The Useless Tree

Mencius Says: Donald Trump is Inhumane and Should Not Be President

When faced with challenging circumstances I turn to ancient Chinese philosophy in search of answers. And when the issue is a matter of political leadership I often find myself thinking: what would Mencius say? And so, here are some thoughts on the prospect of Donald Trump as President of the United States from a Mencian point of view.

It is fairly safe to say that Mencius would consider Trump unfit for any sort of exemplary leadership position. Quite simply, Trump sets a bad example. To start, his career as an aggressive, selfish, profit-seeking wheeler-dealer is a problem for Mencius.  Let's go to the text:

Yang Hu once said: "One who would be wealthy will not be humane; one who is humane would not be wealthy"  [為富不仁矣，為仁不富矣]

This is perfectly in keeping with one of the main themes of the text: how the pursuit of profit destroys moral character.  The very first passage of Mencius has him upbraiding a king: "Why must you use that word - "profit?""  And he expands upon the problem in passage 6B4, where he points out that invoking profit as a motive, even for a good cause like stopping a war, inevitably corrodes human relationships:

If you, starting from the point of profit, offer your persuasive counsels to the kings of Qin and Chu, and if those kings are pleased with the consideration of profit so as to stop the movements of their armies, then all belonging to those armies will rejoice in the cessation of war, and find their pleasure in the pursuit of profit. Ministers will serve their sovereign for the profit of which they cherish the thought; sons will serve their fathers, and younger brothers will serve their elder brothers, from the same consideration - and the issue will be, that, abandoning benevolence and righteousness, sovereign and minister, father and son, younger brother and elder, will carry on all their intercourse with this thought of profit cherished in their breasts. But never has there been such a state of society, without ruin being the result of it.

A person obsessed with profit-making will likely be a base and immoral person, unable to to understand more fundamental human qualities such as commiseration and humaneness and reciprocity.  In this, Mencius is very much following his forerunner, Confucius.  Remember Analects 4.12:

The Master said: "If profit guides your actions, there will be no end of resentment." 子曰：「放於利而行，多怨。」

This is not to say that all business people are, ipso facto, resentful and inhumane persons.  Rather, if one is engaged in profit-seeking he or she must be ever vigilant in resisting the morally bad tendencies inherent in profit-seeking. A business person must work especially hard to fulfill the key Confucian virtues of humaneness (ren) and uprightness (yi).

Needless to say, Trump fails in this regard. There is no one in the public eye more crass and greedy and insensitive than Trump.  He does not temper profit-seeking with conscientious care of others.  Shallow and garish and narcissistic materialism is his very brand. Thus, from a Confucian point of view he is inhumane - bu ren - 不仁.

For Mencius, it is imperative to confront inhumane leaders. In his own time, the Warring States period of Chinese history, it was all too common for kings to be swept up in egotistical pursuits.  And Mencius never shied from speaking truth to power and telling them they should get right with Confucian morality or give up their political power. The stakes were high (4A1):

Therefore only the humane should be in high positions. When one lacking in humaneness occupies a high position, his wickedness spreads to everyone. (Bloom translation) -  是以惟仁者宜在高位。不仁而在高位，是播其惡於眾也

It should be noted that all is not lost. While it is certainly bad to have an inhumane individual in a position of power, right-minded people can work to counteract his malign effect through constant public critique, which is what we will do.

Trump supporters might want to argue that we should not take his campaign rhetoric seriously: he was only doing what most politicians do in fighting to win office. But Trump is different. He has taken lying and deception and untruth to new levels, unseen before.  And, for Mencius, that matters, as suggested by Bloom's translation of 4A22:

Mencius said: "A person who makes light with his words is not qualified to assume responsibility."

Trump should not assume responsibility because he is, quite clearly, irresponsible and inhumane. Were he a conscientious and well-meaning person he would recognize his own flaws and step away from office.  But he won't; so, we will have to be like Mencius and continuously call out his inhumanity.

 

Two (more) defects of the "China Model"

 

I have been in a discussion, over at Parlio, with Daniel Bell about his book, The China Model.  It's getting a bit long and I thought I would post some of my comments, as a single piece, here, and then move on, in another post, to some other issues.  Here is some of what I have posted at Parlio:

 

    Daniel Bell's book, The China Model, has already attracted pointed criticism by political scientists. Andrew Nathan finds that the book “…is not an account of the real China.” Stein Ringen  writes that Bell’s analysis “…falls into empirical descriptions that are just bizarre.”

