Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
Pupils given headwear modelled on a style worn by officials a thousand years ago to reinforce the message that they must stay a metre away from each other
One legend says the hats were given long extensions to stop courtiers whispering among themselves when meeting the emperor
Hats with long extensions were worn by officials during the Song dynasty. Photo: Handout
An ancient Chinese hat has joined face masks and hand sanitisers as one of the weapons in the fight against Covid-19.
A primary school in Hangzhou in the east of the country took inspiration from the headgear worn by officials in the Song dynasty, which ruled China between 960 and 1279, to reinforce lessons on social distancing.
Pupils at the school wore their own handmade versions of the hats, which have long extensions, or wings, to keep them at least a metre (3ft) apart when they returned to school on Monday, state news agency Xinhua reported.
One legend says that the first Song emperor ordered his ministers to wear hats with two long wings on the sides so that they could not chitchat in court assemblies without being overheard, according to Tsui Lik-hang, a historian at City University of Hong Kong.
Pupils at a school in Hangzhou made their own versions of the hats. Photo: Weibo
However, he warned that this story came from a much later source, adding: “The Song emperors, in fact, were also depicted to have worn this kind of headwear with wing-like flaps.”
The World Health Organisation recommends that people stay at least a metre apart to curb the spread of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
Coronavirus droplets may travel further than personal distancing guidelines, study finds
16 Apr 2020
“If you are too close, you can breathe in the droplets, including the Covid-19 virus if the person coughing has the disease,” the global health body advises.
An early childhood education specialist said the hats were a good way to explain the concept of social distancing to young children, who find it difficult to understand abstract concepts.
The pupil’s head gear is designed to drive home the social distancing message. Photo: Weibo
“As children can see and feel these hats, and when the ‘wings’ hit one another, they may be more able to understand the expectations and remember to keep their physical distance,” said Ian Lam Chun-bun, associate head of the department of early childhood
Using pictures of footprints to indicate the right distance to keep when queuing, standing, and even talking to schoolmates was also helpful, said Lam, who recommended visual aids and aids that stimulate other senses, such as hearing and touch.
“We can use sharp colours or special textures, like tactile paving,” he added.
Documentary puts China’s literary hero into context: there is Dante, there’s Shakespeare, and there’s Du Fu
Theatrical legend Sir Ian McKellen brings glamour to beloved verses in British documentary
A ceramic figurine of Du Fu, a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty. Du is the subject of a new BBC documentary, thrilling devotees of his poetry. Photo: Simon Song
The resonant words of an ancient Chinese poet spoken by esteemed British actor Sir Ian McKellen have reignited in China discussion about its literary history and inspired hope that Beijing can tap into cultural riches to help mend its image in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
The BBC documentary Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet has provoked passion among Chinese literature lovers about the poetic master who lived 1,300 years ago.
Sir Ian Mckellen read works of ancient Chinese poet Du Fu in Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet. Photo: BBC Four / MayaVision International
The one-hour documentary by television historian Michael Wood was broadcast on television and aired online for British viewers this month but enthusiasm among Chinese audiences mean the trailer and programme have been widely circulated on video sharing websites inside mainland China, with some enthusiasts dubbing Chinese subtitles.
The documentary has drawn such attention in Du’s homeland that even the Communist Party’s top anti-graft agency has discussed it in its current affairs commentary column. Notably, Wood’s depiction of Du’s life from AD712 to 770 barely mentioned corruption in the Tang dynasty (618-907) government.
“I couldn’t believe it!!” Wood said in an email. “I’m very pleased of course … most of all as a foreigner making a film about such a loved figure in another culture, you hope that the Chinese viewers will think it was worth doing.”
Often referred to as ancient China’s “Sage of Poetry” and the “Poet Historian”, Du Fu witnessed the Tang dynasty’s unparalleled height of prosperity and its fall into rebellion, famine and poverty.
