[00:00:00] SPEAKER 1:
Today is the occasion of the twenty-third Moses Lecture, and, uh, it is my honor to introduce our speaker, Professor Eberhardt. Uh, many of you, I’m sure, know him. Many of you, on the other hand, may be intrigued by the title of his talk and are attracted, so I thought I might say a few remarks about his background.
And, uh, I would say, first of all, that, uh, he was educated in Berlin, took a, uh, diploma in Oriental languages specializing in Chinese in 1929, and received his PhD from the University of Berlin in 1933. In receiving his degree, it was one in two areas, sociology and classical Chinese. A unique combination even now, but certainly it must have been, uh, astounding to those that considered it then.
He went on to, um, go into areas which are now called interdisciplinary. I’m not even sure the word was in common, uh, circulation at the time, but his interest, uh, spanned such areas as history and sociology, anthropology and religious studies, and literature and folklore. With this, uh, experience of the training in sociology and the training in classical Chinese, he was able to, uh, delve into the documents of the Chinese culture and civilization and, uh, performed studies and established an international reputation which
[00:01:31] HOST:
few have equaled since that time. He has published a number of, uh, books. Uh, The History of China has been printed, reprinted, revised over the past thirty years.
Other things which have, uh, caught his attention and, uh, been brought to the public’s awareness are his studies of classical Chinese folktales, uh, local cultures in old China, the Chinese novella, as well as a, an, uh, book on the guilt and sin in traditional China. He continues his, uh, interest in the studies of China, not only the, uh, China of the continent, but the China that we know locally in the Chinese community. Uh, today, he will speak on the, um, inscrutable Chinese, can we understand them?
It’s my pleasure to introduce Professor Eberhard.
(applause)
[00:02:29] PROFESSOR EBERHARD:
Dean Brown, colleagues and friends, I, um, want to discuss a, a problem of mu– international understanding today. For almost thirty years, the Chinese leaders and their press, uh, attacked the United States almost daily and rejected our political ideology, our economic system, our cultural and artistic achievements. Uh, only a very few Americans clearly recognized by the Chinese as sympathizers were allowed to enter China under the most restrictive conditions.
Suddenly, a man c-came into power, Hua Guofeng, whom we hardly knew. Uh, and with him, another man, uh, who had been reviled and attacked for a long time as an enemy of the system. And now China claims to be a friend of the United States, wants to send thousands of specialists to our country to learn from us everything which they could learn so that their country would be, as soon as possible, as strong as the United States and the Soviet Union.
Uh, they play American jazz tunes or rock tunes, show American films, and behave in, in a way that some of our politicians detect a trend towards a democracy of our type in China. Yet none of these scholarly specialists known to me would dare to make any prediction concerning the developments in, um, uh, China, uh, in the next half year. Uh, yet in this trend towards the Western d– Uh, i-is this trend towards Western democracy genuine?
Are the men of Mao Zedong and the Gang of Four, as it is called, all dead or silent or without any influence or power? Uh, in other words, are the Chinese really inscrutable? Of course, I wouldn’t make any pretensions, uh, and I do not think that I understand everything, uh, uh, which goes on of.
Of course not. My aim today is to show what the problem of understanding is and what attempts have been made to get to an understanding. And we are not the only ones that, uh, uh, are, uh, puzzled.
In 1925, the, uh, Soviet Union’s leaders believed that a communist revolution in China was imminent. They sent many observers and advisors to China and helped Chiang Kai-shek, uh, that may be forgotten now. Helped Chiang Kai-shek in his fight against the warlords.
Suddenly, Chiang turned against them, and those advisors who, uh, couldn’t run away were killed, uh, as well as those of their supporters, their Chinese supporters, who couldn’t go into hiding. The debate about China and how to understand it began in the early nineteen twenties in Marxist circles in, uh, Europe. It began with the discussion whether all societies have to go through these stages which Marx and Engels, uh, had outlined.
That means that before a society can move into the state of socialism, it had to pass first through its stage of bourgeois capitalist society. This discussion was, uh, concluded by Stalin with the acceptance by Lenin, by Lenin, I’m sorry, by Lenin with the acceptance of a, a revision of the theory. A backward feudal society could move directly into the so-socialist stage if a socialist society helps them.
