The Useless Tree

Mencius speaks to Republicans obstructing health insurance reform

Mencius said: "Talk is easy when you don't have to get the job done."

孟子曰：“人之易其言也，無責耳矣。” (7.22; 4A.22)

A Mencian thought on the passing of Ted Kennedy

If you want to put my words into practice, why not return to fundamentals?  When every five-acre farm has mulberry trees around the farmhouse, people wear silk at fifty.  And when the proper seasons of chickens and pigs and dogs are not neglected, people eat meat at seventy.  When hundred-acre farms never violate their proper seasons, even large families don't go hungry.  Pay close attention to the teaching in village schools, and extend it to the child's family responsibilities - then, when their silver hair glistens, people won't be out on the roads and paths hauling heavy loads.  Our black-haired people free of hunger and cold, wearing silk and eating meat in old age - there has never been such times without a true emperor. (1.7)

Kim Dae-jung, Confucian Democrat

Former President of South Korea, and long time advocate for democracy there and throughout Asia, Kim Dae-jung, died today.  His was not the perfect political career but his persistent defense of democratization in Korea certainly stands out in world historical significance.  He was, we might say, on the right side of history on that score.

I also think be was basically right on how to deal with North Korea, however perverse and entrenched the regime there has been.

In 1994, Kim published an article in Foreign Affairs (which seems to be available in full on line), "Is Culture Destiny? The Myth of Asia's Anti-Democratic Values"  It was a rebuttal to an earlier interview in the same journal with the then Prime Minister of Singapore, and infamous defender of East Asian authoritarianism, Lee Kuan-yew (which seems not to be freely available - oh the irony!). 

Kim argued, pace the facile culturalist assertions made by authoritarians everywhere that democracy is somehow alien to a particular society, that within Asian culture and history precursors of democratic thought and practice could be found.  One of his examples is Mencius, which he refers to by his Chinese name, Meng Tzu:

...It is widely accepted that English political philosopher John Locke laid the foundation for modern democracy. According to Locke, sovereign rights reside with the people and, based on a contract with the people, leaders are given a mandate to govern, which the people can withdraw. But almost two millennia before Locke, Chinese philosopher Meng-tzu preached similar ideas. According to his "Politics of Royal Ways," the king is the "Son of Heaven," and heaven bestowed on its son a mandate to provide good government, that is, to provide good for the people. If he did not govern righteously, the people had the right to rise up and overthrow his government in the name of heaven. Meng-tzu even justified regicide, saying that once a king loses the mandate of heaven he is no longer worthy of his subjects' loyalty. The people came first, Meng-tzu said, the country second, and the king third. The ancient Chinese philosophy of Minben Zhengzhi, or "people-based politics," teaches that "the will of the people is the will of heaven" and that one should "respect the people as heaven" itself.

There is a lot in that paragraph, some of which I would reject (i.e. Mencius did not really suggest that the "people" had the right to overthrow a bad ruler; rather, other elite political actors had such a right).  But his basic thrust conveys a key point: the political philosophy articulated by Mencius, while perhaps not democratic (at least in a modern sense) in and of itself, is certainly compatible with modern democratic sensibilities and, thus, can be seen as a cultural resource supportive of democratic development in East Asian countries.

To answer the question of the title of his article, then: no, culture is not destiny.  Culture is multifaceted and malleable.  It contains elements that can be used to hinder democratization, and it includes aspects that can be used to support democratization.  Human agency continually remakes "culture" - and that is true for any culture, American, Korean, Chinese, whatever.  When authoritarian rulers say "we are not culturally oriented to democracy," they are not telling the whole story.  Kim demonstrated with his life's work, which ultimately succeeded in promoting the democratization of South Korea, that apparently authoritarian cultures can hold within them democratic possibilities, nurtured from deep indigenous cultural springs.  Korean culture, could be and is now authentically and uniquely democratic. 

So, let's leave off here with his own words, drawn from that same article:

The movement for democracy in Asia has been carried forward mainly by Asia's small but effective army of dedicated people in and out of political parties, encouraged by nongovernmental and quasi-governmental organizations for democratic development from around the world. These are hopeful signs for Asia's democratic future. Such groups are gaining in their ability to force governments to listen to the concerns of their people, and they should be supported.

Asia should lose no time in firmly establishing democracy and strengthening human rights. The biggest obstacle is not its cultural heritage but the resistance of authoritarian rulers and their apologists. Asia has much to offer the rest of the world; its rich heritage of democracy-oriented philosophies and traditions can make a significant contribution to the evolution of global democracy. Culture is not necessarily our destiny. Democracy is.

Pulling out the rice shoots

A nice post over at Danwei on the discovery of some old "backyard furnaces" from the Great Leap Forward.  The furnaces (pictured above) were an attempt, as a part of the disastrous Great Leap Forward, to produce steel in a radically decentralized, localized manner.  It was a terrible failure.