Writer, historian and presenter Michael Wood followed the footsteps of the ancient Chinese poet Du Fu in Yangtze River gorges. Photo: BBC Four / MayaVision International
Wood traced Du’s footsteps to various parts of the country. He interviewed Chinese experts and Western sinologists, offering historical and personal contexts to introduce some of Du’s more than 1,400 poems and verses chronicling the ups and downs of his life and China.
The programme used many Western reference points to put Du and his works into context. The time Du lived in was described as around the as the Old English poem Beowulf was composed and the former Chinese capital, Changan, where Xian is now, was described as being in the league of world cities of the time, along with Constantinople and Baghdad.
Harvard University sinologist Stephen Owen described the poet’s standing as such: “There is Dante, there’s Shakespeare, and there’s Du Fu.”
The performance of Du’s works by Sir Ian, who enjoyed prominence in China with his role as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movie series, attracted popular discussion from both media critics and general audiences in China, and sparked fresh discussion about the poet.
“To a Chinese audience, the biggest surprise could be ‘Gandalf’ reading out the poems! … He recited [Du’s poems] with his deep, stage performance tones in a British accent. No wonder internet users praised it as ‘reciting Du Fu in the form of performing a Shakespeare play,” wrote Su Zhicheng, an editor with National Business Daily.
A stone sculpture at Du Fu Thatched Cottage in Chengdu city, China. Photo: Handout
On China’s popular Weibo microblog, a viewer called Indifferent Onlooker commented on Sir Ian’s recital of Du’s poem My Brave Adventures: “Despite the language barrier, he conveyed the feeling [of the poet]. It’s charming.”
Some viewers, however, disagreed. At popular video-sharing website Bilibili.com, where uploads of the documentary could be found, a viewer commented: “I could not appreciate the English translation, just as I could not grasp Shakespeare through his Chinese translated works in school textbooks.”
Watching the documentary amid the coronavirus pandemic, some internet users drew comparisons of Du to Fang Fang, a modern-day award-winning poet and novelist who chronicled her life in Wuhan during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Shanghai pictured in April. Devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic has brought about a new suspicion of China. Photo: Bloomberg
The pandemic has infected more than 2.5 million people and killed more than 170,000. It has put the global economy in jeopardy, fuelling calls for accountability. British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab last week called for a “deep dive” review and the asking of “hard questions” about how the coronavirus emerged and how it was not stopped earlier.
Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at University of London, said the British establishment and wider public had changed its perception of Beijing as questions arose about outbreak misinformation and the political leverage of personal protective gear supply.
“The aggressive propaganda of the Chinese government is getting people in the UK to look more closely at China and see that it is a Leninist party-state, rather than the modernising and rapidly changing society that they want to see in China,” Tsang said.
On Sunday, a writer on the website of the National Supervisory Commission, China’s top anti-corruption agency, claimed – without citing sources – that the Du Fu documentary had moved “anxious” British audience who were still staying home under social distancing measures.
“If anyone wants to put the fear of the coronavirus behind them by understanding the rich Chinese civilisation, please watch this documentary on Du Fu,” it wrote, adding that promoting Du’s poems overseas could help “healing and uniting our shattered world”.
English-language state media such as CGTN and the Global Times reported on the documentary last week and some Beijing-based foreign relations publications have posted comments about the film on Twitter.
Wood said he had received feedback from both Chinese and British viewers that talked about “the need, especially now, of mutual understanding between cultures”.
“It is a global pandemic … we need to understand each other better, to talk to each other, show empathy: and that will help foster cooperation. So even in a small way, any effort to explain ourselves to each other must be a help,” Wood said.
He said the idea for producing a documentary about Du Fu started in 2017, after his team had finished the Story of China series for BBC and PBS.
Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet first aired in Britain on April 7 on BBC Four, the cultural and documentary channel of the public broadcaster. It is a co-production between the BBC and China Central Television.
Wood said a slightly shorter 50-minute version would be aired later this month on CCTV9, Chinese state television’s documentary channel.
The film was shot in China in September, he said.
“I came back from China [at the] end of September, so we weren’t affected by the Covid-19 outbreak, though of course it has affected us in the editing period. We have had to recut the CCTV version in lockdown here in London and recorded two small word changes on my iPhone!” Wood said.
