Yusheng (2014/03/31)

Abstract: If the people are governed too leniently, they will fight amongst themselves and be defeated internally; if they are governed too strictly, they will not receive the necessary training, lack fighting power, and will be defeated externally and conquered by foreign enemies. Therefore, governance must be appropriately flexible. The author classifies the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties as primitive social superpowers, lacking absolute authority like the modern United Nations. Therefore, China at that time was neither defeated internally nor externally. During the Warring States period, wars between the various states of China escalated dramatically, and fighting power reached unprecedented heights. The Qin and Han dynasties, founded by Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Wu of Han, set a path for China that led to constant defeats due to strict self-defense: initially, there were brief periods of internal strife, and even the Three Kingdoms period lacked the pluralistic political landscape of the Warring States period. After the mid-Tang dynasty, Han Chinese regimes were forced to accept half of the country, and were subsequently conquered by foreign tribes and peasant armies, while foreign regimes expanded their territory. In contrast to China, the West chose a path of complete internal defeat, marked by both cultural and military turmoil. The Roman Empire embraced foreign Christian culture while tolerating the secular culture represented by ancient Greece, leaving Europe fragmented to this day. Simultaneously, it used its honed military power to conquer the world, exporting its culture and modernizing the globe. Japan lies between East and West. If the thousand-year period following the An Lushan Rebellion corresponds to the Dark Ages in Europe, Chinese civilization faced the Renaissance, while the West faced another dark period. Only through mutual learning and exchange between East and West can they hope to overcome the current global ecological crisis.

Keywords: defeat from within, defeat from without, Confucianism, primitive society

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I spent my childhood in a rural area in northern China, very close to Tianjin. Many people in my village had spent a few years in Tianjin, and they said that fights among Tianjin children weren’t like those in the countryside, where it was just two boys fighting. Tianjin children fought in large groups, often consisting of close family teams of brothers. In this context, if parents were too strict with their children, they lacked the necessary training and fighting ability, and were defeated by outsiders in group fights. If parents were too lenient, their children often fought amongst themselves at home, unable to form a united front against external threats, and were thus defeated internally. This phenomenon offers a unique perspective on Chinese history, and this article uses this perspective to show readers that since the Qin and Han dynasties, China has unknowingly followed a path of being defeated by external forces, a path that has become increasingly severe over time.

I. From Darwin’s theory of natural competition and survival of the fittest, we can see why human societies are defeated both internally and externally.

In the early 1970s, while I was in Guizhou, I bought a famous book called *On the Origin of Species*, which discussed the principles of defeat stemming from internal and external factors, specifically focusing on social and national governance. The book states:

“If we do not inherit the nature from our ancestors who are manipulated by cosmic processes, we will be helpless; a society that denies this nature will inevitably be destroyed from the outside. If there is too much of this nature, we will be even more helpless, and a society dominated by this nature will inevitably be destroyed from the inside.”[1]

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) then explained the meaning of nature here, referring to individual behavior guided by Darwin’s natural laws of competition and survival of the fittest: acting independently and considering only oneself, regardless of others. A social guiding principle that denies this nature is self-restraint.

In short, Huxley made the same point in his theory of evolution: if a society governs its members too strictly, forcing everyone to exercise self-discipline, it will be defeated by external forces and conquered by neighboring societies; if a society governs its members too loosely, allowing everyone to act as they please, it will be defeated by internal forces and fall into internal chaos.

The author of this paper divides human society into genetically encoded primitive society and artificial secondary society and finds that Western Mediterranean civilization began in secondary society, while Chinese civilization began in primitive society as a superpower and only entered secondary society in the Warring States period. [2, 3] Because Huxley lived in Europe and was influenced by European traditional culture, he only knew about the history of civilization of Western secondary society, so he could only talk about the secondary society of civilized humans.

For this reason, Huxley devoted a considerable portion of his theory of evolution to comparing the management of a nation and society with the process of horticulture. Huxley argued that the horticultural process is in opposition to the cosmic process; horticulturists perform thinning and other selection processes on the plants in their gardens, providing the selected organisms with sufficient nutrition and space to ensure their growth and maturity—all for the horticulturist’s goal of a bountiful harvest, rather than allowing the plants to naturally compete and eliminate those that are not suited. In other words, garden managers have the power to artificially select crops and livestock, wielding the power of life and death to ensure the superior living conditions of the selected organisms.

Huxley argued that human societies, much like gardeners, manage their people, providing different living conditions to different individuals. Just as gardeners thin out seedlings from what they deem unsuitable, those eliminated from human societies may not have genetic problems, and those chosen by society may not necessarily be genetically superior. The reason human societies cannot achieve the same effect as gardeners, according to Marxism, is that societies are controlled by the ruling class, a tool for one class to oppress another. Huxley believed the intellectual gap between those managing and those being managed in a society is less significant than the intellectual gap between a gardener and plants or animals. In other words, Huxley shared a similar view with some contemporary Western conservative politicians: modern societies are not manageable by humans; only a God, with intelligence far superior to humanity, can manage them.

This also aligns with the author’s two-tiered social theory proposed many years ago, which divides human society into a hereditary primitive society and a man-made secondary society. The masters of the primitive society are humans, not gods, while the masters of the secondary society are gods, not humans. [2.3] There are countless types of man-made secondary societies. Each secondary society has its own purpose and direction, as well as a social hierarchy structure that corresponds to this purpose and direction. It is impossible for humans to have a deep understanding of the countless possibilities and directions of secondary societies, nor is it possible to have a historical foresight regarding each possibility and direction. Therefore, it is impossible to reach a consensus with historical foresight on the current direction of national society. This is also the original meaning of Lao Tzu’s saying, “The divine instruments of the world cannot be grasped or manipulated,” that is, the inability of secondary societies to be artificially manipulated.

In this way, unlike the management of gardeners, the managers of states and societies throughout human history have a broad scope of operation. They can manage their subjects very tightly, even wielding the power of life and death, just as gardeners manage crops and livestock. They can also manage their subjects very loosely, like anarchy, allowing them to do as they please. But the result is the same: wheat yielding a thousand catties per mu and rapidly fattening Peking ducks, once released into the primeval forest and competing with other plants and animals, will only face annihilation and defeat. Those states and societies managed using gardener methods face the possibility of being conquered and destroyed by other barbaric peoples; those states and societies that only know how to fight are likely to fall into chaos and perish on their own.

II. Limitations of Darwin’s Theory and the Primitive Social Superpower Status of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou Dynasties

Darwin’s theory of natural competition and survival of the fittest has been widely accepted and is included in primary and secondary school textbooks worldwide. However, Darwin’s theory of natural competition also has its limitations. Natural competition and survival of the fittest acts as a large framework within which organisms still have freedom and room for maneuver, rather than struggling on the brink of life and death and awaiting nature’s cruel selection. This is similar to how human life between heaven and earth is an insurmountable framework, but heaven and earth are already quite vast: humans travel by plane to the sky, even to the moon, and can live in the deep sea and underground, etc.

Here, the author raises a question overlooked by Darwin’s theory of natural competition: Do animals and humans have other purposes to pursue in life? If so, when these purposes become impossible, animals and humans lose their motivation to live and voluntarily end their lives. If you catch a wild bird and put it in a cage, no matter how much you like it or how good its food and drink are, generally speaking, the bird will neither eat nor drink until it dies. Scientists can offer various explanations, but one irrefutable conclusion is that harsh living conditions initiate the bird’s death process, regardless of the existing living conditions.

This section introduces the concept of the intrinsic motivation for animals and humans to enter into Darwinian competition, and this motivation is the pleasure of life itself. Animals and humans are inherently joy-oriented. Here, “animals” primarily refers to higher animals with complete nervous systems, such as birds and mammals. If we observe how wild birds live in the forest, we can see that they spend most of their time leisurely, doing nothing, only spending a small amount of time foraging for food. Compared to the recreational activity of humans playing ball, foraging for food is certainly a more enjoyable activity for birds, because humans are rewarded with scoring goals, while birds are rewarded with delicious treats. We have no reason to say that birds are struggling on the front lines of natural selection. They are enjoying life. The caged environment prevents wild birds from continuing to enjoy life, and they voluntarily give up their lives. Birds born and raised in cages are a different matter.