    I will state at the outset that I am sympathetic to these critiques . Empirically, Bell’s assertion that China is characterized by “democracy at the bottom, experimentation in the middle, and meritocracy at the top” is deeply flawed, and interpretive weaknesses ultimately undercut his normative argument in favor of meritocracy. With that in mind, I will try not to simply repeat the previous criticisms but add two points.

    First, somewhat less critical attention has been paid to the initial element of the “China Model,” Bell’s general characterization of village-level elections that have emerged in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1987. Although he recognizes that “…there is a substantial gap between reality and the ideal” (189), his condensed tag line – “democracy at the bottom” – leaves the impression that some sort of genuine democracy is to be found at the lowest levels of political administration in China. As is well documented by electoral practices in many authoritarian regimes around the world, however, voting does not equal democracy. Far from it. Bell’s thin evidentiary basis does make a wan nod toward the obvious restrictions on democratic politics in Chinese villages, but stricter scrutiny of local politics in the PRC leads inexorably to the conclusion that the jaunty phrase “democracy at the bottom” obscures more than it reveals about political realities in the PRC.

    Bell quotes research by Kevin O’Brien and Rongbin Han: “electoral procedures have improved greatly in the past two decades and a good number of competitive and reasonably fair elections have been held.” (Bell, 189) And he goes further to recognize O’Brien and Han’s key point that elections move toward effective democracy only to the extent that they yield meaningful change in how citizens, or their representatives, are able to exercise political power. But his brief recognition of the limits of village “democracy” misses the broader significance of O’Brien and Han’s work. Quite simply, they reject a procedural definition of democracy because “…democracy does not simply denote majority rule, but instead is usually seen to be a congeries of institutions that guarantees rule of law, separation of powers, protection of minorities, and protection of civil liberties” (O'Brien and Han, 361). Without such fundamental elements as rule of law, unhampered by Party power, and the protection of civil liberties, which are increasingly under threat in the PRC today, there is no real “democracy at the bottom” in China.

    The case of Wukan in Guangdong province, where it seemed like meaningful political change might come through local election but was later thwarted by higher authorities, is instructive in this regard.

    It could be true that village elections are creating a potential for democracy in China. To say, however, that at some unspecified point in the future, and after significant political-institutional change, democracy might be possible, is a very different kind of statement than the implicit description of China now having “democracy at the bottom.” At present, it would be more accurate to characterize local politics in the PRC as authoritarianism plus elections.

    A second, more general problem involves the role that meritocracy can play in political legitimacy. Quite simply, meritocracy, in and of itself, does not provide political legitimacy for any type of regime, authoritarian, democratic, or hybrid. Indeed, meritocracy itself must be justified by other means of legitimization, most prominently democracy. Bell recognizes this trouble: “The problem of legitimacy, however, can only be addressed by means of democratic reforms, including some form of explicit consent by the people” (150). But the obstacle is greater than he acknowledges.

    The problem is epistemological: how can we know that leaders who claim to be meritocratic truly are and will continue to be meritocratic? Passing an examination does not really answer this question. It only provides the briefest snapshot of a person’s knowledge, or the perception of his character, at a particular time. If meritocracy is a matter of selecting and promoting “leaders of superior ability and virtue” (2) then it is performative, not existential. A meritocrat is meritocratic only as long as he acts meritocratically.

    This is a very Confucian idea. Analects 15.18 reads: “The Master said, ‘The superior man in everything considers righteousness to be essential. He performs it according to the rules of propriety. He brings it forth in humility. He completes it with sincerity. This is indeed a superior man.’” The moral person performs goodness through focused and conscientious action, “ritual”: 禮以行之.  If you do not perform virtue, you are not virtuous.

    And how do we know if a leader is performing virtuously? We assess the effects of his or her actions, we look at whether or not politics and policies produce morally good outcomes. In terms of legitimacy, what appears to be meritocratic legitimacy is, in actuality, a proxy for performance legitimacy, how well a regime “delivers the goods” to the people. Although Bell wants to distinguish meritocratic legitimacy from performance legitimacy, in fact such a distinction is impossible. We can only know whether a leader is living up to a claim of virtue through his or her performance.

    Bell further argues that PRC citizens tend to value patriarchal meritocracy: “…the majority of Chinese people endorse ‘guardianship discourse,’ defined as the need to ‘identify high-quality politicians who care about people’s demands, take people’s interests in consideration when making decisions, and choose good policies on behalf of their people and society’…” (147)

    But, again, how do they know that their leaders are living up to this ideal? They must base their judgment on the outcomes leaders create. Mao Zedong believed that the Great Leap Forward was a good thing; he, and a large portion of the Chinese Communist Party leadership, believed it was in line with what “the people” wanted. It was, however, a horrible disaster which, though still muffled in Chinese media and academia, gives the lie to the wisdom of an elite who claimed a kind of “virtuocracy.”

