A Bridge Between Two Cultures
Seminar: November 8, 15, 29 - 2001
Oakton Community College - Skokie Campus
Lecturer: William K. Tong, Adjunct Faculty, Earth Science
Excerpts from
"Americans & Chinese: Passages To Differences,"
3rd Edition, by Francis L.K. Hsu "Americans & Chinese" is the classic work of professional anthropologist Francis L.K. Hsu, who was former chair of the Anthropology Department at Northwestern University and President of the American Anthropology Association. First published in 1953, "Americans & Chinese" was the first comprehensive and exhaustive study between two great cultures, China and the United States of America. Professor Hsu utilized his unique background (born in China, educated in Europe, and settled as an American citizen since the 1940s) as a scientist to bridge the gap between two often very different cultures by illuminating each through the deliberate comparison and contrast of an astonishing array of everyday facets of life generally understood by most native members of each respective culture, including: art, fictional literature, sex, romance, the role of women in society, parents and children, educational methods, social needs and values, causes and nature of crime, marriage and class, hero worship, attitudes towards government, corruption and bribery, religion (Chinese polytheism vs. Western monotheism), approaches and attitudes to economic life. He also analyzed the long-standing societal problems that have plagued America (old age, the generation gap, racial relations, sex crimes and violence), as well as those that had plagued China, especially before 1949 (inability to shed past practices, foot binding, the powerless plight of women, revolt without revolution, the loss of world leadership in science, lack of voluntary organizations outside of kinship). Even more amazing were his 1953 predictions of America's struggle with world unrest while pursuing foreign policy that supported former colonial powers in opposition to the struggles of indigenous peoples to gain freedom by pursuing American ideals and principles - he essentially foresaw the aftermath of the Korean War and America's disastrous involvement in Vietnam more than a decade later. Professor Hsu's book aimed to present a new solution and paradigm for understanding the root cause of societal ills in both cultures. In America, he saw the blind, often excessive pursuit of self-reliance and the inherent, permanent instability of human relationships as the root cause of many intractable social ills, including crime, racial discord, and the sale of influence in government. In China, he saw the traditional narrow focus on kinship based relationships had rendered their society unable to effectively counter Western colonialism, widespread poverty and famine, and even the practice of footbinding of women. "Americans & Chinese" is well organized into discrete chapters, and may be read and skimmed in any order desired. The author's reasoning and arguments are well documented and supported, and often challenge readers' long held assumptions. It is especially suited to open-minded readers who wish to truly learn and understand Chinese culture, as well as illuminate and offer an alternative perspective on American culture.
As a fourth generation Chinese American who was also the first to be born in America (my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were immigrants), "Americans & Chinese" has influenced my life and outlook more than any other book that I've read. My father found it to be invaluable for helping him understand the culture of his adopted country.
-William K. Tong, Adjunct Faculty, Earth Science
Oakton Community College
The paperback version of the 1981 edition of "Americans & Chinese: Passage To Differences" is available at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble book stores. Here are reviews of the book from Amazon:
From the Back cover: "When the first edition of Professor Hsu's book was published in 1953, it became a celebrated book, highly valued among scholars across many fields in the humanities and social sciences.... The publication of the third edition of this book, almost thirty years after its first appearance, certainly says a great deal about its value.... Reading this classic allows the readers to see real people, and how people relate to people, in two culturally contrasting societies. This book will serve a useful purpose for those who have little understanding of the cultural history and psychological orientations of the people of China and the United States."
-The Journal of Psychoanalytic AnthropologyAbout the Author
Francis L.K. Hsu (1909-1999) was professor emeritus of anthropology and a past director of the Center for Cultural Studies in Education at the University of San Francisco. For many years he was chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University, and in 1977-1978 he served as president of the American Anthropological Association.
Excerpts from "Americans & Chinese: Passages To Differences," 3rd Edition, by Francis L.K. Hsu
Prologue: Culture and Behavior
There is no doubt that individuals differ as to temperament, taste, potentiality, and idiosyncrasy. Exceptional actions on the part of some individuals are not difficult to find. For example, a mischievous Chinese humorist, Hsu Wen-ch'ang of the Ming dynasty, did something that seemingly antedated the Russian Pavlov of the "conditioned reflex" fame by at least two hundred years. Hsu's maternal uncle disapproved of him in general, and the feeling was mutual. One day they had a particularly trying session with each other. While his older relative was visiting with Hsu's parents, Hsu went outside the house and bowed low toward the donkey on which his uncle had arrived. Before the animal realized what was happening Hsu whacked it with a stick several times on its head and body. Of course the donkey twisted and jerked wildly in pain. When the time came for his uncle to take leave of Hsu's parents, Hsu was asked to see the visitor off. As soon as his uncle mounted the beast, Hsu bowed low to the departing relative in the customary attitude of respect. The animal, remembering what had followed that gesture before, instantly jerked and twisted, throwing Hsu's uncle to the ground.
Beyond differences among individuals, every society exhibits variation within itself. Northern Chinese and Cantonese speak mutually unintelligible dialects. Clan temples were more numerous south of the Yangtze River than north of it. Some northern Chinese are prone to speak of their southern compatriots as superficial and "slippery headed" (tricky), or dishonest, while I often met Southerners who told me that I did not look like a man from the north. I have, they would say, a southern complexion and a stature not quite tall enough for the north. The myth about northern stature is alive in spite of the fact that many Fukien Chinese (from the mainland province opposite Taiwan) are giants of six feet or better. As for the United States, sortie New Yorkers think, as one author put it, "Californians are adolescents with a surfboard under one arm and a guru under the other." On the other hand, some Californians see most New Yorkers as people too given to what's "in" and what's "out." They are "rigid with apprehension that they will die wearing the wrong sneakers."
It is well known that laws vary from state to state in the United States. But most Americans probably do not know that Mississippi is the only state in the Union that allows convicts in prison to receive regular conjugal visits; or that Nevada, besides having legalized gambling, did not post speed signs on its highways before the energy crisis, on the theory that motorists should be able to judge for themselves. However, in spite of exceptional individuals and regional differences, a majority of the people of each society do act according to their society's accepted and usual patterns of behavior in their day-to-day business of life. The penalties for nonconformity vary. A departing male American who forgets to kiss his wife at the airport is in for trouble when he returns. A Chinese father who boasts to his friends about his son's good looks will be an object of derision. An American guest who brings someone else to dinner unheralded is not likely to be invited again. A Chinese visitor who compliments his hostess on her beauty comes close to being immoral. He can praise her cooking skills, or her kindness, or even the way she trains her children, but he must not mention her physical attributes, including her clothing. These do's and don'ts are but a few of the countless culturally prescribed rules of individual behavior so clear to the adults of each society that they seem to be part of the order of nature. From this angle, the notion that each individual can "do his own thing" to the exclusion of others is unrealistic and nonhuman, for two reasons. First, all of us must live with some other human beings in varying degrees of affection. They are our spouses, parents and children, close friends, relatives, followers, and heroes. The second reason we must have some other human beings is that they provide us with goods and/or services. We and they stand in role relationships to each other. We need not only basic utilities, garbage disposal, or medical attention, but also postcards, writing implements, and daily nourishment. Even Zen masters usually have to do their meditation in buildings which they did not build and guide or punish their disciples with tools which they did not produce. There are quite a few Hindu holy men who receive the adulation of their disciples while seated on tiger-skin-draped thronelike sofas or make use of the modern microphone as deftly as Billy Graham in Madison Square Garden.
Consequently, no matter how committed a society is to an individualistic philosophy, it cannot function without having to organize its members according to certain general principles of grouping: women as distinguished from men, adults from children, able-bodied from the unfit, atomic scientists from butchers, unskilled from the skilled, the qualified practitioners from the quacks, soldiers from civilians, and so forth. Individuals are placed in each of these categories for their commonality, not individuality.
As our society evolves toward greater equality and liberalization more women will enter occupations formerly thought to be male preserves, more children will break down more parental restrictions, and more "gays" will be accepted in the "straight" world. But it is unlikely, in fact impossible, for any society, including ours, to obliterate categorization and consider every member as an individual in every way according to our individualistic idea. Can we stop certification of doctors and drivers so that anyone who wants to can practice medicine or drive a car? Can we forget about age and income differences so that anyone who so desires can collect Social Security and welfare payments?
Likewise, over and above differences based on class, national origin, sex, geographical region, age, and occupation, a majority of Chinese in China can deal with each other better than they can with the inhabitants of the United States, while a majority of Americans can do the same better with their own countrymen than with the Chinese in China. They may not approve of or understand all that their respective fellow countrymen do, but in the normal course of events they are less likely than foreigners to be surprised by them. For each people share a large body of basic, common ideas, attitudes, and expectations which provide the average man with his bearings in dealing with his fellow countrymen and which hold the society together, contemporaneously and over time.
In the 1953 edition of this book, I related the following episode according to mid-1948 north China newspapers:
A bundle containing the remains of a woman's body was found on the bank of a river which runs through the metropolitan city of Tientsin. More than ten years before, she and her husband, Chang, had left their north China village and gone to Manchuria, where he worked as a coal miner. She died in 1946 and was buried there in a temporary grave. When the Nationalist vs. Communist civil war forced a shutdown of the mines, Chang decided to go back to his native village. Not wanting to leave his wife's body in Manchuria, he dug its remains out of the tomb, packed them in a bundle, and started home with his three children, aged eleven, eight, and seven. Unable to pay for train fares all the way, they walked from Changchun, north Manchuria, to Shenyang, south Manchuria, a distance of about two hundred miles. From there they rode for forty miles west to Hsinmin, then walked for three hundred miles to the north China coal mining center of Tongshan, from which point they rode free in a coal train for another eighty miles to Tientsin. Before beginning their last 120-rnile walk home from Tientsin, the four passed the night at the bottom of a wall near the railway station. A thief, obviously mistaking the bundle for ordinary baggage, stole it and later abandoned it. As soon as Chang discovered the bundle was missing he begged a literate person to write a number of "lost" notices for him, and these he posted in streets around the station. When someone told him that the police had found a female body near the river, Chang went forward and identified it as that of his wife. But instead of agreeing to its local burial, which the authorities required for public health reasons, Chang insisted: "Burial here will never do. Even if I agree, my sons will object. I carried her over a thousand miles. I used the bundle as a pillow every night, but I am still not sick!" He was finally allowed to take the body. But before leaving, Chang asked that the lock of hair and a tooth, removed by the examiners for identification, be returned to him, saying "she must have her body intact for burial. "That Chang was a poor and illiterate man who could not afford to pay for rail transportation is easy for Americans to understand. They have heard that poverty was common in China. Americans who hear this story are also impressed by the intensity of Chang's devotion to his deceased wife, but they regard the form it took as bizarre and unnecessary since it might have imperiled the health of Chang and his children. Some of my American friends sympathize with Chang's insistence on the restoration of the tooth and the lock of hair, yet they cannot understand why Chang claimed to be acting on behalf of his children.
In the Chinese view both American objections are groundless. To be buried with body intact in the village of one's birth is, to the Chinese, part of the complete life, and it is a son's obligation to carry this out. Because the miner's children were too young to bury their mother, the father acted for them, regardless of whatever hardship this entailed. Just as these customs baffle the average American, many American ideas and practices are equally alien to the Chinese. I first realized this in China in 1944 while watching the movie version of Marcia Davenport's novel, "Valley of Decision." The leading roles were played by Gregory Peck and Greer Garson. Peck, as the son of a wealthy industrialist in one of the great steel centers of the United States, had many new ideas concerning both production and labor relations which were contradictory to those of his parents and their associates. He was unhappily married to a woman whose ideas agreed with those of his parents and they had a child of about six. During a conversation with Greer Garson, a maid in the family's palatial home, whose father was a worker in one of her employer's plants, Peck became attracted by her views, personality, and sympathy. But she refused his love because he was a married man. In the meantime, labor trouble erupted in the plant. The workers struck for higher wages and better work conditions. A group of strike breakers were then called in. Peck attempted to persuade his father and his advisers to call them off and to discuss terms with the labor leaders. But while his father, under pressure of the son's advice, was exchanging views with the labor leader, a battle started between the workers and the strike breakers. The father was killed, many men were injured, and the family's magnificent house was destroyed. Garson's father was killed also. After order was restored, Peck took over the management of the business and liberalized its labor policies. In conclusion, Peck's unsympathetic wife demanded a divorce and Peck and Garson were married.
To the American audience, this was good drama, since every conflict was resolved in a way that is desirable, from an American point of view. The production conflict was resolved in favor of new views on manufacturing methods over the old-fashioned ones; liberal attitudes toward labor won out in the social conflict with hard fisted attempts to suppress the workingmen; Peck, the progressive son, replaced his conservative father; and true love triumphed where only marital misery had prevailed.
However, my Chinese friend who saw the film with me was far from pleased. He understood the gigantic size and extent of American industry and wealth, and he had some comprehension of the bitterness and violence of American industrial disputes. He was also aware that Americans are usually ready to experiment with new ideas or to introduce novel methods of production. But he considered both the Peck and Garson characters to be villains. Peck was shamefully unfilial because he was opposed to his father, and undid all that the elder tried to carry out. Garson was practically the sole cause not only of the breakdown of Peck's marriage but also of his family's ruin and his father's destruction. When the maid first entered the picture, the family was prosperous, dignified, and intact. If she had not encouraged her young master in his views, he would not have asked his father to negotiate with the laborers, the old man would not have been exposed to their fatal attack, nor would her own father have died in the melee.
To the Chinese audience, a son in conflict with his father was a bad son, and a maid who would help such a son in his ventures was a bad woman. Through the same Chinese lens, the daughter-in-law was regarded as an extremely virtuous woman who suffered in malicious hands. The question of the young master's own unhappiness with his wife as opposed to his possible happiness with the maid should never have been raised.
The contrasts epitomized in these two episodes arise out of the basic and characteristic ways in which people in each society see their past, present, and future, and define their problems and seek solutions to them. This common outlook has been variously termed "social character," "themes of culture," "life way," "ethos," "basic personality, " or "philosophy of life. " I shall not consider here the merits and demerits of these terms or enter upon a technical discussion of psychological anthropology. For the purposes of this book, I will simply call this common outlook the "Chinese way of life" or the "American way of life."
Does each way of life change over time? My answer is yes, but not in the usually understood sense of the word "change," especially as it has been applied to American society and culture. America has indeed undergone many changes since World War II, and from the 1960s to the 1970s. In the sixties, we saw the widespread use of drugs among youth, the hippie and yippie movements, the student unrest that challenged the nature and even the very existence of higher education, the racial violence that threatened to reduce our cities to ashes, and the sex explosion.
Since then, and up to now, we have witnessed a variety of new developments, which Christopher Lasch, Tom Wolfe, and others call the "new narcissism" or the "me generation." But is this trend really new? The shift from collective protest to the individual search for self-gratification and self-fulfillment was foretold in mass protesters' statements about their own mental condition while they were protesting. For example, "Pete" (not his real name), a philosophy major who turned to campus-wide protest to force his Ivy League university to divest itself of stocks of companies that did a primary amount of their business in South Africa, said, "Now that I'm actively involved in trying to change things, I'm much happier than when I was feeling a lot of guilt-sex hangups and ambition hangups."
Pete's statement is echoed in the words of Susan Stern, another anti-establishmentarian of the late sixties. In her memoir of the Weathermen, she described her feelings during the demonstration at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago: "I felt good. I could feel my body supple and strong and slim, and ready to run miles, and my legs moving sure and swift under Me."
Seen in the longer-term context of the American culture, the trend toward individual fulfillment is but an escalation of that same American approach dramatized nearly a half century ago in "Valley of Decision." On the China side, tumultuous events after 1949 have seemed to signal to the Western world real breaks with the past. The avowed aim of the Communist government at Peking since 1949 has been no less than the total transformation of the entire Chinese society. The Great Leap, the Cultural Revolution, and now the fall of the Gang of Four and the drive for the Four Modernizations tell us something about the twists and turns of a giant revolutionary movement involving a huge society with a long and proud history.
But the Chinese character of the new developments has yet to be clearly understood even by Western visitors to the People's Republic who had
known the country before 1949. For example, after a 1972 tour of China the columnist Joseph Alsop changed from a vehement critic of the new regime to a high praiser of its achievements. As he and his wife were leaving China by train from Canton to Hong Kong they discussed between themselves a question that puzzled them most. Both found the Soviet Union and other European Communist countries depressing in contrast to China, which they found during their month-long trip "neither suffocating nor
depressing." Rather than thanking God to be crossing the border (which is standard post-Russia trip response), we wished we could have had several months more." He and his wife asked themselves, "Why?"
Alsop's question was well posed, I think, for I had the same feeling.
... [we shall now] look at the broader phases of the family pattern in which the two peoples differ greatly, but consistently.
The Home
Let us begin with Chinese and American homes. An American house usually has a yard, large or small. It may have a hedge, but rarely is there a wall so high that a passerby cannot see the windows. The majority of American houses have neither hedges nor outside walls. Usually the interior is shielded from exterior view only by window curtains or blinds, and then during but part of the day.
The majority of Chinese houses are, in the first place, surrounded by such high walls that only the roofs are visible from the outside, and solid gates separate the interior grounds from the outside world. In addition, there is usually a shadow wall placed directly in front of the gates on the other side of the street as well as a four-paneled wooden screen standing about five feet behind the gates. The outside shadow wall keeps the home from direct exposure to the unseen spirits. The inside wooden screen shields the interior courtyard from pedestrians' glances when the gates are ajar.
Inside the home, the contrast between China and America is reversed. The American emphasis within the home is on privacy. There are not only doors to the bathrooms but also to the bedrooms, and often to the living room and even the kitchen. Space and possessions are individualized. Parents have little liberty in the rooms of the children, and children cannot do what they want in those parts of the house regarded as preeminently their parents' domain. Among some sections of the American population this rule of privacy extends to the husband and wife, so that each has a separate bedroom.
Within the Chinese home, on the other hand, privacy hardly exists at all, except between members of the opposite sexes who are not spouses. Chinese children, even in homes which have ample room, often share the same chambers with their parents until they reach adolescence. Not only do parents have freedom of action with reference to the children's belongings, but the youngsters can also use the possessions of the parents if they can lay their hands on them. If children damage their parents' possessions they are scolded, not because they touched things that were not theirs but because they are too young to handle them with proper care.
The lack of privacy within the home finds its extreme expression in many well-to-do families of north China. Here the rooms are arranged in rows like the cars of a train. But instead of each room having a separate entrance, the rooms are arranged in sequence, one leading into another. Thus, if there are five rooms, the front door of the house opens into the center room, which serves as the kitchen, each leading into a room which has in turn another door opening into the end rooms. Beginning at one end of the house-call it room A-one can walk in a straight line to room B, into the kitchen-dining room C, into room D, and finally into room E. The parents will occupy room B, nearest the kitchen, leaving room A free for a married daughter when she and her children come for a prolonged visit. If the family has two married sons, the older brother and his wife and children will occupy room D, while the younger brother and his wife will occupy room E. The occupants of rooms A and E will have to pass through rooms B and D in order to go in and out of the house. Actual arrangements vary somewhat from family to family, but this simplified picture is generally true.
Such an arrangement in living quarters would be very offensive to Americans. But many Chinese adhere to a variation of the common linear arrangement even when they have more rooms and space in which to spread out. For they consider all within the four walls as being one body. The American child's physical environment establishes strong lines of individual distinction within the home, but there is very little stress on separation of the home from the outside world. The Chinese child's environment is exactly the reverse. He finds a home with few demarcation lines within it but separated by high walls and multiple gates from the outside world.
Parents and Children
The difference between Chinese and American homes reflects the contrasting patterns of behavior in the family. In no other country on earth is there so much attention paid to infancy, or so much privilege accorded during childhood as in the United States. In contrast, it may be said without exaggeration that China before 1949 was a country in which children came last. The contrast can be seen in a myriad of ways. Americans are very verbal about their children's rights. There is not only state and federal legislation to protect the young ones, but there are also many voluntary juvenile protective associations to look after their welfare.
In China, parents have had a completely free hand with their children. Popular misconception notwithstanding, infanticide was never an everyday occurrence in China. It was the last resort of poor parents with too many daughters, especially during a famine. Certainly no parent would brag about it. In fact, there are stories about the grief of parents in such a predicament and quite a few jokes on the theme of how some irate parents deal with tactless clods who utter unwelcome expressions about the birth of a daughter.
However, before 1949, infanticide by needy Chinese parents was never cause for public shock or censure. Parents who committed infanticide were seldom punished by the law. It is literally true that with regard to children, American parents have practically no rights; but from the viewpoint of Chinese parents, children have little reason to expect protection from their elders. If an American were to point with justifiable pride to his country's many child protective associations, a Chinese would simply counter with an equally proud boast about his nation's ancient cultural heritage in which Confucian filial piety was the highest ideal.
American parents are so concerned with the welfare of their children, and so determined to do the right thing, that they handsomely support a huge number of child specialists. Chinese parents have taken their children so much for granted that pediatrics as a separate branch of medicine was unknown until modern times. I know of no piece of traditional literature aimed at making the Chinese better parents, and even several decades after the fall of the Manchu dynasty, there was hardly any scientific inquiry into what children might think or desire. Articles on how to treat children appeared only sporadically in a few Chinese newspapers and magazines, many of them translations or synopses of material from the West.
But American do not only study their children's behavior - they glorify it. Chinese did not only take their children for granted - they minimized their importance. The important thing to Americans is what parents should do for their children; to Chinese, what children should do for their parents.
The extent to which some American parents will go to suit the convenience of their children is exemplified by a Midwestern couple I know. To make their little ones happy, they installed a fancy slide in their living room. Guests entered the apartment by bending under it, and then they attempted to enjoy a conversation within reach of the boisterous sideshow provided by the young ones sliding up and down.
That this is unusual even for the United States is indicated by the fact that this couple felt compelled to justify their action every time they had a visitor and by the fact that their friends remarked about it. No Chinese parents could have kept the respect of the community if they permitted anything remotely resembling this indulgence.
For many centuries, Chinese were both entertained and instructed by tales known as "The Twenty-Four Examples of Filial Piety." These were so popular that different versions of them are available. Following the traditional approach to literature of writing on some exalted model, the Chinese ancients have handed down to posterity at least two series of "The Twenty-Four Examples of Filial Piety. "
These stories were illustrated in paintings, dramatized on the stage, and recited by storytellers in tea houses and market places all over the country. Here is one of these "examples":
A poor man by the name of Kuo and his wife were confronted with a serious problem. His aged mother was sick in bed. She needed both medicine and nourishment which Kuo could ill afford. After consultation between themselves, Kuo and his wife decided that the only way out was to get rid of their three-year-old only son. For Kuo and his wife said to each other, "We have only one mother, but we can always get another child." Thereupon the two went out to the field to dig a pit for the purpose of burying their child alive. But shortly after the man had started to dig he suddenly struck gold. It transpired that the gods were moved by the spirit of their filial piety, and this was their reward. Both the child and the mother were amply provided for and the family thrived happilyTo the Chinese, this story dramatized their most important cultural support of the parents came before all other obligations s obligation must be fulfilled, even at the expense of the children.
Economic support is not, however, the only way in which Chinese children are obligated to their parents. The son not only has to follow the Confucian dictum that "parents are always right," but at all times and in all circumstances, he must try to satisfy their wishes and look after their safety. If the parents are indisposed, the son should spare no trouble in obtaining a cure for them. Formerly, if a parent was sentenced to prison, the son might arrange to take that parent's place. (In the 1999 movie, "Romeo Must Die," the Hong Kong police officer character played by actor Jet Li voluntarily frames himself and goes to prison to protect his father, a crime boss, from being convicted of contract murders. - W. Tong) If the parents were displeased with their daughter-in-law, the good son did not hesitate to think about divorce. In the service of the elders, no effort was too extraordinary or too great.
...The relationship between Chinese parents and children shows entirely different characteristics. Chinese parents are amused by infantile behavior and youthful exuberance, but the measure of their children's worth is determined primarily by the degree to which they act like adults. Chinese parents are rather proud of a child who acts "older than his age," whereas some American parents might take a similar child to a psychiatrist. What Chinese parents consider rowdiness in a child's behavior, American parents might approve of as a sign of initiative. (American parents praise their children by calling them "good kids." Chinese parents giving similar praise call their children "obedient," which in the Chinese context is synonymous with "good" in Chinese society. -W. Tong)
Also interesting is the approach of Chinese children to whatever toys they may have. When I was six years of age, my mother bought me a cart made of tinfoil. Soldered above the door of the cart was an ornamental rectangle. Having seen movable curtains on real carts, I attempted to lower the "curtain" at the entrance of my toy cart and yanked the stationary ornament out of place. An American mother might have gloated over creative impulse of her "budding genius," but my mother was very much displeased because she thought me destructive and temperamental. Had I acted the model Chinese child and nursed one old toy for a couple of years, an American mother might have worried about the retarded or warped state of my mind."
...In order to understand the contrasting life-styles of the American and Chinese peoples, we must explore the long-standing parent-child bases that have nurtured them. Only then can we evaluate how far more recent developments have or have not altered the picture. It is true that a good many things have happened, to the Chinese parent-child relationship since 1949. To start with, when an American speaks of a family he refers to parents and unmarried children; a Chinese includes grandparents and in-laws. Even if Chinese grandparents and in-laws do not live under the same roof, they usually reside in the same village, a neighboring village, or, more rarely, a neighboring district. This is one of the traditional features which the government of the People's Republic has worked hard to alter by assigning places of work, by stimulating population movement, by the work-study program, and other measures. But as we shall see in Chapter 15, kinship and local ties remain important building blocks of the commune. On the other hand, Americans related by blood or legal bonds may live so far from one another that this broader group does not come together except on holidays.
These differences mark the point of departure in the early experiences of Chinese and American children. The Chinese child grows up amid continuing or frequent contacts with a number of related individuals besides his own parents and siblings, but his American counterpart grows up in much greater physical isolation. Thus very early in life the former is conditioned to getting along with a wide circle of relatives while the latter is not.
Far more crucial, however, is the manner of interaction between the growing child and individuals other than those belonging to his immediate family. American parents are the sole agents of control over their children until they are of age. The grandparents and in-laws do not ordinarily occupy a disciplinary role, whether they live in the same house or not. Even when grandparents take over during an emergency such as sickness or childbirth, the older people are supposed to do no more than administer things according to the laws laid down by the younger couple, most likely by the younger woman.