The author argues that ancient humans, living in primitive societies, enjoyed life much like birds and beasts. Only when civilization led humanity into a secondary society, the inherent unmanageability of which plunged them into the quagmire of competition between different nations and societies, leading to five thousand years of escalating warfare. Humanity differentiated into different classes, giving rise to a leisure class that supervised the labor of others, and thus humanity struggled on the front lines of natural selection. This five-thousand-year history of human civilization also created unparalleled scientific and cultural achievements. The author once wrote:

When humans learned how to wage war against their neighbors to gain additional benefits, the human world began a military competition. The victors of war were always the most militarized and well-equipped social groups, as well as the cultures that were free from human constraints. At this time, the challenge facing humanity was neither physical nor social, but a hostile self that humanity had never faced before, which was constantly growing and escalating. Toynbee said, “Humanity’s chances of survival when facing a pack of tigers without any defense are far greater than when facing itself without any defense.” [4]

In short, it was only after entering civilization that humanity began to see itself as its own enemy, leading to the brutal struggle for survival and the fight against death. This is fundamentally different from the natural competition inherent in the natural world. In the biological world, defeat is defeat at the hands of other different species, while humanity’s defeat is defeat at the hands of different nations and societies within the human world.

Having said all that, let’s examine the unique characteristics of ancient China as a primitive superpower. During the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, after the Chinese entered civilization, they still lived in a primitive society, like birds and beasts, like humans in ancient primitive societies. To be precise, they were neither defeated internally nor externally.

The original social superpowers of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, much like the United Nations today, lacked absolute authority. Just as tribal peoples without states could not completely stop violent conflicts between various vassal states and between village residents. [5, 4]

The ninth line of the Bo hexagram in the Book of Changes says, “The great fruit is not eaten; the superior man obtains a carriage; the inferior man is stripped of his possessions.” This means that the richer one is, the less one can enjoy life, and the poor eat the rich. Some biographies of Mao Zedong mention that when Mao was young, there was a Gelaohui (a secret society) in his hometown of Hunan that was influenced by Taoist thought. They organized peasants to eat the rich, which affected Mao’s family. If the warlord conflicts in Mao’s youth led to anarchy in the remote mountainous areas, then judging from the eating of the rich, there was also anarchy in the era of the Book of Changes. [5]

The sixth line of the Zhongfu hexagram says, “When encountering the enemy, some beat drums, some retreat, some weep, and some sing.” Only in the wars of primitive societies could there be such chaotic scenes, and only people in primitive societies could record such chaotic war scenes without praise or criticism. The first hexagram of the Book of Changes says that the first thing to emerge is the common people, and all nations are at peace. Only in such a unified situation would there be a war in which weeping and singing coexist. [5]

Just as the United Nations effectively prevented World War III, the original social superpowers of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties also effectively limited the occurrence and escalation of local violent conflicts, but they were far from eradicating them. The San Shi Pan (a bronze vessel) records that the San clan lost land in a conflict with neighboring vassal states. Due to the mediation of the Zhou king, the other side returned the seized land, and the San clan made this vessel to commemorate this event. This archaeological data is consistent with the records in the Book of Changes (I Ching), suggesting that the original social superpowers played a role in suppressing and mediating conflicts between local forces.

In this context, the various vassal states and local powers underwent corresponding training, acquiring a certain level of combat capability and the ability to control the situation. On the other hand, China has historically divided its regions into five zones, with the outermost ring being the uninhabited wilderness, where people could live freely without the jurisdiction of the Chinese dynasties. Therefore, the primitive superpowers of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties clearly considered themselves the center of the world and their regime the sole center of power for all humanity. Such a world only had an inner dimension, no outer dimension; they also lacked the capacity for violent conflict with those outside their known world.

The change of dynasties was caused by the accidental personalities of the two emperors, Jie and Zhou. The successors were the vassal states, which were not much different from dynasties without absolute authority. They were like the shadow cabinets of the opposition parties in modern Western countries, making the change of dynasties similar to the change of government in contemporary Western democratic elections. It was impossible to say who lost.

From the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period, the military and agriculture were intertwined; citizens served as soldiers, while commoners did not. The truly regular military force consisted only of guards protecting the royal family, and their numbers were very small. Chinese historical records indicate that the Shang Dynasty’s replacement of the Xia Dynasty and the Zhou Dynasty’s replacement of the Shang Dynasty occurred when the last emperors lost popular support and faced widespread rebellion. However, accounts of the last emperors’ misdeeds must be understood within the context of the power balance system, which did not allow for deviations too far from human nature. Because war is constrained by human nature, the victorious side properly resettled the defeated, unlike in ancient Western societies where they were enslaved.

The *Mencius* (Chapter 7, Part 2) mentions that King Wu of Zhou only used three thousand men to conquer King Zhou of Shang. The *Records of the Grand Historian* (Chapter 1, Annals of Yin) states that “eight hundred feudal lords rebelled against Yin and joined Zhou,” indicating that the feudal lords had the freedom to choose between Shang and Zhou. The *Records of the Grand Historian* (Chapter 1, Annals of Zhou) states that “King Zhou’s army all turned their weapons against him to open the way for King Wu,” indicating that even Shang soldiers on the battlefield had the freedom to choose between Shang and Zhou. This sufficiently demonstrates that in the early, primitive, superpower-like society of ancient China, people did not establish a secondary socio-political belief system, nor did they cultivate partisan loyalty through factionalism. They could freely switch sides without guilt, far more freely than Western voters. If Western voters changed their voting choices, they would at least face disapproval from friends and family who did not. Many modern scholars believe that King Wu’s conquest of King Zhou of Shang lasted only one day because history only records the defection of Shang soldiers, not bloodshed, and does not rule out the possibility that no one died except for King Zhou’s suicide. The change of government in the United States through democratic elections is likely to be more peaceful. Of the more than forty presidents in American history, four have been assassinated, two have been killed by assassination, and one election has led to a three-year civil war. This is because the United States is an election of a secondary society, while the dynastic changes of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties were elections of a primary society.

In short, for the United States, the change of government through democratic elections is part of American politics, not a result of internal strife. Different political parties face the challenge of responding to the will of the people, not a civil war. Similarly, the dynastic changes during the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties in ancient China, a primitive superpower, were neither defeated by external forces nor by internal conflicts.

III. The Central Position of the Warring States Period in Chinese History

The concept of the Axial Age was first proposed by the German philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), and it has been widely accepted in academia. Jaspers defined the period from 800 BC to 200 BC as the Axial Age. During this period, dramatic changes occurred throughout the world, and humanity’s understanding of its own world was elevated to a philosophical level for the first time.

If Jaspers’ Axial Age is mainly defined by culture and ideology, then in terms of society and politics, the Warring States period became the Axial Age in Chinese history. During the Warring States period, the Chinese people established a mature secondary society for the first time, which led to the political system that historian Huang Renyu called China’s precocious system, which was adopted by later dynasties. The author found that the wars in Chinese history were different from the escalating wars in the West over the past five thousand years. During the Warring States period, Chinese wars escalated rapidly and were accompanied by major changes in social structure, while there were two thousand years of stable period before and after the Warring States period. [6] The following are the important differences in society and politics before and after the Warring States period:

1) Before the Warring States period, Chinese society was mainly composed of primitive society and quasi-primitive society, with the feudal lords and their ministers all living at the primitive society level. After the Warring States period, a typical two-tiered bureaucratic system emerged.

