The Useless Tree

Reply to my Diaspora Fenqing Nationalist Critics

For the Record: one of the commenters on this post has, on another blog, accused me of "banning" him.  That is not true.  I suspect he ran into a bit of trouble with the Captcha system in Typepad Comments, and jumped to the conclusion that I was a hypocritical imperialist hell bent on suppressing speech.  As of this posting - 2/26/13 2:35PM -  the error has gone uncorrected, even though I tried to send an email to the person involved.  Just to be clear: I have not banned anyone from this post, and have never banned any individual in a systematic manner (In the past, I have taken down some specific comments I felt were inappropriate personal attacks)

I knew this was going to happen.  Was it George Bernard Shaw who said: "Never wrestle with pigs.  You both get dirty and the pigs like it"?  That is where I find myself now.  In my previous post, I criticized Great Leap Famine denialists, knowing full well that this would likely spark an attack against me personally.  And, lo and behold, like clockwork, it has.  I will not belabor this exchange, for there is really no prospect of any sort of meaningful outcome when dealing with staunch ideologists incapable of anything but stark binary oppositions, and I will not link to the site (don't feed the trolls...), but I will make a couple of clarifying comments.

First, the question of precisely how many people died during the Great Leap Famine is not settled.  It will likely never be, as I suggested in the original post.  There is certainly room for serious intellectual investigation into the issue of how many people died. I do not believe that all such critical questioning of the death toll is motivated by denialism.  But it is rather obvious that a particular subset of that criticism is denialist.  This is difficult for ideologically-  and politically-motivated people to grasp, because they think only in black and white terms.  So let me be painfully clear: not all critics are denialists, but all denialists are rooted in a political agenda that keeps them from maintaining an open and, ultimately, critical attitude. They are apologists.  

Thus, I do not view Amartya Sen as a GLF denialist, as is implied by my critics.  Sen is obviously a serious intellect.  I am a bit amused, however, that he would be invoked in this manner, since he is famous for arguing that famines do not occur in democratic regimes.  Although that argument has opened into a wide-ranging debate about the politics of famine, and there are ways in which Sen's analysis has run into problems (Zimbabwe, for example, turned out not to be as democratic as he first thought), his basic point is crucial to keep in mind when thinking of the Great Leap Famine: the causes of that terrible tragedy are rooted in the nature of the political regime, whether we call it "authoritarian" as Sen does or "totalitarian" as Yang Jisheng does.  The PRC political system, dominated by the CCP, is chiefly responsible.  I am happy to include Sen's perspective into the conversation.

Selective use of sources is characteristic of the denialists' approach.  In their most recent invective they continue to focus on demographic estimates, focusing specifically on possible problems with the 1953 census, in an attempt to discredit some of the larger calculations of GLF deaths.  On this narrow question, I accept the possibility that the 1953 census could be flawed, just as so many other statistical products of the Maoist era PRC are flawed.  But debates among demographers do not settle the larger question of how many actually died.  Especially when we have a growing body of archival documentation - not simply demographic estimates, but internal bureaucratic reports from the time of the starvation itself - to bolster our understanding. The denialists assiduously avoid these sources, obviously because they point inexorably to the worst sorts outcomes.  

When will they deal directly with the work of Yang Jisheng and Zhou Xun?  Until they do, they cannot be taken seriously.

The denialists also ask why I would make the comparison between the death toll of the GLF and the horrible effects of Japanese imperialism in China.  It is precisely because I see the latter as terrible, and yet, the Mao-led CCP killed more Chinese people than even that scathing inhumanity.  Serious scholars of the GLF cannot avoid that sad comparison.  Yang Jisheng writes (Tombstone, p. 13): "The Great Famine even outstripped the ravages of World War II; the war caused 40 to 50 million deaths throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa over the course of seven or eight years, but the Great Famine's 36 million victims died within three or four years, with most deaths concentrated in a six-month period."

It is precisely because the value of every Chinese life - whether victims of Japanese imperialism or Maoist radicalism - is significant, that such comparisons must be made.

But denialists cannot stand this.  They must defend Mao; they must resist the terrible truth in order to preserve the memory of the Chairman.  And those of us who would question Mao's culpability,  must be totally negated. Thus, they call me "morally degenerate".  This is Cultural Revolution language. The language of ideological motivation, intended to inspire repression and violence and elimination. That is the preferred idiom of the denialist: threaten in order to silence.

It must be rather frustrating for them, because they are losing this battle. Yang Jisheng's book was first published in Hong Kong, in Chinese.  It is banned still on the mainland, but it went through eight printings in two years.  It circulates widely in the PRC, in spite of the ban, and has become "...a legendary book in China."  Thus, Chinese people are gaining access to the truth that the denialists work to repress.  And Yang shows us that Mao bore significant responsibility for the mass death:

Those who deny that the famine happened, as an executive at the state-run newspaper People’s Daily recently did, enjoy freedom of speech, despite their fatuous claims about “three years of natural disasters.” But no plague, flood or earthquake ever wrought such horror during those years. One might wonder why the Chinese government won’t allow the true tale to be told, since Mao’s economic policies were abandoned in the late 1970s in favor of liberalization, and food has been plentiful ever since.

The reason is political: a full exposure of the Great Famine could undermine the legitimacy of a ruling party that clings to the political legacy of Mao, even though that legacy, a totalitarian Communist system, was the root cause of the famine. As the economist Amartya Sen has observed, no major famine has ever occurred in a democracy.

In Mao’s China, the coercive power of the state penetrated every corner of national life. The rural population was brought under control by a thorough collectivization of agriculture. The state could then manage grain production, requisitioning and distributing it by decree. Those who tilled the earth were locked in place by a nationwide system of household registration, and food coupons issued to city dwellers supplanted the market. The peasants survived at the pleasure of the state.

The Great Leap Forward that Mao began in 1958 set ambitious goals without the means to meet them. A vicious cycle ensued; exaggerated production reports from below emboldened the higher-ups to set even loftier targets. Newspaper headlines boasted of rice farms yielding 800,000 pounds per acre. When the reported abundance could not actually be delivered, the government accused peasants of hoarding grain. House-to-house searches followed, and any resistance was put down with violence.

That is undeniable.

UPDATE: a bit of further evidence that denialists are being thwarted by the historial understanding of people in China: this story about a People's Daily editor having to backtrack on a denialist claim when confronted by angry netizens on weibo. 

Great Leap Famine Denial

In my other class this semester, contemporary Chinese politics, we are getting ready to consider the Great Leap Famine.  In noodling around the internet in search of the any new bits of information, I have found several examples of what I will call GLF denialism, arguments that attempt to deflect attention away from the horrible fact that millions and millions of people starved to death as a direct result of state policy. 

I will not link to these sites, because I do not want to advance their project; moreover, they are an insult to the countless victims of the CCP's horrific assault on rural society.  But I do want to engage with a point or two that the denialists raise.

