Modern China. A Very Short Introduction (4 page)

Among the most powerful elements of modern thought in Europe was its ability to maintain the idea that its own genesis and construction were profoundly different from those of other societies. In part, this was because of a desire to create a profound distinction between Western European politics and that of other societies, particularly in the 19th century, when imperialist ideology became important. Yet in many ways, the attributes of modernity – particularly self-awareness and its associated sense of anti-hierarchy – were drawn from a pre-existing religious tradition, in which birth and rebirth were crucial. While Christianity was clearly one source of this concept (having also provided the cultural grounding for the teleology of progress that underlies classic modernity), the ideas of enlightenment and self-awareness emerged much earlier as part of Buddhist thought,
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and in later centuries were developed within another path defi ned by Islam. The most strongly Eurocentric understandings of
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modernity have found it hard to acknowledge its cross-cultural roots; yet they are there.

But all the same, China before the mid-19th century did not share certain key assumptions of the emerging elites of Europe in the 16th to 19th centuries. China did not, during that time, develop powerful political movements that believed in fl attening hierarchies: in the Confucian world, ‘all men within the four seas’

might be ‘brothers’, but ‘all men’ were not equal. Chinese thinkers did not stress the individuated self as a positive good in contrast to the collective, although there was a clear idea of personal development to become a ‘gentleman’ or ‘sage’. Nor, overall, did it make the idea of a teleology of forward progress central to the way it viewed the world: rather, history was an attempt to recapture the lost golden age of the Zhou and ways of the ancients, and rather than praising innovation and dynamic change in its 14

own right, premodern China developed highly sophisticated technology and statecraft while stressing the importance of past precedent, and of order. As for economic growth, while it would be too strong to say that Confucian thought wholly disapproved of trade (the Ming and Qing saw a comfortable accommodation by the state with the idea of commerce), the concept of economic growth as a good in its own right was not as central to the premodern Chinese mindset as it was to the type of modernity that emerged in Europe.

These assumptions mark a profound difference from China’s experience in the contemporary era. Since the early 20th century at least, China’s governments and elite thinkers have accepted most of the tenets of modernity, even while vehemently opposing the Western and Japanese imperialism which forced those ideas
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into China. As we will see (Chapters 2 and 3), the Communist and Nationalist governments that dominated China in the 20th century both declared that China was progressing towards the future; that a new, dynamic culture was needed to take it there;
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that hierarchies needed to be broken down, not preserved; and that while order was important, economic growth was the only way to make China rich and strong. Most notably, China’s leaders were much more fi ercely and uncompromisingly modern in their assumptions than many of their contemporaries in India or Japan in the early 20th century: as Chapter 3 suggests, the ‘May Fourth Movement’ of the 1910s was far more eager to reject China’s Confucian past completely than fi gures in India, such as Gandhi, were to reject that society’s past.

But at the same time, there is a chimerical element to the quest for modernity. Modernity keeps changing, and Chinese conceptions of it change as well: the modernity of the ‘self-strengtheners’ who sought to adapt Western technology in the late Qing is not the same as that of the radicals who declared a ‘new culture’ in the 1910s, nor of the Nationalists and Communists whose primary 15

goal was to fi nd a stable, modern identity for the Chinese state and people. Even today, the question of what a modern China looks like is in fl ux. At the same time, China’s new-found strength means that it is in a much better position than ever before to project aspects of its own model of modernity back into the wider global defi nition of the term.

With very few exceptions, all of the warring factions that vied over China’s future in the 20th century were ‘modern’, not just in the sense of being ‘recent’, but in their rejection or adaptation of the Confucian norms of the past, and their embrace of a new set of norms that were derived from outside, but which were adapted to make ‘Chinese’ and ‘modern’ compatible, rather than terms which seemed to be in opposition to one another. Although they violated their own rhetoric on countless occasions, China’s rulers in the 20th century – and the 21st – have sought to create a nation-state with an equal, self-aware citizen body. This is a
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profoundly modern goal. The rest of the book will seek to assess how successful they have been in achieving it.

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The old order and the new

A typical characterization of China’s past, often put forward by Chinese modernizers in the 20th century, is that late imperial China was a corrupt, ‘feudal’ mess that was held back by unchanging, conservative, Confucian thought. Yet the imperial Chinese state, while underpinned by ideas of order and hierarchy, was also driven by a sense of mutual obligation between different groups in society and gave rise to an ever-changing and highly dynamic political and social culture, although this had collapsed in many important respects by the early 20th century.

However, Western political infl uence did change China profoundly in the late 19th century in the wake of the Opium Wars, when concepts such as nationalism and Social Darwinism became hugely infl uential on a generation of Chinese who felt that their country was now vulnerable to the outside world.

Japan also became a conduit for importing the new modern modes of thought. In 1868, the revolution known as the Meiji Restoration began, turning Japan in just a couple of decades from a feudal state run by a warrior aristocracy to a modernizing, industrial empire. Among these modern political concepts that energized debate in the very last days of the Qing dynasty were the ideas of a constitution, parliamentary government, citizenship rather than subjecthood, and reorientation of China 17

into an international system of nation-states. Even though the dynasty itself fell, these concepts would shape all political discussion in the 20th century, and are indeed profoundly important today.

The early 20th century was a time of great political distress in China, but also opened up unimagined new vistas for generations of Chinese at all levels of society: rural girls who became factory workers, farmers who became Communist activists, and middle-class students who learned about Japan, Europe, and America at fi rst hand. The imperial system collapsed in the Revolution of 1911, and a new republic was established.

