Who is “Distorting Chinese History and Chinese Philosophy”: The New Legalists or Prof. Sam Crane

Part I: THE CHINESE NATION AND NATIONALISM


EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second piece of writing by the New Legalists in response to Prof. Crane’s criticism. He posted his first three articles criticizing the New Legalists on his own website without our knowing about them. They are entitled:
The New Legalists: Distorting Chinese History and Chinese Philosophy for Nationalist Ends
More on the New Legalists: The Philosophical Problems
Once More Into the Breach: The New Legalists and the Tao Te Ching

The New Legalists’ first article meeting this challenge was entitled
An Apology for New Legalism in Reply to Prof. Sam Crane by Mr. Yuzhong Zhai, general editor of The New Legalist website (Chinese and English) – a reply to Prof. Crane’s first article, being unaware of the existence of his 2nd and 3rd articles.

Prof. Crane then followed by his 4th article entitled:
New Legalists, Again

The following is Part 1 of a comprehensive series in reply to Prof. Crane’s above critical articles. Parts 2 and 3 are forthcoming. The author of this series is editor of the New Legalist, English section.

More comments on either side of the debate are welcome.

THE TEXT

We, the New Legalists, were accused by Prof. Sam Crane, a U.S. Sinologist, of “Distorting Chinese History and Chinese Philosophy for Nationalist Ends” (from the title of his article).

What “nationalist ends” are we pursuing, according to him, then? Only one answer is found in his article, i.e., “to build a new global presence for China”. Is this true?

THE “CHINA THREAT” FALLACY

What is “global presence”? That means, of course, “to be present all over the globe”, just like today’s United States of America. Or to use one simpler and more straightforward word, which Prof. Crane might feel it uncomfortable to use because it has been too often related with U.S.’s policies and actions, that is, “hegemony”. So, Prof. Crane’s accusation is just another echo of the clamor about “China threat”, in spite of the fact that it was the U.S. that bombed the Chinese embassy, not vice versa; it was the U.S. warplanes that came from across half the globe near to Chinese coast for peeping purposes and hit a Chinese plane at China’s front door, not the vice versa; it is the U.S. warships that are cruising through and around the island chain off China’s coast, blocking her way out, not the vice versa. It is the U.S. that is encircling China from all directions with military bases and nuclear warheads, not the vice versa. From Prof. Crane’s obvious uneasiness about “the more militant tendencies of popular Chinese nationalism of the past twenty years or so” (Once More Into the Breach: The New Legalists and the Tao Te Ching), we can see that what he really resents is not the non-existing “China threat” but the Chinese people saying “No!” to U.S.’s hegemonic provocativeness; what he is really worried about is the spreading all over the globe of the moral influence of the Chinese saying “No!” – that is what he actually means by the “global presence” China is said to be pursuing. But Prof. Crane should know that those who fabricated the “China threat” fallacy are really, to use a Chinese saying, behaving like “A thief crying ‘Catch the thief!’”. It does not take much wisdom to see that it is the hegemonic polices and actions of the U.S. itself that have aroused strong anti-U.S. emotions around the world, a fact so apparent that nobody can cover up by sophistry, pseudo-academic or non-academic. 

Anybody who has carefully read our articles on Chinese philosophy and history and on current world affairs and who are not prejudiced can see that the future world order that we, as New Legalists, would like to see is certainly opposed to what the U.S. is trying to push for and defend. And if a future China should step into the shoes of today’s United States and become another hegemonic power dominating over the globe, we would also say “No!”, because that would betray the traditional belief of the Chinese people. 

NATIONALISM

Rise of Nationalism and European Capitalism: Now about “nationalism” as an academic topic. From the above we see two kinds of “nationalism”, the offensive one represented by the U.S. government and the defensive by the Chinese people. This difference has come about as part of human history.