The basic denialist approach is to raise doubts about the estimated death toll of the Great Leap Famine, which ranges from about 16 - 45 million.  Notice that range of estimates.  It is fairly broad, reflecting the difficulty in discovering the truth in the face of an extraordinarily determined authoritarian state that resists the release of information.  Obviously, we do not know, for sure, precisely how many people died.  But what is incontrovertible is that the Great Leap Famine killed millions and millions of people.  Even if the lower estimates are true, we must remember that we are talking about a rather short period of time: three years or so.  We are talking about, as Zhou Xun (see below) suggests, the worst famine in modern history.

Thus, there will always be uncertainty about the true toll.  But GLF denialists are pursuing a political agenda: to protect Mao Zedong from bearing responsibility for the massive loss of Chinese lives.  They are not simply engaged in an honest search for the truth.  They are trying to obfuscate and divert.  We cannot let them.

One deniliast tactic is to suggest that "Western" media and scholars exaggerate the death toll of the GLF, part of a nefarious plot to weaken China.  An extended denialist critique of Judith Banister's path-breaking attempt to arrive at an informed estimate of famine deaths (she comes to the figure of 30 million) leaves us with a conclusion that we should not assign blame to Party leaders for the catastrophe.  The implication is that such high a number can only be a Western plot to embarrass Mao.

Now, Banister's work may well have certain empirical and methodological problems.  No single study is ever really definitive.  It is notable, though, that Peng Xizhe has done similar work.  But what the denialists avoid is the fact that those sorts of demographic analyses are far from the only relevant evidence.  What has emerged in the past decade is extensive archival research, pain-staking sifting through documents held in provincial Party offices, that has confirmed and detailed the worst of what we know of the GLF.  Yang Jisheng's work is central here.  As is Zhou Xun's.  Their estimates of the death toll are actually higher than Banister's.

And notice, too, that these are not "Westerners:" Peng and Yang and Zhou.  I imagine that deniliasts will simply say that they are traitors, selling their souls to the "West" to gain fame and fortune, or something like that.  Anything to keep from recognizing the grim truth that millions and millions of Chinese people died because Party cadres took their food away.

And that needs to be remembered, too: the deaths were not simply the result of "natural disasters" or the removal of Soviet aid, or some sort of Western plot.  People died because the Party, led by Mao, and abetted by the entire top leadership including Deng Xiaoping, took their food away.  Yang bats away extraneous rationalizations:

The government admits the fact that some people starved to death. Is mentioning starvation really a sensitive topic half a century later?

The government says the famine was caused by “three difficult years” (natural disasters), the Sino-Soviet split (of 1960), and by political errors. In my account I acknowledge that there were natural disasters but there always have been. China is so big that there is some kind of natural disaster every year. I went to the meteorological bureau five times, looked at material and talked to experts. I didn’t find that climate conditions in those three years were significantly different from that of other periods. It all seemed normal. This wasn’t a factor.

What about the Sino-Soviet split?

It had no impact. The Soviets’ break with China was in 1960. People had been starving to death for more than a year already. They built a tractor factory and that was finished in 1959. Wouldn’t that have been a help to Chinese agriculture rather than a hindrance?

        So what can account for starvation on such a vast scale?

The key reason is political misjudgment. It is not the third reason. It is the only reason. How did such misguided policies go on for four years? In a truly democratic country, they would have been corrected in half a year or a year. Why did no one oppose them or criticize them? I view this as part of the totalitarian system that China had at the time. The chief culprit was Mao.

That simple truth, that simple, searing truth is what the denialists cannot abide.  Mao does bear significant responsibility, not sole responsibility, but very significant responsibility.  And denialists can also not stand the fact that the more we know of the GLF - the forced starvation, the beatings, the cannibalism - by way of Yang and Zhou and other archival researchers, the more evident it is that the Maoist system was responsible for many, many more deaths of Chinese people than was Japanese imperialism.  That is is a horrible thing to contemplate, but it is likely true.

For those with about a half hour to spare, here is a clip of a presentation by Zhou Xun, talking about her new book:

Lin Xiling and the Necessity of Dissent

A new semester is upon us and I am preparing for this week's classes on Chinese politics.  On Thursday we will be thinking about the big events of the 1950s: the Hundred Flowers Campaign; the Anti-Rightist Movement; the Great Leap Famine.  I'm interested in dissent and how it was expressed and repressed at that time.  Thus, the Hundred Flowers Campaign is very much in my mind this afternoon.  I have been noodling around on the intertubes, looking to see if there are some interesting bits of information I might bring into class.  One thing I have noticed is the near virtual absence of English language material on Lin Xiling on the web. 

She needs to be remembered.

Lin was a student at Renmin University in 1957 when the Hundred Flowers Campaign entered its "big blooming and contending" period (biographical details in French, here).  She had strong revolutionary credentials.  Lying about her age in 1948, she joined the PLA when she was only 13.  In 1955, as a college student, she met with Hu Yaobang, who was then the General Secretary of the China Youth League.  By then, she was well versed in Marxist-Leninist ideology and, by her own account, optimistic about China's future:

``Those few years after liberation were a golden age. Young people were very pure. Everyone was full of hope,'' she says.

Perhaps it was that optimism, and a certain naivety, that led her to heed the call when Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai encouraged the urban intelligentsia to criticize the work of the Communist Party more thoroughly and openly in 1957.

Just for the record, I tend to accept the interpretation of the Hundred Flowers Campaign that sees it as a political error on Mao's part (MacFarqhhar is the best source here): he thought that the intellectuals would be generally supportive of the Leninist system he and the Party leadership had imposed on the country.  When that turned out not to be the case, Mao was caught out in an exposed political position.  He regained his footing by siding with Liu Shaoqi and others who had resisted the Hundred Flowers initiate from the beginning, thus initiating the Anti-Rightist Movement. 

In any event, Lin took up the call for constructive criticism in May, 1957:

Lin's ordeal started with a speech she delivered at Peking University in 1957. ``I went on to the stage and gave the speech without much thought,'' she pauses and sighs. ``I didn't know I was going to be dragged into such a tragic event. Once I was on that stage, I was to stay there for the rest of my life.''

It was May 23, 1957. Peking University students had declared the beginning of a democracy movement on May 19 and demanded party reforms. They had been inspired by Mao's speech that spring calling for intellectuals to criticise the party. The ``May 19 Movement'', as it was to become known, was the first post-communism pro-democracy movement.

Lin couldn't believe her eyes when she arrived at the university campus. ``All the walls were covered with Big Character posters,'' she says. ``I had not even seen such a level of democracy during the KMT years. It was the first time I breathed the air of democracy.''

During a raucous debate over a counter-revolutionary literary critic named Hu Feng, Lin was invited to speak. On stage, she said Hu's thoughts should not be crimes, and that the evidence against him was weak.

``I didn't know that the evidence had been prepared carefully by chairman Mao. No one was allowed to challenge him,'' Lin says. `That became my biggest crime.''

