The Useless Tree

Additional Thoughts on the China-Egypt Comparison

Following up on the post below, I notice that others have commented on the differences between the horrendous violence in Egypt in the past few days and the "Beijing Massacre" of 1989.   Matt Schiavenza, over at The Atlantic, adds some additional historical contextual points (Egypt is embedded in a regional dynamic quite unlike China's situation 24 years ago).  CDT had a good round-up of stories and links.  Both help to diffuse overly simplisitc comparisons.

A post at China Matters, however, misreads my argument.  The author there writes:

As to Mr. Crane’s assertions, I have a few comments concerning the CCP’s iron grip on power in 1989 (which, in his view, apparently makes the Tiananmen Massacre worse than the events in Egypt):

They are: the example of the Cultural Revolution…rampant inflation…widespread student and worker strikes...millions of demonstrators…leadership split…army units disobeying orders…worldwide collapse of Communism.

I am in no way suggesting that the Beijing Massacre (let's refrain from calling it the "Tiananmen Massacre") was "worse than the events in Egypt."  I make no general evaluative statement of that kind.  The rather simple point is that the PRC state is more coherent, more institutionalized, more durable, and more powerful than the state in Egypt.  And that structural contrast makes for a very different political context.  The China Matters writer can belittle this observation as much as he (she?) wants, but without a substantial counterargument (does he/she believe the state in Egypt is more powerful than that in the PRC?) it is simply empty snark.

I agree with the China Matters writer: all such massacres of demonstrators should be condemned.  What the Egyptian government has done is unconscionable; what the PRC state did in 1989 was also unconscionable.  The consequentialist logic that might be employed to relieve the CCP of its responsibility for killing some hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand, unarmed Beijing citizens, is ethically insufficient.  But it's not clear to me what the China Matters writer believes: should we cheer Li Peng for his nerve to do "what was necessary" to carry on with deepening China's ties to the world economy, widening economic inequality, and preserving growth?  I'll leave that to him/her.

In his/her zeal to overstate and ridicule my post, he/she suggests that I would characterize the current PRC regime as "totalitarian."  I have never used this term to describe the post-Mao PRC state (the Maoist era is another matter...).  It is a fraught term, rather vague in its empirical referents (though Hannah Arendt's analysis may still be the best).  To reject its relevance for today's PRC, however, does not mean that we cannot still point out that the state there is stronger (more institutionalized, capable, autonomous) than the state in Egypt.  We can and it is.

What we might be able to say at this point  is that the crisis in Egypt appears to be more extensive than what happened in China in 1989.  While it is true that the Chinese demonstrations were national in scope, they were not accompanied by armed assaults on police stations as is happening in Sinai.  It will likely be much more difficult in Egypt now to reconstitute centralized government authority than was the case in China in 1989.

Finally, a friend emailed me to argue that I was underestimating the extent to which the CCP did in fact face an existential threat in 1989.  He argues that the nation-wide protest was such a threat and, therefore, had to be "ruthlessly repressed."  I disagree.  I believe that the regime could have found a way of getting the students off the square and diffusing the situation without mass violence.  The terrible tragedy of June 4th was that violence was not necessary; it was a choice made by spiteful and rigid conservative leaders.  The military did not have to open fire as it did. 

If there is a basic similarity with Egypt now, it is this: explosions of state repression are usually the result of a longer series of prior political decisions, any of which might have been taken differently, averting catastrophe.  The ultimate responsibility lies with power-holders who make strategic decisions that close off avenues for peaceful resolution of political tensions.

Egypt is not China

Let me put on my contemporary Chinese politics cap for a moment to comment on the horrible events unfolding in Cairo.  I notice, on Twitter, that comparisons are already being drawn between the violent crackdown on Egypt and the Beijing Massacre of 1989.  For example: 

Number of people killed in Tiananmen Square: ~300 // Number of people killed yesterday in Egypt: 525.

— Anup Kaphle (@AnupKaphle) August 15, 2013

This creates both a false sense of accuracy and a false equivalence. The inaccuracy lies in the estimate for deaths in Beijing in 1989.  Quite simply, we do not know how many people died in Beijing on June 3-4, 1989.  We do know that most of the people who died then were killed by PLA soldiers west of Tiananmen Square, especially around Muxidi. Thus, it is best to call this the "Beijing Massacre," not the "Tiananmen Massacre."  Although contemporaneous diplomatic reports at that time suggested a civilian death toll of 180-500, the staunch repression by the CCP in the PRC of open discussion of the entire 1989 protest movement makes it impossible to know for sure how many innocent people perished.  It may be that the current violence in Cairo is approaching Beijing 1989 levels, but, in truth, we cannot know because the CCP will not let us know.

