Faces of China

This translation was made for information purposes only. The views expressed in the article are that of the author and him alone.

Author: Jie Xizhang Editor-in-chief of Beijing based Tongxin Press.

Link to original essay: http://blog.caijing.com.cn/expert_article-151323-3959.shtml

Translator’s note: The essay includes numerous historical references not known to most Western readers. To give a broader understanding of the context of the essay and to encourage more reading on the topic I’ve included footnotes with explanations of some of the major references with links to further reading.

Unfinished business A translation by André Holthe

I feel I should get reacquainted with the education I once received. That summer everybody was arguing about whether to compromise or not, arguing back and forth, in the end those who advocated compromise fell silent when having nothing left to justify themselves, while those who wanted to stay to the bitter end displayed a moral pride. In fact, this was no surprise, as this was just the way we had been educated all along, making it easier for us to accept Shi Kefa¹, and harder to accept Qian Qianyi². It was as if we were used to stick to our own argument, like two armies meeting at the border, neither side willing to give in, completely eliminating the possibility of an intermediate zone. Because this goes back to the question whether or not people stick to their opinions, whether or not they take a clear cut stand, is it sheer emotional and is integrity aloof from politics and material pursuits. In a word, the political and moral judgements that might be passed on a person are often in alignment. Therefore, on such an occasion, a rational, calm and moderate attitude will be drowned by more inspiring slogans and behaviour , causing it to not get the attention it deserves, it will be misread, misunderstood or considered weak, as a loss of principle, and sometimes even as betrayal. Square Politics³ will eventually always head towards disorder and irrationality, because this is its roots. In the full glare of publicity, nobody will give in and the sound of people shouting slogans will just get louder and louder, people shouting at the top of their lungs. The hysteria caused by mass uprising will step by step move towards the extreme, towards civil strife, and throughout history there have indeed been far too many lessons and tragedies of this kind.

However, it is not as though traditional Chinese culture lacks the rational spirit of knowing when to stop. The Golden Mean⁴ of Confucian thought and the concepts of non-action⁵ and non-competitive in Taoism all express supreme political wisdom and moral ambit. Yet it’s a pity that I first came across these thoughts just as they were being contaminated beyond recognition. I was still pretty young back then, around 14, 15 years old, and it all coincided with the Cultural Revolution and the labelling of Liu Shaoqi⁶ as “No. 1 Capitalist Roader”, “Khrushchev sleeping next to Mao”, and these thoughts therefore suffered from “ruthless struggle and merciless blows”⁷. It is said that among the eight black doctrines of literature and art⁸, class compromise was the worst, with a clear link to the Doctrine of the Mean. At that time, although I did not fully grasp its implications, I memorized the words, because I knew it was something bad and negative and you didn’t want anybody to think that you lived the life of a Philistine⁹. Back then, a person’s values were often established like this. The dominant value system of that time was the “philosophy of struggle”¹⁰, “we should seek for unity to exist through battle, if we concede even an inch unity will seize to exist.” When Mao said “What we have here is class struggle. With a population of 800 million people, is it really okay to not participate in this battle?” it all resulted in the heroic proverb: “It is a great joy to battle against Heaven. It is a great joy to battle against Earth. Is is a great joy to battle againist Humans.” At that time I didn’t understand what “Going too far is as bad as not going far enough” meant, invariably we were told that “Proper limits have to be exceeded in order to right a wrong, or else the wrong cannot be righted”;<¹¹ “Do not pursue a beaten enemy” this could also not be accepted because “With power and to spare we must pursue the tottering foe and not ape Xiang Yu¹² the conqueror seeking idle fame.” Xiang Yu and Xiang Gong of the Song were both considered to be foolish. And not even Mother nature was worthy as a model.

