[Part 5 Centrifugal-Centripetal] China Governance History
Yuri Pines explains Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy through to 2011
Yuri Pines wrote:
In recent decades … interest in Chinese political culture among Western students of China … subsided. Many factors have contributed to this: emerging scholarly uneasiness with sweeping generalizations that all too often served hidden or overt political agendas; “decentering” shifts in the historiography that redirected scholarly gaze from the center to the periphery and from the rulers to the ruled; and, arguably, the seemingly dull and predictable state of contemporary Chinese politics, which makes the field of political studies of current—and, mutatis mutandis, premodern—China much less attractive than it was during Mao’s twists and turns. [MGH: my bad transcription of this sentence in the email version is now corrected above. I may call current China ‘premodern’ but Yuri Pines did not.]
Yet curiously, just when Chinese politics became less “exciting” … this topic gained unprecedented prominence in China’s indigenous scholarship. Prompted by the need to reassess the traditional sources of manifold malpractices of Mao’s (and not only Mao’s) era, and encouraged by relative relaxation of academic control, Chinese scholars produced dozens of monographs and thousands of articles on various topics concerning traditional Chinese political ideologies, values, and practices and their modern impact. Few are the topics on which the divergence of interests between Chinese and Western scholars is so marked …
… The Chinese empire was established in 221 BCE, when the state of Qin unified the Chinese world after centuries of intensive interstate warfare. The nascent empire was then roughly contemporary with the Maurya Empire in India and with the Hellenistic and Roman empires in the Mediterranean area. The Chinese empire ended with the proclamation of the Republic in 1912 CE, almost simultaneously with the final collapse of three major empires in the West: the Ottoman, the Habsburg, and the Romanov. Between these termini, for 2,132 years, China underwent tremendous changes in demography and topography, in ethnic composition of the ruling elites and socioeconomic structure, in religion and means of artistic expression. It encountered—like any other comparable polity worldwide—periods of internal wars and foreign incursions, alien occupations, and devastating rebellions; not a few times the very survival of Chinese civilization looked precarious.
Yet upheavals and transformations notwithstanding, we may discern striking continuities in institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural spheres throughout the imperial millennia. The monarchic political system; the powerful bureaucracy; the strongly pronounced social hierarchy, usually coupled with considerable social mobility; the extended family system; the uniform written language and continuous educational curriculum—all these features remained valid both under unifying dynasties and under regional regimes during the ages of fragmentation, under native and under alien rule.
Moreover, underlying these common features were fundamental ideas and values, which shaped the imperial polity. The emperor should be omnipotent and his rule should be universal; the bureaucracy should be staffed by men of proven talent and merit; and the commoners deserve utmost concern but should remain outside policy making. These ideas guided political actors in China from the beginning to the end of the imperial enterprise, from the Qin dynasty (221–207 BCE) to the Qing (1644–1911) …
… I shall focus on a single variable, which distinguishes Chinese imperial experience from that of other comparable polities elsewhere, namely, the empire’s exceptional ideological prowess. As I hope to demonstrate, the Chinese empire was an extraordinarily powerful ideological construct, the appeal of which to a variety of political actors enabled its survival even during periods of severe military, economic, and administrative malfunctioning. Put in other words, the peculiar historical trajectory of the Chinese empire is not its indestructibility—it witnessed several spectacular collapses—but rather its repeated resurrection in more or less the same territory and with a functional structure similar to that of the pre-turmoil period. This resurrection, in turn, was not incidental: it reflected the conscious efforts of major players to restore what they considered normal and normative way of sociopolitical conduct—the imperial order …
… Centuries of internal turmoil that preceded the imperial unification of 221 BCE, and which are known ominously as the age of “Warring States” (453–221 BCE), were also the most vibrant period in China’s intellectual history. Bewildered by the exacerbating crisis, thinkers of that age sought ways to restore peace and stability. Their practical recommendations varied tremendously; but amid this immense variety there were some points of consensus. Most importantly, thinkers of distinct ideological inclinations unanimously accepted political unification of the entire known civilized world—“All-under-Heaven”—as the only feasible means to put an end to perennial war; and they also agreed that the entire sub-celestial realm should be governed by a single omnipotent monarch. These premises of unity and monarchism became the ideological foundation of the future empire, and they were not questioned for millennia to come. Furthermore, the ideological fertility of the Warring States period provided the empire builders with a rich repertoire of ideas from which solutions could be drawn to deal with a variety of problems and challenges. Thus … an ideological framework was formed within which much of the empire’s political life continued to fluctuate …
… Until the late nineteenth century, the empire was the only conceivable polity for the inhabitants of the Chinese world. Even during periods of woeful turmoil and disintegration, major political actors—from the emperor and his aides down to local elites and rebellious commoners—all vied to restore and improve the imperial order rather than replace it …
… [My] study faces [a] potential pitfall—that of overreliance on traditional Chinese historiography as the major source for understanding the imperial past. As is well known, this historiography … the so-called dynastic histories in particular, suffer not just from political biases but also from ideological conventions that at times result in a skewed presentation of the past.