But there is a larger false equivalence here, and that is simply that Egypt in 2013 is very, very different politically than China 1989. 

To begin, Egypt now is much more politically mobilized than was China then.  The 1989 protests in the PRC, although they spread to many cities throughout the country (Nanjing included!), lasted only about eight weeks, from April 15th, when the death of Hu Yaobang was announced, to June 4th, or a few days after in some other places, like Nanjing.  Compare this to Egypt, which has been roiled by not only large scale protests for over two years, but also actual regime change.  This is a much more fluid and fraught political context than China in 1989.

Institutionally, the two places are vastly different. Civil society in China is nowhere near as organized as in Egypt; there is nothing like the Muslim Brotherhood, which was able to maintain a strong political network through years of repression and then rise during the breakdown of the Mubarak regime to become an electoral force, only to, again, be violently repressed. The CCP is much more effectlively proactive when in comes to keeping dissidents from developing significant organizational networks.  Conversely, there is nothing like the CCP in Egypt.  Mubarak obviously relied on the military for support, as does the CCP, but he had nowhere near the political structure that the Communist Party gives to China's leaders.  And Egypt now is institutionally disintegrating before our very eyes. The earlier regime change opened the political system to much more participation and mobilization than the institutional capacities of the state could handle (for those keeping track at home, yes, I am lapsing into some old school Samuel Huntington speak here... and here's Fukuyama applying Huntington to Egypt in 2011... )

The PRC state is much more powerfully institutionalized than Egypt's ever was. Thus, when the CCP called out the army there in 1989, it was an example of a very firmly rooted regime employing a small fraction of its well organized repressive capacity to put down a limited protest that did not fundamentally threaten the bases of state power.  In contrast, in Egypt we have what seems to be an implosion of centralized state power, with the removal of one ruling political organization but not yet the consolidation of a new regime.  The Egyptian military is lashing out against the previous power-holders as legitimate authority dissolves in street fights.

So, let's be careful with the comparisons (even if only in headlines). Egypt and China are two very different places. Nor should we rush to conclusions about what the violence in Cairo might mean for political change in other parts of the world.  Transitions from authoritarianism are often unstable and they sometimes fail.  There is nothing inevitable in processes of political transformation: they are driven by actors responding to particular immediate circumstances with varying strategic calculations. Thus, violence in Cairo today does not mean that political change in China is unwise or impossible. There are all sorts of political reforms that the CCP could initiate - living up to the existing state constitution being perhaps the most readily available - that need not bring an explosion of instability.  Quite to the contrary, if the CCP continues to resist poltical change, it may face its own crisis in the future.  If Egypt's problem is that it has changed too quickly, the PRC's may be that it is not changing, politically, at all.

East Asia is not a Confucian Region: The Survey Research Evidence

I am closely reading Doh Chull Shin's book, Confucianism and Democratization in East Asia, for a review that will emerge later this year (or early next).  It's quite good: deeply researched with a complex argument.  I wanted to note here, however, some conclusions from chapter 3, "Confucianism as a Hierarchical Way of Life," which may not feature centrally in the forthcoming review. 

In this chapter, Shin investigates, through analysis of public opinions surveys, how strongly people in East Asia (which he divides between those countries with significant historical experience with Confucianism and those without) believe in certain principles that represent a Confucian "way of life."  It is an examination of the social bases of Confucianism, as opposed to a more directly political expression of Confucian thought (which is the subject of chapter 4).  Thus, we can take this as an indication of the extent to which these places might be considered Confucian societies.

It should  be noted, at the outset, that the terms of this study are limited.  Shin is only drawing on certain opinion surveys (World Values Survey; Asian Barometer).  There are other ways to gauge the extent to which people in China and East Asia adhere to Confucian ideals.  But Shin's analysis is quite valuable in offering a systematic presentation of the survey data.

The key take away is: there is more bad news here for Confucians than good. 

Here are some of his conclusions:

"In  Confucian Asia [China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam] today, most people no longer feel strong bonds to the people they regularly interact with, including their own family." (92)

"...people in Confucian Asia remain attached, but not strongly attached to group life." (92)

"... all five countries are alike in that those who are strongly compliant with both norms [ren - humanity; li - ritual] constitute very small minorities of less than one-tenth of their populations." (94).