The Danwei post links to and translates an article by Wu Zhaolai, "Ruins of Great Leap Forward smelters should be preserved."  I agree with him completely when he writes:

Half a century has passed in the blink of an eye, and the backyard smelters of the Great Leap Forward have at last become ruins, lying there on the ground for people to reflect upon. History is recorded in words, but the preservation of a group of relatively intact iron furnaces is extremely valuable. The men and women who labored to refine iron in that era have grown old, and it is hard to imagine what feelings and memories will be brought to mind when they see the furnaces that they constructed and the “products” they produced.

The memory of the Great Leap Forward, and its millions and millions of innocent victims killed by failed Maoist policies, must be kept alive.   Wu must be circumspect in discussing the Leap - government censors do not like too much consideration of those bad days - but this is a nice paragraph:

The past has become a memory and a historical lesson. But has the mentality of the Great Leap Forward been entirely eradicated? Faced with this massive cluster of iron smelters, we have much to reflect upon. Public, scientific, and democratic decision making must not be merely empty words but must be put into practice in every project.

And there is a nice allusion to Mencius:

There are natural laws that govern nature: you can't pull on shoots to help them grow. Similarly, social and economic development has its own set of laws: all-out effort won't bring accelerated economic growth overnight. In those days, iron was the "supreme commander," iron was everything. That was the extreme mentality of the Great Leap Forward. Society no longer meant unified economic development. It was forced to make immense, unconditional sacrifices for the cause of increasing a particular type of output, and spiritual victories were won by realizing a particular target. As a result, the views of those who opposed rash advances were criticized, and they were sidelined as obstacles to rapid development. Radical speech, thinking, and officials became the mainstream and its guiding forces.

The "can't pull on shoots to help them grow" phrase alludes to this passage from Mencius (3.2) about the man from Sung:

...who worried that his rice shoots weren't growing fast enough, and so went around pulling at them.  At the end of the day, he returned home exhausted and said to his family: I'm worn out.  I've been helping the rice grow.  His son ran out to look and found the fields all withered and dying.

In all beneath Heaven, there are few who can resist helping the rice shoots grow.  Some thing nothing they do will help, so they ignore them.  They are the ones who don't even bother to weed.  Some try to help them grow: they are the ones who pull at them.  It isn't just that they aren't making things better - they're actually making things worse!

And this raises a question, perhaps on that Wu cannot raise directly and not get into political trouble: in the case of the PRC's Great Leap Forward, who played the role of the man from Sung? The Mencius quote could suggest that it was a generalized human tendency to force things along.  But I think we can be more specific.  Mao Zedong did the most to push the Great Leap Foward onward to its deadly culmination.  He pulled at the rice shoots of the Chinese economy and the Chinese people more violently than anyone else.   He deserves the primary blame for the deaths of millions upon millions of Chinese people then.  And that is what needs to be remembered, above all else, about the Great Leap Forward.

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.

Mencius in Lhasa

There are people in the PRC, brave people, who are willing to stand up to power and present facts that run contrary to both popular perceptions (which, after all, are shaped by official media control) and political interests:

A group of prominent Chinese lawyers and legal scholars have released a research report arguing that the Tibetan riots and protests of March 2008 were rooted in legitimate grievances brought about by failed government policies — and not through a plot of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

The lengthy paper is the result of interviews conducted over a month in two Tibetan regions. It represents the first independent investigation into the causes of the widespread protests, which the Chinese government harshly suppressed. The government blamed the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan exiles in Dharamsala for the unrest.

Mencius comes to mind here not just in the style of the critique - openly challenging power holders - but also in its substance.  Consider this:

The report also said: “When the land you’re accustomed to living in, and the land of the culture you identify with, when the lifestyle and religiosity is suddenly changed into a ‘modern city’ that you no longer recognize; when you can no longer find work in your own land, and feel the unfairness of lack of opportunity, and when you realize that your core value systems are under attack, then the Tibetan people’s panic and sense of crisis is not difficult to understand.”

This makes me "think about barley" as Mencius would have us do:

Mencius said: "In good years, young men are mostly fine.  In bad years, they're mostly cruel and violent.  It isn't that Heaven endows them with such different capacities, only that their hearts are mired in such different situations.  Think about barley: if you plant the seeds carefully at the same time and in the same place, they'll all sprout and grow ripe by summer solstice.  If they don't grow the same - it because of the inequities in richness of soil, amounts of rainfall, or the care given them by farmers...(11.7).

