An opinion piece in today’s People’s Daily is chock full of material for my purposes.  It is titled, "To Dissolve Cultural Conflict with Oriental Wisdom," and it starts like this:

History tells us that cultural conflict can’t be solved by taking over
or wiping out the other culture. Culture is rooted in people’s heart.
Conquering or wiping out a culture is only temporary, but will sow the
seeds of hatred and create new hatred. Chinese culture emphasizes
dissolution of hatred which means to communicate and have dialogues
between different cultures in order to reach understanding. Chinese
culture has never sought to ‘rescue’ or conquer another culture, but to
realize co-existence of many different ones, protect the natural
development of different cultures.

     This is, of course, a patently obvious nationalist distortion of a complex and multifaceted history.  Suffice it to say that the Chinese state, in its imperial and modern forms, like any other state, is based upon coercive military and police power.  When we think of the expansion of the borders of the Chinese state, and with it the expansion of "Chinese culture," we must always remember that it was accomplished with military power.  The territorial growth of the Han and Tang and Qing dynasties (we’ll leave the Mongols out of it for now) was not accomplished by "dialogue;" land was taken by force and incorporated into the empire.

     The notion that Chinese culture (as problematic a term as it is) "never sought to rescue or conquer another culture," is also dubious.  While "sinocentrism" may have its conceptual pitfalls, it is certainly true that a strain of traditional thinking understood China as culturally superior to others, and that sense of superiority was institutionalized in the tribute system of foreign relations and the expectation of assimilation of "barbarians" who came to China.  There can be, and is, debate about the extent to which sinocentrism might be seen as an ancient form of "soft power" or how much it was backed by the hard power of military force.  But what cannot be debated, it seems to me, is that a sense of cultural superiority existed among the elite of imperial China and, for whatever motivations, military force was used to expand the boundaries of the imperial state.

      The People’s Daily piece, then, is really just an exercise in what Ernest Renan called historical forgetting: all nationalisms seek to create a usable past, a historical narrative that serves contemporary political purposes.  This is not about an open and critical engagement with China’s past; it is a public relations exercise to reassure the world that the PRC’s growing power will not produce a new imperialism. 

     The piece also quotes Chuang Tzu (Zhuang Zi by their transliteration), who does not make it into the papers that often, certainly not as often as that new CCP favorite, Confucius.   More below the jump….

      Here’s a mishmash of ancient Chinese thought:

In China, the basis of Confucius thought was to deal with relations
between people while the foundation of Taoism, another school of
thoughts was to deal with relations between man and nature. But both of
them dealt with issues on how to be in harmony despite the differences.
The lofty ideal of traditional Chinese culture is that all things in
the universe will grow together but not harm each other and their ways
are coexisting but not against each other. This means different things
will live together harmoniously. According to ancient Chinese
philosopher Zhuang Zi, the lofty ideal was the peaceful co-existence of
all the things in the universe so that the living world is in harmony.
Ethics and morality are the core value of Confucius thought. It tried
to see proper and harmonious relations between people. Thus people
should use common principles and standards to achieve the precious
harmony. Only under the harmonious and proper situation can these
common principles and standards be observed. This situation needs to be
kept with the spirit of seeking harmonious development and provides an
endless source of thought for multi-culture co-existence and
dissolution of contradictions and conflicts.

     Both Confucianism and Taoism recognize human will and, for each, human will can disrupt the realization of "natural harmony."  For Confucians, who in their own pre-Qin time faced dismal and violent (dare we say Hobbesian) political circumstances, the "common principles" that might produce a modicum of harmony were local: morality was to be built from the ground up through the careful, routine performance of social obligations to family and friends.  Indeed, "harmony" was not something that could be imposed from the top (i.e. through government laws) down.  A political leader should be an ethical person, and he should demonstrate that morality through his public behavior, thus creating an example for others; but the essence of that morality was the genuine and reverent fulfillment of his family responsibilities. 

     Translating that key Confucian imperative into social or foreign policy is not easy.  An op-ed in a national newspaper seems the wrong place to be doing it, since it smacks too much of using words that may not be backed up by actions.  There is a possibility for trans-cultural mutual respect in Confucianism, but it is based on constant self-critique.  I cannot editorialize about how you should be behaving without being absolutely sure that my own social duties have been fulfilled.  Is the People’s Daily really that morally perfect?

    The invocation of Zhuang Zi is too simplistic as well.  Zhuang Zi did not expect people to produce a natural harmony.  While he certainly understood that each thing had its rightful place in the totality of Way, he also understood the ways in which will and temptation and desire can create war and destruction and misery.  That is why he made fun of Confucius so much: purposive human action, even when intended to create ethical outcomes, was destined to disrupt the natural unfolding of Way and bring about precisely the opposite of what it aimed for.  I don’t think the modernizing, capitalistic, domineering CCP is ready to latch on to that message.

    In the end, actions speak louder than words, for both Confucians and Taoists.  If the CCP wants to demonstrate that it is really embracing a Confucian-Taoist governing philosophy, then they will give up their military spending, and get serious about addressing the growing economic inequality and disastrous environmental degradation their policies have created.

     One last thing.  Let’s think about this for a moment:

…After more than 200 years development, there is a deep crisis in the
post capitalist culture. French thinker Edgar Morin said capitalist
individualism has created the self-centered isolation. The blind
economic development in the western world has caused the ethical and
psychological dilemma and the separation between different fields which
in a way restricted people’s wisdom. As a result, people feel helpless
in front of complicated issues and can’t have a clear and whole picture
of things. Science and technology has promoted the social progress, but
it has also brought about damage to environment and culture and caused
new round of inequity. The old-style slavery is simply replaced by the
new style, in particular, the pollution in cities and the non-ethical
nature of science has brought tension and harm to people and leads
people and the ecology to demise. This has gone astray from the early
stage of capitalist ideal of seeking freedom, equality, universal love
and liberation of human nature.

    The description of post-capitalist crisis is such an accurate picture of contemporary China that I wonder if the author is slyly offering us a critique of the "development at any cost" mentality of the CCP, under the guise of criticizing the "West"?