China

The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom

Tongdong Bai

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781780320786
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

China is a rising economic and political power. But what is the message of this rise? Tongdong Bai addresses this increasingly pressing question by examining the rich history of political theories and practices from China's past, and showing how it impacts upon the present. Chinese political traditions are often viewed negatively as 'authoritarian' (in contrast with 'Western' democratic traditions), but the historical reality is much more complex and there is a need to understand the political values shaping China's rise. Going beyond this, Bai argues that the debates between China's two main political theories - Confucianism and Legalism - anticipate themes in modern political thought and hence offer valuable resources for thinking about contemporary political problems. Part of Zed's World Political Theories series, this groundbreaking work offers a remarkable insight into the political history and thought of a nation that is becoming increasingly powerful on the world stage.

ONE

Modernity before its time: the historical context of ‘classical’ Chinese political thought

Political thought in traditional China flourished during the so-called Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (SAWS for short, roughly from 770 to 222 BCE). As was argued in the Introduction, to understand the political thought in this era we need first to recognize the problems that defined these times. In this chapter, therefore, I offer a summary of the historical background of traditional Chinese thought. In particular, I explain the transitions that took place during the SAWS, and thus outline the issues early Chinese political thinkers faced. These discussions will lay the foundation of our investigations of different schools of early Chinese political philosophy in later chapters. I argue that the dramatic transitions China experienced during the SAWS were similar to the European transition to modernity, and established the basic political framework for the following two thousand years of Chinese history. The early Chinese political philosophers, then, were addressing the issues thrown up during this epoch of change. Some of their answers would guide subsequent transitions and exert influence on future regimes in traditional China.

Historical background

Our first task is to understand the changes China experienced during the SAWS. There were legendary founding fathers and sage rulers in Chinese history, such as the Yellow Emperor (often said to be the initiator of Chinese civilization), Yao, Shun and Yu. The sage ruler Yao was said to have given up his throne to the unrelated sage ruler Shun. Shun did likewise, giving up the throne to Yu. But then a son of Yu’s inherited the throne, thus starting the first dynasty in China, the Xia (2070–1600 BCE), in which the kings came from Yu’s bloodline. That said, whether these figures were indeed real historical characters, the dates of the Xia dynasty, and the accuracy of the stories that have passed down, are all controversial questions among historians. Less so is the existence of the second dynasty, the Shang (seventeenth–eleventh centuries BCE). The last king of the Xia dynasty, King Jie, was said to be a tyrant, who was overthrown by the founding father of the Shang dynasty, King Tang. A few hundred years later, history repeated itself, only this time it was the last king of Shang, King Zhou, who was the alleged tyrant; King Wu overthrew Zhou, and thus the Shang line, and founded the Zhou dynasty in the middle of the eleventh century BCE. Again, the historical record is far from adequate; indeed the authenticity and reliability of the extant documentation remain in doubt. Nevertheless, the reader must have a sense of the history that led to the periods on which this book will focus. Importantly, many of the figures and events described so far resurface in the works of the ‘hundred schools’.

The Zhou dynasty was divided into two periods, or ‘sub-dynasties’. The first period is the so-called Western Zhou dynasty (mid-eleventh century–771 BCE). The political structure of this dynasty was a feudalistic, pyramid-like and expanding system. The kings of Zhou (especially of the first generation) enfeoffed their relatives, loyal and competent ministers (many of whom were also relatives), nobles of the past Shang dynasty, and so on. These people became the princes of their own principalities. Some of these principalities were in the remote areas of the empire, functioning in effect as colonies in otherwise ‘barbarous’ areas (Qian 1996: 57).¹ The establishment and expansion of these de facto colonies thus helped to broaden the imperial reach. When the principalities expanded, their rulers did the same as the kings did, enfeoffing their own relatives and ministers. Across the entire empire, the king ruled over princes (of various ranks), princes ruled over lesser lords, and so on. At each level, one master ruled over a limited number of subjects, enabling rule through personal influence, blood relations, contracts between rulers and their subjects, and codes of conduct.

