Grand Strategy - II Ossification and Stagnation of Modern Chinese Society- Part 2

Part 2. Stagnation

(first draft)

In part 1 of this chapter we have discussed this so-called "eunuch culture" and its infestation amidst every facet of social landscape today. If this phenomenon could be categorically classified within the behavioral realm, there is also an aspect which could generally captured the characteristics of the Chinese spiritual realm, namely, intellectual stagnation. The Chinese has often remark amongst themselves , although never to foreigners, for they cherish the so-called mianzi 面子, or literally, face, as the sine quo non element above everything else, that they have retain a certain character which they unequivocally described as nuxing 奴性, literally slave instincts. They will never admit it to any foreigners if such effrontery was to impose upon their arrogant nature, but beneath that layer of unbearable hypocrisy and parochial ignorance, they are all too familiar with such description and often convey the idea to each other with a rather helpless lamentation, or simply a fatalistic sigh. Of course, on the surface value, they would deny any of such presumptuous allegation, and pride themselves of being "liberated" since 1949 with the establishment of the PRC, and indulge themselves in the most celebrated quotation proclaimed by Mao the same year that "the Chinese people have stood up" (whatever that means). This phrase has been indoctrinated into every single mind of youngsters during their years in the socialist public-education, which was indeed an enslavement program preparing the Chinese subject to be perpetually ingratiating towards, and in service of, the Party; however, in the good-old spirit of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's maxim, the slaves can never liberate themselves, but will simply enslave their fellow brethrens once again. Given that since the inception of the CCP, they have been practicing slave mentality all along, which only logically entails the enslavement of the whole nation that follows, liberation and enslavement are all but two sides of the same coin to the poor Chinese in reality. And everything that happened between 1949-1979 only irrefutably substantiated this rather uneasy reckoning. To the chauvinist, he would immediately allege the Mongol and the Manchu as being the culprits who enslaved the Chinese during the Yuan and Qing dynasties, but to a scrutinizing observer, the cause of which lies far deeper and much entrenched than this rather convenient apology.

It goes without saying to the reader that just like the characterization of the “eunuch culture” in the first part of this chapter was a metaphor for the Chinese, the “slave instinct” mentioned here is by no means an authentication of their physical condition. But bear in mind that the Chinese civilization is from its beginning an agrarian society, which shared certain comparable signature traits with any other ancient civilizations such as the Egyptians, Hindu, Persian, or even the Mayan. To wit, all of them tend to act as a collective whole, rather than being individualistic, a hallmark of Western tradition in comparison with the Orientals that Hegel and H.G. Wells have also attested to. Rather than being dynamic and exuberant such as the Western powers, the Chinese have retained much of their antediluvian traits through the millenniums, which for better and worse, have stagnated their intellectual vitality, and prone to be lethargic and submissive in terms of their own spiritual construct. This attribute cannot be more poignantly illustrated than a closer examination on the Chinese intelligentsia as a whole. Other than a few brilliant sages and philosophers during that first pivotal epoch some 500 years before common era, such as Confucius, Lao Zi, etc, the intellectual community of the Chinese in the classical era up until our own century have been operating as almost a facsimile for more than 2000 years. They have proven to be the most efficient administrators for a very long time with an admirable bureaucratic system; they're very capable at analysis, observation, and exegesis, but never acute at something original. Part of the reason was that the system was set up so that the educated scholar-turned bureaucrat after years of tedious examinations will be dedicating his humble service under the direction of the imperial court, and that his ultimate intellectual aspiration lies solely within the dictate of his Majesty's recognition.