Many historical works tend to perpetuate the illusion of unified rule during the ages of de facto fragmentation, and the illusion of China’s superiority over aliens during the ages of dynastic weakness; most of them focus on the center at the expense of the periphery; and the desire of many history writers to seek moral lessons in the past causes some to cross the line between descriptive and prescriptive narratives. More substantial biases permeate not just the official historiography but the entire ideological and historical production of the literati …
The Ideal of “Great Unity”
They say that the great forces of All-under-Heaven after prolonged division must unify, and after prolonged unity must divide.
The phrase in the epigraph, taken from the preface to a classical Chinese novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, may serve as an excellent summary of Chinese history. An ostensibly endless chain of unifications, subsequent disintegrations, and renewed unifications of the oikoumenë, “All-under-Heaven” (tianxia), is a distinctive feature of the Chinese empire …
FRAGMENTATION: CHINA AS A MULTISTATE SYSTEM
Archaeological discoveries of recent decades have revolutionized our understanding of China’s past. A previously widespread uncritical acceptance of Chinese political mythology, which postulated the existence of a single legitimate locus of power on China’s soil since the very inception of civilization there, gave way to a polycentric perspective. It is widely accepted nowadays that multiple Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures interacted for millennia in the basins of the Yellow River, the Yangzi, and beyond, none of them obviously superior to the others. Even the first historical royal dynasty, the Shang (ca. 1600–1046 BCE), might have enjoyed only a relative cultural, military, and political superiority over its neighbors, but by no means ruled the territories beyond its immediate sphere of influence in the middle reaches of the Yellow River.
… By the end of the sixth century BCE, the multistate system of the Springs-and-Autumns era was on the verge of collapse. On its ruins, the war of all against all ensued, giving the period following the breakup of the state of Jin in 453 BCE, and prior to the imperial unification of 221 BCE, its ominous name, the age of Warring States. As the name suggests, the Warring States period was an age when diplomats were overshadowed by generals. Alliances were inevitably short-lived; treaties were routinely violated—sometimes immediately upon being concluded—and the increasing cynicism further diminished the appeal of diplomatic means of settling conflicts …
… While devastating warfare contributed in the long term to the quest for unity, in the short term it strengthened centrifugal rather than centripetal forces. Each of the newly reformed Warring States was more cohesive internally than the aristocratic polities of the preceding age, and this internal consolidation occurred in tandem with increasing estrangement from neighbors. The separation was spatial, marked by long protective walls; administrative, as suggested by legal distinctions between native and foreign subjects; and cultural, as is indicated by the increasing divergence in the material and, to a lesser extent, written culture of major states.
The decline of the aristocratic elite of the Springs-and-Autumns period meant partial abandonment of the Zhou ritual culture, which had once served as a common cultural denominator of the elite members. The new elite, some of whose members had risen from the lower social strata, was more diversified culturally than its predecessors. This diversification is particularly evident in the changing image of powerful “peripheral” states, Qin in the northwest and Chu in the south, which had once been considered members of the Zhou oikoumenë but by the fourth-third centuries BCE were treated as cultural strangers. Cultural separation followed the lines of political fragmentation, indicating that centuries of division might well have resulted in the complete disintegration of the Zhou world into distinct quasi-national entities.
