The Long East Asia: The Premodern State and Its Contemporary Impacts 9811987831, 9789811987830

Citation preview

GOVERNING CHINA IN THE 21ST CENTURY

The Long East Asia The Premodern State and Its Contemporary Impacts

Edited by Zhengxu Wang

Governing China in the 21st Century

Series Editors Zhimin Chen, School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, Shanghai, China Yijia Jing, Institute for Global Public Policy & School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

Since 1978, China’s political and social systems have transformed significantly to accommodate the world’s largest population and second largest economy. These changes have grown more complex and challenging as China deals with modernization, globalization, and informatization. The unique path of sociopolitical development of China hardly fits within any existing frame of reference. The number of scientific explorations of China’s political and social development, as well as contributions to international literature from Chinese scholars living and researching in Mainland China, has been growing fast. This series publishes research by Chinese and international scholars on China’s politics, diplomacy, public affairs, and social and economic issues for the international academic community.

Zhengxu Wang Editor

The Long East Asia The Premodern State and Its Contemporary Impacts

Editor Zhengxu Wang Department of Political Science Zhejiang University Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

ISSN 2730-6968 ISSN 2730-6976 (electronic) Governing China in the 21st Century ISBN 978-981-19-8783-0 ISBN 978-981-19-8784-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credits: Autumn Sky Photography/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Contents

1

2

The Long East Asia: The Premodern State and Its Contemporary Impacts Zhengxu Wang

1

The Edge of Civilizations: The Chinese Civilization and the Development of World Civilizations Tongdong Bai

21 45

3

War and State Formation in Ancient Korea and Vietnam Tuong Vu

4

The Sovereign’s Dilemma: State Capacity and Ruler Survival in Imperial China Yuhua Wang

69

“The Great Affairs of the States”: Man, the State and War in the Warring States Period Ke Meng and Jilin Zeng

99

5

6

Understanding Nation with Minzu: People, Race, and the Transformation of Tianxia in Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries China Zhiguang Yin

143

v

vi

7

CONTENTS

Unipolarity, Hegemony, and Moral Authority: Why China Will Not Build a Twenty-First Century Tributary System Kyuri Park and David C. Kang

175

8

East Asian Monarchy in Comparative Perspective Tom Ginsburg

199

9

Legalist Confucianism: What’s Living and What’s Dead Daniel A. Bell

231

10

The Minben Meritocratic State’s Impact on Contemporary Political Culture Zhengxu Wang

11

Conclusion Zhengxu Wang

Index

249 273

279

List of Contributors

Tongdong Bai School of Philosophy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China Daniel A. Bell Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong Tom Ginsburg University of Chicago Law School, Chicago, IL, USA David C. Kang School of International Relations and the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, USA Ke Meng School of Public Policy & Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China Kyuri Park The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA Tuong Vu Department of Political Science, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA Yuhua Wang Department Cambridge, MA, USA

of

Goveronnece,

Harvard

University,

Zhengxu Wang Department of Political Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

vii

viii

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Zhiguang Yin Department of International Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai, China Jilin Zeng School of Government, Peking University, Beijing, China

List of Figures

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

4.1 4.2 8.1 8.2 10.1 10.2

Diagram 5.1

Two ideal types of elite social terrain Timeline of China’s state development Constitutionalized monarchy over time The return of absolute monarchy Trust in the central and local governments across time Trust in the central and local governments across provinces, 2019

75 82 227 227 264

Reigns of dukes during the Warring States

133

265

ix

List of Tables

Table Table Table Table Table

3.1 3.2 3.3 5.1 5.2

Table 5.3 Table 5.4 Table 5.5 Table 5.6 Table 10.1 Table 10.2

Number of rebellions in South China’s commanderies Revolts or wars in Jiao, first to tenth centuries Wars involving Sila (first to seventh centuries AD) Variables in the panel data The impact of the number of interstate wars initiated on the chancellor’s family background Dyadic dataset The impacts of internal ruling crises on the initiator’s decision to wage war The impacts of internal ruling crises on the initiator’s decision to wage war (robustness test) The impact of the interaction between ruling crises and power gap on the initiator’s decision to wage war Level of trust in the central government 2001–2019 Hierarchical political trust in East Asia

54 55 59 116 120 122 125 126 129 261 262

xi

CHAPTER 1

The Long East Asia: The Premodern State and Its Contemporary Impacts Zhengxu Wang

Is there a coherent model of state making and governance in East Asia before the modern period? What are the ideas and institutions that made such a state? How did such a state form, and with what crosstime and cross-country variations in the East Asia region? How does this premodern state still stay with the contemporary East Asia and the contemporary world? How can scholars discover interesting and profitable research questions from this subject? These are some of the questions that drove the making of this volume. This introduction chapter will lay out the intellectual and conceptual framework that brings the various chapters together, and also provide a synthesis of each of the chapters. The book’s argument or thesis is three-folded. First, a coherent state gradually emerged in and unified the central area of the East Asian mainland during the second half of the first millennium before the Christian

Z. Wang (B) Department of Political Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Z. Wang (ed.), The Long East Asia, Governing China in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_1

1

2

Z. WANG

Era. A state name Qin unified the whole “Central Plain” of the East Asian mainland in 221 BC. The “Central Plain” (zhongyuan) has both a geographical and a cultural meaning, but at that time it largely referred to the area inside today’s China that spans the Yellow and the Yangtze Rivers. Later on, the term Central Plain became more a cultural concept that referred to the state that is China. The polity also obtained the name of “Central Magnificence” or zhonghua, which eventually became the name of contemporary China—zhongguo, i.e., the country or state of zhonghua. The same state established in 221 BC, i.e., the state of zhonghua, together with its intervals of breakdowns and re-establishments by a series of dynasties in the East Asia region, would endure until the arrival of European challenges in the later half of the nineteenth century. Therefore, there was a predominant model of state making and political and social system in the main parts of East Asia for roughly two millennia before the region was faced with the somewhat imposed transition into a modern form of political and social system. During the same time frame, a society of states also existed, different from the modern Westphalia system of nation-states but for most part ensure peaceful relations among the states—interstate wars erupted much less frequently comparing to Europe prior to the eighteenth century, for example.1 Second, and this is implied in the conception of this premodern state as an East Asian instead of Chinese phenomena, is that the ideas and institutions related to the making and reproduction of this state, including the cultural institutions such as its written language and social and political rituals, became an East Asia property, forming a pan-East Asia cultural or civilizational zone. For sure, the term “East Asia” is used loosely here. If we take the adoption of the Chinese written language as the defining character of whether a certain polity should be referred to as a member of this “East Asian” society, then for most of the premodern period, it would include what some refers as the “Sinographic Sphere.”2 Alternatively, most people agree with the existence of “East Asian Culture Sphere.” Either way, we are talking about China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, and several kingdoms, such as Ryukyu. Other parts of what is contemporary East Asia, such as Mongolia, the rest of the Indochina Peninsular, the rest of Southeast Asia were less direct “members” of this international system,

1 Kang (2010). 2 Denecke and Nguyen (2017).

1

THE LONG EAST ASIA: THE PREMODERN STATE …

3

but trade and exchanges of ideas and culture were nonetheless always intensive in the region, resulting in deep cultural links for centuries. For polities in the Sinographic Sphere, it was clear that their making of state and the ensuing political and social systems are highly influenced by the Central Plain state, or what is referred to as the ancient Chinese Confucian-Legalist State.3 The important part of the story is that the Confucian-Legalist state carried with it a model of state-society relation, leading to social institutions such as education and community associations acquiring the role to help reproducing the state. The social elite in different countries—in Korea and Vietnam most notably—also acquired the same set of ideas regarding good government, good society, and good personhood, because the education system was based on the study and interpretation of a similar body of classic texts. This meant the social elites of different countries in the East Asian cultural sphere came to form a trans-border epistemological community, greatly facilitating cross-border amenity and amical interstate relations. Thirdly, the ideas and institutions of this premodern state still play important roles in shaping the social and political practices, including the governance activities and conduct of interstate affairs, of various countries in contemporary East Asia. Many social and political patterns found in the premodern time East Asia can still be found there today. These may include, for example, a strong state tradition, an emphasis or heavy reliance on the bureaucracy part of the state (vis-à-vis the legislative and judicial parts), a merit-based system of upward mobility, and strong emphasis on education for purpose of upward mobility, among others. The separation or detachment of religion from state affairs and politics and the lack of racism and identity politics can also be attributed to the Confucian-Legalist tradition.4 In terms of interstate relations, more and more people are seeing premodern East Asia as an order highly different but equally if no more viable from the European Westphalia system.5 The long history and contemporary continuation of this premodern East Asia state and its influences today leads to the idea of a “Long East Asia” of this book.

3 Zhao (2015). 4 Ibid. 5 See a review by Acharya (2022).

4

Z. WANG

In the rest of this introductory chapter, I first elaborate on several aspects of the premodern state of East Asia. These include the emergence and pattern of this premodern state, its main belief system of “minben” (People-Rootedness), and its contemporary relevance. The next is a “structure of the book” section, which outlines the content of each chapter and explains how they come together. Then it is a short conclusion and the reader can proceed to the individual chapters.

The Making and Patterns of the East Asian State While historians have studied ancient China and attempted to explain how its political system worked, the premodern state in East Asia remains largely an untouched subject of sociology and political science. Scholarship of international relations might be able to claim some inroads in looking at the IR thinking and institutions in the China-centered premodern East Asia system, and Confucianism, Taoism, and other schools of thought may also take a decent position in the study of philosophy and ethics, but the premodern East Asian state rarely features in social science’s vast literature of state formation, political order, bureaucracy, state-society relations, among others. Some recent work, however, has greatly expand our knowledge regarding how the long-lasting bureaucratic state origin in ancient China, and how this state shape or define the patterns of Chinese history during the two millenniums in which it existed.6 While the various schools of political philosophy started to flourish during the Spring and Autumn period, it was toward the latter part of the Warring States they became practically affecting state making and statecrafts. In the period of “total war,” absolutism proved to be the most effective concept of political organization in a country. The Legalist school, which emphasized the efficiency and economic productivity, the state’s ability to mobilize the society and extract taxes, and the military’s fighting capability, finally achieved great success in the state of Qin and prepared the institutional conditions for the unification of the whole country by Qin. The unification of China by Qin marked the victory of Legalist political ideas and political practice that represented pragmatism and efficient state

6 Most notably, Zhao (2015).

1

THE LONG EAST ASIA: THE PREMODERN STATE …

5

and military organization. A state relying solely on coercion, however, is not stable. After the rapid collapse of the Qin Dynasty, the Western Han Dynasty experienced the prosperity brought by the early Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing under the influence of Huang Lao philosophy and suffered the feudal crisis again, Emperor Wu fully established the ruling ideology of Confucianism and rebuilt the imperial bureaucratic system. A series of new and practical governance systems were established, and China’s Confucian-Legalist State was finally formed. In such a system, Confucian ideas and doctrines provide legitimacy for state power, while Legalist forms of institutions enabled a system of effective governance over social, economic, and military affairs. The formation (Qin and Han) and consolidation (from Han to Tang and Song) of the unified Confucian-Legalist State in ancient China led to a range of so-called patterns of Chinese history. In a sense, these “patterns” are what made premodern China different from, say, Europe or the Middle East, and they often dominate scholarly inquiries of Chinese history. According to Zhao Dingxin’s milestone study, the ConfucianLegalist State can provide convincing answers to these questions. The grand divergence between the Chinese and the European paths of social, economic, and political development can be manifested in several important historical patterns. For example, why did capitalism fail to rise in China? Zhao shows that the Confucian-Legalist state is the structural cause to the absence of industrial capitalism in China, despite the country’s long-existing market economy. Under the Confucian-Legalist state, the merchant class could not gain political and military power, so the merchant and manufacturing class could not bring breakthroughs in industrial capitalism, while in Western Europe, the merchants and the emerging urban manufacturing class could compete with political power. This class possessed strong bargaining power vis-à-vis the political authority, and members of them entered political institutions such as parliaments, joined overseas colonial expansion, and at the same time cultivated bourgeois philosophers who provided a set of legitimacy discourses for high profits and personal freedom. These combined to give rise to the industrial capitalism that eventually became the invincible mode of economic production spreading to other parts of the world. Another example regarding the long-lastingness of the premodern state is found in Confucianism’s dominance as a sociopolitical ideology, or a kind of secular religion in traditional China. In the early period of

6

Z. WANG

twentieth century, Confucianism was blamed by Western-influenced intellectuals in China as the cause to China “backwardness,” and its prolonged “rule” imposed on China’s society became a troubled puzzle. Why did the late Ming ideological trend not bring about Western-European religious reforms, breaking the dominance of Confucianism in China? Indeed, scholars have long debated about the emergence of new schools of Confucianist thinking, led by Wang Yangming, Li Zhi, and others in the late Ming Dynasty. But, these “reforms” failed to break the unifying status of Confucianism. On the one hand, Confucianism is only an ethical system, and the controversy caused by Li Zhi and others is only controversies in the “private domain” and does not involve the ultimate truth controversy like Christianity. More importantly, it is due to the huge differences in political models between China and Western Europe. At that time, Western Europe was composed of many smaller countries and lacked a unified state power. This enabled religious reforms to be implemented in some countries, and many countries also intended to promote religious reforms to increase the state’s control over the church, while China’s unified Confucian-Legalist state power can completely oppress any theory that it considered to be dangerous, and the new learning in the late Ming Dynasty cannot be transformed into a force for social change at all. Similarly, why there was no emergence of an autonomous civil society in premodern China, can also be attributed to this Confucian-Legalist state. Region wide, the long-lasting Confucian-Legalist state on the mainland of East Asia, also shaped the state making in areas north, east, and south of China. Zhao shows his theory can provide the answer include why nomadic people to the north of China were able to organize a series of empire, a phenomenon not seen in other parts of the Eurasian continent, and others. In this volume, Zhao and Bai’s chapters continue to explore this theme too. Other scholars, notably Kang and Vu, have in recent years looked into state making in East Asia’s other societies, such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.7 Much remains to be discovered, however. Several chapters in this volume show, in fact, how promising the study of this premodern East Asia states can be—Meng and Zeng’s chapter shows how the Warring State period events can be contributed to institutionalist study of politics, and Wang’s chapter shows the long history of the Confucian-Legalist state provided vast data for examining changing elite

7 Huang and Kang (2022), and Vu’s chapter in this volume.

1

THE LONG EAST ASIA: THE PREMODERN STATE …

7

network within the state, and how such changing structures affect state capacity. In terms of international relations, the study of the peace and prosperities achieved through such a “Confucian society” in East Asia before the European-originated Westphalia nation-state system has now formed a sizable literature too. Zhang gives a rich account regarding the organization of this inter-state society,8 while Kang has most provocatively argued that the East Asian tianxia system was responsible for five hundred years of peace and trade at a time when European states were engaged in fierce warfare.9 The contribution of premodern East Asian international relation thinking to global order and contemporary IR theories appears to be a highly active field, and we might have a lot to expect in the years to come.10

Organizing Concept: Minben Meritocracy Much has been written about Confucianism and other schools of Chinese philosophy. Yet most of the work was most done by colleagues in the discipline of philosophy and was rarely featured in the discussion of contemporary political theories. Chan, Bell, and Bai, among others, however, have taken the inquiry into the area of political theory and political institutions.11 Bai and Chan’s work brings to us the most focused formulation of a Confucianism as a type of political theory, with the direct implications regarding to what is good government and how to achieve it, while Bell has been the most outspoken regarding meritocracy as a viable principle of political organization. Furthermore, the political science and sociological study of the premodern state in East Asia include related areas of inquiry—how were the various Confucianist ideas and norms actually translated into political and governmental institutions, how well did these institutions perform in achieving the political and governmental purposes they were supposed to achieve, and how did ideas and governmental practices shape each other, among others. While Zhao’s Confucian-Legalist

8 Zhang (2020). 9 Kang (2010). 10 Archarya (2022). 11 Bai (2020), Bell (2016) and Chan (2013).

8

Z. WANG

State is a prime example of how the Confucian-Legalist ideas of government were selected and turned into actual institutions, and how such institutions defined the many patterns of the premodern East Asia, there are still vast space for latecomers to engage in this area of inquiry, as some of the chapters in this volume will show. While Confucianism offers a vision of a good government for Chan,12 in a recent piece of work, Bai is more interested in showing how Confucianism as a political theory can be pit against some of the key ideas and institutions of liberal democracy. To be sure, we should appreciate the fundamental differences in Confucian understanding of political legitimacy, i.e., the role of government, who should rule, and how the rulers should be selected, as comparing to Western liberal democratic and individualist understanding. That the government is a necessary good, and that government’s responsibility should include not just socioeconomic welfare but also moral well-being (i.e., morality or virtue) of the people determine on what criteria a person should be selected to serve in a political office and to what standards he/she should be held accountable—the government should be a government “of the people”—the people are the ultimate owner of the state, and “for the people.” The contemporary challenge is the Schumpeterian procedural definition of democracy (and people’s sovereignty) with the institution of “one person, one vote” in choosing political leaders. We can argue that the whole modern political science is built upon this formulation, whether it is theoretical inquiry of democracy (such as Robert Dahl’s definition of “polyarchy), or empirical analyses of political development and crosscountry comparison. In fact, the basic thinking of categorizing countries around the world according to “regime types,” such as using a Freedom House of Polity IV measurement, shows how the field is limiting its perspectives to this Schumpeterian definition of democracy. Bai argues that seeing people being the owner of the state cannot be interpreted as Confucianism’s endorsement of people’s sovereignty, if popular sovereignty has to be expressed through one person, one vote. Confucian proposal of good government, as articulated by Mencius, differentiates people that rule from people that are ruled for the following reasons: the need for division of labor for any society with a reasonable level of complexity; the superiority in terms of knowledge, skills, and most

12 Chan (2013).

1

THE LONG EAST ASIA: THE PREMODERN STATE …

9

importantly, compassion of the former over the latter; the inability of the latter, with its energy consumed by the need to make their own living, to mount enough attention to political affairs. Bai argues that although Confucianism believes that all people are potentially equal (maybe that is also to say that all human beings are born as equals?), it also takes it “as a fact of life that the majority of the people cannot actually obtain the capacity necessary to make sound political decisions and participate fully in politics.” On top of Mencius’ separation of those who rule and those that are ruled, Bai gave four reasons why one person one vote is a flawed institutions of political selection: it basically leads to suspicion or even hostility of government and political leaders; it cannot ensure the interests of nonvoters, such as people of the future generation, and citizens of the global community, are protected; it tends to trump the interests of the powerful while silencing the powerless; and even the ability of voters to make best judgment regarding their own interest are doubtful. It is in this line that we should take the Confucian-Legalist meritocratic beliefs and ideas seriously. Daniel Bell has attempted to show how the contemporary Chinese political system can be interpreted through a model of meritocracy.13 In another, more recent piece, Bell and co-author Wang go on to examine how a “Legalist Confucian” ideal of political meritocracy informed not only the premodern Chinese politics, but also “political reform in China over the past four decades or so.”14 A ranked system ensures those with the talent and virtue are placed in more important (i.e., higher) positions of a political/bureaucratic hierarchy, and the Confucian rules and beliefs ensure such a hierarchical order, including the person with the highest power-the emperor or the ruler, aims to serve the people. This way, it is a just form of hierarchy because its existence and operation increase the welfare of those in the lower levels of the hierarchy. It is just also because such a hierarchy allows role changes among those at different levels—commoners have channels to be admitted into the meritocratic system, and once in the system they enjoy the prospects of promotion. By softening the boundary between the meritocratic state—by expanding public participation at the grassroots level and by introducing sortation

13 Bell (2016). 14 Bell and Wang (2022, p. 72).

10

Z. WANG

in the admission of officials, for example, and by promoting a culture that value and reward other career choices other than joining the public services, such a hierarchical meritocratic state system can gain more legitimacy. In this Introduction as well as in my own chapter in this volume, I refer to the premodern East Asian state as the “minben meritocratic polity.” Minben, which literally means people-rootedness or people-asbase, developed out of the Mencian doctrine that treats people, as comparing to the state and the ruler, as the base or foundation of the political community. For the state of premodern East Asia, its meritocratic nature was much better known, but the minben dimension has, until recently, been largely overlooked by most political scientists. Chu Yun-han first used survey data to show the minben-based popular legitimacy of the Chinese state,15 and Pan Wei is probably the first political scientist to refer to the Chinese state as a minben regime.16 Put it simply, minbenism represents the Confucian conception of good society, good government, and good life, and how they are made possible through morality, i.e., virtue. The moral virtue of societal members, government officials, and the ruler and the ruling elite are all required alongside the rational meritocratic design of bureaucracy and other social and political institutions. The Legalist contributed by bringing in institutional designs that incentivize and regulate citizens’ behaviors, with harsh enforcement of rules if necessary. Fundamentally, minben doctrines put strong moral demands on the state, which exists only for the purpose of bringing a better life to the people and caring for them. The “mandate of heaven” comes with the moral requirement to care for the people and will be taken away if the state fails to be upright. Asian states, therefore, assume the heavy responsibility to be morally impeccable, a kind of Confucian perfectionism as per Joseph Chan. The meritocratic state is not just meritocracy, but a meritocracy with a soul. It was a meritocratic state for just purposes, a Just Meritocracy, to paraphrase the Wang and Bell’s term “just hierarchy.” Advocating the importance of the Confucian/Mencian ideas of good government and effective institutional designs, however, does not negate the importance of democracy as an ideal. For example, Bai’s proposal of

15 Chu (2013). 16 Pan (2009).

1

THE LONG EAST ASIA: THE PREMODERN STATE …

11

the good type of government is a hybrid design that aims at achieving the Confucian middle way that balances between equality and hierarchy and between mobility and stability. While recommending a fully democratic design for the community-level governance, his proposal for legislature institutions at upper levels combined election and meritocracy—a leveled selection regime, as he puts it. Similarly, Chan also believes in a form of parliamentary democracy that integrates the Confucian ideas of good government and good society.

Contemporary Relevances No need to say, studying the premodern East Asian state is not simply examining things of the past. In fact, when in the 1980s and 1990s, political economic scholars paid great amount of attention in the developmental state in the East Asian economic miracle, they would have done better understanding of the state had they been led into the premodern roots of strong state in East Asia.17 The meritocratic elements should clearly bring useful lessons to state building and pursuit of good government around the world, as some later chapters in this volume will show. In fact, the ideas and institutions of the premodern East Asia can help enlightening the reader’s thinking of many contemporary political and governance issues, and many other challenges facing human kind of today. For example, the challenge of as climate change demonstrates the imperatives of reviving Confucian ideas and designs, and Confucian ideas can be taken to attend thorny questions such as ethnic relations in China and in the US and the Taiwan-Mainland question.18 Besides domestic governance, the premodern East Asia state also carries important ideas regarding inter-state relations. Often called a “tributary” system, it means a pair of states, with one larger or more powerful than the other, can establish relations to the benefits of both parties, and therefore achieving equality or mutual benefits on another level. Today, the challenge is to build peaceful and mutually supportive international relations in a world of great disparities, where states differ tremendously in their size, population, military, and economic strength, and the desire for and willingness to accept a certain level of esteem and

17 Vu (2007). 18 Bai (2020).

12

Z. WANG

status. The premodern East Asia’s inter-state society gives an example how such a goal can become obtainable.19 A system of “strong reciprocity” between states generates a sense of community among states and produces significant amount of public good for the society of states—the tianxia.20

Structure of the Book After this introductory chapter, in Chapter 2, Bai, whose recent treatise on Confucian political theory is certainly a must-read for people interested in this book’s subject,21 outlines the emergence and evolution of the Chinese civilization between its earliest time of origin through the contemporary era. What is most interesting is that the Chinese civilization, in its evolutionary form, is counterposed to what the author refers to as the “center” of human civilization throughout the history, i.e., the Mediterranean and the Middle East region. Bai takes the domestication of horse, the adoption of wheels for transportation, metallurgy (bronze), and the written language as the “four great inventions” that made the advancement of human civilization possible. With the only possible exception of the written language, the early Chinese civilization obtained these inventions from the “central civilization,” instead of being the inventor of them. The late-starter status of the Chinese civilization, however, did not put China on a permanent position of “backwardness.” Instead, due to some unique advantages it enjoyed by being at the “edge” of the world civilization, the Chinese civilization in fact made important achievements in the two to three millennia starting from the Zhou period, contributing technological and institutional innovations to the world—such as inventing the world’s earliest bureaucracy. The special environment in which the Chinese civilization was in also led that civilization to develop a number of major “problems,” as comparing to the “central” civilization. The long physical distance that kept China far away from the “central” civilization, for example, made the Chinese civilization the dominating one in the “world” it was in, i.e., the East Asia region, so that for centuries China was not met with major civilizational challenges, but neither was able

19 Kang (2010). 20 Bell and Wang (2020). 21 Bai (2020).

1

THE LONG EAST ASIA: THE PREMODERN STATE …

13

to benefit from sophisticated civilizational exchanges, partly contributing to its inability to adapt Western ideas and institutions after the rise of Europe in the modern period. In the end, the chapter is a call for a kind of “fighting pluralism” among the world’s countries and people, in order for humankind to continue to deal with the common challenges we face. The several chapters that follow will bring detailed studies that illustrated the scholarly potential of this subject, as well as how it connects to and inform contemporary social science. Chapter 3, by Tuong Vu, shows how the premodern East Asia case can contribute to contemporary social science scholarship, in this case that of state making. Focusing on ancient Korea and Vietnam, Vu examines a key issue in anthropology, sociology, and political science on the relationship between war and state formation. Despite their apparently identical conditions at the beginning, Chaoxian and Jiao (names in Chinese language of ancient Korea and Vietnam, respectively) diverged in the first century AD with Chaoxian witnessing constant and intense warfare in contrast with the relative tranquility in Jiao. A primary cause of the divergence, he argues, was the different geopolitical environments of the two Han frontiers and the various ways Chaoxian people and polities were connected to the steppe and its people. The steppe and its people between China proper and the Korean peninsula disabled the hegemonic state on the central plain of East Asia from achieving direct rule over the peninsula, as well as spreading war making culture, means, and technology to the polities on the peninsula, leading to fierce wars, which supposedly contributed to state making there. The higher degree of connectedness between the Central Plain (China Proper) and the region that is contemporary Vietnam, by contrast, made it much easier for the state on the Central Plain to maintain its rule of Jiao. The divergence ultimately led to stunningly different outcomes by the seventh century: Chaoxian achieved self-rule and unification under a kingdom led by native elites, whereas Jiao remained part of the Chinese empire but local governments were dominated by immigrant families. In Chapter 4, Yuhua Wang’s focus is on elite networks’ impact on the strength of the state vis-à-vis the security of the autocrat, i.e., the emperor of ancient China. Wang shows that China’s state development was shaped by elite network structures that characterized state-society relations, rather than representative institutions or bellicist competition. For the 2,000 years of its existence, its rulers faced the sovereign’s dilemma: a coherent elite that could take collective action to strengthen the state could also overthrow the ruler. When elites were in geographically broad and densely

14

Z. WANG

interconnected networks—the “start” type of network—they preferred a strong state capable of protecting their far-flung interests, and their cohesiveness constituted a threat to the ruler’s survival. In contrast, when elites relied on local bases of power and were not tightly connected— the “bowtie” type of network—they instead sought to hollow out the central state from within; their internal divisions enabled the ruler to play competing factions against each other to secure his personal survival. This capacity-survival tradeoff explains China’s historical state development and highlights the importance of elite social relations in understanding alternative paths of state development outside Europe. Wang’s study is based on rich datasets generated from a various bodies of historical records, showing the tremendous great promises the historical data of ancient China hold for researchers. Chapter 5 continues with such theory testing exercise using premodern East Asian data. Examining wars as the locus where domestic meets with international politics, Meng and Zeng challenge the conventional wisdom that a ruler’s freedom of action is conditioned by the coalition structure he is in, and the general tendency in international relations to treat states as unitary actors. The conventional explanations of war, based on the selectorate theory, argue that leaders with larger winning coalitions tend to be more selective about the wars they fight. This argument assumes that the winning coalition is exogenously given and therefore not subject to change. The authors challenge this assumption, arguing that interstate warfare can be a way for leaders to rearrange the winning coalition and thus secure their power. It then follows that threat posed by winning coalitions can give leaders an incentive to wage war abroad. To test this argument, the authors rely on original panel and dyad datasets on domestic politics and international affairs of major states in China’s Warring States period (476–221 BCE). The cross-level theory of war, which intertwines domestic and international levels of analysis, receives empirical support from historical inquiries and quantitative analysis. As a result, the chapter advances an institutional explanation that points to the domestic origins of interstate warfare, as well as bringing a new perspective to the unification of China by the state of Qin. Chapter 6 links two important subjects regarding the study of premodern and contemporary China—the premodern idea of tianxia and the contemporary assertion of Chinese nationalism. On the one hand, it is a detailed study of how Chinese intellectuals made the transformation from a tianxia worldview, which does not categorize people into

1

THE LONG EAST ASIA: THE PREMODERN STATE …

15

races or nations, to the worldview of independent nation-states. On the other hand, it is a critique of European way to define nationalism against an ethno-centric ideal China represents a clear case in that meaning of nationalism in the non-Western world emerges through the long history of anti-imperial and anti-colonial domination. It demonstrates how minzu in Chinese becomes a non-hegemonic, and non-ethnic-centric notion in the process of pursuing an anti-imperialist modernization. It is very informative in that it first presents a brief etymological development of the word minzu and other related concepts such as people, race, and nationalism in the context of nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when China encountered Western colonial expansion. It shows how the development of minzu understanding in China was closely related to the political experience of China being subjugated to the global expansion of imperialism at the time. By doing so, it also challenges the Eurocentric interpretation of the Chinese notion tianxia, taking it as a hegemonic order and in contrast with modern state-centric world system. By bringing in the revolutionary experience in the making of the connotations of minzu in China, in the later part it elaborates on why minzu in Chinese deviates from the Westphalian connotation of exclusiveness and emphasizes on the issue of equality through liberation of the oppressed peoples in the world. Chapter 7, co-authored by Kyuri Park and David C. Kang, looks at how the premodern East Asia was an international system with a hegemon, which is China. They argue that a unipolar world is possible because there is a cultural dimension of hegemony. The historical record in East Asia reveals that East Asia was an enduring hegemonic system with one unipolar power within a multi-state system: China. The Chinaderived historical tribute system of East Asia depended crucially on moral authority. Despite China’s rise and fall over the centuries, for almost two millennia Chinese hegemony was attractive, not compellent. The Chinese role in that system should inform greatly our contemporary discussion regarding the rise of China and how China’s rise will change the world order. The East Asian history shows, they argue, that China’s increasing economic, and possibly military power, will not bring real challenges to the existing order. While China might be becoming big and rich, it has no moral authority—its culture, values, and norms do not attract. This view of hegemony leads to a clear prediction about the twenty-first century: no matter how big or rich China becomes, until it has crafted a moral and cultural vision for itself and the world that is attractive, it will not be a genuine challenger to the United States. The same discussion also leads

16

Z. WANG

to the question about the United States: no matter how big or rich the United States remains, can it retain moral authority in the twenty-first century? From withdrawing from various multilateral economic institutions to the domestic troubles, they argue, the answer to this question is not clear at this point. Chapter 8 takes up a similar topic that looks at East Asia’s transition from the premodern into the modern era, and it takes up a highly understudied institution, i.e., the monarchy. This transition meant either the termination or continuation of the institution in various East and Southeast Asian countries, therefore the study of it expands our understanding of both the past and the present. The theoretical locus, furthermore, is at the bargaining between the monarch and the political elite during the time of transition, therefore the various country cases form a kind of structured comparison of the elite political interaction when the international and domestic situations put the old political setting on a challenging position. The chapter starts from general ideas about the origins, legitimation, and frequency of monarchy, including the functions of monarchy, as well as the key issue of succession. Then, drawing on standard bargaining models in political science, it explains how kings bargain with elites to try to survive in a changing world. The results of these bargains depend in part on material and normative resources the kings can bring to bear. Here, premodern ideas served as beliefs that conditioned the survival of monarchy in the face of major social and political upheavals. Therefore, in the late nineteenth century, Chinese ideas about dynastic replacement meant that the late Qing had difficulty rallying support when its material capacities were clearly in decline. During the same period, Japanese ideas of an unbroken imperial line presented the then-weak emperor as an available solution to collective action problems among elites. Precisely because he had no prior power, the Meiji emperor could unify the diverse coalition that overthrew the Tokugawa in the 1860s. Japan’s Emperor integrated the country, while China’s disintegrated it. The chapter goes on the give a comprehensive survey of the various monarchies of Southeast Asia. The Thai monarchy was able to navigate the challenges of the twentieth century through deft coalition building, while those of Laos and Vietnam fell. Cambodia and Malaysia’s monarchs were able to provide symbolic legitimation for elites and so restored as constitutional figureheads, occasionally playing a political role. While monarchy has now existed in very small number of countries around the world, this chapter does lead us to first pay more attention to this form

1

THE LONG EAST ASIA: THE PREMODERN STATE …

17

of state making and second think more broadly about the state making process each country needs to go through. Chapter 9 is a contemporary examination of China’s premodern political tradition, what the author Daniel Bell refers to as Legalist Confucianism. It gives a brief summary of the main arguments of the two schools of political thought (Confucianism and Legalism) as related to issues such as the human nature, the ends and means of politics, the understanding of family and the state, and the foreign policy of a state, among others. It also gives a review of how the two schools became part of the Chinese political practice, beginning from the Zhou period and through the end of the imperial time. In this regard, the first half of the chapter serves as a handy guide to the main ideas of the two schools, how they were employed in actual politics, and how they defined the patterns of traditional politics and governance in China—and for that matter, political patterns of other East Asian polities that emulated the middle kingdom’s political and cultural institutions. The combination of the two schools in premodern China’s statecraft and politics leads the author to give this tradition the name of “Legalist Confucianism”— pursuing Confucian ideals with Legalist institutions and tactics, so to speak. The second part of the chapter first lays out the “dead” ideas related to the Legalist Confucian state and social system. No doubt, some of the ideas and beliefs of that model is no more viable in the contemporary world, such as the Legalist belief in using ruthless coercion and aggressive warfare. Yet, given some of the still highly attractive social and political ideals of Confucianism and Legalism’s contribution to effectiveness in achieving social and political goals, the chapter goes on to show three examples in which the Legalist Confucian model can serve good purposes today. These are China’s effort to limit or even eliminate drunk driving, its effective response to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 and early 2020, and the state’s strong effort in cracking down government corruption since 2012. Coming from a keen observer of China’s contemporary society and government from within China, the chapter should prove a highly eye-opening one. In Chapter 10, I show how the premodern Chinese state’s important legacies are still significantly shaping politics in society in China today. Specifically, its belief in the search of a people-rooted meritocratic government has endured. This belief system continues to reproduce itself in the form of political and literary texts, public discourse, and policy and

18

Z. WANG

political debates. Therefore, this belief system remains a vibrant factor affecting the public’s political beliefs and attitudes. The study of political psychology of the public, i.e., political culture, therefore, must take this into account. This chapter provides a case study of how the contemporary Chinese public’s political attitudes are shaped by this belief system inherited from the premodern Chinese state. This premodern minben-, or people-rooted meritocratic state emerged and evolved with its minben-meritocratic belief system. This chapter will show how a theory of political culture developed out of the minbenmeritocratic belief system holds stronger explanatory power to political trust in China—i.e., how and why the Chinese public show such a high level of trust in their government, especially the central/national government. The analysis of large-N survey data finds that a minbenmeritocratic political culture theory can well explain the main empirical findings in China’s political trust research—namely China’s sustained high level of political trust and the phenomenon of significant differential political trust. At the same time, this theoretical framework can better accommodate the empirical phenomenon that it cannot explain—that is, the phenomenon of a certain degree of decline in the level of political trust in China in the past two decades. In both regards, it outperforms the conventional liberal-democratic theories of cultural changes such as Inglehart’s postmaterialism theory and Norris’s “critical citizens” thesis. The chapter’s implication is that, as comparing to the liberal-democratic belief system, the minben meritocratic belief system represents a viable alternative as we strive to build good society and good government.

References Acharya, A. (2022). Before the “West”: Recovering the Forgotten Foundations of Global Order. Perspectives on Politics, 20(1), 265–270. Bai, T. (2020). Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case. Princeton University Press. Bell, D. A. (2016). The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy. Princeton University Press. Bell, D. A., & Wang, P. (2020). Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World. Princeton University Press. Chan, J. (2013). Confucian Perfectionism. Princeton University Press. Chu, Y. H. (2013). Sources of Regime Legitimacy and the Debate over the Chinese Model. China Review, 13(1), 1-42.

1

THE LONG EAST ASIA: THE PREMODERN STATE …

19

Denecke, W., & Nguyen, N. (2017). Shared Literary Heritage in the East Asian Sinographic Sphere. In W. Denecke, W. Li & X. Tian (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE–900 CE) (pp. 510–532). Oxford University Press. Huang, C. H., & Kang, D. C. (2022). State Formation in Korea and Japan, 400– 800 CE: Emulation and Learning, Not Bellicist Competition. International Organization, 76(1), 1–31. Kang, D. C. (2010). East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute. Columbia University Press. Pan, W. (2009). The Contemporary Zhonghua System: An Economic, Political, and Sociological Analysis of the China Model. In W. Pan (Ed.), The China Model: Interpreting the Sixty Years of People’s Republic (pp. 3–85). Central Translation Bureau Press. Vu, T. (2007). State Formation and the Origins of Developmental States in South Korea and Indonesia. Studies in Comparative International Development, 41(4), 27–56. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02800470 Vu, T. (2010). Studying the State Through State Formation. World Politics, 62(1), 148–175. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887109990244 Wang, Y. (2022). The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development. Princeton University Press. Zhang, F. (2020). Chinese Hegemony. Stanford University Press. Zhao, D. (2015). The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History. Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 2

The Edge of Civilizations: The Chinese Civilization and the Development of World Civilizations Tongdong Bai

On the New York Times ’ Opinion page, two scholars who teach at the philosophy department at American universities argue that in the USA (and in the West in general), what is mainly taught at a philosophy department is actually Western philosophy. If it refuses to diversity itself, they argue, it should call itself as what it really is, that is, “Department of European and American Philosophy” (Garfield and van Norden 2016). One of them later has written a book with the title “Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto” (van Norden 2017). As the title suggests, they urge the philosophy department to teach philosophies from a multi-cultural perspective, including Chinese, Indian, Islamic, African, Native American philosophies. There are a few questions that need to be addressed here. First, how should we make divisions of philosophy, or

T. Bai (B) School of Philosophy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Z. Wang (ed.), The Long East Asia, Governing China in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_2

21

22

T. BAI

more broadly culture and civilization? Is the continent a good indicator? India, China, and much of the Islamic world are in Asia, but is there a unified “Asian philosophy” or “Asian civilization”? Was the ancient Greek philosophy really European? As we will see in this article, “Europe” was not even a political and cultural entity in the time of ancient Greece. This question is not only about divisions within philosophy, but about other subject matters. For example, in teaching world history, what would be the proper units in the grand world stage? If these units are states, why don’t we teach histories of individual states and put them together? There should be civilization circles instead of merely states for world history to be a meaningful endeavor. Then, how do we divide civilizational (and political) circles or units? Second, do all peoples have philosophies? If they do, are all philosophies and civilizations created equal? In the last a few centuries, when the West dominated the world, the majority of both Westerners and non-Western peoples considered non-Western civilizations as inferior to the Western civilization. In today’s world of multi-culturalism, this view is politically incorrect. Still, in the clashes of civilizations, some are winning, and some are losing. In what sense are they winning or losing, and why is it the case? These issues need to be addressed, politically correct or not. Reflections on these questions may also help us orient ourselves in an era when globalization is more and more challenged, and clashes of civilizations seem to have a comeback. All these grand questions are what I intend to address, if only preliminarily, in this short chapter. As an America-trained political philosopher who is Chinese and who uses a lot of Chinese materials in research, I’ll use China as a crucial point of reflections. I dwell on the origin and some characteristics of the Chinese civilization and the interactions between the Chinese civilization and the other world civilizations through human history to arrive at my conclusions in light of the grand questions I summarize above. To begin with, I will argue that a key condition for the development of civilization is the adequate exchanges among enough number of leisurely people. After humans developed agriculture that could sustain city life in the Neolithic age, four great inventions are needed for the next big step of transition: written language, bronze, (the domesticated) horse, and wheel. For much of the human history, only three civilizational circles, the pan-Mediterranean, the Indian, and the Chinese civilizations, as well as the connective corridor among them, i.e., the Eurasian Steppe, possessed these inventions. The other civilizations

2

THE EDGE OF CIVILIZATIONS: THE CHINESE …

23

that were outside of these circles never made the transition until they encountered these civilizations. A main line of argument of mine is that, among the “central civilizations,” the Chinese one was on the edge and relatively isolated, and was the sole leader in East Asia, the Chinese “world,” which could explain its apparent long-lasting continuity. It may not be as rich and diverse as the pan-Mediterranean civilizations, but it had its unique features, some of which were leading the rest of the world. A fair evaluation of the merits and demerits of the developments of world civilizations needs to take the Chinese (and the pan-Mediterranean) civilizations into account. After discussing some patterns of the Chinese civilization as well as how it was able to benefited from its interactions with the other world civilization, I take a global view and argue that for humans to develop further, a fighting pluralism, that is, an open, non-violent but fierce competition among different civilizations is needed.

Key Condition for Civilizational Development: Humans, a Lot of Humans, a Lot of Well-Connected and Leisured Humans Doing field studies in New Guinea, Jared Diamond was asked by a local: Why it was the West that conquered (militarily and economically) New Guinea (as well as Australia and Americas), and not the other way around (Diamond 1999, 13–15)? This question was the inspiration for Diamond to write his influential book: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Obviously, for humans to develop, we need humans. In fact, a “critical mass” is needed for humans to develop, even to maintain, civilizations. An interesting example in Diamond’s book is about the Tasmanian natives (Diamond 1999, 312–313). Before they were “discovered” by Western colonialists, there were about 4,000 people on the island of Tasmania. Though an island people, they didn’t even have such basic tools as fishhooks. More strikingly, archeologists discovered these tools underground. Where did the ancient settlers on this island get these tools, then? It turns out that before the end of the last ice age, the island was connected to the mainland of Australia. After the ice melt and the sea level rose, it became a real island and was disconnected from the mainland. This suggests that a people of a few thousand cannot even maintain simple tools such as fishhooks. It is only in Hollywood movies, perhaps thanks to the modern

24

T. BAI

Western (and American) sense of individualism, where a handful of people after some dystopic events could still use guns and automobiles, if not something even more sophisticated. The reality is that we human beings, as fundamentally social animals, can only maintain our present technological achievements when there is a large number of us, perhaps in the scale of tens of millions, if not more. The number of humans by itself, however, is not a determining factor in civilizational development. If a group looks populous but its members are in isolated sub-groups, these people still can’t develop their civilizations through communications and competitions.1 For civilizations to develop, it is also necessary for there to be “idlers” or people of leisure. Both requirements, communication and leisure, are met when cities emerge. Compared to hunter-gatherer and agrarian groups, the emergence of cities means that there is wealth that is beyond subsistence, freeing some of the population from the almost animalistic activities that are aimed at mere survival. In cities, there is also the concentration of people, making communications convenient. Grand buildings, poetry and literature, and technological and military advancements are all related to big cities. Put it in another way, what represents an advanced civilization is all in its cities, not in its rural areas or grassland. Until the industrial revolution, the agrarian and nomadic life of humans changed little. Of course, the emergence of cities is a result of the development of agriculture, which makes excessive production possible, compared to hunter-gatherer communities.2 That is, although agriculture and rural areas do not represent the achievements of a civilization, they are the foundations of these achievements. But agriculture is an almost universal development in various human societies. In contrast, the “four great inventions” that are crucial for the next stage of the development of human societies were unique to certain regions for a very long period, and thus are crucial for the differences of development among human societies. 1 To be clear, the terms used in this chapter such as “development,” “advanced,” “progress,” and even “civilizations” are meant to be value-neutral, and they are only referred to being farther away from the “natural” stage of human existence and being more sophisticated. But sophistication could be bad for human beings, as thinkers such as Lao Zi (the alleged author of the Lao Zi or the Dao De Jing) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau would argue. 2 It doesn’t mean that the development of agriculture would inevitably lead to surplus of production, even if it is technically possible (Carneiro 1970, 734).

2

THE EDGE OF CIVILIZATIONS: THE CHINESE …

25

To early humans, communications within and among different groups are done by one’s feet. For humans’, animals’, plants’, and even germs’ migrations and spread, similar latitudes, weather, and environments offer convenient conditions. On this, the Eurasian continent plus North Africa (EANA) are unique in that there is a long “conveyor belt” that is stretched from Western Europe, North Africa, the Mesopotamian region, Iran, Central Asia, and all the way to Manchuria. Human inventions and new germs that are the result of dense human population can be quickly spread and further developed on this “belt.” After paying a huge price of human lives, for example, Eurasians have developed immunity to certain germs that were instrumental to wipe out much of the native American population when Europeans tried to colonize the Americas, a reason for Diamond’s book to have the term “germ” in it. In addition to this long belt, there is another geographical advantage in EANA, the Eurasian Steppe. It is stretched from today’s Hungary all the way to Manchuria, and it is a relatively flat “highway” for human movements, especially when horses were domesticated and utilized by humans. Here we also see that, for the development of civilizations, luck often plays a big role. Modern humans originated in Africa, but there are no animals in Africa that can be used for long-distance transportation. Zebras may look like horses, but they are of different species and are almost impossible to domesticate (Diamond 1999, 157–175). More interestingly, as Diamond points out, there are big animals in the Americas and Australia that could have been domesticated. In particular, wild horses actually originated in the Americas. But humans who migrated there carried with them hunting—but not domestication—techniques from the old continents, and as a result, these animals were killed off by humans before they could be domesticated. Other than these large-scale environmental factors, there are also “small-scale” environmental factors—“small” only in comparison with aforementioned factors. As Robert Leonard Carneiro pointed out, early states often emerged from “areas of circumscribed agricultural land,” each of which “is set off by mountains, seas, or deserts” (Carneiro 1970, 734). In such an area, people from different villages, when in conflict, have nowhere to run to, and wars among them lead to largerscale and more sophisticated political institutions. Ancient Egyptian, the Mesopotamian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations all emerged in such an environment.

26

T. BAI

In sum, key to the advancement of human civilization is large population, people with leisure, and adequate exchanges among them. Agriculture lays the foundation for the food surplus, which leads to the emergency of cities that meet the above requirements—let’s call them the first set of conditions. Further developments also rely on geographical features (e.g., the long EANA belt) and available animal species. Let’s call them the second set of conditions. Smaller-scale environmental conditions, the third set, such as the aforementioned environmental circumscription, also play a key role. Both the first and the third sets of conditions are available in many areas all over the world, while the second set is unique to EANA, which, as we will see, makes EANA the center of human civilizations.

The Center, the Peripheral, and the Outside of Civilizations; The Four Great Inventions In contrast to EANA that has all the conditions for the advancement of civilizations, sub-Saharan Africa, where modern humans originated, is long in the north-south direction, but narrow in the east-west direction, with the Great Rift Valley in between. As indicated, due to climate, plants, and other environmental factors, it is much more difficult for humans to move north-south than moving east-west, and there were no big animals suitable to domesticate for transportation. This makes sub-Saharan Africa, the place of origin of modern humans, not the leader of the following advancements of human civilizations. Egypt, the Near East, and Mesopotamia, being the first stop for humans to move out of (sub-Saharan) Africa and onto the great belt of EANA, are where many major advancements of human civilizations were made. These included, in particular, what I call the “four great inventions.” It is now commonly accepted that horses were first domesticated in the Eurasian Steppe, and were quickly adopted in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Wheels and carriages on wheels were also first invented or widely adopted in the Sumerian civilization. These two advancements made quick projection of power and thus the control of a vast area possible. The earliest states were Sumerian city-states and the Egyptian kingdoms. The former were small in size, and the latter relied on the Nile for transportation. The introduction of horses and wheels made land-based large states much more likely, promoting the sophistication of state formation. The third major advancement of human civilization is

2

THE EDGE OF CIVILIZATIONS: THE CHINESE …

27

the development of metallurgy, especially bronze. Although it was likely introduced in the Eurasian Steppe, again, among early civilizations, people in the Mesopotamian region and Egypt were among the first to adopt its wide use. Yet another, the fourth major invention of human civilizations, the written language, was also first made in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in 3,000 BCE or even earlier. These four great inventions are key for human civilizations to move up one major step. Horses and wheels promote further communications (including wars), which are crucial for the sophistication of human civilizations. The introduction of bronze and later iron leads to greater production, explorations and exploitations of nature and manpower, and the capacity of war. The invention of written language helps the cumulative and communicative activities, further deepening the development of civilizations. All four great inventions are either first made or widely used in Egypt, the Near East, and Mesopotamia, which are all on the east side of the Mediterranean sea. They are the real cradle and early center of human civilizations. Apparently simple, these four great inventions are actually extremely hard for a populous but isolated group to make. First settlers of Australia and Pacific Islands were almost completely separated from the EANA belt. As a result, they could not develop any of these inventions until their almost fatal encounter with the Europeans, although they could develop their own agriculture and even cities. There were more native people in the Americas, and there were also splendid civilizations there, such as Maya, Aztec, and Inca. Nevertheless, there were no domesticated large animals, and no wide use of bronze or other metals. Some American civilizations did have wheels, but interestingly, they were used in children toys, but never a part of real transportation. People of Inca had a sophisticated string system for record-keeping, but no written language. People of Aztec had some rather basic written language. The Mayans had the most sophisticated written language among all native Americans, but their language cannot be compared with those in EANA with regard to sophistication. It is unlikely that these people could move up the ladder of civilizational sophistication and progress on their own,3 and would 3 What philosophy is a philosophically highly controversial issue. If we understand philosophy as a reflective enterprise, it is nearly impossible for a group of people to develop a proper philosophy if the reflections are at best limited to an individual or people of one generation. Written texts from the past are crucial for this enterprise to be constructed.

28

T. BAI

have remained a (very splendid) Neolithic civilization forever, without the encounter with the Europeans. Unfortunately, this encounter with the Europeans leads not to a major progress, but a near extinction of the natives. Against such a background, the Chinese civilization possesses a curious place. It is not at the very center of early civilizations, but is not completely outside of them, either. It is at the edge of the civilizations. The Chinese civilization is connected to the center through the Eurasian Steppe. Thanks to this connection, it acquired three of the four great inventions, to say the least (whether written language was independently developed in China is still controversial). To be clear, the acquisition can be done directly or indirectly. For example, after hearing about the wheel, a people could invent it on their own.4 No matter how they were introduced to China, Chinese people adopted these four great inventions a thousand years or more later than peoples of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia did. In some other aspects, China was also behind the Eastern Mediterranean civilizations. Large cities emerged in China a thousand years or so later than in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The former were also smaller in scale than the latter at the emerging stage, although they were larger than cities that appeared much later in history in Central and South America (Xu 2014, 96). Therefore, in terms of the four great inventions that are crucial for humans to enter the next stage of civilizational development, the Chinese one was a latecomer compared to the eastern Mediterranean ones. It was a major receiver of advanced civilizations. Again, I wish to emphasize that “advanced” and similar terms are used in a neutral manner and are referred to the sophistication of civilization. More importantly, a thousand years or more head-start does not give a people permanent advantage. Modern humans are so evolved that children of parents who lived in a

Then, maybe Garfield and van Norden (and many other multi-culturalists) have overreached when they claim that peoples with no written language have philosophies. They surely have worldly wisdoms, sometimes different from other peoples’ and thus very valuable. We—and they, after they have acquired a written language—can also reflect on these wisdoms and thus turn them into philosophy. But philosophy as I describe it belongs to the literate civilizations. 4 For an example, see Puett (1998).

2

THE EDGE OF CIVILIZATIONS: THE CHINESE …

29

Neolithic civilization can quickly adapt themselves to the age of industrialization and information technology if they are exposed to the latter, while contemporary Egypt and Iraq are not leading human civilizations anymore.

China as the Sole Continuous Civilization? A New Division of the World While perhaps not the oldest, the Chinese civilization is often described as the sole continuous civilization among the four major early civilizations: the Egyptian, the Mesopotamian, the Indian, and the Chinese, which is a source of pride for the Chinese. Whether the Indian civilization is continuous or not is debatable, but clearly the peoples who live in Egypt and Mesopotamia today hold no clear cultural heritage that goes all the way back to the ancient civilizations. But the matter of fact is that before 2,000 BCE, there were many competing civilizations in what would become China. Nonetheless, from 1500 BCE on, the Shang people and its successor the Zhou people had almost a monopoly of the four great inventions in the China region. They were the only peoples with a written language. Other than the San Xing Dui 三星堆 culture, they were the first people and for a long time the only people who mastered bronze making. The horses and wheels were also first utilized by them. This may have had something to do with the fact that they were closer to the Eurasian Steppe, the highway connected to the center of early human civilizations, which made the inventions from the center easily accessible to the Shang and Zhou peoples. Perhaps due to these technological advancements, the Shang-Zhou peoples gradually assimilated, drove out, or eliminated other earlier civilizations in today’s China (minus the Tibet and Xinjiang regions). Through a period of infighting among different political entities that belong to the Shang-Zhou civilization, the Western Zhou feudal order was transformed to the Qin-Han centralized bureaucracy, which laid the foundation of the Chinese political regime for the following 2,000 years. Through Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian (shi ji 史记) and other historical works, the Chinese (Shang-Zhou) civilization became the common cultural memory of all “Chinese.” Memories of other civilizations, cultures, or peoples that once thrived in China were either denigrated or simply erased. From politics to history and to culture, the Chinese civilization became a unified whole, and civilizations in early China became the Chinese civilization.

30

T. BAI

Therefore, the so-called continuous and unified Chinese civilization was the result of a sometimes violent transformation from an earlier stage of diverse civilizations before 2,000 BCE. These other civilizations were either assimilated into the Chinese civilization, or were driven out and eliminated, physically or culturally. After this assimilation and elimination, the Chinese civilization became the dominant one in East Asia, or the “world” known to the Chinese, people of the “Central Kingdom,” zhong guo 中国. This dominance might have had something to do with the fact that the Shang-Zhou peoples were closer to the center of early human civilization. Due to the fact that China as well as East Asia are at the edge of civilization and China first entered the next stage of civilizational development, thanks to its affinity to the early civilizational center, China remained dominant in East Asia because it lacked a serious competitor. The dominance of the Chinese civilization also means, however, that it couldn’t quickly evolve even further though communications and competitions among civilizations on similar levels. In a chapter—with the title “The Chinese Character”—of his book The Problem of China, Bertrand Russell (2004) made the point that even if China was conquered by invaders, these invaders would be politically and culturally conquered by the Chinese civilization. This is why although other ancient civilizations perished, the Chinese one persisted. This description is rather moving, especially to the Chinese. But the fact that the conquerors were assimilated into the Chinese civilization means that there have always been changes, such as the ethnic make-up of “the Chinese,” under the apparent continuity of the Chinese civilization. More importantly, the cultural conquest and assimilation of the conquerors happened frequently in the pan-Mediterranean civilizations as well. For example, when the Hittite conquered the Old Babylonian Empire, they were quickly assimilated into the Babylonian and old Mesopotamian civilization. As the historian Henri Pirenne (2001) showed, the so-called barbarians who were fighting with the Romans were also trying to become culturally Romans themselves. The assimilation of conquerors who were not as culturally sophisticated as the conquered is a rather universal phenomenon. Different from China, however, the pan-Mediterranean civilizations are relatively open and pluralistic. In the early stage, there were already multiple centers in this region, most importantly the ancient Egyptian and the Mesopotamian civilizations. The speaking and written languages were different between these two civilizations. Within the Mesopotamian

2

THE EDGE OF CIVILIZATIONS: THE CHINESE …

31

civilization, there were also different, competing, or successive (sub-) civilizations. Although they all used the cuneiform, the written languages were actually different among them. These languages were also used to record their own legends, histories, and literature. In contrast, other civilizations within China did not have their own written languages, and their activities could only be recorded in the “Chinese” civilization that was actually the civilization of the Shang-Zhou peoples. Such records were not only scarce, but often biased. One telling fact is that those who did not follow the Zhou feudal regime were called man yi 蛮夷, the barbarians. oς ) that literally Different from the Greek term “barbarians” (β αρβαρ ´ meant those who make sound (“bar-bar”) that is unintelligible to the Greeks, the Chinese term, man yi, was put in contrast to the term hua xia 华夏, “the flowery xia people,” which is how the Shang-Zhou peoples referred to themselves and is translated as “Chinese.” The term man yi, therefore, carried the meaning that the barbarians were culturally inferior to the Chinese. Of course, the ancient Greeks often looked down on the barbarians as well. Nevertheless, language-wise, the term “barbarian” does not carry any derogatory meaning. This suggests that to the Greeks, the differences among different peoples were a matter of diverse civilizations that can be equally sophisticated, rather than between a higher and a lower civilization, as the Chinese terms hua xia and man yi suggest. After all, for the Greeks, the Egyptians, who obviously had an older and more sophisticated civilization, were also “barbarians.” Therefore, from very early on, there were many equally advanced civilizations in the region east of the Mediterranean, the center of early human civilizations, whereas in China, one civilization was so dominant that it wiped out other earlier civilizations. The former were gradually spread to ancient Persia, Phoenicia, Carthage, Greece, and Rome, eventually forming what I would call the pan-Mediterranean civilizations. The communications among all these different civilizations promoted further developments. To be clear, some of the communications and exchanges were violent. Indeed, wars may be a more effective tool to promote the advancement of civilization than peaceful exchanges. The multi-centered violent competitions also mean that the successor of a civilization may be ethnically and culturally different from the ancestor in this great Mediterranean circle. In the Analects, Confucius claimed that the Zhou culture is splendid because it has synthesized the two generations (dai 代) of earlier

32

T. BAI

civilizations (Xia and Shang) (3.14).5 But the Greek and the Roman civilizations were splendid because they had synthesized even more civilizations. It is rather revealing that Confucius used the term “generation”: the legendary Xia and Shang civilizations were actually representations of the one and the same civilization over different periods (“generations”). But in the pan-Mediterranean circle, there were equally advanced civilizations even in the same period or generation. Therefore, although the Chinese civilization seems to be continuous inside of China, the civilizations within the pan-Mediterranean circle were also continuous. It is just that within this big circle, the main leaders, bearers, or successors often changed in a more apparent manner than the ones in China. The above discussion can also help us to correct another common misunderstanding. Many Chinese have thought that China was defeated by the West, and the West really originated from ancient Greece and Rome. Compared to these two civilizations, the Chinese one is much older. But as we see, in terms of civilizational origins, ancient Greece and Rome were not really part of Europe, but part of the pan-Mediterranean circle. They were successors of civilizations that were actually much older than the Chinese one. China’s almost fatal encounter with the West in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries is really a very comprehensive encounter and clash of two groups of very old civilizations. Indeed, in today’s world, we tend to divide peoples up based on which continent they are from. But this is not very helpful, and even misleading. As we see, early civilizations that mastered the four great inventions can be divided into these groups: pan-Mediterranean civilizations, Indian Civilization, Chinese Civilization, and the civilization of the “highway” that connects all these civilizations together, that is, the Eurasian Steppe. The Persian civilization is slightly more difficult to categorize: it was between the Mesopotamian civilization and the nomads in the Eurasian Steppe, and also had exchanges with the Indian civilization throughout history. In the pan-Mediterranean circle, Alexander the Great unified all different civilizations and even part of the Eurasian Steppe, ushering in the Hellenization of much of the civilized world, with only China completely untouched. Later, Romans solidified such a unity in the panMediterranean region. Still, there is a cultural divide between the Greekspeaking east and Latin-speaking west. After the fall of the (western)

5 For an English translation of the Analects, see Lau (2000).

2

THE EDGE OF CIVILIZATIONS: THE CHINESE …

33

Roman empire, as Pirenne (2001) showed, Roman culture was still dominant in the pan-Mediterranean region. It was only when Muhammad established Islam and the Muslims conquered much of the Mediterranean region (other than the northern part of it), was the pan-Mediterranean world, unified by Alexander the Great and strengthened by the Romans, disrupted and divided again. This leads to the creation of Europe—to be precise, Western (and central) Europe—as an independent political and cultural entity. This is the famous and now widely accepted thesis introduced by Perinne a hundred years ago: no Muhammad, no Charlemagne (who was the father of Europe) (Pirenne 2001). Therefore, we should not understand Greek and Roman civilizations as European civilizations. Rather, (Western) European civilizations should be understood as successors of Greek and Roman civilizations that were in turn successors of the pan-Mediterranean civilizations. This is not merely for historical interest. The divisions of the world that are based on different circles or centers of early civilizations are still present and significant in today’s world, if we wish to understand the political regimes, cultures, and philosophies of different countries. In this sense, “Europeans” and “Asians” can be rather misleading. In “Asia,” the Islamic world in Asia is a successor of the pan-Mediterranean civilization. Countries on the Indian sub-continent are successors of the Indian civilization, with some mixture from the Islamic and Persian civilizations. China and much of East Asia are successor of the Chinese civilizations. Culturally and politically, there is no such a thing as “Asia.” There are also regions in between. For example, Southeast Asia has been under the influence of both the Chinese and the Indian civilizations, with countries like Vietnam, especially its northern part, mostly under the Chinese influence. As we see from the chapter by Tuong Vu in this volume, the early political regimes of Vietnam were an offshoot of the Chinese regimes, and although both countries were under Chinese influence, Korea, being on the edge of the Eurasian Steppe and thus suffering more wars than Vietnam did, developed more sophisticated political regimes faster than Vietnam. In the case of Europe, Eastern Europe was the buffer zone between Romans and the nomads from the Eurasian Steppe, and Russia was as much a successor of the nomadic empires on the Eurasian Steppe as of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire. As the challenges of the unification of Europe through EU and Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 reveal, the cultural and political divisions that could be traced to the early stage of advanced human civilizations still play a role.

34

T. BAI

Problems of the Chinese Civilization Despite the re-division of the pan-Mediterranean world, civilizations from this world have continued to evolve through the communications and clashes between the “Occident” (Western and Central Europa) and the “Orient” (the Islamic world in Near and Middle East). Within Western Europe, there were competing political and cultural centers that were good for the preservation, cultivation, and development of cultural and political “genes.” We all know the story of how many Greek classics were preserved in the Islamic world and were reintroduced to Western Europe, which led to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. As Diamond mentioned (1999, 411–413), Christopher Columbus (1451–1506 AD), who was born in Genoa, could go from one ruler to another, eventually finding support of his plan after many failures, which led to the Great Discovery and a new era of European history. In contrast, the Chinese general Zheng He郑和 (1371–1433 AD) of China’s Ming dynasty had a far large fleet with more advanced ships and technologies, but his explorations were discontinued for good when the emperor changed his mind, because there was only one unified political authority in China. Generally speaking, being the sole leader in the “world” (East Asia) for much of the history, the Chinese civilization lacked stimulations from competitions of equally or more advanced civilizations that could lead to fast evolution. In fact, some civilizational achievements were lost when China was overrun by the “barbarians,” the nomadic invaders whose civilizations were less sophisticated than the Chinese one. The lack of true civilizational competitors may have been the deeper reason for China to be defeated by the West in the nineteenth century. To be clear, it is often said that this defeat is caused by the closedness—in Chinese it is called bi guan suo guo 闭关锁国, literally “closing the customs and locking the state”—of traditional China.6 In fact, people who believe in this often refer to the Great Wall of China as a symbol of the lack of openness of traditional China. This is highly misleading. As we see, it is likely that China acquired most and maybe all of the four great inventions from the center of early civilizations. Although China became an exporter of technologies, institutions, and ideas in East Asia, many religions from other major civilizations were spread to China. Buddhism that was originally from India was even Sinicized and this version of 6 See Rofel (2017, 212) for a quick overview.