Obviously, some young Tibetan men in Lhasa violently rioted in March, 2008.  What the report is asking (as Mencius asks) is, essentially: why did they act in that manner?   What were the causes of the violence?  They are not inherently bad individuals but, rather, they have found themselves in intolerable circumstances.  When they compare their situations to those Han-Chinese immigrants in Lhasa who have moved in and taken good jobs and are prospering, they are enraged by the difference and discrimination.  And that anger, born of exclusion and poverty, can explode into violence.  This strikes me as rather similar to the racial problems in the US over the years, divisions and discrimination especially between black and white.  

Thus, the question becomes, what will the PRC government do to address the disparities?  The first thing that needs to be done is to openly recognize that the core of the problem is internal to the PRC. The report makes this point as well:

The report also cast blame on the governing structure in Tibetan regions, saying that there had been problems adapting Tibetan culture and society to the “ruling state’s systems.” It also criticized the central government for putting into power incompetent Tibetan local officials who, the researchers said, play up the threat of separatist movements to acquire more power and money from Beijing.

The report quoted Phuntsok Wangyal, one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party in Tibet, as saying, “They are unable to admit their mistakes and instead put all of their effort into shifting accountability onto ‘hostile foreign forces.’ ”

This goes to the heart of CCP power.  The "incompetent Tibetan local officials" are Party apparatchiks. The central authorities cannot let go of them because to do so would undermine the power of the single Party and open up possibilities for alternative sources of local power.  (Note to all fenqing out there: "alternative sources of local power" does not here suggest Tibetan separatism but, simply, greater Tibetan autonomy within the PRC). Socio-economic improvement in Tibet would seem to require political reform, something the CCP has studious avoided these past twenty years.

As Phuntsok Wangyal says, Party leaders must admit their mistakes in managing Tibet, and stop looking to blame outside forces.  Something Mencius would also agree with:

...in ancient times, when the noble-minded made mistakes, they knew how to change.  These days, when the noble-minded make mistakes, they persevere to the bitter end.  In ancient times, mistakes of the noble-minded were like eclipses of the sun and moon: there for all the people to see.  And when a mistake was made right, the people all looked up in awe.  But these days, the noble-minded just persevere to the bitter end, and they they invent all kinds of explanations. (4.9)

Thoughts on the first week of June, twenty years ago...

Mencius said: "The people are the most precious of all things.  Next come the gods of soil and grain.  The sovereign matters least. (14.14)

If the CCP took that sentiment to heart, it would not be so fearful of popular memory.  The Party represses because it places itself first, above and beyond the control of the people.  The only danger that might come from free and open discussion of the events of 1989 is the loss the the Party's prestige.  Indeed, through its repression, the Party has extinguished "the people," as Yu Hua points out in his NYT piece:

In China today, it seems only officials have “the people” on their lips. New vocabulary has sprouted up — netizens, stock traders, fund holders, celebrity fans, migrant laborers and so on — slicing into smaller pieces the already faded concept of “the people.”

But in 1989, my 30th year, those words were not just an empty phrase.

The Party has reduced "the people" to an empty phrase, with little substance in the lived experience of many Chinese people.  Perhaps last year's nationalist-Olympic extravaganza was the swan song of "the people;" the notion is now submerged in the globalized reality of class stratification, cultural fragmentation and niche marketing, and filtered through the twitter-fearing technologies of party-state censors.

But Yu is an optimist.  He ends his piece with an image of what "the people" might be, if given the freedom to express themselves:

Thousands of people were standing guard on the bridge and the approach roads beneath. They were singing lustily under the night sky: “With our flesh and blood we will build a new great wall! The Chinese people have reached the critical hour, compelled to give their final call! Arise, arise, arise! United we stand .... ”

Although unarmed, they stood steadfast, confident that their bodies alone could block soldiers and ward off tanks. Packed together, they gave off a blast of heat, as though every one of them was a blazing torch.

That night I realized that when the people stand as one, their voices carry farther than light and their heat is carried farther still. That, I discovered, is what “the people” means.

Their song, ironically, is the national anthem.  And perhaps that reassertion of "the people" might be possible, if Party leaders embraced the Humane governance of Mencius...

Kim Jong-il, please read Mencius

The North Korean leader should ponder this passage (as should all journalists tempted to refer to NK as somehow "Confucian"), before he makes any personnel decisions:

...Let no one hold office by hereditary privilege, and let no on hold more than one office at a time.  In selecting officials, select only the most qualified.  No ruler shall have sole authority to execute a high minister... (12.7)

Sonia Sotomayor: Confucian Gentlewoman

Conservative critics of Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, are irrationally fulminating about her.  One of their many gripes is that Obama stated that he sought a person who would be able to empathize with the individuals involved in particular legal cases.  As he said on C-Span:

And you know, I said earlier, that I thought empathy was [an] important quality and I continue to believe that. You have to have not only the intellect to be able to effectively apply the law to cases before you.

