The Useless Tree

Confucius: Soft Power Symbol or Historical Failure?

An article in The National a couple of days ago repeats the "look, China is trying to gain soft power through Confucius Institutes" story.  How many times do we have to go through this?  Little has changed in the past four (or more) years.  I guess one novel aspect of this most recent "news" story is the odd denial given by a Hanban official:

Officials insist the Confucius Institutes are not about spreading soft power. Hu Zhiping, the deputy director general of Hanban, the government language organisation that runs the institutes, said the aims were to help foreigners learn Chinese, introduce Chinese culture to the wider world and, through this, to “promote mutual understanding and friendship”.

“You cannot find any trace of this soft power promotion,” he said at the organisation’s Beijing headquarters.

“We are just promoting language and cultural understanding.”

And if you believe that I have a bridge in Shanghai I can sell you...

But seriously, at this point, the PRC soft power strategy as manifested in Confucius Institutes is not news.  What is needed is analysis.  Are they actually working to increase PRC soft power?  I doubt it.  Language learning might have some effect but, as I've mentioned before, I doubt that Confucianism generally can serve the soft power interests of the PRC.  These days I suspect that the Chinese response to the current North Korean crisis will have a much greater impact on PRC soft power than all the Confucius Institutes combined.  If China is seen by South Korea and Japan as siding too closely with North Korea, the former's soft power will be seriously damaged in the region.   It seems that the CCP leadership understands this and is beginning to press NK.  But the bigger test will come when the UN Security Council takes up the issue.  Soft power is shaped not just by amorphous notions of "culture" but more directly by the actions and policies of states.

But don't get me wrong.  I continue to believe that Confucianism has something important to say to modern life everywhere.  It just isn't well suited to the political maneuvering of the PRC or any other state.

And that assessment is a good deal less harsh than that rendered by Xiao Jiansheng in his book Chinese History Revisited.  I noticed this book last year, when it was banned in the mainland.  But, as often happens, the truth will out, and a piece about it appears in today's Asia Sentinel.  I especially like his argument that over-centralization of political power has been an obstacle to social and cultural and economic development in China:

Chinese History Revisited, written in Chinese, has sold more than 11,000 copies – a large number for such a serious subject – many to mainlanders who have taken it home, where it is banned. The book challenges the conventional wisdom – supported by Emperors,

The opposite is true, argues Xiao Jiansheng. The golden ages of Chinese civilization were the Song dynasty (960-1269 AD) and the Spring & Autumn Period (770-476 BC), where a weak central government allowed a high degree of local autonomy and for civil, intellectual and commercial society to flourish.

The centralized and violent imperial system introduced by Emperor Qin Shi Huang when he unified China in 221 BC and followed by most dynasties since, including the Communists, has been a curse for China, Xiao says. It has stifled civil rights, intellectual development and human diversity.

The lack of religious faith, especially Protestantism, has also been a great misfortune because it left China's rulers with no moral compass or restraint and exposed individuals to their greed and caprice, he charges.

And it's that point about religion that is trouble for Confucius.  The Sentinel actually has a companion page that focuses  on Xiao's point about religion: "Follow Martin Luther, not Confucius."  I do not really agree with him on most of this - a bit too neo-Weberian for my tastes (although I think Weber was right about the state, he was problematic on the Confucianism-prevented-capitalism argument...).  In any event, here is Xiao:

Xiao also praises Protestantism's respect for individual life. "In the eyes of God, everyone is created equal and has rights that cannot be removed. This demands respect and protection for individual life, assets and freedom. The equality of people is the most precious equality."

 But the Chinese character does not have this respect, he said. "According to Confucian thinking, the ruler can divide people into gentlemen and common people and those with power and authority can strictly control those without them. Society has a strict order of classes and an enormous bureaucracy. In the name of the nation, the rulers can exploit the rights and freedom of the people and the individual sacrifices himself for the state and the collective. For this purpose, the ruler can sacrifice the lives of countless ordinary people.

I think this is wrong.  Xiao is criticizing the subordination of Confucianism to Legalism, the combination that became such a potent driver of Chinese statecraft.  Certainly, from a perspective based on The Analects and Mencius (i.e. Confucianism before the Han dynasty combination with Legalism), it is certainly not the case that "...the ruler can divide people into gentlemen and common people..."  That division is not a matter of the ruler's decree; rather it is a reflection of the innate capacities and ethical training of individuals themselves.  A "gentleman" (junzi) is a "gentleman" not because the ruler says so, but because he has worked hard to learn and live Humanity.

In any event, Xiao has written an important book that needs to be take seriously.  And the confusion about Confucianism is just another example of why that great philosophical tradition will likely not serve as a source of PRC soft power: if we disagree on fundamental definitions of what Confucianism is, then how can it function in a politically persuasive and significant manner?

