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NOTES
The collapse of the Chinese traditional order resulted from 2 major phenomena:
internal decay and external aggression. Internal decay reflected a dynastic decline that
was traditional. External aggression brought new forces into play that demanded non-
traditional response, which China found difficult to develop because it was in the
throes of dynastic decline.
Geographical Setting
The geographical setting in which Chinese civilization developed thus gave the
Chinese a sense of self sufficiency, exclusiveness and cultural superiority which they
have not lost to this day. (Reinforcing Confucian values)
History
The chief components of Confucianism, (Confucius c.551 – 479 B.C.) and Mencius
portrayed an idealized picture of the past when (supposedly) wise moral rulers guided
and led their people by the example of their own ethical conduct rather than by harsh
laws.
Confucians were against war because it was wasteful and brought human misery, real
authority came not from physical power but from virtue that radiated humanity and
benevolence.
Confucians looked upon the family unit as the foundation of civilization. All loyalty
was focussed on the family at the expense of every other social or political institution.
Confucius put great emphasis on “ancestor worship” as a concept of filial piety. Filial
piety came to influence the institution of marriage and the development of Chinese
humanism. An individual was to learn to serve and submit to his family and dispense
benevolence. This was essential for proper regulation of a family.
If families were well regulated, then the state would also be well regulated and there
would be universal tranquillity and harmony.
The Confucian element is the reassertion that good government depends not on laws
and institutions but on the ethics and moral leadership that its primary duty is to look
after the welfare of the people.
Confucian thinkers tired to use the imperial system itself to achieve their ends. The
bureaucracies, recruited through an examination system, were trained in Confucian
classics and the orthodox ideology was perpetuated.
The examination based on Confucian texts later made Confucianism the official
ideology of the bureaucracy, the ideology of the educated. It became the hallmark of
high culture and gradually was accepted as national ideology by all Chinese.
The traditional political culture made China synonymous with the greatest civilization
on earth. Chinese culture provided the ultimate unity to the state, and that unity was
strengthened more by the belief that there could never be more than one Son of
Heaven. In other words, there could never be more than one government over the state
that coincided with the culture area. All peoples outside the culture area were
barbarians.
This secular ideology was all-embracing, relating mankind to the universe, the
individual to the family, the family to society, private life to public life, and culture to
politics.
China never came close to the Confucian utopian ideal, but the Confucian political,
social and economic framework did prove durable over the centuries.
When China entered the 19th century, the sophisticated imperial system, which had
once allowed for technical developments and economic growth, had lost its resilience
and dynamism and the gap between Confucian ideals and the socio-political reality
had begun to widen.
Some suggest that in the late Ming – early Qing period, China saw a tremendous
growth in silk and porcelain production, which led to the emergence of “workshops”
and the “sprouts” of capitalism, and that had it not been for the destructive presence of
the West, China would have produced its own industrial revolution. However, there is
very little evidence to support this.
The Qing continued the Ming approach to mercantilism, meaning the repressive
system of tariffs, duties, and squeeze were perpetuated and national market kept from
developing.
The government had no constructive policies that would have fostered manufacturing
industries.
In external trade, the Manchu policies were even more restrictive of growth than the
Ming government.
Around 1760, China began its century of isolation from the west by cutting off all
foreign trade and restricting it only to one port in Canton, where it was to be kept
under strict supervision.
The emperor
Confucianism places the highest importance on the role of the emperor in the Chinese
socio-political system. The accepted myth was that the emperor was the “Son of
Heaven”, the ruler of all mankind, the fountainhead of civilization, the ultimate
defender of ideology, a most humane sovereign, whose only raison d’etre was his
concern for the welfare of the common man. And he was endowed with supreme
power.
The Confucian myth is that the officials and gentry were wise sages who helped
sustain the moral order and who worked zealously for the welfare of the people. In
reality, they connived and competed with each other to exploit the peasantry in order
to build up private fortunes.
By the 19th century the central government became more inefficient and ineffective at
the local level, the gentry became increasingly un-Confucian.
They separated themselves from the common people and ruled from a distance.
The Confucian, Manchu political system can be compared to a colonial one because
the Manchu rulers wanted to preserve itself by giving maximum free play to
supportive traditional institutions which indoctrinated people to make them
subservient.
The function of the Beijing government was negative. In the face of European
aggression, neither the emperors nor the officials were in a position to “lead” society.
The examinations had become stereotyped, knowledge has been stultified and there
was little allowance for creative political thought. Education was not for broadening
cultural horizons or liberating the spirit of enquiry, but for memorizing texts that
exulted in the conservatism and a backward-looking Confucian ideology that
effectively shut out the world beyond the borders of the middle kingdom.