But you have to be able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes and get a sense of how the law might work or not work in practical day-to-day living...

How is that a bad thing?  My friend, Chris Panza, picked up on the clear Confucian resonances in that statement:

Obama is clearly asking here that a judge be capable of expressing shu [reciprocity] – he wants judging to incorporate (a) empathy and (b) he wants the empathy to function in a way that it has the judge “put him/herself in the place of the other.”

Confucianism is, of not, not alone in advocating ethical reciprocity, or "the golden rule" as it is known commonly.  This notion is a keystone in many moral theories, Christianity not the least of them.  So, why would conservatives go crazy over this? (I know, I know: their anger and frustration is not really about empathy or ethical reciprocity but ideology....).  How can anyone really reject the sentiment of Analects 12.2:

Chung-kung asked about benevolence. The Master said, 'When abroad behave as though you were receiving an important guest. When employing the services of the common people behave as though you were officiating at an important sacrifice. Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire. In this way you will be free from ill will whether in a state or in a noble family.' Chun-kung said, 'Though I am not quick, I shall direct my efforts towards what you have said.'

Indeed, it is something like this sentiment that Sotomayor is getting at in the now famous speech in which she uttered the "wise Latina" line.  When I read the speech, I understood her to be saying that wisdom was not exclusively the domain of men, that wisdom emerges from the totality of our lived experiences, not simply the impersonal application of a general rule.  How we judge will reflect how we have lived and how we have cultivated, in specific contexts, our moral empathy towards others. 

Think about that line from 12.2: "do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire."  It asks us to look into our hearts, to reflect upon our personal circumstances, and use that as a basis for empathy.  Yes, there will be certain universal human qualities that transcend the you-other divide.  Confucius understood that.  He believed that most people, most of the time, would love their parents and their children and want to do the right thing by them.  But how that universal human quality is expressed in particular social contexts will vary.  It is precisely because of that sort of social variation that Shun, in Mencius's telling, had to interpret filiality as not telling his parents he was getting married, an act that would usually be considered unfilial.

Sotomayor is rather like Mencius in this.  She is suggesting that the particular circumstances of her "Newyorkrican" heritage will shape her perception and understanding of the law.  That does not mean she will ignore the law or dishonor the law.  It means that when she is considering a case, as she looks into herself in an act of not imposing on others what she would not desire for herself, she will filter the law through her experience and circumstances in search of the best, most just, outcome.  That's something we all do in actuality.  And if you don't, if you mechanically and impersonally impose general rules without reference at all to circumstance and context, then you are lacking a fundamental sense of ethical reciprocity.

UPDATE: David Brooks, who has revealed certain Mencian tendencies in the past, comes close to what I am trying to say above: "It’s not whether judges rely on emotion and empathy, it’s how they educate their sentiments within the discipline of manners and morals, tradition and practice."

Reverse the verdict

As June 4th edges closer, Party authorities in China are clamping down on the internet and information.  I suspect Typepad, through which I publish this blog, will soon be blocked in China, too.

But the truth will out, as this story in Reuters suggests:

Du [Daozheng] has joined a small but bold undercurrent within China openly urging the government to renounce the 1989 crackdown, when hundreds of demonstrators and bystanders died as troops and tanks surged down Beijing streets on the night of June 3-4.

A group of Chinese intellectuals has disclosed it recently met on the capital's outskirts to urge an end to official silence about the bloodshed 20 years ago.

Their speeches are now circulating on some Chinese-language internet sites and through email.

"As time has passed, this massive secret has become a massive vacuum. Everyone avoids it, skirts around it," Cui Weiping, a Beijing-based academic, told the 20 or so participants, who included some of the nation's most prominent liberal scholars, among them Qian Liqun, a former professor at Peking University.

"This secret is in fact a toxin poisoning the air around us and affecting our whole lives and spirit," said Cui.

Du and Cui and Qian follow in the tradition of Menicus, speaking truth to power:

Prince T'ien asked: "What is the task of a worthy official?"

"To cultivate the highest of purposes," replied Mencius.

"What do you mean by the highest of purposes?"

"It's simple: Humanity and Duty.  You defy Humanity if you cause the death of a single innocent person, and you defy Duty if you take what is not yours.  What is our dwelling-place if not Humanity?  And what is our road if not Duty?  To dwell in Humanity and follow Duty - that is the perfection of a great person's task." (13.33)

It's simple: the Party leaders who ordered the army to fire on the citizens of Beijing on June 3rd defied Humanity, they are responsible for the deaths of hundreds and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people.  They are unworthy officials.  That is what the Party cannot admit, that is what it is afraid of.  The suppression of that truth creates the secret, the vacuum, the poison to which Cui refers.

Reverse the verdict!