THE FUTURE IS CHINESE
Created | Updated Oct 25, 2008
THE FUTURE IS CHINESE?
The idea of a re-awakening of the Chinese 'giant' has, been a recurring theme of at least the last forty years, raising expectations that have not been fulfilled so far. But the current "Great Leap Forward" would appear to be 'the real McCoy', and we must anticipate that the Beijing Olympics will announce China as a major force in world affairs.
The Future, however, is always an unknown country. Even the fifty year 'Kondratiev Cycles', that seem to fit into the revolutionary waves that have animated the western world since 1760-70, do not really provide any basis for accurate forecasting. The Chinese, on the other hand, observe that the normal length of a dynasty is 200 years, suggesting the influence of a much longer cycle for this third of humanity.
THE 'ASSORTED FOREIGN DEVILS' DYNASTY
Of course China no longer has a dynasty as such, but arguably that is only because the "Foreign Devils" refused to 'play by the rules'.
In the middle of the nineteenth century a British and French force marched into the heart of China, occupied the capital city and burned the Emperor's great Summer Palace to the ground. It was conclusive evidence that the Manchu dynasty had "lost the mandate of Heaven". But, as Edward Behr wrote in his 1987 study "The Last Emperor", the Manchu court in 1860 just could not believe that the British and the French would be prepared to go to these lengths just to establish fair trade and a permanent diplomatic presence in Peking. The Manchu mind-set was still that of their ancestors. They had been indomitable enemies of the Chinese Emperor, who had then invited them into China in a desperate attempt to restore his power and authority within a disintegrating empire. Once at the seat of power the Manchu had taken over the Imperial throne, as had happened many times over the millennia. The "big-nosed hairy ones", however, did not declare a new dynasty in 1860. So for the last 150 years government in China has depended upon outside "foreign devils" of one kind or another.
In the nineteenth century Britain spearheaded the process, but that was followed by the period of Russian expansion. There was also, however, an increase of US involvement in the Pacific, a key factor in the careers of both Sun Yat Sen and Chiang Kai Chek. Then the USSR saw China as a suitable place for a Communist Revolution, and sent advisors and guides to further the career of Mao Tse Tung. Japan, however, as a newly emerged great power, had seen its own destiny in imperial expansion for some time, and found a tool in the deposed Emperor Pu Yi. The Sino-Japanese war eventually saw these three external influences competing for prominence.
Communism eventually emerged victorious in 1949. But twenty years later the Red Brotherhood began to weaken and soon the USA returned to a policy of cultivating friendly relations with China. So we now have the ironic situation of a Communist Party holding on to power rather as the Manchu dynasty clung on after its apparent 'mandate of Heaven' has gone, because its administration is supported by huge inward investments from global capitalism.
As it took the USA about half a century to move from its own sky-scraper economic boom to its accepted role as the world's leading superpower, a similar trend in China would fit in very neatly with the 200 year cycle, and it seems quite reasonable to expect that by 2050-60 China will be firmly established as one of the leading powers in the world, if not the World's main superpower.
THE POLITICS OF FREEDOM AND REFORM
Just what motivated the British and French to intervene in this way? Mr. Behr commented on the previous page on the predatory immorality of nineteenth-century imperialism. This is the kind of thing that it is very easy to say at the end of the twentieth century, because we have become accustomed to decry the politics of measured progress and reform associated with an age of Liberalism in favour of more instant and decisive solutions.
Progress and reform, however, were the cornerstones British domestic and foreign policy from the 1830's. Their champion in foreign affairs was Lord Palmerston, who welcomed the French revolution of 1830, for it put France on a similar path to that pioneered by Great Britain. Now a Franco-British alliance, Palmerston argued, could save Europe from the two extremes of reaction and revolution. And there was no reason to believe that economic and political reform was not the way forward for a decrepit 'ancien regime' in the Far East as much for their European equivalents.
During the eighteenth century 'enlightened despots' in Europe had tried to take their countries along the path of progress. Then the tempo of change was increased by revolutionary France, which forced Britain to match its revolution in its own way in order to survive as a free and sovereign state. Waterloo, however, was followed by an age of reaction, and Britain and France became allies supporting the politics of reform and freedom. Their policies over the following decades identified progress with 'free peoples' living under competent administrations that ruled in the public interest.
Revolution and then reaction had another throw in the revolutionary year of 1848 and its aftermath. In fact Britain became so worried about the expansion of Russia, whose enlightened despots had proved a short-lived period of 'enlightened' politics, that Britain and France went to war to help the Ottoman Turks, "the sick man of Europe".
Earlier Britain had supported the Greeks in their war of independence from the Turks in the 1820's, but in the 1850's it saw grave dangers in the total collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Russia seemed well placed to expand at the expense of the Turks. But Russian power would be placed in the hands of an autocracy that had backed reaction and showed no signs of conceding liberal reforms. Moreover, the loss of central authority in the weak and hapless Ottoman Empire threatened chaos and disorder from the Balkans, through Asia Minor, down into Egypt and the Sudan, and throughout much of the Middle East. So the "Eastern Question" demanded careful handling, if a catastrophic situation was not to arise. This careful handling meant giving the Turks time to take the path of reform and progress.
So in 1860, when Britain and France used what has been called "gunboat diplomacy" in China, there seemed no reason why China also should not gradually become part of the modern world. That this thesis was not absurd was shown only seven years later, when Japan embarked on the Meiji Restoration ( 1867), the first step in that country's incredibly rapid 'modernization'.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INDIA AND CHINA
Possibly British and French attitudes to China might not have been the same if there had been no India. Significantly just three years before the sortie to Peking, in 1857, 'British' forces had put down the Indian Mutiny/the First War of Indian Independence. And in this case the British Crown had assumed power creating the British Raj. So, at the time of the capture of Peking, no doubt some pragmatic and practical voices must have urged that Great Britain had its hands full with sorting out one of the Asian giants. Modern commentators, on the other hand, aware of "the bottom line" of Marxist/Capitalist materialism, might suggest that predatory imperialism surely must have achieved some short-time satiation having just swallowed up the whole Indian sub-continent.
There were, however, important historical reasons for the different policies taken in India and China. The declaration of the British Raj was in effect the final recognition of the reality of British control of India that had emerged during the eighteenth century. Of course India was not as far away from Europe as China, and so it was natural to establish closer links there than in the “Far East”. But proximity had also made it possible for most of India to become part of the Islamic world; and European explorers, especially the Spanish and Portuguese, possessed an intimate knowledge of Islam. Bitter experience may well have encouraged prejudice and hostility in advance, but much of what was discovered about the India's Islamic 'Moghul' Empire confirmed the idea that little should be expected of the Islamic world.
Yet, just as there was a hope that the Greeks could once again reconnect the World with past glories, once they had been freed from Islamic domination, so British hopes for the Indian sub-continent were based upon attempts to revive, and raise from the ashes, its great ancient Hindu civilization. This could only be achieved by freeing the Hindus from the Muslim domination that had destroyed Hindu self-belief. The era of reform and progress, however, produced a reactionary backlash. Those who took up arms in 1857 declared their intention of restoring the rule of the last Moghul Emperor. Significantly Britain's Sikh regiments, whose faith had started in the seventeenth century as a militant movement to resist Muslim oppression, stayed loyal to Britain and were very prominent in the fighting. The war of 1857 did, however, highlight the anomalous situation, rather similar to that existing in Japan, in which there was a purely titular and powerless head of state, while the actual power had devolved to a more effective agency. So the "British Raj" was declared, based on the ideal of a state in which 'free peoples' would be living under competent administrations that ruled in the public interest
China, however, with its geographical remoteness reinforced by isolationism, had not only resisted Islam, but also continued to inspire in Europe an enduring and pervasive idea of the wisdom of the Orient. This was particularly associated with the courts of Kublai Khan that Europe knew largely through the tales of Marco Polo.
Marco Polo's China had seemed so incredible during the late Middle Ages that cynics doubted his veracity for a long time, while dreamers hoped one day to get to fabulous 'Cathay'. Once Europeans made it to China, however, it quickly became obvious that most of the things that Polo had described were absolutely true. Of course, the signs of decay and decline were very obvious. But, if there could be a Hindu revival, and a Greek revival, surely the unchanging qualities of "the Chinese race" would mean that China could once again live up to its past greatness. Merely breaking through to China, as Marco Polo had done, and bringing it into normal diplomatic and economic relations might be enough.
Unfortunately, however, China was no longer the self-confident and open civilization of Kublai Khan, and the Peking expedition was the outcome of decades of frustration at the refusal to concede to the European's demands to deal with "the man at the top". Previous treaties and understandings had subsequently been undermined because the Imperial government had denied the right of its underlings to make formal commitments.
The Peking raid finally resulted in a firm treaty. So, when the Manchu dynasty, whose weakness had been so clearly exposed by Britain and France, faced another great internal rebellion, neither of these two allies was inclined to interfere in China's 'domestic politics'. China could find its own 'free market' solution. And they were right. China had valuable assets at her disposal, so the foreign commercial interests in the "concessions" decided to have a 'whip round' amongst them selves.
The French revolution with its National Guard has cut us off from the eighteenth century reality in which many of the minor states of Europe had armies for hire, so increasingly during the nineteenth century armies in Europe were expected to be national ones. The rulers of less wealthy countries, however, still find mercenaries a cheaper and frequently less dangerous option. Certainly the "Ever Victorious Army", created by the money raised by the "foreign devils", was a brilliant success and launched the career of an "Eminent Victorian", Major Charles Gordon.
China's backers, of course, had to be rewarded. But this success was followed by a realization that there had to be modernization and for a while the reformers were prominent in Chinese politics.
It is quite easy now to criticize this politics of progress and reform, because the First World War swept away what H.A.L Fisher called "The Liberal Experiment". The twentieth century became the age of quick results, and people who "want it now" through the exercise of overwhelming power. So it is easy to forget that the first fourteen years of the twentieth century did see significant 'progressive revolutions'. Internationally this meant revolution in the tottering empires of Russia, Turkey and China, while, from a British domestic perspective, the Liberal Government created the both the foundations of the Welfare State and the real politics of progressive taxation aimed at addressing social inequality.
The period 1900-1914, in fact, has been described as an age of seismic change. But it was being negotiated successfully, until events in the Balkans blew up and created a situation that was aggravated by the elderly occupant of one old ramshackle empire, and the young naive occupant of a new thrusting one built on Prussia, which had been the most successful eighteenth century ‘mercenary state'. At the time there was a great sense of German war-guilt. But this has given way to a more general disapproval of those violent and war-like times. It was, however, because it was an age in which “War and Peace” were so closely interrelated that the politics of moderate, gradual and piecemeal reform was considered to be the safest political way forward.
CHINA'S LONG MARCH INTO THE MODERN WORLD
It seems that, after a catastrophic period of world history, this Liberal spirit has won a second chance. And, in China, the economic opportunities offered by the nineteenth century concessions are now being exploited not only by new investment by 'Foreign Devils', but also by a Chinese leadership that is no longer trying to totally re-invent the industrial revolution as Chairman Mao tried to do.
