The Roots of Intellectual Property in China: A Bibliography

•June 11, 2008 • Leave a Comment

The Roots of Intellectual Property Rights in China

Background

This bibliography is for the purpose of my anticipated master’s thesis, to further explicate the nature of intellectual property (IP) law in China. Of course, this is not an easy goal as most scholars have noted, there is only a limited notion of intellectual property in dynastic China, only lately appearing due to the Western cultural exchange. My historical period will be Ming-Qing China, with emphasis on the Great Qing Code. I accommodated this bibliography to meet this goal by surveying Chinese law through history, sociological, and political affairs perspectives. Law is accounted for not only in terms of IP itself, but civil law as well; I depend on Philip C.C. Huang’s work in defining “civil justice” from Chinese law, which has no distinction between criminal and civil law, to accomplish this goal first and foremost.

I have structured this bibliography to meet two environmental goals. First, as a current student at University of Oregon, I wanted my bibliography to reflect what is available at UO students’ disposal. My source reviews, as well as the the whole of the first area of my sectional bibliography (Central Sources), are designed with this in mind. The call numbers I use are denoted by the libraries they are available in. Second, as a future student at University of Washington, I wanted to expand on these sources with information that would be available for myself at that institution. I have organized the sources that fit this description into the latter two areas of my sectional bibliography (Regional Sources and Universal Sources). The call numbers I included are regional numbers, rather than Library of Congress call numbers. Finally, I included a cumulative bibliography for the sake of strict alphabetization.

Sectional Bibliography

Central Sources

<KNIGHT> H 62.5.C5.T45 2007

Furth, Charlotte, Judith T. Zeitlin, and Ping-chen Hsiung eds. Thinking with Cases: Specialist Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007.

Cultural study (e.g. social anthropology) and the law come hand and hand; this has been an established fact since Weber and Durkheim “started” the discipline of sociology. Thinking with Cases is a book that shows the value of cultural analysis for the study of law. The authors attempt to merge articles regarding “cases” together between three unusual fields: law, medicine, and religion. Obviously the first is the most helpful for studying law, but the brilliance of this anthology is that it tries to link these notions together to portray the utility and meaning behind the use of examples. It is in a sense foundational for the study of law because it examines the axiological divide between East and West in terms of method of analysis. The section on law itself is broken into three articles: one pertaining to late Ming casebooks (even including an examination of court case fiction, gong’an xiaoshuo) and law manuals; the next dividing hand books between prescriptive manuals, expository on law code, and opinions/sentences in terms of forensic analysis; the last regarding affidavits in Qing legal cases. All three of these are interesting pieces that are great for formulating notions concerning the historical roots of Chinese law, but it seems as though the first article is best due to its uncommon focus and how well in distills ancient law into an essence, brewing in even fiction to display how the legal process was seen in past dynasties.

<LAW> KNN 33.A4.E55 2005

Jiang Yonglin. The Great Ming Code / Da Ming lü. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005.

Professor Jiang was an assistant for William Jones in writing his translation of the Great Qing Code, so it can be assumed that the scholarship of this work is superb. The Great Ming Code was a formative precedent to the Great Qing Code, and was written by the founding bureaucracy of the Ming dynasty. Because the law code is filtered through the political times, the Ming Code is worth studying in how the political turmoil of the Ming’s restoration of Han culture resounded even to the ascendancy of non-Han people. Finally, the Ming Code is worth studying because it represents the first formal code garnering commercial law, including code pertaining to salt monopolies. As a result, I believe this source is important for understanding the roots of civil law.

<KNIGHT> KNN 34.A4.E54 1994

Jones, William C, tr. The Great Qing Code. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

As one of the primary sources for my writing, along with the “134 Qing Cases”, this book is unsurpassed in its importance. The Qing Code is the polestar to my thesis, and although it lacks a certain bearing to civil law beyond administration, it is still the major source of law in late imperial China. Jones rarely comments upon the text in any other form than introduction to his translation, so it is a “pure” text that can articulate cleanly with my secondary sources. His interpretation acknowledges the clear line drawing the Qing in relation to the Tang Codes, and he tends to talk of the law as a continuous tradition. These thoughts do not emerge in his translation, but they are helpful for interpreting his text, when there is a dearth of scholarship regarding the Tang Codes.

<CHINESE> KNN 34.T3 1993

张荣铮, 刘勇強, 金懋初点校. “大清律例“. 天津: 天津古籍出版社, 1993

Zhang Rongzheng, Liu Yongqiang, Jin Maochu eds. Da Qing Lu Li. Tianjin: Tianjin Classics Press (Tianjin gu ji chuban she), 1993.

This is the Chinese form of the Great Qing Code. There seems to be a lot more commentary in this version than the version by Jones. It resembles the Confucian Classics, with commentaries in small font accompanying the code. The nature of these seem more explicative than interpretative: contextual issues are generally taken care of in footnotes than in passage scribblings. It seems sensible that this form has a lot of advantages over the more straightforward English version. An example of this is the commentaries in the introduction to the 13th scroll, one encompassing family law (戶律). Commentaries in the first line explain archaic grammar and vocabulary, in addition to fill in a few of the interpretive blanks involving what constitutes a suspect in private law. The entire text is in simplified script, as well.

<LAW> KNN 63.4.M56213 1999

McKnight, Brian E and Liu, James T.C. trans. The Enlightened Judgements: Ch’ing-ming Chi. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999/

During the late years of the Southern Song dynasty, Chan Yanfu from Fujian province wrote an expansive collection of law cases. Intended to be the interest of local magistrates, this book is a translation and interpretation of Chan’s work. McKnight divides the book into chapters based upon what type of law the cases appeal towards, with the vast majority dealing with either family or public law. However, a great deal of cases concern property disputes. If there is a manner of contrasting intellectual property and (landed) property law, then this book is an appealing addition to the study of the history of Chinese law.

<LAW> KNN 64.L38 1967

Bodde, Derk and Morris, Clarence. Law in Imperial China: Exemplified by 190 Ch’ing Dynasty Cases, With Historical, Social, and Juridical Commentaries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Case studies are very important for the study of law, as they inform us how to act in an analogical way. This book is one of the first translated case study volumes, the Xing’an Huilan. Bound sets of prescriptions are held within a case study, and in effect this text will illustrate how the Great Qing Code operates. This book not only attempts to establish the basis of law in China in its first part, but through the translated case studies, it shows practical interpretation of Qing dynastic law. As a result, Bodde and Morris’s text is utterly essential, even if it has a focus on criminal law.

<LAW> KNN 122.E86 1980

Cohen, Jerome Alan, Edwards, R. Randle, and Fu-mei Chang Chen. Essays on China’s Legal Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.

This is an anthology of texts from a variety of historians, including Derk Bodde. Of particular merit is Brockman’s essay on commercial contract law in 19th century Taiwan and Fu-Mei Chang Chen’s essay on Shen Zhiqi’s commentary on Qing judicial decisions. Brockman discusses how customary law is the basis of contract law in Taiwan, an interesting notion for a pragmatic approach to civil law in historical China. The bulk of his work covers buy-seller exchange and negotiation, parts of law which do not really constitute the abstract principles of law as we know them. Fu-mei Chang’s work covers the Xing’an Huilan law case book that Derk Bodde so decisively translated and interpreted. She focuses specifically on a bureaucrat named Shen Zhiqi, whose private commentary on the Qing Code exercised a gigantic influence among legal scholars in the court of Qianlong forward. As a result, Fu-mei’s article is profoundly important to the study of Qing dynastic law, and repudiates this as an appropriate source.

<LAW> KNN 122.H43 2005

Head, John W. and Yanping Wang. Law Codes in Dynastic China: A Synopsis of Chinese Legal History in the Thirty Centuries from Zhou to Qing. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2005.

A book covering the evolution of Chinese law from Hundred Schools of Thought to the Qing Code, this book is serviceable as a road map to the history of Chinese law. It is dependent upon a great deal of sources listed in this bibliography, including Bodde and Morris, Fairbank, and Hulsewe. As a result, this can be considered a “tertiary” source, something of a guide to applying more detailed secondary sources for the purpose of linked history. This will be the perfect for writing the framework for historical background of law prior to the Qing Code.

<KNIGHT> KNN 122.B37 1997, KNN 122.L39 1997, KNQ 1829.C66 1997, KNQ3202.F67 1997

Lee, Tahirih V, ed. Basic concepts of Chinese law. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.

Lee, Tahirih V, ed. Law, the State, and Society in China. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.

Lee, Tahirih V, ed. Contract, guanxi, and dispute resolution in China. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.

Lee, Tahirih V, ed. Foreigners in Chinese law. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.

I couple these books together because they form a four part series. The third part is entitled “Contract, Guanxi, and Dispute Resolution in China” and the fourth “Foreigners in Chinese Law”. Each has a particular focus, as their topic indicates, but most of them deal with law in contemporary China. For instance, the second book only devotes three chapters to Republican Era or Qing China. Meanwhile, the first book too deals only loosely in regard to Chinese history, most dealing with the past thirty years in Chinese law. These articles are of unmistakable quality, including work by Jerome Cohen (head Chinese law professor at Harvard) and William Alford (head Chinese law professor at Stanford). My task with law is not so much wholly focused on the historical qualities of law, but reconciling this legacy with current practices. To this end, Tahirih Lee’s series seems quite helpful. It is all very discursive in focus, and the most interesting article is one written by Hom and Malloy which deals with the two professor’s experience teaching law and economics to Chinese lawyers in 1993. It takes the format of a series of letters, and each author has a varying understanding of Chinese so it makes for a cultural experience inasmuch one on law. Suffice it to say, the entire volume would make for an interesting contribution to a thesis regarding Chinese law, no matter the subject.

<KNIGHT> KNN 1155.A958 1995

Alford, William P. To Steal a Book Is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilization. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.

By title, this is the perfect book. It examines a contemporary phenomenon, infringement, and the author attempts to discern why intellectual property law, especially the copyright, never appeared in Chinese civilization. Although a good portion talks about imperial China’s lack of “a sustained indigenous counterpart to IP law” (2), the mass of the book is about the failure of forms of IP law to become widespread in practice in China. A lot has to do with Republican Era and Maoist China, so it is a bit beyond my initial interest in the field, specifically with late imperial China. It seems as though the book’s talk about axiological law will deal largely with philosophy, wherein the idea of “novelty” and copyright are discussed in context of Classical Confucianism. This book should nonetheless prove helpful, if not one hundred percent essential, to any inquiry into Chinese law.

<KNIGHT> KNN 1572.C58 1994

Bernhardt, Kathryn and Philip C.C. Huang eds. Civil Law in Qing and Republican China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.

This book is an anthology of writings concerned with civil and administrative law in late imperial China. Not only does it include the requisite chapters introducing law in China to the novice, but then it examines law in particularly notable instances. This is largely an interdisciplinary task, as many deal with social dimensions of the practice of law (who and what defines professional law practice) as well as analysis of textual sources on Chinese law. Because the breadth of this book and the credibility of the authors as astute historians (Zelin) as well as trained lawyers (Huang), this is quite an extraordinary piece for my thesis’s topic. And as demonstrated, civil law in China is incredibly important for my academic mission as well as many others; it exists as the critical theoretical link between yesterday and today, in terms of Chinese forms of law.

<LAW> KNN 1572.H83 1996

Huang, Philip C.C. Civil Justice in China: Representation and Practice in China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

An important distinction for my project requires the imposition of a Western ideal onto Chinese law traditions. The distinction between civil and criminal law is something that does not sustain to Chinese sources of law, and Huang makes this clear by differentiating between civil law and civil justice. He makes the definition that civil law does not exist by virtue of the lack of a specific notion denoting private rights in China, and cites William Jones as representing the most extreme pole of this interpretation. On the other hand, he states that civil justice must have existed, for cases made to protect property rights and contracts almost never levied criminal punishment. This is the fundamental assertion he assumes, as he gives us a discursive explication of this form of “civil justice” in China, from lawsuits and mediation to strategies of “civil justice” related legislation. I believe this book is key for my thesis question, because people claim that intellectual property did not have associated rights in China. It might be possible to follow Huang’s example to appropriate a standard of upholding intellectual property in imperial China.

<LAW> KNN 1572.H834 2001

Huang, Philip C.C. Code, Custom, and Legal Practice in China: The Qing and the Republic Compared. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

By title alone it is obvious that this book is important for my question. It means to place Huang’s established notion of “civil justice” into a period fraught with ideas brought in from the West. Huang sees it as an adaptation of a German model, but also as a revision of the Great Qing Code. This portion is the seed of my interest, to find the continuities of tenets from the Qing Code found today. He focuses heavily on civil law as well as property law (dian). He also expands upon other China legal scholars by examining the nature of custom in shaping law. All and all, this is another book in his series “LAaw, Society, and Culture in China”; each addition to this contributes greatly to the goals of my thesis.

<KNIGHT> KNN 3800.M33 1990

MacCormack, Geoffrey. Traditional Chinese Penal Law. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990.

The majority of this book focuses upon early imperial China, with only a small portion on Ming and Qing law in terms of history. However, a good portion does deal with the evolution of the tradition of law based on the Tang code, which is my primary interest for study. His main source tends to be the Da Qing luli huiji bianlan, which I want to spend a great deal of time studying. He talks about law textually, but also discusses how it was enforced from dynasty to dynasty. In talks about punishment, both in terms of capital punishment and compensatory damages, it goes a long distance to explain social roles within these, especially for the bureaucrat. Finally, he explains contract and family law in tandem. All of these chapters appeal to the highest textual sources — the Qing and Tang codes — but are sensible for each dynasty. This is quite an extraordinary book for this subject.

<KNIGHT> KNP 490.T383.A46 1994

Allee, Mark A. Law and Local Society in Late Imperial China: Northern Taiwan in the Nineteenth Century. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Sociological aspects of law are valuable contributions to examining what makes a “legacy”, and certainly including Taiwan into a study of late imperial China is a good thing. This book tends to cover family law above all other forms, but in doing so covers the territory of civil law in China that is so crucial, for a principle notion separating Chinese law from Western law is that there was not explicit division between civil and criminal law. A good deal of the book covers criminal proceedings, including court procedure. It covers the so-called Dan-Xin archives, a rarely utilized bulk of law cases that deal with mostly commercial matters. All of this is tempered by setting: Taiwan during the 19th century was a military settlement, and this affected administrative law in a profound way. Although frontier politics is not a major part of this research topic, my specialty falls within the area, so this book would be an interesting addition, and would contribute some great case studies to law enforcement and crafting.

<LAW> KNQ 48.7.W75 2007

Hegel, Robert E. and Carlitz, Katherine. Writing and Law in Late Imperial China: Crime, Conflict, and Judgment. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007.

This is a multidisciplinary examination of law in Late Imperial China, perfectly attuned to the nature of my study. Including work by UO professor Maram Epstein, this book takes a tripartite examination of the nature of Chinese law. First, it looks at rhetoric in persuasion and how it pertains to law in dynastic China. Most of the articles in this section examine law via literature, which indeed held an influential fixture within late imperial Chinese popular novels (e.g. Judge Di). Part two examines legal discourse in the auspices of state authority. Most applicable in this section seems to be Buoye’s discussion of leniency of punishment found in the Qing Code. The final section deals with the interplay between legal procedure and literary tropes. This section is especially useful because it deals with the notion of legal case studies, which is a central part of demonstrating a workable practice for a theorized form of proto-IPR law. Thus, the last third of this book is worth examining.

<LAW> KNQ 92.C36 2004

Cao, Deborah. Chinese Law: A Language Perspective. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2004.

Despite the lofty title, this book may have limited use for the topic of historical law. Cao’s mission is not to address law universally as it is to deal with law in the here-and-now China. She appeals to historical forms of law only through Hundred Schools texts, largely through Kongzi, Han Feizi, Xunzi, and Lord Shang. From here, her approach deals with the modern form of Mandarin Chinese. However, I do enjoy the fact that she employs a broad understanding to law, even as she focuses on language. She employs linguistic (e.g. Gadamer) and critical (e.g. Habermas) sources to analyzing how law communicates universally, and then applies her knowledge to make case examples with the Chinese language, specifically focusing on cases of particular consonance. Great in theory, but of limited use to the mission of my historical study — perhaps Cao’s text will come in handy in understanding what makes the history of law a specific legacy, with application in today’s China.

<LAW> KNQ 500.M5413 1989

Jones, William C. ed. Basic Principles of Civil Law in China. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1989.

Although a bit dated, this book deals with civil law in modern China. William C. Jones is the erudite scholar who translated the Great Qing Code, so it this book is unquestionable in its veracity and context in historical study (even if this book predates his translation of the Code). His understanding of civil law as a theory and practice is crucial for an understanding the essential bond between IPR law in contemporary and dynastic China.

<LAW> KNQ 1155.F46 1997

Feng, Peter. Intellectual Property in China. Hong Kong: Sweet & Maxwell Asia, 1997.

Focused on issues and aspects of intellectual property law in contemporary China, this is probably the most technically sound book on IP law in China. It includes Chinese terms for technical terms (for instance, zhuoqingquan, “at the court’s discretion”, a term applied for the judicial discretion entailed in calculating economic losses in IPR cases). The book is systematically organized and includes citations that are intensely interesting and detailed. Perhaps the technical detail precludes reading by any scholar not familiar with law as a profession, but this would be a tragedy given the sheer amount of useful information held in this tome.

<LAW> KNQ 1160.H8 2000

Hu, Robert Haibin. Guide to China Copyright Law Studies. Buffalo: William S. Hein & Co, 2000.

As a research guide to intellectual property rights in China, this is a fantastic source. It has a brief bibliography, including articles and dissertations, all on the subject. It also includes a full listing of websites, institutions (i.e. affiliated with the government, such as the USTR) related to copyright law and China. The focus is mainly on contemporary law, but this only slightly diminishes the utility of this great source.

<KNIGHT> KNQ 1160.Q2 2002

Sanqiang Qu. Copyright in China. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2002.

Copyright in China as it is remains complicated, even without including the historical breadth of the legacy of law. This book sets out to examine the state of copyright law in China, especially the intricacies of the law since its admittance to the WTO in 2001, so it focuses one chapter heavily upon international standards. For my look at the nuances of IP law in modernity, my focus will be placed on international standards via international organizations so this is particularly useful. Qu also covers copyright law’s infringement (in a variety of media), what defines a copyrightable work (i.e. what is “original”), but draws careful attention to what makes Chinese law so unique. This uniqueness leads to deep political explorations, not only of the legal reforms occurring through the Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin administrations, but also looking at Western influence on law crafting. Its focal points are valuable for exploring the topic of law in China. Qu has written a great book with this, not only due to his own brilliant scholarship, but also that he has drawn his work from the top scholars in the field including Bodde, Alford, and Zheng Chensi.

<KNIGHT> KNQ 1572.M33 1998

Macauley, Melissa. Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.

As the term master implies, this book covers the vocation of the barrister in late imperial China in a sociological manner. It focuses upon popular perceptions of lawyers and other elites involved in law. Because the lawyer-elite is a social entity according to Macauley, she seeks to find the context of these elites, what made them powerful, and what effect they had upon the law. These litigation masters are not simply villians or frauds, she finds; they were power brokers with an agenda that was not completely selfish. Their mastery of the law was also not universal, for some were merely literate individuals willing to help those in need of legal aid. Giving a face to these individuals might prove helpful for identifying the legacy of law in China, and through them it is possible to see a dimension of their larger institutional context. Sociological studies such as this prove that an interdisciplinary approach exposes a lot of elements completely lost by a wholly textual focus.

Regional Sources

China intellectual property law guide. Frederick: Aspen Publishers, 2005. <KNQ1155 .C45 2005>

Available copies: 1. A copy of this book is available at the University of Washington Law Library.

China law reports. Singapore: Butterworths Asia, in co-operation with China Law and Cultural Publications, 1995-. <KNQ19.A35 C44>

Available sets: 1. This is an annual journal, and University of Washington Law is the only school with a subscription to it. They hold their copies in the reference area.

Neil J. Diamant, Stanley B. Lubman, and Kevin J. O’Brien eds. Engaging the law in China : state, society, and possibilities for justice. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. <KNQ1155 .G355 2005>

Available copies: 7. This is a widely available book in the Northwest. Five of these copies come from Washington, including Seattle University and Washington. However, two are available in institutions in Oregon: George Fox and Willamette Universities.

Feng Xu. The law of China: dancing with the dragon in the 21st century.West Hartford: Graduate Group, 2005. <KNQ68 .X8 2005>

Available copies: 2. Available at Lewis and Clarke and Willamette’s law libraries.

Ganea, Peter and Pattloch, Thomas. Intellectual property law in China. Frederick: Aspen Publishers, 2005 <KNQ1572 .E54 2005>

Available copies: 3. The Law Library has a copy of this in their archives. Unfortunately, I was unable to get it in time. In addition, Lewis and Clarke and Washington’s Law Libraries both have this book available.

Gao Fuping. Zhongguo wu quan fa: zhi du she ji he chuang xin (Real right law of China: institution design and innovation). Beijing: Zhongguo ren min da xue chu ban she (China Public scholarly press), 2005. <KNQ640 .G366 2005>

Available copies: 1. A copy of this book is available at the University of Washington Law Library.

Karen G. Turner, James V. Feinerman, and R. Kent Guy. The limits of the rule of law in China. Seattle : University of Washington Press, 2000. <KNQ2025 .L56 2000>

Available copies: 7. This is available in the UO Law Library, however it was unable to find it on the shelves. In addition, there are six other available copies, most of which are at University of Washington.

Hong Xue and Zheng Chensi. Chinese intellectual property law in the 21st century. Hong Kong: Sweet & Maxwell Asia, 2002. <KNQ1155 .X94 2002>

Available copies: 2. This text is available at Washington and Willamette Law Libraries.

Riley, Mary L ed. Protecting intellectual property rights in China. Hong Kong: Sweet & Maxwell Asia, 1997. <KNQ1155 .P76 1997>

Available copies: 1. University of Washington Law Library has the only copy.

Svarverud, Rune. International law as world order in Late Imperial China : translation, reception and discourse, 1847-1911 Boston: Brill, 2007. <KNN2325 .S88 2007>

Available copies: 3. University of Washington and Lewis and Clarke have copies of this book.

Zhongguo fa lü (China law). Hong Kong: Zhongguo fa lü za zhi she you xian gong si (China law magazine electronic journal), 1994-. <KNQ6 .C65>

Available sets: 3. This is a periodical available, in full, at University of Washington Law library’s classified stacks. In addition, Lewis and Clarke has copies dating back to 2005, and Willamette to 1995.

Zhongguo fa xue hui (Chinese legal research society) and Bi jiao fa yan jiu hui (Comparative law research group). Bi jiao fa zai Zhongguo (Comparative law in China). Beijing: Fa lü chu ban she (law publishing inc), 2001-. <K521 .B6>

Available sets: 1. This is an annual journal, and University of Washington Law is the only school with a subscription to it. They hold their copies in the classified stacks.

Universal Sources

Alford, William P. Understanding Chinese Attitudes Towards Intellectual Property (IP) Rights. CIO, September 15, 2006.

Beijing, China. Embassy of the U.S. IPR toolkit: intellectual property rights in China Washington, D.C.: U.S. State Dept., 2005.

Columbia Journal of Asian Law (Hein Online). Also available through: LexisNexis, Academic Search Premier, and Legal Periodicals Full Text.

Congressional Research Service, Franklin Pierce Law Center. Intellectual property, cyberlaw and electronic commerce CRS Reports

Fan Zhang and Xie, Dennis. Chinese Copyright Protection Has Storied History, Strong Future.

Fitzgerald, Brian et al. Copyright law, digital content and the Internet in the Asia-Pacific. Sampsung Xiaoxiang Shi, Chinese Copyright Law, Peer Production and the Participatory Media Age: An Old Regime in a New World. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2008.

Harvard Cyberlaw wiki, “History Workshop”. Bibliography and References.

Journal of Business Ethics 69, No. 1 (Nov. 2006) Lehman, John Alan. Intellectual Property Rights and Chinese Tradition Section: Philosophical Foundations.

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity New York: Penguin Press, 2004.

United States. Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Intellectual Property Protection as Economic Policy: Will China Ever Enforce its IP Laws? Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005.

United States. Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Ownership with Chinese Characteristics: Private Property Rights and Land Reform in the People’s Republic of China 2003.

United States. Department of Commerce. Doing Business in China: A Country Commercial Guide for U.S. Companies. Washington, D.C.: Department of Commerce, 2006.

United States. Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Law in Political Transitions: Lessons from East Asia and the Road Ahead for China. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005.

United States. Congressional-Executive Commission on China. The rule of law in China: lawyers without law? Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2003.

University of Maine, Farmington. China page bibliography, Law and Society.

USA Today via Associated Press, 2005. China’s Shaolin Temple fights for name.

[edit] Cumulative Bibliography

Alford, William P. Understanding Chinese Attitudes Towards Intellectual Property (IP) Rights. CIO, September 15, 2006.

Alford, William P. To Steal a Book Is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilization. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995. <KNIGHT KNN 1155.A958 1995>

Allee, Mark A. Law and Local Society in Late Imperial China: Northern Taiwan in the Nineteenth Century. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. <KNIGHT KNP 490.T383.A46 1994>

Beijing, China. Embassy of the U.S. IPR toolkit: intellectual property rights in China Washington, D.C.: U.S. State Dept., 2005.

Bernhardt, Kathryn and Philip C.C. Huang eds. Civil Law in Qing and Republican China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. <KNIGHT KNN 1572.C58 1994>

Bodde, Derk and Morris, Clarence. Law in Imperial China: Exemplified by 190 Ch’ing Dynasty Cases, With Historical, Social, and Juridical Commentaries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967. <LAW KNN 64.L38 1967>

Cao, Deborah. Chinese Law: A Language Perspective. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2004. <LAW KNQ 92.C36 2004>

China intellectual property law guide. Frederick: Aspen Publishers, 2005. <KNQ1155 .C45 2005>

Available copies: 1. A copy of this book is available at the University of Washington Law Library.

China law reports. Singapore: Butterworths Asia, in co-operation with China Law and Cultural Publications, 1995-. <KNQ19.A35 C44>

Available sets: 1. This is an annual journal, and University of Washington Law is the only school with a subscription to it. They hold their copies in the reference area.

Cohen, Jerome Alan, Edwards, R. Randle, and Fu-mei Chang Chen. Essays on China’s Legal Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. <LAW KNN 122.E86 1980>

Columbia Journal of Asian Law (Hein Online). Also available through: LexisNexis, Academic Search Premier, and Legal Periodicals Full Text.

Congressional Research Service, Franklin Pierce Law Center. Intellectual property, cyberlaw and electronic commerce CRS Reports

Fan Zhang and Xie, Dennis. Chinese Copyright Protection Has Storied History, Strong Future.

Feng, Peter. Intellectual Property in China. Hong Kong: Sweet & Maxwell Asia, 1997. <LAW KNQ 1155.F46 1997>

Feng Xu. The law of China: dancing with the dragon in the 21st century.West Hartford: Graduate Group, 2005. <KNQ68 .X8 2005>

Available copies: 2. Available at Lewis and Clarke and Willamette’s law libraries.

Furth, Charlotte, Judith T. Zeitlin, and Ping-chen Hsiung eds. Thinking with Cases: Specialist Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007. <KNIGHT H 62.5.C5.T45 2007>

Ganea, Peter and Pattloch, Thomas. Intellectual property law in China. Frederick: Aspen Publishers, 2005 <KNQ1572 .E54 2005>

Available copies: 1. A copy of this book is available at the University of Washington Law Library.

Harvard Cyberlaw wiki, “History Workshop”. Bibliography and References.

Head, John W. and Yanping Wang. Law Codes in Dynastic China: A Synopsis of Chinese Legal History in the Thirty Centuries from Zhou to Qing. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2005. <LAW KNN 122.H43 2005>

Hegel, Robert E. and Carlitz, Katherine. Writing and Law in Late Imperial China: Crime, Conflict, and Judgment. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. <LAW KNQ 48.7.W75 2007>

Hong Xue and Zheng Chensi. Chinese intellectual property law in the 21st century. Hong Kong: Sweet & Maxwell Asia, 2002. <KNQ1155 .X94 2002>

Available copies: 2. This text is available at Washington and Willamette Law Libraries.