The Manchu rulers who themselves were “barbarians” should have been aware of the
danger that the “barbarians from the West” represented. However, they have become
so sinicized by 1800 that they too had acquired the Confucian blindfold, to gain
legitimacy in the eyes of the Han population. The Manchus had to out-Confucian the
Confucians.
Corruption
To receive a higher paying post which would result in a higher paying salary, the
officials would have to bribe their superiors who in turn had to bribe theirs, thus
resulting in a system of corruption that extended from the eunuchs and princes in the
imperial palace, in Beijing to the magistrate clerk. The ones who suffered the most
were the peasantries who were wrung dry through unfair taxes.
Economic figures were never accurate because many of the figures were often
ritualistic.
The Chinese were a pacifist people who had contempt for the military man and for
military affairs.
Confucianism? Or contempt due to the fact that the Manchu dynasty not only kept the
senior-most military posts in Manchu hands but also kept the Han out of the main
fighting armies?
Gradually lost its efficiency and became corrupt. The banner forces (Manchu army)
were ill treated, ill paid and ill supplied. They were not able to engage in trade or
labour and had to work as artisans or peddlers.
The army had become so worthless that it often could not even enforce law and order.
In some places, these soldiers even became the cause of disorder; even they even
committed local banditry.
Confucianism ideology stressed the overriding obligation for all persons to preserve
harmony and not disturb the natural order. They believed that by following the
ritualised rules of social conduct, by moral persuasion and by maintaining the proper
attitude towards authority, there was no need for laws and punishment.
However, Confucians recognized that only the educated superior person could be
expected to have the moral understanding and self-discipline that would avert the
need for punishments.
The preservation of the Confucian moral order was more important than any respect
for an abstract legal doctrine.
As the Qing administration deteriorated, this meant that the government was
progressively aware of the actual conditions in the countryside, because magistrates
tended to cover up criminal activity in his district in order to not be suspended or
demoted.
Legal institutions may in fact have done as much to undermine the social order as to
uphold it, by strengthening irrational tendencies, which were at variance with the
common sense humanism of Confucianism.
Peasants
In spite of Confucian lip service to the peasants and their supposed high position
within the ranking class structure, they were in fact at the bottom of society.
According to Confucian myth, Chinese society was egalitarian. In reality, China was a
two-class society: the landlord-gentry-scholar-bureaucrats forming the ruling elite,
and the illiterate peasants, the exploited masses.
Elements of Confucian high culture had trickled down to the peasantry and had come
to provide basic family values and patterns of familial and social relationships.
By mid 19th century, corruption in taxes often meant an increase in 300 – 1000% of
what the peasants had to pay. The imperial system of granaries broke down and was
abandoned. The government and upper classes performed no function that the
peasants regarded as essential for their way of life.
Although called a class in Confucian terminology, the merchants never came to form
an independent class as they did in Japan or India. Chinese guilds were unable to
promote effectively the special interests of the merchants or provide a voice in
government affairs. They served more as control mechanisms for the government.
As the conditions of law and order deteriorated, the richer guilds began to organize
their own militias. By fixing prices and arbitrating disputes, the guilds tended to
reduce the competitive tensions between merchants.
To discard their lowly status and gain higher social honour, many wealthy merchants
abandoned the mercantile world to join the gentry’ class. They became landlords and
encouraged their children to sit for the official exams. Thus the development of
capitalism and entrepreneurial spirit remained thwarted by unfavourable social
circumstances (Confucian)
By 1800, the Qing power declined, peasant uprisings led by secret societies began to
harass the government. The rising of the White Lotus Society lasted nine years (1796
– 1804) and cost the government 120 million taels to suppress (three times the annual
state revenue).
In the process of containing the early 19th century uprisings, the Qing military had
deteriorated because the government had to raise a militia for several hundred
thousands to achieve victory.
By 1800, the Confucian imperial system had become too set in its ways and it was no
longer possible for its operators to change it in any significant manner. The ruling
classes were themselves the prisoners of the system. The system still held the country
together but had begun to tarnish the impressive façade of the ideal monolithic
centralized power structure. Cracks that were created by the very contradictions
between the imperial Inner court and the bureaucracy, the central government and the
provinces, the bureaucracy and the gentry, the gentry and the people, in short, the
government and the people as a whole.
Chapter 2
The End of Isolation, The beginning of political change: 1800 – 1860
When China entered the 19th century, there was little reason for any Chinese to
imagine that within a few decades their traditional polity would be shaken to its very
roots and never recover from the shock.
For 2000 years, China had perfected one of the world’s most durable political systems
and had developed a uniquely indigenous civilization that had deeply influenced the
culture of the peripheral countries but also drawn them into a China-centred
international order.
The success of the system and its self-sufficiency had led to a sense of complacency,
which was heightened by China’s self-imposed isolation.