An honorable cause indeed, it nevertheless becomes lackluster to any intellectuals who endeavor to achieve an independent spirit and an original school of thoughts. The consequence thus becomes self evident. Even though the Chinese never lack any intellectuals, they seldom produce any top-brass thinkers and philosophers such as the West does periodically, Hegel, Kant, Marx, Heidegger, Nietzsche, to name but a few. Therefore the stagnation lies precisely in the "slave instinct" of the thinking retardation of the entire intelligentsia as a whole. Another example could be drawn from the artistic disposition of the so-called educated mass: Chinese classic art as a collective entity is the direct produce of their spiritual progenitor, namely, the religion of Taoism and Buddhism. They could be served as almost a stark antithesis of the Western classic art, which is primarily rational, scientific, and often providential. In contrast, the Chinese took great care and preoccupation in their calligraphy, poetry, landscape painting, and scholar rocks, etc. to produce something, which could be summarily described as escapism and agnosticism. Surely the art itself is quite a tour de force and indeed the most exemplary virtuosity of the Chinese civilization, but if the whole intelligentsia community are quite indulged in such artistic penchant as they did for thousands of years, they will never become progressive in their thinking mode and as a result, turns out to be a stagnation in today's intellectual landscape. While it is arguable that the whole modern phenomenon of the Rise of the West was engendered by an artistic revolution known as the Renaissance, the Chinese are still being preoccupied in their Arcadian landscape paintings in order to retain some harmonious qi 气, or spiritual energy, with the pantheistic and holistic nature, when the imperial legions of the Western force were pointing the Gatlings at them and kicking their jackboots at their doorsteps. Such is the stark reality of the 19th century China at its very last dynastic euphoria while being reluctantly awaken to the reality of modern globalization.

The intellectual stagnation described here actually had already grown very acute since the turn of 20th century, and raised grave concerns of many intellectuals who got exposed to Western ideas. Such initial modern Oriental-Occidental collision was bound to create some radicalized consequences which was equally unsound in its integrity, although not without their grievances. Two offshoots of the immediate aftermath were already prevalent by the end of WWI, one espouses political transformation in the light of the Soviet proletariat revolution, while another advocates for an utter rejection of the Chinese tradition, culture, even its language. Although both radical approaches were heavily influenced by the popular global leftist movement of its time, with the former achieving its final victory by 1949, and the latter also waged some detrimental effect especially under the patronage of Maoist Terror during the Culture Revolution, their cause was not without reasons and deserve a rational analysis before we simply dismissed it as the produce of Communist ideology.

The political radicalization has a simpler picture of explanation than the intellectual one if one is to have a brief survey of the social landscape of the time, as well as an examination of the Intrinsic Logic of Chinese history at large. Namely, at the end of the the fall of the Qing dynasty (1911) and the initial period of republican era, China was in an extreme volatile period and a very precarious stage, which was up for grab by all types of daredevils, from the warlords, the KMT, the Japanese, to the nascent CCP. And if one is familiar with the history of China, it is easier and more plausible for the reader to understand that the entire Chinese peasantry was more than often a key determinant factor for the outcome of any historical transition. From the Chen Sheng-Wu Guang 陈胜吴广 mutiny which initiate the downfall of the Qin Empire some 2000 years ago, to the devastating Rebellion of the Heavenly Peace which inflicted an irreparable damage to the Qing dynasty, all of the initial subversive force had come from the dirt-poor peasantry. Mao, being himself a member of the upper echelon of the same class, understood too well from his guts how to manipulate and abet the impulsive and ignorant mass in his favorite, and turn the historic tide ultimately on his side, because it seems that the wildest imagination of the Chinese has been the repetition of the same old resolution, to wit, to get rid of the old tyrant and install a new one.

The grievances for the rejection of the Chinese tradition, culture, even its language was much more complicated and deserved a thorough examination, for it is really the key to uncover the root cause as to why the Chinese ultimately opted for a communist solution for their whole modern schizophrenic syndrome. As the two major symptoms mentioned before, many had already reached to a stark recognition that the Chinese tradition and its culture being plagued by the so-called “eunuch culture” and “slave instincts” at the turn of 20th century; rather than come up with an applicable prescription to cure such symptoms, they called for an utter rejection of the entire tradition and culture, and embrace the Soviet utopia for once and all. Such radical desperation might looked on the surface as being irrational, but if one is to dig deeper, he will become more sympathetic with their grievances, if not completely at concurrence with their prescribed solution. Even though the thesis of this treatise is not a Fredric Jamesonian sociological investigation, I shall nevertheless recap the essence as to what is at stake of such grave revelation.

