Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume 2

by Wm. Theodore de Bary

  At the beginning of the human race, there were no princes and subjects, for all were just people. As the people were unable to govern each other and did not have time to rule, they joined in raising up someone to be the prince. Now “joined in raising up” means not that the prince selected the people [as for civil service]14 but that the people selected the prince; it means that the prince was not far above the people but rather on the same level with them. Again, by “joined in raising up” the prince, it means that there must be people before there can be a prince: the prince is therefore the “branch” [secondary] while the people are the “root” [primary]. Since there is no such thing in the world as sacrificing the root for the branch, how can we sacrifice the people for the prince? When it is said that they “joined in raising up” the prince, it necessarily means that they could also dismiss him. The prince serves the people; the ministers assist the ruler to serve the people. Taxes are levied to provide the means for managing the public affairs of the people. If public affairs are not well managed, it is a universal principle that the ruler should be replaced. . . .

  The ruler is also one of the people; in fact, he is of secondary importance as compared to ordinary people. If there is no reason for people to die for one another, there is certainly less reason for those of primary importance to die for one of secondary importance. Then, should those who died for the ruler in ancient times not have done so? Not necessarily. But I can say positively that there is reason only to die for a cause, definitely not reason to die for a prince. [B: 1a–b]

  In ancient times loyalty [fidelity] meant actually being loyal. If the subordinate actually serves his superior faithfully, why should not the superior actually wait upon his subordinate also? Loyalty signifies mutuality, the utmost fulfillment of a mutual relationship. How can we maintain that only ministers and subjects should live up to it? Confucius said, “The prince should behave as a prince, the minister as a minister.” He also said, “The father should behave as a father, the son as a son, the elder brother as an elder brother, the younger brother as a younger brother, the husband as a husband, the wife as a wife.” The founder of Confucianism never preached inequality. [B: 2b]

  As the evils of the ruler-minister relationship reached their highest development, it was considered natural that the relationships between parent and child and between husband and wife should also be brought within the control of categorical morality.15 This is all damage done by the categorizing of the three bonds. Whenever you have categorical obligations, not only are the mouths of the people sealed so that they are afraid to speak up but their minds are also shackled so that they are afraid to think. Thus the favorite method for controlling the people is to multiply the categorical obligations. [B: 7b–8a]

  As to the husband-wife relationship, on what basis does the husband extend his power and oppress the other party? Again it is the theory of the Three Bonds that is the source of the trouble. When the husband considers himself the master, he will not treat his wife as an equal human being. In ancient China the wife could ask for a divorce, and she therefore did not lose the right to be her own master. Since the inscription of the tyrannical law [against remarriage] on the tablet at Kuaiji during the Qin dynasty, and particularly since its zealous propagation by the Confucians of the Song dynasty—who cooked up the absurd statement that “To die in starvation is a minor matter, but to lose one’s chastity [by remarrying] is a serious matter”—the cruel system of the Legalists has been applied to the home, and the ladies’ chambers have become locked-up prisons. [B: 7–8]

  Among the Five Moral Relations, the one between friends is the most beneficial and least harmful to life. It yields tranquil happiness and causes not a trace of pain—so long as friendships are made with the right persons. Why is this? Because the relationship between friends is founded on equality, liberty, and mutual feelings. In short, it is simply because friendship involves no loss of the right to be one’s own master. Next comes the relationship between brothers, which is somewhat like the relationship between friends. The rest of the Five Relationships that have been darkened by the Three Bonds are like hell. [B: 9a]

  The world, misled by the conception of blood relations, makes erroneous distinctions between the nearly related and the remotely related and relegates the relationship between friends to the end of the line. The relationship between friends, however, not only is superior to the other four relationships but should be the model for them all. When these four relationships have been brought together and infused with the spirit of friendship, they can well be abolished. . . .

