China: Erratic State, Frustrated Society
"Chinese civilization has produced a distinctive and enduring pattern of relations between the state and society", which contains the seeds of enduring problems in domestic and foreign policy. Within a general 'conspiracy of make-believe', Chinese central authorities issue 'absolute' orders, with which provincial and local authorities feign compliance, while Chinese society at large continues its tradition of passive and introspective focus on the private domain. China's modern political development has failed to create the cultural building-blocks of pluralist democracy, having retained the absolutist mentality in walks of life (notably science and technology) where independent critical thinking, and tolerance of 'probabilistic' thought, are essential. Moreover, decades of communist denunciation of "just about every feature of Chinese culture as a feudal abomination that should be obliterated" has produced a situation in which it is now "not easy to articulate what exactly are the Chinese qualities that should now be defended". Chinese society is left with an ideological façade by which group-interest is supposed to prevail over private interest, but does not, and an arrogant political elite which disdains the serious tasks of foreign policy planning.
Lucian W. Pye is Ford Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and immediate past President of the American Political Science Association.
Why does China thwart, frustrate and even embarrass those who are only trying to help? For all who befriend China, the story is the same: high hopes, then disappointment. The exhilaration of the Beijing Spring followed by the rage of the Tiananmen massacre was only the high-theater version of the countless commonplace ways China continually brings hope and then despair to its well-wishers. All governments, whether democratic or communist, have had their special problems in maintaining smooth relations with Chinese authorities. But it is of course the Chinese people themselves who are most hurt and frustrated.
China seems to evoke in others, particularly Americans, an irresistible desire to serve as China’s teachers in the ways of the modern world, and thereby presumably help China improve itself. Yet, from the time of Lord Palmerston’s efforts to get the Chinese to accept the conventions of Western diplomacy, to President Bush’s humiliating attempts to alter the behavior of Beijing’s current rulers, China seems impelled to reject the helping hand and to act in ways that seem perversely self-damaging in the eyes of those who believe they have that country’s interests at heart.
Western frustrations with the conduct of Chinese officials began with the first efforts to "open" China. Even after 1842, when the Qing court agreed in the Treaty of Nanking to establish state-to-state relations, the British were driven again to using military muscle, in part to get the Chinese to establish a foreign office and conduct "normal" diplomatic relations. Faced with force majeure the Chinese reluctantly gave up their tradition of "managing barbarian affairs" through the offices of the Board of Rites, where specialists in protocol could teach uninformed foreigners the "usages of the empire," including how to get down on all fours when kowtowing to the August One. They did indeed set up a crude facsimile of a foreign office. The British, however, were driven to exasperation, for it seemed to them that in staffing the new office, the Tsung-li Yamen, the Chinese must have diabolically scoured the imperial bureaucracy to find the most dimwitted of officials. Additionally the Chinese had placed the foreign office on a back street in a rundown building, where passers-by could press their noses to the windows to watch Western diplomats attempt to lecture Chinese mandarins on why foreign affairs should not be treated as a mere nuisance.
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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.
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.
"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?