The process … of internal consolidation of large territorial states, and their political and cultural separation from neighbors, unmistakably recalls similar developments in early modern Europe …
Stability is in Unity
The proclaimed universalism of the Warring States period’s intellectuals had immediate political implications: namely, their common commitment to the attainment of peace in All-under-Heaven. In an age of escalating warfare, of endless bloodshed and inherent lack of stability, in an age when rival states routinely tried to undermine domestic order in the neighbor polities, it was all too clear that the internal problems of an individual state would never be resolved unless the entire oikoumenê was settled. And, insofar as diplomatic means of stabilizing All-under-Heaven were inadequate, political unification became the only feasible way out of unending disorder. Therefore, the quest for unity became a peculiar intellectual consensus of the thinkers of the Warring States period, legitimating the universal empire long before it came into being …
… This understanding is vivid in the following dialogue between one of the most important followers of Confucius, Mengzi (Mencius, ca. 380–304 BCE), and one of the regional kings:
[The king] asked: “How can All-under-Heaven be stabilized?”
[Mengzi] answered: “Stability is in unity” …
… “Mengzi’s dictum, “Stability is in unity,” may be considered the common motto of the intellectual discourse of the Warring States period …
FROM DISINTEGRATION TO REUNIFICATION
The architects of the Chinese empire provided it with sophisticated ideological justification and with elaborate administrative tools aimed at sustaining unity, but none of these means could permanently prevent repeated disintegrations. Two political players were latently subversive of the imperial unity: regional elites and local potentates. The first of the two were less dangerous politically, since their goal was usually to protect local interests through enhancing their representation in the empire’s administrative apparatus rather than disengaging from it. However, during periodic crises when local elites felt that the government did not heed their voices and the tax collectors disregarded their vested economic interests, they could shift their support to a local rebellious leader and challenge the court. Without their support, few local potentates could succeed in their “subversive” activities.
These local potentates—either military or civilian leaders, either the emperor’s kin and fellow tribesmen, or even former rebels who were granted provincial authority in exchange for their submission—were the most formidable rivals of the central government in times of crisis. Normally, local governors were not natives of the area under their control and were not supposed to serve lengthy terms in a single locality. In times of lax control, however, a governor could occupy his position long enough to ingratiate himself with local elites, for instance by appointing their members to positions in his administration and by reducing the amount of tax revenue sent to the central government. Such a governor could emerge in an age of domestic turmoil as a natural leader of his province (or quasi-provincial territorial unit), a position that he could then turn into a springboard for establishing a new dynasty. Thus the de facto secession of provinces remained an almost inevitable outcome of major domestic crises well into the twentieth century. However, as I shall demonstrate below, centrifugal forces were of limited vitality; and after disintegration reached its apogee, a move back to the center invariably ensued.
[TANG]
To illustrate the cycle of disintegration and reunification in Chinese history, I shall focus on the Tang dynasty, the long decline of which exemplifies many of the empire’s basic functioning principles. Tang suceeded to and inherited the centralizing tendencies of the preceding Sui dynasty (581–618), which had reunified China after a long period of fragmentation. The political elite of the Tang was strongly disinclined to allow renewed decentralization, and even succeeded in thwarting the plans of the second Tang emperor, Taizong (r. 626–649), who proposed establishing autonomous princedoms. During the first century of its rule, the Tang may have been more centralized than any preceding dynasty since the Qin.
The decentralization of Tang rule came about as a by-product of its initial military and diplomatic successes, which brought about unprecedented territorial expansion. The need to provide swift military response to mobile enemies at the remote northern and western frontiers facilitated the establishment of a system of military commissioners (jiedushi). The commissioners controlled a relatively large area comprising several border prefectures; they were allowed to mobilize the human and economic resources of the subordinate prefectures, combining thereby military and civilian functions; they served for lengthier periods than ordinary officials, had the right to appoint subordinates, and enjoyed a high degree of operational autonomy. In its quest for military effectiveness, the Tang court thus sacrificed much of the empire’s traditional caution with regard to autonomous power-holders …
[QING]
… The remarkable territorial expansion of the Qing and their incorporation of the alien periphery into the empire proper would be hailed by many Chinese subjects as a hallmark of Qing’s success. These sentiments were echoed by the Yongzheng Emperor’s son, the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736–1795), who appealed to the “greatness of All-under-Heaven” to silence critical voices of those advisers, who feared that the Qing ongoing expansion would overstretch its human and material resources. Insofar as the emperors’ expectations that appeals to universality would be a convincing argument in domestic debates were correct (and we have no reasons to assume otherwise), they indicate that a latent desire for attaining truly universal unification remained intact—or was reproduced—a full two millennia after the First Emperor ordered the construction of the Great Wall, which was supposed to set limits to “All-under-Heaven” …