"When all of these findings are considered together, it is evident that the populations of Confucian Asia are far from being highly adherent to the ethical system that Confucius and his followers prescribed for the good life." (94)

"East Asia no longer forms a single cultural zone based on the Confucian culture of hierarchical collectivism." (95)

Shin does some cross-regional comparisons, with other, non-Confucian, areas of Asia as well as other parts of the world to gain greater perspective on "Confucian" East Asia.  Some of his key conclusions:

"... the culture of hierarchism, which early Confucians advocated, is a great deal more popular in other non-Western cultural zones than in Confucian Asia." (97)

"Most notably, Confucian Asia as a whole is more individualistic than any of the four other non-Western cultural zones including Latin America." (104).

He shows how Japan has moved further away from the old Confucian virtues than has Vietnam, thus highlighting the combined effects of modernization and democratization on cultural values.  And he foreshadows a point he picks up in chapter 4:

"Far more powerfully than education, the experience of democratic rule drives people away from the hierarchical way of life.  This seems to support the claim that democratization shapes cultural orientations as much as cultural orientations affect the process of democratization." (105).

Confucianism, then, is not an insurmountable barrier to democracy.  A cultural milieu, which may include vestiges of Confucian ideals, may well influence how democracy might emerge in a particular place, but it is not a bar to democratization.  Indeed, once people experience life in a democratic political context they are more likely to let go of Confucian beliefs, which are sometimes presented as being more sympathetic to authoritarianism. 

Keep all this in mind when authoritarian apologists try to argue that China or Vietnam are culturally unsuited for democratization....

"An Era of Lost Faith"?

A piece in Caixin about a questionable qigong "master," brings up a larger point, one that provides some insight into China's current cultural climate. In considering why successful business people and government cadres seek out spiritual guidance from questionable sources, the writer turns to public intellectual Lei Yi:

Lei Yi, a historian at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says that this is due to a sense of insecurity troubling China's political and business elite. They hope to receive some sort of blessing and turn to these "experts" for career advice and luck.

...

Lei said that superstition is common in all walks of life, but this "man of God" phenomenon among senior officials and businessmen is worth special attention. While the worship by entertainers can be written off as a hobby with little public influence, in the case of officials it reflects a paradox because they are the ones openly preaching and advocating materialism and atheism. These words diverge radically from their thinking, Lei said.

Ultimately, Lei said, this phenomenon showed that "this is an era of lost faith."

This is not at all a novel observation, but it is a useful reminder.  The roots of contemporary China's "crisis of faith" go back to the failures of Maoism.  For two decades, (roughly 1958-1978) Chinese people had to suppress their anger and frustration with, first, the mass state-sponsored starvation of the Great Leap Famine, and, then, the lethal political insanities of the Cultural Revolution.  Deng Xiaoping was smart enough to recognize that Maoism had to be jettisoned, at least in the economic and social realms, if people were once again going to believe in something larger than themselves. 

But the strategy of economic reform has turned out only to be half right. It has certainly revived the country materially and kept the CCP afloat politically, but it has not provided a basis of popular faith in broader civic or spiritual principles.  Indeed, this same point is the first premise of Jiang Qing's (and others) assertion that Confucianism needs to be remade into something like a state religion, a project that I suspect Lei Yi would reject. (Here is an article - pdf - that provides some historical background on attempts to make Confucianism into a "religion.") 

The intellectual and social anxieties mentioned by Lei are more than simply a "lost faith."  Business and political and social actors in China seek some sort of transcendent affirmation, but many of them are also search for a transcendent affirmation that is somehow uniquely "Chinese".  The "crisis of faith" is bound up with the crisis of contemporary Chinese identity.  Or so it seems to me...

But let's stop for a moment and, instead of analyzing the "crisis of faith," think more about what kinds of beliefs are possible in the world today.

I will throw out an assertion that, perhaps, not everyone will accept (critiques welcome!): it is simply not possible to construct a set of transcendent principles that will "unify" or "represent" populations at the scale of the "Chinese people". 

If we have learned anything about the dynamics of postmodernity, it is that such efforts, these days (and maybe always in history?) will inevitably descend into authoritarian repression of actually existing intellectual and religious diversity.   There simply cannot be "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic" church. There are many and they do not share the same beliefs.  Of course, there can be many  communities of believers but these communities are always limited, never universal, and they never scale up to truly fill "national" categories.  Not all English are believers in the Church of England.   Not all Iranians share a single faith community.  Globalized postmodernity powerfully reproduces diversity in belief.  There's just no escaping that fact of contemporary life.