Chinese parents have much less exclusive control over their children. In cases where grandparents do not share the same roof with them, during a brief visit the older couple can do almost anything they see fit in regard to the children, even if it means going over the parents' heads. The liberty taken by most Chinese aunts, uncles, and in-laws would cause very severe stress in American families. Furthermore, while an American mother exhibits her displeasure with an overindulgent grandmother and is considered right by others, a Chinese mother doing the same thing would have been an object of censure rather than sympathy.
The inevitable result of the omnipresent and exclusive control of American parents over their children is greater and deeper emotional involvement. The American parent-child relationship is close and exclusive. To the extent that they are the only objects of worship, they also are liable to become the only oppressors. Accordingly, when an American child likes his parents, they are his idols. When he dislikes them, they are his enemies. A conscious or unconscious attachment to one parent at the expense of the other, a situation which gave Freud ground for postulating his famed Oedipus complex, is the extreme expression of this configuration.
The mutual affection of Chinese parents and children is toned down compared to that of their American counterparts. Since parental authority varies with circumstances, the parental image in the mind of the growing child must necessarily share the spotlight with men and women held in much higher esteem, such as grandparents, and with those regarded as the equals of the parents, such as uncles and aunts. The feeling toward parents and other adult authority figures being divided and diluted, the child does not develop a paralyzing attachment to, or strong repulsion against, the elders. There is still less reason for the emergence of the Oedipal triangle in which the child is allied to one parent against the other. Consequently, when the Chinese child likes his parents, he fails to idolize them alone; when he dislikes them he vents his displeasure with great reserve. These contrasting results flow inevitably from the respective kinship premises of the two cultures. Even though the biological family consists of parents and unmarried children everywhere, according to the American pattern of interaction it tends to become a collection of isolated dyads; according to its Chinese counterparts, no dyadic relationship is free from the larger network.
This contrast reveals itself with great clarity when pseudo-kinship is involved. The only pseudo-kinship relationship left in present day United States is that of godparents and godchild. Our older daughter Eileen's godfather, Mr. L. (an anthropologist and a native American), died in 1953. Some years later my wife and our two daughters paid a social visit to Mrs. L. While the five of us were having dinner, our younger daughter, Penny, then about twelve years old, casually declared to all of us that since Mrs. L. was Eileen's godmother, she was naturally also her godmother. This came to my wife and me as a surprise. Though born, raised, and partially educated in China, I had understood - intellectually at least - the American usage. Eileen was Mr. L.'s goddaughter, and he her godfather. But that relationship had nothing to do with Mrs. L. nor with any of Eileen's family members. Our Evanston-born second daughter, though she had never seen China at that time, had obviously picked up our implicit understanding of Chinese kinship logic. According to which, not only would Mrs. L. be Eileen's godmother and Eileen's sister would be Mr. and Mrs. L.'s second goddaughter, but all of Mr. and Mrs. L.'s children would be both of our daughters' godsiblings.
The beginning of the contrasts between the two ways of life now become apparent. In America, the child learns to see the world strictly on an individual basis. Even though he did not have a chance to choose his parents, he can choose to prefer one more than the other. Extending from this basic tie outward, the American's relationship with other members of his kin group is strictly dependent upon individual preference. The American "must see early in life that a powerful force composed of many aspects of individual choice - making operates to create, maintain, or cancel out interpersonal relationships. His parents, for their part, have to conduct themselves so that they will not tag in the competition for the affection of their children. This, and the fact that most American parents encourage their children very early to do things for themselves - to feed themselves, to make their own decisions - leads the American child to follow his own predilections. He expects his environment to be sensitive to him.
The Chinese child learns to see the world in terms of a network of relationships. He not only has to submit to his parents, but he also has little choice in his wider social relationships and what he individually would like to do about them. This, and the fact that Chinese parents are firmly convinced that elders know better and so never feel defensive about it, leads the Chinese child to appreciate the importance of differing circumstances. As to defending themselves, the characteristic advice to Chinese children is: "Don't get into trouble outside, but if there is danger, run home." The Chinese child is obliged to be sensitive to his environment.
There is experimental evidence for this difference. Godwin C. Chu, comparing his study of 182 Chinese high school students in Taiwan with an earlier study by Janis and Field of 182 American high school students, demonstrates that the Chinese are far more persuadable than the Americans.
Though consciously encouraging their children to grow up in some ways, American parents firmly refuse to let the youngsters enter the real world of the adults. They leave their children with sitters when they go to parties. If they entertain at home, they put the youngsters to bed before the guests arrive. Children have no part in parents' regular social activities. There is a tendency on the part of a few ultra-modern American parents to take their babies or children with them to social gatherings, but this is not the generally accepted American way. At least not yet.
Chinese parents take their children with them not only to wedding feasts, funeral breakfasts, and religious celebrations, but also to purely social or business gatherings. A father in business thinks nothing of taking his boy of six or seven to an executive conference.
This pattern is still adhered to by the majority of second- , third- , and even fourth-generation Chinese-Americans in Hawaii, San Francisco, and New York. Like their Caucasian neighbors, Chinese organizers in Hawaii resort to "family" picnics and "family" evenings, and even athletics for the purpose of maintaining or increasing club or church enrollment. But unlike their Caucasian neighbors, Chinese parents take their very young children with them on many more occasions - for example, on social and business visits which last until late at night.
Some years ago the idea of "togetherness" between parents and children became fashionable, at least in some sections of American society. The central concern was that the parents and children should do things together, such as attend outings, shows, or church activities, and share hobbies. Some writers observed that television, for all of its faulty programming, at least brings members of a family together. Now we know that this isn't true. There is also no evidence that the togetherness which some progressive parents had hoped would solidify the family as a unit has achieved the desired effect. For the togetherness that progressive American parents looked for was planned-an activity-studded togetherness in which children and their elders would have each other but would define the rest of the world as outsiders and give it no part in their circle. So conceived, it was literally a honeymoon between parents and children. It was bound to get on the nerves of all, especially its commander-in-chief, the father. It failed because it was an artificial togetherness, not one nurtured in the American kinship constellation.
Chinese youngsters enter into the adult world unobtrusively in the course of their mental and physical growth. Their own infantile and youthful world is tolerated but never encouraged. On the contrary, they reap more rewards as they participate more and more in adult activities. From the beginning their elders share with them a community of interests, except relating to sex; they participate in real life, not in an artificially roped-off sector of it. American parents, except for the very poor, proceed on quite the opposite assumption with their insistence on privacy for all individuals. The business of American parents - social and commercial - is their private reserve, and no trespassing by children is allowed except on those rare and eventful occasions when an explicit invitations is extended. By the same token, parents are also supposed to refrain from entering into the activities of their youngsters.
Not so among the Chinese. Chinese children consider it a matter of course to witness or participate in adult affairs, exactly as Chinese adults have no constraints about joining in their children's activities. This reciprocity goes so far that neither has any reservations about opening letters addressed to the other.
Nothing is more strikingly symbolic of these profound differences than the fact that American children celebrate their birthdays among themselves, their parents being assistants or servants, while Chinese children's birthdays are occasions for adult celebrations at which children may be present, as in wedding or funeral feasts, but where they certainly are not the center of attraction.
The line of demarcation between the adult and the child world is drawn in many other ways. For instance, many American parents may be totally divorced from the church, or entertain grave doubts about the existence of God, but they send their children to Sunday schools and help them to pray. American parents struggle in a competitive world where sheer cunning and falsehood are often rewarded and respected, but they feed their children with nursery tales in which the morally good is pitted against the bad, and in the end the good invariably is successful and the bad inevitably punished. When American parents are in serious domestic trouble, they maintain a front of sweetness and light before their children. Even if American parents suffer a major business or personal catastrophe, they feel obliged to turn to their children and say, "Honey, everything is going to be all right." This American desire to keep the children's world separate from that of the adults is also exemplified by the practice of delaying the transmission of bad news to children when their parents have been killed in an accident for example, or concealing certain facts from them, as when one of the parents goes to jail. In summary, American parents face a world of reality while many of their children live in the near-ideal, unreal realm where the rules of the parental world do not apply, are watered down, or may even be reversed.
It is this separateness of the children's world that makes the kind of hero found in J. D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" so meaningful to so many youthful American readers. Here is an adolescent who sees through the invisible wars around him. He denounces as phonies the people who act according to rules outside that wall, but he feels terribly lonely, because most of those inside the wall are working so hard to be content with their place. However, even Holden Caulfield returns to the fold in the end. He decides not to run away; he goes back to school; and he reflects while his little sister, Phoebe, is on the carousel: "The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them."
In this context, too, we can understand why Eddie Seidel, Jr., a fifteen-year-old boy in Minnesota, jumped two hundred feet to his death from a bridge after the television series "Battlestar Galactica" was cancelled by ABC. "His father ... described Eddie as a sometimes brilliant boy who couldn't find enough in life to keep him interested." The father "learned ... the boy had been sniffing gas with friends so he sent him to a psychiatrist." The latter reported that the boy was "just kind of bored with life," because "there was nothing here for him to excel in.... There was no real challenge here on this earth." He "lived and died for television shows" according to the news story headline (San Francisco Chronicle, August 26, 1979). Eddie's is, of course, an unusual case in any society, but it is more in tune with what goes on in America than in China.
Chinese children share the same world with their parents, and the parents make little effort to hide their problems and real selves from their children. Very early in life, Chinese children learn that reward and punishment are not necessarily consistent with the estabished rules of conduct, and that justice and love do not always prevail. At the same time they are more likely than American children to become conscious of the power exercised by the environment - they see their parents' faults as well as their virtues. From the beginning, they see their parents as ordinary mortals succeeding at times but failing at others, following inevitably the paths marked by custom and tradition.
American children are not only increasingly convinced of the importance of their individual predilections, but they are equally sure that they can accomplish what they set out to achieve. In the American child's restricted and comfortable world, he experiences few irreparable setbacks and knows few situations in which he is entirely frustrated by reality. It is only parents who can impose restrictions that the child may see as barriers to his own advancement.
The Chinese child is not only fully aware that he should obey his parents and other seniors, but even when he succeeds in circumventing them, he still faces the hurdles presented by custom and tradition. Through his active observation of and participation in adult activities, he is already well acquainted with some of his own shortcomings and the real nature of his society. The foci of attention and power being many, the restrictions imposed upon the individual. come not merely from the parents but from the society at large. Even if he resents these barriers, he can still see no point on which to center his attack, for they are too numerous and too diffuse.
Consequently, Chinese children's dreams are far less grandiose and their fantasies are far more down to earth. Being part of the adult world they tend to be too busy with adult or adult-linked activi ties to be left to their own devices. This explains, I think, why Chinese literature, regardless of political change, does not feature characters who will go it alone, and is not concerned with introspection - a condition that one scholar of Chinese literature characterizes as "psychological poverty."
School
By school age, Chinese children have a fairly realistic world view. Most American children of the same age understand little of the. world of human reality which awaits them." The impact of the schools makes their differences even more pronounced. The traditional Chinese schools, which remained unchanged for two thousand years, and the American schools of today are different in every way imaginable.
Old-style Chinese schools carried forward what the growing children had learned from the preschool experience, just as modern American schools attempt to further the pattern of behavior that American youngsters learn at home. Chinese children learned at home to respect their parents and tradition. In school they had the same virtues impressed on them by Confucian classics. American children learn at home to follow their individual predilections. In school, it is true, they are taught to cooperate, to develop sportsmanship, and so forth, but the relentless emphasis on creativity, autonomy, and progressive teaching techniques reinforces the values learned in the home.
It is only since the beginning of the twentieth century that Chinese children have been confronted with ideas and activities in school that are different from those which prevail at home. In the newer schools, for example, they learned about the relationships between germs and disease; at home their elders, who might also have attended school, but the fully traditional school, spat on the floor just as their ancestors did. In the modern schools, youngsters engaged in physical exercise, arts and crafts, and band practice; at home their elders could not see any connection between scholarship on the one hand, and calisthenics, wielding a knife, and blowing a bugle on the other.
This is not to deny that the progressive teaching technique is relatively new, even in the United States. It began in the 1920s, and its principal proponent, John Dewey, believed that education should be related to a child's interests and experiences. Even so, many Americans today are not unfamiliar with the stereotype of the severe-looking schoolmarm in the one-room schoolhouse of early American history. But the progressive teaching philosophy and technique are indigenous American developments, and in terms of our analysis, a natural outgrowth of the American way of life.
Conversely, the old-style Chinese schools are truly of ancient origin. The philosophy of education on which they were based flourished in China without significant change for over twenty centuries. The new-style schools were introduced from the West from about the end of the nineteenth century and did not replace the old-style schools until about the end of World War II. The old-style Chinese schools are organic to the Chinese way of life, especially in view of their age, as much as the progressive teaching technique is to the American way of life, despite its recent origin.
Furthermore, although the new Western-style schools in China began to confront Chinese children with ideas and activities that were different from those which prevailed at home, the differences between them and the old-style Chinese schools are not so great as those between Chinese institutions as a whole and their American counterparts.
For one thing, American schools foster a desire and a skill for self-expression that is little known in the Chinese schools. Even in nursery schools, American children are taught to stand up individually to tell the rest of the class about something they know - perhaps a toy or an outing with parents. When I compare American youngsters with those I have known in China, I cannot help being amazed at the ease and the self-composure of the former when facing a single listener or a sizable audience, as contrasted with the awkwardness and the self-consciousness of Chinese youngsters in similar circumstances. In old-style Chinese schools there was nothing like public performance at all. For purposes of recitation, the teacher listened to each pupil, standing beside him one at a time and facing the wall, as the pupa loudly repeated that section of the classics assigned the day before. The rest of the class, which might contain up to thirty boys, could not hear the performing pupil because they would all be busy reading aloud their own assignments. In fact, it was not uncommon for a lazy teacher to have two pupils reciting simultaneously, one on each side. In modern Chinese schools after 1911, public appearance came into vogue. But even then the responsibility usually fell on the shoulders of the selected few, and practically all of the public oratory in trade and high schools was performed by rote, prepared in advance, and corrected by teachers before delivery.
Since 1949, public exhibition of music, dance, sculpture, painting, and crafts has become far more common than before. Visitors in the seventies, my family and I included, have all marveled at the remarkable precision and, by American standards, advanced forms of the arts. Performers and exhibitors are no longer limited to the select few as before. Spontaneity, however, is not given priority. For the overriding emphasis, pronounced by large slogans everywhere, is on how the arts can serve laborers, farmers, and soldiers.
The American emphasis on self-expression not only enables the American child to feel unrestrained by the group, but also makes him confident that he can go beyond it. The Chinese lack of emphasis on self-expression not only leads the Chinese child to develop a greater consciousness of the status quo but also serves to tone down any desire on his part to transcend the larger scheme of things.
A second fundamental difference between American and Chinese schools is the importance of the progressive principle in the former and the lack of any indigenous development of it in the latter. Simply stated, the progressive principle has two facets: individuals learn at different rates, and individuals have different kinds of abilities.
While this principle is not equally endorsed or lived up to throughout the school system, there can be little doubt that no other single principle has had a comparable influence on American education. The rapid acceptance and widespread popularity of intelligence tests and various psychographs is one indication; the movement to provide special training to the exceptional child is another; and
the many curricula in which more stress is laid on the pleasure of learning than on learning itself is a third. To the extent that the Chinese tutor schools of old allowed students to proceed at different speeds, one might say that they also were particulary progressive. But this scholastic liberty was a matter of practical convenience and not a matter of principle. Moreover, while American students began by taking different courses, ranging from those that were creative to ones that
required some memorization, Chinese students in tutor schools had to concentrate on memorizing great literature from the past and practicing the art of handwriting. There was never any thought of devising methods to make the learning process more palatable; this scholastic route had but one immediate and long-term goal: imperial examination honors leading to official rank.
The modern Chinese schools, which came near and after the end of the Manchu dynasty, did open the door to different
curricula and aimed at somewhat different objectives. They contained most of the subjects taught in American schools, and they no longer expressly prepared men for the now nonexistent imperial examinations. But in the majority of schools, there was no freedom to choose electives. Furthermore, while Chinese children in modern schools learned physics and chemistry and attended physical education and craft classes, they still concentrated on reading and writing, ethics and civics, and history and
geography. Until World War II, the number of Chinese college students in the arts and humanities far outnumbered those in the physical sciences.
In other words, throughout the years of the Chinese Republic, there was no significant deviation from the Confucian ideal of education in which the individual should be concerned first and foremost with his place in the scheme of human relations: emperor-subject, father-son, husband-wife, brothers, and friends.
During and since World War II, the number of Chinese college students in the physical sciences and engineering has become much larger than in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. But new-style schools in Taiwan since 1945 have in many ways reaffirmed many of the educational practices and goals of traditional China. The most spectacular indication of this is what all Taiwan knows today as ngo pu which, for lack of a better translation, may be described as "evil-type supplementary instruction." All grade school students have to take entrance examinations to gain admission into the better high schools. The examinations are so competitive that all school work is keyed to passing them. Those who hope to succeed in these examinations (a majority) pay for supplementary instructions for several hours a day after school. Many of the supplementary instructors are regular school teachers paid by the parents of the pupils. As high school pupils have to pass entrance examinations for admission to colleges and universities, this practice is even more common for them.
... In addition to the emphasis on self-expression and progressive principle, there is a third facet: American schools seem to encourage a militant ethnocentrism. Many American school children entertain the idea that the world outside the United States is practically a jungle: China is a land of inscrutable ways and mysterious opium dens, and Africa is a "dark continent" inhavited by cannibals and wild animals. Even Europe is a backward place - its only export a decadent culture and its present inhabitants an unprogressive lot whose ancestors stayed behind when their more intelligent and ambitious fellows departed for America.Once I met a youngster in a park who, seeing that I was Chinese and trying to be very nice, said in his boyishly exaggerated way, "The Chinese are great." I asked him if he knew what was so great about them. And he responded, after a long pause, "They fly kites and they invented gunpowder."
This boy's innocence is not accidental. He was first of all assisted by popular media such as movies and comics whenever the Chinbese or other Orientals are included. For years we had Fu Manchu, the Chinese laundrymen and their broken English, and Harold Lloyd's movies featuring pig-tailed Chinese gambling their life savings away in opium dens.
... In other words, China is a land where coolies, fortune tellers, opium smokers, and primitive water wheels predominate - a picture in substantial agreement with America's popular notion of that Asian land.
... Presuming that school texts will undergo continuous change and evolve toward a less ethnocentric view of the world, it probably will still be a long, long time, however, before the average high school honor student from the best equipped American institution will be able to associate much more than the name of Confucius, kite-flying, and gunpowder with China, and an even longer time, if ever, before American youngsters will concede that any other people on earth could have anything better than or even as good as what is to be found in America. One reason for the above is that old prejudices die hard. The familiar ideas are bound to maintain their hold in spite of the best intentions. The other reason is more deep-seated. Can Americans afford to allow any other people, especially a non-Western people, to better them in any way? My conclusion is that they probably cannot because active superiority over others is essential to a people with the individual-centered way of life. From this angle, the reason for America's insistence on its superiority over the rest of the world, especially the non-Western world, is both similar to and different from that underlying Beijing's anti-United States posture in the recent past. In both cases the attitudes are functional and are dictated by felt needs. However, while the American need for superiority over others is rooted in the long- established national character of the people, the Chinese need to be anti-United States was based on temporary political expediency, generally unrelated to the aspirations of the people. It was Washington which rebuffed Chinese Communist leaders' friendly gestures, including Mao's and Chou's offers to visit the national capital shortly after they took power in Peking. Instead, the United States adhered to the domino theory of [Former Secretary of State] John Foster Dulles, and pursued a China encirclement policy. Such attitudes and acts were what led to Beijing's militancy toward the United States. Consequently, Chinese militancy toward America could change in short order as new circumstances developed. The American approach toward the rest of the world, however, is likely to be longer lasting in spite of setbacks such as Vietnam .
To the Chinese, Confucian classics were, of course, the only important matters of learning, and history was written from the Chinese point of view alone. It is something of a surprise for many a present-day Chinese, including myself, to learn that Genghis Khan and his successors considered China only as a province of his much vaster empire, since the Mongol rule was presented in Chinese books simply as a dynasty, Yuan, in the sense that Tang, Sung, and Ming were also dynasties. Many popular novels, either of the supernatural or the realistic kind, depicted victorious expeditions of founders of dynasties or their generals. Some of these dealt with battles between Chinese and "barbarians" but more often the opponents were all Chinese. The most famous Chinese versus "barbarian" war was that waged by the clever tactician, Chu Ke Liang, of Three Kingdoms fame (A.D. 220-286) against a southern tribal chieftain, Meng Hu. In this campaign, Chu Ke Liang was supposed to have defeated and captured his "barbarian" opponent six times-each time the captive was released and each time he came back with a more formidable invading force. But when he was captured the seventh time and was once again released, Meng Hu vowed "eternal allegiance" to the Han people. In popular Chinese thought, Chu Ke Liang's actions were a great feat of "conquest of hearts" and it has ever since been eulogized in Chinese historical writings.
However, the Chinese, while always maintaining their own unquestioned superiority and conscious of their differences from others, never entertained the notion that their inferiors should change their ways of life. Some of the "barbarians" became "cooked barbarians" (shufan) in that they took on Chinese speech and culture; they were welcomed. Many of them remained "raw barbarians" (shengfan),- they were also left alone. Some Chinese undoubtedly considered the latter unfortunate, but it was their own business.
For this reason, the Chinese attitude vis-a-vis the non-Chinese world must be characterized as passive superiority, in contrast to American and Western active superiority. Neither attitude is an unmixed blessing, and we shall see the logical consequences associated with each as we journey through the body of this book. White Westerners in China were, of course, objects of curiosity to Chinese children and adults, as were Asians in the United States. The Chinese nickname for Westerners was "Ocean-born Devil or Ghost" (yang kuei tze) primarily because of their pale skin, and the frequent occurrence of blue eyes and blond hair. The Chinese associated these colors with death and funerals just as many Americans equate the color yellow with cowardice and white with purity and weddings. But because of their attitude of passive superiority, Chinese parents and teachers, far from encouraging their children to disregard all non-Chinese things and values, actually insisted on a relativistic view of the world. Chinese, for instance, have for many centuries revered written characters, which they believe to have been created by past sages. There were many "societies for saving papers with written characters. " These societies employed collectors who roamed around town, with forks in hand and baskets on their backs, gathering such scattered pieces. The bits were then burned at the local Confucian temple. It was believed that a person who used inscribed papers for toilet purposes would be struck dead by lightning. And one who accidentally stepped on a book must pick it up and place it on his head momentarily for propitiation. We might imagine that Chinese parents and teachers would restrict their feelings to Chinese written characters, but this was not usually the case. I knew a number of parents and village tutor-teachers who advised their children or pupils to treat with equal reverence pieces of paper on which there was writing, whether the words were Chinese or foreign. "After all," I heard one father say, "the foreign words must have been created by foreign sages."
This seemingly minor episode is an expression of a basic aspect of the Chinese orientation to the world. With the coming of the new schools and a new curriculum, the age-old injunction against defiling of the written character has been noticeably relaxed in many quarters. However, in this new curriculum, which prevailed until the rise of the Communist regime when jingoism and Mao's sayings began to overshadow everything else, school children learned not only about great men and significant events in Chinese history, but they also read and heard about the scientific investigations and statesmanship of Benjamin Franklin, Columbus and his discovery of the New World, Abraham Lincoln's efforts to emancipate the slaves, the Magna Carta, and the French Revolution. As early as the first or second grade, I learned in an ethics course how George Washington when a small boy cut down a cherry tree and was honest with his father about it, how a famous French scholar by the name of Montaigne used all his spare time, including the few minutes before and after dinner, to write his thoughts down so that in ten years he accumulated a tremendous volume, and how the Scotsman, Robert Bruce, after disastrous defeats at the hands of his English adversaries, was inspired to victory by the actions of a spider which tirelessly and successfully built its web in spite of destructive winds. Some of these anecdotes are, of course, myths. But they are myths that represented the United States and the West in a favorable light. It is no exaggeration to say that the average American high school graduate knows very little about the rest of the world, especially Asia and Africa. It is equally true that the average Chinese high school graduate, before the rise of the new regime in 1949, tended to have a fuller view of the world and its inhabitants .
The usual Chinese description of things American is that they are different. This remains basically so in Taiwan today even though, since the country is under the pressure of so much American influence, the idea of American superiority often asserts itself. On the other hand, the usual and prevailing American view of the Chinese is that they do everything the wrong way. This does not deny the existence of a very small American minority of Sinophiles.
We have seen that American parents encourage a feeling of self-importance in their children who live in a world quite separate from reality; and the American educational system confirms this initial tendency. This belief in personal invincibility affects the belief in the invincibility of the country. This last conviction has an inevitable effect on internal politics and the conduct of international affairs.
The child's private world cannot, however, be kept distinct from that of the elders indefinitely. American children, when they begin school, for the first time come into close contact with persons, ideas, and activities over which the parents exercise little or no control. The children must submit some of their ideas about themselves and their environment to mild tests of reality. The Chinese child, having never been set apart from the world of his elders, faces no such trial. He has always been in contact with a multiplicity of persons and he has few illusions about his own capabilities and how he may fare in the world.
Serious dislocations often result when the American child enters school life. These occur in two principal areas, the first of which is the religious. The majority of American children are raised in the Christian faith, learning its prayers, attending Sunday school, and participating in other church activities. As they are initiated into the wonders of science, with its mechanistic description of the universe, they cannot but apply the same mechanical principles to their conception of religion. For example, how can God watch over all of us at the same time? Who or what created God? How do we explain the miracles? Having been encouraged to be rational about things, American children will ask these and innumerable other questions. But finding no satisfactorily "scientific" answers to these questions, American parents and teachers have had to evade the issues. Some children will feel compelled to explain the supernatural in mechanistic terms. Recently, I overheard one child say to his playmate: "Jesus is right in this room. We cannot see him because he is of every shape and color." This child was simply repeating the arguments I have heard in many a church and Sunday school. But his playmate extended the argument thus, to an extent not usually acceptable to ministers or Sunday-school teachers: "God must have very long, long legs, and He stands in the middle of the world. He can look this way or that way any time He pleases. That's why He is everywhere. "
Are parents going to accept these explanations? Or are they to tell children that such ideas are wrong, that religious belief and the reality of life belong to two different orders? If they take the latter view, how are they to tell children that religion will have anything to do with a life and a universe which are increasingly described in scientific terms? If they take the former view, how can they face the question as to whether God is also in the ugly things that children of school age must have seen?
