The Useless Tree

Chuang Tzu on the continuing AIG debacle

Today we find this story in the NYT:

Seeking to avoid the public furor that erupted last spring, the American International Group has been quietly seeking approval from the new federal compensation czar to pay a total of $2.4 million dollars in bonuses to dozens of its senior executives.

Officials at the embattled insurance company, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer money, have sought meetings with, the pay czar, to review the payments for 40 of its highest ranking employees, according to individuals briefed on the matter.

Mr. Feinberg has been tasked with approving the pay for the 100 highest paid employees, but he also can also weigh in on other matters if a company requests.

And it brought this these lines, from Chapter 10 ("Rifling Trunks") of Chuang Tzu to mind:

If one is to guard and take precautions against thieves who rifle trunks, ransack bags, and break open boxes, then he must bind with cords and ropes and make fast with locks and hasps. This the ordinary world calls wisdom.  But if a great thief comes along, he will shoulder the boxes, hoist up the trunks, sling the bags over his back, and dash off, only worrying that the cords and ropes, the locks and hasps are not fastened tightly enough.  In that case, the man who earlier was called wise was in fact only piling up goods for the benefit of a great thief.

AIG thus plays the role of the "great thief," and Feinberg, it would appear, stands in the for the many, many "wise" people who enabled the great thief. 

Chuang Tzu is quite perceptive about these sorts of things.  He recognizes that power often defines practical morality in the human realm:

He who steals a belt buckle pays with his life; he who steals a state gets to be a feudal lord...

Perhaps that is why Chuang Tzu tended to avoid politics....

Thoughts on Urumqi

The loss of life in Xinjiang is truly sad and depressing.  I fear that the reported death toll will rise in the coming days.  So many innocents killed....

In looking through various sources in the last couple of days, I was struck by the honest and forthright piece by Hu Shuli, editor of the Chinese journal, Caijing.  In thinking about how to prevent "mass incidents," he writes:

A more immediate task calls for improving governance and building a framework for democratic dialogue. Mass incidents in China's current stage of development highlight the characteristics of a society in transition, and relate to improper use of public power without oversight. Urgently needed are improvements to governance. A process is needed for advancing democratization, letting the National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference fulfill their functions, building a more effective system of checks and balances, and empowering social organizations such as labor groups, women's leagues and other non-governmental organizations to widen channels for effective expression of public opinion.

That could help in Urumqi.

I also like Jeremiah's post.  Among his observations:

Racial and ethnic tensions are difficult problems for any state or society.  But ignoring the causes of grievance, papering over the problems of living in a post-colonial age with empty rhetoric and increasingly shrill slogans of “harmonious society” and “family of nationalities” guarantees nothing except that these problems will continue and likely worsen.

Makes me thing of Mencius:

To keep the mind constant without a constant livelihood - only the wisest among us can do that.  Unless they have a constant livelihood, the common people will never have constant minds.  And without constant minds, they'll wander loose and wild.  They'll stop at nothing, and soon cross the law.  Then, if you punish them, you've done nothing but snare the people in your own trap. And if they're Humane, how can those in high position snare their people in traps?  Therefore, in securing the people's livelihood, an enlightened ruler ensures that they have enough to serve their parents and nurture their wives and children, that everyone has plenty to eat in good years and no one starves in bad years.  If you do that, you'll be leading the people toward virtue and benevolence, so it will be easy for them to follow you.  

But now, with you securing their livelihood, the people never have enough to serve their parents or nurture their wives and children.  In good years they live miserable lives, and in bad years they starve to death.  All they can do is struggle to stay free of death and worry about failing.  Where could they ever find the leisure for Ritual and Duty? (1.7)

UPDATE: here's a piece by my former classmate, Calla Wiemer.  Key graf:

What makes Xinjiang so volatile is a simmering resentment by the native Uighur people against repression by the Han majority. Uighurs in many respects are denied the opportunity to live the life they desire. They are inhibited in the practice of their Islamic faith. They are limited in their access to economic opportunity. And, not unlike their Han Chinese counterparts, they are denied basic freedoms of expression and assembly.

The New Legalists respond, again

The folks over at the New Legalist web site have responded to my last response to them.  I guess we could call this a debate.  The post, authored by Sherwin Lu, is entitled: "Who is 'Distorting Chinese History and Chinese Philosophy': The New Legalists or Prof. Sam Crane"  It is labeled "Part I," so I guess more is on the way.

