When China Rules the World полностью

The earliest awareness of China as we know it today came with the Zhou dynasty, which grew up along the Yellow River Valley at the end of the second millennium BC. Already, under the previous Shang dynasty, the foundations of modern China had begun to take shape with an ideographic language, ancestor worship and the idea of a single ruler. Chinese civilization, however, still did not have a strong sense of itself. That was to happen a few centuries later through the writings of Master Kong, or Confucius (to use his Latinized name). [596] As discussed in Chapter 4, by this time the Chinese language was used for government and education, and the idea of the mandate of Heaven as a principle of dynastic governance had been firmly established. Confucius’s life (551-479 BC) preceded the Warring States period (403 BC- 221 BC), when numerous states were constantly at war with each other. The triumph of the Qin dynasty (221- 206 BC) brought that period to an end and achieved a major unification of Chinese territories, with the emergence of modern China typically being dated from this time. [597] Although Confucius enjoyed little status or recognition during his lifetime, after his death he was to become the single most influential writer in Chinese history. For the next two thousand years China was shaped by his arguments and moral precepts, its government informed by his principles, and the Analects became established as the most important book in Chinese history. Confucianism was a syncretic mode of thinking which drew on other beliefs, most notably Taoism and Buddhism, but Confucius’s own ideas remained by far the most important. His emphasis on moral virtue, on the supreme importance of government in human affairs, and on the overriding priority of stability and unity, which was shaped by his experience of the turbulence and instability of a divided country, have informed the fundamental values of Chinese civilization ever since. [598] Only towards the end of the nineteenth century did his influence begin to wane, though even during the convulsions of the twentieth century – including the Communist period – the influence of his thinking remained persistent and tangible. Ironically it was Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader most hostile to Confucius, who was to pen the Little Red Book, which in both form and content clearly drew on the Confucian tradition. [599]

Two of the most obvious continuities in Chinese civilization, both of which can be traced back to Confucius, concern the state and education. The state has always been perceived as the embodiment and guardian of Chinese civilization, which is why, in both the dynastic and Communist eras, it has enjoyed such huge authority and legitimacy. Amongst its constellation of responsibilities, the state, most importantly of all, has the sacred task of maintaining the unity of Chinese civilization. Unlike in the Western tradition, the role of government has no boundaries; rather like a parent, with which it is often compared, there are no limits to its authority. Paternalism is regarded as a desirable and necessary characteristic of government. Although in practice the state has always been rather less omnipotent that this might suggest, there is no doubting the reverence and deference which the Chinese display towards it. [600] Similarly, the roots of China ’s distinctive concept of education and parenting lie deep in its civilizational past. Ever since Mencius (372- 289 BC), a disciple of Confucius, the Chinese have always been optimistic about human nature, believing that people were essentially good and that, by bringing children up in the right manner through the appropriate parenting and education, they would acquire the correct attitudes, values and self-discipline. In the classroom, children are expected to look respectfully upwards towards the teacher and, given the towering importance of history, reverentially backwards to the past in terms of the content of their learning. Education is vested with the authority and reverence of Chinese civilization, with teachers the bearers and transmitters of that wisdom. A high priority is placed on training and technique, as compared with the openness and creativity valued in the West, with the result that Chinese children often achieve a much higher level of technical competence at a much younger age in music and art, for example, than their Western counterparts. Perhaps this stems partly from the use of an ideographic language, which requires the rote learning of thousands of characters, and the ability to reproduce those characters with technical perfection. [601]