Most American parents I know tend to gloss over these questions, and have no effective reply to their children's mechanistic statements about God. Yet a child whose preschool years are marked by idealistic simplicity in which everything is consistently right or wrong, true or false, must be confused by the new situation in which the once authoritative and positive words of the. parents become vague, facts are at variance, and ambiguity is everywhere. That is why a "God Is Dead" movement can arouse so much public attention. I have no figures to indicate whether its adherents are predominantly young, but this is probably the case. Theologians will undoubtedly be able to invent arguments showing that standard bearers of the "God Is Dead" movement do not mean God is dead. For our purposes this movement is merely another symptom of confusion and doubt.
Chinese children face no such problems. In the first place, religion in China, as we shall see later, is much more matter-of-fact than it is in America. Christianity and Judaism depend upon fixed dogmas which in turn must depend upon constant interpretation to relate them to the actuality of human existence. Chinese creeds have a few simple dogmas plainly tied to life's immediate problems, such as, if one has eye trouble the Goddess of Eyesight will help; or dogmas needing no extended argument to be convincing, such as, that ancestors and their own descendants have a community of interest. Chinese religion is nontheoretical, utilitarian, or based on self-evident truisrns that require no defense. It is unlikely to come into conflict with other Chinese values or beliefs.
Secondly, the American child is from birth conditioned to attach himself to one parental authority, to one set of truths, and to one style of life that is absolutely right. To maintain this singleness of life, it is inevitable that he will want to synthesize his knowledge of science and religion.
The Chinese child is from the beginning, conditioned to a multiple parental authority, to many points of view, and to the vicissitudes of a life in which circumstance dictates inconsistency, doubt, and compromise. It is almost inevitable that he should compartmentalize his experiences. Even if a medicine based on scientific experiments is proven to be more efficacious than offerings to gods, why should he not use both tools?
Finally, with their attitude of active superiority, most Americans who give themselves to science have a tendency to deny and to disprove all other avenues to truth. But with their attitude of passive superiority, their Chinese counterparts have no comparable concern.
In exactly the same way, Chinese worshipers of one god did not care about the blasphemous. For the Chinese will say, "If you are bad the gods will punish you. Why should I usurp the gods' place?" For practical reasons, most Americans do live with conflicting standards. But I have not found any American counterpart of this kind of Chinese reasoning. This attitude explains why, when the modern schools began to campaign against idolatry and superstition (meaning a traditional Chinese religious beliefs), few educated Chinese youngsters came into conflict with their parents. Nor do I know of any Chinese parents who withdrew their children from the schools that taught agnosticism or Christianity. In brief, there were no difficulties caused solely by the fact that the home and the modern school taught sharply different things.
The second difficulty facing the American child in school, at least among the middle and upper-middle classes, is the gap between his idealized childhood world and the real world. The latter is no longer the protective environment of the family nursery, with supportive parents to buffer the outside world. The new surroundings may be beautiful or ugly, comforting or cruel; the child discovers that some of his schoolmates have a lot and others little. Even if he is talented and very bright, he may still have trouble, for the exceptional child often faces social ostracism by his less gifted peers. But if he is not, his misery will be an entirely new experience. If he is from a lower class while his associates come from better circumstances, or worse still, if he belongs to a religious or racial minority, he is now in for wounds which he never thought God or Santa Claus would ever allow any human to inflict.
Social Needs and Values
The impact of these new forces on the American child is strong because of the values placed by the culture on self-reliance. Very early in life the American child learns to think in terms of private property. He appreciates the difference between what is his and what is not. At school age he begins to become aware that what belongs to his parents is out of bounds to him. His basic needs are provided by the family, but he begins to earn some money, if only from his parents, or to handle a weekly allowance. Soon he is aware that after eighteen or twenty-one years of age his parents will have no obligation to support him in any way. This is the foundation of a businesslike relationship between American parents and children which assumes increasing clarity as the years go by.
We must outline the social needs of the human individual before we are able to see clearly the results of the two patterns of parent-child relationship. Although we are accustomed to think of human beings as entities, each human being is always tied to a web of fellow human beings. I use the word "tied" advisedly, for every human being must live in association with other human beings. This is why solitary confinement is one of the most severe punishments man can suffer and why, as we shall see later, rehabilitation programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Alateen (for children whose parents are alcoholics), Al-Anon (for spouses of alcoholics), Encounter in Manhattan and Palmer Drug Abuse Program in Dallas (both organizations to combat narcotics addiction), are all based on dependence on some form of group affiliation for the client.
This kind of "cure" created the following predicament for the husband of a reformed alcoholic, described in his letter to Ann Landers:
Through Alcoholics Anonymous my wife has been sober for nearly five years. My problem is an unusual one. When she was drunk she was home all the time. Now, I hardly see her anymore. When I come home from work she is getting ready to go to an AA meeting. She rarely returns before midnight.... (Honolulu Advertiser, January 22, 1980)What do human beings seek among their fellow human beings? They crave satisfaction of one or all of three social needs - sociability, security, and status.
Sociability embodies the individual's enjoyment of being with other human beings: to see them, to rub shoulders with them, to hear them, to speak with them, to complain to them and to listen to their gripes, to gossip, and to engage in various degrees of body contact with them. The closest sociability is the intimacy between a man and a woman. The loosest sociability is New Year's Eve on Times Square. Between these extremes we have cocktail parties, dances, fox hunts, family gatherings, conversation between friends, seminars and conferences, coffee klatches, and psychotherapy sessions.
Securitysignifies the predictability of the individual's human environment, now or in the future. It has two components. First, every individual wants to be certain that an assured number of his fellow human beings are his intimates and share with him certain aims, thoughts, or action patterns. Second, in time of need he can count on their sympathy and support just as they can count on his. These are what we in daily speech express in terms of loyalty, faithfulness, fidelity, or devotion. Every individual needs to have some fellow men in whom he can confide his worst thoughts without the fear that they are going to despise him or draw away from him. When he speaks or expresses himself or acts, he needs to have a fair certainty regarding the kind of reaction he will receive. The highest security is that of the armed forces in peacetime, when the individual's movements and even recreation are well regulated. The lowest security is that of riots or war. Between these extremes are many human associations that affect one's sense of belonging to a group: friendship, clubs, cliques, political parties, church or temple, gang, honor society, or residentiial group.
Status provides the individual with his sense of importance among his fellow men. It is the rank or comparative position occupied by the individual in his group, and of the rank or comparative position of his own group vis-a-vis other groups, with the specific attitudes, duties, and privileges associated with it. Status can be seen in sports, in economic pursuits, in the professions, in academic achievements, in politics, among churchmen as well as hunters. It is felt by students no less than by warriors. The Chinese concepts of face and of propriety, and the American sensitivity to prestige and superiority are all familiar expressions of the same need. The utmost concern for status is to be found in a caste situation, where inter-dining or even sight of the lower groups carries pollution. An example of almost total lack of concern for status is to be found in some monasteries such as those of Trappist monks where all distinctions are conscientiously removed. But even the Trappist monks must regard their form of devotion as far superior to that of other orders.
The drug and alcohol rehabilitation groups mentioned before and those like them satisfy all three social needs. They provide ample company for the lonely. Their highly regulated programs make the human relation very predictable. And the more each such group distinguishes itself by size, by visibility or whatever, the higher the sense of status it confers on its members vis-a-vis the people outside it.
So far we have spoken about needs shared by Americans, Chinese, and human beings in all societies. Returning to our earlier discussion of the two differing patterns of parent-child relationships, we shall come to some interesting results. The first human group in which the American or the Chinese individual satisfies his social needs is the biological family consisting of parents and siblings. This is where, as every reader knows, he has so much of his siblings' and his parents' - especially his mother's - attention, that he sometimes wishes that they would leave him alone. This is where his every move and what he eats are so regulated that often he purposely does the opposite of what he has been told or refuses to eat food his mother offers him. And finally, this is where he first vies with his siblings for parental favors, but his parents, if they are wise, will make sure that failures are covered up and successes are praised, so that he may not suffer from an inferiority complex.
However, the self-reliant orientation makes it impossible for the American child to continue satisfying his social needs in the kinship group. Even before school age the American child, because of the American customs concerning cribs, separate bedrooms, baby-sitters, and the American emphasis on peers, has already frequently and clearly led something of a separate existence from his parents. Still, since he is very much under the protective care and supervision of his parents, the best the American child can do at this stage of the game is to sometimes hide his activities from his parents and to unite with his siblings as a defense against his parents. The horizontal gravitation toward siblings is the beginning of opposition between the young and the old, which anticipates the generation gap to come later. The exclusive nature of the average American family makes it inevitable that, for the young child, his parents are the only great man and woman in existence. Therefore parents still figure greatly in the boastful world of youngsters. I once heard the son of a naval petty officer telling his playmates how absolutely useless the army and the air force were. More recently I saw a cartoon of two boys, the bigger of whom said to the other, "My father has been a father longer than yours. " But by the time he is in second grade, the American child begins to realize that socially he and his elders are separate individuals.
Having been taught to rely on himself from the beginning, he is now ready to explore the wider world on the same basis. Yet his social needs prevent him from being independent of other human beings. When the American child, driven by independence training, wants to make it on his own, he must seek another group to substitute for the group at hand. This means that the American youngster, at school age, must learn to transfer his allegiance from the kinship (and kinship-connected) group to a group composed of his. unrelated peers, the gang. Even siblings of the same sex cannot figure for long in this group. For, while siblings are better than parents, they are still connected with a group that he has not made on his own. The American child must, therefore, gravitate away from a group in which he has been deeply entrenched without trying, in favor of a group in which his membership is subject to change without notice. Furthermore, his place in the latter group is often adversely affected by the closeness of his relationship with the former. The net effect of .his allegiance to the gang is the systematic undermining of his relationship with his parents.
This is not a question of love or lack of love for his parents. Even if he loves them, his needs for sociability, security, and status among his peer group must take precedence over his feelings for his elders. It is not even that he misunderstands his elders. Rather, the urgency of his own social needs precludes his acceptance of their communication. To make it on one's own is truly an all-pervasive American value. Even the superhero "Spider Man" [in a 1980 story line] of the comics is trying desperately to make it on his own, as Peter Parker, without the aid of his web-slinging powers.
Thus, many American children give up music lessons despite parental protests, because the gang considers such skills to be sissi fied. Many American children shun foreign languages regardless of their ancestral background, because their linguistic prowess is derided by their playmates. I have known Chinese children raised in the United States who spat at anyone who dared talk to them in Chinese, and children of French origin who tearfully told their parents that they couldn't possibly continue to speak French. One wealthy German couple hired a German governess to speak German with their son, who was of course learning English in school. Soon the governess gave up because she could not make her charge follow any orders except in English. Conflict can develop over many matters - hair, dress, hours, sex, and drugs. The American child has to flout parental wishes because of his fear of rejection by his own peers. The more insecure he is about this, the more he must conform to the standards of his peer group at the expense of those of his parents. The American school child's insecurity is easily matched by that of, his parents. American parents, as we have mentioned, have complete control over their children. While consciously grooming them to be independent, they have unconsciously never doubted that the youngsters are inseparable parts of themselves. For by independence, they really mean that the youngsters can do those things for themselves of which the parents approve, but not others which the elders frown on. In this they are, of course, safe as long as the children are young; small children can be manipulated reasonably easily. They can coax the little ones to take care of themselves, but at the same time be fully certain that such independence does not go far. Yet the situation is never stationary. The infant can be satisfied with a bottle or when he is picked up and held. At three or four, a male child may be placated by having a haircut like daddy's or a female child by being dressed like mommy. But at each successive age level, as his physical and mental powers grow, the increasingly autonomous little individual demands fuller freedom to do things on his own, and in his own way.
Sometimes, after the child's entry into school, the American parents, having been used to confining youthful antics within a playpen, suddenly face a serious threat to their control. Their children have figured too largely as part of the satisfaction of their own social needs. They have seen and cuddled their children every day. They have watched and directed the youngster's habits and speech. They have praised and been proud of their progeny's performance. And in A this they have had an exclusive and strong hand. Now they are faced with the prospect of seeing little of the children, of having less to say about how they act, and even of being less proud of what they do. It is not unnatural that they feel threatened. The more they have been accustomed to having complete control, and the more their children have helped satisfy their social needs, the harder it is for parents to relinquish this control.
American parents feel threatened not merely because of reluctance to relinquish control. Their society is one in which each succeeding generation ruthlessly replaces the previous one; once the children become independent, parents have no honored place in their children's lives. School age gives the parents a preview of the children's future independence and of their own progressive decline from a position of dominance. This is a prospect or transition that few human beings can take with equanimity. The children's departure from the close, warm circle of the family thus creates a cloud of insecurity in the shadow of which both parents and children henceforth move. Consequently, instead of welcoming the prospect of their children's ultimate independence, many American parents experience increasing anxiety as their youngsters progress. Some parents, as their children grow away from them, declare that they are glad to be free and that they would not have it any other way. Perhaps so, but such declarations are frequently necessary for the protection of parental pride. On the other hand, more American parents try, in one way or another, to hold on to the parent-child bond. The results are not at all certain. In infancy, the simple formula of more attention-greater attachment and less attention-diminished attachment undoubtedly works in most cases. But children at school, under pressure to be both independent and to be themselves with the gang, are a different matter. Some succumb to an increase in parental charm. Their love for their parents increases, and the calls of the gang go unanswered. These children are described derogatorily as being tied to their mothers' apron strings and if they continue this close attachment will in later life be known as "poor marital risks." Here American parents face a dilemma. Though wanting their children to be close to them, they are worried when their children are unpopular with their peer group. Most youngsters reject parental affection in favor of that of their own playmates, and they must do so with an ever-increasing sense of rebellion. Well-adjusted American children advance in a direction.determined by their way of life much earlier: a way of life characterized by strong emotionality and the encouragement of individual predilection.
Chinese school children and their parents find life much easier in this respect. Having always been a part of the real world, the children are now prepared to deal with this same reality on a broader basis. They are not shocked by injustices, slights, or untruths, because they have already experienced or learned to expect these trials. At twelve or fourteen, most of them are not merely acquainted with their, future places and problems in society - they are already full-fledged members of that society.
This realistic orientation is furthered by the Chinese ideal of mutual dependence, which is the exact opposite of the American spirit of self-reliance. We have already noted that the Chinese son has to support his father; the Chinese father is likewise obligated to support his son. This reciprocity is a social contract that lasts for life. The idea of a legal will is alien to Chinese thought, for a Chinese father's assets, no less than his liabilities, go automatically and equally to his several sons before or after his death.
The Chinese child learns about his permanent link with his parents in diverse ways. For one thing, he never has to manage an allowance. He is free to spend whatever he can get out of his parents; the idea of earning money from one's parents is considered laughable by Chinese. Consequently, while necessity causes poor Chines children to appreciate the value of money, youngsters from wealthier families rarely learn this.
The social tie between Chinese parents and sons is equally automatic, inviolable, and life-long. This proverb expresses the of the pattern: "First thirty years, one looks at the father and the son; second thirty years, one looks at the son and respects the father." That is to say, while the son is young the father's social status determines that of the son; but later the son's social status determines that of the father.
For this reason, the sons of the powerful, however young they may be, are as powerful as their fathers, while the fathers can, even after retirement, wield the authority and status they derive from the position of their sons. Once this is understood, I think the reader will even more readily see why it would not have been possible for any Chinese son to write about his mother, famous or not, the way James Roosevelt did about Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt.
This means that the Chinese child not only finds satisfaction of all his social needs in the kinship group where he begins life, but he is also under no compulsion to leave it as he grows up. Having been exposed gradually to the adult world, the Chinese child tends always to gravitate vertically. He plays games or gambles with his elders on festival occasions; he works together with them in the fields and markets. The automatically shared community of interests between him and his parents makes it unnecessary for him to go it alone. If the child has a few friends among unrelated peers, it is condoned. But if he has many of them and their common activities interfere with his studies or family duties, his friends will be branded "fox friends and dog cronies" and he, a wastrel. On the other hand, he will be much admired as an example of a good son and a good man if he has few outside associations and devotes his entire energy toward working and pleasing his parents. Popularity among peers is a condition which some Chinese youngsters may enjoy, but it is not an objective toward which they must strive. Because of this, the Chinese have known neither the problem of the generation gap nor the fear of being known as a teacher's pet. Both of these situations reflect a horizontal orientation in which the young are pitted against the old, or the subjects of authority against its sources.
Consequently, while the American father who basks in his son's glory or the son who profits from his father's fame will always object to any suggestion that this is the case, a similarly situated Chinese father or son has no such desire to conceal his source of strength. In case the identity of such an individual is temporarily obscured, he is likely to reassert his position in just so many words. Thus, the Chinese pattern of mutual dependence, as opposed to American pattern of self-reliance, provides satisfaction in being under the protection of elders. For the parent-child ties are permanent rather than transitory. It is taken for granted that they are immutable, and so are not subject to individual acceptance or rejection. Secure in the shadow of their ancestors, Chinese youngsters of school age have no great psychological urge to seek any alliance outside the kin group.
For Chinese children, therefore, the call of their own age group possesses none of the dictatorial compulsion that it has for their American brethren. Chinese boys and girls are able to get along wit their play groups without having to part with the things their parents, represent. My own experience illustrates the point. When my parents moved their home from a south Manchurian village to an east Manchurian town, I was for the first time in my life confronted with a dialect difference. My first-grade schoolmates spoke a dialect considerably different from mine. Within six weeks, I had changed over, to the speech prevailing in school when I was there, but at home spoke in my original tongue, although my parents never suggested that I do so. This transition occurred again when I went to Peking and once more when I went to Shanghai. Each time I acquired a new dialect. But each new dialect was merely added to the list of those my command. This pattern was true of all Chinese youngsters whom I knew, even with reference to entirely foreign languages, for Russian and Japanese were both widely known in Manchuria, French in Yunnan, and English in the rest of China. Furthermore, these additional dialects and languages never prevented the individual from firmly retaining his original tongue, even though he took pride in his personal achievement in speaking them.
Chinese parents, on their part, have little reason for anxiety their children grow older. First, never having been exclusive masters of their children, they do not feel rejected when the children becom more independent. Second, the Chinese parent-child relationship is permanent. A father is always a father, whether or not he is loving or kind. A son is always a son; rarely is he disowned because he is not dutiful. Lastly, Chinese social organization is such that age, far from being a defect, is a blessing. Chinese parents have no reason to regret their children's maturity, for it assures not a lesser role but a more respected place for themselves.
The Chinese pattern of mutual dependence thus forms the basis of a mutual psychological security for both the old and the young.: When children have little need to leave home, parents have little need to hold. The result is a life-style in which individual predilections are minimized not because there is strong restraint that demands conformity, but because the emotions of the individual are neutralized since he is satisfied with things as they are.
In Chapter 13, we shall see the relevance of this contrast to the problems of old age and juvenile delinquency. Here it should be. noted that most American parents assert that their children present bigger and more complex problems as they grow older. The elders are most troubled when the youngsters draw near adolescence. Most Chinese parents see the situation entirely differently. Their children become less of a problem as they become older. Until the time of extensive contact with the West, the Chinese did not recognize adolescence as a specific period of human development, had no exact term to designate it, and had no literature on the subject.
But the same contrast is sharpened by two more factors. For one thing, practically all Americans go to school until they are sixteen, while even in 1945 less than 30 percent of Chinese children received any formal education at all. Consequently, for the majority of Chinese, their transition from childhood to adulthood has been, up to recent decades, even less turbulent than the picture presented here.
Since 1949, many movements, some better known in the West for their involvement of youths in the form of Red Guards and Little Red Soldiers, have seemed to bring about drastic changes in this picture. They have certainly activated many sectors of the society formerly dormant and suppressed others formerly active. However, as we shall see in Chapter 15, even today the changes have not been that fundamental.
The other factor is the concept of equality as an active ideal, which has been as important in America as it has been insignificant in China. To evaluate the part played by this concept in the American way of life, we must first examine the differences between Europe and the United States.
Excerpts from
CHAPTER 4
Where Europe Ends and America Begins
Throughout these first three chapters, many readers have probably asked: Isn't the way of life which the author designates as American fundamentally the same as the Anglo-Saxon, and isn't this itself but one floor of a European civilization which formed the foundation and framework for all later developments? I must answer in the affirmative. When I speak of individual-centeredness as an American characteristic, I am reminded of the individualism of England. When I describe the emotional intensity peculiar to the people of the United States, I realize that I have characterized it by examples in art, literature, and romantic love which, without exception, had their origin in Europe. But it is no less true that the American way of life has also departed considerably from that of England. Many writers have given lengthy consideration to the subject. There is, however, one simple but central fact - while individualism is the basis of the English way of life, self-reliance has taken its place in America.
The initial differences between English individualism and American self-reliance are not obscure. English individualism developed hand in hand with legal equality. American self-reliance, on the other hand, has been inseparable from an insistence upon economic and social as well as political equality. The result is that a qualified individualism, with a qualified equality, has prevailed in England, but what has been considered the unalienable right of every American is unrestricted self-reliance and, at least ideally, unrestricted equality. The English, therefore, tend to respect class-based distinctions in birth, wealth, status, manners, and speech, while Americans resent them.
Admittedly, these are strong generalizations that in fact vary from individual to individual. But it is only in the perspective of these attitudes that we can understand the following scene. A child does something naughty. His mother punishes him. The child becomes angry and sulks. The mother cleans up the mess, and asks the child, "Are we still friends?" The child grunts, "Humph." The mother is satisfied. Similarly it is not at all unusual for an American mother to be called a good mother because "she lives for her children," just as an American father may express his disgust with an ungrateful son by mournfully asking, "Haven't I done everything for him?"
The differences between the parent-child relationship in America and that in England are reflected faithfully in innumerable other areas of Anglo-American life: between employers and employees, teachers and pupils, ministers and their congregations, males and females, government leaders and their constituents, and different classes and different occupations. The most widespread expression of the American pattern is the tendency toward complete informality, which reaches its extreme in a desire to be free of all boundaries, restraints, and traditions.
The Rise of the American Way of Life
The American pattern of self-reliance and its concomitant demand for freedom from restraints evolved because of three factors. First, in the environment of an undeveloped continent the pioneers found that self-sufficiency was an actuality, a prerequisite for survival that they had not experienced in their homelands. This is the basis of the famous Turner frontier theory. The self-sufficiency of those who survived produced in pioneer Americans and many of those who came later an undeniable ruggedness of character, a degree of mastery over the environment, and a feeling of individual importance that provided the foundation for self-reliance.
But self-sufficiency alone, however complete, could not have been, the touchstone of the American way of life. Many a Chinese farmer in China before 1949 could, and in Taiwan today can produce practically all he and his family need: food, clothing, housing, and even, transportation. Many of his immediate ancestors migrated to Manchuria, where land was cheap, opportunities abundant, and where the conditions of life paralleled those in the American West in more ways than one. The Chinese in Manchuria never developed an outlook even remotely similar to that of the Americans because the self-sufficiency of the former was a result of circumstances, not of preference. As soon as he could lead the existence of a village landlord or an absentee landlord in some town or city, the erstwhile Chinese Pioneer not only ceased to be self-sufficient in fact, but he consciously tried to forget the entire experience. He would hold on to his land for land was his status symbol and his security. But the Chinese have never believed that all individuals should be self-sufficient.
The self-sufficiency of pioneer Americans was rooted in individualalism, which is the second factor in the development of the American way of life. Their self-sufficiency was a channel into which their individualism could flow without restraint, and which was necessary if families were to survive in a hostile environment. And unfettered individualism became an ideal that they inculcated into their children and by which they judged the worth of all mankind.
However, even the emphasis on individualistic self-sufficiency is not enough to explain the American way. The pioneers who went to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Africa were also self-sufficient to varying extents, and most came from lands where individualism was a dominant ideal. But they did not evolve a way of life identical or even too similar to that of America. This does not mean that some Americans may not find Australia or Canada more congenial than India or Malaysia. There were apologists for apartheid who attempted to equate the situation of the Republic of South Africa with that of the United States. For example, Clarence Randall, former chairman of the board of Inland Steel Company, found white South Africans "lovable," and "just like ourselves." (Chicago Sunday Sun-Times, February 3,1963).
The fact is that in spite of grudging white concessions in recent years giving Blacks slightly more freedom and a subterfuge for racial equality in the planned so-called independent black states within its boundaries, the Republic of South Africa remains [as of 1981] the most racially unequal society in the world. The laws of the Republic of South Africa and even much of its theology still openly propound and promote racial inequality, whereas in the United States, the racists and the religious bigots are everywhere on the defensive. Australia and New Zealand have never developed any internal movement for equality to their indigenous population.' Even today when the United States has already abolished the last vestiges of ethnic discrimination in her immigration laws, New Zealand and Australia still cling to their basically all-white policy.
The difference will be more understandable when a third factor in the American development, not present in the others, is considered. That is revolution. The English people who pioneered in the other lands made no sharp break from the political rule of Britain, however nominal, but the American Revolution, a violent political separation, permitted other significant developments. In the first place, a break from the crown meant the brushing aside of all things for which the crown symbolically stood: differences in social privileges, inequality in wealth, and class or status-based distinctions in manners. Whereas the English upper and lower classes maintain their respective "public school" and lower-class accents, American speech differences are mostly geographic. Whereas the English look up to titles, American law requires that no immigrant can be naturalized unless he relinquishes them. The reverential attitude of the English toward their royal family contrasts with the buddy-like atmosphere that surrounds the relationship between the American people and their president." These phenomena are most illustrative of these profound Anglo-American differences.
Secondly, the American attitude toward the head of the government gave a tremendous impetus to the quest for equality and made it a much more obvious point of contention in America than in England. While inequality in principle has been attacked by various social and political movements in England, inequality in fact has always been accepted as a matter of tradition and custom. In England, the impact of inequality on the individual has been greatly mitigated by his psychological tie with the past. The American, having successfully broken with the crown. for the express purpose of achieving equality and freedom, has found such inequalities to be emotionally unacceptable. This resultant intensity of American feeling about a self-reliant, equal system permeates all aspects of political, economic, religious, and social life.