She went further than the Hu Feng case.  She understood the systemic problem of highly centralized authoritarianism, arguing on the fateful May day:

"True socialism is highly democratic but the socialism we have here is not democratic.  I call this society a socialism sprung from a basis of feudalism.  We should not be satisfied with the Party's rectification and reformist methods and the slight concessions made to the people...."

....Moreover, quoting Engles' theory that one country cannot construct socialism and Lenin's dictum that socialism is the elimination of class, she arrived at the conclusion that present-day China and Russia are not socialist.  She loudly demanded a search for "true socialism" and advocating using explosive measures to reform the present system. (MacFarquhar, The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals, pp. 140-141)

She was loyal to the ideology the regime had taught her.  She truly believed that Mao's "Democratic People's Dictatorship" would yield a more genuine democracy.  But by 1957 she had realized that actually existing Maoism was not living up to the democratic promise, and she called out the Party. 

For that she was branded a "Rightist" and imprisoned for fifteen years.  In 1983, Hu Yaobang, then General Secretary of the Communist Party, let her travel to Paris, where she remained in exile until her death in 2009.

Looking back on what she had to say in 1957, we have to conclude that she was correct.  Single-party authoritarianism was becoming more repressive and isolated from popular life.  Party elites were concocting utopian visions of "socialist China" that had little connection to realities on the ground.  Lin could see this; Mao was blinded by his own power.  The tragic culmination was a year away, when the Party veered into the "Great Leap" and started a process that would systematically kill tens of millions of Chinese.  The problem of the "Great Leap" was not some sort of policy miscalculation or communications breakdown.  The problem was that the Party took food away from people and they died en masse.  It was not "true socialism;" it was not "democracy;" it was hell on earth.

Looking back at those tragic times, I think of Confucius, who understood that dissent was required for good leadership.  Analects 13.15 includes this point:

..."Is there a precept the could destroy a country?" asked the Duke.

[Confucius replied]" "Precepts cannot do such things.  But they say: In ruling, there is but one joy: no one dares defy you.  If a ruler is good and no one dares defy him, isn't that good?  But if a ruler is evil and no one dares defy him, isn't that close to a single precept destroying an entire country?"

Mao would not allow people to defy him.  Millions and millions died.  He was, qutie simply, a bad ruler.

Although she would probably reject the comparison with Confucius, due to her revolutionary-modernist orientation, Lin Xiling, in her dissent, was doing more to save the country.  Had Mao, and the Party leadership, listened to her in 1957, the worst famine in humane history might have been averted.

Yang Jisheng is a Confucian Sage, and Mao Zedong was an Inhumane Qin Shihuangdi Wannabe

We hear a lot these days about the revival of Confucianism in China.  Some argue that it will bring something like political meritocracy and moral leadership to the PRC.  But these outcomes are fairly remote, obstructed as they are by powerful institutional structures and incentives to maintain the power, and perquisites of the ruling party.  The system is not meritocratic, it is fundamentally corrupt and in need of reform.  But examples of a more immeidate embrace of Confucian values are more readily at hand.  An outstanding example is the Yang Jisheng and his impressive book, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962.

It is an extraordinary and painstaking volume.  Yang amasses reams of documents and reports and testimony, carefully piecing together the painful loss of millions and millions (36 million unnatural deaths - p. 430) of people due to CCP-made starvation during the "Great Leap Forward."  The American edition of the book (the Chinese edition was even longer and more detailed) alternates between chapters on particular provinces, where the story delves into chlling specifics on political violence, hunger, death, cannibalism, and chapters that step back an analyze the structural and historic causes on the horror.  It is true tour de force.

What makes it Confucian is its introduction, where Yang recounts his witnessing of his own father (really his uncle who raised him as a son) dying of starvation.  It was April, 1959.  He was called home from school:

Upon entering our home, I found utter destitution; there was not a grain of rice, nothing edible whatsoever, and not even water in the vat.  Immobilized by starvation, how would my father have had the strength to fetch water? (4)

His father was by then beyond hope and he died three days later.  Yang, only 19 at the time, could not then see - as so many of his countrymen could not see - the larger poltiical context:

I grieved deeply over my father's death, but never thought to blame the government.  I harbored no doubts regarding the party's propaganda about the accomplishments of the "Great Leap Forward" or the advantages of the people's communes.  I believed that what was happening in my home village was isolated, and that my father's death was merely on family's tragedy....(7)

This is a vexing question: how did the regime survive after bringing so much suffering and death to China?  Why didn't people rise up and overthrow the power-holders who had killed so many?  Of course, starving people are too weak to revolt.  But, beyond that, the CCP maintain a monopoly on the means of communication, such that many, many people shared Yang's understanding: the problems were local, not systemic.  The party also found scapegoats, as Yang goes on to detail in other chapters.  Certain local officials were blamed for ideological and policy errors.  Some were punished, evene executed; others transferred far away from the counties where they had taken food from desperately hungry people.  Those higher up in the political system, the provincial and central authorities who pressed the famine onto the people, and Mao himself, were shielded from any blame.  Perhaps the real tragedy is that the massive evasion and deception, hiding the true reality of the national disaster from Chinese people and the world, worked.  The Party was able to shirk its responsibility for, as the introduction to Yang's book describes it, the "worst famine in human history."  

It was only after an adulthood of growing skepticism, and especially an epiphany after the massacre in Beijing on June 4th 1989, that Yang came to realize that the history and causes of the Great Famine had to be documented and told.  And he was motivated in that task by the memory of his father.  The book, he says, stands as a tombstone for his father:

In my effort to shake off deception, I came to understand the social background of my father' s death and to reflect more profoundly on his life....I thought that even though I was not a high official, I would erect for my father a tombstone grander than any  of those others.... My father's tombstone had to be erected not on the ground, but in my heart.  A tombstone in the heart could never be demolished or trampled underfoot.

I did erect a tombstone for my father, in my heart, and this book is made up of the words I carved into that tombstone....(12)

These are the words of a filial son, a man determined to redeem the memory of his father.  He carves the words in his heart, which Mencius tells us is the core of our moral being.   If you are looking for ways in which a Confucian sensibility is manifest in China today, Yang Jisheng's book is the best starting place.

And that book also reminds us of just how deeply inhumane Mao Zedong was.  There is a chilling passage in chapter two.  It recounts a meeting, the second session of the eighth national congress, where Mao gave a speech, urging on the move toward ever more irresponsible agricultural policy, laying the political groundwork for the famine to come.   Lin Biao, a sycophantic general, mentioned the name of the murderous first Qin emperor, and Mao responded:

What was Qin Shihuang? He only buried 460 scholars, but we buried 46,000 scholars.  During the suppression of counterrevolutionaries, didn't we kill some counterrevolutionary intellectuals?  I've discussed this with advocates of democracy: "You call us Qin Shihuang as an insult, but we've surpassed Qin Shihuang a hundredfold."  Some people curse us as dictators like Qin Shihuang.  We must categorically accept this as factually accurate.  Unfortunately, you haven't said enough and leave it to us to say the rest for you.