… [The] process of preserving the territorial integrity of the Qing realm was not smooth, and its unity was questioned—even if briefly—not just on the ethnic frontiers but even within the imperial core. Centrifugal forces were set in motion at the very end of Qing rule when the court allowed the formation of provincial assemblies staffed by members of local elites as an entirely new vehicle of political participation. The establishment of the assemblies enabled an unprecedented institutionalization of local interests, turning these new bodies into a powerful instrument in the hands of provincial elites, who sought to protect their economic and administrative interests at the court’s expense. The assemblies adopted an increasingly confrontational attitude toward the central government and played an important role in the breakdown of Qing rule. It was the assemblies’ declarations of “independence” of the Qing that hastened the empire’s collapse in late 1911. These declarations indicated that the new province-oriented discourse, which had emerged in the assemblies, was potentially detrimental to the country’s territorial integrity …
Imperial Political Culture in the Modern Age
The story of the [Qing] empire’s fall is well known … Through the second half of the nineteenth century, the Qing leaders desperately tried to restore the fortunes of their battered state through adopting certain achievements of Western civilization, most specifically military technology, while preserving the “essence” (ti) of imperial rule intact. The futility of these attempts was mercilessly exposed when China suffered a humiliating defeat in 1894–1895 at the hands of Japan, the country that a generation earlier had introduced much more profound and successful reforms than anything contemplated by the Qing leaders. Immediately thereafter, China fell victim to the great powers’ “scramble for concessions,” in the process of which its sovereignty and territorial integrity were significantly impaired. Only then (1898) was the first attempt made to introduce truly substantial reforms; but as these reforms were swiftly smashed by the conservative opposition, the imperial court entered the twentieth century in a state of stubborn disregard of new realities. This self-imposed blindness once again extracted a heavy price, as the dynasty entered into a suicidal conflict with the entire “civilized world” of those days, the so-called Boxer War (1900). The subsequent defeat at the hands of Western (and Japanese) expeditionary forces was humiliating enough; moreover, the atrophy of the dynasty’s domestic prestige was further demonstrated by the behavior of many regional governors who, ignoring the court’s call to arms, proclaimed neutrality in its conflict with the foreign powers. The empire lost not just its military but also its political vigor; change was inevitable.
Imperial China had in the past faced similar combinations of domestic and external threats—but this time it also had to withstand an unprecedented cultural challenge. In marked distinction from the empire’s traditional foes, Western powers had no respect for its political system and were not prone to adapt themselves to Chinese ways. While the Westerners in general did not aim at toppling the imperial regime, the demonstrable superiority of their political models in an age of bitter interstate struggle meant that China’s erstwhile consensus in favor of imperial rule was steadily eroded. Most fundamentally, the millennia-long insistence on stability as the most essential political virtue came to an end. The narrative of “progress” and “modernization” firmly captivated the minds of the educated elite, becoming a new political paradigm, in light of which the virtues of sociopolitical arrangements had to be measured. By the early twentieth century a broad new consensus emerged: in order to survive, China must modernize itself. Whereas the precise meanings of “progress” and “modernization” were constantly debated, it was increasingly obvious that changes were required not just in the economy and the military but also in the political system and even in basic cultural values. This was the background for the introduction of radical antimonarchical ideas, which in due time ended the once unshakable ideological hegemony of the imperial system. Lacking its ideological legitimacy, the empire collapsed almost instantly in the wake of the somewhat accidental 1911 Republican Revolution.
The empire’s collapse brought about woeful ideological turmoil. The intellectual elite was unified in its hope to restore “a rich country with a powerful army” (fu guo qiang hing)—and its members were increasingly aware that to attain this goal they must dispense with significant aspects of the imperial system or even dismantle it outright. Yet the rapidity of the empire’s disintegration had caught them unprepared: few, if any, could clearly envision an alternative to the imperial model. For decades following the collapse of the Qing dynasty China remained a huge battleground of competing ideologies and political systems. Almost any “ism” practiced anywhere throughout the twentieth century was tried in China or parts of it: from experiments in parliamentary democracy to military regimes, from theocracy (e.g., in Tibet) to colonial rule of different kinds; from Leninism and Stalinism to experiments in fascism, anarchism, renovated Confucianism, and Legalism; from an Islamic republic and khanates in Xinjiang to a variety of local idiosyncratic regimes under military and civilian leaders.