2

THE EDGE OF CIVILIZATIONS: THE CHINESE …

35

Buddhism was then spread to Korea and Japan. A major development of Confucianism, the so-called Neo-Confucianism, was partly triggered by the competitions and clashes with Buddhism. The Jesuits brought to China not only Christianity but also European science. The main reason for this exchange to be interrupted was not China’s closed-ness, but the infight within the Catholic Church. Another common thesis about China is that it has a super-stable system (Jin and Liu 1992), which is as wrong as the China’s closed-ness thesis. After the Zhou-Qin transition (roughly from 770 to 221 BCE), politically speaking, traditional China did evolve slowly. But the reason is that there was no clear alternative of equally sophisticated or more advanced political model in the known world. Even when one dynasty collapsed, there was no obviously alternative in terms of political regimes. Naturally, the next dynasty would go back to the old, pre-existing “super-stable” social and political organizations. Therefore, the main problem of the Chinese civilization is its lonely civilizational dominance in the “world,” lacking exchanges and clashes with civilizational equals. Although the four great inventions can be spread through the great highway of Eurasian Steppe, more sophisticated elements of advanced civilizations, such as philosophy and political institutions, are far more difficult to spread by tradesmen and nomadic conquerors on this highway. Nevertheless, Buddhism was introduced to China. But perhaps due to some characteristics of the Chinese civilization, its logic and metaphysics have been more or less marginalized. Moreover, this lonely dominance means that for much of the past two millennia, China was the main exporter of civilizational products. This naturally affected the interest of the Chinese in the outside world. This is just natural, and has little to do with mysterious and specious factors such as “the national character,” “closed-ness,” or “super-stable structure.” As late as 1600–1800 AD, in terms of trade, China was still a major exporter of various goods, and the Europeans had little to offer other than guns. The silver Europeans extracted from the Americas was sent to China (and India) to trade for various products. Indeed, Americas were “discovered” by the Europeans when they searched for a route to China and were considered not a treasure, but an obstacle to China at first. An important motivation for Europeans to colonize the Americas and Africa was also to trade with China. The relatively lack of interest in Europe by the Chinese was natural. I am not saying that it was right—it may have been wrong, but it was rather understandable and was resulted from the cultural and economic settings faced by the Chinese. The contemporary Americans

36

T. BAI

have only dominated the world for less than a hundred years, and they already acquire the “Chinese national character” of close-mindedness and lack of interest in the outside world. There are also accidental reasons for China to be left behind by the West in the past two centuries. As already mentioned, due to the lack of competing centers, when China lost certain civilizational products under the invasions and disruptions by the nomads, it could lose them forever. In contrast, when Romans lost these products due to the barbarians’ invasions, many of them could be preserved in Byzantine and the Islamic world. A major traumatic event in the development of the Chinese civilization is the Mongolian conquest. Many political institutions and other civilizational products were lost for good in the dynasties after the Mongolian dynasty, according to historians such as Qian MU (Qian 1996, 2005). The Song dynasty (960–1279 AD) was known for its openness, tolerance, and commerce, and its arts were elegant, whereas the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1911) were more despotic and agrarian. Still, if the Eurasian Steppe were stretched all the way to Western Europe, and the Mongols turned it into a “Western Khanate,” could Europe still maintain its civilization and develop industrialization, capitalism, and constitutional democracy? It is a geographical luck for the Western Europeans (and maybe for the human race) that the Eurasian Steppe ends in Eastern Europe. No matter what the reasons or excuses are, the fact of the matter is that China started falling behind the West 200 years ago, if not even earlier, and there are things from the pan-Mediterranean civilizations that were not easily available to the Chinese and are worth learning from and competing with. It was a long and painful process for Chinese to understand this, and the history of China in the past 200 years could be characterized as an effort to become part of a larger world and a more diverse civilization. In spite of the early hesitance, the Chinese became quite enthusiastic about learning from and becoming part of the world. But the world was divided into two world systems in the twentieth century, and China joined the Soviet one in 1949, which was an early globalization effort by the Chinese (Rofel 2017). But China retreated from this socialist cosmopolitanism after the conflict with the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and the 1960s (ibid.). Between this retreat and the death of Mao in 1976, China was indeed extremely isolated and closed, but it has little to do with the traditional Chinese civilization or any alleged Chinese mindsets. Then, the socialist world system collapsed,

2

THE EDGE OF CIVILIZATIONS: THE CHINESE …

37

and China has joined the capitalist world system that has been led by the USA. In spite of recent clashes and growing claims of de-coupling from both sides of the Pacific Ocean, China has not yet developed an alternative world system, and I doubt it ever will. Rather, the recent clashes can be understood as the growing and integrating pain of China in the comprehensive exchanges with the pan-Mediterranean civilizations and joining the greater civilized world. China never experienced such a great cultural shock since the introduction of the four great inventions 4,000 years ago, and naturally, the integration will take time and much pain. It also has to be acknowledged that not only were the pan-Mediterranean civilizations ahead of the Chinese civilization at the beginning of the post-Neolithic age, but much of the contemporary world has been shaped by one of their successors, the Western European civilization, such as how educational institutions and economy are run. Although the Chinese economy has grown impressively in the past four decades, China still has a great learning curve to overcome. It is not the time to say that it is China’s century (yet).

Contributions of the Chinese Civilization to the World The Chinese civilization was a relatively young one, especially compared with the pan-Mediterranean civilizations. It lacked diversity, and it lagged behind the Western European civilization in the past 200 years. There is a lot of catching-up for China to do. Nevertheless, it has had and will have a lot to offer to other civilizations. After all, it mastered the four great inventions and entered the next stage of civilizational advancement, and thus has a wide range of shared civilizational concerns with other advanced civilizations. Moreover, due to its relative isolation, it has developed many unique features that would enrich the diversity of human imaginations. The learning between China and the rest of the world is a mutual process, although China may need to learn more from the rest than the other way around. For example, after first developing hieroglyphs, the pan-Mediterranean civilizations and their successors all adopted alphabetic writings. This form of writing is dominant in today’s world. Thanks to China, a nonalphabetic writing is preserved. Moreover, it is not a dead or primitive language, but a highly developed and sophisticated one. If not for the

38

T. BAI

Chinese written language, our understanding of language would be significantly limited. There are a few other interesting unique phenomena of the Chinese civilization. In the tombs of all civilizations with written languages, to my knowledge, only the ones in the Chinese civilization have books in them, which is a major source of the rediscovery of long-lost texts. The only other civilization that buried the dead with the book—yes, the singular “book”—is the Egyptian one. But the book they buried with the dead is the Book of the Dead, which is an instruction manual for the mummified kings and nobles of how to come back to life. All other three major early civilizations (Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Indian) have legends about the struggles between the omnipotent good god and the omnipotent bad god, and many of them have also legends of the wiping out of the human race by the gods due to their disappointment and wrath about human beings. Gods who are absolutely and purely good become the inspiration of the God in Abrahamic religions and of ancient Greek metaphysics. In ancient China, there are no such legends, and the Chinese culture and language were not metaphysical at all until the encounter with Buddhism. The latter was the reason for the sinologist Christoph Harbsmeier to introduce the terms “pre-Buddhist Chinese” and “pre-Buddhist literature” (Harbsmeier 1995, 50n5).7 In the Chinese civilization, what is somewhat equivalent in function to the gods in other advanced civilizations is the role of ancestors and rituals. As a result, the symbol of the state is ding 鼎, basically a cooking pot that contains meat and wine for ancestors in state rituals. In contrast, the symbol of the state in the pan-Mediterranean civilizations is often the symbol of power. This difference may have had something to do with the fact that the Chinese civilization has one dominant source and ancestry, whereas the pan-Mediterranean states have different ancestries and have to fight among equally civilized states through pure power. It is hard to say China is more or less advanced than other civilizations because of all these features, but the Chinese one is unique in these regards, which offers a very rich source of reflections on the universality and diversity of civilized societies and states.

7 This paper by Harbsmeier also contains other examples of the relatively lack of metaphysical thinking in early Chinese civilization, in comparison with the Greek civilization.

2

THE EDGE OF CIVILIZATIONS: THE CHINESE …

39

In addition to these different but not necessarily advanced features, there were other areas in which China was ahead of other advanced civilizations. The small state of Zhou defeated the powerful Shang imperial army around 1,050 BCE, and the Shang empire collapsed. We know little of how the Shang controlled a large territory. But we know far more about the succeeding Zhou empire. The regime is called feng jian 封建 in Chinese, which is often translated as “feudalism.” The English term is used to describe the Medieval European regimes, but the Chinese one is ahead of the European one for 2,000 years. The inadequacy of this term to describe ancient Chinese and medieval European regimes aside,8 there are indeed some fundamental features that are shared by both regimes. In essence, the Zhou feudal regime is a form of military colonialism that was invented or adopted by early Zhou rulers to take over the Shang empire (Qian 1996; Li 2005). The king sent out his friends and relatives to colonize areas that were not under the Zhou control, and the feudal lords would do the same when they tried to control their feudal states. As a result, the “world order” was built on a hierarchy of nobility, and through the pyramid of nobility, a large empire was divided into small, close-knit feudal communities. The noblemen ran their fiefdoms with some autonomy, and the legitimacy of rule was based on the noble pedigree. During the so-called Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (SAWS, roughly from 770 to 221 BCE), the old regime collapsed. Through wars of all against all, large, populous, well-connected, and plebeianized societies of strangers emerged. There were a few de-facto sovereign states that emerged in the newly globalized “world.” This transition may be a forerunner of the European transition to modernity and even of the globalization in our times. Common to all these transitions is the need to address three key political issues in this new world: the bond of a large state of strangers, the principles of international relations among independent states, and the selection of the ruling members of the state and even the world (and the legitimacy of the selection) when all are considered more or less equal, thanks to the collapse of nobility. These issues were also faced by early modern European thinkers, and in a sense, our contemporary world is but an enlarged version of Warring States China. 8 See Brown (1974), Reynolds (1994), and Li (2005, 2008) for more detailed discussions.

40

T. BAI

This is not the place to review all the major proposals by Chinese thinkers in this period.9 One notable fact is that, what emerged from this transition is a centralized rational bureaucracy. The American political thinker Francis Fukuyama acknowledged the fact that, if we use the German sociologist Max Weber’s criteria, the Qin empire that emerged from this transition is the first political modern state in human history (Fukuyama 2011, 125–126). In comparison, the Roman empire existed around the same time of the Qin and Han empires, ruling over an area with similar size and population. But especially in the early imperial period, the Roman empire was run in a very crude manner, in contrast to the highly organized and sophisticated system of bureaucrats in the Qin and Han empires (221 BCE-220 AD). The Roman empire looked like an overgrown baby in that Rome, starting out as a republic, a regime suitable to a city-state, acquired something much bigger for the republican form of government to handle, but handled it through this “baby” form of government anyways. It was not until the European Enlightenment and modernity that the knowledge of Chinese political regime became available to some European thinkers, and this knowledge inspired the development of European (including British) bureaucracy. In fact, even before this period, oftentimes, the nomads on the east side of Eurasian Steppe learned political organizations and other advanced technologies from the Chinese or simply grabbed Chinese artisans, which, together with being squeezed by the powerful and organized Chinese empires, was crucial for their westward migrations and conquests. Indeed, the simple fact that all nomadic empires in the past started from the East where nomads were in close contact with the Chinese civilizations showed the institutional and technological superiority of China over the polities on the Western edge of the Eurasian Steppe.10 The trades with China through the Silk Roads were also the financial source for the nomads to go to war and to build large empires of their own. The discovery and the control of the sea routes to China (and India) by the Europeans and thus the depletion of this financial resource might have been an important 9 See Bai (2012) for a fuller picture. 10 Dingxin Zhao also points out the fact that “it was on the frontiers of China that

the largest, most complex, and most powerful nomadic or semi-nomadic empires, such as Xiongnu, Turk, Mongol, and Qing, emerged” (Zhao 2015, 328), and his explanation is similar to and more detailed than what I have offered here. I am also highly sympathetic to his characterization of the post-Qin Chinese empires as “Confucian-Legalist.”

2

THE EDGE OF CIVILIZATIONS: THE CHINESE …

41

factor for the disarming of the threat from the nomads on the Steppe, after they played the role of both a connector among and a disruptor of other Eurasian empires for almost two thousand years. Economically speaking, in China’s transition to early modernity during the SAWS, China already developed free sale of land and agriculture-based market economy. Financially, indirect tax, excise tax, credit-based public financing, and so on, which are considered to be key to industrialization or the second stage of modernity, are thought of being first introduced in England and the Netherlands. According to Liu, Guanglin 刘光临 (Liu 2015, 2016), however, these financial institutions and tools were already introduced in China’s Song dynasties (960–1279 AD). Unfortunately, these institutions were destroyed in the Mongolian conquest and were not reintroduced to China until the last years of the Qing dynasty (1636–1911 AD). As already mentioned, traditional China lacked competitions among diverse but equally advanced civilizations that co-existed at the same time but occupied different spaces. But traditional Chinese dynasties could be understood as offering competitions among equally advanced civilizations that existed in the same space, but occupied different times. In fact, traditional Chinese took history seriously, and thus were keenly aware the diversity over time and tried to learn things from it. The successes and failures of traditional (and yet politically modern) Chinese regimes could still offer lessons to us today. In particular, even if the very unorthodox thesis that China entered a form of modernity before the common era is wrong, given the apparent similarities, we are forced to answer the question: what is modernity? After all, according to Weber’s criteria that are centered on rational bureaucracy, China since the Qin dynasty would be considered modern. If traditional China was not modern, there has to be something wrong with Weber’s criteria. Moreover, even if traditional China since the Qin dynasty is not completely modern but shares some fundamental features of modernity, and if Chinese thinkers and Chinese dynasties offered different ways of governing a somewhat modern state, we need to investigate all proposals of governing a modern state before we claim that history has ended with a best model, a claim Fukuyama may have made too rashly in the 1990s, without looking into traditional Chinese alternatives (Fukuyama 1992).11

11 Bai (2019) is meant to be such an alternative that is based on early Confucian ideas.

42

T. BAI

Concluding Remarks One general lesson from the discussion in this chapter is that we human beings need to be humble. We need to realize that we are at the hands of things that are beyond our control, such as geography and biological diversity, and our creativity and imagination is rather limited (see Zhao’s chapter in this volume as well). Though equally intelligent, natives of the Pacific Islands, Australia, and even Americas could not develop most and even all of the four great inventions that appear to be rather simple for peoples in Eurasia. Before the deep encounter with the panMediterranean civilizations, it is nearly impossible for the Chinese to imagine political institutions such as Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism. For early modern European thinkers, it was extremely enlightening to know that a large and populous state (China) could be run without Christianity or a similar kind of religion. It is crucial, then, for human development to cherish diversity, which is flourishing today when different circles of advanced civilizations fully encounter with each other in this truly globalized world. It is truism that pluralism is good. For the development of human civilization, all kinds of walls need to be torn down. But a mere tolerance of diversity is insufficient. In human history, wars and life-and-death competitions are often the most effective driver for development. One of the most flourishing periods of Chinese thought is the Warring States period, and the result was the first developed rational bureaucracy in human history. The aforementioned “modern” financial tools were developed in China’s Song dynasties and in the UK and the Netherlands because they needed to respond to the pressure of war. In the twentieth century, Penicillin and nuclear bombs were developed also because of the pressure of war. Though effective, however, we also have to see that war is a brutal means. Put the moral issue aside, war can be destructive to the sophistication of human civilization as well. When the Mongols conquered China, many civilizational achievements were lost, some for good. The technologies we have mastered today can easily destroy the whole human race. In his response to Charles Tilly’s thesis, the sociologist Zhao Dingxin 赵鼎新 shows that what drives development in the Warring States period of China were frequent but inconclusive wars (Zhao 2015, 26). But even inconclusive wars are too high a price for civilizational development. A moderate proposal would be that under the condition of basic welfare (basic materials needs, health care, education) and the removal of different kinds of

2

THE EDGE OF CIVILIZATIONS: THE CHINESE …

43

walls, open, non-violent, but fierce competitions are encouraged. This is different from tolerance-oriented pluralism, which often degenerates into indifference, relativism, and nihilism or anarchy. The competition is not the kind of clash of civilization in Samuel Huntington’s theory. It is a fighting pluralism in the way of an ideal soccer match: one team tries its best to defeat its competitor, but at the same time, it wishes the competitor to exist and even help it to thrive. The sophistication of human civilization needs such “clashes,” clashes of gods that are immortal in the sense that they cannot be killed, but only grow stronger than ever.

References Bai, Tongdong (2012), China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom. London: Zed Books. ——— (2019), Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Brown, Elizabeth A. R. (1974), “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe,” The American Historical Review 79 (4), 1063–1088. Carneiro, Robert L. (1970), “A Theory of the Origin of the State,” Science 169 (3947, August 21), 733–738. Diamond, Jared (1999), Gun, Germs, and Steel. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Fukuyama, Francis (1992), The End of History and the Last Man, New York, Avon Books. ——— (2011), The Origins of Political Order. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Garfield, Jay and Bryan van Norden (2016), “If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is,” The New York Times (May 11, 2016), http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/opinion/if-philosophywont-diversify-lets-call-it-what-it-really-is.html Harbsmeier, Christoph (1995), “Some Notions of Time and of History in China and in the West,” in Chun-Chieh Huang & Erik Zürcher (Eds.), Time and Space in Chinese Culture (Leiden and New York: Brill), 49–71. Jin, Guantao金观涛 and Liu Qingfeng刘青峰 (1992), The Cycle of Growth and Decline: On the Ultrastable Structure of Chinese Society兴盛与危机——论中 国 社会超稳定结构. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. Lau, D. C.刘殿爵 (tr.) (2000), Confucius: The Analects (First Paperback Edition). Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Li, Feng (2005), Landscape and Power in Early China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

44

T. BAI

——— (2008), Bureaucracy and the State in Early China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Liu, William Guanglin (刘光临) (2015), “The Making of a Fiscal State in Song China: 960-1279,” Economic History Review 68 (1), 48–78. ——— (2016), The Chinese Market Economy: 1000–1500. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Pirenne, Henri (2001), Mohammed and Charlemagne. Mineola, NY: Dover. Puett, Michael (1998), “China in Early Eurasian History: a Brief Review of Scholarship on the Issue,” in Victor Mair (Ed.) The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia (Washington: Institute for the Study of Man), 699–715. Qian, Mu钱穆 (1996), Outlines of the History of China国史大纲. Beijing: Shangwu Press商务印书馆. ——— (2005), Successes and Failures of Traditional Chinese Politics 中国历代政 治得 失. Beijing: Sanlian Shudian 三联书店. Reynolds, Susan (1994), Fiefs and Vassals. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rofel, Lisa (2017), “China’s Tianxia Worldings: Socialist and Postsocialist Cosmopolitanism,” in Wang Ban (Ed.) Chinese Visions of World Order (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 212–234. Russell, Bertrand (2004), The Problem of China. The Project Gutenberg EBook. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13940/13940-h/13940-h.htm Van Norden, Bryan (2017), Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Xu, Hong许宏 (2014), China: 2000 B.C. 何以中国: 公元前2000年的中原图景. Beijing: the Sanlian Press. Zhao, Dingxin (2015), The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 3

War and State Formation in Ancient Korea and Vietnam Tuong Vu

Introduction This chapter explores the relationship between warfare and ancient state formation in the territories that would become today’s Korea and Vietnam. The birth of state-level societies and modern states are considered critical milestones in the political development of human society. From an evolutionary perspective, state-level societies are distinguished from tribes and chiefdoms in their relatively higher degree of social stratification and centralized territorial administration. As an ideal type, modern states are further distinguished by centralized governments which govern through a specialized bureaucracy and which monopolize the means of violence over a designated territory.1 1 According to Max Weber (1947: 156), “The primary formal characteristics of the modern state are as follows. It possesses an administrative and legal order subject to change by legislation, to which the organized corporate activity of the administrative staff, which is also regulated by legislation, is oriented. This system of order claims binding

T. Vu (B) Department of Political Science, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Z. Wang (ed.), The Long East Asia, Governing China in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_3

45

46

T. VU

Scholars of anthropology, sociology, and political science have long noted the role warfare played in state formation whether in primitive or early modern societies. War, defined as open armed conflicts between polities, operates as a method for more powerful groups to annex weaker ones and form larger polities. Carneiro, an anthropologist who studies primitive societies, claims that “[f]orce, and not enlightened self-interest, is the mechanism by which political evolution has led, step by step, from autonomous villages to the state.”2 War is a necessary condition for state formation in this view.3 Similarly, sociologist Tilly argues that war or threats of war forced rulers in medieval Western Europe to prepare by building up not only armies but also an infrastructure of administration and taxation that often outlasted the particular wars they fought.4 Tilly’s argument that war made states has been confirmed by the case of ancient China but not by those of early modern Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.5 The debate on the relationship between war and state formation inspires this chapter, which examines that relationship in ancient Korea or Chaoxian (K: Choson) and Vietnam or Jiao (V: Giao).6 These two cases followed divergent paths of state formation despite being in apparently identical conditions at the beginning. In particular, near the end

authority, not only over the members of the state, the citizens, most of whom have obtained membership by birth, but also to a very large extent, over all actions taking place in the area of its jurisdiction. It is thus a compulsory association with a territorial basis. Furthermore, today, the use of force is regarded as legitimate only so far as it is either permitted by the state or prescribed by it.” 2 Carneiro (1970: 735). 3 War is not sufficient though. According to Carneiro (1970), other conditions include

environmental circumscription and resource concentration. 4 Tilly (1990: 20–21). 5 Hui (2005), Herbst (2000), Centeno (2002) and Fukuyama (2011). 6 To avoid teleology, I use “Chaoxian” for ancient Korea and “Jiao” for ancient

Vietnam. The term “Chaoxian” first appeared in Sanguozhi written by Pei Songzhi in the fifth century (citing the lost source Weilue by Yu Huan written in the third century). See Gardiner (1969: 10, 60–61) and Hong (2012: 457). “Jiao” refers to the whole region that made up the southern half of the Lingnan region. Jiao, or Jiaozhou when it came to be used officially under the Tang dynasty, referred to the three commanderies of Jiaozhi, Jiuzhen, and Rinan that spread from the Red River plain to the area near modern Hue in central Vietnam.

3

WAR AND STATE FORMATION IN ANCIENT KOREA …

47

of the Han dynasty (202 BCE-8 AD and 23–220 AD), which colonized the northern halves of both today’s Korean peninsula and Vietnam, Chaoxian witnessed constant and intense warfare in contrast with the relative tranquility in Jiao. A primary cause of the divergence, I will argue, was the different geopolitical environments of the two frontiers and the various ways Chaoxian people and polities were connected to the steppe and its people. The divergence ultimately produced stunningly different outcomes by the seventh century: Chaoxian achieved self-rule and unification under a kingdom led by native elites, whereas Jiao remained part of the Chinese empire but local governments were dominated by powerful immigrant families. A key legacy of this divergence was the existence of a powerful aristocracy with tribal roots that would persist for several centuries afterward, and the absence of a similar group in Vietnam. More broadly, the historical cases of Chaoxian and Jiao provide additional evidence to support the hypothesis that war facilitates state formation and state building. Yet the particular outcome among the Korean cases is not expected by the theory: the ultimate victor in war (Silla) was not the militarily strongest polity (Koguryo). Below I will first discuss the historical and environmental contexts of Chaoxian (Korea) and Jiao (Vietnam), and then review the key developments in the history of the two regions from the first to seventh centuries.7 The third part of the chapter will discuss the questions concerning the divergent paths of development in ancient Korea and Vietnam and their legacies.

The Qin and Han Empires Ancient Chinese civilization developed in the plains (hereafter called Central Plain or zhongyuan) located along the western and middle sections of the Yellow River in northwestern China today. As the earliest and most sophisticated civilization in East Asia at the time, the Central Plain came to have powerful influences on other human communities throughout the region, especially after Qin Shihuang (Ying Zheng) succeeded in uniting the Central Plain under a single government by 221 7 While I made an effort to consult primary materials if having been translated into Vietnamese or English—examples are Fan (1961), Ngo (1993), Le (2002), Ha and Mintz (1972), Best (2006), Kim et al. (2011, 2012), this paper is based mostly on secondary sources.

48

T. VU

BCE. This took place after more than two centuries of constant warfare during the so-called Warring States period (403–221 BCE). During this period, the Liaodong peninsula and perhaps even the upper stretch of the Korean peninsula were part of Yan, one of the warring states whose capital was located near modern Beijing.8 In the Red River plain, which lies in today’s northern Vietnam, tribes and chiefdoms appeared to be the main form of political communities.9 After its formation, the Qin empire was active in expanding its frontier in the north and the south, but not toward east or west.10 Yet interesting parallels can be identified in the developments of the Korean and Indochinese peninsulas. In the south, the influence of the Central Plain was initially limited to the Yangzi River delta, but by the end of Qin rule in 206 BCE, Central Plain rulers had established outposts as far as modern Guangdong and Guilin. A Qin official in Guangdong named Zhao Tuo (V: Trieu Da) took advantage of the collapse of the Qin dynasty to proclaim himself the King of Nan Yue; Zhao would expand his kingdom by seizing control of the Red River plain in 208 BCE.11 In the northeast, following a failed revolt against Qin rule in 196–195 BCE, another official named Weiman (K: Wiman) led a group of followers from the Liaodong area into northern Korean peninsula to found the Chaoxian Kingdom based near today’s Pyongyang.12 Under Han Wudi (156–87 BCE), the seventh emperor of the Han dynasty, the Central Plain’s domain was expanded in all directions.13 Military conquests brought under Han rule much of the steppe in the north and northwest. In the northeast, Han forces defeated those of Chaoxian and established commanderies in southern Manchuria and the northern part of the Korean peninsula. In the south, Han Wudi’s generals subjugated several kingdoms, including Nan Yue. Han rule then extended to as far as the northern part of central Vietnam today. This is the starting point of the comparison in this essay, when central rule was imposed by

8 Gardiner (1969: 8–9). 9 Taylor (1983: 7–23). For an archaeological study of society and polity in the Red

River plain prior to the conquest by Zhao Tuo, see Kim (2015). 10 Chang (2007: 45–64). 11 Le (2002: 220–224). 12 Lee (1984: 16–17). 13 Chang (2007: ch. 3).

3

WAR AND STATE FORMATION IN ANCIENT KOREA …

49

northern rulers nearly simultaneously on both Chaoxian and Jiao. Prior to this external imposition, only tribal societies and walled towns had existed in both places.14

Northeastern vs. Southeastern Frontier Environments Ancient Korea and Vietnam belonged to widely different frontier environments.15 At the time of the Han dynasty, the northeastern (NE) frontier encompassed the eastern part of the steppe (modern China’s Heilongjiang & Jilin provinces), the area surrounding the Yellow Sea (the Korean peninsula and modern China’s Shandong, Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin, and Liaoning provinces), and the Wa (Japanese) islands. During the first 1,500 years AD, nomad or semi-nomad empires on the steppe in central Asia and Manchuria frequently and sometimes for centuries controlled the Central Plain and ruled over the entire Middle Kingdom.16 For our purpose here, these nomad empires can be divided into two groups. First were tribes from central Asia such as the fully nomadic Xiongnus and the Mongols who relied on their military prowess for their conquests. Second were semi-nomadic tribes on the NE frontier such as the Xianbei, Tuoba, Khitans, and Jurchens who lived close to or among the communities of sedentary farmers in the Liao River delta and in the thick forests of east Manchuria. They were militarily less powerful but as conquerors were no less successful than the Xiongnus and Mongols. Located slightly beyond what Barfield has called the “perilous frontier,” the Korean peninsula is adjacent to Manchuria to the north but not directly connected to the Central Plain. Ethnically most inhabitants on the Korean peninsula (and in the entire NE frontier) had perhaps originated from the steppe and Manchuria.17 Geographically, culturally, and politically, nomadic tribes were as important for ancestors of today’s Koreans as

14 Lee (1984: 12–16). 15 The distance between ancient Luoyang (capital of Zhou and Han dynasties for some

periods) and modern Pyongyang is about 700 miles, whereas Luoyang is about 1,000 miles from modern Hanoi. 16 Barfield (1989: 19). 17 Lee (1984: 1–5).

50

T. VU

was the Middle Kingdom. Their relationship with the Middle Kingdom was deeply conditioned and mediated by the Xianbei, Tuoba, Khitans, and Jurchens in Manchuria and in the Liao River delta, and less directly, by the Xiongnus and Mongols. Changes in the relationship between the steppe and the Central Plain also profoundly affected political developments on the Korean peninsula. For all the complexities in the triangular relationship ancient Korea had with Central Plain and nomadic polities in the NE frontier and beyond, the important fact is that the Korean peninsula is a kind of “cul-de-sac” that was somewhat removed from the repeated battles over a millennium between nomads and Central Plain rulers. The southern part of the Korean peninsula is accessible by ships, but the distance either from China’s Shandong peninsula (about 300 miles) or from Japan’s Kyushu (about 120 miles) is not insignificant. Some Wa (Japanese) polities were involved in politics on the Korean peninsula from very early on (at about the same time with the rise of the Samhan kingdoms in the peninsula in the second and third centuries).18 Wa pirates were a common threat to coastal inhabitants on the peninsula. Interestingly, Central Plain rulers were never interested in extending their power to Japanese islands, except for the Mongols who sought to invade Japan after having conquered the Korean peninsula in the twelfth century.19 Another important characteristic of the Korean peninsula is its relatively compact shape, small size, and difficult topography. The length of the Korean peninsula extends about 700 miles from the Yalu River (modern border with China); its width is about 150 miles from coast to coast. The land area is about 85,000 square miles, but much of the peninsula is mountainous. Lowlands are located mostly on the peninsula’s western side and downstream major rivers along the western and southern coast. In contrast with its NE frontier, the Han empire’s southern frontier was home to both sedentary farmers and mountainous tribes but not nomads. It was a vast landmass spreading from the Yangzi River all 18 For an early history of Japanese kingdoms, see Piggott (1997). 19 Japan started to play more important role after it was unified under Hideyoshi

in the fifteenth century. Hideyoshi sought to conquer the Korean peninsula but was unsuccessful. In the early twentieth century, Japanese rulers were able to colonize not only Korea (1910–1945) but also Manchuria (1937–1945).

3

WAR AND STATE FORMATION IN ANCIENT KOREA …

51

the way to the Indochinese peninsula. The region can be divided into four sub-regions from north to south: the region immediately south of Yangzi River, north Lingnan (Guangxi and Guangdong), south Lingnan (Jiao or northern Vietnam), and the region further south. As Qin and Han empires expanded, the area south of Yangzi River up to the SinoVietnamese border today was gradually brought under Central Plain’s rule. The wars in the steppe and the Central Plain following the fall of the Han dynasty forced thousands of Central Plain inhabitants to migrate south. A series of “southern dynasties” were established by elites originating from Central Plain. These dynasties, which included Wu, Eastern Jin, Liu Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen, may have claimed to inherit the mandate of Han emperors but they often had effective control over only parts of the southern frontier. Militarily, they were no match for nomadic empires in the north but were normally more powerful relative to other polities on the frontier. The southwestern part of the frontier was occupied by many Tai principalities, of which the most powerful was Nanzhao Kingdom (later changed to Dali) based in today’s Yunnan province. In the southern part of the Indochinese peninsula, beyond Han rule, were Linyi, Funan, and other principalities of Cham, Khmer, and Tai groups.20 These groups were influenced by Indic civilization in varying degrees. The Jiao region contained the Red and Ma River plains where ancestors of today’s Vietnamese are believed to have inhabited. After the defeat of Nan Yue Kingdom, the Han emperor divided this region into three provinces: Jiaozhi (V: Giao Chi), Jiuzhen (V: Cuu Chan), and Rinan (V: Nhat Nam). The administrative center of the whole region was near today’s Hanoi. Until the late sixth century or so, the Red River plain was more populous than the southern part of the Middle Kingdom. Over time, the area received many immigrants from the Central Plain who ran from the disorders and wars in the north. The shape of the Indochinese peninsula is longer and much wider than the Korean peninsula with its western side being blocked not by sea but by mountains. The distance from Lang Son at the northern tip of today’s Vietnam to its southern tip at Ca Mau is about 860 miles in a beeline. With low mountains and highland plateaux dominating the 20 For a recent collection of essays on China’s relationship with this whole region throughout history, see Anderson and Whitmore (2014).

52

T. VU

middle section of the peninsula, the Jiao region was connected with the southern section of the peninsula by a narrow strip of land running along the coast. The southern section is relatively flat and opens up in the west to large plains along the Mekong and Chao Phraya rivers. Below I will review how centralized rule developed in ancient Korea and Vietnam, with frequent and intense warfare distinguishing the state formation experience in the former from the latter. For the purpose of this chapter, I will focus only on the eastern part of the Indochinese peninsula, not its western part.

State Formation on the Eastern Indochinese Peninsula, First to Seventh Centuries AD The eastern Indochinese peninsula, especially in the Red River plain, was under the rule of northern imperial powers for more than a millennium. Here centralized imperial rule was imposed on tribal societies. Han commanderies expanded over time with trade and with migration from the north by Han people fleeing from wars.21 After a revolt by the local tribal aristocracy (the Trung sisters) was crushed by a northern expeditionary force, Han rule was robust enough to dominate the region for about two centuries. The southernmost province of Rinan experienced many revolts and raids from polities further south in the second century AD.22 As the Han dynasty collapsed in the early third century AD, important changes took place in the Jiao region. The territory was still nominally under northern rule, but ruling dynasties in the North were too busy with their own problems and could maintain only infrequent contacts. Over time, imperial rule existed only in name, but practically power rested with certain prominent families who came from the Central Plain originally but had grown roots in the region over several generations by that time. They were northerners who actively fostered the sinicization of local tribal societies, while themselves developing a local base and a southern creole identity. The threats to these ruling families came from three sources. One was rivalry among themselves. Another threat was intervention from afar by 21 Yu (1967: 177–178). 22 Taylor (1983: 60–70).

3

WAR AND STATE FORMATION IN ANCIENT KOREA …

53

northern dynasties. Northern emperors were often willing to accept sons who took over administrative positions from fathers, but sometimes they appointed northern men to those positions who would pose a challenge to the dominant families in Jiao. A final threat was from the far south in the form of raids by Linyi, an Indic polity. In the second century AD, Chinese records show the existence of Linyi (V: Lam Ap) and Funan (V: Phu Nam). Linyi was founded by the son of a former imperial official who seized control of the southernmost district of Rinan and established a kingdom there around 192.23 Linyi’s population comprised local uplands and coastal tribes besides Han renegades, and the kingdom was organized as a confederation of many Cham groups. Linyi was well organized enough to become a major source of raids on the southern frontier of Jiao well into the fifth century.24 South of Linyi was Funan, a Khmer-Cham polity located in the lower Mekong River delta that thrived on trade. Like Linyi, Funan was not a centralized state but rather a confederation of many principalities. Nationalist historiography of Vietnam today assumes a natural and ancient tendency for local “Vietnamese” to rebel against “Chinese” rule, but there were few revolts recorded throughout the centuries of imperial rule (see Tables 3.1 and 3.2). Jiao was largely peaceful as central administration slowly expanded together with population growth. Every few decades there was a conflict among the great families but these tended to be brief.25 Raids from southern polities were more frequent, but only affected the southernmost province of Rinan. Many times northern forces entered Jiao either to back up a newly appointed governor in the face of local resistance, or to repulse Linyi’s attacks.26 These forces would withdraw after order had been restored. By the middle of the sixth century, the dynasties ruling southern China were in turmoil. A major rebellion led by Ly Bi, an imperial official and a descendant of Chinese migrants, took place in Jiao in 541.27 Bi proclaimed himself Emperor of Nan Yue after having chased away the

23 Taylor (1983: 60) and Cœdès (1966: 63–68). 24 Taylor (2013: 28–33) and Munoz (2006: 87–89). 25 See “author” for the pattern of conflicts in Jiao. 26 An example was when Lu Dai brought imperial forces into Jiao to overthrow Shi Hui (Holmgren 1980: 74) and Ngo (1993: 165–166). 27 Taylor (2013: 34–37) and Le (2002: 276).

54

T. VU

Table 3.1 Number of rebellions in South China’s commanderies

Commandery Rinan (V: Nhat Nam) Jiuzhen (V: Cuu Chan) Jiaozhi (V: Giao Chi) Hepu Nanhai Cangwu Yulin Lingling Guiyang Changsha Wuling Nan Jiangxia Nanyang Yizhou

Number of rebellions 4 2 1 2 – 2 1 1 1 3 14 1 2 – 4

Time span (years) 44 21 1 (in 178) 62 – 1 1 (in 116) 1 (in 162) 1 (in 164) 5 110 1 (in 101) 11 – 100

Note Only the first three commanderies are located in today’s Vietnam Source Adapted from Holmgren (1980: 65)

imperial governor. It took four years for the Liang Emperor, whose capital was based in today’s Nanjing, to send an imperial force, and Bi was defeated and killed. After Liang lost to Chen which completely neglected Jiao, Ly Phat Tu, a kinsman of Ly Bi, became the effective ruler of Jiao for the next three decades. In the late sixth century, the Sui dynasty reunified the Middle Kingdom. When a Sui army reached Jiao, Ly Phat Tu surrendered and the region was brought back again under imperial rule from the north. The brief review above suggested that two main forms of warfare existed in Jiao and along the southern coast of the Indochinese peninsula in the first seven centuries. One form was wars of conquest and pacification by imperial armies. The other, more common, form was Linyi’s raids on Jiao for booties. These raids posed serious threats to imperial administrators but they were limited mostly to the southernmost districts of Jiao. Jiao was protected only by small militias, and major disturbances or threats were coped with by imperial armies sent in from the north.

3

WAR AND STATE FORMATION IN ANCIENT KOREA …

55

Table 3.2 Revolts or wars in Jiao, first to tenth centuries Period

Jiao revolts or wars among frontier polities

Time span

First century AD Second century AD 192: Lin Yi est

40–43 CE: Trung sisters 100: Nhat nam 137: Khu Lien 144 Cuu Chan 157: Chu Dat 178–182: Luong Long 245–248 Lady Trieu 248: Lin Yi’s raid 263–271: Lu Hung 344–359, 399–405, 407, 413–420, 424, 435–446: wars with Lin Yi 542–547: Ly Bi 543: Ly Bi fought Lin Yi 571?-603: Ly Phat Tu 685–687: Ly Tu Tien 722: Mai Thuc Loan 767: Sailendra’s raid 791–798?: Phung Hung 819–820?: Duong Thanh 862–865: Nanzhao’s invasion 938: Ngo Quyen’s victory over Southern Han

4 1 2 1? 1? 4 4 1 7 35?

Third century AD

Fourth century AD Sixth century AD

Seventh century AD Eighth century AD

Ninth century AD Tenth century AD

6 1 32? 33 1 1 7 3 4 1

Source Author’s compilation based on Taylor (1983, 2013)

Even though wars were few and changes were slow, it would be a mistake to assume that Jiao was a stagnant backwater. Significant developments in culture, economy, and demography took place in the region under ambitious governors and capable administrators such as Shi Xie and Tao Huang.28 Politically, the norm of centralized bureaucratic rule appeared to gradually grow local roots after having been imposed by an external force. Even as authorities passed from centrally appointed administrators to locally based prominent families of northern descent, the system did not revert to tribal rule or chiefdom. This trend was to continue in the next four centuries after a brief revival of central rule under Sui and early Tang dynasties.

28 Taylor (2013: 28–30), Le (2002: 169–170, 176–177) and Ngo (1993: 161, 169– 170).

56

T. VU

State Formation on the Korean Peninsula, First to Seventh Centuries AD Following the conquest under Han Wudi in 108 BC, four Han commanderies were established in Manchuria and northwest, central, and northeastern Korean peninsula. Within four decades, the latter two commanderies had been abandoned perhaps due to lack of security.29 Lolang, the commandery overseeing Liaodong and northwestern Korea, was the most important and prosperous center of Han rule. While central administrators were able to mobilize corvée labor and collect taxes, their jurisdiction was limited to northern Korean peninsula. In the rest of the peninsula, autonomous tribal polities existed and occasionally challenged imperial authority based in Lolang. Chinese records divided those polities into three main confederacies [Samhan]: Mahan in the southwest (containing 55 polities or guo), Pyonhan in the center (12 guo), and Chinhan in the southeast (also 12 guo). Less than a century after Han rule had been established, Chaoxian was already on the verge of collapse. We have seen that in Jiao the Trung sisters rose up in 40 AD only to be crushed by a powerful Han army three years later. The Central Plain’s control over Chaoxian was far more fragile, especially following the rise of Wang Mang (9–23) who usurped Han rule for 15 years. In 12 AD, local tribes in Gaoguli [K: Koguryo] rebelled and killed the Han governor—this event apparently marked the birth of the Koguryo kingdom, the first important native polity that appeared on the Korean peninsula (more on this later).30 A raid on Lolang in 22 AD by local tribes took away hundreds as slaves.31 Three years later, Wang Tiao, a Chinese born in Lolang, killed the Han governor and seized the commandery in 25; it took the Han emperor five years to suppress the revolt. From then on, effective central rule was maintained only in Lolang but not the other commanderies where the central administrator merely granted titles to tribal chieftains who had established themselves in the

29 Gardiner (1969 18). 30 Samguk Sagi recorded the date of Koguryo’s founding as 37 BCE (Kim et al. 2011:

19, 56–58). 31 Gardiner (1969: 21), citing Weilue. The exact number of captives as written in the record was 1,500.

3

WAR AND STATE FORMATION IN ANCIENT KOREA …

57

districts and towns nominally under imperial rule.32 We have seen a similar phenomenon of nominal rule taking place in Jiao but there were two differences here. First, the phenomenon took place much later in Jiao. The second difference concerned the identities of the local chiefs. In Jiao, Han migrant families ruled the region on behalf of the imperial government, but in Chaoxian, it was native tribal chiefs who did. In the southern half of the peninsula, Samhan polities were not subjected to imperial rule, much as Linyi and Funan did in southern Indochinese peninsula. Yet, as seen later, one of the Samhan polities went on to unify the Korean peninsula under its rule, whereas Linyi could not. The birth of Koguryo as a tribal kingdom in the first century AD marked the beginning of the end of Han rule in Korea. At birth Koguryo was a confederacy of tribes inhabiting mountain valleys in northern Korea and southern Manchuria whose main activities of their clan nobility were warfare and raiding.33 Throughout its existence from the first to the seventh centuries, Koguryo was a constant threat to its neighbors, including Han commanderies and Liaodong rulers to the east, the tribal kingdom Fuyu (K: Puyo) to the north, and (since the fourth century) Paekche and Silla kingdoms to the south—much as Linyi was to Jiao during the same period. Unlike the relatively peaceful situation in Jiao, the collapse of the Han dynasty in 220 brought massive chaos to the Middle Kingdom and its northeastern frontier. Three rivals, Wei, Shu, and Wu emerged and fought for the mandate of Han over six decades, with the Middle Kingdom being reunified in 280 under a fourth contender, the Jin House. A century later, however, the Middle Kingdom was again broken up into two or more regions ruled by different dynasties. This so-called era of Northern and Southern dynasties was to last until 581 when the Sui dynasty reunified China.34 During this period, the Central Plain was under the rule of a series of nomadic tribes, and even Sui and later Tang dynasties traced their lineages in part to those tribes. On the northeastern frontier, the Gongsun warlords established themselves as new rulers of the Liaodong region, but were later vanquished

32 Gardiner (1969: 22). 33 For a cogent discussion of Koguryo, see Hwang (2010: 1–11). 34 Lewis (2009a).

58

T. VU

by the Murong clan of Xianbei tribes.35 The Murongs revived Yan, the kingdom of the Warring States period, and Murong Yan fought with Koguryo numerous battles over the control of former Han commanderies. Several times Koguryo appeared totally finished as a result of war. In 204, Murong forces sacked Koguryo’s capital for the first time. In 244–245, an allied force of Wei and Murong again demolished Koguryo’s capital in response to the latter’s raid, forcing Koguryo to move its capital into the upper Yalu River plain. Hostilities in 342–343 again provoked the Murongs into launching a massive invasion of Koguryo, taking “tens of thousands” of captives back to Liaodong, and forcing Koguryo to accept the Murongs’ suzerainty by the end of the decade. Yet by the late fourth century, Koguryo had revived, thanks in part to the Murongs having been vanquished by Tuoba Xianbei tribes. Under the talented King Kwanggaet’o (391–413), Koguryo expanded its borders in all directions: to Manchuria in the north, to the Liaodong River in the west, and to the Han River in the south.36 The next two centuries witnessed near-constant and intense warfare among Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla—the latter two were newly emerging kingdoms in the south of the Korean peninsula. Paekche located in the southwest came to dominate the former Mahan area, thanks to the leadership of an exiled prince from Koguryo.37 In 371, Paekche forces advanced north as far as modern Pyongyang, killing Koguryo’s king in the campaign. In 475, Koguryo seized Paekche’s capital at Hansong (near modern Seoul), capturing Paekche’s king. At first, Silla, which was located in the Naktong River basin in the southeast, was the weakest among the three. Paekche for much of this period was closely allied with Yamato forces from the Japanese islands. Koguryo appeared the strongest of the three and distinguished itself by repulsing not one but three massive land invasions (598, 612, and 645 AD) by Sui and Tang armies. We saw above that Jiao under Ly Phat Tu quickly surrendered to Sui forces, which went on to destroy Linyi further south.

35 The most important source in English on the Murong Xianbei is Schreiber (1949); for a cogent discussion see Hong (2012: 148–161). 36 Lee (1984: 38–40). 37 Best (2006: 27–29).

3

WAR AND STATE FORMATION IN ANCIENT KOREA …

59

Table 3.3 Wars involving Sila (first to seventh centuries AD) Polity

1BC

1AD

2AD

3AD

4AD

5AD

6AD

7AD

Total

Paekche Wa Koguryo Malgal Tang Gaya Naklang Others Total

0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 2

8 2 0 0 0 3 3 1 17

8 1 0 5 0 3 0 7 24

12 7 1 1 0 0 0 3 24

0 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 4

1 16 10 1 0 0 0 2 30

4 0 2 0 0 1 0 3 10

44 0 16 4 11 0 0 10 85

77 (40%) 30 (15%) 29 (15%) 12 (6%) 11 (6%) 7 (4%) 4 (2%) 26 (13%) 196 (100%)

Note The percentages in the far right column don’t add up to 100 due to rounding Source Adapted from Kang (1995: 174)

The fortunes of the three kingdoms reversed quickly with the intervention of the Middle Kingdom now reunified under Tang.38 By cleverly forming an alliance with Tang, Silla successfully defeated its rivals Koguryo and Paekche in 671, then pushing Tang forces north to the Taedong River in 676. For the first time, most of the Korean peninsula (under the Taedong River) was under the rule of a single king. (Surviving forces of Koguryo fled north to form a new kingdom of Parhae that would last until the tenth century). By the late tenth century, the entire peninsula up to the Yalu River had become the territory of Koryo, the dynasty that reunified Korea after the collapse of Silla in 927.39 Based on the two surviving sources about the period, one study counts 483 wars experienced by the three kingdoms during 51 BCE and 676 AD (725 years) (see Table 3.3).40 Silla saw one war every four years on average for a total of 196 wars—most taking place toward the end of the period. Nearly 40% of these wars were with Paekche, while about 15% were with Koguryo and Wa each. There were also wars with other smaller kingdoms and with Tang forces.

38 Lee (1984: 66–73). 39 Two fine studies of Koryo are Duncan (2000) and Breuker (2010). 40 Kang (1995: 173–177).

60

T. VU

Discussion Although Chaoxian and Jiao started out in the first-century BCE in roughly similar conditions, Chaoxian had gained self-rule by the fourth century and unified government by the late seventh century. Despite certain periods of de facto self-rule, Jiao did not emerge free from northern rule until the tenth century. Unified government was achieved in the eleventh century, but Dai Viet kings at this point ruled over a much smaller territory than their counterparts did in the Korean peninsula. It was not until the nineteenth century could a Vietnamese government exercise its authority through the length of the Indochinese peninsula. Without assigning any intrinsic values to “self-rule,” “unified government,” and “centralized bureaucratic rule,” the different outcomes are intriguing. Clearly, the divergent paths resulted partly from the more compact shape of the smaller Korean peninsula.41 Yet the sharp contrast between ancient Korean and Vietnamese state formation was no doubt a direct consequence of the conditions of constant and intense warfare in the Korean peninsula from the first to seventh centuries. Three issues will be taken up in turn in this section. First, why did the Korean peninsula experience so much warfare while the eastern Indochinese peninsula did not? Second, how did war contribute to state formation in ancient Korea and what were the long-term legacies for Korea in comparison with Vietnam? Finally, what do the Korean and Vietnamese cases add to the general scholarship on the relationship between war and state formation? Kang (1995) has argued that the desire for territory and people, together with environmental stresses, were the primary causes of war among the three Korean kingdoms between the first and seventh centuries. This argument perhaps applies for the brief raids and wars Linyi conducted against Jiao. The fact is that Linyi was the only enemy of Jiao, and a relatively weak one that could never match the power of imperial armies protecting Jiao. What, then, explains for the much greater frequency and intensity of war in the Korean peninsula? I argue that a key difference between Chaoxian and Jiao was Chaoxian’s connections to the steppe. The steppe functioned in two ways that raised the frequency and intensity of warfare in the northeastern frontier. First, the steppe was a vast and wild landmass that offered many nomad 41 Duncan (2000: 267) makes this argument for the reunification of the peninsula under Koryo.

3

WAR AND STATE FORMATION IN ANCIENT KOREA …

61

tribes and confederacies the base to organize raids and military conquests against sedentary communities and polities. Tribes on the steppe from the Xiongnu to the Xianbei at their peaks were capable of matching or overcoming Chinese imperial armies. These two tribes in fact gained control of the Central Plain for centuries after the fall of the Han dynasty. The Xianbei Murongs seized the Han commanderies in Liaodong and northern Korea and was a great regional power from the late third to early fifth centuries. By battling Central Plain forces, nomad empires not only gave Korean-based groups the opportunity to preserve or seek selfrule from the Middle Kingdom but also forced them to defend themselves from conquest by those tribes. The second way the steppe affected Chaoxian was through the spread of war culture (raids), means (horses), and technology (cavalry). Koguryo and Paekche founders traced their origins to tribes in Manchuria, and at its start Koguryo was a confederacy of tribes. It would be safe to assume that Koguryo rulers were no strangers to the steppe’s way of war. In fact, raids and conquests were the primary activities of Koguryo rulers whose territory spread from southern Manchuria to northern Korean peninsula. One frequent activity of Koguryo was to raid the kingdom of Fuyu in the north for slaves. The famous Koguryo king, King Kwanggaet’o (391–413), is known for successful cavalry attacks that greatly expanded Koguryo’s territory under his rule.42 One should not overstate the importance of the steppe’s way of war for Korean kingdoms as they also employed defensive techniques such as building fortifications. Silla built 56 fortifications in the fifth to seventh centuries, and Koguryo successfully repulsed Sui and Tang armies thanks to a formidable system of fortifications along the Liao River.43 It is not clear whether the construction of these fortifications borrowed techniques from the Central Plain, or it was simply a locally devised technique in response to invasions by armies from the steppe and the Central Plain. Interestingly, Jiao is not known to have constructed such fortifications— which may have reflected the low level of security threats there. While the causes of war were relatively clear, how war contributed to state formation in the Korean peninsula is a more difficult question due to the lack of references to such issues as taxation in the historical

42 Lee (1984: 38). 43 Kang (1995: 193), Wright (1978: 191–197) and Xiong (2006: 54–58).

62

T. VU

records.44 However, it is possible to describe gradual changes over time in the authority of kings and queens vis-à-vis their subjects and in the administration of the realm. Although the three Korean polities of Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla emerged on the basis of confederacies of tribal societies, over time they developed centralized kingdoms as evidenced in three trends.45 One was the restructuring of administrative units in geographical terms (south, north, east, west, and center) as opposed to tribal divisions. Second, succession rule changed from brother-to-brother to father-to-son pattern. Third was the practice of taking queens from a single house or lineage. This practice may have represented an attempt by kings to keep power preserved within the royal household and not to be spread out among a broader circle of aristocratic families. According to South Korea’s preeminent historian Lee Ki-baik, Koguryo witnessed the above changes under the reign of King Kogukch’on (179–196).46 In Paekche, it was under King Kun Ch’ogo (346–375).47 King Naemul (356–402) of Silla began the changes with his change of title from isagum (successor prince) to maripkan (“elevation”) and with the establishment of a hereditary kingship succession system.48 Subsequently, under Silla’s King Chijung (500–514), the title wang or king was first used instead of maripkan. The changes in the titles were followed by other, more substantive changes. A code of administrative law was promulgated in 520, and Buddhism was officially adopted as state religion during 527–535 under King Pophung (514–540).49 Apparently, these institutional changes were related to the fierce wars Silla was fighting, yet it is not possible to point to specific causal ties between events in part because changes may have lagged behind particular wars. Analyzing Silla’s pattern of change, Kang concludes that it was gradual with a few leaping stages, likely spurred by defense needs.50 44 The two earliest surviving Korean sources are Samguk Sagi and Samguk Yusa. For translations and (in the case of Paekche) analysis, see Best (2006), Kim et al. (2011, 2012) and Ha and Mintz (1972). Lee (1984, chs. 2–4), offers a standard analysis of the period. 45 Lee (1984: 36). 46 See also Kim et al. (2011: 105–111). 47 See also Best (2006: 252–258). 48 Lee (1984: 41), Kang (1995: 178) and Kim et al. (2012: 87–95). 49 Lee (1984: 43) and Kim et al. (2012: 117–122). 50 Kang (1995: 181–182).

3

WAR AND STATE FORMATION IN ANCIENT KOREA …

63

In contrast with Chaoxian, state formation in Jiao proceeded slowly without much warfare. As the Central Plain fell into chaos, centralized rule in Jiao deteriorated into rule by local powerful families who had earlier migrated from the north. Some talented governors such as Shi Xie and Tao Huang oversaw important efforts to transform local culture and expand administrative jurisdictions.51 One may infer that under these able administrators bureaucratic rule according to the northern model was gradually accepted by the Jiao elites and populace alike, even though the form of bureaucracy at the time was still primitive. However, once a locally based authority emerged in the form of a central monarch by the eleventh century, centralized bureaucratic rule easily thrived. Viewed in the long term and in comparison with Vietnam, the consequences of war went beyond the earlier creation of more centralized polities in ancient Korea. Imagine that the Trung sisters had succeeded in resisting Han armies in 43, or that Linyi had conquered and unified the entire Jiao. War gave rise to and helped consolidate states led by native elites of tribal origins in the Korean peninsula. In Jiao, the absence of war allowed northern immigrant families to consolidate power and eventually lead the province to self-rule. With a short period of Han imperial rule that gave way early on to self-rule by native elites, tribal social structure was preserved in all three Korean kingdoms as evidenced in the existence of powerful hereditary aristocracies in Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla. The hallmark of this structure in Silla was the so-called bone-rank system (kolp’um), which conferred or withheld political privileges and social status to individuals according to their hereditary bloodline. The system included “hallowed bone” rank (songgol ) for members of the royal family who could become kings; “truebone” rank (chin’gol ) for those members who could not become kings and members of a few other lineages; and “head-ranks” that included six steps.52 The top three head-rank steps (six, five, and four) comprised the general aristocracy. Government positions, scale of private residence, household vehicles and horse trappings, etc. were tied to the status of individuals in the bone-rank system. The bone-rank system in Silla was modified somewhat after Silla successfully unified the peninsula, but the aristocracy as a whole remained

51 Taylor (2013: 28–30). 52 Lee (1984: 49–54).

64

T. VU

powerful even as monarchs became more authoritarian over time.53 With the rise of a local gentry from the ninth century on,54 and following the centralizing efforts by monarchs in the Koryo dynasty (918–1388), the bone-rank system gradually yielded to a land-based aristocracy called yangban, a central institution in medieval Korea until the beginning of the twentieth century.55 Still, yangban did not appear in the tenth century out of nowhere but grew out of and incorporated a significant part of the bone-rank system.56 In Jiao, the rise of strongmen from powerful immigrant families such as ˜ should be distinguished from seemthe Shis (V: S˜ı) and the Dus (V: Ðô) ingly similar phenomenon in the Central Plain dynasties where a small number of great families formed an aristocracy around monarchs.57 The families in Jiao were mere local rulers whose clan networks and Chinese roots helped them gain and maintain their power. They were not an aristocracy. When Jiao achieved self-rule, the pattern continued and medieval Dai Viet (Vietnam) never had an aristocracy. Among dynastic clans that came to rule Dai Viet, several traced their roots to the north such as the Ly, Tran, and Ho. The great frequency and intensity of warfare on the Korean peninsula during the first to the seventh centuries should not obscure the fact that kings and queens there devoted significant efforts to diplomacy. It was a common practice for smaller polities to pay tribute to more powerful kingdoms throughout the period. Koguryo sided with Wei, then with Wu, and then back to Wei again during the Three Kingdoms period in China. Military alliances were formed between Paekche and Yamato, between Paekche and Silla, and between Silla and Tang. The latter alliance proved to be decisive: it helped Silla to rise from a position of relative weakness to become the power that unified the peninsula under its rule.58 Warfare clearly pressured polities to consolidate and expand, or perish. Yet it was diplomacy as much as war that determined the outcome in the ultimate

53 Ibid., 73–75. 54 Ibid., 94–95. 55 Palais (1975: 11-12). 56 Duncan (2000: esp. 59) and Eckert et al. (1990: 67–74). 57 Lewis (2009b: ch. 2). This aristocracy would be destroyed during the wars at the

end of the Tang dynasty. See Tackett (2014). 58 Lee (1984: 66–67) and Hwang (2010: ch. 2).

3

WAR AND STATE FORMATION IN ANCIENT KOREA …

65

victory of Silla. It was not the fittest (Koguryo) but the best connected (Silla) that won the competition.

Conclusion This chapter contrasted political evolution in ancient Korea and Vietnam from the first to the seventh centuries AD. This period saw the decline and eventual collapse of the Han dynasty in the Central Plain and the breakup of China into several polities with those in the north being under the rule of nomad empires. By the end of the sixth century, the Middle Kingdom was reunified under the Sui, and then Tang dynasties. From a roughly similar initial condition of being mostly subjugated under imperial rule by the Han dynasty, ancient Korea and Vietnam diverged greatly in the next six hundred years. Korea achieved self-rule and unified government over nearly the entire peninsula by the end of the period, whereas Vietnam remained under imperial rule. I have argued that warfare contributed decisively to divergent outcomes, and the great frequency and intensity of warfare on the Korean peninsula were largely due to the various ways the Korean peninsula and its people were connected to the steppe and the nomads. A critical consequence of the specific way Korea evolved is the preservation of a powerful aristocracy that had native tribal origins and that would exert its influence for centuries afterward. In contrast, such an aristocracy was destroyed early on in Vietnam under imperial rule. Sino-Vietnamese strongmen and their families would for centuries stand at the helm of the country long after it had achieved self-rule. This chapter notes the positive relationship of warfare to state formation, but hopes to offer two additional insights into the debate through a comparison of ancient Korea and Vietnam. First, while the general trend favored the militarily strong, diplomacy was as important as warfare in determining the outcome of the competition among polities. Second, the lack of warfare needs not mean lack of political development. Ancient Vietnam continued to evolve in peace, acquiring northern (Sinic) institutions and culture while growing locally based identities. An ironical outcome of warfare was the survival of the native tribal aristocracy in ancient Korea well into the medieval period. Korean monarchs for subsequent centuries would be restrained by a powerful aristocracy. When Vietnam emerged from imperial rule, in contrast, it seemed much easier for monarchs to centralize power.

66

T. VU

References Anderson, James, and John K. Whitmore. China’s Encounters on the South and Southwest: Reforging the Fiery Frontier over Two Millennia. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Barfield, Thomas J. The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Best, Jonathan W. A History of the Early Korean Kingdom of Paekche: Together with an Annotated Translation of the Paekche Annals of the Samguk Sagi. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center and Harvard University Press, 2006. Breuker, Remco E. Establishing a Pluralist Society in Medieval Korea, 918-1170: History, Ideology, and Identity in the Kory˘o Dynasty. Boston: Brill, 2010. Carneiro, Robert L. “A Theory of the Origin of the State.” Science 169, no. 3947 (1970): 733–738. Centeno, Miguel. Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2002. Chang, Chun-shu. The Rise of the Chinese Empire, v. 1. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007. Cœdès, George. The Making of South East Asia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966. Duncan, John B. The Origins of the Chos˘on Dynasty. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000. Eckert, Carter et al. Korea Old and New: A History. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University, 1990. Fan, Chuo, and Oey, Giok Po. The Man Shu, Book of the Southern Barbarians. Data Paper no. 44. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1961. Fukuyama, Francis. The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Gardiner, Kenneth Herbert James. The Early History of Korea, the Historical Development of the Peninsula up to the Introduction of Buddhism in the Fourth Century A.D. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1969. Ha, Tae Hung, and Mintz, Grafton K. Samguk Yusa: Legends and History of the Three Kingdoms of Ancient Korea. Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1972. Herbst, Jeffrey. States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Holmgren, Jennifer. Chinese Colonisation of Northern Vietnam: Administrative Geography and Political Development in the Tongking Delta, First to Sixth Centuries A.D. Canberra: Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University Press, 1980. Hong, Wontack. East Asian History: A Tripolar Approach. Rev. ed. Seoul: Kudara International, 2012.

3

WAR AND STATE FORMATION IN ANCIENT KOREA …

67

Hui, Victoria Tin-bor. War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Hwang, Kyung Moon. A History of Korea: An Episodic Narrative. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Kang, Bong Won. The Role of Warfare in the Formation of the State in Korea: Historical and Archaeological Approaches. PhD Dissertation, University of Oregon, 1995. Kim, Nam C. The Origins of Ancient Vietnam. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015. Kim, Pu-sik, Edward J. Shultz, and Han’guk Ch˘ongsin Munhwa Y˘on’guw˘on. The Koguryo Annals of the Samguk Sagi. Seongnam-si, Korea: Academy of Korean Studies Press, 2011. Kim, Pu-sik, Edward J. Shultz, and Hugh H. W. Kang. The Silla Annals of the Samguk Sagi. Gyeonggi-do Seongnam-si: Academy of Korean Studies Press, 2012. ,, ´ Ban Thuâ.n Hóa and Trung Tâm ´ Nh`a Xuât Le, Tac. An Nam Chí Luo. c. Huê: , V˘an Hóa Ngôn Ngu˜ Ðông Tây, 2002. Lee, Ki-baik. A New History of Korea. Seoul, Korea: Ilchokak Publishers, 1984. Lewis, Mark Edward. China Between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009a. Lewis, Mark Edward. China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009b. Munoz, Paul Michel. Early Kingdoms of the Indonesian Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet Pte Ltd, 2006. , , Ngô, S˜i Liên, and Viê.n Khoa Ho.c X˜a Hô.i Viê.t Nam. Ða.i Viê.t Su K´y Toàn Thu (1697), v. 1, transl. Ngo Duc Tho. Hà Nô.i: Khoa Ho.c X˜a Hô.i, 1993. Palais, James B. Politics and Policy in Traditional Korea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975. Piggott, Joan R. The Emergence of Japanese Kingship. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Schreiber, Gerhardt. “The History of Former Yen dynasty (285–370).” Monumenta Serica 14 & 15 (1949). Tackett, Nicolas. The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014. Taylor, Keith Weller. The Birth of Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Taylor, Keith Weller. A History of the Vietnamese. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Tilly, Charles. Coercion, Capital, and European States AD 990-1992. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990. Weber, Max. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, edited and introduced by Talcott Parsons. New York: The Free Press, 1947. ij

ij

68

T. VU

Wright, Arthur F. The Sui Dynasty. New York: Knopf, 1978. Xiong, Victor Cunrui. Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty: His Life, Times, and Legacy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Yu, Ying-shih. Trade and Expansion in Han China: A Study in the Structure of Sino-Barbarian Economic Relations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

CHAPTER 4

The Sovereign’s Dilemma: State Capacity and Ruler Survival in Imperial China Yuhua Wang

Why do some states endure for centuries, while others fall years after they were founded? Why are some strong, and others weak? Generations of remarkable social sciences scholarship have explored these questions. Yet, much of our understanding of how the state as an organization develops is based on how states evolved in Europe. The centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire laid the foundation for Europe’s distinctive path of political development. Political fragmentation led to a dual transformation. On the one hand, rulers’ weak bargaining power vis-á-vis domestic elites gave rise to the creation of representative institutions, which provided an arena in which elites could bargain with the ruler nonviolently. This institutional bargaining mechanism lengthened ruler survival and made European states more robust. On the other

Y. Wang (B) Department of Goveronnece, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Z. Wang (ed.), The Long East Asia, Governing China in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_4

69

70

Y. WANG

hand, frequent (and increasingly expensive) interstate conflicts incentivized rulers to centralize state bureaucracy and tax effectively. Together, these developments made European states stronger and more durable.1 Representative institutions and bellicist competition, however, were born in a political geography that was unique to Europe. For most of human history, the majority of the world’s population has not been governed by a European-style state. Much of the literature, however, treats the European model as the benchmark and asks why states in other regions have failed to follow suit. Rather than treating nonEuropean states as underdeveloped cases that will eventually converge to the European model, we should take these alternative patterns of state development seriously in their own right. Departing from the Eurocentric approach reveals new state development patterns and provides a new lens through which to analyze the processes involved. I examine the case of China to develop such a new approach to understanding alternative paths of state development. China accounts for a large share of the world’s population and economy, and was a pioneer in state formation millennia ago. The Chinese state thus constitutes a useful, yet understudied, alternative to the Euro-centric literature. Using original data I collected on historical taxation and ruler duration in imperial China, I first establish empirical patterns that suggest a fundamental difference between European and Chinese state development: While European states had increased their capacity to collect taxes and become more durable by the modern era, the Chinese state seemed to have gained durability at the expense of state capacity. Chinese emperors became increasingly secure, and their dynasties long-lasting. For example, from 1000 to 1900 CE, Chinese emperors on average stayed in power as long as European kings and queens. With the exception of the Yuan (1270–1368), every Chinese dynasty in the second millennium lasted for roughly 300 years—longer than the United States has existed. But China’s fiscal capacity gradually declined during this period. In the eleventh century, for example, the Chinese state (under the Song Dynasty) taxed over 15% of its economy. This percentage dropped to almost 1% in the nineteenth century (under the Qing Dynasty). Exploring how the state maintained its durability despite declining capacity helps broaden our understanding of alternative paths of state 1 For discussions of European political development, see Tilly (1992), North and Weingast (1989), Dincecco (2011), and Stasavage (2020).