    Of course, precisely because of the failure of Maoist revolutionary meritocracy, PRC leaders now lean on economic growth as the basis of performance legitimacy for the authoritarian regime. The expectation is that as long as a sufficient portion of the population believe that their material lives are improving, they will accept the political limitations of single party dictatorship. So far it seems to be working. Since the nation-wide protests of 1989, a serious challenge to the regime legitimacy, the Party has worked hard to maintain high growth rates. It has been helped in this project, first, by relatively inexpensive labor for manufacturing exports, and, second, by cheap money, as debt-driven expenditures boosted real estate development and other infrastructural projects. Under those conditions, after the government had stopped the economically irrational policies of the Cultural Revolution, hundreds of millions of hard-working Chinese individuals have built better lives for themselves. Although localized protests and demonstrations abound, the overall strategy still seems to be effective: the Party-state is strong.

    The problem the PRC faces now, however, is the problem any sort of performance-based legitimization faces: what have you done for me lately? Economic growth is starting to decline. Chinese capital is seeking better investment conditions overseas and Chinese students are flocking to colleges and universities in the US and Europe. The best opportunities may no longer be found within the borders of the PRC for those people with the means to look elsewhere. If more and more PRC citizens come to believe that the regime is not delivering the goods, will they continue to see their leaders as “high-quality politicians who care about people’s demands”?

    In the end, neither democracy nor meritocracy exist in the PRC, and even if meritocracy did exist, it would not provide legitimacy for the authoritarian regime. This is not to say that current political institutions are weak. They are not. The Communist Party has, since the passing of Mao, attended assiduously to maintaining its hegemony, and more than twenty five years of robust economic growth and development have provided it a certain performance legitimacy. What happens if economic growth falters further is anybody’s guess, but if that happens the invocation of “meritocracy” in China will likely elicit sharply sarcastic laughter from most Chinese citizens.

Thoughts on Yu Ying-shih's brief reflection on "Confucianism's Kiss of Death"

Thanks to Yaxue Cao on Twitter, I came upon some recent brief remarks by the eminent scholar Yu Ying-shih on the current revival of Confucianism in the PRC that had popped up on Weixin (wonder if it was taken down....).  The title of the post is: 余英时：大陆提倡儒家是儒家的死亡之吻, which runs something like: "Yu Ying-shih: The Confucianism Promoted on the Mainland is Confucianism's Kiss of Death." 

Yu is a long time critic of the CCP regime in the PRC.  Thus, it is unsurprising that his comments express a certain skepticism regarding how Confucianism might be used there now. I share a good deal of that skepticism, but I would raise a question with one aspect of Yu's approach.

First, his critique, which is captured in this line: 中国历史上向来就有两个[儒家]，一个是被迫害的儒家，一个是迫害人的儒家, which translates as: "In Chinese history there have been two [types of] 'Confucianisms,' one is the Confucianism that has been persecuted, the other is the Confucianism that has persecuted people."  The latter is what he refers to as "institutional Confucianism" - 制度性的儒家- the use of Confucian ideas by the state to rationalize authoritarian rule.  He points out that this was a powerful trend throughout Chinese history, but that it is not, to his mind, "genuine Confucianism"  (真正的儒家).  A more genuine Confucianism must embrace a high degree of critical consciousness - 高度批判精神.  Though in these very brief remarks he does not elaborate, I believe what he means here is a kind of moral autonomy, and a corresponding degree of freedom, to be able to make particular judgments about right action in very specific circumstances beyond the reach of the state.  Current political conditions in the PRC constrain such autonomy and genuine Confucianism is obstructed there.  Thus, for Confucianism to be revived in a context where its most genuine expression is impossible is the "kiss of death" - 死亡之吻 - for Confucianism.

I agree with analysis, as I have similarly argued here. 

There is one aspect of Yu's discussion, however, that I find problematic.  He goes on to argue that genuine Confucianism is compatible with democracy and human rights as they are understood in modern times, which again I agree with.  But then he asserts that ancient China had significant expressions of democracy and human rights as universal values.  He invokes, among others, Kang Youwei to argue that China of the "three dynasties" - Xia, Shang, and Zhou - was democratic: 所以康有为也就认为三代以上我们中国的制度是民主的...