2) Before the Warring States period, vast tracts of wasteland existed between the various states in China. The military power of these states had not yet reached the point of controlling territory and monopolizing all land. Peasants had the freedom to migrate and choose among the states, a situation similar to modern Western democratic elections. After the Warring States period, the military power of these states reached the point of controlling territory and monopolizing all land, which, according to Marxism, meant that Asian peasants became slaves to autocratic monarchs. Confucius mentioned three times in the Analects the use of virtuous governance to attract peasants from afar to submit. After this, the political power gained the ability to monopolize all land, and the focus shifted from attracting people to submit to managing slaves.

3) If hegemony requires the consent of its followers, then the authority of an empire is guaranteed by its military and state structure, without needing the consent of its followers. The Five Hegemons of the Spring and Autumn Period were the last five hegemons in Chinese history. The West also had hegemons in the era of artificial secondary societies. In Chinese history after the Qin and Han dynasties, there were only empires, no universally recognized hegemons.

4) The nature of wars in ancient China underwent a decisive change during the Warring States period, which distinguishes between wars before and after the Warring States period.

In “On Protracted War,” Mao Zedong pointed out that “politics is war without bloodshed, and war is politics with bloodshed.” This viewpoint encapsulates the essence of five thousand years of human civilization in warfare. However, we cannot apply this viewpoint to family conflicts, nor to conflicts between clans and villages in rural China. Similarly, this viewpoint cannot be applied to conflicts in ancient, primitive societies. Violent conflict in ancient times was a way to resolve disputes, fundamentally different from warfare in civilized humanity. During the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, including the Spring and Autumn period, Chinese warfare exhibited characteristics of primitive social violence; only the wars of the Warring States period possessed the nature of secondary social warfare.

Contemporary scholar Yang Kuan said that the army in the Spring and Autumn Period was mainly composed of the people of the state (the lower class of the nobility), and fought in chariots. The number of people was small, and the king or high-ranking officials commanded the battle by beating drums. The outcome was often decided within one or two days. [7] Famous historian Huang Renyu said that the battle did not last more than a day. This does not contradict Yang Kuan’s statement. The two concepts and standards are slightly different. [8] Huang also said that the chariot warfare in the Spring and Autumn Period was a kind of aristocratic warfare. Sometimes they regarded each other as competitors. There was a certain procedure for the formation and there were also recognized principles for the intersection. That is, they were still bound by etiquette. Not acting for oneself was the general trend at that time. [9] In short, their wars were also constrained by human nature. The conclusion is that the wars waged by the large countries and the moral etiquette demonstrations carried out by the small countries were all for the purpose of winning people over. This is the same as in the animal world. Strong male chimpanzees often risked danger to obtain rare food and share it with the whole group, while bulls and stags defeated each other by force. [6]

In his book “War and State Formation in Ancient China and Modern Europe” [10], Xu Tianbo compared China from 656 to 221 BC with Europe from 1495 to 1815 AD. He aimed to answer the question of why ancient China could unify while modern Europe could not. Xu Tianbo used Hobbesian Leviathan to represent the process of demoralization and cruelty in human warfare, arguing that ancient China went further and more thoroughly down this path. Although Britain was completely Hobbesian Leviathan-like when conquering other peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, it never abandoned its gentlemanly demeanor when fighting with other European countries, always showing self-restraint. During the period that Xu Tianbo compared, Europe did not experience large-scale killings like the Qin army. I compared the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods in China with the five hundred years of modern Europe before the end of World War II in 1945, and compared the Qin Dynasty with Germany, which attempted to unify Europe by force during the two World Wars. The two wars were comparable in their demoralization and brutality; there was no question of which went further than the other.

In 266 BC, the Qin state appointed Fan Sui as its prime minister. Fan Sui proposed a strategy of “attacking the enemy,” which involved large-scale mass killings. He said that Qin had attacked Wei ten times without causing any damage. This ability to attack ten times without causing damage explains why the seven states could coexist for so long despite frequent warfare during the Warring States period: the defeated side could quickly recover and regain its original fighting strength. In 260 BC, Qin general Bai Qi buried alive 400,000 surrendered soldiers, releasing only 240 child soldiers. According to today’s war tribunals, killing a soldier who has laid down his arms is murder. Although there was no such law during the Warring States period, the mentality was the same. Such large-scale killings are not something anyone can accomplish under all circumstances. The *Records of the Grand Historian* states that Bai Qi subsequently refused to cooperate with the Qin dynasty and was ultimately forced to commit suicide, saying, “I deserve to die. In the Battle of Changping, tens of thousands of Zhao soldiers surrendered, and I tricked them and buried them all alive. This is enough to warrant death.” This shows that even a general like Bai Qi could only commit large-scale killings once. But for the course of history, often once is enough.

The Qin state’s ability to conquer the six other states within a decade or so relied entirely on the success of its espionage and diplomacy. As the saying goes, those noblemen and officials of the six states who could be won over with wealth were generously bribed; those who refused were assassinated with swords. This strategy of sowing discord among the rulers and ministers of the six states was highly effective, explaining their swift annihilation and their inability to unite against Qin. However, such deception can only be used once, as no one can be fooled twice. Therefore, Qin’s unification of China also involved many accidental factors.

IV. The Social Model After the Qin and Han Dynasties and the Special Characteristics of Traditional Rural Quasi-Primitive Society in China

(I) The Chinese Social Model After the Qin and Han Dynasties

Ancient Chinese society possessed an aspect unknown to Western scholars, including Marx: the Confucian bureaucracy’s advocacy of small government made it possible for peasants to live in a quasi-primitive society. The following describes the social model of China after the Qin and Han dynasties:

The imperial court and its family represent a quasi-primitive society (Huang-Lao Legalism).

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The bureaucratic and reserve intellectual group constitutes a secondary social unit (Confucianism).

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Village families (citizens) Quasi-primitive society (Taoism)

In the diagram of ancient Chinese society, the three levels are separated and each becomes a world to a large extent. If we were to summarize these three levels with a philosophy of life based on their attitudes toward life and cultural traditions, the most accurate words that come to mind would be Huang-Lao Legalism, Confucianism, and Taoism. The rulers of the Han Dynasty once used the phrase “a mixture of kingship and hegemony” to describe themselves, and added the concepts of “inner Legalism and outer Kingship” and “inner Huang-Lao and outer Confucianism.” Here, Huang-Lao Legalism is used as a representative, meaning it is not a naked Legalism, but rather has the lubricant of Huang-Lao power tactics. [11]

(II) The essential differences and insurmountable gap between the original society and the secondary society led to the hierarchical division system in Chinese society.

In the upper-level social model, the vast majority of peasants lived in a quasi-primitive society, while Daoists, advocating small states and few people, adhered to Lao Tzu’s tenets of primordial society, preferring seclusion to compromise with the secondary society of the imperial era. As a result, Daoist thought often became the spiritual source of peasant uprisings throughout history, and the Yellow Turban Rebellion at the end of the Han Dynasty marked the beginning of Daoism in China. The degree of separation between the three upper levels has not received the attention and research it deserves from academia.

1) The difference between the original society and the secondary society is like the relationship between Chinese characters and articles. The meaning of articles is derived from the arrangement and combination of Chinese characters. This is like a frog eating insects, which is beneficial to the balance of species in the biosphere, and thus beneficial to agriculture. The same thing of eating insects is a fun way for frogs to fill their stomachs, but in the biosphere it is a balance of species and a bountiful harvest in agriculture. The Chinese society in “The True Story of Ah Q” is also like this: the government executes Ah Q to change the image of being incompetent in solving cases. Ah Q uses such a situation that not everyone has to show his extraordinary nature and becomes a revolutionary party in a glorious way. The book says, “However, although Ah Q often wins, he only became famous after Master Zhao slapped him in the face… Ah Q was proud for many years afterward.” [12]

2) The extent to which the rumor of “egg cutting” spread in North China reveals the essential differences between upper and lower classes:

Li Ruojian extensively consulted archival materials and made a detailed description and analysis of the rumors about Nian Huabei cutting off eggs and Nian Huadong water monsters, providing a powerful example of the hierarchical system in ancient Chinese society: the upper and lower classes were two worlds that could not communicate with each other, and a normal thought from the upper class would become an unbelievable panic and chaos when it reached the lower class. [13, 14]

Li Ruojian believes that these irrational rumors and actions are the interpretation and reaction of government propaganda within rural communities. Mao Zedong’s visit to the Soviet Union, from December 6, 1949, to March 4, 1950, lasted three months, which explains the rumors and speculations that he was detained by the Soviet Union. On May 15, 1950, the People’s Daily published an editorial entitled “Launching a Peace Signature Campaign,” calling on the people of the whole country to respond to the appeal issued by the Stockholm Conference of the World Peace Congress, and to respond to the notice issued by the China Committee for the Defense of World Peace on April 28 of the same year. Immediately afterwards, a nationwide signature campaign was launched to “support world peace and prohibit the use of atomic weapons.” More than 200 million people signed the petition, accounting for half of the total population.