A key factor in this transformation was the evident satisfaction that was felt when China claimed back the Hong Kong territories that had been leased to Britain for 150 years. What had been taken away from them had been returned. But not returned in its original state, for modern Hong Kong is some of the most valuable real estate in the world. Thus, overnight, Communist China acquired a new dimension, a new place in the world economy, and a new identity as a place "to do business with". Finally, through Hong Kong, the Chinese and the "outer barbarians" had established a working relationship, and venture capital pours into China.
So we are becoming accustomed to the sight of ever-growing clusters of Communist Chinese skyscrapers, those classical symbols of Capitalism. At the same time the fear of a new "Wall Street Crash" and a return to the depression years of the Thirties makes it possible for business interests, politicians and western consumers to play on the need to tolerate things in China that would not be tolerated in the 'free world'. For China has become vitally important as a major driving force in global economic development.
But it is, and will be, a Chinese modernity, as we were reminded by the events in Tiananmen Square. Just what happened there took many western journalists by surprise, because they saw the student demonstrations as part of the kind of world culture that has been promoted as a part of our post-Imperial 'global village'. Perhaps the students believed their own ‘press’ and forgot what they should have remembered about what it means to be Chinese. It may be that the nineteenth century age of massacring "Foreign Devils" is in the past, but Chinese people should know better than to ape the 'misguided conduct' of the 'outer barbarians', who must be excused a certain amount of ignorance that goes along with their ‘backwardness’..
It is reasonable to assume that a newly powerful and self-confident China will be rooted in Chinese traditions and values because:
(a) Even in the liberal age an appeal to the best parts of the past was often the politician’s strongest suit. The whole Palmerstonian vision was based upon the idea of the exportability of the English system of representative democracy and England’s old democratic mechanisms and traditions. It was, in fact, this ability to appeal to "Englishness" that made Palmerston almost an obligatory member of any cabinet for decades. And it was the English tradition of partnership between the Crown government and the people that had made Britain “Great”.
So, in the world that Palmerston sought to create, the easiest way for those, who wished to attain power through mass support, was not to call for the people to achieve some revolutionary personal transformation in order to become other than they were. Marx could ask working people to educate them selves in order to become part of a new, enlightened, and progressive 'Proletariat'; but populist politicians found that it is much easier to mobilize the masses by appealing for them to revert to their roots. Hence the late nineteenth century drive for 'freedom' often involved appeals to past ethnic, racial, and cultural identities. This often demanded the break up of Empires. But in both Germany and Italy it meant the attempt to restore past imperial greatness.
There are endless examples of this appeal to a lost past. One of the most obvious was the Nazi appeal to a fabricated German 'aryan' past. But perhaps one of the noblest was Martin Luther King's appeal to the ideals of "The American Dream" that could unite "all people of goodwill" behind the cause of freedom. More recently Gordon Brown has talked of the need for Britain to rediscover its "soul", by which he meant a reconnection with its previous spiritual and social life.
(b) China has been no exception to this trend because, throughout this "foreign devil dynastic" period, Chinese people have been struggling to adjust in a Chinese way to this new reality. This is brought out most clearly in some of the books that have sprung from the world’s longest literary tradition. Han Suyin's great work "China. History/Autobiography"; is particularly valuable to an English readership. Han Suyin, as the daughter of a 'foreign devil', lived with the stigma of living as a mixed-race person through a period when racism connected with roots and racial purity was a common world phenomenon. But though she was forced to spend most of her life outside China, Han Suyin, like many exiles, could see the special virtues and values of the childhood home country she had lost. Frank Ching's "Ancestors" is rather different because this Chinese American had only Chinese Ancestor's. But at the age of 43 he gave up his job on the "Wall Street Journal" in order to spend all of his time tracing his family back through 900 years. For every Chinese person should be intimately connected with the ancestors and attempt to live with their approval. Gao Xingjiang, born in the same year as Frank Ching (1940) grew up within China through the turbulent decades that followed, only leaving in 1987. But the sense of loss, alienation, and confusion is ever-present in his 1990 novel "Soul Mountain", which is based upon a personal odyssey deep into China. It was an attempt to reconnect with those fundamental and unruly forces that have been vital to Chinese life over the millennia, and with which the Chinese had learned to live in harmony, in spite of all the dynamics of Yin and Yang.
BEHIND THE COURTS OF KUBLAI KHAN
There is no reason, however, to expect China to live up to the cherished western vision of the era of Kublai Khan. Even if we take Marco Polo's story-telling as unvarnished and factual reporting, the 'Cathay' that Polo knew was a very particular and unique period of Chinese history, in effect a fusion of two great powers.
If it was the case, as Polo stated, that a beautiful girl could walk naked with a gold brick on her head in perfect safety from one end of the Silk Road to the other, then that security owed more to the legacy of Genghis Khan and the Tartars than to any outreach of purely Chinese authority. Our European idea of Genghis Khan, of course, is bound up with our fears that this uncivilized 'barbarian' would overrun Europe. So all Europe gave thanks to God when the great Horde he commanded decided to over-run China instead.
Genghis Khan, however, clearly knew a thing or two about the practicalities of life, for he stands out as one of the great individual achievers in history. Perhaps he knew enough to understand the most important truth that there is so much more in Heaven and Earth than anyone can ever understand. For, though the Khans decided to settle in possibly the most civilized place on Earth, it did not mean that they had decided that the Chinese possessed the whole truth.
All of this helps to explain Kublai Khan's self-confidence and his openness to outsiders like the Polos from far away Venice. But, as Eileen Power brought out in her 1924 account of Marco Polo as one of her "Medieval People", this situation did not last: "But a change came over everything in the middle of the fourteenth century. Darkness fell again and swallowed up Peking and Hangchow, the great ports, the crowding junks, the noble civilization. No longer was the great trade route sichurissimo, and no longer did Christian friars chant their Masses in Zaiton. The Tartar dynasty fell and the new rulers of China reverted to the old anti-foreign policy; moreover Islam spread its conquests all over Central Asia and lay like a rampart between the Far East and the West, a great wall of intolerance and hatred stronger by far than the great wall of stone which the Chinese had once built to keep out the Tartars. All Marco Polo's marvels became no more than a legend, a traveler's tale" ( page 66)
The story of the Manchu dynasty, though in some ways similar to that of the Tartars, was nevertheless significantly different. The Muslim rampart across Central Asia scaled down the potential scale of operations for future Golden Hordes. So the Manchu had a much more local impact. Nevertheless, they were invited into China as military competent barbarians, who could make good the military weakness of the existing dynasty.
For the Manchu taking over China must have been like winning the lottery, and they had little hesitation in adopting the Chinese system of government and administration 'as seen'. The second Manchu Emperor, K'angshi, was a kind of Manchu equivalent of Kublai Khan. He made the adaptation from 'barbarian' to 'civilized', and during his sixty years on the throne he set about pacifying the country. But, whereas Kublai Khan had been open -minded, K'angshi found Chinese civilization to be ‘sufficient unto itself’. He became a great scholar in his own right and organized the printing of a great encyclopedia of Chinese knowledge that ran to 5,020 volumes. This studiousness equipped K'angshi to hold his own within a governmental system that was in theory at least a meritocracy, run by mandarins, who only gained entrance to their administrative functions by means of a very demanding examination procedure. But, as R.K Douglas observed in his 1904 study of "Europe and the Far East"- "The circle of knowledge required is narrow, but so much more is it thorough. It is always easier to remember than to think; and by the help of naturally tenacious memories, perfected by exercise, young and ripe scholars face their examiners thoroughly possessed of every subject which can be presented to them." ( page 40)
The existence of this ancient system of government run by Confucian scholars makes it easier to understand why Kublai Khan should have been so keen to make good use Marco Polo. The Polo's republican city-state of Venice was not yet part of the Italy of the "Universal Man" of the Italian Renaissance, but, as in ancient Athens, citizens were expected to be able to turn their hand to whatever task was necessary. Moreover, like Khan's own ancestors, the several generations of the Polo family had experienced the travel "that broadens the mind". Marco was very different, therefore, from the Mandarins, who had spent long years in mastering the complexities of the Chinese alphabet, Chinese calligraphy, and the prescribed texts. Travel promotes self-reliance, thinking for your self, and using common sense.
An isolated China, however, returned a mechanism of government that was essentially divorced from the dynamics of change. To quote Professor Douglas once again- "The Chinese recognize four classes of society, namely, scholars, farmers, mechanics, and traders. But practically the constituents are officials and people". And the officials were guided by "The Institutes of the Dynasty", ancient rules that governed every single governmental act from the top to the bottom. Consequently the main task of the Emperor and his Council of State was merely to oversee the work of the 18 provincial administrations. It was the provincial viceroys who were expected to govern.
In theory the system should have worked well. "The code of laws in force is excellently devised and provides penalties for every conceivable crime and offence. If only administered righteously it would meet every requirement and would combine justice with discretion." ( page 38)
A CHINA CAPABLE OF BEING REFORMED
Of course in 1904 Professor Douglas was writing in an age when the belief in liberal progress was still strong. Even Great Britain was only just beginning to get adjusted to the idea that a government might have to assume a responsibility for the everyday life of its citizens. Previously it had been as true of England, as it still was of China, that the main function of government in quiet times was "to see that......the town and village elders govern the people in harmony with their traditions... Thus the country is to a certain extent self-governing; and with much wisdom the people are allowed full latitude in the arrangement of their own affairs, and in the performance of their social and clannish customs, so long as they do not come into conflict with the laws of the State. " ( page 40)
This grass-roots level of life, however, was far from anarchic. In China it was based upon ancient systems and traditions that sought to promote harmony, including the ideas of "Feng'shui" that promoted riots in the late nineteenth century, when the proposed railway constructions cut their way across the landscape in accordance with the demands of engineering and in violation of ancient wisdom. It was the strength of this rural Chinese society that encouraged Mao Tse Tung to base his revolution and his resistance to the Japanese invaders on the countryside.
Traditional China was woven together by complex traditions that had often been vital to surviving disastrous times. Han Suyin rushing from her medical training in England to 'do her bit', when the Japanese attacked China itself, was astonished to be met by a total stranger on a remote railway station. He turned out to be one of her father's students, who was, therefore, under a lifetime obligation to his teacher's descendents. Having somehow found out what she was doing, he had come to help her on her way. Frank Ching discovered that his own family was bound up with a bundle of fifty families that were expected to look out for each other across the generations.