When in 1927, Chiang Kai-shek, with his Russian-trained army, accompanied by Russian-trained propagandists and Russian military advisors, began his march from Canton into the north, and all along, uh, the march, uh, they destroyed temples, uh, and, uh, fought against superstitions, in quotation marks. Um, this was, in the opinion of Russian communists, an example of help of of a developed socialist country to lead China directly into the socialist stage. The question which concerned theoreticians at the time was whether China was still a feudal s-society or already a bourgeois society, and this was a long ongoing, uh, discussion.
When Chiang Kai-shek oc-had occupied Shanghai, he changed, and China got a nationalist regime instead of a communist one. In a Marxist circle, in circles in Europe and among the leadership in the Soviet Union, this was understandably regarded as a capital failure of their policies, just as for us, the flight of Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan and the creation of Communist China was regarded as a failure of our policies. After first discussing, uh, in Marxist c-circles, uh, the, whether the failure was the result of mistakenly assuming that China was a b-bourgeois society while it was still a feudal one, uh, or discussing which mistakes the advisors had made, uh, in their tactics.
A new theory came up, a Marxist as well, but built on the basis of some not too clear statements of Marx himself, uh, developed fully by Karl August Wittfogel, a German communist, in part a co-student of mine. Uh, it takes off, this theory, it takes off on the premise that Asian societies are basically different from European societies and Western societies in general, and therefore had a different development in history and required a different approach by anyone who wants to direct these societies towards communism. The discussions were conducted in, in Moscow by Wittfogel and had parallels in China in nineteen thirty-three.
At this time, incidentally, Mao Zedong was sometimes criticized as a deviate– deviationist. And in Japan, the new theory is basically\an ecological economic theory. In non-modern societies, the theory, uh, says agricultural production is the most important kind of production and occupies, in some societies, more than eighty-five percent of the population and of the labor force.
Uh, in the West, uh, farming is possible because of sufficient rainfall. That means that a farmer can do with his fields whatever He thinks it is best for him. He is independent of other farmers and has the tendency trans– to transfer this independence feeling to the area of politics.
Uh, he wants to have a share in political dis– Uh, discussions and decisions. That means democracy is what he wants to have, and good. Uh, he also wants to plan his own economic behavior so that it is best for him.
That means, uh, he thinks in capitalistic terms. This leads, as Marx tried to show, to economic crisis due to overproduction. Uh, these crises will become more and more serious and ultimately lead to a revolution which will, will bring, uh, socialism.
In Asian society, uh, Wittfogel claimed the situation is basically different, uh, because the Asian farmer cannot rely on regular rai-rainfall and sufficient rainfall. Farming is possible only by irrigation. Irrigation by canals requires a central planning organization.
That means a totalitarian state, uh, which not only has the canals built by conscripted labor, labor, but also determines the days and hours when f– the farmer will get water. That means total planning, no freedom of decision to the, uh, for the indivi- of the individual. These societies, however, have their own built-in cycle of crisis, and I think this is an, um, uh, elegant part of his theory.
Uh, the totalitarian rulers in China, the emperor and his officials, the upper class, managed to get hold of more and more land. The farmers become tenants and suffer from exploitation by their landlords. In addition, temples succeed to be free of taxes, and, uh, so that more and more farmers dedicated their land to the temple and became temple tenants.
The temple also asked for rent, but the rent was less high than what the government wanted.
(clears throat)
Thus, the income of the government went down. It tried to balance the budget by forcing the local officials to deliver to the state the same amount of taxes they had always, uh, delivered. That means, uh, no decrease when there are le-less taxpayers.
Now, that many farmers didn’t pay taxes to the government, but rent to the landlords and temples. And as temples didn’t pay taxes to the government, and many landlords succeeded in paying less or no taxes because of their contacts with the government or because they themselves were government employees. The taxes, uh, which the free farmers had to pay increased steadily until they, they ran away and left their, the, the farmers ran away and left their land.
