Cycle of Cathay
DENNIS J. DUNCANSON
China in Crisis edited by Ping-ti Ho and Tang Tsou (University of Chicago Press 3 vols 90s each) China Readings edited by Franz Schurmann and Orville Schell (Penguin 3 vols 23s)
There was a time, immediately after the com- munist victory in" China in 1949, when old China hands wagged their fingers knowingly and prophesied that the four decades since the overthrow of the Manchus in 1911 would prove to be just another of those cyclical intervals of turmoil which had occurred throughout-Chinese histoty between the decadence of one dynasty and the rise of-the next; that the new 'dynasty' would turn out to bear little resemblance to the bolshevism of Russia, so unsuitable to the Chinese temperament, and instead would soon settle back into ways (conveniently) more in line with-the Chinese heritage.
By the time, in 1967, that Russian com- munism was preparing to celebrate fifty years of power in Europe, the Sino-Soviet dispute was in full career and the Great Proletarian Cul- tural Revolution fast getting under way. The new communist political system in Asia, as predicted, did bear little resemblance to the original bolshevism. But how did it relate to the Chinese heritage? The sixty-two contributors to China in Crisis met in a symposium at the University of Chicago to seek the answer; they went on to survey the new China's policies in Asia and what alternative responses to them were available to America. Nearly every America scholar of note in the field of Chinese politics, and some from abroad, took part. The fruit of their discussions runs to 1,287 pages in three beautifully printed volumes; it makes an impressive parade of scholarship.
Wurks of "Composite scholarship rarely lead to simple conclusions, however, and this one' is organised in the modern fashion, of basic papers on which other contributors comment, leaving the reader to draw his own. The weight of the traditional element in Mao's People's Republic is debated without, for this reason, being settled. But some of the individual obser- vations are deeply perceptive—for instance that it is 'from the nation's cumulative fund of skill in handling human relations that the Chinese communists have perfected the sophisticated psychological techniques of thought reform' (Professor Ping-ti Ho); or that, while 'the major values espoused by the Chinese communists are totally modern, the style of leadership is tradi- tional,' making use of 'casual conversation, heart-to-heart talks, and intimate person-to- person relationships'—that it is in this sense that 'Mao is the modern Son of Heaven' (Pro- fessor Tang Tsou).
Professor Eckstein elaborates a theory that fluctuations in the growth rate of the economy have been following a cycle determined-in part by natural hazards, at work on a subsistence level of production, in part by contradictions within the centrally-dictated policy—contradic- tions of the kind 'collectivize but do not disrupt agricultural production'; the ups and downs are `a function of a deep-seated conflict between Mao's vision [of the moral transformation of Man] and the realities of the country's economic and technical backwardness.' (Presumably it could be argued, according to taste, that the Maoist version' is Confucian, marxist, or even Stalinist.) There is argument whether the central conflict in the Cultural Revolution, between the advocates of 'expertness' and those of 'redness' —that is, the conflict between Liu Shao-ch'i and Mao Tse-tung (although their theoretical posi- tions were formerly the other way round)— arose from different experience in guerrilla days (Professor Lewis) or goes back essentially to the very beginning of the Chinese Communist party, though more acute since the failure of the Great Leap Forward (Professor Oksenberg). But nobody says- how Mao's regime conducts its paperwork, surely the lifeblood of govern- ment.
How does all this affect the rest of the world? Several contributions touch on the gulf of historical experience separating the Chinese world order from the concepts of international relations formalised by the West in the rules and procedures of the Congress of Vienna.
Where this discrepancy may lead in the long run is not explored; but it is relevant to note, as the us embarks on yet another attempt at a Sbuth-East Asian settlement, the opinion (Professor Ginsburg's) that, in the short run, China's foreign policy aims to align her neigh- bours 'in accordance with the [traditional] perception of their place in a Sinocentric, Aslan-oriented power system.' The defence pundits agree in doubting communist China's capacity to back any external policy with even conventional, let alone nuclear, might, although she would fare better in limited wars with limited objectives, and above all in defensive ones. Contributions on the exportability of people's warfare and on the enigma of China's past hand and future aims in Vietnam are, dis- appointingly, the least original. The guilty conscience over Europe's colonial past and over America's supposed backing of 'the wrong' successor regimes which has for a decade and a half distracted hawks as well as doves, the old China lobby as much as the new Liberals, into empty contemplation of the national navel, as it were, still constricts the debate over this issue in China in Crisis.
So it does China Readings. The three volumes and 1,328 pages of this historical explanation of 'the depths of China's spiritual pain, which remain to this day,' make an anthology that is excellent value, though necessarily culled in the . main from English-language originals. The in- tention is to illuminate the full cycle of Cathay, from Mencius to Mao Tse-tung and Lin Piao. Numerous gems are included; the middle volume, on republican China, perhaps contains most that is new, or forgotten. The theme that has guided the selection, however, is that China today is more sinned against than sinning, her break with her heritage—if that is what it is— self-defence and self-justification in the face of 150 years of foreign pressure, still wrongfully kept up by Washington.
Whether massive works like these two are to one's taste or not, and whether their inspiration is really research or mainly intuition, they re- present _genuine efforts to understand China. One could wish the effort were reciprocated by China in her outlook on the rest of the world. That it is not is perhaps the most abiding feature of her heritage, and the most disquieting for the future.
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