Under these circumstances, a six-month-long rumor and panic about “castration” occurred in northern North China. In the suburbs of Beijing, due to public panic, one village of only 400 households purchased 1,000 flashlights, kept their doors tightly shut, and kept the lights on all night, consuming 25 jin (approximately 17.5 catties) of kerosene each night. Farmers’ shouts echoed throughout the village, and the cries of one village caused ripples in neighboring villages. In the Zhangjiakou area, from July 27th to August 8th, 1950, within 13 days, there were 166 incidents of people disturbing each other with unfounded shouts. In this highly tense atmosphere, many passersby were mistaken for “castration” perpetrators and beaten to death. The government cracked down on those who created and spread the rumors, arresting and executing many people before the rumors finally subsided.

According to the information from various places, the main content of the rumors can be roughly reconstructed as follows: The Soviet Union wanted to build an atomic bomb, and its raw materials (some say ingredients) were men’s testicles, women’s breasts and uteruses, and children’s intestines. Mao Zedong agreed to supply the Soviet Union, so he sent plainclothes troops to cut these things and send them to the Soviet Union. The people who “cut off the testicles” disguised themselves as monks, Taoists, merchants, and farmers. They were all specially trained and could climb walls and roofs. They would investigate during the day and carry out the operation at night. Cutting off a woman’s uterus could be exchanged for three silver dollars in the Soviet Union. In some places, there was also a rumor that cutting off a person’s intestines, “as proof of the intestines,” would earn 12 bolts of foreign cloth. [13]

Between 1953 and 1954, the rumors about the “hairy water monster” in East China were very similar to the rumors about the removal of testicles in North China in terms of content and public reaction. It said: “There is a monster that harms people (hairy water monster) that can harm and remove human reproductive organs and is used to make atomic bombs for the former Soviet Union. This rumor can be called one of the biggest rumors in contemporary China. The rumor spread across three provinces, involving dozens of counties and tens of millions of people. The rumor lasted for more than a year from its large-scale outbreak to its end. More than a hundred people died as a result, and thousands were arrested.” [14]

Both of these rumor-spreading incidents were directed at the government, even claiming that Mao Zedong sent people to cut off testicles. Another characteristic was that they were directed at strangers from other places, reflecting the distrust of the rational social construction of the secondary society in the face-to-face interactions of the original society. Li Ruojian said, “This is exactly the opposite of the inherent nature of Western witchcraft (Western witches are mostly from the local community).” [13]

3) Section 5(iv) below mentions: “When Emperor Yang of Sui built Luoyang, the eastern capital, he conscripted 2 million people every month. Due to the massive scale of the project and the short timeframe required for completion, the labor was excessive, and four or five out of ten died. The vehicles transporting the dead were constantly on the road each month… He also conscripted over a million people to build the Great Wall, stretching over a thousand li from east to west, with a deadline of 20 days. The majority of the people died.” The fact that over half of a group of millions could die is due to the peasants’ lack of understanding of secondary society and their lack of experience living in it. To them, secondary society was like God’s world, which is why they endured it so much and could not rally the masses. There was no similar event among intellectuals in Chinese history; they faced being killed one by one.

(III) The Lack of Social Perspective on Farmers in the Secondary Sector from the Perspective of the Author’s Hometown

In his article, Li Ruojian mentions that “Linshu County in Shandong Province was one of the areas where the ‘hairy man and water monster’ rumor circulated in 1953. In 1950, 98% of the county’s population was illiterate, 1.4% was semi-literate, and only 0.58% knew 1,000 characters to the level of advanced primary school.” Leaving aside the fact that knowing 1,000 characters is far from sufficient for literacy, even for someone who can read, in a rural area without newspapers or magazines, gaining a general understanding of government operations and ways of thinking, and connecting it to their own rural life, is no easy task. Western Christianity, besides providing people in secondary societies with a sense of equality and kinship reminiscent of primordial society, also offers a perpetual discourse based on people’s life experiences, connected to an omnipotent God. Some Western scholars say that modern novels based on the lives of ordinary people have a Christian-like religious function. With his modern educational background and general understanding of domestic and international affairs, Mo Yan, when writing about rural life in China, imbues it with the meaning and scope of a secondary society, transcending the quasi-primordial social life of pre-1950s China.

Before I started working in the 1970s, I lived for many years in rural Hebei, in a small town of three or four thousand people. My family, about three hundred people, lived in the southwest corner of the town. In the 1950s, only two or three of them joined the Communist Party, and throughout history, only two or three people participated in the War of Resistance against Japan and various other wars, accounting for only one or two percent of the total population. These people were far from typical ordinary farmers; they were people with special experiences and mindsets. They gained a second-level social perspective and participated in second-level social activities. Even though the Communist Party entered the area in 1938, making it an old base area, and after the brutal baptism of the War of Resistance against Japan, 98 percent of the farmers lacked a second-level social perspective and lived in a quasi-primitive society.

Those who gain a second-level social perspective and then leave rural areas to work in cities or the government become fully-fledged second-level social beings, which will not be discussed here. Those who remain in rural areas will be divided into the following three categories:

1) Rural intellectuals like my father. They were knowledgeable, educated, and had their own sources of income, thus maintaining a certain distance from the political system of the time. Confucius was such a person.

2) Those who acted as a link between the rural quasi-primitive society and the secondary social government often held titles such as team leader or village head. Zigong and Zilu, who were disciples of Confucius and also held social professions, can be considered part of this group. Zigong’s business can be considered a secondary social profession, while Zilu served as steward for high-ranking officials on multiple occasions.

3) After experiencing secondary social life once or twice, they became ordinary members of the rural quasi-primitive society. One of my uncles, who was once the chairman of the county peasant association, spent his entire life farming. He told me his experiences several times, saying that he had met all the other Communist Party leaders except Mao Zedong. His stories had a distinctly fantastical element, emphasizing the randomness and incomprehensibility of events. I still remember him saying that Zhu De’s groom was so simple that even in his fifties, he didn’t know what marriage and taking a wife meant.

Of the three types of people mentioned above, only the first type possesses both 1) a foothold in the original society and 2) a broad perspective encompassing the entire secondary society. Western philosophers like Plato and Chinese philosophers like Dong Zhongshu lost their foothold in the original society. The *Records of the Grand Historian: Biographies of the Disciples of Confucius* mentions that Zigong and Zilu both felt Confucius’s ideals were too lofty and not accepted by the world, indicating that they also partially lost their foothold in the original society. Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang largely lost their foothold in the original society, especially after becoming emperors, but this did not prevent the expression of peasant consciousness during their reigns.

(iv) The unrealistic nature of the slogans used in peasant uprisings in Chinese history

Zhang Renzhong recorded more than twenty peasant uprisings in ancient Chinese history, and he commented on each major peasant uprising. Chen Sheng and Wu Guang’s uprising, the peasant army “ate wherever they could find a house and roamed the world”; the uprising army at the end of the Sui Dynasty “killed all the Sui officials and sons of noble families”. Zhang believes that the Huang Chao uprising at the end of the Tang Dynasty was the first to express the peasants’ idea of ​​equality, which was imitated by peasant uprising armies in subsequent dynasties. For example, Wang Xiaobo of the Northern Song Dynasty put forward the slogan of equalizing wealth and poverty, Zhong Xiang’s uprising in the Southern Song Dynasty put forward the slogan of “equalizing the noble and the lowly, equalizing wealth and poverty”, and so on until the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom’s “Heavenly Kingdom and Heavenly Land” system. [6] In fact, the Yellow Turban Rebellion at the end of the Han Dynasty had obvious ideas of equalizing society. For example, the theocratic regime established by Zhang Lu in Sichuan was praised by Mao Zedong and used to support his People’s Commune Movement in 1958.