It was at this level that the Chinese people dealt with life, so, as the philosopher Mencius, put it- "the people are the most important element in a nation and the sovereign is the lightest". The Emperor and the mandarin class were expected to promote the welfare of the people and administer the law righteously. But the ideal situation was one in which the Emperor just 'did his thing' in the Imperial City, while his empire flourished. For in China it is often the case that 'less is more', and a mandarin whose forceful actions made his people openly rebel against his rule had failed and would be moved to another post. In the same way, if the Emperor failed to promote the wellbeing of his people, they had the right to dispossess him and even, according to Mencius, put him to death. But, in times of famine and pestilence, when the gods are against man, and the Emperor could not be blamed, he would be expected to humble himself before the gods: and then degrade the administrators in the affected areas.
Much has changed in China since 1904, but it could be argued that the ‘mandarin class’ in modern China is the Communist Party.
THE ROMAN STATE
One Party rule, however, has become inextricably linked in the western mind with totalitarianism, and those interested in liberal concepts of freedom and progress are worried about the continued lack of democratic machinery and governmental accountability in China. But Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the rest; and there is widespread disillusionment with parliamentary democracy in the west. The Victorian idea that the path of progress pioneered by Britain and France has some historical inevitability as the way into the future has little currency, as is shown by the lack of public enthusiasm for the present efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The problem is that ‘western government’ is still very much founded upon the ancient Roman model. The effectiveness of Rome sprang from its economic power and its ability to impose military control and authority over lands within its sway. There were advantages in this 'pax romanum' in uncertain times, and even Jesus advised that people living within it should "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's".
But "Rome outgrew its strength", for, with its Empire based around 'the sea at the centre of the world', its borders were largely arbitrary and only sustainable by the exercise of force against those who sought their share of 'the glittering prizes'. When that external pressure proved too much, the Roman system collapsed, only to re-appear after the Dark Ages in much smaller units. These Medieval realms were based upon a military competence that was closely linked to systems of service, dues and taxation. And this connection eventually led to a very close relationship between the government and the economy. A percentage of the wealth from industry, trade and commerce could be taken by the government in order to increase its power and competence, creating an interdependence that has been a great theme of modern history, down to questions about the influence of oil and arms companies over recent US international policies. It is ,however, the intertwining of economics and politics that has made it possible for 'great powers' to pursue domestic and foreign expansionist policies in order to give as much security as possible to their citizens, in spite of the accompanying need to create a dynamic, changing and unsettled world.
The situation of China, however, was very different to that of the Mediterranean civilizations on which the ‘west’ is based. China's famous Great Wall was inspired by the realization that such a great work would effectively complete the isolation that nature had bequeathed to China’s three great river valleys. Once the whole region was brought into one Empire it was not too big for the "strength" of a competent and energetic central government, though in times of poor government such control could disintegrate, creating an internal dynamic of change. Times of instability, however, called for the restoration of harmony and balance, sometimes by drastic and dramatic action-surgical violence that contrasts with the French decision to solve their internal difficulties with revolutionary violence during their great eighteenth century revolution by launching revolutionary war that destabilized the rest of Europe.
AND SHALL I DIE WITH THIS UNCONQUERED
Back in the age of Queen Elizabeth I, right at the real start of the process of expansion that was to lead to the creation of Britain's "Empire on which the sun never set", Christopher Marlowe wrote his play "Tamburlaine the Great" about another great conqueror on the plains of Asia. It was a reminder to the English people that they lived in a dangerous world. The Spanish Armada was a more concrete reminder and the subsequent logic of conflict was that the "great wall of oak" would be maintained at a level that could keep the country safe. This meant that no foreign Armada would be allowed to assemble in the Sheldt Estuary, and this led directly to British involvement in the war of 1914 turning it into a World War. After 1918, as it was argued that one of the causes of the Great War had been the great pre-war arms race, Britain did reduce its military capability. But, in turn, by the late thirties Winston Churchill could argue that Britain's military weakness merely served to encouraged Adolf Hitler to see himself as a modern Tamburlaine.
After 1945, however, both 'capitalist' powers, one following the liberal capitalism of the 'west' and the other the state-capitalism of the Soviet sphere, used their growing economic power to pay for a three-fold pursuit of security. (a) A new arms race knew no limits under Heaven. (b) Citizens were guaranteed social security and standards of living that were often beyond the dreams of their forefathers. (c) The risk of future local conflicts was minimized by the creation regional blocks that brought together old enemies -Germany& France, Poland &Russia.
Fifty years later "New Labour" promised to the electorate "Things can only get better" because it is the only message that is acceptable in populist politics that depend upon creating disharmony. But all three strands of that post-war drive for security give grounds for grave concern. Our arms and defense systems need improvement. The social security situation is leaving children growing up in poverty, ignorance and disadvantage. And the conflicts between the member countries of both the United Kingdom and the European Community lead to popular resentments and calls for separation and divorce.
Fortunately, for the moment, our massive investment in China's economic revolution increases the earnings of Britain's financial sector, while cheap Chinese goods have a major impact on the purchasing power of the British consumer. But, if the economic development of China really allows China to catch up with the 'developed world', the impact on the global environment may prove fatal to mankind.
THE ART OF HARMONIOUS LIVING
We must hope, therefore, that the Chinese have not forgotten the ancient wisdom that has understood that mankind's struggle is to achieve a balance between Yin and Yang, Light and Dark, Positive and Negative. This is radically different from the idea that has spread through Christianity and Islam, namely that our destiny is to use our God-given power to eliminate "Evil" and create a temporal Heaven on Earth. For the ancient Chinese lived in an environment in which just creating such a balance was an achievement in its own right.
The first god-kings were credited with coming down from the Heavens and organizing the taming of the great waters that were vital to the development of ancient river valley civilizations around the World. China was, and is, a mighty land of extremes and great variety so that climatic irregularities have always meant potential disaster. While earthquakes, though not quite as prevalent as in Japan, required the development of early methods of detection so that relief and support could be sent to badly affected areas.
And China is almost a world in itself. Even in 1904 China's population was around 420 million people, and Professor Douglas could write:- "China is such a huge country that it is impossible to expect it to move uniformly ; and it is invariably the case that at any given time one can point to extreme cases of pro-foreign and anti-foreign tendencies in the various provinces. Thus it happened that, while in certain provinces there appeared to be hopeful signs of advance, in others the torch of ignorant fanaticism was kept blazing." ( Douglas page 252)
In 1904, however, champions of “progress” expected it eventually to turn out citizens on an industrial scale. By the early twentieth century the 'progressive' nation-state had a state education service that taught the standard national language, along with an approved folk culture, and a national history, that prepared them for the national press version of current affairs. Many also finalized the apprenticeship in citizenship through periods of national service, and membership of a national military reserve.
Yet China worked in its own fashion and one of the great frustrations of the Europeans, who sought to establish ‘mutually beneficial’ trade, was that the Chinese often saw very little to be gained from what the west had to offer. Thus a document submitted to the throne in 1889 gave a considered judgment on just where Chinese interests might be served by the building of the railways that had proved so important to the development of the world's ‘great powers’. The official, who compiled the report, noted that a railway between Tientsin and T'ungchow would replace the existing cart and boat traffic. But the existing traffic employed about 60,000 people, whereas, on the basis of the 1889 manning levels on English railways only 800 men would be needed on a track that long. In the free market conditions of Britain this would be seen as a more economic use of factors of production. But the report pointed out that, allowing for a family size of five per worker, "that makes a total of 300,000 persons depending on these trades for their daily rice". ( page 280) So building the line would leave a quarter of a million people with no means of survival.
Moreover, you did not need to be a brilliant scholar to work out that the free market conditions in “the west” were not always as beneficial as they were supposed to be to non-westerners. After the end of the African slave trade there were other attempts to move workers to the parts of the world that were in need of cheap muscle. While it is true that the British public responded generously to support famine victims in both India and China, there were also schemes to move people from regions where poverty and famine were endemic, to new lives in far away places. One such scheme was ended, however, when many Chinese workers claimed that they had not in fact emigrated of their own free will.
Elsewhere genuine Chinese emigrants proved their worth in the age of the nineteenth century gold rushes doing the back-breaking work required in isolated rural sites, especially in California and Australasia. Soon, however, they started to find their way to the towns. And then they began to compete on the labour market with white working men.- "As labourers and mechanics they were in all respects the equals of the white man, while their economical habits enabled them to work for lower wages than their rivals would accept... This condition of things aroused an active campaign against them; and political candidates found that there was no more popular policy than that which was directed towards the exclusion of Chinese from the States." ( page 275) As a result of this popular pressure, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand all passed measures against Chinese immigration.
This wave of anti-Chinese hostility was a godsend to those who linked the presence of the new "Foreign Devils" with bad things that were happening in China. Han Suyin, whose very life and being were bound up with the stretch of railway built with Belgian support, tells the tragic story of a young bride, who was compelled by commercial interests to marry a young man with powerful new connections, rather than the young man that she 'should' have married. She left her home in her bridal outfit, and was carried in a curtained palanquin to the groom's house. But when they opened the curtains on her arrival they found that she had strangled herself rather than dishonour her ancestors. It was this mood of resentment and resistance that produced the Boxer Rebellion of "The Righteous Harmony Fists" that set out to wipe China clean of this foreign infection.
THE NEED FOR GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP
Some people might suggest that the foreigners should have 'taken the hint' and just left China alone. It is an attitude that goes along with a modern trend that asserts that people should "mind their own business". It is the kind of attitude that says- "I get on perfectly well with my neighbours. I just have nothing to do with them." It belongs to an age when young back-packers can set off on world tours and tour the globe, for the most part with only acceptable misadventures that give colour to their travels. In fact the world is generally so safe that tragic and exceptional incidents make headline news. But it is too easy to assume that the current world order might have arrived in some other way than the way it did.
It certainly did not happen easily. And in the case of China and Japan it happened in the face of strong opposition. This meant that those people, who first attempted to overcome the policies of isolation, had to feel that the possible benefits were worth the chances of meeting a gruesome death. Many of these pioneers, therefore, were people who thought that they had causes worth dying for, usually Christian missionaries whose faith bound them to attempt to spread the word of God- the most precious thing that they believed the world could offer. Many died in the aftermath of the first discovery of the Far East , others from random outrages and local uprisings once the "Foreign Devils" got the right to spread the word and establish missions. By the time of the Boxer uprising many such missions had created small Chinese Christian communities that the Boxers sought to eliminate along with all trace of foreign influence. 'In extremis' the bond between convert and missionary was often very strong and it was natural for Missionary Societies to feel some additional responsibility for their Chinese converts.
Undoubtedly, however, a major driving force in the attempts to at least gain access to the ports of China and Japan was trade and the needs of shipping. They naturally went hand in hand. But there were two very clear strands, because not all shipping was merchant shipping. All shipping, however, shared the timeless 'perils and dangers' of the sea. Popular novels like "Swiss family Robinson" were based upon the known realities of shipwreck and foundering, which could happen on almost any seas. And the seas of the Far East were no exception. It was necessary, therefore, to establish mechanisms to make sure that those, who survived shipwrecks to get to a landfall, would not then find themselves murdered, or worse by the local inhabitants. So, formal understandings had to be established by which those in authority extended their protection over unfortunate sailors, who happened to land where they were not normally welcome, with corresponding arrangements to have them brought to a port and handed over to people, who could ensure their safe journey home.