I know what Yu is doing here.  He is trying to resist the pro-authoritarian argument that China has never had a significant historical experience with democracy, that the very idea of democracy is a product of Western imperialism, and, therefore, the only culturally appropriate political system for China is some form of authoritarianism.  This is a classic non sequitur, since democracy, as it is currently understood and practiced around the world, is very much a modern phenomenon and, while there are certain conceptual precursors, did not come into its own anywhere until the 19th and 20th centuries (remember: women got the right to vote nationally in the US only in 1920; and blacks were politically excluded for much longer).  This sort of false argument is quite common, and Yu knows he is up against it: his work is banned in the PRC.

But I think Yu's effort in this regard in ineffective both historically and politically.  Historically, it may be true that there are certain proto-democratic ideas in ancient China, most notably in Mencius.  Be that as it may, there is lots and lots of Chinese history that pushes in the other direction.  The imperial state was not democratic and "universal human rights," as they are contemporaneously understood, were not firmly rooted in the culture nor protected by political institutions.  I don't think Yu can win the "but China was democratic back in the day" argument.  

Furthermore, in political terms, reaching back to deep Chinese history will not overcome the authoritarian-nationalist position arrayed against Yu.  Better to concede the historical point and focus on modernity.

China now is not what China was in imperial times.  Too much has changed materially and socially and culturally.  Everyone agrees on this. The CCP is a party of modernization; it's most horrible actions, such as the man-made Great Leap Famine, were attempts to accelerate Chinese modernization.  Deng Xiaoping was a modernizer.  And modernization creates a very different China, just as it creates a very different America (compared to, say, the America of 1850), a very different Japan, a very different India.  And that creative destructive transformation does not stop.  That's what modernity is.

As such, the "moral crisis" that China now faces, that seems to necessitate a reconnection with its Confucian past, is not a function of Western imperialism.  It is the culmination of over 150 years of Chinese modernization.  Yes, imperialism started that process (we will leave Max Weber out of this), but China has been rid of imperialism since at least 1949 and the CCP has been very much in control of how modernization has transpired there.  The internal generation of calls for democracy and human rights are not a nefarious plot by "hostile foreign forces."  Rather, they are predictable and inescapable elements of modernization (I am not arguing that modernization is a singular process that unfolds along the same course everywhere; rather, I hold to a complex and pluralistic understanding of modernization as here).

Long story short, for those who want to argue that Confucianism, genuinely and autonomously critical Confucianism, is compatible with Chinese modernity, do not need to argue against the "imposition of 'Western' values" canard that authoritarian apologists are so quick to invoke.  Modernization is not simply "Westernization."  The "West" was not the "West" before modernity; and the "West" is constantly transforming within modernity, influenced incessantly by the experience of modernity in the "East".  China, too, is transforming, and the combination of economic and political and social and cultural practices and institutions that constitute Chinese modernity at any particular moment will obviously be different than the formations of, say, American modernity.

There is, therefore, no deep historical experience that might ultimately authorize genuine Confucianism in China.  Confucianism was viciously struggled against by Mao and it now faces a wholly unique modernizing context.  Whatever Confucianism might be in contemporary China, genuine or not, will not be what it was in the 19th century.  And the main thing standing in the way of the emergence of genuine Confucianism in China, as Yu reminds us, is the continuing authoritarian power of the CCP.  As long as that power remains unchanged, the prospects for a Confucianism of a high degree of critical consciousness in China are oppressive.

Hong Kong and the Mandate of Heaven

I have been totally captivated by the extraordinary events in Hong Kong this past week.  Twitter has been my medium of choice, allowing, as it does, real time contact with people on the scene.  Here are some thoughts.

Having followed Hong Kong politics intermittently for the past thirty years, I am not at all surprised that at the critical moment the PRC leadership would resist the creation of an electoral system that might allow a party beyond CCP control to gain the Chief Executive position.  At the end of the day, Xi and company quite obviously take the maintenance of single party hegemony as their number one task.  And they will not let Hong Kong, however remote it may be politically from the PRC, become an example of what might be possible for opposition within the strictures of NPC sovereignty. 

I am also not surprised that a politically significant portion of the Hong Kong population would now reject CCP limitation on their right to select the candidate of their choice for CE.  Hong Kong is a sophisticated city.  People there are used to certain civil and political liberties, and they know very well that the CCP wants to restrict those very things.  PRC-instigated efforts to impose a draconian "security law" in 2003 and a more "patriotic" school curriculum in 2012 have only served to heighten anxiety in Hong Kong over a tightening of CCP control.  Indeed, the ham-handed efforts of pro-Beijing HK leaders have had quite the opposite effect: contributing to the rise of a distinct "Hong Kong" identity, over and against a "PRC" identity.  Here is a summary statement from this year's Hong Kong University Pulbic Opinion Programme poll on ethnic identity:

The survey finds that in terms of absolute rating, the strength rating of “Hongkongers” has significantly increased, that of “Chinese” and “citizens of the PRC” have significantly dropped to their respective record low since 1997 and 2007...