To begin, I must thank Mr. Lu.  He has done more to make my case for me than I could ever have done.  You might remember that, way back when, in February 2008, when I put up my first post on the New Legalists, I said their analysis was: "...unremarkable because it has traces of the Say No nationalists of the 1990s."  Well, this time around, Mr. Lu goes for a declamation that directly hearkens to those "Say No Nationalists:"

...what he really resents is not the non-existing “China threat” but the Chinese people saying “No!” to U.S.’s hegemonic provocativeness; what he is really worried about is the spreading all over the globe of the moral influence of the Chinese saying “No!”...

Just for the record, I really don't resent or worry aabout anything.  And I am most happy to accept a critique of US hegemony.  Claims of exceptionalism of all sorts, I reject, be they assertions of American exceptionalism or Chinese exceptionalism.  I am, after all, a standard issue US left-liberal academic and am used to having American conservatives complain that I am insufficiently patriotic, etc. 

My main purpose in all of this is simply to point out that the New Legalists are in the thrall of contemporary Chinese nationalism and, therefore, their readings of Chinese history and philosophy are biased in favor of whatever serves the power interests of the Chinese state.  They are unable, therefore, to look dispassionately at key historical questions.  And Mr. Lu, in his invocation of the "Say No Nationalist" rhetoric has demonstrated clearly that that is the case.

Let me make two points in response to Mr. Lu's piece.  1) his analysis of nationalism is historically muddled; and 2) his view of Chinese military history is blinkered and flawed.

(This gets a bit long, so I am putting it below the fold...)

Sarah Palin, Taoist Sage, Again

The abrupt and bizarre resignation of Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, has befuddled many political commentators.  Why did she do it?  What is she thinking?  Is it a shrewd political move or a delusional political suicide?  She seems to have stumped the best journalists of the day...

But not me.  I understand Sarah Palin.  She is a Taoist politician, best described, a la passage 20 of the Daodejing as: "muddled," "inept," "a simpleton."  Thus her incoherent resignation statement makes perfect sense.  She said, essentially, that if she stayed in her job she would be a "quitter."  It was only by quitting that she would not be a quitter.  And no one understood this.  But it is clear (to me at least) that she is making a sly reference to passage 38 of the Daodejing, which begins:

High Integrity never has Integrity and so is indeed Integrity. 

Low Integrity never loses Integrity and so is not at all Integrity.

In other words, a really steadfast person (i.e. a non-quitter) is like the person of "High Integrity" in the quote above.  It is only because the steadfast person never has to live up to the artificial standards of "steadfastness" created by the mainstream media and established political leaders that she attains a genuine steadfastness.  Conversely, a quitter (i.e. a person of "Low Integrity") always publicly declares affinity to conventional standards of steadfastness and, thus, is not at all steadfast, a real quitter.  

Got it?

For those of you out there who are hoping that this is truly the end of Palin's political career, I can point out that, in the contemporary US, those who attempt to use a Taoist approach to gain power and influence, are not generally successful.  Save, of course, George W. Bush.

A Taoist (and thus non-nationalist?) July 4th

I've run this post for several years now but I rather like it, so here we go again:

It may seem improbable but I think we can find a Taoist angle on the US Independence Day, July 4th, holiday.

   Patriotism and nationalism, which are basically what July 4th is all about, are rather alien to the Taoist world view.  Indeed, far from celebrating the accomplishments of the nation, the Tao Te Ching (passage 80) urges: "Let nations grow smaller and smaller/ and people fewer and fewer."  The ideal is a primitive, we might even say pre-nationalist, small-scale political community centered on common production and close family life.  Not much of an "imagined community" there.

     But there is one element of the holiday that a Taoist might connect with: the line in the Declaration of Independence that states our unalienable right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." 

      As for Life, the "Te" (or "De" in the Pinyin transliteration) of the Tao Te Ching, denotes the integrity of each thing in the larger context of Way (Tao).  As such, I take it to imply a recognition of the value of each thing in itself, each life in itself, as in this passage from Chuang Tzu:

Hence, the blade of grass and the pillar, the leper and the ravishing [beauty], the noble, the sniveling, the disingenuous, the strange - in Tao they all move as one and the same. (23)

    As for Liberty, we have this statement from Burton Watson's introduction to Chuang Tzu:

The central theme of the Chuang Tzu may be summed up in a single word: freedom. (3)

  "Freedom" here means, for Watson, "free yourself from the world," but it is not incompatible with other notions of political liberty that might be celebrated in the US today.  For Chuang Tzu, governments should not interfere in our pursuits of freeing ourselves from the world.

