井底之蛙

There has been a good deal of comment on Chinese history textbook revisions of late. Mao is gone! For foreigners who can only name one Chinese historical figure this must be troubling. The project is supported by Zhu Xueqin, and according to one of the authors of the new textbook they are trying to take a more Braudelian approach, emphasizing social change over politics. According to Zhou Chunsheng,

“History does not belong to emperors or generals,” Mr. Zhou said in an interview. “It belongs to the people. It may take some time for others to accept this, naturally, but a similar process has long been under way in Europe and the United States.” via NYTimes

I have not seen the textbooks, but at least for the pre-modern period it seems like a good change. Memorizing a list of dynasties and events without making any attempt to explain why they matter is bad history teaching, and it seems to be common in China. Dropping the whole revolution is bad, but perhaps better than doing the old revolutionary catechism. Needless to say there has been some controversy. Danwei has a nice summary.

The thing I found most interesting is that almost all the Western commentary claims that it is Chinese textbooks that are being revised. Actually it is just in Shanghai so far. The old narrative of Chinese history stressed class struggle, that the ordinary people of China were being oppressed, mostly by foreigners, but also by fellow Chinese. I like most of Zhu Xueqin’s ideas, but I also suspect that Shanghai authorities like his ideas in part because if anyone is oppressing people in Anhui today it is likely to be people from Shanghai. Emphasizing harmony and unity over the revolutionary power of the exploited masses is probably a good idea, and also fits in well with the interests of the Shanghai elite.

How does one become a good person? That is a question that crops up a lot when one reads the Confucians. In fact, for Confucians the processes of self-cultivation and the questions surrounding it are absolutely central. Needless to say, Yen Chih-t’ui has stuff on this.

Partly one becomes good by hanging with good people. As Confucius put it

To live with good people is like staying in a room of orchids where, after a long time, one would naturally be sweet-scented; To associate with bad people is like living in a dried-fish shop, where one would unavoidably become imbued with the odor.p.46¹

Study (and self-cultivation more generally) are also important. One issue that comes up a lot is how ‘universal’ Confuican concepts of human perfectability are. Can anyone become good? Even Barbarians? How about women? Do we all become the same sort of good?

In the Ch’i dynasty (550-577) a eunuch and a palace attendant, T’ien Peng-luan, 田鹏鸞, was originally a southern barbarian. When he became a eunuch at the age of 14 or 15, he already had a desire for study. He always hid a book in his sleeves and would recite it in a low voice day and night. His position was low and the service toilsome: however, at any short respite he would hurry off to find some one he could question. Whenever he came to the Hall of Literary Galaxies, he panted and perspired and would say nothing beyond asking questions from books. When he saw some heroic or loyal deed of the ancients, he was always deeply moved, meditating for a long time. I had deep compassion and love for him and gave him double encouragement. Later on he was known and loved by the emperor, who granted him the name Ching-hsuan 敬宣, and raised his position to that of chamberlain with an independent office. When the last emperor of Ch’i fled to Ch’ing-chou [Shandong], The army of Chou captured him and asked the whereabouts of the Ch’i emperor. He deceived them, say that [the emperor] had already gone away and estimated that he should be beyond the border. Suspecting him of lying, they beat and lashed him to force him to submit. As each of his limbs was cut off, his speech and appearance became more severe than before; when his four limbs were cut off, he died. That a young barbarian boy by study could achieve such fidelity! How inferior are the generals and high ministers of Ch’i to this slave Ching-hsuan. p.73

So Yen, at least, claims that barbarians and eunuchs are capable of becoming good. Actually, they are even better than Yen himself, since he ended up serving four dynasties.
¹ This quote is from 孔子家语, 4, 8b This makes it doubtful that the quote is actually from Confucius, but of course would have been regarded as his.

I just finished teaching 20th century China, and the three biggest issues in the last section of the course were clearly economic growth, political liberalization and the one-child policy. All three of these are ongoing processes — some more potential than reality — so all I could really say, in the end, was “stay tuned.” It turns out that these processes may be more closely related than I thought, as pointed out in this review [registration required] of Vanessa L. Fong’s Only Hope: Coming of Age Under China’s One-Child Policy (Stanford University Press, 2004).

Fong argues, if the review is correct, that the one-child policy was not just an attempt at gross demographic relief but also a plan for economic development through cultural, even psychological, engineering. “Her central claim is that the policy was designed ‘to create a generation of ambitious, well-educated children who would lead their country into the First World, [and it] succeeded, but at a price’ (pp. 2-3).” Fong argues that the one-child policy has raised the status of female children within the family: families are more willing to invest effort in girls when they have no boys as an alternative. Fong also points out that parents are willing to make extraordinary sacrifices for their childrens’ education — the brief discussion of university entrance exams in the review was, of course, reminiscent of Japan’s “examination hell” of past decades — and upbringing when they have only one in whom to invest all their hopes and ambitions.

This is “the cultural model of modernization” in action, we’re told: channeling the aspirations of traditional families into education, which is seen as fundamentally modern, as a route economic success, which is seen as beneficial to society generally. It doesn’t matter, apparently, that Japan’s modernization was in the opposite direction: Japan’s de facto one-child policy families are a result of industrial economic growth which drove cultural change and, consequently, raised the status of education which, in turn, lowered birth rates, etc. It might be less of a process and more of a cluster of co-dependent variables, if Fong is correct and if the founder of the one-child policy really had this in mind.

A few thoughts come to mind: it may well be true that one-child raises the status of girls within the family, for families that have only one girl. This is plausible, but has to be mitigated by the obvious (and accelerating) gender gap in births which indicates the strong survival of patriarchal and patrilineal patterns. There’s also a significant question as to whether one-child policy is viable in a more mobile society — and mobility is so often both an engine and effect of modernity — where strict work-group monitoring is impossible. So it may turn out to be an episode rather than a pattern. And I’d like to hear from someone who is more familiar with the origins of China’s demographic intervention as to whether Fong’s impression of the policy as a component of a planned jump-start to modernization is indeed born out by the historical record.