Mao was proud of killing his countrymen at a rate greater than Qin. And he would kill many, many more.  It is small wonder that as the news of starvation returned in 1959, Mao "willfully ignored" the suffering.  He did not care; he was inhumane, more concerned about ideological purity and political power than with the livelihood of the people.

Yang's book thus gives us a sharp contrast: the work of a filial son that reveals the full meaure of a depraved ruler's iniquity.  The son's care for his parents shines with Confucian virtue, while Mao's baleful masoluem, and the Party that still venerates him, stands as a cold and powerful obstacle to genuine moral revival in China.

photo credit

When Martin Jacques Fools the World

Couldn't resist the title, which came to mind after I read this recent BBC commentary by Martin Jacques: "Is China more legitimate than the West?" (his book is entiteld When China Rules the World) There are many problems with the piece, perhaps the least of which is its main thesis, but let's start there.

Jacques argues:

Now let me shock you: the Chinese state enjoys greater legitimacy than any Western state. How come?

In China's case the source of the state's legitimacy lies entirely outside the history or experience of Western societies.

This was less shocking than simply inane.  What does it mean to say that the PRC state is more legitimate than any in the "West"?  He gives us no definition or basis for understanding what he means by "legitimacy."  Serious considerations of the topic, remind us that legitimacy is not simply popularity.  And it's obvious that Jacques has not really done any sort of systematic analysis to back up his claim.  He's just throwing rather empty rhetoric out there to demonstrate his admiration for the CCP.  

But he gets into some historical trouble with that second assertion, that China is somehow "outside the history or experience of Western societies."  This belies a certain inattentiveness to both Chinese politics, from at least 1911 onwards, as well as international relations more broadly.  As Amitav Acharya (pdf!), among others, argued years ago: "...China uses Westphalian language to stake its  claims to territory and sovereignty."   Imperial China did not operate with the same understanding of sovereignty as the Western powers in the 19th century.  This created big, big problems that weakened the Celestial Empire's capacity to resist imperialist encroachments.  Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, Chinese states, both the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China have not repeated that mistake.  They have embraced the Westphalian notion of sovereignty as exclusive and extensive political dominion within a given territory, and they have used that concept to define and defend Chinese interests in terms very much within the experience of Western societies. 

And, yes, we all know that Westphalian sovereignty is regularly violated by the Great Powers that say they respect it.  We all learned this in our international relations theory classes, of which, perhaps Jacques needs a bit more.  The point is that the concept of sovereignty, as adapted from the Westphalian idea, matters because it defines a good part of the give and take, and hypocrisy, of contemporary international relations, China included.

But there are bigger problems with Jacques's piece.  Take this assertion:

...China is not primarily a nation-state but a civilisation-state. For the Chinese, what matters is civilisation. For Westerners it is nation. The most important political value in China is the integrity and unity of the civilisation-state.

He's taking an idea - China as "civilization state" - first forwarded by Lucien Pye twenty years ago and misapplying it by putting it in the service of a facile historical exceptionalism.  Yes, Chinese history is different than American or British or French history.  Yes, the idea and practice of "national identity" and "nationalism" arose in the West (theorists differ on where it started and when, but the modern concept is generally understood to have developed outside of China).  But it is rather clear at this point that "nation" is very important to "the Chinese" (is there a singular, monolithic "Chinese" experience?  I don't think so...).  Similar to the embrace of Western notions of sovereignty, many Chinese people, especially poltiical leaders and intellectuals, have worked hard, for over a hundred years, to define and reproduce various understandings of modern national identity in China. 

It is curious that Jacques discounts the importance of nationalism in China.  I don't know him, but his biography suggests that he was trained as an economist, with a focus on Marxist theory.  And that might explain his disregard for nationalism.  Remember: Benedict Anderson, in his classic study, works hard to convince those on the left that Marx was wrong in this regard, that nationalism is, in fact, a powerful political force, not just in Europe but all around the world. 

Jacques really misses the boat here.  Of course, other aspects of his argument have some merit.  China has gained a great deal of economic and political and military power in the past three decades.  And the PRC is pressing against certain international rules and practices that its leaders feel do not serve its interests.  But there is nothing particularly remarkable here.  Other "Western" powers have behaved in similar ways.  Moreover, it is not at all clear that China will "rule the world" any time soon.  It will be more powerful.  It will get its way in some areas where in the past it did not.  But global power is diffuse.  Capital in dynamically mobile. Advantages come and go, and that pattern seems to be accelerating as globalization makes everything - production, information, understanding - move faster and faster and faster.

Assertions of cultural exceptionalism thus seem untenable in a world that fragments and shifts and chages so quickly.  And nostalgia for a world that never existed is simply misplaced, as with this line from Jacques:

The Chinese idea of the state could hardly be more different [than that of the "West]

They do not view it from a narrowly utilitarian standpoint, in terms of what it can deliver, let alone as the devil incarnate in the manner of the American Tea Party.

They see the state as an intimate, or, to be more precise, as a member of the family - the head of the family, in fact. The Chinese regard the family as the template for the state. What's more, they perceive the state not as external to themselves but as an extension or representation of themselves.

This strikes me as the fluffiest form of faux-Confucianism, uninformed by serious engagement with Chinese history or philosophy.  Has he never read Mozi, the inspiration of an early Chinese utilitarianism?  Is he familiar with Han Feizi, who rejects the government-as-family metaphor?  Or the myriad ways in which family interests can clash with, and thus often take precedence over, state interests? How one could ignore the horrible assault on families and family institutions by a tyrannical state during the Great Leap Forward, and by omission assume that the memory of tens of millions of deaths is politically and culturally insignificant, is beyond me. 

So, to answer the question that Jacques poses, no, China is not more legitimate than the West.  Not, at least, until the CCP allows for truth telling about the worst famine of the twentieth century. 

The Chinese Political System is not a Meritocracy

Daniel A. Bell has a piece today in the CSM, arguing that the PRC political system is, basically, a meritocracy that holds lessons that might correct the flaws of US democracy.  Bell is a philosopher and he tends to operate in normative terms (i.e. what a meritocracy ought to be; what a democracy ought to be; how the ideal of meritocracy might improve democracy).  I do not want to engage with the normative questions because there is a rather glaring empirical problem: the current Chinese political system is not a meritocracy by the definition Bell puts forth.  And I think we could push a bit further to say that, in fact, the imperial Chinese system was not a meritocracy either, if we consider a somewhat broader definition of that term.

Bell gives us his definition of meritocracy right up front:

Political meritocracy is the idea that a political system is designed with the aim of selecting political leaders with above-average ability to make morally informed political judgments. That is, political meritocracy has two key components: 1) The political leaders have above-average ability and virtue; and 2) the selection mechanism is designed to choose such leaders.