China’s isolationist policies came at a totally wrong time. When the emperor Qian-
Long ordered that all foreign trade be restricted to the single port of Canton
(Guangzhou), he was unaware that a new, potentially dangerous dynamism was
emerging in the occident (West), which was bound to affect China.
A revolution in science and technology led by Britain, was transforming the Western
nations into competitors in the global arena for markets, raw materials and colonies. It
was only a matter of time until the expansive, aggressive West, incapable of being
contained within the Chinese international system of “tribute and trade” would shatter
the isolationist walls raised by China.
China’s ignorance of the west was colossal, and such knowledge may have helped
China to be better prepared for the onslaught.
The Chinese international structure was totally different from any part of the world.
First, it was premised on the belief that China was the cultural centre of the universe
and that all non-Chinese were uncivilized “barbarians”
Second, since the Chinese ruler, was considered the ruler of all mankind, all other
barbarian rulers owed allegiance to Beijing. There could be no Western-style
diplomatic relations. Countries wanting to trade with China had to send “tribute”
missions and kowtow before the emperor.
The non-Chinese Asians accepted it without difficulty and continued to pay regular
tribute to Beijing. There was little reason for the Chinese to doubt their prominence in
their world order.
The foreign trade system in Guangzhou reflected the Chinese government’s attitude
that trade was secondary to the maintenance of the Chinese world and internal order.
Foreign traders could not communicate with the officials directly but would have to
send their “petitions” through the Cohongs.
The Westerners were dissatisfied with their circumstances but were willing to accept
the humiliating treatment because they were loath to give up their highly profitable
trade in China. By accepting their inferior position, the Westerners strengthened the
Chinese belief in the pre-eminence of the Middle Kingdom.
The Cohong had the monopoly of foreign trade and was a merchant organization.
If the Chinese had not been so self-absorbed and intent on keeping their country
closed off, they might have realized that the Guangzhou system of trade was
collapsing and that is it did collapse, the tribute system would go down with it. The
relationship between tribute and trade was established by China to control the
barbarian.
For the Chinese, “tribute” was more important than trade. (Confucian philosophy)
By the end of the 18th century, British trade with China had expanded tremendously.
The trade was one sided because the Chinese agrarian-based economy was relatively
self-sufficient and there was no demand for European goods in Chinese.
Demand for Opium increased in China and the trade balance reversed in favour of the
British.
Internal Decay
The critical Confucian values that held state and society together had begun to erode
by the opening decades of the 19th century. A pop
Corrin, Jay, June Grasso, and Michael Kort. Modernization and
Revolution in China (East Gate Books). Revised ed. Armonk, New York:
M.E. Sharpe, 1997. Print.
NOTES
China is one of the world’s oldest, geographically contiguous civilizations and for this
reason alone; history probably looms larger in the Chinese consciousness than it does
in the minds and thoughts of others.
Revolutions bring about radical changes in the economic and political orders of a
country; they produce shifts in consciousness and social structures and are always
marked by the emergence of a new ruling elite, whose values achieve legitimacy
through acceptance by the larger society.
At the centre of Chinese history is the ongoing struggle between the forces of
modernity and the pull of tradition.
In ancient times, they called their land “Zhongguo” – the central territory/Middle
Kingdom.
Chinese tradition and mythology affirmed that their emperors ruled over “all under
heaven” in a universe that composed of concentric circles of which China was the
core, and which became less civilized the farther one strayed from the centre.
Traditional beliefs further affirmed that China’s earliest emperors gave humanity fire,
hunting, agriculture, writing, silk, musical instruments and most of the other
prerequisites of civilized life.
Although the Chinese were not the first to develop civilized life, their basis was a
highly efficient agricultural system utilizing sophisticated and extensive water control
and irrigation techniques that enabled them to grow enough food to support what was
considered the largest concentration of human beings in the world.
China’s core was Confucianism, an ideological and ethical system dating from the
sixth century B.C. whose primary concern is maintaining a stable and humane social
order.
The Chinese were the first, over 2 millenias ago, to develop a relatively efficient
bureaucratic system of government, one that they improved on in succeeding
generations.
The most basic of Chinese fundamental constants is that Chinese civilization has
always rested on an agrarian, peasant base. Chinese thinkers themselves accorded the
peasantry’s contributions partial recognition. In their view of society, the peasantry
was assigned second place in terms of status, only inferior to the scholar-officials who
governed the state. Chinese peasants generally lived and died in their own
encapsulated world. One of the most important divisions in traditional Chinese society
was that between the masses who lived in the villages and those who lived in the
towns.
Urban China housed the other 3 orders: the governing officials and the class of large
landowners, the artisans and the merchants, and lastly a mixed group of others.
