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A CIVILIZATION-STATE
China, by the standards of every other country, is a most peculiar animal. Apart from size, it possesses two other exceptional, even unique, characteristics. China is not just a nation-state; it is also a civilization and a continent. In fact, China became a nation-state only relatively recently. One can argue over exactly when: the late nineteenth century perhaps, or following the 1911 Revolution. In that sense — in the same ma
The Chinese live in and through their history, however distant it might be, to a degree which is quite different from other societies. ‘Of what other country in the world,’ writes the historian Wang Gungwu, ‘can it be said that writings on its foreign relations of two thousand, or even one thousand, years ago seem so compellingly alive today?’ [592] The Chinese scholar Jin Guantao argues that: ‘[China ’s] only mode of existence is to relive the past. There is no accepted mechanism within the culture for the Chinese to confront the present without falling back on the inspiration and strength of tradition.’ [593] The Chinese scholar Huang Ping writes:
China is… a living history. Here almost every event and process happening today is closely related to history, and ca
The author Tu Wei-ming remarks:
The collective memory of the educated Chinese is such that when they talk about Tu Fu’s (712- 70) poetry, Sima Qian’s (died c. 85 BC) Historical Records [the first systematic Chinese historical text, written between 109 and 91 BC, recounting Chinese history from the time of the Yellow Emperor until the author’s own time], or Confucius’s Analects, they refer to a cumulative tradition preserved in Chinese characters… An encounter with Tu Fu, Sima Qian, or Confucius through ideographic symbols evokes a sensation of reality as if their presence was forever inscribed in the text. [595]
The earliest awareness of China as we know it today came with the Zhou dynasty, which grew up along the Yellow River Valley at the end of the second mille
Two of the most obvious continuities in Chinese civilization, both of which can be traced back to Confucius, concern the state and education. The state has always been perceived as the embodiment and guardian of Chinese civilization, which is why, in both the dynastic and Communist eras, it has enjoyed such huge authority and legitimacy. Amongst its constellation of responsibilities, the state, most importantly of all, has the sacred task of maintaining the unity of Chinese civilization. Unlike in the Western tradition, the role of government has no boundaries; rather like a parent, with which it is often compared, there are no limits to its authority. Paternalism is regarded as a desirable and necessary characteristic of government. Although in practice the state has always been rather less omnipotent that this might suggest, there is no doubting the reverence and deference which the Chinese display towards it. [600] Similarly, the roots of China ’s distinctive concept of education and parenting lie deep in its civilizational past. Ever since Mencius (372–289 BC), a disciple of Confucius, the Chinese have always been optimistic about human nature, believing that people were essentially good and that, by bringing children up in the right ma
[590] James Kynge, China Shakes the World: The Rise of a Hungry Nation (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2006), p. 203; and Julia Lovell, The Great Wall: China against the World 1000 BC-AD 2000 (London: Atlantic Books, 2006), pp. 30 and 27.
[591] Lucian W. Pye, The Spirit of Chinese Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 207, 212-17.
[592] Wang Gungwu, ‘Early Ming Relations with Southeast Asia: A Background Essay’, in John King Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 61.
[593] Cited in Zheng Yongnian, Will China Become Democratic?: Elite, Class and Regime Transition (Singapore: EAI, 2004), p. 81.
[594] Huang Ping, ‘“Beijing Consensus”, or “Chinese Experiences”, or What?’, unpublished paper, 2005, p. 6.
[595] Tu Wei-ming, The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 3–4.
[596] Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong, eds, Confucianism for the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 1.
[597] Wang Gungwu, The Chineseness of China: Selected Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 2–3.
[598] Peter Nolan, China at the Crossroads (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), p. 154.
[599] Interview with Huang Ping, Beijing, 10 December 2005.
[600] Tu Wei-ming, The Living Tree, p. 17.
[601] Howard Gardner, To Open Minds (New York: BasicBooks, 1989), p. 269; also pp. 13–14, 150, 217. Pye, The Spirit of Chinese Politics, pp. 94- 5. Given that calligraphy, the drawing and reproducing of characters, forms the basis of Chinese art, it is unsurprising that it is of a quite different content and style to Western art. Which, one might ask, is the better system? Howard Gardner, the American educationalist, argues that both have their strengths. The point that needs stressing here, though, is the fundamental difference between the two and their deep historical and cultural roots; in the light of this, we should not expect to witness any serious pattern of convergence. Gardner argues: ‘It [is] disastrous to inject — unexamined — our notions of education, progress, technology into alien cultural contexts: it [is] far more timely to understand these alternative conceptions on their own terms, to learn from them if possible, and for the most part to respect (rather than to tamper with) their assumptions and their procedures.’ Gardner, To Open Minds, p.118.