     And as for the pursuit of Happiness, Taoism, in its philosophic form, is very much about happiness.  It tells us that we should not reify Happiness (maybe Chaung Tzu would have counseled Jefferson not to capitalize it in the Declaration) nor pursue it in a purposive and directed manner; but we might find happiness precisely in that process of detaching ourselves from worldly worries and desires and embracing "nothing's own doing" (wu wei).  Watson also has this to say:

Finally, Chuang Tzu uses throughout his writings that deadliest of weapons against all that is pompous, staid, and hold:  humor.  Most Chinese philosophers employ humor sparingly - a wise decision, no doubt, in view of the serious tone they seek to maintain - and some of them seem never to have heard of it at all.  Chuang Tzu, on the contrary, makes it the very core of his style, for he appears to have known that one good laugh would do more than ten pages of harangue to shake the reader's confidence in the validity of his pat assumptions. (5)

    Sounds pretty happy to me.

    So, have fun today, and remember those Taoist principles of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness!

Confucianism and Global Warming

An article last week in the Christian Science Monitor caught my eye: "How Confucianism could curb global warming."  Two main points are put forward.  First, we have this:

But Pan Yue, China's vice minister for environmental protection, is calling for China to capitalize on traditional Chinese religions in promoting ecological sustainability.

He says, "One of the core principles of traditional Chinese culture is that of harmony between humans and nature. Different philosophies all emphasize the political wisdom of a balanced environment. Whether it is the Confucian idea of humans and nature becoming one, the Taoist view of the Tao reflecting nature, or the Buddhist belief that all living things are equal, Chinese philosophy has helped our culture to survive for thousands of years. It can be a powerful weapon in preventing an environmental crisis and building a harmonious society."

I like Pan Yue.  I think he truly works hard, against difficult odds, to do the right thing by China's, and the world's, environment.  But the simple assertion that some elements of tradition now play a key role in addressing the contemporary environmental crisis is a bit shallow.   Powerful political and economic interests are in play, interests that care little and pay no heed to tradition.  More on that later.

A second point is also asserted in the CSM piece:

The $64,000 question facing economists and politicians across the world is how to make decisions that take into account the big picture beyond the "purely financial perspective."

This is a hard question for Western economic and political theorists to answer, because their theories are based on the Enlightenment view of the self as an autonomous, rational individual.

But how are we to make decisions that take into account the interests of those who have not yet been born?

Being respectful to the interests of past and future generations is key to the Confucian view of the self and groups. To the question, "Who am I?" the Confucian answers, "I am the child of my parents and the parent of my children."

Confucianism begins from the proposition that human beings are defined by kinship networks that span the centuries. From this perspective the interests of the individual are bound up with the interests of the kinship group as it extends forward and backward across the generations.

This will be a key factor in the way China handles present and future environmental issues.

Let me counter with two points.  First, it is not clear that Western liberalism, whatever we think of it, cannot respond to environmental problems.  One economic approach is to determine the real cost of certain kinds of activities - that is, take those effects (pollution, warming, etc.) that are understood as "externalities" and build them into the real price of energy.  The cap and trade approach is another possibility.  And democratic institutions should not be assumed to be incapable of responding to environmental problems.  Even though much more needs to be done in the US, there has been a marked improvement in air and water pollution in the past forty years (remember the river that caught fire?!).

I do not want to take up a detailed defense of liberalism here.  Indeed, I readily accept that it has certain failings.  But I would just push back against an overly simple critique that fails to recognize those ways in which liberalism, in either its political or economic guise, can respond to environmental problems.

The issue I want to focus on here, however, is whether Confucianism really does account for the "interests of those not yet born."  I think it is limited in this regard.

Of course, there is a certain environmental sensitivity in Confucianism.  Confucius himself does makes statements regarding the conservation of resources.  But he also demonstrates an anthropocentrism that might limit his environmental credentials.  Let's turn, however, toward the more specific question about the interests of those not yet born.