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

71

development. China’s different, but durable, patterns of state development demand a new approach that goes beyond simply testing Europe-generated theories in a non-European context. I argue that rulers of states without representative institutions face a fundamental tradeoff that I term the sovereign’s dilemma: a coherent elite that can take collective action to strengthen the state is also capable of revolting against the ruler.2 This dilemma exists because strengthening state capacity and enhancing ruler duration require different elite social terrains,3 which are the ways in which central elites connect to local social groups—and each other. When central elites are in geographically broad and densely interconnected networks, they prefer to have a strong state that can protect their far-flung interests, but their cohesiveness constitutes a threat to the ruler’s survival. When elites have a local power base and are not tightly linked, they will instead seek to hollow out the central state from within and prefer to provide order and public goods locally. Yet their internal divisions will enable the ruler to play competing factions against each other to secure his personal survival. Building on social network theories, I characterize two ideal types of elite social terrains. A star network, which features coherent and geographically dispersed elite connections, promotes a strong state but threatens ruler survival. A bowtie network, characterized by fragmented and geographically concentrated elite connections, undermines state capacity but helps rulers stay in power for longer. I evaluate the implications of the sovereign’s dilemma in the context of China’s state development during the imperial era. I use what Robert Bates, Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Barry Weingast call “analytic narratives” to provide an overarching description of the development of the Chinese dynastic state.4 I draw on historians’ work as well as archival materials. I argue that China started with a star network and transitioned to a bowtie network. Medieval China was governed by a national elite embedded in a star network. A 2 I borrow the term from Huntington (1968, 177), who dubs the tradeoff between

success and survival the “king’s dilemma.” The sovereign’s dilemma also echoes what Geddes (1996) calls the “politician’s dilemma,” in which strengthening the state jeopardizes the ruler’s chances of survival. 3 My inspiration for the term “social terrain” comes from Bates (2017, 61), who uses political terrain to describe whether a polity is centralized or decentralized. 4 Bates et al. (1998).

72

Y. WANG

semi-hereditary aristocracy that consisted of several hundred noble clans monopolized government positions and formed a close-knit marriage network, which connected different corners of the empire. In the ninth century, a climate shock triggered mass violence, which eliminated the medieval aristocracy. Emperors in the subsequent dynasty exploited the power vacuum and reshaped the elite social terrain into a bowtie network. Sons of locally embedded landowning families entered central politics through the civil service examination system. The emperors pitted elite factions against each other to consolidate their absolute rule. The bowtie network thus became a self-enforcing equilibrium in late imperial China. It contributed to the rulers’ exceptional durability, but also weakened the state’s capacity to extract resources. I complement my historical narratives with descriptive statistics that highlight broad historical patterns. I have collected and compiled a large amount of original data—most notably a dataset of all Chinese emperors and a longitudinal dataset of taxation from the seventh to the early twentieth centuries. As a synthesis of my book The Rise and Fall of Imperial China,5 the primary goal of this article is to take a preliminary step toward creating a framework to analyze China’s long-term state development, which will enrich our understanding of varieties of state-building paths. I corroborate this framework with narrative and descriptive evidence, which, given the long time span covered in the study is both feasible and desirable. The evidence, however, is admittedly Spartan. I leave out many details from any particular time period. Yet what my narrative lacks in specificity regarding individual dynasties it makes up for in generality allows me to highlight fundamental relationships between the state and society over the long run. My findings contribute to three literatures. First, the dominant perspective in analyzing long-term state development is still state centered. This literature generally treats the state as a unitary actor that is independent of society.6 The bellicists, for example, consider states as actors in the international arena and link external war with state building.7 In the same vein, institutionalists equate the state with the ruler and

5 Wang (2022). 6 Evans et al. (1985). 7 Tilly (1992).

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

73

examine how ruler–elite bargaining determines state-building outcomes.8 I join state–society scholars and consider state–society interactions to be a driving force of state development.9 However, I also advance the traditional state–society approach. While it assumes that the state and society are separate and competing entities, I emphasize the blurred boundary between the two and analyze how state–society linkages through elite networks drive state development. In this sense, I join an emerging elite-centered literature on state building.10 While most of these studies emphasize elite competition, I focus on elite social relations. Second, my findings also contribute to the recent literature on authoritarian politics. While the dominant view is that formal institutions bolster authoritarian durability, I highlight the importance of state–society relations in prolonging rulers’ tenure. While popular arguments often associate state capacity with the stability of authoritarian regimes,11 I examine the conditions under which state capacity and regime durability are incompatible. As an ancient autocracy, and probably the most durable one in human history, imperial China did not develop any of the political institutions, such as legislatures and parties, that past studies argue help autocrats hold onto power.12 Faced with economic and fiscal decline, Chinese emperors at the time could not claim “performance legitimacy” either.13 Its extraordinary durability instead relied on an elite social structure that facilitated rulers’ “divide-and-conquer” strategies and collaboration between the state and social groups. Lastly, I contribute to the literature on China’s historical state development. A static origin story has dominated popular understandings of the Chinese state. Starting with Karl Marx, and popularized by Karl Wittfogel, this story features an “oriental state” that was formed to control floods and manage irrigation.14 Historians’ earlier work, by contrast, examined China’s political development through the lens of dynastic cycles.

8 Levi (1988). 9 Migdal (1988). 10 Geddes (1996), Kurtz (2013), Soifer (2015), Garfias (2018), and Beramendi et al. (2019). 11 E.g., Slater (2010). 12 See, e.g., Magaloni (2006), Gandhi (2008), and Svolik (2012). 13 Zhao (2009). 14 Wittfogel (1959).

74

Y. WANG

According to this view, Chinese history simply exhibited repetitions of recurring patterns.15 Recent social science scholarship on China’s state development has focused on either the beginning or the end—state formation during the Qin era (221–206 BCE) or state collapse during the Qing (1644–1911 CE). The scholars who study the beginning treat China’s early state formation as finite, completed process without examining how the state was sustained and how it changed over the next two millennia.16 The scholars study the end focus on China’s declining fiscal capacity without discussing the system’s exceptional durability.17 It is time to account for the entire trajectory of China’s state development and to consider these seemingly contradictory trends—longer ruler duration and declining fiscal revenues—not as paradoxes, but as interconnected manifestations of an underlying political equilibrium. Only when we take a holistic view can we start to explore the conditions that led to different outcomes in the country’s political development. The rest of the article is organized as follows. The next section elaborates on the central arguments that elite social terrains shape state development, and exogenous shocks provide opportunities for rulers to reshape this terrain. The third section uses descriptive statistics to illustrate some stylized facts about China’s state development, focusing on changes in ruler duration and fiscal capacity. The fourth section offers a narrative on the two phases of China’s state development. The first phase features strong state capacity but short ruler durations; the second phase is characterized by long ruler durations and low state capacity. An exogenous shock led to mass violence, which facilitated the transition from the first to the second phases when the ruler was able to exploit the power vacuum to reshape the elite social terrain. The last section concludes by discussing the broader implications of my findings.

The Argument I argue that the network structure of state–society relations shapes the level of state capacity and how long a ruler stays in power. I focus on one aspect of state–society relations, the elite social terrain: the ways in

15 For discussions and critiques of the dynastic cycle theory, see Skinner (1985) and Fairbank (1983). 16 E.g., Hui (2005) and Zhao (2015). 17 E.g., Bai and Jia (2016).

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

(a) Star Network

75

(b) Bowtie Network

Fig. 4.1 Two ideal types of elite social terrain

which central elites connect to local social groups (and each other). I draw on social network analysis to analyze two network structures—i.e., stereotypical ways in which individuals in a hierarchy are connected with each other: a star network in which a coherent core connects everyone in the periphery18 and a bowtie network in which members of a fragmented core connect their own peripheral communities.19 Figure 4.1 illustrates these two ideal types of elite social terrains. The central nodes are state elites, defined as politicians who work in the central government and can influence government policies. Each peripheral node represents a local social group, such as a clan, in a specific geographic location. The edges denote connections, which can take multiple forms, such as membership, social ties, or family ties.20 Central elites are agents of their connected social groups; they seek to influence government policies to provide the best services to their groups at the lowest cost. Each central elite is only interested in the welfare of his or her connected groups, not necessarily that of the whole nation. Central elites can use a variety of governance structures to provide services to their

18 Wasserman and Faust (1994, 171). 19 Broder et al. (2000, 318). 20 The number of nodes and ties in the graphs is plotted for aesthetic considerations and does not carry theoretical significance.

76

Y. WANG

connected social groups. The most popular such structures are publicorder institutions, such as the state, and private-order institutions, such as clans, tribes, or ethnic groups. Whether elites cooperate with each other or clash over their preferred policies depends on the type of networks in which they are embedded. In a star network, each central elite directly connects all social groups located in dispersed geographic areas. The central elites are also connected with each other: because elites link various social groups, their networks are likely to be overlapping, generating lateral ties between the elites. In a bowtie network, each central elite is connected to a set of social groups in a concentrated geographic area, but not to any social groups in distant areas. Nor are the central elites connected with each other: because elites’ social relations are localized, they are also less likely to be in each other’s social networks. The two forms of elite social terrains are archetypes; the reality is messier. The vertical dimension of elite social terrains (geographic dispersion vs. concentration) conditions elite preferences regarding the ideal level of state capacity, while the horizontal dimension (cohesion vs. division) conditions ruler survival. Together, they capture the basic characteristics of elite social structures that can produce important implications for state development outcomes.

The Star Network Central elites embedded in the star network have a strong incentive to use the state (rather than private-order institutions) to provide services to their connected social groups. Two considerations drive elites’ choices. The first is an economic consideration. In the star network, elites are connected to multiple social groups that are geographically dispersed. It is more efficient to rely on the central state to provide services because it enjoys economies of scale and scope. With a strong central state, it is much cheaper to cover an additional territory in which a connected social group is located than to rely on the social group to provide its own security and justice. The second consideration that drives elites’ choices is social. Tribes, clans, and ethnic groups that are concentrated in a certain locality often care a lot about their local interests but little about national matters. They oppose paying taxes to the central state, because the state will use these funds to provide services to all parts of the country, so these

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

77

specific social groups would end up paying for services that benefit others. These geographically defined social groups hence create regional cleavages that produce distributive conflicts. Nevertheless, if central elites can connect multiple social groups that are geographically dispersed, as in a star network, this social network will cross-cut regional cleavages.21 These cross-cutting cleavages incentivize the central elites to aggregate the interests of multiple localities and groups and scale them up to the national level. The star network therefore transcends local interests and fosters a broad state-building coalition. The star network, however, represents a centralized and coherent elite that threatens ruler survival for two reasons. First, the elites are embedded in a centralized structure in which they can use their cross-cutting ties to mobilize a wide range of social forces across regions. Second, the cooperative relations among elites make them a coherent group—and thus able to overcome collective action and coordination problems if they decide to rebel against the ruler. Therefore in this scenario, the ruler is more likely to be challenged by the elites.

The Bowtie Network In the bowtie network, where elites only need to service a few groups in a relatively confined area, private service provision is more efficient because the marginal costs of funding private institutions to service a small area are lower than the taxes that elites would be required to pay to support the central state. In addition, social networks in this case reinforce existing regional cleavages. The central government then becomes an arena in which these elites compete to attract national resources to serve local interests. Elites in the bowtie network would oppose strengthening the central state because such policies would divert resources from social groups to the state and weaken their local power bases. The bowtie network, however, facilitates ruler survival. Central elites can mobilize some (regionally based) social groups against the ruler. But it is easier for the ruler to quell challenges that are concentrated in certain areas. In addition, the lack of a dense network among elites provides what the sociologist Ronald Burt calls “structural holes” that allow the ruler to divide and conquer. As Burt argues, if parts of a community are not 21 For a seminal discussion of cross-cutting versus reinforcing social cleavages, see Lipset and Rokkan (1967).

78

Y. WANG

directly connected with one another (i.e., structural holes separate them), an outside player can gain an advantage by playing the clusters against each other.22 In this scenario, the ruler is more likely to establish absolute rule to dominate the elites.

Social Terrains Make the State, and Vice Versa For each network type, the central elites find it in their best interest to maintain the status quo. Elites embedded in the star network prefer to strike a Hobbesian deal with the ruler to pay taxes in exchange for centralized protection. The central state provides an institutional commitment device between the elites and their social groups. Supporting state building allows the elites to credibly commit to protecting their group members because it is harder for the central state, compared with privateorder institutions, to exclude specific members as beneficiaries from a distance. The star network also strengthens the bargaining power of the elites vis-á-vis the ruler because elites embedded in cross-regional networks can credibly threaten the ruler. The ruler, facing a nationally connected elite, must commit to using the state to provide public goods rather than to prey on the society. In the bowtie network, however, elites prefer to delegate state functions to their social groups, which can provide private services at a much lower price than paying taxes to the national government. But the elites in the bowtie network still have an interest in keeping the state “afloat.” A state with a minimum level of capacity can help protect social groups from existential threats such as external invasions and large-scale natural disasters. The ruler, however, faces the sovereign’s dilemma: state capacity vs. personal survival. He seeks to maximize state capacity, which can best be achieved by facilitating the creation of a star network. But he also seeks to maintain his grip on power, which is easier if elites are fragmented, as in the bowtie network. Depending on the initial conditions, the ruler either attempts to strengthen the state or to maximize personal survival, but not both. A coherent elite helps strengthen the state, but threatens his survival. Exogenous shocks, however, can disrupt an equilibrium and provide opportunities for the state to reshape elite social relations. I assume the

22 Burt (1992, 47).

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

79

ruler has a “first-mover advantage,” which he can exploit to reshape elite social terrain in his favor to ensure his own survival—even if this involves creating an elite network that is detrimental to state strength. A polity can suffer from various exogenous shocks. Over the long term, the most important shock to dynasties is climate change, which leads to large-scale conflict.23 Cold weather, for example, increases the likelihood of mass violence, since famine becomes more likely.24 Large-scale violence can in turn destroy or weaken the old elite. If the old elite threatens the ruler’s personal survival, he may take advantage of this power vacuum to recruit a new elite that is more fragmented and less threatening. A fragmented elite, however, will lead to a weak state. In sum, social terrains make the state, and vice versa. While elite social terrains generate certain state development outcomes, the state (led by the ruler) can exploit exogenous shocks to reshape them, which can create new types of networks.

Capacity vs. Survival in Chinese History In my book, I collected original data on taxation and rulers to highlight the sovereign’s dilemma in China’s state development. I identify the turn of the first millennium as a watershed moment that signaled a change in political development patterns. In the first phase, the state became stronger at the expense of ruler duration. In the second phase, the opposite occurred: rulers stayed in power longer, but state capacity declined.

Fiscal Capacity We can analyze state capacity by examining either fiscal policies (where they designed to strengthen or weaken state capacity) or the actual amount of taxes collected (the most popular measure of state capacity). To levy taxes, the state needs accurate information (e.g., on land, economic production, and population), a bureaucracy to collect the taxes, and an infrastructure to transport the tax payments, all of which require a certain

23 Burke et al. (2015). 24 Zhang et al. (2006).

80

Y. WANG

level of capacity.25 Data on fiscal policies and per capita taxation demonstrate that China’s fiscal capacity peaked in the eleventh century, started to decline afterward (with transitory increases), and diminished toward the end of the period. A popular argument that can be traced back to Adam Smith and was more explicitly stated by Thomas Malthus is that China’s development failure in the late imperial era had demographic roots: its population was too large for its economy to support.26 Indeed, the population tripled from 150 million in 1700 to 450 million in 1900.27 This Malthusian narrative, however, cannot fully explain the low taxation in the late imperial era because while the population growth mainly occurred after 1700,28 China’s per capita taxation started to decline much earlier—in the Song and Ming times. Nor can this demographic theory explain why the imperial state failed to adjust its tax policies accordingly. Recent estimates show that Chinese real personal incomes between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries remained relatively stable, despite a dramatic increase in population.29 This suggests that there were more people from whom the Chinese state could have extracted, if it had been able to adjust its fiscal policies.

Ruler Duration As Lisa Blaydes and Eric Chaney demonstrate, how rulers ended their reigns is an informative indicator of political stability and ruler–elite relations.30 Here, I rely on an original dataset I collected on all Chinese emperors from 221 BCE to 1912.31 Of all 282 Chinese emperors, half died peacefully, while the other half exited office unnaturally. Of these unnatural exits, about half were 25 See Levi (1988) and Besley and Persson (2009). 26 Malthus (1992 [1806], 41, 183–184). 27 Lavely and Wong (1998, 719). 28 According to Lavely and Wong (1998, 719), China’s population grew by 29% in the

fifteenth century, 40% in the sixteenth century, and 0% in the seventeenth century. 29 Rosenthal and Wong (2011, 48–49). 30 Blaydes and Chaney (2013). 31 My primary sources are Chronologies of Chinese Emperors and Their Families edited by Du (1995) and The Complete Biographies of Chinese Emperors edited by Qiao et al. (1996).

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

81

deposed by the elite (murdered, overthrown, forced to abdicate, or forced to commit suicide). In my book, I show the moving average of the probability of being deposed by elites. Emperors from the tenth century onward were significantly less likely to be deposed—an indication that the rulers had strengthened their power vis-á-vis the elite. China achieved a remarkable level of political durability in the second millennium. Comparing the moving average of ruler duration in China, Europe, and the Islamic World shows that Chinese rulers were just as secure as European rulers, and both outperformed their Islamic counterparts.

An Analytical Narrative of Chinese State Development In this section, I provide a narrative account of China’s state development, drawing on primary and secondary sources. In the first phase of state development, from roughly the beginning of the common era to the ninth century, a star network was created. An aristocracy gradually emerged during the Han Dynasty (202 BC–220 CE) and consolidated its power. During the Tang times (618–907 CE), the aristocracy dominated central politics. This aristocracy was a semi-hereditary caste that consisted of several hundred noble clans. These families formed a close-knit marriage network in which status endogamy persisted for centuries. Through marriage alliances made in the capitals, the aristocracy connected different corners of the empire. The social terrain that formed among the Tang aristocratic families hence resembled a star network—a coherent center connected to the periphery. The Tang aristocrats had a vested interest in strengthening the state to protect their kinship networks, which spanned the entire empire. They nearly unanimously implemented a historic fiscal reform—the Two-Tax Reform—which influenced the country’s fiscal development for the next millennium. Aristocratic interests constituted a credible check on monarchical power by institutionalizing the office of the chief councilor (宰 宰相), which was almost on a par with the emperor. It was a rare time in Chinese history when the emperor ruled with the elites. In the late ninth century, severely cold weather induced a mass rebellion that stormed the capitals and physically destroyed the aristocracy, leading to the second phase of state development, which lasted for almost

82

Y. WANG

Fig. 4.2 Timeline of China’s state development

a millennium after the mid-tenth century. Starting in the Song era (960– 1276 CE), the emperors exploited the power vacuum left by the Tang aristocracy to reshape the elite social terrain. They expanded the civil service examination system to identify bureaucratic talent on a relatively meritocratic basis. With their competitiveness and focus on learning, the examinations brought selected members of local gentry’s families to the center and prevented them from forming a new aristocracy. The national elites in this era thus resemble a bowtie network, representing local interests. They sought to influence central policies to benefit their home societies and kin groups. Despite severe external threats from the steppe nomads, the elites in this era sought to maintain a state with mediocre strength. The emperors exploited the fragmented and localized elite to establish an absolute monarchy at the expense of a much-contracted state. Figure 4.2 summarizes the timeline of China’s state development.

The Star Network Before the Tenth Century A star-like network emerged during the Han Dynasty. Han emperors’ policy of recruiting Confucian scholars into the bureaucracy created a class of scholar-bureaucrats who exploited their political power to strengthen their economic power. They invested these resources into educating their sons and further consolidating their families’ political power.32 In 220 CE, the new ruler of the Wei regime introduced a political selection mechanism called the nine-rank arbiter system (九 九品中正) to gain the cooperation of powerful families.33 The arbiter—a local notable—classified candidates for office into nine ranks of character and ability. The system rapidly became an instrument to perpetuate the power of a narrow 32 See Yu (2003 [1956]). 33 Ebrey (1978, 17).

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

83

social class. Birth, status, and office holding became inseparably bound, and many aristocratic families began to form. In the late fifth century, the nomadic ruler Xiaowen (471–499) placed elite Chinese clans into one of four classes, depending on their ancestors’ ranking.34 Government positions were awarded based on the ranking of the applicant’s clan, which consolidated the self-perpetuating aristocracy. These eminent families were similar enough to aristocracies elsewhere, such as the medieval European nobility, to merit the description “aristocrat.” But their eagerness to be associated with the imperial court in order to perpetuate their social status countered any tendencies for aristocratic families to become feudal lords with proprietary control over sections of the country.35 Many of the great clans managed to maintain their elite status for five, six, or even seven hundred years. The secret to their success was family practices that sustained a continuous descent line. While the medieval European church engaged in a vigorous campaign against aristocratic reproductive behavior by prohibiting endogamy, adoption, polygyny, concubinage, divorce, and remarriage,36 men in imperial China could take as many concubines as they could afford.37 Wealthier elites reproduced faster than their poorer counterparts because they could afford more concubines and support more children. The most successful clans therefore reproduced more quickly, allowing them to occupy an ever greater share of government positions.38 While in Europe a 50% rate of attrition among aristocratic families every century was common,39 the same group of great clans dominated China for centuries.40 By the Tang period, the aristocratic families had become a status group that was sustained by marital exclusiveness. The core male members of the aristocratic clans congregated in the capital cities of Changan and Luoyang and often held office for successive generations.41 Their 34 These four categories were labelled simply A (甲), B (乙), C (丙), and D (丁), and known collectively as the “Four (categories of) Clans” (四姓). See Johnson (1977, 28). 35 Ebrey (1978, 2). 36 Goody (1983, 123). 37 Ebrey (1986, 2). 38 Tackett (2014, 44). 39 Stone (1965, 79). 40 Ebrey (1978). 41 Tackett (2014, 84).

84

Y. WANG

geographic proximity to the emperor certainly helped them obtain desirable positions. But as the historian Nicolas Tackett pointed out, the key to their political success was their social network. The geographic concentration of dominant political elites in the two capitals both reinforced and was reinforced by a tightly knit and highly circumscribed marriage network. Members of this network constituted the dominant political elite who monopolized power during the late Tang era. The social capital embedded in the capital-based elite marriage network allowed these elites to control both bureaucratic recruitment and appointment to the highest posts.42 For example, there are countless examples of chief councilors intervening to promote a clansman, son-in-law, or sister’s son.43 With capital elites moving throughout the empire to serve in top local positions, the Tang political center maintained a colonial-like relationship with other parts of the empire. Capital-based bureaucrats were sent to all corners of the empire, monopolizing all of the top civilian posts for 3–4 year tenures.44 The marriage network that was facilitated by capital interactions and regional rotations also created a colonial-like relationship. A central family located in the capital connected through marriage ties with multiple families with home bases in the provinces to form a star network.

State Strengthening and Rule Survival in the Star Network State Capacity Before the tenth century, most of China’s fiscal policies were designed to increase central taxation, and taxation continuously increased during this period. A key fiscal reform during this period was the Two-Tax Reform in the Tang era. This reform, introduced in 779 to address the fiscal shortfall after the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763), aimed to change a flat tax based on public land tenure into a progressive tax that recognized private property. The central state imposed a new land tax, collected based on the amount of land under cultivation, levied in two installments (in summer and autumn).45 42 Tackett (2014, 25–26). 43 Tackett (2014, 133–134). 44 Tackett (2014, 182). 45 Twitchett (1970, 40).

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

85

The tax was costly for the political elites expected to implement it, but only three of 141 major officials publicly expressed opposition to the reform.46 Why did the overwhelming majority of political elites, big estate owners themselves, support (or at least acquiesce to) a reform that increased their tax burden? The answer lies in the social terrain of the Tang elites, who formed aristocratic clans. Their dispersed kinship network allowed them to internalize the gains of state strengthening to others from regions far from their own. The central state could dramatically reduce the marginal costs of servicing larger areas by exploiting economies of scale. The dispersed network therefore transcended elites’ personal interests and aligned the incentives of a broad coalition in favor of the fiscal reform. Ruler–Elite Relations Contrary to the popular view that a despotic monarchy dominated China for thousands of years, for a long time the Chinese ruler was weak vis-á-vis the central elite. The medieval aristocracy effectively checked the monarchy’s power. From the fall of the Han Dynasty to the founding of the Tang, Chinese emperors shared power with the dominant aristocratic families: the rulers exploited aristocratic social capital to govern society. During the Tang times, the aristocracy institutionalized its power. Official genealogies identified the empire’s most prominent clans, guided the nobility’s marriage choices, and provided the emperors with a list of families from which bureaucrats were chosen. These genealogies, compiled by state officials, consistently ranked the imperial clan lower than the most prominent aristocratic families.47 Infuriated, Tang emperors banned the most prominent clans from intermarrying, which only made them more sought after.48 The coherence of the Tang aristocracy checked the ruler’s power. For example, the office of the chief councilor was elevated during this period. It started as an informal body of advisors to the emperor; chief councilors were drawn from the central ministers. In the early eighth century, the office became a formal government organ that competed

46 Li (2002, 124, 283, 327). 47 Wechsler (1979, 212–213). 48 Tackett (2014, 35).

86

Y. WANG

with monarchical power.49 According to my data, Tang rulers were the most likely among rulers in all dynasties to be overthrown by the elite. The Tang aristocrats’ interconnectedness and geographic concentration facilitated collective action and coordination against the throne. Official histories recorded multiple coup attempts, some of which succeeded.50 In my dataset of Chinese emperors, 5 of the 12 late Tang emperors who ascended after the An Lushan Rebellion were toppled by a coup.51

Transition from Star to Bowtie During the late Tang period, China—and much of the Northern Hemisphere—experienced an unusually severe period of cold, dry weather.52 The prolonged period of drought ignited rebellions in multiple places. Huang Chao, a salt merchant, gradually united disparate rebel forces and captured the capital city of Changan in 880.53 During two years of occupation, the rebels killed all the aristocrats in the city.54 After the central nodes were removed, the star network collapsed. The succeeding Song emperors seized the opportunity to reshape the elite social terrain. They began to rely on an expanded civil service examination system to recruit bureaucrats.55 Candidate numbers grew dramatically, as did the exams’ competitiveness. E. A. Kracke and Ping-ti Ho have demonstrated the meritocratic nature of the examination system and how it increased social mobility.56 While in the Tang era several hundred aristocratic clans held all the offices, the exam system during the Song period significantly broadened the social basis of bureaucratic recruitment. Although locally powerful families enjoyed an advantage in 49 Dalby (1979, 590–591). The aristocratic effort to increase bureaucratic power did

not fully succeed. See Dalby (1979, 591). 50 Dalby (1979, 601, 634). 51 These five were Xianzong (805–820), Jingzong (824–826), Wuzong (840–846),

Zhaozong (888–904), and Aidi (904–907). According to the official histories, eunuchs played an important role, with aristocratic acquiescence, in leading these coups. See Dalby (1979, 635). 52 Tackett (2014, 240). 53 Somers (1979, 745). 54 Tackett (2014, 218). 55 Chaffee (1995, 16). 56 Kracke (1947) and Ho (1964).

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

87

grooming their sons for the exam, they still needed to compete with thousands of other families across the country to obtain the advanced scholar degree required to gain entry to the highest echelon of the bureaucracy. Naito Konan dubbed the changes during the ninth and tenth centuries the “Tang–Song transition.”57 Historians have reached a near consensus that the turn of the millennium marks a watershed in Chinese history.58 This transition was so significant that historians usually divide China’s imperial period into two eras: the early imperial era from Han (202 BCE– 220 CE) to Tang (618–906) and the late imperial era from Song (960– 1216) to Qing (1644–1911).59

The Bowtie Network After the Tenth Century The Tang–Song transition first and foremost involved the transformation of the elite social terrain.60 During the Tang Dynasty, office holding was the single most important determinant of family status. All elite families sought to place as many of their sons in the bureaucracy as possible. Building a marriage coalition with other powerful families at the national level provided insurance against uncertainties (such as the death of an important family patron) and represented the most effective way to exploit the patronage system. During the Song era, the expanded exam system made it more competitive to obtain a bureaucratic position. Thus, pursuing a bureaucratic career became a risky investment with uncertain returns. Meanwhile, rising trade, marketization, and urbanization gave men more occupational options. Consolidating a local power base with solid properties and closeknit networks with other powerful neighbors became the best way to perpetuate elite families’ status. When the elites scattered and married locally, multiple communities emerged with their own centers connected to their own neighbors but not with other parts of the network.61 The historian Beverly Bossler remarks

57 Naito (1992 [1922]). 58 See Chen (2017) for a recent review of the literature. 59 See, for example, Ebrey (1978, 1). 60 For a more detailed discussion, see Hymes (1986, 115–117). 61 Historians call the localization process “the localist turn” among Chinese elites. See

Hartwell (1982) and Hymes (1986).

88

Y. WANG

that in the Song era the “center had disappeared, and the network had instead numerous regional nodes.”62 This resembles a bowtie network in which each central node connects with its own community, but different communities are not connected.

State Weakening and Ruler Duration Under the Bowtie State Capacity Starting in the eleventh century, most fiscal policies started to weaken the state’s capacity to extract revenue. This is puzzling, given the growing external threats. The Northern Song Dynasty faced existential threats from the Khitan and Tangut nomadic tribes in the North. Faced with a situation in which a war could break out at any moment, why did the elites not “make the state?” They tried to, but failed. In 1069 the Song ruler introduced the New Policies, which were the brainchild of one of his cabinet members, Wang Anshi. These policies, which became known as the Wang Anshi Reform, had the goal of “enriching the nation and strengthening its military power.”63 The philosophy of the New Policies was to expand the scope of state power to intensify its participation in the market economy, which would generate a surplus that the state could use to meet its fiscal and military needs. In the first decade of the New Policies, the Song state’s revenues dramatically increased. This led to a brief peak in China’s fiscal revenue around the year 1086. The bowtie network, which was gradually formed during the early Song era, created a strong anti-reform sentiment. The state-building coalition was not strong enough to sway a significant number of the Song central elites who were embedded in local vested interests. Many politicians opposed the reform. They viewed local elite families as competing with the state to provide various services. They considered kinship institutions to be the most efficient way to protect their family interests. Politicians also feared that a stronger state threatened their family interests because state strengthening increased the personal costs to them, through taxation.

62 Bossler (1998, 93). 63 Liang (2009 [1908], 165).

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

89

After Wang Anshi’s retirement and the death of the emperor, the opposition leaders completely abolished the reform. Before long, the Northern Song state was significantly weakened and defeated by the Jurchen in 1127. The state remained relatively weak after the Song era. As the central elites became more locally oriented, centralized state-strengthening reforms became politically impossible. The government, however, still made periodic attempts to improve its tax collection methods. In the midMing period (circa 1570s), a powerful grand secretary advocated a new method called the Single Whip, which simplified taxation by combining the labor levy and land tax.64 But the Single Whip was implemented decentralized manner, delayed by a coalition of local elites and their representatives in the national government.65 The policy took more than 100 years to roll out throughout the country, and was still incomplete when the Ming Dynasty collapsed.66 The Manchu conquest in the mid-seventeenth century brought in a new class of elites—the Manchu Eight Banners. The Eight Banners was a unique Manchu military organization that emerged during military campaigns; it was sustained by a close-knit elite network.67 Early Qing rulers achieved a level of centralization that was unusual in late imperial China. They enforced policies to diminish the gentry’s power and privileges, simplified tax collection by merging land and labor taxes, and delineated central and local revenues.68 This explains the brief surge in state revenues in the late seventeenth century. The state-strengthening momentum, however, did not last. With the deterioration of the Eight Banners and the increasing corruption and ineptitude of the Manchus, later Qing rulers increasingly relied on the civil bureaucracy, which was staffed by members of the narrowly interested gentry.69 Due to political opposition from the bureaucracy, the Qing government did not carry out any cadastral surveys during its 267-year

64 Huang (1974, 117–118). 65 Huang (1974, 45). 66 Liang (1989, 485–555). 67 Elliott (2001). 68 Zelin (1984). 69 Elliott (2001, 40) and Xi (2019).

90

Y. WANG

rule; it relied on the late Ming records with infrequent and minor revisions carried out by officials at the provincial and local levels.70 As a result, the Qing revenues could not keep up with the rapid population growth and the growing external and internal threats after the First Opium War.71 When local military groups declared independence in 1911, the Qing government was too broke to hold the country together.72 Ruler–Elite Relations The demise of the medieval aristocracy changed the relationship between the ruler and the central elites. If the Tang emperors were first among equals, rulers after the Song started to dominate the central elite. The rise of absolute monarchy was a key element of what Naito Konan termed the “Tang–Song transition.”73 Song emperors filled the post-Tang power vacuum by relying on expanded civil service examinations to select bureaucrats. Landowning elite families enjoyed a human capital advantage, but there were so many participants in the examinations that the process was competitive and the outcome uncertain. Even the most powerful families struggled to ensure one member per generation obtained office.74 The establishment of palace examinations, in which the emperor ranked top candidates after a face-to-face interview, further strengthened the monarch’s personal authority to select bureaucrats.75 The transition from a star network to a bowtie network marked the fragmentation of the central elite during the Song era. Robert Hartwell observed “the diminished cohesiveness among the elite lineages” in Song times.76 With a fragmented elite, the emperor used a “divide-andconquer” strategy to dominate the bureaucracy. For example, the Song emperors fragmented military control by separating the Military Affairs Commission (枢 枢密院), which maintained monarchical control over military matters, from the Ministry of War (兵 兵部), a civilian-controlled organ in charge of military policy making.77 The Song rulers also reorganized 70 Wang (1973, 27). 71 Shi and Xu (2008, 55). 72 Kuhn (1970) and Wakeman (1975). 73 Naito (1992 [1922]). 74 Kracke (1947) and Ho (1964). 75 Chaffee (1995, xxii). 76 Hartwell (1982, 405). 77 Smith (2009, 461).

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

91

the top echelon of the bureaucracy by dividing the authority of the office of the chief councilor, which centralized executive power during the Tang times, into three executive branches.78 During the Wang Anshi Reform, Emperor Shenzong kept both reformers and opponents of the reform in court to play them against each other. “Although the Emperor did not seriously doubt Wang [Anshi]’s loyalty,” James Liu speculates, “he was probably afraid that by giving Wang too much power he might arouse the disloyalty of other leading officials.”79 For many years during the New Policy era, the emperor retained Wen Yanbo, Wang’s firm opponent, as head of the Military Affairs Commission, and ignored Wang’s complaints about him.80 Shenzong used the same strategy for other major opposition leaders. As the personnel minister Zeng Gongliang advised the emperor: “it is important to have people of different opinions stirring each other up, so that no one will dare to do wrong.”81 Keeping the critics and dissenters close, the emperor stated, would “broaden what he hears and sees.”82 The Wang Anshi Reform was a watershed event in Song history. After its failure, Song central politics became increasingly factionalized. The monarchy was the biggest beneficiary of elite fractionalization. As James Liu argues, “The more bitter the power struggle among the bureaucrats became, the greater was the probability of their depending upon the support of the emperor, of their playing into the hands of those around the emperor and in the palace, and of their helping, by design or by force of circumstances, the growth of absolutism.”83 As a result, political factions were a prominent feature of Song political life. Although earlier dynasties also had political factions, they were more persistent in the Song era and more closely integrated into the dynasty’s political structures.84 Ming emperors further consolidated their absolute power. In 1380, the Ming founding emperor abolished the entire upper echelon of the 78 Smith (2009, 462). 79 Liu (1959, 92). 80 Liu (1959, 92). 81 Li (1979 [1177], 213: 5169). 82 Smith (2009, 367). 83 Liu (1959, 60). 84 Hartman (2015, 46).

92

Y. WANG

central government, including the chief councilor, and concentrated power securely in his own hands. He then brought the ministries under his direct supervision.85 China’s autocratization was completed during the Qing era. The Grand Council (军 军机处), which was established in the late seventeenth century and evolved into a permanent privy council, expanded its sphere of authority to all arenas of imperial policy. The council remained a personal “star chamber” or “kitchen cabinet” granting private advice to the throne. Its members were overwhelmingly Manchu and were often drawn from the emperor’s closest circle of relatives and friends.86

Why Was the Bowtie Self-Enforcing? The bowtie network proved to be exceptionally durable. If we characterize state–society relations under the Tang Dynasty as a state-dominant direct rule, the Song era facilitated a state–society partnership in which entrenched local elites bargained, but also collaborated, with the state. This partnership became a self-reinforcing equilibrium that contributed to the exceptional durability of imperial rule in the second millennium. The civil service examinations played a crucial role in shaping this partnership between the state and society. As Peter Bol points out, during the Song era the examination system was transformed from an institution for recruiting civil officials into one that allowed local elites to claim the privilege of belonging to a relatively homogenous social elite. When most sons of existing gentry’s families neither passed the examinations nor gained official rank, they needed a new mechanism to prove they were still part of the elite. The examination system gave the gentry throughout the empire a universal mechanism for educating the next generation in what it meant to be a literati, perpetuating their families in the local elite, and controlling the membership therein.87 The examinations therefore created a channel of state legitimation and a myth of meritocracy that kept the bowtie together. To maintain their membership in the elite over generations, local gentry’s families invented a new form of organization. In 1050, Fan

85 Hucker (1998, 75). 86 Rowe (2009, 40–41). 87 Bol (1990, 168–171).

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

93

Zhongyan—a Northern Song politician—created the first trust-based lineage. Wealthy members of the Fan lineage donated 1,000 or so mu (approximately 90 soccer fields) of paddy fields. The annual rents provided Fan’s relatives and their descendants with regular support: equal daily grants of grain and annual winter clothing, housing, an education for the boys, financial support for examination candidates, and marriage and funeral expenses. A designated clan member served as the manager of the landed trust endowment, its revenue, and its grant distribution. The trust was intended to be permanent, and its property inalienable.88 The trust-based lineage increasingly crowded the countryside of southern China and became the model large kinship organization from the late twelfth century onward. Such lineage organizations helped secure the long-term survival of gentry’s families as a unified kinship group. With their entrenched local power base and local interests at heart, the gentry elite from the Song era onward became what Robert Hymes calls “local advocates.” They intervened directly and openly with local and central officials to influence the course of local events and government actions.89 Nevertheless, the gentry also depended on the state and could not afford to separate from it. Sukhee Lee shows that connectedness to— rather than independence from—the state granted the gentry prestige and safeguarded their local prominence. Some families occasionally obtained offices, which brought privileges, including exemption from taxes and services. This partnership with the state emerged under the Song Dynasty and was reinforced in the Yuan era, when the gentry elite had to collaborate and bargain with an ethnically alien regime.90 The partnership, when it finally consolidated during the Ming and Qing eras, was key to imperial China’s durable rule.

Conclusion Europe and China pursued different paths of state development from the seventh to the twentieth centuries. In Europe, the fall of the Roman Empire created a large number of small kingdoms. Political fragmentation gave rise to representative institutions and interstate competition,

88 McDermott (2013, 134). 89 Hymes (1986, 127–128). 90 Lee (2009, 207).

94

Y. WANG

which made European states stronger and more durable. China started as a centralized state. Violence, rather than making the Chinese state, destroyed its centralized social network. Chinese rulers reshaped the elite social terrain by recruiting localized elites into the bureaucracy. The rulers were able to dominate these localized elites, but China’s fiscal capacity started to decline. The Chinese state thus gained durability at the expense of state capacity. Social science research has generally assumed there is a positive link between state capacity and state durability. According to this logic, a strong state enables the ruler to quell mass rebellions, defeat outside enemies, and provide public goods. However, as I have shown, most rulers were toppled by elites. In states without representative institutions, there is an inherent tension between state capacity and state durability because strengthening capacity and lengthening durability require different elite social structures. An elite that can take collective action to strengthen the state is also capable of revolting against the ruler. I document this capacity–survival tradeoff and use it to explain China’s long-term state development. My findings shed light on important issues related to state building in the developing world. Many countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East have weak states. The policy interventions carried out by the international community, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, focus on strengthening state capacities.91 But the Chinese experience implies that rulers may need incentives to build state capacity, as doing so where institutions are weak may compromise their personal survival. Lessons from Chinese history indicate that state building should go beyond a narrow focus on strengthening capacities to reshape elite social structures to make them more compatible with a strong state.

References Bai, Ying, and Ruixue Jia. 2016. “Elite Recruitment and Political Stability: The Impact of the Abolition of China’s Civil Service Exam.” Econometrica 84 (2): 677–733. Bates, Robert H. 2017. The Development Dilemma. Princeton University Press. Bates, Robert H, Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Barry R Weingast. 1998. Analytic Narratives. Princeton University Press. 91 Evans and Rauch (1999).

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

95

Beramendi, Pablo, Mark Dincecco, and Melissa Rogers. 2019. “Intra-Elite Competition and Long-Run Fiscal Development.” The Journal of Politics 81 (1): 49–65. Besley, Timothy, and Torsten Persson. 2009. “The Origins of State Capacity: Property Rights, Taxation, and Politics.” American Economic Review 99 (4): 1218–1244. Blaydes, Lisa, and Eric Chaney. 2013. “The Feudal Revolution and Europe’s Rise: Political Divergence of the Christian West and the Muslim World Before 1500 CE.” American Political Science Review 107 (1): 16–34. Bol, Peter K. 1990. “The Sung Examination System and the Shih.” Asia Major: 149–171. Bossler, Beverly Jo. 1998. Powerful Relations. Harvard University Press. Broder, Andrei, Ravi Kumar, Farzin Maghoul, Prabhakar Raghavan, Sridhar Rajagopalan, Raymie Stata, Andrew Tomkins, and Janet Wiener. 2000. “Graph Structure in the Web.” Computer Networks 33 (1–6): 309–320. Burke, Marshall, Solomon Hsiang, and Edward Miguel. 2015. “Climate and Conflict.” Annual Review of Economics 7 (1): 577–617. Burt, Ronald S. 1992. Structural Holes. Harvard University Press. Chaffee, John W. 1995. The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China. State University of New York Press. Chen, Song. 2017. “The State, the Gentry, and Local Institutions: The Song Dynasty and Long-Term Trends from Tang to Qing.” Journal of Chinese History 1 (1): 141–182. Dalby, Michael T. 1979. “Court Politics in Late T’ang Times.” Chap. 9 in The Cambridge History of China: Sui and T’ang China, 589–906, Party I, edited by Denis Twitchett, 3:561–681. Cambridge University Press. Dincecco, Mark. 2011. Political Transformations and Public Finances. Cambridge University Press. Du, Jianmin. 1995. Chronologies of Chinese Emperors and Their Families (Zhongguo lidai diwang shixi nianbiao). Qilu Shushe. Ebrey, Patricia. 1986. “Concubines in Sung China.” Journal of Family History 11 (1): 1–24. Ebrey, Patricia. 1978. The Aristocratic Families in Early Imperial China. Cambridge University Press. Elliott, Mark C. 2001. The Manchu Way. Stanford University Press. Evans, Peter, and James E Rauch. 1999. “Bureaucracy and Growth: A CrossNational Analysis of the Effects of “Weberian” State Structures on Economic Growth.” American Sociological Review: 748–765. Evans, Peter B, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol. 1985. Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge University Press. Fairbank, John King. 1983. The United States and China. Harvard University Press.

96

Y. WANG

Gandhi, Jennifer. 2008. Political Institutions Under Dictatorships. Cambridge University Press. Garfias, Francisco. 2018. “Elite Competition and State Capacity Development: Theory and Evidence from Post-Revolutionary Mexico.” American Political Science Review 112 (2): 339–357. Geddes, Barbara. 1996. Politician’s Dilemma. University of California Press. Goody, Jack. 1983. The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe. Cambridge University Press. Hartman, Charles. 2015. “Sung Government and Politics.” Chap. 1 in The Cambridge History of China: Sung China, 960–1279, Party II, edited by John W. Chaffee and Denis Twitchett, 5:19–138. Cambridge University Press. Hartwell, Robert M. 1982. “Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations of China, 750-1550.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42 (2): 365–442. Ho, Ping-ti. 1964. The Ladder of Success in Imperial China. Columbia University Press. Huang, Ray. 1974. Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth-Century Ming China. Cambridge University Press. Hucker, Charles O. 1998. “Ming Government.” Chap. 1 in The Cambridge History of China. Volume 8, The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 2, edited by Denis Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote, 9–105. Cambridge University Press. Hui, Victoria Tin-bor. 2005. War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press. Huntington, Samuel P. 1968. Political Order in Changing Societies. Yale University Press. Hymes, Robert. 1986. Statesmen and Gentlemen. Cambridge University Press. Johnson, David George. 1977. The Medieval Chinese Oligarchy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Kracke, Edward A. 1947. “Family vs. Merit in Chinese Civil Service Examinations Under the Empire.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 10 (2): 103–123. Kuhn, Philip A. 1970. Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China. Harvard University Press. Kurtz, Marcus J. 2013. Latin American State Building in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge University Press. Lavely, William, and R. Bin Wong. 1998. “Revising the Malthusian Narrative: The Comparative Study of Population Dynamics in Late Imperial China.” Journal of Asian Studies 57 (3): 714–748. Lee, Sukhee. 2009. Negotiated Power. Harvard University Asia Center. Levi, Margaret. 1988. Of Rule and Revenue. University of California Press. Li, Tao. 1979 [1177]. The Extended Continuation to Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance (Xu zizhitongjian changbian). Zhonghua Book Company (Zhonghua shuju).

4

THE SOVEREIGN’S DILEMMA: STATE CAPACITY AND RULER …

97

Li, Zhixian. 2002. A Study of Yang Yan and His Two-Tax Law (Yangyan jiqi liangshuifa yanjiu). China Social Sciences Press (Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe). Liang, Fangzhong. 1989. Collection of Liang Fangzhong’s Economic History Essays (Liangfangzhong jingjishi lunwen ji). Zhonghua Book Company (Zhonghua shuju). Liang, Qichao. 2009 [1908]. Biography of Wang Anshi (Wang Anshi zhuan). Oriental Publishing House (Dongfang chubanshe). Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Stein Rokkan. 1967. Party Systems and Voter Alignments. Free Press. Liu, James T. C. 1959. Reform in Sung China: Wang An-shih (1021–1086) and His New Policies. Harvard University Press. Magaloni, Beatriz. 2006. Voting for Autocracy. Cambridge University Press. Malthus, Thomas Robert. 1992 [1806]. An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, A View of Its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness. Cambridge University Press. McDermott, Joseph P. 2013. The Making of a New Rural Order in South China. Cambridge University Press. Migdal, Joel S. 1988. Strong Societies and Weak States. Princeton University Press. Naito, Konan. 1992 [1922]. “A Summary of Tang Song Times.” Chap. 2 in Selected Translations of Japanese Scholars’ Research on Chinese History (Riben xuezhe yanjiu zhonguo shi lunzhu xuanyi), edited by Junwen Liu, 1:10–18. Zhonghua Book Company (Zhonghua shuju). North, Douglass C., and Barry R. Weingast. 1989. “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in SeventeenthCentury England.” The Journal of Economic History 49: 803–832. Qiao, Jitang, Luo Wei, Fupeng Li, and Xuehui Li. 1996. The Complete Biographies of Chinese Emperors (Zhongguo huangdi quanzhuan). Industry/Commerce Press (Gongshang chuban-she). Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, and Roy Bin Wong. 2011. Before and Beyond Divergence. Harvard University Press. Rowe, William T. 2009. China’s Last Empire. Harvard University Press. Shi, Zhihong, and Yi Xu. 2008. Finance in the Late Qing, 1851–1894 (Wanqing caizheng). Shanghai University of Finance/Economics Publishing House (Shanghai caijing daxue chuban-she). Skinner, G William. 1985. “Presidential Address: The Structure of Chinese History.” The Journal of Asian Studies: 271–292. Slater, Dan. 2010. Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia. Cambridge University Press. Smith, Paul Jakov. 2009. “Shen-tsung’s Reign and the New Policies of Wang An-shih, 1067–1085.” Chap. 5 in The Cambridge History of China. Volume

98

Y. WANG

5, Part 1, The Sung Dynasty and Its Precursors, 907–1279, edited by Denis Twitchett and Paul Jakov Smith, 347–483. Cambridge University Press. Soifer, Hillel David. 2015. State Building in Latin America. Cambridge University Press. Somers, Robert M. 1979. “The End of the T’ang.” Chap. 10 in The Cambridge History of China: Sui and T’ang China, 589–906, Party I, edited by Denis Twitchett, 3:682–789. Cambridge University Press. Stasavage, David. 2020. The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today. Princeton University Press. Stone, Lawrence. 1965. The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641. Clarendon Press. Svolik, Milan W. 2012. The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. Cambridge University Press. Tackett, Nicolas. 2014. The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy. Harvard University Press. Tilly, Charles. 1992. Coercion, Capital and European States. Wiley-Blackwell. Twitchett, Denis. 1970. Financial Administration under the T’ang Dynasty. Cambridge University Press. Wakeman, Frederic. 1975. The Fall of Imperial China. Free Press. Wang, Yeh-chien. 1973. Land Taxation in Imperial China, 1750–1911. Harvard University Press. Wang, Yuhua. 2022. The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development. Princeton University Press. Wasserman, Stanley, and Katherine Faust. 1994. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge University Press. Wechsler, Howard J. 1979. “The Founding of the T’ang Dynasty: Kao-tsu (Reign 618–26).” Chap. 3 in The Cambridge History of China: Sui and T’ang China, 589–906, Party I, edited by Denis Twitchett, 3:150–187. Cambridge University Press. Wittfogel, Karl. 1959. Oriental Despotism. Yale University Press. Xi, Tianyang. 2019. “All the Emperor’s Men? Conflicts and Power-Sharing in Imperial China.” Comparative Political Studies 52 (8): 1099–1130. Yu, Yingshi. 2003 [1956]. The Relationship Between the Great Clans and the Founding of the Eastern Han Dynasty (Donghan zhengquan zhi jianli yu shizu daxing zhi guanxi). Shanghai People’s Press (Shanghai renmin chubanshe). Zelin, Madeleine. 1984. The Magistrate’s Tael. University of California Press. Zhang, David D, Chi Yung Jim, George CS Lin, Yuan-Qing He, James J Wang, and Harry F Lee. 2006. “Climatic Change, Wars and Dynastic Cycles in China over the Last Millennium.” Climatic Change 76 (3): 459–477. Zhao, Dingxin. 2009. “The Mandate of Heaven and Performance Legitimation in Historical and Contemporary China.” American Behavioral Scientist 53 (3): 416–433. Zhao, Dingxin. 2015. The Confucian-Legalist State. Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 5

“The Great Affairs of the States”: Man, the State and War in the Warring States Period Ke Meng and Jilin Zeng

Introduction As Ancient Greece was to the Western world, China’s Warring States period (476–221 BCE) witnessed the emerging thoughts and practices of international relations.1 During this period, Qin defeated the other six states and unified China, contradicting the conventional wisdom about the balance of power generated from the Western experience.

1 Chan (1999), Ye (2005a, b), Yang and Wang (2005), Yan and Xu (2008), Deng (2015), Downs and Rocke (1994).

K. Meng (B) School of Public Policy & Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China e-mail: [email protected] J. Zeng School of Government, Peking University, Beijing, China

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Z. Wang (ed.), The Long East Asia, Governing China in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_5

99

100

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

Investigating the origins of these interstate wars can, on the one hand, reexamine and modify international relations theories of war in a premodern non-Western context and, on the other hand, shed light on a new approach to understanding Qin’s unification. Currently, the relevant literature either considers the expansion of Qin as a natural result of successful legalist reforms at the domestic level2 or examines the diplomatic strategies of states at the systemic level.3 However, both lines of literature fail to address the interplay between the two levels. One reason is that they assume each state as a unitary player in the interstate arena and warfare as the only concern of the dukes. In this article, we highlight the domestic ruling crisis posed by recalcitrant old nobilities and propose a cross-level approach to analysing the causes of interstate wars. Our approach first draws on and then diverges from the mainstream institutional explanations of war, with which much of the recent literature on the relationship between international conflicts and internal structures is concerned. As a typical institutional explanation, the selectorate theory uses the size of the winning coalition to examine each state’s internal political system and to explain interstate wars. Here, the size of the winning coalition is determined by the size of the winning coalition (i.e. those constituents whose support is essential to keep a leader in power) relative to the selectorate (i.e. those with at least a nominal say in choosing leaders).4 Then, regimes can be classified along a spectrum of coalition size, from democracies (with large winning coalitions) to autocracies (with small ones). The place on the spectrum will determine the constraints on the leaders of the states while they are deciding whether to wage war abroad. Unlike autocratic leaders, democratic leaders need to manage a large winning coalition, and are therefore under more constraints. This tends to make them more cautious about declaring an external war.5 Further development of the institutional explanations applies other definitions and measurements of the winning coalition6 and uses a variety

2 Hui (2005), Zhao (2009). 3 Wei (2003), Mei (2007), Xin and Zeng (2010). 4 Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003). 5 Bueno de Mesquita et al. (1999), 2004), Bausch (2015). 6 Clarke and Stone (2008), Kennedy (2009), Gallagher and Hanson (2015).

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

101

of calculation matrices of the costs and benefits of wars.7 Nonetheless, all institutional explanations of war base their analyses on the assumption that the sizes and members of winning coalitions of a state are exogenously given and are not easily be challenged by wars; they also share an obsession with supporting the democratic peace theory which tends to categorise states into democratic and autocratic ones.8 When it comes to wars before the birth of modern democracy, however, the institutional explanations need to be modified and extended. As we will show in our case of the Warring States period, the winning coalition may be emboldened to replace the leadership, hence posing threats to the incumbent. In turn, leaders facing such threats, instead of simply responding to the needs of the winning coalitions, may restructure it by expelling disloyal members. When this happens, going to war against a foreign state becomes a good opportunity for the leaders to restructure their winning coalition, especially if the external enemy is much weaker and the chances of victory are good. Here, restructuring refers to enlarging the candidate pool to replace people who show signs of disloyalty or insubordination. To avoid being replaced, members of the winning coalition will intensify their loyalty.9 This new context then necessitates the relaxation of the assumption that the winning coalitions of a state are exogenously given. Therefore, by allowing the possibility of a winning coalition to make structural changes, this paper constructs a cross-level framework to patch the theoretical gaps of literature and test proposed hypotheses through statistical regression. Our framework considers the dukes of each state during the Warring States period as the leaders in the selectorate theory, and the nobles holding high-ranking positions as the initial members of the winning coalition. Learning from numerous precedents, the Warring States dukes felt threatened by recalcitrant nobles who were plotting against them, members of the literati and gentry were selected to replace the established nobility and join the restructured winning coalition. When we looked at this history from “the second image reversed”,10 we found that wars created new channels for upward social mobility,

7 Chiozza and Goemans (2004), 2011), Carter (2017). 8 Kant (1972), Russett and Oneal (2001), Reiter and Stam (2002). 9 Weber (1978), Bueno de Mesquita and Smith (2011). 10 Gourevitch (1978).

102

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

allowing ordinary people with military talent to climb the social ladder. Thus, a new class of military upstarts emerged to counterbalance the old nobility. Moreover, wars created opportunities for the dukes to change the winning coalition. While the dukes would not face grave consequences for losing a war,11 the benefits of winning a war were tempting. A duke who defeated a foreign state frequently acquired new lands; more land meant a larger labour force and a larger army. Thus, winning a war helped the dukes to accumulate military and economic strength and to outcompete the rest of the nobility. From the perspective of the second image, the more constraints from the winning coalition dukes face, the more serious ruling crises is. To overcome these constraints, the dukes are incentivised to wage coalitionchanging wars, especially those with the greater chances of victory. In other words, the seriousness of ruling crises within each state determines the importance of “the chances of victory” when the duke is deciding whether to wage war. The interaction between domestic politics and international practices explains the causes and evolution of wars during the Warring States period. Unlike the mainstream institutional explanations of wars, this paper presents a new framework that breaks the assumption of an exogenously given and fixed winning coalition and identifies the possible restructuring power that wars have on winning coalitions. Thus, our framework goes beyond the contemporary dichotomy of democracy versus autocracy and initiates a discussion on a broader history of international relations. For the international relations studies of the Warring States period, we do not restrict ourselves to the few wars aiming at a balance of power. Instead, we study the entire period to find the roots of wars and comprehend Qin’s unification from a new angle. Our research is the first to build a panel database on the Warring States period that contains all the interstate wars and the domestic political condition of each state. We also created a dyadic dataset that pairs the initiator and target states in interstate wars, which allows the comparison of states in terms of important indicators such as their power gaps. As a result, it is possible to test the proposed hypotheses for our new framework. The rest of this paper is structured as follows. First, we review the literature on institutional explanations of war based on the selectorate

11 Zhao (2004).

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

103

theory and highlight their assumptions of a fixed and exogenously given winning coalition. We suggest that this literature has logical limitations in analysing the causes of wars and in comprehending the interaction between internal and international conflicts. Next, drawing data from Warring States China, we relax the assumption and construct a cross-level framework that utilises both ideas from the second image and the second image reversed. We then propose our hypotheses and test them through panel and dyadic data analysis. In the final section, we present our findings and explain how the Qin state broke the balance of power and emerged as a unified empire with our cross-level framework.

Leaders, the Winning Coalition and Interstate wars---An Institutional Explanation Why do wars happen? Waltz’s second image theory attributes one of the main causes of war to the internal structure of separate states.12 Although initially criticised as reductionist,this theory was reconsidered after the Cold War ended, and globalisation started.13 In theory, the internal structure of states could be defined in several ways. In practice however, with the popularisation of democratic peace theory, the dichotomy of democracy versus autocracy became the primary basis for classifying state structures. Following such a dichotomised framework, the institutional explanations of war that emerged in the late twentieth century introduced the perspective of leaders’ rational choice to explain causes of war. This new approach takes participation in wars as a means of protecting the interests of the leaders. The underlying assumption is, faced with institutional constraints, leaders wage an external war if and only if the war is in their interest. Thus, it is essential to consider how the interests of leaders will be affected by interstate wars, before we can examine the causes of any given war. If we comprehend the domestic roots of interstate war from the second image, we must first look at how interstate war affects domestic politics from a “second image reversed” point of view.14 This raises the following questions. What implications does making a war decision have for leaders of different types of governments? Is initiating wars 12 Waltz (2001). 13 Legro and Moravcsik (1999), Kapstein (1995). 14 Gourevitch (1978).

104

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

abroad a threat to the political survival of state leaders, or a final resort to distract the population’s attention from conflicts at home? The answers will determine how leaders calculate the costs and benefits of war and their final decisions to wage or avoid an interstate war. Focusing on the “loss aversion” that leaders make in the course of decision-making,15 scholars providing institutional explanations for war are primarily concerned with the potential risks and consequences of war.16 James Fearon proposed the audience-cost theory and emphasised that political attrition is a public event being observed by domestic political audiences. These audiences constantly evaluate the performance and ability of the leaders. State leaders incur audience cost by being criticised, condemned, or even dismissed should they back down during a public confrontation with another state or break a promise. Thus, in democracies where decision-making processes are more transparent and stronger domestic audiences are more capable of generating audience costs, leaders are more cautious when signalling selective threats. Given such caution, democracies can signal their intention, including war threats, more effectively and credibly, triggering a deeper fear in their rivals and forcing them to concede. In either case, democracies under more public scrutiny and subject higher audience costs are less likely to engage in open confrontation than their authoritarian counterparts.17 Unlike the audience-cost theory that looks at bargaining period and the pre-war environment within individual states, the selectorate theory proposed by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al. focuses on the costs of military defeat.18 This theory divides domestic audiences into two groups: the selectorates who nominally participate in leadership selection and the winning coalition whose support eventually translates into the victory of a candidate. To stay in power, leaders need to retain the support only of the winning coalition. Empirical research backing the theory suggests that facing a large winning coalition, democratic leaders use public goods that reach more people to retain the loyalty of their winning coalition. Whenever war is considered, only winning would allow democratic leaders to

15 Levy (1996, 1997). 16 Filson and Werner (2004), Jackson and Morelli (2007), Baliga et al. (2011), Ramsay

(2018). 17 Fearon (1994), Schultz (2001). 18 Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003).

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

105

obtain and provide more public goods to the coalition, hence ensuring support from the coalition. Thus, democracies would make sure that they will win the war before they engage in one. In contrast, autocratic leaders need only a few private goods to garner support from the winning coalition. Thus, the amount of support these leaders receive will be less affected by the outcomes of war abroad. Hence, the autocratic leaders may be less selective about engaging in wars.19 However, the selectorate theory, as Hein Goemans suggests, only acknowledges that leaders who fail to meet the needs of the winning coalition will be forced to resign but does not consider what will happen to these former leaders afterwards.20 Goemans finds that if autocrats lose a war, they are more likely to resign through irregular processes, such as exile, imprisonment, or even execution after stepping down. In contrast, the cost of defeat is much lighter for democratic leaders. Most of them will step down through a regular process and enjoy a decent life after leaving office. As a result, leaders of democratic countries are more emboldened to compromise and avoid international war, while leaders of autocratic countries will “fight for survival”.21 Several scholars have also noted that countries do not pay for war only after they have been defeated. Instead, they start to incur heavy costs as soon as mobilisation begins. In democracies, social spending helps to buy majority support from the winning coalition. However, when preparing for a war, the surge in military expenditure will inevitably cause social spending to plummet. Thus, democratic leaders, fearing the loss of support from their winning coalition, are more cautious when making war-related decisions.22 In every case, going to war is risky. How state leaders calculate and take these risks is determined by different institutional conditions and constraints. In institutional explanations, state leaders seem to be always at the receiving end where they can only try to avoid the audience cost, respond to the winning coalition’s requests, or worry about what will happen to them after they have left office. These stories repeat the ideas underlying the false dichotomy of democracy versus autocracy, and never go beyond the boundary set by the democratic peace theory.23 Moreover, 19 Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2004), Morrow et al. (2008), Bausch (2015). 20 Goemans (2000, 2008). 21 Chiozza and Goemans (2004), Debs and Goemans (2010). 22 Carter (2017). 23 Gallagher and Hanson (2015).

106

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

these explanations that stress the costs of war or institutional constraints frequently explain only why a specific type of country tends not to wage or engage in wars but does not explain why some leaders choose to start a war. In fact, wars can be beneficial for leaders. Some scholars have already offered, beyond institutional explanations, some ideas. The diversionary theory of war suggests that when state leaders are threatened by domestic political turmoil or economic downturn, they may initiate an international conflict to distract their people’s attention and improve their political standing. Such a strategy was adopted in various historical situations ranging from the Roman Empires to the two world wars and to postwar United States.24 There are two mechanisms for leaders to ensure their political survival using diversionary conflicts. The rally-around-theflag effect causes an increase in national fervour and support for the political leader. By creating an out-group that poses an external threat, the leaders urge members of the state to stop criticising the malfunctioning government to blame domestic failure on outside forces.25 The second mechanism highlights the final opportunity for leaders to “gamble for resurrection”, where political leaders in dire domestic conditions and facing forced resignation are willing to take high-risk foreign policy decisions including starting wars. Here, desperate leaders will wage war in a last-ditch effort to restore domestic support, whereas a defeat will not cause anything worse than a resignation that was already expected.26 Following the logic of the diversionary theory of war, many empirical studies scrutinise the impact of domestic turmoil on war decisions. However, these studies have not yielded satisfactory results and obtained weak or even no correlation in quantitative tests.27 Just as many scholars correctly criticise, the diversionary theory of war, while seeming plausible, needs a set of strict conditions and assumptions before it can be used to explain real-world scenarios.28 There are many counterexamples to this theory. Some countries have waged wars of colonisation or expansion.