Hu, Robert Haibin. Guide to China Copyright Law Studies. Buffalo: William S. Hein & Co, 2000. <LAW KNQ 1160.H8 2000>

Huang, Philip C.C. Civil Justice in China: Representation and Practice in China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. <LAW KNN 1572.H83 1996>

Huang, Philip C.C. Code, Custom, and Legal Practice in China: The Qing and the Republic Compared. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. <LAW KNN 1572.H834 2001>

Jiang Yonglin. The Great Ming Code / Da Ming lü. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005. <LAW KNN 33.A4.E55 2005>

Jones, William C. ed. Basic Principles of Civil Law in China. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1989. <LAW KNQ 500.M5413 1989>

Jones, William C, tr. The Great Qing Code. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Journal of Business Ethics 69, No. 1 (Nov. 2006) Lehman, John Alan. Intellectual Property Rights and Chinese Tradition Section: Philosophical Foundations.

Lee, Tahirih V, ed. Basic concepts of Chinese law. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997. <KNIGHT KNN 122.B37 1997>

Lee, Tahirih V, ed. Law, the State, and Society in China. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997. <KNIGHT KNN 122.L39 1997>

Lee, Tahirih V, ed. Contract, guanxi, and dispute resolution in China. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997. <KNIGHT KNQ 1829.C66 1997>

Lee, Tahirih V, ed. Foreigners in Chinese law. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997. <KNIGHT KNQ3202.F67 1997>

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity New York: Penguin Press, 2004.

Macauley, Melissa. Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. <KNIGHT KNQ 1572.M33 1998>

MacCormack, Geoffrey. Traditional Chinese Penal Law. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990. <KNIGHT KNN 3800.M33 1990>

McKnight, Brian E and Liu, James T.C. trans. The Enlightened Judgements: Ch’ing-ming Chi. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999 <LAW KNN 63.4.M56213 1999>

Riley, Mary L ed. Protecting intellectual property rights in China. Hong Kong: Sweet & Maxwell Asia, 1997. <KNQ1155 .P76 1997>

Available copies: 1. University of Washington Law Library has the only copy.

Sanqiang Qu. Copyright in China. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2002. <KNIGHT KNQ 1160.Q2 2002>

Svarverud, Rune. International law as world order in Late Imperial China : translation, reception and discourse, 1847-1911 Boston: Brill, 2007. <KNN2325 .S88 2007>

Available copies: 3. University of Washington and Lewis and Clarke have copies of this book.

Karen G. Turner, James V. Feinerman, and R. Kent Guy. The limits of the rule of law in China. Seattle : University of Washington Press, 2000. <KNQ2025 .L56 2000>

United States. Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Ownership with Chinese Characteristics: Private Property Rights and Land Reform in the People’s Republic of China 2003.

United States. Department of Commerce. Doing Business in China: A Country Commercial Guide for U.S. Companies. Washington, D.C.: Department of Commerce, 2006.

United States. Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Law in Political Transitions: Lessons from East Asia and the Road Ahead for China. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005.

United States. Congressional-Executive Commission on China. The rule of law in China: lawyers without law? Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2003.

University of Maine, Farmington. China page bibliography, Law and Society.

USA Today via Associated Press, 2005. China’s Shaolin Temple fights for name.

张荣铮, 刘勇強, 金懋初点校. “大清律例“. 天津: 天津古籍出版社, 1993

Zhang Rongzheng, Liu Yongqiang, Jin Maochu eds. Da Qing Lu Li. Tianjin: Tianjin Classics Press (Tianjin gu ji chuban she), 1993. <CHINESE KNN 34.T3 1993>

Zhongguo fa lü (China law). Hong Kong: Zhongguo fa lü za zhi she you xian gong si (China law magazine electronic journal), 1994-. <KNQ6 .C65>

Available sets: 1. This is an annual journal, and University of Washington Law is the only school with a subscription to it. They hold their copies in the classified stacks.
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Posted in China studies, University of Oregon essay, University of Washington
Tags: China studies, history, intellectual property rights, law

AWAKENED RADICALISM, EGALITARIANISM, NATIONALISM

•June 2, 2008 • Leave a Comment

In the beginning of Henrietta Harrison’s biography of the scholar Liu Dapeng, she recounts the story of the Daoist immortal Lu Dongbin, connecting his ascension into Heaven with the conduct of Liu. “When [Liu] calls himself The Man Awakened From Dreams, Liu is expressing his exclusion from political power, but he is also pointing up for us both the fragility and the complexity of the Confucian moral order” (Harrison 19-20). The scholar’s life, in Harrison’s view, is a representation of the status of Confucianism in terms of ethics and politics. How does this model interact with the world at large? With some discussion (1) on creating an overview of the work, and then elaborating upon the status of the identity of the Awakened Liu Dapeng in regards to the three ethical standards of Confucianism: (2) ritual, (3) filial piety, and (4) benevolence. One can become elucidated on exactly what it means to be Awakened in turn of the century’s China.

Within the years comprising the Republican era, Sinologists have a great deal of material that can potentially be utilized. In particular between 1899 and 1919, events relevant for discussion are numerous and complex, even if the period can be wholly comprehended as an interregnum era. For Harrison and many scholars, this means that the fundamental key to understanding society is to find (A) what were the original cultural norms, (B) what were the norms to be adopted, and (C) how the society went from one norm to the other. Liu, to Harrison, seems to be a figure within the latter category, an anachronism naturally occurring as China undergoes cultural transformation. Harrison’s main goal for writing an analysis of Liu’s journal is to attempt to find the reconciliation of Confucianism and the lessons provided by Western imperialism. Her voice in doing so analyzed the culture with a balance of universality and specific context, to teach the reader in both [1]. In regards to the actual content of the book, Harrison writes in a fashion unusual for most biographies, focusing on particular themes rather than drawing upon events in chronological order [2]. As a whole, the book consists of an amalgamate of philosophical themes in the context of tumultuous history, in an attempt to explain the changes in ideology during the turn of the century.

For one to talk about change pursued by a society, it is logical to start by discussing Liu’s encounter with what initially seems to be the most anachronistic. Ritual, or li (禮) refers historically to the orthodox rites of a Confucian empire and household, such as the veneration of ancestors or the commemoration of high civil status. Scholars have extrapolated from the works of Confucius that the term refers more so to the conduct people follow in social engagements and in viewing relationships [3]. In the view of Liu Dapeng and scholars of political ethics, this was defined specifically as how the state mandated individual relationships. Ethics is defined by the Classics (venerated as items of the moral precedence of the Sage Kings [Harrison 27]) and the corresponding education system designed to normalize the tenets. The nature of rite in this scope is to exist as an arm of the legitimate regime, penetrating into the populace by normalizing their administrative leaders.

With the breakdown of the civil bureaucracy generally through the “New Policy” reforms and epitomized by the 1905 end to the civil service examination, such normalization became separated from education and examination systems (Zarrow 28-30)[4]. The penetrability of the populace was obscured: no longer could elites act as the model for virtuous behavior. To this end, the abandonment of the old normalization process had geographical dimensions. “Even as Confucian morality was detached from the state and condemned as feudal,” comments Harrison, “it came to be associated with rural areas” (Harrison 80). This lack of penetration and poverty within the inland areas can be a sign of a decline in the effectiveness of the bureaucrats, at this time facing an ethical crisis, if not a professional one.

Inland-dwelling Liu Dapeng was a model of such a breakdown of the stability of the civil service system. Him and the vast majority of his friends suffered an end to all prospects of social mobility and salary. (Harrison 87) Yet, he shows persistence in retaining a Confucian ideology in political matters, as few of his compatriots did. With this disintegration of relationship between precedence and the advocated politics as well as the monarchy-gentry bond, radical protestation could be the only result (Zarrow 47). If a government lacked the ability to instill its values within the people, let alone the ability to find suitable bureaucrats, the appropriate course of action would be to advocate for increased government reciprocity (minben, [Zarrow 15]). Led in part by Kang Youwei, the radicals pursued a unification between emperor and people to ameliorate this lack of accommodation (Zarrow 14).

Accordingly, Liu Dapeng can be found to be a voice within this greater movement. Having had his only legitimate road to political power dismantled to favor Western learning, he birthed an Awakened ego. He denied the world of institutions and political position (destroyed with the dissolution of the old teaching) and accepted his vision of an inner landscape shaped by Confucian values(Harrison 45) [5]. In doing so, Not only was he part of a historical practice of avoiding civil service in an immoral world [6], but he also joined the ranks of a growing population of disaffected intellectuals. His voice remained unique, his philosophy differentiated from that of Kang’s [7]. What could be the possible ramifications of such a rapid alienation of scholars, and what is to be made of their diverse opinions? These questions can be appropriately answered given an additional Confucian theme.

Filial piety, or xiao (孝), is denoted by the veneration of ancestors. Like li, one can dig deeper to find a more complex significance. To respect one’s ancestors is to correspondingly respect one’s position with society. In this sense, filial piety can refer to the relationship of the individual with the leader, a piety not simply limited to that of family members, but to the entire dynasty. In total, the tenet can be said to be a guideline as to who is superior and who is inferior in the social hierarchy [8].

To Liu, filial piety was of both practical and moral importance. He was completely dependent on his parents’ funds, and his schooling made him an advocate of it philosophically above all else, even using it as a judge of an individual’s moral quality (Harrison 57). Appropriately, the philosophy of egalitarianism, of throwing away filial piety, shocked and angered Liu to no end. He saw this “rejection not only of the natural affection between parent and child, but also of the whole moral order of the state, which he saw as structured around these natural bonds” (Harrison 79). This put him naturally at odds with the revolutionary movement that was gaining momentum in Tianjin and Chinese urban centers from 1900 to 1911 (Zarrow 50).

The goal of revolution fundamentally called for an immediate reversal of the status quo. Such a goal would not be stopped by friction between “conservative fathers and radical sons”: the scope of such resistance to the traditional familial composition was rooted in its link to the polity of society as a harmonious hierarchy(Zarrow 49) [9]. If the structure of the family reflected the structure of a society that was clearly anemic in the face of Social Darwinism, then it was essential for both to be reformed. The call for equality of family, and opportunity of political voice was issued by urban intellectuals, yet the fact remained that the perception of Chinese society’s weakness was a function of “an international hierarchy dominated by race and nation” (Zarrow 44).

Such an atmosphere of paradoxes and confusion is what characterized the era before the revolution. With the path to bureaucratic profession gone, and the identities within the family being threatened, Liu became increasingly bitter of the new norms in respect to education and administration. Fellow scholar officials everywhere also lost their identities and vocation; the antipathy turned towards the rulers and their reforms. Despite this anger focused on progressive reform movements, Liu embraced notions of popular sovereignty, and he predicted backlash with the connection of the state’s harmful actions and its perceived legitimacy (Harrison 97-98). When the revolution did come in 1911 and when Liu was appointed as a representative for the county assembly, he was in a greater state of vertigo. He voted for a constitutional monarchy with Yuan Shikai as head with the logic that it would restore the dynasty; instead, he was plagued with nightmares of a loyalist—having elected an emperor who was illegitimate (Harrison 100-101).

Toppling filial piety was the fall of yet another stratified hierarchy that was indicative of the revolutionary need to reshape the nature of status. Yet, when a semblance of the old order reappeared, not even Liu had a clue whether it was legitimate, let alone how to reconcile the notion of the Republic with the former dynasty. Liu’s Awakened self persisted, despite seeing dangerous portents everywhere: the fall of the moral path of power and the demonstration of this with the abolition of the reinforcing educational system. Yet, with the help of the Classic of Changes, Liu was confident that such chaos would not threaten the existence of the traditional moral order, given a bit of stability (Harrison 104-106). In the conception of Liu’s enlightened self was the very nature of non-participation and failure in political circles. Although disturbed by the political entropy and decline of morality in his environment, The Man Awakened remained confident that the essence of morality—sincerity and respect—would never die (Harrison 19). In such a statement lies the true value of the standard of goodness.

Benevolence, or ren (仁), is probably the most complex of the three basic conducts, yet was the least discussed by Confucius. To define it most simply is to compare it to li: whereas “ritual” is how one conducts oneself in the presence of others, “benevolence” is how a one conducts oneself beyond social interactions. Transcending relational goodness, it is personal moral fiber, latent in the very character of ren [10].

The most profound tenet of the Confucian ethic instilled in Liu, transcending even his affairs in the public realm, was his undying loyalty, manifesting in a sort of an air of self-righteousness. In all affairs, he was not one to compromise his principles, loyalty included. He was loyal to the Qing, calling the republic illegitimate; he was loyal to the old calendar, old style of education, and even took Zeng Guofan’s suggestion to keep a diary until his death; he was stubbornly a conservative when it was virtually a crime to be one (Harrison 11, 93, 97-98). This abidance to the old norms seemed to be in direct opposition to the chaos of the times. Perhaps his morality was the only thing keeping him sane: his strict abidance to his enlightened world of Confucianism was solace in a world of overwhelming change.

Morality of type of personal morality represented by ren manifested historically with the building of rhetoric to support nationalism, particular on the part of Liang Qichao. Through “The New Citizen” (1903), he developed the ideals of popular sovereignty as epitomized by the term guomin. Reciprocity in government, he believed, was not simply through representative government and an active participatory citizenry, but also through the mutual reinforcement of “public” and “private” morality. Liang posited that the solution to the fragmentation of society, characterized by the sheer ideological chaos of the era, was to use all of society’s tools (namely education) to create a coincidence between civic interest and self-interest. Achievement of such a connection was possibler by combining the boosting of group cohesion with personal cultivation (Zarrow 63-64). The answer to the problem posed by imperialism was finally being answered: to beat a cohesive nation-state, the victim must become one. In this manner ren as a personal trait and enforced by ritual conduct, became more inclusive to the group: moral fiber fundamentally transformed into something less contextually based, and more of a universal quality, not bound by the regime in which it was vested [11]. Personal freedom (especially from the dynasty) to the extent of allowing self-determinism to Liang was essential for popular sovereignty. “A nation goes into decline when its people do not know the difference between nation and the dynasty” (Zarrow 65).

While Liu Dapeng was quite adaptable in terms of adopting a commercial lifestyle amidst the failed opportunities as a politico, he lacked the capacity to think of statecraft in a progressive manner as per Liang Qichao. Although he believed in the importance of personal freedoms, he was unable to think of himself as anything but a Qing loyalist attempting to express his views in an illegitimate institution (Harrison 105). In political affairs, this sort of strict personal code acted as a hindrance to his political campaigning when he refused to take part in any nepotism, in part due to his declining wealth. While Liu Dapeng was truly caring for his state to the point of opposing Japanese incursions (Harrison 105), he had no particular identity within the new dynasty (being a Qing loyalist) and his code of ethics interfered with the type of individual freedoms advocated by Liang necessary to express himself politically [12].

To Liu Dapeng, it may be that ren was manifested in his Awakened self: it was, after all, the moral world driving his actions [13]. His enlightened character dominated his private thoughts and poetry, not his public self striving to adapt to the changing conditions of the Republic. This aspect of his personality is what he was determined to cultivate, even as it made little sense to those around him (Harrison 158). His code of conduct impeded any political achievement or welfare he could have brought to his family, yet he staunchly refused to compromise his Confucian view of the world. Even in his commercial dealings, he remained respectful and kept his integrity uncompromised to the point of mediating familial business crises at his own expense (Harrison 123). Thus, in a significant way, Confucian morality had not died off in revolution, but thrived in the minds of conservatives such as Liu Dapeng, even as they negotiated modern circumstances.

Having discussed (1) the overview of Harrison’s work along with the central Confucian tenets of (2) li (3) xiao and (4) ren, some thoughtful conclusions can be made. First, Liu Dapeng can be seen as a product of the state’s eventual breakdown of ritual in the form of the education system, having lost his ability to pursue a meaningful political career with these New Reforms. This can be seen as the birth of The Man Who Awakened From Dreams, linked intrinsically with the decline of self-cultivation as the focus of the civil examination system. He is thus part of the demography of the Radical Confucians, and was in favor for a few of their policies (such as the populace having a role in the state of the dynasty) but as a Qing loyalist was far from ascribing to their belief of revolution. Secondly, Liu can be seen as an ardent supporter of xiao, putting him at odds with the radical youth that advocated for equality within family circles. To this end, he viewed the relationships within a “harmonious hierarchy” as necessary for stability. Yet, he tended to side with the reformists in regards to their views on Social Darwinism, believing that a reformation would be necessary to overcome China’s predators. For Liu, reforms were to be on a moral level aimed at eliminating the villains in government, as opposed to the ideological changes that more progressive scholars suggested. Finally, in terms of ren, it can be argued that Liu’s enlightened ego was the basis of his benevolence. Rather than explicitly falling into the thinking of nationalists such as Liang Qichao, his thinking tended to stray into more conservative lines, advocating for the cultivation of self at the top (with bureaucrats and the court) to reform the state, rather than the development of a nation that transcended dynastic cycles and depended on the common people.

The ultimate vision that Liu can instill into historians in regards to the period of reconciliation between Eastern and Western ideology is one of a diversity that remains very difficult to classify. Liu Dapeng and his fellow conservative scholars might have held onto their Awakened view of the world, but facing a world of iconoclasm they adapted selected portions of their philosophy to fit the times. The journey into the next century with China was not one taken solely by the state, nor specified groups of intellectuals. Nay, it was a difficult set of changes that every thinker had to surmount. In doing so, scholars such as Liu found that while a measure of their dreams had to remain unfulfilled, they could continue to cherish their traditions and perceptions of society to the extent of its present existence.

[1] Universality being traits shared by multiple cultures. Specific context being traits held solely by China, sometimes in regards to the historical precedence and sometimes within the period alone. I think Sinologists in general attempt to extrapolate this pair of scopes in a corresponding way, as a method of commenting on human society at large and as a way of understanding China alone. This to a small extent is not explicit, but it seems to be the implicit goal of historians to find relevancy in all of its manifestations.

[2] Unusual in the scope of how the average biography (such as Bergere’s on Sun Yatsen) is organized, but only moderately in the context of the interpretation of Chinese history, where scholars like Timothy Brook (“The Confusions of Pleasure”) rely on thematic organization for better comprehension. It is important to note that although I say that the focus is on themes, that the book as a whole is still narrated in a chronological fashion, ala “The Confusions of Pleasure”, gearing chapters to flow with a semblance of chronology but addressing themes within chapters.

[3] And by scholars, I refer specifically to Herbert Fingarette’s “Confucius: The Secular As Sacred”. I do not dare presume to know the context of the character from Classical to Modern Chinese, but in the context of the Classics and Fingarette, this is what I gather.

[4] In regards to the education system, the breakdown of the ethics as the focus was a slow process that has roots early into the Qing. Money could buy status even earlier, during the Ming (i.e. Purchase of Dragon robes, the scholars’ studios). As early as there were missionaries in China, there has existed a curiosity behind Western technology, even if it was stifled from top (i.e. The reign of Qianlong), and it was only a matter of time before the decision was made to Self-Strengthen by adopting Western technology. The exam reform can be seen therefore as a turning point, but not necessarily the singular cause of such downfall of ethics.

[5] Perhaps it is a bias of mine to use Daoist terminology when I write about Confucianism. But, I believe “Inner Alchemy” is the most precise word to be used in this situation. His view of the world was viewed in relation to his own identity (i.e. His age and position in the family, his education), like all Confucians, and therefore what he saw was a world shaped by his own morality. It is difficult to explain it in anything other than the holistic vocabulary of a Daoist.

[6] Example being Cao Zhi, prince and poet, who because of his position in society was forced to escape politics (for fear of death). Ruan Ji who drank to keep himself out of politics. Even as far back as Qu Yuan have the tragedies of service to the emperor been a dominant theme. Most seek solace by adopting Daoist traditions—solitude in work, hermitage, inebriation and poetry composition, etc. I think Liu Dapeng has quite a bit in common with these themes. My source for this information is a combination of Professor Fishlen and Sunflower Splendor.

[7] Liu preferred to reinstall the Xuantong emperor and isolate the reform to replacing the corrupt bureaucrat and court, whereas Kang wanted a constitutional monarchy and a moral revolution in several avenues besides Confucianism.(Zarrow 27-30, Harrison 100-101)

[8] The simplicity of the statements belie the actual complexity of the subject. In short, my connection of individual and leader is based upon the Five Relationships, and the common ideal that the relationship between a son and his father should be emulated at a political level. Superiority and inferiority are fundamental to this argument, thus indicating that the public should defer to the leader.

[9] Conservative fathers comprising of the Qing loyalists and even some of the Confucian radicals. I think I will prove that Liu is part of this category. As for the radical youth, this could be linked to not only the revolutionary radicals, but the resulting New Youth, who sought gender equality and an egalitarian society as a whole.

[10] This is my two sentence summation of Fingarette 37-56, thus in a sense a gross oversimplification. But in a way, all attempts to discuss ren is an exercise of futility in this regard. The very manner that Fingarette deals with the virtue, like Laozi—explaining the object by telling the reader what it is not—makes the task of specifically talking about the virtue very difficult. For the purposes of this essay, it represents the internal morality of Liu Dapeng, and his sense as to what society should be in his personal opinion. As to clarifying what I mean “the very character of ren”, I mean an analysis of the character via its radicals: a person (ren) and two (er). That is, that the action of a person in the context of a population (er) is the only way to see benevolence, yet it remains exclusively personal (ren). Even beyond my interpretation, the very ambiguity of possible interpretations reflects thoughtfully on the ambiguity of the term as a whole, I believe.

[11] That is, the nature of benevolence was not necessarily tied to the li relational duty one has based upon who is leading. It transformed into something tied to the nation—the Han race. Zarrow himself draws upon li more fully than ren to talk of the Han nation: he sees it as commonality in behavioral patterns, despite diverse geography and specific traditions (Zarrow 57-59). I prefer to look at it in the scope of ren because it seems more personal when isolating the conflict in how to see China politically, as opposed to the group identity. Zarrow’s comments are more of a look at popular identity rather than one exclusively looking up at who leads.

[12] My usage of dynasty is a reference to the Republic. I refer to it as dynasty to reflect how I believe he sees himself—as a loyalist of a fallen dynasty within the historical precedence of the preceding eras. That is, in his view that it is not a nation of like-minded individuals and identities as per the view of Liang Qichao, but as yet another dynasty with Yuan as a leader. It even has the tell-tale corruption of a illegitimate dynasty, so it is a plausible belief for a person conditioned to expect such rule in a time of foreign oppression (i.e. The Mongol rule during the Yuan, the Jurchen rule in the Jin, even the Manchu rule in the Qing) and overall chaos.

[13] Compare to my usage of “inner alchemy”.

Posted in China studies, University of Oregon essay
Tags: China studies, Confucianism, history, nationalism

RADICAL CONTRADICTION

•May 28, 2008 • Leave a Comment

RADICAL CONTRADICTION

During the Summer of Love, in July 1967, Time Magazine featured a cover story determined to scoop the vitriolic nature of the then booming Hippie subculture:

“…the hippies hope to generate an entirely new society, one rich in spiritual grace that will revive the old virtues of agape and reverence. They reveal, says University of Chicago Theologian Dr. Martin E. Marty, ‘the exhaustion of a tradition: Western, production-directed, problem-solving, goal-oriented and compulsive in its way of thinking.’ Marty refuses to put the hippies down as just another wave of ‘creative misfits,’ sees them rather as spiritually motivated crusaders striking at the values of straight society where it is most vulnerable: its lack of soul. In a sense, hippiedom is a transplanted Lost Horizon, a Shangri-La a go-go blending Asian resignation and American optimism in a world where no one grows old.” [1]

The hippies’ embrace of Eastern thought reflected frustrations with the dominant philosophy in the West, or as this author established, the West’s priority for the individual to be linked to the means-end duality. At the utilitarian extreme of this ideology, humans are described simply as agents for the accomplishment of a particular goal. “Asian resignation”, however strange the phrase sounds today, was a spirit that negated this system, and de-prioritized people as cogs within a progressive machine. The cover story in the July 1967 issue of Time Magazine illustrates that this partial misrepresentation of Eastern thought was one perpetuated through the critics of the Hippies, but I contend that the Counterculture movement itself, through what it symbolized then, radical activism seeking to expand America’s popular culture through the introduction of new belief systems, and what it became—the New Age movement. I believe that while each has its own virtues, generally seen through their attempts to make Chinese religion accessible to more segments of American culture, the spiritual for the Counterculture and the consumer for the New Age [1]. Yet, each has their own corruption of the version of culture they attempted to introduce to America, with the New Age being at greater fault than the Counterculture.

The specific failings of the Counterculture and its legacy are not only entrenched in the sources which are misrepresented, but also in the damage the movement incurred upon mainstream society. When the Counterculture interpreted Buddhism, they extracted the religion’s aesthetic vision, with the unfortunate consequence that the New Agers have built a consumer culture around this aesthetic that contradicts its most integral precepts. When the Counterculture attempted to disseminate Daoism, the movement in its excitement internalized a lackadaisical methodology, and in New Age publishing the practice has damaged even the most lucid renditions of classical sources. Through the Counterculture’s roughshod study of the complex tradition of Confucianism the movement muddled religious lines, forming the religion into a syncretic mess of folk mysticism that New Age quacks attempt to explain with pseudoscience, deluding the American masses from the native and historical forms of Confucian thought. In total, the shape the counterculture has had upon popular culture, through New Age religion and other forms of bastardization, has created a crude caricature of Chinese culture and detracted from the intercultural understanding between the Western and Eastern axis.

The Counterculture frequently took Buddhism as its flagship religion, and in their reverence to the school of thought they created their own art to encapsulate the spirit of the practice; unfortunately, this was the beginning of Buddhism’s encounter with the spirit of Capitalism. Minimalism is the key idea for this form of art, as they attempted to capture the feeling of enlightenment through the stripped-away essence, where one is supposedly part of the larger world by breaking himself down to his key components. Between the stark rock gardens and the sleek lines of IKEA furniture, something went awry in the beautification under these rules, and the modern “Zen home” was created. In this domesticated form of Buddhism, one need not be part of the monastic community, or even know the Four Noble Truths to look the part. Not unlike the consumer products created through the Bauhaus school of design during the 1920’s, what we can see today is a Zen aesthetic that is not only pleasing, but cost effective[2]. Buddhism, the West via the New Agers has discovered, is highly marketable. There is no particular damage to the general notion of introducing religion to popular culture. However, the contradiction between marketing Zen design in cheap furniture and popular music and the transcendental dogma of Buddhism is staggering. The dogma of Buddhism, whether affiliated with the Mahayana or Theravada schools, does not condone strong attachment to material possessions, let alone the use of a mere aesthetic to communicate the simplicity of the monastic lifestyle[3].

Buddhism has had its spirit stripped away, as a result of the Counterculture introducing it to the American mainstream and more so due to New Age in exploiting its chic aesthetic. The people responsible for the damage are not those who first interpreted the religion and transmitted it to the West, such as D.T. Suzuki. Instead, it seems to have been when the amateurs who took the religion as an individual experience and plunged the West into a distorted Zen sensibility, to the point where Zen lost its original meaning as a deeply meditative state and become an un-meditative buzzword[4]. This is but a small portion of corruption within a larger bit of good, however. America has lent a particular ideal of engagement in political affairs that was in the past not as explicit in worship in Buddhism. Although this brand of activism tends to transcend cultural lines (both Gary Snyder and Thich Nhat Hanh advocated politically active forms of Buddhism)[5], the lines continue in other forms of practice: Buddhism has become oriented towards attracting non-Asian worshippers, and as a result, export-oriented Buddhism has become estranged from even its core tenets. Our grasp of Buddhism today is far more warped than before we were familiar with the term, and as a result it has hindered the capacity for the average American to study Buddhism. In this sense, the Counterculture and New Age movements have done a great deal of damage to Buddhist spirituality.