The main culprit deemed responsible, even though wrongly charged, by those desperate intellectuals around the turn of the century and culminated in the so-called "May 4th spirit" (1919), a historic mythology propagated by the CCP, was the whole backbone of Chinese civilization, namely, Confucianism. All of the negative characteristics described throughout this chapter were somehow the product of this very civil institution, and as they reckoned, if it is utterly jettisoned from the main body of China and to be replaced by Science and Democracy, a catch-phrase of the time, and soon to be misinterpreted into dialectical materialism, a central communist doctrine, the Chinese shall be redeemed and regained their honor. The reality of which as it turns out has just been the contrary, not only the CCP did not liberate the people, they have enslaved them once again and exacerbated those vice into an infinite proportion. The all time celebrated essayist and thinker, a sort of a Chinese version of Frederich Nietzsche, Mr. Lu Xun, had nevertheless, had a better stab at the core social illnesses in the Chinese culture and tradition by intimating his critique in a series of short stories and novels. Most famous of which were the so-called "Ah Q spirit", after the protagonist in the novel, The True Story of Ah Q, and the ubiquitous somberness and anomie described in a surrealist novel, A Madman's Diary. Ah Q, whose name has already become an euphemism for the stereotypical Chinese, and whose spirit, has become an open secret, an inconvenient truth which they don't publicly admit, as a stark caricature of themselves: cynical, apathetic, parochial, trivial, ignorant, hypocritical, and fatalistic. Madman's Diary encapsulated a morbid reality of the Chinese society via a seemingly diabolical and free-association style of its spontaneous prose, it depicts a series of cannibalistic episodes throughout the Chinese history to highlight a certain socio-pathology within the society. Both novels had been hailed by the CCP propaganda machinery as a most poignant jab at the darkness and ills of the so-called jiu shehui, or Old Society, an arbitrary newspeak of a mythologized era of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic-comprador-capitalism, the three mountains oppressing the people, according to Big Brother. Of course, Mr. Lu Xun even though was critical of the vice in Chinese tradition and culture, the revelational delineation was ad hoc an unrelenting exposure of some of the darkest sides of the Chinese soul, an ipso facto existential soliloquy of the whole stagnation of modern China.

Mr. Lu Xun was amongst the fewest individuals of the disillusioned to have come to such grave reckoning on the nature of the Chinese character. To the ordinaries, the allegation against tradition and culture could run endless: female foot-binding, sexism and infanticide, myriad manners of torture, superstition, sadistic authoritarianism, stifling patriarchy, etc, etc. To the learned and educated, it was the so-perceived injustice of the whole ancient institution and religions. But to people such as Mr. Lu Xun, the root cause came from the very nature of the Chinese themselves, for this final analysis was teleology, and the former mere methodology, and the first phenomenology. Therefore, one has to question not the abominations of traditional behaviors or the injustices of cultural norms, but probe deeper into the very heart of their natural characters to seek for possible remedies. For it is only in this manner of approach can we be rid of those vices for good, without such self diagnosis, the problems are still deep entrenched such as we’ve seen in China today.

My final expatiation on the stagnation of modern China might come as a surprise to some, since most people would palpably take something such as their mother tongue for granted without further deliberation on the form and substantiality of itself. That is maybe precisely one of the key issues to unravel many of the riddles of international contentions, to wit, the linguistic epistemology. While this coinage might come as a novelty to some, I do not claim the authorship of such theory, and such notion of the limitation, or even the intrinsic "evil" to some, of the Chinese language has actually perplexed many scholars since the turn of the 20th century; some radical leftist thinkers including Mr. Lu Xun at one point, even though he, including everyone else who advocate for the abolition of the Chinese consistently conveying their zealous ideas as well as other respectable achievements, in the very language they so hated, proclaimed that hanzi bu mie, zhongguo bi wang! 汉字不灭，中国必亡！(sic.) in Chinese, or literally, if the Chinese characters are not destroyed, China will be. I have no intention to name names, but so many other contemporaries of Lu Xun had equally shared such desperation of an utter aversion of their mother tongue, and sought in every possible way to see to its abolition, from the spurious salvation of the latinized Chinese, albeit its unintended result being the pinyin we are so conveniently at using today, to the entire replacement of a new language. (Such fanaticism is equally being faithfully upheld by those anti-China zealous Chinese mentioned in the last chapter.) I shall leave the precise root cause and the detail investigation to other attentive sinologists, for such enterprise requires an entire tome of its own reward, but as a bilingualist since my 12 years of age, I shall simply expound a few personal opinions as to the merits as well as shortcomings of my beloved mother tongue.