As evidence of the peculiar ideological openness of twentieth-century China, suffice it to cite the Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan (1883–1960), who proudly proclaimed that he ran his province according to the perfect ideology, one that combined the best features of “militarism, nationalism, anarchism, democracy, capitalism, communism, individualism, imperialism, universalism, paternalism and utopianism”. Notably, Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, Buddhism, and all other traditional “isms” are absent from this ideological supermarket. While twentieth-century Chinese leaders occasionally looked to the native political tradition for answers to persistent crises, more often than not they sought these answers elsewhere—in a variety of novel ideologies introduced into China from the West.”
What remained of China’s traditional political culture amid these endless twists and turns, in which foreign ideologies appeared incomparably more attractive than the native ones? This question fascinated— and continues to fascinate—scholars in China and in the West. From Joseph Levenson’s seminal trilogy Confucian China and Its Modern Fate to countless studies by current Chinese, Western, and Japanese scholars, the answers fluctuate tremendously, reflecting ever-changing political and historical perspectives. Naturally, a definitive answer to this question is impossible: as suggested by this chapter’s epigraph, a statement ascribed to Zhou Enlai (1898–1976), it is advisable to be humble when dealing with events of the recent past. Perhaps the only clear conclusion that we can draw from the analysis of the last century of historical developments in China is this: any reductionist view—either identifying China’s twentieth-century turmoil as nothing but another dynastic change, or, alternatively, arguing that China witnessed a total rupture with its past—is not tenable. David Shambaugh usefully identifies the current Chinese state as an “eclectic” one, in which “each new departure was never total, although all were sharp and each sought to ‘overthrow’ and replace the former. In reality, though, each new Chinese state maintained certain features of the old”. But which features of the old were adopted by the new state formations, and which—if any—were cast away altogether? …
THE QUEST FOR UNITY
The concept of political unity was the most fundamental idea behind the empire’s formation, and it remained the least affected by the advent of modernity. While China underwent a painful process of adaptation from an empire with pretensions to world leadership into a nation-state, the idea of unified rule was only marginally affected. Rather, unity, once conceived of as “universal”, came to be understood as a “national” one. This readjustment was not entirely nonproblematic, though, especially insofar as postimperial leaders had to preserve huge territories beyond the limits of China proper, inherited from the Qing regime. The process of adaptation to new realities had some painful repercussions on the empire’s ethnic frontiers, where former dependencies of the Qing tried—with varying degree of success—to attain independence from the Han-led Chinese Republic. For a short while, as the image of the empire’s inclusiveness was profoundly shattered, the possibility of ethnic secession was entertained even by staunch Han nationalists, such as the eminent thinker Zhang Binglin (1868–1936), and even the Republic’s “father,” Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan, 1866–1925). Yet soon enough Han nationalists reinterpreted the idea of “national unity” as pertaining inclusively to all the dwellers of the former Qing realm, as it is incorporated nowadays into the official parlance of the People’s Republic of China. The close proximity between the traditional idea of unified rule in “All-under-Heaven” and the modern notion of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of a nationstate supported the efforts of China’s modern leaders to preserve the former Qing territories intact.
This said, the process of preserving the territorial integrity of the Qing realm was not smooth, and its unity was questioned—even if briefly—not just on the ethnic frontiers but even within the imperial core. Centrifugal forces were set in motion at the very end of Qing rule when the court allowed the formation of provincial assemblies staffed by members of local elites as an entirely new vehicle of political participation. The establishment of the assemblies enabled an unprecedented institutionalization of local interests, turning these new bodies into a powerful instrument in the hands of provincial elites, who sought to protect their economic and administrative interests at the court’s expense. The assemblies adopted an increasingly confrontational attitude toward the central government and played an important role in the breakdown of Qing rule. It was the assemblies’ declarations of “independence” of the Qing that hastened the empire’s collapse in late 1911. These declarations indicated that the new province-oriented discourse, which had emerged in the assemblies, was potentially detrimental to the country’s territorial integrity.
The latent threat posed by provincial assemblies to China’s unity was duly recognized by the first Republican president, Yuan Shikai (1859-1916), who ordered their dissolution in early 1914, a mere five years after their convention. Yet the idea of provincial autonomy that emerged in the wake of the late Qing reforms did not disappear in the immediate aftermath of the assemblies’ dissolution. Rather, it gave rise to a shortlived federalist movement, which articulated provincial identities and local interests as opposed to those of the center. Although not overtly separatist, this movement and the sentiments it generated posed a rare alternative to the millennia-long dominance of “unitism” in China’s political tradition.