Image copyright PEMILLE KLEMPImage caption A group of Indian troopers who fought for the English, Ghulam Ali Khan, 1815-16
The English East India Company, founded in 1600, was established for trading. But as the powerful multinational corporation expanded its control over India in the late 18th Century, it commissioned many remarkable artworks from Indian painters who had previously worked for the Mughals. Writer and historian William Dalrymple writes about these hybrid paintings which explore life and nature.
Calcutta in the late 1770s was Asia’s biggest boom town: known as the City of Palaces, the East India Company’s bridgehead in Bengal had doubled in size to 400,000 inhabitants in a decade.
It was now unquestionably the richest and largest colonial city in the East – though certainly not the most orderly.
“It would have been so easy to turn it into one of the most beautiful cities in the world,” wrote the Count de Modave, a friend of Voltaire who passed through at this time. “One cannot fathom why the English allowed everyone the freedom to build in the most bizarre taste, with the most outlandish planning.”
Nor were visitors much taken by its English inhabitants. Most had come East with just one idea: to amass a fortune in the quickest possible time.
Image caption An Indian trooper who fought for the English, Ghulam Ali Khan, 1819Calcutta (now Kolkata) was a city where great wealth could be accumulated in a matter of months, then lost in minutes in a wager or at the whist table. Death, from disease or excess, was a commonplace, and the constant presence of mortality made men hard and callous.
Rising with Olympian detachment above the mercantile bawdiness of his contemporaries was the rotund figure of the chief justice of the new Supreme Court, Sir Elijah Impey.
A portrait of him by Johan Zoffany still hangs, a little lopsidedly, in the Kolkata High Court. It shows him pale and plump, ermine gowned and dustily bewigged.
Impey was, however, a serious scholar and unusual in taking a serious interest in the land to which he had been posted.
Image copyright PEMILLE KLEMPImage caption Indian villagers by Ghulam Ali Khan, 1815-16
On the journey out to India, a munshi (administrator) had accompanied him to teach him Bengali and Urdu, and on arrival the new chief justice began to learn Persian and collect Indian paintings. His house became a meeting place where the more cultured elements of Calcutta society could discuss history and literature.
Impey and his wife Mary were also greatly interested in natural history and began to collect a menagerie of rare Indian animals.
At some stage in the mid-1770s, the Impeys decided to bring a group of leading Mughal artists – Sheikh Zain ud-Din, Bhawani Das and Ram Das – to paint their private zoo.
It was probably not the first commission of Indian artists by British patrons. “The Study of Botany is of late Years become a very general Amusement,” noted one enthusiast, and we know that the Scottish nurseryman James Kerr was sending Indian-painted botanical drawings back to Edinburgh as early as 1773.
But the Impeys’ albums of natural history painting remain among the most dazzlingly successful of all such commissions: today, a single page usually reaches prices of more than £330,000 ($387,000) at auctions, and the 197 images from the Impey Album are now widely recognised as among the very greatest glories of Indian painting.
Image copyright FRANCIS WAREImage caption English child seated on a pony and surrounded by three Indian servants by Shaikh Muhammad Amir
This month, for the first time since the Impey Album was split up in the 18th Century, around 30 of its pages will be reassembled for a major exhibition in the Wallace Collection in London.
Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company celebrates some of the extraordinary work which resulted from commissions made by East India Company patrons from master Indian artists between the 1770s and 1840s.
It will be a unique chance to see some of the finest Indian paintings which are now scattered in private collections around the world.
The three artists who Impey summoned to his fine classical house in Middleton Street were all from Patna, 200 miles (320km) up the Ganges.
The most prolific was a Muslim, Shaikh Zain-al-Din, while his two colleagues, Bhawani Das and Ram Das, were both Hindus.
Image caption A finely painted miniature depicting four British officers with their wives taking refreshments at a table, artist unknown
Trained in the late Mughal style and patronised by the Nawabs of Murshidabad and Patna, they quickly learned to use English watercolours on English Watman watercolour paper, and take English botanical still lives as their models. In this way an extraordinary fusion of English and Mughal artistic impulses took place.