24 Bodin (1955), Mayer (1969), Mueller (1970). 25 Levy (1989). 26 Downs and Rocke (1994), Richards et al. (1993), Smith (1996). 27 Chiozza and Goemans (2003), Meernik and Waterman (1996), Leeds and Davis

(1997). 28 Levy and Thompson (2010).

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

107

In others, external confrontations intensified domestic conflicts. Thus, to make their arguments more convincing, and influenced by the institutional explanations, scholars supporting the diversionary theory of war prefer to integrate their analysis with more institutional restrictions. This approach is taken to analyse the differences between democratic and autocratic countries that wage diversionary wars,29 or to explain the rise of nationalism during democratisation.30 This paper believes that the most insightful contribution of the diversionary theory of war is its recognition of leadership’s ability to use international conflicts to solve domestic problems, hence shifting the discussion on causes of war to the individual. These leaders’ ability to defend their interests through manipulation of the international environment proves that they are not mere recipients of institutional pressures. However, more insightful discussion is limited by the democracy versus autocracy dichotomy and the resulting democratic prejudice in institutional explanations. Because of the popularisation of democratic peace theory and scarce data, these institutional explanations easily assume that the structure of the state (democracy or autocracy) is exogenously given and cannot be changed by war. However, if we could integrate the perspectives of the diversionary war theory and the institutional explanations, we would be able to break the assumptions embedded in institutional explanations. Just as Daron Acemoglu mentioned, in weakly institutionalised countries, like autocratic states, the institutional environment, including forming the winning coalition, is not exogenously given. Instead, such an institutional environment emerged from political competitions within the state.31 In these competitions, the members of the winning coalition will accumulate power, consolidate their positions, and even attempt to replace the incumbent leaders. Hence, their presence becomes not only constraints upon, but even threats to the leadership. Petros G. Sekeris suggests that, in such cases, leaders frequently do not choose to accede to a winning coalition’s requests.32 Instead, they can restructure the winning

29 Miller (1995), DiLorenzo (2019). 30 Mansfield and Snyder (1995, 2002, 2005). 31 Acemoglu et al. (2008). 32 Sekeris (2011).

108

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

coalition to minimise their costs and retain their power. Several such situations occurred before the birth of democracy. Were there any better ways than wars to reorganise the winning coalition before democratic states were established? This paper relaxes the assumption of an exogenously given winning coalition and draws data from China’s Warring States to construct a cross-level analytical framework. By applying this framework, we explain how leaders use interstate war to restructure the winning coalition and how ruling crises caused by the threats from the winning coalition within separate states embolden leaders to go to war.

Analytical Framework: The Dukes, Courtiers, and Wars “The great affairs of a state are sacrifice and warfare.”33 This quote from Zuozhuan (左传), or the Commentary of Zuo, an ancient Chinese narrative, guides the construction of an analytical framework for this study. Highlighting sacrifice and warfare, the quote inspires us to construct a cross-level analytical framework that looks at the interaction between internal politics (focusing on the patriarchal system and sacrifice) and international warfare (focusing on armed attacks). Liu Xiang, a litterateur from the Western Han dynasty, noted in the preface of the Strategies of the Warring States (Zhanguo Ce, 战国策) that “after Confucius’s passing, the Tian family replaced the Lyu family and became the ruler of the Qi; its six courtiers dismembered the State of Jin; the virtue of morality had been forgotten, and the hierarchical division was no longer honoured. When Duke Xiao of Qin took power, people abandoned the rite and started to promote wars …”34 This quote reveals two plights facing the dukes of the Warring States. On the internal level, the pecking order between the dukes and the courtiers started to collapse. Thus, the dukes were haunted by the fear that some disloyal nobles may overthrow the crown and were trying every method to hold power. On the international level, comity and rite were no longer the principles of interstate interactions. Instead, people began to value power and strength. As a result, a Hobbesian and Machiavellian international system started to emerge.35 These two 33 Zuozhuan (1981), “The Thirteenth Year of Cheng”. 34 Zhanguo Ce (1991), “The Preface”, 1991. 35 Hui (2005).

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

109

plights together defined the Warring States period, so we are prompted to build a cross-level analytical framework that integrates internal political conditions with the international behaviour of individual states. However, current research on the attacks initiated by the dukes during the Warring States period tend to concentrate on one of two levels. Based on the second image that emphasises internal politics, Victoria Tin-bor Hui follows Charles Tilly’s idea of states making war and argues that the “self-strengthening reforms” of individual states fuelled the coercive transformation in the international system and eventually urged the formation of a Leviathan system.36 In other words, the “selfstrengthening reforms,” especially those in the state of Qin, promoted and exacerbated interstate wars. However, other scholars, including Zhao Dingxin and Qi Haixia, criticised the logic of self-strengthening reforms as reverse causation.37 The reforms of individual states did not aim at self-strengthening. Instead, these reforms only became self-strengthening after they enhanced state capacity and created impulses for a reform of the international system. Hence, we need to question the reasons for these reforms and how they were related to the outbreak of interstate wars. Hui’s answer to this question is simplistic. She attributes the emergence, success, and resulting consequences of the “self-strengthening reforms” to individuals’ leadership abilities. She assumes that a wise leader will attract and be able to rely on capable and loyal followers, and a bad ruler will have only cunning subordinates. However, there is a set of historical and institutional conditions to be met before the wise leaders rely on capable advisors. For example, the Lord of Xinling (信陵君) in Wei was the brother of the Duke of Wei, and Lian Po (廉颇) in Zhao was one of the greatest generals of the Warring States period. However, they both lost the trust of their dukes and were dismissed when the ambassador of Qin plotted against them. These anecdotes demonstrated how the trust between leaders and followers could be easily destroyed. While studies based on the third image criticised Hui’s overemphasis on the characteristics and strategies of the constituent units in the international system, these studies, as well, focus merely on one level. To be specific, these studies argue that the greater the pressure on the system level, the more rational the individual units will be. The

36 Hui (2005). 37 Zhao (2011), Qi (2015).

110

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

internal reforms urged by system-level pressure would also make the units more homogenous.38 Thus, the wars during the Warring States period, whether outcomes of a grand unification agenda,39 responses to potential threats,40 or the product of “anti-balance of power” expansion,41 were all influenced by international norms and the international interactions at the system level.42 However, most of the research based on the third image regards warfare as the single most important topic during the Warring States period and ties the rational choices made by the dukes to the success or failure of the wars. By doing so, they ignore the fact that internal politics were evolving and mattered. As Zhao Dingxin reveals, most of the wars during the Warring States period were not fatal for the big states, and posed little threat to the ruling dukes.43 The real threats came from internal ruling crises caused by disloyal nobles, as suggested by Zhanguo Ce. Such ruling crises had institutional causes. Bueno de Mesquita et al. assert that the winning coalition is made up of nobles who inherited their power in a strictly hereditary system.44 Hence, in ancient China, the ministers (qin dafu, 卿大夫) appointed under the patriarchal system naturally became members of the winning coalition. According to the patriarchal system in the Spring and Autumn period, these ministers inherited their political power and wealth and dominated high-ranking positions in each state. The legitimacy of their power originated entirely from their blood lineages and could not be challenged by the dukes. Therefore, although the patriarchal system outlined the obligations of the dukes and the nobles, it also emboldened the disloyal nobles and brought hidden troubles to the dukes.45 Contrary to the assumption of an exogenously given winning coalition underlying the institutional explanations, as time went by, the winning 38 Liu (2019). 39 Xin and Zeng (2010). 40 Qi (2015). 41 Liu (2019). 42 Wang and Qi (2013). 43 Zhao (2004). 44 Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003). 45 Yang (2014).

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

111

coalition could evolve and be influenced by endogenous forces. Gradually, the strength of the noblemen in the winning coalition grew, and the dukes became less able to provide enough private goods to bribe these noblemen in exchange for their support. As a result, these noblemen became more ambitious and even wished to overthrow the incumbent leadership, precipitating ruling crises during the mid- and late-Spring Autumn period. Take the State of Lu as an example. The three Huans (三桓)—the Jisun family (季孙氏), the Shusun family (叔孙氏), and the Mengsun family (孟孙氏) were the most distinguished noble families. Many of them had been appointed to ministerial posts. After helping the duke solve the crisis of Qingfu and after expelling the Dongmen family, the power of the three Huans was consolidated. They controlled politically important positions including Sikong and Sikou.46 Militarily, the army were divided into four parts, with the Jisun family taking two, and the Shusun and Mengsun families taking one each.47 Economically, the three Huan families collected taxes and kept the revenue for themselves. Hence, the taxpayers were subordinated to the Huans, and the power of the state declined.48 When the time came to the Duke Dao of Lu, the duke’s power was hardly comparable to that of the Huans.49 The case study of Lu demonstrates how the power relation between the ruler and the ruled could be reversed, and how the old nobility who were also ministers and members of the winning coalition could challenge the hereditary leadership. In fact, there were many times during the Spring and Autumn period when a noble became powerful enough to overthrow the crown. Sima Qian noted that the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu, 春秋) recorded that during this period, 36 dukes were killed, 52 states collapsed, and many more dukes were forced to exile.50 Zhanguo Ce made the exaggerated claiming that Chunqiu had recorded hundreds of regicides. Behind the scenes, it was always the ministers who planned these betrayals

46 Sikong and Sikou were two of the five most important political positions in the Western Zhou. 47 Zuozhuan (1981), “The Fifth Year of Zhao”. 48 Chunqiu Zuozhuan Zhengyi (1990), “The fifth to sixth year of Zhao”. 49 Shiji (1997), “Biography of the Duke Zhou of Lu”. 50 Shiji (1997), “Taishigong Xu”.

112

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

and killings.51 Thus, just as Chen Lai argues, the Spring and Autumn period was “an era of ministers”.52 The start of the Warring States period coincided with the end of the era of ministers. While the results of the ruling crises in each state became clear, the succession system through which power and wealth were inheritable continued to exist. More nobles turned against their dukes. With these complicated domestic conditions, states could not be generalised as units with standardised internal systems which behave rationally in the international system. Meanwhile, history had taught the dukes that power relation between themselves and their ministers could be easily reversed–some of the dukes themselves had previously been nobles.53 For them, it was more urgent to overcome the internal threats posed by disloyal members of the winning coalition than to expand externally. Hence, it becomes understandable that these dukes did not behave in accordance with the predictions of institutional explanations, where they had to appease the old patrimonial nobility in the winning coalition and wait for the nobility to expand their power and influences. Instead, the dukes of the Warring States carried out bureaucratic reforms, restructured and weakened the winning coalitions, and enhanced the centralisation of power. These actions were popularly welcomed by the rising commoners. Specifically, the legalist reforms abolished the succession system through which power and wealth were inheritable and revoked the aristocratic privileges. Moreover, these reforms established a set of principles that rewarded contributions and punished wrongdoing. These principles granted a large number of privately educated commoners, literati, and outstanding soldiers with opportunities to enter politics. Consequently, the candidate pool for the winning coalition was expanded, and members in the coalition became more substitutable. Fearful of being replaced, the members of the winning coalition became more loyal to the dukes. Ever since Li Kui’s legalist reform in Wei, reorganising the winning coalition became a crucial part of reforms in each state.54 Consequently, chancellors (zai xiang, 宰相) from grass roots backgrounds moved to

51 Yin (1987). 52 Chen (2009), 247. 53 Zhao (2011). 54 Du (1990).

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

113

the centre of the political stage.55 Being the head of the administrative organ in each state and the superior of all other government officials, the position of chancellor used to be monopolised by old nobility. These chancellors’ aristocratic backgrounds emboldened them to criticise and even dismiss dukes who constantly made the same mistakes. In contrast, the chancellors, coming from humble backgrounds and lacking a solid power base, depended on the dukes. When the dukes ignored their suggestions and advice, all they could do was leave the state.56 Thus, the backgrounds of the incumbent chancellors could explain how well the dukes restructured the winning coalition within each state. Looking at the chancellors’ backgrounds therefore offers a perspective to study the internal affairs of each state. What does applying the second image reversed theory tell us about the relationship between the interstate wars and bureaucratisation, which restructures the winning coalition? Clausewitz claimed that “war is the continuation of politics by other means”.57 In fact, reforms could not happen overnight and might be attacked by the old nobility. The process of reform might raise many conflicts of interest. For example, Wu Qi, the leader of the legalist reform in Chu, was assassinated. Shang Yang, the engineer of Qin’s legalist reforms, was persecuted and decapitated. Hence, to hasten the reshuffling of the winning coalition, an external war was a last-ditch way to create new opportunities for the dukes. Some sources have argued the conflicts of the Warring States facilitated the bureaucratisation of individual states.58 For instance, war opened new channels for upward social mobility. During the Warring States period, the infantry replaced the chariots that had been dominated by nobles and became the mainstream mode of warfare. Meanwhile, the legalist reforms awarded noble titles based on military achievements instead of blood. This system encouraged ordinary soldiers to fight hard.59 Under such a system, many commoners were able to earn a noble title and enter politics. Some military strategists were admired by their dukes. Cho-yun Hsu has pointed out that the fierce wars of the Warring States period 55 Chao (1998), Hsu (1965), He (1996). 56 Mengzi (1992), “Wanzhang Xia”. 57 Clausewitz and Graham (1990). 58 Kiser and Cai (2004), Zhao (2011), Chen (2021). 59 Hanfeizi (1998), “Xian Xue”.

114

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

created a desperate need for military strategists, tacticians, organisers, and warriors.60 Some historians call this group of people “the class of military upstarts”.61 Given their backgrounds, they unquestionably supported the reforms that restructured the winning coalition. These military upstarts countered the influence of the old nobility.62 For instance, in Qin these upstarts were able to petition the Duke of Qin, who had ordered the execution of Shang Yang, to continue Shang’s legalist reforms. This leads to our first hypothesis: H1 The higher intensity a state encountered during external wars, the more likely its duke is to appoint a chancellor (zaixiang ) of humble parentage. Given that waging external wars would help the dukes to create a new winning coalition and following second image, it is more likely for the dukes to wage interstate war when they felt threatened by the members of the winning coalition. For example, King Zhaoxiang of Qin felt threatened by his uncle, Wei Ran. The latter, Empress Dowager Xuan’s brother, was extremely powerful both in the military and in politics. Fan Sui, a commoner, told the king that since he had the bravest warriors and the most chariots and horses, Qin could have easily defeated other states. However, Qin remained in the Hangu Pass for 15 years because Wei Ran was not loyal to the king and was reluctant to contribute to his unification agenda.63 The king agreed with Fan, and Fan was admitted into the office. Thus, for any kings or dukes who felt threatened, waging an interstate war could be their excuse to solve the internal problems. By waging interstate war, the dukes could attribute the failure to achieve previous strategic goals to the members in the winning coalition. If the state won the war, the newly conquered lands could be distributed to those responsible. The winning coalition could be legitimately restructured through this process, and the ruler’s position could be consolidated. Further, traditionally, for a commoner like Fan to become a chancellor, he needed military victories.64 Thus, in the face of ruling 60 Hsu (1965). 61 Li (2000). 62 Zhu (2017). 63 Shiji (1997), “The Biography of Fan Sui and Cai Ze”. 64 Huang (2002).

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

115

crises, dukes who wished to add new nobles to their coalition had to wage interstate war and ensure that they were going to win. But how could they know? The Art of War by Sun Wu concluded that to improve the odds of winning, a leader had to be confident that he was stronger than his rival.65 In Qin, Fan Sui’s proposal was like what Sun Wu suggested. Fan criticised Wei Ran’s strategy of bypassing Qin’s neighbours, including Han and Wei, and attacking Qi and proposed the strategy of “befriending a distant state while attacking a neighbour”.66 Fan also used the example of how Zhao defeated and annexed the Kingdom of Zhongshan to illustrate the idea that one should only attack because it was sufficiently strong. The King of Zhaoxiang accepted Fan’s proposal. Qin then defeated Wei and occupied Wei’s Huaicheng and Xingqiu. Through proposing the right strategy and helping Qin to win the wars, Fan Sui gained the credentials required to become a chancellor. Therefore, the king could then appoint Fan as the chancellor and dismiss Wei Ran as Fan suggested. The case of Qin proves that attacking weak neighbours made it possible for the duke to win a quick war and restructure the winning coalition. We therefore propose the following hypotheses. H2a The more serious the ruling crisis within a state, the more likely its duke is to wage external war. H2b The more serious the ruling crisis within a state, the more the odds of winning mattered in its duke’s decision to wage external war. In conclusion, this research provides a cross-level framework to explain the attacks and interstate wars during the Warring States period. From the second image reversed point of view, waging external war could facilitate the restructuring of the winning coalition. According to the second image’s viewpoint, to resolve ruling crises within the individual states, the dukes were tempted to wage external war, especially if they were confident of winning. In the next chapter, drawing evidence from our database, we will test the hypotheses.

65 Sunzi Bingfa (2007), “Xingpian”. 66 Shiji (1997), “The Biography of Fan Sui and Cai Ze”.

116

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

Empirical Studies: A Quantitative Analysis on Internal Politics and Interstate War in China’s Warring States Period This paper uses different structural data to test the hypotheses. To test H1, we have constructed a panel dataset that describes the internal politics and interstate wars of major powers during the Warring States period Table 5.1 Variables in the panel data Variable name

Measurement

Sources

Family background of the chancellor

Commoners and ordinary people = 1, ministers = 2, members of the ducal clan (the duke’s immediate and collateral families) = 3 Average yearly number of external wars initiated in every ten years Average yearly marching distances (in km) every ten years Average yearly number of defensive wars initiated in ten years

A dictionary of all chancellors in the Chinese History,68 A list of Warring States Chancellors 69 Chronology of Chinese Wars Writing group of Military History of China (2002) Historical Sources of the Warring States Period edited in chronological order 70 The Historical Atlas of China 71 Statistical Analysis on Correlations of Interstate Wars during the Spring–Autumn and the Warring States Period 72

Number of interstate wars initiated Distances of interstate wars

Number of defensive wars

Region—the South (Nan Man) Region—the North (Bei Di) Ducal family name—Ji

Ducal family name—Ying

Whether the state is in the South. Yes = 1, No = 0 Whether the state is in the North. Yes = 1, No = 0 Whether the surname of the ducal family is Ji. Yes = 1, No = 0 Whether the surname of the ducal family is Ying. Yes = 1, No = 0

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

117

(476–221 BCE)67 with the analytical unit as a country year. Table 5.1 presents the measurements and sources of data. The dependent variable of H1 is the chancellor’s family background. Based on blood lineage, the background variable is categorised as commoners and literati, ministers, and members of the ducal clan (the duke’s immediate and collateral families). The three categories are given a score of 1–3. Members of the latter two categories are the nobles. As mentioned in the last chapter, the family backgrounds of the chancellors could reflect how well the dukes were restructuring the winning coalition. Having chancellors from humble backgrounds indicates that the dukes had expanded the candidate pool for the winning coalition, and had therefore made the members of the coalition more loyal. To make the coding more comprehensible, we want to highlight some points. To get a list of all the recorded chancellors and their tenure in the Warring States history, we cross-referenced the Dictionary of all Chancellors in Chinese History and A List of Warring States Chancellors and validated the data against the Zhanguo Ce and the Records of The Grand Historian (Shiji). If the time of assuming and leaving office for a chancellor was not specified in these books, we would take the time scope in which all the events related to this chancellor were mentioned. If one chancellor succeeded another in a specific year, this year would be regarded as the first year in the new chancellor’s tenure. If more than one chancellor appeared each year in these books, we would consider the positions of each chancellor mentioned and take the one directly involved in administrative matters. If there were no specified differences in the positions held by these chancellors, we would take the chancellor with the humbler background. We made this choice because the emergence of a humble chancellor would suggest that the duke had made a significant effort in changing his coalition. In addition, when quantifying the background variable, if we could not trace a chancellor’s background, we

67 Major powers refer to the seven warring states and the Jin state before being partitioned into three parts. 68 Zhang (2004). 69 Qi (1981). 70 Yang (2016). 71 Tan (1996). 72 Wang and Qi (2013).

118

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

would assume that he was not from a noble family, as history writers would always record down his/her background if a person were coming from a notable family. Also, if there are any disputes over a chancellor’s family background, such as that of the Lord Chunshen of Chu’s, we would give a score of 1. We would then recode these disputed units in the robustness test. Lastly, we omit years in which there were no records of any chancellors.73 The most important independent variable for H1 was the number of interstate wars initiated by each state. This data is gathered from the Chronology of Chinese Wars and is cross-referenced against the Historical Sources of the Warring States Periodedited in chronological order.74 According to H1, as wars became more intense, the possibility of moving up the social ladder based on merit and military prowess increased. The intensity of wars could be measured not only through the number of wars but also from the distances marched by the armies. For ancient wars, distance was a natural barrier. An army needed food and military supplies before it could undertake a march.75 Thus, a well-prepared, longdistance march proved that the state had made a significant investment in the war.76 Such effort also created channels and opportunities for the dukes to change their winning coalition. Hence, this paper borrows Zhao Dingxin’s methodology in the Historical Atlas of China to use distances to interstate wars as another dimension of the intensity of these wars.77 Since the data would be sparse if a war were only counted for one year, and the influence of wars frequently lasted longer, we measure the average yearly distances of interstate wars for every ten years for the baseline model. Meanwhile, we also consider the average yearly number of interstate wars for every five years in the robustness tests. 73 We must admit that the data on the family background of chancellors during the Warring States period is too insufficient to build a complete panel data set. There are also possible selection biases. However, our data set is sufficient to support this study. 74 This study does not consider the military alliance emerged during this period for two reasons. First, the incentives and the nature of the wars differed significantly for the members in the military alliance and could be affected by multi-level cofounding factors. Second, the contribution of each member in the military alliance is hard to gauge, hence affecting the accuracy of the test results. Thus, we only count the number of wars engaged by the initiators of the alliances. 75 Wei Liaozi (2007), “Zhanwei”. 76 Fan (2003). 77 Zhao (2004).

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

119

This paper considers three control variables: the number of defensive wars, the geographical location (region) of each state, and the ducal family names. According to Chen Yuxin’s studies of the wars during the Spring and Autumn period, defensive wars might pressure the dukes to hire more nobles. These nobles usually had more consistent goals and wished to defend their inherited land and population.78 This logic could also apply to the Warring State period. The ducal family name and region variables control the regional differences, as well as the geographical, cultural, and behavioural differences associated with them. Specifically, most of the states belonged to the central Xia region; the state of Chu was part of the South, and the state of Yan was in the North. The states of Yan, Han, and Wei shared the ducal family name of Ji, and the states of Qin and Zhao shared the ducal family name of Ying. Since cross-state panel data is used for this study, we apply the PanelCorrected Stand Error method to estimate the baseline model. This method corrects the AR1 autocorrelation and panel-level heteroskedastic errors and addresses the issues that has arisen in cross-section and timeseries models as well as heteroscedasticity.79 Table 5.2 presents the estimated results. In Table 5.2, Model 1 and Model 2 are baseline models. The former controls only the state/year dummy variables and the latter considers all the control variables. We find a strong negative correlation between the number of interstate war initiated and the chancellors’ family backgrounds. In other words, the more interstate wars initiated, the more likely the dukes were to appoint chancellors from humble families, thereby restructuring the winning coalition. The result is consistent with H1. The rest of the models are robustness tests for the results mentioned above. In Model 3, to avoid measuring errors, we redefine the independent variable to consider the average yearly number of interstate wars initiated every five years (instead of ten). In Model 4, we take the total marching distances during wars as another dimension to measure the intensity of the wars and find that the longer the marching distance, the humbler the chancellor’s background. This finding verifies H1. Next, since the dataset does not pass the Hausman Test, we use the random effect model in Model 5. For

78 Chen (2021). 79 Beck and Katz (1995).

120

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

Table 5.2 The impact of the number of interstate wars initiated on the chancellor’s family background Variables

Model 1 (PCSE)

Number of interstate wars initiated (N = 10) Number of interstate wars initiated (N = 5) Distances of interstate wars Number of defensive wars Region—South

−0.782*** −0.757*** (0.119) (0.120)

Observations Adjusted R-squared

Model 3 (PCSE)

Model 4 (PCSE)

Model 5 (RE)

Model 6 (OL)

−0.757*** −3.100*** (0.137) (0.461) −0.551*** (0.116)

Y

−0.0015*** (0.0003) 0.274 0.304* 0.385** 0.274 0.935 (0.178) (0.179) (0.177) (0.214) (0.808) −0.378*** −0.348*** 0– −0.378*** −1.135*** 0.356*** (0.088) (0.088) (0.108) (0.359) (0.089) 0.052 0.123 0.071 0.052 0.547 (0.142) (0.146) (0.142) (0.212) (0.787) −0.077 −0.092 −0.075 −0.077 −0.251 (0.060) (0.062) (0.060) (0.105) (0.292) −0.929*** −0.936*** −1.006*** −0.929*** −4.128*** (0.080) (0.080) (0.079) (0.097) (0.417) Y Y Y Y Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

2.623*** (0.267) 749 0.520

2.556*** (0.268) 749 0.521

2.529*** (0.269) 749 0.508

2.508*** (0.269) 749 0.516

2.556*** (0.392) 749 749 0.365

Region—North Ducal family name—Ji Ducal family name—Ying Dummy variable— country Dummy variable—year Constant

Model 2 (PCSE)

Y

Note Standard Errors in parentheses, *p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01

Model 6, we apply the ordered logit model considering that the dependent variable is ordinal. All four models support the results obtained from the baseline models. Hence, recalling the second image reversed, waging interstate wars could restructure the winning coalition during the Warring States period. This empirically proven result breaks the assumption underlying the institutional explanations of wars that the winning coalition is

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

121

exogenously given and would have affected the decision-making of the ancient dukes on whether to wage interstate war. To test H2a and H2b and following the operational standard set by the MID Data in the Correlates of War programme,80 this paper constructs a dyadic dataset that contains the paring of initiator and target states in interstate wars, which allows state dyads to be compared in terms of important indicators such as their power. The analytical unit of this dataset is the directed-dyad year. This dataset also allows us to distinguish the initiator and target of each pair. The measurements and sources of data are listed in Table 5.3. The dependent variable for both hypotheses in H2 is the war strategy of the initiator, which describes whether the initiator waged war against the target in the given year in a specific directed pair. The source of the data is consistent with that of the number of interstate wars in H1. The key independent variable for both the hypotheses is the ruling crisis, measured by the reign of the previous duke in the initiator state. There are three reasons to use this measurement. The first reason is that the reign can be viewed as dependent on the probability that the duke was not subject to such important indicators of political stability as coups, unrest, and assassination.81 Therefore, a longer reign of the previous duke indicates his ability to maintain internal stability and grants the incumbent duke a stronger sense of security. The second reason is that in ancient China, the patrilineal inheritance system followed either the agnatic seniority principle or the primogeniture principle. The adoption of the former principle frequently led to succession crises. According to the Records of the Grand Historian, when Duke Xuan of Song died, his throne passed to his younger brother instead of his sons. The younger brother died soon after his succession and returned the throne to the sons of his late brother. Consequently, the sons of the younger brother, thinking that they were the rightful heir to the throne, killed the sons of Duke Xuan. The state fell into disorder and suffered from a persistent crisis.82 In contrast, following the primogeniture principle, which started in Western Zhou, the Mandate of Heaven helped prevent unwanted

80 Ghosn et al. (2004). 81 Blaydes and Chaney (2013), Wang (2017). 82 Shiji (1997), “House of Prince Xiao of Liang”.

122

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

Table 5.3 Dyadic dataset83 Variable names

Measurements

Sources

Decision of the initiator

Whether the initiator waged war against the target. Yes = 1, No = 0

Ruling crises—the reign of the previous duke Ruling crises—unnatural death of the previous duke

Reign or the previous duke for the initiator Whether the previous duke died unnaturally. Yes = 1, No = 0 Average yearly marching distances in ten years (km) for the initiator: Average total marching distances of both sides in ten years Number of counties in the initiator: total number of counties in both sides

Chronology of Chinese Wars, Historical Sources of the Warring States Period edited in chronological order Historical Sources of the Warring States Period edited in chronological order

Power gap—war distance ratio

Power gap—number of counties

Target experience of conquering other states

Whether the target had conquered other states within ten years. Yes = 1, No = 0

Target experience of occupying others’ lands

Whether the target had occupied others’ lands within ten years. Yes = 1, No = 0

Chronology of Chinese Wars, The Historical Atlas of China General History of Chinese Administrative Divisions Overview and pre-Qin dynasty 84 Chronology of Chinese Wars, Historical Sources of the Warring States Period edited in chronological order, The Historical Atlas of China

(continued) 83 The missing values in the variable “Ruling crises—the reign of the previous

duke” were the result of missing historical records for the early dukes of the states of Han and Wei. The missing values in the variable “Ruling crises—unnatural death of the previous duke” are because of the three dukes/kings resigned before they passed away, including the King Huai of Chu, King Hui of Yan, and King Wuling of Zhao. The missing values for the variable “Power gap—number of counties” are the results of insufficient historical evidence. 84 Zhou and Li (2009).

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

123

Table 5.3 (continued) Variable names

Measurements

Geographic proximity

Whether the initiator and the target shared a border Whether the initiator and target were in the same region

Same region

Sources

Correlations of Interstate Wars during the Spring–Autumn and the Warring States Period

(continued)

Table 5.3 (continued) Variable names

Measurements

Shared family name

Whether the initiator and the target had the same family name

Sources

competitions for the throne.85 These anecdotes demonstrate that the seriousness of ruling crises felt by the incumbent duke is positively correlated with the possibility of the brothers of the previous duke fighting for the throne. Thus, the longer the previous duke was in power, the older his brothers would be and were, therefore, the less they were able to threaten the incumbent. Meanwhile, if the previous duke stayed in power for a long period, his sons were more likely to enter adulthood and more likely to have smooth and legitimate succession through the primogeniture system. The third reason is that a longer reign granted the previous duke more time and resources to assist his heir to prepare for the throne and earn the respect of the officials who served the former duke. Hence, the reign of the previous duke can reflect the seriousness of the ruling crises felt by the incumbent duke. In the robustness test, this study measures the ruling crises of the initiator based on whether its previous duke died unnaturally. In other words, we scrutinise whether the previous duke had been assassinated or overthrown. With this indicator, Zhao Dingxin has discovered that the power of nobles was highly positively correlated to the

85 Wang (2009).

124

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

unnatural death of the dukes during the Spring and Autumn Period.86 Zhao’s finding suggests that if the previous duke died unnaturally, the ruling duke would be alerted by the increasing nobility power and feeling more threatened by the internal ruling crises. The other independent variable in H2b is the power gap between the initiator and the target. There are no direct indicators of state power available in the historical literature. We therefore take the average yearly marching distance as an indicator of such power. A longer distance suggests a greater capacity of the state to mobilise resources, hence proving the power of the state. Moreover, dukes usually set up counties that were under their direct control on the newly conquered lands. Meanwhile, the population and taxes collected from these counties could be used by the dukes, which hints at the power of the state.87 Hence, to ensure the robustness of the results, this paper takes the number of counties in each state as another measurement for state power. To measure the power gap and drawing on the international convention, we use the ratio of initiator’s state power to the sum of state powers of the two states.88 If both states scored 0, the value would be considered missing. We also consider a series of control variables. According to Qi Haixia, waging war might be the result of feeling threatened. Except for power gaps, other factors, including the target’s intention to conquer other states and the distance between the initiator and the target, also influenced the duke’s decisions on whether to wage war.89 The intention is measured by whether the target had conquered other states and occupied others’ lands within ten years. Whereas based on the Historical Sources of the Warring States Periodedited in chronological order and The Historical Atlas of China, the latter is measured by whether the initiator shared a border with the target. Moreover, according to Wang and Qi, sharing a family name and living in the same region may also affect the outcome of

86 Zhao (2004). 87 Creel (1964). 88 Anderson and Souva (2010). 89 Qi (2015).

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

125

Table 5.4 The impacts of internal ruling crises on the initiator’s decision to wage war Variables

Model 1

Model 2

Ruling crises—reign of the previous duke

−0.018*** (0.007)

−0.021*** (0.007) 1.749*** (0.247) 0.616* (0.316) −0.105 (0.193) 1.660*** (0.274) 0.975*** (0.283) −0.214 (0.356) −6.530*** (0.389) 8,452

Power gap—war distance ratio Target experience of conquering other states Target experience of occupying others’ lands Geographic proximity Same region Shared family name Constant Observations

−4.482*** (0.281) 11,847

Note Standard Errors in parentheses, *p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01

a war.90 Hence, this paper controls these variables. Given the data structure, this paper uses panel logit regression to estimate the baseline model and obtains the results demonstrated in Table 5.4.91 As indicated in Table 5.4, both Model 1, which only considers the independent variable, and Model 2, which considers other control variables, suggest that the previous duke’s reign is strongly negatively related to the initiator’s decisions to wage war. The shorter reign of the previous duke suggests a more serious ruling crisis. As a result, the incumbent would decide to wage external wars. Thus, H2a is confirmed. We follow up by doing robustness tests and obtain results, as demonstrated in Table 5.5. 90 Wang and Qi (2013). 91 The results of Hausman’ test (not given in the paper) suggest that the panel logistic

regression for testing H2a should use a fixed-effects model, but for testing H2b, only a random-effects model is sufficient. To facilitate analysis and presentation, the models listed in the tables in this paper all use random-effects model. Even if the fixed effects model is used, the results still support the hypotheses of this article, which can be obtained from the author.

Shared family name Constant

−5.009*** (0.254)

0.453*** (0.165)

Model 1 (All samples)

−0.113 (0.199) 1.663*** (0.282) 0.923*** (0.295) −0.202 (0.371) −6.656*** (0.403)

−0.216 (0.203) 1.658*** (0.291) 0.880*** (0.310) −0.453 (0.395) −6.971*** (0.398)

1.688*** (0.269) 1.053*** (0.257) 0.263 (0.338) −6.430*** (0.377)

−0.152 (0.195)

1.787*** (0.251) 0.553* (0.326)

−0.023*** (0.007)

−0.021*** (0.007)

1.837*** (0.258) 0.616* (0.329)

Model 4 (Seven Warring States samples)

Model 3 (non-balance-of-power war samples)

1.654*** (0.253) 0.475 (0.340)

0.436** (0.174)

Model 2 (All samples)

1.616*** (0.277) 0.846*** (0.290) −0.100 (0.362) −6.479*** (0.393)

−0.076 (0.198)

1.817*** (0.257) 0.576* (0.328)

−0.015** (0.007)

Model 5 (The total war period samples)

The impacts of internal ruling crises on the initiator’s decision to wage war (robustness test)

Ruling crises—reign of the previous duke Ruling crises—unnatural death of the previous duke Power gap—war distance ratio Target experience of conquering other states Target experience of occupying others’ lands Geographic proximity Same region

Variables

Table 5.5

1.709*** (0.315) 1.090*** (0.302) −0.299 (0.378) −6.746*** (0.430)

−0.139 (0.202)

1.801*** (0.266) 0.768** (0.324)

0.018** (0.007)

Model 6 (Pre-collapse of Eastern Zhou samples)

126 K. MENG AND J. ZENG

11,807

Observations

8,345

Model 2 (All samples)

8,396

Model 3 (non-balance-of-power war samples)

Note Standard Errors in parentheses, *p < 0.1, **p< 0.05, ***p < 0.01

Model 1 (All samples)

Variables

7,681

Model 4 (Seven Warring States samples) 7,356

Model 5 (The total war period samples) 7,535

Model 6 (Pre-collapse of Eastern Zhou samples) 5 “THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

127

128

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

Table 5.5 presents the results of the robustness test. In Model 2, we take the unnatural death of the previous duke as an indicator of the ruling crisis in initiator states. The result suggests that if the previous duke died unnaturally, the state would experience more serious ruling crises, and a greater likelihood of the incumbent duke waging external war. This conclusion is consistent with the baseline model. We get similar results for Model 2, which considers other control variables. From Models 3 to Model 6, we examine the results for different subsets. First, while a few wars with military coalitions aims at balance of power, the conventional expansion wars follow the “counter balance of power” logic.92 To avoid the complications arising from divergent war logics, we exclude all the samples recorded as balance-of-power wars in literature.93 Second, before it was split, the state of Jin experienced slower bureaucratisation than other states. Thus, its duke might lack the capacity to restructure his coalition. Hence, we exclude all the Jin-related samples in Model 4. Third, according to Zhao Dingxin, the years 419–211 BCE were a period of total war. The wars of this period lasted longer and required more manpower and resources. Moreover, grabbing land became the overriding goal of each state.94 Such changes in the incentives and nature of the wars might have affected the dukes’ war strategies. Thus, in Model 5, we exclude the samples before 419 BCE and scrutinise the total war period. Lastly, after the collapse of Eastern Zhou, the states were no longer bounded by Zhou’s patriarchal system.95 Hence, they might have different decision-making process regarding the war as during the Zhou era. Thus, we exclude the samples after the collapse of Zhou in 256 BCE in Model 6. All these robustness tests support our hypotheses. This paper next looks at the interaction between ruling crises and power gap to test H2b. To avoid the collinearity caused by the interaction, the variables that produce the interaction are centralised in this part of the analysis. The results are presented in Table 5.6. In Table 5.6, Model 1 contains only two independent variables and their interaction term. The coefficient estimate of the interaction term is

92 Liu (2019). 93 According to Qi Haixia, these balance-of-power wars included eight wars such as the

war to conquer Wei and rescue Zhao and the war against Wei to rescue Han. 94 Zhao (2011). 95 The Qin king’s great-grandson Yin’s prayer to the spirits of the Mount Huatai.

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

129

Table 5.6 The impact of the interaction between ruling crises and power gap on the initiator’s decision to wage war Variables

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Ruling crises—reign of the previous duke

−0.009 (0.008) 1.558*** (0.239) −0.036** (0.018)

−0.012 (0.008) 1.665*** (0.247) −0.038** (0.018)

−0.002 (0.007)

Power gap—war distance ratio Reign of the previous duke x War distance ratio Power gap—number of counties Reign of the previous duke x number of counties Whether the target had conquered other states Whether the target had occupied others’ lands Geographic proximity Same region Shared family name Constant Observations

−4.500*** (0.213) 8,497

0.606* (0.316) −0.098 (0.193) 1.654*** (0.273) 0.972*** (0.280) −0.200 (0.353) −6.080*** (0.326) 8,452

1.299*** (0.456) −0.127*** (0.026) 0.298 (0.311) −0.215 (0.189) 1.512*** (0.282) 0.506 (0.314) −0.102 (0.400) −5.693*** (0.344) 8,476

Note Standard Errors in parentheses, *p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01

negative, indicating a negative correlation. That is to say, the longer the reign of the previous duke, the less serious the ruling crisis. As a result, the power gap between states and the decision to wage external war becomes less positively correlated, proving H2b. The results remain robust when adding in a series of control variables, as demonstrated in Model 2. In Model 3, we again use the number of counties each state had as an indicator of state power and obtain a similarly negative coefficient estimate for the interaction term. By far, all three hypotheses are confirmed.

130

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

Conclusion: A New Perspective for Understanding Qin’s Unification Looking at the leadership’s rational choice under different incentive structures and institutional constraints, the institutional explanations of war give us a glimpse of the interaction between internal politics and external wars. However, these explanations are oriented around the democratic peace theory, so they are vulnerable to democratic prejudice. Such explanations assume that institutions, including the winning coalition, are exogenously given in democratic and non-democratic countries alike and fail to consider those that can make a change to winning coalitions. As previous sections have argued, the winning coalition was constantly evolving and posing threats to the leadership when we look at human history. Meanwhile, war was a matter of life and death for both the warriors and their countries. Wars also influenced the evolution of the institutions within these states. Some leaders might be constrained by the winning coalition and hesitate to declare war. Others might take the initiative to restructure the winning coalition, making the coalition members more loyal to the leadership and thus consolidating the regime. Hence, should the assumption of an exogenously given winning coalition be relaxed, we can better interpret the leader’s desires and actions. In so doing, the institutional explanations on the second image and second image reversed theories could be expanded, providing new perspectives for us to comprehend the relationship between man, the state, and war. This paper uses data from the Warring States period and adopts quantitative analysis to examine the mechanism empirically. This paper also demonstrates how the dukes were trying to keep a balance between the internal ruling crises and the external conflicts when “bad government prevailed, and the lord and marquis dominated ceremonies, music and punitive military”.96 Intensive wars created channels for upward mobility, assisting in the restructuring of the winning coalition. As a result, upstarts countered the influence of the old nobles. Moreover, the more severe the ruling crises the dukes were facing, the more incentive they had to wage external war, especially those with the best chances of winning. Consequently, these dukes could rely on the military upstarts to consolidate their power.

96 Lunyu (1992). “Jishi”.

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

131

Unlike other studies of the Warring States period, this paper presents a cross-level analytical framework instead of a single-level analysis. We believe that to understand the warfare among the states, we must link the external wars to internal great affairs such as sacrifices and patriarchal practices. During the Warring States period, the internal politics centred on the patriarchal system were constantly under the threat of ruling crises. Institutionally, the old nobles who inherited their wealth and power through blood lineage had never been challenged. Under such circumstances, when deciding whether to wage external war, the dukes had to consider domestic politics first. A degree of selective affinity was present for these dukes between their wish to restructure the winning coalition and their expansionist ambitions. Hence, this paper examines the selective affinity and brings a new perspective to understanding why dukes waged external war during the Warring States period. It is worth noting that we do not reject the existing analyses on the causes of wars during the Warring States period but respond to these analyses with control variables in our models. For example, the tests carried out for our dyadic model prove that variables including target experience of conquering other states and geographic proximity increased the possibility of war, as Qi Haixia predicted in her model.97 At the same time, we also find that the war initiators did not follow the balance of power logic and waged war against rising powers. Instead, the initiators usually preferred to go to war against and annex the weaker states. We also find that being in the same geographic regions was positively correlated to the decision to wage war, but having the same family name was not. These findings are consistent with previous studies.98 We also need to deal with a few alternative explanations of the causes of wars. First, did dukes wage war for external expansion or for domestic stability? In fact, we do not deny that many interstate wars directly resulted from the desire for expansion, but our statistical analysis does reveal that the timing and target of war were not randomly chosen and that the domestic ruling crisis played a significant role. Second, did the dukes appoint a commoner as prime minister because they simply respect the talents or because they wanted to restructure the winning coalition? Although the discourse prevailed in the Warring States period that rulers

97 Qi (2015). 98 Wang and Qi (2013).

132

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

should promote the talents, we also want to note that aristocrats enjoyed a much higher level of education and visibility than commoners on average. Therefore, we legitimately assume that if a duke recruited a commoner instead of an aristocrat, restructuring the winning coalition should be one of his motivations. Third, did the external wars also influence internal stability, causing reverse causation? To avoid the problem, we measure the ruling crisis through the reign of dukes’ predecessors, which was already determined before the wars took place. With the proposed theoretical framework and empirical research, our findings provide a new angle to another question that has been long debated among the historians of Chinese history. While both the Warring States China and early Europe experienced an era of constant wars, why China eventually emerged as one unified empire under Qin, while Europe was fractured into several territorial states? Many scholars have suggested answers to this question. Some attribute the unification of Qin to unitlevel causes such as the Qin’s successful legalist reform, a favourable terrain, and the absence of nationalism.99 Other scholars have looked at the balance of power and state expansions at the system level.100 This paper integrates the two types of explanations and adds to the cross-level analysis. We argue that the Qin state had more serious ruling crises than other states. These crises forced the dukes of Qin to wage external wars. Also, since it was more likely to win a war and occupy the conquered lands if the target was close to Qin’s territory, the dukes of Qin adopted the strategy of befriending a distant state while attacking a neighbour and eventually unifying China. Our argument diverges from the classical theories on Qin’s unification which emphasised the weak nobles. The classics argue that given Qin’s long distance to China’s cultural centre, people from Qin were less constrained by patriarchal values. As a result, the legal reforms in Qin were smoother and more thorough, making Qin a war machine that strictly acted according to rules and orders regardless of blood lineages. However, if we take a closer look at Qin’s politics, we will realise that the history suggests story that contradicts to the classical argument as summarised in Diagram 5.1. As shown in Diagram 5.1, compared to the other six states, the average years of reign for Qin’s dukes was low, whereas its total years of reign for

99 Hui (2005), Zhao (2009). 100 Wei (2003), Qi (2015), Liu (2019).

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

100

30

25 60

40 20 20 15

Total years of reign for all dukes

80

whose predecessors died unnaturally

Average year of reign for all dukes

133

10 Chu

Qi

Yan

Qin

Zhao

Wei

Han

Average year of reign for all

Total years of reign for all dukes

dukes

whose predecessors died unnaturally

Diagram 5.1 Reigns of dukes during the Warring States

all dukes whose predecessors died unnaturally was the highest. Qin did not face fewer ruling crises with its weak patriarchal system and successful legal reforms. In fact, the recent archaeological and historical evidence showed that Qin did not have any sign of a weaker patriarchal system but instead had a more stubborn one.101 Just as Yan Gengwang suggested, historically, Qin’s dukes frequently clashed with the nobles. While other states had their ups and downs and kept a weak nobility with frequent regime changes, Qin had a strong and long-standing noble class.102 As a result, the nobles in Qin were more capable of threatening the incumbent dukes than were their counterparts in other states. Moreover, benefiting from people’s grudging obedience to the patriarchal values, Qin could carry out more through bureaucratisation and consolidate power in the hands of the duke. However, centralised power also caused officials with close personal ties with the duke to take on important positions and grab power for themselves. As a result, the relatives of the queens (usually with a different ducal family name) emerged 101 Pines (2005), von Falkenhausen (2006), Zhao (2014). 102 Yan (2009).

134

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

and made Qin the first state in Chinese history to be threatened by the queens’ families.103 As mentioned before, King Zhaoxiang’s maternal uncle Wei Ran had dominated the military and politics for 40 years under King Zhaoxiang’s reign. The king was only able to launch his expansionist agenda after he dismissed Wei and destroyed the last country that was militarily comparable to Qin in the battle of Changping.104 Even Ying Zheng, the first emperor of China, was threatened early in his reign by his mother, Queen Dowager Zhao and her secret lover Lao Ai. Witnessing how people from other states could emerge to threaten the crown after Lao Ai’s failed coup, the remaining nobles urged the king to expel all foreign scholars and officials. However, the king accepted Li Si’s proposal and did not expel the foreigners. Eventually, with assistance from these commoners and foreign scholars, the king was able to counterbalance the old nobles and expand his power. Thus, ruling crises inside the state and the King’s expansionist agenda made it possible for Qin to emerge as the hegemon and unify China. Other states, however, were becoming increasingly incapable of initiating wars to counterbalance Qin as Qin grew stronger and expanded its influences. As a result, even when facing their own ruling crises, the dukes in these states would not risk war against Qin but attacked weaker states instead. In the end, Qin inevitably emerged as the sole hegemon and unify China. Qin’s unification resulted from a combination of good timing, strategic location, popular support, and hard work. Qin’s success could not simply be explained in terms of its strength from a unit-level viewpoint, nor its strategic plans and unique opportunities from a system-level viewpoint. Instead, the interaction between internal structure and interstate conflicts offers another perspective for us to understand the choices made by the dukes of Qin and other states and help us to comprehend Qin’s eventual unification. In other words, both Qin and the other six states together made unification possible. In conclusion, this paper relaxed the assumption of an exogenously given winning coalition and demonstrates how dukes of the Warring States broke free of the institutional constraints and restructured their winning coalition. This paper proposes a new perspective to understand

103 Li and Qin (2017). 104 Shiji (1997), “The Biography of Fan Sui and Cai Ze”.

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

135

events during the Warring States, especially the unification of Qin. We hope to inspire future explorations on the causes of unification during in other phase of Chinese history, so that we arrive at a better understanding of why China emerged as a unified country from an international relations perspective.

References Acemoglu, D., Egorov, G., Sonin, K. (2008). ‘Coalition Formation in NonDemocracies,’ Review of Economic Studies, 75 (4), pp. 987–1009. Anderson, S. and Souva, M. (2010). ‘The Accountability Effects of Political Institutions and Capitalism on Interstate Conflict,’ Journal of Conflict Resolution, 54 (4), pp. 543–565. Baliga, S., Lucca, D. O., Sjöström, T. (2011). ‘Domestic Political Survival and International Conflict: Is Democracy Good for Peace?’ The Review of Economic Studies, 2 (78), pp. 458–486. Bausch, W. A. (2015). ‘Democracy, War Effort, and the Systemic Democratic Peace,’ Journal of Peace Research, 42 (4), pp. 435–447. Beck, N. and Katz, J. N. (1995). ‘What to Do (and Not to Do) with Time-Series Cross-Section Data,’ American Political Science Review, 89 (3), pp. 634–647. Blaydes, L. and Chaney, E. (2013). ‘The Feudal Revolution and Europe’s Rise: Political Divergence of the Christian West and the Muslim World before 1500 CE,’ American Political Science Review, 107 (1), pp. 16–34. Bodin, J. (1955). Six Books of the Commonwealth, translated by M. J. Tooley, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Bueno de Mesquita, B., Smith, A., Siverson, R. M., and Morrow, J. D. (1999). ‘An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace,’ The American Political Science Review, 93 (4), pp. 791–807. ———. (2003) The Logic of Political Survival. Cambridge: The MIT Press. ———. (2004) ‘Testing Novel Implications from the Selectorate Theory of War,’ World Politics, 56 (3), pp. 363–388. Bueno de Mesquita, B. and Smith, A. (2011). The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics. New York: Public Affairs Press. ———. (2012). ‘Domestic Explanations of International Relations,’ Annual Review of Political Science, 15, pp. 161–181. Carter, J. (2017). ‘The Political Cost of War Mobilization in Democracies and Dictatorships,’ Journal of Conflict Resolution, 61 (8), pp. 1768–1794. Chan, G. (1999). ‘The Origins of the Inter-state System: Warring States in Ancient China,’ Issues & Studies, 35 (1), pp. 147–166. Chao, F. (1998). ‘On the Powers of Prime Ministers during the Warring States Period,’ Social Sciences in China, (5), pp. 179–192.

136

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

Chen, L. (2009). The World of Ancient Thoughts and Cultures. Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company. Chen, J. (2021). ‘State Formation and Bureaucratization: Evidence from PreImperial China.’ Working Paper. Chiozza, G. and Goemans, H. (2003). ‘Peace through Insecurity: Tenure and International Conflict,’ Journal of Conflict Resolution, 47 (4), pp. 443–467. ———. (2004). ‘International Conflict and the Tenure of Leaders: Is War Still Ex Post Inefficient?’ American Journal of Political Science, 48 (3), pp. 604–619. ———. (2011). Leaders and International Conflict, New York: Cambridge University Press. Chunqiu Zuozhuan Zhengyi. (1990). Annotated by Kan Huang, Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe. Chunqiu Zuozhuan Zhu. (1981). Annotated by Yang Bojun. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Clarke, K. A. and Stone, R. W. (2008). ‘Democracy and the Logic of Political Survival,’ American Political Science Review, 102 (3), pp. 387–392. Clausewitz, C. V. and Graham, J. J. (1990). On War. Champaign, Ill.: Project Gutenberg. Creel, H. G. (1964). ‘The Beginning of Bureaucracy in China: The Origin of the Hsien,’ Journal of Asian Studies, 23 (2), pp. 155–184. Debs, A. and Goemans, H. (2010). ‘Regime Type, the Fate of Leaders, and War,’ American Political Science Review, 104 (3), pp. 430–445. Deng, X. (2015). Conflict and Coordination— Focused on the Wars and Conferences in Spring and Autumn Period. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. DiLorenzo, M. (2019). ‘Leader Survival, Sources of Political Insecurity, and International Conflict,’ Political Research Quarterly, 73 (3), pp. 596–609. Downs, G. W. and Rocke, D. M. (1994). ‘Conflict, Agency and Gambling for Resurrection: The Principal-Agent Problem Goes to War,’ American Journal of Political Science, 38 (2), pp. 362–380. Du, Z. (1990). The Appearance of the ‘Registration of Commoner Households’ and Its Historical Significance: A Study of the Registration of Commoner Households. Taipei: Linking Publishing Co., Ltd. Ethan B. K. (1995). ‘Is Realism Dead? The Domestic Sources of International Politics,’ International Organization, 49 (4), pp. 751–774. Fan, X. ed. (2003). War Moboilizations in Ancient China. Beijing: Military Science Press. Fearon, J. D. (1994). ‘Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes,’ The American Political Science Review, 83 (3), pp. 577–592. Filson, D. and Werner, S. (2004). ‘Bargaining and Fighting: The Impact of Regime Type on War Onset, Duration, and Outcomes,’ American Journal of Political Science, 48 (2), pp. 296–313.

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

137

Fravel, M. T. (2010). “The Limits of Diversion: Rethinking Internal and External Conflict”, Security Studies, 19 (2), pp. 307–341. Gallagher, M. E. and Hanson, J. K. (2015). ‘Power Tool or Dull Blade? Selectorate Theory for Autocracies,’ Annual Review of Political Science, 18, pp. 367–385. Ghosn, F., Glenn, P. and Bremer, S. A. (2004). ‘The MID3 Data Set, 1993– 2001: Procedures, Coding Rules, and Description,’ Conflict Management and Peace Science, 21 (2), pp. 133–154. Goemans, H. (2000). ‘Fighting for Survival, the Fate of Leaders and the Duration of War,’ Journal of Conflict Resolution, 44 (5), pp. 555–579. ———. (2008). ‘Which Way Out? The Manner and Consequences of Losing office,’ Journal of Conflict Resolution, 52 (6), pp. 771–794. Gourevitch, P. (1978). ‘The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics,’ International Organisation, 32 (4), pp. 881–912. Hanfeizi. (1998). Compiled by Wang Xianshen. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. He, H. (1996). The Hereditary Society and Its Collapse: The Spring and Autumn Period of Chinese History. Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company. Hsu, C. (1965). Ancient China in Transition: An Analysis of Social Mobility, 722–222 B.C. Redwood: Stanford University Press. Huang, L. (2002). ‘A Review on the Official Selection System in Qin’, in Huang Liuzhu: Discussions Regarding Qinhan History Culture, Xi’an: Xi’an Sanqin Press. Hui, V. T. (2005). 1st Edition. War and state formation in ancient China and early modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jackson, M. O. and Morelli, M. (2007). ‘Political Bias and War,’ The American Economic Review, 97 (4), pp. 1353–1373. Mueller, J. (1970). ‘Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson,’ American Political Science Review, 64 (1), pp. 18–34. Kant, I. (1972). Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay. New York: Garland. Kennedy, R. (2009). ‘Survival and Accountability: An Analysis of the Empirical Support for ‘Selectorate Theory’,’ International Studies Quarterly, 53 (3), pp. 695–714. Kapstein, E. B. (1995). ‘Is Realism Dead? The Domestic Sources of International Politics,’ International Organization, 49(4), pp. 751–774. Kiser, E. and Cai, Y. (2004). ‘Early Chinese Bureaucratisation in Comparative Perspective: Reply to Zhao,’ American Sociological Review, 69 (4), pp. 608– 612. Leeds, B. A. and Davis, D. R. (1997). ‘Domestic Political Vulnerability and International Disputes,’ Journal of Conflict Resolution, 41 (6), pp. 814–834. Legro, J. W. and Moravcsik, A. (1999). ‘Is Anybody Still a Realist?’ International Security, 24 (2), pp. 5–55.

138

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

Levy, J. S. (1989). The Diversionary Theory of War: A Critique, in Manus I. Midlarsky, ed., Handbook of War Studies, London: Unwin Hyman, pp. 259– 288. ———. (1996). ‘Loss Aversion, Framing, and Bargaining: The Implications of Prospect Theory for International Conflict,’ International Political Science Review, 17 (2) pp. 179–195. ———. (1997). ‘Prospect Theory, Rational Choice, and International Relations,’ International Studies Quarterly, 41 (1), pp. 87–112. Levy, J. S. and Thompson, W. R. (2010). Cause of War. Chichester: WileyBlackwell. Li, K. (2000). ‘The Establishment of Han Empire and the Group of Liu Bang: A Research the Beneficiaries of the Peerage system’. Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company. Li, Y. and Qin, X. (2017). The Waiqi Politics of Ancient China. Beijing: The Commercial Press. Liu, J. (2019), ‘Counter Balance of Power logic’ and the Evolution of International System – Race to Expand and the Demise of the Warring States System,’ Foreign Affairs Review (5), pp. 104–132. Lunyu yizhu. (1992). Annotated by Yang Bojun. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Mansfield, E. D. and Snyder, J. L. (1995). ‘Democratisation and the Danger of War,’ International Security, 20 (1), pp. 5–38. ———. (2002). ‘Democratic Transitions, Institutional Strength, and War,’ International Organization, 56 (2), pp. 297–337. ———. (2005). Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War. Cambridge: MIT Press. Mayer, A. J. (1969). ‘Internal Causes and Purpose of War in Europe, 1870– 1956,’ Journal of Modern History, 41(3), pp. 291–303. Meernik, J. and Waterman, P. (1996). ‘The Myth of the Diversionary Use of Force by American Presidents,’ Political Research Quarterly, 49 (3), pp. 573– 590. Mei, R. (2007). ‘Central-Peripheral Theory: A New Geopolitical Model for Explaining the Rise and Fall of Great Powers’, in International Political Quarterly, 1, pp. 80–93. Mengzi Yizhu. (1992). Annotated by Yang Bojun. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Miller, R. A. (1995). ‘Domestic Structures and the Diversionary Use of Force,’ American Journal of Political Science, 39 (3), pp. 760–785. Morrow, D. J. Bueno de Mesquita, B., Siverson, R. M., Smith, A. (2008). ‘Retesting Selectorate Theory: Separating the Effects of War from Other Elements of Democracy,’ American Political Science Review, 102 (3), pp. 393–400. Pines, Y. (2005). “Bias and Their Sources: Qin History in the ‘Shiji’,” Oriens Extremus, 45 (6), pp. 10–34.

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

139

Qi, S. (1981). Discovery and Research into History of China. Shijiazhuang: Hebei Education Press. Qi, H. (2015). ‘The End of Warring States and Failure of Balancing: A Study on the Stratagem of Vertical and Horizontal Alliances of the Warring States Period,’ Journal of Contemporary Asia-Pacific Studies, (5), pp. 4–48. Ramsay, C. K. K. (2018). ‘Dyadic Conflict: Elites, Citizens, and War’, Working Paper. Reiter, D. and Stam, A. C. (2002). Democracies at War. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Richards, D. T., Morgan, C., Wilson, R. K., Schwebach, V. L. and Young, G. D. (1993). ‘Good Times, Bad Times and the Diversionary Use of Force: A Tale of Some Not-So-Free Agents,’ Journal of Conflict Resolution, 37 (3), pp. 504–535. Russett, B. and Oneal, J. R. (2001). Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations. New York: Norton. Schultz, K. A. (2001). Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sekeris, P. G. (2011). ‘Endogenous Elites: Power Structure and Patron-client Relationships,’ Economics of Governance, 12, pp. 237–258. Shiji. (1997). By Simaqian. Annotated by Zhang Shoujie, Sima Zhen, and Pei Yin. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Smith, A. (1996). ‘Diversionary Foreign Policy in Democratic Systems,’ International Studies Quarterly, 40 (1), pp. 133–153. Sunzi Bingfa. (2007). In Wujing Qishu. Annotated by Pian Yuqian, Li Jiemin and Sheng Dongling. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Tan, Q. (ed.) (1996). The Historical Atlas of China Book 1. Beijing: Sinomap Press. von Falkenhausen, L. (2006). Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1050–250 BC): The Archeological Evidence. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. Waltz, K. (2001). Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis. New York: Columbia University Press. Wang, G. (2009). On Yin and Zhou Systems in the complete collection of Wang Guowei volume 8. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Education Publishing House. Wang, Y. (2017), Sons and Lovers: Political Stability in China and Europe Before the Great Divergence, Tsinghua Sociological Review 2, pp. 34–42. Wang, R. and Qi, H. (2013). ‘Statistical Analysis on Correlations of Inter-State Wars during the Spring Autumn and Warring States Period’ in The Journal of International Studies, (1), pp. 103–120. Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

140

K. MENG AND J. ZENG

Wei, Z. (2003). ‘The Puzzle of Collective Action and the Balancing of Hegemony’, International Review, 4 (4), pp. 21–27 Wei Liaozi. (2007). In Wujing Qishu. Annotated by Pian Yuqian, Li Jiemin and Sheng Dongling. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Writing group of Military History of China (2002), ‘Historical Timeline of Wars in China, Vol.1’. Beijing: PLA Press. Xin, W. and Zeng, X. (2010). ‘Different Behavioural Logics of Actors in the ‘Multinational System’ and Their Roots—a discussion with Xu Tianbo’, in World Economics and Politics, (5), pp. 59–73. Yan, G. (2009). ‘The Guest Ministers of Qin’ in the Collection of Yan Genwang’s Writings. Shanghai: Shanghai Classics Publishing House. Yan, X. and Xu, J. (2008). Selected Readings on Inter-state Political Thoughts in Pre-Qin China. Shanghai: Fudan University Press. Yang, Y. (2014). ‘Two Evolutionary Paths of Great Power’s Strategies for Power Competition: Comparative Research of the International Systems of the Autumn and Spring Period and the Post-World War II era’, Journal of Contemporary Asia-Pacific Studies, (5), pp. 4–50. Yang, K. (2016). Chronicle Research on Historical Evidence during the Warring States. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press. Yang, S. and Wang, H. (2005). ‘Were the Leud States in Spring and Autumn Period Independent Countries?’ China’s Borderland History and Geography Studies, (4), pp. 4–12. Ye, Z. (2005a). ‘The Origin of Chinese Diplomacy: On the Nature of the Zhou Royal Family and the States in the Spring and Autumn Period,’ in The Journal of International Studies, (1), pp. 9–22. Ye, Z. (2005b). ‘On China’s Perspective in International Studies,’ Foreign Affairs Review, (3), pp. 64–71. Yin, Z. (1987). ‘Through the Passing Down of the Crown and Regicide: The Gradual Formation of the Autocratic Monarch Theory,’ Journal of Chinese History Studies, (4), pp. 17–24. Zhang, Z. (ed.) (2004). Dictionary of Grand Chancellor in China. Guangzhou: Guangdong Education Publishing House. Zhanguo Ce Zhushi. (1991). By Liu Xiang. Annotated by He Jianzhang. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Zhao, D. (2004). ‘Spurious Causation in Historical Process: War and Bureaucratization in Early China,’ American Sociological Review, 69 (4), pp. 77–79. ———. (2009). ‘The Historical Roots of China’s Unification’, Beijing Cultural Review, (6), pp. 102–106. ———. (2011) 2nd Edition. Wars of the Eastern Zhou and the Birth of The Confucian-Legalist State. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press.

5

“THE GREAT AFFAIRS OF THE STATES”: MAN, THE STATE …

141

Zhao, H. (2014). “New Explorations of Early Qin Culture,” in Yuri Pines, et al. (eds.) Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin Revisited, Berkeley: University of California Press. Zhou, Z. and Li, X. (2009). General History of Chinese Administrative Divisions Overview and pre-Qin Dynasty. Shanghai: Fudan University Press. Zhu, S. (2017). A Study of Military Achievement-Based Promotion System. Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan.

CHAPTER 6

Understanding Nation with Minzu: People, Race, and the Transformation of Tianxia in Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries China Zhiguang Yin

Introduction China is a ‘civilization pretending to be a nation-state.’1 This claim made by Lucian Pye in 1993 was later made even more popular by Henry Kissinger in his account on the rationale of Chinese foreign policy making. The questions leading to this claim is more revealing than the claim itself. Since China is only pretending to be a nation-state, as this premise suggests, the contemporary social science theories must be ‘recalibrated’ when applying to the study of China. Hence, Pye came up 1 Lucian Pye, “Social Science Theories in Search of Chinese Realities,” China Quarterly 132 (1992): 1162.

