I highly recommend John Keay’s China: A History to any readers who wish to familiarize themselves with this civilization. Keay’s narrative is aimed at the general reader. Specialists will no doubt find themselves irritating by the simplifications, or even errors (I’m not a China specialist but even I picked out a factual error here and there), but I’m always impressed by Keay’s ability to interject a great deal of erudition and social history into a relatively fast paced political narrative (his India: A History is of similar quality).
Of course China matters. It matters now, and it has mattered in the past. To a great extent much of human history is Chinese history. It is amusing for example when Keay’s points out that China has always been characterized by export surpluses over its history; the world has long craved the goods of the Middle Kingdom, which in return demanded specie or vice. But more interestingly for readers of this weblog is the fact that between 200 BC and 1900 AD the Chinese political-cultural system maintained a high level of continuity and stability. A scholar who flourished during the reign of Hanwudi could have made himself understood with ease to a mandarin serving under the Dowager Cixi over 2,000 years later. It is true that in the 19th century much of the Western elite had familiarity with the classics of the Greeks and the Romans, but I think the analogy is broken because the resurrection of a civilian elite versed in the literature and values of the ancients was a reconstruction of the Renaissance. By contrast, the Confucian literati had maintained a chain of transmission back to antiquity.
Today we in a world dominated by Whiggish technocratic sensibilities are wont to denigrate the achievements of Imperial China, and characterize it as a regime of reflexive adherence to blind protocols and exhibiting a cultural torpor. And yet what would we say if Rome and arisen multiple times and revived its ancient forms for thousands of years? One might wonder if Roman ways were robust and congenial to human flourishing. The Confucian idolatry of antiquity seems backward looking to us today, but in a Malthusian world they made the best of it, and rested their philosophy upon concrete realities of family, custom and tradition. Lived human existence and not abstractions. I suspect there is much we could learn from their long record of success, and I believe, and yes hope, that China might learn something from its own cultural past as it surges toward material affluence.
You didn’t mention it, so I will: and this great civilization was maintained all that time without any white-bearded sky-god telling them all how to behave. A sky-god with a long beard is not necessary for morality. But YHWH and Jesus probably are necessary for the preservation of our morality, the morality espoused by Secular Right.
China didn’t have a sky-god with a long beard, but it did have a hierarchical, moral metaphysics during those thousands of years, right? (I don’t think I’ve ever read a single book on China.) My hypothesis is that a culture can’t survive for long – more than a century or so – without a metaphysics that reflects its social hierarchy and organization.
My hypothesis is that a culture can’t survive for long
a nice way to test historical hypotheses would be read some books about the past.
Yeah, that Idea has actually occurred to me. But there are people who read books, so I figure it’s easier just to ask them.
So, what are some historical counter-examples? Can the conjecture be revised to explain them, or does it have to be thrown out completely? (This question is addressed to anybody who has read books.)
So “David Hume” has learned that the Chinese invented bureaucracy and that bureaucracy can be quite stable. Yawn.
The problem with such bureaucracy is that it inhibits innovation and growth which reduces the dynamism of the society. In the case of the Chinese, it resulted in them falling behind and eventually being exploited/imperialized by the West. One example of this failure was how ocean expeditions at the end of the Ming dynasty were not allowed to continue. Had these been allowed to proceed, North and South America (and Australia) would be a part of a Greater China today, rather than the domain of the white man. China would never have been exploited the way it was by the Europeans had the Chinese been more dynamically oriented.
I’ve actually discussed this with Chinese people I know from both Taiwan and the Mainland. They instinctively understand the lesson in all of this. The people I know personal seem to understand, instinctively, what I call the “red queen” paradigm of competition and dynamism. They realize that stagnation and decay are not good at all.
Such bureaucratic stability leads to stagnation and decay which, in turn, results in more dynamic societies moving ahead. Dynamism is always preferable to stagnation and decay.
@Aaron
it’s complicated. the author above argues that confucianism was not imbued with a metaphysic aspect until the crystallization of ‘neo-confucianism’ around 1000 AD. this is in many ways a standard telling. but i think it depends on what you define as ‘metaphysic.’ one of the three great early thinkers of confucianism (along with confucius and mencius) was xun zi, and he can most accurately best be described as a materialist.
Of its last three imperial dynasties — Yuan (Mongol), Ming and Qing (Manchu) — two were from conquering pastoralists. This is not a sign of a civilisation improving its ability to cope with the outside world.
As a broad generalisation: if it was invented before 500BC, it was first discovered in the Fertile Crescent; if it was invented from 500BC to 1500AD, it was first discovered in China; if it was invented after 1500, it was first discovered in the West. (Unless it was something to do with horses, in which case it was first discovered in Central Asia.) Again, a civilisation which was losing ground, comparatively speaking.
As for the comparison with the Roman Empire, the patterns where the commercial Powers of the West tore chunks out of the bleeding carcass of Qing China are very, very similar to what Venice and Genoa did to the Eastern Roman Empire (who we call for no good reason ‘Byzantine’) after about 1050. Right down to a ruling elite who disdained the commercial. The Roman Empire did not finally fall until 1453 (and even then, Trebizond held out for another couple of decades).