Considering that a secondary society can take many forms, an egalitarian society is also an option. This is precisely why Zhang Lu’s regime lasted for twenty years and was welcomed by the local peasants. Chinese peasants, based on their psychological experience of a quasi-primitive rural society, advocated for an egalitarian society. However, the maintenance of a secondary society requires hierarchy and class differentiation to drive the society in a predetermined direction and stabilize the existing social order. An egalitarian society, on the other hand, only achieves material equality. Therefore, Zhang Lu’s Sichuan regime was a religious society, with religious leaders at various levels to maintain social stability.

Zhang Renzhong mentioned the special behavior of Dou Jiande, the leader of the uprising who established a peasant regime in Xian County, Hebei Province, saying: “He encouraged agriculture and sericulture in the territory, developed production, and lived a very simple life with plain clothes and vegetarian food, which won him the hearts of the people.” He also said, “After Emperor Yang of Sui died, he thought he was a commoner of the Sui Dynasty and mourned Emperor Yang.” He attacked Yuwen Huaji, who killed Emperor Yang of Sui, and killed Yuwen Huaji after the city was captured. He also sent Empress Xiao, Emperor Yang of Sui’s wife, to the Turks to live with her daughter.

Zhang Renzhong criticized Dou Jiande for lacking a peasant’s perspective. In my view, this precisely illustrates that peasants, transitioning from a quasi-primitive society to a secondary society, faced multiple choices and could adopt any stance. However, influenced by the primitive society and the so-called class-based stance of the secondary society, they mostly leaned towards unrealistic ideals of an egalitarian society. Dou Jiande’s frugality and self-discipline in his personal life were consistent with his adherence to loyalty to the emperor, demonstrating that he already possessed a relatively strong understanding of the moral constraints of a secondary society.

In short, apart from a few peasant leaders such as Zhang Lu and Dou Jiande, peasant uprisings throughout Chinese history advocated for an equal society, but lacked a perspective on the diversity of secondary societies. They did not consider how to resist the erosion of private ownership, or how to tolerate the existence of class society while drawing a clear line between themselves and others, much like the communist villages still scattered around the world today.

(V) Conclusion: The three levels of the upper-class social model are fundamentally different and do not form an organic whole like in Western societies. Because of this, after the Qin and Han dynasties, those who replaced the top-level court included middle-level bureaucratic aristocrats, such as Yang Jian, Li Yuan, and Zhao Kuangyin who established the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties, as well as figures like Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang who came from the lower peasant classes. The maturity of the Song dynasty’s imperial examination system represented the successful Confucianization of the bureaucratic intellectual class in the upper-class social model. After this, the possibility of the bureaucratic class replacing the court disappeared, while peasants retained this ability. In the upper-class social model, each of the three levels has a different philosophy of life and worldview, but the top two levels are both secondary societies, representing two different secondary societies. When peasants enter a secondary society from the primitive society, they adapt more easily to the different secondary societies, while bureaucratic intellectuals deeply influenced by Confucianism find it less easy to enter a court guided by Huang-Lao and Legalist thought; they must first abandon their Confucian worldview. Similarly, the northern ethnic minorities, with their backward culture, did not have the burden of being deeply influenced by Confucianism.

For the reasons mentioned above and based on historical facts, this article views Chinese peasants living in quasi-primitive society as an external force of the Chinese imperial government, which only includes the top two levels in the social model diagram.

V. Defeats Due to Internal and External Factors in Chinese History After the Qin and Han Dynasties

(1) Civil strife

Mao Zedong wrote the poem, “The Qin dynasty’s political system has been followed for a hundred generations; even ten criticisms are not good articles,” illustrating that for over two thousand years after the Qin and Han dynasties, successive dynasties largely inherited the imperial political system established by the Qin dynasty. In other words, the Qin dynasty laid the political foundation for the imperial era, while Emperor Wu of Han began to adopt Confucianism as the official ideology until the Xinhai Revolution. This author considers the period from the Qin and Han dynasties to the 1911 Xinhai Revolution as a unified whole, without distinguishing between any specific stages or noting the differences between the Qin and Han dynasties. Using Zhang Renzhong’s *Ancient Chinese History* as a reference, the author selects seven internal rebellions as events that led to defeat during this period. Court intrigues that did not result in nationwide wars are not included.

The seven internal strife events are: 1) The Rebellion of the Seven States, triggered by Emperor Jing of Han’s reduction of the power of the vassal states; 2) Wang Mang’s usurpation of the throne in 9 AD and his implementation of new systems, leading to chaos and unrest. In 23 AD, after peasant rebels entered the capital, citizens stormed the palace and killed Wang Mang; 3) Dong Zhuo’s installation of the 9-year-old Liu Xie as Emperor Ling of Han in 190 AD to consolidate his power, leading to uprisings in various prefectures and counties, eventually forming the Three Kingdoms period, which lasted 90 years; 4) The enfeoffment of princes in the early Western Jin Dynasty, leading to the 16-year War of the Eight Princes (291-306 AD); 5) In 304 AD, more than 100,000 refugees flooded into Sichuan and were forced to leave, leading to an uprising and the occupation of Chengdu, followed by the chaos of the Sixteen Kingdoms (304-439 AD); 6) The An Lushan Rebellion (755-763 AD); 7) The Jingnan Rebellion in the early Ming Dynasty, which lasted four years.

The author argues that the first and seventh internal rebellions mentioned above have unique characteristics and represent inherent problems of only two peasant dynasties in Chinese history, and should therefore be excluded. The author provides the following reasons and explanations.

(II) The different ways in which the enfeoffment of princes during the Han, Jin, and Ming dynasties led to internal strife

For ease of comparison, the following are excerpts from Zhang Renzhong’s book “Ancient Chinese History” [15]:

“Emperor Wu of Jin, Sima Yan, believed that the reason for the rapid demise of Cao Wei was that there were no royal princes or nobles to act as a protective barrier, leaving the imperial family isolated. … The prince Zhu, a member of the royal family, not only held military power but also participated in the power struggles in the court, which led to the War of the Eight Princes (291-306). … The one who launched the War of the Eight Princes was Empress Jia, the wife of Emperor Hui.”

“Liu Bang eliminated kings of different surnames and enfeoffed kings of the same surname: In the Chu-Han Contention, in order to defeat Xiang Yu, Liu Bang had to enfeoff some kings of different surnames. On the one hand, this was to satisfy the demands of his generals to cede territory and become kings, and on the other hand, it was to win over the kings enfeoffed by Xiang Yu to come and submit to him.” After the establishment of the Han Dynasty, Liu Bang believed that they were a serious threat to the central government, so he “devote himself to finding an opportunity to eliminate them.”

“In order to consolidate the Zhu family dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang vigorously promoted the centralized system on the one hand, and implemented a policy that contradicted the centralized system, namely, enfeoffing his sons as kings to protect the royal family. Zhu Yuanzhang implemented the enfeoffment system for two purposes: first, to strengthen the defense against the Mongol cavalry in the north, and second, to prevent treacherous officials in the court from usurping the throne.”

