Home › Features › Essays › The People's Middle Kingdom

The People's Middle Kingdom

By John K. Fairbank
July 1966
Article Summary and Author Biography

"Communist China"-how far Communist? How far Chinese? And what is the difference anyway? How are we to evaluate the impact that decades of war and violence and revolutionary zeal have had upon the China of today? Do Peking's leaders use the terminology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism but express sentiments inherited from the Middle Kingdom? Are they unconsciously in the grip of their past, even when most explicitly condemning it? Certainly there is a resonance between China today and earlier periods. But how great is the actual continuity?

Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.

"Communist China"-how far Communist? How far Chinese? And what is the difference anyway? How are we to evaluate the impact that decades of war and violence and revolutionary zeal have had upon the China of today? Do Peking's leaders use the terminology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism but express sentiments inherited from the Middle Kingdom? Are they unconsciously in the grip of their past, even when most explicitly condemning it? Certainly there is a resonance between China today and earlier periods. But how great is the actual continuity?

American expectations of Chinese behavior have groped along two lines-the approach by way of Moscow, the Soviet example, and the approach by way of history, Chinese tradition. The two overlap considerably, but both are faulted by discontinuity. China today is not just another Russia. It is very different indeed. Nor is the People's Republic just another imperial dynasty. Times have changed.

History can only help to synthesize these two approaches and suggest the degree of overlap. Chinese traditions, the Soviet example and the accidental conjunctions of events can all be given meaning in a chronological perspective. But history is invoked by all parties-by our Marxist adversaries, so addicted to their "world history," and by our own policy-makers, particularly when we have to be aggressive. Even the stoutest pragmatists can hardly leave it alone. Yet it is an art, not a science, a game any number can play except historians, who feel too ignorant to play with self-confidence.

The first difficulty for all China-pundits is the very high level of generality at which the game is played. Surely "Chinese history" offers "lessons" as diverse as the experience of a quarter of mankind during 3,000 years. But we are all entangled in the old Chinese custom of viewing the Chinese realm, t'ien-hsia or "all under Heaven," as a unit of discourse. We still characterize dynastic periods-Han, T'ang, Sung, Ming, Ch'ing, etc.-as homogeneous slices of experience even when each lasted two or three hundred years. It is like a tenth-grade course on "Europe since the Fall of Rome." At such a level of generality, platitude is unavoidable. Statesmen who need an analytic scalpel are handed a sledgehammer.

This is a premium article

You must be a logged in Foreign Affairs subscriber to continue reading. If you wish to continue reading this article please subscribe , or activate your online account to get full online access.

Buy PDF

Buy a premium PDF reprint of this article.

Related

Essay, Jan 1973
Who After Mao?
Mark Gayn

The great hurrahs of the Cultural Revolution, the slogans, the messianic fervor, the public humiliation of the heretics are all gone. A visitor to Peking is impressed by nothing so much as by the return to normalcy, by pragmatism and-if one could imagine it in a Spartan land-a feeling of relaxation. Indeed, one might easily think that there had never been the awesome upheaval of 1966-69 "to change men's souls." Human frailty is once again understood, and there is at least an implied recognition that man does not live by faith alone.

Read
Essay, Jul 1967
Mao's China: The Decline of a Dynasty
L. La Dany

For a long time it was thought that the way the People's Republic of China was being governed opened a new chapter in Chinese history. Some scholars argued that the communist system in China was a continuation of Confucianism, but a closer look disclosed little resemblance. The country was subject to spasmodic, repetitious political campaigns; the national economy constantly went through major reshuffles-land reform, socialization, communization, the retreat from communization and the Great Leap Forward. Traditional Chinese values were repudiated or ignored. Even the old Chinese concern for "face" seemed to be disregarded. Everybody was expected to expose in public meetings the evil words and evil deeds of friends and colleagues, of parents and brothers. The traditional Chinese family was severely disrupted, though, as the old Chinese proverb says, it is useless to attack a city if the hearts are not won over. The hearts were not won over, but for a long time it appeared that the régime was solidly established and enjoying general support, if not from love, then from fear.

Read
Essay, Jan 1967
China Convulsed
Mark Gayn

Mao Tse-tung's latest battle is almost certainly his last. It will also probably lead to his first major and irreversible defeat. A superb political tactician, he should be able to destroy his old companions who have turned against him. But this will not attain for Mao what he set out to achieve with his "cultural revolution." For he seeks nothing less than the rejuvenation of a great revolution, the rebirth in middle age of the drive, the passion, the selflessness and the discipline it had in its youth a third of a century ago. But the clock can hardly be turned back, and a nation in the age of nuclear bombs and computers cannot behave as if this were still the age of millet and rifles.

Read