  People in China and abroad are now talking of reforms, but no fundamental principles and systems can be introduced if the Five Moral Relations remain unchanged, let alone the Three Bonds. [B: 9b–10a]

  [From Renxue, Tan Liuyang quanji A: 37a–b, B: 1a–10a—CT]

  REFORM EDICT OF JANUARY 29, 1901

  After China’s defeat by Japan in 1895, the Empress Dowager had been amenable to conservative or moderate reform. What she opposed in 1898 was radical reform of the kind associated with Kang Youwei. The Reform Edict of January 29, 1901, charged Kang and his “rebels” with propounding “less reform of the laws than lawlessness,” but this same edict committed the court and its officials to its own bold and precarious course—a full review of public and governmental affairs, both foreign and Chinese, in order “to blend together the best of what is Chinese and what is foreign.”

  This shift in thinking was impelled by the Boxer disaster and the evacuation of the court to distant Xi’an in August 1900. It was meant to save the Qing dynasty from extinction, as the court entered into protracted negotiations for a Boxer peace settlement. Yet for all these pressures of the moment, it launched a process that brought the abandonment of the old-style civil service examinations (with the school curriculum geared toward them) and the adoption of many modern elements, chiefly from Japan, laying the foundation for new institutions that outlasted the dynasty. The reforms embraced Western-style education (new curriculum, new textbooks, new concepts, and vocabulary mostly imported from Japan), the military, modern police, the law (civil, criminal, and commercial), the judiciary, administrative organs of government, banking and currency, and economic regulations. The Revolution of 1911, far from abandoning these changes, kept them in place. Carried forward by Yuan Shikai, they continued with modifications on into the warlord period, the Nanjing decade, and beyond.

  The 1901 edict, in contrast to the Reform Edicts of 1895 and 1898, openly invited and legitimated borrowing from foreign countries, exposing China intellectually and institutionally to the outside world. In this it is comparable to the imperial Five-Article Charter Oath of Meiji Japan, 1868, which more than thirty years earlier had committed Japan to a similar course.

  The Chinese government that issued the edict and orchestrated the reforms was a centralized, authoritarian regime, heir to a long-established tradition. It provided firm and coordinated leadership at court, continuing through multiple administrative layers on down to the people. With such direction and coordination from the top, it was possible to effect sweeping institutional changes with remarkable speed.

  In 1908 the Empress Dowager and the Guangxu emperor died. The court, having grown dependent on the Empress Dowager for unified direction, found itself increasingly adrift and divided. Imprudent actions and policies by Manchus at court alienated non-Manchu elites whose support was needed. At the end of 1911, in rapid succession and with some turmoil and bloodshed, one province after another declared for a republic, and the isolated Manchu center collapsed.

  Certain principles of morality (changjing) are immutable, whereas methods of governance (zhifa) have always been mutable. The Classic of Changes states that “when a measure has lost effective force, the time has come to change it.” And the Analects states that “the Shang and Zhou dynasties took away from and added to the regulations of their predecessors, as can readily be known.”

  Now, the Three Mainstays (Bonds) [ruler/ministe
r, parent/child, and husband/ wife] and the Five Constant Virtues [humaneness, rightness, ritual decorum, wisdom, and trustworthiness] remain forever fixed and unchanging, just as the sun and the stars shine steadfastly upon the earth. . . .

  Throughout the ages, successive generations have introduced new ways and abolished the obsolete. Our own august ancestors set up new systems to meet the requirements of the day. . . . Laws and methods (fa) become obsolete and, once obsolete, require revision in order to serve their intended purpose of strengthening the state and benefiting the people. . . .

  It is well known that the new laws propounded by the Kang rebels were less reform laws (bianfa) than lawlessness (luanfa). These rebels took advantage of the court’s weakened condition to plot sedition. It was only by an appeal to the Empress Dowager to resume the reins of power that the court was saved from immediate peril and the evil rooted out in a single day. How can anyone say that in suppressing this insurrectionary movement the Empress Dowager declined to sanction anything new? Or that in taking away from and adding to the laws of our ancestors, we advocated a complete abolition of the old? We sought to steer a middle course between the two extremes and to follow a path to good administration. Officials and the people alike must know that mother and son [the Empress Dowager and the Guangxu emperor] were activated by one and the same motive.