Zain ud-Din’s best works reveal a superb synthesis between a coldly scientific European natural history specimen illustration, warmed with a profoundly Indian sensibility and vital feeling for nature.
At his best – whether by instinct or inherited knowledge and training – he channels the outstanding Mughal achievement in natural history painting of 150 years earlier, when the great Mughal artist Mansur painted animals and birds for the Emperor Jahangir.
Image caption Portrait of a Mughal artist, by Yellapah Of Vellore, 1832-1835
Nowhere are the merits of Company Painting better illustrated than in Zain ud-Din’s astonishing portrait of a Black Headed Oriole (No. 27).
At first glance, it could pass for a remarkably skilful English natural history painting. Only gradually does its hybrid origins become manifest.
The brilliance and simplicity of the colours, the meticulous attention to detail, the gem-like highlights, the way the picture seems to glow, all these point unmistakably towards Zain ud-Din’s Mughal training.
Image caption Portrait of a black headed oriole by Zain ud-Din
An idiosyncratic approach to perspective also hints at this background: the tree trunk is rounded, yet the grasshopper which sits on it is as flat as a pressed flower, with only a hint of outline shading to give it depth – the same technique used by Mansur.
Yet no artist working in a normal Mughal atelier would have placed his bird detached from a landscape against a white background, with the jackfruit tree on which its sits cut into a perfect, scientific cross-section.
Equally no English artist would have thought of painting the bark of that cross section the same brilliant yellow as the oriole; the tentative washes of a memsahib’s watercolour are a world away.
The two traditions have met head on, and from that blinding impact an inspirational new fusion has taken place.
Bhawani Das, who seems to have started off as an assistant to Zain ud-Din, is almost as fine an artist as Zain ud-Din.
Image caption Indian trooper holding a spear by Ghulam Ali Khan, 1815-186
He is acutely sensitive to shape, texture and expression, as for example in his celebrated study of a great fruit bat with the contrast between its soft, furry body with the angular precision of its blackly outstretched wings, as if it were some caped Commendatore ushering a woman into a Venetian opera rather than a creature in a colonial menagerie.
Now, for the first time, the work of these great Indian artists painting in this brilliantly hybrid Anglo-Indian style are beginning to get the attention they deserve.
The first-ever museum show of this work in the UK aims to highlight and showcase the work of a series of extraordinary Indian artists, each with their own style and tastes and agency. Indeed the greatest among them – such as Zain ud-Din- deserve to be remembered as among the most remarkable Indian artists of all time.
William Dalrymple is the author, most recently, of The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company and Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company (Bloomsbury)
China Reconnects: Joining a Deep-rooted Past to a New World Order looks at how the Middle Kingdom is trying to build a modern civilisation without forgetting its heritage
The Scales of Justice and Lady Justice in front of China’s national flag. Photo: Alamy
China Reconnects: Joining a Deep-rooted Past to a New World Order is a new book by Australian historian Wang Gungwu. The book seeks to explain the new-found confidence among the Chinese in their capacity to learn all they need from the developed world while retaining enough from their past to build a modern civilisation. It does not employ theoretical frameworks to explain China’s rise, as Wang believes they are not appropriate to describe the changes sweeping the country. He calls for greater understanding of why history is particularly important to the Chinese state and its people, as the nation seeks the means to respond to a United States trying to preserve its dominant position in the international status quo.
Historian Wang Gungwu. Photo: Handout
Wang is university professor at the National University of Singapore and professor emeritus of the Australian National University. The book is published by World Scientific Publishing. Here are some excerpts.
CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
Xi Jinping’s China inherited the policies that opened the country to the global economy. The policies created the conditions that made China prosperous and, to many, they put China on the world map again. At the same time, what Xi Jinping inherited also includes practices and lapses of discipline that led to corruption on an unprecedented scale. Deng Xiaoping might have expected some leakages in a more open system, but would not have thought that his party cadres could succumb to that extent.
