Summer Vacation Essays
Origin
Taking advantage of the rare opportunity of summer vacation, besides making the most of my time to study and amuse myself, I also had ample and continuous free time to read and think, and once school starts I’ll be even busier. So I decided to record my thoughts during this period: first, for my own later recollection; second, so that I can keep them on hand and use them as an essay for homework in the future; and third, so that they may serve as a kind of “thought report” and let the Party organization get to know me better. I’ll write whatever comes to mind, without the least bit of restraint or affectation, and without deliberately polishing it up.
I. The Beggar
Last semester, there was an English assignment called “picture composition,” and the plot went roughly like this: two children meet a beggar in ragged clothes on the street; one child ignores him while the other gives him money. Then the beggar turns around and takes off his disguise—in fact he is an actor; both children are invited into the studio, the child who did not give money looks embarrassed, and the child who did give money is commended.
The story we were asked to write seemed to suggest such a value orientation: giving money to beggars means having sympathy and love, and makes you a good child.
I did not write according to the setter’s line of thought, because I do not agree with that kind of value orientation.
Since the case of Sun Zhigang provoked intense reaction throughout society, the long-standing “Measures for the Confinement and Repatriation of Urban Vagrants and Beggars” was finally abolished. Although this reform seemed somewhat reactive, it was nevertheless a remedy after the fact, and showed the new government’s determination to carry out further reform and improvement in social welfare and social relief. But I heard someone say online: after the “measures” were abolished, there were more beggars on the streets of Shanghai.
Without firsthand experience, I would not have believed it. Not to mention that when going to school, on the subway one would encounter such a sight with a probability of about one in ten; just take my trip out a few days ago to buy books as an example: I went from the Pudong Mind Computer City to Dongfang Book City, then from the overpass to No. 1188 Yibai Ban, then turned back and crossed Zhangyang Road to the bus stop on the other side. Making a loop like that, without retracing any roads, the route was probably about the same as going around the inner ring of the No. 2 High School once. Along that stretch of road, I actually encountered beggars fourteen times in total, young and old, male and female of every sort!
Among these people, the women had disheveled hair and murmured something like a litany of misery while stretching out their hands toward you; the men lay sprawled on the roadside, trembling all over, with broken bowls beside them; little boys chased after passersby, tugging at them; little girls would drop to their knees at the slightest provocation…
I know that, miserable as they look, they are very capable when it comes to making money. An article in the July 14 issue of Cankao Xiaoxi said that beggars in Shanghai, if they’re lucky, can make “two hundred yuan a day”! That is not just fantasy. Just look at the extremely high pedestrian flow around Yibai Ban: as long as one or two out of every hundred people are willing to give money, they can at least make several dozen yuan in a day. No wonder such a tiny patch of land, no bigger than a sesame seed, can attract more than ten beggars!
Is begging, for beggars, a new and稳赚不赔, guaranteed-profitable means of making a living, or even of making money? For passersby, is it a test of your compassion? For Shanghai, is it the formation of a unique scenic line?
No. For beggars, begging is a shameful act of selling their personality and dignity in exchange for getting something for nothing; for passersby, it is a test of one’s mood and appetite; for this international metropolis of Shanghai, it is a major chronic ailment that gives one a headache.
Foreign tourists and visitors from abroad who come to Shanghai cannot directly feel questions such as: what is our crime rate in Shanghai; how effectively have pornography, gambling, and drugs been cracked down on; how well are anti-corruption and clean government being carried out; and so on. But the quality of your city’s social relief work can make a deep impression simply by taking a walk down the street. Moreover, this “profession” of begging is unlike ordinary illegal professions: not only is it not afraid of being “in the light,” it even deliberately seeks out places with many visitors to “work.” Therefore, although begging is not considered a violation of the law or a crime, the damage it does to a city’s image is especially serious!
Of course, although many beggars are people who merely have healthy hands yet are lazy to labor, and who rely on acting skills and selling their dignity as a way to make money while lying back and waiting for the harvest, there are after all also those who are genuinely driven by survival pressure and end up on the streets because they have no other choice. One cannot put all the blame for the proliferation of beggars on beggars themselves; the key issue is still society:
First, the government must formulate reasonable policies and adopt appropriate measures. The “Measures for the Confinement and Repatriation” were issued in order to solve problems, and the abolition of the old “measures” and the promulgation of the “Measures for the Assistance and Administration of Urban Vagrants and Beggars with No Means of Support” were likewise intended to solve problems better. For vagrants and beggars, one must not simply leave them unattended; control and relief must be combined: if control is too strict, the tragedy of Sun Zhigang may keep recurring, while too much relief may create a situation of “using money to support loafers.” The exact degree to be grasped is, of course, a matter for the relevant government institutions.
At the same time, the problem of beggars is even harder to solve because of the attitude of society as a whole. Returning to the beginning, from this picture-composition exercise in the English textbook one can see this harmful value orientation—giving beggars money is doing good and accumulating virtue; not giving money is cold and heartless. But one must note that today’s socialist New China is different from the evil old society: the Party and the government will not stand by and watch vagrants starve to death on the streets. Although some policies are still imperfect, the state has after all formulated many measures for social security and social relief. We should believe in the government; the government has the ability to settle those beggars—today’s problem is not that there are no conditions for resettling vagrants, but that most vagrants are unwilling to let go of this profession of begging, which requires little labor but yields much.