A significant difference between the Han, Jin, and Ming dynasties is that the Jin dynasty was established by a usurper from a powerful clan, while the Han and Ming dynasties are the only two dynasties in Chinese history established by peasants. The Jin dynasty enfeoffed as many as 57 princes of the same surname, so the War of the Eight Princes was actually a manifestation of internal court struggles under special circumstances, related to both the inadequacy of the system’s establishment and the political situation at the time. Lin Yutang divided Chinese history into eight-hundred-year cycles of order and chaos, with the first five hundred years of stability followed by two to three hundred years of war. The Qin and Han dynasties and the Northern and Southern dynasties constitute the second cycle of chaos in Lin Yutang’s classification, and the fourth and fifth of the seven internal rebellions listed above represent the wartime period of this cycle. The next cycle is the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties, and the final cycle is the five hundred years of the Ming and Qing dynasties, plus the three hundred years of war predicted by Lin Yutang.

The internal strife among princes in the Han and Ming dynasties differed greatly from that in the Jin dynasty, yet they shared striking similarities. The princes involved in these rebellions were all descendants of the founding emperors, far fewer in number than the princes of the same surname in the Jin dynasty. Both occurred during the stable initial phase of what Lin Yutang described as the eight-hundred-year cycle, comparable to the Xuanwu Gate Incident in the Tang dynasty, where Li Shimin and his brothers vied for the throne. While the Xuanwu Gate Incident, like countless other dynastic conflicts in Chinese history, was confined to the capital and the court, the internal strife among princes in the Han and Ming dynasties was a nationwide war. The Han and Ming dynasties were also known for their large-scale purges of founding heroes, whereas the Song dynasty, like the Jin dynasty, was established by a clan-based general who usurped the throne, and was able to resolve similar issues with the famous “Zhao Kuangyin’s release of military power over a cup of wine.”

Compared to the Tang, Song, and other dynasties, the early Han and Ming dynasties were less adept at coordinating internal relations because they underwent a process of gradually adapting from the free and undisciplined nature of a quasi-primitive rural society to the constraints of a secondary social system. The primordial social order was built upon aesthetics and emotions; the enfeoffment of Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang’s descendants as kings was influenced by emotional factors, which remained at the subconscious level and decisively influenced behavior without being expressed in language. When Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang’s grandsons became emperors, the vassal kings were elders, the emperors’ uncles—a situation common throughout Chinese history. However, due to the lingering influence of the quasi-primitive rural society, this led to the rebellions and wars among the vassal kings in the early Han and Ming dynasties.

The short-term wars in the early Han and Ming dynasties, similar to the discrimination against Han intellectuals in the Yuan and Qing dynasties, were internal problems resulting from defeats by external forces in Chinese history, and were the result of external factors. Therefore, the author here only refers to the remaining five internal conflicts as events in Chinese history where defeats were caused by internal factors.

(III) Analysis of Five Wars in Chinese History in Which China Was Defeated by Internal Troubles

The five internal conflicts that led to defeat were: 1) Wang Mang’s ascension to the throne; 2) Dong Zhuo’s usurpation of power; 3) The War of the Eight Princes in the Western Jin Dynasty; 4) The Sixteen Kingdoms period; and 5) The An Lushan Rebellion.

The first and second instances are similar in nature, namely Wang Mang’s ascension to the throne and Dong Zhuo’s seizure of power. Wang Mang’s ascension only led to short-term warfare, while Dong Zhuo’s seizure of power resulted in the Three Kingdoms period. The third and fourth instances are also similar in nature, but ultimately led to the Sixteen Kingdoms period. The result of these four internal conflicts was that China’s unified state gradually shifted towards a fragmented state of decentralized power, with the Sixteen Kingdoms period essentially being a separation and confrontation between the Han and non-Han regimes.

The last major internal defeat in Chinese history was the An Lushan Rebellion. Unlike the previous four, it was a nationwide war caused by the rebellion of a high-ranking general of non-Han ethnicity. The An Lushan Rebellion occurred roughly in the middle of the two thousand years following the Qin and Han dynasties, a period of internal strife after the maturation of the Chinese imperial system. By this time, China had established the imperial examination system and accumulated nearly a thousand years of experience in autocratic imperial governance. Therefore, this internal strife also had an element of external defeat, namely, the excessive trust and indulgence of those of non-Han ethnicity. It also marked the beginning of a series of external defeats in Chinese history over the next thousand years. As the last major internal defeat, containing elements of external defeat, it signifies a turning point in Chinese history, shifting from defeats both internally and externally to defeats solely from external sources. After the mid-Tang dynasty, Han Chinese regimes could only maintain control of half of the country.

The author argues that, compared to the Han Chinese, the so-called Hu people, a minority group in the north, were closer to the cultural habits of the original society than Chinese farmers.

(iv) Events in Chinese history where China was defeated by foreign powers

1) The Chen Sheng and Wu Guang uprising and Liu Bang’s establishment of the Han Dynasty (209-206 BC)

2) The Western Jin Dynasty was destroyed by the Xiongnu (316 AD).

3) Emperor Yang of Sui’s large-scale use of laborers led to the peasant uprisings at the end of the Sui Dynasty (611-618).

4) The Later Jin dynasty was destroyed by the Liao dynasty (946 AD).

5) The Northern Song Dynasty was destroyed by the Jin Dynasty (1127).

6) The Southern Song Dynasty was destroyed by the Yuan Dynasty (1279).

7) The peasant uprisings at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the establishment of the Ming Dynasty by Zhu Yuanzhang (1351-1368)

8) The Ming dynasty was destroyed by the Qing dynasty (1645).

Peasant uprisings were commonplace in Chinese history, and the three examples mentioned above were not the only ones that led to the downfall of dynasties. Only the peasant uprisings at the end of the Qin Dynasty and the end of the Yuan Dynasty resulted in the establishment of dynasties by peasant regimes—the only two instances in Chinese history. The peasant uprising at the end of the Sui Dynasty, like the one at the end of the Qin Dynasty, was a direct consequence of the large-scale use of peasant laborers.

“When Emperor Yang of Sui built Luoyang, the eastern capital, he conscripted 2 million people every month. Due to the sheer scale of the project and the short deadline, the labor was excessive, and four or five out of ten died. The vehicles transporting the dead were endless on the roads every month. Furthermore, the construction of the Western Garden in the eastern capital required a great deal of timber, mostly transported from the Jiangnan region. The transport workers were constantly on the roads for thousands of miles, and each large pillar required 2,000 people to pull it, consuming an immeasurable amount of manpower. In addition, over a million people were conscripted to build the Great Wall, stretching over a thousand miles east to west, with a deadline of 20 days; the majority of the people died. As for the excavation…” The canal required even more manpower. For example, when the Tongji Canal was opened, more than 1 million people from Henan and Huaibei were conscripted. When the Hangou Canal was dredged, more than 100,000 people from Huainan were conscripted. Even when the Yongji Canal was opened, there were not enough men to serve, so women were also conscripted. In addition, Emperor Yang of Sui conscripted a lot of laborers when he visited Jiangdu three times. For example, when he visited Jiangdu for the first time, he used 80,000 boatmen alone. …During the 14 years of Emperor Yang of Sui’s reign, he toured the east and west. …He stayed in the capital for only one year. Each time he toured, he mobilized a large army, with more than 100,000 concubines, palace maids and guards following him. …”[15]

Within ten years of unifying China, Qin Shi Huang made five tours, traveling all over the country with a large retinue. “It is estimated that during Qin Shi Huang’s reign, no less than 2 million laborers were conscripted each year, while the national population was about 20 million. Thus, most of the able-bodied men in the country were conscripted for military service and corvée labor… The number of convicts at that time was astonishing, to the point that the roads were blocked by people wearing red robes and prisons became like markets.” [15]

The author has specifically discussed this phenomenon, saying…

“Rural China closely resembled primitive social life, while large-scale corvée labor projects created a temporary secondary society. The two had drastically different lifestyles; the latter was more akin to the slave life in the silver mines of ancient Athens. Compared to slaves, peasants had the hope of returning to the countryside, but they lacked the discipline and discipline of slaves. The sudden shift from a carefree life to slavery, with such a drastic change in living standards, was far from easy to manage. Discontented masses, gathered for any reason, could become the source of uprisings and rebellions. The peasant population undergoing corvée labor possessed many psychological factors that made them prone to losing control. For example, peasants were inclined towards supernatural thinking and were easily influenced by suggestion; Kuhler’s self-awareness stemmed from primitive…” In the interactions of a primary social group, this temporary secondary society has no room for self-respect. The so-called “loss of control” simply means that group members suddenly forget the behavioral norms of the secondary society, blindly obeying temporary leaders or imitating the behavior of others. Once an out-of-control group forms, their actions are uniform, exhibiting immense self-sacrifice and heroism. According to Freudian analysis, the internalization of others’ will into one’s own, along with the unconscious superego, forms the basis of such a psychological group. This book uses the awe-inspiring power of large-scale human gatherings on individual psychology and the god-like world effect of secondary society to explain this extraordinary collective behavior.

