Yu Sheng (from the 24th issue of “Learning Lamp”)
1) Homogeneous cultures with no single ruler and diverse cultures coexisting: Different social structures in the East and West
During the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, China was a primitive, multi-ethnic superpower. Peasants migrated freely, ethnic minorities coexisted with the Han Chinese, and the land was largely undeveloped. There was no economic foundation or institutional system with absolute power; it was a primitive, pluralistic society. After the bloody Warring States period, the centralized system of the Qin and Han dynasties emerged, lasting for over two thousand years. This system, applicable to Marxism as the so-called Asiatic mode of production, saw millions of peasants become slaves to autocratic monarchs. This is the origin of the Chinese proverb: “Heaven cannot have two masters.”
The ancient Western slave society and modern capitalist society described by Marxism are not like this. They are cultures of wealth accumulation, where the means of production are controlled by a few, and the entire population is organized within this system. An individual cannot survive outside this existing social mechanism. Ancient China did not establish such a two-tiered social operating mechanism; the autocratic monarchical slave system did not have this effect. This Western culture of wealth accumulation is characterized by pluralistic coexistence, accompanied by class conflict and regional contradictions and struggles. This is fundamentally different from the pluralistic coexistence of the Three Dynasties period in China. This is a two-tiered pluralistic coexistence, where slaves are dependent on their masters, and numerous masters further form a pluralistic society. This two-tiered pluralistic coexistence leads to pluralistic competition, resulting in continuous transformation of the social structure. The result is that as wars escalate, society undergoes a step-by-step evolution from slavery to feudalism to capitalism.
In the so-called medieval feudal period, the West had a unity of the Roman Pope and Christian culture, which was somewhat similar to the Three Dynasties period in China. It lost such a social operating mechanism for wealth accumulation. Although it had the technology, materials and slave sources, production still degenerated to the primitive stage. Archaeological data shows that between 650 AD and 950 AD, the main sources of life in Europe were hunting, gathering and raising pigs without pens, not relying on agriculture, because during this period, human settlements were mostly forests and wastelands with vast land and sparse population. [15] A university professor said that squirrels can jump from one tree to another without touching the ground from Paris to Moscow; another professor said that a medieval European emperor was like a small landowner with only a dozen houses. As mentioned above, the pluralistic coexistence of the secondary society in ancient Greece easily formed two opposing camps, while the pluralistic coexistence of the primitive society was not easy to form opposing camps, and the homogeneity of the aesthetic social order of the primitive society was preserved. The secondary society in medieval Europe was only similar to the Three Dynasties period in China in form: the secondary society was diverse, Christianity used Latin, and it did not unify the European language for a thousand years.
2) The different fates of the Xiongnu and the Germanic peoples: Historians from both the East and the West like to compare the Han Dynasty and the Roman Empire at the same time. Their territories and populations were roughly the same, the only difference being their cultures: a pluralistic coexistence and a homogeneous culture of one ruler over two. Both of these great empires were harassed by nomadic peoples in the north. China erected the Great Wall, which still stands today, and was ridiculed by the West as a symbol of isolationism and conservatism. The Roman Empire, facing the same problem, would have similar ideas. The culture of pluralistic coexistence did not leave a social and cultural space for such ideas to be implemented. The Han Empire aimed to drive out the Xiongnu, rather than confront and coexist with them. Therefore, it sent troops to the distant desert. The troop transport was thousands of miles long and costly. Huang Renyu recorded that 140,000 horses went out of the border, but less than 30,000 returned. [7] In the end, the Xiongnu were driven to Europe, but other nomadic peoples still appeared in the north and had the same harassing effect. There was no two rulers under one sky. In the end, the Han Empire was destroyed by the nomadic Yuan Dynasty. Ancient Rome employed a strategy of stationing troops along its borders with Germanic peoples. These troops became acquainted with the Germanic populations, recruiting impoverished Germanic men into the Roman legions, eventually resulting in a majority of Germanic soldiers within the legions. Consequently, the Germanic peoples launched large-scale invasions of the Roman Empire, their aim not to seize power but to plunder its wealth. This led to a period in Europe characterized by feudal fragmentation under a Christian-unified system, similar to the early stages of Chinese civilization—a form of backwardness that, in some ways, fostered a more progressive humanitarianism.