From what I have gathered from the media, at present in the renovated relief stations of some big cities, the vast majority of those taken in are neatly dressed, physically fit young and middle-aged job seekers, with almost no beggars among them; and according to experts’ explanation, “professional” beggars, even if their “life is without support,” do not count as targets of relief.
I see that many people now also openly call on everyone not to give alms to beggars, so as to cooperate with the government in carrying out better reform attempts in social relief policy, and this is exactly the same as my own thinking—beggars only become “without means of support” when they can no longer get money, and only then will they actively seek “assistance.” Having compassion is of course a good thing, but if one gives one’s love to the people who truly need care, and uses it in places that are truly beneficial to others and to the country, that would be even better.
II. “The Three Represents”
Recently, I’ve read quite a few books on Party history, Party building, and theory, such as After the Sixteenth National Congress—Focusing on the Urgent Issues Facing China, 25 Theoretical Questions of Concern to Cadres and the Masses, Reader on the History of the Communist Party of China, Compilation of Documents from the 2003 “Two Sessions,” Some Questions Concerning the Important Thought of the “Three Represents,” On the “Three Represents,” and Selected Revisions to the Party Constitution at the Sixteenth National Congress, among others. Of course, I did not read all of these books word for word from beginning to end. The first one was quite worth reading, but the rest were indeed rather dull. Some of them I read through in the gaps between reading history books; others I used as reference books for theoretical verification, selectively reading certain chapters.
First of all, I should say that I have always been the most steadfast supporter of the Party and the government, and I am sincerely in agreement with and appreciative of the actions of the Party and the government in all kinds of domestic and international affairs at present. Still, I think that the more distant people are, the more they tend to praise and flatter one another; only those who are close will point out each other’s problems. Internationally, we need to vigorously shape the image of the Communist Party of China; among the masses, we need to resolutely safeguard the Party’s prestige. But if this is merely internal exchange among comrades who share the same aspirations, there is no need to write too many words of praise.
1. “Important”
The thought of the “Three Represents” is of historical significance. Its proposal came right at the turn of the century, when the building of socialism with Chinese characteristics was entering a new stage. The “Three Represents” are the foundation of the Party’s founding, the basis of its governance, and the source of its strength; implementing the requirements of the “Three Represents” means returning to basics, consolidating and upholding the cornerstone of the Communist Party of China’s founding and governance, so that the Party can still stand invincible under the new historical circumstances. The essential requirement of the “Three Represents” is “pragmatism.”
But in the propaganda and implementation of the thought of the “Three Represents,” there is still a very strong tendency toward exaggeration.
A few years ago I saw a story that I have not forgotten to this day: Premier Zhou once inspected a newspaper office and saw on the front page of the newspaper being revised the headline “… Premier Zhou delivered an important speech…”; Premier Zhou immediately asked that the word “important” be deleted, and then gave a thought-provoking explanation. Because too much time has passed, I have forgotten the specific details of the story, but the general meaning should not be wrong. It is a very simple principle: a speech is a speech; whether it is important or not depends on what the content of the speech is, not on who gave it. If the content is important, readers will naturally take it seriously. If, taking the Premier as an example, one casually adds “important” everywhere, and higher levels follow suit with lower levels, so that everything is “important,” then not only does it fail to bring out the meaning of “important,” it instead creates a mood of empty grandiosity from top to bottom.
And what about now? Flip through the newspaper, listen to the news—how many speeches, instructions, documents, reports, directives… are there that do not have the words “important” in front of them?
I am not saying that the thought of the “Three Represents” is important. Comrade Jiang Zemin originally did not say that either—what he proposed was the “requirements” of the “Three Represents.” I examined the speeches in On the “Three Represents,” from Comrade Jiang Zemin’s first mention of the “Three Represents” during his inspection tour of Guangdong on February 25, 2000, to his speech on July 1, 2001, commemorating the eightieth anniversary of the founding of the Party. In them, he repeatedly spoke of the “requirements” of the “Three Represents” and did not mention “thought”; only in the report to the Sixteenth National Congress did he begin to call them the “important thought.” What now appears in newspapers and books is an all-encompassing “important” thought.
This still does not amount to much of a problem, after all it is for propaganda purposes, so a bit more emphasis is only to be expected. But what is most regrettable is that the word “important” has finally entered the Party Constitution:
The second paragraph of the General Program of the Constitution of the Communist Party of China: The Communist Party of China takes Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, and the important thought of the “Three Represents” as its guide to action.
Marx is the “old ancestor”; Marxism is our source of theory. Marx broke through all the earlier forms of materialism and dialectics, organically combining the two and closely integrating them with practice. The emergence of Marxism marked humanity’s understanding of history and society entering a new height; Marx and the first generation of socialist theorists and revolutionaries awakened the proletariat of the world and opened up a new era.
Lenin was the mentor of proletarian revolution. His achievements were not limited to establishing the first socialist state; on the theoretical side, Lenin broke away from the dogmas of the Second International and offered a new interpretation of Marxism, opposing reliance on “peaceful evolution” to transition to socialism. After establishing the state, he solved many concrete practical difficulties that Marx had not yet addressed, and proposed the New Economic Policy. Lenin and his generation brought the international communist movement to its peak, pushing socialist revolution from theory to a new stage of practice.