The “federalist” challenge was short-lived, though. By the 1920s, as the country sank into a civil war led by local military potentates, the so-called warlords, the idea of provincial autonomy rapidly lost its appeal, and the federalist movement evaporated. Some scholars, most notably Prasenjit Duara, lament the demise of federalism, which Duara describes as having been caused by the “interplay of power politics and authoritative language, [which] enabled the hegemonic, centralizing nationalist narrative to destroy and ideologically bury the federalist alternative”. Yet this explanation, which reduces political processes to the interplay of “hegemonic narratives,” strikes me as somewhat reductionist. From the point of view of the majority of political actors, what was at stake was not just a narrative but the very real survival of China as a unified entity. Rival warlords, who were too ready to pose themselves as champions of regional interests, became the major destabilizing force; they repeatedly defied the central government, became engaged in devastating internecine warfare, and mercilessly plundered the populace. It is against this menace—rather than out of abstract commitment to the “nationalist narrative”—that political unification became an urgent imperative.
The warlord era, with its unmistakable resemblance to earlier periods of political fragmentation in terms of domestic devastation, served as a powerful reminder of the advantages of political unification. The quest for unification duly became the major political factor in the Republican era. It played the decisive role—arguably, more than either anti-imperialist propaganda or promises of social justice—in the success of the Northern Expedition undertaken by the Nation’s Party (Guomindang, GMD, a.k.a. Kuomintang, KMT) in 1926–1928. By the same token, the inability to complete an effective unification may be considered the single most unforgivable failure of the GMD leader, Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek, 1887–1975), who eventually had to acquiesce—even if grudgingly—in the ongoing autonomy of his warlord allies.
Conversely, the successful unification of both China proper and its ethnic peripheries became one of the greatest attainments of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and its leader, Mao Zedong, and an important—perhaps the primary—source of the Party’s legitimacy. Unity meant peace and stability—and for Chinese statesmen there was no plausible alternative to it either with or without the emperor …
MONARCHISM
While the concept of unity remains the single most significant legacy bequeathed by the imperial age to China’s modernity, the second pillar of the imperial political culture—the principle of monarchism—collapsed immediately with the advent of the new age. The republican form of government, which in the early twentieth century was advocated by only a tiny number of elite radicals, emerged suddenly as a new political norm. Introduced without an intervening age of constitutional monarchy, and amid great confusion, to a largely unprepared population, the Republic, not surprisingly, malfunctioned. Its leaders—presidents, prime ministers, grand marshals, and the like—lacked the emperors’ exclusive authority and were unable to effectively perform stabilizing tasks. Since the Republican heads of state owed their nominal authority to a vaguely understood popular will, their position was repeatedly contested, and many political actors refused to comply with the leaders. This lack of sufficient legitimacy became particularly damaging when the Republic’s leaders faced the warlords’ challenge.
The proliferation of warlordism in the Republic was the direct result of a botched transition from an imperial to a republican form of rule. In the Qing, as in most of the preceding dynasties, the military command structure was decentralized to prevent the emergence of powerful generals who would be able to challenge the emperor’s power; yet insofar as substantial numbers of commanders remained fundamentally loyal to the emperor, this decentralization was not inimical to political order. When the Republic inherited this decentralized system, its leaders were unable to rein in powerful warlords. Soon enough, these warlords divided the country among themselves; and while displaying nominal fidelity to the concept of unified rule and to republican legitimacy, they were practically engaged in defending their autonomy. The reason for this situation was self-evident: unlike the emperor, the “republic”, the “nation,” and the “constitution” were abstract symbols that could not issue orders and demand absolute loyalty. Thus, even when most warlords succumbed to the rule of the GMD, they continued to challenge the Party leader, Jiang Jieshi, causing persistent malfunctioning of the GMD military and civilian structures. The inability of the GMD leaders to subdue holders of the gun became the major source of their disastrous performance vis-à-vis the Japanese aggressors and Communist rebels.