More and more Hong Kong people see themselves as distinct from those they understand as "Chinese" and "citizens of the PRC."  And that shift in identity helps us understand the very strong desire for self-determination and self-government demonstrated by the mass protests of the past several days.

My sense is that the identity poll reflects the political or civic aspect of what "Hongkonger" means.  Hong Kong people are different from mainland Chinese people because they share a common political life that is freer and more open than that in the PRC.  We often think of "Chinese" as simply an expression of a cultural group (which is also problematic, since "Chinese culture" is quite diverse), but in this context I think it has a more of a political connotation because, in fact, Hong Kong is culturally "Chinese" while it is simultaneously politically "Hong Kong."  James Palmer gets at this point nicely:

....the truth is that Hong Kong is in many ways more Chinese these days than mainland China. That might be what scares the authorities so much. The shrines and altars that dot Hong Kong speak to the richness of Chinese custom, annihilated between 1949 and 1976 in the mainland...

It is fashionable now for PRC officials, including Xi Jinping, to drape themselves in traditional Chinese cultural rhetoric.  They pepper their speeches with references to Confucius, while maintaining a most un-Confucian political regime.  They are desperate to keep Hong Kong in line but when they press too hard they reveal their old-school Leninist core, illustrating to people in Hong Kong, who well know what "Chinese culture" is, that they are upholding neither traditional Chinese values nor modern Hong Kong liberties.

The faux-Confucian PRC leadership thus legitimates a genuinely Confucian critique of their actions in Hong  Kong.  And that critique is aptly provided by Chris Fraser, professor of Chinese philosophy at Hong Kong University.   He gave some remarks to the gathered protesters in Admirality on October 1, and he brought Mencius (Mengzi) into the discussion:

 How do we know how well a leader is fulfilling his responsibility and maintaining his mandate? For Mengzi, the people do not choose their leaders or run their own government. But public approval or disapproval serves as an indicator, or a gauge, of how well the leadership are doing their jobs.

 You might argue that public demonstrations such as this week’s are just the sort of thing Mengzi is talking about. When tens of thousands of people pour into the street day after day in frustration, this is a sign that the leader is failing and his mandate is weak.

When he says that, for Menicus, the "people do not choose their leaders" he is simply making an historical observation: people in ancient China did not choose their leaders.  This is not to suggest that Mencius cannot be relevant to modern democracy; quite the contrary, Menicus has been an inspiration to various East Asian democratizers.  And one of ways that the old text applies to what is happening in Hong Kong right now, is what Fraser points to: the mere fact of massive public protest is a sign that the leadership - and that means the Beijing leadership - has lost the mandate of the people.

And we can take it one Mencian step further: since the people are the eyes and ears of Heaven, it is plain the regime has not only lost the mandate of the people, but also the mandate of heaven.

Mozi on the House Republicans

Yesterday, as I was watching the political debacle in DC unfold on my Twitter feed, I was simultaneously proof-reading a piece for the upcoming Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography. I have written an entry for Mozi, the great pre-Qin philosopher who inspired a significant school of thought, Mohism.  I should say right up front that I am not a Mohist. Their politics are overly authoritarian for my tastes; but I am fascinated by Mozi: how he developed a utilitarian and empiricist philosophy - quite an alternative to Confucianism - but also how he fell into utter irrelevance after the Qin dynasty.  Maybe they should make a movie about him...

In any event, there was John Boehner, going down to crushing defeat as the Republican caucus in the House fractured into factional in-fighting.  The center did not hold because there was no center, just small groups of self-interested political actors driven by narrow ideological concerns.  "Herding cats" hardly captures the chaos.  And then my eyes shifted to this passage from Mozi:

Master Mo Zi spoke, saying: “Ancient times, when people first came into being, were times when there were as yet no laws or government, so it was said that people had differing principles. This meant that, if there was one person, there was one principle; if there were two people, there were two principles; and if there were ten people, there were ten principles. The more people there were, the more things there were that were spoken of as principles. This was a case of people affirming their own principles and condemning those of other people. The consequence of this was mutual condemnation. In this way, within a household, father and sons, and older and younger brothers were resentful and hostile, separated and dispersed, and unable to reach agreement and accord with each other. Throughout the world, people all used water and fire, and poisons and potions to injure and harm one another. As a result, those with strength to spare did not use it to help each other in their work, surplus goods rotted and decayed and were not used for mutual distribution, and good doctrines were hidden and obscured and not used for mutual teaching. So the world was in a state of disorder comparable to that amongst the birds and beasts. (Johnston, 91)