Mao Zedong was the great leader who led the Chinese nation in founding socialist New China. In the revolutionary struggle to seize power, he did not simply copy the theoretical model of the Soviet revolution, nor did he follow the Soviet “elder brother” in relying solely on the revolutionary method of urban workers. Instead, he pioneered a revolutionary road suited to China’s national conditions, and with the distinctive strategy of encircling the cities from the countryside, successfully liberated old China. After the founding of the country, he not only dared to oppose “U.S. imperialism,” but also dared to oppose “Soviet revisionism”; in the Cold War era of two superpowers confronting each other, he still upheld independence and self-reliance, and did not become a vassal of any major power. Mao Zedong Thought is the guarantee of China’s self-reliance and self-strengthening, a great innovation in the Sinicization of Marxism.
Deng Xiaoping initiated the takeoff of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Deng Xiaoping and the new generation of Party leaders set things right after chaos, reclarified the meaning of socialism, timely shifted the focus of the Party’s work, liberated the mind in theory, and carried out reform and opening up in practice, pushing China’s socialist construction to a new height.
From the above, it can be seen that whether it is Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, or Deng Xiaoping Theory, their common feature is this: the birth of the theory or thought is not only the development of the theory that came before it, but that this development is also a leap, a revolutionary one, always breaking through certain limitations of the original theories of the time. Therefore, the formation of these theories and thoughts can all be called “epoch-making” innovations.
So why is it not Marxism-Leninism “important-ism,” Mao Zedong “important thought,” Deng Xiaoping “important theory,” while the “Three Represents” must be prefixed with “important”? Surely the considerations here are not merely about the smoothness of the wording.
I think that, compared with the earlier -isms, thoughts, and theories, the thought of the “Three Represents” can only count as “inheritance and development,” not “innovation and revolution”; only as “theoretical consolidation and returning to the source,” not “theoretical sublimation and novelty.” The “Three Represents” were not something first created by the generation of Communist Party members with Comrade Jiang Zemin at the core since the Fourth Plenary Session of the Thirteenth Central Committee: the “Three Represents” are the “foundation of the Party’s founding and governance,” after all, so naturally they existed from the very beginning of Party founding and governance. It was just that at the time, the Party was newly born and full of vitality, and the “Three Represents” were self-evident; there was no need to emphasize or require them. Only now, when the Party and the country have entered a new environment for development, and when the advanced nature of the Communist Party of China is being interfered with by some corrupt elements within the Party and questioned by some conservative people outside the Party, did Comrade Jiang Zemin need to emphasize the requirements of these “Three Represents” in order to ensure that the Communist Party of China can always stand at the crest of the wave of the times. Therefore, the Three Represents are theoretical consolidation rather than theoretical innovation.
Therefore, although at present the thought of the “Three Represents” is the latest achievement in the Sinicization of Marxism, and is the one that best reflects the characteristic of “keeping pace with the times,” the Party Constitution will be passed on to future generations. I think that in the future Marxism will continue to develop, and we today should still be a little more modest.
2. My Understanding
Of course, I am not opposing the thought of the “Three Represents” itself. I very much agree with writing the “Three Represents” into the Party Constitution. I simply do not want to see the word “important,” which comes across as overly self-confident.
After reading so many books, one cannot remain stuck at the stage of passive cognition. I think that, whether right or wrong, I should have my own independent understanding of the “Three Represents.”
My view is that rather than saying the “thought of the ‘Three Represents’,” it is more appropriate to say the “requirements of the ‘Three Represents’.” I examined the speeches in On the “Three Represents,” from Comrade Jiang Zemin’s first mention of the “Three Represents” during his inspection tour of Guangdong on February 25, 2000, to his speech on July 1, 2001, commemorating the eightieth anniversary of the founding of the Party. In them, he repeatedly spoke of the “requirements” of the “Three Represents” and did not mention “thought” until only in the past two years did the term “important thought” come into use. That is to say, when the “Three Represents” were first put forward, they were presented as a kind of “requirement”; only after being mentioned more and more often did they rise to the status of “thought.” Although a “thought” compared with a “requirement” is greatly enriched in content, I still believe that calling them “requirements” more clearly and distinctly presents their original meaning, and can better serve the purpose of emphasis.
“Thought” is “the result produced by the active process of thinking in which objective existence is reflected in human consciousness”; “theory” is “a systematic conclusion about nature and society abstracted by people from practice,” highlighting the “systematic” “conclusion” drawn from “practice.” Compared with “theory,” “thought” leans slightly toward emphasizing subjectivity, while the former leans slightly toward objectivity; and “ism” indicates a more systematized “theory” and also carries the meaning of “belief.” From this, it can be seen that there is a reason why we have Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and Deng Xiaoping Theory, rather than Marxist-Leninist theory, Mao Zedong-ism, Deng Xiaoping thought, and so on:
Marxism contains philosophy, sociology, history, politics, economics, and various other fields. The theories in these fields are interconnected, forming a rigorous and complete theoretical system, and in a certain sense it has already become a kind of belief; therefore it deserves the name “ism.” Leninism was in fact the first genuine development of Marxism in practice; it did not become a new “ism” detached from Marxism, but rather a new version that supplemented and perfected Marxism, and so it too can be called an “ism,” though it is often inseparable from Marxism, and thus is always collectively referred to as “Marxism-Leninism.” From revolution to governing the state, Mao Zedong encountered a series of new problems peculiar to China’s national conditions. Faced with these, he thought independently and practiced boldly, forming a unique system of thought. However, although his thought was rich, it had not yet formed a rigorous and complete, mutually responsive theoretical system, and after all he also committed some serious mistakes in practice, failing to reach the completeness and relative truth required to form a “theory”; calling it “thought” is undoubtedly the most apt. Deng Xiaoping Theory summarizes both the positive and negative experiences since the founding of the state, elucidates the basic theoretical questions of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and derives from practice while also standing the test of practice, so it can indeed be called a “theory.”