The correlation between the supreme ruler’s weakness and the proliferation of domestic disorder was clear to all major leaders of the Republican age, and it may explain why each of these leaders sought quasi-imperial status for himself. Chinese history for much of the twentieth century can actually be interpreted as a process of gradual detoxification from the country’s lengthy addiction to imperial rule. One Republican president, Yuan Shikai, fully assumed emperorship in 1915; but his imperial pretensions were rejected by military commanders, and he had to abdicate a few weeks after ascending the throne. Other leaders did not claim the throne directly but developed a variety of personality cults with quasi-imperial pretensions, as is clearly evidenced by the activities of Sun Yat-sen, Jiang Jieshi, and, most blatantly, Mao Zedong. The last was doubtless the most successful candidate for emperorship in the aftermath of the 1911 revolution, and his power over the Party, the army, and society exceeded what the Leninist system could have allowed. The imperial style of Mao, and, to a lesser degree, of Jiang Jieshi, may appall Western observers who are intrinsically averse to dictatorships; but it is worth noting that both leaders were active during a period of transition from monarchism to alternative forms of rule, and their quasi-monarchic behavior may have been requisite to China’s gradual adaptation to novel forms of government.
China’s “imperial detoxification” accelerated under the next generation of leaders, who were born in the very late years of the empire: Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) on the Mainland and Jiang Jingguo (Chiang Ching-kuo, 1910–1988) in Taiwan. Both had dramatically reduced personality cults and presided over smooth transitions to essentially non-monarchical government.
The Mainland … evolved into a kind of Leninist oligarchy with power shared by a group of top Party leaders, members of the Politburo Standing Committee. These leaders act as a “collective emperor”: while none of them possesses the imperial aura and exclusiveness, as a group they enjoy nearly absolute power and symbolize the state’s unity, stability, and prosperity. The transformation from autocratic to collégial rule began with Deng Xiaoping, but it was under his non-charismatic successor, Jiang Zemin (b. 1926), that China truly entered a new age. Jiang instituted the system of mandatory retirement and imposed term limits for top executives; in 2002 he set an example by voluntary stepping down and allowing the next generation of leaders to assume power. As of 2011 it is widely anticipated that the current incumbent, Hu Jintao (b. 1942), and his colleagues would likewise cede power to the next generation of Party leaders in 2012.
Currently (2011) China’s experiment with oligarchic leadership appears impressively successful, and it may even be interpreted as a neat solution to the perennial weaknesses of monarchic rule. The principle of collective leadership, term limits, and the introduction of a mandatory retirement age may prevent the rise of inept leaders; these safeguards may also preclude top executives’ remaining in office after becoming physically or mentally debilitated, as occurred with the first generation of CPC leaders. Current chief executives undergo lengthy processes of recruitment, training, and socialization into the top leadership, which renders them incomparably fitter for their tasks than were the majority of the emperors. Assuming that this system of leadership selection, training, and rotation is maintained appropriately, then the CPC can be credited with mending one of the weakest aspects of China’s imperial system—the emperor’s potential inadequacy—without jeopardizing the principle of a single source of legitimate authority. This said, a word of caution is required. The current system can be effectively maintained only insofar as the collective leadership adheres to the Leninist principles of resolving internal contradictions confidentially and presenting a unified front to the outside world. Any deviation from this facade of unity may have the disastrous consequence of exacerbating political conflicts in the Party and in society at large …
EPILOGUE: STABILITY VERSUS PROGRESS
… Having discarded the imperial system as a source of stagnation and an impediment to “modernization” and “progress,” the renovated Chinese political elite is gradually shifting toward a more accommodative view of the past. Having lost its revolutionary zeal, the CPC leadership in particular has come to appreciate the value of stability and tranquillity. Hence the lessons embodied by the imperial political system, which excelled at ensuring long-term stability, cannot be ignored.
Interest in the legacy of the past is increasing in China almost daily, paralleling the rise in national pride and the resultant more affirmative view of the imperial enterprise. This interest has copious manifestations. On the popular level it is promoted through a variety of popular publications, movies, TV serials, and even Internet games that deal with emperors, meritorious ministers, generals, and other heroes from the past. On the level of official discourse it is reflected in the adoption of new terminology, such as Hu Jintao’s invocation of the term “harmonious society” (hexie shehui) as a substitute for the class-based ideology of the past. On a more substantial level we see the work of certain members of the academic community who are eager to promote a “Confucian revival”. Even if largely superficial, these phenomena cannot be ignored.