Z. Yin (B) Department of International Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai, China e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Z. Wang (ed.), The Long East Asia, Governing China in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_6

143

144

Z. YIN

with the term Confucian Leninism, suggesting that the uniqueness of contemporary communist China is the result of the marriage between ‘long-standing Chinese cultural traditions’ such as its patrimonialism and imported modern ideas such as Leninism. Alternatively, one should simply accept, like Henry Kissinger suggests, the singularity of China and try to make sense of China from within its own ‘civilization’. However, by advocating the uniqueness of China, we are implying that the universalism of social theories stands firmly and strong. It is China that has problems. Henceforth, we often could hear the judgement that China is not a ‘conventional nation-state’ that needs to be treated with care or even as an abnormity. However, could it be that the theoretical framework, the conceptual foundation we use to comprehend China is problematic? Nation-state in Chinese is translated as minzu guojia (民族国家). It consists of two crucial modern concepts, namely minzu (民族, nation) and guojia (国家, state). The focus of this paper is on minzu. Existing scholarship associates the emergence of the notion of minzu in China with global anti-colonial movements at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This process, henceforth, is described as a ‘concept-formation and intellectual reorientation’, which in turn generates momentum for political movements.2 Therefore, this paper looks at minzu and its associated concepts such as nationalism (民族主义 minzu zhuyi), nation-state, and sovereignty with a particular attention to their applications outside the European historical and socio-political contexts in which they were formed. It takes a historical materialist approach to the study of idea and looks at the formation of a modern Chinese national unity in the context of twentieth-century Chinese revolution. It does not want to repeat a postcolonial problematic, trying to discover the subjectivity of the non-Western world by ‘provincializing Europe’.3 Instead, this paper is interested in a story of entanglement, in which the meaning of nationalism in the non-Western world emerges through the long history of anti-imperial and anti-colonial domination. It demonstrates how minzu in Chinese becomes a non-hegemonic, and non-ethnic centric notion in the process of pursuing an anti-imperialist modernisation. To borrow the expression of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference (AASC) in Cairo in 2 Rebecca E. Karl, Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 5–9. 3 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

145

1957, the discussion of the rise of nationalism in the non-Western world is about the ‘breaking free’ from the ‘imperialist monopoly’ of modern ideas. How do we understand such a monopoly of ideas? The modern political knowledge formed in the historical context of nineteenth-century global expansion of colonialism and nation-state world order is exercising its Foucauldian power of discipline. As Lydia H. Liu indicates that the transnational moving of concepts is far from being merely a creation of ‘equivalent synonyms’ in different languages.4 The transnational travel of ideas was far from being a simple story of intellectual transfusion or even diffusion. Particularly in the case of the spread of ‘nationalism’ from the dominant to the oppressed, it ignites a global process in which generations of intellectuals begin to aspire the future of their own nations through rewriting, crossbreeding, interpreting, adapting, criticising, and resisting those discourses of dominance. The paper consists of four main parts. This first part presents a brief etymological development of the word minzu and other related concepts such as people, race, and nationalism in the context of nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when China encountered Western colonial expansion. The following part then focuses on how Japan served both as a crucial theoretical resource and an anti-thesis for the Chinese intellectuals’ understanding of minzu in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It particularly focuses on how the development of minzu understanding in China was closely related to the political experience of China being subjugated to the global expansion of imperialism at the time. By doing so, this part also hopes to challenge the Eurocentric interpretation of the Chinese notion tianxia (天下 literally means, everything under the heave), suggesting it is a hegemonic order and in contrast with modern state-centric world system which emphasises on sovereign equality. The third and final parts bring forward the importance of revolutionary experience in the making of the connotations of minzu in China. It elaborates on why minzu in Chinese deviates from the Westphalian connotation of exclusiveness and emphasises on the issue of equality through liberation of the oppressed.

4 Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 3–10.

146

Z. YIN

Minzu and Minzu Zhuyi: An Etymology In modern Chinese, the term minzu indicates a two-fold connotation. On one hand, it means ‘ethnicity’, which defines the racial difference in a biological taxonomic sense. On the other hand, it is similar to the use of ‘nation’ in Marxist texts, which, as a political concept, strongly emphasises the broader historical connection among social groups. Comparing to the implications of this word rooted in Western cultural and historical experience, ‘nation’ follows a drastically different path in China. Such a variation not only appears in the formation and practice of ethnic policy in People’s Republic of China (PRC), but also exists in its historical transformation in the late nineteenth century when China as an empire was struggling to cope with the rapidly changing global order featured with the expansion of European legal principles. A common understand is that the Chinese terms minzu and minzu zhuyi in their modern senses have a strong Japanese influence. Recent studies also show that German missionary Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff (郭士立, 1803–1851) had already used the word minzu in the periodicals and books he published in Chinese in the early 1830s.5 According to Huang Xingtao’s research, the early use of minzu in Chinese is close to the German concept of Nation, which signifies a naturally occurred unity of people. The word min (民) in Chinese refers to the general public, whereas zu (族) focuses on the gathering of families or tribes. Until the late nineteenth century, minzu in Chinese texts was used almost exclusively in this sense.6 From the first Sino-Japanese war in 1895 to the late 1910s, reformist intellectuals began to use minzu more closely to its contemporary connotation. In 1896, Shiwu Bao (时务报, Current Affairs), a Chinese periodical in Shanghai edited by Wang Kangnian (汪康年, 1860–1911) and Liang Qichao (梁启超, 1873–1929), published a Chinese translation of a Japanese newspaper article on ‘Turkish Empire’. The article was translated by a long-term collaborator of Liang Qichao, Japanese sinologist

5 Xingtao Huang, 重塑中华: 近代中国 “中华民族”观念研究 (Reshaping Zhonghua: The Concept of ‘Zhonghua Minzu’ in Modern China) (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2017), 70–73. 6 Guantao Jin and Qingfeng Liu, 观念史研究: 中国现代重要政治术语的形成 (Studies in the History of Ideas: The Formation of Important Modern Chinese Political Terms) (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008), 531.

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

147

Kozyo Satakichi (古城貞吉, 1866–1949). It mentions six ‘minzu under the governance of the Turkish Empire’, including ‘Tuerqi ren, Alabiya ren, Xila ren, Yaerminiya ren, Lamu ren, and Yaerbaniya ren (literally means Turkish people, Arabic people, Greek people, Armenian people, Romani people, and Albanian people)’. The article claims that ‘minzu of ancient state’ (古国民族, guguo minzu) does not understand the ‘art of leadership and rule’ (统御之道, tongyu zhidao), and has to rely on tribal and religious unity to govern. However, other minzu under its rule have been under the influence of cultural and material development of Western Europe. Consequently, they began to demand ‘self-rule’ (自主).7 This text draws a distinction between the old and the new minzu. The former relies on tribal and religious ties to build its political unity, whereas the latter, although not clearly stated in the article, forms its political agency under the influences of the West European material and cultural progresses. The story about the Ottoman Empire being the ‘sick man of Europe’ was widely known by the then Chinese reform-minded intellectuals. Particularly after 1895, the possibility that China could be broken up by European powers and the rising Japan became an eminent concern to Chinese intellectuals and officials. It is particularly intriguing to notice that this early use of minzu has very little ethnocentric implication. Surely, it refers to unity of people with similar ethnic background, in which case the Chinese notion ‘ren’ (人, people) was used. However, it can also be used in the context such as ‘guguo minzu’ which indicates a political unity formed under different principles of governance (tongyu zhidao). A unity can form or dismantle as the result of politics rather than ethnicity. Ethnicity as the foundation of tribalism, which is recognised as a form of political unity, is backward and no match for the advanced West European nations. Hence, it needs to be transformed. The Chinese word resembling the ethnocentric notion of nation, or more specially ‘race’, is ‘zhong ’ (种). In an article published in Zhejiang Chao (浙江潮, Tidal Wave in Zhejiang), a periodical published in Japan by Chinese overseas students, ‘minzu zhuyi’, is defined as ‘unifying same zhong and alienating different zhong to build a state for the minzu’.8 However, in the early 1900s, terminologies used to elaborate the notion 7 Satakichi Kozyo, “土耳其论 (On Turkey),” Shiwu Bao (Current Affairs) 11 (1896):

24. 8 Yuyi, “民族主义论 (On Nationalism),” Zhejiang Chao (Tidal Wave of Zhejiang) 1 (1903): 3–7.

148

Z. YIN

of nationalism were in flux. Liang Qichao, for example, considers nationalism as a rejection to the ‘freedom of invasion’. It deters ‘other zu from invading us’, and ‘us from invading others’. Hence, nationalism is ‘the fairest principle in the world.’ It is a modern state theory began ‘at the turn of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’. Liang refers to the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen de 1789 as one of the intellectual foundations of nationalism with a focus on its advocacy of ‘guomin duli’ (国民独立, literally independence of national people) in the world.9 Comparing to the article in Zhejiang Chao, which focuses on nationalism sustaining the rise of main European powers, Liang Qichao’s attention was on nationalism being a force of mobilisation in the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movements among the small and weak nations. He combed through historical events such as European resistances against Napoleonian expansionism, Irish independence movement, Anglo-Boer War, and anti-Spanish resistance in Philippine as examples to argue that nationalism could be a force to deter ‘new imperialism’ (新帝国主义) and promote equality among states around the world.10 Liang was more interested in nationalism being a force to facilitate ‘equality’ (pingdeng, 平等) among nations. Such an equal status could only be achieved if people across the world with the ‘same ethnic, linguistic, religious, and customary backgrounds could organise themselves into autonomise, wellstructured governments, working towards the public good and defending themselves from other nations’.11 Undoubtedly, Japanese intellectual discussions had a tremendous impact on the development of modern notions of nation and nationalism in Chinese. In comparison, the Japanese ethnocentric view on minzu functions as the justification for the Japanese to lead the ‘yellow race’ in competition for dominance against the ‘white race’. However, it is clear that from an early stage, Chinese discussions on minzu zhuyi was more interested in taking it as a state theory, providing the volonté Générale capable of unifying individuals into a collective, from which a 9 Qichao Liang, “国家思想变迁异同论 (The Transformation of State Theory, Similarities

and Differences),” in 梁启超全集 (The Complete Works of Liang Qichao), ed. Pinxing Zhang (Beijing: Beijing Chubanshe, 1999), 459.

10 Liang, “国家思想变迁异同论 (The Transformation of State Theory, Similarities and Differences),” 459–60. 11 Qichao Liang, “新民说 (On the New Citizen, 1902),” in 梁启超全集 (The Complete Works of Liang Qichao), ed. Pinxing Zhang (Beijing: Beijing Chubanshe, 1999), 656.

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

149

modern state could emerge. Only after this transformation, can China be a ‘nation-state’ and Chinese people be the ‘master’ of ‘building their own nation into a full-fledged member of the modern world’.12 Consequently, the Chinese discussions of minzu, from its inception, were largely associated with envisioning of a new world order featuring with national self-determination (zizhi, 自治) and equality.

Nationalism and the Imagination of a New World Order Being treated as a state theory, Chinese discussions of nationalism have always been closely associated with its imagination of a new world order. Transferring China from a universal empire into a modern state also means taking China out of the traditional Confucius tianxia order and resituating it in a modern interstate order. A common understanding of this notion is that it denotes a universal kingship associated with a widely shared sense of participation in higher culture. However, such a cultural recognition was also accompanied by an overarching authority achieved mainly through military and political campaigns over large areas. It makes almost no difference from pax orbis as an aspiration for global unity, which is no stranger to the European Christian empires. One of the most influential interpretations in the English-speaking world comes from Joseph Levenson. He suggests that tianxia is a ‘regime of value’ in contrast with guo (国 nation), which is a regime of power. He argues that based on tianxia worldview, the Chinese Empire is the world. He then famously proposed the culturalism-to-nationalism thesis, which suggests that by the nineteenth century, the Chinese cultural recognition of tianxia began to give way to a nationalist recognition.13 The dichotomy between tianxia and nationalism is Eurocentric. The notion of nationalism here depicts a common process starting from Europe and then across the world since the early nineteenth century, aiming at state-making, rights to self-government and excise the right organization of a society of states in the name of a unity of a certain 12 Yuyi, “民族主义论 (On Nationalism),” 5; “国家学上之支那民族观 (View on Chinese Nation from the point of State Theory),” 游学译编 (Translations of International Studies), no. 11 (1903): 11–23. 13 Joseph R. Levenson, “T’ien-Hsia and Kuo, and the “Transvaluation of Values”,” The Far Eastern Quarterly 11, no. 4 (1952): 447–51.

150

Z. YIN

population. In the European context, nationalism retrospectively provides legitimacy to a union against European territorial empires and transnational religious authority. It depicts a sovereign status established in the Peace of Westphalia among European protestant nations. It connects to the modern European notion of sovereignty which is fundamentally an extension of private land ownership. By emphasising the exclusive right to a piece of land by its inherited residence with the same ethnic origin, a modern European nation-state sovereignty came into existence. In today’s discussions of nationalism, such an ethnocentric exclusive right to land ownership forms an underlining criterion. Consequently, the application of nationalist rhetoric is constantly risking of re-enforcing the imagination that the world is nothing but an ‘inherently fragmented space’.14 The ethnocentric ideal of nationalism, however, can rarely translate into a political reality. Instead, it usually has a blurry line with racism and xenophobia. Since the late nineteenth century, we can often see ethnocentric nationalism being used to justify expansionism or ethnic cleansing in Europe and many parts of the world. In this sense, nationalism and imperialism in the modern historical context form the ‘opposite sides of the same coin’. The transnational travel of ideas was far from being a simple story of intellectual transfusion or even diffusion. Particularly in the case of the spread of ‘nationalism’ from the dominant to the oppressed, it ignites a global process in which generations of intellectuals begin to aspire the future of their own nations through rewriting, crossbreeding, interpreting, adapting, criticising, and resisting those discourses of dominance. It also interacts with the notion of tianxia. The entanglement of the ideas creates new momentum and conditions which inevitably brought the concept such as ‘nationalism’ outside its European origin and lead it on a truly global path. In China, early discussions of nationalism, minzu and shijie (世界, the world), often appear together. Expressions such as ‘zhonghua minzu’ (中华民族, Chinese nation), ‘shijie minzu’ (世界民族, world nations), ‘minzu guojia’, and ‘shijie guojia’ (世界国家, world states) are regularly seen in discussions forming crucial contexts for us to understand the connotations and implications of the Chinese understandings of nation and nationalism. 14 Timothy Oakes, and Patricia L. Price, ed., The Cultural Geography Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 61.

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

151

A common misconception about nationalism is that it always risks of leading towards Chauvinism. The foundation of such a misconception is the premise that only dominance by a hegemonic power could constitute the optimal situation for ensuring and maintaining an open and stable world economy. The decline of one hegemon means confrontations and conflicts, and will always lead to the rise of another.15 Based on this premise, nations in the non-Western world established during the wave of the anti-imperial national independence movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could only replicate the European historical experience and go on a path of either expansionism or self-destruction.16 A state will either strive to become a regional or global hegemon and success or being placed under the dominance of a rising hegemon. The contemporary Western scholarly interests in tianxia in fact reenforces such an anxiety. Such an anxiety was noted bluntly in William Callahan’s review on Zhao Tingyang’s discussion on tianxia system. Callahan argues that Zhao’s new scheme privileges order over freedom, ethics over law, and elite governance over democracy.17 It almost repeats the decades old thesis that China is not ‘conventional’, or normal. This Eurocentric and teleological view of the world order is re-enforced by cases such as the rise of Japan in the late nineteenth century. The Japanese understanding of minzoku (民族) also combines the notion of people and race. A crucial component in the forming of Japanese understanding of minzoku was the civilisation theory with a twist of statecentrism. In 1875, Fukuzawa Yukichi (福沢諭吉, 1835–1901) introduced the Civilization as a singularity into Japanese. His Bunmeiron (文明論) depicted in his widely circulated book Bunmeiron no Gairyaku (文明論 之概略, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization, 1875, hereafter refers as 15 Robert O. Keohane, “The Theory of Hegemonic Stability and Changes in International Economic Regimes, 1967–1977,” in Change in the International System, ed. Ole R. Holsti, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alexander L. George (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980), 131–62; Robert Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation: The Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment (New York: Basic Books, 1975); Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929–1939 (Harmondswworth: Pelican Books, 1987). 16 Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (London: Hutchinson & Co. Publishers Ltd., 1961). 17 William A. Callahan, “Chinese Visions of World Order: Post-Hegemonic or a New

Hegemony?” International Studies Review 10, no. 4 (2008): 749–61.

152

Z. YIN

Outline) aims to provide a path for Japan in the time of great transformation to become a ‘civilised nation’ (文明国) like the ‘most civilised nations in Europe and the United States of America’. His teleological view on the development of Civilization is made very clear with the title of the second chapter in the Outline, which says ‘taking the Western (西洋) Civilization as the destination’.18 He accepted the popular three-tier hierarchy order in the Western theory of civilization and divided the nations of the world into categories of ‘the civilised’, ‘the semi-civilised’, and ‘the savage’. Fukuzawa’s categorisation of Civilization has a subtle but crucial difference from its Western source. The Civilization theory popular in the then Euro-American world was deeply rooted in the study of ethnography. The three-tier division was a categorisation of the world’s people. This ethnocentric view of civilization can be understood as the raison d’état of an empire. It always emerges when an empire is on an expansionist trajectory, providing justification for the domination of one race over the others. The standard of civilization forms the foundation for the justification of a European expansionism. It originated in eighteenth-century France.19 Later it was made popular with the global expansion of the British Empire. In his famous lecture series on the history of the expansion of England, John Seeley’s interest is to connect the development of Britain as a global empire with the ‘general drift’ and ‘goal’ of the entire human civilization. To him, the expansion of England is inevitable as it is determined by the uniqueness of English environment and biological evolution of the Anglo-Saxon race. The expansion of the ‘English State’ is fundamentally the ‘diffusion of our race’ and will transform the other races morally and socially to an advanced stage.20 This rhetoric at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries quickly sunk into political and popular discourse in the Anglo-American world. As a superior race, the white man, or to be more specific in the eyes of Anglo-American imperialists, the Anglo-Saxon, has the moral duty to carry the other races to the top of human civilization. The main way to achieve this goal is through both indirect dominance of the semi-colonies in Afro-Asian world and 18 Yukichi Fukuzawa, 文明論之概略 (An Outline of a Theory of Civilisation), vol. 1 (Tokyo: Fukuzawa Yukichi, 1875), 21. 19 Brett Bowden, The Empire of Civilization, the Evolution of an Imperial Idea (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 27–28. 20 J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, Two Courses of Lectures (London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1914), 4–10.

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

153

building ‘White Man’s country’ in settlement colonies such as the US, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. However, to Fukuzawa, his vision of transforming Japan into a ‘civilised nation’ would not work with such an ethnocentric view of civilization placing the White race at the top of human civilization and evolution. Therefore, Fukuzawa downplayed the centrality of race in his version of civilization theory. Instead, he placed kuni (国, state) rather than ‘people’ as the fundamental unit to evaluate the level of development. In this way, the hierarchical order only denotes the different levels of development of state. A semi-civilised state could transform into a civilised one if applying the modernisation model proved to be useful by the success of the civilised Western countries. Unlike the ethnocentric civilization theory, which suggests the other races need to be enlightened by the White race, the Japanese take on civilization theory gives importance to self-transformation through reform and learning. To Fukuzawa, for Japan as a ‘state in the East’ (東洋の一国), the source for modernisation comes from teachings offered by ‘seiy¯ o bunmei’ (西洋文明, Western Civilization), which was ‘already introduced to Japan over a hundred years ago’.21 This notion of modernisation by transforming Japan less like an Eastern nation but more like a European state was later coined famously as ‘leaving Asia and joining Europe’ (脱亜入 欧).22 Fukuzawa’s vision of modernisation by ‘leaving Asia’ does not imply detaching from Asian geopolitical affairs. Asia in his civilization theory mainly implies a Sino-centric regional order sustained by a narrowly defined Confucianist hierarchical moral structure. Fukuzawa considered China as an intellectually barren place under authoritarian theocracy, whereas Japan was much more vibrant with potential to develop an

21 Yukichi Fukuzawa, “蘭学事始再版序 (Forward for the Reprint of The Origin of Dutch Studies),” in 福沢諭吉全集 (The Complete Works of Fukuzawa Yukichi) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1962), 770. 22 For the discussion of this idea, see: Urs Matthias Zachmann, “The Foundation

Manifesto of the K¯oakai (Raising Asia Society) and the Ajia Ky¯okai (Asia Association), 1880–1883,” in Pan-Asianism, A Documentary History, ed. Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011), 53–60. Hirakawa Sukehiro, “Japan’s Turn to the West,” in Modern Japanese Thought, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 30–97.

154

Z. YIN

advanced civilization. The advanced state consequently has a moral obligation to supress the backward nation in the development of human civilization through trade competition and warfare.23 By the early 1880s, Fukuzawa began to actively express the idea that ‘Asia should work together to fend off the Westerns’ bully and invasion’. This marks the emergence of his civilization theory has matured into a geopolitical strategy later known as ‘Nihon meishu-ron’ (日本盟 主論, literally means Japan as the leader in the union).24 In the early twentieth century, the growing power of the Japanese nation-state and growing Japanese self-confidence, emerging as a consequence of growing power, eventually militated against a return to Asia, but led instead to ever-strengthening Japanese claims of superiority over Asia and leadership in Asia culminating in the ‘new order’ of the 1930s and the ‘Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’ of the early 1940s. Although in the late nineteenth century, Chinese intellectuals were attracted to both the pan-Asian ideal and discourses of nationalism.25 However, instead of accepting the statist narrative of Japan being the leader of the Asian yellow race, the Chinese elites were particularly interested in the idea that Asia could work together to fend off the growing Western penetration. The US occupation of Philippine in 1898 and the Anglo-Boer War in 1899 were two major global events reminding the Chinese about the real possibility of China being broken up by the Western expansionism. Growing number of Chinese elites also quickly became disillusioned of the Japanese rhetoric of ‘the Orient for the Orientals’ (東洋は東洋人の東洋なり) and the unity of the yellow race in the Orient based on shared cultural identity (D¯ obun, 同文, literally means same language)26 and the ethnic relationship among the Asian races 23 Fukuzawa, 文明論之概略 (An Outline of a Theory of Civilisation), 1, 36–39. 24 Songlun Zhou, “Wenming ‘Ruou’ yu Zhengzhi ‘Tuoya’: Fuze Yuji ‘Wenminglun’ de

Luoji Gouzao (Civilisation ‘Joining Europe’ and Politics ‘leaving Asia’: The Logic Structure of Fukusawa Yukichi’s ‘Civilisation Theory’),” Ershiyi shiji (Twenty-first Century), no. 142 (2014): 29–41. 25 For a brief overview of pan-Asianism’s influence in Asia, see: Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman, “Introduction: The Emergence of Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity, 1850–2008,” in Pan-Asianism, A Documentary History, ed. Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011), 20–26. 26 This expression refers to the fact that Chinese character is the cultural lingua franca among the educated people in Asian countries such as Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and China.

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

155

(D¯ oshu 同種, literally means same ethnicity). In 1894, during the First Sino-Japanese War, Japanese expedition force conducted a massacre at Port Arthur (in Chinese lvshunkou, 旅顺口). The killing lasted for four days, leaving more than 20,000 Chinese unarmed service men and civilians dead. This atrocity was among the first widely reported massacres in Western media in modern history. When the news about the massacre appeared in the US media, Japan turned from the ‘light of civilization’ in the ‘darkness of the Far East’, to just another ‘Asian barbarian’. As the Kansas City Journal observed, ‘[t]he barbarities perpetrated by the civilized Japanese at Port Arthur are just as revolting as if they had been committed by the uncivilized Chinese.’27 Fukuzawa was extremely upset by the American media reaction towards the Japanese action at Port Arthur. He continued to defend that the Japanese military action in China was a war to advance world civilization by eliminating the backward forces. China should be thankful for the Japanese as a civilising leader. He also condemned the reports of massacre as false, which originated from the long-lasting bias and arrogant disbelief towards the fact that a ‘backward nation could transform itself into prosperity’.28 It did not take very long for the intellectuals from other Asian nations to realise that the Japanese idea of Asianism was firmly centred on the Japanese domination of Asia. Dr Sun Yat-sen once warned Vietnamese anti-colonial revolutionary Phan Bô.i Châu (1867–1940) that Japan was interested in ‘power’ (qiangquan, 强权) rather than ‘humanity’ (rendao, 人道). Therefore, Japan would not be a reliable ally in

Regarding Chinese as the lingua franca in the anti-colonial movements in Asia, see: Jingwen Luo, “东亚汉文化知识圈的流动与互动——以梁启超与潘佩珠对西方思想家与日 本维新人物的书写为例” (Transfers and Interactions among the Intellectual Communities of East Asian Chinese Character Culture Sphere: The Description of the Western Thinkers and the Meiji Restoration Intellectuals by Liang Qi Chao and Phan Bô.i Châu,” Taida Lishi Xuebao (Historical Inquiry) 48 (Dec. 2011): 51–96. 27 Quoted from Jeffrey M. Dorwart, “James Creelman, the “New York World” and the Port Arthur Massacre,” Journalism Quarterly 50, no. 4 (1973): 697–701. 28 Quoted from Shunbo Dong, “Lun Fuze Yuji dui Lvshun Datusha Shijian de Pinglun (Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Comments on the Port Arthur Massacre),” Sheke Zongheng (Social Sciences Review) 29, no. 7 (Jul. 2014): 107–09.

156

Z. YIN

the cause of global anti-colonialism.29 Instead of relying on the hierarchical civilization theory, Chinese intellectuals were more interested in seeing Asia as a union against imperialism. In 1898, Qingyi Bao (清议 报, The China Discussion), a reformist periodical published in Yokohama by Liang Qichao, Mai Menghua (麦孟华, 1875–1915), and Ou Jujia ( 欧榘甲, 1870–1911) published a short article titled ‘New Monroeism from the Far East’ 《极东之新木爱罗主义》 ( ). It claims to be a translation of a news article published in the U.S. The article calls the New Monroeism as a ‘new imperialism excised by the U.S. and Britain to dominate the world’. Such a new imperialism is different from the ‘Roman imperialism’ as it calls for ‘justice and peace, self-determination and rule of law’. The international order under such a new Monroe doctrine is ‘under the governance of an international arbitral institution, jointly led by Britain, the U.S.A. and Netherland’. This world order advocates ‘open door policy’ and ‘free trade’. It will also prevent the colonial expansion of European powers in China and ‘take China under the joint protection provided by the U.S.A., Britain and Japan’.30 There is no further comments associated with this article, showing how the Chinese reformists think about the ‘new imperialism’ from the U.S., Britain, and Japan. However, other texts published in the same period by intellectuals in the inner circle of these Chinese reformist thinkers are helpful in piecing together a comprehensive picture of Chinese attitude towards Asianism. One of the significant feature is that the ethnocentric view among Euro-American advocators of social Darwinism such as Benjamin Kidd and Walter Bagehot was either omitted or altered in Chinese translations and introductions of their works. A famous interpretation of Benjamin Kidd comes from Liang Qichao, which focuses on the importance of cooperation in the national progression. In Liang’s reading, Christianity, which Kidd placed in a crucial position in his narrative, was omitted. Instead, Liang elaborates on the general function of ‘religion’ in ‘combating against the inherited evil of mankind’, ‘promoting the unification of different groups’, and ‘serving

29 Xianfei Liu, “东游运动与潘佩珠日本认识的转变 (The Changes in Phan Boi Chau’s Understanding of Japan after the Movement of Traveling about Japan),” Dongnanya Yanjiu (Southeast Asian Studies), no. 5 (2011): 72. 30 “极东之新木爱罗主义 (New Monroeism from the Far East),” Qingyi Bao (The China Discussion), no. 2 (1898).

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

157

the future interests of the entire mankind’.31 Liang believes that Kidd’s theory moves a step further from the natural selection theory of Charles Darwin. Although a single organism can perish, the development of the entire species is eternal. Liang therefore argues that ‘death’ serves an important evolutionary function as long as ‘each individual could die for the benefit of the entire race and the current generation of a race would die for the future generation’. In this sense, death becomes a form of sacrifice, which aims to ‘give birth to the future’. Different from the Western reception of Benjamin Kidd, Liang believes that it is the philosophical thinking about death that establishes Kidd as a ‘revolutionary figure in the development of evolutionism’. To Liang Qichao, Kidd’s discussion on the relation between individual and society is intriguing. Liang argues that within a species group, the number of individuals who hold the spirit of ‘sacrificing now in exchange for a better future’ determines the group’s level of evolution. He believes that the path of evolution is always forward looking. The past and present are merely ‘gateway to the future’. Therefore, Liang suggests that Kidd is reminding readers not only to focus on seeking for the well-being now but also think about the ‘bigger picture for the future’. To Liang, ‘nation’ is a present-facing institution which is only responsible for looking after the interests of a certain group. ‘Society’, on the other hand, beholds the future general well-being of the entire human kind. However, Liang did not envision a clear solution for humankind’s transformation from fragmented nation to a universal global society. He simply rejects Herbert Spencer’s conviction which argues for the destined abolishment of national boarder and arrival of a cosmopolitan world. In Liang’s reading, by embodying presence with future-looking destiny, Kidd manages to save the present from its temporality. This makes Kidd’s thought more valuable. Chinese intellectuals should also respond to this development and recognise that any discussions about the present has to have a future-facing purpose. Only by doing so, we can then transcend from the nineteenth century, an ‘era focusing only on the present existence’ (现在主义之时代) and make the ‘thinking about current society,

31 Qichao Liang, “进化论革命者颉德之学说 (Introducing Bejamine Kidd, a Revolutionary Thinker on Evolutionism),” in 饮冰室文集点校 (Collection and Anotation of Liang Qichao’s Works) (Kunming: Yunnan Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 2001), 424.

158

Z. YIN

nation, and morality’ more ‘meaningful and valuable’.32 Through Liang’s interpretation, Kidd’s justification for Anglo-Saxon global economic and military expansionism became a philosophical enquiry of a series of more dialectic and universal relations, namely life and death, presence and future, nation and society, and individual and community. Most Chinese intellectuals in the early twentieth century show concerns about imperialism. In 1901, Kai Zhi Lu (开智录, Enlightenment Recording) published an article titled ‘On the Development of Imperialism and the Future of the 20th Century World’. The author suggests that the Afro-Asian cooperation against imperialism will reshape the course of the twentieth-century historical development. The author takes imperialism as an ‘expansionism (膨胀主义)’, an ‘ism advocating territorial acquisition (版图扩张主义)’, a ‘militarism (侵略主义)’, and a ‘Dick Turpinism (狄塔偏主义)’. The rise of imperialism leads to an ‘era when liberty decays’. Imperialism began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when ‘the European powers recovered from revolutions’. It feeds upon the ‘inequality of national powers across the global’. The author, using the pseudonym Zi Qiang (自强, literally means selfstrengthening), specifies that imperialism refers to the ‘expansionist global doctrine of Britain, the USA and Germany’. It is different from the ‘territorial expansionist policy that Russia and France always embraced’. Japan should also be viewed differently, as it ‘merely follows the European powers’. The author emphasises that combating against imperialism should rely on ‘waving the flag of self-reliance and liberty, encouraging national people’s spirit of independence and love of freedom’. The resistance against imperialism and the pursuit of national independence and self-reliance (自由自主) will have the momentum, which is ‘tens and hundreds times larger than the one driving the European revolutions’, and eventually transform ‘Asia and Africa’ into a ‘big battlefield of the twentieth century’.33 Such a criticism against imperial world order and an awareness of achieving independence through some forms of cooperation among the 32 Liang, “进化论革命者颉德之学说 (Introducing Bejamine Kidd, a Revolutionary Thinker on Evolutionism),” 426–27. 33 “论帝国主义之发达及廿世纪世界之前途 (On the Development of Imperialism and the Future of the 20th Century),” in 近代中国史料丛刊三编·第十五辑·清议报全编 (Collection of Modern Chinese Historical Documents, Volume 3, Number 15, Complete Collection of Qingyi Bao), ed. Yunlong Shen (Taipei: Wenhai Chubanshe, 1985), 178–84.

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

159

weak and the small nations can be spotted at the time across many Third World intellectuals. Probably to the surprise of the nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon imperial elites, the hierarchical world order they envisioned based on the dichotomy between centre and peripheral, advanced and backward, and developed and underdeveloped achieved its ‘universality’ in their most unintended manner. The empire and its knowledge become the ‘Other’ in the ‘peripheral’ and ‘semi-peripheral’ world. By writing back against and writing through the imperial knowledge, the broader Third World create its own modernisation experience and modern world view. Nationalism in the Context of Internationalism: A Communist Narrative In the Manifesto of the Communist Party of China (CCP) passed in the First National Congress of the CCP in July 1921, it states that any individual ‘regardless of gender and nationality’ can join the party. The only existing copies of this document are the Russian version archived by the Communist International and an English version found in Chen Gongbo’s (陈公博, 1892–1946) monography The Communist Movement in China. A Chinese translation of the document is now in the Museum of Chinese Revolutionary History (中国革命历史博物馆) in Beijing, in which the word ‘nationality’ is translated as ‘minzu’. The common translation of ‘nationality’ in contemporary Chinese is ‘guoji’ (国籍). It is unclear which Chinese expression was used in the original Chinese copy. However, this is a meaningful ambiguity. It indicates the basic Marxist understanding of the ‘national question’ (in Chinese 民族问题, minzu wenti). On a normative level, the Communist ideal of a transnational and trans-class unification of the world is not compatible with nationalism which divides the world into mutually excluding fragments. However, in practice, national liberation movements against the imperialist global order played a crucial role in facilitating the communist revolution across the world. When Karl Marx was completing the Communist Manifesto, the modern nation-state recognition was also spreading across Europe with the rising national revolutions in 1848.34 In the Manifesto, the word 34 See Connor, Walker (1984). The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. 5–7.

160

Z. YIN

‘Nationalität ’ (and the relating words such as Nationalen and Nation) is used to indicate the political unity of people with the same consanguineous relation. Such a political unity is also related to the geographic condition of people’s place of residence. Being isolated in their own physical space forms the condition of ‘lokalen und nationalen Selbstgenügsamkeit und Abgeschlossenheit ’ (local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency) among different nations. However, this was transformed by the bourgeoisie need for a world market. The condition of fragmentation and isolation turned into a ‘universal inter-dependence of nations’. This also transforms the intellectual creations of individual nations into ‘Gemeingut ’ (common property). It is under such a complexity of interconnectiveness that the ‘national one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness’ was shattered. To Marx, the destiny and nature of a nation is associated with the world order shaped by the changing method of production. The hierarchical relation between the civilised ‘Länder’ (state) and uncivilised and semi-civilised states was in itself a global manifestation of a domestic exploitive relation generated in the process of the bourgeoisie ‘need of a constantly expanding market for its production’.35 When translating Marx’s German text, we can see three interconnected words being used to form the complex notion of minzu in Chinese. The word ‘das Land’ and the suffix ‘-völkern’ were used to indicate the territorial affiliation of a group of people with legal responsibilities and rights. When discussing the relationship between different groups of people and their historical development, the Manifesto uses the word ‘Nation’. The German text of the Manifesto uses ‘Land’, ‘Volk’, and ‘Nation’ to describe the complexity of the formation and transformation of nation. It states that the development of the method of production terminated the fragmented status of population, capital, and means of production. The ‘loosely connected provinces’, consequently, have to relinquish their differences and form a united, singular nation, or in German, ‘eine Nation’. We could understand the global order based on nations formed during the development of the bourgeoisie methods of production as a World System. However, in its English translation, some

35 All German, English, and Chinese texts of the Manifesto are based on Marxists Internet Archive. Chinese: https://www.marxists.org/chinese/marx/01. htm; English: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manife sto/ch01.htm#007; and German: https://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/marx-eng els/1848/manifest/0-einleit.htm. Last access: 28 October, 2021.

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

161

of the crucial differentiations are missing. For example, when translating ‘die Bauernvölker’, the English text reads as ‘nations of peasants’. The connotation of ‘people’ as a political unity expressed in the German word ‘Volk’ is absent in the English text. To Marx, forming of a singular ‘eine Nation’ fits the interest of the bourgeoisie. It is a world order with a clear hierarchy, in which the bourgeoisie occupies the centre and the proletariat as the peripheral. In the context of nineteenth century, the hierarchical order was countries ruled by the bourgeoisie (den Bourgeoisvölkern) extending their dominance to the pre-industrial agricultural countries (die Bauernvölker). Such a hegemonic unity needs to be demolished through the ‘national liberation’ (der nationalen Befreiung ). It is a resistance against the bourgeois hegemonic socio-political order (Gesellschaftsordnung ) rather than a rejection of the interconnected status of all nations. Eventually, through the unity of ‘working men of all countries’ (Proletarier aller Länder) a new world order could come into being. The Chinese communists develop their understanding of minzu in the dynamic of national liberation and internationalism. Li Dazhao (李大钊, 1889–1927), one of the founding fathers of the CCP, was among the first to understand Chinese national liberation in this context. In 1912, Li Dazhao and his colleagues at the Peiyang Law and Politics Association (北洋法政学会) translated Nakajima Hata’s (中島端, 1859–1930) The Destiny of China Being Divided (支那分割の運命) with annotations and commentary. In the commentary, Li and his colleagues considered Japanese ‘Asian Monroeism’ (亚洲孟罗主义) as the equivalent of ‘pan-Asianism’ (大亚细亚主义), which was ‘merely a synonym of Japanese ambition of dominating Asia’.36 To Li Dazhao, ideas for regional domination in the forms of ‘Pan…ism’ are fundamentally ‘in conflict with democracy’. It is ‘nothing more than the cant term for despotism’.37 Regional domination in forms of ‘pan-Europeanism’, ‘panAmericanism’, ‘pan-Asianism’, ‘pan-Germanism’, and ‘pan-Slavism’ are all selfish hegemonic ambition, seeking to subjugate other people.38 36 Dazhao Li, “支那分割之命运驳议 (Against the Destiny of China Being Divided),” in 李大钊全集 (Complete Works of Li Dazhao), ed. Shiru Zhang et al. (Shijiazhuang: Hebei Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 1999), 479. 37 Dazhao Li, 李大钊全集 (Selected Works of Li Dazhao) (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1959), 109. 38 Li, 李大钊全集 (Selected Works of Li Dazhao), 105.

162

Z. YIN

In comparison, Li Dazhao proposed his own ‘New Asianism’ (新亚 细亚主义) as a counter argument to the Japan-centric pan-Asianism. Li considered that ‘pan-Asianism’ was not aiming to promote national selfdetermination. Instead, it was ‘an imperialism aiming to absorb the small and weak nations’.39 A true Asianism, according to Li Dazhao, should come from a unified action against imperialism. All the Asians under oppression should work together, striving for ‘justice (gongli, 公理, literally means truth acknowledged by the public) and equality (pingdeng, 平 等)’, even ‘at the cost of armed resistances’.40 Through ‘New Asianism’, Li Dazhao has envisioned a spatial order which does not involve hegemonic domination of space. Instead of having a dominating power filling the geopolitical ‘void’, Li believes that the national independence movements in Asia will transform the nations formerly dominated by hegemonic powers. Only with self-determined nations filling up the space of Asia can a true union of equality could form. This will then turn Asia into a ‘larger union’ on equal footing with Europe and America, leading the world into a ‘federation of equals’ that could ‘advance the wellbeing of humankind’.41 Li Dazhao believes that the future of Asianism is the union of the world. It should not be understood as a regionalism or even narrow-minded nationalism which opposes the ideal of ‘globalism’ (Shijie zhuyi, 世界主义). Differing from the state-centric view in Japanese panAsianism, Li Dazhao sees the future of China in the context of a broader liberation of all oppressed Asians. Our ‘common enemy’ is ‘hegemony’ (qiangquan, 强权). Our ‘common friend’ is ‘justice’ (gongli).42 Mao Zedong (毛泽东, 1893–1976) expressed a similar opinion. In a letter to Zhang Guoji (张国基, 1894–1992), who at the time was already living in Singapore, Mao states that Hunan people living abroad should take the position of ‘globalism’, which ‘wishes the best for ourselves and others as well’. It is different from ‘colonialism’ which ‘based the wellbeing of one nation over the sacrifice of the others’.43 These early discussions

39 Li, 李大钊全集 (Selected Works of Li 40 Li, 李大钊全集 (Selected Works of Li 41 Li, 李大钊全集 (Selected Works of Li 42 Li, 李大钊全集 (Selected Works of Li

Dazhao), 119. Dazhao), 120. Dazhao), 12. Dazhao), 280.

43 Xianzhi Pang et al., eds., 毛泽东年谱, 1893–1949 (The Annotated Chronicle of Mao

Zedong, 1893–1949), 3 vols., vol. 1 (Beijing: Zhongyang Wenxian Chubanshe, 2002), 71.

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

163

on the relation between Chinese revolution and a transformation of the global order form the foundation for the later discourses sustaining the imagination of an Afro-Asian solidarity order in the PRC. Li’s depiction of a new ‘Asianism’ adds another layer to the complexity of this transnational diffusion of ideas in modern time. It entails an innovative understanding of the dialectic relation between nationalism and internationalism (or in Li Dazhao’s word ‘globalism’), reminding us that concepts as such could only acquire their limited universality in certain socio-historical contexts. In this case, it reminds us that the contradiction between nationalism and internationalism is only true in the European historical context. In the non-European world, the nationalist agenda of independence would only be possible when it became a transnational movement. Mao gave a clearer narrative of this dynamic. He claims that instead of ‘transforming the Orient’, it is better to think about ‘transforming China and the world’. The focus on the world (shijie, 世界) clarifies that ‘our proposition is for the world’, and the ‘beginning of our transformative practice starts from China’.44 Revolutionary leaders and progressive intellectuals in Asia came to this understanding when they began to understand that hegemonic powers were already operating on a global level. To the CCP, liberation as a transformation for the oppressed world only gains its momentum in the modern history of anti-imperialism.45 It is a ‘part’ of a global transformation associated with the historical development of imperialist warfare and anti-imperialism across the world.46 Henceforth, liberation could not just be a nationalist transformation. It is, by nature, a universal mission rooted in the shared experience of suffering from the imperialist hegemony among the world’s peoples, particularly peoples from what is later known as the ‘Third World nations’. This narrative of a shared historical experience caused by the nineteenth-century global expansion of imperialism consequently becomes the foundation for the understanding and practices of sovereignty among the Third World nations.

44 Pang et al., 毛泽东年谱, 1893–1949 (The Annotated Chronicle of Mao Zedong, 1893– 1949), 75. 45 Mao Zedong, “Xin Minzhuzhuyi Lun (On New Democracy),” in Mao Zedong Ji (Collected Writings of Mao Tse-Tung), ed. Minoru Takeuchi (Tokyo: Hokub¯osha, 1983), 148. 46 Mao, “Xin Minzhuzhuyi Lun (On New Democracy),” 147–55.

164

Z. YIN

Nationalism in Chinese Revolution In its early years, the CCP had made a distinction between ‘modern national liberation movement’ and ‘primitive national xenophobia’. During its debate against the statists in Xinshi group (醒狮派, literally awakened lion school), the CCP considered the state-centric nationalism as a ‘nationalism of the bourgeoisie’ which only ‘interests in liberation of one nation’.47 During the same period, the Fourth National Congress of the CCP passed a resolution on national liberation movement, stating that the ‘policy on assimilating Mongolians and Tibetans’ in China is hegemonic politics similar to the ‘pan-Turkism in Turkey’. It is ‘oppressing the small and weak nations in the name of national glory’. Instead, ‘the nationalism of the proletariat’ emphasises on the right of self-determination. It is a ‘nationalism of equality’.48 Therefore, instead of focusing on the tension between the right of secession and policy of assimilation, the CCP advocates the right of self-determination among different ethnic groups in China under the political goals of achieving the liberation of ‘Chinese nation as a whole’ (中国整个的民族) and the ‘unification of China’.49 The CCP’s understanding of nationalism also contained the early reformists’ focus on establishing political subjectivity of guomin (国民, national people) through actions of liberation and reform. This element became more pronounced after the 1927 party purge when the CCP was driven underground and became active in the rural and remote areas. At the time, the so-called base areas (根据地) under the CCP control were located in areas with great ethnic diversity. The economic development in these inland areas was also significantly belated comparing to the coastal cities. In this context, the CCP began to acknowledge that liberation cannot be a top-down, one-size-for-all initiative. Instead, it 47 Chunv Xiao, “显微镜下的醒狮派 (The Awakened Lion School under Microscope),” 中国青年 (The Chinese Youth) (October 1925). 48 Zhonggongzhongyang Tongzhanbu, ed., 民族问题文献汇编 1921.7–1949.9 (Collection of Documents on National Questions, from July 1921 to September 1949) (Beijing: Zhonggongzhongyang Dangxiao Chubanshe, 1991), 32. 49 “中国共产党第六次代表大会底决议案 (The Final Resolution of the Sixth National Congress of the CCP),” in 六大以来: 党内秘密文件 (Since the Sixth National Congress: Secret Documents of the CCP), ed. Zhonggongzhongyang Shujichu (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1980), 2. Tongzhanbu, 民族问题文献汇编 1921.7–1949.9 (Collection of Documents on National Questions, from July 1921 to September 1949), 96.

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

165

needs to recognise the socio-economic diversity among regions. In this sense, recognising the ‘right of self-determination of the Manchurian, Mongolian, Hui, Tibetan, Miao, and Yao people’ is to recognise that areas populated by these ethnic groups should have the right to determine the pace and policy of liberation suitable for their own regional socioeconomic conditions. Recognising the right of self-determination does not mean the absence of a unified party leadership. The CCP is clear that the territorial unification and the establishment of a ‘people’s sovereignty’ within the territory inherited from the Qing Empire has always been the goal for liberation and national self-determination. In the 1928 party manifesto, the CCP emphasised the party leadership in conducting works in different ethnic regions. It states that ‘an ethnic minority work office needs to be established in party regional headquarter.’ This is to make working among ‘the proletariat from other ethnic groups’ easier, as when working in these regions, ‘ethnic minority languages need to be used’. However, all works need to be ‘under the supervision and guidance of the local party headquarter’.50 In practice, particularly during the war against the Japanese invasion from 1931 to 1945, the Communist revolutionary agenda of creating a proletarian state and eventually a communist world order is embedded in the language of achieving a national liberation against imperialism. To both the Nationalist Party (Guomindang, 国民党) and the CCP at the time, Zhonghua minzu (the Chinese nation) was an ‘oppressed nation’ (被压迫民族). No ethnic groups in China could be isolated from the reality of Japanese invasion. Since the Second United Front beginning in 1937, the CCP had always been developing the notion of nationalism based on Dr Sun Yat-sen’s narrative. The Chinese national liberation as a whole and the equality among all ethnic groups within China were the two cornerstones in the CCP’s understanding of nationalism in this period. To the CCP, the goal of national liberation could be jeopardised by the external influence of imperialism trying to drag China into the imperialist conflicts by allying with a certain imperialist country. It could also be negatively impacted by internal factors such as the hegemonic Han Chauvinism, selfishness of certain classes, and collaborative elements in China to protect their own interests by sacrificing the national interest

50 Tongzhanbu, 民族问题文献汇编 1921.7–1949.9 (Collection of Documents on National Questions, from July 1921 to September 1949), 88.

166

Z. YIN

(minzu liyi, 民族利益).51 In the context of imperialist invasion, cooperation and unification are the only way to safeguard the nation. Chinese nationalism and internationalism are ‘not in conflict against each other’. Internationalists could only ‘achieve the goal of Chinese independence and liberation’ by ‘firmly excise Chinese nationalism’. At the same time, Chinese nationalists have to ‘sympathise and cooperation with internationalist movement, in order to overthrow the hegemony of imperialism and achieving real national equality on the global stage’. Only by then, the ‘Chinese nation can be thoroughly liberated’. In this sense, the notions that ‘nation is supreme’ (民族至上) and ‘state is supreme’ (国家至上) are ‘revolutionary’ in all colonies, semi-colonies, and weak and small nations under invasion. Whereas in ‘all the capitalist states, such notions are counter-revolutionary’.52 The CCP considers that the nationalist agenda of independence would only be possible when it became a transnational movement in the nonEuropean world. Liberation as a transformation for the oppressed world only gains its momentum in the modern history of anti-imperialism.53 It is a ‘part’ of a global transformation associated with the historical development of imperialist warfare and anti-imperialism across the world.54 Liberation does not only mean gaining the Westphalian sovereignty.55 Without the capabilities ‘which enable governments to be their own masters’, states could at most be recognised as possessing the ‘negative sovereignty’.56 Henceforth, liberation could not just be a nationalist transformation. It is, by nature, a universal mission rooted in the shared experience of suffering from the imperialist hegemony among the world’s

51 Zhou Enlai, “民族至上与国家至上 (On Nation Is Supreme and State Is Supreme),” 新华日报 (Xinhua Daily) (Chongqing) 15 June 1941. 52 Zhou, “民族至上与国家至上 (On Nation Is Supreme and State Is Supreme),” 新华 日报 (Xinhua Daily) (Chongqing) 22 June 1941. 53 Mao, “Xin Minzhuzhuyi Lun (On New Democracy),” 148. 54 Mao, “Xin Minzhuzhuyi Lun (On New Democracy),” 147–55. 55 Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1999), 73–104. 56 Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States:: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 27. Jackson also uses the term negative sovereignty to describe a formal legal condition of a state enjoying the freedom from external interference. It is resonates with Krasner’s categorisation of the Westphalian sovereignty.

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

167

peoples, particularly peoples from what is later known as the ‘Third World nations’. This narrative of a shared historical experience caused by the nineteenth-century global expansion of imperialism continues to influence the People’s Republic of China’s (RPC) nation-building narratives and foreign conducts with the Third World nations since 1949. This idea that sovereignty could only emerge through an act of liberation by the people against all forms of oppression, foreign and domestic alike, is deeply rooted in the modern Chinese experience of social revolution. It was given constitutional status in the Common Programme of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (hereafter refers as the Common Programme) in 1949. As the first constitutional document of the PRC, it proclaims at the beginning that the ‘glorious triumph of the Chinese people’s liberation war and the people’s revolution’ marked the ‘end of an era under imperialist, feudalist and crony capitalism in China’. With the establishment of the PRC, an old nation of China is made anew. Its hallmark is the transformation of the ‘Chinese people’ from being oppressed into the ‘master of the new society and the new nation’.57 All its state power ‘belongs to the people’.58 The Common Programme pays more attention to defining the centrality of the people in all the state institutions. Such a position is not received a form of empowerment but a result of their own revolutionary struggle. This notion is reflected in the narrative of the 1949 Common Programme. It defines the newly formed nation in the historical dynamics of socio-political transformation. The ‘will of the people’ to establish the PRC is a consensus reached through this historical process and becomes the political foundation’ of the new nation.59 History does not stop with the establishment of the new republic, with the territorial transference

57 “Zhongguo Renmin Zhengzhi Xieshang Huiyi Gongtong Gangling (Common Programme of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference),” in Zhonggong Zhongyang Wenjian Xuanji (Collection of the Documents of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party), ed. Zhongyangdanganguan (Beijing: Zhonggong Zhongyang Dangxiao Chubanshe, 1992), 584. The Common Programme of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference was passed at the first Plenary Session of the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference on September 29, 1949. 58 “Zhongguo Renmin Zhengzhi Xieshang Huiyi Gongtong Gangling (Common Programme of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference),” 586. 59 “Zhongguo Renmin Zhengzhi Xieshang Huiyi Gongtong Gangling (Common Programme of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference),” 584.

168

Z. YIN

between the old rulers and the new sovereign. The protection of the territorial sovereignty by the ‘military force of the people’ is certainly a major responsibility of the newly formed government.60 However, it is more important for the new regime to carry out the missions of the people’s sovereign and ‘strive for independence, democracy, peace, unity, prosperity, and strength of China’.61 The means of achieving this mission is by ‘developing new democracy people’s economy’, ‘transforming China into an industrial nation’, promoting the ‘public morality’ (gongde 公德) among the ‘national people’ (guomin 国民), and ‘defending the perpetual peace of the world’ and ‘friendly cooperation among peoples of all nations’.62 Until the recently 2018 Amendment, the Chinese Constitution has always maintained this historical approach and placed the history of revolutionary struggle of the Chinese people since 1840 at the central of its source of law.63 The PRC’s understanding of the Afro-Asian solidarity reflects its own domestic experience of liberation through revolution. It is viewed as a segment in a long history of the ongoing struggle for national and social liberations in the Third World, which stretches back to the early twentieth century and forms the post-WWII Afro-Asian and later the Tricontinental solidarity movement. This solidarity movement embodied the hope for a new world order envisioned by the former colonised world. It challenges the traditional Eurocentric diplomacy that resonates on the notion of the balance of powers. The newly formed nations and nations seeking for independence were actively pursuing a democratic and equal international order that did not discriminate against the weak and poor nations. The confidence in the possibility of achieving such an idealistic global order contextualises the nation-building practices in many of those nations. To the PRC, this

60 “Zhongguo Renmin Zhengzhi Xieshang Huiyi Gongtong Gangling (Common Programme of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference),” 586. 61 “Zhongguo Renmin Zhengzhi Xieshang Huiyi Gongtong Gangling (Common

Programme of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference),” 585. 62 “Zhongguo Renmin Zhengzhi Xieshang Huiyi Gongtong Gangling (Common Programme of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference),” 586 and 95. 63 Xinhua Net. “Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Xianfa (Constitution of the People’s Republic of China).” Xinhuanet.com. http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2018lh/201803/22/c_1122572202.htm (accessed September 3, 2018).

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

169

international call for an egalitarian global order signifies a historic moment in which the weak nations could unite and make their own fate. As Zhou Enlai stated in his Bandung Speech in 1955, with more and more ‘Afro-Asian nations freeing themselves from the constraint of colonialism’, the ‘Afro-Asian region’ has transformed tremendously. The Afro-Asian peoples’ rising awareness of ‘regaining control of their own fates’ after a ‘long struggle’ against colonialism symbolised that ‘yesterday’s Asia and Africa’ being made anew. The common historical experience of suffering and struggle enables the Afro-Asian peoples to envision their volonté générale to achieve ‘freedom and independence’, and to ‘change the socio-economical backwardness caused by the colonial rule’.64 In this long historical process of transformation, the AfroAsian peoples have developed a sense of ‘empathy and solicitude’ that enable the Afro-Asian nations to peacefully coexist and achieve ‘friendly cooperation’.65 The historical narrative in Zhou’s Bandung speech contextualises the proposal of Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence recognised in the Final Communique of the Afro-Asian Conference. Sovereignty does not only convey principles of non-intervention and territorial integrity, it also exists in the context of the recognition of a set of collective international responsibilities. These responsibilities, as coined in the Final Communiqué of the Asian-African Conference of Bandung, are ‘recognition of the equality of all races and … all nations large and small’, ‘promotion of mutual interests and co-operation’, and using ‘peaceful means’ ‘in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations’ to settle ‘all international disputes’.66

64 Zhou Enlai, “Zai Yafei Huiyi Quantihuiyi shangde Fayan (Speech delivered to the Plenary Session of the Bandung Conference)” in Zhou Enlai Waijiao Wenxuan (Collection of Zhou Enlai’s works on Foreign Affairs), ed. Zhonghuarenmingongheguo Waijiaobu and Zhonggongzhongyang Wenxianyanjiushi (Beijing: Zhongyang Wenxian Chubanshe, 1990), 112–14. 65 Zhou, “Zai Yafei Huiyi Quantihuiyi shangde Fayan (Speech delivered to the Plenary Session of the Bandung Conference),” 120. 66 Final Communiqué of the Asian-African Conference of Bandung (Djakarta: 1955), 161–69.

170

Z. YIN

Conclusion In the closing remark at the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Conference, Guo Moruo, the chairman of the Chinese Delegation, gives sincere regards to the Egyptian people, as they ‘defeated the joint imperialist aggression’.67 Guo quotes Mao’s words and says ‘unity is power’. The imperialists have ‘a consistent policy of dividing us’, hoping to ‘conquer us one by one’. Hence, we need to ‘unite together’.68 The final declaration of the conference takes the similar line and suggests the capability of ‘solidarity and mutual support among the Afro-Asian people’ is key in defeating imperialist order and achieving perpetual peace of the world.69 Guo’s remark corresponds closely with the slogan ‘Long live the People’s Republic of China, Long live the unity of the World’s people’, painted on the façade of Tiananmen (the Gate of Heavenly Peace). Comparing to the hegemonic view, which sees the world space as empty void being filled by dominant powers, the world order coming from the oppressed believes that the world space should be filled by the liberated people. The former believes that global stability comes from the balance of powers, whereas the latter envisions a world federation formed by the autonomous people through acts of liberation. The image of an international unity against imperialism was deeply intertwined in the PRC’s domestic exercises of nation-building. The knowledge about the ‘struggles’ in the Third World helped the Chines general public to image the Chinese national liberation in the context of a major transformation of the global order. The genesis of the PRC in this context is more than just a creation of a Westphalian sovereign. It is seen

67 Guo Moruo, “Zhongguo Daibiaotuan Tuanzhang Guo Moruo de Fayan (Speech of Guo Moruo, the Chairman of the Chinese Delegation),” in Yafeirenmin Tuanjiedahui Wenjian Huibian (Collection of Documents of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference) (Beijing: Shijiezhishi Chubanshe, 1958), 187–91. 68 Guo, “Zhongguo Daibiaotuan Tuanzhang Guo Moruo de Fayan (Speech of Guo Moruo, the Chairman of the Chinese Delegation),” 190. 69 “Yafeirenmin Tuanjiedahui Xuanyan: Gao Shijierenmin Shu (Declaration of the AfroAsian People’s Solidarity Conference: An Open Letter to Peoples of the World),” in Yafeirenmin Tuanjiedahui Wenjian Huibian (Collection of Documents of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference) (Beijing: Shijiezhishi Chubanshe, 1958), 219. An editorial about the conference in the People’s Daily adopts the similar line. See “亚非团结大会的 伟大成就 (The Great Achievement of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference).” 人民日报 (People’s Daily), January 4, 1958.

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

171

a step towards a creation of a new world order and ultimately the liberation of humankind. It is also situated in the creation of a new time, in which the transformation of the world from ‘old’ to ‘new’ is happening.

Bibliography Bowden, Brett. The Empire of Civilization, the Evolution of an Imperial Idea. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. Callahan, William A. “Chinese Visions of World Order: Post-Hegemonic or a New Hegemony?” International Studies Review 10, no. 4 (2008): 749–61. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Dong, Shunbo. “Lun Fuze Yuji Dui Lvshun Datusha Shijian De Pinglun (Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Comments on the Port Arthur Massacre).” Sheke Zongheng (Social Sciences Review) 29, no. 7 (Jul. 2014): 107–09. Dorwart, Jeffrey M. “James Creelman, the “New York World” and the Port Arthur Massacre.” Journalism Quarterly 50, no. 4 (1973): 697–701. Final Communiqué of the Asian-African Conference of Bandung. Djakarta, 1955. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. “蘭学事始再版序(Forward for the Reprint of the Origin of Dutch Studies).” In 福沢諭吉全集 (The Complete Works of Fukuzawa Yukichi). Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1962. Fukuzawa, Yukichi. 文明論之概略 (An Outline of a Theory of Civilisation). Vol. 1, Tokyo: Fukuzawa Yukichi, 1875. Gilpin, Robert. U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation: The Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment. New York: Basic Books, 1975. Guo, Moruo. “Zhongguo Daibiaotuan Tuanzhang Guo Moruo De Fayan (Speech of Guo Moruo, the Chairman of the Chinese Delegation).” In Yafeirenmin Tuanjiedahui Wenjian Huibian (Collection of Documents of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference). Beijing: Shijiezhishi Chubanshe, 1958. ———. War and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Huang, Xingtao. 重塑中华: 近代中国“中华民族”观念研究 (Reshaping Zhonghua: The Concept of ‘Zhonghua Minzu’ in Modern China). Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2017. Jackson, Robert H. Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Jin, Guantao, and Qingfeng Liu. 观念史研究: 中国现代重要政治术语的形成 (Studies in the History of Ideas: The Formation of Important Modern Chinese Political Terms). Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. Karl, Rebecca E. Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.

172

Z. YIN

Kedourie, Elie. Nationalism. London: Hutchinson & Co. Publishers Ltd., 1961. Keohane, Robert O. After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. ———. “The Theory of Hegemonic Stability and Changes in International Economic Regimes, 1967–1977.” In Change in the International System, edited by Ole R. Holsti, Randolph M. Siverson and Alexander L. George, 131–62. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980. Kindleberger, Charles P. The World in Depression, 1929–1939. Harmondswworth: Pelican Books, 1987. Kozyo, Satakichi. “土耳其论 (on Turkey).” Shiwu Bao (Current Affairs) 11 (1896). Krasner, Stephen D. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Levenson, Joseph R. “T’ien-Hsia and Kuo, and the “Transvaluation of Values”.” The Far Eastern Quarterly 11, no. 4 (1952): 447–51. Li, Dazhao. “支那分割之命运驳议 (Against the Destiny of China Being Divided).” In 李大钊全集 (Complete Works of Li Dazhao), edited by Shiru Zhang, Licheng Han, Shusheng Zen, Zhonghua Li, Lanshen Yan, Wanquan Chen, Zhenguo Zhou, et al. Shijiazhuang: Hebei Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 1999. ———. 李大钊全集 (Selected Works of Li Dazhao). Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1959. Liang, Qichao. “国家思想变迁异同论 (The Transformation of State Theory, Similarities and Differences).” In 梁启超全集 (The Complete Works of Liang Qichao), edited by Pinxing Zhang. Beijing: Beijing Chubanshe, 1999. ———. “新民说 (on the New Citizen, 1902).” In 梁启超全集 (The Complete Works of Liang Qichao), edited by Pinxing Zhang. Beijing: Beijing Chubanshe, 1999. ———. “进化论革命者颉德之学说 (Introducing Bejamine Kidd, a Revolutionary Thinker on Evolutionism).” In 饮冰室文集点校 (Collection and Anotation of Liang Qichao’s Works). Kunming: Yunnan Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 2001. Liu, Lydia H. Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900–1937. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995. Liu, Xianfei. “东游运动与潘佩珠日本认识的转变 (The Changes in Phan Boi Chau’s Understanding of Japan after the Movement of Traveling About Japan).” Dongnanya Yanjiu (Southeast Asian Studies), no. 5 (2011): 69–73. Luo, Jingwen. “东亚汉文化知识圈的流动与互动——以梁启超与潘佩珠对西方 思想家与日本维新人物的书写为例 (Transfers and Interactions among the Intellectual Communities of East Asian Chinese Character Culture Sphere: The Description of the Western Thinkers and the Meiji Restoration Intellectuals by Liang Qi Chao and Phan Bô.i Châu.” Taida Lishi Xuebao (Historical Inquiry) 48 (Dec. 2011): 51–96.

6

UNDERSTANDING NATION WITH MINZU : PEOPLE, RACE, …

173

Mao, Zedong. “Xin Minzhuzhuyi Lun (on New Democracy).” In Mao Zedong Ji (Collected Writings of Mao Tse-Tung), edited by Minoru Takeuchi. Tokyo: Hokub¯ osha, 1983. Oakes, Timothy, and Patricia L. Price, ed. The Cultural Geography Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. Pang, Xianzhi, Hui Feng, Xu Yao, Futing Zhao, and Zhengyu Wu, eds. 毛泽 东年谱, 1893–1949 (The Annotated Chronicle of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949). 3 vols. Vol. 1. Beijing: Zhongyang Wenxian Chubanshe, 2002. Pye, Lucian. “Social Science Theories in Search of Chinese Realities.” China Quarterly 132 (1992): 1161–70. Saaler, Sven, and Christopher W. A. Szpilman. “Introduction: The Emergence of Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity, 1850–2008.” In Pan-Asianism, a Documentary History, edited by Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011. Seeley, J. R. The Expansion of England, Two Courses of Lectures. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1914. Sukehiro, Hirakawa. “Japan’s Turn to the West.” In Modern Japanese Thought, edited by Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Tongzhanbu, Zhonggongzhongyang, ed. 民族问题文献汇编 1921.7–1949.9 (Collection of Documents on National Questions, from July 1921 to September 1949). Beijing: Zhonggongzhongyang Dangxiao Chubanshe, 1991. Xiao, Chunv. “显微镜下的醒狮派 (The Awakened Lion School under Microscope).” 中国青年 (The Chinese Youth) (Oct. 1925). “Yafeirenmin Tuanjiedahui Xuanyan: Gao Shijierenmin Shu (Declaration of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference: An Open Letter to Peoples of the World).” In Yafeirenmin Tuanjiedahui Wenjian Huibian (Collection of Documents of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference). Beijing: Shijiezhishi Chubanshe, 1958. Yuyi. “民族主义论 (on Nationalism).” Zhejiang Chao (Tidal Wave of Zhejiang) 1 (1903). Zachmann, Urs Matthias. “The Foundation Manifesto of the K¯ oakai (Raising Asia Society) and the Ajia Ky¯ okai (Asia Association), 1880–1883.” In PanAsianism, a Documentary History, edited by Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman, 53–60. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011. “Zhongguo Renmin Zhengzhi Xieshang Huiyi Gongtong Gangling (Common Programme of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference).” In Zhonggong Zhongyang Wenjian Xuanji (Collection of the Documents of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party), edited by Zhongyangdanganguan, 584–96. Beijing: Zhonggong Zhongyang Dangxiao Chubanshe, 1992.