He goes on to report that various methods of rigorous recruitment into the Chinese Communist Party have moved the Chinese political system toward this ideal.  But there is much evidence that leads to the opposite conclusion: that the very nature and structure of the CCP vitiates the possibility of realizing meritocracy.

I should point out here that various writers and scholars have delved deep into the study of CCP, and their work demonstrates that personal gain and loyalty to the existing power structure are the animating features of the contemporary CCP.  It is not about "morally-informed political choices;" it is about gaining power and advantage.  Richard  McGregor's book, The Party, and Minxin Pei's work on the "trapped transitions" are good starting points for understanding how the PRC polticial system actually operates.

To return to Bell, notice that his definition of meritocracy focuses on "morally-informed political choices," which is to be expected, given his normative focus.  We might also define merit more in terms of technical competence (i.e. promoting people who have the technological and scientific skills necessary to answer complex modern questions).  For now, we will just focus on Bell's normative definition; but we will have reason to return to the other definition later, when considering some broader, historical aspects of the issue.

Contrary to Bell's normative aspirations, the CCP is currently not an organization that recruits and promotes and rewards people for making the best "morally-informed political choices."  We can see this at both the top and the bottom of the political heirarchy.

The case of Bo Xilai, whom some will want to mimimize as exceptional, is quite instructive.  Bo rose to the top fo the political system, the Politburo, and was aiming for the very, very top, the Standing Committee.  He got there by building a personal empire of connections and payments and coercion.  He was quite willing to distort the law to his own purposes of personal power:

Bo’s enormous power as the top Communist official in Dalian manifested in other more sinister incidents. After Dalian-based journalist Jiang Weiping wrote three anonymous articles in a Hong Kong publication that criticised Bo for his role in a corruption scandal, he was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of subversion and stealing state secrets. He served nearly six years before he was freed and fled to Canada.

Persecuting journalists who are trying to tell the truth about corruption is not a  "morally-informed political choice."  

And things got worse, much worse, when Bo took power in Chongqing and initiated an anti-crime campaignto burnish his political image:

"The anti-mafia campaign in Chongqing wasn't based on the rule of law," says lawyer Li Zhuang, who represented an alleged gang member. "It was an anti-mafia campaign for political purposes. It overrode the law, it ignored basic legal procedure and it even violated basic human morality."

When Li first met client Gong Gangmo, Gong told him Chongqing police had tortured him sporadically over a period of eight days and nights.

"They hung him from the ceiling, so he could touch a table with his toes, but he couldn't put his heels down," Li recalls being told. "He was hanging for a long time, so he soiled himself. An interrogator took him down, and ordered him to clean up the mess with his hands, and wipe the floor with his shorts. Then they hung him up again naked."

It should be noted that Bo's trangressions were illegal and immoral by the standards publicly espoused by the CCP in it's efforts to develop the "rule of law" in China:

“Even by Chinese Communist Party standards, this is unacceptable,” said Cheng Li, an analyst of the Chinese leadership at the Brookings Institution. “This is red terror.” 

If Bo's police chief had not desperately run to the US Consulate in Chengdu to get out from under the scandal, Bo might still be in power, moving toward the highest office.  The internal workings of the Party had been impotent in the face of his actions.  It was only when the story broke internationally, and the eyes of the world were able to see the truth of Chongqing, that the Party removed Bo.

Bo is unusual only in the scale of his abuse of power.  He got away with a lot because he had a lot of power.  But at lower levels of the vast Party machine, the interests of power regularly contravene morality.  Again, when I say "morality" here I do not need "Western" standards, but standards articulated by the Party itself.  This is what we see in the Chen Guangcheng case.

It was local Shandong party authorities who held Chen without charge, beat him and punished his family.  They did so to isolate and silence him so they could preserve their local power and, they thought, their reputations.  Obviously, these were not "morally-informed political choices."

We could go on to adduce other cases.  Suffice it to say, if the PRC political system were truly a meritocracy it would not have to routinely lie and distort in its efforts to maximize its power, as it did in the 2003 SARs outbreak, and the 2005 Songhua River spill, the 2008 Siquan earthquake school collapse scandal, or what now appears to be dissembling and evasion in reporting the truth about the Beijing flood. None of these are indicative of "morally-informed political choices."

Now, it must be said that there are, no doubt, many well meaning and ethically upstanding people working in the PRC's vast bureaucracy.  But the system, with its powerful material incentives for corruption and self-interest, does not live up to Bell's ideal of meritocracy.  It makes me think of Gandhi's response when asked about western civilization: "it could be a good idea."

Finally, if we think in more technocratic terms, a meritocracy that centers on promoting people with the best technical and scientific credentials, we might also find the current Chinese political system lacking.  We could debate that.  But thinking in these terms leads us to a conclusion about imperial China: when confronted with the challenges of Western technology in the 19th century it proved to be incapable of systemic adaptation and, thus, was lacking a certain technical meritocracy.  Mandarins and gentry were too wed to the old order, they benefited materially and politically too much, to concern themselves with change.  There were, of course, some Chinese leaders - Kang Youwei, Liang Qiqiao, countless entrepreneurs and activists - who tried to change.  But they were thwarted by a system that did not promote people with the technical expertise required to understand and manage the transformations that the times required.  Political and personal interest reigned supreme.... Come to think of it, that sounds rather like 2012 as well....

Bottom line: US democracy is flawed. There may well be some aspects of China's experience that could be useful in thinking about how to improve US politics and society.  But CCP meritocray is not one of them because it does not actually exist.

(illustration from Pigs Incorprated)

The Northern Wei Dynasty Comes to Williamstown

For anyone in the northeast United States this summer and early autumn, you really need to see the new exhibit at the Clark Art Institute in my hometown, Williamstown, MA, entitled: Unearthed: Recent Archaeological Discoveries from Northern China.  The centerpiece of the show is a fantastic sarcophagus, in the shape of a small house, dating from about 477, during and in the geographic territory of the Northern Wei Dynasty.  This photo gives a sense of the proportions of the 8-foot-by-12-foot, 10-ton stone structure:

It had been buried in the fifth century and not excavated until 2004.  And it has never been shown formally in any museum, in China or elsewhere, until now.  Incredible that it is now right down the street from me...

There are also some great Tang Dynasty pieces.  Including this one of a foreigner:

That's what I love about the Tang: it was open and cosmopolitan, tolerant of many people moving in and out. 

And check out this dude, a tomb Warrior Guardian from the Norther Qi Dyanasty (ca. 550-577):

Indeed, there are short videos of several of the pieces at the Clark's Youtube page.  But none of those do real justice to the exhibition. 

Come to Williamstown to see some great Chinese historical artifacts! 

The Mencian Critique of the Terracotta Warriors

Word comes of a new excavation of even more terracotta warriors and figures at the massive burial site of the first Qin Emperor.  But whenever I think of Qin and his subterranean army, Mencius comes to mind.  And Mencius gives us reason to resist the hoopla and see Qin's megalomaniacal effort to militarily dominate the after-life for what it truly is: inhumane.

