(Translated from Chinese by Sherwin Lu)
   
EDITOR’S NOTE: This editor is happy to see that The New Legalist website has attracted the attention of such serious Sinology scholars as Professor Sam Crane. His seriousness is evidenced by his website named The Useless Tree -- Ancient Chinese Thought in Modern American Life, in spite of the fact that there might be disagreements between him, his readers and other scholars of Chinese philosophy, including the New Legalist, for this is only natural, and also beneficial to the development of human society. As is known to all, the lively contention between “a hundred schools of thought” during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period of ancient China served to lay the ideological foundation for the later great golden era of the Qin-Han dynasties. Now, another high tide of “a hundred schools of thought contending” is dawning on the world’s horizon, one that will surpass in scale and significance the earlier one in China and another earlier one in Europe, i.e., the Renaissance – this coming new great debate will be on a global scale and bear on the fate of the whole mankind in a much longer time to come. Therefore, while we might be opponents on certain issues, we should be, finally speaking, partners and friends in our common pursuit for truth and also for a better future for the human race. Besides this, there is also common ground even in philosophical perspective between Prof. Crane and the New Legalist. Take for instances such articles on his website as Pico Iyer: Daoist Sage? and Uncertainty is not the problem; believing that certainty is possible is the problem. So, The New Legalist sincerely hopes that this first encounter in the debate on Chinese legalism will be taken in the above light by all participants and readers.

THE TEXT

Four years ago, when the New Legalist website (Chinese section) was first open, some scholars warned us with a good intention: Legalism has been condemned for two millennia, heavily burdened with an ages-old bad name, which it is no easy job to get rid off. So, you’d better get prepared to catch it. True, in the past four years, we have been receiving whatever reproof we can expect from inside China. Now it is time to expect the same from overseas (since our website has got an English section).

    Just recently, some friend forwarded to us from the United States an article by Professor Sam Crane of Williams College, Massachusetts, entitled The New Legalists: Distorting Chinese History and Chinese Philosophy for Nationalist Ends. After reading it, I cannot help but to write this apology.

    Professor Crane is a sinologist and a great father as well. Nobody who has read his book Aidan’s Way: The Story of a Boy’s Life and a Father’s Journey would not get deeply touched. Prof. Crane has nurtured his deaf-mute and blind son Aidan with fatherly love and Chinese Daoist wisdom. His story is a song of victory for humaneness, fatherly love and life itself.

    A magnanimously loving heart is not, however, all that is needed to engender unprejudiced wisdom. Prof. Crane’s commentary on our New Legalism is full of deep-rooted prejudices that came partly from Confucians’ deliberate distortion of Legalism throughout history and partly from some Western scholars’ long-time wrong notions about China and the whole non-Western world in the past centuries.

    At the very start, that commentary brands our New Legalism as “nationalist”, making it an easy target for Western critics:

    “It seems to be the product of people with a fairly unremarkable nationalist, anti-globalization, anti-Westernization mindset.  They are searching not only for a new basis for critique but also for a distinct non-Western cultural foundation upon which to build a new global presence for China.  I say this is unremarkable because it has traces of the Say No nationalists of the 1990s.  Indeed, its underlying cultural anxiety traces back to the 19th century and the worries then about the balance between Western knowledge and Chinese "essence," the old ti/yong distinction.  

     “It is novel, however, in that, instead of the usual reach for Confucianism as the new and distinctively Chinese cultural foundation, these guys go for the Legalism.”