I believe that, if there were a conflict between the living and the not yet born, Confucianism would tell us to protect the living first.  To be more concrete, if a person needed to participate in a business or activity that was harmful to the environment in a manner that would be manifest in future generations, but that business or activity was necessary to provide for the extent members of that person's family, Confucianism would tell that person to do what is necessary to care for the living members of the family. Analects 11.12 gets at this problem in regards to the living versus the dead:

When Adept Lu asked about serving ghosts and spirits, the Master said: “You haven’t learned to serve the living, so how could you serve ghosts?”

“Might I ask about death?”

“You don’t understand life,” the Master replied, “so how could you understand death?”

The key here is the notion of “serving the living,” which implies daily commitment to cultivating social relationships, starting first with family and moving then to friends and acquaintances and even strangers.  “Life,” is the process of serving the living.  Our duties toward those now living around us are more important than worries about death.  Although we have obligations to remember the dead, to venerate the ancestors, we do so because they have already lived and provided for us the social interactions that nurtured our Humanity.   This is different from the not yet living, who have not begun humanizing themselves by adding to the humanization of others around them.

In short, in Confucianism our duties toward the living trump our potential duties to the not yet born.

This is the problem with overly simplistic invocations of "Confucian tradition."  Often, when we dig a little deeper, we find that the tradition may say things that we do not expect, or do not really want to hear.  Indeed, I would go so far (as I have here on various occasions) to say that China is not, and never has been, a "Confucian society."  At least insofar as the ethical standards found in The Analects and Mencius are concerned.   Those texts might best be understood as prescriptions for how the world ought to be, not descriptions for how it is or how it was.  

Confucianism sets high standards that are hard to meet.  It does include a kind of conservation ethic but it does not privlege the interests of the not yet born over the now living.  And it has always been confounded by political and economic powers-that-be.  It is not, in sum, an panacea for our contemporary environmental problems. 

Four Years

I have been remiss of late; haven't posted anything in almost a week.  No real excuse...except that I have gotten into a better writing groove on my book.  The endless chapter 5 is just about done.  And that's good.  But I do need to get some posts up here....

Perhaps my drop off in bloggy productivity is due to the longevity of this humble site.  Yesterday was the four year anniversary of The Useless Tree!  The second post of that first day explained that blog title, useless tree..  And the very first post, "Beginning a Beginning," was a veiled reference to a passage in Zhuangzi.  Since I do not have any deep and profound things to say on this blog birthday, let me simply give you the whole quote from Zhuangzi.  It is, I believe, meant to be a parody of the logicians he so loved to bait:

Now, I have something to say about these things.  I don't know if it's similar to "this," or if it's dissimilar.  But similar and dissimilar are quite similar in the end, so it can't be much different than "that."  But be that as it may, let me try to say it:

Being a beginning.  Being not yet beginning to be a beginning.  Being not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be a beginning.  Being being.  Being nonbeing.  Being not yet beginning to be nonbeing.  Being not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be nonbeing.  Then suddenly, being nonbeing.  And when it comes to nonbeing, I don't know yet what's being and what's nonbeing. (26)

There now: I've spoken.  But I still don't know whether it was being spoken or nonbeing spoken.

Happy birthday!

Time to end the Tehran/Tiananmen comparisons

With the escalation in violence, Iran appears to have moved into its Tiananmen moment, the time when the regime brings much more deadly force to bear against popular mobilization.  But events in Iran have moved away from the China comparison.

The key distinction between China in 1989 and Iran in 2009 is the strength of elite-level factionalism in the latter.  In China, Zhao Ziyang and some close lieutenants pushed back against hard liners and tried to prevent martial law and the violence that ultimately erupted.  But Zhao did not fully reveal his opposition until very late in the game, most famously when he went to Tiananmen Square on the night of May 19th, when martial law was announced, and said to the students that he was too late.  He was essentially defeated then, and the elite-level split was resolved in favor of the hard-liners. 

Iran looks much different at this moment.  Mousavi is still issuing defiant statements (even though some reports suggest he is under house arrest).  More importantly, the elite opposition appears to run much deeper: Rafsanjani is said to be working hard behind the scenes to thwart Khamenei and Ahmadinejad.  Ahmadinejad has his own sources of power, so it is not clear who will prevail in this showdown, but the sides are more evenly matched than was the case in China in 1989.  Much will depend on the military: if it stays strong behind the President and the Supreme Leader, the reformists could be thwarted.  But if the military splits, with some moving in the direction of Rafsanjani, then some more significant political change could come down.