Some of them migrated into the area of minorities, a very interesting, uh, uh, development, and settled there. Others became bandits. Hordes of bandits began to attack these cities in want of food.
The government tried to fight them, but ultimately the government and the dynasty were overthrown, and a new and better dynasty came up. Better dynasty in quotation mark, uh, and regulated the, uh, uh, economy by a land reform. According to Wittfogel, this cycle will also become worse and worse with time and will ultimately lead to the establishment of a new communist regime, uh, as it will happen in the West according to classical Russian theory.
Uh, and the downfall of Chiang Kai-shek, uh, uh, Uh, can be used as an, uh, example of what Wittfogel predicted. I have reasons to regard this theory as wrong because it is based on incorrect and insufficient data. But that doesn’t matter.
Uh, it seems that one of the main reasons why, oh, the only communist country in nineteen thirty-three, thirty-two, the Soviet Union, rejected this theory and that it would mean the social– Soviet Union could not be a leader in the movement towards comm, uh, uh, commun- uh, communism in Asia, uh, this theory Uh, the Chinese Marxists rejected it because they needed foreign help against the capitalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek. Uh, they could expect help from the Soviet Un-Union only.
After the Korean War, the situation was d- was different for the Soviet Union. When it became clear that American power was on the decline, and that the Third World would begin to look towards communist powers as a model, and when the Soviet Union and China began, began to compete for the friendship of the Third World, there was, and perhaps there still is, there still is, a possibility to revi-revive the Wittfogel theory again, as a theory better fit for the numerous Asian and African countries which have, as a residue of the colonial age, a suspicion towards the West as well as towards the Soviet Union, uh, which is also a European country and a white country. And some attempts in this direction have been made by French scholars around Professor Godelier.
The point to be made, uh, would be that the cultivation of rice requires great investment in labor and favors a specific social organization, but not of the type that Wittfogel had in mind. Uh, to these economic theories which regard Chinese society as basically different from the Western societies, and therefore inscrutable, or at least hard to understand, uh, Mark Elvin’s, uh, theory should be added. Elvin tries to, to, um, explain why China did not develop into an industrial society before, uh, before the stimulus from the West came.
Now, we come to a basically different approach towards the inscrutable Chinese, uh, and I think a much more modern and more interesting one. A number of, uh, socio-psychological theories began to appear in the late nineteen thirties, and though the in details differ, these theories assert that the Chinese have a way of thinking which is basically different from the Western way of thinking. Such theories have sometimes only set China against the West.
Others have lumped Chinese and Indians together as one group versus the West. And a few have tried to include even Japan. It is very interesting that Japan has always been a stumbling block for all theories.
Uh, although Japan had, for many centuries, an extensive system of irrigation, Wittfogel had to include– exclude it from his other irrigation societies, into which, uh, uh, incidentally, he includes, uh, ancient Mexico, Mexico, pre-Columbian Mexico. Uh, and even Hitler gave the Japanese the status of Aryans as the only non-white country which had the Aryan spirit. Uh, so he had his problems, too.
Uh, the social psychological theories have been proposed by several, uh, scholars, such as Northrop in the United States, and perhaps most developed theory– the most developed theory is by Lily Abegg, a Swiss, uh, scholar. Traces of this theory can also be seen in the work of, uh, Joseph Needham in England. And Northrop stresses the aesthetic approach, which to, according to him, Chinese prefer.
Needham thinks that Chinese like to see things as a whole and not as a compound of tiny different parts, uh, which are put together in a kind of mechanical way. To some degree, Rorschach tests, uh, seem to support him. I come to that later.
Uh, Abegg thinks that the Chinese have a different kind of logic. Uh, she describes our Western Aristotelian logic as a way of thinking which goes along on straight lines. Uh, first there is an observation.
Uh, we want to understand ex- and explain this observation. Uh, we seek the cause which created the phenomenon which we have observed. This cause must be prior to the effect.
If we are correct, there is one straight line which connects cause with effect step by step, uh, with a time difference between both. Uh, if we find out that we are incorrect, we go back and try another approach in the same way until we find a satisfactory cause and ef-effect relation. It is, however, possible that we stick to a wrong theory for a long time, and there are examples, uh, in recent, uh, years.