The last king of the Western Zhou dynasty turned out to be a bad king because he neglected his duties and used his power frivolously. The Zhou capital was ransacked by a tribe of ‘barbarians’, assisted by the disgruntled ruler of a feudal state, and the king was killed. The next king had to establish a new capital east of the older capital; hence this new period of the Zhou dynasty is called Eastern Zhou (770–256 BCE). The era from the beginning of the Eastern Zhou dynasty to the establishment of the next dynasty, the Qin, is also divided into two periods, the Spring and Autumn (770–476 BCE) and the Warring States (476–222 BCE) periods.² During the SAWS, the aforementioned hierarchical system began to collapse: familial bonds and contractual and ritual relations had weakened after generations; the empire had expanded to what would be its limit and population growth had put pressure on the limited resources, which made infighting inevitable. In the Spring and Autumn period, the king of Zhou was paid only nominal homage, and eventually the boundaries of the principalities ceased to be respected. Through wars and conquests, seven large and independent states emerged. This was the beginning of the Warring States period, in which the nominal king of Zhou was eventually removed from his throne. At this time, rulers had to rule directly over states that were becoming ever larger and more populous, and the survival of both states and rulers depended upon their physical strength alone.

Similarities between China during the SAWS and Europe’s transition to modernity

The transitions experienced by the Chinese states during the SAWS bear some uncanny similarities to the European transition from the Middle Ages to (Western) modernity. The political system in the Middle Ages was also a feudalistic, pyramid-like structure. Every level of the ruling structure was a de facto small state with a small population, and the bonds were likewise a combination of contractual, ritual and blood relations. This structure, too, was collapsing during the transition to Western modernity. The emerging large and populous states were fighting (‘warring’) for domination. Of course there are differences. For example, there were Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations long before the Middle Ages, which served as invaluable philosophical, political and cultural resources during the European transition to modernity. The Chinese people in the period of the SAWS might have had a stronger sense of cultural and political identity and continuity than Europeans did during their transition, thanks to imagined or real memories of China’s past and the efforts of some past Zhou rulers.³ There was no secular throne in medieval Europe with the status of overlordship as high, long-standing and stable as that enjoyed by the kings of Western Zhou. The papacy was relatively stable, but whether it can be seen as an explicit overlordship similar to the role played by the kings of Western Zhou is debatable. A driving economic force in China’s transition was an agricultural revolution (the widespread use of iron, etc.), though this was less drastic than the commercial revolution that occurred at the beginning of the Western transition and was certainly dwarfed by the Industrial Revolution that came towards the end. The European transition to modernity was accompanied by a territorial expansion into Africa and the Americas, while Chinese civilization during the SAWS reached the territorial limit imposed by economic, political and technological conditions. The European ‘warring states’ did not manage to achieve the kind of unity that the Chinese states achieved, although they did manage to wage two ‘world’ wars, among many other, smaller-scale, military conflicts.⁴

Nevertheless, the similarities between the SAWS transition and the Western modernization are clear and profound. Gone, along with the feudal system, were the noble classes and their way of life and politics. During the SAWS, exclusive inheritance of land by the noble class was abolished, along with the old communal system; a free market in land emerged. The West saw the notorious enclosure movement in England. The military became plebeianized, and so the nobles’ codes of conduct vanished. Wars served the naked needs of the economic struggle for resources, and became a brutal sport of beheading. As Qian Mu observes, compared to wars in the Spring and Autumn period, when the feudal system was tottering but still in place, those in the Warring States period were downright savage and ugly (Qian 1996: 88–9). Correspondingly, Europe saw the outbreak of Napoleon’s people’s war, and the large-scale killing involved in all-out warfare. In this new form of war, wars were no longer confined to the nobles, and could involve everyone in a state. Thus the distinction between the military and innocent civilians became far more blurred than in the feudal age. This remains an issue to this day, still posing a serious challenge to the Geneva Convention, based as it is upon a strict separation of innocent citizenry and military.

Thus, while we must acknowledge the differences between the SAWS transition in China and that from the Middle Ages to modern times in Europe, there are nevertheless profound similarities between them. If the transition in the West is understood as ‘modernization’, then it follows that China had already experienced its own modernization of sorts, a few hundred years before the onset of the Common Era – that is, two thousand years before the West!⁵ This conclusion may help us to re-examine the notion of modernization, and to understand the nature of the distinctions between the Ancients and the Moderns. It also means that Chinese thinkers during the SAWS were already dealing with issues of modernity. It is to these that we now turn.

