EDITOR’S NOTE: Recently a seminar was held in Beijing, China, on a newly published book Socialism in Ancient China. Just as pointed out by one speaker at the seminar, the general editor of this website, ever since the New Culture movement which started about one century ago, Chinese scholars had been hindered, until recently, from assimilating good ideas, even socialist ones, from their own cultural tradition. This has been proved a disastrous error for China. Therefore, the new book has arrived in the nick of time. And so has the seminar.

THE TEXT

In April this year, a seminar was held in Beijing, China, on the recently published book Socialism in Ancient China, authored by Prof. Li Xuejun (李学俊), senior fellow at Modern Research Institute, Northwestern University, China.

I. Initial speech by Prof. Li, the author

Prof. Li spoke first on his book. He said that Western theories cannot explain why Chinese civilization has survived for thousands of years. Only after reading Guanzi and many other Chinese classics and accounts of Chinese history did he come to find the answer to the above question. He pointed out that, according to Guan Zhong, the author of Guanzi, Chinese statehood had originated in the need to stop violence and served to develop economy, protect the people and manage the society.

Prof. Li indicated that, as has been proved by some Chinese historians, China had not evolved into a slave society as the West had, in spite of existence of non-institutional slaves in ancient China, but become a society with "Asian mode of production" typical of the East as noted by Marx. The major reason for this difference was that ancient China practiced benevolent governance without resorting to colonization and colonial wars, which would turn large numbers of POWs into slaves. For instances, Yao (尧) and Shun (舜), traditionally known Chinese sage-kings of remote antiquity, after putting down the revolts of the Miao（苗）tribe, did not put their clansmen into slavery but move them to border areas. Later, after Xia (夏) dynasty was replaced by Shang (商) and Shang by Zhou (周), those fellow clansmen of the replaced rulers did not descend into bondage either but were granted lands and even titles.

Another important reason, according to Prof. Li, for non-existence of institutional slavery was that the "nine squares" land system (井田制) institutionalized since the Yellow Emperor had prohibited selling and buying of land so that land annexations and consequent bankrupt farmers-turned slaves were rare.

And a third reason was non-existence of such piracy in ancient China as happened in ancient Greece and Rome that would victimize and degrade merchants to slaves.

Prof. Li found after detailed studies that China’s politico-economic system in remote antiquity was characterized by:

a) Virtuous government prioritizing economic development to secure people’s livelihood;

b) Effective institutions ensuring state ownership of land and of natural resources, the former in the form of the "nine squares" land system;

c) Capable chieftains, almost all being technical innovators, inventors and promoters of new tools and skills, such as making fire by drilling wood, keeping records by tying knots, house-building, written language, animal husbandry, planting, medicine, handicraft, and mining;

d) Powerful governance in making plans and regulating the market for effective resource allocation.

Socialist theories and practices in the State of Qi and in whole China since the Spring and Autumn period, said Prof. Li, was neither a Utopian ideal nor any product of social engineering, but the result of natural social evolution from the genes and tradition of public ownership-based economy and moral virtue-guided politics typical of Chinese civilization since remote antiquity.

II. Speech by Mr. Roger T. Ames, American Professor of philosophy on the faculty of Beijing University

Prof. Ames’ speech was entitled "Challenges to individualistic ideology from Confucian role-playing ethics".

Prof. Ames pointed out that communications between the East and West has been seriously out of balance -- China knows far more about the West than the West about China. One major reason for this has been faulty translation of Chinese classics in Western languages, causing misunderstanding and debasement of the original ideas in those classics. What is most worrisome is modern West’s lack of interest in traditional Chinese culture, which has been exacerbated by Hegel’s severe prejudice against China as shown in his philosophy of history.

Modern China has introduced Western culture and education in a big way, bringing in a lot of modernist ideas. From the Chinese point of view, the translation of “儒学” into “Confucianism” has been misleading for Western readers, according to Prof. Ames, while it was one of the major theories in ancient China that contained socialist ideas.

Now people generally are mistaking modernization as Westernization and the younger generation is pursuing liberalism and individualism. Therefore, our duty is to spread progressive Confucianism into the West, said Prof. Ames.

The wide spreading of individualism in the West has turned social life into finite games [i.e., played with the goal of winning]. Our goal is to transform it into a pattern of infinite games. Prof. Ames suggested that modernization should not mean Westernization, nor Sinicization either, but mutual assimilation. Confucianism should play an important role in this process.

III. Speech by Mr. Zhai Yuzhong  (翟玉忠), contract research fellow of the Center for Chinese and Global Affairs, Beijing University, and general editor of The New Legalist website

Mr. Zhai’s speech is entitled “Recover the Original for New Development: Socialist Factors in Traditional Chinese Culture”. He pointed out that Prof. Li’s theory on the two-way regulation of the currency and commodities is a major theoretical innovation which transcends the Western paradigm of economics.

He also mentioned the book The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School written by Huan-Chang Chen (陈焕章) about a century ago, which devotes six whole chapters to a discussion of socialistic policies in ancient China.

      Unfortunately, Mr. Zhai pointed out, since the New Culture movement which started at about the same time, scholars had been hindered, until recently, from assimilating good ideas, even including socialist ones, from Chinese cultural tradition. This has been a disastrous error. Therefore, Prof. Li’s work has arrived in the nick of time.