Because we try, when we see weaknesses in our theory, to amend or to enlarge, uh, the, uh, uh, theory to make it, uh, fit again. And in the end, we usually find out that we could not explain the whole phenomenon but only of some part of it. To give an example which is overdone for the sake of clarity.
If we want to understand a house, uh, which is, um, which we can see only but not enter, we remain where we are and attempt to, um, uh, and attempt to make a theory which fits the observation which we have made. But as we cannot see the rear and the sides of the house from the place where we are s-standing, we might be almost, though not fully, wrong. Our results will be partially correct.
According to this theory, a Chinese would take a look at the house as we do, then turn around to the side or to the rear and take a different point of view, uh, so that he can also see, uh, the house from several, f-, can see the house from several sides, though from far away. As he, too, cannot get close to the house, he will have a total view of the house, but it will be f-a fuzzy view, fuzzy view. Perhaps he will get at the spirit of the house, while our view will be sharp, but perhaps not get an understanding.
This understanding of the whole versus our analysis, that means taking the object apart, lies also at the bottom of Needham’s view and can be combined with Northrop’s es-aesthetic approach. Northrop, too, thinks that the Chinese, uh, think, see wholes, while we see elements, fragments, parts. To these observations can be added that the Chinese have never developed their own system of formal logic, although they were made acquainted, uh, with the Indian, uh, systematic logic in the fourth and fifth century AD and they rejected this.
Some scholars, uh, have put the Chinese therefore in the category of pre-logic people, uh, who use analogy when they want to explain a happening instead of logic, uh, referring to theories of Lévy-Bruhl and Danzel, Lévy-Bruhl in Paris, Danzel in Hamburg. I think the Chinese do think logically, uh, but we– but have not developed a theoretical system of logic because they always take into consideration the elements of time, in Chinese, shi, uh, and situation, in Chinese, also shi, in a different, uh, way of writing. Thus, Abegg and Northrop are puzzled by happenings like the following.
A foreigner asks, uh, how ni– uh, how old a Chinese friend’s, uh, uh, son or daughter, uh, is. Uh, uh, he– his answer would be, uh, fifteen or sixteen years, or fifteen to sixteen years. Uh, the foreigner is puzzled, uh, perhaps even angry.
Uh, does this man not even know his– how old his child is? Of course, the man knows. But first, birthdays are not normally celebrated except, uh, the sixties and seventies birthday.
Uh, so he’s not sure whether the child is fifteen years and twenty days old or fifteen years and three hundred days. But moreover, more important, does the foreigner really have to know the exact age? What for?
Uh, it’s– if he really wants to know it, he should ask a second question, and then the Chinese man will see why the foreigner wants to know, uh, the exact date and answer accordingly. When I ask how long it takes, uh, uh, from, um, on foot from a place A to a place B, uh, he would again answer ten to twenty minutes if he uses our system of, uh, time reckoning. The foreigner would again be angry, uh, because he wants to catch the train and therefore, uh, needed to know, uh, needed to have an answer like twelve minutes.
The Chinese here is not sure how quickly the foreigner walks, uh, and, uh, whether or not he will be delayed by a set of, uh, series of, uh, red traffic signs, et cetera. And taking these factors into calculation and consideration, he gives his imprecise answer. Both examples show that the reaction of a Chinese depends on the situation, the social situation, and therefore, it is not exact and abstract.
This factor is also underlying the so-called fuzzy view which Abegg and Northrop, uh, mentioned, and the total view, uh, uh, of Needham. Other observations by Abegg and others are simple misunderstandings. Uh, Abegg tries to integrate Carl Jung into her theory by saying that we see time, just as we see space, in fr– uh, as fragments in constant, um, movement.
The cause has to be earlier than the effect. For Jung, it is possible to say, “I saw the train accident of tomorrow today.” Uh, and, uh, turning to space plus time, “I see the train accident in Australia right now from my house.”