It makes sense to call the “Three Represents” a “thought”; in that way, it encompasses the chain of thinking methods and lines of thought from why the “Three Represents” were proposed, to how they were elucidated, to how they should be implemented. However, once it is called the thought of the “Three Represents,” it has to be distinguished from “Jiang Zemin Thought,” and that sounds easy but is in fact very difficult in practice: I have read many related books and materials, and found that when they argue for the background and importance of the thought of the “Three Represents,” they seem to treat it completely as “Jiang Zemin Thought.” In fact, Comrade Jiang Zemin’s contributions to the Party and the country are many, many more than can be encompassed by just one thought of the “Three Represents.”
I think that saying “the requirements of the ‘Three Represents’” is more apt and more practical than saying “the thought of the ‘Three Represents’,” not only because putting “requirements” together with “ism,” “thought,” and “theory” does not seem repetitive or cumbersome, but also because it returns to the source and reflects the simplest, most precise essential meaning.
When one truly takes the “Three Represents” as a body of thought, one finds that the scope of its theoretical system is quite small: Marxism-Leninism faces questions of philosophy, history, and every aspect of human society; Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory mainly faced the various problems involved in building, consolidating, and developing socialism in China. But the “Three Represents” — as I have already said, it is not “Jiang Zemin Thought” — is aimed at a relatively clear and single target: the issue of the Party’s “standing with the people or losing their support.” In other words, what the “Three Represents” concern is the problem of “what kind of party to build, and how to build the party,” rather than “revealing the essential laws of society” or “the lines, principles, and policies for revitalizing the nation and securing the state.” What the “Three Represents” require is directed at problems within the Party.
When Comrade Jiang Zemin first put forward the “Three Represents,” he presented them precisely as a basic “requirement” for the Party’s internal ideological and political work — among the twelve speeches by Comrade Jiang Zemin containing the “Three Represents” from February 25, 2000 to July 1, 2001, every single time they were mentioned in connection with ideological construction issues such as governing the Party strictly, resisting corruption and preventing degeneration, and improving work style; the expressions that appeared were only things like “persist in ‘achieving’ the ‘Three Represents’” and “implement the ‘requirement’ of the ‘Three Represents’,” while words such as “study,” “carry out,” and “thought” never appeared. Of course, in the past two years all the wording has changed, but even if it has been sublimated into a “thought,” or even, as the summer assignment from the school has already phrased it, into a “theory,” its core has always been nothing more than a “requirement,” and that will never change.
Everyone can study Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and Deng Xiaoping Theory; they are not confined to the Communist Party, because each of them can be called a broad and profound body of knowledge. If the “Three Represents” are taken as a “thought,” then they ought to be the same. But the fact is that the “Three Represents” are a demand placed on the Party itself and on all Party members and activists: they require us to strive to improve our own level, to keep the masses in our hearts; they require us to be strict with ourselves and serve the people; to maintain the Party’s advanced nature, shape its image, and win the people’s support. The people are the masters of the country, and Party members should serve as the people’s servants. The “Three Represents” are simply a demand that Party members do more concrete things for the people, and take the lead in production and culture. Yet in some places today the situation has been turned upside down: Party cadres are demanding that the masses study the “Three Represents.” Is that not strange?
The reason, I fear, is that the definition of the “Three Represents” is not clear enough. If they were instead called a “requirement,” then the meaning would surely be easier to understand, and the spirit easier to implement.
From “socialism with Chinese characteristics” to “socialism of Chinese characteristics,” changing a single character is something that also has to be carefully weighed. My own thinking about whether the “important” should be there; whether “thought” is better or “requirement” is better, I suppose is not excessive either. Though it won’t have any practical significance, it is surely better to think about it in a乱七八糟 way than to swallow everything whole without thinking at all, isn’t it?
III. Responsibility
This wasn’t originally in my writing plan, but I had a sudden feeling and wrote a little short piece.
Today was a little cooler, so I went out for a walk to get some air. On the way home, I suddenly noticed an inconspicuous green belt — a patch of lawn only a few square meters in size — and saw that there was a gray, dirty sign standing in it. At first I thought it would say something like “Protect the Greenery,” but when I walked closer, it turned out to read “×× Primary School Greenery Protection Responsibility Plot.”