While I do not share the same mortified feeling as those mentioned above regarding the Chinese language as being in such state of destitution or even somehow "evil" in character to some, I do see its limitation in conveying ideas, concepts, and theories of a foreign origin, and the end product of which being finally imported to China had often been lost in translation or simply misinterpreted and misunderstood. I had discussed such reckoning with a fellow linguist, and our consensus had been equally shared on the limitation of the Chinese language itself, especially on topics such as philosophy, science, political ideology, and that of a nature of the occidental achievements, canons, and ethos, which had become universalized today.

To begin with, the Chinese language is one of the most ancient languages that is still in current usage today even though with two of the ostensible modifications; that is, the simplified written version widely in use within the PRC and the so-called baihua, or vernacular version that had been coming into vogue since the revolution of 1911. Nevertheless, being autochthonous and the most unique language, its purity and form had never really been substantially undermined or even fundamentally transformed. Despite hundreds of different dialects and topolects scattered all over the country, the written standard had remained unchanged in thousands of years. For a very long time, it has been one of the most sophisticated and advanced languages ever devised by humanity. Its style, verse, pithiness, and the infinite euphoria of its calligraphic aestheticism had been appreciated and admired by all classic virtuosos. In contrast to its seniority, longevity, and exclusiveness, the modern English is a newborn child with a complex pedigree: Greek, Latin, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Frankish Norman, etc. Probably precisely because of the English's relative novelty and the adaptability with its phonetic alphabetic symbols, it is able to contain far more ideas and concepts, and capable of conveying such in far better efficiency and precision. Since the encounter between the East and West, and compounded by the machtpolitik of the imperial era, The Chinese had started to become less equipped for the new wave of the west, because so much of the novelties were simply nonexistent in the Chinese mind. If concrete and non-abstract entities were easier to translate, such as the transliteration of English: sofa as shafa 沙发, coffee as kafei 咖啡, carnival as jianianhua 嘉年华, club as julebu 俱乐部, or even humor as youmo 幽默, modern as modeng 摩登 and romantic as langman 浪漫, etc. etc., those complex and more abstract ideas and conceptions are much harder to take hold and internalized. For example, one of the most central preoccupations of Western philosophy has been the subject of freedom and liberation since time immemorial, from the Greek city-states, Plato's Republic, the Magna Carta to the American Declaration of Independence, hence the almost second nature of the Western concept of being free, freedom and liberty, which all translate into the same somewhat problematic Chinese word: ziyou 自由, which had been much debated, misunderstood, misinterpreted, and frankly unfamiliar to the Chinese, for the Chinese word somehow connotes to a sense of lawlessness or the nonchalance for the esprit de corps. Even the most internationally celebrated Hongkong superstar, Jackie Chan, albeit his entire upbringing in that British colony and being well versed in the Hollywood, still proclaimed to a group of reporters in 2009 that "the Chinese people need to be controlled", and confided his uncertainty about freedom. The ignorance and blunt effrontery had been openly attested by such glitterati, not to even mention the abysmal absurdity and stupidity averred by the CCP cohorts of loyal cadres, instances of such were simply innumerable; the moral landscape of modern China looks indeed desolate and deplorable.