Only slightly less extreme than this was the plight of the ship that needed some safe harbour in order to carry out the repairs that would ensure that it did not sink, or to stay safe while a violent typhoon blew itself out. Another problem was that of essential supplies. Sailing on the wind was always unpredictable, and mishaps could mean that food and provisions might run low. The courtesy of the sea should mean that no port would deny access to such essential supplies. And, as the age of steam developed, those essential supplies came to include coaling stations. But "what shall we do with the drunken sailor" is not just a rhetorical question. Sailors in port like to have shore leave and then incidents are likely to arise, which raise questions of jurisdiction and judicial procedures. There was an expectation that foreigners within Chinese territory and waters would just accept Chinese justice, which demanded a life for a life under any circumstances, and expected foreign sailors to be handed over for public strangulation, when unfortunate incidents had upset harmonious order, in spite of western ideas of guilt or culpability.
But the great expansion in commercial shipping in the narrow seas and the Atlantic during the eighteenth century had also made this a great age of ships lost at sea through human intervention. It was not only a great age of smuggling, but also a great age of 'wrecking', which meant coastal settlements luring ships on to their dangerous rocks where they would founder. Then the locals would murder the crew, and help themselves to the cargo. A similar fate awaited ships that fell into the hands of pirates and privateers. So the age of Nelson was followed by more effective police action by the British navy that made much of the world safe for shipping. Britannia ruled the waves.
The Far East, however, was one of the last regions in which piracy was a real problem, to the extent that some pirate chiefs became virtual warlords in some coastal regions. So there was the anomalous situation ten years before the Anglo-French expedition to Peking, when the local viceroys in south China were most happy that a British naval 'man of war', that had no legal right to be in Chinese waters, as far as they were concerned, destroyed one great pirate and his large fleet of junks, who had been able to operate with impunity.
Setting up and conducting actual trade, of course, involved many more questions, though in many ways it was an extension of the process of buying supplies. Inevitably this meant creating an interface between two cultures. For trade meant negotiation, and successful ports developed ways of accommodating different cultures. But negotiations with China were very difficult. For example, though in the 1770's East India Company servants in India were drawing up a dictionary of Sanskrit so that Europeans could study the great classics of Hindu literature, it was forbidden right into the nineteenth century for foreigners to learn the Chinese language, and therefore for any Chinese person to teach it.
This did not mean that the Chinese could not learn foreign languages, but it did perhaps make it difficult for the foreigners to understand the full subtlety of the negotiations that led up to the now infamous Opium Wars. There was, in fact, no real conflict of interests between Britain and China over opium, and the problem could have been settled in an atmosphere of partnership and common interest. This had not been the way that relations had developed at Canton, however, and eventually the Chinese sent a fleet to drive the British out of their waters. The British recognized this as an act of war, and acted accordingly.
In fact, drug trafficking especially makes it obvious that the globalization of trade and commerce means that any attempts at regulation and control must be through global partnership. In the case of Chinese opium the determined campaign of Viceroy Lin that brought Britain and China to war, merely had an impact that was totally in keeping with the current tenets of British political economy. It did bring about a reduction in supply. But this pushed up the price of opium and encouraged even more smuggling all along the extended coastline.
A CHINESE FUTURE
The upshot of the Opium War was that Britain was allowed to make a base for its "Foreign Devils" on the island of Hong Kong, slightly distanced from mainland China. But the 150 year lease ran out ten years ago and Britain and China were able to handle the peaceful handing back of Hong Kong to China.
We know that there was considerable anxiety within Hong Kong at the prospect of losing many aspects of 'Britishness'. But, as the Chinese Communists arrived to take over, they must have looked at Hong Kong with the same eyes that Mao Tse Tung used to look at "The Heavenly City" of the Imperial royal family. While other communists might have torn down and destroyed the Imperial places built for a ruling elite, Mao invited the Chinese people to admire what their own forefathers had built, and what they had never been allowed to see. For, though these magnificent buildings were built for Emperors, the exquisite workmanship and artistry of “The Forbidden City” was that of the Chinese people.
In the same way, Hong Kong in 1997, one the most economically productive places on Earth per square mile, was also a triumphant achievement of Chinese people, albeit Chinese people working within a British framework. So, while there were some tears as the Royal Yacht Britannia sailed away, for many there was more gain than loss, especially those who had managed to keep many of the values and traditions of their ancestors. This included some who had even made it to Britain itself, for, as the 'dust settled', there were those who concluded that Chinese Hong Kong was a better place to bring up their children than a Britain that seemed to have lost its way.
It would be inappropriate for a westerner to suggest how the positive and negative results of the "Assorted Foreign Devils dynasty" balance out within China. But we can at least admire the way that the fusion of the two cultures has enriched our lives, quite apart from the triumphs of Hong Kong
In view of the impact of 'western-Chinese' on mathematics and science it seems incredible that these two vital areas of western civilization, the driving forces of the twentieth century, were totally absent from ‘modern’ Chinese education and scholarship until late in the nineteenth century, when an official had the courage to point out that these disciplines had originated in China, and needed to be brought back. More visible perhaps are the careers of some of the world's greatest exponents of western classical music of the last twenty years. And, at a more popular level the Chinese ping-pong revolution, that coincided with the establishment of better relations between Communist China and the USA, has been followed by the great success of Chinese Americans in sports as various as lawn tennis and ice-skating. This in turn has encouraged China to enter into the Olympic spirit with the kind of determination, dedication and application that seems so characteristic, and which will probably be reflected in a whole clutch of medals in the Beijing Olympics.
We know the Chinese as achievers. But this is not an accident. Two of the most conscientious pupils in my south London comprehensive school used to cross London on Saturday mornings to attend Chinese school. One day I noticed one of these boys looking around from his place at the front of the class to look at the rest of the boisterous class that I was struggling to keep on task. We exchanged glances- " I bet it's not like this at Chinese school." He shook his head almost imperceptibly. The thought was clearly absurd. "No Sir." I encountered him about twenty years later in a local shop. He was a little embarrassed, because he had passed me with eyes respectfully lowered, and so he had not recognized his old teacher. He apologized, and we caught up on our news. He was just back briefly from Hong Kong, where he had been studying and training to be an architect. It is such young men who will build our future.
For China is probably the key to whether we destroy ourselves or not in the next hundred years. If we have taught the Chinese to abandon their own traditions and eventually take over as the new superpower in the western fashion, we are probably finished one way or another. Industrialization on a Chinese scale, using current technologies, will probably destroy the global environment. On the other hand, there is every probability that before that happens, should China decide to pursue 'western style' policies of revenge, and geographical expansion for 'lebensraum' and a better share of the earth's assets, we might yet end up with a most terrible war.
The politics of Mutually Assured Destruction in the Fifties, however, led a new generation to question just where we were heading. So Dr. Bronowski could detect, as he put it in "The Ascent of Man", "a crisis in confidence in western civilization". He was right. It was necessary to look for new inputs.
One of the most obvious and immediate sources of 'new input' was the Indian sub-continent, where the fruits of the British involvement in establishing English as the 'lingua franca', and the genuine interest of generations of British enthusiasts in the revival of Hindu culture, made it possible for Indians to have an immediate impact on the Sixties. Ravi Shankar was just about the only master of classical music to be taken to the heart of western pop culture. This all had considerable novelty value for those who had grown up since the end of the Raj, and those who were "living the dream" that, as Nehru said in his independence speech, had not been fulfilled in full measure. Others, however, knew that Britain and India had too much ‘history’ for the Indian sub-continent to provide a genuinely credible new input.
Apart from anything else the Hindu Revival of the late nineteenth century was something that had been wished into existence in order to recreate a sense of a living past that had died out. Like the Gaelic revival, that reinforced the Irish Republican movement, it was like the spirits of the dead summoned back to the living by the spiritualists that were so popular in Victorian times. Such roots were essential to causes that had populist foundations. Pakistan, on the other hand, was just an idea dreamed up by a conference of Muslim university students in the late nineteen twenties. To some extent all of these strands were branches off from the western tradition.
China, on the other hand, has the kind of continuous and unbroken history that means that, while countries that were formed after the end of the Second World War like Eire, India and Pakistan may hope to have a future, the Chinese can believe that they have a future. They can after all claim with some justification to being the most successful people in history, and may well be the key to the survival of life on Earth as we know it.
This may seem to be a very dramatic statement, but the facts are these:
(a) The population of China is one third of humankind contained in one country. Solve China and we make the biggest single step possible towards saving humankind.
(b) China is geographically vast and varied including a wide range of human habitats. Perfect the ways to make them work successfully and we would have answers that would be applicable in much of the rest of the world.
(c) Chinese culture has always believed in trying to work in harmony with nature, which means trying to control the violence of nature, or failing that trying to curb its damaging impact on human life. These are exactly the traditions that we now need to draw upon to heal the global environment and to minimize the harm caused by the degradation that has already been caused.
(d) The Chinese ideal has been light central government with high levels of local and family responsibility. The western alternative demands levels of economic activity that can fund taxation systems to support ‘Roman style’ government that absorb up to 40% of National Income. This has only been possible during ages of expansion during which new resources and economic openings have seen politics and economics working together to promote the kind of economic growth that produces an "economic take-off". But, like heavier-than-air craft, these economic systems have no capacity for remaining air-borne without a forward momentum. While certain privileged countries have held international power, and have exploited it, their profligate use of human resources has made it possible to carry heavy payloads funded out of taxation. But it is difficult to see this "Roman model" as a long- term solution for mankind
In fact, we in Europe are surely moving away from the superpower dream that made Charles De Gaulle support the idea of a new Europe and a new Charlemagne to counterbalance the USSR and the USA. In fact, the reality of the EEC has become rather like Professor Douglas's Manchu China, with the bureaucrats of Brussels often referred to as 'mandarins'. And the EEC is fast developing its own "Institutes of Dynasty", providing rules and regulations for what should be done in almost all circumstances. Unfortunately, there is not the same belief in "light government". Quite the reverse. More than a century of populist politics selling simple solutions "because you're worth it" has had a major impact on our values and attitudes. Yet, increasingly people are questioning whether such expensive and "heavy government" is worth it.
So, as Europe looks towards some a new constitution, and a new political, social and economic era, it could do worse than look at the old Chinese model. An over-arching authority with a largely supervisory function, provincial governments with a great deal of regional autonomy and responsibility for dynamic change, and devolved government in which "the town and village elders govern the people in harmony with their traditions" is surely a better model for the future, and would allow people that peace that comes from being connected with their roots. " Thus the country is to a certain extent self-governing; and with much wisdom the people are allowed full latitude in the arrangement of their own affairs, and in the performance of their social and clannish customs, so long as they do not come into conflict with the laws of the State. " ( page 4)
Perhaps Professor Douglas’ view of China was just an English dream
The idea of a re-awakening of the Chinese 'giant' has, been a recurring theme of at least the last forty years, raising expectations that have not been fulfilled so far. But the current "Great Leap Forward" would appear to be 'the real McCoy', and we must anticipate that the Beijing Olympics will announce China as a major force in world affairs.