This is not a sign of a civilisation improving its ability to cope with the outside world.
the qing weren’t even exclusive pastoralists (this was probably the less important aspect of their economy). if you’re going to talk about history, get it right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurchen_people#Culture.2C_language_and_society
in any case, the analogy between the yuan and qing is weak. qianlong was in many ways the apotheosis of a traditional chinese emperor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianlong_Emperor
most of the yuan did not even learn to read chinese from what i have read. kublai did not. the if you compared on “trait values” the jurchen/manchu (the ethnicity from which the qing derive) are arguably much more like the han than they are like the mongol (the jin dynasty in many ways set the standard for an explicitly sinified barbarian dynasty, the jin also being of jurchen ethnicity).
your assertion above making a close analogy totally misleads the ignorant reader (like aaron above).
The Roman Empire did not finally fall until 1453 (and even then, Trebizond held out for another couple of decades).
this is a moderately misleading contention too. the classical chinese of the qing in the 19th century was derived from that of the han dynasty. the eastern roman empire totally abandoned latin for greek by the early 7th century excluding a few legal and military loan words and phrase. in any case, though byzantium was critical in the preservation of the corpus of classical learning (in particular, greek works), it ultimately led in a different civilizational direction (as evident during the debates between slavophiles and westernizers in russia). by contrast, during the qing period there were movements to go “back to the han” and purge neo-confucianism accretions, suggesting that the evolutionary direction of chinese civilization exhibited enough continuity that “rollback” was a possibility. in china plethon would seem a less quixotic figure.
@David Hume
I didn’t define “metaphysics” because I’m not really sure what I meant by it myself. Obviously, even the most devout materialist believes in metaphysics; he couldn’t live otherwise. Roughly, I meant something like this sort of belief: the cosmos is ordered; it’s not a meaningless, indifferent universe. There is value, including moral value, in things and acts. For instance, murdering the emperor would be “really” wrong, not just wrong in the sense that you or I disapprove of it or that this kind of action is detrimental to human flourishing. Or, rituals of veneration of ancestors mean something beyond just the expression of some natural psychological need or whatever. That’s what I meant by a metaphysics that reflects the social order. Some but definitely not all atheists negate such a metaphysics.
So I don’t know whether China always had such beliefs. By the way, I’m talking about the beliefs of the society as a whole, not just the intellectuals or the elites.
@Aaron
in general they accepted “metaphysics” as you are defining it.
@David Hume
It is likely that none of the pastoralist peoples were “pure” pastoralists: they did, however, have far more access to horses than the Chinese and pastoralism was central to the origin of the dominant group. What they were certainly not was not ethnically Han. That is, they were foreign conquerors. However much they may have admired Chinese culture (and yes, the Qing did adopt a lot of Chinese culture but always saw themselves as separate ethnically than the Han: Han were forbidden to live in the Walled City of Beijing, for example). The Western barbarians who conquered the lands of the Western Roman Empire admired Roman culture too (indeed, many had served with Roman forces), that does not make them any less conquerors.
An increasing propensity to be subject to foreign conquest is not a sign of a civilisation improving its ability to cope with the outside world. How much one lot of foreign conquerors was or was not like another is rather beside the point.
The people of the empire we call ‘Byzantine’ (a term http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire#Nomenclature“>first applied in the C16th, a century after the fall of Constantinople) called themselves “Romans”. Their enemies call them “Romans”. They traced their state as a continuous entity back to the founding of Rome. It was a state that had gone through several fundamental transformations: from Kingdom to Republic, from Republic to Principate, from Principate to Dominate, from pagan to Christian. Separating one such transformation off and saying “it’s completely different now” is dubious at best.
So yes, I am aware of the history, thank you.
“In a Malthusian world they made the best of it, and rested their philosophy upon concrete realities of family, custom and tradition. Lived human existence and not abstractions. I suspect there is much we could learn from their long record of success, and I believe, and yes hope, that China might learn something from its own cultural past as it surges toward material affluence.”
Do we still live in a Malthusian world? Also, to echo the sentiment of commenter Kurt9, there is a price to be paid for stability. Stability, so far as I know, has never been a staple of Western cultures, marked as they were by constantly feuding small political entities and extreme individualism, enabled by the peculiar geography of Europe. Perhaps by comparing ourselves with Chinese cultures we can come to better understand our own dynamism, but I highly doubt that we will ever be able to imitate in any substantial way their stability, which was likely undergirded by their hydrology and agriculture.
Paul,
I think the only true resource is the creative human mind, and the only way to waste this resource is to not use it.
“Stability, so far as I know, has never been a staple of Western cultures, marked as they were by constantly feuding small political entities and extreme individualism, enabled by the peculiar geography of Europe.”
If you compare the Chinese civilization from the Shang to the beginning of the Qing, to the West from the Hellens to the end of Christendom, I fail to see how China was politically more stable. And given this, I fail to see what ‘constant feuding political entities’ had to do with anything.
The issue here is cultural stability. China civilization is continuous and that aided in their long term success. The West moved from Greco-Rome to Christiandom to post-Renaissance Europe and managed to form a successful cultural hybrid (ie one which promoted empirical naturalism in what turned out to be a material universe).
The West is now trying Muti-culturalism, which means ceasing to be the West as Classically European and becoming the West as Everything. This is based on the reading that change “or dynamism” was the root of Western Success.
I guess we will see if political-cultural universalism is successful too. Since this does not seem to be China’s model, as they seem to be holding onto their particular ways and identity, I guess we’ll get to see which way is more adaptive in the 21st century.