“In short, it was not an easy task for the emperors of ancient China to use a large number of agricultural workers. A large number of supervisors and severe laws were indispensable. It was no coincidence that large-scale peasant uprisings followed Qin Shi Huang and Sui Yangdi.”[16]

Both the Qin and Yuan dynasties rose from humble beginnings in remote and underdeveloped regions to rule the Central Plains. The Qin dynasty’s excessively bloody rule was related to the moral decay and brutality of warfare during the Warring States period, and also to its lack of administrative experience as the first dynasty to achieve this, which fueled Qin Shi Huang’s illusion of an everlasting empire. The Yuan dynasty, on the other hand, had over a thousand years of experience with imperial autocracy to draw upon, but it was the first time China had experienced a large empire ruled by a foreign ethnic group. As a result, at the end of both the Qin and Yuan dynasties, a power vacuum emerged within the Han Chinese intellectual elite at the first and second levels of the social structure. This highly centralized power meant that when problems arose, no one stepped forward to solve them or take their place; the situation had to be addressed layer by layer from the peasantry. The situation was different at the end of the Sui dynasty. After the peasant uprisings began, figures like Yang Xuangan, the Minister of Rites, general Yuwen Huaji, and the powerful nobleman Li Yuan rebelled against the Sui. These individuals possessed far more experience in secondary social life and administration than the peasants.

(V) Defeats in Chinese History Due to Internal and External Factors

The five major internal conflicts in Chinese history lasted from a few months to nearly a century during the Three Kingdoms period. Even during the Three Kingdoms period, despite the emergence of many heroes, it could not compare to the Warring States period, especially in terms of political and cultural diversity. During the Warring States period, Qi had the Jixia Academy, where the state funded and supported the free discussion of various schools of thought; Chu had Wu Qi, who reformed the state but was killed by a hail of arrows from nobles; Yan had King Kuai, who abdicated the throne and even participated in manual labor; the Qin Dynasty, described by the renowned historian Huang Renyu as a police state, had government officials mostly appointed from those who had distinguished themselves in battle, and a system of collective punishment where if a crime was not reported, all five families would be punished. The Three Kingdoms period largely lacked this political and cultural diversity. The rulers of the three kingdoms came from the same chaotic era, possessing very similar cultural backgrounds and ways of thinking. Their narrow-mindedness, focused solely on competing with each other, did not broaden the horizons of the people and was therefore despised by them. This internal strife ultimately ended with the An Lushan Rebellion. The narrow-minded cultural mentality exhibited during the Three Kingdoms period also marked the beginning of the internal decline of Chinese culture: it lost the original social superpower status of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, and failed to establish a complete two-tiered social and cultural system that tolerated different directions and lifestyles.

The author here views the Northern and Southern Dynasties after the Western Jin Dynasty was destroyed by the Xiongnu as the beginning of China’s defeat by foreign powers. After the An Lushan Rebellion led to a brief period of regional separatism, the Han Chinese regime began to be content with half of the country and confront the foreign regimes. It went further and further down the path of defeat by foreign powers, and the expansion of its territory was given to the foreign regimes.

What Western scholars find truly remarkable is that these foreign peoples who conquered China were all eventually submerged within the broader Chinese culture, nearly annihilated. The conquest of foreign cultures by Chinese culture was based on the unified nature of the original society, not on multi-society competition at a secondary level. Because of this, both the Mongols and Manchus possessed their so-called military democratic traditions before entering the Central Plains, rather than absolute autocracy. Once they conquered the Central Plains, they seemed to face a choice: accept the autocratic traditions of the Chinese Empire or withdraw from the Central Plains; they both willingly chose the former. In contrast, the Roman Empire, conquered by Germanic peoples, not only allowed the Germanic peoples to maintain their barbarian cultural institutions but also voluntarily relinquished its imperial ambitions.

VI. Comparison with Western History

Compared to China, Western history lacks both Chinese-style territorial and cultural unification. The Roman Empire, comparable to the Qin and Han dynasties, embarked on a path of complete internal defeat, never to regain its former glory. Instead, it pursued a path of continuous outward conquest. It honed its military strength through internal strife, conquering vast swathes of the Americas and Australia. Furthermore, through multicultural competition, it improved its management system for secondary social and material development, exporting this system to the world and leading to the so-called modern world.

The Roman Empire was comparable to the Qin and Han Empires, and historians often compare the two: they were roughly equal in population, territory, and duration. The Roman Empire conquered all the Mediterranean countries, including the Greek and Jewish civilizations. Among numerous cultures and traditions, they were particularly captivated by the diverse culture of ancient Greece, and even during their imperial period, they retained considerable elements of democracy and pluralism. In its later years, the Roman Empire fully embraced Christianity. Christianity, similar to the Zhang Lu regime, differed from Confucianism, and among the two schools of thought, it was closer to Daoism.

Compared to the short-term divisions caused by internal strife in Chinese history, the permanent divisions caused by internal strife in the West stemmed from their broader perspective of a two-tiered society with multiple possibilities, allowing for prolonged periods of division. The Roman Empire split into the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, not through mutual conquest, but through successive conquests by different tribes. What the Chinese find difficult to understand is that the Germanic tribes conquered the Roman Empire to plunder its wealth, not to replace it. During the Dark Ages, a thousand years later, people admired the glory of the Roman Empire, but no one attempted to rebuild it, because imperial culture willingly yielded to the universalism of Christianity. Compared to China, the Roman Empire was culturally defeated by the imported Christian culture, and militarily defeated by internal corruption and incompetence, not by nationwide warfare. Yet, the Christian culture of the Roman Empire conquered the whole of Europe, expanding far beyond its original territory, becoming known as the Christian Kingdom. This Christian Kingdom lacked internal administrative unity, yet it exported Christianity to the world.

Among the vassal states before the Qin and Han dynasties, only the State of Qi resembled ancient Greece, possessing a pluralistic political and cultural spirit. The only state comparable to monotheistic Jewish civilization was the State of Lu, renowned for its Confucian tradition. The Qin and Han political systems continued the centralized system of the Warring States period, similar to Germany during World War II. The Qin and Han empires ultimately adopted the Confucian tradition of Lu but not the broad-mindedness of Qi’s diverse culture, lacking multicultural competition at the secondary social level and also emasculating Confucianism. Rome was efficient, fostering a democratic atmosphere that encouraged collective initiative, with an elite and lower class integrated; the Qin and Han dynasties were highly centralized, extremely inefficient, to the point that Emperor Wu of Han could halve the population without anyone being able to stop it, demonstrating a complete lack of democratic spirit. While the Qin and Han empires embraced the unification of Confucianism, they did not fully and thoroughly accept the universalist spirit of Confucianism and Mencius.