The Future, however, is always an unknown country. Even the fifty year 'Kondratiev Cycles', that seem to fit into the revolutionary waves that have animated the western world since 1760-70, do not really provide any basis for accurate forecasting. The Chinese, on the other hand, observe that the normal length of a dynasty is 200 years, suggesting the influence of a much longer cycle for this third of humanity.
THE 'ASSORTED FOREIGN DEVILS' DYNASTY
Of course China no longer has a dynasty as such, but arguably that is only because the "Foreign Devils" refused to 'play by the rules'.
In the middle of the nineteenth century a British and French force marched into the heart of China, occupied the capital city and burned the Emperor's great Summer Palace to the ground. It was conclusive evidence that the Manchu dynasty had "lost the mandate of Heaven". But, as Edward Behr wrote in his 1987 study "The Last Emperor", the Manchu court in 1860 just could not believe that the British and the French would be prepared to go to these lengths just to establish fair trade and a permanent diplomatic presence in Peking. The Manchu mind-set was still that of their ancestors. They had been indomitable enemies of the Chinese Emperor, who had then invited them into China in a desperate attempt to restore his power and authority within a disintegrating empire. Once at the seat of power the Manchu had taken over the Imperial throne, as had happened many times over the millennia. The "big-nosed hairy ones", however, did not declare a new dynasty in 1860. So for the last 150 years government in China has depended upon outside "foreign devils" of one kind or another.
In the nineteenth century Britain spearheaded the process, but that was followed by the period of Russian expansion. There was also, however, an increase of US involvement in the Pacific, a key factor in the careers of both Sun Yat Sen and Chiang Kai Chek. Then the USSR saw China as a suitable place for a Communist Revolution, and sent advisors and guides to further the career of Mao Tse Tung. Japan, however, as a newly emerged great power, had seen its own destiny in imperial expansion for some time, and found a tool in the deposed Emperor Pu Yi. The Sino-Japanese war eventually saw these three external influences competing for prominence.
Communism eventually emerged victorious in 1949. But twenty years later the Red Brotherhood began to weaken and soon the USA returned to a policy of cultivating friendly relations with China. So we now have the ironic situation of a Communist Party holding on to power rather as the Manchu dynasty clung on after its apparent 'mandate of Heaven' has gone, because its administration is supported by huge inward investments from global capitalism.
As it took the USA about half a century to move from its own sky-scraper economic boom to its accepted role as the world's leading superpower, a similar trend in China would fit in very neatly with the 200 year cycle, and it seems quite reasonable to expect that by 2050-60 China will be firmly established as one of the leading powers in the world, if not the World's main superpower.
THE POLITICS OF FREEDOM AND REFORM
Just what motivated the British and French to intervene in this way? Mr. Behr commented on the previous page on the predatory immorality of nineteenth-century imperialism. This is the kind of thing that it is very easy to say at the end of the twentieth century, because we have become accustomed to decry the politics of measured progress and reform associated with an age of Liberalism in favour of more instant and decisive solutions.
Progress and reform, however, were the cornerstones British domestic and foreign policy from the 1830's. Their champion in foreign affairs was Lord Palmerston, who welcomed the French revolution of 1830, for it put France on a similar path to that pioneered by Great Britain. Now a Franco-British alliance, Palmerston argued, could save Europe from the two extremes of reaction and revolution. And there was no reason to believe that economic and political reform was not the way forward for a decrepit 'ancien regime' in the Far East as much for their European equivalents.
During the eighteenth century 'enlightened despots' in Europe had tried to take their countries along the path of progress. Then the tempo of change was increased by revolutionary France, which forced Britain to match its revolution in its own way in order to survive as a free and sovereign state. Waterloo, however, was followed by an age of reaction, and Britain and France became allies supporting the politics of reform and freedom. Their policies over the following decades identified progress with 'free peoples' living under competent administrations that ruled in the public interest.
Revolution and then reaction had another throw in the revolutionary year of 1848 and its aftermath. In fact Britain became so worried about the expansion of Russia, whose enlightened despots had proved a short-lived period of 'enlightened' politics, that Britain and France went to war to help the Ottoman Turks, "the sick man of Europe".
Earlier Britain had supported the Greeks in their war of independence from the Turks in the 1820's, but in the 1850's it saw grave dangers in the total collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Russia seemed well placed to expand at the expense of the Turks. But Russian power would be placed in the hands of an autocracy that had backed reaction and showed no signs of conceding liberal reforms. Moreover, the loss of central authority in the weak and hapless Ottoman Empire threatened chaos and disorder from the Balkans, through Asia Minor, down into Egypt and the Sudan, and throughout much of the Middle East. So the "Eastern Question" demanded careful handling, if a catastrophic situation was not to arise. This careful handling meant giving the Turks time to take the path of reform and progress.
So in 1860, when Britain and France used what has been called "gunboat diplomacy" in China, there seemed no reason why China also should not gradually become part of the modern world. That this thesis was not absurd was shown only seven years later, when Japan embarked on the Meiji Restoration ( 1867), the first step in that country's incredibly rapid 'modernization'.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INDIA AND CHINA
Possibly British and French attitudes to China might not have been the same if there had been no India. Significantly just three years before the sortie to Peking, in 1857, 'British' forces had put down the Indian Mutiny/the First War of Indian Independence. And in this case the British Crown had assumed power creating the British Raj. So, at the time of the capture of Peking, no doubt some pragmatic and practical voices must have urged that Great Britain had its hands full with sorting out one of the Asian giants. Modern commentators, on the other hand, aware of "the bottom line" of Marxist/Capitalist materialism, might suggest that predatory imperialism surely must have achieved some short-time satiation having just swallowed up the whole Indian sub-continent.
There were, however, important historical reasons for the different policies taken in India and China. The declaration of the British Raj was in effect the final recognition of the reality of British control of India that had emerged during the eighteenth century. Of course India was not as far away from Europe as China, and so it was natural to establish closer links there than in the “Far East”. But proximity had also made it possible for most of India to become part of the Islamic world; and European explorers, especially the Spanish and Portuguese, possessed an intimate knowledge of Islam. Bitter experience may well have encouraged prejudice and hostility in advance, but much of what was discovered about the India's Islamic 'Moghul' Empire confirmed the idea that little should be expected of the Islamic world.
Yet, just as there was a hope that the Greeks could once again reconnect the World with past glories, once they had been freed from Islamic domination, so British hopes for the Indian sub-continent were based upon attempts to revive, and raise from the ashes, its great ancient Hindu civilization. This could only be achieved by freeing the Hindus from the Muslim domination that had destroyed Hindu self-belief. The era of reform and progress, however, produced a reactionary backlash. Those who took up arms in 1857 declared their intention of restoring the rule of the last Moghul Emperor. Significantly Britain's Sikh regiments, whose faith had started in the seventeenth century as a militant movement to resist Muslim oppression, stayed loyal to Britain and were very prominent in the fighting. The war of 1857 did, however, highlight the anomalous situation, rather similar to that existing in Japan, in which there was a purely titular and powerless head of state, while the actual power had devolved to a more effective agency. So the "British Raj" was declared, based on the ideal of a state in which 'free peoples' would be living under competent administrations that ruled in the public interest
China, however, with its geographical remoteness reinforced by isolationism, had not only resisted Islam, but also continued to inspire in Europe an enduring and pervasive idea of the wisdom of the Orient. This was particularly associated with the courts of Kublai Khan that Europe knew largely through the tales of Marco Polo.
Marco Polo's China had seemed so incredible during the late Middle Ages that cynics doubted his veracity for a long time, while dreamers hoped one day to get to fabulous 'Cathay'. Once Europeans made it to China, however, it quickly became obvious that most of the things that Polo had described were absolutely true. Of course, the signs of decay and decline were very obvious. But, if there could be a Hindu revival, and a Greek revival, surely the unchanging qualities of "the Chinese race" would mean that China could once again live up to its past greatness. Merely breaking through to China, as Marco Polo had done, and bringing it into normal diplomatic and economic relations might be enough.
Unfortunately, however, China was no longer the self-confident and open civilization of Kublai Khan, and the Peking expedition was the outcome of decades of frustration at the refusal to concede to the European's demands to deal with "the man at the top". Previous treaties and understandings had subsequently been undermined because the Imperial government had denied the right of its underlings to make formal commitments.
The Peking raid finally resulted in a firm treaty. So, when the Manchu dynasty, whose weakness had been so clearly exposed by Britain and France, faced another great internal rebellion, neither of these two allies was inclined to interfere in China's 'domestic politics'. China could find its own 'free market' solution. And they were right. China had valuable assets at her disposal, so the foreign commercial interests in the "concessions" decided to have a 'whip round' amongst them selves.
The French revolution with its National Guard has cut us off from the eighteenth century reality in which many of the minor states of Europe had armies for hire, so increasingly during the nineteenth century armies in Europe were expected to be national ones. The rulers of less wealthy countries, however, still find mercenaries a cheaper and frequently less dangerous option. Certainly the "Ever Victorious Army", created by the money raised by the "foreign devils", was a brilliant success and launched the career of an "Eminent Victorian", Major Charles Gordon.
China's backers, of course, had to be rewarded. But this success was followed by a realization that there had to be modernization and for a while the reformers were prominent in Chinese politics.
It is quite easy now to criticize this politics of progress and reform, because the First World War swept away what H.A.L Fisher called "The Liberal Experiment". The twentieth century became the age of quick results, and people who "want it now" through the exercise of overwhelming power. So it is easy to forget that the first fourteen years of the twentieth century did see significant 'progressive revolutions'. Internationally this meant revolution in the tottering empires of Russia, Turkey and China, while, from a British domestic perspective, the Liberal Government created the both the foundations of the Welfare State and the real politics of progressive taxation aimed at addressing social inequality.
The period 1900-1914, in fact, has been described as an age of seismic change. But it was being negotiated successfully, until events in the Balkans blew up and created a situation that was aggravated by the elderly occupant of one old ramshackle empire, and the young naive occupant of a new thrusting one built on Prussia, which had been the most successful eighteenth century ‘mercenary state'. At the time there was a great sense of German war-guilt. But this has given way to a more general disapproval of those violent and war-like times. It was, however, because it was an age in which “War and Peace” were so closely interrelated that the politics of moderate, gradual and piecemeal reform was considered to be the safest political way forward.
CHINA'S LONG MARCH INTO THE MODERN WORLD
It seems that, after a catastrophic period of world history, this Liberal spirit has won a second chance. And, in China, the economic opportunities offered by the nineteenth century concessions are now being exploited not only by new investment by 'Foreign Devils', but also by a Chinese leadership that is no longer trying to totally re-invent the industrial revolution as Chairman Mao tried to do.
