Condensed translation from Chinese by Sherwin Lu
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a fifth 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 6, Section 1 ). The original subtitle for this section is “Two Disparate Processes of Political Evolution in the East and the West”.
Mainstream Western and Westernized Chinese scholars have been interpreting and actually distorting China’s history in Eurocentric terms. The West has since ancient Greece been advocating and encouraging factional, ethnic and geopolitical rivalry and competition so as for the 1% to “fish in troubled water” to the detriment of the 99% and imposing this way of living and thinking on all others, while traditional China before modern-time Westernization had since antiquity been practicing holistic integration of all social strata with different interests and of all ethnic or geopolitical groups with different cultural backgrounds, successfully winning the hearts of people from all directions with no use of force, who, conquerors included, voluntarily joined in the real “melting pot” of Chinese civilization and/or adopted her culture. Whether to make the human community into a “civilized” version of a kingdom of beasts still ruled by the “jungle law” or into a big family based on mutual respect and love, balance of interests and peaceful coexistence – this is what distinguishes the different types of civilizations. The discussion in this article illustrates the distinction very well.
THE TEXT
To understand the mutually unrelated and disparate processes of evolution of Chinese and Western political systems, we need to know first that there was essential distinction between pre-Qin Chinese feudalism and Western European feudalism. While from the latter there stemmed the modern Western system of democracy, the former served as the foundation of a characteristically different form of politics, i.e., classical Chinese non-partisan politics, with the ruling elites representing the holistically balanced relations, political as well as economical, between the different strata of the whole society. Traditional Chinese politics, as institutionalized in the earlier Social Merit System and later Imperial Examination system, was opposed to partisan interest groups wielding power unilaterally.
The difference between Chinese and Western feudalist systems has been pointed out much earlier by Qian Mu (钱穆): While the Chinese system was an integrated whole within one political framework, West European feudal kingdoms were not, or only nominally, unified political entities but were actually divided in political authority between powerful, warring feudal lords. He wrote: “In China’s early Western Zhou, the Duke of Zhou set up an enfeoffment system, or as a matter of fact, he perfected in great degree the traditional system inherited from the preceding Xia and Shang dynasties. This system incorporated all the political institutions of the kingdom into one whole: The Son of Heaven granted titles and territories to his vassals, who in turn granted such to their ministers or high officials, while all of them pledged allegiance to the Son of Heaven, thus forming from top down a unified political entity. The system of that historical period should be called unitary feudalism. However, in the history of the West, this only happened at the lower levels, not on the top. After the disintegration of the Roman Empire, Europe sank into a chaotic state without a unitary power center for people to depend on. The common people had to scramble for refuge with local aristocracies, who in turn attached themselves to higher-ranking noblemen. They all wished for a centralized political authority but in vain, just as a tower being erected without ever topping out. There was at that time the name of ‘Holy Roman Empire’, but it was only a never-attained goal, a castle in the air, a shadow organization in imagination. This means that the term ‘feudalism’ indicated two totally different things in Chinese and Western histories.” （钱穆：《中国历史研究法》，生活·读书·新知三联书店，2001年，第21~22页。）
Medieval Western Europe: My vassal’s vassal is NOT my vassal
Many a scholar traces Western feudal system to the social structure of the late Roman Empire and the original military organizations of Germanic Barbarian tribes, especially the Frankish leudes (sworn followers) system. Such a feudalistic political structure was actually very simple, being a political alliance between individuals based solely on a military hierarchy of loyal followers. Emperor Charlemagne (768 - 814) followed a policy of “strong trunk with weak branches” when granting titles and territories, e.g. never granting more than one prefecture to a palsgrave, nor ever making it hereditary. After his death, with the spreading of internal and private wars and repeated foreign invasions, the yeoman, being no longer effectively protected by royal power, were forced to seek protection from local big lords by surrendering their land. The relationship between the feudal lords and their dependents thus formed was one with reciprocal rights and obligations. The lord was obliged to provide the dependents with land as means of livelihood and with safety against any harms while the latter to answer the lord’s call to go to war or help the lord with his administrative or judicial duties or donate money to the lord when needed for special purposes, etc.
In a word, in medieval Western Europe, royal power was weak while the local vassals each held his own judicial power independent of his feudal lord, giving rise to endless disputes. In their eyes, the king was none other than a vassal to God and thus on an equal footing with them. They would not hesitate to rebel against his power when necessary. For instance, the leader of the feudal barons who revolted against King John of England in the 13th century proclaimed himself to be commander of the God’s and Holy Church’s army. Their fight finally ended in the issuance of the Magna Carta in 1215, by which the barons successfully restricted the king’s authority while securing many of their own rights.
Magna Carta had a direct impact on British history and on the constitution of the United States. In a sense, modern Western constitutional democracy has been a historical extension of Western European feudal relations, with the reciprocal rights and obligations shifted from between feudal lords and their vassals to modern social relations with city dwellers as a new social force. Thus appeared the Noble Council, and then political parties. Since the 19th century, with the right to vote gradually extended to all citizens, political parties have evolved from behind-the-door meetings among elites to street gatherings of the public. Political mobilization and propaganda has become the most glaring part of contemporary politics.
Along with the above process, modern Western market economy shaped up. Under this system, individuals and private enterprises make decisions about social production and consumption. The helpless and dependent freemen of medieval Western Europe have been replaced by free citizens, and private wars between feudal lords by free competition as the most aboveboard principle for resource distribution. But nowadays we have come to realize that market economy based on free competition definitely leads to the Matthew effect, i.e., the rich become even richer while the poor even poorer, thus ending in violating the rights of free citizens. In the last few centuries, an effort to solve the contradiction between the noble ideal of free citizens and the cruel reality of free competition has almost exhausted the intellectual wisdom available in Western civilization.
