Han Feizi believed in discounting the past, emphasizing the present, and adapting to change. He opposed feudalism and promulgated the unification of China under a single supreme ruler. Though he believed in the rule of law and taught that the law must be constant and obeyed by everyone, he made one fatal exception: he did not include the supreme ruler himself.

Because the supreme ruler wrote the laws and could arbitrarily change them, the laws were therefore designed to serve, not the people, but the supreme ruler himself. Because of this crucial omission, Han Feizi’s “rule of law” became his deeply flawed “rule of the emperor.” The welfare of the ruler would take precedence over the welfare of the people.

Eventually, the people came to regard the emperor’s laws as an instrument of terror to keep them in subjugation for the sole benefit of the ruler. The rule of law was perceived as being established by the ruler for himself and not by the people for the people. As such, the system was destined to fail.

There was no doubt that Han Feizi was a brilliant thinker. Why, then, was he not aware that in order for the rule of law to succeed there could be no exceptions? Perhaps he was aware but could not say so. In a total dictatorship such as the state of Qin during the third century
B.C.E.
, advocating that the king be placed under the same rule of law as everyone else would probably have resulted in punishment by death. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that 2200 years ago, Han Feizi had already suggested that the law should be universal and be obeyed by everyone alike. It would be the highest method of conduct for “all under Heaven.”

Although Han Feizi proposed the “rule of law” for “all under Heaven,” everyone in China knew that this “rule of law” did not include the king. Since ancient times, an alternate name for a Chinese monarch was
tian zi,
“son of Heaven.” As such, a special pronoun,
zhen,
was created and used only by the king for self-designation, in place of the common pronoun
wo
(I). The implication was that the king was not like everyone else. Both his title and name indicated that he was special and different, even supernatural.

In the West, there has been a long-standing conviction that “laws make the king; the king does not make the laws.” The western Christian belief in an almighty God who was higher than the king has traditionally, by serendipity, subsumed political power under a higher framework of reference. There is no such precedence in China to provide for the sovereignty of a rule-based legal system. In China the “son of Heaven” was always above the law. He was the one mandated by Heaven to rule and was therefore accountable to no one but himself.

To have a leadership that is enlightened and responsive to the wishes of the people, China needs first to adopt a set of laws that are sovereign to the power of the ruling party. Otherwise,
gu zhang nan ming,
“clapping with
one hand will produce no sound.” Unfortunately, history has taught us that it is only too easy for a supreme ruler to become corrupted by unlimited power and adulation. This was the final legacy of Mao Tse-tung.

The majority of Chinese would probably agree that the most dominant figure in twentieth-century China was Mao Tse-tung. They would also draw a clear distinction between the “Great Mao” of his prime and the “tyrannical Mao” of his declining years. Before 1949, Mao was the passionate revolutionary whose vision brought about the unification of China. His achievement elevated him into becoming the supreme ruler. Mao’s every word was worshiped, and he gradually turned into a despot more powerful than any previous emperor.

As he grew older, Mao became increasingly megalomaniac and paranoid. Seven years after launching the Cultural Revolution he said, in a conversation with the Egyptian ambassador, “The First Emperor [King Zheng] was the most famous emperor of China. In China, there are always two opposite viewpoints. Some people support the First Emperor. Others oppose him. I myself endorse him, but I am against Confucius.”

Three years before he died, Mao encouraged his wife, Jiang Qing, to set up a group of writers to denigrate Confucius and promote the Legalist School as represented by Han Feizi. Mao claimed that he as well as the First Emperor were both Legalists who advocated reform and opposed retrogression. As soon as he seized power at the age of twenty-one, King Zheng had eliminated the Confucian prime minister, Lu Buwei. From then on, according to Mao, China’s history was characterized by a series of struggles between Confucianism and the Legalist School, between progress and retrogression, between stagnation and revolution.

While advocating the rule of law and the consolidation of power within the hands of a single supreme ruler, Han Feizi never wrote about the adverse consequences of such unlimited authority on the personality of the ruler. In the case of Mao, absolute power corrupted him absolutely, and he became increasingly intolerant of the slightest disagreement with any of his wishes.

Mao carried out political persecution at an unprecedented scale during the last ten years of his life, attacking most of his closest associates. He exhibited such ambiguity and contradiction that it was impossible to foretell his intentions or predict his desires. Ever since Khrushchev’s posthumous denigration of Stalin in the 1950s, Mao had been fearful of a similar revisionism in China after his own death. He was obsessed both with grooming a successor and destroying that successor as the latter’s
power grew. It became extremely hazardous to assume the number two position in China.