Pretty much captures the extraordinary ineptitude of the contemporary Republican party: "The more people there were, the more things there were that were spoken of as principles. This was a case of people affirming their own principles and condemning those of other people." Perhaps we should subject these people to the kinds of punishment Mozi also recommended:

Those who were unworthy [were] curbed and demoted, impoverishing them and debasing them by making them followers and servants. (Johnston, 63)

Does Ted Cruz do windows?  He should....

How Bo Xilai might emerge as a Latter Day Confucian Hero

OK, this is a bit far-fetched, but bear with me....

I have been absorbed these past two days with the Bo Xilai trial (an 18 minute video backgrounder by WSJ here). On Wednesday night (Thursday morning Jinan time) I followed various twitter feeds and live blogs as Bo took the stand and rejected the charges against him.  He described the testimony of one prosecution witness as: "...the ugly performance of a person selling his soul.” And today (Friday, August 23rd), when confronted with an 11 minute video of his wife providing evidence against him, he brusquely dismissed her: "...she’s crazy, she always tells lies.”  Bo is obviously not going quietly.

And this raises all sorts of questions about what is going on here. On the face of it, it is hard to believe that the Party leadership is happy with this turn of events. The case is revealing seamy details of how the CCP elite uses its power to amass and conceal vast wealth.  And Bo is not simply admitting that he is some sort of bad apple (the Neil Heywood murder was pinned on his wife).  He is rejecting the very idea that he has committed any offenses here and, in doing so, is suggesting that he is not so different than Xi Jinping or Wen Jiabao.  Indeed, the discomfort of the powers-that-be might have been expressed in the variation in access to information.  On the first day of trial, the local court provided regular Weibo tweets and timely transcripts.  On the second day, information was more tightly controlled.  Perhaps some worries in Zhongnanhai?

It is also hard to believe that the orchestrators of this extraordinary bit of political theater were not aware that Bo would be defiant.  And if they did know that, what did they think they were going to gain politically from the image of an unbowed Bo beaming out to the world?  It is likely that Bo's stature among his many Maoist-esque sympathisers is only growing stronger from this performance.

So, the politics of all this are far from settled. There is much here that will be re-imagined and reincarnated in the future.  It's all rather sordid and corrupt.  Hard to see how anyone in the PRC leadership, especially Bo himself, comes out of this a hero. But it's possible.

In striking a pose of defiance, Bo has taken the first step toward redemption.  He is rejecting the idea that he is somehow different from others at the very top of the power heirarchy.  But to gain the upper hand in moral-political terms, he has to take another step: assert that his fall has transformed him.  If he comes out and says something like: "yes, now I see how immoral this entire lifestyle has been and I reject it and will live a simpler, more upright life from here on."  And if he follows that with a call for all of the other corrupt high officials to also renounce their abuses of power and embrace righteousness, he could retain his political viability.  He would be the man who changed, the elite politician who had reveled in the fruits of corruption but who now is tranformed by adversity into the one honest man at the top.  And if he did that he could call on some Confucian imagery to help him along.

Redemptive transformation is a key aspect of Confucian moral theory.  We all struggle as we work to do the right thing in the world. We all make mistakes, we all do wrong at various times.  But the whole point of Confucianism is perfectibility: we can do good again. If we recognize our past and current transgressions, we can do better moving forward. This is why Confucius and Mencius tirelessly preached to the political elites of their day: they believed that corrupt and devious power-holders could be shown the folly of their ways and be turned to right action.

Both Confucius and Mencius point out that the sages of old made mistakes, but when they did err, they owned up publicly.   Here is Analects 19.21 (Hinton):

Adept Kung said: "Mistakes of the noble-minded are like eclipses of sun and moon: they make a mistake, and it's there for everyone to see; they make it right, and everyone looks up in awe."

子貢曰：「君子之過也，如日月之食焉：過也，人皆見之；更也，人皆仰之。」

This image is repeated in Mencius 2B.9 (we might take such repetitions as a kind of emphasis). When asked by a follower, "Then even sages make mistakes?", Mencius is said to have replied (Bloom):

"...when the noble persons of antiquity made mistakes, they corrected them, whereas the noble persons of today persist in their errors. The mistakes of the noble persons of antiquity were like eclipses of the sun and moon. The people could all see them.  Once they had corrected their mistakes, the people looked up to them.  And do the noble persons of today only persist in their mistakes?  No, they also go on to make excuses for them."