In short, while on the street level Iran now looks like something less than the massive mobilization of China 1989, at the elite level it appears to be something considerably more.

Sad but true: Bush lost the war

I've said this many times in the past but it is always important to keep in mind, especially as more and more bad news comes out of Iraq, that the situation there has never been politically settled.  Yes, there was a truce of sorts, a lull in the violence, but that simply reflected tactical decisions by various Iraqi militias and political actors to bide their time until the US pulled out.  Politics in Iraq is not, and has not been since the US invasion, self-sustaining.  That is, the relative calm of recent months has been predicated upon US power, not fundamental reconciliation among competing political forces within the country. 

Bush thus left Obama with an impossible situation: remain in Iraq indefinitely, which most Americans do not want (and which would, as it has now, eventually spark more attacks on Americans) or create a time frame for pullout which would, as it has, gradually reveal the lack of political settlement in the country. 

There is no good way forward because....

Bush lost the war. 

Teheran and Tiananmen, IV

There is a sad truth about the 1989 Beijing Massacre.  It is a truth that those of us who live in liberal democracies would rather avoid.  But it is a truth nonetheless: in Beijing in 1989 repression worked.

Repression worked in that it put an end to a fundamental challenge to the state's authority and power.  It worked in that a split within the ruling elite was resolved in favor of hardliners, and scapegoats, most notably Zhao Ziyang, were created.  It worked in that the the state was able to redevelop its legitimacy through economic growth and material development.  Thus, in the twenty years since that horrible night, June 3-4, 1989, there has not been a repeat popular mobilization of such massive scale.  For younger Chinese people the "lesson learned" seems to be: don't protest, it can get you killed; better to study hard and find a way to make money in the expanding economy; don't rock the boat.  Repression thus worked to preserve the Party's power.

When we compare Tehran today with Beijing of twenty years ago, we need to keep this in mind.  The heady hopefulness of political change can be shot down by state power.  And, if the regime plays its cards shrewdly, the movement can wither and fade. 

The challenge for Iranian reformers, then, is: how to avoid such drastic repression, which might just kill the movement, while maintaining sufficient momentum and pressure to gain some sort of political victory?  With the Revolutionary Guards threatened more deadly force, the reformers may have to back down, at least for a time, to avoid the worst outcome.

Teheran and Tiananmen, III

Events in Iran have reached a new stage. The defiant Saturday demonstrations and protests, which came after Supreme Leader Khamenei called for a return to normalcy, are a direct challenge not only to Ahmadinejad but to the very basis of state legitimacy.  The people are now defying the Supreme Leader, and by their actions they are rejecting his authority.   This is the functional equivalent of the April 27th marches in Beijing twenty years ago.  Then, students took to the streets in direct violation of Deng Xiaoping's call for order (scroll down for my other posts that make this comparison).

Thus, we have half of what is needed for the movement to succeed (and success here I take to be a fairly significant political change - the forced resignation of Ahmadinejad for example).  It is, of course, impossible to predict.  But the populace has clearly demonstrated its rejection of the political status quo.  The other thing that must now follow is a more fundamental rupture within the political elite.  If the leadership remains fairly united, or if a split is resolved in favor of hardliners, then we may well have a Tiananmen style escalation of state violence against the people.  I dearly hope that does not happen.  But to avoid that, and secure some sort of political victory, the reformist forces must hold firm and bring at least some sectors of the security apparatus over to their side.  This will depend on political dynamics that we will not see in the streets.  It will take place in the halls of power, as various key players assess the national situation and figure out how to align themselves.  If some combination of Mousavi and Rafsanjani can convince other senior leaders that larger scale violence will do irreparable harm to the regime, then political change might be possible.  Zhao Ziyang failed, ultimately, in this regard.  Let's hope Iranian reformers have better luck.

Alternatively, reformers could decide to back down, take a longer view and try to consolidate their political positions for the future.  This might fail politically (they could be out-maneuvered by Ahmadinejad down the road), but it could be a way of avoiding larger scale bloodshed.

