A Great Nation of Timid People
This is an old piece I wrote in 2010. Recently, seeing the various injustices in society, I felt the same way, so I have tidied it up and reposted it. Though I have now changed from the hot-blooded youth I was then into a far milder middle-aged man, and my political views have changed greatly, the main ideas in this essay are still ones I now endorse.
China currently has many problems: social injustice, an unenforced legal system, evil forces running rampant, powerful plutocrats acting with arrogance, and the commission of countless unethical deeds in society. Most ordinary people remain used to being silent subjects and soft lambs, so that people's lives are hard and countless misfortunes and injustices occur every day. All this is deeply distressing and demands a reform of national culture. I also hope the ruling class will recognize that the root of these problems lies precisely in the people's not having awakened, and that it should allow the intellectual class to boldly carry out social criticism without causing social turmoil. If China's intellectuals do not do this but remain submissive for long, China's social culture will never have any possibility of improvement.
The old essay follows:
We often relish talking about the Chinese government's macro-control ability, but the facts show that on issues truly related to people's livelihood this macro-control cannot be brought to bear. This shows that behind the government stands a huge plutocratic group able to sway the government. Whether National People's Congress delegates or Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference members, the members basically all have deep political and economic backgrounds; representatives of the common people, the overwhelming majority of the population, can be counted on one hand. Recently a certain CPPCC official even had the shamelessness to say that China cannot let the people decide their own affairs, because the people are not yet mature. His tone was like that of parents judging a three-year-old child, posing as the people's guardian.
What is politics? It is not a group of elites talking to themselves. Politics is a mechanism by which people of every walk of life—peddlers and porters—jointly negotiate the principles by which they coexist in society. It is a mechanism for negotiating the division of economic and social interests, not a routine announcement handed down by a few people or a few interest groups. When a few people or a few interest groups talk only to themselves, they are unquestionably looking out for themselves.
What is saddest is that, from ancient times to today, the clearest feature our country has formed is that of a great nation of timid people. The government and the gentry are enormously powerful, while 99 percent of the common people are cowards. The disparity in power is so great that changing this political structure is almost an impossible task. People often say China had no Enlightenment; in fact, during the Spring and Autumn period, the late Ming, and even from the late Qing to the Republican era, China's Enlightenment was carried out in full swing. Reading the works of the thinkers and writers of those periods today, one deeply sighs at how hard it was to carry out an Enlightenment in China. Our predecessors did not spare their efforts; they poured out their hearts and blood, and they were many, wave after wave of thought surging forward, generation after generation of determined scholars following one another. But after the storm, in an extremely short time—usually within a single generation—the society immediately reverted to its old ways, returning to the state of a great nation of timid people.
When I was young, once during the Spring Festival I went home and discussed with my fourth uncle whether a new revolution would occur in China; I thought it possible. My fourth uncle mocked me severely, saying, "When have children not obeyed their parents?" Most Chinese are rural people, and how many rural parents want their children to rebel? If rebellion truly came, a single word from parents could call most people back. How realistic my fourth uncle was; this is precisely the feature of the rural China described by Mr. Fei Xiaotong. However powerful, it is only a rural China; the countryside is its root, and the countryside determines that it must operate only according to rural ways of thinking.
What is rural thinking? It is my fourth uncle's thinking: simple, pragmatic, and timid. Not unless absolutely necessary will people easily shed blood; if someone does so, everyone mocks him as a fool. So in China, when people encounter injustice, most choose to swallow their anger.
Thus I doubt whether China's society and economy can truly develop healthily. The coordinated development of the economy depends on a balance of power among all social strata; if the power of the strata is forever unequal, social and economic development will never be coordinated. The spindle-shaped society will therefore be hard to achieve. This dooms Chinese society to great volatility: problems accumulate to a certain point, then large-scale unrest erupts; after the unrest there is a brief period of balance, then imbalance builds again, until new unrest occurs.
As Luo Guanzhong wrote in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, "When the world has been united long, it must divide; when it has been divided long, it must unite." So far no dynasty has escaped this fateful law. From current signs, our country's social development is also at such a critical point, which warrants the greatest vigilance.
This also dooms China's tradition of valuing power-stratagems. Stratagems exist everywhere in the world, but they are most extreme in China. Bookstalls on every street are filled with books on stratagems. Where there is demand there is a market; this demand for stratagems is forced out. Why does everyone in China learn stratagems? This is well explained by Schopenhauer's philosophy of the will. Schopenhauer said that when an eagle seizes a rabbit, the eagle, as the strong aggressor, never disguises its intent. But the rabbit, as the weak victim, is very cunning, often playing dead; at the last moment of the eagle's attack it suddenly strikes, catching the eagle off guard. This trick of the rabbit is stratagem.
In Chinese society, imbalance of power is constant and strong-vs-weak confrontation occurs at every moment, so China's timid people value stratagems. It is like a complete ecosystem: if there is a strong government and vested-interest groups, there must inevitably be a crafty, sly populace.
Chinese society also values relationships; clinging to the powerful is the wish of many. "Once a man rises, even his dogs and chickens ascend to heaven" is a reality repeated over the centuries. Beneath the petty urbanites' fawning hides the survival philosophy of a great nation of timid people. Because the disparity between strong and weak is too great, hierarchy has been deeply rooted in every corner of Chinese society from ancient times to today. If a person cannot adapt to such a society, then being born in China, in whatever dynasty, would be a huge disaster and a heart-rending sorrow, because he would constantly have to live in the environment he loathes.
Interpersonal relationships are the most effective means by which timid people, unable to wrestle with interest groups, melt into those groups. I believe China's clan system arose in just this context; the clan system is a highly efficient institutional guarantee by which timid people merge into interest groups. As long as one person in the clan rises, the whole clan is protected. The clan therefore has strong incentive to cultivate its own talented people. But once that talent is cultivated, the burden that person must carry is very heavy.
It is said that when the great Ming scholar Gui Youguang moved house, several hundred members of his whole clan moved with him, for the simple reason that without him they would have no livelihood and would lose protection when victimized. And the thinker Li Zhi of the Wanli period, for exactly this reason, abandoned his wife and daughters and became a monk to escape the responsibility. Among contemporary politicians, many never want to return to their hometowns; could the reason not include escaping the clan system?
This understanding of China's essential nature as a great nation of timid people often depresses me greatly. For a long time my ambition was to reform society, hoping to do work that would change Chinese society and the Chinese people at a deep level. But in reading history and the works of predecessors and in putting this wish into practice, I gradually realized that my ideal was no different from catching the moon in water. Like predecessors before me, even if I succeeded, I could only slightly influence Chinese society for a very short time and could not bring about deep-rooted change in the whole of Chinese society.
In every dynasty there was no lack of people with noble ideals; their wisdom and ability are admirable. But their efforts were ultimately submerged in the curling smoke of rural China, submerged in the bright spring days, in the spittle of the old countryman earnestly teaching his descendants beneath the eaves. Such a populace is truly beyond praise: they always fantasize about the appearance of a great hero, always fantasize that someone with chivalrous spirit will rescue them from the sea of suffering, yet when others help them drive off the local bullies who oppress them, they hide in a corner, trembling and watching. They calculate their own petty self-interest at every moment and have no sense of public justice at all; it is therefore hard for them to live in a truly just society.