Each individual had to contribute to the general welfare and do nothing to disrupt the
order and stability deemed so vital to the functioning of the system on what
community life depended.
The individual was first subordinated to the family, the basic economic, political and
moral institution of Chinese society. It was the family that owned property, not the
individual, paid taxes, and frequently took responsibility for the legal or moral
transgressions of one of their members.
The family was therefore crucial to maintaining social discipline and keeping the
people in place. This was done through an autocratic and hierarchical structure headed
by the grandfather or father.
The concept of filial piety went beyond absolute deference to one’s father to include
subservience to any superior and submission to the state.
While the peasants fed China, a class called the gentry did the governing. Although in
China the gentry were the large landowners, formal membership was based on the
official examinations, based on Confucian texts.
Living alongside the gentry families in the towns were the merchants. Confucianism
did not consider commerce a productive endeavour since merchants themselves
merely bought and sold what others made, rather than create new wealth.
China’s merchants were never able to establish the independence of action that
Europe enjoyed. This was largely because early on Chinese faced a unified state that
had developed the strength to control many human activities, including commercial
life.
In Western Europe on the other hand, the merchant class was able to maneuver and
grow in the urban cracks and crevices of Western Europe’s decentralized medieval
society.
A typical problem for the Chinese merchants was that whenever a great demand for a
product developed, the government would move in and set up a monopoly to generate
revenues for itself. Moreover, Chinese merchants tended to invest in land and in the
education of their sons and aspire to gentry’ status. This meant that China’s merchants
did not develop into a self-conscious entrepreneurial class like the bourgeoisie of the
Western Europe that was to be the driving force behind commercial capitalism and
the Industrial Revolution.
Social stability existed because the peasantry had enough land to support itself and
pay the taxes necessary to maintain the government. Eventually, the quality of the
emperors would decline.
Chinese tradition provided an explanation for the dynastic cycle. The failure of the old
dynasty was proof that it had lost the support of the gods, what was called the
“Mandate of Heaven”
The prime directive of Confucianism was to maintain social order and good
government. Confucianism assumed that the harmony and order required by society
could not be imposed solely from above. This meant that all individuals had to
understand and accept their place in society.
A concept that perhaps best illustrates the essence on Confucianism is the concept of
Li – proper conduct according to status.
Confucius was convinced that his knowledge and teaching held the secret to good
government from state to state in a yet divided China looking for a ruler willing to
sample his intellectual and political wares.
Confucius suggested that good government began with a ruler knowing how to
behave; naturally, the foremost experts in proper behaviour were none other than
those with a mastery of Confucian teachings and broad education and knowledge of
Chinese culture. Therefore, Confucian scholars were the perfect and only choice to
serve as the rulers, advisers, administrators, and officials. Over time, only
Confucianism was accepted and became the official ideology of the Chinese state, a
complex and sophisticated system based on a rigorous system of examinations was
developed for training and selecting these men.
Imperial China
Under the Han (206 B.C. – 222 A.D.), Confucianism became the official state
doctrine, and the system of examinations for selecting officials was introduced for the
first time.
The emperor memorized and learned to accept the ancient Confucian system of values
and behavioural rules; he did not learn, as is the tradition in the West, to think
critically and question what he was told. Rather than being trained in specific
governing techniques, he was drilled in proper Confucian behaviour and the
management of people in general.
The legal system in China did not function as it does in the modern West, where a
well-developed civil code regulates relations between individuals and law is viewed
as protecting the individual against not only criminal acts committed by other citizens
but against abuses by the state. In China, law was subordinated strictly to the interests
of maintaining order. The law served the state, not its subjects.
The emperor stood at its head and had absolute power, and the quality of the
government fluctuated with the quality of the emperor.
The emperor was considered all-powerful but he was nonetheless bound by Confucian
guidelines.
The elites power and pervasiveness in Chinese life make it reasonable to call
traditional China a bureaucratic society, ordered and restrained by the administrative
system to which in ancient times it had given birth.
Centuries of cultural contact between China and various foreigners shrank, therefore
decreasing the stimulation provided by alien ideas and techniques. Intellectual life
began to stagnate. Technological progress in many areas, including agriculture ebbed
to what was probably its slowest pace in China’s history. The Chinese began to fall
behind in military techniques; they made much less progress in the use of firearms,
for example, than the Japanese.
More importantly, the technological lag relative to the distant inhabitants of Western
Europe, who were learning to overcome many technological problems inclusing how
to travel global distances by sea.
From the later part of the 17th century until the middle of the 18th century, China was
the most populous and possibly the most prosperous country in the world. The
Manchus strengthened inter-regional ties, promoting both prosperity and unity.