This emphasis on self-reliance has caused Geoffrey Gorer to observe - mistakenly, I think - that the psychology of the individual American is built on a rejection of the father just as the American society began by rejecting Europe. Gorer errs for two reasons. First, there is little evidence that Americans reject their fathers or that the American society as a whole rejects its connection with Europe. On the contrary, there is, for example, a surprising degree of occupational continuity between fathers and sons, just as there is pride in kinship ties with England and in acceptance of European art, European fashions, and even European products. American aid to Europe was much more massive than that to other continents. Second, insofar as the psychological evidence permits, there seems to be more rejection of mothers in America than of fathers. American husbands, either because they hope to be friends with their children or because they are too busy at work, usually leave the disciplinarian aspect to their wives. This situation leads to a greater chance for possible tensions between mothers and children. However, what is evident in the United States is not rejection of the parents as such but an emphasis on the complete independence of the individual. This begins, naturally enough, between children and their parents, but it extends, in most cases, to all wider social relationships. This independence, although it has its origins in English individualism, has become more complete, pervasive, and, therefore, more obvious, in the New World. Thus, whereas English parents and children maintain a relationship of command and obedience, at least until the youngsters reach the age of puberty, very early in life American children are considered to be the equals of their parents; whereas English teachers still enjoy a great deal of disciplinary power over and social distance from their pupils, their American counterparts tend more and more to follow the interests and predilections of their charges; whereas Englishmen of lower socio-economic origin still find it possible to accept the status of their forebears without embarrassment, Americans in similar circumstances not only strive actively to better themselves, but feel positively superior to their elders.
This transition from English individualism to American self-reliance has brought about certain unforeseeable but far-reaching consequences. No individual can be completely self-reliant or completely independent. Human existence requires that the individual ego achieve an adjustment or balance between the inner and outer environments. The main elements of the inner environment are inborn drives, such as sex and hunger, and the principles of conduct that are instilled in childhood, the sum total of which Freud termed the superego. The main elements in the outer environment are other human beings, not only relatives, friends, and business associates, but all members of the society with whom the individual comes into direct or indirect contact. The personal pattern of adjustment naturally varies from individual to individual. However, no matter what the variation, every individual must relate himself to these different categories of human beings according to the culturally sanctioned rules. An individual may feel closer to persons in one category rather than another, but he cannot dispense with all of them. When Mark Twain said something like, "The more I look at human beings, the more I like dogs," he was speaking from deep disillusionment. All human beings have social needs which cannot be satisfied except in association with their fellow human beings. Under these conditions those who are members of fixed and permanent human groups in which they may satisfy their social needs enjoy a higher degree of certainty of life than others reared in individualism and especially self-reliance who insist on being judged according to their individual merits.
The advantage or disadvantage of the contrasting ways, is, of course, strictly dependent upon the point of view of the observer. Those who emphasize self-reliance and deny the importance of other human beings in their lives will have greater social flexibility. They can exercise initiative unhampered; they can make decisions with speed. But the same people must experience a great deal of insecurity, for they must find their groups in which to satisfy their social needs and work constantly to maintain their places in them. The more self-reliance is stressed, the greater is likely to be the individual's social flexibility or insecurity.
The American school child faces a choice between allegiance to his parents and loyalty to the gang, or peer group. Only a relative minority wish to or can make a decisive and complete choice of one or the other. It is more likely to be a tug-of-war in which neither party overcomes the other. It may even be a series of compromises with which neither side is entirely satisfied. But the lack of a permanent and continuing anchorage in the kinship group becomes manifest for the American adult. He must both set and achieve his own goals if he wants to maintain his self-esteem and avoid being branded a failure.
Facing the American adult is a large array of groups in which h can hope to satisfy his social needs: occupation, association, church neighborhood, college, "race," and those
revolving around interests hobbies, and causes. Membership in one or more of these groups will serve as his anchorage which, however, is transitory, for the twin corollaries of self-reliance - the ideas of freedom and equality - remain primary. How will freedom and equality make this an chorage transitory? The answer is that, since these ideas are no rel specter of fixed places and privileges, they tend to raise aspirations on all levels. Consequently, the individual who has made it on any level
is still likely to be unhappy and dissatisfied because he envies those who have climbed above him and he fears the encroachment of those struggling below him. The greater the envy for those above, the more serious is the fear of encroachment from below. These envies and fears lead to a pair of American characteristics conformity and the continuous proliferation of nonkinship associations and clubs. While the second of these characteristics is in line, with self-reliance the first seems
diametrically opposed to it
.
Many observers have noted this and other contradictions. Some have avoided these problems by noting them without interpretation. Harold Laski went hardly any further by observing Americanism to be inherently dualistic, that is to say, full of opposites. Riesman is the only scholar who has thus far made a serious attempt to deal with the question of conformity. He has hypothesized three types of national character:
tradition-direction, inner-direction, and other-direction.
Tradition-direction is a way of life in which the individual is almost irrevocably bound by age, sex, kinship, and local groups, and in which the social order remains relatively unchanged for many generations. This type of life, Riesman claims, is characteristic of peoples ranging in diversity from precapitalist Europeans to present-day Hindus, Chinese, North African Arabs, and Balinese.
Riesman describes inner-direction as a transitional way of life in which the individual selects his own personal goals and then unyieldingly drives toward achieving them, and in which the society is characterized by personal mobility, expansion in production, exploration, colonization, and imperialism. This type of personality, he claims, began to emerge in Europe during and after the Middle Ages and has been predominant in Western society since the Renaissance.
The term other-direction he applies to a way of life in which the individual is "shallower, freer with his money, friendlier, more uncertain of himself and his value, more demanding of approval" than an inner-directed person. Such an individual is capable of "a superficial intimacy with and response to anyone." Riesman claims that Americans have been changing from their European-based inner-directed orientation to an other-directed one.
This characteristic emphasis on conformity is, according to Riesman, the basic element determining the character type emerging in the larger American cities. The type is most noticeable among the upper middle class, " the "young, " the "bureaucrats, " and the "salaried employees in business."
Riesman's inner-directed orientation roughly corresponds to our term, self-reliance, and his other-directed orientation is certainly central to what we generally see as conformity. What I disagree with is Riesman's notion that the American way of life has been changing from inner-direction to other-direction (or from self-reliance to conformity).
I believe that Riesman's interpretation suffers from two defects. First, he failed to see that the emphasis on conformity is an inevitable side effect of extreme self-reliance. Envy for those above and fear of the encroachment of those struggling below combine to make one extremely insistent demand on the conduct of the self-reliant man. This is that he must constantly attempt to climb not only in order to equal those above him but also as a matter of defense against those below him. The self-reliant man (the militantly inner-directed man) has to compete with his equals, has to belong to status-giving groups, and, as a means to these ends, has to conform to the customs and fads of the game whether he hopes to keep his existing status or to be accepted in a higher place. There is thus a direct relationship between self-reliance and conformity: the more militant the spirit of self-reliance, the greater the fear of nonconformity. The other difficulty in Riesman's position is that he mistakenly lumped together the Chinese way of life and that of preindustrialist Europe. It is this failure to perceive the intimate link between self-reliance and conformity and the fundamental differences between traditional China and preindustrial Europe that prompted Riesman to observe that the differences between his three character types are "a matter of degree only." His tradition-directed Chinese and his other-directed American are similar insofar as both will take their "signals from others" but different merely because the signals sought by the Chinese "come in a cultural monotone" needing "no complex receiving equipment to pick them up," while those sought by Americans come "from far and near; the sources are many, the changes rapid."
There are basic bonds between Europe and America which cannot be dissolved by an imaginative argument, just as there are deep gulfs between China and Europe, a bridge for which has yet to be found.
The differences between Chinese and Americans are a matter of quality. These differences are illustrated by American and Chinese, attitudes toward conformity. The Chinese may appear to value conformity, but their conformity results from the relatively stable quality of their society. When they act opportunistically (as all conformists must do from time to time) they are enggaged in culturally approved behavior. In fact, the Chinese have no exact equivalent for the English word conformity. A person doing what is expected is well versed in human sentiments, is understanding, has elegance, as distinguished from one who is clumsy, has no concern for others, or is obdurate.
The famous saying by a scholarly contemporary of Confucius that "high-class songs have few singers" has been more than overshadowed by the popular adage, "the tall tree is crushed by wind first." Throughout Chinese history there were, of course, brave men who spoke up or acted according to their convictions and risked torture and death. There were quite a few Chinese versions of Sir Thomas More who dared to oppose the actions of quite a few Chinese tyrants such as England's King Henry VIII.. In the T'ang dynasty, Han Yu, whose famous ultimatum to the croco-diles we shall have occasion to discuss in Chapter 7, was demoted because he was opposed to the emperor's efforts to seek Buddha's relics from India. In the Ming dynasty, Yang Chi-Sheng was executed for bluntly advising the emperor (when all of his colleagues were silent) to dismiss and punish the favored, all-powerful, and corrupt prime minister.
However, the undeniable fact is that such Chinese acts were based on considerations of duty to the founder of the dynasty or for upholdiing Confucian ethical principles, but never for individual autonomy or freedom. Despite their erudition, the Chinese have produced no writings extolling self-reliance or attacking conformity. Their great literature deals with the means to achieve peace by wise government and by the elimination of causes of crime, corruption, and civil disturbance. Their problem has always been how to make the individual live according to the accepted customs and rules of conduct, not how to enable him to rise above them. The closest some Chinese came to being deliberate nonconformists was when a few of them removed themselves from active society by becoming monks or retiring to their paintings, calligraphy, gardens, or mountain retreats. At best this was passive nonconformity.
To Americans, by contrast, conformity is bad, is degrading, and a problem, for they are members of a society which holds self-reliance (and with it, freedom and equality) to be of the highest value. Consequently, when the American acts opportunistically by warping or shedding his principles, he cannot help suffering from feelings of guilt. And when he has no way of avoiding these feelings of guilt because the external circumstances make it difficult for him to be non-conforming, the least he must do to feel better is to voice some opposition to conformity. This is why "The Organization Man" by William H. Whyte, Jr., achieved such a wide readership. It lambasts the tendency toward uniformity in living and thinking. It offers no solution to the individual American's problem of conformity, but it does express his resentment.
Moreover, in addition to directly voicing his resentment against conformity, the American can channel his feelings of guilt either against those who do not conform as he does, or by affirming all the more loudly the principles that he has broken. Either will give him a measure of peace and both express themselves as the American impulse to persecution. In the United States, all sorts of action groups spring up continuously among the common people, without political instigation or leadership. This force drove the Mormons to Utah, and has surfaced from time to time in groups extolling or enforcing white supremacy or segregation. This development contrasts sharply with avowed ideals of freedom and equality and is a result which Emerson overlooked when he wrote so brilliantly on the importance and necessity of self-reliance.
Faced with the necessity for conformity, the self-reliant man can defend himself in another way: join another organization he likes better or form an organization of his own. The "going into business for myself" ideology is at work here, but more is involved. At the end of his book, "The Organization Man," Whyte advises his readers that "the individual must constantly fight the organization." Whyte does not seem to realize that in order to fight the organization, the individual has to have more organization. With his ideology of self-reliance, the American is inevitably forced by his resentment against conformity to split ongoing organizations or to form new ones. Consequently, voluntary associations have proliferated in the United States to an extent unknown anywhere else in the world.
These developments are almost entirely absent in Chinese society and history. The difficulties and dangers facing Chinese non-conformists came from the political authorities, not the people. Their actions met with dire consequences because they challenged their rulers' decisions, but they did not concern the rest of the people. Therc were no organized protests by the people against them since resentment against conformity was not a significant factor in the situation.
If Americans had really discarded their inner-directed orientation and changed to an other-directed one, as Riesman claims, there would not have been any significant American resentment and protest against conformity or persecution for nonconformity. Quite the contrary, that Americans do resent conformity and have done so much to protest it and defend themselves against it is evidence enough that they have yet to give up their individual-centered way of life which stresses inner-direction or self-reliance.
The Chinese truly come much closer to Riesman's other-directed orientation. In their situation-centered way of life that values mutual dependence, conformity not only tends to govern interpersonal relations, but it also enjoys social and cultural approval. Since Chinese can conform without resentment, they have no need to protest or to defend themselves against it.
This Chinese-American difference helps to explain why the Chinese before the influence of the West was introduced have never had any philosophical calls or significant struggles for individual liberties but at the same time have not felt any long-lasting need to persecute those who differed with themselves. This difference partially explains the fact that although Americans began their national life with a Bill of Rights, these constitutional guarantees have yet to be fully implemented, and those who work to realize or defend them are always in danger of violent attack on one pretext or another, Americanism or anticommunism. Developments in China under the Communist government - from public confessions, group struggles, Red Guard rampages, the outpouring of sentiments at the death of Premier Chou En-lai, the fall of the Gang of Four, and the proliferation of the big character posters on the so-called "Freedom Wall" in Peking - would all seem to at least greatly modify the contrast outlined here. In fact this is hardly the case. The objectives of the Communist government were of Western origin. The course of revolution in any society is bound to be replete with ups and downs. But as we shall see in Chapter 15, both the forces for greater totalitarianism and those for greater liberalization are inspired by the West. We have yet to see how well the Chinese people at the grass-roots level are actively behind them in a sustained manner.
Our analysis compels us to see the differences between Europe and America as a matter of degree, in contrast to those between China and America which are a matter of kind. What distinguishes the United States from Europe is that the contradictory forces inherent in her ancestral cultures have in her way of life become exaggerated, more noticeable, and in many respects more violent.
In both cases the apparent contradictions are comprehensible when we dig into the common basis upon which each of them rests. The American contradictions stem from an individual-centered way of life that stresses self-reliance. The Chinese characteristics originate in a situation-centered way of life that values mutual dependence.
Marriage and Class
Some years ago, I went to a movie in which a young couple had a quarrel. The wife, in a huff, ran out of the apartment carrying a packed suitecase. The husband's mother, who lived on the next floor, then appeared on the scene. The elderly woman consoled her son by saying, "You're not alone, son. I am here." The audience roared with laughter. The sequence of events and that particular remark left little doubt in the minds of the audience that the older woman was the cause of the young couple's quarrel. The mother was committing the worst of follies because she did not have sense enough to stay away, especially after the trouble had flared into the open.
A Chinese audience would have found hardly anything amusing in these events from the movie. They would have seen the younger woman, and not the older one, as the culprit. A man's tie with his partents customarily has priority over the marital bond. Only a bad woman would leave her husband because of a conflict between these two responsibilities. Given this framework, the mother who consoled her son was doing nothing out of order.
The Chinese wife is, in the first place, selected by her husband's parents to become an additional member of a home which is founded on solidarity between her husband and his parents. The typical American wife, on the other hand, would never consider occupying a subsidiary position. She has claim not only to the bulk of her husband's earnings, but also, after business hours, to his undivided attention, as well. Parents-in-law are useful in an emergency, but the connection between the older couple and the younger one is a matter of friendship rather than kinship.
Chinese marital adjustment, instead of being exclusively a matter between a man and his wife, is very much the parent's business. In fact, some Chinese parents not only participate in quarrels between their sons and daughters-in-law, but it is not at all unusual for them to openly force a showdown between the younger couple. Most Chinese wives entertain the impression, usually with good reason, that their parents-in-law favor their husbands in any marital dispute. In self-defense, or if they really feel aggrieved, they often call in their own parents from another village. And not infrequently, what begins as a minor ripple between the spouses soon develops into a battle royal b etween the two sets of parents-in-law, each reinforced by their other children. In this situation, the husband and wife usuallyare divided by the battle line of the two sets of relatives.
No American parents would dare to interfere to such an extent. Even if they have strong feeling about their children's marital difficulties, they are obliged to do their manipulating behind the scenes. In fact, most family counselors do not hesitate to advise parents to keep out of their youngsters' affairs, difficulties of no difficulties.
"How can you cope with meddling in-laws?" asked a marital counselor in a big daily newspaper, and he continued:
The answer to the problem of meddling in-laws ususally lies within the couples themselves. If they show that they will brook no interference, they will usually get none. But they must present a united front! Each partner must come first with the other. Where either is made unhappy throiugh in-law interference, first consideration should be given the partner rather than the parent.The wisdom of thiese piece of advice is easily condeded anywhere in the United States.
These differences express something fundamental. To the Chinese, a man's relationship with his parents in permanent. It is so central and so important that all othe individual relationships are overshadowed by or subordinated to it. American relationships are individually determined. The emphasis on martial happiness in America and the relative lack of attention to it in China is, therefore, another distinction between the two peoples.
ClassBackground:
For thousands of years, Chinese society has revered scholarship and learning. Scholars (teachers) ranked highest in social prestige in Chinese society, followed in order of rank by farmers, craftsmen, laborers, and merchants (businessmen). In fact, business men ranked lowest in Chinese society, no matter how much
wealth had been amassed. Historically, upward social mobility in traditional China was limited to scholars. Chinese government was based upon rules of Chinese ethics codified by Confucius and his disciples, whereby a harmonious society could be achieved by each person fulfilling his/her proper role in society, including the emperor. The bureaucrats and royal advisors to the emperor were drawn nationally from the ranks of scholars. To serve as an imperial official in
the government, one had to make great personal and financial sacrifices to study and pass a rigorous imperial examination based upon knowledge of the Confucian classics, whose principles had been used for governing China for two millenia. Top scholars selected from the examinations were then appointed as a royal official for life, and his new exalted rank was cause for great celebration by his clan and home town. When this official retired, he always returned to his place of birth to
live out his life in a position of honor and respect; it was unthinkable to live in a retirement community in a more hospitable climate, as is the practice in America.
-W. Tong
...The Emperor Ch'ien Lung of the Manchu dynasty was not only proficient in poetry and calligraphy but he personally supervised the editing (and some purging) of all Chinese works handed down from the past, an accomplishment that resulted in a colossal collection of more than thirty-six thousand volumes. These and many other similar historical facts show that the rulers eagerly sought to take up the stock in trade of a class over which they had full control and superiority.
The situation of the military is equally instructive. The common soldiers, despised or feared like bandits, were considered outcasts - even the officers enjoyed no equality with their civil counterparts of comparable rank. Yet those military officials who read the classics, wrote poetry, matched couplets, were fine calligraphers, and were known as "scholarly generals" ranked higher in social esteem than their fellow generals who knew strategy but lacked literary prowess. In time of chaos, the social importance of scholarship would be eclipsed temporarily by military power. This always happened in the past when one dynasty collapsed and another had not yet come to power; this condition also prevailed during the four decades after the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 191 1. But in the long run the superior rating of scholarship was never challenged. We should note, too, that those who obtained their official positions or imperial titles by purchase were objects of contempt and ridicule by those who achieved distinction through examination. Thus, although for many centuries the Chinese have spoken of themselves, in the order of their social ranking, as scholars, farmers, craftsmen and laborers, and merchants, the really important classl division has always been between those who mastered the classics on the one hand, and the rest of society on the other.
There is nothing comparable to this in the United States. Here the factory wage earner does have a lower standing than a man with a college degree. It is true that among the elite, and many groups below it, a college education for the children has become one of the "musts." And polls still rank professors third in prestige professions. But for centuries in China the most important positions were filled exclusively by scholars who had attained the highest honors by examination. In the United States, such positions are open to a wide, variety of individuals, and educational achievement, though more important at the national level since the New Deal, remains as a relatively insignificant qualification for positions in state and local administrations.
...Most Americans feel compelled to march forward perpetuallly looking for further rewards or pleasures. These fundamental facts should be kept in mind in examining Chinese and American attitudes toward the idea of social class. The class structures of Chinese and American societies differ in several respects. First, the relative sizes of the classes are different. At Recast four-fifths of the Americans are, by most definitions, "middle class" or higher, but over half, if not more, of the Chinese, even today in the People's Republic and in Taiwan, must be classed as "the poor."
Another difference between the two peoples concerns the criteria for class membership. Among Americans, wealth seems to be the most important single factor in determining an individual's class status. According to the studies of Richard Centers, this is especially true in the case of membership in the "upper class." And Lloyd Warner's studies make it clear that, of A types of wealth, that which is inherited ranks highest." More comprehensive analysis shows that size of income and patterns of consumption are generally the most important criteria for class assignment in all strata of American society.
Wealth is also important in China, but by itself could never place an individual in the highest class, whether his wealth came by inheritance or personal industry. The most important criterion for membership in the highest class was, until very recent times, scholarship, consisting chiefly of mastery of the Confucian classics, which in turn led to imperial honors and bureaucratic positions.
The literati-bureaucrats until recently served as standards for the rest of the Chinese society. Throughout the last twenty centuries not only did wealthy merchants buy titles in the government or send their children to schools as a means of improving their status via the imperial examinations, but even the aristocracy, who were one notch above the bureaucrats in power and wealth, and the military, who could sometimes seize the throne, were similarly affected.
The aristocracy of any dynasty consisted solely of the emperor and his relatives. The founders of Chinese dynasties were in some cases illiterate, such as that of the Ming, and in other cases they were of foreign origin, such as those of the Yuan (Mongol) and Ch'ing (Manchu). All of them, without exception, engaged literati-bureaucrats to tutor their male children, and even the illiterate founders of dynasties usually sought to improve themselves in this fashion. The result was that most rulers of China were masters of the classics...
Furthermore, even at the national level, intellectuals have never enjoyed the kind of security their Chinese counterparts did for centuries. The importance of American intellectuals in the national administration fluctuates, depending upon who is president. Thus, their relatively high esteem under Roosevelt (and to a lesser extent Truman) sank low under Eisenhower; it rose under Kennedy only to plunge to new depths under Johnson and Nixon. Under Carter, intellect seems to rate equally with personal friendship and political necessity.
The relationship between the intellectuals and the business community is always one of ambivalence. For certain specific objectives, business people seek the advice of the intellectuals, and there has been for some years a new emphasis on college
degrees, often the master's in business administration (MBA), for top level executive positions. But the active elements in business do not hesitate to speak derogatorily of eggheads who meddle in practical affairs from ignorance.
In China, scholarship led to bureaucratic power, which in turn brought wealth and prestige. In the United States the sequence is reversed: wealth and consumption patterns by and large command prestige and bureaucratic power while scholarship is only a sideline.
These differences between China and America, though interesting, are not fundamental. The fundamental distinction is to be found in how each people reacts to the idea of class. To the situation-centered Chinese, class is a group matter. His class does not only belong to himself and to his immediate family, but the distinction is shared also by his clan, his wider band of relatives, and sometimes even his whole district. Since he is not insecure about his class position, he can aspire upward without anxiety and can mingle with those below without fearing that they may contaminate him.
For the individual-centered American, class is a personal attribute. His class belongs to himself; even the appearance of his wife and the achievement of his children are signs of his distinction. His relatives and his community may try to claim him, but he has no psychological commitment to them. He strives mightily to enter the company of those above him and he is equally determined to avoid associating with those below lest they pull him down.
...Yet, in spite of the emphasis on equality, upward social mobility in America today is a much more strenuous proposition than in China, for two reasons. Obviously there are more economic opportunities in the United States than almost any other country in the world. But one recent publication issuing from a seven-year study by the Carnegie Coucil on Children has shown that, "although for more than a century we have tried repeatedly to reduce the inequalities that adversely affect millions of children, we have made virtually no progress in that effort." The definitive findings are that, besides the effects of racial discrimination, and for a variety of reasons, those who are born to rich and well-to-do parents are destined to be rich and well-to-do, while those who are born to poor parents are destined to be poor.
The second reason upward
social mobility in America is strenuous is that those more fortunately situated are very likely to oppose the self-elevating efforts of those below. This is done by refusing to admit the climbers into their residential areas, clubs, and even churches, or by snubbing them if they happen to get in.
This resistance to encroachment from below, at any point on the ladder, is matched by the intense desire on the part of the subordinate classes to climb higher. Here is how Lloyd Warner and
associates describe the efforts of two social climbers:
Fred is only a skilled worker (rated 4) who punches a clock every day and receives a wage every week. When they came to Jonesville, Nancy drove all over town and consulted everyone about a nice place to live. Several of her better-placed friends wrote notes to their friends in Jonesville and asked them to be nice to Nancy and Fred. Nancy says, "If you want something hard enough you can always get it. That's how I got our house and met the nice friends we have in Jonesville." Whatever the cause, the Fred Browns, with only a wage and a skilled worker classifica- tion, live in a house rated by us as above (3) in Top Circle (1). Their social equipment, their comparative youth, and their friendships with people who are better-placed than they, make it possible that Fred may move into a higher occupational and income bracket. The chances are better than even that Fred and Nancy will move into the upper-middle class. That's what they want, and they want it hard.There are obvious reasons why the "Freds" and "Nancys" of China would never have gone to such trouble. Finding security and contentment in a definite place among their kinship and communal relations, they are not disposed to crash wealthier but unfamiliar neighborhoods. Conversely, once in a strange neighborhood, they need not worry about being snubbed. One of the most popular axioms of the Chinese is "harmony among neighbors," and this means regardless of status.
As in the marital situation, the Chinese attitude toward class is inclusive rather than exclusive, while the American attitude is the reverse. Since to the Chinese social relationships are merely additive and mutually shared, the Chinese elite is less emotionally identified with its high status than is its American counterpart, and its members see little personal threat in the rise of those below. On the other hand, deprived of a permanent anchorage in the primary group relationships and determined to be independent of all, the individual American is forced to guard the prerogatives of his social status with greater vehemence than his Chinese brethren do; he fears discrimination from above no less than encroachment from below.
The result is one of the many paradoxes which distinguish the Chinese and American peoples: Chinese openly admitted class differences and frankly symbolize them
in custom, but there is less tension between the classes because there is less desire to change one's assigned position which depends more on the kinship grour
whole rather than on the individual. American class differences are less evident in speech and behavior, but class barriers create strong feelings because each level is directly threatened by the level above and below it. In the society of China, we find, therefore, open ne borhoods and unrestricted educational facilities, clubs,
associate and temples to which all are welcome, as contrasted to a professe egalitarian America segmented into exclusive neighborhoods an schools as well as clubs, associations, and even churches that are restricted sanctuaries for distinguished families.
Once the underlying reasons for these paradoxes are understood it becomes clear that racial discrimination in the United States is but part of a larger general American tendency to exclude. Since that tendency is founded on fears of losing one's place among a majority of the individuals, attempts at integration will not lead to lasting results unless the source of that fear is allayed. This will be examined in Chapter 13. The Chinese Communist revolution, like its Russian counterpart, had its inception in the Marxian theory of class struggle between labor and capital. Since large-scale industrialization formed only minor part of the Chinese economy, the Communist leaders shifted their emphasis to a struggle between the peasants, especially landless peasants, and landlords, especially absentee landlords.