As we know, modern nation-states have developed under different circumstances in different regions of the world. In Europe, they took shape with the rise of capitalism. Prof. Crane says in his article New Legalists, Again “The ‘nation’ is a collective identity that arises in tandem with other aspects of modernity: world markets, modern legal-rationalist states and attendant socio-economic processes.” If we add the word “modern” before the word “nation”, then his statement is true to fact (because there had already been existing at least the Chinese nation for over 2000 years before that, see below). Now, what is “world market”? --That is market for commercial goods (including opium) and capital investment all over the world. While capitalism brought about industrialization and hence progress in material production, it also means exploitation of labor and of all other peoples subjected to its power. The efforts to make all this “legal” and appear “rational” and to push for a “free” domestic and world market against feudalistic barriers or against self-protection by other nations, that is, the “attendant socio-economic processes”, led to the formation of modern nation-states in Europe and the rise of nationalism.

During the two world wars triggered by contests for world market between the capitalist-imperialist powers, nationalism was used by the ruling classes of those countries to mobilize and attract people to fight for their capitalistic interests. The United States was a latecomer. It was born and grew up as a new nation out of the struggles against British and other European colonial forces in North America and rose quickly to be the No. 1 capitalist superpower through the two world wars by taking advantage of its unique geopolitical position and selling arms to both sides of the wars. In the recent decades, it has sown the seeds for a larger part or almost all of the major international conflicts by pushing unilateral hegemonic policies and yet has been trying to shift the blame for these conflicts onto its victims by demonizing them. And “nationalist” is one of the labels it uses to demonize those victims who would not yield to its despotic power, though it has also been using a form of nationalism, i.e., blind “patriotism”, to cover up its own evil doings and mobilize people to support its stubbornly chauvinistic policies. 

Imperialism and Nationalism: But the situations on other continents have not been the same. Take China for instance. It was the British gunboats trying to dump opium on the Chinese population in the name of “free trade” and the following intrusion by the Eight Power Allied Force, joined by the U.S., in the 19th century that pushed the Chinese nation to the brink of extinction and thus aroused the national consciousness of the Chinese people. And this is certainly defensive nationalism. The U.S. policy towards China since then till today has been a continuation of that gunboat policy on an increasingly larger scale. Its present-day strategic encirclement of China is already mentioned above and need not be repeated here. So, we are sorry to say that, by echoing the “China threat” fallacy, Prof. Crane is distorting both history and the present-day reality.

THE CHINESE NATION

 No Meddling Into China’s Internal Affairs Allowed: Another distortion of history by Prof. Crane is his denial of the existence of the Chinese nation as an integrated whole with full rights of an independent nation against any external interference of its internal affairs. He says: “Contemporary Chinese nationalists … are especially desirous of the forceful take-over of Taiwan.” By saying so, he excludes the ‘Chinese nationalists’ and Chinese people living in Taiwan from the Chinese nation. The historical fact is: Taiwan and the mainland have been two inseparable parts for hundreds of years, longer than the whole history of the United States, two parts belonging to the same Chinese nation, and thus, legally, there are no such issues as a certain part of China ‘taking over’ another part of the same country, just as neither the U.S. government nor Prof. Crane would tolerate such a fallacy saying that the northern U.S. states in the civil war were “desirous of the forceful take-over of” its southern states, because the South and the North had already been integrated into one nation-state of USA. But, to realize its imperialistic goal in Asia, the same goal it tried to achieve when joining the Eight Power Allied Force, the U.S. government has been playing the “divide and rule” strategy and interfering into the internal affairs of China all the time, diplomatically and militarily, openly and secretly. And Prof. Crane is just serving this strategy in the name of doing academic work. 