Nature and problems of modernity

In the feudal systems of China and Europe, each level of the pyramid-like ruling structure comprised only a small community of a few hundred or, at most, a few thousand people, bonded by certain rituals, codes of conduct, and explicit or implicit contracts. That is, the community on each level was a de facto small state, a community of acquaintances largely sharing the same values. After the transition to modernity these levels collapsed, and what emerged was large, populous, well-connected states composed of strangers. This might appear to be an insignificant change, but in politics ‘size matters’. The pyramid-like feudal structure does not seem to have worked on a large scale over a long period of time because, after all, the number of trusted relatives and friends was likely to have been limited. More importantly, in a small community the noble codes of conduct and the virtues based upon a shared, comprehensive conception of the Good were likely to have been maintained. But when the community was too large to be considered as such, unless coercive means were employed, these codes and virtues could no longer serve as a social glue that bound the whole society together, and thus a pluralism of values became inevitable. This is a facet of pluralism understood by some Western modern thinkers, as it was by Chinese thinkers during the SAWS.⁶

In short, the point comes when the old political structure no longer has relevance to the new reality, and a new regime is desperately needed. The issues that need to be addressed are the following. First, what can replace the old virtues and become the new social glue for both the ruling class and society as a whole? Second, the ruling class that was built upon nobility by birth was seriously weakened, and the pyramid-like structure that was associated with it was gone. What should replace this form of governance? There are three sub-issues here. The first is that there were no international relations in feudalism. Come the emergence of independent states, how should such relations be handled? The second is that the legitimacy of the king of Zhou was said to come from heaven (although, as we will see, this ‘heaven’ might already have been humanized in Western Zhou); the legitimacy of lesser lords came from the approval of greater lords. With this structure gone, what should provide the legitimacy for rulership? The final sub-issue is related to the previous one. That is, within each state, how should members of the ruling class, other than the ruler, be selected? On the last question, there are similarities between the answers offered by SAWS-era Chinese thinkers and those offered by Enlightenment and modern thinkers in the West. These latter, or most of them, advocated equality and mass education, while the former, especially some early Confucians, argued for equality among all human beings in terms of their potential to become wise and virtuous, and likewise for some form of mass education. Both groups believed that, under ‘modern’ conditions, upward mobility was needed, so that the worthy among the masses are able to become members of the ruling class, and have mobility within this class. But the thinkers differ from each other on how this upward mobility works. For example, the Legalist philosopher Han Fei Zi韩非子 objected to Confucian education and to the Confucian meritocracy, advocating instead a meritocracy based upon farming and military achievement. Of course, not all thinkers embrace modernity. As we will see, both the Lao Zi and Rousseau found modernity and its consequences abhorrent, and called for a return to the pre-modern times of small states with small populations.

The similarities of thought between Western modern thinkers and Chinese thinkers of the SAWS era reflect the fact that they were confronting similar problems. This in turn helps give us a new perspective on the historical facts. For example, ideas from China once offered political inspiration and ideals to certain Enlightenment thinkers.⁷ Clearly, the China they knew included imaginary elements, and they probably intended China and praise for it as esoteric criticism of their own regimes. But if this imagined China captures some aspects of Chinese thinking on ‘modernity’, the reason that these ideas resonated with those of European thinkers during the period of modernization was likely because they addressed issues of direct concern to them. In historical studies, we know that the spread of innovations (technology, regime, etc.) may not have always been direct. For example, people who lacked a certain technology may have heard about it, and then proceeded to invent it ‘independently’. Moreover, whether developed independently or not, an invention or a new regime can only become established if there is a new environment ready to receive it. Otherwise it will not last long, for the conditions will not exist for it to thrive.⁸ From this historical point of view, we can say that Chinese thinking may have played a constructive role at the beginning of European modernization, and that such a role was not incidental but had profound reasons. More research needs to be done in this area, particularly concerning the basis and effect of China’s influence at this time.⁹ If the influence is shown to be constructive and not inadvertent, my thesis regarding China’s early modernity and the nature of modernity stands to be further corroborated.

Another historical process whose understanding can be shaped by the notion of Chinese modernity is Japan’s modernization. Before the Meiji restoration, Japan was heavily influenced by Chinese culture. This might suggest that the Japanese political system before the Meiji period was comparable to that in contemporary China. However, if we follow the understanding of feudalism and modernity offered in this chapter, it would be more accurate to say that since this Japanese political system was feudalistic, it was actually closer to the Chinese one during the Western Zhou dynasty or the transitional one during the Spring and Autumn era. The Meiji restoration, then, would be a combination of the Chinese transition to modernity (achieved by the unification of China under the rule of Qin, and not by the m...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• World Political Theories
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Modernity before its time: the historical context of ‘classical’ Chinese political thought
• 2 The middle way of Confucianism: humanity as the new social glue
• 3 The middle way of Confucianism: an equality-based mobile hierarchy
• 4 Daoism: return to an age of innocence
• 5 The Legalists: builders of modern bureaucracy and institutions
• 6 Later developments: the middle way
• Conclusion: The contemporary relevance of traditional Chinese political philosophy
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About Zed Books