A key factor in this transformation was the evident satisfaction that was felt when China claimed back the Hong Kong territories that had been leased to Britain for 150 years. What had been taken away from them had been returned. But not returned in its original state, for modern Hong Kong is some of the most valuable real estate in the world. Thus, overnight, Communist China acquired a new dimension, a new place in the world economy, and a new identity as a place "to do business with". Finally, through Hong Kong, the Chinese and the "outer barbarians" had established a working relationship, and venture capital pours into China.
So we are becoming accustomed to the sight of ever-growing clusters of Communist Chinese skyscrapers, those classical symbols of Capitalism. At the same time the fear of a new "Wall Street Crash" and a return to the depression years of the Thirties makes it possible for business interests, politicians and western consumers to play on the need to tolerate things in China that would not be tolerated in the 'free world'. For China has become vitally important as a major driving force in global economic development.
But it is, and will be, a Chinese modernity, as we were reminded by the events in Tiananmen Square. Just what happened there took many western journalists by surprise, because they saw the student demonstrations as part of the kind of world culture that has been promoted as a part of our post-Imperial 'global village'. Perhaps the students believed their own ‘press’ and forgot what they should have remembered about what it means to be Chinese. It may be that the nineteenth century age of massacring "Foreign Devils" is in the past, but Chinese people should know better than to ape the 'misguided conduct' of the 'outer barbarians', who must be excused a certain amount of ignorance that goes along with their ‘backwardness’..
It is reasonable to assume that a newly powerful and self-confident China will be rooted in Chinese traditions and values because:
(a) Even in the liberal age an appeal to the best parts of the past was often the politician’s strongest suit. The whole Palmerstonian vision was based upon the idea of the exportability of the English system of representative democracy and England’s old democratic mechanisms and traditions. It was, in fact, this ability to appeal to "Englishness" that made Palmerston almost an obligatory member of any cabinet for decades. And it was the English tradition of partnership between the Crown government and the people that had made Britain “Great”.
So, in the world that Palmerston sought to create, the easiest way for those, who wished to attain power through mass support, was not to call for the people to achieve some revolutionary personal transformation in order to become other than they were. Marx could ask working people to educate them selves in order to become part of a new, enlightened, and progressive 'Proletariat'; but populist politicians found that it is much easier to mobilize the masses by appealing for them to revert to their roots. Hence the late nineteenth century drive for 'freedom' often involved appeals to past ethnic, racial, and cultural identities. This often demanded the break up of Empires. But in both Germany and Italy it meant the attempt to restore past imperial greatness.
There are endless examples of this appeal to a lost past. One of the most obvious was the Nazi appeal to a fabricated German 'aryan' past. But perhaps one of the noblest was Martin Luther King's appeal to the ideals of "The American Dream" that could unite "all people of goodwill" behind the cause of freedom. More recently Gordon Brown has talked of the need for Britain to rediscover its "soul", by which he meant a reconnection with its previous spiritual and social life.
(b) China has been no exception to this trend because, throughout this "foreign devil dynastic" period, Chinese people have been struggling to adjust in a Chinese way to this new reality. This is brought out most clearly in some of the books that have sprung from the world’s longest literary tradition. Han Suyin's great work "China. History/Autobiography"; is particularly valuable to an English readership. Han Suyin, as the daughter of a 'foreign devil', lived with the stigma of living as a mixed-race person through a period when racism connected with roots and racial purity was a common world phenomenon. But though she was forced to spend most of her life outside China, Han Suyin, like many exiles, could see the special virtues and values of the childhood home country she had lost. Frank Ching's "Ancestors" is rather different because this Chinese American had only Chinese Ancestor's. But at the age of 43 he gave up his job on the "Wall Street Journal" in order to spend all of his time tracing his family back through 900 years. For every Chinese person should be intimately connected with the ancestors and attempt to live with their approval. Gao Xingjiang, born in the same year as Frank Ching (1940) grew up within China through the turbulent decades that followed, only leaving in 1987. But the sense of loss, alienation, and confusion is ever-present in his 1990 novel "Soul Mountain", which is based upon a personal odyssey deep into China. It was an attempt to reconnect with those fundamental and unruly forces that have been vital to Chinese life over the millennia, and with which the Chinese had learned to live in harmony, in spite of all the dynamics of Yin and Yang.
BEHIND THE COURTS OF KUBLAI KHAN
There is no reason, however, to expect China to live up to the cherished western vision of the era of Kublai Khan. Even if we take Marco Polo's story-telling as unvarnished and factual reporting, the 'Cathay' that Polo knew was a very particular and unique period of Chinese history, in effect a fusion of two great powers.
If it was the case, as Polo stated, that a beautiful girl could walk naked with a gold brick on her head in perfect safety from one end of the Silk Road to the other, then that security owed more to the legacy of Genghis Khan and the Tartars than to any outreach of purely Chinese authority. Our European idea of Genghis Khan, of course, is bound up with our fears that this uncivilized 'barbarian' would overrun Europe. So all Europe gave thanks to God when the great Horde he commanded decided to over-run China instead.
Genghis Khan, however, clearly knew a thing or two about the practicalities of life, for he stands out as one of the great individual achievers in history. Perhaps he knew enough to understand the most important truth that there is so much more in Heaven and Earth than anyone can ever understand. For, though the Khans decided to settle in possibly the most civilized place on Earth, it did not mean that they had decided that the Chinese possessed the whole truth.
All of this helps to explain Kublai Khan's self-confidence and his openness to outsiders like the Polos from far away Venice. But, as Eileen Power brought out in her 1924 account of Marco Polo as one of her "Medieval People", this situation did not last: "But a change came over everything in the middle of the fourteenth century. Darkness fell again and swallowed up Peking and Hangchow, the great ports, the crowding junks, the noble civilization. No longer was the great trade route sichurissimo, and no longer did Christian friars chant their Masses in Zaiton. The Tartar dynasty fell and the new rulers of China reverted to the old anti-foreign policy; moreover Islam spread its conquests all over Central Asia and lay like a rampart between the Far East and the West, a great wall of intolerance and hatred stronger by far than the great wall of stone which the Chinese had once built to keep out the Tartars. All Marco Polo's marvels became no more than a legend, a traveler's tale" ( page 66)
The story of the Manchu dynasty, though in some ways similar to that of the Tartars, was nevertheless significantly different. The Muslim rampart across Central Asia scaled down the potential scale of operations for future Golden Hordes. So the Manchu had a much more local impact. Nevertheless, they were invited into China as military competent barbarians, who could make good the military weakness of the existing dynasty.
For the Manchu taking over China must have been like winning the lottery, and they had little hesitation in adopting the Chinese system of government and administration 'as seen'. The second Manchu Emperor, K'angshi, was a kind of Manchu equivalent of Kublai Khan. He made the adaptation from 'barbarian' to 'civilized', and during his sixty years on the throne he set about pacifying the country. But, whereas Kublai Khan had been open -minded, K'angshi found Chinese civilization to be ‘sufficient unto itself’. He became a great scholar in his own right and organized the printing of a great encyclopedia of Chinese knowledge that ran to 5,020 volumes. This studiousness equipped K'angshi to hold his own within a governmental system that was in theory at least a meritocracy, run by mandarins, who only gained entrance to their administrative functions by means of a very demanding examination procedure. But, as R.K Douglas observed in his 1904 study of "Europe and the Far East"- "The circle of knowledge required is narrow, but so much more is it thorough. It is always easier to remember than to think; and by the help of naturally tenacious memories, perfected by exercise, young and ripe scholars face their examiners thoroughly possessed of every subject which can be presented to them." ( page 40)
The existence of this ancient system of government run by Confucian scholars makes it easier to understand why Kublai Khan should have been so keen to make good use Marco Polo. The Polo's republican city-state of Venice was not yet part of the Italy of the "Universal Man" of the Italian Renaissance, but, as in ancient Athens, citizens were expected to be able to turn their hand to whatever task was necessary. Moreover, like Khan's own ancestors, the several generations of the Polo family had experienced the travel "that broadens the mind". Marco was very different, therefore, from the Mandarins, who had spent long years in mastering the complexities of the Chinese alphabet, Chinese calligraphy, and the prescribed texts. Travel promotes self-reliance, thinking for your self, and using common sense.
An isolated China, however, returned a mechanism of government that was essentially divorced from the dynamics of change. To quote Professor Douglas once again- "The Chinese recognize four classes of society, namely, scholars, farmers, mechanics, and traders. But practically the constituents are officials and people". And the officials were guided by "The Institutes of the Dynasty", ancient rules that governed every single governmental act from the top to the bottom. Consequently the main task of the Emperor and his Council of State was merely to oversee the work of the 18 provincial administrations. It was the provincial viceroys who were expected to govern.
In theory the system should have worked well. "The code of laws in force is excellently devised and provides penalties for every conceivable crime and offence. If only administered righteously it would meet every requirement and would combine justice with discretion." ( page 38)
A CHINA CAPABLE OF BEING REFORMED
Of course in 1904 Professor Douglas was writing in an age when the belief in liberal progress was still strong. Even Great Britain was only just beginning to get adjusted to the idea that a government might have to assume a responsibility for the everyday life of its citizens. Previously it had been as true of England, as it still was of China, that the main function of government in quiet times was "to see that......the town and village elders govern the people in harmony with their traditions... Thus the country is to a certain extent self-governing; and with much wisdom the people are allowed full latitude in the arrangement of their own affairs, and in the performance of their social and clannish customs, so long as they do not come into conflict with the laws of the State. " ( page 40)
This grass-roots level of life, however, was far from anarchic. In China it was based upon ancient systems and traditions that sought to promote harmony, including the ideas of "Feng'shui" that promoted riots in the late nineteenth century, when the proposed railway constructions cut their way across the landscape in accordance with the demands of engineering and in violation of ancient wisdom. It was the strength of this rural Chinese society that encouraged Mao Tse Tung to base his revolution and his resistance to the Japanese invaders on the countryside.
Traditional China was woven together by complex traditions that had often been vital to surviving disastrous times. Han Suyin rushing from her medical training in England to 'do her bit', when the Japanese attacked China itself, was astonished to be met by a total stranger on a remote railway station. He turned out to be one of her father's students, who was, therefore, under a lifetime obligation to his teacher's descendents. Having somehow found out what she was doing, he had come to help her on her way. Frank Ching discovered that his own family was bound up with a bundle of fifty families that were expected to look out for each other across the generations.