This is a residential area, with only a kindergarten nearby. That primary school is probably some distance away, so this “responsibility plot” has flown rather far. Even if the school were right next door, the children probably would not have many chances to come here often. Even if the children could come here frequently, what could a group of primary school pupils do except water the plants and pick up trash? It can hardly be called “maintenance.” Even if they were able to do maintenance work, they would not come only in twos and threes; when a group of little children all bungles around together, they probably would not work very seriously… Looking back at that “poorly maintained for years” green space, I really felt a little regret:
Originally, the school’s idea of creating a “responsibility plot” was probably nothing more than to cultivate students’ sense of responsibility. Indeed, the lack of a sense of responsibility is a major problem in moral education for young people today, but in a “responsibility plot” like this, where exactly does the “responsibility” show itself? In this kind of responsibility plot, not only can the children themselves fail to see any “responsibility” in it, but if such activities become too many and too frequent, the children may grow weary of them, and that originally naive enthusiasm will probably be gradually washed away.
Cultivating a sense of responsibility is a big matter, but such superficial showpiece work done for “putting on a display” should be kept to a minimum.
IV. History
Books on history are what I have been reading relatively more of lately. A few months ago I first read A Five-Thousand-Year History of China and A Brief History of the World, but when I later ran into a midterm essay on architecture I still felt short of knowledge, so I went and bought Global History and The History of World Civilization, these two works by Americans, as well as another A Five-Thousand-Year History of the World, in order to understand history from different perspectives; each reading gives me a different feeling.
The more I read, the harder it becomes to summarize my own thoughts. I can’t set forth any grand thesis, so let me write down a few smaller points:
1. Expansion
This is a point I mentioned in my essay last semester: I believe that the progress of civilization always brings with it some tendency to expand outward, and only when this desire for outward expansion is satisfied can civilization achieve leap-like advances:
The reason Chinese civilization, among many ancient civilizations, was able to catch up from behind and stand out above the rest is, to some extent, precisely due to the abundant space for expansion available in its early development — the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins, with their favorable climate, flat terrain, and fertile land. Once an empire expands to such a vast territory, the political and economic systems used to manage a few small city-states are far from sufficient, so territorial expansion inevitably forces rulers to reform the original political system — if rulers are unwilling to change proactively, then the empire, having exceeded the limits of its governing capacity, is bound to break into fragments, until one of the states that undergoes reform reunifies it again — just as China entered feudal society earliest after the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. By contrast, those earlier civilizations — the ancient Egyptians were surrounded by desert; the Sumerians and ancient Babylonians were trapped between vast deserts and mountains full of barbarians; the Dravidians were hemmed in between the Pamirs and the scorching Deccan. — these civilizations, unable to “stretch themselves out,” had no choice but to halt after an initial brilliance.
Later, as technological development brought advances in land and sea transport, the original obstacles to expansion, such as high mountains, deserts, and oceans, became surmountable, and Western civilization gradually narrowed the gap with China. In particular, Western Europe adopted long-distance ocean voyaging as an entirely new means of expansion, breaking through the limitation that territory had to be continuous. This new form of expansion undoubtedly propelled reforms in its system, allowing Western Europe to enter capitalist society earliest. By contrast, Russia, most strongly influenced by Western Europe, and benefiting from expansion into Eastern and Northern Europe, Siberia, and Central Asia, had a rate of reform second only to Western Europe; the Ottomans and the Mughals were content with the status quo and had no further impetus to advance; while China, because it had the boundless Pacific to the east, the impassable Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to the southwest, the Pamirs and fierce nomads to the northwest, and barren Siberia to the north, had already reached the peak of expansion by the Tang dynasty — and the Tang dynasty was precisely the dividing line in China between the prosperity and decline of feudal civilization.
In modern times, all the land that could be expanded into has been occupied, but civilization continues to develop. At this point, what drives society forward is no longer the simple flat form of territorial expansion, but another, three-dimensional and all-encompassing new kind of “expansion”: it includes population expansion (population explosion), cognitive expansion (the technological revolution), communicative expansion (the information revolution), and so on. These forms of “expansion” are still forcing modern civilization to launch reforms against all sorts of entrenched mechanisms.
2. Division
Where there is expansion, there will be division. Once the expansion of an empire exceeds the limits of the social system, there will inevitably be an irreversible tendency toward division. Unfortunately, although the territory and cognition of China in the feudal period had not reached the point where proactive self-reform was possible, they were too large for the original polity, and so feudal China fell into the strange cycle of “long united, must divide; long divided, must unite” (note that the change of dynasties in slave-society China from Xia to Shang and from Shang to Zhou did not go through a process of “division”).
Division can again be of two kinds: one is that the original empire itself was composed of multiple conquered cultures; if these cultures failed to merge, division was only a matter of time. The other is a separatist regime produced by a unified civilization; such division always carries a tendency toward eventual recombination.
Such division also has its benefits: a unified civilization promotes material accumulation, and thus is favorable to production; while a divided unified civilization promotes spiritual progress, and thus is favorable to the development of thought and the advance of science. This is because unity can better integrate production resources and reduce wasteful consumption caused by internal conflict; while divided and turbulent eras are better able to nurture heroes and sages, and competition among various separatist units can more fully reveal and unleash the advantages of technology and culture.