As illustrated here, the gap between the East and the West lies quite crucially at the very quality and character of their linguistic media of communication itself. Just as foreigners would find a hard time to understand some of the central ethos of the Chinese civilization such as the qi 气mentioned above that permeates not only in the arts, but also in philosophy and physiology. Having said, it is nevertheless a stark reality that for a very long time since the modern age, there has been a consistent convergence toward Eurocentrism on a global scale, not Sinocentrism , which is really what the word China in Chinese literally meant: zhongguo 中国, or center country. Therefore, it is quite imperative that since the Chinese are constantly chanting their mantras such as "peaceful rise" (a current sound bite) or "surpass the Brits and catch up the Yanks", (albeit a Maoist era euphoria, mirage, or deja vu, but nevertheless a wholehearted national endeavor;) it is really in their best interest to come to a comprehensive understanding as to the nature and characters of the West, some of the most crucial canons of concepts lies precisely in their languages. Without such approach, they will tend to be lost forever in the quagmire of the misleading or somewhat flawed translations; because the translated words of say, nation, state, democracy, republic, civil rights, to name but a few, are ipso facto of a Western origin with deep classical roots, without an understanding of the concepts of such terms, a halfhearted translation is nothing but a hollow nomenclature, such is the case to most people in China, who knows how to say democracy in Chinese, but knows very little of what it really signifies.

Complex and mind boggling as it may appear, it is nevertheless a positive aspect for the vibrancy of a civilization as a whole. The last time we saw China undergoing such culture clash or exotic influx was almost 2000 years ago when Buddhism was imported into China via the Silk Road from India. Back in the days of the Dark Age, it took the Chinese hundreds of years to study it with an incredible piousness and industry, which ultimately resulted in a legendary monk's most celebrated journey to India during the Tang dynasty. His name was Tang Xuanzang 唐玄奘, but it is his mythologized disciple, a monkey who became the ultimate superstar in the Classic, Journey to the West. This is just a testament that how much the once foreign ideology of Buddhism had enchanted the people for generation, with ultimately an internalization of Buddhism that's beyond description in every facet of society. It equally took the Chinese very long time to come to a full comprehension of those Sanskrit words of Buddhism, such as the transliteration: nirvana as niepan 涅磐, Dharma as damo 达摩, Bodhisattva as pusa 菩萨, and Buddha as fo 佛 or fotuo 佛陀. They have nevertheless assimilated the whole ideology to the point where Buddhism disappeared in India by the eclipse of their own national religion Hinduism, and it took on a whole new blossom in East and Southeast Asia, and some of those concepts such as karma, reincarnation, or the whole Buddhism philosophy of enlightenment has become almost a Chinese second nature. Even the CCP, albeit its atheist tenet, still carried out its propaganda campaign by insinuating to the mass adopting such concepts of juewu 觉悟, a Buddhist term means "enlightened" in order to serve its own cause.

In the 21th century of an international information superhighway, it appears to be much optimistic for transformation of knowledge and enforcement of education to yield much speedy results than the previous cultural exchange discussed above. Even though I do not share those radical ones in their desperate calling of the abolition of the Chinese language, and frankly find the language's classic idiosyncrasy quite attractive in her own grace and elegance, especially expressed in the arts and literature, on the other hand I do find it less equipped for the modern and globalized world with the influx of Western ideology, scientific developments, and social norms. If cultural exchange and translation were much easier conveyed in those quotidian popular setting, such as the mass consumerism that quickly took hold of China since 1978, intellectual and ideological exchange were much harder to transmit, starting from the limitation of the language itself, compounded by the CCP state-sponsored obscurantism that is still very much a current event. Thus an unhealthy and stifling vista had become more and more uneasily apparent, resulting in the ossification and stagnation of the whole modern Chinese society discussed in this chapter, from an infested eunuch culture, to a wide spread slave instinct, to the limitation of the linguistic epistemology, complicated by the retardation of the ruling Party.

The diagnosis looks indeed grim, and the symptoms seem to be deep entrenched, but if we could pin point one biggest culprit who's not only much responsible for the illness itself, but also for not taking up a timely response to ameliorate the situation, and on the contrary, only exacerbated the problem, it will undeniably be the CCP itself. Let us now probe a deeper investigation on the nature of the Party in our next chapter.

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