Table Of ContentChina: Promise or Threat?
A Comparison of Cultures
By
Horst J. Helle
LEIDEN | BOSTON
China: Promise or Threat?
Studies in Critical
Social Sciences
Series Editor
David Fasenfest (Wayne State University)
Editorial Board
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (Duke University)
Chris Chase-Dunn (University of California-Riverside)
William Carroll (University of Victoria)
Raewyn Connell (University of Sydney)
Kimberlé W. Crenshaw (University of California, la, and
Columbia University)
Heidi Gottfried (Wayne State University)
Karin Gottschall (University of Bremen)
Mary Romero (Arizona State University)
Alfredo Saad Filho (University of London)
Chizuko Ueno (University of Tokyo)
Sylvia Walby (Lancaster University)
Volume 96
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Helle, Horst Jürgen, author.
Title: China : promise or threat? : a comparison of cultures / by Horst J.
Helle.
Description: Brill : Boston, [2016] | Series: Studies in critical social
sciences ; volume 96 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2016034846 (print) | lccn 2016047881 (ebook) | isbn
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Subjects: lcsh: China--Social conditions. | China--Cultural policy--History.
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relations.
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Copyright 2017 by Horst J. Helle.
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Contents
Foreword: A Fascination with China vii
David Fasenfest
Preface xi
Introduction: The Goal of This Book 1
1 Familism: A Threat to the Environment 5
The “Public Sphere:” Rights without Obligations 5
Two Types of Personal Association 9
Personalization of Law 11
2 Exchanges of Threats: The Opium Wars 14
International Relations: Britain 14
Russia, Japan, and Germany 20
The Chinese Experience: Threat and Disappointment 21
Why Did China Not Defend Herself? 22
3 China and the us: A Balance of Power? 24
Why Follow Thucydides? 24
Chinese Classics on Warfare 30
An Alternative to Thucydides: E.R. Service 31
Promises and Threats Based on Economic Interests 34
Real and Imagined Military Threats 38
4 Religions: Core Components of Cultures 40
The Task at Hand: What is a Religion? 40
Shared Origins of Contemporary Religions 43
Governmental Interference with Religious Affairs 47
5 Religious Vitality in Contemporary China 53
Types of Atheism in Party Politics 53
Ancestor Worship: The Religion of China 56
6 Max Weber’s View of Religion in China 59
vi Contents
7 Daoism: China’s Native Religion 71
The Fundamentals of Daoism 71
Nature and Life Everlasting in Daoism 75
Daoism as Seen by Confucians and Buddhists 79
8 Oracle-Bones: The Mandate of Heaven 82
How to Change – Forward or Backward? 82
The Splendid Age of the Oracle Bones 85
9 Confucius: Recapture the Lost Splendor 97
Heavenly Mandate and Objective Order 97
Finding Options for the Future 101
The Party or the Family as “Church” in China? 106
10 The West: Individualism at Its Limits 112
The Western Family as Fate and Tragedy 112
Evolution of Kinship in the West 115
11 China: The Kinship Society 123
Granet and the Analects: Cultural Evolution
of Kinship in China 123
Fei Xiaotong: Field Work on Contemporary Family
Life in China 128
Altruism and Selfishness: A Precarious Balance 133
12 China: A Threatening Promise to the West 138
Summaries of the Chapters 138
Concluding Queries about Threats and Promises 149
References 155
Index 160
Foreword
A Fascination with China
The name Marco Polo evokes images of exotic adventure and Europe travels
east to explore the riches of the Orient. Everyone knows the story of how his
travels brought to Europe new spices, gun powder and noodles. Just as the
horticulture of the New World introduced tomatoes to Italian cooking, East
and West collided to create the quintessential Italian meal of pasta and toma-
to sauce. China represents mystery, the unknown and unknowable, certainly
with the isolation during the great dynasties of central China, and perhaps
even more so today, China is a country both seemingly impenetrable yet ev-
erywhere in the world. China is ever present in the Western press, is a topic
of intellectual inquiry, and for many a symbol of the unknown that should be
feared. What can’t be denied is that we have misconceptions borne of misun-
derstanding, and anything that offers us a better understanding of the country
and its people can only aid in fostering a safer world for all.
Most of us think of historical China as a vast inland empire, in the North
China Plain with it’s capital Beijing protected by a Great Wall that extended
from the North China Sea across the northern border west to the mountains. It
was a wall designed to protect the empire from the Mongols coming from the
North. But China’s history included extensive navel adventures. During the end
of the 10th Century to the end of the 13th Century (during the Tang [618-907]
and Song [960-1279] Dynasties) Chinese merchants sailed throughout South
East Asia, into the Persian Gulf, along the Arabian Peninsula, the Red Sea and
there is evidence of trading with cities of Egypt and Ethiopia (Bowman 2000).
Chinese ships traveled along the east coast of Africa and appeared in the chron-
icles of North African merchants (Sun 1989: 310-314). The ongoing invasions by
the Mongols meant that China’s rulers pulled back its naval forces for the de-
fense of the Empire. But this fascination with China’s maritime exploits have led
to some wilder (and generally disputed) claims about how far it’s fleets traveled
(Menzies 2002, 2008). One can speculate; had the Mongol invasion not focused
Imperial resources inland, continued merchant explorations down the coast of
Africa might have resulted in a 13th Century voyage up Africa’s Western coast,
perhaps leading to a very different dynamic of Chinese-European interactions.