174

Z. YIN

Zhou, Enlai. “Zai Yafei Huiyi Quantihuiyi Shangde Fayan (Speech Delivered to the Plenary Session of the Bandung Conference)”. In Zhou Enlai Waijiao Wenxuan (Collection of Zhou Enlai’s Works on Foreign Affairs), edited by Zhonghuarenmingongheguo Waijiaobu and Zhonggongzhongyang Wenxianyanjiushi. Beijing: Zhongyang Wenxian Chubanshe, 1990. ———. “民族至上与国家至上 (On Nation Is Supreme and State Is Supreme).” 新华日报 (Xinhua Daily) (Chongqing), 15 June 1941a. ———. “民族至上与国家至上 (On Nation Is Supreme and State Is Supreme).” 新华日报 (Xinhua Daily) (Chongqing), 22 June 1941b. Zhou, Songlun. “Wenming ‘Ruou’ Yu Zhengzhi ‘Tuoya’: Fuze Yuji ‘Wenminglun’ De Luoji Gouzao (Civilisation ‘Joining Europe’ and Politics ‘Leaving Asia’: The Logic Structure of Fukusawa Yukichi’s ‘Civilisation Theory’).” Ershiyi shiji (Twenty-first Century), no. 142 (2014): 29–41. “中国共产党第六次代表大会底决议案 (The Final Resolution of the Sixth National Congress of the Ccp).” In 六大以来: 党内秘密文件 (Since the Sixth National Congress: Secret Documents of the Ccp), edited by Zhonggongzhongyang Shujichu. Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1980. “国家学上之支那民族观 (View on Chinese Nation from the Point of State Theory).” 游学译编 (Translations of International Studies), no. 11 (1903): 11–23. “极东之新木爱罗主义 (New Monroeism from the Far East).” Qingyi Bao (The China Discussion), no. 2 (1898). “论帝国主义之发达及廿世纪世界之前途 (On the Development of Imperialism and the Future of the 20th Century).” In 近代中国史料丛刊三编·第十五辑· 清议报全编 (Collection of Modern Chinese Historical Documents, Volume 3, Number 15, Complete Collection of Qingyi Bao), edited by Yunlong Shen. Taipei: Wenhai Chubanshe, 1985.

CHAPTER 7

Unipolarity, Hegemony, and Moral Authority: Why China Will Not Build a Twenty-First Century Tributary System Kyuri Park and David C. Kang Introduction It has become conventional wisdom in the United States that China has rising and extensive ambitions including hegemony or transforming the entire global order. Former U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, for example, writes that “Chinese leaders aim to put in place a modern-day version of the tributary system that Chinese emperors used to establish authority over vassal states.”1 Rush Doshi, a key architect of the 1 H.R. McMaster, 2020. “How China Sees the World.” Available at https://www.the atlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/mcmaster-china-strategy/609088/.

K. Park (B) The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] D. C. Kang School of International Relations and the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Z. Wang (ed.), The Long East Asia, Governing China in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_7

175

176

K. PARK AND D. C. KANG

Biden administration’s China policy, writes that China “wants to displace the United States as world leader.”2 Bradley Thayer and Lianchao Han write that the Chinese Communist Party’s “ambitions are to remain in power — its permanence cannot be questioned — and those ambitions include global hegemony.”3 Doshi claims that, “US-China competition is primarily over regional and global order as well as the ‘forms of control— coercive capability, consensual inducements, and legitimacy—that sustain one’s position within that order.”4 Elbridge Colby claims that China aims to be a regional hegemon in East Asia. He argues that “Readers will not find here any discussion of how to compete with China economically…this is a book about war…China has a most potent interest in establishing hegemony over its region. Denying China hegemony over Asia is therefore the cardinal objective of American grand strategy.”5 As Allan Vucetic and Hopf summarize the central issue in the contemporary debate about the future of hegemony: “how strong is the US-led Western hegemonic order and what is the likelihood that China can or will lead a successful counterhegemonic challenge?”6 For example, Ikenberry argues that the Western liberal order can accommodate China’s rise because it is open and based on “fair” rules.7 Yet, Charles Kupchan argues that Beijing does not show “any signs of readiness to play by Western rules and norms.”8 Kupchan argues that China is only influential in a “Sinicized sphere of influence,” while Acharya explores the “end of the

2 Rush Doshi, The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (Oxford University Press, 2021), p. 51. 3 Bradley A. Thayer and Lianchao Han, July 14, 2021. “China’s Centenary Address Recalls Stalin’s Declaration of Cold War,” The Hill. Available at https://thehill.com/opinion/international/562675-chinas-centenary-address-recalls-sta lins-declaration-of-cold-war. 4 Doshi, The Long Game, p. 298. 5 Colby, The Strategy of Denial (Yale University Press, 2021), location 114 (Kindle

edition XYZ). 6 Bentley Allan, Srdjan Vucetic, and Ted Hopf, “The Distribution of Identity and the

Future of International Order: China’s Hegemonic Prospects,” International Organization 72 (Fall 2018): 839–869. 7 John Ikenberry, “The Future of the Liberal World Order: Internationalism After America,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 3 (May/June 2011): 56–68. 8 Charles Kupchan, “The Case for a Middle Path in U.S. Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy (January 15, 2021).

7

UNIPOLARITY, HEGEMONY, AND MORAL AUTHORITY: …

177

American world order.”9 As Allan et al. argue, “if hegemony is simply leadership of a rule-based order conditions by elite beliefs, then in the abstract it can incorporate any rising power. But if hegemony is a thick phenomenon…then the substantive ideational content of the order, rather than its abstract form, is crucial.”10 Perhaps, the most relevant argument comes from Schweller and Pu, who argue that “the current international system is entering a deconcentration/delegitimation phase…China [is] the most viable contender for a hegemonic challenge.”11 Order, unipolarity, and hegemony as concepts are interrelated. In this chapter, we define unipolarity as an intentionally truncated concept of hegemony—truncated because it includes only material, and not ideational, elements. A true hegemon, by contrast, would not only have unipolar capabilities, but also moral authority—the civilizational purpose that the dominant power projects. Historical East Asia was an enduring hegemonic system with one unipolar power: China, and historical China was indeed a hegemon that existed within a multi-state system. For over two thousand years, China as civilization was attractive to many of its neighboring societies. Chinese ideas about domestic and international order were widely emulated. The China-derived multi-state tribute system of East Asian international relations depended crucially on moral authority. Despite China’s rise and fall over the centuries, for almost two millennia Chinese hegemony was attractive, not compellent. However, almost no scholarship about China’s potential challenge to the contemporary, Western liberal order explores what a China-centered order would look like. From this perspective, it becomes clear how little China today actually challenges the existing order. Today, China is big and rich. It is increasingly integrating around the world on economic and diplomatic arenas, mostly within the current Western international order, not outside of it. But, China has no moral authority—its culture, values,

9 Charles Kupchan, “The Normative Foundations of Hegemony and The Coming Challenge to Pax Americana,” Security Studies 23, no. 2 (2014): 219–257; Amitav Acharya, Constructing Global Order: Agency and Change in World Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 10 Allan et al., “The Distribution of Identity and the Future of International Order: China’s Hegemonic Prospects,” p. 843. 11 Ranchall Schweller and Xiaoyu Pu, “After Unipolarity: China’s Visions of International Order in an Era of U.S. Decline,” International Security 36, no. 1 (Summer 2011): 41–72, 44–45.

178

K. PARK AND D. C. KANG

and norms do not attract. This view of hegemony leads to a clear prediction about the twenty-first century: no matter how big or rich China becomes, until it has crafted a moral and cultural vision for itself and the world that is attractive, it will not be a genuine challenger to the United States, nor can it establish hegemony, either in East Asia or globally.

Hegemony, Unipolarity, and International Order A system exists when units regularly interact; an order structures how those units interact. Three terms occupy us here: hegemony, unipolarity, and international order. Although they are often conflated or used interchangeably in the scholarly literature, we view these as discrete concepts. Unipolarity and hegemony are types of roles that a state can occupy within a particular order. Monteiro uses a particular definition of unipolarity. He defines unipolarity as “the concentration of military power in one state, the sole great power”12 and consciously excludes the role of ideational factors such as authority in the system. According to Monteiro, unipolarity is not the same as hegemony or empire, because “the organizing principle of a unipolar world is anarchy,” not hierarchy, so it has limited amount of authority over other sovereign states. He adds that “[i]f the unipole’s power augments to the point at which it can control all external behaviors of all other states, then hegemony has replaced unipolarity.”13 Under this narrow conceptualization of unipolarity, Monteiro claims that post-Cold War U.S. unipolar era was a unique period that was properly unipolar, and comparison to other historical cases such as ancient Egypt, Persia, Rome, and China are flawed because they were empires.14 In short, Monteiro appears to equate hegemony with empire, a definition we will challenge in this paper. Emphasizing the relationship between the distribution of military power and the durability of unipolarity, Monteiro argue that “the nuclear revolution is a condition of possibility of a durable unipolar

12 Nuno P. Monteiro, Theory of Unipolar Politics (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 13 Ibid., pp. 41–42. 14 Ibid., p. 47.

7

UNIPOLARITY, HEGEMONY, AND MORAL AUTHORITY: …

179

world…Without it…a unipolar world would quickly disappear.”15 The underlying logic of this argument is that the durability of unipolarity depends on the expected costs of war between the unipole and a rising challenger, and nuclear revolution makes the expected cost of great power war prohibitive.16 To say, Monteiro employs squarely materialist approach to explain the absence of a systemic balance of power against the unipole. Our definition is broader. Although, the contemporary international order’s fundamental organizing principle is sovereign equality among states, many international orders have been hierarchic and have recognized a wide variety of units as legitimate members. There are many different understandings on international order: what it is, what it is composed of, and who builds it, and how it gets maintained and changes, for example. The simplest definition of an international order is that: it is an arrangement made between units in the international system on how they wish to interact with each other. Our starting assumptions are threefold. First, the construction of international order depends on cultural context (ideational/normative factors) as much as distribution of material capabilities. We are building on from Reus-Smit’s conception of international orders that highlights the relationship between culture and order. He writes, “culture is understood as a coherent whole, an integrated and bounded system of values and practices that is both a necessary background condition for the emergence of an international order, and the principal determinant of that order’s institutional structure and processes.”17 For example, contemporary liberal international order (LIO) which enshrines ideas such as openness, rulebased governance, and Westphalian sovereignty (states are formally equal and independent, possessing the ultimate authority over their people and territory) are artifacts of two centuries of Anglo-American dominance. Ikenberry writes that “Western Christendom, the European state system, the Industrial Revolution, the rise of Western liberal democracy, and the eras of British and American hegemony provide the foundations for modern liberal international order. Put differently, liberal internationalism has emerged and gained dominance within a historically unique political formation.”18 15 Ibid., p. 50. 16 Ibid., p. 4. 17 Christian Reus-Smit, “Cultural Diversity and International Order,” International

Organization 71 (Fall 2017): 856. 18 Chapter 7 Liberal Internationalism and Cultural Diversity (from Part III—The Modern ‘Liberal’ Order) in Culture and Order in World Politics (eds., Andrew Phillips

180

K. PARK AND D. C. KANG

Second, international orders are neither neutral nor inherently moral, they are always built by actors for a purpose.19 International orders promote a set of material, ideational, and normative interests, and values that the order-makers care about. Often, dominant powers in the system play the role of order-makers. Robert Gilpin writes, “In every international system the dominant powers in the international hierarchy of power and prestige organize and control the processes of interactions among the elements of the system…These dominant states have sought to exert control over the system in order to advance their self-interests…To some extent the lesser states in an international system follow the leadership of more powerful states, in part because they accept the legitimacy and utility of the existing order.”20 In the similar vein, Ikenberry and Nexon write, “Hegemonic powers pursue these policies not out of altruism but rather a desire to mold and maintain an international system that serves their interests and values…Hegemons face major challenges in establishing order without, at minimum, the complicity of a small group of secondary states who support their leadership, as well as the rules and institutions of international orders.” Third, the architecture and the infrastructure of international orders are dynamic and malleable. International orders evolve through continued contestation, adjustment, and negotiation between units in an international system. Bull defines international order as “a pattern of activity that sustains the elementary or primary goals of the society of states, or international society.”21 Building on from Bull’s definition of international order, Goh argues that international orders are “underpinned by an inter-subjective consensus about the basic goals and means of

and Christian Reus-Smit). https://www-cambridge-org.libproxy1.usc.edu/core/books/ culture-and-order-in-world-politics/liberal-internationalism-and-cultural-diversity/952FA0 CD93E60F88E3989B8ADC7A875E. 19 David A. Lake, Lisa L. Martin, and Thomas Risse, “Challenges to the Liberal Order: Reflections on International Organization,” International Organization 75 (Spring 2021): 247. 20 Robert Gilpin, War & Change in World Politics (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1981): 29–30. 21 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 1997, p. 4.

7

UNIPOLARITY, HEGEMONY, AND MORAL AUTHORITY: …

181

conducing international affairs. These shared understandings are historically contingent, evolving, and grounded in practice.”22 Tourinho argues that international orders are co-constituted through recurrent bargain between great powers and relatively weak actors, those often considered as rule-takers. He writes, evolution of an international order “is not…a unilateral hegemonic move…It is a contested process in which weaker parties resisted hegemonic orders practically, legally, or diplomatically…Great powers engaged that resistance with concessions because they could not create a new, stable global order alone.”23 Alex Cooley claims that an international order is an ecology produced from both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic activities, and that this ecology, in turn, creates opportunities and constraint for contestation over order.24 Ikenberry and Nexon write, hegemonic orders, which is a variety of international orders, are “means, mediums, and objects of cooperation and contestation.” Hegemons are “not simply order makers but also order takers whose domestic political processes significantly interact with the dynamics of international order.”25 Ji-young Lee defines hierarchy as “authority exercised by the ruler over the ruled.” Feng Zhang similarly defines hierarchy as an “international relationship of legitimate authority.”26 Seo-hyun Park agrees; international hierarchy, she writes, is determined not only by “the material capability of states but also by their relative social standing based on prestige and authority.”27 Key to this definition is the social nature of hierarchy. For one actor to be at the top necessarily implies that others must be below. Just as important, then, as understanding the role of the hegemon is exploring whether or not secondary actors consider its authority as legitimate. In this way, all three authors are building on 22 Evelyn Goh, The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy, and Transition in Post-

Cold War East Asia, p. 7. 23 Marcos Tourinho, “The Co-constitution of Order,” International Organization 75 (Spring 2021): 260. 24 Alexander Cooley, “Ordering Eurasia: The Rise and Decline of Liberal Internationalism in the Post-Communist Space,” Security Studies 28, no. 3 (June–July 2019): 588–613. 25 G. John Ikenberry and Daniel H. Nexon, “Hegemony Studies 3.0: The Dynamics of Hegemonic Orders,” Security Studies, 28, no. 3: 395–421. 26 Lee 2016, 9 and Zhang 2015, 6. 27 Park SH 2017, 8.

182

K. PARK AND D. C. KANG

a widely shared definition of hierarchy, one that incorporates rational calculations as well as social and ideational factors.28 Hegemony is a type of hierarchy and arises when units accept the leadership and influence of another unit. Crucially, this is different from Monteiro’s definition. Hegemony does not involve controlling the behavior of other units, but instead is about the attractiveness of the values and ideas the hegemon holds and projects. The simple fact of material preponderance connotes only primacy or unipolarity, and hegemony implies more than mere size. As Zhang defines it, hegemony is the “conjunction of material primacy and social legitimacy…a system of primacy is not necessarily one of hegemony. Hegemony entails a social recognition by other states that the leading state’s material dominance and its consequent international rules and behaviors are broadly legitimate.”29 Lee concurs: “a country does not automatically become a hegemon by virtue of preponderant power but instead needs legitimation of its identity as such…an important aspect of hegemonic power is about using cultural resources for strategic purposes, ‘rendering some activities permissible while ruling others out of order.’”30 In this way, Zhang and Lee are at the forefront of theoretical scholarship on international order and hegemony. Scholars are increasingly looking beyond materialist or cost–benefit calculations of hierarchy and hegemony and recognizing the social bases of these concepts.31 Regarding the contemporary order, we focus most centrally on Schweller and Pu’s arguments about delegitimation. Schweller and Pu argue that contenders or rivals to the United States will first attempt to delegitimize the United States, and will begin to contest and resist in ways that “fall short of balancing against the unipolar power.”32 They argue that rising powers will adduce competing visions of global order, “the discourse of resistance,” as well as cost-imposing strategies, “the practice of resistance,” to challenge the unipolar power. These cost-imposing strategies are defined extraordinarily widely, including:

28 Mattern and Zarakol 2016. 29 Zhang 2015, 6. 30 Lee 2016, 64–65. 31 Example, Allan, Vucetic, and Hopf 2018, 845 and Mastanduno 2003, 145. 32 Schweller and Pu, 48.

7

UNIPOLARITY, HEGEMONY, AND MORAL AUTHORITY: …

183

Diplomatic friction or foot-dragging; denying U.S. military forces access to bases; launching terrorist attacks against the United States; aiding, abetting, and harboring terrorist groups; voting against the United States in international institutions; preventing or reversing the forward-baseing of U.S. military forces; pursuing protectionism and other coercive economic policies; engaging in conventional uses of forces such as blockades against U.S. allies; and proliferating weapons of mass destruction among anti-Western states or groups.”33

Enduring Premodern Chinese Hegemony: A Trans-dynastic Idea of China Monteiro excludes premodern China from his set of cases that fit his definition of unipolar power. However, Monteiro’s dismissal of China as an empire is empirically flawed. China existed since at least the fifth century AD within a multi-state system—it was by far the most powerful country, and it had a civilizational influence across the known region. Over this long span of time, China did not attempt to control other units in the system, or even attempt to impose its values and ideas on them. The key difference between historical Europe and East Asia is that East Asia was a hegemonic system, while Europe was a multipolar balance of power system. From the time of the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), although Chinese power waxed and waned over the centuries, East Asia was a hegemonic system; not a multipolar balance of power system as existed in Europe. As MacKay observes: For more than two millennia…a relatively consistent idea persisted of what Imperial China was or should be. When China was ascendant, as during the Han and Ming dynasties, this identity justified Chinese regional dominance. When China was in decline, it provided a source of aspiration. When foreigners occupied the country, as did the Mongols under the Yuan dynasty and the Manchus under the Qing dynasty, they justified their rule by claiming the Mandate of Heaven (tianming ) for themselves.34

33 Schweller and Pu, 48–49. 34 Joseph MacKay, “The Nomadic Other: Ontological Security and the Inner Asian

Steppe in Historical East Asian International Politics,” Review of International Studies 42, no. 3 (July 2016): 474.

184

K. PARK AND D. C. KANG

Every other political actor that emerged in the past two thousand years emerged within the reality or idea of Chinese power. Korea, Japan, Vietnam, the peoples of the Central Asian steppe, the societies of Southeast Asia—all had to deal with China in some fashion and decide how best to organize their own societies and to manage their relations with the hegemon. That is, the biggest evolution over time was the gradual emergence of a multi-state international system in which China was the hegemon, existing in a system comprised of many different units. The Qin dynasty from two millenia ago had no other recognizable counterparts. By the fourth to sixth centuries CE, however, recognizable countries—institutionalized, territorially delimited, centrally administered—had begun to emerge in Korea and Japan.35 As Richard von Glahn describes it: The might and wealth of the Sui–Tang empires (618–907) at their peak deeply impressed China’s neighbors. Japan, the Korean states, and even (briefly) Tibet imitated the Sui–Tang imperial model, and to a greater or lesser degree adopted the Chinese written language, Sui–Tang political institutions and laws, Confucian ideology, and the Buddhist religion. It was during this era that East Asia – a community of independent national states sharing a common civilization – took shape in forms that have endured down to modern times.”36

By the tenth century, Vietnam, Ryukyus, Tibet, and other actors had emerged as well, creating a truly “international” system. Not only were there new and different actors across time, the sophistication, complexity, and interconnectedness of the region changed and deepened substantially over the centuries. Thus, while there were enduring cultural and institutional threads that run across two thousand years, there was also substantial change, as well. The reality of Chinese power, Chinese ideas and debates about the proper role of government and state-society relations; and different ways to conduct foreign relations were a fact of life in East Asia. Surrounding peoples could choose to embrace or reject the idea and fact of China, but they had to engage it no matter what they chose. 35 Chin-hao Huang and David C. Kang, State Formation through Emulation: The East Asian Model (Cambridge University Press, 2022). 36 Von Glahn 2016, 169.

7

UNIPOLARITY, HEGEMONY, AND MORAL AUTHORITY: …

185

When China did fail, and fall apart, it was almost always for internal reasons. As Yuri Pines writes, choosing particular starting and end points: The Chinese empire was established in 221 BCE, when the state of Qin unified the Chinese world…the Chinese empire ended in 1912…for 2,132 years, we may discern striking similarities in institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural spheres throughout the imperial millennia. The Chinese empire was an extraordinarily powerful ideological construct. The peculiar historical trajectory of the Chinese empire was not its indestructability…but rather its repeated resurrection in more or less the same territory and with a functional structure similar to that of the preturmoil period.37

Walter Scheidel (2007, 8) writes about the Han dynasty, delimits the centuries between its fall and the eventual reunification under the Tang, and concludes that sixth-century CE China restored a bureaucratic state that succeeded, “albeit with substantial interruptions, in maintaining a core-wide empire under Chinese or foreign leadership until 1911 and, in effect, up to the present day.”38 Some of this literature treats two thousand years of Chinese history as stagnant, repetitive, and unchanging. There is, unfortunately, a hoary stereotype of stagnant and endless dynastic cycles that should have been excised long ago from any serious scholarship on East Asian history. There was no enduring Chinese state. In fact, far from being an “endless cycle unbroken up to the twentieth century,” East Asian history was far more vibrant, creative, and contingent. It is important to take both trends into account: some astonishing continuity, and some remarkable change, as well. East Asia grew, changed, evolved, and innovated as much or more than any other region on the planet, and scholarship on war and violence should reflect that historical reality. China spent much of its history in disunity and divided, as well as at other times being powerful and hegemonic. Furthermore, the challenges it faced, and the wars that occurred across time, were not simply a cycle—the East Asian region evolved over time, and the challenges facing the various countries evolved, as well. However, there was a trans-dynastic idea of both China and the international order. All Chinese dynasties since the Qin and Han of 200 BC 37 Yuri Pines, The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy (Princeton University Press, 2012), 2. 38 NO CITATION.

186

K. PARK AND D. C. KANG

existed within an unquestioned worldview that took for granted the idea or vision of the “traditional” Chinese homeland. Conventionally, scholars view the formation of national identity as a Western, nineteenth century creation. But countries in East Asia have had well over a millenia of a corporate identity. Yet, Nicolas Tackett has argued forcefully that tenthcentury Song China was a “nation” in the modern sense of the word, a trans-dynastic entity that viewed itself as a homogenous cultural and ecological zone. Key to this was the attraction the Chinese civilization had to other emerging societies. Attraction and Emulation, not Compellence In historical East Asia, state formation occurred in a region in which war was relatively rare. There was no balance of power system with regular existential threats—the longevity of the East Asian dynasties is evidence of both the peacefulness of their neighborhood and its internal stability. Instead, emulation and learning from China—the hegemon which had a civilizational influence across the known world—drove the rapid formation of centralized, bureaucratically administered, territorial governments in Vietnam, Korea, and Japan.39 State formation in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam occurred 1,000 years earlier than in Europe, and for reasons of emulation, not bellicist competition. These countries did not engage in state-building in order to wage war or suppress revolt. Despite Charles Tilly’s famous dictum that “war made the state, and the state made war,”40 neither war nor preparations for war were the cause or effect of state formation in Korea, Japan, or Vietnam. However, scholars of international relations have not sufficiently investigated how the system affects the units, and in particular how hegemonic systems may differ from balance-of-power systems. Moreover, how small, weaker actors support or resist large hegemons has been largely undertheorized in the study of authority relations, power, and legitimacy in the extant literature.41

39 Huang and State Formation through Emulation. 40 Charles Tilly, The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 42. 41 Chin-Hao Huang, Power and Restraint in China’s Rise (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022, in press).

7

UNIPOLARITY, HEGEMONY, AND MORAL AUTHORITY: …

187

State formation occurred through conscious, intentional emulation and learning. A regionwide epistemic community existed, composed mainly of Confucian scholars and Buddhist monks, who interacted, traveled, and learned from each other from Vietnam and Tibet to China, Korea, and Japan. So intertwined is the history of China with its neighbors that Charles Holcombe concludes that “the early histories of both Korea and Japan would be incomprehensible except as parts of a larger East Asian community”42 In his magisterial history of Vietnam, Keith Taylor concludes that “Vietnamese history as we know it today could not exist without Chinese history. The manner in which Vietnamese history overlaps with and is distinguished from Chinese history presents a singular example of experience in organizing and governing human society within the orbit of Sinic civilization that can be compared with Korean and Japanese history.”43 The impact of Chinese civilization was comprehensive, including language, education, writing, poetry, art, mathematics, science, religion, philosophy, social and family structure, political and administrative institutions and ideas, and more. Individual strands of emulation are almost impossible to understand outside this larger civilizational context. As Batten describes it, “Japan, like other regions of East Asia, can be regarded in many periods as a periphery of China. Not only were the two countries part of the same political/military network, but power relations took an unequal, hierarchical form, with China playing the role of core and Japan playing that of periphery.”44 State formation—such as taxes, meritocratic bureaucracies, and the military—was a key element of broader Sinicization and is inseparable from that larger Chinese civilizational influence. What is most obvious is the slow, gradual, and uneven transformation of these countries. Chinese civilization, Buddhism, and Confucianism were used for legitimacy and prestige within a domestic context, yet those elements of state formation were only effective within a larger intellectual, philosophical, and religious environment in which those ideas were not only valued and desired, but were considered almost “inevitable.” 42 Charles Holcombe, A History of East Asia: From the Origins of Civilization to the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 109. 43 Keith Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 4. 44 Batten 2003, 228.

188

K. PARK AND D. C. KANG

Key elements of the state-building were Buddhism, Confucianism, and the Chinese language and writing system, which fundamentally transformed religion, philosophy, government, society, and political life in both Korea and Japan. Batten sums it up: “China, Korea, and Japan all share a common cultural heritage centered on Buddhism, Confucianism, and the use of the Chinese writing system.”45 Lewis and Wigen emphasize that, the “distinctive” Chinese writing system “became the crucial vehicle for spreading Chinese notions of philosophy, cosmology, and statecraft to the neighboring peoples of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.”46 There was clearly a degree of learning, in that the body of knowledge in Chinese sciences, mathematics, architecture, and calendar were far more developed beyond anything in Korea and Japan. Chinese learning was so advanced that being conversant with it was prestigious and impressive to Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese elites. During the fourth to sixth centuries, the “Korean states regularly sent tribute missions to the states in China … in exchange, Korean rulers received symbols that strengthened their own legitimacy and a variety of cultural commodities: Ritual goods, books, Buddhist scriptures, and rare luxury products.”47 By 503, the Silla dynasty had adopted Chinese titles such as “king” and abandoned native Korean titles. Ebrey and Walthall note that “Silla kings took steps to institutionalize their governments … they made Buddhism the state-sponsored religion, and collected taxes on agriculture.”48 They also note that “The newly created board of academicians had specialists in medicine, law, mathematics, astronomy, and water clocks.”49 All of this was indicative signs of emulation and nearly wholesale adoption from China. In Japan, this first wave of Chinese influence was comprehensive importing of Tang-style institutions, language and writing systems, and education, including Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, geomancy and divination, law, literature, history, mathematics, calendrics, and medicine, not to mention art and architecture. Indeed, all three Japanese writing

45 Batten 2003, 66. 46 Lewis and Wigen 1997, 144. 47 Seth 2016, 45. 48 Ebrey and Walthall 2014, 104. 49 Ebrey and Walthall 2014, 106.

7

UNIPOLARITY, HEGEMONY, AND MORAL AUTHORITY: …

189

systems—hiragana, katakana, and kanji—were derived from Chinese characters. “The Yamato court adopted many features of the superior Chinese civilization, included a reorganization of court ranks and etiquette in accordance with Chinese models, the adoption of the Chinese calendar, the opening of formal diplomatic relations with China, the creation of a system of highways, the erection of many Buddhist temples, and the compilation of official chronicles.”50 As with the Korean and Japanese states, during the scattered early attempts at creating a Vietnamese state, rulers used many Chinese practices simply because it was the civilizational universe in which they existed. One of the defining features of Vietnamese emulation in its state formation was the introduction and adoption of the civil service examination system. By the eleventh century, the Vietnamese civil service examinations—along with the role of scholar-officials and the use of classic Chinese texts—had become consequential in the governing of the country and the formation of the state. The scholar-officials were “professional elites … whose hierarchies were created by public competition as much as by social class.”51 In 1075, the Vietnamese ruler Lý Nhân Tông ordered three levels of examination, “to select senior graduates familiar with the classics and broader learning.”52 The exams for civil servants were largely based on China’s syllabus and focused on key aspects of Chinese history, literature, and classical studies, all meant to train a new crop of officials and administrators to concentrate the power of the central court, and to introduce a tax and legal code modeled after the northern neighbor.53 The top scorers over the centuries have become national heroes, and many are remembered today. For instance, the title of tra.ng nguyên (top scorer, c: zhuangyuan, 狀元) was first awarded to Lê V˘an Thi.nh (1038–1096) for ranking first in that first exam. Lê had a storied career, and eventually rose to the position of chancellor and negotiated the border with the Song in 1084. The term tra.ng nguyên is still used today to describe the best performer in a competition.

50 De Bary et al. 2001, 40–41. 51 Woodside, Lost Modernities, 18. 52 Kiernan, Viet Nam, 160. 53 Truong Buu Laam, New Lamps for Old: The Transformation of the Vietnamese

Administrative Elite (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1982).

190

K. PARK AND D. C. KANG

´ 文廟) was built as a In 1070, the Temple of Literature (V˘an Miêu, dedication to Confucius. It also housed the first national university, the ´ Tu, Giám (國子監), which opened in 1075. A subsequent examiQuôc nation in 1077 tested officials on “letters and laws.”54 By 1086, again in direct borrowing from Chinese practice, the government held a literary exam to select a hàn lâm ho.c s˜ı (academician). In Tang and Song governments, “such men were assigned to what was called the Hanlin Academy where erudite men were called upon for various tasks.”55 Often considered the most elite group of scholars, they managed the courts and were responsible for interpreting the Chinese classics for the kings. In sum, deeply institutionalized and territorially defined states in historical East Asia emerged and developed under the shadow of a hegemonic international system through a combination of emulation and learning, not bellicist interstate war. Many of these institutions lasted over 1,000 years in Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. Chinese hegemony was not only unquestioned, it was remarkably durable. Even in times, when China was divided or in chaos, a trans-dynastic idea of “China” persisted, as did the norms and ideas and institutions of both international relations and domestic governance. This is enduring hegemony within a multi-state system. Hegemony endured for cultural reasons even as China’s material power waxed and waned over the centuries. ij

China Today---Crafting an Economic, Not Hegemonic Order Today, is China a challenge to the Western liberal order? Does it seek hegemony within that order? Or, is it simply a potential unipole— powerful but without any attractive civilizational core? The world has changed—China—like all contemporary countries—exists within a Westphalian, Western-derived international order that it does not question.56 China is often called one of the most ardent defenders of the sovereign nation-state. China has made no attempt to bring back the historical East Asian tributary system. Indeed, we find almost no evidence of any of the contestation or delegitimation strategies that Schweller and Pu described 54 Kiernan, Viet Nam, 160. 55 Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese, 87. 56 Allen Carlson, XYZ.

7

UNIPOLARITY, HEGEMONY, AND MORAL AUTHORITY: …

191

earlier. China is not launching terrorist attacks of denying forces access to bases nor pursuing protectionism nor engaging in blockades against United States allies nor proliferating weapons of mass destruction. And yet, the degree to which China is playing by the rules and not changing them is hotly debated. There is clearly evidence that in some areas, China is working within global norms. There is also probative evidence that China plays by many of the rules of the contemporary international order. For example, economists Chad Brown and Douglas Irwin note that “China has complied with findings from the WTO surprisingly often.”57 David Welch and Kobi Logendrarajah of Waterloo University monitored China’s compliance to the 2016 ruling from the Tribunal in the Hague over the South China Sea dispute between China and the Philippines, finding that “China has been cooperating surprisingly well” with the rulings.58 Chin-hao Huang has surveyed ASEAN summit statements and Chinese behavior in the South China Sea from 2012–2018. Huang finds a positive relationship between ASEAN’s summit statements that exhibit strong consensus on the South China Sea and China’s restraint.59 Far from pursuing protectionism, China is pursuing a clear economic strategy toward the region and itself, as well. China and fourteen other East Asian states signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in November 2020—Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Korea are among the signatories. Significantly, the United States chose not to participate. RCEP is the first trade agreement that includes all three China, Korea, and Japan. RCEP arose as a regional initiative of ASEAN, and is aimed at lowering tariffs, increasing investment, and allowing freer movement of good s around the region. RCEP’s focus on cutting tariffs and increasing market access makes it seems less comprehensive than CPTPP. Another regional initiative was the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Originally a Japanese initiative, TPP was a high-quality trade agreement that would have included the United States and eleven other Latin 57 Chad P. Brown and Douglas A. Irwin, “Trump’s Assault on the Global Trading System: And Why Decoupling From China Will Change Everything,” Foreign Affairs (September/October, 2019). 58 David Welch and Kobi Logendrarajah 2019. 59 Chin-hao Huang, Power and Restraint in China’s Rise (Columbia University Press,

forthcoming).

192

K. PARK AND D. C. KANG

American and East Asian countries such as Vietnam and Singapore, but without Korea or China. The original TPP was considered of high quality than RCEP because in addition to trade and investment provisions, TPP also includes provisions that emphasized labor rights, environmental and intellectual property protections, and dispute resolution mechanisms. President Trump withdrew from the agreement, and the other 11 countries continued to sign a modified agreement in March 2018, calling it the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). China applied to join the CPTPP in September 2021. This is significant—Alex Lin and Saori Katada argue that that China “wants” to join the TPP is not new—this has been happening since 2013, where Chinese leaders have consistently made aspirational statements about TPP entry.60 Chinese Premier Li Keqiang gave a keynote speech at ASEAN in September 2013, one of the first times a high-ranking Chinese official openly said they’d entertain the CPTPP: China is willing to join hands with ASEAN to advance talks of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and discuss exchanges and interactions with frameworks such as Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement, so as to create an open, inclusive, and mutually beneficial climate to ‘make two wheels of regional and global trade roll together.’61

China’s geoeconomics endgame was always engaging both RCEP and TPP (and they’ve told us in plain sight). In 2013, this seemed highly unlikely to happen, and most Western observers dismissed the possibility that China could improve and reform its legal, institutional, and commercial institutions and infrastructure to meet the requirements of TPP. However, that was almost a decade ago, and China’s domestic economy and legal institutions continue to change and evolve in ways—and at speeds—totally unexpected. In terms of the pace of change, China in 200 As recently as 2008, China had zero kilometers high speed rail. Since then, it has built over 37,000 kilometers (23,000 miles) of high speed

60 Alex Yu-Ting Lin and Saori Katada, “Striving for Greatness: STATUS ASPIRATIONS, RHETOrical entrapment, and Domestic Reforms,” Review of International Political Economy (forthcoming). 61 Quoted in Lin and Katada, “Striving for Greatness.”

7

UNIPOLARITY, HEGEMONY, AND MORAL AUTHORITY: …

193

rail, with trains traveling up to 350 km/hr.62 The train from Beijing to Shanghai, for example, takes little over four hours. In contrast, the United States has only one rail line, Acela, that qualifies for high speed status. The Acela’s top speed is only 240 km/hr, and it can only attain those speeds on 55 kilometers of the route. In 2001, Chinese per capita GDP was a little over $1,000 US; by 2010, per capita GDP was $4,550. By 2020, that had grown to $10,500. China’s per capita GDP is far behind that of the United States, but it is also a bit premature to predict that China a decade from now will not be even wealthier, and its economy more rationalized and institutionalized, than it is today. All the evidence points to the opposite: despite setbacks, the Chinese economic and legal environment continues to evolve in the direction of greater transparency, not less. With the conclusion of RCEP, and with the CPTPP application, China has moved much closer to this endgame. There are multiple reasons for this. One of them is that China—and everyone else—understood that it would be difficult for China to actually join the TPP because of the mismatch between TPP’s entry requirements and China’s domestic economic practices, for example, on property rights. What does this mean? It means that China realized (since around 2013) the CPTPP is a club good, but one which will require significant reforms to access, for which China was not ready for at the time. Unless, China is applying to get denied (not impossible), a formal application means that China now considers itself willing and able to meet the requirements. Or, at a minimum, it now considers itself as moving much closer to this bar than ever. As an indication of intentions, China’s application to join CPTPP is significant. China has changed domestically far more rapidly than anyone envisioned even a decade ago. Its domestic economic practices and institutions may not yet be sufficient to join CPTPP, but it is moving in that direction more rapidly than most had believed. As for economic relations abroad, in 2000, every major country in East Asia traded more with the United States than China.63 By 2010, 62 Ben Jones, “Past, Present and Future: The Evolution of China’s Incredible HighSpeed Rail Network,” CNN (May 26, 2021). https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/ china-high-speed-rail-cmd/index.html. 63 Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia.

194

K. PARK AND D. C. KANG

every major country in the region traded more with China than the United States. In other words, often the speed at which China’s domestic economy is both growing and becoming more institutionalized and stable is often under-appreciated. AIIB, World Bank, Belt, and Road Initiative. These are economic strategies; despite the excessive hyperbole linked to them in the Western press, close inspection often reveals that they are not debt-traps and that they are not military initiatives. As Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire summarize: “The debt-trap narrative is just that: a lie, and a powerful one. Our research shows that Chinese banks are willing to restructure the terms of existing loans and have never actually seized an asset from any country, much less the port of Hambantota [Sri Lanka].”64 A fair amount of research suggests that China is trying to maintain the economic aspects of the global liberal order, yet shift other parts of it closer to its national interest, principally human rights and sovereignty issues. For example, Ted Piccone’s Brookings report points out on how China and Russia are working together at the UNHCR to insert the right to economic prosperity into the list of human rights, so China can call itself a leading human rights defender.65 In fact, many activists and scholars in the West regularly include economic rights as human rights. To be fair, as Rob Schmitz puts it: What China — its government and its people — have achieved is unprecedented in human history: Around 700 million Chinese have worked their way above the poverty line since 1980, accounting for three-quarters of global poverty reduction during that period. (According to the World Bank more than 500 million Chinese lifted themselves out of poverty as China’s poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 6.5 percent in 2012).66

And, to be fair as well, it is precisely because of the lack of attention to economic rights that many Western scholars and activists criticize North Korea. Fahy points out that many scholars and activists have

64 Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire, “The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth,” The Atlantic Monthly (February 6, 2021). 65 Ted Piccone, China’s Long Game on Human Rights at the United Nations (Brookings Institute, September 2018). 66 Rob Schmitz, “Who’s Lifting Chinese People Out Of Poverty?” National Public Radio (January 17, 2017).

7

UNIPOLARITY, HEGEMONY, AND MORAL AUTHORITY: …

195

criticized North Korea because “access to food is a human right,” while Marcus Noland has written extensively on “North Korea and the Right to Food.”67 Erin Baggott Carter and Brett Carter’s chapter on Chinese propaganda narratives about international politics shows that China advances precisely these arguments: the global free trade order is important, but that the international order needs to downplay human rights and emphasize non-interventionism. Thus, there is a debate, but it is far from clear that China is necessarily any worse than other countries in this regard.68 What is inconsistent is to criticize China for claiming economic right are human rights, and then to criticize North Korea for precisely the opposite reasons: that economic rights are, actually, human rights and North Korea should provide them. Yet fundamentally, can Chinese society or culture or moral authority be attractive to regional countries and the international community at large? Clearly, China faces a challenge of projecting a global image based on Western liberal democratic values such as human rights. Today China is often seen as closed and authoritarian—its one-party political system, its “Great Firewall” that blocks flow of information, and its censorship regime that restricts freedom of media and freedom of speech, among others, are often targets of Western criticism. Indeed, global media and many Western governments are constantly criticizing China for numerous human rights abuses, from Xinjiang to Hong Kong and Tibet. However, it remains to be debated whether China can establish itself as morally appealing to other countries.

Conclusion: Can American Moral Authority Continue? One can argue that China today is becoming rich and strong. But it is doing so largely within the existing order. It is not at all clear that China has any ideas about a non-order.

67 Sandra Fahy, Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record (Columbia University Press, 2019), Chapter Two; Marcus Noland, “North Korea and the Right to Food,” Testimony before the United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Public Hearings (October 30, 2013). 68 Brett Carter and Erin Baggott Carter, Propaganda in Autocracies (Book manuscript, USC, 2021).

196

K. PARK AND D. C. KANG

As to pure hegemony, China is not attractive today. It is compellent. There is little possibility about a China taking over the world because it does not put forth a civilizational purpose that is attractive. Its economic policy is attractive to many countries. It is increasingly bold, engaged, and building and participating in multilateral economic institutions most centrally in East Asia, but also around the world. But this is largely within the prevailing order, not against it. Contra Schweller and Pu, China is not delegitimating the order, it is replacing the United States. Even in politics, China accepts the norms of the prevailing order. Although China is clearly an authoritarian country, it now claims that it is democratic. There is no alternative worldview from China. The argument put forth in this paper leads to questions about the United States, as well. One of the most attractive aspects to American hegemony is not its size or wealth, but its values. American values are crystal clear: democracy, capitalism, and human rights. Yet U.S. decisions in the past few years have increasingly raised into question whether the United States still strives to follow its values, either at home or abroad. In foreign affairs, it is the United States, not China, that is backing out of regional trade regimes. The Biden administration has clearly signaled that it has no intention to rethink Trump’s decision to withdraw from RCEP and CPTPP. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in March 2021 that, “Some of us previously argued for free trade agreements because we believed Americans would broadly share in the economic gains and that those deals would shape the global economy in ways that we wanted…But we didn’t do enough to understand who would be negatively affected.”69 Furthermore, American moral authority—its ability to call out human rights and other standards—is seriously impeded by the actions of the past few years. This is not false equivalence, this is American hubris. Indeed, it is not clear that the United States ever had moral authority, given its calculated support of many authoritarian dictators around the world during the Cold War. But, as Kelly Zvobgo points out, “many foreign policy issues, such as human rights, are also domestic policy issues. In order to be an effective champion of rights – for example, those of religious and ethnic minorities in China – the Biden administration will need to address the

69 Quoted in Yuka Hayashi, “Japan Wants U.S. Back in the TPP. It Will Likely Have to Wait,” Wall Street Journal (April 16, 2021).

7

UNIPOLARITY, HEGEMONY, AND MORAL AUTHORITY: …

197

United States’ own checked past and perhaps especially, its present.”70 This is not simply state policies, such as the 2017 ban on immigration from several Muslim-majority countries, or the separation of young children from their parents on the US-Mexico border. These are the most obvious issues, but rather it is deeper than that. Adkins and Devermont point out that: it has been difficult to square the United States’ image as the global standard-bearer for human rights, individual freedoms, and democratic governance with recent images of militarized police forces and armored vehicles taking to U.S. street; of peaceful protesters being met with rubber bullets, tear gas, and batons, and of senior government officials calling for us to “send in the troops” and “dominate the battlespace” by which they mean the public square of towns and cities across the nation where citizens exercise their rights to assemble and protest.71

As Sohrabh wrote in 2021 about the United States foreign policy establishment: The internal decay has only accelerated since [2013], and yet the foreign-policy apparatus—liberal and “conservative,” governmental and nonprofit—still publishes annual reports judging other nations on a dozen silly metrics; champions this or that foreign dissident who may or may not be worth championing; issues urgent appeals about “democratic backsliding” in Central Europe and LGBTQ rights in Uzbekistan. More than once in the past few years, I’ve felt an urge to grab these men and women by the well-tailored lapel, shake them and scream, Look around you!

To conclude, this chapter invites debate on the role of ideational and normative factors in the future of international order and hegemonic transition. Historically, ideational sources of power played a crucial role in China’s maintenance of its hegemonic position in modern East Asia, especially in the context of the tributary system. But does China have something equivalent today? Vice versa, the United States’ rise as

70 Kelebogile Zvogbo, “Foreign Policy Begins at Home,” Foreign Policy (January 15, 2021). 71 Travis Adkins and Judd Devermont, “The Legacy of American Racism at Home and Abroad,” Foreign Policy (June 19, 2020).

198

K. PARK AND D. C. KANG

a unipolar power after the Cold War was not met with balancing behaviors because various countries were attracted to democratic values and liberal ideas presented by the United States and accepted the Western liberal order. Is the United States doing a good job of guarding the principles that have allowed the United States to maintain the position of unchallenged hegemony today? Hegemonic orders created by compellence may erode as soon as the hegemon declines in material power, but attractive and morally appealing orders may last longer despite the change in the distribution of material capabilities. This paper raises the need for an in-depth discussion on the role of ideational factors in the stability of hegemonic orders in future research.72

72 Sohrab Ahmari, “An Apology To Richard Haass: The Case for Putting America’s House in Order Before We Try to Remake the World Is All Around Us,” The American Conservative (August 18, 2021).

CHAPTER 8

East Asian Monarchy in Comparative Perspective Tom Ginsburg

Introduction Monarchy is a universal phenomenon found all over the world, and the subject of a vast and rich historical literature. Yet economists, legal scholars, and political scientists sometimes think of it as an anachronism. This is odd, because 22% of countries today are monarchies, as Figs. 8.1 and 8.2 show.1 Casual observation suggests that constitutional monarchies are an extremely successful type of government: According to the Economist Intelligence Unit 2020, eight of the world’s top fifteen democracies are constitutional monarchies. And many of the richest countries in the world are monarchies, including both the constitutional monarchies of Europe and Japan, as well as the oil-rich absolute

1 See Appendix.

T. Ginsburg (B) University of Chicago Law School, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Z. Wang (ed.), The Long East Asia, Governing China in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_8

199

200

T. GINSBURG

monarchies that survive. Rather than being treated an anachronism, the continuing endurance of monarchy deserves explanation. In this chapter, I examine East and Southeast Asian monarchy in comparative perspective.2 Monarchy survives at the national level in five countries in East and Southeast Asia: Brunei, Cambodia, Japan, Malaysia, and Thailand. Brunei’s sultan is an absolute monarch, one of only eight remaining in the world today,3 but the others are all considered to be constitutional monarchies (although Thailand is increasingly ambiguous in this regard). I first present some ideas about the origins, legitimation, and frequency of monarchy in general. Working from contemporary conceptualizations, I discuss the functions of monarchy, as well as the key issue of succession. Then, drawing on standard bargaining models in political science, I explain how kings bargain with elites to try to survive in a changing world. The results of these bargains depend in part on material and normative resources the kings can bring to bear. In this regard, traditional East Asian ideas served as beliefs that conditioned the survival of monarchy in the face of major social and political upheavals. For example, in the late nineteenth century, Chinese ideas about dynastic replacement meant that the late Qing had difficulty rallying support when its material capacities were clearly in decline. During the same period, Japanese ideas of an unbroken imperial line presented the then-weak emperor as an available solution to collective action problems among elites. Precisely because he had no prior power, the Meiji emperor could unify the diverse coalition that overthrew the Tokugawa in the 1860s. Japan’s Emperor integrated the country, while China’s disintegrated it. The various monarchies of Southeast Asia provide further evidence of the plausibility of the mechanisms we identify. The Thai monarchy was able to navigate the challenges of the twentieth century through deft coalition building, while the monarchies of Laos and Vietnam fell. Cambodia and Malaysia’s monarchs were able to provide symbolic legitimation for elites and so were restored as constitutional figureheads, 2 I exclude the Pacific Islands partly for lack of expertise but also because it lacks the longstanding and routinized exchanges with China that characterize the countries of East and Southeast Asia. 3 The eight are Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Eswatini is the last absolute monarchy outside the Muslim world and lacks oil.

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

201

occasionally playing a political role. Finally, Brunei’s absolute monarchy emerged as a result of its protectorate status.

Theories of Monarchy and Its Survival Monarchy is a form of political organization that ties groups together beyond kinship relations, allowing for more diverse polities, of greater geographic scope, than did its predecessors. Scholars have attributed various valuable functions to monarchs, including social and cultural integration, conflict resolution, and establishment of a stable basis for long-term investments. This section discusses some of this literature. Social and Cultural Integration Integration is perhaps the single most important function a monarch can play. Gerring et al. point out that monarchs become more attractive as size of the polity increases.4 It is the very diversity of society that, paradoxically, increases the value of a single individual as a coordination point. The ruler in some sense creates fictive kin status for her subjects, allowing her to resolve any conflicts that do arise among them, and facilitating cross-group transactions. The ontological unity of the nation thus reduces intergroup conflict, in turn contributing to economic stability. Integration frequently involves appeals to religion. Indeed, since ancient times, monarchy has been sacralized, tied to guaranteeing welfare, good harvests, and productivity. Yet typically, kings are not themselves priests—there is a division of labor between the two offices. In the Western tradition, this is embodied by the biblical story of the emergence of monarchy as a replacement for governance by judges and prophets, going back to the Book of Samuel. The priest anoints the king, who is chosen by divine command, and rituals of investiture take on cosmic significance. This distinction survived in the medieval Catholic church, which claimed the authority to legitimate temporal power. Another important theme in the study of monarchy is that ancient kingships were rooted in complex ideas of purity, pollution, caste, and

4 Gerring, John, Tore Wig, Wouter Veenendaal W., Daniel Weitzel, Jan Teorell and Kyosuke Kikuta. 2021. “Why Monarchy? The Rise and Demise of a Regime Type,” Comparative Political Studies 54(3–4): 585–622.

202

T. GINSBURG

integration. In a famous volume called The Golden Bough, anthropologist and folklorist James Frazer sought to understand the symbolic and ritual aspects of kingship, treating it as more than a mere political office. Instead, the King in his conception is a ritual actor, a sacred figure under a form of house arrest. He is “hedged in by a ceremonious etiquette, a network of prohibitions and observances.”5 He keeps the cosmic order. But Frazer notes that if the king fails in this duty, he is killed and replaced by one who can restore cosmic order. Thus, the king is also the scapegoat for society. Scholars of East Asia will already sense the potential overlap with the idea of the Mandate of Heaven, to which we will return shortly. Frazer’s themes are updated in an important anthropological examination of monarchy by Graeber and Sahlins.6 They characterize kings as imitations of gods, who frequently emerge as strangers from outside the polity. Graber and Sahlins also discuss the locus of sovereignty as resulting from a war between king and society. They distinguish between divine kingship, which emerges if a monarch exerts effective control over the people, and sacred kingship, which emerges if the people win against the king. One might see the sacred king as the prisoner-scapegoat in Frazer’s terms, a constrained figure rather than a true power holder. There is perhaps no better tragic figure to illustrate this feature of monarchy than Empress Masako of Japan, the Harvard-educated diplomat whose failure to conceive a son was the object of national obsession during the 1990s and early 2000s.7 Limited and Absolute Monarchies These interpretative frames from anthropology are complemented by the dominant theory in political science, which views the monarchy as engaged in a bargaining process with society. The relative power of

5 James Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890) at 138–39. 6 David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins, On Kings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

2015). 7 Princess Toshi was born in 2001, but that led to national debate over whether the

Imperial Household Law of 1947 had to be revised in order to allow a female to take the throne. When the Masako’s brother-in-law Akishino and his wife gave birth to a son Hisahito in 2006, the controversy was laid to rest. Somewhat uncomfortably for the Graeber-Sahlins theory, Hisahito is believed not to be merely sacred but a descendant of the divine.

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

203

monarch and society is not fixed but can vary over time. Many assume a kind of teleology in which society will eventually win out, leading to a constitutional monarchy or even a republic (In other work, I contest this view, seeing a powerless monarch as a stable equilibrium). Constitutional monarchy is a concept with no precise definition in the literature, but for our purposes can include governments (i) in which the Head of State is a monarch, either appointed or hereditary, but (ii) the actual head of government is not the monarch. In modern times, another condition applies: (iii) the powers of the monarch are laid out in a constitution or set of constitutional texts. In pre-modern conditions, a constitutional text is not essential, so the key element is that the bulk of effective power lies outside of the royal house. Classical thinkers in the Western tradition understood their own monarchies to be constrained by institutions, even if not the electoral institution emphasized today. In De L’Esprit des lois (1748), Montesquieu identifies three basic types of government: “republican government is that in which the people as a body, or only a part of the people, have sovereign power; monarchical government is that in which one alone governs, but by fixed and established laws; whereas in despotic government, one alone, without law and without rule, draws everything along by his will and his caprices.”8 The Ottoman Sultan was the definition of a despot in Montesquieu’s orientalist construction; the monarchies of Europe, including England, were monarchs who governed by “fixed and established laws.” He saw them as constrained by small-c constitutional rules. Relatedly, Hume (1752: 58) emphasized the importance of a monarch as a constraint on the legislature: It is possible so to constitute a free government, as that a single person, call him doge, prince, or king, shall possess a large share of power, and shall form a proper balance or counterpoise to the other parts of the legislature. This chief magistrate may be either elective or hereditary; and though the former institution may, to a superficial view, appear the most advantageous; yet a more accurate inspection will discover in it greater inconveniencies

8 Montesquieu believed that the ideal was “a constitution that has all the internal advantages of republican government and the external force of monarchy. I speak of the federal republic.” Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws 1748 [1989]: Book 1. 10.

204

T. GINSBURG

than in the latter, and such as are founded on causes and principles eternal and immutable.9

A Digression on Succession Hume introduces us to the problem of succession a critical one for institutional design. All monarchies confront a coordination problem around succession—if there is uncertainty about the successor, then there may be wasteful competition among potential contenders. The basic political logic of succession is that a ruler wants to appoint a successor who is strong enough to protect elite bargains after his death, but not so strong as to depose the ruler in her lifetime.10 Choosing one’s own child will minimize (though not eliminate) the chance of the Crown Prince overthrowing the monarch. At the same time, there is a risk of the child being too weak for the job, which might induce challengers from within or without the family. One might imagine that a monarch would choose the strongest among her children, but this in turn will induce competition among them.11 Hereditary primogeniture has emerged as a focal point solution to the coordination problem, reducing potentially wasteful conflict among possible claimants to a throne, while also providing more security and predictability for elites. There is a political and economic logic to succession in general and to primogeniture in particular. But we also observe countervailing evidence in which some systems preserved elective kings. Examples include Anglo-Saxon England, where the king had to be approved by the magnates assembled in the Witan; the Holy Roman Empire, in which the emperor was elected by the princely electors (Kurfürsten); and the Mongol Empire, in which the ruling khans of each horde were chosen from among descendants of Chinggis Khan.12 The elective principle means that the best possible leader can be selected, but also introduces the possibility of costly fights among contenders. 9 David Hume, Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations (1752). 10 Gordon Tullock, On Autocracy (Springer, 1985). 11 The early Ottoman sultanate engaged in the practice of murdering all males in the family save one, once the heir succeeded to the throne. But Favereau notes this precise maneuver by the Mongol khan Batu introduced an unraveling of his rule. Marie Favereau, The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). 12 Marie Faverau, ibid. One could add the Vatican since the eleventh century to the

list.

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

205

A final possible principle is agnatic succession, in which siblings take the throne in sequence. The House of Saud, in which current King Salman is the sixth son of the dynasty’s founder Ibn Saud to hold the throne, is an example of agnatic succession, but one which has featured constant turmoil since the founding of the Kingdom. Ibn Saud had 35 sons that survived to adulthood, and decreed that his sons would serve in sequence. This scheme creates what he economist Alvin Roth called an unraveling problem.13 Because the number of sons in the first generation was limited, it was inevitable that there would have to be a switch to a new generation at some point. Knowing that such a switch would occur, sons taking the throne later in the sequence would have an incentive to defect on the original decision, and instead establish their own line by appointing a son as the successor. In turn, knowing that later sons have such an incentive, earlier sons would seek to make the move first. Indeed, Ibn Saud’s two first successors, Saud and Faisal, engaged in a fierce power struggle when the former sought to designate his own son as Crown Prince; eventually King Saud was deposed and exiled. Faisal was later assassinated by a member of the family. More recently, of course, the agnatic line was broken by the current King Salman. Salman initially made his youngest brother Crown Prince, only to renege three months later and appoint his nephew Mohamad bin Nayef as the first member of the next generation to be so designated. But in 2017, Salman’s son Mohamad (MBS) was named Crown Prince, and Mohamad bin Nayef was deposed, with his wealth confiscated. In 2020, he was arrested and charged with treason. The inner workings of the House of Saud are hardly harmonious, and readers can bless their good fortune for not having been born into it.

13 Alvin Roth and X. Xing. 1994. “Jumping the Gun: Imperfections and Institutions Related to the Timing of Market Transactions,” American Economic Review 84: 992– 1044.

206

T. GINSBURG

Political Equilibria As the discussion so far has demonstrated, bargaining among elites is a theme in both anthropological, economic, and political science accounts of monarchy. A simple bargaining model commonly employed in political science can explain the dynamics.14 We present an informal version here. Consider a game with two players, an absolute monarch and a set of civilian elites with whom she must bargain over government formation. The monarch provides services to civilian elites, taxing them in exchange for military protection and other services. Civilian elites have some power as well, perhaps based on independent sources of revenue not controlled by the monarch. As civilian elites develop forms of wealth not dependent on the monarchy, they will demand a greater share of control over government and taxation (In bargaining theory, this is called a change in their threat point). Demand for monarchic services falls, and the civilian elites can choose to challenge the monarch. On the other hand, as civilian wealth is threatened, either from external predators, or perhaps from internal challengers, demand for the monarchic services increases, and the monarch can take a greater share of power. Changes in the relative levels of power over a long period can result in a series of gradual adjustments. But if one of the increases or decreases in power is large and not anticipated in an accurate way by both players, then we have a problem of asymmetric information, which can lead to fighting. This occurs if the players have wildly different expectations of how an event affects their power. For example, if the monarch believes its power had decreased a small amount over a given period while the elites think the decrease is much larger, then the highest offer the monarch is willing to offer may be lower than the lowest the elites are willing to accept. In this case, at least one of the parties will initiate a fight. Under some conditions, the elites will eliminate the monarch entirely, either replacing her or turning the country into a republic.15 In others, the monarch will repress the challengers and take more control.

14 James Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization 49(3): 379–414 (1995); See George Tridimas “Constitutional Monarchy as Power Sharing,” Constitutional Political Economy 32: 431–61 (2021) for an application to monarchy. 15 Adam Przeworski, et al. “The Origins of Parliamentary Responsibility.” Chapter. In Comparative Constitutional Design, edited by Tom Ginsburg, 101–37 (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

207

Absolute monarchy results when the king wins this contest, or in which there is no meaningful challenge to the power of the monarch, either from below, outside, or from relevant elites. Republicanism results when the King tries to fight but loses. Constitutional monarchy results when the King concedes in the face of sustained challenge by parliament. Much of the English-language literature on constitutional monarchy draws on the paradigmatic case of the United Kingdom, in which allegedly weak kings had to bargain with powerful landed nobles in order to raise taxes. The need to make war drove fiscal bargaining that gradually led to the emergence of parliament as the lawmaking authority.16 While this account has come under some recent criticism as to its empirical basis,17 the basic image of a monarch bargaining with elites seems consistent with recent history in many parts of the world. As the economy became more complex in the nineteenth century, the monarchy’s relative power declined in many societies. This required renegotiation over power, typically with parliaments. When the underlying economic change was incremental, the monarchs could yield gradually—a process that took hundreds of years in England. But where changes were sudden and sharp, the monarch typically could not yield in time. The Russian Revolution is one prominent example. Kings who resisted demands for reform often found themselves deposed, while those who yielded kept their thrones with great reductions in power. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries are therefore crucial for understanding which monarchies survived into our current era, and a notable example of failure is China. Services Rendered: Why Keep a Monarch Around? What resources does a monarch bring to the bargaining table in circumstances in which her material power has declined, as occurred for most over the last two centuries? We return to the idea of integration discussed above. A monarch can serve to help divided elites resolve collective action problems; by providing ontological unity she can integrate diverse populations. Besides ethnic minorities, monarchs can play a role in reassuring

16 Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast. “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,” The Journal of Economic History 49(4): 803–32 (1989). 17 Deborah Boucayannis Kings as Judges (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

208

T. GINSBURG

conservatives that their interests are protected. In a series of papers, Weingast along with co-authors argues that democratic constitutions endure when they successfully reduce the stakes of politics.18 When people’s core interests, be they religion, language or property, are threatened, it triggers what he calls the rationality of fear. This in turn can lead to political disruption and even constitutional replacement. Constitutional monarchs serve as a stakes-reducing mechanism for conservatives. First, monarchies sound in tradition, and tend to be associated with conservative politics. Conservatives favor property rights and religion. A long history of political thought considers the threat posed by democracy to property holders, with constitutions as a device to codify a social arrangement between the wealthy few and the populous poor. Property owners can feel protected and empowered when monarchy is preserved. Relatedly, monarchs often take on a special role in religious ritual. The Queen of England is the head of the Anglican Church; similar roles can be found for many European monarchs. The Japanese Emperor is the living descendent of the Sun Goddess and plays a central role in Shinto ritual. The retention of a religious role means that monarchs send a signal to the faithful that their symbols will not be eliminated. Again, this reinforces conservative politics and reduces the rationality of fear. Contrast the contemporary United States where conservatives have an irrational fear that their interests will be destroyed. This leads to hyperbole, polarization and, perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy in which democratic erosion is the only way to protect ones core demands. A final service we may see monarchs provide is what I and co-authors call crisis insurance. Even without any power, monarchs can play a special role in providing focal points during times of true crisis. This means that at a last resort, a constitutional monarch can serve to prevent the surrendering of democracy. A central example is when Juan Carlos of Spain helped stand down a coup d’état launched in his name in 1981. He went on television wearing his military uniform, and ordered the armed forces to return to barracks, even as he was communicating individually with key generals, which helped prevent them from coordinating themselves and threatening the survival of the young democracy. The next elections were won by the Socialist Party, and the monarchy gained an enormous amount of legitimacy. While Juan Carlos’ later philandering and tax avoidance 18 Barry Weingast, “Self-Enforcing Constitutions: With an Application to Democratic Stability In America’s First Century.”

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

209

sullied his personal reputation, the institution of constitutional monarchy has survived with Spanish democracy.

East Asia The next section considers East Asian monarchy in light of these themes. We start, in each case, with ancient ideas, which we argue provided normative resources for the monarchs and elites to deploy in their conflicts over the last two centuries. China The Chinese idea of the Mandate of Heaven (tianming) encapsulates cosmic legitimation of a charismatic ruler. Going back to the Zhou dynasty, rulers were legitimated by a deity that had lost favor in the previous Shang dynasty. As this force became abstracted into “Heaven,” it was conceptualized as making moral assessments of human rulers, upon whom it bestowed or withheld favor. In the case of the latter, the decision would be objectively evidenced in natural phenomena—famine, war, and bad crops—as well as in human dissatisfaction in the form of popular revolt. As scholars have long recognized, the loss of the Mandate of Heaven did not quite amount to a right to rebellion. The people did not have epistemic power to identify violations of the moral duties of rulers. That power was beyond human reach and resided in heaven. Nor was there any idea of explicit consent of the governed, even if there are hints that some sort of implicit consent was required for continued legitimacy.19 The monarch emerges as a result of a contest for power, but once enthroned, has the right to rule through his descendants until such time as disorder ensues. This system provide a conceptual framework for understanding dynastic change, including the possibility of integrating stranger-kings in the form of non-Han dynasties. In addition, it created the possibility of political order as a distinct end in itself.20 Politics was a distinct sphere, 19 Joseph Chan, “Democracy and Meritocracy: Toward a Confucian Perspective,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34: 186 (2007). 20 Loubna El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).