If one needs to learn what Daoism is, it only requires one word for description: elusive. The goal of the religion itself evades the learner, and this is explicit in the Daoist texts. On the one hand, Daoism posits that true knowledge is ineffable, and that words only serve to detract from meaning. Yet, Daoist texts are highly poetic, so it is hard to say there is a set way of interpreting any of its texts. Interacting ineffability and poetics leads the Daoists canon to be some of the most difficult texts to read, let alone translate into another language. For instance, the Daodejing and Zhuangzi both rely upon highly allusive language that is difficult to recreate in English. This has given rise to the need for many different scholars to provide translations to the texts, both academics (such as Philip J. Ivanhoe, Arthur Waley, D.C. Lau, and James Legge) and non-academics (such as Ursula Le Guin). There is no guarantee that the non-academics cannot provide an academic insight in their translations, for instance, Le Guin’s version of the Daodejing is reputed to be one of the best poetic translations in existence. A close reading of texts through a cultivated intellect—whether attached to academia or not—leads to an effective translation; when the aloofness of a writer is emphasized over the content of his or her rendition is problematic.

The Counterculture’s promise to Daoism, of broader societal awareness of Daoism, meant open access to translations, but it also gave open access to publishing for the New Agers as well. Non-academic publishing, where academic review is not as consistently available, does not bar these authors from publishing bad or stolen translations. All the while, consumers and devotees place their good faith in these religious books that they have been translated in a dedicated fashion. Unfortunately, open publishing does not have the means to ascertain authors’ credibility as translators. The message of Daoism, whether derived from the Daodejing or the Zhuangzi, is consequentially bastardized through unverified non-academic sources, which are created for or on behalf of the aging former members of the Sixties’ Counterculture who characterize this New Age.

In particular, the bastardization occurs through misinterpretation and intellectual property infringement. The most hazardous way to author a rendition of the Daodejing is one that does not refer to the original text in its original language. Lacking even a basic proficiency of Vernacular Chinese (baihua) let alone with Literary Chinese (wenyan), these authors generally compare translations to make their own editions. The problem is that these versions are not derived from a definite source, but from the author’s own thoughts. As Russell Kirkland suggests, these takes on the Daodejing do not reveal a “true Dao”, rather “[that] modern Westerners to bear in mind that such a conception of the spiritual life does not actually reflect the ideals jofany form of ‘Taoism.’ Rather, it reflects the Protestant Christian ideals of Martin Luther, sanitized, of course, of all the hateful dross of Christianity.”[6] He criticizes Stephen Mitchell’s work first and foremost as a work demonstrating a lack of understanding, even to the point of colonial appropriation, or a sort of deluded Western-Orient fetishism. Even worse, because the Daodejing is so frequently translated and is considered a public work, it is often infringed. A copy of the Daodejing published in 2002 by NuVision Publications LLC is a word-for-word copy of Mitchell’s work, and it continues to be sold to this very day. The New Agers who buy NuVision’s products, which are in the vein of religious and occult good, buy what amounts to damaged goods. [2] These New Agers represent not only the masses confused by popular culture as to what is truly Asian, but also the very people who spread the misinformation.

Compared to Daoism and Buddhism, the American understanding of Confucianism is comparably small and obscured. Generally, we tend to envision Confucianism as a religion through a mish-mash of Chinese folk practices, running the gamut from Tai Chi to Feng Shui and ancestral veneration. It is a contentious debate whether Confucianism can even be called a religion. Despite this controversy, forms of Confucianism have been integrated into American culture as an amalgamation of these tenets, deemed as either Chinese thought or more generally under the umbrella of “Eastern thought”. The identity of Confucianism is obscured, rather than clarified, when elements which are uncharacteristic of the original spirit and historical utility of the orthodox texts are forcibly merged with Chinese folk practices. Confucianism is not so much a strict school of completely uniform beliefs as it is a series of individual thinkers with a few similarities, or as P.J. Ivanhoe puts it, “we all are still under the spell of the myth of ‘timeless Confucianism’ [where] we either fail to see the differences between [individual thinkers] or see them yet find them so surprising”[7]. Although this can be said about quite a few religions, the divergent beliefs between classical Confucianism and imperial Confucianism (today deemed “Neo-Confucianism”) are so difficult to document due to language barriers and textual hazards.

This problem seems to occur as a common problem among not only Western masses, but Chinese scholars as well. The classical education in historical China was reinforced by the civil service examination, which in turn was subject to political machinations. During the Song Dynasty in the 11th and 12th centuries, an influential scholar, Zhu Xi, wrote commentaries for the Chinese classics (e.g. the Analects of Confucius, the Mengzi, and the Book of Odes). In the centuries after Zhu Xi’s death, the civil examination system integrated Zhu Xi’s version of the classics. As per this form of Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism, these classics push a highly metaphysical interpretation of texts that were originally completely secular in their ethical orientation, demonstrated through Confucius, “If you cannot serve man, how can you serve the spirits?”[8] A methodical pace is demanded by many Sinologist experts in religion, with attention upon each transformative event in the philosophy. Method was an element completely devoid in the Counterculture, which tended to cobble everything together without any regard to capturing its true spirit in its haste to introduce unfamiliar elements into the American mainstream. Although we can hardly blame them for these problems, for even academics have problems extracting Confucian ideology from centuries of Neo-Confucian, it is reproachable that the misappropriation of Chinese culture continues to this day through the New Ager’s grasp on consumer spirituality. Similar to the state of open publications, New Agers, purported to be experts in the field, exploit people’s lack of information regarding Feng Shui to make a quick buck[9]. They apply Feng Shui to the office, when it was originally applied to marriage dates and grave sites. Geomancy is employed in a novel way; adapting an old concept for new affairs in itself is not a bad thing. Alas it too is a complete charade, for these con-artists deem Feng Shui to be scientifically proven to aid people’s affairs, yet the experts themselves lack credentials of scientific or even Chinese philosophical merit, a diluted form of Feng Shui derisively termed “McFeng Shui”[10]. Ultimately, their chicanery gives all elements of Chinese thought a bad name, despite the fact they have a tenuous connection at best.

Western interpretation of religion has its good traits. Buddhist thought boomed in the West and created a new generation of devotees. Daoism, when given mainstream popularity, has texts that have translated in the West more than any other non-Western religion. Confucian texts have introduced many people to the basic ideals of Confucian thought. However, the Counterculture’s involvement has led to bad developments as well, ones that I trace to the crass entrepreneurial practices of the New Age. Buddhism’s boom pushed the religion into art, which transpired into a contradictory and soulless version of the religion. Daoist thought has been corrupted in translation, through shoddy rendition and downright theft. Confucianism has been subject to misappropriation by shysters who make fraudulent claims of Confucian mysticism, and as a result the religion has been shunned more than accepted. The Counterculture, representing the first attempts to open America to external forms of religion, features good qualities of openness in religious materials in regards to Eastern thought. As informed consumers and students, we must recognize that this good comes with certain bad, and we should at least attempt to establish a custom of seeking credibility of our teachers before we accept their teachings. For the sake of better encapsulating the authenticity of these religions, it would be best to recast their role in American culture, one detached from the Counterculture’s lack of method, and shunning the New Age’s no-holds-barred consumerism.

[1] I define the Counterculture as a lineage of transmission. It runs from practices to the 1950’s (via the Beats and D.T. Suzuki in particular, to a broader platform. Although they attempted to grasp at whatever alternative thinking that went beyond the mainstream, I believe China and its philosophical mission at times ran so strong (Ames and Hall, Anticipating China) that it was especially attractive.. The New Age movement, in contrast, is specifically referring to a mainstream adoption of the Counterculture that occurred in the decades after, which I find to be most virulent in terms of consumer culture, vis-à-vis LOHAS (through Ray and Anderson’s The Cultural Creatives) which is a lifestyle which is one part spirituality mixed with four parts spending habits. The greater part of the lifestyle is consumer culture, as seen how the term “LOHAS” is most used to character the socially aware sovereign consumer. My argument will say that while both movements tend to misinterpret Chinese spirituality, it is the New Age movement’s consumer culture that contradicts the very spirit they attempt to channel.

[2] Prof. Robert Felsing originally warned me about the dangers of plagiarism for this case, with each document available online: (http://libweb.uoregon.edu/tools/wikis/chinwiki/index.php/Goals_of_the_course_%28course_syllabus%29.) My assertion that NuVision primarily caters to New Age is through the assortment of books they publish, which include popular books that have lapsed into the public domain (e.g. Voltaire’s Candide), but also a wide selections of books on spiritual and occult subjects (e.g. Duncan’s Ritual and Monitor of Freemasonry).

WORKS CITED (Partial)

Chan, Edmund. “Four Noble Truths.” The Buddhist Encyclopedia. May 2008. 19 May 2008 <http://buddhism.2be.net/Four_Noble_Truths>.

Denzer, Anthony S. Masters of Modernism. 2004. 23 May 2008 <http://www.mastersofmodernism.com/?page=Modernism>.

Hall, David L., and Roger T. Ames. Anticipating China. Albany: SUNY P, 1995.

Ivanhoe, Philip J. Ethics in the Confucian Tradition. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Company Inc., 2002.

Kirkland, Russell. “THE TAOISM OF THE WESTERN IMAGINATION.” Center for Daoist Studies. 20 Oct. 1997. 1 May 2008 <http://www.daoistcenter.org/Articles/Articles_pdf/Kirkland.pdf>.

Lau, D.C. The Analects. New York: Penguin Group, 1979.

“The Hippies.” Time Magazine 7 July 1967. 20 May 2008

<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,899555,00.html>.

Thich Nhat Hanh. Being Peace. Berkeley: Parallax P, 1996.

[1] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,899555,00.html (boldface at my own inclusion)

[2] http://www.mastersofmodernism.com/?page=Modernism, also http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/gropiusw2.shtml

[3] http://buddhism.2be.net/Four_Noble_Truths tanha is the term I am talking about, desires. It starts with material possessions, exemplary through the monk’s lifestyle, and moves beyond to attack egoism.

[4] The original word for Zen in Chinese (禪) refers to meditation, for instance “just sitting” (坐禪). The buzzword usage can be found through a quick search online. Zen has become applicable for anything simple in terms of the LOHAS lifestyle, e.g. http://zenhabits.net/.

[5] See Being Peace, as well as Nhat Hanh’s biography http://www.plumvillage.org/HTML/ourteacher.html

[6] Kirkland 15

[7] Ivanhoe 137

[8] Analects IX: 12

[9] E.g. the Black Sect Tantrism http://www.yunlintemple.org/temple.htm, which supposedly practices syncretism between Tibetan Buddhism and Feng Shui, and in academic circles is suspected of the type of quackery I mention. However, there is no proof that one way is more spiritually sound than the other, merely that one is more historically accurate that nother.

[10] http://qi-whiz.com/node/1569

Posted in China studies, Tirade, University of Oregon essay
Tags: China, religion

SOME PEOPLE USE MOUNTAINS: Han Chauvinism in Cultural Revolution Xinjiang

•May 17, 2008 • Leave a Comment

Some people use mountains to identify national boundaries. In West China, there are plenty of mountains with geographical significance. The Altays define the northwest border of China, the Tianshan Mountains bisect Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) latitudinally, the Hindu Kush Range marks the southern border between Xinjiang and the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), and the Himalayas lie upon the southern end of the Tibetan plateau.

Modern people, however, prefer to use legality as the basis for defining identity. This naturally changes contingent upon ideology and regime. As identity changes, so do the underlying conditions for the relationship of humanity, especially as a function of relational exercise of power. Therein lies the notion of ethnicity-based chauvanism. Still absent in this relationship is the definition for what can prompt a legal code to fluctuate so profoundly; for this matter, the notion seems to root in how one groups ideology with regime. If one can define the two elements as co-dependent factors, where one is just as likely to determine the other, then it can be said that a potent time where ideology and regime are both liable to change are times (relatiovely) devoid of social control, and in regard to China this can take radical forms. For the purpose of analysis, the event where social order reaches a nadir that necessitates radical transformation of political affairs, is revolution.

There are many revolutions meaningful to the notion of chavanism, however. But few of these events were as uniformly disturbing to collectivity and individual Western minority as the Great Proleterian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) that raged from 1966 to 1976 through the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The narratives of the lives damaged by the ravages of this time are true testaments to the authoritarian potential of states that boast even the most egalitarian doctrines towards protected nationalities. Unfortunately, the historical narratives of the decade, like all historical documents, represent a socially unequal demographic: whereas there exist several memoirs of Tibetan participants during the years of the Cultural Revolution, there are few to no documents about the people of their northern neighbors.

Where there seems to be none, there actually exist stories. While we wait for their voices to emerge, we can also anticipate the content of what they share. For like the Tibetans, they are in a sense the mouthpiece for their social, economic, and political existances; an area of enquiry that boasts significant scholarship as well as a slew of similiarties between the two territories. The procedure to accomplishing this takes a tripartite form: one must research the explore the social existances of both Xinjiang and Tibet; next, one best examine the voices of Tibet and seek their guiding light to illuminate the possible Revolutionary experience in Xinjiang; then, one uses the synthesis of conditions with experience of Tibet as a model for an expected series of personal events for XUAR during the Cultural Revolution.

First, in exploring the environment of both territories hitherto the Cultural Revolution, case examples of chauvanism at the point of revolution will inform the analysis. In Xinjiang, this means a brief look at the periods of rebellion encompassed through (1) the second half of Qing colonization (c. 1864-1890), (2) the local struggle against the tyranny of warlord rule (c. 1931-1949), and (3) the revolt against land reform during initial years of rule by the Communist Party of China (CPC) (c. 1950-1962). For Tibet, resistance is found in (1) the first century of Chinese chauvanism (18^th century), (2) the initial defense of Tibet from the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) encursion (1947-1954), (3) and the uprising of Lhasa that spelled years of exile for many Tibetans (1955-1960). Besides looking particularly at the manifestations of Han chavanism in these periods, the

Second, the voices to be examined for Tibet are twofold diverse actors during the Cultural Revolution: (1) Bapa Phuntso Wangye (Phunwang), the founding member of the Tibetan Communist Party and reputable member of the CPC bureaucracy who served eighteen years in prison jailed as a political degenerate; (2) Tashi Tsering, a younger Tibetan who studied abroad as well as actively participated in the first years of the Cultural Revolution. Both confronted ethnic tension, as well as political turmoil as each were jailed for varying years.

Finally, to determine the common experiences of the individual in Xinjiang necessitates a close look at Han chavanism during the Cultural Revolution in Xinjiang. In particular, seeking the points of (1) what actions would have forced ethnic tensions to be exacerbated, (2) who suffered the challenges of the era, and (3) what entailed the difficulties for non-Han residents of Xinjiang to surmount during this period largely characterize the procedure for this portion of the debate. Seeking particular phenomena that existed similarly to Tibetan conditions or experiences is a must for this debate; a procedural comparison between Tibet and Xinjiang during the Cultural Revolution will reveal a more tangible image that without.

The first moments of Han chavanism in Xinjiang were exposed a generation into the Qing’s administration of the area. Xinjiang at that time was divided territory in terms of administration techniques: in the “Northern Circuit” (beilu) north of the Tianshan Mountains, generally referred to as “Dzungaria”. This area was under the rule of the high commandery (jiangjun) that was based in the Ili River valley on the western border of Xinjiang. In the “Southern Circuit” (nanlu), an environment wildly different from the north—a series of Muslim oasis towns encircling the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin—required command to be distinctively autonomous. A hierarchy of local elites (begs) and Qing-eneoffed local nobility (jasaks) reported to councilors (canzan danchen) stationed in the older cities of Kasghar to the west. These officials were generally Manchu banner men of high rank, but generally imposed few restrictions on the control of local populations beyond a series of taxes^¹. Such was the system of administration from initial rule to the Yakub Beg rebellion (1760-1864).

But the fate had a different plan for politics in Xinjiang. The Dzungars who had once had support of the Tarim cities had used the cities as fortifications; they were ruined with the destruction Emperor Qianlong’s scorched earth campaign inflicted upon the area. Without the Dzungars, who held the linkage between steppe and oasis city with great esteem, these cities began to fall into disrepair, and yet their denizens were heavily taxed^². Additionally, literary sources have conveyed us a certain disdain among the Han in the local military-agricultural cities (bingtuan): by 1760 officals were referring to the local Muslim population as being “dogs”^³ and complaining of their hard-drinking, “raw”-ness (fuxing), but Millward makes the distinction that these phrases were uttered in ignorant nervousness, rather than in an odious manner; he sees a transformation of moods occuring with the Yakub Beg rebellion. There was a clear ground for revolt, between the subtext of prejudices as well as the refusal for the Qing court to properly fund their expansionism. [1]

In June 4^th, 1864 the rebellion began, as Kucha attracted aggravated Muslims to gather and protest their treatment stemming from the lack of post-war support. The city was segregated to allow for a small group of colonial officials and soldiers, yet it was far too small to deal with the rapidly spreading chaos: as they began to band together and burn the administration buildings, the Qing soldiers could not repel them. Before long, local elites began to take part in the revolt, and it blazed into Kashgar, Yarkand, Urumqi and throughout the entire country by late July^⁴. The local begs were ordered to massacre participants in the violence, and few complied. As Kucha destroyed its Han administrators, new leadership emerged and began organizing expeditions to attack other garrisons, including the main Qing garrison at Barkol in March 1865. The explosion of violence gushed into other personal conflicts, and two Sufi orders began battling it out for domination. Yet, the motives of the battles were not stationed in religion, and they were not defined by ethnicity. These were certainly unifying elements, but they did not primarily motivate the actors to revolt. Rather, Hodong Kim simply describes the violence as a struggle for authority, where the multinational Qing imperial ideology did not win out^⁵ The vacuum of Qing rule encouraged local elites to battle for control. As the Kuchean Yakub Beg gained control over Xinjiang, he tried to assert his imperial ambitions by allying with the western powers. The Qing, in a maneuver that was the orthodoxy in Central Asia during Great Game politics, co-opted teir alliance building, and sent out and army that promptly crushed Yakub Beg by 1871.

In this, we observe that economic conditions can coexist with chauvanism to bring about resistance. The resistance itself, took the form of a plurality of views and ethnicities, that fought a regime that had lost the mandate to use such a pluralistic identity. The era of cultural autonomy had ended with this show of violence, and the years following “Hanization” would acquire new tools as Han citizen and prisoner settlement in Tarim were promoted, and the weapons of this new demographic were language and customs. Qing thinkers Gong Zizhen and Wei Yuan best encompassed this form of Han chavanism: a natural defense against violence incitement via assimilation^⁶. But it was not long before a new era fashioned new terms for resistance to be made against these weapons. Control became further entrenched in culture, so effective rebellion necessitated the creation of a culture of revolution. New lines for the oppressed were drawn during warlord rule based upon class, but even among this new perception old thought festered. It was during another power struggle that the inclinations of xenaphobia manifested as chauvanism once again; two organizations of radical thought manifested with differing aims and ethnic identities—it was only natural for one to contend against the other.

In the 1910’s, Xinjiang’s economy was still bleak, and tensions continued to rise with the ineffectual control of the Kuomintang (KMT) and barbaric rule of warlords, their strict policies of security that ultimately elevated racial boundaries. By 1931 another violent explosion wrecked the unity of the nation, as local revolts inflamed into all-out war and Tarim and Kashgar seceded from China to form the East Turkestan Republic (ETR). Warlord rule persisted in the new nation, propped up by USSR influence, and did not represent the views of the people any differently from authoritarian Chinese rule. As a result, tension between KMT, ETR, and the populace continued to mount, and in 1944, the county of Yining in Ili seceded from Xinjiang simultaneous to the disintegration of the ETR. Unlike the ETR, the Yining regime was not a function of warlord struggles, and sufficiently represented the locality, in the form of the Xinjiang Turkish People’s National Liberation Committee. Similar to the ETR, however, the Yining regime was greatly influenced by USSR ideology; the propaganda focused upon the nationalistic rhetoricof the building of a pan-Turkist or pan-Muslim nation, rather than an overtly leftist message^⁷. So it was that the ETR was founded for a second time, under terms relatively autonomous from Han elites The ETR’s reign lasted until 1947, and for those three years the ETR enjoyed economic stability with help from the USSR. It did not, however, restrain Han chauvanism.

For the next ten years, Han chauvanism came from two different ideologies, flouted by two different agents. While the harassment campaigns the local KMT leaders led against the Ili-based ETR regime had little connection to the future, the inevitable arrival of the PLA once they had bested the KMT had serious implications upon future attempts at self-sovereignty. It is quite counterintuitive to speak harshly about the attempts to fit Xinjiang into the PRC fold: once they became part of the PRC, their currency stabilized and prosperity once again returned to Xinjiang; conventional experiences tell us that the initial CPC encounter with the frontier was quite bloodless. While it is true that the fatalities were low in recouping Xinjiang Uyghur, the liberties that were tread upon are tantamount to any crime of ethnic chauvanism. When the ETR folded in 1947, the people in Ili did not abandon their radical nationalist beliefs, yet the CPC expected them to, given their supposed respect for minorities’ right to self-determinism—the sharing of this ideals spelled that “greater nationalism” was to supercede the needs of “local nationalism”.

When the northern allies of the ETR were hesitant to join the CCP without persuasion, as they were habituated to resisting the attempts of any Chinese organization effort., persuasion came in the form of a suspiciously timed airplane crash that killed the entirety of ETR’s leadership. ^⁸ But in a sense the goal of establishing an “autonomous” order can be seen as a rather genuine act of selflessness by the CCP. The PRC knew the problems that the KMT had with rebellion and in Xinjiang and the difficulties of communicating from capital to periphery. By establishing Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), the CCP leadership hoped to implications of chauvinistic assimilation in introducing socialism to Xinjiang. Materially, this panned out by planning for minority cadres to fill government positions by 1953. As Millward mentions, however, this “arguably contributed to [indigenous] acceptance of PRC rule, [but] aided the cause of PRC control in Xinjiang through the nested administrative system that put majority Uyghurs in structural competition with other groups and kept real power in the hands of upper-level party officials, who were predominantly Han.^⁹”

Thus a new method of control was conceived by revolution. Legally, the Uighurs and Turkish minorities of Xinjiang were representated (de jure). But in terms of the function of this doctrine, it was not observed, and the enforcement proved that the minoritiy representatives were popularly (de facto) discarded. As time passed, the people of the province began to understand the root of their disenfranchisement, and began to dissent for enforcement of the constitution. This turn of events merely played in the foreground as the next phase of Han control over Xinjiang’s affairs began. And it is our duty to take this to heart in regard to the Cultural Revolution: forms of control overlap and sometimes are difficult to discern.

While the subjects may have been unsettled about their de facto disenfranchisement, it seems as thought the determining factor for dissent is largely economic in base. Within this broader economic view, the notions of a region’s overall prosperity is coupled with the welfare of the individual. It is on the terms of the latter, of social equality, where the origin of the next form of resistance laid. The land reform (c. 1950-1962) was a very controversial time in China, and generally the perspective of those who suffered retains a semblance of meaning to class, whether based on a point of view oriented towards hereditary or an arbitrary or personal element of counterrevolutionary substance. Like the rest of the country, the reforms seized landlords’ property and distributed it to the landless, a popular move for a sizeable population of Xinjiang’s serfs. However, for grazing land, the notion of giving up (sedentary) property did not mesh well with the local economy; they measured value through livestock as a property, and relied on land as per usufruct usage as opposed to dedicated land use. In this sense, collectivization in Xinjiang was messier than the rest of the country, and took a unique twist of hurting local cultures in the Dzungaria steppe more than Han, for they were the nomadic ones. ^¹⁰ Furthermore, land reform had to deal with mosque endowments. They attempted to control the flow of tithes to the mosques, sometimes pressuring elites to match tithes in taxation. The CPC authorities also furthered the demographic shift by turning the traditional bingtuan into labor camps for political prisoners and immigrants. They were levied for civil engineering and land reclamation, to put land en masse to the plow^¹¹. Ultimately, all of these acts were ones that contravened the traditional Xinjiang way of life and limited the prosperity of non-Han workers, as well as hindered the development of the province.

Recourse for matters both petty and provencal was allowed through the Hundred Flowers movement. Many local administrators were sick of the selfish behavior on part of the Han immigrants and politicans. The promise of pragmatic reform was a tempting reason to speak out against the early reforms, and critics took the moment to espouse the virtues of greater autonomy. But when the Anti-Rightist Campaign swiftly followed, the hardships were multiplied, focusing upon “local nationalists” and people with ties to the ETR—who were seen as patrons to the hated USSR. It took years before many of the 1,612 cadres blamed of these dire crimes were rehabilitated^¹². As a sum total of chauvanism and resistance, the attacks upon ethnicity occurred through economic development ignoring the environment and the indigenous knowledge the locals held about it, and it hurt the individual and collective alike both in principle and practically. When room was provided for all begrieved people to criticize the party, the resistance was co-opted entirely, and the excuse for detention was, in one way or another, an issue of local identity (beyond international politics).

It should be no surprise that this sort of nationwide movements had a similar toll upon Tibetian life as well.

There are many parallels between Xinjiang and Tibet’s experiences with Chinese colonialism. Perhaps the common experience originated with the precedent of the two areas being incorporated within a greater whole, the Mongol Empire. The Manchus in terms of their very own identity were defined by the passage of the Yuan Dynasty, so it is a suitable place to start for Tibet. From the beginning of the throne’s reign, the two sides were on unequal terms: although the Dalai Lama was exempt from the traditional court kowtow, he still had to bow in submission to the Qing emperor. But the throne truly became active in the affairs of Tibet when their vaunted enemies, the Dzungars, began to upset the Mongol balance of power in the frontier land by courting the Tibetan religious aristocracy. Circumstances turned bloody when the Dzungars invaded Lhasa in 1717, and Qing armies counterattacked; although they were welcomed in Lhasa, the encorporation of Kham—the easternmost portion of TAR—into Qing Sichuan, as well as the creation of a Lhasan garrison was not a comforting move. Aggravating the throne further, the Qing also created a regency in Lhasa that split the formerly united political power of the Dalai Lama, propping up local gentry who supported the Qing throne. Without religion to unite the elites, civil conflict was unavoidable. As rival factions of native bureaucrats squabbled with each other, the son of a influential minster plotted to enlist the Dzungars to gain political dominance. The Chinese garrison disposed of the figure, but it incited riots—the Dalai Lama once again turned to Qing help. One resounding beating later, the Qing reversed themselves and the Dalai Lama once again had complete control politically. Finally, the true extent of the Qing’s dominance over their politics materialized when the Tibet was invaded by the Gurkhas. The court gave the Manchu governor of Tibet (amban) priviledges equal to the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, tasked him as the official go-between for Lhasa-Beijing affairs, and even gave him the power to settle succession disputes^¹³.

The driving notion for Chinese intervention was that agency was a commodity. Qing China, as a force more powerful than Tibet, could help in their affairs if given the chance to direct the leadership. However, at the same time it is suggestive that China’s interests were not with benevolently protecting an equal nation of people, but with fighting a sworn enemy (the Dzungars), and occupying Tibet as a means to recouping their war debt. What makes this case even more similar to the Xinjiang colonization was the method of asserting control. An administration that was originally autonomous in reality became more and more directly in Chinese control through building local administration buildings, and creating a strict system of patronage among local elites. Such parallels compell us to ponder, is there any similarity between the techniques employed by the PLA to gain control Xinjiang, in regards to Tibet?

While KMT affairs embroiled Xinjiang up to 1947, the period in Tibet prior to ascension into CPC regency was fraught with civil conflict that exposed the KMT’s ambivalence towards autonomous regions. Chiang Kai-shek, fighting a losing war, needed to regain grasp over Tibet, yet could only do so surreptiously; in Tibet itself, a revolt occurred against Chinese-backed leadership, as the Sera Monastery rebelled. China did not even attempt to mediate this conflict or implement its disingenuous policies. As a result, as Hsiao-Ting Lin contends, China had completely lost Tibet^¹⁴. A vindicative Tibet was certainly acting the part, and when the CPC was gaining control of China, Tibet had expelled all KMT officials from the land, but not without them designating the new Panchen Lama in Kokonor, a final rebellious act that Tibet refused to recognize. Immediately, the Panchen Lama allied with the CPC, and it was used as a bargaining chip to gain “liberation” on their terms^¹⁵.