With the diminishing appeal of Marxism-Leninism, China faces a dangerous ideological void that should sooner or later be filled in. While a few Chinese intellectuals—and many foreign observers—would like China to embrace Western liberal ideals, and while the ideological gap between China and Western democracies is indeed narrowing, it is highly doubtful that Western democratic discourse will prevail in the long term. Aside from being potentially detrimental to CPC power, and lacking demonstrable advantages in ensuring prosperity and stability for non-Western countries, the democratic discourse of the West is problematic in China owing to its patently alien roots. Should China fully embrace it, the country would forever be compelled to follow the ideological lead of alien powers, who would oversee and judge its “advancement” on the path toward democracy and human rights, much as the USSR dominated China ideologically when the latter embraced the Soviet model of development. This situation is incompatible with China’s growing power, prestige, and assertiveness. In this context, the search in China’s immensely rich past for appropriate ideological solutions to the country’s current problems, followed by the synthesis of these traditional elements with modern Western (either Marxist or liberal or both) ideas, appears by far the more advantageous course.
Which aspects of Chinese traditional political culture are applicable nowadays? Perhaps the single most important one is the legacy of the political center maintaining its hegemonic position vis-à-vis a variety of social groups and local interests, and reining in centrifugal socioeconomic and political forces. In this context, the ability of the Party leadership to act as “a collective emperor” and maintain a single legitimate locus of power on Chinese soil is the most essential precondition for China’s political stability and governability. The idea that “oneness [of the ruler] brings orderly rule; doubleness brings chaos” in its modified (oligarchic rather than monarchic) form remains broadly acceptable to the vast majority of China’s political actors—or so, at least, the present observer remains convinced.
The … closely related pillar of traditional political culture that retains ongoing relevance is the concept of political unity. As argued above, this concept was least influenced by China’s entrance into modernity; and it arguably reflects the broadest consensus on the Chinese mainland. Both the turmoil of the Republican period, and, more recently, the disintegration of the USSR and Yugoslavia, contributed toward the ever-stronger belief that “stability is in unity”. Significantly, the actualization of this ideal—much as in the past, especially under the Qing—remains highly flexible: as the cases of Hong Kong and Macao exemplify, the central government can grant certain areas real autonomy, much beyond what is acceptable in most nation-states. It may be expected that China will apply similar flexibility in settling the Taiwan issue, and, perhaps (though this is less likely), in resolving tensions on the country’s ethnic frontiers. Insofar as the overarching principle of political unity is not compromised, China may well be able to allow a considerable degree of local variation with regard to its practical implementation.
The third, and perhaps most controversial, pillar of traditional order that may be of relevance today is political elitism. Surely, after a century of “masses-oriented” discourse one can expect neither a reemergence of the stratum of “scholar-officials” in its traditional form, nor a reappearance of the erstwhile rigid bifurcation between “superior” and “petty” men. Yet the advantages of meritocratic rather than excessively egalitarian modes of rule are evident to many in China, and it is plausible to expect further professionalization of the political elite amid ongoing depoliticization of the “masses”. It is also possible that attempts will be made to utilize the power of the newly emerging socioeconomic elites, turning them from the state’s and the Party’s potential competitors into their voluntary aides. However, in this regard the trends are still unclear, and the Party’s radically egalitarian past may prevent successful co-optation of the members of new proprietary classes. Concomitantly, the Party’s strongly pronounced commitment to the economic interests of “the people”—which clearly echoes not only modern concerns but also the “people-oriented” discourse of the past—may ensure that it continues to enjoy a sufficient degree of popular support, at least insofar as it is able to satisfy the rising economic expectations of the masses.
Time will show whether the CPC will be able to creatively synthesize China’s traditional values and norms with current social and ideological realities, forming a new viable ideological framework for Chinese society. Yet the very possibility that the lessons of the Chinese empire—the most durable political entity in human history—have relevance for the rapidly advancing and innovating Chinese society of the twenty-first century testifies to the empire’s remarkable posthumous strength. Now, as always, studying China’s past is essential for an understanding of China’s future.
The Source:
Yuri Pines, The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy, Princeton 2012 [pp. 1-6, 12-19, 25-26, 36-37, 163-167, 181-182]
[MGH: It is striking how quickly logical scholarly prognostications about China’s future can seem dated, even slightly naive. AI plays a role in speeding change in unanticipated directions, opening up a panorama of new possibilities in governance, economy, military, and ideological domains of social order. Eventually Social Science Files will cover Western governance from AI perspectives. There are two or three more exhibits yet to come in the current China Series, possibly ending on 11 June which will be the 4-month anniversary of Social Science Files. This is the 104th exhibit. Once the China series is complete and a few loose ends dealt with I will try to settle it down to a somewhat slower pace — not daily, some readers will be relieved!]
[Today’s picture is from today’s newspaper, which for US readers is your tomorrow]
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.