After communization in the fifties the overall drive has been to elevate the worker, farmer, and soldier classes and depress the literatibureaucrat, rich farmer, and capitalist classes. Under the Gang of Four, sons and daughters whose forebears belonged to the wrong class could not enter college and were given no chance of advancement at all. At theatres, museums, and acrobatic shows everywhere the banners were the same: "Perform for Labor, Farmer, and Soldier." Since the fall of the Gang of Four in 1978, the doors to institutions of higher learning are again open to a on the basis of merit.
What inroads have such vicissitudes due to high-level policy changes made on the fundamental Chinese approach to class? The situation-centered way of life is more conducive to accommodation than to struggle between the classes. Under the new government the hierarchical order of the classes has been switched around, not eliminated. We will touch on this matter again in Chapter 15. In the meantime we shall shift our focus to the exceptional or prominent individual in both societies: What makes him a success or hero? What does he do to symbolize success or hero status? How does he relate to the rest of the world after he has made it?
Excerpts from
MEN, GODS, AND THINGS: TWO KINDS OF
RELIGION
Background:
Because the mutually-dependent, situation-oriented Chinese have a permanent primary group of human relationships throughout life, religion is regarded as utilitarian, and based upon practical necessity as a reflection of a particular situation. On matters of religion, the ancient sage Confucius advised, "We know not enough of this world - how then, can we know of the spirit
world? Therefore, respect all gods and spirits, but keep them at a distance." Despite centuries of proselytization and even military force by Western missionaries, the majority of Chinese never converted to Christianity because the worship practices and emphasis upon an individual, introspective relationship with God, typical of western religions, have never found resonance with most Chinese. Instead, the relatively few Chinese who have practiced Christianity have done so
without great emphasis on religious dogma due to their lack of emotional attachment to unseen deities. (A common Chinese insult used to mean "crazy" is pronounced "sun-ging" in Cantonese, meaning "one who has seen spirits." )Throughout its long history, the Chinese have never fought a religious war, as the concept is understood in the west (i.e. the Crusades), and there has never been a history of religious persecution (i.e. the Inquisition). In fact, a colony of Jewish
settlers who came to Kaifeng, China over 1,000 years ago still survives today, and their descendants today have noted that their colony was the only Jewish settlement in history that had never suffered religious persecution.
The concept of an official state-sanctioned religion, or even the question "What is your religion?" is alien to most Chinese. A Chinese is likely to respond, "I follow no particular religion." Like human relationships, which are additive, rather than exclusive, religion is also regarded by the Chinese as additive, not mutually exclusive, and dependent upon situation. Thus, it was possible for a typical Chinese family to practice no particular religion at all; or at the opposite extreme, one son could be a Catholic, another son a Baptist, a daughter a Buddhist, yet another daughter a Muslim, all without conflict generated by religious intolerance. It was even possible for an individual Chinese to worship many different religions simultaneously, as was during cases of national crisis, such as famine, epidemics, or war. It is therefore not an exaggeration to classify the majority of Chinese as polytheists (acceptance of many gods) or passive atheists, with the adjective "passive" is an important distinction; unlike many American atheists, the Chinese are not committed to actively opposing the religious practices of other people nor to exposing such practices as unscientific foolishness.
Reflecting their matter-of-fact concepts of religion, the Chinese view of the after-life is not much different than this life. Gods and spirits may be good or evil; they may have the same character flaws as mortals, and the lesser, lower-ranking gods may even be fooled or bribed. Many of the gods in the Chinese concept of heaven were once revered statesmen and military heros, whose spirits were elevated in the after-life to serve the supernatural Jade Emperor, the ruler of heaven. However, the Jade Emperor as depicted in Chinese literature does not even remotely resemble the western omnipotent God.
The ancient practice of ancestor worship (sometimes called Confucianism) by the Chinese is poorly understood in the western world. It is not truly a "religion" as defined in the west, because it does not involve a deity or deities. The spirits of one's ancestors and future unborn descendants are seen by the Chinese as part of their primary network of human relationships. The father-son relationship is permanent, and is the foundation of Chinese society; a father's primary role in life was to raise sons of his own to carry on the family line; a son's primary role was to respect his father's wishes, honor his parents, provide for them in their old age, and preserve or improve upon his father's accomplishments. Similarly, a man was obligated to pay homage to his ancestors' spirits and seek their blessings of good fortune upon his family in the present and to his future descendants. The annual spring ritual known as Ching Ming, practiced by over 1 billion Chinese world wide, is an annual homage to the spirits of one's ancestors, where offerings of food and liquor are presented at the ancestral graves, and where incense, symbolic money and official papers are burned, thereby transmitting them to the spirit world.
-W. Tong
...The worst imaginable plight for any Chinese is, while alive, to be without known parents and relatives, and, when dead, to be without living descendants. In the latter eventuality, his position as a ghost will be like that of a Chinese who has no parents, no children, and no relatives.
As might be expected, mutual dependence runs through the Chinese idea of relationship with ancestral spirits and with other gods. A Chinese is as dependent upon his ancestors as the latter are upon him. He is also dependent upon the gods for protection and other forms of assistance which an authority can bestow, but the gods must look to him for provision and reverence. Many Chinese sayings imply how pitiable certain relatively minor and powerless gods must feel because for them the "incense and offerings are few and far between." But his ancestral spirits are in an inner circle with him far removed from the other gods, exactly as his parents and children are in an inner circle with him far removed from officials and heroes. This Chinese conception is not usually understood in the West, especially by the ndive observer. For example, Colin Mackerras, an Australian who resided for two years in the People's Republic (1964-1966) as a teacher has the following to say about ancestor worship under communism:
" I saw no trace of the survival of ancestor worship in the cities, but I am told that it is stillfound in the countryside. On the other hand, respect for the dead is still strongly encouraged by the Communists. Indeed, Mao's most widely read article Save the People, written in 1944, makes a special point of this. "From now on, when anyone in our ranks who has done some useful work dies, be he soldier or cook, we should have a funeral ceremony and a memorial meeting in his honour. This should become the rule. And it should be introduced among the people as well. When someone dies in a village, let a memorial meeting be held. In this way we express our mourning for the dead and unite all the people." Reverence for dead revolutionaries was very noticeable among my students."What Mao says here is not in support of ancestor worship as the Chinese have known and practiced it. In that Chinese practice all ancestral spirits will be honored and cared for by their own descendants regardless of whether they were good or bad tnen. In this instance, Mao's pronouncement goes directly counter to that Chinese view. Instead, it is entirely in line with Western attitudes toward the public hero, except that Communist heroes are likely to be "soldier or cook" rather than movie star or business tycoon. Mackerras quite correctly observes that "the Communists do not want to do away with the family," but, as we shall see in Chapter 15, they are trying to achieve some important modifications of it which, if they are successful, portend far-reaching consequences.
The structural and psychological similarities between the two worlds are so great that the Chinese find their overlapping not at all bizarre. The absence of a clear-cut demarcation sometimes produces situations which to the Western mind are neither of a worldly nor godly nature, but which do not strike the Chinese as even "in between " because of
the interlinked nature of the two worlds in their minds. The ancestral tie involves more than just an association between the will of the spirits and the fate of a single human being, family, or kin group. The principle of this tie even pervaded the relationship between the individual and his community. The fortunes of the entire community, as noted previously, are not unaffected by the disposition of the gods who may be favorably inclined toward an entire district because of the special merit
of one of its living or departed citizens. For example, an epidemic may be ended not only in response to mass prayer meetings but because of the merits of a highly virtuous individual who is a fellow townsman of the afflicted. In the same manner that the favorable wind and water of a locale contribute to an individual's success, so may his virtues and accomplishments be so magnificent as to raise the spiritual standing of his community.
Polytheism
Although studies in comparative religion have produced many classificatory systems in which to pigeonhole the religions of the world, the most basic and meaningful categories would appear to be monotheism, polytheism, and pantheism. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are monotheistic religions; Hinduism and the Baha'i faith are pantheistic religions; while all other religions of the world are polytheistic. The characteristics of pantheism do not concern us here." It is in the basic contrast between monotheism and polytheism that the profound differences between the Chinese and American approaches to the supernatural have their beginnings. In a society where relationships tend to be exclusive rather than inclusive, where an attitude of "all or nothing" pervades every aspect of life, the worshiper finds in monotheism a religious doctrine compatible with secular life.
Christianity and Judaism, the two monotheistic religions most common in the West, are essentially individualistic religions that emphasize a direct link between the one and only God and the individual human soul. The more fervent the worshiper's belief in individual self-reliance, the stronger is his faith that there is only one omnipresent, omnipotent, and even omniscient (as in the tenets of the Christian Scientist's faith) God.'" This being the case, by definition all other gods are false and evil idols to be eliminated at whatever cost.
On the other hand, in a society in which human relationships are inclusive rather than exclusive, and which are shared rather than monopolized, the worshiper finds polytheism to his liking. This religious outlook encourages not only a belief in many gods, but it emphasizes the coexistence of all supernatural beings. Taoism, Buddhism, and ancestor worship are essentially religions of the group. At one extreme, Buddhism preaches the negation of the individual. But the usual aim of the believer is to establish a satisfactory relationship will all spiritual forces, and the open and avowed reason is the achievement of specific human ends. Thus as man's activities extend and his purposes multiply, his gods become more numerous. In the minds of Chinese believers there is, therefore, no question of which gods are true and which false, and for this reason there are no grounds for religious contention.
Consequently, it is completely inaccurate to describe the Chinese - as social scientists, historians, and missionaries have done and still do - as Buddhists, Taoists, Confucianists, or ancestor worshipers in the same sense that we classify Americans as Jews, Protestants, or Catholics. The American belongs to a church or a temple, provides for its support, attends its services, and goes to its social meetings. Protestant differentiation, in turn, compels him to be a sectarian, such as a Presbyterian or a Baptist. Yet he must not only be a Baptist, but must choose between being a Baptist or a Southern Baptist. Finally he is not only a Baptist, but he is known also as a member of the First Baptist Church of Evanston, Illinois, or the Third Baptist Churchof Jonesville, Ohio. For the American way in religion is to be more and more exclusive, so that not only is my God the only true God while all others are false, but I cannot rest until my particular view of God has prevailed over all others. The Chinese tendency is exactly the reverse. The Chinese may go to a Buddhist monastery to pray for a male heir, but he may proceed from there to a Taoist shrine where he beseeches a god to cure him of malaria. Ask any number of Chinese what their religion is and the answer of the majority will be that they have no particular religion, or that, since all religions benefit man in one way or another, they are all equally good. Most Chinese temples, as we noted previously, are dedicated to the worship of many gods, and few family shrines are a sanctuary for only a single deity. There are many Chinese temples built expressly to house together Confucius, Buddha, and Lao Tze, the founder of Taoism. In "prayer" meetings to ward off a raging cholera epidemic staged by several southwestern Chinese communities during World War II, I saw included at many an altar the images of not only the numerous Chinese deities but also of Jesus Christ and Mohammed as well. For the Chinese way in religion is to be more and more inclusive so that my god, your god, his god, and all gods, whether you or I know anything about them or not, must be equally honored or at least not be the objects of either my contempt or of yours.
These distinctive tendencies - the American tendency to exclude and the Chinese tendency to include - are fundamental, affecting as they do all other significant qualities in Chinese and American religious behavior. For example, the Chinese believer resorts little to prayers, but most pious Americans regard prayers as the essence of religious worship. Furthermore, even when a Chinese does pray, his utterances are little more then an express request for godly favors. On the other hand, the central focus of an American's prayers is introspection, a searching of the soul. Given the Chinese type of polytheistic belief, in which the worshiper reveres and seeks the favors of the gods but does not link himself personally with them or regard himself as permanently committed to them, intensive personalized prayers are as incongruous as they are unnecessary.
By proceeding from our analysis of the two distinctive viewpoints we can also understand why in the Chinese religious conception, good and evil tend to be relative while to the religious American they are absolute. Of course, religion and ethics intertwine in China as they do elsewhere, and many gods will punish evil behavior among humans and reward the good. But although the polytheist holds some spirits to be evil, their evil is a matter of concern to him only if they hamper the work of the good spirits. Cholera epidemics are spread by well-giving spirits that seek to enter every household. The great Wen God is then invoked to send the troublemakers away. In fact, the Wen-giving spirits and the Wen God may be one and the same. A drought is caused by demons called Han Pa. The Dragon God is then called upon to destroy them so that rain will fall. Once such practical ends are served, the Chinese has no further interest in the evil spirits until the next emergency occurs. Neither does he have any urge to wage an incessant war upon them. For all spirits, if propitiated in the right way, may be good to men, but any spirit, if displeased, may cause tragedy to befall them. This attitude is intrinsic to a belief system in which the worlds of the dead and the living are not only similar but overlap. The monotheist holds one god to be good in contradistinction to all others who are by definition false and therefore evil. The followers of the one god not only refuse to compromise with that which is defined as false or evil, but his worshipers must seek out the false and evil and eliminate them. To the monotheist, being good is synonymous with fighting evil. Since the latter is a constant measure of the former, good and evil do not only coexist, but are at war with one another regardless of time or circumstance. The wider context of this psychology is a life orientation in which the worlds of living and the dead are not only separate but also are completely different. This is in sharp contrast to the Chinese situation.
Yet all human beings, even monotheists, must of necessity explain their religious tenets in terms of thoughts and experiences that are familiar to the most humble of us. That is why terms like father, mother, children, marriage, or family are most commonly used everywhere in expressing man's relationships with gods, and in those of gods with bne another. Polytheistic Chinese tend to go to one extreme in insisting on the similarity between the two worlds. That is why the inhabitants of a Taiwan village arranged a concubine for a local Earth God when the figure for the deity's wife disappeared from the temple. But monotheism, by its very nature, is further removed from such thoughts and experiences than is polytheism, and tends to lead to the other extreme of insisting on the total dissimilarity between the two worlds. The Chinese believe that gods may be both good and evil, and that, while the wonderful things of the world are the gifts of the good deities, the illnesses and disasters that plague men come upon them either as punishments meted out by the good gods or through the maliciousness of the evil ones. A matter-of-fact belief like this is easily comprehended by even the least tutored and requires little explanation .
In contrast, Christians believe that God, who is the Creator of all things, is absolutely good, and while the kind, the virtuous, and pure have their origin in Him, all evil, oppression, and strife result because men have failed to follow Him. Christ died to redeem all mankind, yet waves of strife and atrocities have plagued and continue to plague followers of the same God or His only Son. In fact it is easy to see that many of the followers of God or His only Son have been and continue to be perpetrators of such strife and atrocities. These apparent inconsistencies are hard to reconcile even for the well-educated. Faced with such basic difficulties, Americans (and Westerners, in general) seek their solution through some single and simplified but all-embracing religious dogma. Once again, their contrast with the Chinese is as pronounced as it is inevitable. Given the need for constant war between the good and evil, the monotheist could not help but develop the perfect God at war with the irreparably demonic original sin hanging over all sexual love; and Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth symbolizing not only freedom from all biological constraints of life but also complete self-reliance.
Not being summoned to endless war between good and evil the Chinese religious mythology pays little attention to antithetic a forces. The well-known concepts of Yang and Yin underline the unity of the two, not their antithesis. It is true that according to myth, the Chinese people came from the incestuous marriage between the mythical ruler, Nu Wa, and her brother. Too, Lao Tze, the alleged founder of Taoism, was popularly supposed to have been conceived by a virgin mother who remained pregnant for eighty years . He was, therefore, very old when born and hence his name which means "the old master. "
Folklorists have conjectured that Nu Wa was the same as Noah, and the Lao Tze's virgin birth and the concept of original sin had a common origin. But it is significant that, in spite of the fact that in China, sexual misbehavior has for centuries headed the list of all evils, and virginity has always been the most valuable asset of the unmarried woman, neither of these myths assumed any importance in Chinese religion.
The fact that the Chinese maintain a relativistic view of good and evil, virtue and sin, life and death, while the American view is absolutist, explains why the Chinese speak of "rescuing" (chiu) the soul, but Americans and other Westerners emphasize "saving" it.'" To the Chinese, whose firm psychological and social roots lie in the primary groups, gods are needed only for specific and practical purposes. The believer is not irretrievably committed to any or all of the gods and he does not stand or fall with them. Since the god-worshiper relationship is temporary rather than permanent, and practical rather than emotional, the Chinese tends to invoke his gods only when he needs them. Because his gods are not omnipresent, the Chinese fails to make a precise differentiation between crime, violation of the laws of man, and sin, disobedience of the will of the gods. Offenses punishable by the gods tend to coincide with those punishable by the society because the characteristics of the gods are akin to those of the emperor and his officials. According to Chinese belief, therefore, neither condemnation to hell nor elevation to paradise is permanent. A good spirit can be demoted if he does the wrong thing, and a sinner can be rescued from further torture if his descendants behave in the proper way.
To the American, a permanent god, who provides the worshiper with a source of support and a sense of security, is one way of solving his dilemma caused by his lack of irrevocable social and psychological ties in life and every individual's inability to "go it alone." For this very reason, the believer stands or falls with God. He is saved if he has God, but he is lost if he does not. Crimes and sins tend to have two centers of orientation because the former revolve around the laws and customs of the group, while the latter are a matter intimately tied to the individual conscience. The hell in Western faiths is therefore by and large a place to which a sinner's soul is irretrievably committed in the same manner that the soul of the worthy resides in paradise throughout eternity."
Given the differences between soul saving and soul rescuing, between an irretrievable identification with one god and a generalized relationship with diverse deities, and between believers who stand and fall with one god and those who have no particular concern with the fortunes of their deities, it is natural for Western monotheism to be given to missionary activities, while Chinese polytheism has no similar inclinations or venture.
America, despite her presumed materialist outlook, has led the West in this form of enterprise. There is, however, no contradiction here, for where, as in the American way, God's success is necessarily identified with the individual believer's success, the individual must contribute to the overall success of God in order to protect his own security but especially to enhance his prestige. Conversely, where, as in the Chinese way, the gods' success has meaning only with reference to specific needs such as relief when illness or disaster strikes, the individual's personal security and status are not threatened by other people's rejection of any or all of his gods. This is why the Chinese find it difficult to understand the exertions and commitment of Western missionaries. At great personal sacrifice and for man-years, missionaries are thousands of miles from home, and in these far-off lands they often live under the most trying conditions for the sole purpose of bringing non-Christians into the fold. But the life stories of many great Western missionaries are impressive not only be cause of their dedication and self-sacrifice. Some contributed greatly to numerous advances among non-European peoples: better educational facilities, more measures for the protection of health, the alleviation of social evils (such as foot-binding in China), and a general awakening to the danger of being industrially backward in the mod ern world. No polytheists have ever labored in these ways to such an extent and with such determination.
But it is also unfortunately true that monotheistic missionaries have often resorted to anything but Christian measures when dealing with those who were not of their faith. For the "heathens," "pagans," or dissenters present a twofold threat to the missionaries' basic security and status. On one level, the superiority of their own Western culture and purpose is at stake, for the monotheistic missionary does not only assert the unquestioned superiority of his creed but of most, or even all, other aspects of his own way of life, from table manners and clothing to the conduct of education, marital arrangements, and business. This is not simply a superficial desire to see the heathen copy the outward aspects of Western culture; for if sex is evil then the Pacific islander must clothe his loins, and if cleanliness is next to godliness then the true believer must be sanitary as well as go to church.
This conviction that the missionary's total culture is superior has not been peculiar to those propagating Christianity. Ibn Fadhlan, a tenth-century Moslem missionary proselytizing among a settlement of Scandinavian merchants near the Baltic, described the behavior of his charges as that of "asses who have gone asrray." What he found particularly loathsome was their uncleanliness, their indiscreet sexual behavior, and their erotic rites of human sacrifice. But even missionaries who sincerely profess love and admiration for the peoples among whom they work rarely succeed in concealing their own sense of superior people being gracious to inferiors. And if the inferiors refuse to accept the monotheistic missionary's god, they are thereby repudiating the superiority of his very way of life - a situation which few monotheists can tolerate.
On a second level, the missionary's personal security and status are endangered by the nonbeliever's reluctance to accept the monotheistic god. For a monotheistic missionary's essential wish is to have others joined to him in that faith which is his psychological security and his social anchorage - mooring points that the polytheistic Chinese find in other spheres. Because the success of the missionary is inextricable from that of his faith, when the "pagans" or "heathens refuse to heed the missionary's god, they are threatening the core of the missionary's psychological well-being.
However, this threat is a passive one because the polytheist has no desire to impose his beliefs on others or even to react violently to those who would impose their religious ways upon him. It is for this reason that the religious differences between the missionary and the pagan are rarely resolved by bloodshed, but those between different monotheistic creeds and denominations that worship the same god have often led to wars of extermination and prolonged periods of mass persecution. The Christian-Moslem struggles, the Christian-Jewish struggles, the Moslem-Jewish struggles, and the Catholic-Protestant struggles have left their scars everywhere and today still inflict new divisive wounds throughout the world.
...It must not be thought, however, that religious trouble has been altogether absent among the polytheistic Chinese. There have been conflicts between Chinese and Moslems at various times, and there was a great furor of Chinese opposition to Buddhism between A.D. 700 and A.D. 955. But when we analyze the Chinese-Moslem difficulties, we usually find their source to be the attempt of Moslem leaders to aggrandize themselves or the expansionist ambitions of Chinese dynastic rulers. There was little tension among the common people who adhered to different faiths. In China proper, in Manchuria, and in Taiwan, Chinese Moslems and non-Moslems live side-byside with no visible tension among them. They intermarry, with the usual proviso that a non-Moslem girl may marry into a Moslem household, but a Moslem girl may not marry into a non-Moslem household. This one restriction exists because it is possible for a nonMoslem girl to observe the food taboo in a Moslem household, but a Moslem girl entering a non-Moslem household would find it difficult to follow the dietary practices of her faith.The nature of the objections to Buddhism in the T'ang dynasty are more instructive. They were three in number. First, the monks did not marry, and yet they had contacts with women worshipers. Therefore Buddhism was an invitation to immorality. Second, the monks did not work and had to be supported by others. Therefore they were an economic burden upon the community. Third, the monks forsook all family connections and did not practice ancestor worship. Therefore the spirits of their ancestors would become vagabond spirits, thus creating difficulties for normal souls. As is obvious, the objections had nothing to do with the question of the truth or falsehood of the new belief.
During the period in question, this opposition to Buddhism produced what might be called religious persecution. But this Chinese persecution had characteristics of its own wholly distinct from those of its Western counterpart. For example, at one time the reigning emperor was very much devoted to Buddha. When he decided to dispatch a special delegation to India to procure Buddha's relies, the great Han Yu, of whom we spoke in the previous chapter, was among the high ministers to oppose him. Han Yu was punished by demotion. Later, more furor resulted when another reigning emperor was opposed to Buddhism. But his reason for it was that rebels were using the new creed as cover and its temples as refuge.
The pattern of the emperor's persecutory actions followed that of his definition of the situation. First, he required all monks and nuns to be registered and regulated to make sure they were bona fide religious functionaries. Next, he stipulated that "only two temples with thirty monks each were permitted to stand in each of the two capitals, Ch'angan and Loyang. Of the 228 prefectures in the empire, only the capital cities of the 'first-grade' prefectures were permitted to retain one temple each with ten monks." Finally, temples in excess o'f the permitted number were destroyed while monks and nuns in excess of the permitted number were forced to revert to civilian life. In this way, thousands of temples were destroyed and nearly a quarter of a million religious functionaries left the temples.
Thus in contrast to Western persecutors, the T'ang authorities did not attempt to stamp out Buddhism. They did not execute Buddhists or root out lingering Buddhist faith or practices by Inquisition among those who had left it or were never part of it. The Chinese ruler's views and actions were neither followed up nor preceded by mob attacks against Buddhists or by mass revivals of other faiths to compete for the stray souls. Finally, and this is most important evidence of the Chinese approach to religion, the monks and nuns who were required to revert to secular life did not resist the governmental order, so that the ruler's wishes prevailed without the need for imprisonment, exile, or execution. The latter in particular signifies how profoundly the Chinese approach to religion differs from that of the West - where men have gone to the stake for much less than was required of these T'ang monks and nuns. Is there any wonder, then, that while religious tension and persecution are a continuing ingredient of Western culture, Chinese opposition to Buddhism was limited to four occurrences within a mere two centuries of her long history?
In the modern era, the Boxer Uprising of 1900, in which Western missionaries and Chinese Christians suffered a heavy toll, may be interpreted as a form of religious persecution. But this is not a full explanation. In the first place, the object of the uprising was not strictly religious, for it was aimed at all foreigners and all Chinese who were associated in any way with them. In the second place, the Boxer Uprising must be compared with its predecessor, the T'aip'ing Rebellion in the middle of the nineteenth century, and its successor, the revolution led by Sun Yat-sen in this century. The T'aip'ing event and the Sun Yat-sen revolution differed from the Boxer affair in that their aim was to overthrow the Manchu rulers and to restore China to the Chinese, while the Boxers sought to assist the Manchus in expelling the foreigners. All three were but a part of a long series of reactions that took place at a time when the people were under severe economic, social, and political strains. The missionaries were the scapegoats in 1900, but the Manchus were the principal targets of the other two struggles. In characteristic Chinese fashion, the Boxer storm blew over ·in an even shorter time than did the earlier anti-Buddhist episode.
When one compares this kind of persecution with the kind that has characterized the great monotheistic religions of the West, he is left with the feeling that if the latter are tragic dramas in the classic mold, the Chinese affairs are but one-act trifles.
Previously we mentioned the monotheist's need for a single, simplified, but all-embracing religious dogma to counterbalance the many apparent inconsistencies in his belief. However, the combative nature of all monotheistic religions is perhaps an even more important reason why they must be armored with an elaborate theology and why they are intolerant of other belief systems. Convinced that their religious cohcepts are the only true ones, and that truth must conquer not only other creeds that are wholly wrong but those heresies that develop within the same creed, monotheists must be equipped for attack and for defense. Under the impression that their own objects or forms of worship neither threaten nor are threatened by those of another people, even their national enemies, the polytheists feel no need for the armaments of theological battle. Thus, whether we look at Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, we find in each not only a definite group of scriptures as the Bible or the Koran, but also a large body of literature devoted to the extension, interpretation, and exemplification of the original dogmas, and all of these are elaborated in theological seminaries, universities, and elsewhere. Fierce sermons and other forms of dialectic exposition are indispensable parts of such a faith.