If that is true, then how can there really be a Chinese "crisis of faith"?  When I wander about China I see many kinds of believers: Buddhists, Daoists, Christians, secular traditionalists, confirmed and secure atheists, and, yes, Confucians.  Zhang Xin is Baha'i. There are all sorts of possibilities.  What is missing is a singular or uniform template of faith.  But such a thing is really not possible in China or anywhere now.

So, maybe the qigong thing is not a sign of "an era of lost faith" but just the opposite: an era of dynamic finding of faith.  Some people will make some strange choices as they search for meaning within postmodernity (I'm more of an Daoist immanentist than a transcendentalist myself...),  We still have snake handlers in the US. But so what?  It is a shame that some people will get hurt or do stupid things as they search for meaning, but that is their choice.  As long as they are not hurting others or causing signficant negative social effects, they should be given some leeway to make mistakes.  

And eventually, the silliness of the claims of those qigong "masters" will out. 

Bottom line: the "crisis of faith" may only be a "crisis" for those who want to impose a particular faith on a broad population of people.  For everyone else, it is an era of freedom to find one's own faith.

Chinese Middle Class Aspirations

Just returned to the US after a three week China trip.  The jet lag is starting to clear, and I can finally return to the blog.  I wasn't able to write as I traveled because, at first, the pace of the touring was too hectic and, later, I was swept up in finishing and then presenting a conference paper.  A busy time.  Before I get to some socio-political observations, let me just mention the sightseeing we did.

The highlights for me, once we got past the usual Beijing-Xi'an thing, was our return to Hangzhou, where we hadn't been since 1989, the fabulous Huizhou region of Anhui, and the stunning Huangshan.  All of these places are well worth a trip for anyone planning a China vacation. Huizhou and Huangshan, in particular, provided a nice respite from the urban crowds and pollution.

As I traveled, and then as I stayed afterward to attend an academic conference, I sensed a certain satisfaction in the slices of social life that I observed.  Unlike my last trip, in 2011, which took me to a poor rural area of Yunnan, this time I was firmly ensconced among the urban middle class.  And, generally, my impression is that the urban middle class is fairly comfortable with the materialist opportunities it enjoys and, also, largely happy with the growing cosmopolitanism and cultural hybridity of the major cityscapes.  While the government and some intellectuals continue to worry about a loss of "Chinese culture," the urban middle class is quite willing to embrace social and cultural practices that cross and blend and erode national boundaries.   Let me give three examples:

1) The Wuxi Ladies on the Beijing train.  I took the gaotie (high speed train) from Shanghai to Beijing last week. And I should say, since this year marks the 30th anniversary of my first trip to China, that the train service itself is great.  Comfortable seats; smooth ride; efficient service. 

I was riding second class to see what the experience might be like for the average Chinese passenger (whom I realize is be better off than the average Chinese citizen, given the ticket price).  Three ladies got on the train at Wuxi, the first stop out of Shanghai. Two took up the seats immediately next to me and the other directly across the aisle.  They seemed to be typical of the rising middle class.  Here they were, on the fast train going to Beijing, quite literally socially mobile. Each had an android cell phone; the woman next to me also had a tablet: all of the modern media conveniences.  They stocked up on KFC before boarding.  My neighbor put a movie on her tablet, close enough for me to see and hear.  It seemed to be set in Shanghai, or some other high-end urban environment.  The characters were upper middle class: fashionable clothes, well-appointed living quarters, first-world problems, perhaps similar to the new movie Tiny Times (which I have not seen).  I imagine it is a lifestyle to which the Wuxi ladies aspire.

But they’re not quite there yet.  While materially advantaged, they were behaviorally rough. They did not feign a false female modesty but draped their feet on the small seat trays in front of them and schemed to get better seats.  Their sharp and direct Wuxi language, unintelligible to a Mandarin speaker, did not suggest the refinement of the traditional elite.  They are nouveaux-riches, perhaps not that  far from more modest circumstances: a marginal city block or, even, a dusty agricultural town. 

But they were completely nonchalant about the jumble of inter-cultural commodities they were using to define themselves materially: South Korean phones; faux French hand bags; American food.  I imagine that the cries of neo-conservatives, who call for the preservation of some kind of authentic Chinese-ness, would fall on deaf ears with the Wuxi ladies. They simply want new, good, fun stuff; and, whatever that stuff is, it all now transforms into a globally-informed and novel experience of Chinese-ness.

2) The Wushan Night Market in Hangzhou.  It was great to be back in Hangzhou.  And while there my daughter and I paid a quick visit to the bustling night market in the midst of the city.  It is a tight and hot and crowded place, jammed with stalls selling all sorts of things: clothes; shoes; DVDs; jewellery; bags; cell phone cases; cigarette lighters; you name it, they have it.  For me, it was reminiscent of the Temple Street night market in Hong Kong, or even the Shilin night market in Taibei.  Wushan is not quite as big and institutionalized as Shilin (I haven't been there in a few years...) but the energy was similar.