This belligerent wind spread everyhere in society and we were all unconsciously influenced. They said to hate evil like an enemy, so we did that, they said we should be clear about what to love and what to hate, so we did that too. It was better than letting people know that you didn’t understand all these policies, you didn’t want people to doubt your position, or suspect that you were having emotinal problems. As a result, everybody had to “prefer Left from Right”, magnify every problem to be a question of ideology, we had to go to extremes, we couldn’t be satisfied with what was proper, there was no Doctrine of the Mean, especially when publicly declaring one’s stand there should not be the slightest hesitation or wavering. This was later coined in the phrase “Only when you are paranoid are you truly alive!” During those years when people were parading the streets of my village to publicly denounce landlords, we children watched the scenes from the back of the crowd. If when a person was beaten to the ground, his life draining away, somebody showed compassion, that person too was instantly brought in to accompany the primary target of criticism. Knocked clean of his feet, being stepped on by everybody, I sympathized with him, I felt sorry for him, where was he supposed to run? I remember the Red Guards organizing a debate that year in Zhongshan Park where they put up a scroll which read as follows: “The son of a hero must be a stout fellow too, the son of a reactionary must be a bastard!.” The title of the scroll was originally “Probably”, which was later changed to “Absolutely”. The speakers first had to declare their class origin, if they turned out to be revolutionary, they enjoyed great fame, if they turned out to be counterrevolutionary, it was sure going to be tragic. In milder cases they were clamoured down, in more serious cases they were grabbed by the hair and given a good beating. There were people who shouted “We should fight with words and not resort to violence”, but their voices were too feeble, completely drowning in the sound the slogan “If you do not revolt, go to hell!” At that time, the phrase “Fair Play” was about as much good as the plague. Everybody kept away, who dared to play fair? Lin Yutang¹³ advocated “Fair Play”, and Lu Xun¹⁴ responded with the essay “On deferring Fair Play”, asking who does Lin Yutang thinks he is? The comprador bourgeoisie asked, who does Lu Xun thinks he is? Who did the standard-bearer of the Cultural Revolution reject and who did he accept, well, one can only imagine.

However, when Lu Xun spoke of “Fair Play”, he did by no means believe that it couldn’t be done, but rather that it should be postponed. Postponed for how long, well he didn’t say, but it should be OK now, right? Class struggle has long been a taboo, but this it’s-either-you-or-me type of battle has not yet become history. In actuality, conflicts and confrontations in society still exist even to this day and it is as if it’s implacable. If we would talk about “Fair Play”, “Do not overdo” and the Golden Mean today, I’m worried that our nation, society and people are not well prepared, are we capable of accepting such thoughts. If we look at the revolutionary and constitutional debate in the last years of the Qing dynasty, the revolution struck a triumphant tone, the constitution fleed in panic, what kind of logic is this! Compared to the appeal of revolution, constitutonalism appear to be heartless, completely ignoring the experience of the oppressed. But when a revolution is carried out, it is easy to be destructive, and equally hard to be constructive. The result of old sayings like “There is no construction without destruction, no flowing without damming, no motion without rest”, and “put destruction first, and construction will follow automatically”, is usually a heap of rubble, a war-ravaged land, and because if we do put destruction first, there is no place for a written statement. In the ROC¹⁵ (1912-) revolution actually prevailed, and republicanism was achieved, but the constitutional governement suffered such a blow, that the status and life of the masses has not yet changed. I suddenly thought of Liang Qichao¹⁶, who advocated constitutionalism, starting of with a constitutional monarchy, and then changing his attitude to pursue democracy. He wrote “How strange is this so-called national polity problem! hoping that people wouldn’t be bogged down on the issue of state system, and neglect the essence of goverment. However, rational voices always have a hard time getting public acceptance, especially in historical circumstances like that of the late Qing. Therefore, Liang Qichao’ view was not accepted either by the revolutionary party or the Empress Dowager Cixia¹⁷ and even his master dispelled doubt, creating an estrangement between teacher and student. Later generations simply classified Liang Qichao as a royalist and reformer, and only a few people have given him objective and impartial criticism. It is quite obvious that Liang Qichao during his lifetime was considered awkward and ended up being forgotten in history. This illustrates that if you present an argument, just and fair, you will experience loneliness, not appreciation. This is the tragedy of Liang Qichao, as well as the tragedy of our nation and people. From his misfortune we can probably learn that even though it is a good thing not to exaggerate, but being truly accepted by people at the grass-roots level is at least at the moment still hard. In fact, after so many years, we have still not reconsidered our specious reasoning, or even discussed and sorted out our choice of values. Most of the time we’ve been unable to avoid this extreme and bigotted disposition. This is indeed very dangerous, because in a given situation this might lead to a brewing catostrophe. Although we’ve always evaded this problem, sooner or later it will become something a China on the path of modernization can’t avoid.