There are many examples of this: the Hundred Schools of Thought in China arose during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods; the Vedas of ancient India were born in the era when small states such as Magadha stood in great numbers, and later, during the age of rival states in North India, the Buddha and Mahavira appeared; Muḥammad was born during the period of tribal strife before the Arabs were unified; hundreds of large and small city-states in ancient Greece were never unified, yet they created a culture and philosophy that influenced the whole of Europe and West Asia; the Renaissance originated in Italy, where city-states and duchies were numerous; Germany never unified before Prussia in 1871, yet German classical philosophy was extraordinarily brilliant…
But division can only be temporary; only fusion can bring true progress. For example, the long periods of division separated by brief unifications in Indian history were not beneficial, and the repeated cycles of division and unity in China did not prove very effective in the end either. After entering modern society, division among civilized nations will probably no longer occur, and exchanges and competition among civilizations have become the driving force for technology and culture.
3. Writing
As a Chinese person, when reviewing history, one is often interested in this question: why has our Chinese civilization been able to weather the storms of the long river of history and not fall?
There are many factors here. Some say it is the cleverness of its geographical setting; some say it stems from a unified identification with the primordial rulers Yan and Huang; some say it is due to Confucian thought; others attribute it to the Chinese people’s ability to reproduce; and so on. But these explanations often fail to explain why China’s nation and state have been so unified for thousands of years. By contrast, Western Christian civilization and Orthodox civilization also have a unified origin — ancient Greek and Roman civilization, and can even be traced together with Islamic civilization back to Minoan civilization; their religious beliefs are also quite consistent. Yet Diocletian split Rome in two, Charlemagne split the Franks in three; almost every division in the West has been one-way and irreversible, so that the number of states keeps increasing and ethnic groups become ever more finely divided. Not to mention the evolution of the Germanic peoples, which is enough to make me dizzy, even a Slavic people before the 6th century, in just a few hundred years, first split into western, southern, and eastern branches, and then further differentiated into Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Croats, Russians, Cossacks, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Latvians, and so on, many ethnic groups. In the development of Western ethnic groups, often when a more advanced A people enters the land of an indigenous B people, or when A people are invaded by a migrating B people, no people is ever eliminated and absorbed; instead, after cohabitation there often appears out of nowhere a C people, and as time passes, the C peoples of different regions may again differentiate into D, E, F, and so on. So what is it about the cohesion of the Chinese nation that is so exceptional?
In the books and articles I have read, very few people mention the role of the Chinese language and writing system. And I think that China’s unique square two-dimensional graphic script is a major key.
Aside from Chinese characters, and setting aside as well the phonetic scripts mixed with Chinese characters used in Japan and Korea, all the influential writing systems are purely alphabetic. A graphic script is not written by “spelling”; there is no direct correspondence between writing and reading, and the vocabulary of a monosyllabic “analytic” language is convergent; whereas in alphabetic writing the relation between writing, often called spelling, and reading is extremely close, and the vocabulary of multisyllabic “inflected” languages tends to “diverge.” It is precisely this difference that has produced the starkly different patterns of ethnic development in East and West.
Language always arises far earlier than the invention of writing, and the more primitive the region, the more numerous the languages: for instance, there are more than 1,000 Indigenous languages in the Americas, nearly 1,000 languages in Africa, and on one island in New Guinea there are more than 700 languages. The external conditions at the time Chinese civilization took shape and at the time Western civilization took shape were probably much the same. Whether it was China, which in slave society constantly expanded outward and in feudal society constantly suffered invasions from barbarians, or Western Europe, which in slave society constantly suffered barbarian invasions and in feudal society constantly expanded outward, so long as a backward people encounters an advanced people, it will always need to learn the advanced culture. And writing is the ancestor of culture, the first thing that must be learned:
The Phoenicians used an alphabet, an invention of the utmost convenience. With an alphabet, different peoples could easily engrave into writing the language words that had originally only been spoken. Thus a backward people needed only to take over the alphabet of an advanced people and adapt it to spell its own language, and this allowed the same set of Latin letters or Slavic letters to give rise to dozens of languages. Chinese characters, however, are not nearly so convenient: they can hardly allow a backward people to absorb them as writing while preserving its original language. But the advantages of writing are so obvious that primitive peoples had no choice but to adopt them; then, coupled with such means of fusion as intermarriage, each primitive people could be absorbed into the Chinese nation almost without a trace.
In addition to promoting ethnic integration, Chinese characters can also effectively prevent ethnic division:
In the classical period, communication between different regions was lacking, so it was unavoidable that one language would form many dialects. Long-unified China has eight major dialects, and even the small Korean Peninsula has seven dialects; the West is the same. And if one is not careful, a dialect becomes a new language. This is because alphabetic writing has a divergent vocabulary: as new things are constantly produced and as exchange with other local cultures takes place, new words are continually created; meanwhile, as habits change, some old words are discarded, some strengthened, some simplified, and so on. Yet because communication among regions is lacking, these improvements are often handled independently, and in just a few hundred years people can no longer understand one another.
The example of the Slavic languages has already been mentioned; let me give another striking example: after Dutch colonists entered South Africa, in just over three hundred years a new language had long since taken shape — Afrikaans (also called South African Dutch) — and a new ethnic group had come into being — the Afrikaners (formerly called Boers).
Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes can converse in their own languages and understand one another, but people usually regard their languages as three different languages; by contrast, some Chinese dialects are difficult to understand across regions, yet we consider them different dialects of the same language. This is precisely thanks to our ever-unified Chinese characters, which have played a role in preventing dialects from further differentiating, and thus effectively avoiding ethnic alienation and division.
V. Religion
Lately I have received several propaganda newsletters for “Falun Gong” in my email inbox. Their content is tightly tied to current politics, their phrasing skillful and seasoned, their narration all of a piece, making it sound as though Jiang Zemin’s jealousy of Li Hongzhi was like Zhou Yu’s jealousy of Zhuge Liang — “driven mad by jealousy” — and it is enough to make one laugh and cry at once. Of course, these little tricks, intended to tempt my mind armed with Marxism, are still far too immature.
Although I just laughed off the spam, the impressions it left behind were many.
This brings to mind an important part of civilization that was not mentioned in the previous chapter — religion. When examining history, one cannot ignore religion. From primitive civilization all the way to modern civilization, religion has often fundamentally affected every aspect of human society, from political systems and ethics and morality to daily life and routine.
What, after all, is the definition of “religion”? The dictionary says it is “a social ideology, an illusory reflection of the objective world, requiring people to believe in God, divine ways, spirits, retribution for cause and effect, and so on, and to place their hopes in the so-called heaven or the afterlife.” This is probably a narrow understanding, because there is the “Confucian religion” — a term on which most scholars, ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, agree, and which is called “religion” (教 as a noun has only one meaning) — and it is an exception: it is often opposed to illusionary worldly pragmatism, is noncommittal about ghosts and spirits, and therefore has neither deities nor heaven; venerating Confucius and other idols is usually only a ritual rather than worship of gods… It seems that to include exceptions like “Confucian religion,” one would have to radically alter the original definition.
But there are so many different religions, ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, each with its own characteristics: Sikhism advocates equality, while Brahmanism is rigidly hierarchical; Buddhism demands purity of the six senses, while Islam permits one man to have four wives; Daoism values detachment from the world, while Confucianism requires active engagement with it; Muslims must wrap their heads even in hot weather, while Jain practitioners remain completely naked at all times…
Let us look at the common features of these religions, including Confucian religion: first, they usually have objects of worship, which may be ancient sages, priests or authorities of the present, some thing in nature, or imagined deities, and so on; exceptions include Theravada Buddhism and Judaism, which prohibit idolatry (of course, this here refers only to idols in the narrow sense); second, they generally have written scriptures, such as the Bible, the Qur’an, the Vedas, and so on. Religions such as Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism also have numerous classic texts, but all primitive religions are exceptions; third, they all have specific rituals and methods of cultivation, such as pilgrimage, meditation, chanting scripture, and regulations concerning speech and conduct, diet, clothing, and so on; Confucianism also has a series of special rites; fourth, they have systematic doctrines. In addition to prescribing ritual and methods of cultivation as forms of behavior, doctrine also regulates believers’ worldviews, outlook on life, and values.
However, among the above four points, the first two have exceptions, and the latter two are not enough to distinguish them from certain ordinary social groups, so these can only be regarded as general features of religion.
As for the question of defining religion in the broader sense, I think one must begin with “belief”:
What is called “faith” is an extreme belief in something, but very firm belief in objective laws is often not called faith, because those are things you have no choice but to believe in. “Faith” is usually directed at that “metaphysical” dimension of a particular period’s practice that cannot be verified. All religions have faith, and different religions must necessarily have different faiths; a person’s scattered beliefs do not make up a religion, but a certain systematized, treaty-like faith, formed through the work of certain people and spread to more people—in other words, when an organized group of people all possess a particular faith (and this faith must be large enough to change your worldview and your way of life)—then a religion takes shape. I myself think that such a definition can quite neatly absorb into itself any religion, including Confucianism.
I have spent nearly a thousand characters improving the definition of religion for a special purpose, because the revised definition can not only include Confucianism, but can also absorb my faith—Marxism.
Marxism is the most thoroughgoing materialism and atheism, but according to the broad definition of religion, that has nothing to do with it.
Marx said: “Religion is the opium of the people.” This is reasonable, because apart from bringing strong social transformation at the moment of its birth, religion usually very quickly becomes a powerful obstacle to reforms in the existing political system, scientific theories, modes of thought, and ways of life. But religion’s benefits are equally obvious: it fills the spiritual emptiness and confusion of ordinary people, gives life and work a specific meaning, regulates and guides the behavior of the masses, and greatly enhances the people’s spiritual joy and cohesion. Comparing religion to spiritual opium is to speak of its negative effects; going one step further, I compare religion to “alcohol”: it can confuse human nature, sometimes making people intoxicated and infatuated, sometimes making them manic and impulsive, but at the same time there are nutritious beers, tonics that strengthen the body, medicinal liquors that help treat illness, and so on; its advantages and disadvantages are a dialectical relationship.
More importantly, religion can provide a kind of spiritual sustenance, making a fleeting life possibly possess eternal meaning.