So what?  What does Wushan tell us about middle class aspirations in China more generally?  The idea of "emulative spending," which I hit upon after a 2010 trip to Shanghai, is apt here.  This concept is usually framed in class terms: the commodities - the brands -  consumed by the rich become the markers of upward mobility for the middle class, who buy certain items to emulate the habits and culture of the rich.  But there is also a global aspect here: Chinese middle class consumers buy international brands - and the Wushan market is full of real and knockoff global brands - to signify their upward mobility and cultural cosmopolitanism.  Wushan, then, is another node in the world-spanning network of bourgeois conspicuous consumption; it is linked, in this manner, not only to Hong Kong and Taibei, but also New York and London and Paris.  The Hangzhou middle class, just like the Wuxi ladies, create their personal identities through this kind of globalized consumption, and they seem to have no qualms about what this might mean for more traditional notions of "Chinese-ness."

3) The Henan Students on the New York Plane.  Coming home earlier this week, I found myself sitting next to two young teachers from Zhengzhou, Henan province. They were chaperoning 33 sixth grade students on a 10 day whirl-wind tour of New York, Boston, and Washington DC.  Summer tours and summer camps in the US are becominng increasingly popular in the PRC. Parents see early exposure to US society and English-language immersion as an important educaitonal advantage: it might help them get into better colleges and open up career choices in the future.  The tragic Asiana airline crash has exposed the dark side of this phenomenon: rip-off artists taking advantage of these parental desires with shady deals.

But the broader cultural dynamic here is the value placed on children learning English and gaining access to American culture. That is seen as a path to a better future.  Some of the opposite occurs in the US. We now have elementary schools that provide Mandarin immersion programs.  And that's great. But my sense is that the flow goes more in one direction than the other: America looms as more important in the Chinese cultural imagination and China does in the American. The rising Chinese middle class defines itself, and its children, in global cultural terms to a greater extent than does the American middle class (this is an empirical assertion, and I welcome evidence to the contrary).

What struck me about the two young teachers, and their happy students, on the plane was that they were from Zhengzhou.  When one thinks of cultural hybridization in China, Shanghai comes immediately to mind, or Nanluoguxiang and Sanlituin in Beijing,or Guangzhou.  But the process has spread much further in China.  Zhengzhou parents who can afford the price (which I assume is significant), are quite willing to find a way to expose their twelve year old children to America, because that provides a cultural and economic advantage.  Henan is moving out into the world.

Two thoughts now by way of conclusion.

First, I want to emphasize again the relative comfort with which average Chinese people experience the increasing hybrid nature of their cultural identities.  That, at least, is my sense.  And this stands in contrast to some conservative intellectuals who fret about preserving some other (more traditional?) expressions of "Chinese culture."  The Confucian scholar Jiang Qing comes immediately to mind here.  He's the fellow (that's right: not Mao's wife!) who wants to establish Confucianism as a state religion and also as a basis for a new constitutional order. His frames "Confucianism" as fundamentally opposed to liberalism, which leaves little room for cultural combinations and accommodations.  He is referred to by some as a Confucian fundamentalist.

Whatever we might think of Jiang's version of Confucianism, it appears that the Chinese middle class is not at all interested in what he is saying.  Jiang is searching for a kind of "Chinese" cultural authenticity that is just not possible under conditions of globalized modernity/postmodernity and, more importantly, holds little or no significance for the Wuxi ladies on the Beijing train.

Second, the middle class aspirations I have sketched above have political implications as well. Generally, my sense is that the people I observed were happy. The possibilities of new cultural expression drawn from a wide array of globally available commodities and practices are quite alluring. And for many people, these new cultural expressions can fit comfortably within a contemporary understanding of what it means to be "Chinese."

Also, the regime's formula for legitimation – trading material gain for political acquiescence – is still working. And I suspect it will continue to work for some time yet. It would take a very hard landing, an economic downturn that undermined the middle class's complacency. There will certainly continue to be protests and demonstrations, like the recent one that stopped a polluting plant in Guangdong, but those are essentially part of the system now. The regime can process those kinds of events without large-scale violence, and adapt to keep a step ahead of real political challenge.

Ironically, however, if my observations are correct, it might make sense for the CCP to accept a wider definition of "Chineseness," one that recognizes the inevitabilty of cultural hybridity in a global economy. Because it is precisely those sorts of novel inter-cultural identities that the Chinese middle class embraces most comfortably today.