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Xi Jinping also inherited programmes from his predecessors “theories” like sange daibiao (Three Represents) and hexie shehuizhuyi shehui (Harmonious socialist society).
Given the pervasive corruption that he found in high places, he must have wondered how useful these theories were. The former was implicitly socialist, stressing productive forces, advanced culture and concern for the interests of the majority. The latter, however, was redolent of Confucian values, made even more explicit when Hu Jintao spoke of barong bachi, or “eight honours and eight disgraces”. Despite these exhortations, the corruption that accompanied them reminds us of conditions familiar to Chinese dynasties in decline.
Chinese President Xi Jinping inherited the policies that opened the country to the global economy. Photo: Xinhua
If the regime’s Chinese characteristics enabled officials to be corrupt and the rich to become excessively rich and selfish, where was the socialism? While no one would claim that everything in China’s past was desirable, surely there were better features that could have been chosen to inspire the present. Perhaps not all the corruption should be blamed on old feudal China; the open market economy with its capitalist characteristics is also known for creating the huge gap today between the super rich and the rest. If the capitalist mode is undermining socialist good intentions, are there Chinese characteristics that can protect China from that infection?
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Critics have been quick to attack as well as defend Confucian China and the market and no simple answer has been found. What Xi Jinping inherited was a collective leadership system that failed to police the Party. He thus reacted by asserting that the Party was in grave danger of collapse. The foremost patriotic act was to save the party. He has to find the socialism that could induce his comrades to rededicate themselves.
He turned to Karl Marx to emphasise its original inspiration and avoided the Russian duo, Lenin and Stalin. By stressing the importance of Marx’s world view and analytical methods, he could ignore the Soviet institutional baggage. Above all, Marx stood for the idea of progress, the modern import from the Enlightenment that has impressed generations of Chinese.
China’s modern story began by rebuilding a unified state. Those leaning towards socialism further agreed that the country had to have a strong centralised government, perhaps the most enduring feature of dynastic China. Sun Yat-sen had recognised that and wanted to be the leader with power to get things done. When Chiang Kai-shek seized power, he fought with every weapon available to maintain his supreme position. It was therefore not surprising that Mao Zedong thought that the Party leader should have full control. His victory over the Nationalists had put him in an unassailable position.
Thereafter, he could redefine the goals that fit his agenda. He was so successful that socialism in his hands became almost unrecognisable. Deng Xiaoping had a difficult time teaching another generation why socialism was progressive and why infusing it with Chinese characteristics would ensure its legitimacy.
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This was the background to the corrupted China that came so unexpectedly into Xi Jinping’s hands. From his appointment as party secretary in Shanghai to the Politburo Standing Committee and as vice-president, he had five years to prepare to become the leader of the country. Some of what went through his mind during that period may be gleaned from his writings when he served in Zhejiang, in the Zhijiang xinyu that he published in 2007, but more important was what he thought of a collective leadership that was headless.
Xi Jinping obviously believes that his anti-corruption campaign was vital to enable him to save the Party. His campaign also made him popular and he has tied the campaign to a new faith in socialism.
A poster of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in Shenzhen. Photo: AFP
He has emphasised that Deng Xiaoping’s reforms saved the state and the Party and are integral to the power that he has inherited. He had worked dutifully in support of reform and this helped him rise to the highest office. His youthful experiences growing up with the peasants of the northwest taught him about failures as well as successes. That has led him to ask the Party to connect with the first 30 Maoist years as much as study the later years of reform. That way he confirmed the continuity of what he, his father and their comrades had committed their lives to serve. This attitude towards continuities in Chinese history has always looked to a strong state with powerful leaders. Xi Jinping discovered during his years of service what kind of power would be required to establish the caring and fair society that socialism stood for. When he became president, he not only knew that Mao Zedong as cult leader could not succeed but also that a leaderless collective endangered the Party. He has concluded that the Chinese way of doing socialism would have to be connected to the lessons learned throughout the Chinese past.
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Only by recognising how relevant those lessons are can China confidently go forward to devise the modern state that it wants.