3) Differences between Christianity and Confucianism: Christianity organizes grassroots community life, while Confucianism or its religion does not. In today’s technological age, Western churches still fulfill this role: organizing people from different social classes into a platform for equal interaction before God, with services such as worship, various Bible reading groups for different ages and genders, choirs, and meals. Christianity, as an organizer of grassroots social life, lacks a similar organization in China. The Yellow Turban Rebellion, Zhang Lu’s Hanzhong regime, and later the White Lotus Society and the Gelaohui did not develop into a Chinese-style Christianity. The reasons for this include: the need for imperial centralization to suppress challengers to a unified culture; the rejection by Confucian bureaucrats, who replaced religion with poetry, books, music, painting, and Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism; and the relatively complete quasi-primitive society of rural China, where community life was not organized within any secondary social religious culture.
4) The Three-Tiered Structure of Ancient Chinese Society and Periodic Turmoil:
For over two thousand years, the West has witnessed a continuous escalation of war accompanied by social transformation, while China’s Warring States period saw a dramatic escalation of warfare alongside profound social upheaval, only to be replaced by cyclical periods of chaos for the next two millennia. The original social superpower underwent a fundamental transformation during the Warring States period, evolving into a centralized imperial system that lasted for over two thousand years, with the following model:
The quasi-primitive society of the imperial family
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Bureaucrats and reserve intellectual groups are the second-level social group
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Village families (citizens) Quasi-primitive society
Both Lao Tzu and Confucius emphasized the separation of upper and lower classes, showing none of the ancient Greek idea of constructing society through the clamor of tens of thousands of people. The degree of separation in the upper three layers of Chinese history has not received due attention. Lu Xun’s *The True Story of Ah Q* illustrates the different understandings and meanings of the same event between peasants and the government: the government executes Ah Q to change its image of incompetence in solving cases, while Ah Q uses this uncommon situation to demonstrate his extraordinary nature. With this perspective, Lu Xun believed that the foundation of Chinese culture was Taoism, a view shared by Joseph Needham, a scholar of China. This aligns with the author’s classification of Chinese peasants as a quasi-primitive society, and the difference between the two social strata is like the relationship between Chinese characters and literature—there is an inherent incomprehensibility. Add to this the cliché in historical circles: Chinese dynasties were internally Legalist but externally Confucian, internally Huang-Lao but externally Confucian. John King Fairbank argued that emperors favored Legalism, while bureaucratic intellectuals favored Confucianism. In any case, the thoughts and actions of Chinese emperors throughout history have been at least a hundred thousand miles away from the teachings of Confucius and Mencius. Here, we tentatively define the upper three layers of thought and culture as Huang-Lao, Confucianism, and Taoism. The Huang-Lao philosophy here refers to the art of power and tactics, which is closer to Legalism and differs from the original ideas of Laozi and Zhuangzi.