  We have now received Her Majesty’s decree to devote ourselves fully to China’s revitalization, to suppress vigorously the use of the terms new and old, and to blend together the best of what is Chinese and what is foreign. The root of China’s weakness lies in harmful habits too firmly entrenched, in rules and regulations too minutely drawn, in the overabundance of inept and mediocre officials and in the paucity of truly outstanding ones, in petty bureaucrats who hide behind the written word and in clerks and yamen runners who use the written word as talismans to acquire personal fortunes, in the mountains of correspondence between government offices that have no relationship to reality, and in the seniority system and associated practices that block the way of men of real talent. The curse of our country (Ch. guojia, J. kokka) lies in the one word si, or “private advantage”; the ruin of our realm lies in the one word li, or “narrow precedent.”

  Those who have studied Western methods up to now have confined themselves to the spoken and written languages and to weapons and machinery. These are but surface elements of the West and have nothing to do with the essentials of Western learning. Our Chinese counterparts to the fundamental principles upon which Western wealth and power are based are the following precepts, handed down by our ancestors: “to hold high office and show generosity to others,” “to exercise liberal forbearance over subordinates,” “to speak with sincerity,” and “to carry out one’s purpose with diligence.” But China has neglected such deeper dimensions of the West and contents itself with learning a word here and a phrase there, a skill here and a craft there, meanwhile hanging on to old corrupt practices of currying favor to benefit oneself. If China disregards the essentials of Western learning and merely confines its studies to surface elements that themselves are not even mastered, how can it possibly achieve wealth and power?

  To sum up, administrative methods and regulations must be revised and abuses eradicated. If regeneration is truly desired, there must be quiet and reasoned deliberation.

  We therefore call upon the members of the Grand Council, the Grand Secretaries, the Six Boards and Nine Ministries, our ministers abroad, and the governors-general and governors of the provinces to reflect carefully on our present sad state of affairs and to scrutinize Chinese and Western governmental systems with regard to all dynastic regulations, state administration, official affairs, matters related to people’s livelihood (minsheng), modern schools, systems of examination, military organization, and financial administration. Duly weigh what should be kept and what abolished, what new methods should be adopted and what old ones retained. By every available means of knowledge and observation, seek out how to renew our national strength, how to produce men of real talent, how to expand state revenues and how to revitalize the military. . . .

  The first essential, even more important than devising new systems of governance (zhifa), is to secure men who govern well (zhi ren).16 Without new systems, the corrupted old system cannot be salvaged; without men of ability, even good systems cannot be made to succeed. . . . Once the appropriate reforms are introduced to clear away abuses, it will be more than ever necessary to select upright and capable men to discharge the functions of office. Everyone, high and low: take heed!

  The Empress Dowager and we have long pondered these matters. Now things are at a crisis point where change must occur, to transform weakness into strength. Everything depends upon how the change is effected.

  [From Guangxu chao Donghualu 4: 4601–4602—DR]

  LIANG QICHAO

  Liang Qichao (1873–1929), disciple of Kang Youwei and his coworker in the reform movement, escaped to Japan after the failure of Kang’s brief regime and there became perhaps the most influential advocate of reform in the years before the Revolution of 1911. His writings, in a lucid and forceful style, dealt with a wide range of political, social, and cultural issues. To thousands of young Chinese studying abroad (most of them in Japan) or reading his books and pamphlets on the mainland, he became an inspiration and an idol—a patriotic hero, whose command of Chinese classical learning together with a remarkable sensitivity to ideas and trends in the West, gave him the appearance of an intellectual giant joining Occident and Orient, almost a universal man.

  The fortnightly journal Renewing the People (Xinmin congbao), which Liang published in Yokohama from 1902 to 1905, showed a great change in his thinking. He was now exposed far more to Western influences and enormously impressed by Japan’s progress in contrast to China’s repeated failures. Sensing the power of nationalism as the force that galvanized the Western peoples and the Japanese into action and realizing too the apathy and indifference of China’s millions toward the abortive palace revolution of 1898 (as, indeed, toward most public issues on the higher policy levels), Liang became fully convinced that popular education and the instillment of nationalism were China’s greatest needs. In these years everything in its past culture that seemed an obstacle to national progress was to be cast aside.