The polytheistic religions are not usually enriched by a systematic theology. Even the Chinese, who have a long written history and a highly developed written language, have but a fragmentary and meager theology. There were never
any Chinese theological seminaries, nor were sermons or discussions ever intrinsic to Chinese religious activities. Confucianism is the only exception. The Analects of the sage have, it is true, been annotated, taught, and reinterpreted throughout the last twenty centuries. But, significantly for the scholars who thus engaged themselves, Confucius was not a god and Confucianism was not a religion. To the illiterate majority who paid homage to Confucius in the same manner that they honored other
deities, the systematically interpreted Confucian classics possessed no meaning.
Furthermore, even when the founder of a polytheistic religion provides it with a systematic set of doctrines, his teaching becomes less and less systematic and more and more neglected as time goes on. This is what happened to Buddhism. Between the sixth and seventh centuries A.D., approximately three thousand Chinese believers traveled on foot to India for the sole purpose of obtaining the complete teachings of
Buddha. The journey was so arduous that only a couple of hundred lived to reach their destination and only a handful of these eventually succeeded in returning to China with the treasured manuscripts. It was this journey that was the subject of the fantasy, "Western Journey," which was discussed in Chapter 1. But the theology brought to China remained an object of study for a few sophisticated monks and lay believers. The refined doctrines never became generally known to the majority of Chinese
who, in one way or another, have been affected by Buddhism. There was little effort on the part of the pious to pass them on nor was there any demand on the part of the public, literate or illiterate, to learn.
The Bible, however, has had a far different history. The battle to make the Bible and rituals accessible to all believers was a principal feature of the Protestant Reformation. For centuries, the Bible has been and is still a best-seller in Europe and America. It is published in a wider variety of editions than any other book.27 Th, Bible is found in the majority of homes and even hotels; but it is a rare Chinese home which contains a copy of some Buddhist scripture. Chinese hotels, never.
All of these characteristics that differentiate polytheism from monotheism are interrelated. On one side stands the polytheistic Chinese with his continuing primary relations that even include the souls of his deceased ancestors as distinguished from all other supernatural beings, his nonintrospective prayers, his relativistic distinction between good and evil and between the living and the dead, his concept of rescuing the soul rather than saving it, his "live and let live" attitude toward other faiths and his lack of interest in theology and sermons.
Polytheistic Chinese rarely discuss religious unity because they see no need for such a religious concept, and they do not stress tolerance because intolerance is alien to their religious thought. The Chinese have no significant problems of unity or intolerance because thei~ attitude toward the supernatural is essentially the same as the attitudes they traditionally assume toward their heroes and their government: their gods may be beneficial or harmful, good or bad, cooperative or hard to handle, but if one god is destroyed or falls out of favor, they simply select another. The Chinese react to the rise and fall of their gods as they do to the ascendancy or collapse of their dynasties. The Chinese philosophy is: whoever be the gods, we shall revere them and make adequate offerings. The great popularity of certain gods is the gods' glory; the Chinese believer has little sense of sharing the spotlight. Similarly the general neglect of certain gods is the gods' misfortune or the misfortune of those who neglect them. The pious Chinese is not threatened.
On the other side is the monotheistic American with his anxiety to achieve independence from his parents, which leaves each person to his own devices; his emphasis on individualized and introspective prayers; his rigid dichotomy between good and evil and between the living and the dead; his concept of the necessity for permanent conversion rather than a temporary change of heart; his missionary zeal, and his elaborate theology and eloquent sermons.
Further, an insistence on monotheism affects not merely the believer but generates agnosticism and especially atheism. The believer is absolutely committed to his god as the atheist is absolutely certain of the nonexistence of all supernatural powers. There is no possible ground for coexistence or accommodation between them. In the polytheistic way, the worshiper has little compulsion to decry the non-worshiper, but the non-worshiper's view is, why risk the wrath of gods and spirits?
Excerpts from CHAPTER
16
World Unrest: Communism and America
Background:
Professor Hsu's first edition of "Americans & Chinese" was published during the Korean War in 1953, a conflict in which mainland China and the United States were adversaries. His analysis of America's relationship to the rest of the world as a superpower was far ahead of its time, for he foresaw the
political and societal consequences of the Korean War and the McCarthy blacklist era, as well as the future disastrous American involvement in the Vietnam War as inevitable consequences of the American outlook on life centered on self-reliance. Even though Americans today regard communism as "dead" as a result of America winning the Cold War, communism still exists in a modified form in China, a fact conveniently ignored by the American news media, in naive anticipation of the "future
adoption of American style democracy by China.". More important than the designation of a particular ideology (communism vs. fascism), it is the tendency towards a "totalitarianism" that was seen by Professor Hsu as an ever-present threat in American society, given its psychological need for conformity and security. It is a well-known fact that most Chinese know more about American history than Americans know about Chinese history. Given the precarious state of the world
following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, it is important to acknowledge without censorship America's history and psycho-cultural orientation in creating the present world and its relationship to the rest of the world.
-W. Tong
The present situation of America, remote as the proposition might at first appear, can be viewed as somewhat analogous to China's when, in consequence of external pressures, the society's internal mechanisms were confronted by problems for which they were not fashioned to deal. America, like China, for many years rejoiced in its isolation from the rest of the world. Insulated from warring Europe and chaotic Asia by two great oceans, Americans were free to shape their own destiny in their own way. The Great Wall psychology was as true of America as it was of China. Then, almost without warning, the walls crumbled, the oceans were reduced to ponds, and geographic distance no longer meant security. Neither people were able to ignore the world any longer; complete freedom of action disappeared forever. In countless ways, the world was making its presence felt in similarly numberless aspects of individual and national life.
In both societies many persons, trapped between the patterns of psychological satisfaction to which they are accustomed and the realities of the present, either despair of the future or point to the past as the only hope. In China the dream is to return to Confucianism; in the United States complete self-reliance and unbridled free enterprise, such as that preached by Milton Friedman, still have appeal to many. Likewise, in both countries some make a fetish of ignoring and retreating from the troubles around them, seeking individual refuge in art, business, entertainment, or scientific inquiry, while others dream of finding a single, simple solution, including the mysteries of some Oriental religion, which overnight would set matters aright. This is what occurs whenever walls are breached.
Here, however, the similarity ends. We must now take into account once again the great difference in the manner of life that was led behind the protective barriers. China's way of life was static. She was the sleeping lion, and the problem was to awaken her and to substitute action for the torpor that had enfeebled her. The American condition is quite the opposite. Americanism is almost synonymous with dynamism. It is no accident that in the history of American life we saw a new optimism, a new vision, an almost ecstatic carefreeness unknown to the rest of the world. The dream of unlimited expansion and unlimited progress, while first recorded in European thought, was given embodiment in the living achievements of American life. For those achievements Americans need apologize to no one, neither to those "artistic" souls here or abroad who have quailed before the specter of "materialism," nor to their own consciences.
The fact is that America is the envy of the world, in spite of the resentment and even hatred against her, particularly of those millions in Asia and Africa who have been so occupied with the problems of survival that, unlike many well-fed bohemians and intellectuals, they find this misnamed materialism very appealing. The American press and the United States information agencies thought they had struck propaganda pay dirt when in 1950 (during the Korean War) the Chinese Communist mission to the United Nations General Assembly went on a buying spree in New York. But Chinese visitors to the United States have always indulged themselves in this fashion, acquiring cameras, household appliances, and autos. Among Chinese students, a description of the ideal life was to live in an American house (for its conveniences), to eat Chinese food (for its delicate satisfactions to the alimentary tract), and to marry a Japanese wife (for her obedience to the master).
Furthermore, far more than her so-called material achievements, American democracy has exercised a still greater attraction to those people who have suffered under warlords, emperors, and despots of all hues and forms. Malfunctions there may be in the American government just as the economic plenitude of America may be purchased in part at the cost of other values, but most of mankind in its misery and subjection would show no hesitation whatsoever if they could exchange their world for the one in which Americans live.
This is one cause of the difficulties that America faces in Asia today. Until not very long ago, the world's non-Western peoples looked upon the achievements of the West with astonishment, fear, and probably envy. But Western ways were not their ways. They did not aspire to take on those ways; they also did not know how. The situation changed greatly and rapidly since World War II. Those who once were overawed now know many of the means by which the West achieves its ends. Those once held in thrall by fear have since discovered cracks in the Western power and have witnessed the spectacle of Western armies being defeated by Asian forces. Those once resigned to envy of the West are now convinced that they are capable of improving their material welfare and terminating their status as inferiors.
The immediate causes of unrest vary from place to place. The
goals of organized groups, their methods, and the nature of their leadership also are different. But the basic issues are everywhere the same. The few remaining colonial and semi-colonial lands are straining against the chains that have bound them, and the newly independent but economically and politically still weak nations are straining to better themselves in the Western model. It is into the resulting struggle which America has been almost imperceptibly drawn.
The American Dilemma
America has spent billions for the economic recovery of Western Europe and continues to spend billions for its military security. This is done not out of charity or sentiment, but for strategic reasons of self-defense. This would be difficult enough if the problem were confined to Europe, but it is not. The former and present European colonies, protectorates, and spheres of influence are beset by dual pressures that often commingle and coalesce. Native liberation movements and internal revolutions or simple struggles for power frequently are penetrated by Communists so that, as the chief exponent of the fight against communism, America becomes labeled as the abettor and even the inheritor of imperialism - and with good reason. After unsuccessfully aiding the French to crush the Vietnamese independence fighters, America simply slipped into the former colonial master's shoes and Americanized the war in Vietnam. In the process she tried to keep in power first the playboy emperor Bao Dai, then the dictator Diem, and finally the military men Thieu and Ky and their generals, some of whom had actually fought on the side of the French against their own countrymen. Would the American people have tolerated as heads of their government men who had collaborated with their enemies?
Furthermore, even where Communist penetration is nonexistent or nominal, America often feels that it is necessary to take the side of the colonial power or some other despot for other political purposes. For example, America has yet to indicate by some deed or policy statement that she really shares the feelings of African peoples concerning the totalitarian brutalities practiced by the government of the Republic of South Africa against Blacks.
To Americans, these things may be explicable in terms of the anti-Communist struggle. To other peoples of the earth they are not that clear-cut. Many feel that the charges emanating from Moscow do not appear to be at variance with the facts of their daily lives. It does not do much good for America to make the defense that she has proved her good faith by freeing the Philippines, just as it will cause little stir for Russia to describe the good life of the Uzbek minority within her borders. The Philippines and Uzbekistan do not concern the Egyptian fellahin, the Namibian rebels, the Iranian militants, or the Chinese peasant. But discontented peoples bent on improving their life situation are not likely to decline the call of any "ism" which promises to see to their needs and shows immediate signs of fulfilling its pledge.
In this regard the United States suffers from certain disadvantages of historical accident. Except for the Chinese, Asians and Africans have had no experience with Soviet imperialism. But they are only too well acquainted with European imperialism. As we noted in Chapter 15, by the 1930s even the Chinese, whose capital the Russians once occupied together with the United States and six other foreign powers, did not consider Russia to be a significant threat. This picture has not changed; Western Europeans were the last colonial masters, and the Americans are supporting them and opposing Russia.
With such a background, America has become an easy prey to enemy propaganda, whenever she appears to side with the present and former colonial powers. It has not been difficult for Communists to shift the onus of the past onto America while the Soviet Union has run up the banners of peace and plenty, freedom and equality, and anti-colonialism and international justice which were once the rightful possession of America, the land that first gave them national expression. Even the Soviet occupation of Hungary, later of Czechoslovakia, and now of Afghanistan angered Americans much more than it impressed the Asians. Instead, the Vietnamese situation was much more real to them, and its much greater and more extensive brutalities were not, as they could see too, all created by the Viet Cong and Hanoi. I doubt if any amount of American explanation will convince the next several generations of Asians that the United States does not have a double standard where non-European peoples are concerned.
It is this that makes possible the "initiative" which many observers claim to be enjoyed by the Communists since the conclusion of World War II. The philosopher, F. S. C. Northrop, expressed this concern in the following vein:
"The Communists have done their best to make the time in which we live a desperate and tragic one. For how tragic it is that these glorious civilizations which are Asia and Islam, now in resurgence, cannot draw at their leisure in their own way upon the equally glorious civilization of the Hebrew-Christian, Greco-Roman, modern liberalized West, and even upon Karl Marx's original thought, without having their hands and our hands forced by Moscow and Peking Communists."But Northrop would do well to recall first that the forcing of hands began when the industrialized West expanded at no little expense of the rest of the world. The conditions that this expansion either fostered or contributed to did not allow Asia and Islam to draw at their "leisure" upon Western ways. The needs and pressures of the time were not conducive to a slow metamorphosis, Moscow or no Moscow. Long before Borodin appeared in Canton, many Chinese had learned the lesson of action - and action now, not tomorrow - from Europe and America. They had been to school, as Americans say, in the college of hard knocks prior to any postgraduate courses they may have taken in either Leninist or capitalist theory. Sun Yat-sen, who was introduced to Western ideas at an English mission school in Hawaii and who looked to America as the prototype of what he hoped China might one day be, called for a new China based on his Three People's Principles-nationalism, democracy, and a decent livelihood - many years before Lenin detrained at St. Petersburg.
The real American difficulty is not that Communists have seized the "initiative," but that the international world as the Americans knew it has drastically changed without their permission, exactly as - over a century before - the international world as the Chinese knew it had drastically changed without asking for their advice. Before 1842, the Chinese were used to being known as the "civilized" people by "barbarians" who eagerly sought Chinese ways and maintained tributary relations with them. Americans have held a position of superiority - separate, benevolent, and stern. Theirs is a paradise for the select few. They distribute alms to the poor and the wretched. And like the good guy in a good Western movie, they may be unwillingly pushed into the shoes of the sheriff who then proceeds to clear out the troublemakers so that all the people in the little frontier town live happily ever after. The Chinese were rudely awakened from their reverie when they found themselves powerless in the face of external developments; they had no alternative but to change their ways. Americans have yet to see more clearly the handwriting on the international wall.
How much has the international world changed since the nineteenth century? One good indication is to be found in the impotence of arms superiority. The military conflicts between China and the West since the mid-nineteenth century were usually called "wars," but I do not think most people realize what puny affairs they really were. In the Opium War of 1840-1841, the British forces used no more than a few ships, the chief of which was the H.M.S. Volage, a pinnace - a light sailing vessel largely used as a tender. In the France-British expedition of 1857-1858, the invading forces consisted of fewer than ten thousand men. But they were able to occupy Canton, then went all the way north, captured T'ientsin forts, and invaded Peking to raze the emperor's summer palace to the ground. The most revealing of these wars was the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 that led to the flight of the Empress Dowager and the Emperor from Peking and the subsequent occupation of the capital by the armed forces of seven Western powers (including the United States) and Japan. The treaty of 1901 gave the various powers more Foreign Concessions and more trading ports and rights to proselytize in all China than all the other Unequal Treaties before it. In addition it also gave the victors rights to station garrisons in the Legation Quarters in Peking, and an indemnity of over half of the United States federal budget at the time. To force the Celestial Empire with her then four hundred million people into such an abject surrender, the Allied Forces marched to Peking with a total of about twenty thousand men and the entire war took less than a year.
The contrast between this and American experiences in Vietnam sixty years later is simply too startling to escape our attention. In the latter situation, over half a million American men, with ultramodern weapons and uncontested, massive air and naval support, failed to crush the Viet Gong's and North Vietnam's will and ability to fight. What led a giant China to capitulate so easily and so soon before the small Allied Forces was not simply the inferiority of her weapons and organization but her people's psychological demoralization vis-a-vis the West. Those were the days when Western power was reacted to by the rest of the world with fear, awe, envy, and more reluctantly respect.
The Japanese first experienced how a weak nation could hurt a militarily and industrially superior power when Chiang Kai-shek, in spite of numerous defeats and retreats, simply refused to surrender - thereby tying up some three million Japanese occupation and fighting soldiers in China. This expenditure of men and equipment contributed significantly to Japan's eventual downfall. If more Americans had recognized the significance of the Japanese experience and later the Korean War as lessons for the future, perhaps they would have objected more vigorously and much sooner to American involvement in Vietnam. But they did not.
The prestige of any individual vis-a-vis his fellow human beings depends upon how far the latter voluntarily concede and defer to him because of their unquestioned acknowledgment of his superiority. If he has to go around waving a big stick or bundles of money and demanding that they recognize his superiority, his prestige is nonexistent. A nation's prestige among other nations operates in exactly the same fashion; unfortunately, most Americans have yet to understand this.
This then is the American dilemma. She was used to being left alone. But the shrinkage of distances made the two oceans and the Monroe Doctine lose their significance as isolating devices. She was also used to helping whomever she chose, or missionizing and intervening wherever she wished. She had the initiative; now all this is forever changed. The militancy of the once pliant peoples has now altered the picture; they refuse to be grateful for small
favors. They not only are dissatisfied with the status quo but do not want to wait for things to evolve. They will even blackmail America by threatening to invite Soviet aid or to espouse communism. The United States no longer has the initiative as to where and when she wishes or does not wish to help. She must go where the fire is; and fires seem to break out, unexpected to her, almost anywhere.
America's Alternatives
Given a way of life which centers in the individual, it was inevitable that the momentous change in China led to American efforts to uncover the guilty in the American government who "lost" China. We know that to blame a few officials or the State Department for the spread of Communist power throughout the world, and particularly communism's victory in China, is not the least bit different from placing all the blame upon Hoover and the GOP for the depression of the thirties. But "What do we do now?" is a question that has often evoked only confusing answers.
That the American confusion is by no means restricted to governmental circles became clear to me one day in the spring of 1950 when I heard an address which the late Dr. Hu Shih, China's former ambassador to the United States and one of her most distinguished scholars, delivered before the Executives' Club of Chicago. The most interesting portion of his speech, which had been preceded by a five-minute standing ovation, occurred when he made his concluding points. First, he said, America should never recognize the Communist regime in China. At this, wild applause broke out. And second, Dr. Hu continued, America should make a sizable enough increase in the economic and military aid extended to Chiang's Nationalist government and armed forces for the recapture of China. This was received with complete silence. (Throughout over 4,500 years of Chinese history, no deposed ruler has ever been successfully restored to rule in China. Even if militarily possible, the legitimacy and political stability of such a restoration would have been universally questioned and most likely resisted by the Chinese. - W. Tong)
The precipitous waning of enthusiasm for Dr. Hu's advice is explicable not only by the possibility that these businessmen did not see in the Kuomintang the model of rectitude they might have wished. Most Americans supported the cooperation with France and Tito without investigating too closely the condition of their public morality, to say nothing of the divergence of their politico-economic convictions from those of America or from one another. But aid to France and Tito was part of a holding operation whose economic and military costs could be measured with some accuracy. Dr. Hu's proposition opened wide the door to commitments whose nature and end no man could foresee. Its virtue, that of positive action, was in the minds of Dr. Hu's auditors outweighed by its accompanying encumbrance, the prospective cost.
If all-out war with the People's Republic of China was unthinkable, what then were the alternatives? There were only three, as follows: (a) to uphold and encourage the Nationalist regime as the present and future government of China; (b) to contain Communist China; and (c) to make a positive attempt at conciliation with the Peking regime.
In retrospect American actions vis-a-vis the People's Republic came in three stages roughly corresponding to these alternatives. The contrasting reactions of Chicago's top businessmen to Dr. Hu's two points expressed a dilemma presented by the first alternative. Negativism - don't recognize the Communist government - is emotionally satisfying but impractical in the long run because it doesn't lead to concrete results. But the positive course taken on that premise ~ was unacceptable because it would have required military involve a magnitude far greater than what happened later in Vietnam.
The fact that Dr. Hu's audience ceased to be enthusiastic about his second proposition shows that our top executives were not, even at that early date, unwise to the dangers of American military involvement on the Asian continent. However, given the emotional need for superiority, America inevitably took to the second alter native - containment. The tragic events of Vietnam and the follies of Dulles' domino theory are behind us. They need not detain us here, The intricate story of how Americans got into that quagmires through three presidents has been elegantly told by David Halberstam. What remains to be clarified is the fact that the containment policy was founded on two false premises. The first is that the diffusion of ideological communism, either of the Soviet variety or the Chinese variety, can be perpetrated or prevented by physical force. The spread of Christianity in Europe was not stopped by Roman opposition. On the opposite side, Christianity failed to convert a majority of Asians in spite of the pressure of Western military force and social, political, and educational infiltration. One fundamental lesson anthropology teaches us is that the diffusion of any aspect of culture is not a haphazard matter. The incoming elements will only take root if they fit in with the recipient society's needs based in its psycho-cultural context that we have called in this book its way of life.
The other false premise of containment is that the Chinese have been, and still are expansionist. Westerners, with their immediate past of three hundred years of colonialism, not unnaturally projected their way of thinking into Chinese behavior. There is no question that various Chinese emperors embarked on wars of conquest to enlarge their empires. But there are two characteristics which made the Chinese situation very different from Western colonialism.
As we noted before, the Chinese as a whole have never been adventurous and their pattern of mutual dependence made them centripetal. Emigration tended to be a last resort, as defense against natural calamities or ravages of war that were completely beyond their control. Consequently, military conquests by Chinese leaders were neither preceded nor followed by rushes of Chinese settlement in the conquered territories. This was true of the most extensive empires of Han, T'ang, Ming and Ch'ing no less than in the case of the seven naval expeditions under the eunuch admiral Cheng. The Mongol Empire included nearly all of Asia and about half of Europe, but we do not even have writings of Chinese travelers in Europe to match the fascinating story of Marco Polo in China. The Chinese, in spite of their large numbers, have never led nor ever massively supported their rulers in conquest and colonization outside of China's borders.
The other characteristic is that the Chinese rulers always differentiated between territories within their empire and those of tributary states. Chinese rulers did not tolerate rebellion within the boundaries of their empires, but they usually left other states along China's borders to manage their own affairs more or less in their own way so long as they did not make trouble for China and acknowledged their subordinate position in a tributary relationship with the imperial court. At one time or another Vietnam (formerly Annam), Thailand (formerly Siam), and Burma, among many others, were in such a relationship with China. Periodically, the rulers of these kingdoms sent ambassadors bearing tribute to the Chinese capital with credentials or letters showing that they looked up to the Chinese court for guidance, authority, or protection. The details varied from country to country but in a number of instances, the emperor of China was even asked to grant the tributary king a seal of rule as the basis (or additional basis) for his authority over his own country. The Chinese seal, which for higher offices can be as large as a foot square, was the essential badge of power for all Chinese officials in China. The Chinese emperor has a special seal different from all the rest.
In some instances, this tributary relationship was wholly voluntary on the part of the subordinate state. According to Sung Shu or History of the Liu Sung Dynasty (ca. A.D. 513), even successive Japanese rulers asked to be confirmed in their titles by the Chinese court." In the case of Siam, the relationship was much more continuous and lasting. At the beginning of the Ming dynasty (ca. A.D. 1378) a ruler of Siam was granted a Chinese seal of office bearing the inscription "Seal of the King of Siam." When Burma invaded Siam, killed that king and took the Crown Prince prisoner, the new king (the younger son of the Crown Prince) took office (ca. A.D. 1400) and specifically petitioned the Ming emperor for a new seal (because the old seal was lost in the war) in the following terms: As the head of scores of follower states, Siam cannot mobilize her armed forces except when she possesses a seal from heavenly dynasty.
As a rule, the tributary emissaries were entertained in the imperial capital lavishly for several days, at the end of which time they went back to their respective countries with the Chinese emperor's return gifts. Between A.D. 1736 and A.D. 1820 there were no less than twenty-three such tributes from Siam alone, each involving a minister with an entourage of ten or more, a large collection of gifts separately to the Chinese emperor and empress, and a sea and land journey of not less than eight or nine months each way. The tributary gifts from Siam in the year A.D. 1787 were especially numerous. They included, for the emperor, one male elephant and one female elephant, six rhinoceros horns, two European blankets, ten bolts of European calico, three hundred catties of elephants' tusks, three hundred catties of teakwood, ten spreads of peacock feathers, and so forth, and, for the empress, about half in number or weight of each of all the items except the elephants. The Chinese records were not too explicit about the return gifts, which usually included various kinds of silk. There is even evidence that at some point the Chinese ruler was a little wary about these ceremonial gestures of subordination. One Ming emperor sent an edict (ca. A.D. 1375) to tell "Siam and other tributary nations not to present tributes any more since the cost and trouble were great."
These exchanges, however, were never followed up by extensive Chinese colonization or missionization in any of the tributary countries. If the Chinese had been as interested in emigration and proselytization as the Europeans for the last ten centuries, their numbers in the South Seas and in the Western world would have been many, many times what they actually are today."
China's relationship with her tributary countries was primarily a matter of prestige and little else. This fact explains why the first ambassadors from Western countries were treated as tribute-bearing emissaries, and why Emperor Ch'ien Lung issued the imperial edict to the English ambassador beginning with something like, "His Imperial Majesty's domains want nothing from the barbarian countries. .. ."
Of course, lack of expansionist tendencies in the past does not preclude China from having them in the future. Besides, the Chinese under Western pressure have had to accept many non-Chinese ways for self-defense, from universal education to a Communist government. But the point is that the Chinese, in contrast to Western peoples, were historically non-expansionist and have acted cautiously in military ventures even under communism.'" Furthermore, even if the Chinese Communist government tries its hand in the art of subversion in lands distant from China it still must be seen essentially as a response to the West. A parallel is found in that some American Blacks want separate facilities in schools, dormitories, and classes. The Blacks did not invent segregation. They demand it in self-defense, or at least wish to warm their hands on that symbol of white superiority to get even if nothing else.
But the fact that the Chinese are not really expansionist is less important than the American need to create some particular threat and to restore her once powerful American Great Wall. This was the true reason for containment. The psychological forces in its support were so strong that they delayed any serious American consideration of the third alternative - a positive attempt at conciliation with the People's Republic of China - until all hope of American success in Vietnam seemed out of sight.
The events following former President Nixon's initiative in 1972 did not lead to diplomatic normalization between the two countries until 1979, in spite of a whole stream of American visitors to China, including former President Gerald Ford, in the eight intervening years. The obvious reason for this long delay was Peking's insistence on the three preconditions for normalization, namely: (l) de-recognition of. Taiwan; (2) termination of the mutual security treaty with Taiwan; and (3) withdrawal of remaining United States military personnel on Taiwan. But it is interesting that, shortly after he was nominated to be United States ambassador to the United Nations by the then President-Elect Carter, Andrew Young spoke in favor of normalizing relations with Vietnam. The reason? America needs "a strong Vietnam" that could become an independent Marxist state like Yugoslavia, to serve as "a buffer against Chinese expansionism." So the containment psychology lives on.