For the Chinese, relations between nations were based on the idea of Confucian
hierarchy, in which each member state held a prescribed position. Just as in the
Confucian social order the father or the emperor was supreme in his realm, so China
in the world of nations stood at the top. China was the centre of the world; all the
peripheral states held inferior positions. China therefore could not recognize others as
equal trading partners because anyone not a part of Chinese culture ipso facto was a
“barbarian”. Any state wishing to establish relations with the Middle Kingdom first
had to fit itself into the tribute system.
The Chinese were willing to engage in trade and maintain peaceful relations provided
it remained on their terms. Tribute system, Cohongs etc.
Like other “barbarians” – Asian, European and so on, the British traders were
confined to a designated place, Guangzhou, Canton. This angered the British who
were a rapidly expanding colonial power and not in the habit of being told what to do.
Making matters worse, the conditions at GZ were hardly conducive to promoting the
type and level of trade the British desired.
Despite all these problems, the “Guangzhou System” of trade was quite profitable for
the individual Europeans engaged in it, even as it drained the West of Gold and
Silver. Trade peaked between 1760 – 1840 with the greatest beneficiary being the
British EIC, holder of the monopoly on all tea imported into GB until 1833.
However, the British remained unable to sell their manufactured products in China,
which might have reduced their trade imbalance.
The process of Chinese decline was both relative and absolute and had 2 parts.
1. Western nations propelled upwards by the commercial revolution of the 17th
and 18th centuries and then by their industrial revolution of the nineteenth
century.
2. China, after centuries as the top crust of world civilization, was pushed
downward by a series of forces, some internal, emanating from deep within its
own history, and some external, generated by the rising and immensely
powerful European mass that was crashing with increasing force against the
vulnerable Middle Kingdom.
The internal factors undermining China were deeply rooted and extraordinarily
difficult to counteract. There was little China could muster against European
technology, especially after the Industrial Revolution was underway. Chinese
technologies lagged because China had not developed the scientific method of
thinking and research whose products were making the Europeans so strong.
It is not that the Chinese lacked a history of scientific achievements; indeed the
opposite is in fact the case. But the systematic application of theory, experimentation
and practical approach that developed in Europe after 1600 and produced a veritable
explosion in scientific and technological advances there did not take place in China.
Confucian tradition stressed memorization and rote, not critical thinking and the
creative development of new ideas. It also tended to separate intellectual and practical
work, with hands-on labour consigned to an inferior position.
Many of the early machines of the IR were the result of the marriage of intellectual
work and mechanical skills. Even the Chinese language itself was an obstacle to
scientific achievements.
In addition, stifling formality and tradition surrounded not only Confucian ideas but
the written ideographs that expressed them. This formality had grown since the Ming
dynasty. All of this encased Chinese thought inside an intellectual great wall that was
far more effective against new ideas than the Great Wall of stone was against new
invaders.
A related factor in China’s weakness was the failure of the Chinese economy to grow
and expand like the economies of the West. Western economic growth was both a
cause and effect of the scientific and technological progress that made these new
barbarians so irresistible.
Part of the explanation for failure to develop capitalism lies in the anti-commercial
traditions of Confucianism and the suffocating impact of the Chinese imperial state
and its bureaucracy on the merchant activities.
It makes more sense to look at the conditions in China and try to understand what
happened there in light of the problems and choices the Chinese faced.
The problems China faced at the time of the European incursion may well have been a
function of what once had been China’s strength: its size, its deeply rooted traditions,
and its sophistication. China’s large population, once a source of power, seems to
have reached a point, no later than the 18th century, where it began to weigh China
down.
As China’s population passed a certain point, the amount of land available per family
began to decrease. In a country lacking in modern industrial technology, per capita
production began to fall. Over time, this fall in productivity gradually transformed
China from a rich country into a poor one. In addition, the huge population made
human labour so cheap that it became unnecessary to introduce new, labour-saving
technology.
China was far larger than Britain, so much so that even the resources of North
America would not have been enough to overhaul its gigantic economy. Given the
size and traditions of their country, and whatever their attitude toward change, there is
little the Confucian scholars could have done to overcome the legacy transformed by
the alchemy of the time from a golden pedestal into a leaden anchor.
As a result, the MK was forced to perform a long and painful kowtow at the feet of
foreign barbarians.
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/main_pop/kpct/ct_china.htm#9
Notes
Family
State
2. Belief in the innate goodness and perfectibility of man has had strong
implications for the development of the Chinese political system. The ruler's
main function in the Confucian state was to educate and transform the people
(Theme 4). This was ideally accomplished not by legal regulation and
coercion, but by personal rule, moral example, and mediation in disputes by
the emperor and his officials. Confucian political theory emphasized conflict
resolution through mediation, rather than through the application of abstract
rules to establish right and wrong, as the best means for achieving social
harmony.