     The New Legalist objective is manifestly stated on the home page of our website: “End capital’s hegemony in the name of liberty /Build a new world with the original Chinese Daoist-Legalist civilization as a prototype”. It is not to build a China based on the Legalist ideology, nor to push for a powerful China to invade other countries. Classical Chinese theory on diplomacy has this from Lao Tze: “What makes a great state is its being (like) a low-lying, down- flowing (stream)” (Chap. 61, Translation by James Legge). This means that, the more powerful a country is, the more humble and more strictly nonassertive it should be. Prof. Crane asserts that it is also for its “nationalist” purpose that New Legalism has enlisted Daoism as its partner. But he may not be aware that Daoism and Legalism are the two sides of a coin, so to speak. That is why Sima Qian said that Han Fei and Shen Buhai belong ideologically to the Huang-Lao school, “Huang” referring to Yellow Emperor. Actually, the Huang-Lao thoughts at the core of Qi Legalism (齐法家) have unified Legalism and Daoism as one system of thought.

     As a matter of fact, nationalism is quite alien to the Chinese, for China has not been subjected to constant pressures from external aggressors in history like the much divided Europe, but on the contrary, she has been used to viewing political relations from the standpoint of the whole world (Tian Xia, or天下). This broad-mindedness is beyond the comprehension of most Westerners, who cannot look beyond national interests and would even go so far as to defend any evil atrocities in the name of national interests, just as Prof. Crane says, “…nationalist appropriations are almost always the most dangerous, because they can be invoked to rationalize war and killing; that is what nationalists tend to do, whether American or Chinese or Serbian or whatever.” The above quotation most properly applies to present-day Western international politics, but not to either New Legalism or classical Chinese theory on inter-state relations.

     Classical Chinese theory on inter-state relations is focused on “justice” (Yi, or义), not on “interests” (Li, or利). Western religion also has notions similar to Yi, but their application cannot be extended to the international realm. As to issues of war, they have only one principle, that is, that of parochial national interests. 

     Moreover, Prof. Crane might not be able, even after racking his brains, to understand why, for the past thousands of years, the Chinese could tolerate losses all the time in their external trades. In contrast, the British and the Americans would not hesitate to resort to mass killing in order to grab human and material resources from all over the world. Western economics can never really account for this kind of international trade. Anybody with some insight into international affairs knows very well that even Westerners’ aid to other countries is often a kind of trick meant to deceive others and themselves as well.

     Enough is enough. Please, Prof. Crane, take back that label of “nationalism” and pin it on where it belongs!

     New Legalism does say “No” indeed. She says “No” to blind conformism to Western academic thoughts, to those intellectuals in China who have lost their academic integrity, to the present world system that is using more and more resources for war and mass killing instead of for human welfare. She will continue to say so for one hundred more years…

     New legalism does oppose something – she opposes the relentless plundering of resources and destruction of the environment by capital, opposes Western countries’ monopoly of discourse on how modern civilization should develop, opposes Chinese intelligentsia’s brutal self-castration of its own cultural tradition, She will continue to oppose these for one hundred more years…

     The objective of the New Legalist is to establish an academic enterprise to flourish for a century and show to the world a totally new civilization where greed is not indulged but a mindset void of greed (Qing Jing, or清静) is encouraged, where the world is no longer compartmentalized but allows free immigration, where people will feel at ease wherever they live, and where capital is no longer free of regulation but true freedom will be enjoyed by the people …

     This author would not like to say anything more about old allegations against Qin Legalists such as “burning books and burying Confucian scholars alive” and “essentially wiped out” the Mohists, because they are just, so to speak, beating over the old ground and hardly hold water. As to the two-thousand-year-old lie “The fundamental inhumanity of Legalism is best illustrated by the brevity of the Qin dynasty”, we would like to ask the sinologist: Since Qin had practiced Legalism for six generations before it grew from an outlying weak state to a powerful one and finally unified China, how can you apply the word “brevity” to it? Furthermore, what was underlying the historically-known golden age under the Emperors Wen and Jing of Han was nothing but Huang-Lao statecraft, or the core ideas of Qi Legalism. But can anyone apply the word “brevity” to the Western Han dynasty (202 B.C. – 9 A.D.)?