Analogous to the notion of these terms of “liberation” is the Seventeen-Point Agreement, stemming from the 1950 announcement that liberation was a major goal. In truth, it was a major goal, and Mao’s regime tried their best to initially be sensible. As Goldstein mentions,

“On one occasion Mao told his generals they had to be partient and go slow in Tibet: ‘Tibet and Xinjiang are different’, he said. ‘In Xinjiang in the old society there were 200,000-300.000 Chinese but in Tibet there was not even a single Chinese. So our troops are in a place where there were no Chinese in the past.’”^¹⁶

At first the PLA tried persuasion. Meeting failure, they decided to engage the Tibetan miltia at Chamdo. It was too futile a struggle against the organized PLA ranks. Negotiation was necessitated through the veritable conquest of Tibet, and in this agreement China gained for the first time in history a written agreement conceding Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. Many Tibetans felt the terms of the Fourteen-Points Agreement was blatantly unfair, and precluding claims to many forms of autonomy was dangerous. But at the same time, many believed it to be a necessity, as Tibet had clearly been a feudal society in the past. The PRC represented progress in the form of the drive for social equality and modern prosperity.

Hence, the ascendancy of Han authority was perceived as an uncomfortable change, but one that ultimately would lead to some good. Yet, the chavanism brought to the negotiation table was quite obvious. Instead of courting Tibetan leaders through promises of cooperative reform and development, the PLA brought the threat of overwhelming might to the bargaining power. It naturally gave them the ability to demand what they wanted, even if it seemed like they wanted to perserve Tibetan autonomy. This sort of disingenuous practice certainly resembles the role minority positions played in Xinjiang. What is codified on legal documents and what happens due to either practices that are unenforced or occur in the background of political activity are wholly seperate entities, and it is the basis for the majority of modern political abuses of ethnicities. Certainly, this is demonstrable through the difficulties for Tibetans outside of “political Tibet” (henceforth referred to using Phunwang’s term, “Greater Tibet”). When reforms occurred in Sichuan and Qinghai, they were to the diminishment of ethnic Tibetans, yet they could not afford even the constrained recourse that political Tibetans could utilize to have their problems mediated. Their crises pushed them across boundaries to seek refuge in Tibet, where they could protest safely. As tempers raged, the possibility of a major uprising became certain. ^¹⁷

It was 1956, and both Lhasa and Beijing were plagued by a dreadful feeling of uneasiness. Reforms in Tibet would not progress smoothly; every moment of socialist revolution became, as a Qinghai Provincal Committee remarked, “A very violent class struggle of life and death.”^¹⁸ Moments of rapid reform would come accompanied by incindiary revolts. As a portion of a larger movement, Greater Tibet was being forced into a black and white discussion: there was to be no alternative to socialist land reform, especially for nomadic life. Unlike policy in Xinjiang, however, there seemed to be greater sensativity to the downfalls of these programs, and Beijing constantly consulted the Dalai Lama in terms of reform. Yet, this sensativity was confined to the political Tibet. As refugees streamed into Tibet’s urban areas unorganized rebellion became carefully crafted: what started as open revolt in Kham in 1956, became a small portion of a larger militarized freedom force based in the mountains outside Lhasa by 1958. The Dalai Lama was unable to resolve how to deal with this force, or even whether to identify them as friend or foe; Beijing, on the other hand, refused to even entertain the idea that there were problems in Tibet. All of this changed the following year, when the rebels openly asked for the Dalai Lama’s support. He refused to support them. The PLA laid siege to Lhasa, while the Dalai Lama fled for India. Mao declared the result a victory, for Tibetans would be less resistant to reform without the presence of the Dalai Lama^¹⁹.

With the revolt crushed, the timetable for socialist reforms was shortened. New administrative techniques were adopted as well, changing the former system of cooperation with Lhasan elites. An old system that used the Dalai Lama as an intermediary between Tibetan subjects and Beijing policy was discarded in favor for a new system that pushed to enfranchise local intellectuals. Like Xinjiang, schools for minority cadres were set up and the Chinese language was triumphed over Tibetan education, which fortunately continued. The positions these cadres eventually received were far less influential than those of their majority counterparts^²⁰. In a sense, the project of assimilation occurred in Tibet much like it did in Xinjiang. Chauvanism at this time was through a similar mechanical implementation of national policy to a province that could not support these policies. But a difference does exist in the modicum of sensitivity that the Chinese expressed in their dealings with the Tibet, especially in terms of the value of their religious autonomy. Whereas the CPC was careful to respect the authority of the Tibetan monastic community, it seems as though at times they overstepped this sensitivity in Xinjiang, when they demanded excessive taxes from mosques’ tithes. Yet, certain things are the same; between Xinjiang and Tibet, it is absolutely certain that the CPC did not have policies responsive to the needs of nomads, an important element that made land reform very unpopular throughout the Chinese frontier. It is also certain that the forms of control used by the Han over their subjects was seen by individual spectators, views that help inform historical analysis.

Bapa Phuntse Wangye (Phunwang) acts as the optimal scope for examining the events in Tibet prior to the Cultural Revolution, as well as a cogent recording of the individual’s experience with the more radical moments in the Maoist era of the PRC. He was born in Batang, an area part of Kham (although not part of political Tibet) and was rapidly habituated into adopting radical thought. He grew up with a childlike adoration for a KMT offical who also desired to bring self-rule to the Khampas through armed resistance. Not only does Phunwang admire his ideals, but his modernity, and from there he desires to be exposed to modernity to share it with his home town^²¹. Eventually, he becomes further radicalized (specifically, through Lenin’s Concerning a Nationality’s Right of Self-Determination) and adopts communism as an ideology due to notion that a political identity can transcend national borders. Starting as merely a schoolyard idea, radical thought develops Phunwang into an activist. Most important to his radical ideas was the notion of development. “The world is changing very quickly. I think if we do not reform ourselves, we will destroy ourselves. We won’t have to worry about the Chinese or anyone else. We will be our own worst enemy.”^²² These thoughts crystallized into the formation of the political group, the Eastern Tibet People’s Autonomous Alliance. This group would be the lifeblood of Phunwang’s political aspirations from roughly 1945 to 1975. With a plan for national independence formulated, Phunwang and his compatriots finally had the basis to lead a war of revolution. Eventually, Phunwang associated these originally independent ideas to operations within the CPC as they began to win the civil war. But upon activating within the party, he found that his ideas were not garnering much support in the CPC; in reality, Tibet had been captured with no deference made to his popular plans. This was not unlike the case with ETR in Xinjiang: Phunwang’s dreams of a truly autonomous Tibetan government were slowly eroded, despite continual assurances that the CPC bureaus in Tibet would not retain authority over local bureaucracy^²³.

What he does discover, however, is that he was not a trusted member of the party. Despite his persistance to achieve his radical dreams through the umbrella of CPC authority, his superiors believed him to be actively sabotaging the party through his old ambitions^²⁴. Meanwhile, his own views towards the party begin to change. At first idealistic, he begins to understand that what is ideologically right for the party’s practices are not the reality at hand. The communism he had first learned was through books, and the communism practiced in his province was far from this form. He began to suspect what his Tibetan friends were assuming: that these communists were still Chinese at heart, and therefore exploitative^²⁵. The struggle to fight the existance and perception of “Great Han Chauvanism” (da hanzu zhuyi) was a continuous process for Phunwang, but eventually he was the one of the targets of the chauvanism. For his superior, Fan Ming, began to implement more advanced reforms without Phunwang’s approval, through direct consent from above. It prompted his ire, and during the Hundred Flowers movement he argued for the creation of minority “republics” similar to the USSR “socialist republics”. Although this idea was incredibly exciting to Tibetans, it was also a very dangerous idea—both insinuating a relationship with the hated USSR, and preaching too much “local nationalism” for the tastes of the CPC leadership^²⁶. He had become, irrevocably, the enemy.

Phunwang’s experiences in prison obscure our vision of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, for it ranged from 1960 to 1978. But at the same time, it gives historians the tools for examining the memoirs of minority activists, for Phunwang’s prison memories are quite similar to even Han students’ memories of the events. His prison tenure was years of meaningless captivity. It was years before his jailers admitted what his crimes were, and even then they were somewhat ambiguously linked to his radical activities prior to the PLA entering Tibet^²⁷. When emerged from prison in 1976, he could only experience the Cultural Revolution second hand, through the aftermath of the chaos, via his family who were stationed in Beijing at the time. What he experienced was incredibly tragic: his wife had been locked into her stall at work where she commited suicide in 1969. People had continually abused Phunwang’s family in ignorant racist terms. The student activists believed them to be spies, who harbored secret telegraph equipment as well as artifacts constructed from human skin^²⁸. He experienced the same sort of numbness that other participants and victims felt: numbness. He had exited the prison and was given no apollogy or explanation for the actions of the state, and events occurred so quickly he could account for them. And most tragic for Phunwang, his years of good intentioned radical activity had been rejected as bad thought for no significant reason. Unlike other observers, however, he had the persistence to seek out the rationality to explain these events, and in 1985 he was finally given the validation of having his Tibetan party verified as a true communist party^²⁹.

What can be adopted from Phunwang’s limited view of the Cultural Revolution? Certainly, it is that not everyone is capable of having a lucid view of the events. But also, that having a lucid view is not a prerequisite to compiling a lucid history. The sudden onslaught of history he received upon release from prison suffered the same irrationality that others perceieved in the period, and his reaction was suitably alike: a numbness that gave way to a continued effort to achieve his goals in a reformed nation. But it also exposes the goals for most Tibetan intellectuals on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Like Phunwang, many Tibetans wanted to use membership in the PRC as a vehicle to achieve development. However, they too wanted political autonomy, and saw it as a rational end for communist policy, as it was part of the constitution as well as Leninist ideology. Unfortunately, propagating this notion was also seen as comprimising the intergrity of Chinese nationalism, and to an extent this was seen as mutually exclusive with the goal to develop through the PRC. Most of all, the evils of the “Great Han Chauvanism” that Phunwang fights against was that it valued the identity of one nation over another, when autonomy demanded for the two to be equals. He in response advocated constitutional reform on part of the PRC, including steps to recognize Greater Tibet, the study of native languages, and autonomy in local affairs and militia^³⁰. The crimes of Han chauvanism in this regard are accounted for in Phunwang’s narrative, as well as his personal response to the problem; it is natural for us to expect this kind of discourse on part of Xinjiang intellectual’s memoirs as well. However, what can be expected from a first hand participant in the Cultural Revolution?

Tashi Tsering is just the man necessary to submit a personal narrative for ethnic minorities regarding particupation in student activism. Whereas Phunwang was a first generation communist originating from the periphery of Tibet, Tashi Tsering was a slightly older figure who had been sent to Lhasa at a young age, where he served as gadrugba dancer to the Dalai Lama. Also unlike Phunwang, his education was very cosmopolitian. In 1957 he left Tibet for Calcutta, India. A year later, he was accepted into St. Joseph’s in Darjeeling to finish his secondary education as well as to study English. He observed the rebellion occuring in Lhasa at first from afar and then on location. It was distressing for him to imagine radical change for Tibet, but at the same time hoped such change would accompany development. Sentiments hospitable to modernizing continued as Tashi Tsering continued with his education, even as he went to the west. In 1960, he travelled to New York to study at Williams College, and the next year to Seattle to study at the University of Washington. As his education progressed, he began to realize that modernization could not occur from a government-in-exile, but from within the PRC. This led him to return home, despite the wishes of his friends who worked with the exiled Dalai Lama.

When he returned to China, he anticipated continuing his studies at Peking University; policy dictated that he had to study at a minority institute^³¹. His studies were rather frustrating, as he found correct ideology taking the forefront over subject matter. Around this time the GCPR was launched, and Tashi did not feel at danger at the moment, for he was for radical change and was not a capitalist roader. Because he was at Beijing at the time, he was also part of the revolutionary fervor; in this, he was proud of his conscious decision to return to China rather than serve the Tibetan exiles. However, this declaration did nothing but promote the ire of his classmates^³². At the end of 1966, Tashi and his Tibetan classmates decided to return home to pursue revolution. Greeting his friends from the past, he perceieved the first victims of the Cultural Revolution. Progressive Tibetans were being struggled against, and he could but rationalize that they had done something counterrevolutionary^³³.

In reality, it was religion that was inspiring struggle. Lhasa was a deeply Buddhist city, but even burning lamps in offering to a deity was grounds for punishment. Like a “wet hat”, the formely liberal policies had dried (through the 1959 uprising) to become uncomfortable and chauvanistic for the Lhasans. Tashi Tsering identitied the crackdown on religion as being far too indiscriminate. Yet he persisted to be a Red Guard because he wished to root out counterrevolutionary elements. Unfortunately, he was quickly identified as one of these elements. On October 13, 1967 he was publically struggled against. His fellow Tibetans were adamantly believed in his guilt. His crimes were not ideological, but experiential. Tashi Tsering was an enemy because he had visited India and America. They sought his repentance for these small crimes, but additionally saw a greater crime in a Tashi who was an advocate for Tibetan independence. Like Phunwang, Tsering suffered weeks of intimidating interrogation. Unlike Phunwang, his captors were his classmates. After weeks of interrogation in his school, he was sent to a makeshift jail on campus, inhabitated by both Han and Tibetan people. Segregation during the Cultural Revolution, according to Tsering, only occurred via class lines. Months passed in this jail as he feared the fate of his friends, as well as his country amidst rumors of war with the USSR. In 1970, he was finally sent to a larger formal prison in Changwu County, where he was sent once more to Xianyang prison, then Chengdu, and then finally Sangyib prison, where he was prisoner from 1971 through 1973. Like Phunwang, Tashi was assigned solitary confinement and was not sentenced to a specific length, a luxury that political prisoners from the Lhasa Uprising were allowed. He was interrogated by Tibetan and Han interrogators alike. The terms of his release were equally mysterious; he chalks it up to bureaucratic mismanagement.

Upon his release from prison, in the later years of the Cultural Revolution, Tashi surveys the impoverishment that the movement has perpetuated upon Xianyang, Lhasa, as well as his home town. Everyone seemed half dead, and under tge cinnybe system production rates had fallen tremendously. Mao’s death is a monumentous relief for his mind, as he hopes the chauvanism that had occurred during the years of the Cultural Revolution would dissappear with him. The following years followed Tashi Tsering returning to Xianyang, seeking rehabilitation. Finally, in 1978—the same year Phunwang was rehabilitated—Tashi Tsering’s imprisonment was ruled as unjust and the CPC recompensated him for his losses.

In many ways, Tashi Tsering is quite similar to Phunwang. Both valued a semblanece of national independence coupled with the developmental force that the PRC could provide to Tibet. Both were genuinely passionate about developing Tibet, and took many potentially hazardous paths in order to achieve their goals. And both saw the power in maintaining identity through preserving the Tibetan language. However, the forms of chauvanism the two faced were starkly different. We see ethnic chauvanism occuring in Phunwang’s narrative predominantly through his family’s experiences during the Cultural Revolution, as well as his personal experiences with the difficulties affecting politics as a minority politician. But in Tashi Tsering’s views, he was suspected by everyone—both through Han Chinese in Beijing, and his villagers alike! Furthermore, his experiences in prisons equally Han and Tibetan, showed that class background and (probably) personal conflict determined guilty individuals during the Cultural Revolution. This makes the Tibetan experience quite similar to the average Han victim of Cultural Revolution violence. Moreover, it demonstrates the challenges that are promulagated in a GPCR experience just by being unique; Tashi Tsering aggravated Red Guards to struggle against him simply because his international quality made him provocative and different.

What makes Xinjiang different, then? Exploring this question requires an approach seperating these differences from the similiarities. We can draw the differences of Xinjiang’s experience only through the historical record; then, we can use this model to judge against both the techniques and resistance to chauvanism, in tandem to the lessons extracted from the narratives of the time.

Examining Xinjiang as a function of the mechanical operations of national movements puts us in 1960, with the Great Leap Forward; in Xinjiang, it took the same path as it did elsewhere in China, albeit with its own share of problems. Reforming nomadic agriculture, as explained, was a source of great misery during this time, and collectivization of livestock forced the pasture to become sedentarized, and in Dzungaria, the steppe cannot sustain such concentrated activity. Ultimately several collective pastures failed^³⁴. In later years of the movement, collectivization became retrenched, and as commune were reorganized, McMillen notes, “[It] essentially represented the re-emergence of the bifurcation between state and society”, as administrating so many people in so many diverse farming conditions was too difficult a task^³⁵.

Whereas the university played the role of bringing together radicalized students during the Cultural Revolution in Han Proper, in Xinjiang the bingtuan state farms served a similar purpose. Red Guards traveled to Urumqi to form “the Second Red Headquarters” and the military began occupying the bingtuan for their own radical purposes. Immediately, the local commissar Wang Enmao was accused of being a capitalist roader because he refused to join the local revolutionary committee. He reacted by forming his own Red Guard group designed to defend Xinjiang’s revolutionary cadres from outsider Red Guards.^³⁶Like the rest of the nation, the State called upon the PLA to enforce order, to no effect. Despite the dominant view that the cities of Xinjiang were merely backwater frontier towns, they experienced the very same violence as urban areas to the east did. For instance, on January 26^th 1967, tens of thousands of Shanghai youth clashed in Shihezi. They had attempted to seize control of a textile factory and were arrested by conservative Red Guards, and then promptly executed. Factionalism was widespread in Xinjiang as it was in Shanghai or Beijing. ^³⁷ The chaos was so intense at one point that Wang Enmao threatened to occupy the Lop Nor nuclear testing facilities to ensure that Red Guards would demilitarize^³⁸. It took several years after 1971 for order to be restored. By that time, Wang Enmao has been purged and Lin Biao’s soldiers had begun to replace the more moderate PLA officers in the area. Even when order was restored, it took decades for Xinjiang’s economy to recover, due to the epicenter of Red Guard activity having occurred in the bingtuan.

Millward emphasizes, however, what is not discussed, namely, what occurred in Uyghur majority locations. Reports read of radical troops engaging in border raids with Soviet Russian troops, and locals had a very real fear of starting an international conflict. Being non-Han during the midst of this movement did not allow you the opportunity to be more radical, in fact, it made you the target of radicals. Uyghurs were commonly and baselessly accused of being involved with separatist conspiracies, especially those with background in ETR. Even high ranked officers of non-Han descent were targets for slander. Getting rid of the “Four Olds” in a Han majority region might mean desecrating artifacts, but in Xinjiang it meant xenophobia in the most violent fashion possible. The Qu’ran was burned in public, mosques vandalized with pig flesh, and racial epithets crowded the air. There were no pretenses for maintaining the notion of “autonomy” in Xinjiang during the Cultural Revolution. Everything crude and ignorant that had been suppressed for the sake of magnamity was being exposed as a weapon, not criticized.^³⁹ These crimes are not discussed through party self-criticism, Millward laments, and to discuss this persecution even today is considered treason.

To this degree there are quite a few dissimilarities between Tibet and Xinjiang. Perhaps to some degree part of the intial colonial experience, where Xinjiang existed as the war spoils for the Qing court, Xinjiang seems to have experienced a larger degree of native revolt and overall Han antipathy. Because of this, it is likely the potential for ethnic conflict, during the moments of loosened social order of the Cultural Revolution, is far greater in Xinjiang than Tibet. In terms of great game politics, both provinces dealt with the western powers—Tibet with Britain (and to a degree, America) and Xinjiang with Russia/USSR—the sheer hostility that China harbored for USSR during the Cultural Revolution would make life in Xinjiang slightly tenser than Tibet in regards to international conflict. Finally, the ethnic demographics between Tibet and Xinjiang were greatly different: in Xinjiang there was a resident Han population as well as several minorities—people of Turkish, Mongol, as well as Sogdian heritage. In Tibet, there was a far more homogenous population, and the significance of this disparity cannot be under-emphasized.

In documenting chauvanism, it has taken the several important overlapping forms. First, was the ability for the Qing to control affairs indirectly through patronage of local elites; despite the identities of these local governors being equivalent to the local population, the reality was that they practiced the policies of the Qing court. Second, was the CPC’s action of co-opting prexisting political organizations and ideology, in an attempt to fortify their control over the political atmosphere of their regencies. Third, was their practice of applying uniform policies onto these regions, despite their status as autonomous from the whole of the PRC. Fourth, the CPC employed shows of might to heavily influence negotiations that they claimed to be truly cooperative.

In addition to modes of Han chauvanism, there are means for minorities to resist. First, was the armed revolt, usually dictated by dire circumstances. Second, there was “local nationalism”, whether based on ethnicity (e.g. pan-Turkism) or religion (e.g. pan-Islamism), it was more or less a mechanism for organization for armed conflict initially, and turning into a formal ideological stance as the localities became imbedded into the PRC. Third, and most important, was resistance to assimilation by means of codifying one’s culture. Like the previous forms of chavanism, these means to resist are not mutually exclusive, although their progressive development spells that the later developed techniques are generally more effective within the confines of modern PRC politics.

Among the two narratives we analyzed, there were several congruencies. One similarity between Phunwang and Tashi’s stories was that both were relatively disengaged during the Cultural Revolution. Their memories of the event are not at all nostalgic, but clouded by the bars of prison. In liberation, they are numb and cannot reconcile the events that have passed with their years of political engagement. Once again, the Cultural Revolution is portrayed as an aberration, and it is only after pushing the CPC to realize their misconception of their forms of political activity do they feel at peace. A second similarity was that their analysis that “Great Han Chauvanism” was the main enemy to the welfare of Tibet. They saw it persist despite the idealistic rhetoric of the CPC’s constitution. Yet, they did not give up even when directly attacked by this chauvanism. The centerpiece of their narrative was a merger of the collective and individual: they believe in the power of progressivism, and their ability to act upon the progressivism to change their faulty nation for the better. Finally, both identify that the PRC is an important body to Tibetan politics in the sense that it can drive Tibetan development. Both see the primary problem with Tibet as the lack of social welfare and backwardsness of the province. They agree with communism’s aim as a modernizing force and both strive to realize a goal related to developing Tibet. As a whole, both are Tibetans who are emblematic of the multifarious goals of Tibet: they simultaneously seek modernism, as well as resist chauvanism by means of codifying Tibet’s language and culture, and in general, this is the basis for modern Tibetan activism.

So where does Xinjiang’s possible narratives fit in this slew of themes? I believe they would fall within the notion of activism, albeit in a capacity wholly unique from Tibet’s expression of this action. The general sense of activism, to unite the reinforcement of an autonomous culture (the modern form of resistance against assimilation) with the hunt for modern prosperity, is something shared between the two regions. On the basis of the differentiating factors, it is questionable whether any one Uighur or Hui memorist would report, as Tashi Tsering, that the Cultural Revolution struggled wholly through class identification, for they would know preternaturally from generations of authoritarian rule that nearly every act of violence has a bit of chauvanism latent within it. Xinjiang memoirists would certainly remember the events are irrational, for they were merely the victims of a mechanical national movement, and in truth their political intentions had little to do with their punishments, as seen with the Tibetan activists.

A final would point truly seperate the Xinjiang stories from the Tibetan ones: considering the coexistance of Xinjiang ethnic minority and majority populations, what could differentiate the Han story, if both are judged as a function of their “backwater” environment by migrating students and elites? Perhaps answering this distinction could serve the great purpose of blurring lines of identity, formerly clearly drawn alongside ethnicty. Although studying the Cultural Revolution might demand that a lot of events deemed merely “irrational” to be explained on cogent terms, to do the opposite exposes the sheer arbitrary nature of identity. In the end, while some people use mountains to define who they are a person, it is only one view. Legality changes through the winds of time, as does the ephemeral perception of man. But some things do not change and cannot be demarcated by a mountain range. Authority will always be authority no matter how it disguises itself, and a story will always be a story no matter how it dresses itself up. It is those without either who pass with the wind, and the responsibility of the historian is to account for these fleeting moments.

[1] It can be contended that the occupation occurred as an attempt to recoup war debt; to this extent the leadership would be hesitant to spend additional silver to finance grain subsidies for poor villagers or to properly recompensate their banner troops. As a result, the province was backwards and it was a powderkeg of tension.

1Beyond the Pass 32-33

2Kim 1-3

3Beyond the Pass 194: the original charcter for Muslim features the current character for the ethnicity (回族) as a phonetic alongside the dog radical. It was quickly banned, but for a brief period this was a popular derogatory term.

4Kim 45-48

5Ibid 68-71

6Beyond the Pass 240-247

7Wang 90-97

8Starr 86-87

9 Ibid 91-82

10 Ibid 88

11Eurasian Crossroads 250-253

12Ibid 256-263

13Grunfeld 40-47

14Lin 194-198

15Lin 201-205

16Snow Lion 38-42

17Snow Lion 46-54

18Grunfeld 124

19Ibid 141-154

20Ibid 166-179

21Tibetan Revolutionary 17-21

22Ibid 67

23Tibetan Revolutionary 148-153

24Ibid 155-159

25Ibid 160

26Ibid 200-218

27Ibid 256-265

28Tibetan Revolutionary 262-276

29Ibid 304-308

30Ibid 280-298

31Struggle 92

32Ibid 106

33Ibid 109

34 Starr 93-94

35 McMillen 146-147

36 Starr 95

37 McMillen 198-206

38 Ibid 215

39 Starr 96-100

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THE CHAINS OF IDEA AND THE CAGE OF SOCIETY: Contrasting Gramsci’s hegemony (incomplete)

•May 17, 2008 • Leave a Comment

Man is unhappy and wicked as long as he is chained by law, custom and received ideas. He needs to be freed in order to be saved. The creative power of destruction has become an article of faith.¹

A certain amount of universality exists in such a statement, that a life dictated beyond the realm of humanity is not conducive to a harmonious life. In the scope of the conundrum above, conflicts persist in society due to the subordinate role of its consisting members in relation to its norms. Norms can be defined in a number of ways, including the form of laws, regulations, and traditions as Gramsci previously states. In a broader sense, norms might be stated as but one half of larger systemic analysis, placed within the framework of the Marxist thought heavily influencing Gramsci. One segment works to satisfy the material desires of the society, meanwhile another segment acts as the environment in which the laborers interact. The interaction between the two formulate a world propelled by conflict: whether within the sphere of political economy or political culture. But to directly address the problem stated above is to look at the latter—the social environment of the economy that determines the distribution of assets—is to focus upon the cultural materials of a society, and how it interacts with the process of satisfying the material concerns of society.

Defined through Marx, conflict through domination of norms can be seen as the perpetuation of ideology through a base-superstructure system. In analyzing his scholarship (in particular The German Ideology and Preface to a Critique of Political Economy) with a focus upon the superstructure, one finds that it creates a viewpoint suitable for reinforcing false consciousness into humanity regardless of class identity. Further scrutiny of Marx and Engels’ definition of this relationship can be sought by the suitable term hegemony by Gramsci, through his early Prison Notebooks. Identifying hegemony in conjunction with a Marxist definition of superstructure should provide the basis for Gramsci’s cynicism towards “recieved ideas”. Hegemony is best understood in three forms: how he describes it (compared to Marx), how hegemony is established and maintained (especially through intellectuals), and how it is a necessary condition for historical materialism and therefore revolution of the proleteriat (and freedom in a Marxist sense). A case study is provided to demonstrate the interaction of humanity satisfying their desires and how they organize themselves to achieve this goal. Through only a brief glance at Max Weber’s analysis of the reciprocal development of Capitalism and Protestant Christianity through The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, it is evident that domination through a closed system that influences the interests of involved parties consequentially changes the definition of agency in the perceived world, perpetuating a form of alienation of mankind from their social interests through constant rationalization in a time where the legal underpinnings of the rational are becoming more and more obscure in satisfying societal needs.