Reports in the US press suggest that political divisions in the elite are deepening.  This might be wishful thinking on the part of Western analysts.  But it might also be true.  Indeed, the statement by the Guardian Council (h/t TPM) admitting that some 3 million votes in fifty cities may have been fraudulent could be seen as a first step in a move away from Ahmadinejad.  We'll see.

In the meantime, let's remember those who struggle for justice in Iran.  Remember Neda.

A Daoist thought on Father's Day

We like to think that we shape our children's lives.  And maybe we do, to some degree.  But, to an even greater extent, sons and daughters create their parents.

New Legalists, Again

I have written about the New Legalists before (the first of three posts is here, with more here and here).  That was over a year ago.  Well, last month Zhai Yuzhong, whom I do not know, courteously sent along to me, in an email, a critique of my first post on the New Legalists.  I read it and thought about it but did not have time to respond or even discover whence it came.  Well, this week Zhai kindly sent me an English translation of the critique and, with now a bit more time, I traced it back to the New Legalist web site.  It seems it is the "Editor Recommends" article at the top of their page.  Thus, I feel I must now respond. 

I must first thank Mr. Zhai for his courtesy in sending me the original critique and the English translation.  But I must fundamentally disagree with him.  Let me make three points in response.  

1) Mr Zhai argues that I am wrong to associate the New Legalists with Chinese nationalism, saying, among other things:

As a matter of fact, nationalism is quite alien to the Chinese, for China has not been subjected to constant pressures from external aggressors in history like the much divided Europe, but on the contrary, she has been used to viewing political relations from the standpoint of the whole world (Tian Xia, or天下). This broad-mindedness is beyond the comprehension of most Westerners, who cannot look beyond national interests....

This is historically wrong, at least insofar as what China has become since the 19th and 20th centuries. 

It is true that nationalism was alien to China before the 19th century, as it was alien to most of the world, much of the Western world included, before the 19th century.  Nationalism and national identity are, by definition (see Anderson or Gellner or Zhao)  modern phenomena.  The "nation" is a collective identity that arises in tandem with other aspects of modernity: world markets, modern legal-rationalist states and attendant socio-economic processes.  Indeed, the very term zhonghua minzu - 中华民族 - is a modern construct; it was not used before the 19th century.  It is a rather uncomfortable fact for Chinese nationalists that the term nationalism - minzu zhuyi, 民族主义 - was brought into the Chinese language through Japan, which modernized before and had a very significant effect upon China (notice that minzu zhuyi is included in this list of terms transliterated from Japanese to Chinese from Translingual Practice by Lydia Liu, a fascinating book).

Thus, by the mid-twentieth century, the ideas of nationalism and national identity were firmly rooted in Chinese language and, more prominently, political practice.  The Guomindang was a nationalist party as was, and is, the Chinese Communist Party.  Mao Zedong was most famous for "sinicizing" Marxism, adapting it to Chinese circumstances and making it into a Chinese nationalist doctrine.  The history of twentieth century China is a history of a contest of nationalisms and national identities, one that continues today as the PRC moves away from the Maoist version of Chinese nationalism to something different.

To say, as Mr. Zhai does, that "nationalism is quite alien to the Chinese" is to simply ignore or deny the historical transformations of the twentieth century.  Or does Mr. Zhai want to reject the reality and power of zhonghua minzu?  

2) Mr. Zhai further argues:

Prof. Crane’s commentary on our New Legalism is full of deep-rooted prejudices that came partly from Confucians’ deliberate distortion of Legalism throughout history and partly from some Western scholars’ long-time wrong notions about China and the whole non-Western world in the past centuries.

It is strange, therefore, that in trying to defend Legalism, Mr. Zhai himself must invoke a central Confucian principle.  He writes:

Classical Chinese theory on inter-state relations is focused on “justice” (Yi, or义), not on “interests” (Li, or利).

Yi - 义 - is, of course, a fundamental Confucian virtue, one that Han Feizi, the great Legalist writer, railed against, as here (from Watson's translation, which renders Yi as "righteousness"):

Those who practice benevolence and righteousness should not be praised, for to praise them is to cast aspersion on military achievement...(105)

This is amusing because Zhai himself, in having to invoke a Confucian idea, demonstrates the philosophical and ethical bankruptcy of Legalism.  Zhai cannot defend Legalism without resort to Confucianism, which is simply a repetition of the historical pattern.  Legalism, in all of its brutality, has never been able to stand on its own.  It has always had to appropriate other systems of thought, whether Daoism or, more comprehensively, Confucianism, to veil its depredations against humanity.  For much of Chinese history, the classic formulation of "Legalism with a Confucian facade" was the basis of statecraft, as Victoria Hui demonstrates (pdf file).  The Confucians were always uncomfortable with this fact; the New Legalists now simply ignore it.