     The word “brevity” might be applicable to the present-day United States if she should hold on to her selfish unilateral policy. Laozi says “The highest excellence is like (that of) water” (Chap. 8), and “The violent and strong do not die their natural death” (Chap 42, Trans. by James Legge). Americans will find it beneficial to learn and practice the Dao. While a handful of privileged ones are peddling their brand of “freedom”, “democracy”, ”human rights” to the world, everybody knows their trick except a few including some Chinese intellectuals. The world that the New Legalists are striving for is one of Great Harmony (大同) under the “rule of law” effecting ” rule by all” based on “rule by self”. It is our mission to turn these conceptions into reality.

     Prof. Crane alleged about “aesthetic destructiveness of the Legalist Qin” and tried to support his allegation with what he saw in the Shanxi Provincial History Museum in Xian. This author has also been there. It is true that Qin bronzes may not be so impressive in appearance as Zhou bronzes, but Prof. Crane may not have noticed that on those not so impressive bronzes were inscribed the names of those craftsmen who made them, instead of names of owners as had been the custom before. What a great revolution in industrial management it was! The standardization as seen in today’s U.S. auto industry was accomplished that long time ago by the great Qin Empire -- an accomplishment beyond the expectation of too many people!

     Indeed, Qin bronzes were not as refined as those from Western Zhou, but this author is wondering if Prof. Crane was ever shocked at the grand Dujiangyan Irrigation System, the 736 kilometers long Qin Straight Highway, the gargantuan Qin Terracotta Army, and the Great Wall. These are the true monumental wonders of the great Qin period towering over the history of human civilization.

     The social elites in today’s China may appear to be emulating the exquisiteness of ancient works of art, but are actually squandering national wealth on gaudy buildings and star entertainers. Prof. Crane might take this as proof of a more preferable China and feel somewhat satisfied, while disregarding the fact that so many U.S. missiles are closing upon China with nuclear warheads carrying on them the word “peace” written in human blood! 

     Moreover, taking the way of the world today for granted, Prof. Crane cannot understand the following passage from the New Legalist’s “Mission Statement”:

     “Throughout human history, the Chinese civilization is the only one which has not flourished by force of gunboat conquest and colonial expansion but through free interracial marriages and free migration, i.e., through the unity of blood and land. It has been powerful at times, but never an empire — it has been a highly-civilized organic social body. A convincing evidence of the natural development of the Chinese civilization is the fact that so far the distances between Shaanxi, the location of its origin, and China’s current borders in all directions are roughly equal.”

     “This is unadulterated rubbish”, alleged Prof. Crane, citing Han and Ming dynasties as sources of evidence for China’s aggression against others. But actually he is not, or chooses not to be, aware of the way in which China maintained peace with her neighbors at times. As today China is buying peace with the U.S. by sending sweat-shop products, at that time, besides products, China also sent women as gifts, called “alliance by blood”. But if China did not beat back intrusions by the Huns, they would have done the same as today’s U.S. is doing to China – tightening strategical encirclement around her. As Prof. Crane is known to have done research work in international politics, he should know that, at present, China cannot even cross the first island chain off her coast and yet has been accused of being “nationalistic” when she has just built half an aircraft-carrier. So, please, Prof. Crane, do us the favor of re-directiong the accusation back to the president of the United States, be he white or black or green (we do not discriminate between different skin colors, because traditionally we Chinese, while aware of the differences between, for instances, northerners and southerners, and Tibetans, and Manchurians, etc., do not treat people differently because of their skin color or ethnic origin -- what we care most is that they are all Human beings.)

     Finally, what we would like to say to Prof. Crane is: On this planet earth, besides the Western academic thought system, there is also another civilization which has extended people’s selfless parental love, such as you cherish for your son, into the politico-economic system, that is, the Legalist system based on Daoist philosophy, though it appears to you as the cruelest. This author wishes that, someday when you obtain a true understanding of Legalism, you will find that unlimited universal love outside the walls of your home.

     May this come true!