It's Hard Out Here For A Daoist

A disheartening, if not completely unexpected, story in China Daily today (h/t Sinocism) on the ways in which the growing materialism of Chinese society is undermining the practice of Daoist religion:

Taoist abbot Yuan Zhihong has a complicated attitude toward money: He knows his temple needs funds to make ends meet, but the commercialization of religious venues is affecting their sacred status....

A Taoist for 31 years, Yuan said religious venues have received more donations in recent years as the economy has grown, yet he lamented that many temples have become profit-driven, which is contrary to the nature of the religion.

This gets at the sometimes contradictory interactions of the competition for wealth and the search for personal meaning in China today.  To thrive economically, a person has to seize whatever opportunities for gain there might be.  And, in doing so, a person may fail to cultivate and maintain more deeply meaningful human relations.  The market (even one still significantly shaped by the state) dissolves the social bases of humanity.  What was it that Marx said?  Oh yes:

All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

When faced with that brutal materialism, many people seek spiritual or religious succor.  Thus, as China has become more competitively materialist, it has also become more religious, and Daoism is one of those religions that has grown in recent decades.

But, as the China Daily story suggests, religious practice cannot always escape from the venalities of the market:

However, Li Zhijin, deputy director of the Hebei Provincial Taoist Association, who attended the seminar, complained that many Taoists now care about nothing other than money. "They ignore the disciplines and don't observe the rituals," he said.

During a 2011 memorial in Huaiyang county, Henan province, a Taoist temple auctioned off the privilege of lighting the first joss stick for 1.18 million yuan to an entrepreneur. The action led to a public outcry.

Wang Ka, a professor of religious studies with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said commercialization has ruined the reputation of many religious venues.

"Ticket prices for some renowned temples are higher than 200 yuan, which is unaffordable for many people," he said in a lecture at the seminar. "The religion should not be used as a machine to make money."

But as Mr. Wang and Mr. Li and Mr. Yuan well know, the Daodejing anticipates just these sorts of problems:

Understanding sparse and sparser still I travel the great Way, nothing to fear unless I stray.

The great Way is open and smooth, but people adore twisty paths: Government in ruins, fields overgrown, and granaries bare, they indulge in elegant robes and sharp swords, lavish food and drink, all those trappings of luxury. I

t's vainglorious thievery - not the Way, not the Way at all. (passage 53)

People adore twisty paths: a tendency still as strong today, if perhaps not stronger, as it was back in the day when somebody wrote down those words.  Plus ca change...

Elderly caring for elderly may be good, but it's not Confucian

A sadly familiar story - the declining amount of time and attention younger Chinese people can and do spend with their aging parents and grandparents - was in the news again this week. On Sunday, Reuters ran a piece: "Greying China taps rural elderly to care for those even older."  And this was matched by a CRI English report dated the same day (not sure who should be credited with the scoop): "Old-Age care recommended for China's rural elderly" 

In both cases the story is the same: migration of young people from countryside to cities, in search of better jobs and lives, have left many older Chinese folks alone in rural villages with only other less elderly old folks to take care of them.  The impersonal forces of modernization thus erode traditional notions of filial piety.  From the Reuters article:

More than 95 percent of China's rural elderly still adhere to the traditional practice of seeking old-age care within their families, Wang said. But families are no longer able to cope, with youth and even middle-aged people heading to cities to find work, leaving the elderly behind to fend for themselves.

The old Confucian notion of extended family care and integrity seems to hang on - that's how I would interpret the "95%" figure, which should not be taken as completely precise.  But reality has changed: "...leaving the elderly behind to fend for themselves."

And this from the CRI piece:

"Because the farmers are going to other areas to find work and make money, our village ended up with left-behind, lonely elderly people. They are alone and they feel unhappy. In this situation, according to the needs of the villagers, we organized the elderly people to get together to live to old age, to help and support one another."

An admirable pragmatism seems to be emerging from this heartbreaking set of circumstances: even as they struggle with their familial loneliness, the elderly are coming together in mutual aid.  The less old among them care for the more old.  And that is shaping up to be a "model" for elder care (Reuters):

Surrounded by green wheat fields that stretch across a flat plain, Qiantun [Hebei] is unremarkable among countless rural Chinese communities, but its old-age care model is now a prototype cited by central government as a solution to the daunting challenge of caring for a vast and rapidly greying rural population.

Yet even if this should prove to be a relatively efficient means to solve a growing problem, we need to note the obvious: this is yet another example of how China is moving away from its Confucian past.  