It was at this level that the Chinese people dealt with life, so, as the philosopher Mencius, put it- "the people are the most important element in a nation and the sovereign is the lightest". The Emperor and the mandarin class were expected to promote the welfare of the people and administer the law righteously. But the ideal situation was one in which the Emperor just 'did his thing' in the Imperial City, while his empire flourished. For in China it is often the case that 'less is more', and a mandarin whose forceful actions made his people openly rebel against his rule had failed and would be moved to another post. In the same way, if the Emperor failed to promote the wellbeing of his people, they had the right to dispossess him and even, according to Mencius, put him to death. But, in times of famine and pestilence, when the gods are against man, and the Emperor could not be blamed, he would be expected to humble himself before the gods: and then degrade the administrators in the affected areas.
Much has changed in China since 1904, but it could be argued that the ‘mandarin class’ in modern China is the Communist Party.
THE ROMAN STATE
One Party rule, however, has become inextricably linked in the western mind with totalitarianism, and those interested in liberal concepts of freedom and progress are worried about the continued lack of democratic machinery and governmental accountability in China. But Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the rest; and there is widespread disillusionment with parliamentary democracy in the west. The Victorian idea that the path of progress pioneered by Britain and France has some historical inevitability as the way into the future has little currency, as is shown by the lack of public enthusiasm for the present efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The problem is that ‘western government’ is still very much founded upon the ancient Roman model. The effectiveness of Rome sprang from its economic power and its ability to impose military control and authority over lands within its sway. There were advantages in this 'pax romanum' in uncertain times, and even Jesus advised that people living within it should "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's".
But "Rome outgrew its strength", for, with its Empire based around 'the sea at the centre of the world', its borders were largely arbitrary and only sustainable by the exercise of force against those who sought their share of 'the glittering prizes'. When that external pressure proved too much, the Roman system collapsed, only to re-appear after the Dark Ages in much smaller units. These Medieval realms were based upon a military competence that was closely linked to systems of service, dues and taxation. And this connection eventually led to a very close relationship between the government and the economy. A percentage of the wealth from industry, trade and commerce could be taken by the government in order to increase its power and competence, creating an interdependence that has been a great theme of modern history, down to questions about the influence of oil and arms companies over recent US international policies. It is ,however, the intertwining of economics and politics that has made it possible for 'great powers' to pursue domestic and foreign expansionist policies in order to give as much security as possible to their citizens, in spite of the accompanying need to create a dynamic, changing and unsettled world.
The situation of China, however, was very different to that of the Mediterranean civilizations on which the ‘west’ is based. China's famous Great Wall was inspired by the realization that such a great work would effectively complete the isolation that nature had bequeathed to China’s three great river valleys. Once the whole region was brought into one Empire it was not too big for the "strength" of a competent and energetic central government, though in times of poor government such control could disintegrate, creating an internal dynamic of change. Times of instability, however, called for the restoration of harmony and balance, sometimes by drastic and dramatic action-surgical violence that contrasts with the French decision to solve their internal difficulties with revolutionary violence during their great eighteenth century revolution by launching revolutionary war that destabilized the rest of Europe.
AND SHALL I DIE WITH THIS UNCONQUERED
Back in the age of Queen Elizabeth I, right at the real start of the process of expansion that was to lead to the creation of Britain's "Empire on which the sun never set", Christopher Marlowe wrote his play "Tamburlaine the Great" about another great conqueror on the plains of Asia. It was a reminder to the English people that they lived in a dangerous world. The Spanish Armada was a more concrete reminder and the subsequent logic of conflict was that the "great wall of oak" would be maintained at a level that could keep the country safe. This meant that no foreign Armada would be allowed to assemble in the Sheldt Estuary, and this led directly to British involvement in the war of 1914 turning it into a World War. After 1918, as it was argued that one of the causes of the Great War had been the great pre-war arms race, Britain did reduce its military capability. But, in turn, by the late thirties Winston Churchill could argue that Britain's military weakness merely served to encouraged Adolf Hitler to see himself as a modern Tamburlaine.
After 1945, however, both 'capitalist' powers, one following the liberal capitalism of the 'west' and the other the state-capitalism of the Soviet sphere, used their growing economic power to pay for a three-fold pursuit of security. (a) A new arms race knew no limits under Heaven. (b) Citizens were guaranteed social security and standards of living that were often beyond the dreams of their forefathers. (c) The risk of future local conflicts was minimized by the creation regional blocks that brought together old enemies -Germany& France, Poland &Russia.
Fifty years later "New Labour" promised to the electorate "Things can only get better" because it is the only message that is acceptable in populist politics that depend upon creating disharmony. But all three strands of that post-war drive for security give grounds for grave concern. Our arms and defense systems need improvement. The social security situation is leaving children growing up in poverty, ignorance and disadvantage. And the conflicts between the member countries of both the United Kingdom and the European Community lead to popular resentments and calls for separation and divorce.
Fortunately, for the moment, our massive investment in China's economic revolution increases the earnings of Britain's financial sector, while cheap Chinese goods have a major impact on the purchasing power of the British consumer. But, if the economic development of China really allows China to catch up with the 'developed world', the impact on the global environment may prove fatal to mankind.
THE ART OF HARMONIOUS LIVING
We must hope, therefore, that the Chinese have not forgotten the ancient wisdom that has understood that mankind's struggle is to achieve a balance between Yin and Yang, Light and Dark, Positive and Negative. This is radically different from the idea that has spread through Christianity and Islam, namely that our destiny is to use our God-given power to eliminate "Evil" and create a temporal Heaven on Earth. For the ancient Chinese lived in an environment in which just creating such a balance was an achievement in its own right.
The first god-kings were credited with coming down from the Heavens and organizing the taming of the great waters that were vital to the development of ancient river valley civilizations around the World. China was, and is, a mighty land of extremes and great variety so that climatic irregularities have always meant potential disaster. While earthquakes, though not quite as prevalent as in Japan, required the development of early methods of detection so that relief and support could be sent to badly affected areas.
And China is almost a world in itself. Even in 1904 China's population was around 420 million people, and Professor Douglas could write:- "China is such a huge country that it is impossible to expect it to move uniformly ; and it is invariably the case that at any given time one can point to extreme cases of pro-foreign and anti-foreign tendencies in the various provinces. Thus it happened that, while in certain provinces there appeared to be hopeful signs of advance, in others the torch of ignorant fanaticism was kept blazing." ( Douglas page 252)
In 1904, however, champions of “progress” expected it eventually to turn out citizens on an industrial scale. By the early twentieth century the 'progressive' nation-state had a state education service that taught the standard national language, along with an approved folk culture, and a national history, that prepared them for the national press version of current affairs. Many also finalized the apprenticeship in citizenship through periods of national service, and membership of a national military reserve.
Yet China worked in its own fashion and one of the great frustrations of the Europeans, who sought to establish ‘mutually beneficial’ trade, was that the Chinese often saw very little to be gained from what the west had to offer. Thus a document submitted to the throne in 1889 gave a considered judgment on just where Chinese interests might be served by the building of the railways that had proved so important to the development of the world's ‘great powers’. The official, who compiled the report, noted that a railway between Tientsin and T'ungchow would replace the existing cart and boat traffic. But the existing traffic employed about 60,000 people, whereas, on the basis of the 1889 manning levels on English railways only 800 men would be needed on a track that long. In the free market conditions of Britain this would be seen as a more economic use of factors of production. But the report pointed out that, allowing for a family size of five per worker, "that makes a total of 300,000 persons depending on these trades for their daily rice". ( page 280) So building the line would leave a quarter of a million people with no means of survival.
Moreover, you did not need to be a brilliant scholar to work out that the free market conditions in “the west” were not always as beneficial as they were supposed to be to non-westerners. After the end of the African slave trade there were other attempts to move workers to the parts of the world that were in need of cheap muscle. While it is true that the British public responded generously to support famine victims in both India and China, there were also schemes to move people from regions where poverty and famine were endemic, to new lives in far away places. One such scheme was ended, however, when many Chinese workers claimed that they had not in fact emigrated of their own free will.
Elsewhere genuine Chinese emigrants proved their worth in the age of the nineteenth century gold rushes doing the back-breaking work required in isolated rural sites, especially in California and Australasia. Soon, however, they started to find their way to the towns. And then they began to compete on the labour market with white working men.- "As labourers and mechanics they were in all respects the equals of the white man, while their economical habits enabled them to work for lower wages than their rivals would accept... This condition of things aroused an active campaign against them; and political candidates found that there was no more popular policy than that which was directed towards the exclusion of Chinese from the States." ( page 275) As a result of this popular pressure, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand all passed measures against Chinese immigration.
This wave of anti-Chinese hostility was a godsend to those who linked the presence of the new "Foreign Devils" with bad things that were happening in China. Han Suyin, whose very life and being were bound up with the stretch of railway built with Belgian support, tells the tragic story of a young bride, who was compelled by commercial interests to marry a young man with powerful new connections, rather than the young man that she 'should' have married. She left her home in her bridal outfit, and was carried in a curtained palanquin to the groom's house. But when they opened the curtains on her arrival they found that she had strangled herself rather than dishonour her ancestors. It was this mood of resentment and resistance that produced the Boxer Rebellion of "The Righteous Harmony Fists" that set out to wipe China clean of this foreign infection.
THE NEED FOR GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP
Some people might suggest that the foreigners should have 'taken the hint' and just left China alone. It is an attitude that goes along with a modern trend that asserts that people should "mind their own business". It is the kind of attitude that says- "I get on perfectly well with my neighbours. I just have nothing to do with them." It belongs to an age when young back-packers can set off on world tours and tour the globe, for the most part with only acceptable misadventures that give colour to their travels. In fact the world is generally so safe that tragic and exceptional incidents make headline news. But it is too easy to assume that the current world order might have arrived in some other way than the way it did.
It certainly did not happen easily. And in the case of China and Japan it happened in the face of strong opposition. This meant that those people, who first attempted to overcome the policies of isolation, had to feel that the possible benefits were worth the chances of meeting a gruesome death. Many of these pioneers, therefore, were people who thought that they had causes worth dying for, usually Christian missionaries whose faith bound them to attempt to spread the word of God- the most precious thing that they believed the world could offer. Many died in the aftermath of the first discovery of the Far East , others from random outrages and local uprisings once the "Foreign Devils" got the right to spread the word and establish missions. By the time of the Boxer uprising many such missions had created small Chinese Christian communities that the Boxers sought to eliminate along with all trace of foreign influence. 'In extremis' the bond between convert and missionary was often very strong and it was natural for Missionary Societies to feel some additional responsibility for their Chinese converts.
Undoubtedly, however, a major driving force in the attempts to at least gain access to the ports of China and Japan was trade and the needs of shipping. They naturally went hand in hand. But there were two very clear strands, because not all shipping was merchant shipping. All shipping, however, shared the timeless 'perils and dangers' of the sea. Popular novels like "Swiss family Robinson" were based upon the known realities of shipwreck and foundering, which could happen on almost any seas. And the seas of the Far East were no exception. It was necessary, therefore, to establish mechanisms to make sure that those, who survived shipwrecks to get to a landfall, would not then find themselves murdered, or worse by the local inhabitants. So, formal understandings had to be established by which those in authority extended their protection over unfortunate sailors, who happened to land where they were not normally welcome, with corresponding arrangements to have them brought to a port and handed over to people, who could ensure their safe journey home.