3. The belief that the state was the moral guardian of the people was reflected in
a number of institutions. Most important among these was the merit
bureaucracy, or civil servant, in which all officials were to be selected for their
moral qualities, qualities that would enable them not only to govern, but to set
a moral example that would transform the people. Because Confucianism was
a moral system, the Confucian classics had to be mastered by prospective
officials. Official position and examination degree, not wealth or business
acumen were universally recognized marks of status.
1. The relation between the individual and the state was understood not in
adversarial terms, as is characteristic of the modern West, but in consensual
terms (Theme 3 and Theme 5). Therefore, China did not develop an elaborate
system of civil law. Instead, mediation between aggrieved parties was
prescribed, with local leaders emphasizing negotiation, compromise, and
change through education rather than assignment of blame and punishment.
› the educated individual had a responsibility to serve the state (Theme 5);
› a morally upright official should courageously remonstrate with the ruler if
his policies are damaging to the state;
› the state could prosper only if the people prospered; and
› any disruption in the economy or social order was probably due to corrupt
political institutions.
China's stable social and political institutions spawned great scientific achievements,
intellectual and artistic developments. The "golden age" of the Tang (618-907)
and Song (Sung) (907-1127/1279) dynasties was followed by the commercial
expansion and economic prosperity of the Ming (1368-1644) and early Qing (Ch'ing)
(1644-1912) dynasties (Theme 1 and Theme 6). Marco Polo, travelling to China
during the Yuan dynasty when the Mongols controlled China (1279-1368, between
the Song and Ming dynasties) commented with amazement on the contrast between its
civilization and that of Venice, an advanced enclave in Europe at the time. Most
Europeans dismissed his tales of the Chinese cities as fantasy.
China in the 18th and 19th Centuries During the Period of European Economic
Expansion
1. In the 16th century, under the Ming dynasty, the Chinese economy was still
the most sophisticated and productive in the world, and the Chinese probably
enjoyed a higher standard of living than any other people on earth.
The Qing (Ch'ing) or Manchu dynasty (1644-1912) continued this splendor.
Contemporary Chinese called the 18th century, when all aspects of culture
flourished, "unparalleled in history." China was a prosperous state with
abundant natural resources, a huge but basically contented population, and a
royal house of great prestige at home and abroad (Theme 1).
2. Yet by the late 18th century, the strong Chinese state contained seeds of its
own destruction, particularly its expanding population. Having remained at
100 million through much of history, under the peaceful Qing (Ch'ing), the
population doubled from 150 million in 1650 to 300 million by 1800, and
reached 450 million by the late nineteenth century (cf. population of the
United States was 200 million in the 1980s) (Theme 2). By then, there was no
longer any land in China's southern and central provinces available for
migration: the introduction of New World (American) crops through trade —
especially sweet potatoes, peanuts, and tobacco, which required different
growing conditions than rice and wheat — had already claimed previously
unusable land. With only 1/10 of the land arable, farmers had an average of
only three (3) acres, with many having only one acre. The right of equal
inheritance among sons (versus primogeniture as practiced in Japan) only
hastened the fragmentation of land holdings. To compound these problems,
the state was losing its control in much of the country. By the 19th century,
district magistrates at the lowest level of the Chinese bureaucracy were
responsible for the welfare, control, and taxation of an average of 250,000
people (Theme 3). This left control and responsibility for government
increasingly in the hands of local leaders whose allegiances were to their
localities and families, rather than to the state.
NOTES
W.B. Zhang examines issues related to whether or not Confucianism may provide
possible contribution to the industrialization of the Confucian regions. The issues
related to relationships between capitalism and Confucianism were examined by
Weber.
Due to Japan’s economic success and China’s failure to modernize, it was argued that
Japanese Confucianism was not an obstacle to modernization; while Chinese
Confucianism was.
There is a tendency to credit the Confucian work ethic and encouragement of learning
with providing people in the Confucian regions with the motivation, discipline and
skill necessary to engage in many essential processes of modernization.
Confucius: moral thinker, knowledge mirrors his age, practical thinker; his ethics has
meaning for all times in China. How he is treated in China has always symbolized the
current state of the Chinese mind. Neglect of Confucius’ teachings is almost
associated with social chaos and sufferings in China’s history. When Confucianism is
socially despised, the Chinese people are faced with the fate of working under the
control of the foreigners. The historical humiliations, suffered at the hands of the
Mongols, the Manchus, and the West were all preceded by the decline of
Confucianism. When Confucius is respected, Chinese experiences order and
prosperity.
There is often confusion about Confucianism principles and their manifestations, such
as acts of filial piety, propriety and ceremony. Confucian philosophical tradition does
not hold that there is a unique correspondence between a principle and its
manifestations under varied circumstances.