  Instead of reinterpreting Confucianism to find a sanction for progress, as he and Kang had done earlier, Liang now put forward a new view of world history strongly colored by social Darwinism: a struggle for survival among nations and races. Evolution of this fierce, competitive sort, rather than an optimistic view of inevitable progress toward the Grand Commonality, became the spur to drastic reform. In the 1890s he and Kang had urged going beyond the mere adoption of Western “methods” and “instruments” to basic institutional reform; now he argued that institutional change itself could only be effected through a more thoroughgoing transformation of the Chinese way of life—particularly its morals, always considered the very essence of Confucianism.

  While the Qing regime lasted, Liang remained in favor of constitutional monarchy, but after 1911 he accepted the new republican order. Thus when Yuan Shikai attempted a restoration of the monarchy in 1916 Liang refused to support it, contending consistently that the need to respect the established constitutional order transcended the claims of any authority figure. As many early advocates of modernization, like Yan Fu, in later years experienced some disillusionment with the West and a loss of faith in wholesale Westernization, Liang sought increasingly to ground the modernization process in a strengthening of the rule of law and the building of a civil infrastructure, conducive to greater, informed participation of the people in government but also congenial to the more liberal of Chinese humanistic traditions.

  RENEWING THE PEOPLE

  Anyone familiar with the Neo-Confucian curriculum ubiquitous in premodern East Asia would recognize that Liang’s title draws upon the key expression “renewing the people” in Zhu Xi’s formulation of the Three Main Guidelines
(san gangling) in the Great Learning, first in order of his Four Books. Liang thereby establishes his own doctrine squarely in relation to the dominant philosophy of education in traditional China, but he invests it with a new meaning. For Zhu Xi, xinmin meant renewing the people through universal self-cultivation, as the basis of the whole social, political, and cultural order. Individual self-renewal would transform “the people” (min) and lift them up from an illiterate, undisciplined, inarticulate mass. Thus Zhu’s key slogan: “Self-cultivation for the governance of men” (xiuji zhiren).

  Here Liang’s sense of “a people” is of a “nation” informed by the Western (and Japanese) sense of nationalism: “a” people as a nation (not just “the people” as commoners) would become an organic group with a consciousness of its own identity, actively participating in the determination of its national destiny in a world of many contending peoples. To this end he sees a need for corporate organization, an educational system and communication media, bridging the gap between educated elite and illiterate masses. This involves not just individual self-understanding and self-cultivation but one’s own group learning from other peoples and their cultures.

  Since the appearance of mankind on earth, thousands of countries have existed on the earth. Of these, however, only about a hundred still occupy a place on the map of the five continents. And among these hundred-odd countries there are only four or five great powers that are strong enough to dominate the world and to conquer nature. All countries have the same sun and moon, all have mountains and rivers, and all consist of people with feet and skulls; but some countries rise while others fall, and some become strong while others are weak. Why? Some attribute it to geographical advantages. But geographically, America today is the same as America in ancient times; why then do only the Anglo-Saxons enjoy the glory? Similarly, ancient Rome was the same as Rome today; why then have the Latin people declined in fame? Some attribute it to certain heroes. But Macedonia once had Alexander, and yet today it is no longer seen; Mongolia once had Chinggis Khan, and yet today it can hardly maintain its existence. Ah! I know the reason. A state is formed by the assembling of people. The relationship of a nation to its people resembles that of the body to its four limbs, five viscera, muscles, veins, and corpuscles. It has never happened that the four limbs could be cut off, the five viscera wasted away, the muscles and veins injured, the corpuscles dried up, and yet the body still live. Similarly, it has never happened that a people could be foolish, timid, disorganized, and confused and yet the nation still stand. Therefore, if we wish the body to live for a long time, we must understand the methods of hygiene. If we wish the nation to be secure, rich, and honored, we must discuss the way for “renewing the people.” [13: 36b]