That is a possibility that presents itself to Bo Xilai now: he could distinguish himself from the "noble persons of today" (the irony of Mencius is palpable...), who not only persist in their corruption but make excuses for it, by correcting his faults and gaining a certain moral charisma.  The people would look up to him.

Self-rectification is a hallmark of Confucian leadership, as per Analects 13.6 (Hinton):

The Master said: "A ruler who has rectified himself never gives orders, and all goes well. A ruler who has not rectified himself gives orders, and the people never follow them."

子曰：「苟正其身矣，於從政乎何有？不能正其身，如正人何？」

But to become that guy, that guy who others want to follow without orders, Bo needs to make a public display of his moral transfomation.  He needs to go large in owning up to the immorality of his earlier life, like an eclipse of the sun.  It's not clear if he will be that guy.  His personality might keep him from accepting such humiliation.  But the political payoff could be significant.

OK, it may seem strange that a sleazy Party boss who had been positioning himself as a political heir to Mao (singing red songs and all that) might be recreated as a Confucian gentleman.  But similarly strained analogies have taken hold in China's not too distant past.  Peng Dehuai, a hardened revolutionary general who had supported the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957, spoke truth to power against the Maoist insantiy of the Great Leap Forward in 1959 and was later lionized a a latter day Hai Rui. 

The circumstances now are quite different, and it's hard to see Bo as a contemporary avatar of Hai Rui, but Confucianism has historically been quite forgiving of elite malfeasance - if it is followed by rectification.  There might still be some Confucian consolation for Bo yet.

His trial in Jinan is quite close to Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius himself.  After the inevitable determination of his guilt and his sentencing, if Bo asks for copies of The Analects and Menicus to take with him to prison, who knows what political rehabilitation might be possible.....

What Does the Ideological Crack-Down Mean for China's Confucians?

The old Twitter feed lit up yesterday afternoon with links to Chris Buckley's story in the NYT: "China Takes Aim at Western Ideas."  The lede:

Communist Party cadres have filled meeting halls around China to hear a somber, secretive warning issued by senior leaders. Power could escape their grip, they have been told, unless the party eradicates seven subversive currents coursing through Chinese society.

These seven perils were enumerated in a memo, referred to as Document No. 9, that bears the unmistakable imprimatur of Xi Jinping, China’s new top leader. The first was “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation, ardently pro-market “neo-liberalism,” and “nihilist” criticisms of the party’s traumatic past.

A fuller Chinese version of the document is here.

This is a reassertion, apparently in more robust form, of the "seven don't mentions"
 - 七不讲 - which were rolled out earlier this year.  And it is accompanied by a continuing emphasis, expecialliy by General Secretary Xi Jinping, on Maoist-Marxist ideology as the foundation of PRC political-economy.  This narrowing of the avenues for political expression raises some interesting questions about the possibiities for further "reform" in the PRC.  But I want to take the conversation in a different direction: what does this revival of state-socialist ideological orthodoxy portend for those in China who are working to bring some sort of "Confucianism" to the political fore?

Remember: back in January, when the Southern Weekend incident occurred, an event that seems to have inspired the current repressive ideological backlash, a group of self-proclaime "Confucians" came forward to defend the ideal of constitutionalism. I was impressed then at their effort, and I blogged it: "Confucian Constsitutionalism in defense of Freedom of Expression."  As I look back to that post now, however, it seems that the link to the key document is no longer operative - perhaps a victim of the unfolding crack-down (for the record it was entitled: 中国儒者就《南方周末》新年献辞事件告天下书.  And, among other points, it stated:

国民自由表达各种意见，包括直接批评当政者，作为一项政治价值和宪制原则，始终内在于中华文明的优良政治传统中。

National freedom to express every sort of opinion, including direct criticism of power-holders, is a political and constitutional principle that has always been inherent in the excellent political traditions of Chinese civilization.

A refreshingly straightforward defense of freedom of expression.  And one that is in keeping with the political assumptions of Confucianism itself, which requires a sphere of individual moral autonomy to allow persons to determine how best to define and carry out their filial and family and social duties (for a fuller explication of this argument see Erica Brindley,"Moral Autonomy and Individual Sources of Authority in The Analects," pdf here).

But the constitutionalism debate has taken a distressing turn of late: the first of the seven ideological no-nos in Document number 9 is "Western constitutional democracy."  Thus, the political position that the Confucians had staked out in January is now quite clearly out of bounds.