This implies that special customs designed under the Confucian principles for an
agricultural economy may be invalid for an open industrial economy.
Confucianism may refer to 2 different aspects, the first is its basic principles, and the
second is the manifestations of its principles.
Theoretically non-linear economics shows that it is quite possible for one ideology to
sustain multiple economic development patterns, or that 2 ideologies may lead to a
similar pattern of economic development.
The difference between Japan and China’s industrial processes shows that 2 cultures
with similar traditional ideologies may lead to divergent paths of economic
development. 2 economies with different cultural backgrounds and ideologies may
lead to similar economic development processes and live similar material lives, even
though they feel and interpret ‘symbols’ in different spirits.
WB Zhang’s paper provides insight about why some Confucian regions are capable of
rapid industrialization, while some others still remain at initial stages of
industrialization.
The Confucian principles
Confucianism views society as changeable rather than stationary, organic rather than
mechanic.
Confucius placed benevolence, justice, ceremony, knowledge and faith as among the
most important virtues. He held that – it is benevolence, which must be at the heart of
humanity. He believed that benevolence has to be tempered with justice and
reinforced by knowledge.
The central purpose of Confucius’ doctrine is to guarantee and improve the living
conditions of the people. Confucius considered the living conditions of the people to
be of primary concern to the government. Confucius suggested that a ruler should put
the worthiness first among his priorities, the livelihood of the second and military
matters last.
The political economic method he advocated was to let people freely do what they
consider for their own best, without the government intervention when necessary.
Hierarchical Social Structure Supported by Talent and Merit
Modern economics is concerned with similar principles but different terms and in
much broader perspectives. It may be argued that Confucianism is to actualise
potential sources of increasing returns to scale through properly operating social
organizations.
Confucius preferred virtue and propriety to law in maintaining social justice since he
did not believe that law would make the people’s heart virtuous. Confucius tried to
find a way to secure social justice in a feudal-bureaucratic society.
Social symbols like wealth, teacher, and emperor are significant in society. The
Confucian doctrine of the rectification of names requires that there should be a correct
correspondence between the actuality and the essence that the symbol is supposed to
stand for. If one is virtuous and talented, one should hold power, obtain riches, and
get respected and livelong as well. Confucius held that every social symbol contains
certain implications that constitute that class of things to which the symbol
corresponds. He used the rectification of names to advocate not only the
establishment of social order in which names and ranks are properly regulated, but
also the correspondence of words and actions and actuality.
Confucius held that man has 7 feelings given by nature, not by learning. They are joy,
anger, sadness, fear, love, hatred and desire. Confucius considered the impact of
consumption on the mind in the long term. He advised people to spend less because
extravagance leads to insubordination, and parsimony to meanness. It is better to be
mean, than to be insubordinate. He did not value consumption because he believed
some forms of pleasure do not have a desirable impact on the mind in the long run.
Hard working and frugality are highly value in Confucianism. Since wealth is a
respectable symbol in a just environment, hard work for the purpose of acquiring
wealth is highly valued in Confucianism. Knowledge accumulation for the purpose of
earning a high salary is considered a commonly acceptable purpose.
The dominant theme in Confucian political ideology is not power but ethics. The state
is seen as a mechanism for exerting social control and establishing and maintaining
moral order. The government is not a means to use people for some special purpose
but is considered as a body of organizations whose end is to serve the people.
Confucius held that the best policy of the government is to maintain peace and
establish order in society. He proposed five methods – respecting people’s business
and sincerity, loving people, taxing properly, and operating economically.
Japan
The economic miracle is due to rapidly spread education and fast development of
modern science and technology. The institutional values were quickly switched from
Tokugawa Confucianism of fixed class by birth to Meiji Confucianism of social
position by education.
Japan never fully practiced the most important feature of Confucianism, social
position determined by education and merit.
Another character of Japan’s modernization is that the Japanese have accepted neither
capitalism not socialism nor traditional Confucianism as its dominant ideology. No
extreme ideology was used as a dominant ideology for national management.
Mainland China
Mainland China established social order only after 1949. Before that, there had been
no consensus among the Chinese people.
Before the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, the Han Chinese was under control
of the Manchus. Since then, China was characterized by domestic chaos conflicts
among local warlords without any central authority or national consensus.
It may be argued that a main feature of modern China has been that Chinese
intellectuals have great ideological conflicts with the state. The traditional harmony
between scholars and the state was broken under the influence of Western civilization.
As the orthodox philosophy for Chinese civilization for over 2500 years,
Confucianism has influenced the Chinese mind on both conscious and unconscious
levels through the teachings of arts, literature, poetry, customs and ceremonies. The
mind affects action. The connection between Confucianism and action (including
political and economic decision-making) is found in the mind.