Uh, time and space are basic elements of Western thinking, but according to Abegg, not of Eastern thinking, and according to Jung, not realities. She finds stories like these of the train accident in China, but forgets to say that such accomplishments are performed by magicians and, uh, Chinese scholars have not mentioned them in their serious books. Northrop thinks that Chinese painters excel in landscape paintings and did not develop a portrait as a theme because they see man as an integral part of nature.
Therefore, they insert into landscape tiny human figures, but no portraits. I do not, um, agree with this, uh, uh, view of, um, Northrop. Um, men for Chinese is foremost.
But first, with the population density in China, it is really rare not to see any oth-other human being around, uh, usually several. Uh, secondly, though Chinese love mountains, they are afraid of being in wild nature, untamed nature. A nature which hasn’t been perf–
uh, uh, changed by human activity. And just as the Euro-Europeans in the early centuries were afraid of the forest, uh, Chinese were afraid of wild nature. Thirdly, wealthier Chinese families had the portrait of a family member, but had it made when the person died to serve in the ancestral worship.
To make a portrait of a living person was regarded as bad style. Paintings which represent p-persons of low class, low social class, such as prostitutes, beggars, peddlers, could be made, but they were not portraits in our sense either. Here, incidentally, lies one of the many differences between China and Japan.
Uh, the Japanese have developed, uh, in pre-modern times, real portraits of actors and courtesans which could be identified by the viewers. As a preliminary conclusion, I– it would– I would like to say there is some truth in these theories, namely the fact that Chinese do not like to make abstract theoretical statements, but each statement is made in a specific social situation and in a specific time, while Western men prefers abstract thinking. Other conclusions by Abegg and Northrop are simple misunderstandings because, um, uh, of lack of knowledge of Chinese customs.
Incidentally, I want to stress, uh, uh, that none of these scholars has tried to explain the differences as racially conditioned. Um, of more weight, um, are the linguistic theories. Uh, especially in Europe, there is a lively discussion these days, uh, among linguists starting from the theories, Theories, uh, by Sapir, uh, uh, about the language of the Hopi Indians and also taking up Chinese language, uh, as Whorf and Hockett did.
The fundamental question raised is: Do we have to think first and then have to shape words to communicate these, uh, thoughts to others? The other side says, uh, we can think only in words, and words then shape our thinking. Now, Chinese language is indeed very different from all European languages.
No word is changeable. That means there is no declension nor con-conjugation. Words are solid blocks.
Uh, there is, uh, with a very few, uh, exceptional, uh, cases, no noun, no verb, no adverb, no adjective, just a word. The word which, uh, in ninety-eight percent of all cases, uh, means east, dong, can occasionally also mean to go east, or he went to the east, or eastwards or easterly. Uh, we could describe most of our European languages as obsessed with the concept of sex and time.
In French and German, every noun is either male or female, and in German, uh, even, uh, also neuter. And the assignment of sex to objects doesn’t make much sense, uh, linguistically. And when we say, “I went to town yesterday,” uh, we expressed time twice, yesterday and went, uh, which is totally un-unnecessary.
Uh, we also unnecessarily ex-express numbers twice. We say two cars, but two is sufficient, cars is sup-superfluous, uh, if you look from the outset at our languages. A Chinese can make a love poem in which it is unclear whether it is by a man about a woman or vice versa, or by a man to another man, uh, we would have great difficulty in, in doing this with all languages.
It can be done, but it’s quite difficult. And so we can say that the Chinese language, uh, in the abs– with the absence of singular and plural, the non-expression of sex and time, except if absolutely necessary and only once, is a proof for the above-mentioned theory of, uh, Chinese thinking. I would say that if a Chinese wants to be, wishes to be clear, he can be by adding, uh, auxiliary words and reshaping his sentence.
But in h-h-human relations, it’s often preferable not to be too clear so that a certain freedom exists. For instance, in the, uh, texts and the im– uh, i-interpretation of international treaties. The interpretation depends on the social situation and the time.
In addition to this, there are other linguistic particularities which make it difficult for a Westerner to understand Chinese. Uh, these are old– There are old Chinese books on strategy, uh, written in the third century BC probably. Terms used in these books suddenly occur in a totally different context in the descriv– uh, description of a love affair or in a political propaganda speech.