Generally speaking, the upper three-tiered social structure matured in the Song Dynasty, with the bureaucrats and reserve literati group in the second tier of society completely influenced by Confucianism. They were a group of scholar-bureaucrats, often admired by the West. These Confucian scholar-bureaucrats could neither control the emperor nor the millions of peasants. When war or the instigation of ambitious individuals brought peasants into the second tier of society, they lacked both the Christian-style moral consciousness of a second-tier society and the legal and social rules and customs of the Western urban class. The Confucian bureaucrats didn’t know how to organize them; they only knew how to serve their leaders. This hierarchical social structure and the insurmountable nature of the two tiers caused periodic upheavals and social stagnation in Chinese history. The White Lotus Society and the Gelaohui mentioned above could neither cross the middle tier of the upper model nor gain its favor, unless they reached the point of wanting to become emperor. Similarly, the nascent capitalism that emerged at the end of the Ming Dynasty met the same fate. Some scholars deny the existence of this nascent capitalism at the end of the Ming Dynasty, but it can only be said that the upper social structure model didn’t even leave room for the nascent capitalism to thrive. In modern times, Western powers demonstrated their ability to defeat the Chinese emperor, entering the vision of the upper-middle class and attracting numerous figures and political movements within the Chinese intellectual community, from Hong Xiuquan, Kang Youwei, and Sun Yat-sen to Mao Zedong. Strictly speaking, they were neither capitalists nor peasants, nor did they represent the weak urban class; rather, they were pragmatic operators within the upper-middle class, stimulated by the threat of these powers. They all possessed Confucian ideals of benevolence and a tendency towards egalitarianism reminiscent of early societies. During the same period, wars in China, like those in other parts of the world, escalated rapidly. Zeng Guofan, a Confucian scholar, led an army entirely composed of peasants, as did Hong Xiuquan’s army. This comparison reveals the pragmatic operations of the middle class and the implications of social stratification within the upper class. Lu Xun viewed the twenty million peasants beheaded in the Taiping Rebellion as Ah Q. Chinese peasants had already entered a secondary society by the 1950s, and modern electronic communication has brought hundreds of millions of people into the global village. How Confucian and Mencian thought, rooted in early societies, can adapt to a secondary society remains a challenge.
literature:
[1]You-Sheng Li (2005): A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoist Philosophy. London, Canada: Taoist Recovery Centre.
[2] Li Yousheng (2009): “Looking at Life and the World from a Different Angle: Chinese Taoism in the 21st Century”. Beijing: Thread-bound Book Bureau.
[3] Claudio Cioffi-Revilla and David Lai (1995): War and Politics in Ancient China, 2700 BC to 722 BC: Measurement and Comparative Analysis. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 39:467-494.
[4] Liu Baocai, Qian Xun, Zhou Suping, Chinese History: Pre-Qin Volume, 2001. Beijing: Higher Education Press.
[5] Yang Kuan (1997): History of the Warring States Period. Taipei: Taiwan Commercial Press. Page 2.
[6] Huang Renyu (1993): China: A Grand History, Chapter 2. Taipei: Lianjing.
[7] Huang Renyu (1989): Talking about history on the banks of the Hudson River. Taipei: Times.
[8] Chen Ping (1979): The single small-scale peasant economy is the root cause of my country’s long-term turmoil and poverty. Guangming Daily, November 16, 1979, page 3.
[9] Kondo Noriyuki: A New Perspective on the Formation of Zuo Zhuan: A Re-evaluation of the Theory of Ritual.
Translated by Hirose Kaoru, proofread by Cao Feng and Xu Songying. Journal of Chinese Studies, No. 2, 2010.
[10] Translated and annotated by Pian Yuqian et al.: The Art of War by Sun Tzu; The Art of War by Sun Bin. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2006.
[11] Ge Jianxiong, Unity and Division: Lessons from Chinese History, Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore, 1994.
[12] Victoria Tin-Bor Hui (2005): War and State Formation in Ancient China
and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[13] You Sheng (2008): The Five Degrees of Mourning and Early Literary Thought in the East and West (Xuedeng, Issue 8) (http://confucius2000.com/admin/list.asp?id=3771)
[14] Julian Jaynes(1976): The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
[15] F. Delouche (ed) (1993): Illustrated History of Europe., New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993, p137.
31appen. A Study of the Differences in War Culture Between East and West: The Case of Duke Xiang of Song’s Defeated Defeat by Chu Due to His Adherence to Military Rules: Supplement A Study
of the Differences in the Concepts of Enemy and Self Between East and West Through Liu Zongyuan’s “Admonition Against the Enemy”
author By Dr. You-Sheng Li
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