Only slightly less extreme than this was the plight of the ship that needed some safe harbour in order to carry out the repairs that would ensure that it did not sink, or to stay safe while a violent typhoon blew itself out. Another problem was that of essential supplies. Sailing on the wind was always unpredictable, and mishaps could mean that food and provisions might run low. The courtesy of the sea should mean that no port would deny access to such essential supplies. And, as the age of steam developed, those essential supplies came to include coaling stations. But "what shall we do with the drunken sailor" is not just a rhetorical question. Sailors in port like to have shore leave and then incidents are likely to arise, which raise questions of jurisdiction and judicial procedures. There was an expectation that foreigners within Chinese territory and waters would just accept Chinese justice, which demanded a life for a life under any circumstances, and expected foreign sailors to be handed over for public strangulation, when unfortunate incidents had upset harmonious order, in spite of western ideas of guilt or culpability.
But the great expansion in commercial shipping in the narrow seas and the Atlantic during the eighteenth century had also made this a great age of ships lost at sea through human intervention. It was not only a great age of smuggling, but also a great age of 'wrecking', which meant coastal settlements luring ships on to their dangerous rocks where they would founder. Then the locals would murder the crew, and help themselves to the cargo. A similar fate awaited ships that fell into the hands of pirates and privateers. So the age of Nelson was followed by more effective police action by the British navy that made much of the world safe for shipping. Britannia ruled the waves.
The Far East, however, was one of the last regions in which piracy was a real problem, to the extent that some pirate chiefs became virtual warlords in some coastal regions. So there was the anomalous situation ten years before the Anglo-French expedition to Peking, when the local viceroys in south China were most happy that a British naval 'man of war', that had no legal right to be in Chinese waters, as far as they were concerned, destroyed one great pirate and his large fleet of junks, who had been able to operate with impunity.
Setting up and conducting actual trade, of course, involved many more questions, though in many ways it was an extension of the process of buying supplies. Inevitably this meant creating an interface between two cultures. For trade meant negotiation, and successful ports developed ways of accommodating different cultures. But negotiations with China were very difficult. For example, though in the 1770's East India Company servants in India were drawing up a dictionary of Sanskrit so that Europeans could study the great classics of Hindu literature, it was forbidden right into the nineteenth century for foreigners to learn the Chinese language, and therefore for any Chinese person to teach it.
This did not mean that the Chinese could not learn foreign languages, but it did perhaps make it difficult for the foreigners to understand the full subtlety of the negotiations that led up to the now infamous Opium Wars. There was, in fact, no real conflict of interests between Britain and China over opium, and the problem could have been settled in an atmosphere of partnership and common interest. This had not been the way that relations had developed at Canton, however, and eventually the Chinese sent a fleet to drive the British out of their waters. The British recognized this as an act of war, and acted accordingly.
In fact, drug trafficking especially makes it obvious that the globalization of trade and commerce means that any attempts at regulation and control must be through global partnership. In the case of Chinese opium the determined campaign of Viceroy Lin that brought Britain and China to war, merely had an impact that was totally in keeping with the current tenets of British political economy. It did bring about a reduction in supply. But this pushed up the price of opium and encouraged even more smuggling all along the extended coastline.
A CHINESE FUTURE
The upshot of the Opium War was that Britain was allowed to make a base for its "Foreign Devils" on the island of Hong Kong, slightly distanced from mainland China. But the 150 year lease ran out ten years ago and Britain and China were able to handle the peaceful handing back of Hong Kong to China.
We know that there was considerable anxiety within Hong Kong at the prospect of losing many aspects of 'Britishness'. But, as the Chinese Communists arrived to take over, they must have looked at Hong Kong with the same eyes that Mao Tse Tung used to look at "The Heavenly City" of the Imperial royal family. While other communists might have torn down and destroyed the Imperial places built for a ruling elite, Mao invited the Chinese people to admire what their own forefathers had built, and what they had never been allowed to see. For, though these magnificent buildings were built for Emperors, the exquisite workmanship and artistry of “The Forbidden City” was that of the Chinese people.
In the same way, Hong Kong in 1997, one the most economically productive places on Earth per square mile, was also a triumphant achievement of Chinese people, albeit Chinese people working within a British framework. So, while there were some tears as the Royal Yacht Britannia sailed away, for many there was more gain than loss, especially those who had managed to keep many of the values and traditions of their ancestors. This included some who had even made it to Britain itself, for, as the 'dust settled', there were those who concluded that Chinese Hong Kong was a better place to bring up their children than a Britain that seemed to have lost its way.
It would be inappropriate for a westerner to suggest how the positive and negative results of the "Assorted Foreign Devils dynasty" balance out within China. But we can at least admire the way that the fusion of the two cultures has enriched our lives, quite apart from the triumphs of Hong Kong
In view of the impact of 'western-Chinese' on mathematics and science it seems incredible that these two vital areas of western civilization, the driving forces of the twentieth century, were totally absent from ‘modern’ Chinese education and scholarship until late in the nineteenth century, when an official had the courage to point out that these disciplines had originated in China, and needed to be brought back. More visible perhaps are the careers of some of the world's greatest exponents of western classical music of the last twenty years. And, at a more popular level the Chinese ping-pong revolution, that coincided with the establishment of better relations between Communist China and the USA, has been followed by the great success of Chinese Americans in sports as various as lawn tennis and ice-skating. This in turn has encouraged China to enter into the Olympic spirit with the kind of determination, dedication and application that seems so characteristic, and which will probably be reflected in a whole clutch of medals in the Beijing Olympics.
We know the Chinese as achievers. But this is not an accident. Two of the most conscientious pupils in my south London comprehensive school used to cross London on Saturday mornings to attend Chinese school. One day I noticed one of these boys looking around from his place at the front of the class to look at the rest of the boisterous class that I was struggling to keep on task. We exchanged glances- " I bet it's not like this at Chinese school." He shook his head almost imperceptibly. The thought was clearly absurd. "No Sir." I encountered him about twenty years later in a local shop. He was a little embarrassed, because he had passed me with eyes respectfully lowered, and so he had not recognized his old teacher. He apologized, and we caught up on our news. He was just back briefly from Hong Kong, where he had been studying and training to be an architect. It is such young men who will build our future.
For China is probably the key to whether we destroy ourselves or not in the next hundred years. If we have taught the Chinese to abandon their own traditions and eventually take over as the new superpower in the western fashion, we are probably finished one way or another. Industrialization on a Chinese scale, using current technologies, will probably destroy the global environment. On the other hand, there is every probability that before that happens, should China decide to pursue 'western style' policies of revenge, and geographical expansion for 'lebensraum' and a better share of the earth's assets, we might yet end up with a most terrible war.
The politics of Mutually Assured Destruction in the Fifties, however, led a new generation to question just where we were heading. So Dr. Bronowski could detect, as he put it in "The Ascent of Man", "a crisis in confidence in western civilization". He was right. It was necessary to look for new inputs.
One of the most obvious and immediate sources of 'new input' was the Indian sub-continent, where the fruits of the British involvement in establishing English as the 'lingua franca', and the genuine interest of generations of British enthusiasts in the revival of Hindu culture, made it possible for Indians to have an immediate impact on the Sixties. Ravi Shankar was just about the only master of classical music to be taken to the heart of western pop culture. This all had considerable novelty value for those who had grown up since the end of the Raj, and those who were "living the dream" that, as Nehru said in his independence speech, had not been fulfilled in full measure. Others, however, knew that Britain and India had too much ‘history’ for the Indian sub-continent to provide a genuinely credible new input.
Apart from anything else the Hindu Revival of the late nineteenth century was something that had been wished into existence in order to recreate a sense of a living past that had died out. Like the Gaelic revival, that reinforced the Irish Republican movement, it was like the spirits of the dead summoned back to the living by the spiritualists that were so popular in Victorian times. Such roots were essential to causes that had populist foundations. Pakistan, on the other hand, was just an idea dreamed up by a conference of Muslim university students in the late nineteen twenties. To some extent all of these strands were branches off from the western tradition.
China, on the other hand, has the kind of continuous and unbroken history that means that, while countries that were formed after the end of the Second World War like Eire, India and Pakistan may hope to have a future, the Chinese can believe that they have a future. They can after all claim with some justification to being the most successful people in history, and may well be the key to the survival of life on Earth as we know it.
This may seem to be a very dramatic statement, but the facts are these:
(a) The population of China is one third of humankind contained in one country. Solve China and we make the biggest single step possible towards saving humankind.
(b) China is geographically vast and varied including a wide range of human habitats. Perfect the ways to make them work successfully and we would have answers that would be applicable in much of the rest of the world.
(c) Chinese culture has always believed in trying to work in harmony with nature, which means trying to control the violence of nature, or failing that trying to curb its damaging impact on human life. These are exactly the traditions that we now need to draw upon to heal the global environment and to minimize the harm caused by the degradation that has already been caused.
(d) The Chinese ideal has been light central government with high levels of local and family responsibility. The western alternative demands levels of economic activity that can fund taxation systems to support ‘Roman style’ government that absorb up to 40% of National Income. This has only been possible during ages of expansion during which new resources and economic openings have seen politics and economics working together to promote the kind of economic growth that produces an "economic take-off". But, like heavier-than-air craft, these economic systems have no capacity for remaining air-borne without a forward momentum. While certain privileged countries have held international power, and have exploited it, their profligate use of human resources has made it possible to carry heavy payloads funded out of taxation. But it is difficult to see this "Roman model" as a long- term solution for mankind
In fact, we in Europe are surely moving away from the superpower dream that made Charles De Gaulle support the idea of a new Europe and a new Charlemagne to counterbalance the USSR and the USA. In fact, the reality of the EEC has become rather like Professor Douglas's Manchu China, with the bureaucrats of Brussels often referred to as 'mandarins'. And the EEC is fast developing its own "Institutes of Dynasty", providing rules and regulations for what should be done in almost all circumstances. Unfortunately, there is not the same belief in "light government". Quite the reverse. More than a century of populist politics selling simple solutions "because you're worth it" has had a major impact on our values and attitudes. Yet, increasingly people are questioning whether such expensive and "heavy government" is worth it.
So, as Europe looks towards some a new constitution, and a new political, social and economic era, it could do worse than look at the old Chinese model. An over-arching authority with a largely supervisory function, provincial governments with a great deal of regional autonomy and responsibility for dynamic change, and devolved government in which "the town and village elders govern the people in harmony with their traditions" is surely a better model for the future, and would allow people that peace that comes from being connected with their roots. " Thus the country is to a certain extent self-governing; and with much wisdom the people are allowed full latitude in the arrangement of their own affairs, and in the performance of their social and clannish customs, so long as they do not come into conflict with the laws of the State. " ( page 4)
Perhaps Professor Douglas’ view of China was just an English dream