 2000 Years’ Existence of the Chinese Nation Cannot be Obliterated: To serve his purpose, Prof. Crane has been trying to obliterate the over 2000 years’ existence of the Chinese nation from history. Even before the Qin dynasty, scholars of all the schools of thought in all the rivaling and warring states already used the same written language called “Yayan” (雅言) and that became the basis for the standardization of language throughout the unified China under Qin Shi Huang. Besides, Qin also standardized coinage, measurements and legal codes, built high roads connecting the whole nation, and the Great Wall to keep the nomadic Huns from invading and disrupting the agricultural life of the inland areas. Later, more tribal peoples on the borders joined in by assimilating the more advanced agricultural culture of China’s inland areas and/or accepting the protection by China’s inland central government against invasions from other tribes. If such a great community as China that shares the same language, same standards of measurement, same currency, same transit system, same legal codes and same culture of prosperity for hundreds or thousands of years – if such a community is not a nation, then what is a nation? Must it be relentless enough to try to bleed other nations white through expanding its world market by the use of gunboats or missiles and the imposing of attendant rationalizing ideology – must it be like this to be qualified as a nation? 

Prof. Crane’s Self-Defeating Statement: Prof. Crane states, “…the very term zhonghua minzu - 中华民族 - is a modern construct”. If we put this statement into the context of his account of the Taiwan issue, it is clear that he is not really talking about the term only or talking about when the Chinese people began to have the consciousness of the whole China as a nation. He is actually implying that there had been no Chinese nation before “modern” times. This is of course a distortion, as analyzed above. But, this statement of his, contrary to his intention though it might be, helps support the following two observations by New Legalists: 

1. Since the Chinese people’s consciousness of the whole Chinese community as one nation first arose as late as the 19th century (“a modern construct”), its history is only as short as a blink of an eye when compared to the long, long history of the Chinese civilization (with a written history of over 3000 years). Therefore, it is quite true for Mr. Zhai to say that “nationalism is quite alien to the Chinese”. (An Apology for New Legalism in Reply to Prof. Sam Crane)

2. Since the Chinese people’s national consciousness, or defensive nationalism, arose as a response to aggression, oppression and exploitation by “modern” imperialist powers, it is not fair or just for Prof. Crane to accuse the defensive nationalism of the Chinese people while indulging the aggressive national chauvinism of certain imperialist powers.

 Subjective Conjectures and Projection: Moreover, most of Prof. Crane’s critical arguments against us are not based on any careful studies and analyses of our specific theoretical views posted on “The New Legalist” website (e.g., what is “New” in our “New Legalism” as compared with traditional legalism), but on his subjective conjectures about our motive and his preconceived prejudices against traditional Chinese legalism.  The only one quote from our writings in his initial comment on us as supporting evidence for his allegations is the following from our “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...”

His comment is: “Of course, the centralized Chinese state conquered and expanded by means of military force.” This not-to-the-point assertion is actually a projection of his Western experience onto ancient China that he does not really understand. Yes, all the Western imperialist countries HAVE “conquered and expanded by means of military force” which are unprovoked, aggressive and unjustifiable and totally out of selfish profit motive (which fact he takes for granted) and with the result of further widening the material and cultural development gap between them and the countries they conquered and controlled (which fact he has chosen to ignore). Therefore, he imagines that ancient China must have done the same, without bothering to dig into historic facts to find out if the use of military force by ancient Chinese governments were aggressive or defensive and if the assimilation of so many tribal peoples on the borders into the Chinese nation have reduced or further widened the material and cultural development gaps between the inland and the newly joined border areas.
Traditional Chinese society was a highly developed agricultural one. Farming people lived on the land and tended to stay at one place without much mobility. But their prosperity often invited looting raids or even large scale invasions from neighboring nomadic tribal peoples in all directions. Therefore, and also because traditional Chinese philosophy did not allow aggression against other peoples for selfish purposes – therefore, on the whole, Chinese military actions on the borders were defensive or preventive. And those peoples’ joining the Chinese nation usually led to protection and support from the central government and an assimilation of the more advanced culture into and a betterment of their life, not like modern colonization or other forms of control by Western countries, which led to even wider gaps between them and the controlled countries.

So, what Prof. Crane has quoted from The New Legalist “Mission Statement” is true to history. It is not the New Legalists but Prof. Crane who has misunderstood, if not purposely distorted, the Chinese history and Chinese philosophy.