210

T. GINSBURG

in which monarch and people had mutual duties, and their interaction would ultimately determine who would rule. The possibility of dynastic replacement, one might argue, creates a coordination problem among elites. The monarch provides a focal point for intra-elite bargains. But if enough elites have private beliefs that the dynasty is not likely to endure, they may defect, or at a minimum be less likely to provide the monarchy with resources. This could produce a feedback effect: the monarch may have fewer resources to tackle social problems, accelerating more defections, and a rapid loss of support. To prevent his from happening, a monarch might seek to undermine elite coordination and channels of sharing information. On the key question of succession, the Mencius speaks directly and characterizes hereditary monarchy as a later development. Early rulers were legitimated by “sagely, particularistic assessment of who was most qualified to rule, coupled with the endorsement of Heaven, as viewed through the actions of the people.”21 Mencius then identifies hereditary succession as arising later.22 In contrast with Mencius’ view that heaven would determine the succession, Xunzi argued that the critical factor was the merits of the successor in the early period. In terms of normative theory, Xunzi’s emphasis on ritual led him to argue heredity had become a more appropriate mechanism for selection over time.23 The earliest documented throne transitions were recorded in the Records of the Grand Historian, as well as the Bamboo Annals.24 One of the most famous cases was the abdication of Emperor Yao and his yielding of the throne to Emperor Shun, who was unrelated to Yao by blood. According to the Records, Yao knew that his son Dan Zhu lacked sufficient ability to manage state affairs, and decided to give the throne to Shun (The Bamboo Annals indicate the transition from Yao to Shun was in fact a forced abdication). Thus, merit-based succession was a possibility. Among Chinese historians, there is a consensus that the law for succession by primogeniture became formally established during the Zhou Dynasty, and is generally attributed to the Duke of Zhou (Zhou Gong 21 Stanfurd https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-social-political/#Bib. 22 El Amine, ibid. at 39–41 she argues that the Mencius prefers hereditary succession. 23 Sungmoon Kim, “Confucian Constitutionalism: Mencius and Xunzi on Virtue, Ritual, and Royal Transmission,” Review of Politics 11: 73 (2011). 24 Records of the Grand Historian (Shi Ji 史记); Bamboo Annals (Zhu Shu Ji Nian 竹 书纪年).

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

211

周公). It was during this time that Chinese society became morally and legally bound around a formal distinction between the primary wife and secondary or lesser wives. The eldest son of the monarch’s principal wife would be the default heir to the throne.25 Various ancient texts capture this primogeniture law in practice, most famously the Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals (公羊传). The first chapter documents an incident occurring in the first year of the rule of Duke Yin of the Kingdom Lu. In that passage, a son takes the throne upon his father’s death, but yields when the rightful son of the principal wife reaches majority, a decision described as being in accord with the ancient Way. Further, the Commentary makes clear that, whatever the objective merits of individual rulers, the primogeniture norm is superior in that it provides for stability. By the Han dynasty, the emperor was to be hereditary. Of course, there were some Confucian thinkers who still wished to “restore” the practice of the most virtuous person taking over, emphasizing the Yao abdication in favor of Shun. Sometimes usurpers relied on the discourse of merit to justify their seizure of power. For example, the short-lived “New Dynasty” founded by Wang Mang in 9 A.D. drew on these ideas, but he was in turn overthrown and the meritocratic line of Confucian thought lost favor. Primogeniture did not always occur in practice, of course. One way of getting around it was the system of retired emperors. The title of retired emperor was first created as a way to honor the living emperor’s father, a practice deeply rooted in the culture of filial piety. This was the main rationale during the Qin and Han Dynasties. During the Western Jin and the Later Liang Dynasties, the title of retired emperor had more functional purposes, either as a way to ensure a successful transfer of power by primogeniture before the emperor’s death, or to preserve continuity of the dynasty after a coup. In the Northern Wei Dynasty, some retired emperors gained political power, mainly because the succeeding heirs were too young to reign. From the Northern Wei Dynasty on, the role of retired emperors involved a mix of these purposes of ensuring fictive continuity or alternatively helping resolving succession problems. There is general scholarly consensus that primogeniture was nominally the formal inheritance law until the Qing Dynasty under Emperor Yongzheng, when the principle was formally abolished in favor of a secret

25 Dí Zháng Zî 嫡长子.

212

T. GINSBURG

reserve system. In this system, the emperor would carry a secret scroll with the name of his chosen heir, sometimes with a copy in the main palace. The content of the scroll would be revealed only upon the emperor’s abdication, as in the case of Emperor Qianlong, or upon the emperor’s death, such as in the case of Yongzheng.26 Western thinkers such as Hegel and to a lesser extent Montesquieu tended to emphasize the absolutist character of the Chinese monarchy. But in fact, the power of the Emperors rose and fell in various periods. Even from the earlier period, aristocratic families had a good deal of power, and in many periods played a central role in determining the position of the Grand Chancellor.27 Another distinct feature of the Chinese system was the existence of the set of scholar-officials who exercised governing power on behalf of the Son of Heaven. The autonomy of these officials takes an early justification in a passage from Mencius. When summoned by the King, Mencius refuses to go:28 A prince who is to achieve great things must have [officials] he does not summon. If he wants to consult with them he goes to them….Today there are many states, all equal in size and virtue, none being able to dominate the others. This is simply because the rulers are given to employing those they can teach rather than those from whom they can learn.

The idea is that the virtuous prince will hire people who he can learn from and will pay respect to them by approaching them for advice. These virtuous officials are selected on the basis of merit, and so deserve the

26 Zhen Yang, “On the Power of the Crown Prince in Qing Dynasty,” Studies in Qing History 4 (2002). The four main principles of the secret reserve system are: (1) The emperor has total control over whom to choose (2) The emperor considers both merit and primogeniture (3) The emperor is secretly fostering and evaluating the chosen heir. (4) The chosen heir must be kept from knowing his position. This latter provision was necessary both to prevent unraveling, in which the heir might seek to hasten the emperor’s death, and also to prevent infighting, because no one would know the heir until the day that they assume the throne. It bears remarkable similarity to the modern system of the dedazo, by which Mexican presidents in the PRI chose their successors. 27 Yuhua Wang, The Rise and Fall of Imperial China (Princeton University Press, 2022) provides novel evidence for the gradual substitution of officials who were appointed on merit, on the basis of an examination, for those who came from noble families. 28 Mencius 2B.2; see El Amine 2015: 56.

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

213

delegation of power, and the selection of officials the most important task of rulers.29 The role of ministers is further elaborated in the Xunzi. The ruler’s cosmic duty cannot only be achieved through running the day-to-day affairs of government; instead his duty is to perform rituals as well as to recreate and engage in “ease and repose.” The Xunzi contemplates the appointment of a kind of Prime Minister figure, a single person with “universal authority to lead the government.”30 This act of delegation, then, is the single biggest decision the emperor can take: “The way of a ruler lies in knowing men, that of a minister in knowing affairs of state.”31 Thus, although it often considered to be absolutist in character, the Chinese tradition from an early date contemplated a distinction between reigning and ruling.32 Retired emperors who exercised actual power is but one example. More continuously, the large scale of governance and the self-perpetuation of the bureaucracy made it tricky to maintain control. This itself suggests limits on a ruler’s appropriate deployment of his own power. The royal examination system meant that the scholar-officials had control over entry into the bureaucracy. The Confucian scholars had duties to lecture the emperor on norms of governance, and the National Historical Office chronicled good and bad actions of the leader. An emperor must have felt like something of a trustee for a dynasty, but also quite hemmed in by the large structures around him. Even, if this was never instantiated effectively in a formal human constraint, the system still suggests a theory of governance under which a ruler could err by exercising too much power over day-to-day affairs, creating a kind of quasi-constitutional division of labor. The much analyzed duty of remonstrance reflects the idea that good governance was a joint responsibility for the ruler and the ministers. Ministers were to play the role of criticizing unwise behavior of the rulers, a duty designed to overcome a particular kind of agency problem endemic to authoritarian government, namely the lack of information on likely consequence

29 Tongdong Bai, “How Has China Become a Despotic State?” (中国是如何成为专制 国家的). 30 Ela Amine 119. 31 Xunzi 27.69. 32 Rosemont, State and Society in the Xunzi.

214

T. GINSBURG

of policies. Yes-men can lead the ruler to make bad decisions with ruinous consequences, not only for the particular ruler, but the society itself. Of course, none of these ideas were sufficient to save the late Qing. The crisis of the late nineteenth century reached a culmination with the defeat by Japan in 1895. Reformers around Kang Youwei and his student Liang Qichao were not shy about rethinking the system, and a central element of their proposal was to change the formal structure of the government into a constitutional monarchy. During the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898, they were able to introduce a number of proposals. But the Dowager Empress Cixi engineered a coup d’etat on behalf of conservatives. Kang and Liang were exiled to Japan, while other reformers were executed. The Boxer Rebellion followed, and in response Cixi implemented some of the earlier proposals, as what are known as the New Policies. A broad debate about constitutional monarchy emerged, and the Qing sought advice from Japan and elsewhere in thinking about how to restructure their government. In 1908, the imperial government promulgated a “Constitutional Outline,” which included provisions for elections of certain bodies, and laid out a nine-year timeline for transition. But it did not have provision for a legislative assembly. And in the aftermath of Cixi’s death, large-scale demands for representation emerged with great vigor. Indeed, in May 1911, a Prime Minister was appointed as formal head of government, meaning that China did in fact have a formal constitutional monarchy of sorts for a few months until the Xinhai Revolution of October 1911. That event ended more than two millennia of the imperial system. And the foreign house of Qing—the stranger-kings—became the scapegoat for failure. Historians differ on the reasons for the failure of late-Qing reforms.33 For our purposes, we need not wade into these fields except to make two points. First, a reform coalition did not coalesce around a single model for coordination purposes. Second, repeated rounds of bargaining between the Manchu rulers and other forces in society did not succeed. And the upheavals of the late nineteenth century clouded all parties’ ability to determine possible solutions. Some, no doubt, saw the weakness of the

33 Merideth E. Cameron, The Reform Movement in China, 1898–1912 (1974); Meienberger, Norbert, The Emergence of Constitutional Government in China (1905–1908): The Concept Sanctioned by the Empress Dowager Tz‘u-hs (1980). Jie Cheng. “Why Late Qing Constitutional Reform failed: An Examination from the Comparative Institutional Perspective,” Tsinghua China Law Review 10(107): 108–44 (2017).

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

215

Qing as an opportunity to advance their particular interests, defecting on earlier bargains. The slow response of the Qing meant that the monarchy played a role in the country’s disintegration through territorial losses that lasted from the first Opium Wars through the establishment of the People’s Republic. But the basic setup of Chinese monarchy, in which dynasties end and are replaced, may also have contributed to bargaining failure by the strangerkings. Japan The Japanese Imperial House is distinct in the continuous (if fictive) rule of a single family, descended from the Sun Goddess. Legend holds that two deities descended from heaven and created the Japanese islands as well as the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Omikami, whose grandson Jimmu became the first emperor. This means that the grandmother of the imperial line was co-created with the Yamato nation itself. This essentialist unity has a mystic quality not found in China and contributes to a quasifamilial vision of the state.34 It also imbues the monarchy with religious duties. One of the earliest words for government, matsuri-goto, means “affairs of worship.”35 And the various Shinto rituals around rice give the emperor the responsibility for the harvest.36 The distinction between reigning and ruling is an ancient one in Japan.37 Indeed, Japan provides a counter-example for Sahlins and Graeber’s idea that divine kingship reflects the victory of the monarch over the people, for the emperors have for long periods held only nominal power. The unbroken line of divinity has required nimble shifts in a nonmonotheistic society with distinctly syncretic religious traditions. The

34 Cecil Brett, “The Priest Emperor Concept in Japanese Political Thought,” Indian Journal of Political Science 23: 17–28 (1962). 35 Nobushige Hozumi, Ancestor Worship and Japanese Law (Tokyo: XX Press, 1912) at 73. 36 Emiko Ohnukii-Tierney, “Japanese Monarchy in Historical and Comparative Perspective,” in Declan Quigley, ed. The Character of Kingship (New York: Berg, 2005), 209–32. 37 Emiko Ohnukii-Tierney, “Japanese Monarchy in Historical and Comparative Perspective,” in Declan Quigley, ed. The Character of Kingship (New York: Berg, 2005), 209–32.

216

T. GINSBURG

theory of monarchy was initially deeply enshrined with Shinto ritual, but also took on the beliefs and symbols of Confucianism and Buddhism as well. Thus, the monarchs have at some periods been the protector of the three jewels of Buddhism, and at others have been viewed as the literal sons of heaven, in a way that Chinese emperors could only invoke metaphorically. Confucian ideas of ancestor worship were also a natural fit in a context in which the imperial household embodied the nation. Monarchs tend to engage in a bricolage of techniques for legitimation. Buddhist ideas of ideal monarchy entered Japan with Prince Shotoku’s promotion of Buddhism in the sixth century. He drew on Chinese forms, including the widely known “constitution,” a written document of 17 articles, which consisted of exhortations to officials to treat the people well.38 Some of the provisions of this document, including restrictions on corvee labor, have Chinese antecedents and seem to constrain the government, but do so in a way that empowers the people against arbitrary action of officials. He also sought to establish a merit-based civil service. Shotoku’s statecraft emphasized a particular sutra, that of Vimalakirti, which articulated the good ruler as one who: should be above all differences of dispositions and interests of the people and yet care for them all, not for the sake of their individual benefits but for their ultimate welfare in fellowship and spiritual communion. The ruler leads the people by his ideal aims and the people follow him not in mere submission but in the full realization of the high aims and through mutual participation in the spiritual values embodied in the State. This participation is possible on the basis of the universal immanence of the Buddha nature, on the part of both the ruler and the ruled.39

Japan’s monarchy thus reflects a layering of legitimation, drawing on the ancestor of the Yamato race, as well as traditions of the Boddhisatva and

38 Hajime Nakamura, History of Japanese Thought: 592–1868: Japanese Philosophy Before Western Culture Entered Japan 8 (2002). 39 Masaharu Anesaki, “The Foundation of Buddhist Culture in Japan: The Buddhist

Ideals as Conceived and Carried Out by the Prince Regent Shotoku,” Monumenta Nipponica 6: 1–12 (1943). Other sutras emphasized in Japan included that of the Golden Light, promoted by the Emperor Temmu in 673. He instituted national practice of Buddhism and subsequent emperor Shomu undertook image building programs that fused government and religion.

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

217

the Son of Heaven. The fusion of temporal and spiritual authority is ever a powerful tool, when available. Yet, the Japanese monarchs were the first in the region to lose temporal authority. The bureaucratic model of Chinese governance did not succeed in Japan, and even during the Heian period, imperial power was formal rather than real. The Fujiwara clan of hereditary regents exercised real power during this period. Even when Emperors regained the upper hand in the eleventh century, they initiated a practice called “cloistered rule” in which real power would be held by a retired predecessor emperor, while the sitting emperor played the ritual role. Central authority disintegrated during the late Heian period in the twelfth century. A dispute over monarchic succession led rival claimants to align with militarily powerful clans, the Taira and the Minamoto. The Minamoto victory led to the establishment of the Kamakura bakufu, the military government that was nominally appointed by the emperor, and the most developed system under which imperial power was not even formal. Japanese feudalism gave real power to warlords, but also the creation of quasi-constitutional arrangements in which central rulers of the shogunate were formally constrained through independent adjudicative bodies.40 The tradition of reigning without ruling provided a useful resource for the Meiji reformers, of course. They seized on the emperor as a symbol of national integration, and through his “Restoration” were able to construct a strong centralized government. The oligarchy ruled, while the emperor reigned, and a national cult of state Shinto was created, fitting in perfectly with the dominant European logic of ethnically homogenous nation-states. The Constitution of 1889 states clearly that “The Sacred Throne of Japan is inherited from Imperial Ancestors.” And that “the Empire of Japan shall be reigned over and governed by a line of Emperors unbroken for ages eternal.”41 “The Emperor” it notes, “is sacred and inviolable.” The precise conceptual fit between these ideas and contemporary European ideas of sovereignty was contested. One school, formed around the legal scholars Hozumi Yatsuka and Uesugi Shinkichi, developed what

40 Jeffrey Mass, The Kamakura Bakufu (1976); Tom Ginsburg, “Constitutionalism: East Asian Antecedents,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 88: 11–33 (2012). 41 Const Japan (1889), preamble; Art. 1.

218

T. GINSBURG

became known as the conservative theory that the emperor was prior to the state and constitutional order, and the sole source of sovereign power. The state was a legal person whose source was ultimately the natural will of the Emperor. Any constitutional limitation on the powers of the monarch was simply a self-limitation on the part of the sovereign, which could in principle be withdrawn. Against this view was the so-called organ theory of Minobe Tatsukichi, which held that the Imperial institution was simply one among many organs of the state, along with the Diet, the government and the courts. Because the state embodied sovereignty, any claim of imperial power as extraconstitutional could not be maintained. This theory led to Minobe’s being purged by militarists in the 1930s, but was conveniently accessible for revival by Occupation authorities in the 1940s, and seems to be the accepted position of mainstream legal scholarship today. Today, Japan is clearly a constitutional monarchy, one whose survival has depended on the normative resources available to powerful parties at key junctures in history. Another theme illustrated by this account was the role of the monarchy in reassuring conservatives. General MacArthur’s decision to preserve the emperor induced conservatives to cooperate with the Occupation authorities and allowed the successful reconstruction of Japan. The process included massive land reform, which would not have been possible without Occupation pressure, and might have triggered the rationality of fear. Keeping the emperor, however, reduced the threat of right-wing violence in this process. Japan’s monarchy also embodies the prisoner-scapegoat model of kingship. The emperor is a national hostage, bound to perform an endless stream of sacred rituals. As in the United Kingdom, we have seen young members of the household seek to escape its onerous strictures: Princes Mako, oldest child of the Crown Prince, gave up her royal titles to marry a commoner in 2021. And, as already mentioned, Empress Masako’s struggles with mental health have been a topic of public concern for three decades. ∗ ∗ ∗ Summarizing the contrasting fates of the Japanese and Chinese (i.e., East Asia) monarchies in the late nineteenth century: Japan’s monarchy survived, precisely because it started the period powerless, and then provided an opportunity for insurgent elites seeking to integrate the

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

219

nation. After World War II, it was retained by Occupation authorities as a kind of hostage-king. At both junctures, ancient ideas about monarchy and succession were important to the survival of the institution. China’s Qing, on the other hand, was powerful (if not as absolutist as sometimes characterized). The complexity of the problems of China, combined with poor decisions by the monarchs themselves in resisting early proposals for reform, accelerated not just the fall of the dynasty, but the end of the entire system. It is speculation, but the cyclical nature of Chinese dynasties may have played a role in this process, since prior dynasties had all had an end-point. Monarchy survived through weakness in Japan, and was doomed by its own power in China.

Southeast Asia Southeast Asian ideas of monarchy are diverse, drawing from several different religious traditions, especially ideas from South Asia.42 In the Hindu conception of monarchy, ascension to the throne reverses the process of the foundation of the universe. In the beginning, legend has it, a sacrifice of a god-man led to the creation of four kinds of human beings. The installation ceremonies of a Hindu king (the last instance of which was King Gyanendra in Nepal in 2001) involve the monarchic establishment of a new unity by partaking in all four kinds. Buddhist ideas of kingship draw on Hindu conceptions and focus heavily ideal of the dharmaraja, the King who upholds the dharma, turning the wheel of dharma while sitting in the wheel of power. The King upholds religion; religion legitimates the king.43 In addition, the Hindu idea of a chakravartin, a universal ruler, also appears in Buddhist political idiom. The fictionalized image of the great Buddhist emperor

42 Robert Heine-Geldern, Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia (Cornell University. Southeast Asia Program. Data Paper. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1993). 43 Andrew Huxley, “The Buddha and the Social Contract” Journal of Indian Philosophy 24: 407 (1996). Collins, Steven, “The Lion’s Roar on the Wheel-Turning King: A Response to Andrew Huxley’s ‘The Buddha and the Social Contract’,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 24: 421–46 (1996).

220

T. GINSBURG

Asoka provides an ideal type here, and the ideas developed there also influenced Chinese ideas of kingship.44 Thailand The Thai monarchy draws its legitimacy heavily on Buddhist ideas of the dhammaraja, the wheel-turning King who preserves the dhamma and governs righteously.45 Traditionally, this theory was popularized by J¯atakas, tales of the former incarnations of the Buddha, of which the most famous is the Vessantara J¯ataka. The tale involves a prince who gives away everything he owns, including his own children, thus embodying perfect generosity. The story has been a major element of popular Buddhism for centuries. During the nineteenth century reign of King Mongkut, however, the story was de-emphasized, as he sought to enshrine a particular form of Buddhism as the favored national tradition. But the image of a wise Buddhist King remained available to his descendants. Modernizing jurists in Thailand fused European legal categories with Buddhist concepts to create the current frame for governance. In the Three Seals Code of the early nineteenth century, one component was the Phrathammasat (“sacred treatise on the dharma”), allegedly derived from the Hindu Code of Manu. It provided normative limits on authority, requiring the King to observe the “10 Virtues of the righteous king” (totsapit-rajadharma). Interestingly, the King was only to have adjudicative powers, rather than legislative ones.46 As Mérieau notes “his role was to apply the Thammasat, not to modify it.”47 The Phrathammasat also draws on a Buddhist notion of mah¯ asammata or great elected kings. The mythic origin of kings emphasizes a close link with judges. A bodhisattva was incarnated as a

44 Qin Zhi Lau, Ideals of Buddhist Kingship: A Comparative Analysis of Emperors Asoka and Wen of Sui, UC Santa Barbara working paper, available at https://www.history.ucsb. edu/wp-content/uploads/Ideals_Buddhist_Kingship.pdf; James A. Benn and Stephanie Balkwill, Buddhist Statecraft in East Asia (Brill, 2022). 45 Patrick Jory, 2016. Thailand’s Theory of Monarchy: The Vessantara Jataka and the Idea of the Perfect Man (Albany: SUNY Press). 46 Lingat 1941: 26–31; Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, “Thammasat, Custom, and Royal Authority in Siam’s Legal History,” Thai Legal History: From Traditional to Modern Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). 47 Eugénie Mérieau, Constitutional Bricolage 36 (Brill: 2022).

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

221

great man, and was chosen by the people in a great meeting to resolve their conflicts. This idea of a popularly elected, virtuous king remains an ideal. This proto-contractual theory of the origins of Kings predates Hobbes by millennia, but as Mérieau points out, the theory was deemphasized from the mid-nineteenth century onward, as the House of Chakri adjusted to modernity. Instead, they emphasized a document called the “Palace Law,” heavily influenced by Khmer ideas, which institutionalized and justified royal temporal power.48 In their versions, the nineteenth-century Thai monarchs emphasized legislative power. Mérieau’s recent magisterial study of Thailand’s monarchy emphasizes bricolage.49 By this she means the deployment of various and shifting political idioms, as the monarchy developed and consolidated its power into the twentieth century, then formally lost it in 1932, but renegotiated its way to the center of Thai society during the long reign of King Bhumibol Rama IX. Besides Buddhist ideas, Japanese notions of constitutional monarchy, and Soviet and Prussian ideas of statecraft informed formal constitutionalization. And Chinese influence has shaped the bargaining environment for monarchs. The crown’s longstanding alliance with Chinese capitalists predates the establishment of the constitutional monarchy in 1932.50 At that point, a coalition of military and civilian elites combined in the People’s Party to take over effective power, and since then, the system of government has been described as “Democratic Regime with the King as Head of State.”51 The People’s Party had two factions, a civilian group around Pridi Banomyong, and a military faction led by Plaek Pibulsongkram. These two factions distrusted each other, and in deliberations among themselves decided to retain the monarchy, without power, as a symbol of national unity and independence. The powerless monarchy played the symbolic function of integration in a diverse country, in which Chinese elites held most economic power. The largely Muslim population of the South by and large has expressed loyalty to the monarchy as an institution. Ethnic Chinese subjects proudly displayed photos of the King as the highest

48 Mérieau at 38. 49 Eugénie Mérieau, Constitutional Bricolage (Brill: 2022). 50 Wasana Wongsurawat, The Crown and the Capitalists: The Ethnic Chinese and the

Founding of the Thai Nation (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019). 51 Const. Thailand Art. 2.

222

T. GINSBURG

on the wall. The diverse Buddhist populations of Isaan and the former Lanna kingdom around Chiang Mai have been effectively integrated into a unified whole.52 Thai politics for the subsequent nine decades after 1932 has reflected continuous distrust between civilian and military factions, with two dozen coups and coup attempts, and 20 constitutions. In this endless cycle, the monarchy plays a crucial role. No coup succeeds without immediate submission to (and sometimes prior clearance by) the King, who provides a focal point for society’s response. At moments of extreme violence (which are rare but not unknown), the King has been known to intervene publicly. Perhaps most famously, in 1992 King Rama IX called the coup leader General Suchinda Kraprayoon and protest leader Chamlong Srimuang to the literal carpet: a video of him excoriating both men caused a de-escalation and an eventual return to democracy. This is what I have elsewhere called a form of crisis insurance, in which the King reset the bargain after a breakdown between two rival factions. This effective deployment of power by Rama IX drew not only on the formal constitutional strictures, but also deep ideas of a wise Buddhist king, preserving the order of society, and standing above the mundane world of politics. The Thai monarchy not only survived the transition to modernity but by any account thrived.53 To be sure, all is not well in Bangkok today. Throughout his many years as Crown Prince, rumblings about the character of Rama X led to some speculation that he may never take the throne at all. But take it he has, and he immediately made his mark on the system. He took back the holdings of the Crown Property Bureau into his personal control and management, preserving his status near the very richest of monarchs in the world, without owning a single drop of oil. He has removed public works and taken over buildings that belonged to other institutions. He took over direct command of the military units guarding Bangkok, essentially ensuring that no coup could be organized without him. And he spent much of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany with a large harem. All but the last of these steps reek more of absolute than constitutional 52 Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped (University of Hawai’i Press, 1994). 53 Søren Ivarsson Ivarsson, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, and Lotte Isager. Saying

the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand. NIAS Studies in Asian Topics (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2010); Paul Handley, The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

223

monarchy, and the country is taking an increasingly authoritarian turn. Any attempt to shift back toward an absolute form of monarchy must be done carefully, as history does not have many examples of such shifts actually enduring. Cambodia The Khmer monarchy is an ancient one, dating back to 882 C.E., which (like its Thai and Burmese counterparts) was heavily influenced by Hindu and Buddhist notions of kingship. The founder of the dynasty declared himself a chakravartin, the Buddhist notion of a universal king. Soon after Cambodia gained Independence from France in 1954, King Norodom Sihanouk resigned the throne in favor of his father, and became Prime Minister. He presided over constitutional changes to empower the Prime Minister and ensure that the monarch’s powers were limited. The next three decades were a period of war, coups and revolution, and the monarchy was abolished in 1970. But in 1993, the United Nations brokered a rapprochement between the royalist political parties and strongman Hun Sen, leading to the restoration of constitutional monarchy. The office was to be quite weak, but it served a symbolic function of reassuring liberals that a period of unity would ensue. Four years later Hun Sen took over the government in a kind of coup d’etat, but left the constitutional monarchy in place. The monarch is one of the few remaining elective monarchies in the world. The king is selected from among members of the royal family by a Council of the Throne that includes the Prime Minister, leaders of parliament and two senior monks, but in the context of Cambodia’s authoritarian state, this means that the Prime Minister chooses the King rather than the reverse. In such a context, the monarchy plays a very limited function: the monarch has no power or ability to win in any conflict with Hun Sen. The slightest assertion of actual power would lead quickly to a republic. Laos The Laotian monarchy descends from the princedom of Luang Prabang and was constitutionalized at independence from France in 1953; like that of Cambodia, it was unable to survive the Vietnam war. Indeed, three half-brothers from the royal line sided with different factions in the

224

T. GINSBURG

post-World War II period. One of the brothers aligned with the communist Pathet Lao, which took over the country in 1975, and made him President after abolishing the monarchy. Laos illustrates that communism is almost always fatal to monarchy; ideas matter and there are no more distant ideas in political theory than Marxism and monarchy. Vietnam As in Korea, the monarchy in Vietnam was part of the greater Chinese tributary system. This meant that it governed independently but recognized the Chinese emperor as the Son of Heaven, of higher status. Vietnam’s monarchies have risen and fallen over many centuries, with territory expanding and contracting as a result of wars with neighbors. The last monarchy, the Nguyen, ruled the country from 1802 until the French established a protectorate, at which point the monarchy became a constitutional monarchy. That lasted through the Japanese occupation, but the anti-colonial Viet Minh established a republic in 1945. As in Laos, communism provided the death blow. Malaysia and Brunei Malay ideas of monarchy draw on Islamic and local traditions and remain in effect in the nine peninsular Malay states, each of which has a hereditary ruler. These monarchies were preserved by the British in part to provide symbolic primacy for the Malays, who had been subject to mass immigration from China and India during colonial rule.54 The monarchs were given only a few reserve powers and were, from independence in 1957, always “constitutional monarchs” in our sense. Islam does not contemplate the notion of a social contract, in the sense of allowing the people to rebel against a tyrannical ruler. The rulers derive their legitimacy as defenders of the faith, implying military might, and have a religious obligation to rule justly. The doctrine of siyasa sharia provided that the King could take discretionary actions to build an Islamic society, justifying the broad exercise of power. But there is no earthly sanction for failing to use this power justly. To the contrary, there is a duty to 54 G. Braighlinn, Ideological Innovation under Monarchy: Aspects of Legitimation Activity in Contemporary Brunei (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1992). Contemporary Asian Studies Monograph No. 9, at 4.

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

225

obey rulers, save for commands in conflict with Islam. This positions the ulama—the community of religious scholars—in an authoritative position of sorts, with some ability to exercise remonstrance; but sanction is reserved for heaven. These ideas find very different expression in Brunei. As the British prepared the territory for independence with a 1959 constitution, the Sultan was given significant power over state finances, and control over the executive council, with whom he did not even have a duty to consult. An indirectly elected legislature was first elected in 1962. The British were concerned about a radical party (the PRB) emerging under the leadership of A. M. Azahari, and that party won all the seats in the legislature in 1962. Rather than bargain with the absolute monarchy for a share of power, the PRB exploited concern about a forced merger with Malaysia, and rebelled against the British in 1962. This rebellion was quickly shut down by British forces from Singapore, leaving Sultan Omar Saifuddin III as the unchallenged power holder. Rising nationalist sentiment was thus directed against the British rather than the monarch. The Sultan subsequently banned the PRB and abolished the constitutional provision for elections. This case easily fits the resource curse model of an absolute monarch defending a jointly controlled oil field with the British colonialists. The monarchy survived precisely because of its weakness during the key period of challenge by civilians, leaving it unchecked in the next stage. The Sultan abdicated in 1967 in favor of his son, who remains in power today. The official national ideology is konsep Melayu Islam Beraja (MIB), which combines a Malay ethnic nationalism with the divine blessing of Islam.55 This ideology took root only very recently, and rests on a social construction of a long-enduring royal line. But this is also false—the line was saved by the British in 1905, and then again in 1962. The British would leave matters of religion and sometimes custom to the rulers, while exercising effective power. But Brunei’s official narrative has constructed the British as mere protectors, not interrupting sovereignty in any fundamental sense. It has also manipulated historical records, including the claim that the founder of the Malacca Dynasty in Malaysia granted the first Brunei sultanate,56 and sometimes linking the regime back to the nonMuslim founder of Malaysia, Sri Tri Buana. Some of the official discourse

55 Braighlinn, note 54, at 19. 56 Braighlinn note 54, at 30.

226

T. GINSBURG

refers to a social contract of sorts but did not allow rebellion against the monarch, except in cases of “shame” which presumably was directed to elites rather than the public.

Conclusion We see in these preliminary sketches a set of stories of monarchic replacement (China, Vietnam and Laos), survival (Japan, Brunei, and Thailand) and revival (Cambodia). In all cases, the actual power of monarchs waxed and waned over time, and the idea that only European monarchs were historically constrained is clearly a false one. Survival of monarchy into the modern era depends on a bargaining process, in which monarchic power is determined by the services it can provide to other elites in the system. National myths of monarchic origins are a resource here, and if deployed skillfully can facilitate survival in a world of change. East Asian monarchs were able to leverage normative resources to maintain their thrones, even when they lost effective power. For the paradigm case of Japan, it was precisely the presence of a powerless monarchy that led to its elevation as a symbolic focal point in the Meiji era. In China, in contrast, the monarchy’s attempt to hold actual power sealed its fate and led to republican transformation. Weakness also facilitated the survival of monarchy in Brunei, as well as its revival in Cambodia. Where monarchs can play an integrative role, they stand a chance of survival; where they divide the society, they write their own fates. This stylized account has implications for contemporary monarchs engaged in active bargaining processes with their societies, such as in Thailand today. An equilibrium can be a delicate thing if one side moves too quickly. But the ability to mix metaphors, to draw on ancient ideas, and to duck and weave has given monarchs resources with which to bargain.

Appendix See Figs. 8.1 and 8.2.

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

227

Fig. 8.1 Constitutionalized monarchy over time (Source Data from the Comparative Constitutions Project)

Fig. 8.2 The return of absolute monarchy

228

T. GINSBURG

Bibliography Anesaki, M. (1943). The Foundation of Buddhist Culture in Japan: The Buddhist Ideals as Conceived and Carried Out by the Prince Regent Shotoku. Monumenta Nipponica, 6, 1–12. Bai, T. (2016). How Has China Become a Despotic State? Journal of Chiense Humanities (5), 34–46. Baker, C., & Phongpaichit, P. (2021). Thammasat, Custom, and Royal Authority in Siam’s Legal History. In Harding, A. J. & Pongsapan, M. (Ed.), Thai Legal History: from Traditional to Modern Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Benn, J. A., & Balkwill S. (2022). Buddhist Statecraft in East Asia. Leiden: Brill. Boucayannis, D. (2021). Kings as Judges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Braighlinn, G. (1992). Ideological Innovation under Monarchy: Aspects of Legitimation Activity in Contemporary Brunei. Amsterdam: VU University Press. Brett, C. (1962). The Priest Emperor Concept in Japanese Political Thought. Indian Journal of Political Science, 23(1/4), 17–28. Cameron, M. E. (1974). The Reform Movement in China, 1898–1912. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Chan, J. (2007). Democracy and Meritocracy: Toward a Confucian Perspective. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 34(2), 179–193. Cheng, J. (2017). Why Late Qing Constitutional Reform Failed: An Examination from the Comparative Institutional Perspective. Tsinghua China Law Review, 10(107), 108–144. Collins, S. (1996). The Lion’s Roar on the Wheel-Turning King: A Response to Andrew Huxley’s “The Buddha and the Social Contract”. Journal of Indian Philosophy, 24(4), 421–446. El-Amine, L. (2015). Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Favereau, M. (2021). The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Fearon, J. (1995). Rationalist Explanations for War. International Organization, 49(3), 379–414. Gerring, J., Wig, T., Veenendaal, W., Weitzel, D., Teorell J., & Kikuta K. (2021). Why Monarchy? The Rise and Demise of a Regime Type. Comparative Political Studies, 54(3–4), 585–622. Ginsburg, T. (2012). Constitutionalism: East Asian Antecedents. Chicago-Kent Law Review, 88(1), 11–33. Graeber, D., & Sahlins, M. (2015). On Kings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Heine-Geldern, R. (1993). Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications.

8

EAST ASIAN MONARCHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

229

Hozumi, N. (1912). Ancestor Worship and Japanese Law. Tokyo: XX Press. Huxley, A. (1996). The Buddha and the Social Contract. Journal of Indian philosophy, 24(4), 407–420. Ivarsson, S., & Isager, L. (2010). Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand. Copenhagen: NIAS Press. Jory, P. (2016). Thailand’s Theory of Monarchy: The Vessantara Jataka and the Idea of the Perfect Man. Albany: SUNY Press. Kim, S. (2011). Confucian Constitutionalism: Mencius and Xunzi on Virtue, Ritual, and Royal Transmission. Review of Politics, 73(3), 371–399. Lau Q. Z. (2022). Ideals of Buddhist Kingship: A Comparative Analysis of Emperors Asoka and Wen of Sui. UC Santa Barbara Working Paper. https://www.history.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/Ideals_Buddhist_ Kingship.pdf [accessed 10 Sept 2022]. Mass, J. (1976). The Kamakura Bakufu. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Meienberger, N. (1980). The Emergence of Constitutional Government in China (1905–1908): The Concept Sanctioned by the Empress Dowager Tz‘u-hsi. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Mérieau, E. (2022). Constitutional Bricolage. Leiden: Brill. Mittal, S., & Weingast, B. R. (2013). Self-Enforcing Constitutions: With an Application to Democratic Stability in America’s First Century. The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 29(2), 278–302. Nakamura, H. (2002). History of Japanese Thought: 592–1868: Japanese Philosophy before Western Culture Entered Japan. New York: Columbia University Press. North, D. C., & Weingast B. R. (1989). Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England. The Journal of Economic History, 49(4), 803–832. Ohnukii-Tierney, E. (2005). Japanese Monarchy in Historical and Comparative Perspective. In Declan Quigley (Ed.), The Character of Kingship (pp. 209– 232). New York: Berg. Przeworski, A., et al. (2012). The Origins of Parliamentary Responsibility. In Ginsburg, T. (Ed.), Comparative Constitutional Design (pp. 101–137). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roth, A., & Xing, X. (1994). Jumping the Gun: Imperfections and Institutions Related to the Timing of Market Transactions. American Economic Review, 84(4), 992–1044. Tridimas, G. (2021). Constitutional Monarchy as Power Sharing. Constitutional Political Economy, 32, 431–461. Tullock, G. (1985). On Autocracy. Berlin: Springer. Wang, Y. (2022). The Rise and Fall of Imperial China. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Winichakul, T. (1994). Siam Mapped. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

230

T. GINSBURG

Wongsurawat, W. (2019). The Crown and the Capitalists: The Ethnic Chinese and the Founding of the Thai Nation. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Yang, Z. (2002). On the Power of the Crown Prince in Qing Dynasty. Studies in Qing History (4), 20–32.

CHAPTER 9

Legalist Confucianism: What’s Living and What’s Dead Daniel A. Bell

Confucianism and Legalism are the two most influential political traditions in Chinese history. They are diverse and complex traditions with different interpretations in different times (especially in the case of Confucianism), but there are continuities and commonalities and ongoing themes in each tradition. Although the two traditions contrast with each other at the level of philosophy, they were combined in different ways in Chinese imperial history and some form of Legalist Confucianism continues to be influential in the twenty-first century. In this essay, I will identify the main traits of the Confucian and Legalist traditions and show how they were combined in Chinese history. I hope the reader will forgive the broad brushstrokes that simplify a complex history. My aim here is to set the stage for the normative question: Which aspects of Legalist Confucianism should be promoted in the future and which parts should

D. A. Bell (B) Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Z. Wang (ed.), The Long East Asia, Governing China in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_9

231

232

D. A. BELL

be consigned to the dustbin of history? I will illustrate my response with examples from contemporary China to suggest it is both possible and desirable to promote a form of Legalist Confucianism today and in the foreseeable future.

Confucianism and Legalism: The Main Ideas In terms of ideas, the two traditions radically contrast with each other. Such differences help to explain why Han Feizi was unrelentingly hostile to Confucianism, to the point of advocating the killing of Confucian “vermin.” Again, both traditions are diverse and complex. But let me draw out the main points of contrast. In the case of the Confucian tradition, I will draw mainly on the ideas of its most influential interpreters in pre-imperial China—Kongzi, Mengzi, and Xunzi. In the case of the Legalist tradition, I will rely mainly on the ideas of Han Feizi, who systematized the Legalist tradition. Conceptions of Human Nature In the case of Confucian thinkers, humans can be improved whatever the starting point. Kongzi thought exemplary persons (君子 junzi) can set a good model of how to practice other-regarding morality. Mengzi specified that we learn other-regarding morality the family which can then be extended to the political community. He thought we have a tendency to goodness that needs to be nourished by society. Xunzi argued that we have a tendency to badness but that humans can be improved by means of reading the classics and rituals that make us more sociable. In the case of Legalist thinkers, they thought we are born selfish, base, and untrustworthy. The family is not the sphere of love and care. In politics, the rulers need to be especially wary of family members who have an interest in taking over our positions. Humans cannot be improved by means of education or rituals or moral exhortation but if material resources are plentiful it is possible to reduce competition and friction in society.

9

LEGALIST CONFUCIANISM: WHAT’S LIVING AND WHAT’S …

233

The Ends of Politics For Confucians, the purpose of politics is to promote the well-being of the people. The humane ruler should be motivated by the desire to serve the people and should implement policies that serve that aim. If the ruler harms or exploits the people, he is not a legitimate ruler. For Legalists, the purpose of politics is to maintain and expand state power even if it goes against the interests of the people. Even the ruler may not benefit from the political system because he should not act on his desires for fear of showing his preferences and being manipulated by his ministers. The Means of Politics For Kongzi, the humane ruler rules by virtue. The ruler looks to the past for inspiration and should set a good model for others to follow. Mengzi argued that the ruler should also promote land reform that ensures people are well-fed and develop caring relations among themselves. Xunzi argued that the ruler should rely first and foremost on informal rituals that benefit the people, with laws as a last resort. For Legalists, the means are amoral: Whatever works to maintain and increase state power is acceptable. The country needs a strong military and farmers that grow food, with no room for activities that undermine the strength of the state. Virtue at the top is ineffective. The ruler should rely first and foremost on harsh laws to secure social order. Only fear of punishment works, especially in times of warfare and material scarcity. The ruler should look to the present situation for guidance of how to strengthen the state. The Family and the State For Confucians, especially Kongzi and Mengzi, the first obligation is to the family. The state should strengthen and promote family relations, especially the virtue of filial piety. In cases of conflict, family ties should often have priority over ties to the state. For Legalists, the first obligation is to the state. The state should weaken family relations if they interfere with service to the state. In war time, the soldiers owe their obligation to the state, even if they have needy family members at home.

234

D. A. BELL

Foreign Policy For Confucians, the humane ruler should rely on moral example and ritual when dealing with other state. Foreign policy should benefit both the people in one’s state and the people in other states. Warfare and violence should be used only as a last resort and must be morally justified. For Legalists, the international arena is amoral. Each state pursues its self-interest and seeks to maximize its power at the expense of other states. International relations are a zero-sum game and aggressive warfare is fine if it works at strengthening the state. Notwithstanding these philosophical differences, the contrast between Confucianism and Legalism was not so stark in Chinese history. In imperial China, were often combined and Legalist Confucianism worked in different ways in different times.

Legalist Confucianism in History Pre-imperial China was characterized by fierce military competition between small warring states. After the late fifth-century BCE, however, “a synergism of the necessities of war, the power of the state, and Legalist ideology held sway: increasingly the power of ferocious warfare favored those states that were more instrumental in organization and action; the warfare of ordinances imposed by the Legalists enhanced state capacity to harness aristocratic power and exact resources from the population; and the states that were more able to act instrumentally by more thoroughly implementing Legalist regulations were likely to triumph in the fierce military competition.”1 The Qin state proved to be the most efficient at centralizing power and promoting a ruthlessly efficient military meritocracy (soldiers were promoted based on the number of decapitated heads of enemy soldiers),2 and the Qin successfully unified China under the oneman rule of Qin Shi Huang, the self-proclaimed First Emperor of Qin. Qin Shi Huang, however, rejected the Confucian ideal that the purpose of

1 Zhao Dingxin, The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 13. 2 Yuri Pines, “Between Merit and Pedigree: Evolution of the Concept of ‘Elevating the Worthy’ in Pre-imperial China,” in The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in a Comparative Context, ed. Daniel A. Bell and Chenyang Li (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 161–202.

9

LEGALIST CONFUCIANISM: WHAT’S LIVING AND WHAT’S …

235

the state is to serve the people.3 In line with Legalist thinking, Emperor Qin Shi Huang aimed to increase state power and employed ruthlessly efficient means for that end.4 He developed the world’s first sophisticated bureaucracy, unified the Chinese script, and built an advanced transportation and communication system, but still went down in history as a cruel dictator. The Qin empire lasted for only fifteen years—the shortest-lived major dynasty in Chinese history—at least partly because it lost sight of the state’s moral mission. The next dynasty—the Han—found the normative solution that lasted for nearly two thousand years. The Han dynasty was still willing to use ruthless officials: The Book of Han even had a chapter titled “Biography of Cruel Officials.”5 But the Han adopted the political thought of Confucianism as the governing ideology. Emperor Wu Di adopted Dong Zhongshu’s (179–104 BCE) interpretation of Confucian thought to educate the people and train officials with a unified Confucian ideology. Emperor Wu Di did not forsake the use of Legalist-style severe laws and punishments—five out of fourteen ministers during his fifty-year reign were executed—but he used Confucian thought to provide legitimacy for his rule, setting the dynamic for subsequent imperial political history. As Zhao Dingxin explains, In the Confucian-Legalist state, the emperors accepted Confucianism as the ruling ideology and subjected themselves to the control of a Confucian bureaucracy, while Confucian scholars both in and out of the bureaucracy supported the regime and supplied meritocratically selected officials who administered the country using an amalgam of Confucian ethics and Legalist regulations and techniques. This symbiotic relationship between the ruling house and Confucian scholars gave birth to what is by premodern standards a powerful political system – a system so resilient

3 Contrary to popular legend, however, Qin Shi Huang did not bury Confucian scholars alive. Recent research suggests that the First Emperor ordered the killing of alchemists after having found out they had fooled him (http://ulrichneininger.de/?p=461). 4 To be fair to Legalist thinking, Qin Shi Huang went beyond the dictates of Legalism by constructing tombs of mock soldiers known today as the terracotta warriors in an effort to secure his own immortality. Legalists would regard such expenditures (not to mention the brutal means employed) as a waste of state expenditure. 5 Wang Pei, “Debates on Political Meritocracy in China: A Historical Perspective,” Philosophy and Public Issues (new series) 7, no. 1 (2007), pp. 63–71.

236

D. A. BELL

and adaptive that it survived numerous challenges and persisted up until the Republican Revolution in 1911.6

The Legalist legacy is less evident because Legalism largely disappeared from official discourse for nearly two thousand years—there were no card-carrying Legalists from the Han dynasty until Mao’s invocation of Legalism in the Cultural Revolution.7 But Legalist ideas were employed to improve the state’s capacity and ensure administrative efficiency. Whatever the official rhetoric, the political system often relied on a Legalist standard for the selection of competent public officials, namely the selection of officials with the ability to carry out strong and effective execution and the willingness to use brute power to solve problems for the emperor. But the Legalists were not overly concerned with the question of whether the aim itself was just or moral. So Confucianism set the aim of politics—to persuade the emperor to “Rule for All” (天下 为公). Confucians favored the selection and promotion of public officials who could grasp the moral Way (道), implement benevolent policies that benefit the people, and protect civilians from cruel policies. The Chinese term for political meritocracy—the selection and promotion of public officials with above-average (Confucian-style) virtue and (Legalist-style) ability (贤能政治 xianneng zhengzhi)—well captures the ideal of the public official with an ability to grasp practical issues with the aim of efficiently implementing the principle of “Rule for All” well. In reality, however, Legalism and Confucianism often pulled in different directions. From a Legalist perspective, Confucians often selected exemplary men who lacked the ability to deal with practical politics and efficient administration. From a Confucian perspective, Legalists often selected capable villains with no desire for justice or morality. Legalists deferred to the emperor’s wishes as the final court of appeal, whereas Confucians relied on the moral Way to evaluate the status quo and, if needed, to admonish the emperor who implemented immoral policies. Legalists cynically dismissed the possibility of morality and criticized Confucians as hypocrites who sowed political chaos, whereas Confucians doubted 6 Zhao, The Confucian-Legalist State, p. 14. 7 Mao’s invocation of Legalism was invoked to criticize Confucianism, but a genuine

commitment to Legalism would have translated into a commitment to political meritocracy based on ability rather than virtue (yet, the opposite was true in the Cultural Revolution that valued “red over expert”).

9

LEGALIST CONFUCIANISM: WHAT’S LIVING AND WHAT’S …

237

that a political system could survive for long without a moral foundation. This kind of dynamic between Confucianism and Legalism, as we will see, continues to influence Chinese politics today. Whatever its internal tensions, the Legalist Confucian ideal of political meritocracy not only informed Chinese politics for over 2000 years, surprisingly, it has also inspired political reform in China over the last four decades or so. A typical trope in the Western media is that there has been substantial economic reform in China, but no political reform. But that’s because electoral democracy at the top is viewed as the only standard for what counts as political reform. If we set aside this dogma, it’s obvious that the Chinese political system has undergone substantial political reform over the last few decades and the main differences that there has been a serious effort to (re)establish political meritocracy. Again, political meritocracy is the ideal that the political system should aim to select and promote public officials with superior ability and virtue. And the best way to realize this ideal is a complex bureaucratic system that puts public officials through a decades-long process of political education, with the result that only public officials with a proven track record of superior ability and commitment to serving the political community reach the highest level of government. Political meritocracy was largely abandoned, as well as fiercely criticized, in the Maoist period, culminating in the Cultural Revolution that favored “red over expert.” In practice, it meant downgrading the importance of ability and experience for public officials and destroying the bureaucratic system that was supposed to select and promote officials with experience and ability.8 But the ideal of

8 The Maoist ideal was to select and promote officials almost exclusively according to virtue, as measured by revolutionary energy and commitment to Mao himself. If one defines political meritocracy solely as the ideal that the political system should aim to select virtuous public officials, the Maoist ideal can be seen as a form of political meritocracy. In most of Chinese history, however, political meritocracy meant that public officials need to be selected according to both ability and virtue along with the institutional implication that a complex bureaucratic system should be put in place that increases the likelihood such officials make it through the system. Given that the Maoist ideal lacked two out of these three elements of political meritocracy, I do not think the Maoist ideal should be regarded as a species of the ideal of political meritocracy. Another key difference is that traditional Confucians emphasized that public officials should be committed to the moral Way rather than the status quo or the preferences of rulers, hence, virtuous public officials should express and exercise their own moral judgment when it comes to how best to serve the people. So even if we limit the definition of political meritocracy to rule by virtuous public officials, the Maoist ideal should be seen as a perversion of the ideal.

238

D. A. BELL

political meritocracy, along with its institutional manifestation in the form of a complex bureaucratic system, has been revived since the late 1970s. The country was primed for rule at the top by meritocratically selected officials following a disastrous experience with radical populism and arbitrary dictatorship in the Cultural Revolution, and China’s leaders could reestablish elements of its meritocratic tradition, such as the selection of leaders based on examination and promotion based on performance evaluations at lower levels of government—almost the same system, in form (but not content) that shaped the political system in much of Chinese imperial history—without much controversy. And since then, political meritocracy has inspired political reform at higher levels of government, with more emphasis on education, examinations, and political experience at lower levels of government. There remains a large gap between the ideal and the practice, but the underlying motivation for political reform is still the ideal of political meritocracy.9

What’s Living and What’s Dead in Legalist Confucianism I am generally sympathetic with the effort to revive Confucianism.10 But I think Legalism is not completely dead from a normative standpoint. Parts of the tradition can and should be incorporated with the Confucian tradition. Let me first discuss what’s dead about Legalism and then I will discuss which parts are living and compatible with the Confucian 9 In my book The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), chapter 3, I discuss in detail what political merit means in China’s post-reform era: Ability refers to both IQ and EQ and virtue refers to the motivation to serve the political community (the opposite of virtue is corruption, i.e., using public resources for one’s own private interests). I discuss and evaluate various ways of assessing these three standards of political merit designed to minimize the gap between the ideal and the reality. I also argue that EQ, IQ, and virtue are all important, but they should be valued differently in different times in a large, relatively undeveloped country like China that seeks to modernize: Ability in the sense of EQ should matter more in the early days of reform when the emphasis is mainly on poverty alleviation and public officials need lots of good connections to get things done, virtue should be prioritized when corruption poses an existential threat to the political system, and ability in the sense of IQ should matter more once the country confronts many problems that require scientifically-informed solutions. 10 See my book China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

9

LEGALIST CONFUCIANISM: WHAT’S LIVING AND WHAT’S …

239

ideal that the purpose of the state is to serve the people. I will end with some examples of manifestations of Legalist Confucianism in contemporary China to suggest that the ideal is both feasible and desirable today and for the foreseeable future. What’s Dead The Legalist idea that people are permanently selfish. This idea has been soundly debunked by social science studies that show that most people, except for a tiny minority of sociopaths (like Han Feizi?), have a moral conscience and an innate capacity to empathize with the suffering of others.11 Things can go wrong in cases of extreme material scarcity and harmful forms of education, but the tendency to goodness can and should be nourished by appropriate social institutions. The Legalist idea that the end of politics is to build a strong state. The purpose of politics is to serve the people: A principle endorsed not just by Confucians but by most of the world’s great ethical and political traditions. If the state does not serve the people—e.g., a strong totalitarian state that brainwashes the people and leaves no room for freedom—it should be resisted. And Confucian language should not be used to justify Legalist-inspired policies that oppress the people. The Legalist idea that states should pursue ruthlessly self-interested foreign policies, including aggressive warfare. Unjust war needs to be opposed, even if it is (temporarily?) successful. Today, we face common global challenges such as climate change and pandemics and the need to regulate weapons of mass destruction that Han Feizi could not have imagined in his own day. States should work together to overcome these challenges, even if it imposes a certain cost on political communities today. What’s Living The Legalist idea that we should not rely too much on the good will and altruism of public officials. Even, if they are partly motivated by the desire to serve the people, the power of public officials needs to be checked by such Legalist-style practices as assigning public officials outside of their 11 For evidence from neuroscience in favor of Mencius’s view of human nature, see Edward Slingerland, Trying Not To Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity (New York: Crown, 2004), p. 117.

240

D. A. BELL

home towns to reduce the likelihood of nepotism and corruption. In special circumstances such as morally justified warfare, the public interest needs to have priority of Confucian-style commitments to the family. The Legalist idea that laws should treat everyone equally regardless of social status or family background, as well as the Legalist idea that laws need to be publicly disseminated and easy to understand by ordinary people. Confucian-style rituals can have an educative function, but so can laws, especially in modern societies. If laws are too complicated or vague they will not be effective.12 The Legalist idea that harsh punishments and constraints on freedom may be necessary to deal with social chaos (such as civil war) or emergencies (such as pandemics). But the government (and the people) need to be clear that harsh measures are only short term and should be repealed once normal (less chaotic) times resume again. The point of normative political theorizing is to provide a standard to evaluate the status quo and to provide guidance for improvements. Still, we need to recognize that utopian political theorizing can be useless or even counter-productive if it can’t be realized in practice. So let me point to three examples of morally desirable forms of Legalist Confucianism in contemporary China. The examples may be somewhat idealized, but they are sufficiently embedded in social reality to alleviate the worry that Legalist Confucianism cannot be realized in any morally desirable form in modern-day society. Examples of Legalist Confucianism in Contemporary China I regret to report that there are plenty of examples of perverse forms of Legalist Confucianism in contemporary China. The treatment of some minority groups, for example, often relies on harsh Legalist-style repression that is difficult to justify even as policies meant to maximize the long-term good of those people affected. But I’d like to point to three examples of Legalist Confucianism that come close to realizing the morally desirable form of this ideal in contemporary society.

12 See Kenneth Winston, “The Internal Morality of Chinese Legalism,” Singapore Journal of Legal Studies (December 2005), pp. 313–347.

9

LEGALIST CONFUCIANISM: WHAT’S LIVING AND WHAT’S …

241

The Problem of Drunk Driving13 About fifteen years ago, nobody in China openly defended the practice of drunk driving. At some level, people knew it was bad. But it was still common to drive after a few drinks. It would have been almost rude not to serve fiery white liquor (白酒 bai jiu) to guests in Chinese restaurants; and the stronger the better, with 53% alcohol percentage preferred to the measly 38%. Drunk drivers would head back home, with predictably disastrous consequences. Alarmed by data that showed at least 20% of serious road crashes were alcohol related, the Chinese government decided to crack down on drunk driving. Educational campaigns meant to change people’s selfish habits clearly had no effect. Almost overnight, the authorities set up frequent random sobriety checks. At first, the penalties were not so harsh: Drivers were fined and not permitted to drive for three months. That didn’t work much either. Then punishments were increased to compulsory jail time for first offenders with zero tolerance of any alcohol and an automatic six-month driving ban, followed by a need to retake a driving course and pass practical and written exams for those who planned to drive again. Fear worked. Eventually, things loosened up. Attitudes changed, and drinking and driving became universally frowned upon. Death rates caused by drunk drivers plunged nationwide,14 and random checks, now few and far between, have become almost superfluous. Gone are the days when drivers would feel pressure to drink alcohol in restaurants; and when they do drink, sober friends offer to drive them home, and if that’s not possible, drunk drivers call the services of paid drivers who wait outside restaurants with tiny bicycles that can be folded into car trunks. In short, the government tried to tame bad behavior by means of Confucian-style education and ritual, and when that didn’t work, it tried Legalist-style harsh punishments to enforce norms that people knew, deep down, had social benefits. Eventually, the punishments closed the gap between the norm and the practice and the government could rely mainly on moral self-regulation instead of harsh punishment, but without 13 This discussion draws on Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei, Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), pp. 80–81. 14 See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033350616304139 and Wang Qian and Zhang Yan, “Drunken Driving Crashes, Injuries Declining,” China Daily, October 10, 2014.

242

D. A. BELL

completely doing away with laws that serve as last resort checks on selfish and dangerous behavior. More or less as Legalist Confucians would have recommended: Best to rely on informal means of regulation that transform bad behavior, and if that doesn’t work, use the strong arm of the law.15 COVID-19 Control in China16 The COVID-19 scare started in Wuhan, China and the local government, to say the least, did not handle matters well. After the initial debacle in Wuhan, there was massive, top-down mobilization of state power to contain the coronavirus epidemic. Once, the central government gave clear directives in late January 2020, the whole country was put under full or semi quarantine; each level of government strictly followed orders to prioritize fighting the disease. The latest technology was put to use, with hardly any concern for privacy or individual autonomy. Such strong measures helped to contain the spread of the virus in China within a few weeks. But Legalist-inspired draconian means cannot fully explain success. The Confucian tradition also played an important

15 A similar story of “先礼后兵 xian li hou bing ” can be told of those who ignored speed limits. The educational efforts in driving schools and elsewhere to make drivers obey rules of the road had little effect. The government then decided to use traffic cameras that fined drivers, with little room for discretion. That eventually worked to change driving practices. Today, the cameras have less effect because almost every car has a GPS (导航) that warns drivers of the presence of cameras, but still, most drivers have internalized the need to obey speed limits without being forced to do so. The point here is not that harsh laws per se can transform attitudes and actions. The fear of harsh punishment in the short term can help to transform inner morality in the long term only if the initial fear of punishment builds on a commonly held social value that is already internalized by means of education and informal rituals (people knew that drunk driving and speeding was bad, but such norms only affected behavior and became viewed as truly bad after they were backed up by harsh punishments for violations). Regarding other rules of the road, there is still need for progress. The government carries out public campaigns to promote civility by means of signs on major roads with the characters “礼让 li rang,” which can be translated as “ritual and deference.” It’s still quite rare, however, for drivers to show civility by letting pedestrians proceed first in cases of conflict: The powerful cars usually prevail and pedestrian crossways have little effect. Once the government issues strict fines for incivility, it might help to improve things, and once civility will become second nature, the government will no longer need to rigorously enforce the law. 16 This section draws on the new preface to the paperback edition of Bell and Wang, Just Hierarchy.

9

LEGALIST CONFUCIANISM: WHAT’S LIVING AND WHAT’S …

243

role. Dutiful citizens largely complied with the constraints on privacy and freedom because they had Confucian-style faith that the government was acting in their best interests. Most Chinese love nothing better than socializing in restaurants and parks and traveling at home and abroad (in 2019, 169.2 million Chinese traveled overseas, mainly as private tourists). On this basis alone, we can safely assume that they would have been unlikely to comply if they had thought such totalitarian controls on everyday life were supposed to be permanent. More specific Confucian values also contributed to success. Filial piety, or reverence for the elderly, helps explain why East Asian countries took such strong measures to protect people from a disease that is particularly dangerous for the elderly (within families, adult children often wore masks and asked children to do so to protect elderly relatives). Also, East Asian countries’ relatively distant greeting practices such as bowing helped minimize contagion when compared with, for example, the kissing and hugging common in Italy, Spain, and France. Perhaps most important, Confucian-inspired respect for expertise, which is widely shared in East Asian countries, also increased the effectiveness of scientifically-informed policies. In China’s case, when eightytwo-year-old Dr. Zhong Nanshan, famous for leading the fight against SARS, warned of the severity of the coronavirus on January 20, 2020, the country listened and prepared for the worst. Such modern-day junzi (exemplary persons) command great authority: They are trusted to use their expertise to serve the common good. In countries like the United States, which have a more anti-elitist ethos, conscientious experts do not exert the same level of social influence. Dr. Fauci is perhaps more admired in China than in the United States. In short, Legalist top-down mobilization of state power, combined by Confucian-inspired values such as trust in conscientious experts, respect for the elderly, and distant greeting practices, help to explain China’s success for two years after the debacle in Wuhan. That said, the government failed to contain the more contagious Omicron variant in 2022 and eventually it was forced to exit somewhat chaotically from zeroCovid, which may undermine trust in experts and govermental policies in the future. Still, if the rest of the world had followed China’s approach,

244

D. A. BELL

we would be dealing with an epidemic that killed thousands rather than millions.17 The Anti-Corruption Drive18 The anti-corruption drive is a more controversial example and it remains to be seen if it will be successful in the long term. The means employed owe much to the Legalist tradition. In conversation with public officials, including high-ranking leaders, the language of Legalism is frequently invoked to justify the anti-corruption drive. It has worked, at least in the short term. When Xi Jinping assumed the presidency in 2012, corruption had reached a tipping point and Xi made combating corruption the government’s top priority. The government launched what has turned out to be the longest and most systematic anti-corruption campaign in Communist Party history. As of 2018, more than one million officials have been punished for corruption, including a dozen high-ranking military officers, several senior executives of state-owned companies, and five national leaders. Cynical observers claim that the whole thing is a means of going after political enemies, but what distinguishes this anti-corruption drive from previous ones is that it also creates many political enemies, which seems irrational from the point of view of political self-preservation. Whatever the motivation, the effect is clear: The anti-corruption drive has worked. Anybody who has dealt with public officials has noticed the changes. Corruption practices are now almost universally frowned upon. The profits of companies are up because there’s no longer a need to pay extras to public officials. Ordinary citizens perceive the system as less unfair because it’s now possible to access public services without paying bribes and gifts to bureaucrats. Most surprising, the anti-corruption drive has been successful without the mechanisms designed to limit abuses of power in liberal democracies: competitive elections, a free press, and independent anti-corruption agencies. China’s Leninist-inspired political system rules out such mechanisms and allows for abuses such as indefinite detention without trial. 17 In the case of Hong Kong, the COVID-19 calamity in early 2022 can be explained at least partly because the city did not have the resources to mount a Legalist-style attack on COVID-19 and the people lacked Confucian-style trust in the government. 18 This section draws on Bell and Wang, Just Hierarchy, pp. 81–84.

9

LEGALIST CONFUCIANISM: WHAT’S LIVING AND WHAT’S …

245

But the downsides of excessive Legalism are evident. It is not just that public officials think twice before engaging in corrupt practices. They think almost all the time about what can go wrong, to the point that decision-making has become virtually paralyzed. The procedures for using public funds have become bafflingly complex and punitive, and it’s safer not to spend money. The costs are huge, and growing. China’s success over the past four decades is partly explained by the fact that government officials were encouraged to experiment and innovate, thus helping to propel China’s reforms. But ultra-cautious behavior from the government means that innovative officials won’t get promoted and problems won’t get fixed.19 Equally serious, the anti-corruption drive has created huge numbers of political enemies who may be cheering for the downfall of the leaders, if not the whole political system. For every high-level public official brought down by the anti-corruption drive, there may be dozens of allies and subordinates who lose their prospects of mobility in an ultracompetitive, decades-long race to the apex of political power. The “losers” in the anticorruption drive blame China’s rulers for their predicament. These real enemies make the leaders even more paranoid than usual and lead the government to ramp up censorship and further curb civil and political rights. So it isn’t just the political outcasts who feel estranged from the system but also intellectuals and artists, who object to curbs on what they do, as well as business people who worry about political stability and flee abroad with their assets. With yet more social dissatisfaction among elites, leaders further clamp down on real and potential dissent. Knowing that their enemies are waiting to pounce, the current leaders are even less likely to give up power (elderly leaders may not worry so much about their own fate because they will soon “visit Karl Marx,” but they worry about children and family members). So it’s a vicious circle of Legalist means and political repression. Ironically, the most efficient and effective drive to limit abuses of power in recent Chinese history (in the form of the anti-corruption campaign) may also have led the leaders of the campaign to remove the

19 For an empirically informed argument that the anti-corruption drive has a deterrence effect that lowers the average ability of newly recruited bureaucrats, see https://www. cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/price-of-probityanticorruption-and-adverse-selection-in-the-chinese-bureaucracy/5CF35E3428FEE88814 270F861360D3B8.