To Gramsci, the ideal method of reading intellectual material is the method of a prisoner, drawing a the guiding spirit from the book like blood from a stone. Through attentive, almost obsessive, detail of the larger themes in texts and the motives behind their creation, and who encompasses the population receptive to these themes². It is in such a spirit of sensativity of context that Marx’s analysis of dialectical materialism can be explained. With a focus placed heavily upon social relations and the superstructural portion of society as a whole, reading Marx can act as a suitable background for a close reading of Gramsci. Discussion of the themes of (a) the development of a dominant class, (b) the definition of ideology, as well as (c) Marx’s understanding of the two interacting teleologically creates a definition of Marx effective for describing the dialectical materialism for the sake of Gramscian critique.

Dominant class is naturally defined through class. Class is defined by commonality in labor as well as the entire production system. Labor defines class only insofar as the division of labor shapes the social relations of production. Production changes with time, as do the science, technology, and the instruments of labor. As production changes, a surplus of value-added by labor is observed, and creates the beginnings of the division of labor. With the advent of the social class, comes historical modes of relation, otherwise seen as different regimes of exploitation. Bourgeoise Capitalism is the stage of exploitation that Marx identifies as the contemporary regime. Yet, the domination of the capitalists—the dominant class—only serves to create an opportunity for the subordinate class to resist. By virtue of recognizing their subordinate position of society, the proleterian class can begin revolution. Hence, once one recognizes their identity through a Marxist scope, one can survey the whole of the social landscape, host to the theory of historical materialism that determines the terms of domination between classes. It is reasonable to believe that the existence of the dominant class as a theoretical of view society creates the possibility of the creation of a praxis to accompany the theory. Any activity that exhibits having an application to the means-end formula can be said to be praxis. Marx and Engels argue that one condition suitable for furthering the historical materialism is the balance of practice and theory to a state of equilibrium. The best course of action is Communism; proleteriat political cooperation, prostelization of class consciousness to bourgeoise, and the end of exploitation of surplus labor by means of capital.

Yet, this explanation of exploitation merely accounts for one half of society. The base of society, in Marx refers to this in his Critique to Political Economy as the paring of the base and the superstructure. Marx’s goal may be interpreted as finding an equilibrium between the opposing pair of thought and practice; it follows that it is necessary to find the equilibrium of each opposing pair in Marxist thought. Translated into theory over the base and superstructure, a criticism of Marx is that his focus is upon the base over the superstructure in his analysis. Citing example work such as Capital, the domination of the proleteriat is seen to be predominantly the value the dominant class exploits from the subordinate class, as opposed to the values the dominant class expropriates unto the subordinate class. Existence of such a critique exists for Gramsci to utilize in the confines of his cultural analysis. Effectively, this allows for the interpretation of a force that dominates both realms equally, as opposed to depending upon the dictates of political economy alone, the hegemony, and an elaboration of steps necessary to further historical materialism (the counterhegemony).

Turning the focus to ideology, one can find an elaboration on the true relationship between the base and superstructure. Marx interprets ideology as being related to the Hegelian means: ideology can be used to order the world (as to reach an end), but it obscures the interests of parties adhering to the ideology as well. In combining these two elements, ideology can be illustrated as a function of ethico-political motives to who engineers. Naturally, the dominant class has the ability to engineer ideology more efficiently than the subordinate class, due to their social surplus. The ethico-political motive imbedded in the dominant ideology, therefore, is the maintance of the social surplus. To this end, Marx identifies a link between social relations in the material sense, and in the ideological sense; the former determines the latter, according to Marx. Ideology is also not limited to political doctrines or religious dogma: any social view must contain ideology, for it cannot immediately be proved as objective. Additionally, ideology is rendered as a closed system: contradictions must be solved within ideologies, lest they fall into disuse. Ergo, ideology acts as a link between base and superstructure; the dominant ideology is the subjective means for the dominant class to maintain their domination, self-sustaining in its ability to correct contradictions as they appear, functioning as an extension of the dominant class’ compulsion to sustain their dominance.

Two areas of interest are promulgated by critics of Marx. The workings of ideology in how they maintain this self-sustainability is an area of considerable interest to Gramsci, who finds the notion useful in application to Marxism itself. Critique is used to find the underlying social interests driving ideology, and critique can find the appropriate practice to solve the contradictions in a doctrine. Marx’s teleology benefits the greatest from this act. Second, and primarly, questions have been raised regarding causality. Is evaluating the nature of ideology presupposed to the evaluation of material conditions? Is it not conceivable, that considering the base-superstructure is seen as a unity of opposites, that the base should affect, as well as be affected by the superstructure? Gramsci investigates this claim as reciprocity, and Weber too can be seen as proffering an interpretation on this sort of unitary viewpoint. For now, it is simple enough for the critic to find that the emphasis Marx plays upon the base as the prime mover in determining social conditions allows for the emergence of an alternate focusing upon the superstructure.

Teleology provides an end for the means illustrated by ideology, travelling a path designed to subvert the power of the dominant class. It is with this unity of terminology that allows for a focus upon the notion of Hegelian means and end. Both are in a state of rapid flux, in attempting to create a suitable ideal end point and a suitable procedure for achieving the end point, to match the perceived interests of a subject. Hence, there exist not one but two ends: the subjective end—the ideal satisfaction of the subject’s interests, and the realized end—the outcome that actually occurs. There is an inherent gap between the two end points, however, it is possible to shorten or lengthen the gap between the two, in particular through careful manipulation of means.

For Marxism, the idealized end point is Communism, an environment devoid of class domination. Emancipation is the end, equilibrium between thought and practice is the means. The historical materialism is described as eventually bringing about the environment suitable for Communist revolution: through the devaluation of labor and expansion of the ranks of the working poor, class consciousness spreads and a strong Communist party is created through the common experience of historical materialism. Yet, the procedure behind creating the strong, cohesive Communist party is not so decidedly simple. Consider the following: if bourgeoise ideology changes constantly, and it obscures the nature of social relations, should it not have the ability to condition class consciousness?

Indeed, Marxism itself holds an ideological component, so it ideally should have pace to constantly change as bourgeoise capitalism does. To hold fast to a static conception of Marxist literature is to be conservative; to think of the gulf between the subjective state of Communism and the contemporary, realized state of Communism is too vast to ever be bridged is merely a result of the false consciousness instilled by the ideological component. The solution for ideology is simple: critique. Through critique, contradicitions are found and exposed; the dialectical materialism is expanded in this manner to encompass the superstructural component of society, and in an ideal scope it adopts the Hegelian dialectical. Dialectical process is defined by creating a theory (thesis), subjecting it to critique (antithesis), resulting in the creation of a new means (synthesis). The means created by such a process is a purposive means. For Marx, this explains why he believes that thought must be tempered by practice to fullfill the potential of historical materialism. What he fails to realize is that his philosophy of praxis garnered activism and critique of bourgeoise society in a pronounce material sense, his fight was for social equality through socially progressive legislation. What needed to be subjected to critique was not only the static conception of Marxism, but the manifold elements in bourgeoise society exhibiting elements of ideology. To not subject critique to these elements would be to neglect a process necessary for forging the means to reach an end closer to the ideal state of Communism. [1]

Thus, through combining dominant class, their ideology, and the teleology behind it, one finds ample room for critics of Marx to synthesize new forms of Communism. For Gramsci, this meant literature sketching out the appropriate actions necessary to overcome the dominance of the bourgeoise through the superstructure and to adapt to the changing nature of the bourgeoise capitalism that allowed domination to persist in the face of mass exploitation.

In this sense Gramsci acts as both critic as well as disciple of Marx rooted in the parameters of his dialectical materialism, generating critique in order to further the flag of Socialism. His thoughts are a function of his environment: the Prisoner Notebooks Gramsci produced focuses upon popular culture because it was only tracts he was allowed to have access to. Yet, through close reading, it is obvious that his scholarship is as important as it is influential. Gramsci’s attack focuses upon common sense not only because the constraints of his environment, but also the form of domination it represented. Societal norms represent an ideal combination of coercion and force used to ensnare the mind of the masses. So coercive is the force of norms that it demands universal consent from the masses at a level of individual lifestyles. Such coercion is almost devoid of conspicuous use of force because they can lack formalized codification, usually deriving their common adherence from long de facto culture-based behaviors. Norms are ideal exercises of power, in essence, because they are so deeply ingrained into society that the majority of individuals cannot possibly conceive of acting against them. Through the exploration of this form of power, Gramsci represents a greater movement of postmodern political theorists to analyze what defines false consciousness in its purported existence. This totality of base rule and superstructural domination is called a hegemony.

The new form of domination can be thrown off, naturally. To explain the appropriate actions, Gramsci relies on three terms to explain the bourgeoise hegemony. He adapts Georges Sorel’s idea of the historic bloc to explain the unity of the base and superstructure, and sketches out a practice based upon the didactic value of the interaction between the two sectors. Using this didactive currency are organic intellectuals, who are capable of spreading class consciousness through exerting a brand of ethico-political leadership. Once a party of sufficient size has been organized through the work of the intellectuals, the nature of their class struggle is rendered by Gramsci as a war of position. The type of struggle Gramsci envisions is seperated from Marx’s revolution in the areas of society where it predominantly affects—particularly civil society, via cultural and ideological struggle. Understanding the three terms allows for one to arrive at the definititon of counterhegemony, of which the success of Socialism lies.

Defining the term “historical bloc” is quite a difficult task. Gramsci never defines it under Sorel’s terms, preferring to define it under his own terms:

Structures and superstructures form a ‘historical bloc’. That is to say the complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the superstructures is the reflection of the ensemble of the social relations of production. From this, one can conclude: that only a totalitarian [“all absorbing” according to the footnote] system of ideologies gives a rational reflection of the contradiction of the structure and represents the existence of the objective conditions for the revolutionizing of praxis. If a social group is formed which is one hundred per cent homogeneous on the level of ideology, this means that the premisses exist one hundred per cent for this revolutionizing: that is that the ‘rational’ is actively and actually real. This reasoning is based on the necessary reciprocity between structure and superstructures, a reciprocity which is nothing other than the real dialectical process. ³

A dialectical process, as demonstrated, is a unitary pair of opposites that lead to progress. The progress of historical materialism, defined by Gramsci in this statement, is linked to the dialectical relationship of the base and superstructure. To look at the unity at any given moment is to perceive a historical bloc, a “a particular moment of unity of structure and superstructure and of thought and action”⁴. Hence, in the creation of the historical bloc Gramsci welds Marx’s unitary pairs together. With base and superstructure welded together, the interpretation of Marx’s statement that being is defined through definite social relations, the production of material, is flawed. If the interaction between material inequality and dominant ideology is reciprocal, then it must be that being cannot be clearly defined from thinking, as the world inside the human consciousness mimicks the real world that social relations occur.

Also, it is worth noting that Gramsci’s conception of totality is not simply a political one, for Gramsci says that it encompasses all ideologies—it is a social conception, as well. The totalitarian system that can bring unity to praxis and structure brings together the economic, moral, and political segments of society. A functioning totality of these segments formulates a notion, a worldview combining subjectivity and objectivity. The notion is generated through continual sublation of old ideas containing contradictions. Bourgeoise capitalism, Marx defines through Capital, stems from the notion that goods can be produced solely for exchange⁵. Communism can inversely stem from the Communist Manifesto’s notion that the “positive supersecession of private property”, among other factors, are the means to emancipate man. Gramsci’s historical bloc, on the other hand, stems from the notion that unity of culture, ideology and economical life leads to the means to emancipate man. What can be made of this ambivalent disparity?

It is appropriate to return to Hegelian thought to find Gramsci’s key idea. Hegel alludes that the desired end (or beginning) of all subjective means as the unity of notion and being. The emancipation of man is the subjective end man seeks, according to Marx: Notion is defined as Communism and the Being consciousness defined as definite social relations. To Gramsci, the Being does not form a unity with Notion, because Being must be both thought and definite relations (as social relations are determined by ideology). Marx might view that an entirely objective view of the world to be impossible, but he neglects to seek how ideology shapes the subjective view of material. In creating the historical bloc as a moment where superstructure and base is unitary, theory (in the form of recieved ideologies) becomes equal to practice as a criterion of truth. Ambivalence to Gramsci for the sake of this argument is perpetuated because theory and practice reciprocate and are equally important for the revolutionary cause, and that even Marx claims that the unity between theory and practice creates a basis for revolution from below. In this claim, Marx favors one way over the other—that economics hold primacy over human development.

In this contradiction lies Gramsci’s idea for the principal task: he finds that the vast array of intellectual production can create many solutions that contradict each other in finding a fairly common goal (human welfare). His principal task is to organize these diverse philosophic, economic, and political tracts into a dialectical unity. One way to describe this dynamic is that ideology acts the part of form, and material conditions act as the content (for the purposes of critique and aligning form to match content)⁶. When various means are placed within such a unity, the end becomes clear and contradictions are resolved rapidly. This task puts the organic intellectual into the focus of the Gramscian critique. Hegemony is defined by his task: it is a society where all forms of culture reach an end equivalent to material circumstances at the same time shapes the nature of production. Bourgeoise hegemony is defined by the historical bloc as a moment in history where all cultural facets tout the whims of the dominant class through dominant ideology while the laws garnering economics sustain the dominance. If the superstructure remains an area of enquiry for Marx’s critics, it remains to be seen who and what are the factors perpetuating ideology. [2]

Gramsci’s conception of the intellectual is rooted in the Marxist conception of the intellectual as a manufacturer of ideology. Intellectuals, although an entity to be considered beyond class analysis, have their interests shaped by class. Accordingly, there are two brands of intellectuals: those who produce “organic” ideologies, and those who do not (inversely, producing “traditional” ideologies). Organism is defined as acting in concert with history, in the sense of showing class consciousness. Paradoxically, acting as a feature of history to Gramsci is marked by collectivity; acting occurs upon the political level, hence one needs necessary political support of the masses to effectively change society in any fashion. Intellectuals can thus be stated to gain their power in through their leadership potential. Political action occurs within the State, but values of the constituting members of society are influenced by the civil society. Intellectual involvement can influence the spheres of civil and public society. Combining these two points Cain states,

the function of the state and of political society is coercion…civil society provides a protective layer between the infrastructure and the state or political control…the conquest of civil society is a prerequisite for the final conquest of political society…hegemony is something like ideological control or control within civil society; in the expanded conception hegemony, like the state, is both civil and political: is a way of saying that a class is in superstructural dominance.⁷

Superstructural control for Gramsci is both political and ideological, and entraps both civil and public society. Coercive power through ideological manufacture can be found to be foundational in the design of common sense, where the production of ideas in civil society ostensibly have a political dimension. If common sense holds political sway, and it is modified by all those who contribute, then it must be that there is a possibility for any part of the masses to become intellectuals. This is tempered by the statement that, “[a] philosophy of praxis cannot but present itself at the outset in a polemical and critical guise, as superseding the existing mode of thinking and existing concrete thought (the existing cultural world).”⁸ Socialist theory in its optimal form should act as a critique of this common sense, so it may engage the masses. The culmination of this theme is that hegemony is the production of a dialectical relationship between force and consent: hegemony cannot exist without an intellectual leadership⁹. Intellectual force is a requirement for the creation of the collective will, of which historical acts cannot occur¹⁰. Through intellectuals, historical bloc can be pursued: in its organic nature, when ideologies become analyzed at a class level, it becomes the necessary framework for every struggle to occur. [3]

Struggle organically is still a zero-sum game, according to Laclau, because “a failure in the hegemony of the working class can only be followed by a reconstititution of bourgeoise hegemony.”¹¹ But, this statement to Laclau is not to emphasize economic determination, but as a limit to hegemony. Where one is relative to the modes of production cannot be a valid presupposition for where one is relative to this political battle, because of the fashion intellectuals operate in constantly redefining the norms of society. Within hegemony, political ideologies as a representation of peoples’ interests, is not really representation. Contrary to this statement, the act of representation changes the nature of what is represented; hegemony is dependent on constructing interests for the sake of constructing a collective will. Class struggle is not the name of the game through this sort of theory, but a war of subjective positions, and battles between social agents and classes¹². Gramsci describes the battle in a manner that expands upon class struggle and places it into this complex social system, where oppositional identity is undefined from the beginning of the hegemonic process¹³. Revolution in Gramsci’s gaze is an ambivalent relationship between the notions that (a) interests are static and linked to class struggle, and (b) that their interests are wholly subjective upon the historical bloc with which they are identified.

Gramsci’s theory of hegemony accepts the complexities of politics, and at the same time assigns it a primacy in relation to economics. Struggle in his mind accordingly take complex political dimensions that are not wholly determined by identity within modes of production. Struggle, for Gramsci, took a superstructural dimension that went beyond economic status of a society. The conflict found in hegemonic blocs could be advanced as a war of position:

The superstructures of civil society are like the trench-systems of modern warfare. In war it would sometimes happen that a fierce artillery attack seemed to have destroyed the enemy’s entire defensive system, whereas in fact it had only destroyed the outer perimeter; and at the moment of their advance and attack the assailants would find themselves confronted by a line of defence which was still effective. The same thing happens in politics, during great economic crises. A crisis cannot give the attacking forces the ability to organize with lightning speed in time and in space; still less can it endow them with fighting spirit. Similarly, the defenders are not demoralized, nor do they abandon their positions, even among the ruins, nor do they lose faith in their own strength or their own future. ¹⁴

Subversion of bourgeoise capitalism to Gramsci involved entrenched warfare where class struggle did not define politics in the same manner that it did not create static combatents in the conflict. War of position is waged through “progressive disaggregation of a civilization and the construiction of another around a new class core.”¹⁵ Battle is waged not through class struggle naturally, Gramsci argues, but through articulation. Class interests must be asserted through the historical bloc, through every politically accessible sector of civilization, until the hegemonic subject conceives of class interest as their own: an egoistic identity becomes discarded for the sake of one constructed by the historical bloc, and in Communism’s case an identity based upon relations of production. What is essential to be known about the nature of this battle is the fact that “there is no logical and necessary relation between socialist objectives and the positions of social agents in the relations of production; and that the articulation between them is external and does not proceed from any natural movement of each to unite with the other.”¹⁶

How does this social constructivism meld with the activities of the intellectuals with the apparent need for a “collective will”? Common sense is demonstrated to have a political bearing, based upon its historicity. But it is a chaotic one, due to the amount of people modifying it. Found within the common sense is good sense, forming a tentative oppositional relationship with common sense. Good sense is to be promoted as a sense that goes beyond narrow interests and acts as a critique of the imposed will of the dominant culture. For Gramsci philosophy, particularly the philosophy of Marxist praxis, is a form of good sense. It is good sense not because it creates new forms of thought. Marxist praxis is defined by practice, so it is good sense because it “supersedes the existing mode of thinking and existing concrete thought.” Tackling the dominant class through revolution to Gramsci follows this plan of entrenched war. One fights as an intellectual through critique of the society at large, through bolstering common sense into a good form. Political solvency is found through a collective will, and class struggle infiltrates this schema of action not as a natural part of the historical bloc in of itself, but as an ideal regimented into society at large through education provided by the intellectuals.The unity of the base and superstructure is at stake in this form of education, as Gramsci states, “if people become conscious of their social position and their tasks on the terrain of the superstructures, this means that there exists a necessary and vital nexus between structure and superstructure.”

Gramsci’s conception of the war of position is thus constructed upon a Hegelian mindset: critique is the essence of historical progress, exposing and exploiting ambiguities created through discourse. To critique is an essential activity, a self-unfolding extended to society, aimed at exposing the articulations of “the alienated development of the Idea”¹⁷ that sublate into all segments of a civilization. The struggle to make these connections are fraught with logical fallacies, and the most important to Gramsci and his fellow critics is the Freudian concept of overdetermination, that social relations are not determined by one source, but a multiplicity of sources all connected to the unitary Idea. Ultimately, this spells out that social identity lacks a singular literality, “social agents lack any essence, and their regularities merely consist of the relative and precarious forms of fixation which accompany the establishment of a certain order.”¹⁸ Gramsci adds an essential part to this argument with the idea that common sense or norms have primacy as a function of politics, but within this framework that not one element determines the course of history, one must wonder if the creation of hegemony presupposes the view of economic determinism of social identity. If hegemony presupposes economic determinism, how is identity shaped socially outside of the political economy of Marx and Engels? Furthermore, does this logic lend authenticity to the Communist regimes that lack cultural hegemony, to even be called “Communist” in the first place? Gramsci lends credance to mass education to establish an alliance, a totality of Communist interests, and through this political machination the entire truth of class identity in the form of the dialectical of base-superstructure will appear as a monad.

To identify the notion in vaguely Weberian terms, the domination of a larger system of hand acts as a “mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convuslive self importance.” By virtue of the self-interests of the engineers of the system, as well as the self-sustaining nature of ideas, “this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.” Weber writes about the the issues involved with reforming the political system at large in the presence of an overarching “iron cage” of wanton consumption devoid of spiritual meaning in his magnum opus, The Protestant Ethic. For the sake of brevity, the argument is best restrained to three particular incidents of hegemonic culture: (1) the methodological similarities between Weber and the Gramsci and (2) Weber’s likeminded identification of the powerlessness of the individual within his historical conditions.

The methodological of Weber is quite similar to both Gramsci and Marx. All three look upon the historical background of a contemporary condition. For example, Marx analyzes the background of law in The German Ideology, where he outlines the historical materialism as a geneology of domination. Gramsci, meanwhile, discursively writes about everything from Machiavelli to the Italian Renaissance. Weber, too, writes about the history of various religious sects, looking at domination in a similar fashion as the Marxists. In this way all three strive to use critique as their investigation of the axiomatic: to find the hidden processes of historical events. They all seek out how this occurs through relationships of certain events. And all three (especially Gramsci) seek to use multiple points of view to establish a commonality, a sort of discursive objectivity; they seek the leitmotif constituting the connection between discursivity. What is different between the theorists is the nature of such a connection. Marx attempts to synthesize a praxis out of his scholarship, as signified by his Theses on Feuerbach, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is, to change it.”¹⁹ Weber, on the other hand, is ambiguous about making a normative stance. Perhaps, it could be said that his ambiguous stance is his ideal of elective affinity constituting the methodological base of his Protestant Ethic: he finds that capitalism and protestant ethic do not presuppose one another, rather, he finds that the two emerge simultaneously to create a “spirit” furthers both causes²⁰. [4] Gramsci advocates, above all else, “a relationship at once pedagogical and hegemonic”, that revolution is to come from below through mass education, leading to a collective class consciousness²¹. Nonetheless, Weber can claim a more pragmatic, less deterministic, utilizing logic that uniquely does not rely upon historical causality; it is this trait that resembles Gramsci in comparison to Marx, where the true bearing of cultural hegemony upon the end goal of emancipation is tenuous taken out of a Marxist context. [5]

Marx, Gramsci, and Weber all see man as chained to a historical legacy. “The relationship of the world of self-interest to the laws governing it,” states Marx, “[and] the movement of that world within its law is necessarily a continuous abrogation of the law.”²² History in the form of rational self-interests constrains men, where the man is split between his public duties and his civil greed. In a more general way, men do not have volation over any history but an egoistic view, conditioned through particular historical circumstances²³. To Weber, the history that binds humans is one that requires no choice to pursue. Men are but part of a “tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order”, with the alienating aspect of the world being the lack of passion and value behind this “machine production”. Gramsci, as a Marxist, believes alienation from species-being is the root of conflict. However, in avoiding the vulgar economic determinism, Gramsci cites the political conflict of humanity being based upon scattered leadership that did not utilize organic intellectuals to seek out good sense. Thus, each theorist arrives at a relatively similar end: history creates an environment where humanity is subjected to conditions beyond their control, and emancipation can be found through discarding self-interests and petty materialism to embrace a higher order, whether based upon class consciousness or ascetic spirtuality, to create volition in one’s life.

Hegemony through Gramsci seems remearkably familiar to Weber’s conception of the “iron cage” in this analysis. Whereas Marx finds a system based upon a methodology favoring economic determinism,, Gramsci identifies a unique culture espoused by bourgeoise capitalism that allowed for a disjoint development between base and superstructure. Weber is very similar to Gramsci, finding that Protestantism has a certain connection (the elective affinity itself perhaps reflecting the ambivalence of Gramsci and Marx towards determinism) with the development of capital. Moreover, Marx sees a historical path with man chained in labor to a fate of domination, Gramsci sees man chained to history through a cyclical pattern of enslavement of the mind. Weber tends to find a combinatilon of the two, with a particular spirit instilled into human consciousness driving him or her to become dominated in the system of production. The specific constant between the three theorists, it seems, is that domination is present in modern society, and that dominates the man from his posessions to his mindset. In this spirit, all three act in tandem for creating common ground for the discipline of sociology to blossom into structuralist theory, where intellectuals continue to unlock the secrets of the social conception of man.

When one explores Marx and his terminology (dominant class, ideology, teleology), Gramsci and his ideas (historical bloc, intellectuals, and war of position), and how Weber contributes dynamism to the critique of bourgeoise capitalism in the sense of his methodology and conceptualization of domination, one confronts a handful of conclusions.

ORGANIC INTELLECTUALS

WAR

THE WEBER CASE-STUDY

[0] As a preface, it may seem a bit of a cop-out for me to develop an archaeology of the first generation of Marxists based upon a model of opportunity and potentiality: that by virtue of the very existence of the ability to critique a theory, the criticism is realized. I realize that there are processes behind all reform of dogma; at the same time, I realize that I face the dual crises of focus and scale in writing my essays. I hope then that my cop out with the rational of “it can exists, and so it does” works to mitigate my problem selectively, and in a manner best befitting the notion of sublation. The processes may not appear, but are selectively introduced to fit within the theme of the paragraph.

[1] One may accuse me of lack of germaneness for this paragraph. I acknowledge it is discursive, but only as the current scholarship (based upon Althussian overdeterminism and structuralist theories) dictates. Note that I temper my argument not to the ends of indeterminism versus determinism—that argument in itself is complex subject to debate. I attempt to tackle the “essentialist monism… through a proliferation of dualisms” (Laclau 12) issue of teleology, and attempt to show the ambivalence created through the theories of Marx and first generation Marxists. The argument Laclau engages influences my methodology heavily, coming into my thesis that critique is the device pushing all cogs of historical materialism in any level of dialectic: whether it be atomized to a single argument, or to an entire ideology, and for the sake of Marx, the application gives credance to endogenous criticism. That is, a discourse of change, reform, and revolution cannot be sustained in a single form due to the hypocrises encountered from an endogenous application of the theory.

[2] This view does not really characterize my own, nor a critique of Marx as a whole. Rather, it is a critique of a selective reading of Marx, the like that inspired the rise of “vulgar Materialism”. I use it as an argumentative technique to show the degree that Gramsci rebukes even the possibility of economic determinism.

[3] Oppositional in the sense that good sense inhabits common sense, but contain opposing traits, the former being more coherent, or deserving to be coherent than the latter, for example.

[4] “A final introductory point concerns the purposes or intentions of the pragmatists, i.e. whether they personally and consciously wanted the universalization of rights. The elective affinity argument, however, does not assume that the people who construct the social cause, e.g. the Calvinist preachers who made the Protestant Ethic or the pragmatists who theorized moral equality, foresee and intend the effect. The causal process is implicit and at the level of cultural affinity. It happens behind the backs of the intellectuals who produce the cause. Actually James, Dewey and Mead were liberals and would probably have approved the universalization of rights. Peirce, though, seems to have been a reactionary and not in favor of legal equality. In his case you have to credit the force of the ideas and not the purposes of the thinker. “

[5] That is, unless you believe the second phase of Communism is true emancipation, hegemony for the purposes of achieving individual freedom is a bit contradictory.

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SLOUCHING TOWARD JOSEPH’S AI: Nietzsche and Weber’s criticism of Modernity, and their proposed solutions

•May 17, 2008 • Leave a Comment

Robert Bork, prominent conservative legal expert and politico, wrote a 1996 tract (Slouching Toward Gomorrah) that indicted American Liberalism as promoting values contradictory to American values and responsible for the decline of Western culture. Within his polemic, he defines modernity as an era embracing manipulation via the perception of ethics as artificial:

Modernity, the child of the Enlightenment, failed when it became apparent that the good society cannot be achieved by unaided reason. The response of liberalism was not to turn to religion, which modernity had seemingly made irrelevant, but to abandon reason. Hence, there have appeared philosophies claiming that words can carry no definite meaning or that there is no reality other than one that is “socially constructed.” A reality so constructed, it is thought, can be decisively altered by social or cultural edict, which is a prescription for coercion.¹

Bork’s assessment of modernity frames it as problematic, as an era leading to a catastrophic turning point for humanity. He defines it through the trait of moral relativism, something which he finds to act counter to rationality, and the main force acting against the interests of Western culture.

