Comparison of United States and China

¶ … United States and China

The John King Fairbank book - the United States and China: Fourth Edition Enlarged - is a very well written book that covers everything about the history of China (religious, political, social) that an alert reader would want to know. The author's narrative is well crafted, which makes reading more enjoyable than some books that offer historical accounts. Indeed, for a person who is planning to attend the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games (or just visit China out of curiosity), reading Fairbank's book would provide ample perspective and knowledge of this huge nation of 1.3 billion citizens.

China has not been kind to its own environment, which is not unique among nations but has caused a major ecological change to occur. For example the author (Fairbank 11) writes cryptically, "Where forest land occurred, the Chinese, like other early peoples and recent American pioneers, achieved its deforestation." But while both cultures did damage to their ecosystems, Fairbank goes on to point out the vast differences between Western civilization, both in terms of the ecology and in terms the land's effect on the two cultures. This is a very adroit way to introduce a book - to wit, giving descriptions of early traits and strategies of the emerging cultures sets the stage for what is to come later.

The Chinese culture was organized around hand work, toiling a small plot of land, and the farmer was "...obliged to rely on his own family's labor power..." And "obliged to rely on intensive hand gardening" in order to keep his family fed (13). Chinese farmers rejected technology, and inventors and modernizers "constantly ran up against the vested interests of Chinese manpower"; even the railroads were rejected by rural Chinese because they feared jobs would be taken from the "coolies" working the rice paddies. In the West, in America for example, commerce and technology (the cotton gin, the railroad) were welcomed, not rejected.

A major theme in the book and in China is the family. And unlike families in the West (including Europe) the Chinese family unit is, Fairbank writes on page 21, a "microcosm, the state in miniature." This explains a lot about China, since the family - not the individual - has been for centuries the "responsible element in the political life..." Of China. The family's function is to institute obedience (which the state wants from its people of course), to institute loyalty (again, mirrored by the state's demand for loyalty), and to raise "filial sons" who will become loyal to authority in the family setting. Women were always inferior, and are inferior today in China. On page 23 the author points out that philosophically, ancient China had the Yin (all things "female, dark, weak, and passive..") and the Yang (all things "male, bright, strong, and active.."). Girls have been (and still are to a great degree) subordinated to boys from the time they are infants (p. 23).

The Chinese family status historically has emphasized Confucian ideology and philosophy; that is, there are three family bonds: one, the bond of loyalty, "subject to ruler" (citizen to dictator); two, the bond of "filial obedience" from son to father (children to parents); and three, the promise of "chastity" expected of the wives but not expected of the husbands. By Western values one could call it chauvinism, hypocrisy, but that would be a narrow view of what Chinese people have abided by for centuries.

Fairbank resists making value judgments on the parts of Chinese culture and tradition that seems not only foreign and out of step with the modern world, but seems so unfair and so stacked against the peasant. For example, the "gentry" (landowners and those that had money) dominated over ordinary peasants not just because the gentry owned land, but because members of the gentry were given educations, and public officials were chosen exclusively from the gentry - hence peasants had little say in matters of politics or social welfare (p. 38).

The author points out the ways in which politics has functioned in China, and this is a very interesting part of the book, especially for novices who have little knowledge in that regard. Also, it sheds pertinent light on how things are still done today in China. For 13 centuries, the civil administration in Peking was divided up among six "Ministries" (also known as "boards"). Those six were: "civil office" (those who appointed officials, mainly from the gentry); revenue; ceremonies; war; punishments (notice it's not "justice" but rather the more stark concept of punishment?); and "public works" (building flood control projects, etc.) (p. 107).

Each these boards had numerous other lesser bureaucratic political groupings under it's jurisdiction, and all communication for centuries was done through "...a flow of documents of many kinds...[and] each document went through a certain procedure of preparation, transmission and reception." This process kept "hundreds of thousands of brush-wielding scriveners" busy and employed "year in and year out" as they transcribed and then made copies of these documents (p. 111).

Officials from these six boards then were obliged to circulate from one post to another, so as not to become too entrenched. And when an official's father died, that official would be given a three-year sabbatical in which to study and reflect - and to get out of the loop for sufficient time to avoid corruption or, again, getting too comfortable and entrenched in his bureaucratic position.

Buddhism was not a native religion of China (Confucianism was a Chinese original religion), but it was brought into China by India when Indian values and institutions dominated China. If a person looks at the culture of individualism, peasantry and hard work (and pain) associated with the great mass of Chinese people, Fairbank's explanation as to why Buddhism fits so well into the Chinese culture. On pages 126-127, the author points out that among the "ancient tenets of Buddhism is that life is painful and is not limited to the mortal span with which we are familiar." The concept is "transmigration," or reincarnation, and it puts forward the idea that if followers are good citizens and obedient, they will come back in another form, a pleasant form, in "the next life." On page 127 Fairbank alludes to the Buddhist "dharmas," which take many forms and in effect provide a "...very near explanation of experience and form a basis for the denial for the existence of self." In other words, the Buddhist dharmas offer a way of "escaping life's misery," which fits in eloquently with the hard work and misery so many Chinese peasants go through.

In China, as with all nations, there have been numerous political phases, during which old ways collapse, and new ways are ushered in; there have been many periods of revolution and rebellion, reform and uniting, the end of dynasties and the beginning of new ones. Fairbank covers many of these changes, but two in particular are worthy of review in this paper. On page 177 the author notes that the fall of the Manchu dynasty (which ushered in the "warlord period," between 1916 and 1928) and the rise of the regimes, first under Chiang Kai-shek and followed immediately by Mao Tse-tung. One of the catalysts to major change in China post-dynasties, was the opening of China to foreigners in 1860. That move launched the attempt by westerners to Christianize China. Roman Catholic priests and Protestant missionaries - and others - arrived in the late 19th Century; and though they only achieved 60,000 converts (p. 202), and there was substantial resistance (and riots), the presence of outsiders "was a profound stimulus to change" (p. 203).

Another stimulus to change within China was the colonialism in the late 19th Century; Russia, France, the British and Japan seized portions of China, and these defeats at the hands of aggressors "gave the first great impetus toward revolutionary change" in China, Fairbank writes on page 205. When the old Manchu dynasty failed to come up with ways to thwart the invading foreigners, a new nationalism was born in China. The old pastimes and rituals (p. 214) had allowed China to become soft. This awakening nationalism - partly a rejection of "foot binding, servant-girl bondage, prostitution, gambling," and opium smoking - was stoked not just by the colonial aggression, but by a spreading literacy (educational institutions were being built, the telegraph, newspapers, magazines and railway travel) and emerging awareness of their endangered culture. The last Manchu Emperor was put out of office on February 12, 1912, and hence a political system that had endured for 2,133 years, was out of commission.