What will the Confucians do?  If it is true that a certain realm of personal freedom, which would include freedoms of belief and expression, is necessary to make progress toward the moral goal of ren - 仁 - then it would seem rather obvious that Confucians will have to stand against the current ideological crackdown.  But Confucians in China have, since long about the Han dynasty, generally not challenged state power in defense of their beliefs.  Rather, they have attempted to work with and through power-holders to gain a political foundation for implementing their political philosophy.  This strategy worked quite well for long stretches of imperial history.  From the twentieth century onward, however: not so much.

It may be unfair, from my position safe from the repressive reach of the PRC state, to expect Chinese Confucians to take on what might be considerable political risk in standing up to the anti-Confucian ideological crack-down by the PRC, but the question nonetheless lingers: will they resist?

On the face of it, the most immediate problem facing the deepening of Confucianism in China is not "Western" liberalism but the expanding ideological power of the CCP.   And, at some point, if they truly want to make Confucianism more relevant to the lives of more Chinese people, Chinese Confucians will have to take a public political stand against the current ideological tide.

Let's see what happens...

Han Feizi on why Xi Jinping must destroy Bo Xilai

So it looks like Bo Xilai's trial will start on Thursday.  His is a long and sordid story: an ambitious and powerful politician looking to climb to the very top of the CCP pecking order, who ran a deeply corrupt satrap in Chongqing, undone by his wife, who was implicated in the murder of their British fixer, and his security chief, who ran vainly in search of US protection when he realized he was likely the next victim of Bo's political machine. 

We know, of course, that he will be "found" guilty.  This is a political matter of the highest order - disposing of a once-elite leader of the Party - and the current CCP ruling group will not allow its final resolution to be disrupted by anything like the "rule of law". While it may be true that the Party has chosen to use the legal system as the venue for the denouement of this political drama, even if some sort of regular and lawful procedure appears to be upheld, we all know that the system remains "rule by law" not "rule of law."

And that brings to mind Han Feizi (here is a nice pdf of an introduction to his thought), the man who helped invent the very notion of "rule by law."   Han would very much agree that Bo should be punished "according to the law" and done so in a highly public manner, to serve as an example to all, politically high and low, that transgressions will be dealt with severely.  Indeed, the primary reason to establish a system of rule by law is precisely to obstruct the political potential of people like Bo and preserve the power of the current ruler.  That's what makes Legalism so useful to Chinese rulers across the centuries: it speaks directly to their interest in maintaining power.

Han is quite clear on the greatest danger rulers face:

The only reason the ministers do not assassinate their sovereign is that their parties and cliques are not strong enough.  (Watson, p. 40)

Ministers occupy political positions just below the ruler; they are close to power but not in power.  Han assumes they very much want to be in power and will use their postilions, if not sufficiently constrained, to seize power.  They are smart and capable and thus dangerous. Everything about the legal system, how responsibilities are defined and how accountability unfolds, is designed to limit the possibilities of ministers forming cliques and gaining an advantage that might translate into a decisive move against the top leader.

Just like Bo Xilai.  He was developing a unique power base in Chongqing, gaining a repuation as an energetic and creative leader. His style was a bit too dynamic and assertive. He was aiming to gain the top spot, and thus he was a danger to others who were planning how power would be apportioned at the level of the Standing Committee.  Had he made it into that rarified club, he would likely have continued to scheme to gain the number one position.  As such he would have been a direct threat to Xi, the General Secretary of the Party. 

And Han offers advice for how to deal with such a threat:

When cadet houses become too numerous, the royal family will face anxiety and grief. The way to prevent this is to prune your trees from time to time and not let the branches grown too luxuious.  If the trees are pruned from time to time, cliques and parties will be broken up.  Dig them up from the roots, and tehn the trees cannot spread. (Watson, p. 41).

Although the initial focus here in on relatives, how members of the "cadet houses" might be able to use their family ties to impinge upon the rulers power, I think we can safely assume that "ministers" are elements of those kinds of networks and they, too, should be subject to "pruning."

By "pruning" I take Han to mean the ruler should, from time to time as political necessity dictates, purge this or that high ranking administrator, whether a family member or not, as a preventative measure.  This would be above and beyond the usual constraints placed on ministers and lords through the rule by law system, a kind of extra-judicial politial intervention. 

And that is essentially what the Bo Xilai trial is all about. It is a "pruning" of the "trees."  Bo had grown too big and too powerful.  For Xi to consolidate his power, Bo had to be cut down.  And on Thursday we will witness (if indeed the proceedings go forward publicly, which itself is part of the political calculations) the start of the chopping.

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.

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.