If modernity is truly the child of the Enlightenment as Bork states, then the child’s caretakers are most certainly Nietzsche and Weber. Like Bork, the two view modernity as an era of crisis. Unlike Bork, they see this crisis as something to overcome as part of the human experience. In particular, they isolate the hallmark traits of modernity—secularism and individualism—as areas subject to enquiry, criticism, and then remedy. Answers to the philosophers do not take form as prescriptions for a simple procedural fix to the ills of society; they exist as a new way to view the world in total.

Defining secularism is a task that requires care. While it advocates for the public to remain atheistic, it neither suggests that society as a whole should, nor that it will ever, forego all religion. Such thought has had a following since the anti-clerical thinkers of the Enlightenment. In modernity, examination shows that society remains deeply affected by religion, even with the advent of secular values.

For Nietzsche, he cites the existence of a slave morality as evidence for the persistence of religious values. The disgust Jewish priests had for powerful aristocrats “[gave] birth to values: the resentment of those beings who are prevented from a genuinely active reaction and who compensate for that with a merely imaginary vengeance.”² The problem with resentment is that it provides a disincentive for the weak to improve their condition, and it only gives them legitimacy in staying weak. What characterizes the vengeance is a system of values that places the weak as high status. Christ in sacrificing Himself for the sins of the wicked is the highest manifestation of this craved vengeance: it anoints the Church as an evolved form of slave morality³. Nietzsche imagines this behavior as a poison to the body of human culture, and finds that it has migrated beyond religion: “The church repels us, not its poison… Apart from the church, we love the poison”⁴. Ergo, to Nietzsche, the originally religious values of slave morality are a problem in how it invades modern secular society, and compels the populace to ignore their shortcomings and be satisfied as weaklings. [1]

As physician for the modern world, Nietzsche has medicine for the contagion of slave morality. The general panacea for the illness is to create oneself without external supervision. Without a deity to be subordinated under the individual has no ability to abstract a resentment of their own powerlessness into a divine form. Without a society to be instilled the value of slave morality, confidence in ones innate capacities takes the forefront. The specific antidote prescribed by Nietzsche is a practice known as “eternal reoccurrence”. Considering a subordinated existence is one of suffering, for a human to repeatedly experience any given instant in his or her life is to cower before the lack of fate guiding life to unfold an reaching a conclusion beneficial to the meek. If one overcomes nihilism, the koan is perceivable, as the individual is able to conceive of the world without seeking a transcendent meaning; he or she would be content to enjoy the absurdity of the experience. [2]

Weber’s conception of religion is similar to Nietzsche’s: he cites the existence of an underlying Protestant ethic in modern capitalism, exercised through vocation. Protestantism is of important to Weber’s analysis due to its “special tendency to develop economic rationalism… that materialism results from the secularization of all ideals through Protestantism.”⁵ Provided that the spirit of capitalism is defined as “the attitude which seeks profit rationally”, one logically must define how rationality for profit was established—after all, man needs only to acquire subsistence to survive. Rationality is derived through a paradox in Protestant doctrine: whereas morality was acquired through labor for social usefulness⁶, immorality was derived from conspicuous spending on worldly temptations (according to Pietism)⁷. Instead of spending on excess products, money was invested to further the social usefulness of labor. Modern capitalism exhibits this paradox with one complication: secularization has killed the religion behind the practice, leaving only the ethic behind with no spirituality. No longer is it a cultural or religious value, but one of purely economic interest, and through economic means it keeps the citizenry of Europe locked into an “iron cage”, compelled to labor in the face of materialism⁸. Spirit without religiosity leads to dehumanization, in Weber’s analysis, and can be seen as a problem with modernity.

The solution to this lack of spirituality is to find a way to instill the religious values into society. Progress without a soul is not progress at all, and the difficulty is that spirit and material fetters are linked. Weber’s goal to correct this imbalance is the aim of his writings: to describe the system at hand as opposed to taking a normative stance. It can be said that the focus of Weber’s solution to modernity’s problems with materialism is to stop looking at issues through the scope of either materialism or “one sided spiritualistic causal interpretation”; focus should be placed upon each in defining their reciprocal relationship, in a technique known as “elective affinity”⁹.

The second problem with modernity is the notion of individuality. Individuality can be defined as individual sovereignty. Society defines individuality, because it does not exist if members of a collectivity are not recognized; choice must exist for an individual to assert oneself in a group. It is a matter of liberty that individuality is defined.

Nietzsche, as a champion of individual choice, finds slave morality to be an agent diminishing the liberties of the individual: he refers to the group of slaves pejoratively as a “herd”¹⁰. A group of slaves under a “herd mentality” are homogenized to believe that any one person’s values do not trump the others. This is true in the scope of Nietzsche’s focus on slave-master morality. To homogenize on the worst possible terms would signify that the slave is tricked into misrepresenting their interests. The prudent example for this misrepresentation is the case with pity signified by the allegory of the bird of prey and the lamb. “To demand that strength does not express itself as strength, that it must not consist of a will to overpower…” says Nietzsche, “that is as unreasonable as to demand that weakness express itself as strength.”¹¹ The powerful are born as such: individual freedoms dictate they act in accordance to their birthright. To act differently is to constrain individual choice and limit genius in society. The decision to act weak as a powerful individual is not for he or she to make, but rather based upon the all-pervasive nature of slave morality. Modernity accordingly has a problem with the powerful and the weak in establishing their true freedom: the weak are given moral agency to stay weak, whereas the strong is persuaded by pity to embrace weakness. There is no room for individual interests in a world where they cannot be expressed.

Solving the constraint on individual action can be as simple as overcoming pity. Yet, one’s ability to do this is still contingent on the fact that they have inborn strength. Embracing one’s genius to the point of disallowing it from constraining one’s actions is the appropriate action. Internalized morality, Nietzsche laments, causes individuals to “turn away from action, sometimes brooding…[appearing] almost unavoidably [debilitated by illness].”¹² The prescribed solution is not acting as the priests dictate, but to shrug off internalized moral concerns of the weak and focus upon achieving one’s own success through the capability of affirming reality. Although it goes without saying that the weak must overcome the moral disincentive to become powerful, due to the fact that power does not hate weakness as weakness resents power, as per the case with the bird of prey loving the lamb, the focus lies upon the naturally powerful to overcome slave-master morality¹³.
Freedom for the sake of individual expression for Weber is based upon the iron cage of economic norms. The spirit of capitalism is a cultural facet that is “bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determines the lives of all individuals who are born into this mechanism”¹⁴. If striving to find a calling is an expression of freedom, certainly striving to not find a calling is an equal expression of freedom. Striving to do any action that occurs within system that runs as utilitarian as clockwork and there is not much choice for the individual. As Benjamin Franklin’s quotes read, the virtues of an individual in a modern society are based upon industry, frugality, justice, and punctuality: a set of ascetic norms mandated by the Protestant ethic to be operative traits running society¹⁵. Self-sacrifice, creativity, and wisdom have nothing to do with being a virtuous person in modernity according to Weber: who you are is determined how you operate as a function of industrious society, period.

Yet, there is room to change the conception of reality based upon individual virtues. According to Weber, “the proponent of an ethic of absolute ends cannot stand up under the ethical irrationality of the world. He is a cosmic-ethical ‘rationalist.’”¹⁶. The significance of this is that the reality of the world changes depending upon the ethical scope we look at it. Ethical action in a society constrained heavily by norms is still possible through politics provided one gains legitimacy in his actions, through any of the three methods Weber suggests. The path of legitimacy in this fashion is a two-way street: the spirit of capitalism took the road of legitimacy; it follows that anybody can take this path. It is especially promising for the articulation of individual interest considering that values are not as universal as his bleak message of an iron cage in the Protestant Ethic. Weber suggests that there exist status groups that have values that are not explicitly tied to how they best serve the utility of capitalism. In these value groups, an individual would have better results representing their views, as opposed to trying to be heard in society at large. If modernity’s problem is with individual participation in a cultural and economic regime that fight non-conformity, the solution is to air grievances in an arena that allows it. Weber’s view towards the actual process of legitimizing an ideology bestows upon everybody the ability to rationalize an ideology in these arenas. And what short of political momentum divides change at a regional, group-oriented level and wholesale change at a broader, societal level? Individual influence over environment is sustained through modernity in this fashion. [3]

Discussing the problem of modernity between Nietzsche and Weber requires defining the problem into two elements: secularism and individualism. Both authors see secularism as a misnomer, considering they find traits latent to religion surviving the wave of anti-clericism characterizing the Enlightenment era. For Nietzsche, it is the spirit of a idealistic battle against powerlessness (slave-master morality), and for Weber it is the spirit of work tempered by an economy of over-indulgence in the fruits of one’s labors (Protestant ethic). Both authors also find individualism as inherently wracked by problems in modernity, by the weak and powerful being compelled to deny their true position in society (resentment and pity) and by the conformity demanded by the individual by an all-encompassing social order (the iron cage).

Yet despite these problems, both authors find potential solutions. Both authors claim that ascetism and spiritual overcoming can help society mitigate social issues, to a point. Nietzsche cites a mindset of skeptical autarchy (via enternal reoccurance) as useful for overcoming nihilism, whereas Weber found that simply forgetting about causality (via elective affinity) allowed the thinker to free himself from a world of infinite piossibilities. In terms of the freedoms reinforcing individuality, Nietzsche believes that an introspective awareness (via the bird of prey-sheep example) can allow one to focus one’s natural abilities, while Weber is determined that through a cursory glance of social groups, one has the ability to voice one’s concerns (via the link between group values and processes of establishing legitimacy) despite the apparent immutability of capitalism.

Optimism in the face of modernity on part of the forerunners of postmodernity allows one to wonder if Bork in the face of postmodernity is but a cultural pessimist. With regards to modernity: is it conceivable that society did not abandon religion, and turned to reason to explain its persistence? Is it possible that social constructivism via moral positivism, as an organ of “coercion”, acts as a measure of control for the entirity of society rather than an oligarchy? In other words, could we as a people be slouching towards the Ai of Joseph instead of Gomorrah? [4]

[0] Format for in-text citations: author. title (chapter: section, paragraph no.)

[1] I think the subject for the second quote (who is exactly repelled by the church) is the anti-clerical people of the enlightenment. This shows the explicit migration of slave morality into modern culture: it was smuggled aboard the values of the philosophes.

[2] Section strictly from class notes (Thursday of week 5). I believe the discussion focused upon The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, however. A conclusion beneficial to the meek is an afterlife plain and simple. Example of this St. Thomas Aquinas’ quotes: “In the kingdom of heaven the blessed will punish of the damned, so that they will derive all the more pleasure from their heavenly bliss.” Found in paragraph 3 of section 15.

[3] Main source for group-based politics and the processes of legitmation is found in Thursday week 7 notes. Additionally, it can be found in Politics as a Vocation, PV 7-15,

[4] It’s not an important point of the essay, merely something to consider. I try and attack a religious concept in a philogical method that I think Nietzsche or Weber may approve of. Gomorrah, according to Bork is a den of sin, and in modernity the term is linked to unnatural vice, in particular homosexuality and deviant sexual activity. In Hebrew, Gomorrah is “to be buried” , and refers to the city’s destruction by directly God. Ai, on the other hand, is razed by Joseph and totally destroyed, under God’s command. Ai in Hebrew is depicted as “a heap of ruins”. Both ai and gomorrah have similar meanings in the context of divine destruction, yet in one the destruction is only abstractly accomplished by God. I am attempting to critique Bork’s title by saying that if man is to destroy himself, it won’t be through sin and the directly God-like acts, but through action legitimized by the divine. There’s a lot more analysis that could be drawn from this juxtaposition, but I just think it is neat to leave as a point of reflection.

http://www.ancientsandals.com/overviews/ai.htm

http://www4.jrf.org/showdt&rid=285&pid=4

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THE EPIC AS NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY, NATIONAL CONQUEST: How Hero redefines the rules of the Chinese film industry

•May 17, 2008 • Leave a Comment

In a 2002 interview, Chinese director Zhang Yimou claimed that he “knew little” about the West’s interests in movies; he stated that his mastery of English was limited compared to Ang Lee’s (Taiwanese director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Continuing, he mentions that he attempts to access the broad Chinese market, as opposed to a global market.

It is perhaps no coincidence that 2002 marked the domestic release of the second film in a lineage of popular films characterizing the advent of international popular Chinese cinema. Epic films characterize these popular films: utilizing massive budgets, they utilize Western techniques to make beautiful movies combining complex editing, thoughtful computer generated effects, and depicting rich worlds of martial arts as a result. While Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger marks the beginning of the genre’s popularity, Zhang Yimou’s Hero takes the genre to a new level. The movie can be said to represent the puzzling state of the Chinese film industry: encapsulating the cultural norms and political ideology of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but also showing signs of cultural influence and even domination by the international market. Roughly corresponding to the national influences and cultural hegemony implied within Hero is the state involvement with the movie’s production, and the world market’s attempts to distribute the work respectively. Synthesized from these two forces is an interpretation of the politics of China’s film industry and state interaction.

What is popular art in China, and is it classified by the same “high and low” binary pair that characterizes Western art under traditional artistic critique? Channeling Cowen, as well as Grant & Wood, high and low classifications are distinctly shaped by the external environment of the works, and how they perceive the work. That is to say, what could be popular to the point of kitschy “low” ubiquity in 2007 could be a cult classic imbued with a large avant garde “high” art base in a few decades¹. For the sake of simplicity, the political economy of the popular film market will be interpreted solely through Cowen’s praise of the capitalist status quo. It is not without a sense of irony that one finds such a system applicable to the ambiguously Socialist PRC. Popular art, in Cowen’s scope, is powered by financing.

Financing for Hero is unprecedented, both in amount and source. The film cost $31 million US dollars, principally funded through two state-run enterprises based in China (Beijing New Picture Film Company) and Hong Kong (Elite Group Enterprises)². Everything from the actors (notably Maggie Cheung, and Jet Li—both internationally acclaimed stars) to the production (provided by the Hong Kong Society of Cinemotographers) to the extras (members of the People’s Liberation Army) and locales (Tian’anmen Square most notably) were Chinese in nationality. The cultural significance of the story is preserved in the movie (which is in itself an adaptation of an ancient story told by Sima Qian, the grand historian of the Han Dynasty). Furthermore, when the cultural myth is altered, it is for the sake of arriving at a PRC-controlled political message. The ominous tyranny of Emperor Qin is deflected for the sake of advocating unity behind an absolutist regime; ostensibly a message compelling Taiwan to peacefully return to China’s rule. In this sense, the reigns of finance, production, direction, and quality control for the movie were in the hands of Chinese people.

On the subject of quality control, particularly censorship, the Chinese state and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have rigid control. It is informative, if not essential, to reflect upon Zhang Yimou’s previous films to realize how influential the CCP/PRC institution is upon the trends in popular film in China. Ten years previous to Hero, Zhang Yimou was a filmmaker in exile, rebelling against the tyrannical rule of the Deng Xiaoping-led gerantocracy, the politicians responsible for the 1989 Tian’anmen Square crackdown. In the early 90’s, with the help of Taiwanese capital, he produced “high” artistic masterpieces such as Ju Dou and To Live, ambitious films depicting the seamy side of modern China. The films were banned in the PRC, an event which Taniguchi calls a “Catch-22.” Whereas Zhang was allowed to procure foreign capital to produce movies, as well as exhibit them at international festivals, yet “any approval by Euroamerican critics and audiences is seen as evidence that he [had] sold out to an Orientalist/masculine gaze.”³ Hero is the reconciliation of these problems for Zhang, at the cost of losing his unique message. While the state may have control of the changes of film at this level, to compare Hero with To Live one notices a loss of dynamism of the subtextual message in the film. What was an ambigious message, forcing audience members to evaluate for themselves the hardships of the PRC during the Great Leap Forward, has become a very blatant message, bordering on what could be defined as propaganda. With Hero, it is obvious where the controls lie.

Yet, there are signs that the state does not control most of the trends in art. Comparing the simple, operatic Red Detachment of Women (1960) with the expensive, elaborate Hero reveals that even filmmaking for the purpose of propaganda has taken a market-influenced turn. Economically, this makes complete sense: between 1960 and 2002 the PRC gave up the planned market for the free market.

As a result, capital-intensive films in China are becoming far more numerous than in the past. Crouching Tiger redefined the rules of financing for East Asian film making, singlehandedly popularizing the epic movie in China. Following in this tradition have been Zhang’s work: Hero, House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower. Chinese epics operate in the same manner that other capital-intensive works (e.g. the Western epic The Lord of the Rings), by generating huge profits not only domestically (via Hong Kong), but abroad as well. Capital intensity is important for the production of these works because of their epic scale: they demand comparatively larger budgets for special effects. By virtue of the high production values these works gain popularity: common to the human experience is the need for aesthetics—rich costumes, landscapes, and correography transcend borders fluidly, whereas morality requires translation for other cultures to grasp the concepts conveyed.

In this sense imperialism occurs in the contemporary Chinese film industry not only through who consumes the product, but also through the influences foreign movie industries have had upon the Chinese industry. China is a country where cultural development occurs beyond what the state sanctions, through the “sixth generation” DVR camcorder guerrilla filmmakers, as well as the black market for infringed high-budget US and EU films. Through the flooding of Chinese markets with pirated movies from the US during the middle of economic reforms, a new standard for film excellence has been established. National filmmakers have found the artistic technology that the West has employed to be ideal for reinterpreting the mythical stories of martial arts derring-do. Reliance upon computer generated effects has led to beautiful films attractive to the distinguishing eye of the international consumer, giving rise to a thriving demand for distribution rights among multinational media corporations. Public interpretation varies from region to region on this model, however, because translation of goods (particularly due to the ambiguities of Chinese culture and language) can obscure the true message of the film. To this end, Westernization of Eastern products can occur through financing to accommodate to the global citizen, and it is conceivable that the creation of markets abroad give incentives for Chinese filmmakers to make a more universalistic product to make regionalization far easier. Popular movie’s reliance upon new special effects may also be a hallmark of cultural imperialism. With this in mind, perhaps it is conceivable that Hero is not a unique work, but borrows from Western film in constructing an efficient, marketable aesthetic.

Cultural domination does not truly occur in Chinese film. It certainly shapes the demands of the consumer base in China via the on-going infringement crisis, and it defines how high-quality effects are effective in giving an international appeal to movies, but it does not serve to compromise the core values behind Hero, or any of the epic movies. Cowen seems to be right in this instance: a free market has allowed China to undergo an artistic revolution of sorts. While the cost for Zhang Yimou might come in the form of less flexibility in his message, his hard work has allowed for the popular film industry to gain a foothold in the world market. Meanwhile, a new generation of rebellious artists are already blossoming. It is advisable that the Chinese state continues to fund popular art in order to continue to espouse values important for the Chinese people, as well as messages essential to communicate internationally to help people understand the concept of China, as an expression of “soft power”. Meanwhile, the market must remain free: a crackdown akin to the Tian’anmen Square Crisis could lead to the popular art to be squelched. Such is the inherent danger with state-controlled media: it requires a soft touch to avoid innovative anemia, yet micromanagement to avoid the spread of dangerous ideas.

Hero is an important work to identify the state of film in Hu Jintao’s China. The PRC/CCP construct controls the message propogated by these new epic films, as well as funds them. Cultural imperialism occurs in influencing the style of the movie, and competition of foreign big budget movies in the domestic underground market has led to the rise of the big budget Chinese epic. In the midst of this development, the advisable position for China

[0] You may notice a large majority of my works are not available at the Knight Library. These are generally history and political science books from various classes I have taken in the past. In particular, there seemed to be few books in the library directly about China’s film industry; the pair that explicitly covered this subject (e.g. Wan Jihong’s M.A. thesis) were checked out a considerable amount of time before the assignment appeared on blackboard. Hence, I have decided to simply base my conclusions on values on the messages found within the movies I have viewed, and comment upon the changes on the film industry as an intersection between (A) the econ/social/political environment they were produced in and (B) the history of the actual film industry in terms of artistic movements (e.g. first generation vs. fourth generation movies in message). To this degree, my analysis is a bit of an socio/anthro look (ala Weber) than straightforward than cut-and-dried political economy.

It’s also notable that my focus upon Hero is to really show the bizarre functions of state moralizing/”soft power” in the world.

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Comparing Trade Unions in Britain and the US

•May 17, 2008 • Leave a Comment

Joseph Conrad wrote not more than half a decade ago that “the air of the New World seems favorable to the art of declamation”¹. Such a quote is suitable for describing the nation in light of events most disingenuous to the sort labor represented by our Trade Union Congress. It is especially peculiar given opposite circumstances exist domestically. What, could one suppose, be the conditions and how did they manifest? Could our TUC have anything to learn from American labor, or are my previous statements regarding our immutable position substantiated?

First, it is appropriate to comment upon the constituents of this study: who exactly did our TUC representatives survey, and why could such a population interviewed by the gazetteer be considered a diverse opinion, accurately portraying labor in the US? At the American Federation of Labor headquarters, our man was able to get the opinion of an official not only in the Federation, but was referred to an ex-member of the Knights of Labor. Additionally, we were able to contact a prominent state representative from New England, and a circuit court judge specializing in public law. Finally, the study concluded with statements prepared by a journeyman printer and a first generation Polish foundry worker. Naturally, such a melting pot (exemplary of the United States) represents a visage of labor politics in the country with a dichotomous heterogeneity that covers all arguments: AFL and Knights of Labor’; legislative and judicial; unskilled and skilled respectively. Distilling these broad issues into a consensus is a difficult task, but quite possible if one remembers the goals at hand. Our brave volunteers sojourned forth with the intention of finding the agenda of each of the three, concentrating on explaining whether the particular groups were disenfranchised.

Arriving at the AFL office, the disparate situation became abundantly clear. As the unrivaled dominant union organization in the United States, it has unmatched resources capable of affecting politics as a boon to workers everywhere. Instead of achieving this, however, the organization remains entrenched in a philosophy of exclusion. The AFL is undoubtedly run by plutocrats for the benefit of the well-to-do skilled labors, a so-called “labor aristocracy”². Lack of advocacy for broad benefits for laborers and politicization in regard to pro-labor legislation can be attributed to the tradition of voluntarism in the country, so claims master Cigarmaker Adolph Strasser. The people want to approach the crisis of labor representation without relying upon the state, using practicality as a pretense to abandon sweeping reform³. “You can’t pass an eight hour day without changing the Constitution,” claims Strasser, “I am opposed to wasting our time declaring for legislation being enacted for a time after we are all dead.”⁴.

Formerly rivaling the AFL were the Knights of Labor, a group much less driven by realpolitik, and more disposed to engage in basic strategies political in nature. In opposition to the goals of the AFL, the Knights wanted nothing short of the toppling of corporate tyranny for the sake of legislative reform⁵. Contravening the AFL’s current plan of action, the Knights were determined to utilize the ballot in order to achieve their goals, currying the favor of local politicians to elect pro-labor officials. Unfortunately, this tactic proved to have an effectiveness tempered by judicial action. Today, the Knights have disassociated. This was explained to our visiting scholars by the despondent former member: reform by legislation in this manner had died, nullified by the despotic supreme court justices. Finally, it is notable to note that this was the time that the inclusive mobilization of the Knights disintegrated into the AFL, an organization focused upon craft unionists under the auspices of Strasser and ilk⁶.

The state representative was most agreeable with the tenets of the labor cause. It would seem that he constituted an example of the arduous work done by the Knights in voicing their pro-labor values. Passing legislation that allowed collective action was in the best interest of the man, as the public masses had demonstrated. His colleagues in the the House and Senate agreed congenially, and it does not require a keen eye to detect the amount of statutes passed within the previous twenty years alone that have ensured trade union rights⁷. Radical reform fit the demands of popular interest, and as the legislator demonstrated, attempted to pass bills in order to change the system-at-large.

Meeting with the judge provided a foil to the debate, suitable for understanding the harsh reality of the final outcome of legislation in recent past. Rather than being motivated by the demands of the voting public, judges as per the one interviewed preferred to act in line with the more broad sentiments of the time: pursuing a Liberal agenda kind on business for the sake of national economic interests. Class consciousness at this time was seen as merely an irritant to the larger public interests of the country. Thus, the judges voted in such a way to favor big business, in order to make them more competitive in what appears to be an intensifying set of international rivalries: certainly, the little men could swallow a bitter pill for the sake of the whole of the nation. Operating under this view of American Exceptionalism, judges such as the noted William H Taft struck down all legislation with impunity, ending all immediate hopes for allowing basic labor representation and collective action⁸. Therefore, it can be concluded for the moment that this was the integral branch of US government that ensured the disenfranchisement of labor

Interviewing the journeyman printer allowed for a bit of hope despite apprehension about the state of affairs in the face of continual court losses. With the help of the AFL, skilled laborers such as he could find solace in his representation, even if it remains an informal, illegal one at the moment. Strong evidence exists that beyond the courts and capitol, workers affiliated with the AFL are slowly gaining ground. Workers must rely on cutting deals with employers in this informal arena, but one can only hope that with enough practice this de facto set of operating norms become codified⁹.

In contrast is the immigrant worker, forced to the drudgery of the steel foundry. Without representation, due to his lowly status and lack of resources, this population is truly alienated. The state exists to accommodate all, and with the death of the Knights of Labor, these lower class workers have nowhere to turn. Market-based solutions rarely offer equal opportunity, and this is no exception, as many of these downtrodden workers can hardly find the money to pay for lodgings, let alone have the surplus necessary to be seated at the bargaining table. My former Knight colleague agrees with my assessment, adding that it has the potential of creating a labor culture unhealthy for America, where a class of men exist only to be as interchangeable as the parts running the dynamos.

Directly compared with Britain, it is difficult to believe that both countries follow similar political traditions. As mentioned before, the key matter seems to be with the American courts: as opposed to the immortal House of Lords in England, the judicial system of the USA casts a shadow upon the legislative system: the former is able to simply strike down whatever bills are drafter in the latter with the simple utterance of “unconstitutional”¹⁰. Compare the words of Taft (as mentioned previously) with the final result of the Taff Vale court case. While courts killed all laws that attempted to be passed, labor gained the boon of the TUC’s Trades Disputes Bill just four years ago. Furthermore, the direct result of the case was the creation of politicized labor movements—specifically, the Labor Representation Committee. A formal party was created, the “Great Liberal Party”¹¹. When one contrasts the lack of successes found by the Knights in attempting to form parties, even at the basic level of supporting liberal candidates who voiced their sympathy with labor, the disparity between our two nations is startling. An example of this is in the scope of industry standards towards workplace regulations. Britain is aplomb with factory inspectors, boasting the praise of critics as acerbic as Karl Marx himself, and as a whole is far for hospitable towards the common laborers¹².

Circumstances are different between our two countries. Working men across Britain today are winning a battle in the face of stubborn feudal lords, whereas our compatriots in the USA are entrenched, forced to rely on market solutions to find flexibility with their employers. This signifies a country laden with workshops inhospitable towards the unskilled, the poor, the unaffiliated. Such inequality is not to blame on inaction, rather it is explained by mostly upon the structural nature of politics in America. The judicial system in the US is strong enough to fend off a legislature frothing with a popular mandate to lift up the downtrodden worker. Yet, this drive in itself is a function of our times, where laissez-faire economics are the industry norm, and the primary goal of governments is to ensure the economic security of its constituents (that is to say, its most powerful constituents). While one may be inclined to favor our circumstances in the pursuit of an system ideal to the cause of labor, this is not completely true. The US may be lacking in facility in regards to the entirety of the working poor, but the skilled are still able to find solace with representation by the AFL, who can act in the marketplace in the place of the political arena. Defining “better representation” as more equal one will assuredly find our environment to be more suitable.