The situation of religion in China has always been different from that elsewhere: ancient China was the only civilization in world history in which a priestly class never existed; the variety of religions that have spread in China is rare in the world, yet there has never been any conflict in the true sense between government and church, or between different religious sects. A superstitious Chinese commoner does not care much whether he worships the Bodhisattva Guanyin of Buddhism, Lao Jun of Daoism, the Sage of Confucianism, Guan Yu of folk worship, or the Stove God of traditional mythology; he bows to whichever one he encounters. Such a situation is hard to imagine in most places in the world. This state of affairs is almost entirely the merit of Confucius’s worldly pragmatism of “Not yet understanding life, how can one understand death?” And precisely because it was too realistic, Confucianism became completely fused with the political system; thus when the thousands of years of the feudal system were overthrown, the end of Confucianism was also declared.
China today is still a multi-religious country: it has over one hundred million believers in various religions, but relative to a total population of 1.3 billion this is only 7% to 8%, and moreover they are mostly concentrated among ethnic minorities, so to discover a religious believer around you and me is almost an inconceivable thing. But the situation elsewhere in the world is completely the opposite: according to statistics I compiled after consulting the new edition of Overview of Countries, North Korea and Cuba provide no detailed explanation; Japan’s highly influential Shinto has no clear population statistics; in Latvia, nearly one million of the 2.38 million people believe in the major religions; in South Korea the religious population is only about 50%; in the Netherlands 52% are Catholics or Protestants. Apart from these special cases, Germany’s 35% non-religious population already counts as very high. In general, religious participation rates are mostly around 90%. That is to say, abroad it is about as difficult to find someone who does not belong to any religion as it is in China to find a religious believer!
Why is it that in the countries most developed in science and education, people have still not abandoned those absurd religious beliefs? This is still probably due to that irreplaceable sense of fulfillment that faith brings people. Nowadays the children and adults around us often complain of the emptiness of life, of losing their value in society. Why strive, why endure social injustice, why exist at all—on these questions, religion will often give you a satisfying answer.
China’s escape from religion is of course a good thing, but losing a unified faith is not. I fear it is precisely this lack of faith that has allowed the likes of “Falun Gong” to take advantage of the opening.
In order to seek spiritual sustenance and a lighthouse for the road of life, I chose Marxism as my faith. Marxism can indeed serve as a very good substitute for religion, or rather as a new form of it.
In an earlier paper of mine on “metaphysics,” I once opposed treating Marxism as a religious creed to be worshiped. This does not contradict what I am saying now, because Marxism is a fusion of religion, philosophy, and science: religion speaks of faith and reverence; philosophy must think and doubt; science needs to inquire and practice. In that earlier paper I emphasized “questioning,” and thus highlighted the “philosophical” aspect; now, when I want to speak of “faith,” I can bring out its “religious” side. Many people insist on saying that Marxism is entirely science, but in fact Marxism, like general relativity and string theory, is not yet fully science: communism has not appeared—how can you say it must necessarily appear? The metaphysics in this system of social values is probably precisely religion in the broad sense.
As I was writing this article, I happened to read [美]咸廉•麦克高希’s book 《世界文明史——观察世界的新视角》, and in Chapter 3, “Personality and Faith,” the author creatively divides religion, according to his own division of civilization (the past four stages and the coming fifth stage), into six stages beginning with pre-civilizational primitive religion. Before these six subsections there is a first section on “religion in the broad sense,” but I did not read out the author’s exact definition of religion in the broad sense. One sentence in the text was rather interesting: “Religion involves the value core of a society.” This sentence is much more profound than what I wrote. In his overly broad understanding of religion, the Hundred Schools of Thought in China and Greek philosophy, all the way to modern news and entertainment modes, all fall within the category of religion, and the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is even compared to religious struggle in the final period of the third stage of civilization.
In any case, religion is a kind of cohesion, and so are Confucianism and Marxism. In promoting Marxism, we often overemphasize its truth, proclaiming it to be an extremely profound scientific theory, but in doing so the vast masses of ordinary people often become even more confused or weary. Just as a Buddhist does not necessarily have to become a monk, and a Christian does not necessarily have to become a cleric, believing in religion does not necessarily mean one must selflessly devote one’s whole life. Marxism should likewise not develop only among Party members. If we can reduce some of the dry, difficult theoretical argumentation and interpret Marxism more within the category of “culture,” then this faith can penetrate people’s hearts more deeply.
Postscript
This time I wrote intermittently for ten days, spending a total of more than 1,500 minutes, but most of the time I was just leaving the computer on while doing other things. The piece is over 13,000 characters long, so it should count as pretty good. Because time is limited, and also in order to preserve the original idea, I do not plan to make any further revisions.
References
《After the Sixteenth National Congress—Focusing on the Urgent Issues Facing China》Economic Daily Press
《25 Theoretical Questions of Concern to Cadres and the Masses》Xuexi Press
《Several Questions on the Important Thought of the “Three Represents”》Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Press
《On the “Three Represents”》Central Party Literature Press
《Amendments to the Party Constitution at the Sixteenth National Congress》Zhongguo Fangzheng Press
《A Brief History of the World》Shandong Education Press
《A Global History》[美] Stafrianos/Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press
《History of World Civilization》[美] William McGaughey/Xinhua Press
《A Short History of China》People’s Education Press
《Five Thousand Years of World History》Jinghua Press
《(New Edition) Overview of Countries》World Affairs Press
《The Little Encyclopedia of China》Green Apple Electronic Books
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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