Hui also shows, citing Johnson, how China has a long and accomplished realpolitik military history.  She mentions the ur-Legalist Qin dynasty in this regard:

.....the state of Qin crushed its competitors by brute force based on comprehensive self-strengthening reforms that facilitated total mobilization for war. Qin also pursued relentless divide-and conquer strategies to break up balancing alliances, and employed ruthless stratagems of bribery and deception to enhance its chances for victory. Not only did Qin’s military commanders seize territory by force, they also brutally killed defeated enemy soldiers en masse to demoralize and incapacitate losing states. To facilitate consolidation of conquests into the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE), Emperor Qin Shihuang, known as the First Emperor, employed severe measures to subjugate conquered populations. These included mass killings of extended royal families as well as mass forced migrations of noble and wealthy families to the capital. The Qin court also imposed direct rule on newly occupied territories, draconian collective punishment, pervasive surveillance and the establishment of settlements in frontier regions to serve as garrisons.

It is important to keep this in mind (and I recommend Hui's book) when confronted with such New Legalist historical distortions as this:

“Throughout human history, the Chinese civilization is the only one which has not flourished by force of gunboat conquest and colonial expansion but through free interracial marriages and free migration..."

This is, again, a Confucian ideal, the image of a perfectly peaceful China, another example of how New Legalists cannot live without Confucianism, even as they struggle to denounce it.

3) Mr. Zhai goes further in his white-washing of Qin dynasty inhumanity.  Now, it is true that Qin did accomplish some things that had lasting effect on Chinese history, most notably the centralized bureaucratic state.  And I will certainly grant Mr. Zhai his point that the Dujiangyan Irrigation System is an extraordinary accomplishment.  But whenever we discuss Qin we must always keep in mind the horrible human cost, especially when the early Qin state was pushed to universal domination by King Zheng, the man who would become Qinshi Huangdi, the first Qin emperor.  Mr. Zhai wants to romanticize the brutality, as here:

Prof. Crane alleged about “aesthetic destructiveness of the Legalist Qin” and tried to support his allegation with what he saw in the Shanxi Provincial History Museum in Xian. This author has also been there. It is true that Qin bronzes may not be so impressive in appearance as Zhou bronzes, but Prof. Crane may not have noticed that on those not so impressive bronzes were inscribed the names of those craftsmen who made them, instead of names of owners as had been the custom before....

Is Mr. Zhai trying to suggest that Qin was some kind of forerunner of a workers collective, looking out for the interests of the craftsmen against the owners?  Please.  The only response appropriate here is a question: how many men and women died building all those terra cotta soldier statues?  How many died building Qin's tomb?  How many died connecting the many defensive walls around his lands?  Here is what the PRC's Ministry of Culture writes, among other things:

To reinforce his rule, Qin Shihuang practiced autocracy, imposing harsh laws and severe punishments and heavy levies and corves upon his people. Moreover, he levied war year after year and thus caused untold sufferings to the people.

Qin shihuang ruled by terror and spent massive amount of money to build extravagant palaces and his tomb. After five big travels across the country and the building of the Great Wall,China was in debt financially and people lived in terrible conditions. All this strengthened people's hatred towards the emperor and sped the fall of the Qin.

So, why can't the New Legalists look at history honestly?  Why are they so determined to gloss over the obvious failings of Legalism as it actually existed in China? 

I think it's because they are rather plain nationalists, searching for a historical narrative that will rationalize their preferred political outcomes in the present.  They are, like all nationalists, searching for a "serviceable past".  And if one doesn't exist, they'll just make it up.

Teheran and Tiananmen, II

As per my earlier post comparing Iran in 2009 and China in 1989, today's reports of Supreme Leader Khamenei's speech denouncing the dissenters has a eerie resonance.  It seems rather similar to the April 26, 1989 editorial in People's Daily in which the hard liners, led by Deng Xiaoping (China's "supreme leader" of the time), attempted to quash the protests.  Deng's intervention had the opposite effect, however, enraging student protesters and sparking what, until then, was the largest most politically significant march of the entire movement.