Fate

Just let your mind wander along in the drift of things.  Trust yourself to what is beyond you - let it be the nurturing center.  Then you've made it.  In the midst of all this, is there really any response?  Nothing can compare to simply living out your inevitable nature.  And there's nothing more difficult....(56)

Zhuangzi

(h/t: Chinahush)

Mick Jagger channels Zhuangzi

Maybe it's just me, but when I saw this Jagger quote I though of Zhuangzi:

"We were young, good-looking and stupid," he told the audience. "Now we're just stupid."

(h/t: Sullivan)

Materialism in Chinese Society

Another week goes by and still I have not caught up with blogging... Oh well, all I can do to rectify the situation is: blog...

Last wee Kai Pan, over at china/divide put up a short post entitled: "Is Chinese Society Materialistic?  Are Chinese people?"  He is really just raising some questions, not making a sustained argument.  But I want to take up some of the questions he asks.  Let's take this excerpt:

I'm not saying that materialism as a bonafide concept isn't arguably observed in modern Chinese society. I'm just not sure its a meaningful or unique observation. Frankly, anything with statistically significant pervasiveness that could be attributed to materialism in Chinese society I can see with similar statistically significant pervasiveness in many other societies.

I think he's right in the sense that materialism in China is not unique to that society or that people.  Clearly, complaints about materialism in American society are legion.  But the comparative point is less significant here than the historical and cultural interpretations.

The observation that China is now a materialistic society, or is more materialistic than some time in the past, might imply that Chinese society, in some timeless, essentialist way, should not be as materialistic as it is now, or, at least, was not significantly materialistic in the past.  And I think that assumption is likely wrong.

To be most blunt about it: I think Chinese society has always been materialistic.  Thus, while it might be, for particular historical and economic reasons, more materialistic now, that variation is more quantitative than qualitative.

There is a stereotype of "traditional China" out there that imagines a society of upstanding Confucian gentlemen and their families, carefully observing the aversion to profit and commerce that the Sage preached, interspersed with irregular collections of Daoist aesthetes, huddled in their caves renouncing the world.  This is almost certainly wrong.  More accurate, I believe, is a picture of a thriving entrepreneurial society, driven by strong commercial interests and a skill for adapting existing technologies to solve concrete problems. This latter view would explain how the imperial state was able to maintain and reproduce an extensive bureaucracy and a sophisticated civilization: it needed a strong material, economic foundation which provided the resources for political centralization, military power and cultural hegemony.  The Chinese Empire, for much of its history, especially after the economic transformations of the Song, was a wealthy and prosperous place.  And wealth and prosperity are not produced by reading the Analects or the Daodejing.  Wealth and prosperity are created by people, often following material incentives, who pursue wealth and prosperity - one of the aspects of "materialism" that we are considering.

Yes, it's true, when confronted with Western imperialism the Chinese empire did not measure up in certain areas of military technology and tactics.  Perhaps the self-imposed relative isolation of the Ming (and I say "relative" because China has never been wholly cut off from the world economy) after Emperor Yongle contributed to China falling behind Europe's economic growth and transformation (I will defer to better informed historians on this point).  But even recognizing all that, Chinese society has always held within it a powerful materialistic, commercial dynamic.  Imperialism did not extinguish Chinese materialism, it just channeled it in new directions.

This was true going way back, to the time of Confucius himself.  We can read Confucius and Mencius as prescriptive, pointing out to readers what Chinese society should be, not what it actually was.  They were pushing against the materialism that then existed in Chinese society.  Same with the great Daoist texts.  Think about passage 12:

The five colors blind eyes.  The five tones deafen ears.  The five tastes blur tongues.  Fast horses and breathtaking hunts make minds wild and crazy.  Things rare and expensive make people lose their way.

That's why a sage tends to the belly, not the eye, always ignores that and chooses this.

"Things rare and expensive" are a problem: the pursuit of luxury and wealth distracts people from the natural unfolding of Way (Dao).  In other words, materialism, of a sort, was present and problematic (at least from Daoists) in early China.

So when materialism in present day China is lamented, we should resist the temptation to conjure up a past of marvelously spiritual and organic and Confucian-ethical Chinese society.  Perhaps China is more materialistic now than it was a hundred years ago.  But that is not to say that traditional Chinese society was somehow not materialistic at all.  Quite the contrary, it is more likely that a kind of materialism produced much of what we associate with Chinese civilization....

The Limits of Confucian Revival in China

On Saturday the WaPo (hat tip CDT) ran a conventional restatement of the Confucian revival in China story.  Not much new reported beyond the usual observations that people, including businessmen, are embracing revised Confucian rituals.  Yet when this story is juxtaposed against a recent post at ChinaGeeks, "Education without Heart," (with another hat tip to CDT!) we can see just how limited the Confucian revival really is.   