In the 1953 version of this book I wrote:
"Those who favor recognition usually do so in the expectation that this would be the first step toward disrupting the Beijing-Moscow alliance. Mao, such persons contend, can be transformed into an Asiatic Tito. There are reasonable grounds for hoping that China, unlike Russia's European satellites, is not and will not become a Soviet puppet. But anti-Western feeling has been so great in China that we cannot reasonably expect that any Chinese government could now re-embrace the West with the fervor of a Tito."That was before the Sino-Soviet split. That split baffled some observers and gave undue hope to others for a quick United States China rapprochement. I was right in projecting the split but I was wrong in stating that Peking would not warm up to Washington so abruptly as she has been doing since normalization of diplomatic relations in 1979. Could anyone have imagined a few years ago that Coca-Cola will now be bottled and distributed in China?
Consequently, the China Council of The Asia Society, in a recent issue of its newsletter (Winter 1979-80) declared: "In the 1980s, American encounters with China promise to be increasingly substantive and complex. Long-term scholarly exchanges, increased trade and tourism, and direct personal contact at many levels have already altered many American perceptions of China." I have no doubt about the increasingly "substantive and complex" exchange activities to come but I must sound a note of caution about the "altered American perceptions of China." The reason the United States for so long refused to pursue a more realistic course vis-a-vis China goes straight to the heart of the American way of life. That way of life, as we have seen in the foregoing chapters, is marked by the fear of inferiority. Individual Americans defend themselves against this fear by acquisition of wealth and by continuous victories over others in business, in religion, in race, and even in male-female relationships.
Americans may talk about equality, but what they want is to be more equal than others. Therefore, on the national level the main American stumbling block against establishing and then carrying out a realistic China policy is the fear of surrender of superiority, which is, for the egocentric man, equivalent to acknowledging his own inferiority. It is precisely this American emphasis on her national superiority that is being challenged, not merely by the Chinese, but by most Asians and Africans.
The following complaint did not come from a Chinese, but from a Hindu whose homeland has been on friendly terms with the United States and is one of the principal Asian recipients of American aid.
"I recently returned from a five-month visit to India and the Southeast Asian countries and there I was once more made aware that one of the main causes of the resentment against the Western powers is their arrogant assumption that the "white fathers" know what is good for the backward Asian peoples, and that the decisions of the Western powers should be liked, and if not liked, then lumped by the Asians. It is this attitude of the Western nations which has put the Asian democracies' backs up - even though on an ideological basis they are with the Western democracies. These criticisms were not advanced by Communists or fellow travelers who are engaged every hour in maligning the Western democracies, and particularly the United States, but by those Asians who have read Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who know of America's past history and her heritage."There are over 500,000,000 persons in the free countries of Asia. They live for the most part in countries lately freed from Western domination. They are struggling to maintain their newly achieved independence, freedom, and democratic government in a world in which Communism threatens to overwhelm them. What does all this add up to? Simply this: that Asians can no longer be ignored. They refuse to be treated as stepchildren or second-class citizens of the world. Further, that to ignore the dynamic developments in the newly freed Asian countries would be to court disaster in the cold, and in some areas not so cold, war. The United States used to have a very large reservoir of good will among the Asian people. Though that reservoir has been greatly depleted, it is not too late to replenish it. If the Western democracies want the Asian democracies as friends and allies, then let them be accepted and treated as equals, with no mental reservations. It has to be friendship with no holds barred, or perhaps there will be no friendship at all.
The historical record of America's emergence from a colonial status and the lessons of American family life should have taught Americans that there is no people and no individual more touchy about national or personal rights or more eager to assert them than those who are newly independent or are aspiring to be so. Yet Americans find this Asian and African insistence on equality to be hardly tolerable. Despite the heritage of which Singh spoke, Americans do have serious "mental reservations" about recognizing in others the equality they demand for themselves.
The recognition of a former inferior's equality is interpreted necessarily by the self-reliant man as detracting from his superior position. What he must do is to combat his fear and reassure himself of his own importance through external signs: popular acclaim, residence in restricted neighborhoods, membership in exclusive clubs, and other indications which not infrequently take the form of outright violence inflicted upon the impudent inferiors to keep them in their places. On a national plane, the fear of becoming inferior is less allayed by economic aid than by force of arms.
With this in view it becomes understandable why, since World War II, the total American aid to Western Europe was two and one half times that for all East Asia, but that our annual armament expenditure is now many times that of aid to all foreign countries for all the post-World War II years combined." For if it is a question of aid, Americans would far prefer to give to Europe than to Asia or Africa. Europeans, being white, are still superior to Asians and Africans, though inferior to Americans. But when it is a question of aid or force, Americans really do not care to give themselves a choice at all.
Outside of arms, Western superiority vis-a-vis the East is sometimes also defended under a veil of "love" for China and the Chinese. Holders of such views hate what communism has done to that "wonderful" and "traditional" country and its ancient Institutions, and are really "sorry" for the hapless and suffering Chinese.
Some years ago the New Yorker magazine featured a long article most of which seemed to be a report of the opinions of a European Catholic priest, Father LaDany. The magazine quoted a long excerpt from an essay of the good priest, according to whom all changes brought about by the Communist revolution are bad except, in a residual way, those resulting from reactions to the revolution, where the "real" Chinese values occupied a central place.
"It is wonderful to walk around the hills of Hong Kong or roam in the picturesque Mediterranean streets of Macao and look from either place at the hills beyond, for one does not see there any curtain, iron or bamboo. Away from the Peking daily press, one sees beyond the hills a wonderful land where from the time of Confucius philosophers have been discussing good government, where lawyers had worked out a legal system comparable to that of the Romans, where Buddhist philosophy found a fertile soil in the speculative mystical Taoist mind where the rhythm of life was different from that of any other country, where a foreigner could feel at home once he had mastered the language, sonorous, musical, strong and delicate, where the storyteller in the market place recited to the rhythmic accompaniment of the castanets endless stories from the Three Kingdoms, where each one knew the village from which his ancestors had come and many simple folk could trace the family tree back for centuries. Looking at her in this mood, one is not inclined to see in China of today the dark blotches, the terror, the millions of youths toiling painfully in the border lands, the handful of wicked men in command, the superhuman, or subhuman, labor of the masses. Once a year one wants to look at China, wonderful even today, and at that China only. There are true and not merely fictitious values in China as she is now. Communism, like every terrifying power in history, from the Pharaohs, to Hitler, has its values, order, creativeness, dynamism, tenacity, and idealism, however distorted. It also creates values by reaction, as a challenge to thought and to a search for other solutions. China the wonderful is there in the "reactionaries," men of culture who strive to salvage the Chinese heritage even at the risk of their lives. It is also there deep in the reality of their daily life."The reader can easily appreciate the Alice in Wonderland world that Father LaDany shares with all his kindred souls. But is the Father LaDany kind of mental picture of China rare among Americans today? I hope so but am not sure.
In 1979, my wife and I were invited to a luncheon by the wives of some educators and businessmen, to brief them on China. They and their husbands were soon to take a three-week tour of the People's Republic. The ladies were busy studying guidebooks, short histories of China, and geography. They knew that tips were out in China, but what gifts should they give their guides in appreciation? And how could they avoid offending their Chinese hosts and hostesses?
Among the materials they were studying was a long letter from a friend of one of the ladies who had a China connection, who claimed to speak Chinese fluently. The letter is too lengthy to quote in full, but some excerpts follow:
"I am thrilled for you and wish I was packing for China instead of Switzerland. It was an emotional trip for me two years ago for I was actually seeing the sights and streets of my childhood. ... I am sure you have been deluged with suggestions so the following may be very repetitive. Glue - take a small bottle or tube, as most the stamps are glueless and their glue is awful. Paper matches - they have only the bulky little wooden matches and they are hard to carry. (You can gauge the sophistication and standard of living of a country by their matches.) Bob .reports that most underdeveloped countries have wooden matches."The correspondent went on to list some other items to bring, from tea bags and instant coffee to soap and Kleenex. She concluded with what she meant by her "emotional" relationship with China:
"Since we were there for business purposes they (the Chinese) were far more anxious for us to see modern China but my interest was in the old since I had tender memories of tap dancing with my sisters at the Altar of the Sky at the Temple of Heaven so I insisted on several sentimental journeys."My fellow anthropologists will agree with me that the author of this letter is not a reliable source on China and the Chinese. Her relation with the Chinese is not unlike that between many a white hunter in Africa and his "beaters," or even his victims whose stuffed heads adorn his living room walls at home. But her advice was seriously studied by highly placed Americans about to visit China.
While revision of American perceptions of China remains problematic, one fact is clear. Those who wish to change or to prevent change in Asia by force, and those who hope that Asia will slowly meander its ancient way are both hopelessly out of date.
Asians, Africans, and Pacific Islanders, too, do not care to be patient curios waiting for the admiring glances of the West, nor do they want to be told that only the Soviet Union or the United States know what is best for them. That era has long passed. What the Soviet Union and the United States - two of the three most powerful nations on earth - must understand is the importance of cultivating voluntary cooperation on the part of their weaker or have-not brethren with whom they hope to live in peace and to work together constructively, or whose development they hope, each in its own way, to guide .
For this purpose, both the United States and Russia have to make realistic assessments not only of what they need but also what Asians and Africans need; not only what they see as right or wrong, but also what Asians and Africans see as right or wrong; not only to analyze their own fears and anxieties but also the fears and anxieties of Asians and Africans; not only to mind their own security and status drives but also the security and status drives of Asians and Africans.
Powerful and prosperous nations must make efforts not to aggravate the inferiority feelings of the less powerful and the less prosperous nations, just as it is wise for the rich people in any society to avoid inciting inferiority feelings or resentment among the poor. When we used our enormous air power with the express purpose of pounding the North Vietnamese into submission and forcing them to come to the
conference table to participate in what we described as "unconditional discussion,"" it reminded one of the biblical story of David and Goliath. The Western world has always admired little David because he vanquished the giant instead of submitting to him despite the obvious disparity in their relative strengths. The self-reliant man can justly be proud of his own achievements in the spirit of little David against overwhelming odds. But did it seem possible that the leaders of North Vietnam or
other non-Western nations were totally ignorant of the story of David and Goliath? Was it rational for Americans to expect themselves to act as fearless David's while at the same time expecting others to submit like faint-hearted cowards?
The Enemy Within
The preceding analysis does not mean that aid extended through UNRRA, AID, the Peace Corps, and other agencies has been useless, or that American advisers to premiers and farmers have not been helpful. Yet this framework cannot be given real substance unless there is a critical change in the American outlook. Otherwise aid to the rest of the world will be-too small to be effective, the American attitude will be too overbearing to be palatable, and America's resources will be chiefly consumed in the production of weapons.
However, although the problem of America's relationships with other nations is great, it pales when compared with the danger from within the American society itself. Ever since the rise of communism in Russia, Americans have not merely been the chief architect for international alliances against communism; they have also defined the danger from within as Communist infiltration of government, labor, education, and the arts. This American preoccupation with the menace of communism becomes apparent when we contrast it to the lack of a Communist scare in Japan after World War II.
For its own imperialist purposes, a Japanese government under the military allied itself with anti-Communist Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy at the time of World War II. It invaded Manchuria and attempted to conquer China on that platform. But since she has divested herself of military imperialism, Japan seems far less concerned with communism next door and at home than does her senior ally, the United States. Why then are Americans so fearful of communism?
I suggest that the answer lies in a well-known psychological mechanism. Human beings are likely to be most fearful of that which is most attractive to them. The Roman emperors were once fearful of Christianity; they used to throw the Christians to the lions. The Catholic church was once terribly afraid of Protestants; it used to persecute them under the Holy Inquisition and burn the heretics at the stake. But the Romans became Christians, and the Catholics eventually moved its liturgies away from Latin, and is being pressed from within on questions such as the use of the "pill" and marriage for priests and nuns. On the other hand, the Chinese who have never persecuted the missionaries except for one brief mob outburst in 1900, have successfully resisted conversion. Could it be that Americans are most fearful of communism or totalitarianism because this type of ideology offers something most attractive to them? I find it hard to answer this question in the negative; and the foregoing analysis of the individual-centered way of life seems to lend support to my answer.
The immediate needs of the discontented Chinese since 1842 were of two kinds. Their material need was not of a sort that "agrarian reformers" could wholly rectify. Its source was in the overbearing cost of government. The psychological need was for a renewed sense of national dignity and individual self-respect. The people either supported or acquiesced in the Communist victory because the Communists met the first of these needs by reducing taxes and eliminating graft. They fulfilled the second need by giving a majority of the downtrodden a voice and a sense of involvement in the larger Chinese world, and by humiliating and expelling all Westerners regardless of whether these Westerners as individuals had or had not contributed to the well-being of the Chinese.
The sources of discontent in the West are of a different and more complex kind. As I have remarked in several connections throughout this book, the primary cause of American discontent is that fragmentation of family and community life and isolation of the individual which are direct consequences of the emphasis placed upon individual self-reliance. Though at its extreme in America, this discontent is common to the people of all Western nations. Detached from the primary groups and isolated from close ties with fellow human beings, the Western individual has turned to the conquest of the physical environment or to the search for eternal Truth and God for status and security. This orientation has found expression in pursuits as dissimilar on their surface as utopian writings, scientific inquiry, exploration of unknown frontiers on earth and in space, gigantic commercial and colonial empires or worldwide establishments and crusades to spread the Word or to save souls. But none of these endeavors is permanently satisfying to the individual because none can fulfill the deeply felt need for close and lasting human associations and that sense of purposefulness in life which only those associations can provide vision of a purpose in life which is the fundamental attraction of totalitarianism to Westerners.
Not unnaturally, Westerners hold the view that Communism's appeal is economic in origin. This to a limited extent is undeniably true. There is, for example, evidence that Western Europeans voted for Communist slates in alarming numbers in the first postwar years and that this number has declined somewhat as European recovery progressed. In this sense, Marshall Plan aid was money well spent and those programs, such as the Schuman Plan, whose goal was the economic stability of Europe were of some importance. But in regard to the Communist parties themselves, it must be seriously questioned that this loss of voting strength has in any way altered their goals, dimmed the loyalty of their true ideological supporters, or canceled their attraction for the isolated individual looking for a cause. Whether in Asia or the West, men who are searching for a way out of economic distress or struggling to free themselves of oppression will swell the ranks of any movement that offers them hope. But once their basic objectives are reached, the Chinese tend again to be content and find little or no need to give further active support to such movements. That tendency, as we saw in the last chapter, is the basic stumbling block to the future of ideological communism in China, and is the very tendency the Chinese leaders are endeavoring to overcome. Most Westerners, however much their lives are bettered economically still suffer from an emotional vacuum which they can fill only by continued espousal of the cause and continued efforts to achieve new conquests in its name.
In the Marxian interpretation of history and in its doctrinal elaborations by Lenin, Stalin, and Engels, we come closer to the primary appeal of communism. The fact that Marxism is, in the first instance, economic is only incidental to the fact that it also provides answers, certainty, and direction to life. It gives meaning not only to history but to the day-to-day life of the believer. Communism provides him with a faith he can avow, and in that avowal it assures him he is joining not simply the ranks of an ordinary political party but by this very act becomes himself the chosen instrument of history and-a director of mankind's destiny. In brief, the believer has restored to him that focus and sense of purposefulness and identity which he has been deprived of by the isolation of the individual in Western society. Further, communism, despite widespread belief to the contrary, does not ask this individual to break with what is most fundamental in Western culture. Communism, as I have already suggested, is in fact the latest culmination of tendencies and attributes that are much deeper in the mainstream of Western life than is commonly supposed.
... If what communism has to offer fits so well with what the individual-centered man needs, why has the American Communist party never attracted more than perhaps a hundred thousand members?The answer is not complex. Totalitarianism cannot function unless there are two sides: there must be leaders determined to impose their wills and ideas on others and there must also be followers who are, for whatever reason, eager to relate to the leaders emotionally, to carry out their wills with enthusiasm and to submit to their dictates voluntarily. This totalitarianism may be found in different human arenas: interpersonal, economic, therapeutic, religious, or political. We know political totalitarianism well, Fascist or Communist. But is a cult group which requires of its believers unquestioned total submission to its leader, tenets, and rituals not a form of totalitarianism in action?
Being individual-centered, Americans grow up wishing to buck authority no matter where, and ready to compete with each other by all means. They tend, therefore, each to go his or her separate ways, (to go into business on my own.) What we have in America as a result are, instead of a tendency for one totalitarian establishment to control all or most of the society, a galaxy of totalitarian establishments each with its absolute leader, supreme or only truth, and rituals which assert control of every department of their willing followers' lives. Being members of such a group gives the individual-centered person a warm relationship with others (sociability), purpose and certainty (security), and a strong sense of being the chosen and the only righteous ones against the outside crooked or fallen world (status).
How else can we explain the proliferation of cults from the milder ones such as the Dharma Realm Buddhist Monastery and University at Ukiah and the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley and Sonoma to the more militant such as the Unification Church of Rev. Sun Myung-Moon, Synanon, the Church of Scientology, and the People's Temple, made notorious by the tragedy in Jonestown? As we pointed out before, not all ardent supporters of such movements are the poor and ignorant. Many of those active in the Buddhist monasteries and Moon's Unification Church who obey their masters with extreme postures of obeisance are highly educated holders of graduate degrees from major American universities.
In addition to such competing totalitarian establishments, another aspect of American life fits the pictures as well. This is increasing interpersonal violence in our midst: rape, murder (especially motiveless murder), assault on the elderly and the handicapped, and even mayhem against caged animals in toes.
The usual view is that these are works of the mentally deranged or the misguided minority. That view reminds me of what the psychiatrist David G. Hubbard, Director of Aberrant Behavior Center in Dallas, Texas said a few years ago about airplane hijackers. These men are schizophrenic paranoics, he said. They are suffering from a sense of failure, for example, inadequate masculinity. But after also claiming that "the hijacker is unique, he should be treated as such" the psychiatrist admitted that there are an estimated eight million Americans with the psychiatric syndrome he described. Add to the above the estimated one million cases of incest and several million cases of battered children and physically abused wives a year, and we obtain a situation that is no longer marginal to the individual-centered way of life, but fundamental.
Some clinicians may see violence as an attention getting device by its perpetrators. But as one self-reliant individual's decision to force his private will on some victim, interpersonal violence is but the smallest building block of totalitarianism on a national scale.
Interpersonal violence is not confined to societies with any particular way of life. But its quantity and variety are not universal. Unless we appreciate the link between it and the psycho-cultural factors underlying totalitarianism, and develop our preventive work from that premise, we will have no hope ever of reducing it any more than we can prevent future Jonestowns.
However, when all is said, are cults and interpersonal violence safety valves which prevent the American society from turning totalitarian from within?
I have tried to show that, for lack of a better word, Western spirituality is a consequence of the individual's detachment from the primary groups. This spirituality is responsible both for the material magnificence of Western culture and also for its recurring determination to destroy what it has created. It is this committal to the abstract which is responsible for a government of laws and a bill of rights, but it also makes it possible for the West to kill millions of men in the name of the salvation of mankind. It is the doctrine of absolute evil that enables the West to be so relentless in its attack upon social ills but, in its complement as the belief in absolute good, leads Westerners into imposing their particular brand of the good upon each other and upon other peoples of the world.
And I wish to say further that the purposelessness and insecurity of the liberated individual will not be redressed with any degree of permanence by a restoration or reaffirmation of "faith," be it political, economic, or moral. The road that begins in individualism and self-reliance travels surely and directly to the totalitarian state. Paradoxical though this seems to be, the present direction of Western society is proof enough of its validity. In pursuing self-reliance, the individualist societies undermine kinship and community ties, prevent intimacy among human beings except in the marital sphere, consciously attack all customs and traditions, and glorify instability and change. If there is no longer the unity of the primary group, there is the unity of the Communist party or the Hitler Youth Corps, or the yippie colony, or a Manson family, or a People's Temple, or a secret society for anti-Establishment, or the Ku Klux Klan, or the crime syndicate. If direction is no longer provided by custom and tradition, there is the demagogue to point the way. If instability and change leave us without anchorage, the police state is ready to assign us a place and a number in the scheme of things. If, in sum, we do not "belong," if we are purposeless and insecure, Big Brother is ready to admit us to his society, solve our problems for us, and otherwise provide us with what we desire. He grants us the opportunity for emotional release in gigantic parades, monstrous rallies, and organized violence. He gives us the fanatical "faith" the Western spirit craves: the absolutes, the abstractions, a sense of mission and infallibility, the symbols to hate and the symbols to love. He asks but one price, and this price millions have proved themselves ready to pay: the surrender of personal freedom.
Extreme individualism thus ends by destroying the liberty it intended to defend, and Western society as a whole wrecks itself against the rocks upon which it builds. With the advent of ultimate weapons, Western men now hold the potentiality of destroying the world with them in this process. It is indeed ironic that Americans, having jointly with other Westerners broken down Japanese and Chinese doors and foisted their presence on the Asians, had to use the atom bomb on the Japanese and for long have thought they needed containment or antiballistic missiles to "protect" themselves against the Chinese. Those who believe in destruction will surely project their own belief onto others.
The Communist appeal to the West and to China is thus of two different kinds, though, in the most fundamental sense, communism has found its source of strength in a response to what was, in each case, the basic weakness of the society. However, despite the fact that the Communists have triumphed in China while they have at least been brought to a temporary standstill in the West, I cannot but believe that in the long run the West, by way of the irrevocable polarization of its individual-centered peoples behind major or minor causes, stands in more serious danger of succumbing to communism or some other brand of totalitarianism than does China.
The Chinese are not motivated by abstract principles They believed themselves to be superior to others, but never saw themselves as the chosen people who alone would live while all others would perish. They do not see the world or mankind as irreparably divided between the absolutely good and the absolutely evil, the completely just and the completely unjust. The Chinese do not commit themselves to one god - be that god a religious deity, a philosopher of dialectical materialism, or a little father in Moscow or Peking. They lack the zeal of the missionary - be that missionary a preacher of Christianity or Marxism - to carry the one message of truth to the unenlightened, much less to enforce that message upon the disinterested or unwilling. National militancy, class struggle, inevitable war, unconditional surrender - all of these are ideas that fit the Western pattern of life but which are in fact wholly alien to the Chinese. If the Chinese believe that there is sin, it is the unforgivable fault of setting son against father, group against group, and insisting that one man, class, race, religion, or nation must drive another to ruin and construct the future upon the wreckage.
Why these things are so has been the subject of this book. The Chinese have their place. They belong. They, therefore, do not give themselves irrevocably to gods or heroes, nor do they seek the infinite or attempt to exercise total control over the finite. The fundamental impulse of the Chinese is to live and let live and thus preserve what they cherish most - the solidity of human relations within the primary group, and the assurance that human relations beyond it will help and not endanger it. Between the individual and the totalitarian state, protecting the freedom of the former and warding off the impositions of the latter, stands this primary group and all those institutional bulwarks of men and custom which arise out of it and are associated with it. But in the West, as every year passes, between the individual and his freedom and the state and its authority there is less of this type of protection. It is just this bulwark of human solidarity that individualism and self-reliance have succeeded in weakening and even destroying. And it is upon these troubled ruins that totalitarianism arises.
It is true that the superstructure of such a totalitarianism has already established itself in China. Mass demonstrations, persecution, leader worship, slogan shouting, vigilante-type bands invading the cities - all the drummed up enthusiasms of Western political movements in general and totalitarian parties in particular are being utilized by the Chinese Communists. Probably many Chinese are more easily captivated by such techniques than they would otherwise have been if they had not been introduced to them during the preceding century of Western influence. Neither must we underestimate the determination of the Communist elite, a trained and dedicated leadership group in the Western pattern, and the amount of influence which it can exert during this period of transition. The turbulence of the last thirty years in China under communism is a certain indication that the Chinese are beginning to draw some of the Western-type battle lines as they have never done before, or are resisting them.
But of this we may be certain: the wholesale transformation of a society, particularly one that has through two millennia proved itself doggedly resistant to fundamental change, cannot occur without a persistent willingness of the society's members to cooperate actively in the effort. A Hitler or a Stalin cannot run a nation single-handedly. Each must be supported by millions of fervent devotees who are willing to die for the hero and his cause. And it is precisely this unalterable devotion to a cause, particularly the cause of radical and total change, that the average Chinese lacks. Having satisfied his immediate social needs in primary groups with which he is tied in a network of duties, obligations, and privileges, he sees no reason to strain himself further and he has little time and fervor for anything else.
To transform this attitude into one of permanent militancy requires more than tinkering with the social machine which has produced the Chinese-type man and his way of life. It requires instead the total destruction of that machine and the creation of a new one whose end product would be the Western-type man - isolated, insecure, purposeless, and therefore perpetually in search of something to which he can belong and for which he can fight. This means that to succeed wholly in the Western mode the Communists would have to destroy what the Chinese value most, the kinship and local loyalties. This, as we saw in the last chapter, the Chinese leaders are not doing. Instead the basic building blocks of the new Chinese society-the commune - is still rooted in kinship and local ties. But the communes are far more actively linked with each other and with the larger national state via many features including new modes of production, distribution, communication, ideological exercises, and work assignments away from home.
The Chinese Communist leadership, in spite of twists and turns, seems to sense that if they hope to build a lasting Communist government and society, they must exercise their power in a way that is commensurate with the Chinese reality rather than Stalinist theory. It seems inevitable that communism will be a vastly different thing in China than it is in the West.
The solidarity of the primary groups and the institutions and attitudes associated with them which are the consequences of the Chinese way of life are the true barriers to the growth of totalitarianism in China. But the West as a whole and America in particular cannot present this defense in depth. Within the West the path to totalitarianism has already been cleared, a path which the Chinese Communists have yet to open. Great armies and their deployment in worldwide conflicts are no answer to the fundamental threat, for these wars are themselves the final tragic evidence of Western insecurity and purposelessness and can only speed the day of totalitarian victory - whether that totalitarianism be the dictatorship of a Hitler, a Stalin, or an unknown who is now waiting off stage for his grand entrance.
Dire warnings from politicians and publicists against creeping or galloping socialism and impassioned appeals to return to the ways of the fathers will not deter the onward march of totalitarianism. For the individual's search for emotional security and purpose began when the self-reliant ways of the fathers undermined the primary and communal groups. And unless social cohesion is restored through those institutions then these aimless individuals will surrender en masse - despite their heritage of political liberty, despite constitutions, and despite noble sentiments - to the totalitarianism which gives them, in exchange for their freedom, that purposefulness and emotional security for which they yearn and which a society of extreme individualism denies them. The danger is neither distant nor abstract. It is with us now and it is concrete. And it cannot be ended or appreciably reduced by voting for one political party or another. The danger must be faced and fought where it begins - in the primary groups.