European misconceptions about China are long standing, and Max Weber’s
essays under the title Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie (Collected
Essays on the Sociology of Religion) that appeared first from 1920 to 1921, in-
cluded a section on China, later published as The Religion of China (1951), is but
viii Foreword
one example. In it he tried to understand China’s failure to develop the kind of
bourgeois capitalism in place in Europe by the turn of the 20th Century. Build-
ing on his general argument that there is both capitalist practices (instances of
activities we might call production and manufacturing) and a capitalist spirit,
a nation has to have the latter before the former can become the dominant sys-
tem of production. So-called “modern” socio-economic development cannot
occur unless there are proper (and religious) influences. Some of these themes
resonate with this book’s content – that is, what are the essential characteris-
tics of Chinese and Western cultures that can explain both the similarities and
differences in the two societies.
The desire to make sense of this uneven development led to explorations
into China’s past for indications of how the economies of the West and China
diverged. In his analysis, Elvin (1974) recounts China’s Imperial history, con-
cluding that between the 8th and 12th Centuries China’s agriculture was trans-
formed, unleashing productive forces that became “the dynamic driving force
behind an era of economic revolution (113).” In essence, agriculture in China
exceeded the practices and productivity of agriculture in Europe during this
same period. Elvin goes on to document this economic revolution fuelled by
significant advances in farming, water transport, money and credit, markets
and urbanization, and finally a revolution in science and technology. Why, then,
doesn’t China’s economic prowess and technology result in the kind of indus-
trial transformation that can bring on an Industrial Revolution as had advances
in the West? European productivity gains in agriculture starting in the turn of
the 19th Century generated the surpluses needed to feed an every growing in-
dustrial and urban population, as well as provided the wool (though at the cost
of enclosures and displacement of communities) that fuelled early manufac-
turing. Elvin concludes, perhaps in contradiction to Weber’s arguments, that
China’s extensive bureaucracy and the domination of Imperial rule during this
period created what Elvin called a “high-level equilibrium trap (298)” that froze
the economy into a state of quantitative growth but a qualitative standstill.
The 19th and early 20th Centuries brought a period of turmoil, of colonial
and imperial struggles, and followed by a long period dominated by warlords,
the Japanese occupation and the Second World War. China was both romanti-
cized by their exploits during wartime, and the locale for popular fiction and
films depicting the heroic struggles of Westerners in a strange land. As World
War ii came to a close, China was embroiled in a civil war that resulted in the
victory in 1949 of the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao. The first decade or
so was one in which massive changes, with the goals of national unity, socio-
economic change and “freedom from foreign influence” were introduced in
the countryside to transform production and social relationships. Urban areas
Foreword ix
with their industrial base were slowly transformed to work for the benefit of
China’s citizens. By 1953 China introduced the first five-year plan with its focus
on giving priority to heavy industry, nationalizing and collectivizing the firms
and farms, and launching China’s economy. During this period China became
increasingly isolated, became involved in the Korea War that severely curtailed
relationships with Europe and the us, and by the end of that decade its rela-
tions with the Soviet Union reached a low point.
After a brief period of openness in 1957, under the banner of “Let 100 Flow-
ers Bloom” that encouraged open criticism, Mao launched “The Great Leap
Forward” in 1958. Creating large communes, encouraging “backyard” furnaces
to craft the tools needed for agricultural production, and introduced a series of
inconsistent policies that ended in chaos and huge output shortfalls all com-
pounded by bad weather that severely damaged China’s agricultural output.
The Great Leap Forward ended up a great failure and, in some ways, a step
back. This, in turn, led to an effort to shake up both the Party and China in what
was generally known as the Great Cultural Revolution lasting more or less from
1966 to 1976. The results of this period was chaos, a shake-up of the party, and
a country unsure of its path forward (much has been written and it does not
need to be revisited here).
The 1970s brought about significant changes. With the death of Zhou En’lai
early in 1976, followed by the death of Mao 9 months later, there was a pass-
ing away from the leaders of the Chinese revolution, and the beginning of a
new era in China. New relations with the West and especially the United States
marked a period of greater access to Chinese society, but the country remained
obscure to most Westerners. A year after Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping became
the country’s leader and embarked on a program of “Four Modernizations”
looking to reform China’s economy and society in order to bring China into the
modern era in agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and tech-
nology. The reforms put in place in agriculture resulted in support for priva-
tization in order to increase production. This opened the way for farmers to
begin to sell surpluses above their production quotas in local markets. By 1987
new economic reforms continued the transition, opening up the way for en-
trepreneurs building the foundation of economic activities that characterize
China’s economy today. The 20th Century came to a close with China relatively
more open, but still a mystery to outsiders.
Now, well into the second decade of the 21st Century, China is both ever
present in global affairs, central to the global economy, and yet not well un-
derstood by most people. Routinely, political rhetoric in the United States rails
against China as that great enemy waiting to dominate this society, and at the
same time when China’s economy slows down or there is a fear China is falling
x Foreword
into a recession, the response in the economies of Europe and the us is to cre-
ate great uncertainty and anxiety. Does China pose a threat to all, or is there a
promise of great mutual benefit as we strive to recognize our common inter-
ests and or better understand our fundamental differences? This volume is an
attempt at such a resolution.
David Fasenfest
Detroit, us, April 2016