Pre-Qin China: My vassal’s vassal is STILL my vassal
China’s pre-Qin (秦 dynasty) feudalism, as was totally different from that of Western Europe, was an effective governing system over the vast East Asian continent (or “all-under-heaven” of that time) with unified legal, political and economic institutions (《周礼·天官冢宰第一·大宰》,《周礼·秋官司寇第五·大司寇》). The king had strong power for managing public affairs in the name of the whole society and could directly appoint high officials for his vassals（卜宪群：《秦汉官僚制度》，社会科学文献出版社，2002年，第25页）, while the subjects in the vassal states were first of all “subjects of the king” (王臣) and, if their rights were violated, the king was obliged to directly interfere and defend their rights. The Western European principle of “my vassal’s vassal is not my vassal” was not practiced in China – Chinese feudalism implied that “my vassal’s vassal is still my vassal”.
Chinese feudalism took shape no later than early Western Zhou dynasty about three millennia ago, which found expression in the fact that the royal house’s ability to integrate the society’s institutional systems was greatly strengthened through kinship ties. While vassals of the preceding Shang dynasty each had a different family name, half of Zhou’s vassals bore the same name “Zhou”; While the king of Shang was regarded only as a leading member of an alliance, the king of Zhou was the sovereign with authority over his vassals as his subjects. (王国维:《殷周制度论》,《北京大学百年国学文粹·史学卷》，北京大学出版社，1998年，第10页。)
Chinese Tradition of Non-Partisan Politics
While the West changed its system from feudal autocracy to modern constitutional democracy, China completed her transition from Western Zhou feudalism to a system of prefectures and counties two millennia ago. The long history of China as a highly unified entity has had a direct impact on the political orientation of her elites – they have all along opposed partisan politics as doing harm to the overall interests of the state and advocated a non-partisan political system with a shared government.
With the disintegration of Western Zhou feudalism, the political principle of non-partisanship gained more and more weight in China. Almost all schools of thought were categorically opposed to polarization between the rich and the poor, to class divisions and to partisan politics. The Book of Shang explained that partisan politics would lead to the breakdown of the state system and total chaos of the society: “What does it mean ‘to govern the state by ruining it’? For instance, appointing worthy persons as officials is nowadays the way adopted by rulers. However, this is the way to ruin the state. That is because what is meant by ‘worthy’ is ‘good and right’ but the reputation of being ‘good and right’ comes from members of the person’s own political faction. If you judge him by what he says, you may think he is capable; then you ask his followers and they will say he is. Thus you promote some people without requiring deeds of merit and punish others without evidence of wrong-doing. This is how corrupt officials find support to cover up their wicked craftiness and villains find opportunities to play their deceitful tricks. Since the foundation has been laid from the beginning for wickedness and deceitfulness, how can one expect honesty and uprightness from officials and ordinary people? Even the Great Yu (大禹) would not be able to manage ten such persons under such circumstances. How could a mediocre monarch govern all his subjects? Thus, those who have ganged up would surely have their way without making much effort.”(《商君书•慎法第二十五》。)
With non-partisanship extended into the economic realm of traditional China, while she used to have a strong market economy, social production and consumption were not controlled by individual persons or private enterprises but managed by a neutral government from the general perspective of the state, that is, through policy adjustments aiming at balancing the interests of different social strata with a view to achieve a harmonious social development – adjustments called “weighing and balancing economic factors” (轻重之术) in classical Chinese economics. “If the sovereign does not know how to regulate profits among his people，the state can never be regarded as in great order．Thus，a state of ten thousand chariots would have extremely wealthy businessmen with tens of thousands jin of gold，and a state of one thousand chariots would have extremely wealthy businessmen with one thousand jin of gold．Why could things develop this way? A lot of national wealth is lost．As a result，officials will not serve the sovereign loyally，and intellectuals will not devote their lives to the state．Sometimes the yearly harvest is good，but other times it is bad，so that the price of grain can be either low or high correspondingly．Some edicts are urgent but others are not，so that things can be either expensive or cheap．And if the sovereign cannot manage to maintain a balance in the price of grain and prices of other goods，merchants will monopolize the supply and marketing of things to take advantage of the deficiency of food and tools of the common people by charging prices a hundred times higher than the original costs．If the territory of the state were divided equally among the people，the mighty ones would manage to maintain their shares．If the wealth of the state were divided equally among the people，the wise ones would manage to maintain their shares．Moreover， the wise ones can enjoy profits of tens of times higher in comparison with the amount they invested．In the opposite case，the frivolous ones cannot manage to recover their costs．And if the sovereign cannot administer the situation efficiently，the gap between the rich and the poor will be enlarged so strongly that the wealthy people might be hundreds of times more affluent than the destitute ones．Thus，high salaries are no longer inviting enough to attract the wealthy people and penalties are no longer formidable enough to threaten the poor．If the law is not complied with and the orders cannot be carried out，the common people cannot be well administered while the gap between the rich and the poor is extremely large．” (Trans. by Jiangyue Zhai, Guanzi · Sixteen Chapters on Weighing and Balancing Economic Factors (《管子·轻重十六篇》): Chaps. 73)
With the replacement of Western Zhou system of hereditary aristocracy by that of prefectures and counties since Qin dynasty, non-partisan Chinese politics made it possible to give each individual an equal opportunity and distribute limited resources according to their contribution to the society through a system of social stratification. |