But before I get to the ChinaGeeks translation, let me nitpick the WaPo piece.

First these is this graf:

But a Confucian revival sanctioned and initially steered by the party has grown into something more vibrant and also more unpredictable. It has become a quest for alternative ideas that challenge not only foreign imports such as democracy but also some of the homegrown results of China's dash to modernity.

My gripe has to do with that "initially steered," which makes the revival seem like it is the brain child of CCP apparatchiks.  This is unfortunate, since it is more accurate to say that Confucianism began to revive in the PRC in the 1980s largely due to the efforts of intellectuals both outside and inside China.  As John Markham makes clear in his magisterial book, Lost Soul, political authorities had little to do with return of Confucianism after the Cultural Revolution.  US-based academics Tu Wei-ming and Yu Yingshi were key players.  Now it is true that the Party has found something useful in the Confucian revival, and that certain Party leaders have made public gestures of support.  But "initially" the Party had little to do with it.

Substantively, I have to call out this passage:

"If Confucius were alive today, he would probably join the Communist Party," said the institute's deputy director, Kong Xianglin, a 75th-generation descendant of Confucius and a party member for 30 years.

He said Confucianism will never supplant China's official state creed of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" but can complement and reinforce it. Confucius, said Kong, citing an oft-repeated maxim, "believed in 'harmonious while different.' "

I think this is incorrect.  If Confucius were alive today, and if he wanted to be a Party member (and I doubt he would since it has generally transformed into a means for material advancement, not the cultivation of Humanity), he would likely be rejected or expelled.   Confucius and Menicus would be too critical to be accepted in the Party.  They would not sit silently by as the horrendous errors of the past, especially the deadly Great Leap Forward, are quietly forgotten.  They would certainly protest as honest, noble-minded people, like Wan Yanhai, are harassed and hounded from the country.  They would not be interested in using their public office for private gain, as so many Party cadres do.

But let's get to the larger question of the limits of the Confucian revival.  ChinaGeeks translates an article from Southern Weekend (original Chinese here).  The author, Yu Jian, laments the hyper-intrumentalism and lack of empathy characteristic of high school education in China today:

Teaching for the final test seems to have become education’s primary duty.

From what I understand, all grade three Chinese senior high school students have already finished their normal studies for the year and entered into vigorous preparation to battle the Gaokao exam. Now, all schools only have one class: how to handle the Gaokao. Parents closely cooperate, and the study of unrelated subjects such as poetry, music, dance, art, philosophy, aesthetics and ethics have resolutely come to an end, as if the sky had collapsed in on them. In other words, the skill of test taking has become education’s highest knowledge, the only knowledge [worth having].

Yu invokes Confucius briefly:

When the great Confucius said that we should “teach students according to their individual abilities”, he certainly did not mean that we should teach only from some textbook for some test, he meant that we should identify and cultivate each student’s individual and unique genius[….]

We could go further.  Education, for Confucius, was fundamentally moral education.  The purpose of learning was understanding how to enact Duty according to Ritual to move toward Humanity in one's life.   Education was not a means to power and/or wealth; it was a process of cultivating and expanding upon one's innate ethical sensibilities.  While it is true that Confucius hoped that the virtuous and wise would rule, and thereby come to have a kind of privileged position in society.  But it was also true that Confucius did not make that possible outcome the explicit goal of education.  Indeed, the morally educated person should accept poverty if that is what the moral life required:

The Master said: “The noble-minded devote themselves to Way, not to earning a living.  A farmer may go hungry, and a scholar may stumble into a good salary.  So it is that the noble-minded worry about the Way, not poverty and hunger.”  (15.32) 

The Master said: “Poor food and water for dinner, a bent arm for a pillow – that is where joy resides.  For me, wealth and renown without honor are nothing but drifting clouds.” (7.16)

In other words, it hardly matters that a few Chinese businessmen put on some "traditional" outfits and bow down before a statue of The Sage.  If the Chinese education system is producing graduates who focus on the pursuit of individual interest (or "profit" in a general sense), then the soil for the growth of "Confucianism" will be rocky and shallow and inhospitable for many years to come.

 

(illustration from Yu Jian's article; caption reads: "score + grades = character").

Obama is reading Sun Tzu, not the Tao Te Ching

I'm emerging from the end of semester craziness.  My teaching is done for the semester (save one meeting with an independent study group this afternoon - always a pleasant meeting of minds) and the big pile of grading will not drop on me until next week.  A good time to catch up on blogging...