It’s necessary to discuss the difference between empire and hegemony here: During the Spring and Autumn Period in China, the Five Hegemons, along with the Zhou Dynasty, maintained social order and established social rules to ensure peaceful coexistence among various states. This hegemonic culture possessed a more universal perspective than that of an empire. Emperor Wen of Han viewed the Xiongnu’s warlike nature as a result of his own insufficient moral cultivation, believing that the influence of universal morality was sufficient to conquer the world—the original intention of Confucius and Mencius’s concept of a benevolent ruler. However, Emperor Wu of Han did not see it this way. What would have been a source of great sorrow for Confucius and Mencius was that Emperor Wu of Han became the model for subsequent Chinese empires, yet he was cloaked in the guise of Confucianism. Comparing China and the West, at the secondary social level, Chinese history pursued the dream of empire, with occasional episodes of hegemonic ambition, such as Emperor Wen of Han and the Five Hegemons of the Spring and Autumn Period, and also the pluralistic coexistence in parts of the State of Qi during the Warring States Period. Western history, on the other hand, pursued hegemony, with occasional episodes of empire, such as the Roman Empire and Germany’s dream of conquering both World Wars. The dream of hegemony retains a strong sense of internal strife, which leads to an unstoppable increase in fighting power, resulting in continuous outward expansion and awaiting the next dark cycle of cultural defeat due to internal strife.

Located between East and West, Japan is relatively safe due to its island nation status and maritime protection. Its ancient imperial system, similar to the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties in China, has preserved many local separatist forces and tolerated more internal strife, while maintaining a unified culture and territory. However, its attempts to conquer other countries have ended in failure.

Chinese culture, based on the idea that primitive societies could endure for five thousand years, contrasts sharply with the Western world’s five thousand years of history, which has seen alternating periods of glory and darkness since ancient Greece. Chinese culture is expected to help the Western world enter the coming third Dark Age.

We can also view Chinese history in this way, except that the imperial cycle of a unified early society was slower and longer. Compared to the Hundred Schools of Thought before the Qin and Han dynasties and the diverse and competitive culture of modern Western society, we can consider the more than 1,100 years after the An Lushan Rebellion as a Dark Age roughly equivalent to the European Middle Ages, and also the first Dark Age in Chinese history. A future Chinese Renaissance should revive the cultural traditions of the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, and in today’s global village environment, this could potentially help Western culture avoid a third Dark Age in about 500 years.

There are two sources of Western culture: ancient Greek and Jewish culture. In the Mediterranean civilization, they belong to two small countries that were bullied by their neighbors. The Lu and Song states are comparable to these two small countries. Of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, only the Shang dynasty came from the east and had elements of maritime culture. The Song state, a descendant of the Shang dynasty, had a second social tradition: the Mi Bing Conference. Duke Xiang of Song adhered to the rules of war and preferred to be defeated. [6]

Modern European civilization was led by three small coastal nations: Italy, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. This is analogous to Tianjin, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in China being drawn into the Western-led modern world. While these three cities led economically, they couldn’t establish a political and administrative culture suited to their own economic realities, let alone replace a central political culture. The United States also started as a small country. The conclusion is that China, with its large-country culture, faced a military advantage against a small northern nation; the West, with its small-country culture, faced a military advantage against a large nation. The West was defeated by foreign culture, while China was defeated by foreign military force—this is the difference between a secondary society and a primary society.

While it’s somewhat understandable to artistically interpret Confucianism based on primitive society, extending it to the religion and philosophy of secondary society contradicts the social foundation of Confucianism in primitive society. Dong Zhongshu’s discussion of the interaction between Heaven and humanity was an attempt to religiousize Confucianism, but he wasn’t very successful. Even in the Tang Dynasty, Han Yu, Liu Zongyuan, and others launched a powerful Ancient Prose Movement to oppose the religiousization of Confucianism. We can consider Li Bai and Du Fu as the peak of artistic Confucianism; from the perspective of Confucianism based on primitive society, it was a decline thereafter. The descriptive style of Song lyrics and the philosophical nature of Song poetry are signs of Chinese society moving towards a secondary society, yet they lack the vast scope and possibilities of a secondary society. The descriptive style is limited to human emotions rather than Shakespeare’s grand world, and the philosophical nature is limited to the mind rather than Platon’s secondary social philosophical system. Compared to the West, it not only seems incongruous but also tragically clings to its own limited perspective.

Conclusion: The difference between internal and external defeats in Eastern and Western history lies in their respective historical circumstances. The West’s defeats were internal, prolonged, and thorough. The Mediterranean coast of the ancient Roman Empire is now home to diverse ethnic groups and cultures; similarly, Christianity-dominated Europe fragmented into different nations and states. As a result, they not only conquered externally by force, but also promoted their highly diversified and developed secondary social cultures to the world. Chinese culture, based on a primitive society, was conducive to unification but not to diverse competition. While it was militarily conquered by foreign powers, it possessed strong cultural inclusiveness. However, its development at the secondary social level was insufficient, leaving it only able to accept Western foreign culture.

I often hear people say on Western radio: “Confucius said, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.'” In my reading, Confucius never said such a thing. But this statement can be used to express the difference in the starting points of Eastern and Western cultures: Confucius said that if you give a nation a secondary social way of life, they can at most maintain it for a few hundred years like the Roman and Qin-Han Empires; if you teach them how to establish themselves in the original society and deal with various different secondary societies, they can live forever. The author once pointed out that the Confucian aesthetic order and the ideal state of the sage king were entirely possible in Chinese history, but it required the ability to deal with various cultures, including the civilization of war, without being devoured by them. [11]

Western civilization is a civilization of war, where war forces people to develop material strength for survival, but not to enjoy life, much less to appreciate harmony and beauty. It is only in the postmodern era, when war has gradually faded away, that Chinese culture has begun to show its charm.

literature

[1] Huxley (1894, Chinese edition 1971): Evolution and Ethics (formerly translated as: Evolutionary Theory). Beijing: Science Press, 1971. Translated by the “Evolution and Ethics” Translation Group.

[2]You-Sheng Li (2005): A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoist Philosophy. London, Canada: Taoist Recovery Centre.

[3] Li Yousheng (2009): “Looking at Life and the World from a Different Angle: Chinese Taoism in the 21st Century”. Beijing: Thread-bound Book Bureau.

[4] Yousheng (2008): A New Perspective on the Differences Between Eastern and Western Cultures. *Xue Deng*, Issue 6. (http://confucius2000.com/writer/yousheng.htm)

[5] You Sheng (2010): The relationship between the overall thought of the Book of Changes and the pre-Qin Confucianism and Taoism. Xue Deng, No. 16. (http://confucius2000.com/admin/list.asp?id=4591)

[6] Yu Sheng (2012): The difference between Eastern and Western war cultures can be seen from the fact that Duke Xiang of Song was defeated by Chu because he adhered to the rules of war.

(From *Xue Deng*, Issue 24) (http://confucius2000.com/writer/yousheng.htm)

[7] Yang Kuan (1997): History of the Warring States Period. Taipei: Taiwan Commercial Press. Page 2.

[8] Huang Renyu (1993): China: A Grand History, Chapter 2. Taipei: Lianjing.

[9] Huang Renyu (1989): Talking about history on the banks of the Hudson River. Taipei: Times.

[10] Victoria Tin-Bor Hui (2005): War and State Formation in Ancient China

and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

[11] Yousheng (2013): The Imperial Examination System and Plato’s Republic: A Historical Analysis of the Success and Possibilities of the Confucianization of Chinese Politics. *Xue Deng*, Issue 27. (http://confucius2000.com/writer/yousheng.htm)

[12] You Sheng (2013): On the hierarchical system in ancient Chinese society as seen in “The True Story of Ah Q”. Chinese Thought Website: http://www.zhongguosixiang.com/opinion/2013/1224/1804.shtml.

[13] Li Ruojian (2007): The “Egg Cutting” Rumor in North China in 1950. Open Times, No. 3, 2007.

[14] Li Ruojian (2005): Reflections of Social Change: A Preliminary Study of the “Hairy Water Monster” Rumors in the 1950s. Sociological Research, No. 5, 2005.

[15] Zhang Renzhong (2006): Ancient Chinese History. Beijing: Peking University Press.

[16] You Sheng (2010): The concept of a two-tiered society and the complementary relationship between Confucianism and Taoism in mainstream Chinese culture. Xue Deng, Issue 15. (http://confucius2000.com/admin/list.asp?id=4462)

author By Dr. You-Sheng Li

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