In the one case, we have to know that a sexual relation is normally viewed as a contest in which one partner is in the end defeated, and the li-right strategy might lead to victory. Uh, in the propaganda speech, uh, the task whi-which people are asked to accomplish is seen as a war, and those who didn’t know of the task before it is mentioned, uh, are described as enemies. We are often puzzled by such speeches or, uh, or writings.
In some cases, we can even prove that a classical text has been falsified to fit the new situation in the famous sto-story of, um, the, uh, uh, s-stupid man and the mountain. Uh, to understand, we have to know why such terms, um, uh, allusions or quotations are used. Uh, this is refers specifically to the study of Cheng Yi, uh, set phrases of usually two words.
Uh, and if one looks into propaganda speeches, uh, uh, one finds very many, uh, surprisingly many. Now let me refer to some, uh, recent sociopsychological research. First, Chinese Rorschach tests, uh, you know, these, uh, inkblot, uh, tests seem indeed to show that Chinese more often than Americans try to interpret the blots as totals and not as figures, parts of which show different, different, uh, uh, not as figures, parts of which show different pictures.
Uh, this different is, difference is statistical only, and, uh, I think it would need more research. B, Chinese tend to give much fewer answers, uh, to all verbal tests than Americans and other people. Uh, the same is true with the TAT, the Thema-Thematic Apperception Test.
The test requires the person to give a story to a picture which is shown to him or her. Uh, and the respondent, uh, should explain, uh, what is going on in the picture and what will happen. Uh, Chinese answers are, in general, quite dry and very short, while, for instance, Mexicans, uh, tell a whole novel full exci-of excitement.
It’s a pleasure to read them. Uh, here, I see not a basic difference between Chinese, uh, and us, but a social trait again. Uh, this is even expressed in the Chinese maxim, Bù guǎn xián shì, “Don’t mix into things, um, uh, which are not your business.”
Uh, again and again repeated specifically to younger people, uh, “Leave your hands away if, if it’s not your business.” And this means that the more one says to an outsider, the more one exposes oneself.
The words can be used against the speaker, not only by an authoritarian regime, but also by neighbors and even by friends Namely, when the friend is put under pressure to testify against the speaker, and this can happen. If, to return to the example which I gave before, I say that to get to the train station takes ten minutes, uh, and the person for some reason needed fifteen minutes
(clears throat)
and missed the train, he could blame me for his misfortune. At least an unfriendly discussion could be the result. With the test, the situation is the same.
Uh, the Chinese feels he must give some answer. Uh, it would be unfriendly not to. Uh, and the answer should, uh, um, uh, uh, otherwise, uh, the, uh, the, uh, person would offend the test giver, uh, or would get into trouble.
But he cannot calculate exactly what, A, the desired answer is or, B, what the consequence of an answer may be. In which way, way will the test be used against me? Is the question that he asks himself.
If the answer should be long, the shortest possible answer is the best. If the answer should be yes or no, he again has to decide what the test giver may wish to hear, or if the test giver is not a Chinese, which answer would put China as a country in the best into the best light, and at the same time, not of-of-a-of, of-offend this government if the secret police or somebody else gets hold of the, uh, test? Thus, in our terminology, Chinese are not honest.
Uh, this is incorrect. Uh, we rather should say that we should not bring our Chinese friends into a situation in which, for some reasons, uh, which we often can know, that they cannot say the truth When, for instance, at the end of the World War II, many foreigners were forced to leave China, uh, they gave their books and valuables to their best Chinese friends for safekeeping. I kn-I know, uh, several such cases.
Uh, to their dismay, they later found out that the objects had disappeared and accused their friends, uh, of being false friends. They should have known, uh, that, um, a, a Chinese has to think not only of himself, but of his family, and the family goes before friend. Can we ask him to do something as, for instance, deny that he was keeping the objects, uh, which according to law should have been confiscated in his house, even though m-many of his neighbors had seen strange objects in his house?
Uh, the likelihood that this violation of the law would be detected is very high. Uh, and then not only would he be in trouble and lose his job, but, uh, he would also lose his whole family if the family isn’t punished, uh, as well. Can we expect such a sacrifice from a friend?