Truly, the US in the scope of labor rights is as Joseph Conrad claims, a place of bombastic speeches appealing to the humanitarians in the populace, yet consisting of specious content.

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THE FUEL CELL YUANFEN: Hydrogen fuel cell research policy in China and US, and its implications on relations

•May 17, 2008 • Leave a Comment

「百世修来同船渡，千载修得共枕眠」 Literally: “it takes hundreds of reincarnations to bring two persons to ride on the same boat; it takes a thousand eons to bring two persons to share the same pillow “¹

The quote above is a proverb regarding relationships commonly spoken in Chinese. The significance of such a statement is usually in the context of marital affairs: confessing that maintaining love requires devotion in addition to the initial attraction, even to the point of demanding a bit of fate to reach a favorable outcome. Yuanfen is the term used to describe such determinism, garnering a Buddhist sense of actions taken in previous lives affecting the current life. In a sense, it resembles the definition behind Jung’s synchronicity, to the extent that the happenstance can be interpreted as a function of society’s beliefs². If one can use such a quotation to analyze the way in which society acts, it passes that yuanfen may also apply to relations at an international level.

This sense of determined suitability in the scope of international relations applies to the relationship between the US and People’s Republic of China. With the PRC encouraging inward foreign direct investment and otherwise attempting to cultivate an environment suitable for the free market, it can be seen as a nation on a development trajectory synchronized with the economic priorities of the US. Whether this economic vector has any correlation on the political path the country takes remains to be seen, and critics remain highly speculative of the potential for democratization in the region. In any case, the relationship is decidedly improving in comparison to the outright hostility witnessed between the two countries during Mao’s rule. At present, there are many opportunities for the countries to work together economically and even politically, and such relations continue to be fostered as the nature of the marketplace transforms for both countries from one based upon tangible products and manufacturing to one of intangible commodities and intellectual property. In particular is the issue of research and development, an area responsible for the creation of a profound number of goods.

Beyond the notion of how science and technology as a commodity is becoming a key change within the global economy, what other articulations of change within the two countries’ environment manifest the seeds of synchronized policy? One may find the answer by examining the basic requirements for economic development. Conspicuous among the preconditions is the necessity for an energy industry, fostered by appropriate energy policy, sufficient to supply a burgeoning middle class. In this respect interests tend to manifest commonality: both are largely dependent on petroleum originating from OPEC countries. Similar policies appear between both countries reaching for energy autarchy and focusing on the potentiality of alternative fuels. Hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) technology is included in this list of next generation energy solutions, and both countries pursue feasible implementation of such modes for the sake of, in addition to other goals, economic independence.

To determine how fuel cell research impacts the Sino-American relationship, it is first necessary to scrutinize the actors, their policies, and their relationships through a series of questions: What is the hydrogen fuel cell; what is the nominal energy policy of China and the US; how is energy research generally conducted? What is the energy policy of the US and China? What is the state of IR for the US-China relationship, and what is the condition of HFC R&D as a whole? With all the above questions interpreted, the HFC R&D between US and China illustrate their impact upon world affairs.

ACTOR: THE HYDROGEN FUEL CELL

Fundamentally speaking, the hydrogen fuel cell operates as a technology designed to curb dependency and otherwise stave off the ills that result from the incumbent energy production devices, such as environmental degradation. The fuel cell is ideal in this scope in its namesake: HFCs relies on hydrogen (H₂) as the main reactant in the energy conversion process, rather than petroleum products, as is the case with internal combustion engines (ICEs). Electrochemical energy conversion for HFCs also requires an electrolyte in addition to fuel and an oxidizer. What materials comprise an electrolyte is a major factor determining one type of HFC from another (if not the very name of the fuel cell), from the proton exchange membrane fuel cell’s (PEMFC) ionomer membrane to the ceramic oxide electrolyte of the solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC). As stated, such electrolytic differences are quite diverse, creating a heterogeneous environment in the development of the HFC. However, logical circumstances have allowed certain HFC designs to be more popular for certain applications that, in conjunction with the aforementioned diverse set of designs, displays a certain balance of pros and cons in regards to specific developments in HFC technology. It is prudent to survey the possible suitability and “character” of the more attractive fuel cell designs before any conclusions can be made in respect to the aggregate essence of the HFC.

For the purposes of this essay, the IEA’s Prospects for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells is a key source to evaluate the prospects of each of the applicable fuel cell designs. Reliance on such a source is contingent on the OECD’s transnational status and how such origination may mitigate (to a reasonable degree) any particular bias one nation may have upon one design over another.

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells at present seem to be the most suitable candidate for the engine of any potential fuel cell vehicles, and the fuel cell remains an option for stationary implementation. PEMFCs have the potential of becoming widely available for reasonable prices while at the same time delivering quick power, in great enough supply (relative to the fuel cell’s weight), and at a reasonable operating temperature (80°C). According to the 2005 IEA study, the cost for such a fuel cell relative to its power output is USD 1800/kW, with the majority of the share devoted towards components (electrolytic materials) that remain inefficiently manufactured due to the current small-scale production³. The membrane itself also yields a certain measure of inefficiency due to an unfocused market. For example, the DuPont Nafion membranes are more than forty years old and have changed very little; research into the field of materials science will yield economical results, by most figures a factor 10-20 cost reduction⁴. Power efficiency and durability of the PEMFC also follow this vector. Currently for HFC mass transit vehicles, power density losses are projected to be at least halved in the near future, whereas expected advances in materials science will hopefully double the current life of the PEMFC (about 2,200 hours)⁵. Accompanying such optimistic trends are persistent deficiencies such as a fuel cell operating at a decidedly low temperature. Unlike high temperature fuel cells, low temperature cells require precious metals for catalysts, forcing high material costs. These catalysts are subject to carbon monoxide (CO) “poisoning”, causing the cell structure to disintegrate. Unlike certain fuel cells (e.g. molten carbonate fuel cells), PEMFCs may be fueled solely by hydrogen. The opportunity costs of this engine being run exclusively on a single fuel may harm any attempts to create a fuel cell economy able to reconcile the current fossil fuel-based system. In total, PEMFCs display a great deal of potential given suitable marketplaces and production systems.

The more stationary fuel cell designs, in particular molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFCs), are named such due to their intended application as large-scale energy producers. Rather than using a polymer electrolyte membrane as per the PEMFC, MCFCs utilize a molten carbonate ensconced in a ceramic matrix. Carbonate fuel cells operate at temperatures hotter than 650°C and are usually fueled by natural gas, coal, or some other hydrocarbon. Molten carbonate cells can utilize this diverse selection of fuels via the direct internal reforming process within the cell, which transforms more complex hydrocarbons into hydrogen. Such a process conserves modest amounts of fuel, up to 20% by some accounts⁶. Unlike the proton exchange membrane fuel cell, MCFCs depend on a catalyst that is not constituted with precious metals, making material costs significantly cheaper. Furthermore, duration estimates for stationary fuel cells are far longer; the latest Siemens-Westinghouse unit operated for approximately 20,000 hours. The operating efficiency and qualified power figures far outpace the developments of PEMFC designs, ranging from 60 to 90% for the former and up to 100MW for the latter. Thermodynamically efficient, MCFCs can generate combined heat and power, yielding local benefits, provided the power plants could utilize the cogeneration. Costs relative to energy production, however, are quite high. The 20-ton, 250kW MTU Friedrichshafen HotModule MCFC costs USD 13,000/kW; like the PEMFC, however, the MCFC has the potential to be reduced to a reasonable 1,650/kW with mass production⁷.

The main downside for the MCFC is in its lack of durability at the smaller level: while estimates for potential duration previously stated are quite high, the duration of high temperature fuel cells remains short, deteriorated by the high operating temperatures and corrosive electrolyte. Precious metals may not be necessary for the catalyst for MCFCs, but high quality materials are essential for a long lifespan for the cell’s components⁸.

In the manner described previously, this type of fuel cell fails. Paradoxically, it is not feasible for small regional energy production due to the probable outlandish initial costs, yet it harbors benefits that would be of great significance to a locality (cogeneration in particular); it does not require a high cost catalyst, yet its components must be constructed of high-quality materials capable of withstanding the high operating temperature. All these factors can be combined to create an image similar to that of PEMFCs (that with further R&D into materials science, efficiency will be boosted; with mass-production, costs will be cut). Yet, the two types of fuel cells remain distinctively suited towards particular implementation. PEMFCs are cast as versatile, cheap HFCs capable of powering both vehicles and as a stationary electrolyzer; MCFCs appear as the workhorse stationary power plants, able to adapt to the current energy environment without relying on infrastructural overhaul. Both visions give the impression that the driving force for determining the shape and form of HFC implementation is R&D, and the main challenge for the technology to surmount is capacity for it to be implemented without inducing too great transition costs⁹.

ACTOR: CHINA ENERGY POLICY

To examine China’s stance towards energy production and management, it is necessary to scrutinize one particular piece of work. In 2004, the Development Research Center of China’s State Council concluded the National Energy Strategy and Policy (NESP) Report consisting of research from the Center for Energy Environment and Climate Change Research based in the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, led by its director, Xu Huaqing. The aims of this report are to expose the trends of energy usage and to find the necessary measures to allow the demands to be met without compromising economic expansion¹⁰.

Ergo, the nature of energy policy in China is intrinsically tied to the theory behind developmental politics. Economic growth in the country has ranged from Deng’s ascension following the death of Mao (1976) to the high level of annual GDP growth (10.7% between Q3 2005 to Q3 2006¹¹) China displays today. Such growth comes at a price, and according to the May 2005 document produced for China Sustainable Energy Program (CSEP) by researchers from the China Group of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, “to quadruple GDP while only doubling energy between 2000 and 2020, the energy elasticity of GDP (the ration of growth in energy use to growth of GDP) will have to reverse its current trend and remain below China’s average of the past two decades [1].”¹² Energy use by far outpaces GDP in this respect, and the 2005 CSEP report charges the PRC with relying on an obsolete polity in order to resist possible crisis. The impetus for change in CSEP’s mind becomes obvious: through the tools of federal funding, advocacy and regulation, reformers envision a reconceptualized Ministry of Energy.

What exactly needs retooling by the CSEP’s reckoning? In terms of the economic concerns of the major oil producers, Sinopec and CNPC, are exclusively state-owned enterprises. Like the state-owned enterprises that were reformed, liquidated, or otherwise changed through reforms occurring in the 80’s and 90’s, the companies struggle with a predictable host of problems. Both companies demand deregulation and laissez faire solutions while at the same time soliciting federal investments to maintain international competition. According to the CSEP report, solutions to conundrums such as this are attainable through Ministry reform in the three aforementioned areas [2]. Notable goals for reform include expanding R&D relative to the federal energy investments, revamping regulations in terms of implementation and incentives, and funding education related to alternative energy. CSEP generally advocates for utilization of the market to reinforce current policies: for instance, the NPC’s Energy Conservation Law of 1997 relies on a broad stance towards energy issues but does not specify techniques necessary to induce implementation—CSEP (via Brav, 2004) suggests that tax reductions, subsidies, and consistent financial punishments could help ensure adherence and conformity¹³.

Through examining the work of the NESP, in conjunction with the US-based analysis of it manifest in the CSEP report China’s muddled energy issues become apparent. Whereas the current conditions are deleterious in enforcing actual legislation, the future of energy policies in China and the US are uncertain. Various changes may alleviate these problems, but the large scale quandaries still apply to China, in particular, the dependence on foreign fuels along with the environmental degradation that transpires.

ACTOR: US ENERGY POLICY

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 was the latest measure taken to address the admitted “growing energy problems” of the US. In July 28, 2005, Senator Ron Wyden (D-ORE) concluded his presentation to the conference committee of the Act with the following:

…The most patriotic thing this Congress could have done…was to write an energy bill that did three specific things: reduce our dependence on foreign oil, lower gasoline prices for working families and businesses, and end the energy subsidy smorgasbord that has offered these heaping helpings of taxpayer dollars to the energy industry for decades. I am sad to say…that the final product does not accomplish any of those three things¹⁴.

Such a poignantly bitter statement by the senator has relevance to the contemporary energy policy. As per the words of Senator Wyden, energy policy in the US as a whole seems to be striving to accomplish the threefold goal of energy autarchy, reasonable pricing for consumers, and a reasonable modicum of regulation in the face of rampant cronyism. Thereby, it is sensible to examine each facet comprising the goals and possible obstacles for the policies epitomized by the Energy Policy Act.

In the realm of pursuing energy autarchy, the options exercised within the bill include (A) spending authorization for research into alternative energies (especially in regard to nuclear energy), (B) consumer incentives (e.g. tax credit), and (C) promotion of infrastructural efficiency (namely the increase in usage of bio fuel in gasoline and advocating the use of alternative fuels for government fleet vehicles). Reinforcing these three tools is the Set America Free Act (Sec 1423), a broad declaration forsaking OPEC-borne oil dependency for regional free trade areas (i.e. Canada and Mexico) for supply. To this degree the US utilizes fiscal incentives to aid the pursuit of energy independence. Defined specifically as the importation of fossil fuels from OPEC member states, the Act attempts to modify the relationship by cutting down on the level of imports, even to the point of shifting energy production to domestic industries.

Reasonable pricing is pursued in the Act by requiring the secretary of HUD to report to congress to discuss how to lower costs of efficient utilities (Sec. 154), reward consumers who purchase hybrid vehicles (Sec 712) and maintain an energy efficient home (Sec 1333, 1335); additional benefits are bestowed through a wide range of consumer protection regulation (Sec 1281 – Sec 1290). Further measures include rather abstract requirements such as the general advocacy for research of the ill effects to public health of petrochemical production (Sec 1404). In this manner the consumer incentives resemble research into alternative energies: the wording of the Energy Policy Act tends to be unclear about the implementation of legislation, even as it assigns deadlines for over-generalized goals. Clearly fiscal incentives successfully ensure compliance across the consumer-producer board; the problem is not with fundamental ideas, but how the act goes about implementing and enforcing legislation.

Beyond the basic optimistic tools of the act (albeit tainted by naivety towards the implementation and enforcement of legislation) lies a darker nature. Investigations into this side of the policy begin in a July 2005 report issued by the CBO, in which the agency makes it abundantly clear that the private sector mandates in the legislation would breach the threshold specified by Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995¹⁵. What does such a breach mean, even when legislation commonly gets passed despite it? Besides reinforcing the belief that the act is merely for show (after all, how can implementation occur without suitable appropriations), it can also be seen as symptomatic of a broad policy stance on fiscal policy that the Bush administration takes; unfunded mandates run the gamut—not simply isolated to the field of energy policy but in education as well (i.e. No Child Left Behind). Finally, some analysts, particularly from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, tend to see the act as one gigantic pork barrel policy, albeit diffused to multiple industries within energy production, most notably nuclear energy¹⁶.

In total, if one is to surmise that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 can be representative of US energy policy as of late, it is conceivable that legislation is far more complex than the nominal goals of the US. The Act explicitly advocates energy autarchy, stable, feasible pricing for consumers and businesses alike, and an overall gain in efficiency by the energy structure as a whole. Yet, one cannot help but wonder how much influence large energy interests had upon the legislators, and it is difficult to find a great deal of realistic expectations in the Act.

ISSUE: CHINA AND HFC

What could be the overall character of China’s encounter with the HFC given the amount of investment into energy policy R&D? The natural response for China, considering that energy use far outpaced GDP growth, would be to express interest in alternative energy sources as a whole. A look at the Tenth Fifth Year Plan reveals some concern devoted towards the development of alternative energy sources and the accompanying methods of cultivating energy efficiency. In 2001, the NPC pledged 1.2 percent of the GDP towards environmental protection spending, and 106 million USD alone to battery powered, hybrid and HFC engine R&D¹⁷. Could this compulsion to seek alternative energy across the board generate specific concern about the HFC?

Decidedly, such environmental issues in the country have manifested into concern for HFCs especially for fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) since the 90’s when fuel cell research first began. An example of the kind of research at the time is Fuyuan Century Fuel Cell, producers of the first 750W PEMFC in China¹⁸. Development of FCVs is not restricted to Fuyuan or any other Chinese institution, but through a broad range of sites [3]. In order to address research at a nationwide level, one must look at the very configuration of them, particularly in so-called science and technology industrial parks.

In the most concise sense, the actual structure of research in China can be seen as a slightly diffused technopole-based national program. That is, enterprises utilize local knowledge and scientific labor, even if the knowledge is utilized elsewhere. Science and technology industrial parks (STIPs) in China synthesize loosely on this idea, creating three different formations: transnational satellite platforms, district hub and spokes, and local innovation districts. Each respective model is a nodal explanation of economics at a “Neo-Marshallian” level. The first represents a foreign firm operating with little or no local university participation, acting merely as a peripheral supplier run by park authorities or companies. District hubs and spokes, on the other hand, have a “…surrounding region [of] spoke supplier firms, with mixed local and transnational corporate activity, [and] some university connections through transportation lines for imported high skill labor.” Finally, local innovation districts are areas that have universities and other institutions, notably R&D intensive, including any research-intensive company and firms of scale¹⁹. Diffusion of such an R&D network is based primarily on geography, but natural inequities are latent in this system. According to Walcott they can have the same effects as per the Kuznets’ Curve, even to the point of being symptomatic of the extremities of the equation²⁰. For such distribution inequalities, the challenges loom large: China must concentrate on system-wide reform in order to ensure that smaller STIPs can find their particular niche in the market, and STIPs must pool their resources in order to secure enough capital to begin R&D work.

Returning to the issue of FCV development, the most applicable development in the country has certainly been the demonstration and augmentation of the fuel cell bus. Practicality abounds in the very nature of mass transit in China; currently, urban areas suffer from gridlock as the growing middle class takes to the road. Exhaust from cars in this stop-and-go environment can overwhelm the local environment. The FCV tailored towards mass transit is a solution that can reconcile both problems, eliminating extraneous vehicles and at the same time operating with minimal consequences. Currently, the bus project has planned the duration of the operation from 2003 to 2008 in coordination with the Global Environment Facility and the United Nations Development Program. With a budget of approximately 32 USD and a fleet of 12 buses in Shanghai and Beijing, the program is only recently being further developed. In April 2004, DaimlerChrysler won a contract to produce three O530 Citaro buses for use in Beijing Q3 2005. Fuel stations for these buses are currently being constructed. Eventually they will be developed from compressed hydrogen into on-the-fly electrolyzed fuel hydrogen parks. Ultimately the buses will run on industrial waste gas (e.g. carbon monoxide). As of 2005, the planning of “phase II’ of the fuel cell bus program is beginning. Plans are to encourage further hybridization of HFC and conventional ICE technologies, in addition to expanding the bus services to Shanghai and other metropolitan areas. The goal is to eventually allow local producers to work with multinational corporations, such as GM, in order to lower prices and accommodate the business to local demands.

What could possibly be said about the experiences that have occurred as China has developed a legitimate FCV on the mainland? The environment for this ongoing trial is one of little historical precedence, yet one of enormous change. For example, between 2002 and 2005, three generations of fuel cell buses were produced by Tongji and Tsinghua Universities, spanning a maximum power output of 50kW (50, 60, and 100kW respectively). The maximum output was greater than the total output of the first FCV a decade earlier by a factor of 67! Such development of FCV buses in Beijing is a function of the economic geography in terms of STIPs: Beijing, an R&D power, was a candidate for such a program due to technopole allocation of intellectual resources. Inequalities will probably occur in the implementation of this sort of new technology, reflecting the truth behind tech diffusion—it is not equitable, rather, it trickles down. Furthermore, the issue is of interest in light of the general shape of Chinese energy policy. Implementation in Beijing alone seems fairly smooth and extraordinarily rapid, yet enacting policy moves slowly. Perhaps the difficulties encountered in creating feasible policies are not contiguous with the prospects of enacting new policies through market interaction. If so, the modest success of HFC buses in Beijing represent yet another example of demands for economic development driving the impetus for technological change.

ISSUE: US AND THE FUEL CELL

Since the earliest curiosity with hydrogen stemming from the 1.2 billion dollar research appropriation pledge in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address and so-called Hydrogen Fuel Initiative²¹, solutions have been relatively predictable compared to those of all alternative energy sources in general: dependency, emissions, and domestic economy [4]. Provided the US has faced a paradoxical struggle with creating energy policy conducive to progressive change, what has the country experienced in regards to technology research? This question requires an examination of the general structure and nature HFC R&D in the US, and an appraisal of the FreeCAR program for an example of the tangible results of such R&D.

An analysis of any R&D must be incontrovertibly based upon appropriations. In the case of fuel cells, the appropriations begin with the October 2006 100 million dollar grant by the DOE to 25 research facilities across the country for use in hydrogen R&D²². A quick glance at the list of recipients reveals a few interesting elements: first, the primary topic in terms of appropriations, catalyst research (by over 10 million dollars over five years), is usually the most expensive part of low temperature fuel cells (about 1000 USD/kW), specifically PEMFCs. Moreover, the funds are allocated to a few major labs: 3M and Los Alamos National Laboratory receive more than double the funds of the other companies and institutions. The latter is known to be involved primarily with security-driven research including nuclear technology, while the former is an MNC that has been the world’s leading manufacturer in membrane-electrode assembly and patron to DOE’s investment into HFCs, consistently reaching R&D goals (as of 2003)²³. Predictably enough, the DOE contracted 3M to deal specifically with catalytic and membrane research, whereas LANL gained research geared towards heuristic problems (i.e. impurities and water transfer). Such a relationship is foreshadowed with the peer review of 2003, “While LANL makes a good partner, I would have liked to see more industry interaction.²⁴” This new relationship implied by the funding is a good example of industry interaction, as though LANL is subcontracting the MEA manufacturing (an area of research in which LANL has had shortcomings) to 3M beyond the exclusive relationship with GM; one of tighter focus, building on LANL’s previous successes in impurity research.²⁵

What is the impact of these two nuggets of information? First of all, the money pushed into catalysts and membranes are most certainly fueling MEA manufacturing specific for the PEMFC. If true, then the government has an official stance favoring PEMFC technology. Beyond this concept, funds directed at MEA construction may also be driven by 3M becoming more efficient at manufacturing the technology, thus reaching commercial realization, even to the point of mass-production. Second, LANL’s contract with the DOE signifies a certain representation of conservatism driving appropriation: LANL has historically been the top DOE institution for most research activities. Such investment could possibly display the persistence of the military driving technological innovation and “spin-off”, since LANL is historically a site used for military R&D. Such an assessment, however, is perhaps a bit of a reach. Most relevant to the discussion is the conclusion regarding the very structure of HFC research: as years pass and specific issues in the technology become clearer, institutions have become more focused in what they research, as exemplified by 3M’s concentration on MEA. While this institution-industry connection is certainly existent, the extent of the association is unknown. Such a relationship is probably founded upon the fact that 3M’s MEA advances are actually a spin off of LANL’s work, fueled by former DOE scientists going private²⁶. Another case may be that the flight away from Los Alamos may be contingent upon conditions external to the actual research: from 2000 to 2004, LANL underwent a management crisis of a magnitude unprecedented to the research community, culminating in the resignation of director Peter Nanos and a transition from the University of California to a limited liability company jointly run by UC, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, and Washington Group International. In the aftermath of this change of management, the lab faced a budget shortfall as it lost not-for-profit status²⁷. Where the money went shows a certain concentration of research geographically, not unlike the Chinese STIP “technopole” nodal system previously mentioned. As a whole, the transition demonstrates an interesting move for R&D from an investment made essentially in large DOE national laboratories into corporations, with research locales gaining focus between particular technologies within HFC R&D, and particular classifications (whether it be basic or applied research).

Policy driven groups, specifically in the form of FreedomCAR, are perceived as a direct attempt by the actors to fulfill goals that might otherwise be impossible with loose collectives of institutions. Coordination at a macro level is essential to realize goals in applied research. FreedomCAR can be viewd as a manifestation of the goals set out in the HFI: it was founded in 2002 in joint cooperation between the secretary of the DOE, GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler with a predictable set of goals: efficiency, cleaner emissions, and independence from foreign oil²⁸. This program offers a centralized method for the analyst to characterize the overall advancements made on fuel cell technology with a multi-year program plan²⁹. Tangible results therefore eschew the precedence set in this paper in that it represents not a milestone set in pursuit of high technology, nor a barometer of such (as per the HFC bus demonstrations do for China), but rather it can represent a milestone in communication between the research institutions (private or public) and Department, as well as between the (otherwise uninformed) populace and government. Rather than representing a technological breakthrough, the EERE’s efforts with FreedomCAR represent a political breakthrough, demonstrating the true merits of introducing a semblance of the management and coordination of politics into S&T.

Ultimately, the contemporary changes occurring in HFC R&D in the US can be seen as an ongoing revolution in coordinating relationships; in the first case between government and research institutions in regards to focusing the research priorities (favoring PEMFCs over MCFCs) as well as between institutions and industries (giving particular locales focused roles between the dichotomy of basic and applied science, as well as manufacturing and troubleshooting [5]); the second case displaying a modification of the role of the DOE, specifically the EERE as not simply the dictator of general energy R&D goals, but as a coordinating force behind research institutions and as a crucial link between the government and the people. Ironically this conclusion conflicts with the earlier statement that painted the Energy Policy Act of 2005 in not-so-dulcet tones, but one must ponder the true causal relationship. Further paradoxes represent the true nature of politics: at times the bodies work well as an auditing force, finding far more efficient methods, yet at other times the actors and institutions are poisoned by politicians’ self-interest at heart, spawning ineffective policies for the sake of manipulating a particular constituency.

RELATIONSHIP: US-CHINA IR

Having developed the actors and issues in the scope of HFC R&D in both China and the US, how are the US and China affected by their respective stances on the topic? Exploration of this theme is best accomplished in a three-stage process: first, through a brief overview of US-PRC relations with focus on the years from Jiang Zemin forward; second, by examining commonalities in the energy research relationship allowing for positive consequences; third, by inversely determining possible contributors to negative research relations.

Relations between China and US can be viewed in two scopes. A long term scope examines the relationship as an upward climb with an initial site at an ambiguous point. Under the auspices of Operation Dixie and Edgar Snow’s journalistic journey into Shaanxi province and his sympathetic retelling of Mao’s struggle, there has been a certain respect between the two sides. Yet, with the Korean War and the creation of the containment policy, the PRC was thrust into a sea of red, perceived as an appendage of the Third International. The PRC wanted nothing to do with the West during the most radical years of Mao’s regime, viewing the liberal nations as reactionary colonial powers for the most part. Through Deng’s moderating policies and market reforms, the Bamboo Curtain was eventually dropped. On the other hand, to use a more focused scope, consider the relations between the US and PRC as a sinusoid based upon the dominant US administration. For example, during Reagan’s years as president, the administration took a hardline stance against China, loudly advocating for Taiwan’s right to sovereign independence; yet George H.W. Bush’s administration heralded a time of rapprochement to an extreme degree, going so far as sending Brent Scowcroft to reassure Deng Xiaoping of the continuance of normal relations immediately following the Tiananmen Square crisis³⁰. Following Tiananmen Square was a condemnation of the state in the global community, invoking change both in the US (causing the issue of human rights to be brought up time and time again, specifically by Rep. Nancy Pelosi) and China (signaling the beginning of the end of the “gerontocracy” as Deng Xiaoping stepped down from his formal positions of power). It was 1993 and Jiang Zemin had ascended to power as President of the PRC (informally through Deng’s approval) while retaining the position of General Secretary of the CCP: the tides were about to change.