In the first chapter (1A4) of the book that bears his name, Mencius gives us this insight:

Mencius said, "In your kitchen, there is fat meat, and in your stables fat horses.  Yes the people have a hungry look, and out beyond, in the more wild regions, lie the bodies of those who have died of starvation.  This is to lead animals to devour people.  Now, animal devour one another, and people hate this about them.  If one governs as father and mother of the people and yet is not deterred from leading animals to devour people, in what sense is he father and mother of the people?  Confucius said: 'the one who first made grave figures - was he not without posterity?  This was because he made human images for such a use.  How then should it be with one who causes his people to die of starvation?'"

曰：「庖有肥肉，廐有肥馬，民有飢色，野有餓莩，此率獸而食人也。獸相食，且人惡之。為民父母，行政不免於率獸而食人。惡在其為民父母也？仲尼曰：『始作俑者，其無後乎！』為其象人而用之也。如之何其使斯民飢而死也？」

First, the image of animals devouring people is powerful.  It is directed at King Hui of Liang, and it underscores the inhumane effects of his rule.  He maintains a lavish stable of animals, and eats only the best meat, while people in the countryside starve.  His animals eat better than some people; thus, in effect he is feeding people to animals.  Disturbing...

But I want to highlight the last few sentences about grave figures - 俑者.  In Menicus's day, such figures were made of wood and they symbolized servants and others who would provide for the deceased when he or she passed into the after-life.  In some ways, wooden or, later, terracotta or ceramic tomb figures were an improvement over the earlier Shang practice of burying servants alive with a master.  But, even without that horror, Mencius is not down with tomb figures.

Making the comment (in the form of a rhetorical question) that those who invented (and by extension, continue to use) tomb figures are without posterity, Mencius is, in effect, saying that the practice is a self-indulgent distraction.  One who worries about who will serve him in the next life is not paying sufficient attention to performing Humanity toward others in this life.  Remember Confucius tells us (Analects 11.12) that attending to our responsibilities in this life should take precedence over thinking about what happens upon death:

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

"Might I ask about death?"

"You don't understand life," the Master replied, "so how could you understand death?"

季路問事鬼神。子曰：「未能事人，焉能事鬼？」敢問死。曰：「未知生，焉知死？」

Much the same could be said about Qin Shihuangdi.  He forced society to serve his desire for immortality, and his repression became the horrible standard of inhumanity for Confucians ever since.  And he took the production of tomb figures to an entirely different, insanely obsessive, level.  In effect, he led the terracotta figures to devour people.

Whenever we see Qin's vast fields of terracotta figures, we should understand it as a supreme example of un-Confucian and inhuame behavior.

Reply to Eric X. Li: Cultures are not Incommensurable and the CCP is not Confucuian

Over at the Huffington Post, Rachel Beitarie interviews Eric X. Li, under the title "Democracy is not the Answer."  Li, who describes himself as a Shanghai venture capitalist (which carries a bit of irony, as I will attempt to demonstrate), is a well known apologist of authoritarianism, author of such pieces as: "Why China's Political Model is Superior."  In the most recent interview he engages in a bit of facile Confucius-citing, so I figured that brought his arguments into the general ambit of this blog.  As you might guess, I disagree with him fundamentally.

Li's general project is to construct a kind of Chinese exceptionalism, to show that, whether in the political or economic or cultural realms, China is sui generis and, as the second title above suggests, superior to others.  As an American I am quite familiar with exceptionalist type arguments and, anticipating the Chinese nationalist critique that this post is likely to inspire, I state here that I also reject claims of American exceptionalism.  Whether American or Chinese or French or whatever, exceptionalist arguments are generally historically flawed, deeply flawed, and, bascially, intellectually uninteresting.

Let's go right to a big issue.  Li states:

...And cultures are fundamentally incommensurate to each other, as they have been developed under vastly different conditions, including hard conditions such as geography and climate. On the abstract end, one can claim we all want certain things, such as dignity - who can argue against that? Sounds universal? Yes. But what dignity means not only can be different but also totally opposite among cultures.

Incommensurability is a big philosophical idea, with various debates surrounding it.  In ethics, the notion of "incommensurable values" raises quesitons arising from the idea that: "Values, such as liberty and equality, are sometimes said to be incommensurable in the sense that their value cannot be reduced to a common measure."  I think this is what Li means when he says "cultures are fundamentally incommensurate with one and other..."

But this is where he goes wrong: moving from incommensurable values to incommensurable cultures.  These are not the same and the difference makes a difference.

Most problematically, Li does not define what he means by "culture."  And he provides only the crudest intimation of what he is getting at, something about "geography and climate."  Obviously, he wants to say that "Chinese culture" is not the same as "American culture" or "Western culture," etc.  But at this level of abstraction the invocation of incommensurability makes little sense.

The basic problem is that "culture" is not a useful category for discussing value incommensurability becuase  the value incommensurability problem exists within every category of "culture" that Li implies.  The tensions between freedom and equality, or -  to invoke a case that Chinese exceptionalists seem to focus on - between individual and collective interests, are common within "American culture" and "Western culture."  We argue about them all the time. 

To avoid this obvious reality, Li has to conjure straw men:

One fallacy in the modern Western political ideology is the so-called freedom of speech. It makes a presumption that speech, unlike acts, is harmless and therefore can and must be allowed absolute freedom....

A quick class in constitutional law would yield rather quickly the understanding that speech is not an absolute freedom, that is it limited in the interest of public safety ("imminent lawless action" anyone?) and other public goods (obscenity). Now, Li might argue that the parameters of free speech are wider in the US than in China, to which there are two responses: 1) this is a political, not cultural, practice that can be developed in various cultural contexts; thus, speech is freer in Taiwan than in the PRC;  2) within American culture there continues to be wide divergence among various groups on what appropriate limits on speech should be, with some American groups coming much close to a "Chinese" standard than others.  Value incommensurability, in other words, is not simply an inter-cultural phenomenon. 

The problem here, for Li, is the underdeveloped concept of "culture."  It seems that he wants us to believe that "cultures" are distinct and impermeable and unchanging.  And that is simply historically and empirically false.  "Cultures" (I put it in scare quotes precisely because of the variability of any specific definition of any particular "culture") are always, and have always been, dynamic and open and overlapping.  Li seems to recognize this when he writes:

This is not to say that aspects of alien cultures cannot be imported and absorbed. Buddhism came into China from the outside and became a major feature of the Chinese civilization. The success or failure of such importation depends on how consistent it is with the fundamentals of the host cultures, whether in its original or adapted forms. Marxism found deep resonance in China's Confucian egalitarianism and its modern features were much needed in China's desperate attempt to modernize. As such, Marxism's adapted forms have taken roots in modern China.