Footnotes

¹ Shi Kefa was a high ranking general (equivalent to the head of the Ministry of War) in 1645 A.D, the later Ming Dynasty, when the City of Yangzhou was besieged by Manchu forces. He refused to surrender and led the armed resistance against the enemy. Eventually the city fell to the invaders and Shi was killed in the battle at the age of 45. His body was never recovered, resulting in claims that the general still lived which later led to an anti-Manchu rebellion.

² Qian Qianyi was reputed for his own aesthetic that changed the character of late Ming and early Qing poetry. His name, however, was branded with infamy for his disloyalty to the Ming dynasty when it dissolved. Consequently, his works were censored by the Qing court and have been forgotten by most critics until recently.

³ Square politics refers to Athenian democracy

⁴ The Golden Mean or the Doctrine of the Mean – a Confucian book and concept.

⁵ Inaction – a basic concept in Taoism, understood as no unnatural action rather than complete passivity.

⁶ Liu Shaoqi was a Chinese revolutionary, statesman, and theorist who fell out of favour in the later 1960s during the Cultural Revolution because of his perceived ‘right-wing’ viewpoints and, it is theorised, because Mao viewed Liu as a threat to his power. He disappeared from public life in 1968 and was labelled China’s premier ‘Capitalist-roader’ and a traitor.

⁷ Mao Zedong, in a speech delivered at a cadres’ meeting in Yenan. February 8, 1942, “Against these enemies, we must undoubtedly resort to ruthless struggle and merciless blows”.

See Selected Work of Mao Zedong – Volumes I through V published by Foreign Languages Press, Peking, China

⁸ For more on eight black doctrines of literature and art see this Baidu article (Chinese)

⁹ A person called a Philistine is said to despise or undervalue art, beauty, intellectual content, and/or spiritual values.

fn10. Mao ultimately devised his “philosophy of struggle” to serve as the guiding philosophy for the Cultural Revolution. See this article in Journal of Contemporary China.

¹¹ The old Chinese phrase, “exceeding the proper limits in righting a wrong”, was often quoted for the purpose of restricting people’s activities, reforms that remained within the framework of the established order were to be permitted, but activities aiming at the complete destruction of the old order were to be forbidden Actions within this framework were regarded as “proper”, but those that aimed at completely destroying the old order were described as “exceeding the proper limits”. It is a convenient doctrine for reformists and opportunists in the revolutionary ranks. Mao refuted this kind of reformist doctrine.

His remarks that “Proper limits have to be exceeded in order to right a wrong, or else the wrong cannot be righted” meant that the mass revolutionary method, and not the revisionist-reformist method, had to be taken to end the old feudal order. See Selected Work of Mao Zedong – Volumes I through V, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, China

¹² Xiang Yu was a prominent military leader and political figure from the late Qin Dynasty period of Chinese history.

¹³ Lin Yutang was a Chinese writer and inventor.

^{14 15} Republic of China, not to the confused with People’s Republic of China.

¹⁶ Liang Qichao (1873-1929) – pupil of Kang Youwei and an intellectual leader of the first decades of the 20th century.

¹⁷ For more on the Empress, see this Wikipedia entry.

Sources

Wikipedia

ABC Chinese-English Dictionary Edited by John Defrancis, University of Hawai’i

TLS – Thesaurus Linguae Sericae, 漢學文典
An Historical and Comparative Encyclopaedia of Chinese Conceptual Schemes
General Editor: Christoph Harbsmeier 何莫邪; Associate Editor: Jiang Shaoyu 蔣紹愚

Chinese-Norwegian Dictionary
Editors: Harald Rekkedal, Bend Bendixen, Rune Svarverud

Selected Work of Mao Zedong – Volumes I through V
Foreign Languages Press, Peking, China