If China has deeply understood the Confucian principles and had applied them to
reality, they might have made social and economic progresses more rapidly and there
might have been less cultural misunderstanding between the West and the Confucian
regions.
A main feature of Confucianism is that it highly values knowledge and its social and
economic role. Classical Confucianism holds that the first thing for the government to
be concerned with is providing the people a basic livelihood. Once the people’
livelihood is secured, education should be spread.
The people’s livelihood is the essence for the state. The government should first
guarantee the livelihood of the people but material living conditions are the ‘initial
concerns’ of the government in socio-economic development processes.
It should be noted that the contents of traditional education are different from that of
modern education. Even if the government is economically oriented, a modern
government should emphasize science and technology for economic purposes because
science and technology are basic to economic development. Man must get basic
education in order to become a modern worker. This change in economic policy
means that it is necessary to carry out policies and mass education at the same time in
order to secure the peoples’ livelihood. The industrialization of the Confucian region
had been initiated with economic reforms as well as education.
As far as patterns of industrial processes are concerned, Japan and the 4 tigers had
followed similar patterns of economic development. Political freedom was not
emphasized in the initial stages but the peoples’ livelihood and training in science and
technology were emphasized in the initial stages of their economic development.
In modern China, Confucius was repeated criticized before the economic reform was
started. Confucianism was perceived as a symbol of the evils of society. Moral
education (ideology) rather than the people’s livelihood was the main reason for
Chairman Mao and the Party.
With regard to the reason for Mainland China’s poverty before the economic reform,
we quote Mencius:
“Now the livelihood of the people is so regulated, that, above, they have no sufficient
wherewith to serve their parents, and below, they have not sufficient wherewith to
support their wives and children… In such circumstances they only try to save
themselves from death, and are afraid they will not succeed. What leisure have they to
cultivate propriety and righteousness?”
When the Confucian mind is concerned with social systems, it will not accept either
socialism or capitalism (the 2 extremes of Western rationalism) as its ideal. Neither
socialism nor capitalism will find a lasting home in the (educated) Confucian mind.
Social rank in China as been determined more by qualification for office than by
wealth. This qualification was determined by education. Traditional China made
education the yardstick of social prestige. Successfully completing one’s examination
was the most important step toward class advancement.
The literati had been the ruling stratum in China before the collapse of the Qing
dynasty. Merchants tended to be looked down upon in practice.
Despite the high respect for learning in China and the practice of social mobility as a
result of learning, Chinese life had not become materially comfortable.
The secret of Japanese success is that it practiced the traditional Chinese principles:
social positions are determined by merits and learning and the reason for China’s slow
economic development until the economic reform is that it had destroyed this
traditional Chinese practice.
Keynes said that the essential characteristic of capitalism is an intense appeal to the
moneymaking instinct of individuals. He characterized capitalism as the belief that the
nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will work for the good of us all.
The emphasis on seeking after objective symbols as concrete goals of one’s life
means that it is not difficult to switch the Confucian mind from scholarship to
materialism. Objective rather than spiritual symbols are concrete and have a clear
fixed goal in sight.
The Chinese mind is pragmatic and devoted to seeking ‘profit’. But in traditional
(agricultural) China this profit was defined in a complicated way. It included
‘academic face’, material rewards and other social rewards. People work hard to
accumulate their ‘wealth’, which was not necessarily oriented to economic activities.
The Chinese mind is traditionally devoted to hard work in order to pursue concrete
goals (scholarship or official position) because the Chinese official and economic
markets are merit-dependent and competitive.
Before the Meiji Restoration, the social structure was almost fixed. Birth rather than
education determined ones social class. The Japanese chose different symbols of
social importance before the Meiji Restoration from the traditional Chinese.
Education was socially respected as Confucianism was accepted as the state ideology.
However, there was no dominant elite class that would prevent new knowledge from
being introduced into Japanese society. The real significance of the Meiji Restoration
was to restore the Confucian principle that a man’s social value is not determined by
birth but by merit and education in Japan. There was no dominant social group to
‘control’ learning, the Japanese mind was able to rapidly switch from Tokugawa
Confucianism to the traditional Chinese social system of mobile class structure with
education as the main criterion.
Conclusion
The rapid industrialization of the Confucian regions has transformed their social,
political and ideological spheres.
W.B. Zhang holds that the Confucian principles are basically suitable for economic
development but the concrete manifestations of these principles designed for
agricultural economies do not promote modernization. He concludes that
industrialization of each Confucian region should be a process to further promote the
Confucian principles rather than to work against them, to abolish some of the
Confucian practices rather than to exactly follow all of them, to design or imitate
(from the West) new rules and concrete moral standard rather than to pursue the
traditional practice.