But this just killed his assertion of cultural incommensurability.  If Buddhism is imported and absorbed then it becomes a local expression of the more general category of "Buddhism," and that general category provides a measure by which it can be compared to other examples of the general category - which seems to me to be the very definition of "commensurability."  Same with Marxism.  Now, we can argue that there are important differences between Chinese and Soviet Marxism (there are!) but that discussion operates within the framework of "Marxism" which, again, provides a set of measures to draw similarities and differences.  Commensurability, again.

This shows how useless the term "culture" is.  "Chinese culture" is a collection of many, many practices and ideas and beliefs.  It is big and vast and complicated. Within it are its own instances of value incommensurability (which is one possible way to understand Chen Guangcheng's stance v. those who seek to repress him).  In its vastness, there are similarities and differences with "American culture."  Most aspects of "Chinese culture" are certainly commensurable with "American culture" or other instances of "culture" globally.  (I am not quite ready to say all instances of "Chinese culture" are so commensurable - I am open to suggestions for more specific instances of incommensurability operating at something less abstract than the level of "culture").  Here are two examples:

1) Scientific research.  We must recognize science as a "cultural" practice, in the conventional sense of "culture" as a set of orientations and beliefs and practices.  As such it clashes with other cultural practices - i.e traditional forms of epistemology; magic; superstition; etc.  Scientists in China perform research according to widely held views on proper methodology and reporting. They also perform it within a broader "Chinese cultural" context.  Science, much to the delight of Chen Duxiu, has become a part of "Chinese culture," in a way that it was not at the beginning of the twentieth century.   And they're good at it.  Moreover, they want to be good at it -  a Nobel Prize or two would be highly coveted.  They may have some rather small variations to the usual practice of science, such that we could refer to something as "Chinese science."  But, even if that is the case, there remains a rather well articulated measure for valuing the practice of science.  Thus, that part of "Chinese culture" that expresses itself in scientific research is certainly commensurable with other forms of scientific research world-wide.

2) Women's rights. In traditional China, women did not enjoy the kinds of legal protections that are now common throughout the world.  Indeed, the Communist Party made a rather big deal of how it was the liberator of women from the feudalistic, Confucian patriarchal exploitation of the past.  The New Marriage Law of 1950 was seen, wtihin China, as elevating the social and political status of women, ideally at least.  And today, women in China complain that their rights are not being duly protected, that the social and political gains of the revolution are deteriorating in the opening and reform period.  Whatever one thinks of these particular complaints, what is notable is that they assume a general standard of "women's rights," a general standard that can be used to measure the progress or backsliding of "Chinese women's rights."  Once again, we have inter-cultural - or perhaps we should say transcultural - commensurability.

We could go on, examning more partiuclar facets of "Chinese culture" to demonstrate commensurability with those same aspects of other cultures.  Indeed, the work of Longxi Zhang is interesting in this regard. But one really needs to be called out: economics.

I, for one, absolutely believe that economic life is  a kind of cultural practice.  Markets are based upon certain cultural assumptions and, as they operate, they change other cultural practices.  Contemporary China is a powerful example of this.  Perhaps nothing has changed "Chinese culture" as much as economic reform of the past thirty years.  And those changes have increased the economic-cultural commensurability between China and the US and the "West" and other cultural formations.  Yes, of course, there are differences in how the Chinese and American economies operate.  But mere difference is not incommensurability, which suggests no general standard can be used for comparison and judgment.  And we know, obviously, that every day business men and investors and traders and, yes, "Shanghai venture capitalists," work hard to find ways to make big piles of money from the dynamic pattern of similarities and differences between China's economy and other economies.  

Further, economics, as an intellectual discipline, basicially rejects cultural incommensurability.  It claims to be a universal science (a claim that I do not really accept because they take it too far, ignoring cultural differences within a broader commensurability).  Ask Justin Lin Yifu if China is economically-culturally incommensurable and I suspect he would just laugh.  

And there's your irony: if Eric X. Li was right, he'd be out of a job.  And the fact that he is a successful transcultural investor demonstrates that he is wrong in his assertion of cultural incommensurability.

So, what happened?  Li made too sweeping a claim to try to defend the political authoritarianism of the CCP.  He is trying to construct a grand China exceptionalist argument to wall off the Party from political critics, like Ai Weiwei and Chen Guangcheng.  But upon scrutiny his Great Wall of Chinese Expcetionalism crumbles.  And he is left with a rather bare political apology. 

To get back to the beginning of this post, Li also tries to argue that Deng Xiaoping was something of a Confucian:

In the Chinese tradition, an enduring definition of the end of political governance was articulated by Confucius two and a half millenniums ago. He called it Xiao Kang (as differentiated from Da Tong -- an unattainable ideal). In contemporary terms it can be described as a society of general peace and prosperity with a just legal order and built upon a righteous moral foundation. Interestingly enough, when Deng Xiaoping launched his reforms in 1979 he declared that the goal of the Chinese nation in the next phase of its development was to build or, perhaps more accurately, rebuild a Xiao Kang society.

It was probably no accident that Mr. Deng, in declaring China's national goal, did not rely on the modern Communist ideologies that were instrumental in the revolution that established the People's Republic, but rather reached deep into China's ancient tradition, to Confucius. Measured by the "end" as articulated by Confucius and by Deng, the current one-party state model has so far served China well, albeit with real shortcomings.

Yes, xiao kang is common in Party decriptions of economic reform.  But it is, in the words of John Wong: "... fuzzy and grossly imprecise, especially when applied to a transitional economy like China."  He goes on: "To an ordinary Chinese [xiao kang] may vaguely convey the feeling of being 'neither rich nor poor' or  buqiong buhu". Moreover, it is not a central concept of the Analects or Mencius, no where near the importance of ren or yi or li.  And it is not at all clear that xiao kang is a concept that differentiates Chinese developmental goals for those of other countries, or at least not as it is used in this China Daily op-ed:

The xiaokang idea came fromthe late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s and early 1980s while he was working on the country's developmental blueprint.

The government's goal now, for 2020, is to make sure that xiaokang is everywhere and the people are well-off, in a way that is similar to developed countries in the West.

Oops - that writer needs to read the incommensurability memo...

But the big laugher here is the implication that Deng Xiaoping was a Confucian.  He was not.  He was a dedicated communist-nationalist.  His highest priority was maintaining the institutional integrity of the CCP, which he guided as the country careened into the Great Leap Forward, and saw destroyed by Mao during the Cultural Revolution, and rebuilt after 1979.  It was the Party that he sought to maintain when he gave the order to kill hundreds and hundreds of people in Beijing in 1989.  Those main lines of his career have nothing to do with Confucianism.  Indeed, Deng was anti-Confucian in his willingness to use force to defend the Party.  Xiao kang is small beer in the fullness of Deng's political life.  He was much more interested in building up China's economy as the basis of national strength, something more in line with Legalist thinking. I think the turn to reform in 1979 was a great thing for many Chinese people, and Deng deserves credit for that.  But he was not motivated by Confucianism.