I take a rather broad view of what "Confucianism" might be in the modern world.  I have no expectation that, in order to fulfill a contemporary standard of "Confucian" behavior," all children must directly live with and care for their elderly parents.  That may have been the expectation one hundred years ago (two hundred years ago?), but it is untenable in a modern, globalized economy.  Younger workers have to go to where the jobs are.  Many, struggling in hyper-competitive labor markets, will not secure sufficient wages and benefits to take care of their parents in their old age.  What "Confucianism" would require in such circumstances, is that  you do the best you can with what you've got.

But the state of elder care in China today suggests that many younger Chinese people, harried by the uncertainties of (post)modern life, just can't focus on their parents.  They just can't live up to even a modified, contemporary Confucian expectation of actually enacting their obligations to their elders.  And, so, the elderly must fend for themselves.

We could cite many different passages from the Analects here, but let's go with one of the most poignant ones:

Ziyou asked about filial conduct (xiao 孝). The Master replied: "Those today who are filial are considered so because they are able to provide for their parents.  But even dogs and horses are given that much care.  If you do not respect your parents, what is the difference?" (2.7 Ames and Rosemont)

Providing basic shelter and food and clothing and the like is insufficient.  "Respect" is required.  And, for Confucius, that entails a consistent, even daily, consideration of the wants and interests and happiness of the elderly.  It's a tough job. The isolation and unhappiness of the rural elderly described in the stories above suggest that insufficient respect is being paid.

And, lest we think, this is a problem confined to the Chinese countryside, here is this story, from the All-China Women's Federation:

Across the whole country, there is now an estimated demand of 8 million beds for the elderly but there are only 2.662 million beds in all the nursing homes in China, which doesn't meet the demand at all.

In Beijing, half of the vacant beds are available in nursing homes located in remote suburban areas or are available in homes with poor facilities although they are located in more central areas. Vacant beds are not available in public nursing homes or in private nursing homes of good repute.

With the development of the economy and society and the changing of people's ideas on care-giving for the elderly, many families now have moved away from traditional ideas of taking care of the elderly at home, and prefer well-equipped nursing homes with good environment. Many elderly choose to live in nursing homes since their children are too busy or may be abroad and not able to take care of them.

This sounds very familiar to an American: children are too busy to care for parents; parents do not want to be a be a burden. And that is my point in mentioning all this.  I in no way intend to demean contemporary Chinese experience. Rather, my purpose here is to suggest that the Chinese past is not the Chinese present, and that the Chinese present is becoming more similar to the American present than to the Chinese past. 

I have on-going discussions with various friends and acquaintances on the extent to which we might be able to understand China as a "Confucian society."  I think it is not.  And the transformation of elder care is, I believe, a prime indicator that it is not.  There may be conscientious individual Confucians (i.e. persons who really do fulfill something close to a Confucian morality in their personal lives) in China now but, for most, the competitive materialism of capital-eque society and economy and culture make Confucianism an anachronistic shadow of a lost time.

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Organizational Psychology Confirms Confucius: Helping Others is the Best Way to Help Yourself

Just saw this piece in the NYT: "Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead?"  This graf gets at the main idea:

Organizational psychology has long concerned itself with how to design work so that people will enjoy it and want to keep doing it. Traditionally the thinking has been that employers should appeal to workers’ more obvious forms of self-interest: financial incentives, yes, but also work that is inherently interesting or offers the possibility for career advancement. [Adam] Grant’s research, which has generated broad interest in the study of relationships at work and will be published for the first time for a popular audience in his new book, “Give and Take,” starts with a premise that turns the thinking behind those theories on its head. The greatest untapped source of motivation, he argues, is a sense of service to others; focusing on the contribution of our work to other peoples’ lives has the potential to make us more productive than thinking about helping ourselves.

It brought one of my favorite Analects passages to mind, 6.29 (Hinton):

Adept Kung said: "How would you describe a person who sows all the people with blessings and assists everyone in the land? Could such a person be called Humane?"

"What does this have to do with Humanity [ren] " replied the Master. "If you must have a name, call this person a sage.  for even the enlightened Emperors Yao and Shun would seem lacking by comparison. As for Humanity: if you want to make a stand, help others make a stand, and if you want to reach your goal, help others reach their goal. Consider yourself and treat others accordingly: this is the method of Humanity.

To be truly Humane - 仁 -  we need to work to help others reach their goals.  We can't just "assist others."  We have to assist them to advance in their lives. 

And to think of it: it only took about 2,500 years for organizational psychology to confirm that....