A blog  friend sent along a link a couple of days ago (thanks Alan!) to a post by Andrew Sullivan: "The Tao of Obama: No Fight, No Blame."  It's a simple post, just showing a photo of Obama and his new Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, with the text of passage 8 from the Tao Te Ching, taken from the Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English translation:

The highest good is like water. Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive. It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao. In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, go deep in the heart. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech, be true. In ruling, be just. In business, be competent. In action, watch the timing. No fight: No blame.

Not really sure why he chose this translation, but it gets the job done (an interesting comparison of this and other translations of this passage can be found here).

The point, it seems, is to suggest that, in choosing Kagan, and her relatively nondescript public face (not much in the way of scholarly writings, no judicial decisions, etc.), Obama is shrewdly avoiding fights in a manner that will both succeed in the longer term and insulate him from criticism. 

And maybe all that is true.  But is it Taoist?  I think not.

I am already on record as suggesting that Obama has something of a Mencian streak (with the obvious caveat that Mencius would probably not have increased US military action in Afghanistan).  And I have recognized some Taoist resonances in his actions.  But the Kagan appointment is too strategic a political calculation to be Taoist in any meaningful sense.

Taoism encourages a minimalist approach to politics, something that, at the outset, makes it hard to apply to a position like President of the United States.  Could any President (besides maybe Calvin Coolidge) detach himself from the political sphere and do nothing that would run counter to the natural unfolding of things?  Not really.  And maybe that is making too much of Sullivan's juxtaposition.  But the suggestion that Obama's tactical avoidance of battle with conservative Republicans is Taoist misses other important aspects of his political stance, which strike me as more in line with Confucius/Mencius and Sun Tzu.

Obama is Confucian/Mencian in the sense that he has a vision of the Good, or "Humanity" (ren), and he is willing to use political power to move society toward that Good.  That is what the health care debate was all about; and that is what financial regulation is all about.  These are big projects with complex politics that Obama actively engages on a daily basis, as a good Confucian leader (and by that I mean Mencius himself in his constant efforts to persuade inhumane leaders to do the right thing) should do.

A Taoist would take a much more hands-off approach to all of this, something closer to contemporary libertarianism.  Might that bring about terrible social consequences?  Perhaps.  But the Taoist would accept these as a reflection of the natural unfolding of the Way of humankind, which contains both humanity and inhumanity.  Hard to see how any leader of any modern state could be anything close to a Taoist - although perhaps on specific issues a Taoist-like detachment might be maintained for a time.  Taoism can tell us something about our modern predicaments, and it can serve as a very general guide for personal decisions, but it is not all that useful (and it does not want to be "useful") as a framework for public policy.

Obama's choice of Kagan may be better understood as using Sun Tzu tactics to achieve Confucian ends.  As an accomplished politician, Obama understands strategy and tactics.  He knows he is in constant battle with those who want to defeat him politically.  No doubt he is attuned to the particular context of each battle he faces, what Sun Tzu discusses as "ground."  The ground for Supreme Court appointments is the Senate and filibuster is a possibility.  In other words, Obama is not in a position of clear political advantage in the Senate.  He has to tread carefully, not provoke the opposition, not put other aspects of his broader political strategy in jeopardy there. 

I think the "ground" of the Kagan confirmation battle comes closest to what Sun Tzu calls "key ground" or "communicating ground."  Key ground is: "equally advantageous for the enemy and me."  And communicating ground is: "equally accessible to the enemy and me." (11.4, 11.5).  Sun Tzu says: "Do not attack the enemy who occupies key ground; in communicating ground do not allow your formations to become separated." (11.12).

Don't attack frontally; keep your troops together; caution: that is what Obama is about.  He's reading Sun Tzu, not the Tao Te Ching, and Sun Tzu tells him:

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot fight will be victorious. (3.25)

More Ersatz Chinese Proverbs

Sorry for the lack of posing.  As academics know, it's "that" time of year: one pile of papers has been graded just in time for an influx of forty more; meetings with students about theses and independent studies crowd the calendar, and every committee out there is calling a meeting this week and next.  It's the end of the semester and everyone in running crazy...

But here's a little something a friend sent to me: a post over at Language Log, by the great Sinologist/translator Victor Mair.  In it, he deconstructs statements that are supposedly authored by "Lao Tzu" and Confucius but that turn out to be simply made up or wildly and inaccurately extrapolated.  He also links to another post at another blog where he debunks the now familiar "Chinese saying" that "crisis contains both danger and opportunity."    All that I can add is: what he said!

This reminds me of two posts of my own.  In the first (over four and a half years ago) I point out that "may you live in interesting times" is not a Chinese curse, nor even Chinese.  And in the second I question another "saying" attributed to the Tao Te Ching - and interestingly it intersects with the "Lao Tzu" quotation that Mair knocks down.

As I said some time ago: There are plenty of great Chinese proverbs; we don't need to make any up.