To be clear: Confucianism is a valuable philosophy.  We all can learn from it; we all should learn from it.  I teach it to my students. I think about ways it applies to my own life.  But it is precisely because I take it seriously that I reject its association with the Chinese Communist Party.  Were Confucius alive today he would reject much of what occurs in Chinese politics and economics.

Yan Xuetong, History and Philosophy

Sorry for the blog silence - lots of work and distractions.  But I'm back now...

Yesterday's op-ed in the NYT by Chinese international relations academic, Yan Xuetong, has sparked a great deal of discussion on listservs and web sites.  Manyul has already posted on it here, where I made a hasty comment yesterday.  Today I want to develop my response a bit more....

Yan's op-ed is a condensation of his more recent book, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, in which he plumbs pre-Qin texts for insights into international politics, since the Warring States period was essentially a multipolar political struggle, and extends that thinking to the contemporary world.  A good review of that work can be found here.  Yan's thinking is complex.  He is situating himself in the intellectual realm of international relations theorists, identifying himself as a "realist," but engaging in normative theory, an "idealist"(pdf!) project typically shunned by realists.  He is also crafting arguments that speak as much to the need for domestic political reform within the PRC as with that state's foreign policy.  Some interesting stuff there...

But back to the op-ed.

I am concerned that, in his realist-idealist mash-up, Yan conflates history and normative theory.  In speaking about the pre-Qin period, he writes:

It was perhaps the greatest period for Chinese thought, and several schools competed for ideological supremacy and political influence. They converged on one crucial insight: The key to international influence was political power, and the central attribute of political power was morally informed leadership. Rulers who acted in accordance with moral norms whenever possible tended to win the race for leadership over the long term.

China was unified by the ruthless king of Qin in 221 B.C., but his short-lived rule was not nearly as successful as that of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, who drew on a mixture of legalistic realism and Confucian “soft power” to rule the country for over 50 years, from 140 B.C. until 86 B.C.

While it may be true that many philosophers agreed on the need for morally informed leadership - Confucians, Mohists - Legalists, especially as demonstrated by Hanfeizi, did not.  Han was merciless in his critique of Confucians, referring to them as one of the "Five Vermin."  From that chapter of his book we read:

Thus King Wen practiced benevolence and righteousness and became ruler of the world, but King Yen practiced benevolence and righteousness and destroyed his state.  This is because benevolence and righteousness served for ancient times, but no longer serve today. 

Of course, Han offered counsel to, and ultimately died at the command of, the Qin king, a man infamous for his trampling on benevolence and righteousness.

What is important to note here is that the prominence of the ideal of humane rulership was limited.  It was expounded by Confucian intellectuals but not embraced by many of the actual rulers of pre-Qin states.  If we learn anything from Mencius, it is the existence of so many political leaders whose rule was far from the standards of Humanity he advocated.

Qin Shihuangdi was the most ruthless, inhumane of them all.  And he was the ultimate victor of the Warring States period.  His state, Qin, unified, by brutal force of arms, all the rest.  Moreover, the political structure and legal system developed by Qin continued on long after the demise of his short-lived dynasty.  In that sense, Legalism won the political battle, for it was Legalism that determined the structure of Chinese states historically.

I mention this to counter Yan's statement that: "Rulers who acted in accordance with moral norms whenever possible tended to win the race for leadership over the long term."  That is not empirically true.  While many dynasties from the Han forward invoked Confucianism as a moral justification, they all also relied upon Legalist means and powers to maintain state authority.  Never was Confucianism sufficient, in and of itself, to support a Chinese state.  Victoria Hui is helpful here (pdf!):

The problem is that the actual Chinese tradition is better characterized by Legalism than by Confucianism. Legalism is the nemesis of Confucianism, for it is single-mindedly concerned with the maximization of state power through strict regulations and cruel punishments in domestic rule and territorial expansion in external relations. But many Chinese mistake Confucianism as the single Chinese tradition because Chinese rulers ingeniously followed what Chinese scholar Hsiao Kung-chuan called “Legalism with a Confucian façade.”

In the second paragraph above Yan seems to recognize this.  But in his realist-idealist melange he leans more to idealism as a source of explanation (or should we accept his self-definition as a "realist" and suspect that he is simply creating a diversion to make us think that humaneness matters while the PRC amasses material power?... I don't think so.  I suspect he is simply historically un-moored in his idealism...) . 

Why did Chinese states "succeed" in their foreign policies?  Why did they become preeminent in the region and the pinnacle of a hierarchical tribute system?  Was it the attractive "soft power" of their Confucian ideals?  Or was it based on the power of Chinese militaries and the fear and prudence that power instilled in other peoples?  Yan does not focus much on the latter (so much for his "realism") but expects us to simply accept the former.

Don't get me wrong: I think Confucian ideals of humane rulership are great.  I wish leaders in China and the US and elsewhere would embrace them.  But I recognize the uncomfortable reality that those ideals have been honored much more in the breech historically, especially in China.  We cannot simply ignore the very large presence of military and coercive power in Chinese history (pdf!).  When the Han dynasty expanded westward, it did so through military means, as did every other imperial expansion in Chinese history.  Chinese states, like all states everywhere, have been founded on power and coercion, and we must kept that historical fact in mind when we are considering how the Chinese past might be relevant to the global present.

I worry here because there is a kind of Chinese exceptionalism to be found in certain intellectual circles. The idea is that China is unique historically because it did not rely upon military power in its relations with other states.  Nicola DiCosmo, in the introduction to his edited book (linked to above), writes about:

....the influential perception that Chinese culture was inherently indifferent to the gritty matter of battles and wars and consequently paid little or no heed to military topics.  This perception has been interpreted as a preeminently late imperial and twentieth- century product and linked to the concept of an “amilitary” or perhaps “demilitarized” culture (wu bing wenhua)....

It is this perception that Yan is, intentionally or not, bringing forward in his arguments.  And it is simply historically inaccurate.  If we are to take seriously his assertions about the contemporary utitliy of ancient Chinese thought (and I believe there is some utility there),  he needs to be more explicit about the realities of China's past, especially the power realities of state-building and empire-making.

I should add that I absolutely agree with Yan when he argues in the op-ed:

How, then, can China win people’s hearts across the world? According to ancient Chinese philosophers, it must start at home. Humane authority begins by creating a desirable model at home that inspires people abroad.

This means China must shift its priorities away from economic development to establishing a harmonious society free of today’s huge gaps between rich and poor. It needs to replace money worship with traditional morality and weed out political corruption in favor of social justice and fairness.

Unfortunately, I do not see any of this happening now.  The PRC regime is not addressing legal injustice (as depressingly made plain by the Chen Guangcheng situation), economic inequality or political corruption.  

I wonder, then, if Yan would agree that the PRC government should focus its attention on these very pressing internal problems and concern itself less with expanding its global power or pressuring Taiwan?  I suspect the realist in Yan would say "no."