And we should have calculated the situation and not have asked him to keep, uh, our values, uh, for us. Of course, this works also the other way around. They know well that we tend to analyze
(coughs)
the behavior of non-Americans as if these people were Americans. This is one of our weaknesses, I guess. So they think they should praise everything American from Coca-Cola, rock m– to rock music and American films, so that we really believe that China, after thirty years of violent anti-American attitudes, have finally seen the light and made a turn towards democracy and freedom.
While their real aim is to give the Russians a sign to be careful, not to act in a hostile way against China, and at the same time set the Russians against the Americans. Every visitor to China this, in this year is surprised by the friendliness and openness of the ordinary Chinese towards Americans. While two or three years ago, the American go- uh, government was the worst enemy of China, and if an American was admitted to China, he met with all… with a wall of silence and distrust.
I have heard this by many, uh, early visitors, uh, in China. Similarly, when Mao Zedong was alive, millions expressed in all possible ways their love for him. Once he was dead, as it seems to, uh, exist, no lo-love anymore, at least not openly.
Again, we have to take into consideration that China never had a democratic regime comparable to ours. There was always the feeling that the government was watching, and that open opposition was very dangerous. People live very close to one another.
They live in houses with inside walls, if there are any, are made of paper, and the windows, whenever possible, are open. Whatever a person in the house said or did was known to all others in the house, and most of it also to his– to the neighbors. There is no privacy, uh, in China.
Could one rely on neighbors if they were pressed, uh, put under pressure to testify against one? In any totalitarian country, the safest way is to do what the government wants us to do, to say what it wants us to say, but to keep one’s own thinking hidden in one’s heart. Uh, this was the same incidentally under Hitler.
(coughs)
Uh, thus, these sudden shifts which we see again and again cannot simply be taken as signs of real change, of a true change in our sense. Tomorrow, everybody may be, may behave totally different because the situation has changed. Some Chinese, and many of them, uh, to a degree, to some degree Westernized, expressed their criticism of the government in 1957 because Mao Zedong had stated, “Let the hundred flowers blossom.”
“They had to pay bitterly, uh, for their actions.” The government knew who was perhaps not against the government, but critical of it, and therefore not reliable. These people were in some way marginal men, uh, and out of such a small group could come a revolutionary leader and his followers when he feels the situation is ripe.
Lin Biao, uh, thought so. He thought the situation was ripe, and he and his fellas, fellow, uh, followers met their death. And they had counted that many people would join them in the way, uh, would join them when they rose, but they didn’t.
Uh, so instead of a new leader, he was only a rebel, Lin Biao. Thus, a Chinese proverb says, uh, “When he is defeated, he was a rebel; Uh, uh, when he’s victorious, he is an emperor. Uh, and as such, according to the old belief, he has the Mandate of Heaven, the right to rule and to command obedience.
Here comes, uh, the problem of loyalty, one of the two highest virtues of old China. At which moment does a leader lose the mandate, his mandate to rule so that one does not have to obey anymore? And when has the new leader, the one-time rebel, the right to rise?
This is the topic of at least two of the most famous Chinese popular novels. Uh, I think of Shui Hu Zhuan and, uh, Feng Shen Yanyi, uh, specifically Feng Shen Yanyi. Uh, the answer is when time and situation are right.
Sometimes I have the impression that it would be, uh, easier to study the values expressed not by the educated, but by the writers of folk novels than to subject Chinese to tests. May this be added: Is the inscrutable Chinese is not inscrutables– inscrutable. We should not try to inter-understand him as if he were or she were an American.
He is not, she is not. Uh, he, she grew up in a society in which, A, no two persons are equal. They differ in sex, age, social social position from one another, and that is true even today.
The individual is almost never alone. Uh, he is always watched by others and lives in a highly competitive but also highly authoritarian society. Any action he makes or she makes may involve his family, and his family is the only social unit which can give him some security, though not full.
So, uh, he has to consider before any action or utterance time and situation. And if we want to understand them, we too have to consider situation and time. It is our fault when we do not understand the Chinese.
We have to learn, be we scholars or politicians. Thank you.
(applause)