There is some truth in the French saying that the more things change the more things remain the same. The Chinese were even more directly paradoxical. They believed that change was inevitable and hence prepared for changes that could occur several times in a lifetime. When thus prepared, they hoped that each change would not destroy the things that were still valued. If the foundations survived, change could make the new become stronger.
Shanghai is a showcase for China’s modernisation efforts. Photo: Xinhua
There are other ideas in the tradition that Xi Jinping understands. One is that of zhi and xing (knowing and acting) and zhixing heyi (combining knowledge with action). This had been highlighted since the days of Ming philosopher Wang Yangming.
In modern times, Sun Yat-sen advocated xing erhou zhi (act then you will know) as preferable to the safer and more conservative zhi erhou xing (know before acting) and Xi Jinping seems to share that view. When you act and make your choices, these add up so that you will really know. From that perspective, Mao Zedong’s choices taught hard lessons and the Chinese people now know what not to do. Another idea goes back to Confucius, who said shu er buzuo, or transmitting (tradition) and not doing (something new). In other words, without claiming newness or discovery, he transmitted wisdom and knowledge to those who followed. Xi Jinping seems to focus on drawing on past experiences that enable future generations to learn: with learning, something new would result.
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Xi Jinping may not need the word “new” for his socialism. His shehui zhuyi could be the accumulation of layers of modern experience that harmonise with selected bits of China’s history. Explaining the actions and reactions of generations of his predecessors could take his party-state to another level of development. Here a sage Marx symbolically as important as Confucius would add the goal of progress to inherited wisdom. Socialism could be “hard” in rational and disciplined action and “soft” in moral goals deeply rooted in people’s aspirations. A strong leader who knew how to link the past to a dream of the future could shape the socialism that his people could identify as the datong shehui in China’s heritage.
DIFFERENT HERITAGE
The distance between the legal systems in China and the West has long been a matter of regret. It began when Britain was no longer prepared to let Chinese law be used to punish British subjects; that issue became the cause célèbre in the Anglo-Chinese wars.
Despite the fact that China had, with the help of Anglo-American and other European legal scholars, reformed and modernised its legal system during the past 100 years, the gulf has remained and has continued to fuel an underlying lack of trust. This has once again surfaced in contemporary interstate relations wherever the People’s Republic is involved.
Chinese officials pull down a British flag on a ship in 1856. Photo: Alamy Stock Photo
The issue had become sensitive when the Western powers made it clear that their legal ideals were meant to cover the relations between civilised states, and China had been found wanting. The divide stemmed from the European assumption that international law was built on a common Christian heritage. The treaties that followed China’s several defeats led to extraterritorial jurisdictions by Western powers and Japan. These humiliated China for being so uncivilised that provisions were necessary for the protection of civilised people. The set of practices that diminished China’s sovereign rights remained a source of anger for 100 years and coloured Chinese attitudes towards all Western reference to the rule of law down to the present.
The different value given by China and the West to the role of law has deep roots. It originated from the different premises made about the relationship between man and nature, between those who moved from believing in many gods to faiths in one God, and those whose world views allowed them to live without reference to any God or gods.
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The single-god world emerged in the Mediterranean region (among Jewish, Christian or Islamic believers) while the mixed often-godless realm was developed in the Sinic cultural zone in eastern Asia.
When traced far back, what is significant is that, while there were great differences in conceptions, both godly and godless traditions paid respect to the role of law, albeit each in its own way. There was no question of not depending on law for securing order, especially the controls needed for political order. Whether the laws reached into private and family affairs, or were in the main varieties of civil and criminal law, all those in authority gave much thought to formulating them to bring out what was fair and most efficacious. And both European and Chinese rulers paid close attention to laws pertaining to governance, and specifically to their relations with their subjects.