So, let's see what happens next .  Will the protesters in Iran now include a "reversal" of Khamenei's assessment in their list of demands?

Another point of comparison has also occurred to me.  The leadership of the current Iranian protests is obviously more politically prominent and powerful than that to be found in 1989 among the Chinese students.  Mir Hossein Mousavi is an establishment figure.  He is well connected within the Iranian political elite.  He is not a liberal in a Western sense; thus, if he were to come to power it is not at all clear that there would be fundamental structural political change in Iran. 

The leadership of the 1989 Beijing protests, by contrast, were inexperienced students.  They were outsiders who operated at a very large disadvantage: they had only limited access to information about the regime's strategy and tactics and did not have the kinds of technology now available (twitter, blogs, etc.) to facilitate mobilization. They were a fractious group, uncertain of precisely what they wanted and rather naive in their political calculations.

But what difference does this difference make?

It could be the case that with a more mature and influential leadership, the current Iranian protests might be able to succeed in ways the Chinese student movement could not.  Mousavi might have at hand resources and connections that could make a critical difference should the regime decide in favor of heightened repression (which the Khamanei sermon could bring).  On the other hand, however, it could be precisely this greater influence that could make Mousavi more dangerous to the regime.  In 1989, the protests could continue for weeks because, after all, these were merely students with no access to real power.  Zhao Ziyang and others could argue that they posed little real threat to the might and authority of the Party and they could bide their time while they sought a peaceful resolution.  Quite the contrary could be the case in Iran today.  Each day Mousavi persists, the weaker the regime appears, and the greater the possibility that Mousavi could persuade other elements of the power structure to come over to his side.  He poses a greater potential threat and, thus, Khamenei might want to dispose of him before his power grows....

At the end of the day, of course, we cannot know which way this will break. But is seems that we are at an even more critical juncture.

Tehran and Tiananmen

Watching the extraordinary political events unfold in Iran, I am reminded of the massive protests that swept across China twenty years ago.  Here are a couple of comparative ideas:

1) Protests of this sort start out spontaneously, in response to some unexpected political event (election fraud in Iran, Hu Yaobang's death in China).  But they create a self-reinforcing momentum, driven by the regime's response to popular mobilization.  In China, an editorial, reportedly written under the supervision of Deng Xiaoping, was published on April 26th that harshly (in PRC political terms) criticized the student demonstrators.  This sparked the massive march of April 27th, which propelled the movement forward.  

Are we at that moment in Iran?  Whether yesterday's big march develops into a more sustained political movement will depend, in large part, on how the regime proceeds.  In China, as the government hardened its position and attempted to isolate and repress the movement, the students came to focus upon those actions as the rationale for protest. It could be that leaders in Iran have learned from that experience.  Although there has been some early violent repression, the announcement that a recount will be undertaken could diffuse the situation.  It creates a moment when protest leaders will have to reconsider their strategy.  Should they stay in the streets (as more radical dissidents might prefer), or should they wait and see what compromises might be possible (as more moderate opponents might desire).  Harsher government repression can unite radical and moderate dissident groups.  If the regime is smart, it will avoid such repression.  But hardliners in the government will want to heighten the crack-down.  It is a critical moment right now...

2)  Sustaining a movement of this sort requires a split within the regime.  We like to think of popular struggles as being driven primarily from the bottom up, from the people in the streets.  The popular facet is important.  But just as important are the political dynamics within the regime itself.  In China, as the protests of 1989 unfolded, a split emerged within the Communist Party, with Zhao Ziyang calling for a more compromising approach, and Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng taking a sterner, hard line position.  That split limited the state's response and gave the movement political space within which to operate.

Speculation about the role and influence of Ayatullah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani raise the possibility of a significant political split.  But his positions at present may not be powerful enough to make a critical difference.  He does not, it appears, have direct authority over any security forces.  Zhao, by contrast, was the General Secretary of the Party, the highest formal ranking position in the Party with significant say over the use of force. 

But there could be other splits emerging in Iran.  Thus, while the drama in the streets captures our attention we should also keep an eye on the halls of power.

UPDATE: more thoughts on this comparison here., here and here.