The political atmosphere of the time allowed fi erce debates on nationalism, socialism, and feminism, among other ideas, although the Confucian infl uences and preconceptions still continued to shape everyday life. Civil war and the dominance of imperialist powers in China, however, prevented participatory
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politics from taking hold, even after the Northern Expedition of 1926–8, which brought the Nationalists to power under Chiang
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Kaishek, the successor to the veteran Nationalist leader Sun Yatsen. This chapter charts the fi rst stage of that long journey towards a modern mass politics.

The age of gold

The English civil war and the American and French revolutions had a profound infl uence on the relationship between Western governments and their people. The modernity of those systems lies in certain assumptions: that government should be representative of the people, and that the people have inherent rights to the choice and policies of their government; that government should act rationally and to the greatest benefi t of all; and that citizenship, membership in a national body, should be granted on the basis of equality and not assigned by a hierarchy derived from any irrational, arbitrary, or other-worldly source.

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It is often assumed that non-European societies such as China shared few, if any, of these assumptions. Certainly some of them ran counter to Confucian assumptions, yet as we shall see, the question of how the people might be governed justly was critical to many Chinese political discussions. Central to the assumptions of emperors and their offi cials were Confucian ideas about the make-up of the state. In these ideas, hierarchy was not only present but essential: the body politic was held to be a metaphorical extension of the family; just as sons should obey fathers and wives should obey husbands, so subjects should obey their rulers. The people did not have inherent rights as individuals or even as a collective body.

However, it would be wrong to think that this made Chinese governance arbitrary, irrational, or despotic. A good ruler in the
The old order and the ne

Confucian world was not at liberty simply to do as he pleased.

The people were in his charge, and cruel or unfair behaviour towards them would result in his losing the ‘mandate of heaven’.

Confucius and philosophers who had followed his tradition, such as Mencius, stressed that attendance to the welfare of the
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people was a primary task for any ruler. The great dynasties of imperial China certainly paid attention to questions of welfare; for example, removing tax burdens on areas where fl ooding had destroyed crops, and on occasion trying (not very successfully) to maintain ‘ever-full granaries’ that would hold food reserves for distribution in times of hardship. Government was primarily concerned with the maintenance of order, but to do so, it was clear that the people had to feel that laws were applied fairly and equitably. At times of turmoil, the system became corrupt and dysfunctional, but during its periods of confi dence and prosperity, such as the 18th century, the system was one of the world’s most successful empires.

Chen Hongmou (1696–1771) was one of the most prominent administrators and thinkers on statecraft of the High Qing, the period during the 18th century when China seemed peaceful and 19

prosperous, a prime example of a well-run empire that looked to the good of its people. The assumptions and contradictions in Chen’s writings show clearly the way in which Confucian principle and the realities of governance created an effective, though not always consistent, style of government (and in those contradictions, no great difference from the compromises of Western governments). Simultaneously, Chen and his contemporaries in the Qing bureaucracy showed a commitment to the traditional Chinese patriarchy, yet Chen also declared that ‘heavenly goodness’ [
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] lay in all people, even ‘petty commoners’, lowly ‘yamen [local magistrate’s offi ce] clerks’, and even those who were not ethnically Han Chinese. Chen and his contemporaries also put into place policies that encouraged social mobility and popular education (including literacy for women), as well as merchant enterprises: none of the latter are popularly associated with ‘Confucian’ thought, yet Chen advocated them with no sense of violation of the norms for a decent and
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well-ordered society.

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Wei Yuan (1794–1856), one of the most well-known thinkers of the late Qing era, thought broadly about the nature of political participation. He was a Qing loyalist, but strongly argued that the dynasty needed to reform its administration if it were to cope with the threat from overseas. While he never came anywhere close to advocating that the ordinary population of China should take part in their own governance, he wrote extensively about the danger of political sterility that could come from restricting both the number and scope for argument of those who were in power: ‘There is no single doctrine which is absolutely correct, and no single person who is absolutely good.’ Wei argued for a competition in ideas, that would enable the ruler to choose between competing ideas, and in 1826 made his own contribution to that discussion by publishing the ‘Collected Essays on Statecraft’. Wei Yuan, however, did not want to widen political participation so as to reduce the role of the state, but rather to strengthen it.

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The new world

If the 18th century was a broadly successful one for China, the 19th saw the Qing dynasty disintegrate under a series of crises both internal and external. The most obvious trigger for collapse was the arrival of the Western imperial powers demanding that China open itself up to their trading demands. But the Western impact alone was not enough to bring down the Qing. The grave internal stresses and strains manifested themselves in the seemingly separate effects of Western imperialism, with both sets of crises feeding off one another.

Internally, the rapid expansion of the size of the Qing empire had led to problems, as the bureaucracy did not increase to match its new responsibilities. Tax collection became more diffi cult, and
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increasingly corrupt. Between 1600 and 1800, the size of the population doubled to some 350 million; the number of people who were poor and dissatisfi ed increased also. Regardless of the Western intrusion into China, one can see in the late Qing the signs of imperial overstretch that had also eventually doomed China’s previous dynasties.

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Nonetheless, the arrival of European imperialism had effects that had simply not been relevant for the earlier dynasties.

The development of the East India Company by the British meant that large quantities of opium being produced in Bengal now needed a market. The Chinese government, after some debate, banned the sale of opium within China, alarmed at its popularity and addictiveness. The British government, newly concerned with empire in Asia, took the ban (and the destruction of British-owned opium in Canton harbour) as a provocation.

The fi rst Opium War of 1839–42 saw the Qing government defeated, and forced to concede what would be one of a long list of treaties with foreigners made under duress, and remembered by generations of Chinese as ‘unequal’. Between the mid-19th and the mid-20th centuries, Chinese governments were never wholly in 21