Monday, May 21, 2012
China - A Century of Republicanism
Obviously, if the point was to defend China against the “foreigners” (which they meant as anyone not of the Han nationality) then, we can objectively regard the revolution as a dramatic failure. Tibet withdrew into isolation. Outer Mongolia became a Soviet puppet state and finally Manchuria was detached from China. Ultimately, it must be said, many of these areas were re-taken but with disastrous consequences. Manchuria was regained but the Manchu nationality has been virtually wiped out. Tibet was conquered and the Tibetans are in the process of being drowned out in a flood of Han immigrants (as are the Uyghurs, as are the Mongols in Inner Mongolia and so on). Taiwan was also never regained if one accepts the legitimacy of the communist government as the successor of the original Chinese republic. Then, before, during (to some extent) and after World War II there was the Chinese Civil War which dragged on from 1927 until 1950 in which upwards of five million Chinese were killed, placing it behind only the First and Second World Wars as the most bloody conflict in all of human history and, technically, continues to this day, threatening to resume at any moment. This may be “progress” in the sense that it topped what had previously been the bloodiest civil war in history (the “Taiping Rebellion”) but I doubt many people would regard this as an achievement to be proud of.
We certainly know that, in terms of the stated goals of “freedom” or “liberty” or “democracy” or “human rights” or any of the popular revolutionary slogans, the revolution was not a success. There is no doubt that these things, at least in our modern context, were unknown in imperial China. There was no democracy, there were limits on individual liberty (the Manchus famously enforced a new hairstyle on the male population and did try to suppress the “right” to carry on the barbaric practice of foot binding) as the Emperor was an absolute monarch. He was the Son of Heaven, the Lord of 10,000 Years, the master of all he surveyed, his word was law, his person was sacred, his rulings were beyond question. All of it was also perfectly in keeping with thousands of years of Chinese tradition and it was all tempered by the teachings of Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. There were efforts to shift toward a constitutional monarchy for China but this was unsuccessful, in large part due to the fact that the discontented wanted immediate change and even modern Chinese state historians have admitted this.
That, however, points to what may be, on a global level in terms of human history and culture, the most insidious result of the revolution in China and the end of the imperial system which is the utter destruction of the traditional Chinese heritage. This is possibly the single most unprecedented event in the entire ancient history of China. There has never been anything at all in those thousands of years to compare it to. China has not often been conquered but on those rare occasions when China was actually overrun by non-Han peoples the traditional Chinese culture was never destroyed. When the Mongol Yuan Dynasty ruled China, they adopted Chinese ways and when the Manchu Qing Dynasty ruled China they also became assimilated into the Chinese culture to the point where the last Emperor could only speak a few words of Manchurian. Yet, the revolutionaries who called themselves “nationalists” (and the communists claimed to be just as nationalist as the Kuomintang) who so decried all things “foreign” have brought in more foreign ideas, customs and institutions and trampled on more of Chinese tradition and heritage than has ever happened in thousands of years of history. Chinese dress, art, architecture, religion and everything traditionally “Chinese” about China was suppressed after the revolution, particularly after the communists came to power and the Cultural Revolution.
Of course, we are now told that the Cultural Revolution is a rather unpleasant memory and that we should just ignore that and focus on how great and glorious the nominally communist dictatorship of today is. The problem with this is that it has simply replaced the old ugliness with a new ugliness. Again, if we are to regard the lack of an emperor as a benefit, we must see some improvement over what was. We must see the “New China” doing things to surpass the old. What could these be? The technological improvements are those allowed in from outside and, as has been stated, required no revolution to accomplish it. Japan modernized long ago without a revolution and without wiping out everything native to the Japanese culture. So, what about the cultural achievements of this post-imperial China? Where are the great architectural marvels to top the magnificent monuments such as the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs or the Forbidden City itself? Certainly not the Great Hall of the People which is hardly distinguishable from the box-like architecture of Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany. Perhaps the “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium? Sorry folks, the thing looks like a giant bed pan. Judging these things may be subjective but I do not see Chinese people walking around in jeans and t-shirts as an improvement over exquisitely embroidered silk robes.