The distance between legal systems in China and the West has long been a matter of contention. Photo: Xinhua
Where their respective heritage parted significantly was the way their rulers institutionalised their codes. Those in Europe believed that the rule of law was a higher principle that stood above other considerations; it was sanctified by the supernatural and therefore sacrosanct. The idea had grown out of customary law observed by tribal organisations as well as in the royal and canon laws promulgated in princely states or kingdoms. In time, they were extended to cover larger political units like nation states or empires. Law was therefore at the centre of all governance and remained steadfast whether the rulers were strong men or a group of oligarchs, or leaders who were democratically chosen. Whoever they were and wherever they came from, they could only rule through regulations and statutes that were seen as parts of God’s law. Thereafter, that conception of the rule of law led to questions being asked as to what would best serve those who are equal in the eyes of God. That led people to demand that law should protect people from abusive rulers. The key point was that, behind the respect for the law was religious doctrine and the Church. In certain contexts, God’s law had the power to send even the strongest leaders to the fires of hell. When this authority shifted following the Reformation, Christian Europe still maintained that each church embodied the spirit of God’s law.
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When the classics of the Greco-Roman period were given a new lease of life during the Renaissance, this ancient learning stimulated revolts within the Church. The Protestants reinterpreted their heritage and provided conditions whereby new ideas were allowed to grow. As a result, the advent of scepticism, rationalism and the scientific mind enabled an intense questioning of past assumptions that eventually led to a secular view of the world.
Western Europe largely moved away from church-determined ideas and went on to develop laws that have been described as rational and modern. That saw the beginning of a powerful legal system under which the ruler gave up most of his powers so that his subjects would have more say. Of course, who actually had a say was another matter.
US President Donald Trump, who many Chinese believe is trying to contain China’s rise. Photo: Reuters
It took the British more than 100 years to let ordinary men have the vote, and the women did not get theirs until the 20th century. The British were unapologetic about that pace of development. They thought that the only people who should be allowed to vote were people who owned property and were well-educated. Nevertheless, the principle that people could control their own destiny was confirmed.
In one form or another, laws were obeyed in good conscience by God-fearing people and rational scientific-minded people alike. Even when the laws were obviously man-made and could be cruelly implemented, whether by kings, judges or elected legislators, it continued to be understood that a higher spirit rested behind their making. That belief gave the laws a special moral standing and placed the rule of law at the heart of Western political culture. In short, the ruler was always subject to God’s law.
In comparison, the Chinese have also long acknowledged that laws should be respected but the idea of the rule of law was only implicitly understood. Everyone was conscious that the laws demanded absolute obeisance; that was akin to fear of the ruler’s wrath. Those draconian laws had been given centrality by the state of Qin during the Warring States period. The legalists who drew them up enabled the Qin to defeat the rival states and use the laws to control, dominate and dictate in every respect. What was understood, and sometimes made explicit, was that the ruler would always employ the law to stay in power.
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The idea that rules accompanied by harsh punishments made states strong attracted many of the warring lords from the fifth to the third century BC. It led them to challenge the Zhou dynasty’s claim that good governance came from the model rulers of a legendary Golden Age who embodied the principle that the right to rule had to be defined in moral terms. In that context, legitimacy was confirmed through rituals that demonstrate that the ruler had received the Mandate of Heaven.
The rulers of the state of Qin thought otherwise. They employed legalists who believed that power depended on total control through harsh laws and finally destroyed all rivals to establish a new dynasty. The new emperor made sure everyone knew that he was above the law and his laws must be obeyed.
This law was a revolutionary instrument used to destroy a decrepit ancient regime. However, the legalists were so extreme in their rejection of traditional moral and social norms that people rose in revolt and that enabled the Han dynasty to take over the empire. The Han rulers reformed the emperor-state system and experimented with other ideas.
But they retained the body of Qin laws that guided the centralised bureaucracy and brought in non-legalists to administer the empire.
Xiamen in China’s Fujian province. Photo: Bloomberg
The fourth emperor, Han Wudi, then entrusted men of Confucian learning to balance the harsh laws with their moral ideals. The writings of Confucius had been torched and banned by the Qin. Now his disciples could practise what they preached.