Thus together the peoples of China and America may yet prevent the success of totalitarianism: the Chinese by not entirely surrendering their pattern of mutual dependence within the primary groups and the Americans by rejuvenating those fundamental social units. The task of the Chinese is one of resistance to totalitarianism through the preservation of that basic source of strength which has for centuries been the stabilizing factor in Chinese life. The task of the Americans is resistance through a reduction of self-reliance and a concomitant increase of mutual dependence among men.
Excerpts from "Amerians &
Chinese" by Francis L.K. Hsu
EPILOGUE
Purpose and Fulfillment
We have now come to the end of our comparative examination of two contemporary peoples, each the inheritors, makers, and participants of a great historical civilization. At the core of each civilization is a particular way of approaching men, gods, and things. The Chinese way certainly predated Confucius and Mencius who systematized, expounded, and added to it. But Americans often forget that their way has a history that is nearly as long. Plate, Socrates, and other thinkers demonstrated, dramatized, and enriched it.
Some sociologists may see the individual-centered American way of life I have presented as characteristic of the urban or industrial society, while the situation-centered Chinese way as characteristic of the rural or peasant society. Furthermore, some sociologists even hypothesize that as modernization and industrialization gather steam in rural or peasant societies, their way of life will also move in the individual-centered direction.
I find it difficult to agree with this position. If that were true, the problem of inducing industrialism in the so-called underdeveloped societies would have been an easy proposition. All the industrially advanced countries need do is to provide and install the factories and these would then be self-perpetuating. Those involved in foreign aid have found a totally different reality. It was human beings who created, sustained, and escalated industrialism, not vice versa. Toward this end the individuals involved not only have to desire the results of industrialization but also develop a way of looking at the world in which control of things comes before their relationships with each other. Modern conditions of production, once under way, will certainly exert some influence over human behavior, but to see the former as the genesis of the latter is to put the cart before the horse.
Certainly this was not the sequence of events which unfolded itself in the history of the West. The germ of the American individual-centered way of life even predated the ancient Greeks and Romans, Christianity and the Renaissance, not to speak of the Reformation and the Industrial, French, and American revolutions. That germ is to be found in the Western version of the primeval Flood legend.
As punishment for the wickedness of men, God decided to flood the earth and kill all except the chosen man Noah and his immediate family. Noah made an ark into which he packed his wife, his three sons and their wives, together with seven pairs of all "clean " and one pair of all other animals to escape the disaster. When the flood subsided, they landed on Ararat. After thanking the Lord by appropriate rituals, Noah and his wife apparently lived for a while with their sons and their wives together. Then Noah drank the wine he had made and, while under the influence of liquor, some kind of quarrel ensued, and Noah then played favorites by blessing Shem and Japheth, cursing Ham, and condemning Ham's son Canaan to be the slave of Shem and Japheth. Then the sons and their wives all went their own separate ways.
When the flood came, Noah was six hundred years old and his own father Lamech had died five years before. But we have no indication as to what happened to his widowed mother. In those legendary times people lived for a very long time. Lamech died when he was seven hundred and seventy-seven and Noah did not die until he was nine hundred and fifty. Is it not possible that Noah's mother might have survived his father for a little over five years? The fact is that neither he nor the narrator of the legend concerned themselves with her.
Noah and his group did not return to the soil where they were born and lived before the flood came. After it subsided they did not even make any gesture in that direction, nor did Noah think about his father's or mother' s graveyard back home. Furthermore, Noah and his sons did not remain together long. They quarrelled and then separated. And the source of trouble which caused their dispersion was drunkenness and sexuality. The legend of Noah's approach to the flood and its aftermath thus inevitably set the tone of the husband-wife dominated kinship system of the individual-centered Western man.
The contrast between the Western version of the legend and its Chinese counterpart is truly startling. The Chinese account is briefly as follows:
Emperors Yao and Shun (said respectively to have reigned 2357-2258 B.C. and 2258-2206 B.C.) were great and moral rulers. In Yao's old age, a terrible flood devastated the country. Yao appointed a certain Kun to control the flood but Kun was unsuccessful. Yao decided to resign and offered the throne to the able and popular man Shun as his successor. Emperor Shun exiled Kun because he had failed to control the flood and appointed the exile's son Yu in his place. Yu worked for many years, in the course of which he went all over the country, and succeeded in finally eradicating the flood. During his tours of duty he passed by his own house three different times, but he did not enter it even once. After his success, Yu was offered the throne by a grateful Emperor Shun.
The Chinese legend did not name any chosen person (as Noah was) to be favored by God and spared from the disaster; instead all Chinese were to be saved from it. The Chinese legend did not carry the theme that the Chinese (or some one group among them) should take refuge in a boat or flee the country to somewhere else; instead they remained where they were born and lived. There was no question of sons going in different directions from their fathers; instead Yu worked hard to succeed where his father had failed, thus not only vindicating his father's name but also giving honor to his ancestors. Finally, by not even once visiting his wife during his many years of work, Yu put his larger duty before matters of his own heart.
The legend of Yu's approach to the flood and its aftermath thus also inevitably set the standard for the father-son dominated kinship system of the mutually dependent Chinese. Whether there was such a historically verifiable flood or Noah or Emperor Yu is not the question here. The important thing is that over the centuries each people made, embellished, and continued to tell the same myth in their own image. Westerners obviously are in tune with Noah's and his sons' lack of concern for kinship continuity and ancestors, just as the Chinese must have found non-individualistic approaches of emperors Yao, Shun, and Yu agreeable. Being rootless, Westerners have always tended to seek causes (ideal, social, or supernatural) to fight for, to entrench themselves in, and to act as bases for expansion by proselytization or force. Being tied to kinship and locality, the Chinese have always been reluctant to emigrate and unimpressed by abstraction, social ills, utopia, and gods except to the extent of safeguarding the integrity and interests of their primary human groups.
However, the Chinese, along with many other non-Western peoples, are no longer able to continue their own way of life as they had developed and lived it over the centuries. The Chinese survived the Mongol and Manchu conquests and their way of life flourished in spite of the conquerors. But they have not found an efficient answer among their traditional tools to meet the challenge of modern times. The Western world is today the arbiter of mankind's fate. It is paradoxical that the reaction against Western physical domination has gone far to complete the conquest of the world by Western culture. To ensure its own survival, the rest of the world has been obliged to imitate the West, by inviting Western assistance or by reshaping, on their own, the traditional institutions and the individual in the Western model - democratic or totalitarian or a composite of the two.
In this process of utilizing Western methods, instilling Western beliefs, and achieving Western goals, a majority of non-Western peoples suffer from diverse growth and transformation pains and, to varying extents, have also been compelled to align themselves with one or another of the warring factions of the West. This has occurred at a time when the internal divisions of the West are more serious and its instruments of war more devastating than ever before in history. No "neutralist" or "third force" position can save the non-Western nations from the destruction certain to ensue if Western tensions erupt into a third world war. Whatever their political status, the destiny of the world's peoples is at present more intimately bound to that of the West than at any previous time.
As the leader of one of the Western factions and still the most powerful nation on earth, America has a responsibility to the world the equal of which has never befallen any country. Even those bent on isolationism cannot but agree that a good deal of external responsibility is unavoidable, any more than can non-Western nations hope to escape involvement in what is essentially a Western struggle. Yet America cannot effectively exercise or implement her responsibility to others if she does not first recognize her responsibility to herself. Since the race toward worldwide disaster can be checked only within Western society, America - as the strongest among the coalition of free nations within that society - must point the way toward meeting the West's internal problems.
Within nations these problems appear as individual or group struggles - crimes of passion, economic strife, racial violence, religious persecution, political irreconcilability, and the like. Between nations they erupt as recurrent wars and almost perpetual preparations for war. These are the negative consequences of a way of life founded on extreme individualism. It is natural therefore that it is in America, the land where European individualism became complete self-reliance, that the individual's emotional security is the most precarious. The positive effects of self-reliance are to be found in America's wealth and power, and so far these reserves have served to mitigate the insecurity that results from the individuals' isolation from each other. Should the tensions and fears that this isolation produces find release in another world conflict, then we are apt to be confronted by a crisis in the American way of life such as was but hinted at during the Great Depression.
Physical destruction can be repaired if there is the will to do so, and the principal danger is, therefore, psychological. Being given to absolutes, the self-reliant man is most in tune with the extreme view of the world that recognizes only two sides, one good and one evil, and that the destruction of one will mean the automatic success of the other. This was the implicit or explicit promise which sustained the fervor and sacrifices for World Wars I and II, after both of which allies became enemies and enemies became allies. Today we are back at exactly the same old game again. Other than-the possibility that the United States, China, and Russia, in whatever combination, would be equally exhausted by a new war, there is no reason to suppose that a similar situation would not be produced in the next postwar period as a warring world of hostile states realigned once more and prepared itself for another conflict. Such considerations seem to have occupied an important place in the mind of General MacArthur when during his congressional testimony in early 1950 he said:
"...With the scientific methods which have made mass destruction reach appalling proportions, war has ceased to be a sort of the roll-of-the dice to determine ... which should be the winner and dictate the terms. (Modern warfare) ... has outlawed the very basic concepts ... upon which war was used as a final word when politics failed to settle international disputes. It is inherently a failure now. The last two wars have shown it. The victor had to carry the defeated on his back. If you have another world war, you are going to get such destruction and destructiveness. I think it was a philosopher who said...only those will be happy that are dead. (Life, May 14, 1951)."The way out of this war cycle as well as the way to confront our domestic social problems is not through the imaginary escape hatch of exchanging a "materialistic" orientation toward life for a more "spiritual" one. It is not Asian spirituality that has produced harmony in the situation-centered Chinese society. Nor will the situation be improved by pointing out that modern physicists who probe the atom and the ultimate nature of the universe have reached conclusions increasingly resembling certain mystical teachings of Asia. It was not a materialistic orientation that has produced the Western systems of abstract, theoretical thought - whether scientific, philosophic, or religious - which underlie Western material success. The true dichotomy is not between a material or spiritual emphasis but between the central importance attached to human relationships in the one, resulting in the mutual dependence of men, and the attempt to escape them in the other, generating the need for control of things as the isolated individual 's defense against his fellow men. In turning away from the human group, the individualist Westerners also seek emotional security in quests more truly spiritual than anything the Chinese have known. These are the factors which propelled self-reliant Americans to build a nation that baffles, and is the envy of, most of the world; their nation embodies the apparent paradox of extreme idealism flourishing among supposedly crass materialists. The cynical, the envious, and the honestly puzzled miss the nexus which explains both phenomena: the individual's detachment from intimate relationship with other human beings.
Throughout the foregoing chapters we have avoided the question: Which of the two ways of life is better? And for what? After this intensive examination of the contrasting civilizations the two peoples have respectively built for themselves, I ask the indulgence of my readers for engaging in a bit of value judgment. If we assume, as I think we must, that civilizations exist for men and not vice versa, then the question becomes' one of which way of life is more generative of human good.
What is human good? I think that it must be something more than sheer existence. For if sheer existence is the basic human good, then we might as well all be oysters.
I submit that the human good includes at least the following two minimum components. The first is freedom from physical suffering, the most common forms of which are hunger and malnutrition, others being bodily harm due to natural disaster and illness. The second is freedom from psychological insecurity, especially fear of fellow human beings and crippling anxiety about one's place among them, and from boredom.
The Chinese way of life has failed so badly with reference to the first component that traditional China was justifiably categorized as a land of famine. By contrast, the American way of life, through its superb economic, engineering, and biomedical achievements, still leads mankind in its battle against all that ails the body, and for physical fitness.
The usual view of the problems facing America today centers in the economic: recession, inflation, and energy. But these are all within the competence of the American genius. I have no doubt that in time American economic strength will reassert itself. As for energy, it need not be a problem at all. If Americans drive a little less and conserve a little more, the United States will become not only self-sufficient but an exporter of energy as well as technology.
Where the American way has failed badly is with reference to the second component of human good. Despite its spectacular successes in the field of entertainment, which pleases the senses, and in extending the frontiers of knowledge, which enriches the mind, boredom is common. When human beings are purposeless they are bound to be bored. To defend themselves against boredom they will have to seek new pleasures or find new enemies, including imaginary ones. Isolation of the individual and scarcity of intimate relationships are correlated with acute fears and anxieties, which propel many to be hostile toward their fellow men or to seek aspirations so high that they cannot fulfill them, or can only fulfill them at the cost of breaking themselves or others. That is why there is so much vandalism, senseless murder, and mayhem not only among the poor and the underprivileged, but also among the affluent and the well-placed. Most Americans no longer dare to walk alone in parks and scenic spots, even in broad daylight. Girls and young children are told to beware of their male relatives. Homes in cities and most suburbs are defended by fancy security devices and have especially become prisons for the elderly. The human environment has become so unpredictable that America may justifiably be called a land of mistrust." All the great principles of human conduct propounded by Confucius, Mencius, Chu Hsi, Wang Yang-ming, and Tseng Kuo-fan have failed to enable a majority of Chinese in traditional China to derive an adequate livelihood free from crop failures and epidemics. On the other hand, all the great discoveries and inventions by Pythagoras, Louis Pasteur, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and Henry Ford have failed to enable a majority of Americans to open their hearts to, and be free from fear of, their fellow human beings.
The Chinese, by way of the school of hard knocks, have slowly come to realize that they can no longer stand up in the world by going back to their traditional ethical principles. It took them over one hundred years of humiliation, near-chaos, or repeated and bloody struggles against internal and external foes before they came to the present situation which promises to make further progress possible.
The road ahead is not all smooth. There will be relapses. Recent press reports of prostitution in Peking, and of misuse of government power for private gain elsewhere, are but a few examples. There will be further ideological twists and turns. The fall of the Gang of Four will by no means be the last of revolutionary ups and downs. Will the Chiang Ai-chen murder spree we saw in Chapter 2, the bomb explosion in a Peking railway station which killed ten people and injured scores of others by a disgruntled man (reported in the American press in early November, 1980), and the shooting death of a branch Party secretary in Changteh, Hunan Province (Hunan Daily, October 20, 1980) portend more violence in the days and months ahead? The announcement by Vice-Premier Teng of his gradual retirement seems to portend an orderly succession of power, but the Chinese have yet to solve their basic problems of population control and of making significant progress in their drive toward the Four Modernizations while avoiding the pitfalls that beset the industrially advanced West. But Chinese leaders, and a majority of the Chinese, seem determined to change direction.
Most Americans, on the other hand, have yet to realize the need to alter any of the fundamental tenets of the American way of life. They look to intensification of self-reliance, more physical welfare provisions and safeguards, deeper penetration of the individual psyche by way of psychoanalysis, and heightened satisfaction of the senses, including the sexual, as elements of human progress. They refuse to see that such activities may lead to greater exacerbation of the many problems which ail the society. I have even seen in print, and heard said more than once, that violence and fear of fellow human beings is one of the prices we have to pay for living in a free society.
All human beings must live in association with other human beings. They need to relate to each other in terms not merely of how useful one is to the other, but more importantly of how much feeling one has for the other. Usefulness is a matter of skills and it can be achieved, for a majority of mankind, by training. It may even be improved or made possible by legislation, as when Blacks and other minorities are admitted under Fair Employment laws to apprenticeships or jobs formerly reserved for Whites. But feeling is not so easily trained in the same sense as are skills, for it is a matter of the heart. It certainly cannot be improved or made possible by legislation, for even the most thorough laws and enforcement agencies are simply powerless to make harmonious couples out of unloving spouses. In fact, such measures often worsen the situation by generating exactly opposite results.
Self-reliant Americans, being overly zealous of their privacy, are more able to relate to each other through usefulness than by way of feeling, since the former requires opening one's heart far less than does the latter. The resulting loneliness and isolation of the individual make up the Western, and particularly American, condition many writers have mistaken for the human condition.
But loneliness and isolation of the individual are not the only pitfalls of a society held together principally by the usefulness of its members rather than by their feeling for each other. Mistrust, hatred, violence, and separatism are its other bitter fruits. Under the circumstances the well-known remedies for America's ills - increased productivity, elimination of poverty, and equality among the races - are simply not good enough. By all means try to eliminate poverty and right the racial wrongs. But these will not begin to come about, and these will not cure the ills even if they come about, unless something more fundamental is recognized and squarely faced first.
This fundamental something is that our relationship with our fellow human beings is more of a key to peace or violence among human beings and between human groups, and to happiness or misery for the individual, than is our control over things. Therefore when concerned Americans speak of improving the quality of the life of the individual, they should be thinking of improving the quality of interpersonal life for the individual instead.
If the control of material wealth continues to be the individual's principal investment in emotional security, Whites will be unable to surrender any substantial part of that wealth for the betterment of Blacks and the poor, and as Blacks and the poor become more affluent they will be just as reluctant to surrender any substantial part of their wealth for the benefit of other Blacks and other poor. Besides, those who pin their faith on wealth as the panacea for human problems should reflect on the case of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. At the height of their industrial and military powers, did the Germans and the Japanese live in peace among themselves or among the family of nations?
How to modify a way of life predicated on self-reliance so as to allow more weight to interpersonal relationships is extremely problematic. Human beings switch to new models of automobiles much more easily than they will agree to change their basic ways of seeing men, gods, and things. Some early twentieth-century Chinese reformers unrealistically talked about complete westernization of China. Their present-day American counterparts will be equally disappointed if they hope for simple American incorporation of any significant lessons from the East. Each people is tied to its long past which-cannot but play an important part in any change - evolutionary or revolutionary.
But many Americans, especially the young, are already seeking a change in their way of life. In the sixties they sought change by way of negative and destructive acts on campuses and in the streets. Such demonstrations had abated by the seventies but other manifestations which began during that period have continued in force. Little commune-like groups in which the members keep no private property are not rare today in the country. Sensitivity experiments in which participants are encouraged to touch each other under certain guises are still common. The Living Theatre in which nude or nearly nude actors and members of the audience merge in hugging each other has played to full houses.
The late pop-rock-soul blues singer, Janis Joplin, preached a gospel of supremacy of feeling over intellect. "Being an intellectual," Janis said, "creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That's what music is to me. Newsweek magazine (February 24, 1969), which gave this quote, also reported that Joplin had been "making more converts per capita than Billy Graham." Joplin and Elvis Presley are now dead, but what they represented is still offered by numerous rock groups and by many evangelists, each enjoying a sizable following.
These happenings, seen in conjunction with the widespread phenomena of antiwar sentiments and o youths discarding the comforts and status symbols of their well-to-do homes to lead socially amorphous but physically and psychologically intimate lives among strangers, all point to but one direction: the need of the young to relate to each other and to the rest of the world not by wealth and superiority but by opening up their hearts, not by what one can do for the other, but by what one is to the other. This is what young Americans really mean when they want to be "true" and "undisguised" and make their lives meaningful.
The key to discover and implement mechanisms for developing greater depth and permanency in human relationships for society as a whole must be sought in the cradle of human development: the family. We need first and foremost a reassessment of our kinship system. Toward this end we need to divert a fraction of the colossal national wealth to design and carry out basic researches.
The traditional American view is that the primary duty of members of Congress is to make more laws. But laws are role manifestations. We voice often enough such sentiments as "you can't legislate family harmony" or "racial brotherhood". We must realize that we can't legislate obedience to law either. Isn't it time then for our lawmakers, together with our president and his Cabinet, to produce fewer new laws and devote more of their creative energies to new ways of modifying our society's affective pattern, so that more people will obey the laws already on the books and fewer will break them or search for legal loopholes? We need to break the vicious circle of more laws, more laws violated, more investigation and persecution of lawbreakers and more laws to prevent breaking of newly enacted laws.
Toward this end our leaders in government and education can do many things. But I hope they will be farsighted enough to give due weight to the fundamental and long-term goals of our nation. A few years ago the Reader's Digest carried an article (May 1977:96-100) condensed from Newsweek entitled "We've Got Too Much Law." In it were authoritative testimonies and statistics to indicate how our courts are clogged by mounting increases in the number of cases pending before them. The article concluded that one way to reduce the burden is to decriminalize certain kinds of behavior such as personal use of marijuana.
Without arguing about what behavior should be decriminalized, I see such steps as merely palliative. They are attractive to those who demand immediate action but not helpful in the long run. Decriminalization of some behavior will soon be overtaken by the necessity to criminalize other and new forms of behavior. To get at the root of the matter we have to reduce or re-channel the psychic need and social inducement to violate laws. For this we must go back to the family and primary education.
Since the family is the primary arena of human development, can't our officials promote public interest in, and sponsor systematic scholarly inquiries on, new designs for the family which will strike a happy medium between stability requirements and those of progress?
Then, since nurseries and grade schools mold our youngsters at an early age and provide the opportunity for close cooperation with parents, innovation must involve the schools and the parents. For they can reinforce or nullify each other. We need a new approach to, and a new formula for, parent-teacher cooperation. For example, can't our officials help us, by public hearings and working committees, to examine the question of what and how non-Western reading materials may be integrated with benefit into our preschool and primary grade curricula, and how we can induce parents to accept that they are far more responsible for their children's behavior than are the teachers in schools?
In our universities we have departments of economics and government as well as of business management, but I know of no department of the family. Our government has departments of education, housing and urban development, treasury, and labor, but not of family. If the family is so important to us why not have an independent and prestigious unit devoted to the family in all major universities and in our government?
In all these researches and deliberations one point of reference should be held firmly before us. Civilizations-whether they provide philosophies, space exploration, moral rules, profits, air conditioning, or clean sheets - exist for men, be they men or women, old or young, White or Black, plumber or professor; but not vice versa. No civilization, or any aspect of it, is worthwhile which shows signs of running amok so that the physical or psychological well-being of a majority of humans has to be sacrificed in its name.
Consequently, our researches and deliberations must not, as is so often the fashion of the day, take the requirements of industrialization and the modern political state as absolute ends so that human beings have to be trained toward meeting them. Instead we should address ourselves to the much more important problem of how human beings can develop and sustain feelings for each other as fellow human beings instead of as tools, despite the requirements of industrialization and a modern political state. Or we must attempt to re-tailor industrialization and a modern political state so that their requirements will not interfere with the genesis and maintenance in human beings of feelings for each other as fellow human beings.
To facilitate the new researches and new deliberations let us appeal to the self-reliant man's self-interest. Self-reliance is a great ideal, but the conditions of life in which this ideal has served its ends effectively have changed. No ideal can operate without a social context. Honesty is certainly a fine ideal, but it is not always the best policy in diplomacy. We need a new social framework in which our cherished idea can reasonably work without leading to unwanted consequences.
The achievement of this new social framework cannot be dependent upon altruism, for no man is that altruistic. But the self-reliant man should see that it is in his own interest or the interest of his children and his children's children for him to support efforts to find a new social framework for peace within the United States and between the United States and the rest of the world. The cornerstone of this new social framework is that man liberate himself from the magical mode of thinking in human affairs. Man used to pray or recite incantations for rain where he now builds huge dams, and engage priests and witch doctors to cure illnesses where he now makes use of the X-ray and penicillin. Thanks to Western contributions to the natural sciences, the world has gradually emerged from this pre-modern notion of the magical nature of the physical universe.
But man continues to react magically about human behavior and human relations." He considers it utter foolishness to build a skyscraper on sand but he still insists on building empires or alliances by forcing unwilling peoples to do his bidding. He would not think of cheating on the aircraft or rockets he constructs by slipping in inferior chrome, but he still tries to pull the wool over the eyes of other humans by denying them their due, and by giving out half-truths through misleading advertisements or propaganda efforts in intrasocial and international designs.
Above all, he is still addicted to the magic of words in human affairs. Lovers under the moonlight can whisper a lot of magical words to each other. But these words will retain their magic only if there is substance in their relationship as lovers. No amount of words can substitute for the magic of true love. Not recognizing this basic principle governing human behavior, man still thinks he can change a saucepan into a spade because he calls it a spade, a dictatorship into democracy by calling it a democracy, or a lot of irreligious frivolities into religion by calling it worship of God.
It is necessary for us to realize and recognize that in human affairs no less than in the physical world everything has a price and we cannot get anything for nothing. The price may be money, energy, heartache, misery, revolution, war, or outright death; and it may be paid by ourselves or the future generations to come but it cannot be evaded forever. In family affairs, men and women who show no respect and consideration for their own parents cannot later expect their own children to treat them with respect and consideration. In international affairs, countries that have ruthlessly oppressed or enforced their superiority over other countries can hardly expect mercy or love from their former inferiors once the shoe is on the other foot. The United States, as the most illustrious and the richest descendant of Europe, is paying and will be paying through the nose, not in money alone, for the generations of international misdeeds perpetrated by its ancestors. The modern day racial violence in the United States is but a partial payment for the three hundred years of slavery enjoyed by our forebears. And if the Blacks get carried away by their present hatred of the Whites and give themselves to enormous excesses, they or their children will in the same way be paying for such excesses later.
Even the self-reliant man needs to realize that no one has a permanent tenure in life. In that sense we are all transients, and what we need is a pleasant journey through this world, free from physical and psychological suffering, for ourselves and our descendants yet to come. To achieve this, it is essential that we make it pleasant for others while there is still time. And, toward the end of our individual journeys, even the self-reliant man needs the assurance that it is not the end of everything. If he can feel that what he has done with his life will not entail undue payments on the part of his children and his children's children, will he not have lived with a sense of purpose and died with a feeling of fulfillment?
The preceding excerpts from "Americans & Chinese" were provided as reading material for my students in my mini-course "The Chinese & American Experience" at Oakton College.
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From the Back cover: "When the first edition of Professor Hsu's book was published in 1953, it became a celebrated book, highly valued among scholars across many fields in the humanities and social sciences.... The publication of the third edition of this book, almost thirty years after its first appearance, certainly says a great deal about its value.... Reading this classic allows the readers to see real people, and how people relate to people, in two culturally contrasting societies. This book will serve a useful purpose for those who have little understanding of the cultural history and psychological orientations of the people of China and the United States."
-The Journal of Psychoanalytic AnthropologyAbout the Author
Francis L.K. Hsu (1909-1999) was professor emeritus of anthropology and a past director of the Center for Cultural Studies in Education at the University of San Francisco. For many years he was chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University, and in 1977-1978 he served as president of the American Anthropological Association.
CHINA LINKS
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