American Daoism

Sometimes I despair that some of my favorite books - the Daodejing and Zhuangzi - seem wholly irrelevant to the materialism and competitiveness of contemporary American life.  And then along comes an article like this: Living With Less. A Lot Less.  In it, Graham Hill (no, not that Graham Hill, whom I remember from my childhood; this Graham Hill) writes:

We live in a world of surfeit stuff, of big-box stores and 24-hour online shopping opportunities. Members of every socioeconomic bracket can and do deluge themselves with products.

There isn’t any indication that any of these things makes anyone any happier; in fact it seems the reverse may be true.

He goes on to argue that his life has improved since he has pared down his possessions.  He lives in a 420 square foot studio apartment.  The last line of his piece captures a Daoist-like sensibility, though he quotes no Daoist texts: "My space is small. My life is big."  Indeed, it brings passage 9 of the DDJ to mind (Hinton's translation):

Forcing it fuller and fuller can't compare with just enough, and honed sharper and sharper means it won't keep for long.

Once it's full of jade and gold your house will never be safe. Proud of wealth and renown you bring on your own ruin.

Just do what you do, and then leave: such is the Way of heaven.

持而盈之，不如其已；揣而銳之，不可長保。金玉滿堂，莫之能守；富貴而驕，自遺其咎。功遂身退天之道。

Hill is a Canadian, but he is speaking to Americans, North Americans, more generally.  Indeed, he is speaking to the modern world, for the fetishism of commodities is embedded in global capitalism.  And, in that, he is showing, without explicitly meaning to, that Daoism certainly has something to say to all of us now.

Indeed, this message might be more apt than ever, at least in the US in the aftermath of economic crisis.  The economy is obviously bad.  Many talented people don't have jobs.  Most of us have to do with less than might have been the case a few years ago before the 2008 crash.  But maybe that is OK.  Or, as passage 22 of the DDJ states:

In little is contentment.  In much is confusion.

少則得，多則惑

Daoist Gun Control

The Daodejing takes a dim view of weapons.  Passage 31 begins (Legge translation):

Now arms, however beautiful, are instruments of evil omen, hateful, it may be said, to all creatures. Therefore they who have the Dao do not like to employ them.

夫佳兵者，不祥之器，物或惡之，故有道者不處。

This is not simply an anti-war message, though the Daodejing can be seen as generally anti-war.  The aversion to arms runs deeper. Weapons distort our humanity.  They take us away from allowing Dao to unfold as it will; they are instruments of coercive intervention that often do more harm than good.  In a well-ordered society, as in passage 80, they are unnecessary (Eno translation):

Though there be armor and weaponry, they shall not be deployed.

雖有甲兵，無所陳之.

Weapons bring out the worst in people.  They make us think that we can easily dominate others, take what we want without fear of reprisal.  They instill a false sense of power: yes, a gun would allow me to kill a person right here and now, and the fear of that sort of violent death may well cause that person to do what I want right here and now.  But this is a false power because, over time, that coercive force will reach its limit, or it may even inspire counteractions that are more powerful.  A gun may facilitate a victory today, but it cannot bring victories forever.

The wretched "debate" on gun control in the US misses most of this.  Gun zealots hold an impoverished view of society, one that presumes the complete absence of civility.  All they can think of is violent attack against their persons that they believe they can somehow prevent with a firearm.  They resist data that suggest gun ownvership brings an increased likelihood of accidental harm and suicide.  Due to the power of the gun lobby, advocates of stricter regulation are reduced to the narrowest proposals for limiting the availability of fire arms.  Thus, American society is flooded with guns, and grows coarser because of it.

Guns also undermine democracy.  Think about it: democracy requires freedom of expression.  Open, rational debate, with the possibility of peacefully persuading others of your position is the ideal.  Firearms distort that process.  The coercive potential they represent can silence people, weakening the give and take that democracy require.  Interestingly, although not a treatise on democracy, the Daodejing seems to understand this in passage 36 (Hinton):

Fish should be kept in their watery depths: a nation's honed instruments of power should be kept well-hidden from the people.

魚不可脫於淵，國之利器不可以示人。

This statement will not doubt enrage gun owners who resist reasonable regulation.  They will see in it a conspiracy on the part of state power-holders to dominate the population. But that ignores the prior point that state power-holders themselves should not rely upon weapons.  The point of passage 36 is that "soft and weak overcome hard and strong" (柔弱勝剛強).  Fishes find natural comfort in the depths; and people will find their best natural expressions when weapons are not ostentatiously displayed.

Americans can learn something from the Daodejing here: weapons weaken our humanity.

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