The Han ideal thereafter was to educate rulers in the Confucian Classics that extolled them to be guided by responsible officials chosen for their learning and moral principles. The legal system was no longer upfront but remained there to be used by Confucian scholars whenever necessary. That set the tone of imperial governance even for the Central Asian tribal successors of the Han during the fifth and sixth centuries.
By the Tang dynasty, Confucian moral wisdom modified the law codes again, and these were further revised during the Ming-Qing dynasties.
In short, laws with deep roots in Confucian renzhi provided the foundations of the empire state for at least 1,500 years. As outlined earlier, God’s law in its secular form came to stand at the heart of the universalism promoted by the West and led by the United States and its European allies since the end of World War Two. In contrast, the idea of what was civilised in China had been particularistic and the laws guiding its modernisation process operate within its own framework.
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The country has been prepared to learn from and even adopt Western law codes, but also wants to reconnect with the moral principles that had protected its heritage. This reminds us that law today has not only been a question of adapting modern law for China’s use but is also the source of tension in Sino-Western relations. The normative use of law extended by the West to apply to all interstate relations continues to provide a challenge. Chinese leaders closely observed how those legal institutions have worked in international relations. In particular, they noted how those institutions could not prevent the two wars that destroyed European supremacy. This has led them to believe that the system is not fair or stable and could be improved.
THE NANYANG CONNECTION
Today a new Southeast Asia can work through Asean. This regional organisation is a remarkable achievement, but it is still work in progress. Beginning with maritime interests, it now includes continental states with very different histories. Vietnam, for example, learnt the same lessons as the Chinese and now looks much more to the sea while Laos is totally landlocked. As for Cambodia and Myanmar, how they respond to maritime challenges is still unclear. As members of Asean, this may matter less as long as they can count on a united organisation to monitor the region’s naval concerns.
A container port in Qingdao, in China’s Shandong province. Photo: AP
Here Asean’s efforts could make it greater than its parts. The region’s location between the Indian and Pacific Oceans ensures that the great maritime powers of the world will always have a strategic interest in its well-being. But there are analogies with the Mediterranean world that may be relevant. Although on a smaller scale, naval power in that sea determined the fates of all the states involved, deep divisions between the states on its northern and southern coasts have lasted to this day. It is never a question of naval power alone. The states facing the sea have strong hinterlands and neither those of the north nor of the south could dominate the Mediterranean for long. That should remind us that Southeast Asia with its continental and maritime members could also be vulnerable to divisions when confronted by external forces coming from different directions and calling on each of its member states to choose sides.
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Another interesting question is why the South China Sea was never a zone of naval conflict the way the Mediterranean was. It is narrower in parts and wider in others and not well sealed like having Gibraltar at one end and Suez at the other. There are more openings to the ocean, as in the Taiwan Strait, the Sunda and Malacca Straits, as well as the passages leading into the South Pacific. In addition, unlike the Mediterranean where there were always powerful states on both sides of the sea, there was no power that could challenge the Chinese empire in the South China Sea. Had there been one, perhaps that sea would also have been a zone of tense and extended competition from ancient times.
That may be about to change. Today, the newly announced Indo-Pacific front has created a counter-power to face a rising China. At the same time, dynamic economic growth is moving from the Atlantic to this extended maritime space. Together, they have given new life to the Old World. Thus countries like China and India are building more credible navies to match those of Japan and the United States. In that way, the Indo-Pacific could serve as a larger Mediterranean in which the South China Sea acts as its strategic centre. That would make the double-ocean zone one of continuous tension in which powerful protagonists will keep the divisions permanent.
A Cantonese opera show. Can China hold on to its past as it builds a prosperous future? Photo: Handout
If Asean is divided underneath that overarching framework, it would be of little use to anybody. The region’s history renders it open to divisions, especially between the mainland and the archipelagic states that tend to look in different directions for their well-being. However, if these states can overcome their historical baggage, Asean could have a major role to play in the midst of the rapid changes in the relations between the New Global and Old World. If it is united on critical issues, it could provide a bridge that helps to make those relationships peaceful and constructive. That would not only help its members withstand the pressures put on them, but also demonstrate to all major powers that their interests are also best served by a truly united Asean.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 