China Law Blog

For thousands of years, Chinese have been raised to think of China as the center of the world - hence the name zhongguo. The reason they get offended at negative feedback is the same reason your boss gets offended when you tell him what you really think. They're looking for confirmation of their superiority, not an honest appraisal of their warts. The average Chinese views China's present situation vis-a-vis the West the way a Western missionary might view a bunch of cannibals about to cook him for dinner - in a temporary situation of disadvantage that in no way casts any doubt on his innate superiority.

The mumbo jumbo about Western theories of Social Darwinism influencing the Chinese is just silly. The Chinese have been practicing it over thousands of years. Herbert Spencer merely gave it a new name.

Actually, Herbert Spencer's influence was exactly the opposite of what you suggest. It was ideas such as Social Darwinism, as interpreted by Yan Fu and others, that shook a whole generation's belief in China's inherent superiority and inspired them to consider drastic steps to save the nation and the civilization. I might suggest taking a look at Yan Fu's essay "On Strength" first published in the Zhibao in 1901 in which he wrote:

"Months and years slip by, and with rapacious neighbors all around, I fear that we will be too late, that we will follow upon Poland and India, providing an example of Darwin's [elimination] before we have been able to implement Spencer's methods...Alas, our individual lives are not worth the worry, but what of our descendants, and the 400 million of our race?"

(Fascinating that Yan Fu understands Spencer's theories as prescriptive as opposed to descriptive, but that's another issue...)

The whole essay is worth reading in its entirety, as are similar pieces from important figures such as Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei, Tan Sitong, and even Sun Yat-sen, all echoing a similar theme. Far from being 'mumbo-jumbo,' it's not too much to say that a corner was turned in the late 19th century as a result of these ideas.

J: It was ideas such as Social Darwinism, as interpreted by Yan Fu and others, that shook a whole generation's belief in China's inherent superiority and inspired them to consider drastic steps to save the nation and the civilization.

How many Chinese have heard of Yan Fu? Or Social Darwinism? Did Social Darwinism - the strong and the fleet replacing the weak and the slow - begin with Herbert Spencer? Did it begin with Yan Fu? Or was the existence of a single Chinese empire in place of the dozens of kingdoms that used to comprise Northeast Asia itself a manifestation of Social Darwinism - as rebellious kings were slaughtered, sometimes together with their subjects?

Just because someone gives something a new name doesn't means he invented it. Yan Fu was basically saying that the Chinese empire was in danger of extinction, in the face of potential encroachments from Western colonists - just as kingdoms on the Chinese empire's periphery have gradually become extinct over the past several millenia. (This isn't even the first time the Chinese gentry have memorialized over an external threat. Or urged the adoption of the methods of China's adversaries). The danger came and went. Nobody today thinks the Chinese empire will dissolve, let alone become extinct - Chinese or foreigner alike. The question for the average Chinese isn't when China will overtake its neighbors - with which it has a *lot* of catching up to do. It's when China will overtake the US.

My point is that your assumption that China's views are in reaction to Western actions or views is silly. They are irrelevant. When your ancestors were crawling around in animal skins eating raw meat, the Chinese were eating refined meals and drinking tea out of porcelain vessels, clad in silk clothing. This is what the average Chinese has had drummed into him for thousands of years. Under the fake humility the average Westerner encounters is the absolute certainty that the Chinese greatness of yore will bubble to surface, and that the oceanic (and all other) barbarians will be put in their place.

I'll grant you a certain sense of cultural superiority may play a role for some people. I don't think anyone would suggest that all Chinese think alike or that somebody automatically feels a certain way just because they were born in China.

The point of the post was to try and go beyond overly simplistic culturalist/essentialist arguments (that's just the way the Chinese are, etc.) or monocausal analyses (it's cultural superiority and nothing else, etc.) and look at other factors that play a role but which get far less mention. That's all.

I'm a USC East Asian Languages and Cultures student taking a course called "China and the World". Mainly we focus on the "worldviews" of two different countries and where and how these worldviews intersect. This article is a wonderful read, to say the least. We are currently studying that particular subject matter, and I was thrilled to find such a total composite of well articulated information and insight.

"Nobody today thinks the Chinese empire will dissolve, let alone become extinct - Chinese or foreigner alike. The question for the average Chinese isn't when China will overtake its neighbors - with which it has a *lot* of catching up to do. It's when China will overtake the US."

The Chinese empire could in fact be in danger of dissolving (and properly done, would not be a bad thing) because for the first time the encroaching force is not a military power but multiple cultural influences. The US cultural influence is strong. Despite the criticisms and blind assumptions that many Chinese have about American culture, they gladly inhale US movies, music and the Chinese version of American food. Add to that European influences, South Korean cultural influx and most interesting of all, the influence of those bad, bad Japanese and their hair styles, music and manga on China's under 18 crowd.

China uses the US as some sort of measuring stick, but it only measures tall buildings, subways, number of internet subscribers, etc. There are no soft measurements such as chartable contributions, blue blood sponsored art for the masses, any notion of an ACLU, real activism, legal accountability and a balance of power among branches of a government, not to mention proper social behavior.

I am a Chinese American from Taiwan, and I would agree with Zhan Fei in that most Chinese people, wherever they are, whatever they do, have the conviction, rightly or wrongly, that China will rise again to it's rightful place as a leading power. They derive this conviction from their knowledge, however imperfect, of the continuity of the Chinese culture and civilization over three and a half milleniums, during which it was the center of an East Asian focused world. This belief in China's "rightful" place has been sorely tested in the last 150 years by the shocking impact that a liberal, industrial western civilization has had on China, but the belief has held, and the Chinese are seeing the first signs of validation in China's surging economy. This is why there is a lot of sensitivity on the part of the Chinese at this time. They've been taught about China's past achievements, but they have, up until recently, witnessed very little of this greatness in their daily lives. Now - the Chinese will not be denied - and any criticism of China is seen as an attempt to hold them back.

This certainly doesn't mean that China, faced with its huge problems of overpopulation, corruption and environmental degradation may not collapse and dissolve into anarchy, it's just that most Chinese feel they are working through the problems and are on the cusp of their return to the world's center stage.