246

D. A. BELL

most important constraint on their own power (in the form of term and age limits). In retrospect, it may have been a mistake to rely almost exclusively on Legalist means to combat corruption. Legalism can bring short-term political success, but it can also lead to long-term doom, similar to the fate of the Qin dynasty. Chinese history does point to other possibilities, including amnesties for corrupt officials. As the current anti-corruption drive was getting under way, reformers argued that a general amnesty be granted to all corrupt officials, with serious policing of the boundaries between private and public, and resources provided to allow them to start afresh. To deal with the买官 mai guan [buying of government posts] problem, public posts could have been distributed by lot once officials pass a certain level of qualification, as was done under Emperor Wanli. But it’s too late to start over. What can be done is to wind down the anti-corruption drive. Wang Qishan—who led the anti-corruption drive—said that the anti-corruption drive will need to move from an initial deterrent stage to a point where the idea of acting corruptly would not even occur to officials as they went about their business. The next stage can’t rely first and foremost on fear of punishment. It must rely on measures that reduce the incentive for corruption, including higher salaries for public officials and more clear separation of economic and political power. It also matters what officials do when nobody is looking: Moral education in the Confucian classics can help to change mindsets in the long term. The central authorities should put more trust in talented public officials with good track records of serving the public. At the end of the day, however, the best long-term solution for corrupt behavior is Confucian-style moral self-regulation on the part of public officials.

Concluding Thought The reader may be left wondering if Legalist Confucianism is distinctive to China or if it can be exported to other contexts. There may be some lessons for other East Asian countries such as South Korea that have a long history of Legalist Confucianism and its institutional manifestation in the form of a complex bureaucratic system designed to select and

9

LEGALIST CONFUCIANISM: WHAT’S LIVING AND WHAT’S …

247

promote public officials.20 But countries that lack this history and political culture will not be inspired by the tradition of Legalist Confucianism and its contemporary manifestations. If people outside of East Asia do not rank Confucian values such as respect for conscientious public officials very highly or if the judicial system does not allow for the possibility that civil liberties can be curbed even in short term responses to emergencies, then we just need to accept that different countries and societies will rely on different means to resolve urgent problems.

Bibliography Bell, D. A. (2008). China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bell, D. A. (2015). The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bell, D. A., & Wang, P. (2020). Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chaibong, H., & Wooyeal, P. (2003). Legalistic Confucianism and Economic Development in East Asia. Journal of East Asian Studies, 3(3), 461–492. Jiang, J., Shao Z., & Zhang, Z. (2020). The Price of Probity: Anticorruption and Adverse Selection in the Chinese Bureaucracy. British Journal of Political Science, 52(1), 41–64. Li, Q., He, H., Duan, L., Wang, Y., Bishai, D.M., & Hyder, A.A. (2017). Prevalence of Drink Driving and Speeding in China: A Time Series Analysis from Two Cities. Public Health, 144, S15–S22. Pines, Y. (2013). Between Merit and Pedigree: Evolution of the Concept of “Elevating the Worthy” in Pre-imperial China. In Bell D. A. & Li C. (Ed.), The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in a Comparative Context (pp. 161–202). New York: Cambridge University Press. Richter, N., Kwan, A., & Neininger, U. (2012, July 28). Burying the Scholars Alive: On the Origin of a Confucian Martyrs’ Legend. http://ulrichneinin ger.de/?p=461 [accessed 10 Sept 2022]. Slingerland, E. (2004). Trying Not To Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity. New York: Crown. Wang, P. (2007). Debates on Political Meritocracy in China: A Historical Perspective. Philosophy and Public Issues (New Series), 7(1), 63–71.

20 See Hahm Chaibong and Paik Wooyeal, “Legalistic Confucianism and Economic Development in East Asia,” Journal of East Asian Studies 3, no. 3 (Sept–Dec 2003), pp. 461–492.

248

D. A. BELL

Wang, Q., & Zhang Y. (2014, October 10). Drunken Driving Crashes, Injuries Declining. China Daily. Winston, K. (2005). The Internal Morality of Chinese Legalism. Singapore Journal of Legal Studies (2), 313–347. Zhao, D. (2015). The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 10

The Minben Meritocratic State’s Impact on Contemporary Political Culture Zhengxu Wang

The premodern Chinese state that existed in China between 221 BC and 1911 AD could not but left a large number of legacies that are still significantly shaping politics and society in China today. Specifically, its belief in the search of a people-rooted meritocratic government has endured. This belief system continues to reproduce itself in political and literary texts, public discourses, and policy and political debates. Therefore, this belief system remains a vibrant factor affecting the public’s political beliefs and attitudes. The study of political psychology of the public, i.e. political culture, therefore, must take this into account. Examining patterns of political trust in China, this chapter provides a case study of how the contemporary public’s political attitudes are shaped by this belief system inherited from the premodern Chinese state.

Z. Wang (B) Department of Political Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Z. Wang (ed.), The Long East Asia, Governing China in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_10

249

250

Z. WANG

I refer to this premodern Chinese state as a minben-(people-rooted) meritocratic state, and its belief and value system as the minbenmeritocratic belief system. This chapter will show how a theory of political culture that puts the minben-meritocratic beliefs at the center holds stronger explanatory power to two main patterns of political trust in China, i.e. how and why the Chinese public show such a high level of trust in their government, especially the central/national government, and why they trust different levels of government differently. The chapter firstly looks at the main theoretical and empirical puzzles currently faced by the study of political trust of the Chinese public. Next, it puts forward a minben-meritocratic “theory” of political culture— theory defined as a set of propositions that predict empirical findings. The empirical part will demonstrate how this theory shows explanatory power regarding political trust in China. The analysis finds that a minben-meritocratic political culture theory can explain the main empirical findings in China’s political trust research—namely China’s sustained high level of political trust and the phenomenon of hierarchical political trust. At the same time, this theory can better accommodate the empirical phenomenon that it cannot explain—that is, the phenomenon of a certain degree of decline in the level of political trust in China during the past two decades. In both regards, it outperforms the conventional liberaldemocratic theories of cultural changes such as postmaterialism theory and the “critical citizens” thesis. This is followed by some discussion.

Studying Political Trust in China David Easton first began the study of political support as an important element of the “input” side of a political system (Easton, 1965). He distinguished political support into diffuse political support and specific political support (Easton, 1975). Political trust, that is, citizens’ general trust in the government, represents a kind of diffuse political support, while specific political support regards support for specific government agencies and government personnel, including politicians and leaders. Later studies generally treat political trust as a specific kind of political support, distinguishing it from citizens’ support for the polity and polity principles (Norris, 1999). Political trust has become one of the most important concepts in the study of political support. The interest in political trust grew with a sense of urgency as a number of Western democracies were showing quickly decreasing trust

10

THE MINBEN MERITOCRATIC STATE’S IMPACT …

251

in government. In the context of the competition between the Western “democratic” regime and the Soviet-led socialist camp as the Cold War went on, an important topic in Western academic circles is how democracy emerges and continues. Lipset’s (1959) path-setting study of the “social requisites” of democracy represents a typical case in searching for factors contributing to the forming and endurance of democracy. In this context, political scientists argued that public trust in government institutions and support for democratic polities—that is, the public legitimacy of a polity—is necessary for the continuation of democracy. Survey results of low political trust in Western countries in the 1970s led to the alarming call of “democratic crisis” (Crozier et al., 1975). Afterward, political trust became an important subject of empirical research (see, e.g., Dalton, 2004; Norris, 1999). After more than 30 years of research, scholars recognized that political trust in Western countries is generally low. Regarding the consequences of low political trust in the long run, however, no serious findings have emerged (van de Meer, 2017). In other words, whether the long existing low level of political trust represents a crisis of democracy or not, the findings are still inconclusive. Meanwhile, studies of political trust in developing countries have also multiplied, with Chinese scholars also bringing the subject into the study of the Chinese public’s political attitude and political culture in this context. The level of political trust is usually believed to be determined through either institutional or cultural mechanisms, which are also respectively referred to as “endogenous” and “exogenous” factors that shape the level of political trust (Mishler & Rose, 2001). One of the earliest pieces of research pointed to traditional Chinese political culture as a key variable affecting political trust in China (Shi, 2001). This can be regarded as an “exogenous” or culturalist interpretation. It was also found that media consumption negatively affects the level of political trust in China (Chen & Shi, 2001), which amounts to an “endogenous” or institutional explanation. Analyzing a 2001 dataset, I compared the influence of cultural or value variables and institutional variables on political trust in China, and found that institutional variables had a greater impact on China’s political trust than cultural variables (Wang, 2005a). The decreasing effect of socioeconomic modernization on political trust, as expected by Inglehart’s (1990) theory of postmaterialism, was not in operation in the Chinese society at that time (i.e. the year 2001 when the data was collected). Li Lianjiang (2004) identified the hierarchical nature

252

Z. WANG

of political trust among rural residents in China, and attributed the variation in the level of political trust to institutional factors, i.e. government’s performance. The hierarchical nature of political trust in China (Li, 2004; Wang, 2005b), that is, residents hold the highest trust in the central government, followed by the provincial government, and the prefecture, county, and township governments, would become a notable puzzle for more work to tackle later on. In addition to studying political trust as a general concept, a very useful pathway is to desegregate the concept, and operationalize it into various “dimensions” of trust. Through in-depth interviews with residents who have petitioned for a long time, Li Lianjiang (2013) found that their trust in the government should at least be divided into two dimensions: trust in government’s intention vis-à-vis its capability. Li found that, oftentimes, even when people have lost trust in the government’s actual ability to deliver the promised goods or policy implementation, they may still trust the government’s good intention in serving the people’s interests. Similarly, Li Yanxia (2014) conceptualizes trust as constituting a cognitive process of “A trusts B to be able to do X.” This way, whether people trust the government as being willing or prepared to serve the people’s interests form a kind of “intention-based” trust; and whether they trust the government as having the ability to serve the people’s interests forms a “capability-based” trust. Capability-based trust includes trust in government efficiency and its ability, while intention-based trust includes trust in the government’s “democraticness,” integrity, and fairness. Xiao Tangbiao and Zhao Hongyue (2019) argue that political trust should be separated into four dimensions, namely to evaluate whether the government (1) is a “good government that sincerely serves the people,” (2) is a “determined” government that upholds justice for the people, (3) is a “capable” government with the ability needed for solving problems, (4) is an “learner” government that understands social conditions and the actual situation of the people. Therefore, political trust has four dimensions, trust in the intention, determination, capability, and the learning ability of the government. Meng Tianguang (2014) distinguishes the central government’s major organs as the “symbolic” state, as a class of objects of political trust, while the police, the civil service, and local governments are as the “implementer” state. This is a similar conceptual differentiation I used earlier to distinguish the central government and the Party’s “Center” as the “imagined state” and the local government,

10

THE MINBEN MERITOCRATIC STATE’S IMPACT …

253

the civil service, as well as the police, among others, as the “real state” (Wang, 2005b). In any case, by early 2000s, research on political trust in China (others include Chen, 2004, etc.) resulted in four main findings: (1) the level of political trust in China is high; (2) government performance positively affects the level of political trust, i.e. this high-level trust comes largely from government performance; (3) traditional culture and values positively affect the level of political trust; (4) residents’ trust in governments at all levels are hierarchical—they trust the central government the most, and trust lower level governments much less. The subsequent studies on China’s political trust have expanded, and either re-confirmed the existence of these four patterns or attempted to identify the factors that lead to them. This small field of studying political trust in China has, indeed, resulted in very rich results and a group of outstanding scholars. Especially, what is not often available to the English-language literature are a large number of empirical studies of political trust produced by scholars in China, published in Chinese (some referred to above). Political trust research has thus become a “cottage industry” in empirical research of Chinese politics.

A Minben-Meritocratic Theory of Political Culture To have a discussion on Chinese people’s political trust, and political attitudes more generally, it is important to put forward two basic understandings. First, the values and beliefs formed and lasted during premodern China still have profound impacts today. The main components of premodern China’s belief system mostly originated during the 800-year Zhou period, and were greatly formalized during the Qin-Han period (Zhao, 2015). It certainly went through revisions and changes during the period between the Qin-Han (221BC-220AD) and the Qing (1636–1911), but its duration and renewal were even more striking, and have continued into the contemporary times. Second, the political ideas and beliefs taking roots in the Qin-Han period and continued beyond the Republic Revolution of 1911 formed a unified and coherent belief/ideological system. This chapter refers to this belief system as the combination of minbenism and meritocracy. A comprehensive overview of Chinese and Western political values is beyond the scope of this chapter. To examine how a minben-meritocratic value

254

Z. WANG

system shapes the Chinese public’s perception of state-society relationship, however, it is possible to look at how patterns of political trust in China can be attributed to the minben-meritocratic value system. Until today, empirical study of political culture is still continuing the civic culture tradition beginning from Almond and Verba (1963). Ronald Inglehart’s postmaterialist theory (1990, 1997) and Pippa Norris’ “Critical Citizenship” thesis (1999) take postmaterialism or self-expression values as a key explanatory variable of political trust—the rise of a postmaterialist public is believed to lead to a more assertive political culture, and citizens will increasingly distrust the government and any agents of authority in general. It becomes an important paradigm that shapes the study of political trust in China. Since the 1980s, as China was going through rapid socioeconomic modernization, postmaterialist, selfexpressive, or pro-democratic values were expected to rise, which were expected to reduce or weaken the level of political trust, and also brought about the emergence of “critical citizens” in Chinese society (Wang & You, 2016). But this theoretical formulation is closely tied to the study of (Westernstyle) democracy. When studying political culture, scholars are mostly concerned with what kind of political culture is conducive to the establishment, consolidation, and performance of the political system that is called “democracy” in American and Western European political science. Almond and Verba (1963) identified such a democracy-supporting culture as a mixed form of “civic culture,” Inkeles and Smith (1974) link “individual modernity” to modern society of the Western democracies, and Putnam (1993) believes a culture of connectedness, solidarity and reciprocity, among others, makes that political system (democracy) work. The works of Lucian Pye and a few cultural scholars (e.g., Harrison & Huntington, 2000) and others represent the other side of the same coin, i.e. they are concerned with determining what kind of political culture cannot provide the soil for democratic politics. Harrison and Huntington’s co-edited volume analyzes how the political culture of some parts of the world are not conducive to economic and social modernization and democratic politics, while the Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis believes that non-Western and Western values and institutions (and interests) are irreconcilable. It is also common to classify the political culture of regions outside North America and Western Europe as “traditional” and “authoritarian,” which is equal to labeling these regions as not (at least

10

THE MINBEN MERITOCRATIC STATE’S IMPACT …

255

not yet) modern nor democratic (see Welzel et al., 2003). One cannot help but realize more than a dose of Western centrism in such arguments. Inglehart’s study of political culture was further developed into a study of the evolution of political institutions. Many of his works demonstrate that economic and social modernization will bring about political democratization (i.e. establishment of American-Western European type of political systems) by changing people’s political concepts and attitudes (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005). The difference between Inglehart’s theory and the conventional modernization theory (e.g., Lipset, 1959; Prezworski & Limongi, 1997; Boix & Stoke, 2003) is that Inglehart’s cultural theory of modernization (Inglehart, 1997) and human development (Inglehart & Welzel 2005) take the change of people’s values as a bridge or mechanism between economic development and political democracy. For a “non-democratic” polity—that is, a political system without multi-party elections—the Inglehartian theory naturally points to the inevitable relationship between economic development and a decline in the public’s support/political trust for the regime, before the public eventually toppling the regime and turning it into a democracy (Welzel & Inglehart, 2005). I call this a new modernization theory—economic and social modernization brings changes in political values, and further promotes the “democratic transition” as prescribed by the conventional modernization theory. The study of political culture as public beliefs and attitudes starting, i.e. from Sidney and Verba (1963) to Norris (1999) and Inglehart and Welzel (2005), has collectively resulted in what I refer to as the “liberal-democratic theory” of political culture. The main characteristics or the “ethos” of such a “theory” or paradigm consist of several themes or assumptions. These include (1) political culture or a public’s belief system is supposedly to evolve toward a situation where it helps with the well-functioning of liberal democracy; (2) for people living under a non-democratic regime (according to Western definition), they are expected to acquire pro-democratic values and are expected to challenge that non-democratic political system. Regarding political trust in China, such a theory would predict two patterns. First, the level of political trust in China, a non-democratic polity as defined by Western political science standards, cannot be high, as non-democratic polities should not enjoy popular support at all. Second, whatever the level of political trust in China, with a sustained period of socioeconomic modernization, we should see its decline taking place. But these two predicted patterns, so

256

Z. WANG

far, have not appeared in China: the level of political trust is high in China, and has remained high for the last twenty years, during which time rapid socioeconomic modernization has taken place. Furthermore, these liberaldemocratic theories of political culture cannot speak to the hierarchical nature of political trust in China—no study has used any of these theories to explain why Chinese people trust their central government more than they do their provincial government, for example. A Minben-Meritocratic Theory of Political Culture This is not the place to engage in a debate regarding the Western-centrist nature of the liberal-democratic theoretical tradition from Almond and Verba’s (1963) civic culture thesis to Inglehart (1990, 1997) and Norris’ (1999) theories of postmaterialism, self-expression values, and critical citizenship. Suffice to say that scholars arguing multiple modernities (Tu, 2000), indigenous psychology (Yang, 1996), and Confucian modernity (Chan, 2015), among others, show that a different understanding of modernity as well as democracy can be possible. In empirical research, Shi Tianjian has repeatedly found that the higher level of political trust in China is affected by cultural norms and values of Chinese society. He (Shi, 2001) further proposes a general theory, arguing that the political culture of a society is mainly determined by two dimensions of values or norms, that is, a person’s understanding of the relation between him/herself and the authority, and his/her definition of self-interest. Shi Tianjian believes that Chinese political values emphasize the hierarchical positioning of power or authority, which is different from the reciprocal positioning between individuals and power in Western society. With such deep-seated values and norms, Chinese residents tend to trust and obey the government in their attitudes. At the same time, they pay less attention to examining government’s procedures or institutions, but judge the government according to its policies and performance. Chu discovered earlier that the Chinese government and political system have a high degree of trust and legitimacy in the eyes of the public, and the reason for this is the important “people-rooted” beliefs, i.e. minbenism of Chinese people. The ideas, theories, and institutional designs of the minbenmeritocratic state originated during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period (722–221BC), and became a unified guiding ideology within the territory of the unified Qin and Han dynasties. The main

10

THE MINBEN MERITOCRATIC STATE’S IMPACT …

257

parts of minben-meritocratic beliefs originated from the various philosophical schools active during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. The Confucianists argued for a government of people-rootedness (minben) and respecting virtue and talent (zunxian). The Legalists’ statemaking proposal emphasized rewarding performance and promoting the competent (luyougong, shiyouneng ), and the Mohists also argued for “distinguishing those with virtue and talent (shangxian).” The core of minben-meritocracy is legitimation of the state according to the minben and meritocracy beliefs. Minben takes the people as sole origin or root of state power, whereas meritocracy in the form of zunxian and shangxian places the responsibility of government on people with the quality in terms of virtue and talent (Bai, 2013). Therefore, minben and meritocracy make up a two-part legitimation requirement for the state, involving the state’s obligation to deliver governance for the people and for state power to be exercised by those with virtue and talent. This two-part understanding of minben-meritocracy is important, as many people tend to see the premodern Chinese state through more narrowly meritocratic perspective. The imperial examination system of selecting literati-officials and the imperial bureaucracy that promoted and rotated officials according to their performance, of course, easily fit into a meritocracy ideal type. Yet, what is often overlooked is the “merit” part of the examination, assessment, and evaluation of the examinees and officials included a strong emphasis on their “minben” virtue, i.e. whether they demonstrate the belief in the people-rooted nature of state power and the state’s obligations of delivering good governance for the people. The study of Confucian cannons such as Confucius’ Analects, historical accounts as well as past official-writers’ essays, poems, and treaties all serve such a purpose. The system, therefore, was designed and practiced with the purpose to ensure government is made up or/and run by people of both virtue and talent, where virtue is defined as the genuine belief and intention of using power for the good of the people (i.e. public good). In this sense, the minben-meritocratic polity is vastly different from liberal democracy in which the selection of government leaders is generally legitimated through the “one person, one vote” electoral norm. On the one hand, anyone with sufficient “virtue” and “ability” can be selected for the role of national governance. This norm is most clearly manifested in Mencius’ argument that “anyone can be a sage king like Yao and Shun,” and reflects the strong belief in political equality and the belief in the value of any person. On the other hand, Confucius,

258

Z. WANG

Mencius, etc. emphasized the governing responsibility of gentlemen, scholars, and sages. The literati-officials were indeed a political class within the premodern East Asia society, whereas “ordinary” people, the illiterate commoners were neither responsible for state affairs, nor should they play too big a role in governance affairs beyond their household and locality. Compared with liberal democracy’s stipulations on the rights of ordinary citizens to participate in politics, meritocracy in fact opposes formal equality (Bai, 2020). Instead, it recognizes differences in talent and virtue and the resulting differences in political responsibilities (and rights). While minben-meritocracy bases its claim of legitimacy on making political power to serve the well-being and needs of the people, the state’s reading of people’s hearts or needs is achieved through ways highly different from what are referred to as “interest aggregation” in the contemporary political science discipline (Pan, 2009). The state’s reading of the people’s needs and formulating policy responses is especially different from the contemporary ideas of “interest articulation,” “political participation,” “political representation,” and “responsive government” as discussed in contemporary political science. Minben-meritocracy placed the responsibility on the meritocratic political class to actively observe and understand the needs of the public in a comprehensive and balanced manner. Pan Wei (2009) believes that the “people’s heart” in Chinese political thought is a general grasp of the needs of the people, rather than a mechanical aggregation of individual opinions. Minben-meritocracy is, therefore, also opposed to interest group politics, which allows social groups or individuals to make claims and demands to the state for the benefit of local or special interests. It is even more opposed to groups or individuals kidnapping the state apparatus and state policies, as it believes amplification of group interests and sectoral voices will harm fairness and justice at the whole societal level. To summarize, the minben-meritocratic belief system contains values of minben/people-rootedness and values of meritocracy (Bai, 2020; Bell, 2016). The minben value refers to the belief in people as the roots or foundations of the state and the belief that politics requires political power to serve the interest of the people. This means that political power is legitimate and good power only when it proves that it serves the people’s interests. This way, it places heavy responsibility on the state to be accountable, responsive, and responsible. Minben or Confucian beliefs of good government, therefore, in no way amounts to a challenge or contradiction to liberal-democratic values. The meritocratic ideas, on the other

10

THE MINBEN MERITOCRATIC STATE’S IMPACT …

259

hand, emphasize the virtue and effectiveness of the government and those that serve in government. This way, however, there is clearly a hierarchical relation between the state, statesmen, or political office holders and the people as common folks. Politics and state affairs are considered to require special talents, qualifications, competence, and skills, therefore, are delegated to those that are meritocratically selected and promoted (Bell & Wang, 2020). Together, minben-meritocratic beliefs give the autonomy of managing state affairs to competent, effective, and virtuous (i.e. publicminded, just, and incorrupt, etc.) state and political office holders. In other words, effective political power is the basic public product of the political community. Against this discussion, a minben-meritocratic political culture would be shaped by. (1) the belief that political power exists and is exercised for the interests of the people, which implies that, (2) the power that effectively serves the people’s interests gains legitimacy, and is, therefore, trustworthy, (3) the power that proves unable to serve the people’s interests loses legitimacy and will, therefore, lose trust of the people. Chu (2013) empirically shows that minbenist values play the decisive factor for Chinese residents’ high trust in the government, and shows that China’s state gains trust of the people because it proves itself a government “for the people.” Shi (2015) also shows that the Chinese public judge the government’s legitimacy less by processes and procedures, but by its ability and performance results. As long as the government show sufficient ability in delivering a certain degree of governance, the public believes it carries the “mandate of heaven,” and is willing to accord it with legitimacy. In fact, as long as the public believes that the government holds true intention of serving the people’s interests, it is sufficient for them to retain their faith in the government (i.e. even if they see incompetence and corruption among some government officials or within certain government agencies, branches, sections, etc. Li, 2013). With such a minben-meritocratic political culture, therefore, as long as the government is perceived to be a legitimate government, i.e. a government that has not lost the intention to and ability in serving the interests of the people, the public is ready to comply and offer consent. In normal

260

Z. WANG

situation, therefore, the relationship between the state and society, or between the state and citizens, is not one of oppression vs. resistance or control vs. challenge but one of cooperation, mutual support, and the common pursuit of positive socioeconomic and political outcomes (Wang & Zhao, 2021). Meanwhile, citizens do hold high standards when evaluating the actual performance of the state, in that citizens often criticize the specific officials, government agencies, and policies as well as their actual implementation (Li, 2013). For the “real” state, i.e. agencies and agents of the government, a culture of accountability is certainly in place (Zhuang, 2020). This discussion leads we to expect that, within a minben-meritocratic political culture: Hypothesis 1 (H1): The Chinese public generally holds a high level of political trust across time. Hypothesis 2 (H2): The Chinese public holds hierarchical levels of political trust, i.e. while they generally hold high level of trust in the central government, their trust in specific government agencies and agents will depend on actually performances of these agents or agencies. From this hypothesis, we can derive two sub-hypotheses: Hypothesis 2.1 (H2.1) While the Chinese public’s trust in the central government will remain high across time, its trust in the local government might vary across time. Hypothesis 2.2 (H2.2) While the trust in the central government is generally high across provinces, the trust in the local government will vary across provinces.

Empirical Data The data of this chapter come from the Asian Barometer Survey between 2001 and 2019 (asianbarometer.org). Table 10.1 shows the level of political trust in China from 2001 to 2019. The first line shows the percentage of respondents who expressed trust in the Central government, combining those who responded “trust a great deal” and those who responded “trust somewhat.” One can see that from 2007 to 2011, a certain percentage of residents changed their position from “trust a great deal” to “trust somewhat.” If we give “trust a great deal” a score of 4, and

10

THE MINBEN MERITOCRATIC STATE’S IMPACT …

261

“trust somewhat” a score of 3, while giving “distrust somewhat” a score of 2 and “distrust a great deal” a score of 1, then the average trust score certainly decreased between 2001 and 2019. This way, the data seems to confirm the thesis of the arrival of “critical citizens” (Wang & You, 2012). But, based on the same data, we can also argue that political trust in China has remained at a high level across this time. Firstly, trust in the central government has remained above 93% throughout this period. Secondly, in the three latest surveys (2011, 2015, 2019), there was no clear pattern of decrease in the percentage of those giving the “trust a great deal” option. That percentage was observed at around 50% in both 2011 and 2019, although it was as low as 38% in 2015. Therefore, the degree of trust might have decreased between 2007 and 2011, but it has remained at the same level afterward. Meanwhile, the general trust percentage has even increased from 93% in 2001 to 98% in 2019. Based on this data, Hypothesis 1 is confirmed. Table 10.2 presents the level of political trust observed in the most recent wave (2019–2020) of East Asia Barometer surveys. To save space, this table only selects data of six major countries for comparison with the data of China. The data is also compressed to only reporting the combined percentages of those who responded either “trust a great deal” or “trust somewhat,” in comparison with the combined percentage of those reporting “distrust somewhat” and “distrust greatly.” The table shows that, except for China, residents of these Asia–Pacific countries have a higher proportion of trust in local government and the civil service than in central government agencies—the central government and the national Table 10.1 Level of trust in the central government 2001–2019

Percentage of Respondents Who Said They Trust the Central Government Of Which: Trust a Great Deal Trust Somewhat Sample Size

2001

2007

2011

2015

2019a

93

95

97

95

98

60 33 3184

69 25 5098

51 45 3473

38 57 4068

48 51 4941

a In the 2019 survey, the respondent was given six options: trust fully, trust a lot, trust somewhat,

distrust somewhat, distrust a lot, distrust fully. “Trust fully” is coded as “Trust a great deal” here, while “trust a lot” and “trust somewhat” are coded as “trust somewhat” here Data Source Asian Barometer Survey (www.asianbarometer.org)

262

Z. WANG

parliament (India might be an exception). This shows the phenomenon of the (reversed) hierarchical political trust in China that has been observed by researchers since a long time ago. Chinese residents show significant differences in their trust in the central government and their trust in local governments—they trust the central government far more than they do the local government and some specific government departments such as the civil service. Table 10.2 shows that in the data observed in 2019, although Chinese residents’ trust in the civil service and in local governments is lower than their trust in the Central Government, it is still higher than 80%. What the Table does not show, however, is that among the 82–83% of those responding “trust,” only about 14% chose “trust a great deal.” This is far lower than the percentage reporting “trust a great deal” in the Central Government, which is nearly 50% (Table 10.1). In addition, the survey uses “local government” as a generic term to ask the attitude of the respondents. Earlier studies found that with survey questions asking respondents’ trust in the local government of various levels, it is generally the case that their trust level decreases from the higher levels to the lower levels. That is, among the several levels of local government, Chinese residents trust the provincial government most (although less than they trust the central government), the municipal or prefectural government less, and the county and district government even less. And they trust the township government, which is the lowest level local government in China, the least (Li, 2004). Hypothesis 2 is confirmed. Table 10.2 Hierarchical political trust in East Asia Institutions Central Government National Parliament The Civil Service Local Government

Trust Distrust Trust Distrust Trust Distrust Trust Distrust

Japan Korea

Indonesia

Malaysia Australia India China

34 59 31 62 53 44 69 29

87 13 75 24 89 11 90 10

72 25 68 29 85 13 81 16

32 58 12 71 49 47 47 50

Data Source Asian Barometer, Wave 5 (2019–2020)

28 53 26 53 57 35 37 48

74 16 73 17 70 19 70 18

98 2 98 2 82 17 83 16

10

THE MINBEN MERITOCRATIC STATE’S IMPACT …

263

Hypothesis 2 holds that hierarchical political trust brought about by the minben-meritocratic political culture is manifested as high level of trust in the central government, i.e. the abstract “state” as a psychological perception, and lower levels of trust in the “real” government, i.e. specific government agencies, departments, and local branches. For example, Li (2013) found that petitioners always believed that their problems were caused by the specific agencies such as the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Agriculture, but they rarely questioned the intention or ability of “the government” in addressing their concerns. For these people, “the government” exists as something in their mind that will eventually come to their help. Similarly, for rural residents, local governments such as provincial governments and municipal governments, and especially the county and township governments, are often believed to be the wrong doers that distorted central government’s policies and deceived both the residents and the upper level government (Li, 2004). Trust in “The Center” or the “Central Government” or the “State” (guojia) is more likely to come from the belief in the uprightness of the state, which in a minben-meritocratic tradition is constructed as the power that is serving the interests of the people. On the other hand, trust in specific departments and agencies of the government is more likely to come from citizens’ actual experience and assessment of the fairness, efficiency, cleanness, effectiveness, and other aspects of government quality and performance. Therefore, trust in government agencies (other than the wholistic term of the state or the Center, the Central Government) should vary across time and places. For these reasons Hypothesis 2 is further developed into Hypotheses 2.1 and 2.2. That is, Chinese people’s trust in local government or specific government departments may vary across time, locations, and departments, as trust in them are more directly determined by their actual performances and quality. Figure 10.1 shows that, from 2001 to 2019, the public’s trust in the Central Government stayed at a high level and remained relatively stable. Meanwhile, the public’s trust in the local government, referring to the specific local government of the respondents’ respective localities or provinces, fluctuated throughout the same period. Hypothesis 2.1 is confirmed. Figure 10.2, meanwhile, shows that Chinese public’s trust in the central government is consistently high across provinces in China. Trust in the local government, however, is clearly highly different among provinces. Before making and conclusions here, the differences in trust

264

Z. WANG

100 90

Central Government

80

Local Government

70 60 50 40 30 2001

2007

2011

2016

2019

Fig. 10.1 Trust in the central and local governments across time (Data Source Asian Barometer 2001–2020)

in local governments between and among provincial units should be discussed. These inter-provincial differences might be subject to other explanations. For example, an earlier piece of research found that the level of political trust in each province is negatively correlated with the per capita GDP of each province (Su et al., 2016). This finding is in line with the expectations of Inglehart-Norris’ theories, which links a distrusting public with the socioeconomic modernization and material affluence. Nevertheless, Fig. 10.2 clearly shows a low correlation between trust in local governments and provincial per capita GDP levels. The provinces showing lower level of trust in their local government, i.e. Hebei, Shanxi, Jilin, Fujian, Hunan, Guizhou, and Shaanxi, are not the most economically and socially modernized provinces. The same study (Su et al., 2016) also found that the gap between political trust in the central government and trust in local governments tends to be smaller in economically more developed provinces, but Fig. 10.2 does not support such a conclusion. Therefore, we are led to conclude that, Fig. 10.2 seems to suggest that, people’s trust in the Central Government follows the minbenmeritocratic belief in having and supporting a virtuous and legitimate “state,” while their trust in the local governments comes more directly from their perception and evaluation of the actual performance of local governments. This “one center, many provinces” structure represents a natural experiment of how people across the provinces perceive the

10

THE MINBEN MERITOCRATIC STATE’S IMPACT …

265

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30

Fig. 10.2 Trust in the central and local governments across provinces, 2019 (Data Source 2019–2020 [China Survey Conducted in 2019])

Central Government and the local government differently. The result seems to show that, because local governments across the country vary in their quality and performance, the perception of them also varies across the country.

Discussion and Conclusion Political trust has been a “hot” topic in empirical political science research on China, with a large body of literature produced by many scholars. Comparing to most other countries around the world, China’s political trust level is clearly high. At the same time, Chinese people’s trust in their local governments and specific government departments or government agencies is much lower than their trust in the central government. Meanwhile, in recent years, the degree of Chinese public’s trust in the government appears to be in decline. In terms of independent variables that influence the level of political trust, scholars analyze the effectiveness or socioeconomic performance as well as government’s quality in terms of transparency, responsiveness, and cleanness, among others. At the same time, political culture or values and beliefs of the public are also taken as explanatory variables of political trust.

266

Z. WANG

Most of the empirical studies of political trust, however, have constructed their conceptual and theoretical framework based on the Almond and Verba (1963) and Inglehart-Norris tradition of political culture and value changes—what I call a liberal-democratic theory of political culture. The problem is that this research tradition has greatly limited the space for theory building and theory testing on political trust in specific contexts of state-society relations. In this chapter, I proposed a minben-meritocratic theory of political culture—theory in the sense of a number of propositions that predict empirical patterns. The core of this theory points to three basic minben-meritocratic beliefs regarding political power and the relationship between individual and the state. These are (1) the belief that political power exists and is exercised for the interests of the people, which implies that, (2) the power that effectively serves the people’s interests gains legitimacy, and is, therefore, trustworthy, and (3) the power that proves unable to serve the people’s interests loses legitimacy and will therefore lose trust of the people. If we believe these long-lasting beliefs still shape Chinese people’s political attitudes and the way the perceive government legitimacy and trustworthiness, we can formulate hypotheses to be tested by empirical data. In this chapter, I tested two main hypotheses, i.e. the Chinese public generally holds a high level of trust in the government, and their trust local government and specific government agencies less than they trust the central government. My theory takes the high level of trust in the central government as coming from the public’s general belief in the “center” as representing the rightful political authority of the country/political community, as well as both virtue and talents required for good governance. The “center” or the “state,” therefore, represents a moral ideal in people’s mind, and cannot be wrong or corrupt. Their trust in the local government as well as various specific government agencies, by contrast, is more shaped by the actual performances of these bodies and is much more subject to criticism and dissatisfaction. In other words, the Chinese public’s trust in the central government reflects the public’s belief in the “goodness” of the political community’s ultimate source of political power, and their trust in the state’s intention as the guardian and provider of governance. What is shown in the survey data as political trust in China should be partially read as the public’s faith in the political community’s moral ability in building and maintaining good political power. It is, therefore, not trust in any specific organization or body per se, but rather an expression of the faith in their own

10

THE MINBEN MERITOCRATIC STATE’S IMPACT …

267

collective self. The “state,” in this regard, is entrusted to carry out the task of producing an acceptably good level of governance. This trust, of course, is also reflexive, in the sense it also reflects the public’s general assessment or satisfaction with the actual performance of the state. Given the high level of trust in the central government for the past 20 years, we can also conclude that, during this same period, the general belief in the “goodness” of the state as the abstract center or source of the political community’s political power continued, and the public’s general assessment of the government’s performance in terms of socioeconomic, political, cultural, environmental governances, etc. appeared to be positive. Their assessment in specific government agencies and government performances in various policy sectors, of course, varies, and many a study has attempted to track down how these assessments affect the public’s trust in the central government, i.e. the abstract “center” of the political community’s political power. Regarding the mainstream/conventional theories of political culture and cultural changes, i.e. Inglehart and Norris’s theories of postmaterialism, self-expression values, and critical citizenship, as well as Mishler and Rose’s (2001) distinction of institutional (endogenous) vis-a-vis cultural (exogenous) determinates of political trust, although they may prove less effective in explaining the broad patterns of political trust in China, they can still play meaningful roles in identifying causal factors that affect political trust. In fact, many existing researches are in the search of various cultural and institutional factors that may affect the level of political trust. For example, it is still useful to examine whether corruption fighting, rise in individual income, and building better environment (cleaning up the rivers, e.g.,) increase political trust. Such research will surely continue to deepen our understanding of the cognitive and psychological processes of political trust as well as satisfaction with government, and lead to policy suggestions for practitioners. But they are more meaningful for understanding citizens’ attitudes regarding specific government policies, departments, and other agents. In the end, the actual performance of specific government units/departments and/or government performances in specific policy areas will have a larger impact on the public’s trust in specific government bodies, but smaller impact on their trust in the “Center,” i.e. the “central government” presented to them in survey questionnaires. Many of the social science concepts coming out of American and European scholarship need to be carefully examined when transported

268

Z. WANG

into the studies of social phenomena in China, and more generally in all non-Western social and cultural settings. This chapter suggests that the concept of political trust needs such rigorous examinations. Chinese citizens’ trust in the central government is, first of all, a reflection of the general belief that political power exists as a positive good for the benefits/interests of the political community. It is at the same time an indicator of the public’s satisfaction with the performance in terms of serving the benefits/interests of the political community. Meanwhile, because citizens grant legitimacy to a regime or state according to its performance as perceived by the public, political trust also serves as a proxy of measuring the degree of legitimacy of the current order. But, given the hierarchical nature of political trust in China, to understand the level of the state’s legitimacy, it is insufficient to simply examining the public’s satisfaction with government’s performance in various policy areas. What is most important for understanding the minben-meritocratic belief is that the Chinese mind seems to believe in the existence of an abstract state, which is both benevolent and capable of governing the country and the people. For it to lose this perception, the state has to show signs of serious decay, incapability, and corruption. Therefore, for most of the time, the Chinese public is ready to take the state in the abstract sense to be legitimate, and benevolent, being willing to look after the public’s interest. This is largely why the Chinese public generally expresses a relatively high level of trust in the state—meaning the abstract “state” that serves as a symbol of the political community and its ultimate center of political power. Meanwhile, day in and day out, they may find the work of various government departments and other agencies or agencies unsatisfactory, and will not hesitate to express distrust or discontent. For some implications for the larger world, let us compare this minbenmeritocratic tradition with the liberal-democratic tradition. In a liberaldemocratic tradition, the state is conventionally taken as an object of criticism and suspicion. The political culture of such a tradition means the public is generally disposed to distrust the state or any political agency’s intention and commitment to serving the public’s interest. This naturally results in confrontational instead of collaborative relations between the society and the state, and is often the source of many forms of societal and political contentions. In this context, as per the “competitive pluralism” advocated by Bai in this book (Chapter 2), the minben-meritocratic tradition or belief system should be treated as a viable alternative as we strive to build good society and good government.

10

THE MINBEN MERITOCRATIC STATE’S IMPACT …

269

References Bai, Tongdong. “Against Political Equality.” Against Political Equality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020). Bai, Tongdong. “主权在民, 治权在贤: 儒家之混合政体及其优越性.” 文史哲, no.3 (2013): 12–23. Boix, Carles, and Susan C. Stokes. “Endogenous Democratization.” World Politics 55.4 (2003): 517–549. Almond, Gabriel, and Sidney Verba. “The Civic Culture.” Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Sage, 1963). Bell, Daniel A. “The China Model.” The China Model (Princeton University Press, 2016). Bell, Daniel, and Pei Wang. “Just Hierarchy.” Just Hierarchy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020). Easton, David. A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965). Chan, Joseph. Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). Chen, Xueyi, and Tianjian Shi. “Media Effects on Political Confidence and Trust in the People’s Republic of China in the post-Tiananmen Period.” East Asia 19.3 (2001): 84–118. Chu, Yun-han. “Sources of Regime Legitimacy and the Debate Over the Chinese Model.” China Review (2013): 1–42. Crozier, Michel Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy (New York: Russell J. Dalton, Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices: The Erosion of Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies [Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004]; New York University Press, 1975). Easton, David. “A Re-assessment of the Concept of Political Support.” British Journal of Political Science 5.4 (1975): 435–457. Harrison, Lawrence E., and Samuel P. Huntington. (Eds.). Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York: Basic Books, 2000). Inkeles, Alex, and David H. Smith. Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974). Inglehart, Ronald. Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton University Press, 1990). Inglehart, Ronald. Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). Inglehart, Ronald, and Christian Welzel. Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy the Human Development Sequence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Jie, Chen. Popular Political Support in Urban China (Washington, DC: Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Stanford University Press, 2004).

270

Z. WANG

Li, Lianjiang. “Political Trust in Rural China.” Modern China 30.2 (2004): 228– 258. Li, Lianjiang. “The Magnitude and Resilience of Trust in the Center: Evidence from Interviews with Petitioners in Beijing and a Local Survey in Rural China.” Modern China 39.1 (2013): 3–36. Li, Yanxia. "何种信任与为何信任?——当代中国公众政治信任现状与来源的实证 分析," [J].公共管理学报 11, no. 2 (2014). Lipset, Seymour Martin. “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy.” American Political Science Review 53.1 (1959): 69–105. Meng, Tianguang. "转型期的中国政治信任: 实证测量与全貌概览," 华中师范大 学学报 (人文社会科学版) 52, no. 2 (2014). Mishler, William, and Richard Rose. “What Are the Origins of Political Trust? Testing Institutional and Cultural Theories in Post-Communist Societies.” Comparative Political Studies 34.1 (2001): 30–62. Norris, Pippa. Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Pan, Wei. “当代中华体制——中国模式的经济, 政治, 社会解析.”《中国模式: 解 读人民共和国的 60 年》北京: 中央编译出版社 (2009). Prezworski, Adam, and Fernando Limongi. “Modernization: Theories and Facts.” World Politics 49.2 (1997): 155–183. Putnam, Robert D. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). Pye, Lucian W. The Spirit of Chinese Politics: A Psychocultural Study of the Authority Crisis in Political Development (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968). Shi, Tianjian. “Cultural Values and Political Trust: A Comparison of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan.” Comparative Politics (2001): 401–419. Shi, Tianjian. The Cultural Logic of Politics in Mainland China and Taiwan (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Su, Z., Ye, Y., He, J., & Huang, W. Constructed Hierarchical Government Trust in China: Formation Mechanism and Political Effects. Pacific Affairs 89.4 (2016): 771–794. Tu, Wei-Ming. “Multiple Modernities: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Implications of East Asian Modernity,” in Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, ed. Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington (New York: Basic Books, 2000). van der Meer, Tom W. G. “Political Trust and the “Crisis of Democracy”.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. 2017 Wang, Zhengxu. “Before the Emergence of Critical Citizens: Economic Development and Political Trust in China.” International Review of Sociology 15.1 (2005a): 155–171.

10

THE MINBEN MERITOCRATIC STATE’S IMPACT …

271

Wang, Zhengxu. “Political Trust in China: Forms and Causes,” in Legitimacy: Ambiguities of Political Success or Failure in East and Southeast Asia, ed. Lynn White (2005b), 113–140. Wang, Zhengxu, and Yu You. “The Arrival of Critical Citizens: Decline of Political Trust and Shifting Public Priorities in China.” International Review of Sociology 26.1 (2016): 105–124. Wang, Zhengxu, and Zhao Jianchi. 民本贤能政体与大众政治心理:以政治信任为 例[J].开放时代, no. 298.04 (2021):139–156+9. Welzel, Christian, Ronald Inglehart, and Hans-Dieter Kligemann. “The Theory of Human Development: A Cross-Cultural Analysis.” European Journal of Political Research 42.3 (2003): 341–379. Welzel, Christian, and Ronald Inglehart. “Political Culture, Mass Beliefs, and Value Change.” Democratization (2009): 126–144. Xiao, Tangbiao, and Zhao Hongyue. “政治信任的品质对象究竟是什么?——我 国民众政治信任的内在结构分析,” 政治学研究, no. 02 (2019). Yang, Kuo-shu. “The Psychological Transformation of the Chinese People as a Result of Societal Modernization.” in The Handbook of Shinese Psychology, ed. Michael Harris Bond (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1996). Zhao, Dingxin. The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History: A New Theory of Chinese History (Oxford University Press, 2015). 孟天广,杨明, “转型期中国县级政府的客观治理绩效与政治信任——从 “经济增 长合法性”到 “公共产品合法性”,” 经济社会体制比较, no. 4 (2012). 孟天广,李锋, “政府质量与政治信任: 绩效合法性与制度合法性的假说,”.江苏行 政学院学报, no. 6 (2017).

CHAPTER 11

Conclusion Zhengxu Wang

This volume brings together chapters authored by scholars of multiple disciplines. These chapters collectively attempted to show several things. First, there was a long-last model of state making and social organization that exited in an East Asian zone before the arrival of the Europe-originated “modern” challenges of industrialization, capitalism, and representative form of government. Second, the East Asia region, part of which is sometimes referred to as the sinographic sphere, was historically connected, through commerce and warfare and others, but more importantly through exchanges of ideas and institutions connectedness. Third, that some of the ideas, institutions, practices of the premodern period are still highly viable today and are still shaping the making of government, society, and inter-state relations in today’s East Asia. Fourth and last, as these chapters show, the premodern state in East Asia presents itself as a promising subject for scholarly inquiry—some chapters in this

Z. Wang (B) Department of Political Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Z. Wang (ed.), The Long East Asia, Governing China in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_11

273

274

Z. WANG

volume show that rigorous social science research can be devised and implemented in this subject area. In this concluding chapter, I would like to lay out a few ideas as implications to contemporary global issues and scholarly undertaking. They are related to China and East Asia as a region in the globalized world, the debate on the “China Model,” global discussion of democracy and governance, and scholarship in social science and humanities, among others. I continue to use “minben meritocracy” to refer to the ideas and institutions of this premodern state and society-making of East Asia.

East Asia Regionalism or the Reorganizing of East Asia Comparing to 10–15 years ago, East Asian regionalization seems to facing great challenges today. Post-2001, there was a time ASEAN + 1 and ASEAN + 3 were highly energizing the economic integration of East Asia, and the China-Japan-Korean trilateral integration project was also highly promising. The expansion of China’s economic weight, however, has resulted in a much insecure USA, which took upon itself to contain the so-called rise of China. Part the USA’s recent effort to rebuild its alliance systems in the Indo-Pacific region is, clearly, to prevent the forming of an East Asian bloc with China as the center of economic gravity. As a result, despite the signing of RCEP pact in 2020, the East Asia’s prospects of economic and cultural regionalization are far from certain. The USA seems to both overestimate and misunderstand China’s power ambition. And studying the minben-meritocratic state of China and its ideas that continue from the premodern period to today is highly helpful in mitigating such miscalculation and misunderstanding. Park and Kang’s chapter (Chapter 7) in this book gives some useful hints regarding how the region formed a kind of natural community, i.e., multilateral order without member states suffering coercions from the order’s main power. China of today understands this and is carefully promoting interstate linkages without becoming a security threat to the region. Some if not all regional states understand this too—officials and politicians of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia, for example, often refuse to join the USA in framing China as a security threat to their country or to

11

CONCLUSION

275

the region.1 What the USA might have underestimated, however, is the strong legacies of connectedness and shared understandings among countries of the region. This book demonstrates part of these legacies and shared understandings. They should contribute to the region’s community building, and that, by helping with the making of a peaceful and prosperous East Asia, will greatly benefit both the region and the world.

The “China Model,” Democracy, and Governance Despite its wide usage, the term “China Model” has, as far as become the subject of only one book, i.e., Daniel Bell (2015). Bell equates the China model with political meritocracy, which distinguishes itself from the Wester model of liberal democracy. I have argued that, the Chinese model of meritocracy is not just meritocracy, but meritocracy with a minben “soul” (see the Introduction and Chapter 7). The minben ideology or value/belief system ensures the meritocracy is designed and practiced with the goal to serve the people’s interest—political power and government policies are tools to improve people’s living standard, to ensure a good, equitable, and fair social order. The meritocracy has a purpose—it is a just meritocracy. While Zhao (2015) gives a sociological account of how the minben (he calls Confucian) ideology and legalist rational institutions (mostly meritocratic) merged to produce the long-lasting premodern state in China, Bai (2020) and Chan (2016) make the effort to systematically analyze the minben belief system that state and its intellectual elites intend to preserve. In contemporary China, the Chinese Communist Party seems to take this belief seriously—to ensure power is for the interest of the people. In terms of its selection and promotion of government officials, virtue, morality, and personal and professional integrity are very important criteria. The “merit” as in “meritocracy” here certainly contains both (moral) virtue and (professional) competence/capability. The party’s spells no effort in terms of indoctrination and disciplining to ensure government official live up to the moral standards. The minben beliefs

1 Magdalene Fung, “Indonesia Stresses ‘Asian Way’ for Resolving Challenges in a Multipolar Region.” Straits Times, 11 June 2022; Mercedes Ruehl & Oliver Telling, “Mahathir Mohamad Urges Asean to Move Towards China After US’s Taiwan ‘Provocation’.” Financial Times, 30 August 2022; Nile Bowie, “Lee Shines Light on a US-China Middle Path.” Asia Times, 7 April 2022.

276

Z. WANG

are also leading the party/state to devise institutions of policy-making and implementation that aim at improving the state’s ability in understanding the public’s needs and looking after social actors’ interests. Chinese government has made effort trying to explain the Chinese political system as “people’s democracy” as well as a system of “whole-process democracy.”2 In any case, it is no more viable to rely on the old conceptual analytical tool of “authoritarianism” or “totalitarianism” in trying to understand the designs and working of the Chinese political system. The cold-war political science of merely thinking of government systems in terms of “democracy” vis-à-vis “autocracy” should be discarded. Maybe there is no “China Model,” but at least we should be humbler in trying to understand how the Chinese political system and social order work.

Civilizational Dialogues and Mutual Learning In Chapter 2, Bai advocates a form of “fighting pluralism,” endorsing civilizational competition as a way for humanity to thrive. Dialogues and mutual learning might be another way to build a world of diversity, inclusiveness, equality, and tolerance. The Chinese government might not be apt enough in explaining itself, but I think its “community of common destiny of mankind”3 in fact means such a global community—a world of inclusiveness, equality, and harmony of diversity, among others. For example, harmony of diversity, indeed, forms an important part of the Chinese thinking and is still guiding Chinese foreign policies.4 By presenting perspectives, ideas, historical accounts of a major non-Western region in the world, this book means to drive home such a message too— the world should do away with cultural and political privileges in favor of any country or bloc of countries, and judices against any country or bloc of countries. There are two layers here.

2 State Council of the People’s Republic of China. (2022). “China: Democracy that Works.” 3 Some perspectives from Chinese authors can be Linggui Wang & Jianglin Zhao (eds.). (2019). China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Building the Community of Common Destiny. Singapore: World Scientific. 4 This volume that include authors from multiple countries is a good reference: Chengyang Li, Sai Hang Kwok, & Dascha During (eds.). (2020). Harmony in Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Introduction. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

11

CONCLUSION

277

The first is that countries in the region should promote the idea of East Asia, or, an East Asian identity more vigorously, and in a somewhat more coordinated way. East Asian countries had long history of colonial dominance, and post-independence, great effort was put into nation-building. Zhiguang Yin argues in this book that nationalism was promoted, and understood, in China as part of the anti-imperial and anti-colonial domination project. That is appropriate, no doubt. But we are moving toward a globalized world, and countries are so connected and interdependent. The long history of shared culture, ideas, and institutions in East Asia has not played enough a role in supporting the forming of a pan-East Asia identity. In his chapter, Vu explicitly suggests changes in Vietnamese national discourse, but in fact this is something all countries in East Asia should consider undertaking. The difficulties in forming a pan-East Asian identity have many causes. Partly, the traumas from the World War II (including Japan’s atrocious invasion and occupation of China, Korea, and most of Southeast Asia) and the Cold War period are still haunting, and partly, the US-led security structure is driving the wedge. This has negatively affected the economic project of regionalization. Many actions can be taken to promote a more salient pan-East Asia identity. The school and university curriculum in these countries, for example, can include more pan-East Asia subjects. Pan-East Asia cultural events, such as film festivals, concerts, performance tours. China, to take the lead, should downplay its “national rejuvenation” narrative and turn its China story into an East Asian story. On the second layer, North American and European people and organizations should spend much more effort promoting cultural awareness, greatly improve their appreciation of non-western civilizations. School and university curricula in non-Western countries for a long time place heavy emphasis on the Europe-originated “modernity” subjects, studying the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the scientific and industrial revolutions (Indeed, that is why China’s May Fourth Movement rallied around the flags of Mr. De (democracy) and Mr. Sai (science). This is justified, given non-Western countries faced serious technological and economic challenges from the “modernized” Western countries. But now it is the time the Western countries become much more active in understanding non-Western civilizations in the world. As chapters in this book show, much can be learnt and researched in East Asia’s ideas, institutions, philosophy, politics, and history, among others. When American students start to read texts from Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian (Shi

278

Z. WANG

Ji) or Spring and Autumn Annals (Chun Qiu), as university students in China and around the world are reading Plato and Shakespeare, then a world of mutual appreciation will have come into being. Meanwhile, Chinese scholars and students should not just study American and European ideas, but also those of Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central and Western Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Bell and Wang’s (2020) Just Hierarchy, by bringing in ideas and materials from ancient India into the discussion of social order, is a good example. Clearly, this book aims at contributing to all three projects highlighted above. We now leave it to the readers judge whether it achieves this goal.

Index

A Almond, Gabriel, 254, 256, 266 America, 22, 23, 25, 27, 35, 42, 162 Art of War, The, 115 ASEAN, the, 191, 192, 275 Asianism, 155, 156, 162, 163

B Bai, Tongdong, 6–12, 40, 41, 74, 213, 257, 258, 268, 275, 276 Bandung/Bandung Conference, the, 169 Bell, Daniel, 7, 9, 10, 12, 17, 231, 234, 241, 242, 244, 258, 259, 275, 278 Blinken, Antony, 196 Bowtie network, 71, 72, 75–78, 82, 88, 90, 92 Brunei, 200, 201, 224–226

C Cambodia, 16, 200, 223, 226 Central Asia, 25, 49

Changping, The Battle of, 134 Chan, Joseph, 7, 8, 10, 11, 209 Chaoxian, 13, 46–49, 56, 57, 60, 61, 63 Chen, Gongbo, 159 China, 2, 4–6, 9, 11–18, 22, 28–42, 46, 47, 49–51, 53, 57, 64, 65, 70–74, 79–89, 92–94, 99, 103, 108, 110, 121, 132, 134, 135, 143–147, 149–151, 153–156, 162–165, 167, 168, 175–178, 183–197, 200, 207, 214, 215, 219, 224, 226, 232, 234, 237–246, 249–256, 259–263, 265–268, 274–278 China Model, the, 274–276 Chinese Communist Party, the (CCP, the), 159, 161, 163–166, 176, 275 Chu, Yun-han, 10 Cixi, the Dowager Empress, 214 Cold War, the, 103, 176, 196, 198, 251, 277 Common Programme, the, 167

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 Z. Wang (ed.), The Long East Asia, Governing China in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7

279

280

INDEX

the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP, the), 191–193, 196 Confucianism, 4–9, 17, 35, 187, 188, 216, 231, 232, 234–238, 240 Confucian-Legalist State, 3, 5, 6, 235 Confucius/Kongzi, 31, 32, 108, 149, 190, 232, 233, 257 COVID-19, 17, 222, 242, 244

D Dalton, Russell, 251 democracy, 8, 10, 11, 36, 42, 101–103, 105, 107, 108, 151, 161, 168, 179, 196, 208, 209, 222, 237, 251, 254–258, 274–277 democratization, 255 Diamond, Jared, 23, 25, 34

E East Asia, the, 1–4, 6–8, 10–13, 15, 16, 23, 30, 33, 34, 47, 176–178, 183–186, 190, 193, 196, 197, 202, 218, 247, 258, 262, 273–275, 277 economic growth, 11, 102 Egypt, 26–29, 178 England, 41, 152, 203, 204, 207, 208 Eurasia continent plus North Africa (EANA), 25–27 Europe, 2, 5, 13, 14, 22, 32, 33, 35, 36, 69–71, 81, 83, 93, 132, 149, 150, 152–154, 159, 162, 183, 186, 197, 199, 203, 273, 277 Europe, the Western, 5, 6, 25, 34, 36, 46, 147, 254

F Fan, Zhongyan, 93 Funan, 51, 53, 57

H Han Feizi, 232, 239 Hansong, 58 Han, the dynasty/Han, the empire of, 5, 40, 47–52, 57, 61, 65, 81, 82, 85, 108, 183, 185, 211, 235, 236, 256 Han Wudi, 48, 56 huaxia/hua xia, 31 Hume, David, 203, 204 Hungary, 25

I Ikenberry, G. John, 176, 179–181 Indonesia, 191, 193, 262, 274 Indopacific, the, 274 Inglehart, Ronald, 18, 251, 254–256, 264, 266, 267 Iran, 25

J Japan, 2, 6, 16, 35, 50, 145, 147, 151–156, 158, 184, 186–188, 190, 191, 193, 199, 200, 202, 214–219, 226, 262, 277 Jiao, 13, 46, 47, 49, 51–58, 60, 61, 63, 64 Jiaozhi, 46, 51, 54 Jinping, Xi, 244 Jiuzhen, 46, 51, 54

K Kang, David, 15 Khitan, 88

INDEX

Koguryo/Gaogouli, 47, 56–59, 61–65 Korea, 2, 3, 6, 13, 33, 35, 45–47, 49, 50, 52, 56, 57, 59–61, 63–65, 154, 184, 186–188, 190–192, 224, 262, 277 L Laos, 16, 200, 223, 224, 226 Legalism, 17, 231, 234–238, 244–246 Legalist Confucianism, 17, 231, 232, 234, 239, 240, 246, 247 Liang, Qichao, 88, 146, 148, 156–158, 214 Li, Dazhao, 161–163 Li, Lianjiang, 251, 252, 262, 263 Lingnan, 46, 51 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 77, 251, 255 Li, Zhi, 6 Lý Nhân Tông, 189 M Malaysia, 16, 193, 200, 225, 262, 274 Manchuria, 25, 48–50, 56–58, 61 Mandate of Heaven, the, 10, 121, 183, 202, 209, 259 Marx, Karl, 73, 159–161 Mediterranean, the, 12, 27, 31, 33 Meiji Reform, the, 217 Mencius/Mengzi, 8, 9, 210, 212, 232, 233, 239, 257, 258 Mencian, 10 Mesopotamia, 25–30, 32, 38 Middle East, the, 5, 12, 34, 46, 94 minben, 4, 10, 18, 250, 254, 257–260, 263, 264, 266, 268, 275 minbenism, 10, 253, 256 minben meritocracy, 258, 274

281

minben meritocratic state, 10, 18, 250, 256, 274 Ming, the dynasty of, 6, 34, 36, 89, 183 minzu, 15, 144–150, 159–161 Mohist, the, 257 Moruo, Guo, 170 Murong, 58, 61

N Nationalist Party, the, 165 New Guinea, 23 nine-rank arbiter system, the, 82 Norris, Pippa, 18, 250, 251, 254–256, 264, 266, 267

P Paekche, 57–59, 61–64 political trust, 18, 249–256, 260–268 Pye, Lucian, 143, 254

Q Qian, Sima, 29, 111, 277 Qing, the dynasty of, 16, 36, 41, 70, 74, 87, 183, 211, 253 Qin Shi Huang/Qin Shihuang/Qin Shihuangdi/The First Emperor/Ying Zheng, 47, 134, 234, 235 Qin, the dynasty of, 5, 41, 48, 184, 246 Qin, the state of/Qin the empire of, 2, 4, 14, 40, 48, 51, 103, 109, 119, 132, 234, 235

R Records of the Grand Historian, the/Shi Ji, 29, 117, 210, 277

282

INDEX

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), 191–193, 196, 274 Rinan, 46, 51–54 Russell, Bertrand, 30 S Samhan, 50, 57 San Xing Dui, 29 SARS, 243 Shang, the dynasty of, 209 Shenzong, (Song) Emperor, 91 Shi, Tianjian, 90, 256 Silk Roads, the, 40 Silla, 47, 57–59, 61–65, 188 Sinographic Sphere, the, 2, 3, 273 Song, the dynasty of, 36, 41, 42, 70, 82, 87–93 Spring and Autumn Annals/Chunqiu/Chun Qiu, 111, 278 Spring and Autumn, the period of, 4, 39, 110–112, 119, 124, 256 Star network, 71, 75–78, 81, 84, 86, 90 Sun Goddess, the, 208, 215 T Tang, the dynasty of/the period of/Tang times, 46, 55, 57, 64, 65, 81, 83, 85–87, 91, 92 Tasmania, 23 Tianxia, 7, 12, 14, 15, 145, 149–151 Tilly, Charles, 42, 46, 70, 72, 109, 186 Tuoba, 49, 50, 58 U United States, the, 15, 70, 106, 152, 175, 176, 178, 182, 183, 191, 196, 197, 208, 243

V Verba, Sydney, 254–256, 266 Vietnam, 2, 3, 6, 13, 16, 33, 45–49, 51–54, 60, 63–65, 154, 184, 186–188, 190–193, 200, 223, 224, 226 Vu, Tuong, 6, 11, 13, 33, 45, 277 W Wa (Japanese), 49, 50 Wang, Anshi, 88, 89, 91 Wang, Qishan, 246 Wang, Yangming, 6 Wang, Yuhua, 13, 72, 212 Wang, Zhengxu, 99, 249, 251–253 Wanli, the Emperor, 246 Warring States, the period of, 14, 39, 42, 48, 58, 99, 101, 102, 109, 110, 112, 113, 115, 116, 118, 120, 130, 131, 257 Weber, Max, 40, 41, 45, 101 Weingast, Barry, 70, 71, 207, 208 Welzel, Christian, 255 Wittfogel, Karl, 73 Wuhan, 242 X Xianbei, 49, 50, 58, 61 Xiao, Tangbiao, 252 Xinhai Revolution, 214 Xiongnu, 40, 49, 50, 61 Xunzi, 210, 213, 232, 233 Y You, Yu, 254, 261 Yuan, the dynasty of, 70, 93, 183 Z Zedong, Mao, 36, 162, 163, 170, 236, 237

INDEX

Zhang, Feng, 7, 181, 182 Zhanguo Ce/Strategies of the Warring States , 108, 110, 111, 117 Zhao, Dingxin, 3–7, 40, 42, 73, 74, 100, 102, 109, 110, 112, 113, 118, 123, 124, 128, 132, 133, 234–236, 253, 275 Zhao Tuo, 48

283

Zheng, He, 34 zhongguo/zhong guo, 2, 30 zhonghua, 2 zhonghua minzu, 150, 165 Zhou, Enlai, 166, 169 Zhou, period of, 12, 17, 253 Zhou, dynasty of, 49, 209, 210 Zuozhuan/Commenary of Zuo, 108