Condensed translation from Chinese by Sherwin Lu (陆寿筠)
Editor’s Note: This is a seventh excerpt translated from the author’s book in Chinese 《中国拯救世界—应对人类危机的中国文化》(China Saves the World – Chinese culture being the solution to current human crises, Chap 8, Section 1). As the Chinese civilization had developed before modern times along a path that was different from the Western one, it should not be viewed and judged in modern Western ideological terms. The major difference between the two civilizations is that, while the West has been expanding through conquest of others mainly and firstly by physical force, China, before the close and all-round encounter with the West, had been growing by culturally integrating alien tribes, peace-seeking neighbors and conquerors as well, into an even greater human community. Military or physical force never represents real strength and culturally inferior force of aggression and domination can never sustain for long historically, because human society develops in a way different from the jungle law, humans being superior to animals in terms of intelligence.
The Text
Ever since late 19th century, with the dominating Confucianist system of thought failing to help resist the bullying and humiliating from the Western powers, many Chinese scholars have turned away from traditional Chinese learning and used Western way of thinking to judge and tamper with it. Following are the three ways it has been emasculated:
I. Self-Emasculation
Chinese learning had its own philosophical methodology (still being used in traditional Chinese medicine), ethics (or more exactly, the rules of Propriety, 礼, embodying the Chinese way of life and value system), political-economic theories (e.g., on ways of balancing economic factors), etc. But, to cut it at its root, China’s liberal arts scholars have changed them all into “histories” of philosophy, “Propriety system”, politics, economy, and so on, i.e., to treat them as relics from the past no longer relevant to the present time and have modern Western learning dominate the Chinese mind. This is self-emasculation and destruction of the spiritual corner stone of the nation.
What is even worse is that Western learning has always been used as a diplomatic instrument serving Western imperialist interests. For instance, today’s over-marketization in China has been a result of applying Western economics in the recent decades in favor of Western capital.
II. “Cut the Foot to Fit the Shoe”
Here it means to mutilate Chinese learning to fit Western thinking pattern, or more concretely, whatever has been found in the West must also be found in China. For instances:
As the West has religions, China must also have them, so that Buddhism and even Confucianism have both become religions and been studied as such in universities, although neither has anything to do with worshipping of supernatural forces. This has done great harm to the practice of Buddhist and Confucian teachings.
Also, as there has been institutional slavery in the West, there must have been the same in China. Therefore, scholars made one up. As Westerners talk about “classes”, Chinese scholars tried to determine the class statuses of their ancestors. Though this kind of scholasticism is not happening so often now, there was a debate as recently as a dozen years ago in an academic journal about the class status of an ancient thinker who lived two millennia ago.
And because of the influence from the religious establishment, mainstream Western thought believe in the “evil nature” of human beings. Therefore, such believers must also be found in China, and the Legalists were then erroneously labeled as such a type. The fact is that the Legalists believed in humans’ natural tendency to pursue what is beneficial and avoid what is harmful and established on this belief a political-legal system that fitted China’s own conditions.
Such instances are too numerous to mention.
III. Playing “Double Games”
At first this trick was used by Westerners to prove the superiority of their culture, and later was adopted by Chinese scholars for self-degradation. This can be found in almost all doctoral theses on Chinese culture. This is especially harmful as it tends to incapacitate Chinese learning from regeneration.
Here is what Professor Martin Powers of the University of Michigan, U.S.A., wrote about the “sophistry of the pot calling kettle black”: Years ago, at a seminar, one American scholar commented on the very first election held during the 1911 Revolution by stating that “women were denied access to it”, although women were denied suffrage in U.S. and Britain as well at that time (More than that, all Chinese-Americans, men as well as women, were denied suffrage till the 50s of last century!)
The other example cited by Professor Powers is a textbook on the history of non-Western art, which, by commenting on an ancient Chinese book on art history (《古画品录》) that all the artists mentioned in the book were males only, hints that Westerners are more open-minded. But actually, in those early years there were not yet any books on art at all throughout Europe. And, so, what is admirable about China is that she had already produced a book on art as early as the 4th - 5th centuries and it should not be surprising that no women artists were recorded. Mentioning of female artists can be found in art books or painting inscriptions of Song and Yuan dynasties and detailed accounts of women artists in books on art after the 17th century. As to Europe, one female artist was recorded in the 16th century Italian artist Giorgio Vasari’s book, but not many records on women artists could be found in art history books published in Europe and America as well as in China until late last century. “Therefore”, Professor Powers wrote, “it can be inferred that the above-mentioned textbook’s comment on China’s 4th – 5th century art history book was no coincidence but a deliberate attempt to belittle China’s achievements in this area.” (包华石：《逆读西方辨术》，载《读书》杂志，2007年第10期。)
Some Chinese have almost been driven out of their senses by their blind worship of Western culture so much so that some mainland Chinese merchants would publish books written by Chinese authors under Western names and some such books came out as bestsellers. When told about this in a letter from this author, Professor Powers replied: In the last hundred years or so, Chinese intellectuals have neglected what is valuable in their own culture. What is ironical is that, even when they make use of resources from abroad, they often make mistakes, either because of their ignorance of the actual conditions overseas or because they ignored their own conditions. There ARE things outside of China that is worth referring to, but only after Chinese intellectuals have recovered their self-confidence would it be possible to make sense out of foreign things. How well said by this unprejudiced American scholar!
At present what we need to do is to use our own learning as the basic framework of reference and borrow from the West what fits the conditions in China so as to develop a new Chinese culture and a new China. To stop judging Chinese learning in Western terms, we need first to clarify what distinguishes between Eastern and Western culture. Generally speaking, the distinction is first in the way of thinking and then in the academic paradigms resulting from it. These will be discussed in the succeeding two sections, which will be forthcoming. |