The 90’s were characterized in China as another step in the normalization process, thereby improving relations with the US in the process. Steps were taken to turn the PRC into a law-driven, service-oriented regulatory state; they sprung forth from the obstacles presented with the East Asian financial crisis of the mid-90’s, appearing as reforms to the fiscal, administrative approval, market incentive, and AJPG systems. Corruption within the system was reduced to an incredible degree, and as a result the impact on China from the regional recessions was truly modest in comparison to her neighbors. In 2001, China entered the WTO. The following year Hu Jintao became General Secretary, and the fourth and current generation had begun. Following accession and 9/11, relations between the two countries have generally been amicable. A handful of issues continue to invoke conflict however: the Taiwan issue, human rights, and China’s potential role as an challenge to America’s status as global hegemony remain contentious issues bilaterally. Yet, pairing the countries together in a strong, enduring relationship is economic interdependence: during China’s 11^th Five Year Plan (2006-2011), it is expected that annual US FDI into China will reach 100 billion USD per annum³¹. How could this sort of interdependency be modified in the scope of science and technology?

Commonalities between two countries abound in regards to research goals when the same fuel and relatively the same techniques power both countries. As mentioned previously, both countries have the same application goals for alternative energy research. In the purview of Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the National Energy Strategy Policy Report, finding energy autarchy, mitigating environmental problems, and securing innovation in the market through research and development into alternative energies are key tenets. The previous goals exist because the two countries have very similar conditions: both of them are dependent on importing oil from instable OPEC regions, both have a gigantic automobile market, and both tend to implement R&D first and foremost to boost market innovation and thereby increase competitiveness internationally. Between the two countries, both have tended to favor FCV development and the PEMFC, respectively demonstrative by the development of the FreedomCAR and Citaro HFC-powered vehicles, as well as the US’s method of appropriating money in 2006. Both countries have a similar geoeconomic model for S+T sites based upon a modest amount of inequality, allowing the Beijings and Silicon Valleys to sprout out as capitals for domestic tech diffusion. Finally, besides this commonality in geoeconomics, the actual changing relationship between private and public in terms of hydrogen research seem quite similar for the countries: both are attempting to get domestic industries involved with the research; China in the HFC bus program and the US with distribution of appropriations and greater focus on research by end result and application. The by-product is two countries that are changing similarly when encountering HFC research. A portion of these factors may simply be latent (i.e. China’s following of the US’s goals for alternative energy policy is intrinsic to its identity as a highly populated developing country). Some common features are naturally universal (perhaps how each of the countries are in terms of geoeconomics and R&D). In any case, there exist quite a few things in common between the two countries on many levels, and comparative analysis of energy policies leads one to question whether the operative question should be how the relationship is different and what the significance of these differences is instead of merely asking if they are similar.

Differences between the two nations fall into the same categories as listed previously. Some differences in energy policy are contingent on the country’s economic status. China is a developing nation; therefore it has moderate energy intensity but very low per capita energy consumption. If you perceive energy intensity in relation to annual GDP, China is incredibly inefficient. The United States, on the contrary, is a consumer society, thus has relatively low energy intensity (in comparison to GDP per annum) but the world’s highest per capita consumption of energy [6]. With this consumption in mind, you can see why the US sees particular interest in curbing China’s energy consumption via science and technology. Yet this mismatch in energy concerns relative to productivity may provoke hostilities if one country fails to realize the status of the other. Opposition in terms of natural universality for energy policy is the nature of the differing geographies and demographics of the countries. While both the US and China are staggeringly large in landmass, China is a bit more diverse in terms of certain provinces (namely Xinjiang and Tibet autonomous regions) that are not only isolated politically but geographically too, cut-off by gigantic mountain ranges (namely the Kunlun and Himalayan ranges). More so, China is a country of diverse isolated people. For years, even as they were consolidated into a single empire, the Chinese people—Han, Hakka, Hui, Mongols, Manchus, and so on—tended to identify with their ethnicity, kin, and locales. The result is a modest amount of political isolation, but especially unequal conditions between urban and rural regions, to such a degree that it only exacerbates the developmental crises further. The result of the previous factors is possible that implementation of a hydrogen-based economy between the US and China would be far from uniform, and it is certain that attempts by the US to hold China to standards insensitive to these provisos would lead to hostility across borders.

RELATIONSHIP: NATURE OF JOINT RESEARCH

With even greater amounts of knowledge in concerning the matters at hand, it is finally a good time to explore the areas in which China and American research the fuel cell together. Three possible areas exist, conforming to Caroline Wagner’s (The Elusive Partnership: Science and Foreign Policy) views of foreign policy: (1) interpersonal collaboration, (2) team collaboration, and (3) corporate partnerships. Through exploring this triad in a combination of practical and hypothetical scenarios, it is possible to develop of conclusion to the subject at hand³².

Interpersonal collaboration is defined as “conferences, workshops, symposia; laboratory visits; fellowships; databases.” This is obviously the area of highest interaction, as it includes international student cooperation. Between 1988 and 1996 alone, over 5,000 Chinese science and engineer doctorate recipients chose to stay in the US³³. More than sixty percent of all foreign doctoral students in the fields of computer science, engineering or physical sciences over this time period chose to stay in the United States. Those who chose to stay usually went onto postdoctoral studies, although some went into industry employment. Students studying abroad therefore act as a powerful influencing the US and China to cooperate in fuel cell research. Conferences are quite common and broad: www.fuelcells.org lists thirteen conferences between November 2006 and May 2007 in nine different countries³⁴. Finally, databases are infinitely more common and broad in terms of national representation: something as simple as the EERE’s database of fuel cell textbooks spans over eighty titles, most involving international cooperation by students, teachers, and advisors³⁵. In short, the first dimension of Wagner’s chart of characteristics is probably the most pervasive example of US-Chinese joint research into HFC, almost solely on the fact that it can occur even when isolated to one medium (i.e. the Internet) Nevertheless, it is essentially immeasurable due to its informal nature and both lacks the implications to affect foreign policy decisions, and the necessary resources to be geared to specific development goals, as indicated in Wagner’s table.

Team collaboration is defined as “formalized existence[s] [that] are not defined as formal partnerships”, with the pertinent examples being energy efficiency and renewables projects. The main difference between this sort of group and interpersonal collaboration is formality (usually in terms of structure, e.g. a transdisciplinary roster), goals (a motley of mission-oriented and science-focused objectives) and clout in influencing IR decisions. For HFC development, transdisciplinary groups would usually comprise of those behind the planning of the transition and implementation of a hydrogen based economy, if not the infrastructure itself. Such groups exist connected, formally or informally, to institutions or their departments. A good example of Sino-American cooperation in this mode is the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies Hydrogen Pathways program. According to the 2005 report, the program researched the possible implications of transition into a hydrogen-based economy through a diverse population of researchers, instructors, and graduate students representing the disciplines of public policy and management, civil engineering, environmental science, business management, and physical science. Chinese students and faculty participated, including two students from Tongji University³⁶. One may speculate that such students from Tongji University, having worked and learned from American counterparts, may be archetypical of the researchers who conceived the HFC bus program that originated from Tongji. As a whole, mode two can be seen as an effective group of researchers, yet one with only a modest influence on international political affairs.

Corporate partnerships are defined as “highly formal ‘means to an end’ collaborations that are initiated by more than one group and have as a goal access to external resources.” While the usual examples given for partnerships of this scale dwarf all orthodox candidates within the international HFC R&D community, there exist no research programs that fit this sort of magnitude of investment or group participation. What this may represent is the shape of things to come in the future, given more time for the seeds of international cooperation (the likes of which resemble the previous two examples) to grow. There is to be no doubt that global standards regimes over fuel cell vehicles and power plants will appear in the future, but a necessary precondition is that the structure of a hydrogen economy, even on a regional level (e.g. Iceland’s pilot program) need to be further conceptualized.

As a whole, the current level of US-Chinese cooperation seems to be that is largely informal, based in research institutions, loose R&D collectives, conferences, online databases, and smaller transdisciplinary programs. In accordance to the criteria posited by Wagner, there is a long way to go before any global cooperation in coordinating HFC R&D reaches corporate partnership status. One step in the right direction may be to formalize all scientific cooperation in bilateral research; with the loose collectives between US and China being the prototypes for such formalization. Both countries already have a vest interest in each other through economic interdependence, and their goals in pursuing alternative energy—HFC included—are virtually the same. So what is stopping them from pursuing founding solidified institutions? One theory may be that the stumbling block in the path are the skeptics of China’s peaceful intentions (mostly located in the DOD), and vice versa for China. Optimists may say even this roadblock is but a temporary one, for the new global peace theory is not so much one of democratic peace but a tranquility developed through trade liberalization. [7]

CONCLUSION

Having introduced the actors, issues and relationships necessary to understand the nature of US-Chinese, it is wise to discuss the important points to sum the international relations of the two countries in the scope of the development of the hydrogen fuel cell.

First, with information provided about the HFC, it becomes clear than certain HFC designs are more popular than others, even with a broad, diverse set of options. Furthermore, out of the two main potential utilizations of the HFC, one (low temperature PEMFC) has become far more popular for research than the other due to its versatility and that it can be used to power HFC vehicles in the future, and thus best cut dependency on OPEC refined oil imports.

Second, when bestowed with wisdom regarding China’s energy policy, it appears with the NSEP that although the PRC desires to pursue HFC research, it lacks the proper incentives to make policies encouraging alternative fuel sources (HFC included) truly effective in implementation.

Third, provided a survey of US contemporary energy policy epitomized with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, it is obvious that while the US also would like to pursue hydrogen as doggedly as possible, policymaking at the grand scale, explicitly designed to aid alternative energies across the board, can get detracted by lobbying interests with close ties to Washington.

Fourth, with insight into China’s experiences with the fuel cell, one learns that China has already invested quite a bit into HFC, and has made some great developments in terms of mass transit FCVs, although due to the inequity between research institutions (favoring a sort of “technopolarity”) the development of a domestic competitive market for HFC industries may be stunted.

Fifth, remembering the discussion of America’s energy policy dealing with HFC, particularly attributing the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, it is certainly true that state has provided a great deal of funding to HFC R&D. However, these appropriations take a transformative form: working in conjunction with peer-reviews to allow research institutions to specialize in what technologies they generally have success researching, in the format of project-based applied development, additionally cultivating industry-institution (in this case, LANL and 3M) relations to the point of allowing industries to begin to conceptualize their mass-production techniques for certain HFC parts that are prohibitively expensive in relation to power production (although further reinforcing the notion that PEMFC is the dominant HFC technology). Finally, further analysis reveals that the FreeCAR program has important utility in centralizing information regarding the HFC development, allowing for better coordination among domestic institutions and corporations.

Sixth, to scrutinize the Sino-American relationship uncovers a complex relationship, filled with commonalities—in particular being energy policy and the goals behind it. Yet, it is at the same time a volatile relationship, bound for conflict with the differing conditions in rural locales perhaps causing difficulties in creating clear bilateral HFC standards.

Seventh, with a final look at how Chinese and US HFC R&D bodies interact, it becomes clear that the current state of relations is mostly informal, although quite fruitful for technology cooperation diffusion in the example set by UC Davis.

What could possibly be the final word concerning the US-Chinese HFC research relationship given so much information even in synthesizing concluding statements? While the future of the bilateral relationship remains just as unclear as the future of the fuel cell, it is probable that the research relationship is destined to develop on a path corresponding to the development of HFC industry. As informal relationships take root amongst foreign scholars abroad, and exchange programs are built to facilitate international cooperation in research, the formality of the groups will probably increase incrementally. In the scope of international relations as a whole, this sort of creation of a bilateral research relationship only furthers the preceding interdependence between China and the US. In a certain neoliberal school of thought, this can be seen as a development of homeostatic qualities. Placed into the context of global affairs, if one pair of former rivals can cooperate and achieve tranquility in a bilateral relationship harmonizing HFC policy, what is to stop other countries from following suit? If this is the pattern to come, then it can be stated that even a single relationship can act as the catalyst for the creation of a global standardization of HFC technology.

In a sense, the postulated yuanfen relationship between US and China can be seen as fateful due to a certain sense of synchronicity in domestic conditions for both countries. Each respective country desires a set of goals almost identical to the other, especially in terms of autarchy. Both favor a specific technology (PEMFC) and application (FCVs), even when provided with a diverse set of alternatives. [8] And both do not seem to oppose the refinement of a research interdependency to pursue this new technology. If yuanfen can be expressed as a function of a singular nation’s latent beliefs corresponding with another by happenstance or fate, then perhaps there truly is a sort of profundity behind the US-Chinese relationship in the scope of HFC research. Certainly, if the world can prosper from the stability imbued through this harmonious set of circumstances, all the better! After all, there exists another Chinese quote that is just as popular in America:

「同舟共濟³⁷」Literally: “Help one another, for we are all in the same boat.”

[1] This source is my main one in regards to the NESP. Language barriers are too difficult to overcome at this time, and due to it the NESP itself is incredibly elusive. I do not believe that documents directly from the State Council are easy to find, let alone in English. But to this end, I believe the researchers at EETD did an outstanding job interpreting the politics at hand, thus I why I use it as a main source.

[2] See figure 1 for a comprehensive listing of reform suggested by CESP.

[3] See figure 2 for a listing of some good examples of FCV projects.

[4] Note that the bulk of my research into the structure of R&D systems is on the general infrastructure of STIPs rather than tailored to that of HFC. This is due to the lack of English-language specifications for this question. What is certain is that HFC R&D patterns are corresponding to my general findings: Beijing and Shanghai are 3^rd tier STIP centers, and they correlatively has had the brunt of HFC demonstrations and research.

[5] Market performance defined as the concern for economic expansion utilizing R&D spillovers.

[6] “Manufacturing” of MEAs, and “troubleshooting” of problems more intensely abstract features. It is my belief that in electrode “poisoning” mitigation research the research has not quite developed to the extent MEA research and fabrication has. For PEMFCs this of crucial importance because electrode poisoning can lead to degradation as the electrolyte loses concentration; however, solutions to this problem remains difficult, as miniscule changes to a fuel cell solution’s pH level causes rapid poisoning

[7] See figures 3 and 4.

[8] My views on global peace theory are not that cut-and-dried. I am merely reflecting the beliefs of the Neoliberals of the world. However, I do believe free trade is a possible way of allowing, generally, greater cooperation between the US and Chinese states.

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Figure 1

Figure 2

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Figure 3

Figure 4

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Posted in Uncategorized

On Edgar Snow and the nature of bias

•May 17, 2008 • Leave a Comment

“[Although] I was not an active participant in the revolution, I could not deny some responsibility.”

—Edgar Snow (Thomas 148)

Into the atmosphere, out of this world,

Unruly Kun-lun, witness to the buoyancy of every spring on earth.

You fly up, three million white dragons of jade,

Stirring the heavens with your snowcapped scales;

Then, melting on a summer day,

Flooding rivers and creeks,

Turning men into fish and turtles.

In a thousand autumns of works good and band,

Who could tally up your score?

And yet, Kun-lun, I say to you now

No need for such height, nor for all that snow,

If I could only, leaning against the sky, draw the sacred sword,

I’d slice you into three parts;

One part I’d leave for Europe,

Another bequeath to America,

And the third will remain here in the East.

So that the whole world would be at peace,

And we would all share your coolness, and your warmth.

—Mao Zedong (tr. Eugene Eoyang)

PROPAGANDA, PROPAGANDISTS, AND THE MYTH OF IT ALL

Edgar Snow’s adventures in Yan’an and the nature of the narrative’s rebuking

The term “propaganda” in the English language has over time received a bad reputation, and an equally damning connotation. To think of propaganda and propagandists is to believe of materials and sources of untruths delivered in order to achieve a certain result. Tailoring materials can occur through a mean as simply as the selective omission of sources. It can be viewed a problem plaguing historical texts, tainting any attempts at retelling the story in an objective frame.

But what exactly IS objective? History is a study of bias, with the interpreters of time being humans with a specific point of view. Points of view can be seen as functions of a specific context: an individual’s represented setting can shroud an individual’s intended message. Equally important for the debate regarding bias is the field of journalism, a field devoted towards exploring key events, on going or otherwise, from an “on-the-ground” position that other disciplines usually neglect.

Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China can be said to be the target of the arguments against bias usually reserved for historical works. Polarized into parties of opposition and advocacy, the work’s significance has not only a dimension of conflicted levels of objectivity, but also a level in which the book is politicized. To what end is Snow’s work propaganda in terms of structure and content? For what purpose could the actors affecting the content or structure of Red Star become propagandists and how? Finally, is the actual resulting story to be construed as wholly biased material designed to indoctrinate, or can it be viewed as more constructive? Through answering these questions, one may find a better understanding for the Communist Party at the time of Snow’s writing and the subsequent Revolution as well.

Experts of literature have for years guarded the secret central for success in interpreting writers’ views and objectives. Structure as it turns out has far greater significance for conveying a message than most readers prefer to focus upon, and has been on the receiving end of much neglect of criticism. Negotiating the ideas behind Red Star requires one to delve deeply into the structure of the account. Structure for the sake of this argument can be defined as the specific order of the account, the methodology behind the creation of this narrative, and the possible rationale behind the previous two elements.

Edgar Snow’s masterpiece takes an unorthodox form as soon as Mao begins to tell his life story. No longer is Red Star comprised simply of a journalist in a foreign locale, making judgments upon the events wholly based on what can be experienced somatically, but through a set of intermediary sources. What this entails is not so much a modification of the content of “truth” (as the actual events and places Snow experienced had the potential of being exaggerated by the Party to an excruciating detail), but a variation of the medium of the retelling. The interpretation of the CCP is no longer in the hands of Snow alone, but through an intermediary on a person-to-person basis. The conclusion that Snow actively takes, that the Reds were too busy being concerned about the party than the individual constitutes, may be part of the image the Party was concerned with propagating; this is of little consequence compared to the possibility that the relationship of which he and the Communist Party became irrevocably changed from that time forward, in ways to be discussed further into this essay (Snow 130). In terms of structure, the biography of Mao liberates the book from being simply an account of the environment that Snow passes through and an overview of the philosophical and political context of the CCP’s struggle. The story becomes one of multiple voices, individuals set within a single party, rapidly morphing from a chronological look at times into one based upon theme (such as the conditions of Shaanxi). The resulting juxtaposition of individuals’ stories and thematic bearing is Snow’s interesting procedure in describing the CCP’s polity and way of life. The nature of conversing with peasant folk and cadre members is transformed from a way of seeing an individual’s experiences within the whole of the party into a method to find how the party had constructed the individual. Through touring factories, barracks, and peasant cooperatives, Snow constructs an imagine of the normal behavior of the individual in the CCP; through interviewing key members (such as Peng Dehuai and Lin Biao) within the government, he reinforces these behavioral traits of the masses with the traits of the leadership that epitomizes the behavior.

The benefits from such a construction may seem unclear at first, but with a closer look they become abundantly clear. Edgar Snow’s meandering travels from site to site describes the government in terms of its connection to the locality, and correspondingly depicts the individual, the person’s experiences, and the behavior of this individual within the CCP is the method in which Snow reconciles the predictable conflict between his liberal views towards individualism and the Soviet’s views towards collectivity. In other words, by relating a person to his or her history, locality, and duty, the link between what a person is to the party in a utilitarian sense and the rationale and emotional debt one has to the party. Such a contrast between a person’s motives for joining the party and his or her duty in the party could be seen as an attempt by Snow to make a logical argument as to why the average peasant would be motivated to join the Party.

To this end, the actual structure of the book allows the reader to be shown what exactly drove the peasants to join the party while actually describing the constitution of the Party. An example of this includes the story of Xu Haidong where the inequities of his childhood developed from a talk on class-consciousness, and the destruction of his family drove him to fight the Nationalists: the results giving the traits of the Party a human face (Snow 295-230).

In terms of the content of the narrative, one may identify the romanticism Snow bestows into his piece—the energy of revolution, the hope, the optimism—as a facet of propaganda. In particular, the piece describing Zhu De can be seen as a distillation of this. The tale of the building of Zhu De’s massive fortune under the auspices of romanticized warfare, realization of the decadence of it all, followed by his joining with CCP ranks follows a story arc that is not unlike that of Siddhartha, a character following the predictable path of a character in a moral story (Snow 300-340). Mythical proportions are imbued into the ordinary as Snow tells the stories of individuals within the party. What agenda is this used to fulfill?

One school of thought to answer this question is that Snow was using fable, in contrast to using the universality of the behavior and experiences that the Party members experienced, to give the figures that drive the CCP a modicum of exceptionality. In listing off Zhu De’s mundane proportions—his idiosyncrasies, such as his penchant to take off his hat when addressing comrades, and then directly comparing it to the outrageous mythical deeds that Zhu De was supposedly capable of achieving, such as being able to fly and use Daoist magic, was a way for Snow to capture the magic and depth of character of the leaders of the CCP, even when they were in actuality unremarkable. In the eyes of their comrades, in reality, Zhu De was of mythical proportions by virtue of his role and passion for the party; this is where strength was measured, not through magical acts. Such comparisons of the blatantly exaggerated and the simple truth give the readers a perception that the nature of virtue and fame in the CCP was defined through everyday acts of courage (Snow 347).

Another school of thought views this sort of mythical proportions as aggrandizement by Snow as a method to sell copies of his book. It is naturally within the best interest of a writer to create the most interesting story possible, so why should Edgar Snow be any exception? The above example seems to fit more to the criteria of the former rationale: after all, does he make it seem as though the myths propagated by the Party attempted to pass themselves off as the truth in order to deceive the people? Certainly not, rather, he describes the tales in a colorful way, drawing upon the language of traditional Chinese folklore. One can deduce that Snow does use exaggeration at times, but in at least one example he has been able to make an interesting story without compromising the sincerity of the history of the period.

Why would particular actors be driven to create a sort of hagiography of the proceedings as opposed to maintaining a truthful story? In examining Snow’s motivations, two different ways of explaining his actions are possible: explaining his actions as a function of his vocation (which has been partially explored above), and explaining his writing as a function of his setting.

As a freelance journalist, Snow had certain motivations explaining his particular brand of writing. For instance, he was not held accountable to have a list of cited documents supporting his arguments as most historians were. Being a field reporter during a time of war, his tools for fact-checking were primitive, as was his initial editing and translation tools. In fact, his grasp of the Chinese language was quite poor, having only studied the language for two years previous to his journey into Yun’an. Whereas he had an intermediate student’s grasp of Guoyu, Mao and his disciples spoke in accents from the South (i.e. Fujian) along with the North (Yun’an). His solution to this problem was unorthodox: he allowed the Communist Chinese to look over and edit his works, what could usually be construed as a breach of ethics in journalism. Finally, as a journalist, Snow was driven by the need to get “the big scoop”. Before Red Star, Snow was a good journalist in the Orient—a satisfying job, but not as lucrative as he had wanted. Finding clout in his field was a dream of his since he had traveled to New York to work in advertising; perhaps this led him to exaggerate his stories in order to capitalize on his experiences.

As to the context of his nation of origin, matters become a bit more complicated in order to explain. The US as of the 1931 invasion of Manchuria by the Japanese was an isolated state. Attempting to recover from a domestic depression, the foreign policy behind Hoover’s presidency opposed the prospect of war on any ground, including Japanese soil. Consequentially, the invasion was disputed by a League of Nations that lacked the will to back up any threats with force. The resulting China was one without power, yet one that was “[imagine as having] a new birth of nationalism that would keep Japan so bogged down that she would never be able to turn upon [the West]” (Snow 16). Tragedy ensued as the US could do nothing but stand helplessly as China was ravaged; even into the Roosevelt administration the political scene had all the potential for the creation of a Pax Americana but none of the willingness, far too paralyzed by domestic economics (Cohen 132). To this end, I believe the sympathetic Snow was willing to act as propagandist. A humanitarian by heart, he was sickened by USA’s inaction, let alone the country’s prejudice against the CCP, a regime he saw as more representative of the people’s grievances. He lamented:

For some time it had seemed ridiculous that not a single non-Communist could [answer any appropriate questions regarding the fate of China in the face of imperialism]. Here was a story, growing in interest and importance every day; here was the story of China, as newspaper correspondents admitted to each other between dispatches sent out on trivial side issues… (Snow 38)

Having explored the motivations behind Snow to play the role of propagandist, it is appropriate to explore Mao in the same context. As leader of a particular Party, it was his responsibility to constantly reaffirm the morality of the Party. Any sign that the CCP was illegitimate or in any way less determined to aid peasant affairs in comparison to the Guomindang could affect the Party’s popularity. In particular was the credibility of the CCP as being a force effective in fighting the Japanese; this clout alone was the catalyst for the Xi’an Incident (influencing the Dongbei army to mutiny) and thus allowed for the Second United Front. The precondition for the CCP’s success specifically to Mao was the defeat of the incursive Japanese forces, “if our country is subjugated by the enemy, we shall lose everything. For a people being deprived of its national freedom, the revolutionary task is not immediate socialism, but the struggle for independence” (Snow 387). Furthermore, his role as leader of the CCP designated him the role of maintaining nominal foreign relations, exemplary through the third demand of the Eight Demands (Snow 390).

Perhaps in this way Mao was a function of his setting. He knew that the precondition for a socialist revolution was the creation of a broad class of bourgeoisie able to instill class-consciousness into the relatively desolate proletariat. However, the reality of China was that the capitalist class was far too small and weak to be considered large enough to allow for revolution (Snow 400-401). Only through a “union of all classes” could bourgeoisie democracy—the next step in the dialectical materialism—develop (Snow 404). This union manifested into the Second United Front, and was fought in such a way that Mao could have full control over who was the political victor following the Sino-Japanese War. He controlled the nature of the battle (being based more heavily on numbers to defeat the technology-rich Japanese); with this conflict, radical land reform in favor of poor peasants and an education designed for the masses, Mao was able to persuade and indoctrinate the people of China into seeing the merits of the Communist Party.

Indoctrination is a fine word to to use to describe a mass held in sway with untruths and through insincere incentives or disincentives. Propaganda in this manner is an act of manipulating people’s views in such a way that it has purpose behind it. If this is the case, what really defines the definition is the difference between simply persuading people and manipulating. The root of the CCP’s popular support was with the Party’s ability to ensure a minimal level of welfare for even the poorest of people through land redistribution, and the ability to rally to the nationalist concerns of people by directly waging war against the Japanese. On the other hand, the Nationalist Party was, in the point of view of this book, a corrupt regime that managed to hold out against the CCP through greater resources and an entrenched position of favor with the Chinese plutocrats.

Ergo, the point of view of the book reflects a certain truth of the horrors the (impoverished) populace faced. Not only can this insight be corroborated by other analysts—namely, Chen Hansheng—but even negating the conditions in the countryside does not change the fact that the CCP had popular support (Zarrow 284). Despite the convenient notion that the Communist Party was too small to garner such respect that it did, the truth is quite prescient when Snow reveals that the GMD enjoyed a great boom to an otherwise tarnished reputation when it allied with the CCP and proclaimed their bilateral opposition to the Japanese (Snow 398). China’s sense of loss stemmed deep from the loss of the first Sino-Japanese war, and continued with the loss of territory (particularly Taiwan and Manchuria). Even purely into the realm of domestic politics in the 1930’s, the effect of the Japanese incursion into China was profound upon the minds of the peasantry.

Whether a source is tainted with bias or otherwise may be considered propaganda is truly irrelevant, fundamentally due to the fact that the historian must be ready to evaluate all sources for bias, regardless if it happens to be a primary source from a non-participant observer. If a historian places as a main goal to find the unsullied truth, then he or she will most likely find little solace in the fact that the existence of unbiased historical sources is a myth. It is understandable that Snow may have done a better job at “being a historian” in interpreting the events that occurred in his visit to Yun’an through unconcerned eyes, but true objectivity remains elusive. Indeed, one may argue that through the explicitly biased, Edgar Snow recorded historical significance in a way most scholars attempting to remain detached would fail to have conceived. The CCP’s influence upon Snow in generating sympathy can be seen as a compelling example into how the regime attracted popular support. Snow’s biased rationale in writing Red Star could be seen as popular sentiment amongst Americans in regards to their country’s toothless foreign policy. As a whole, it is clear that this book can be interpreted as propaganda; the claims disputing this book on both sides are biased as well. The nature of all works of great political magnitude is to be a link in a certain ideological canon: given the idea that political actors do what they can in their own self-interest to exploit political resources, certain “artifacts” can be seen to historically hold the potential to be politicized. Such is the case with Red Star Over China, although the damage that is to be wrought has already occurred.

Certainly, there remain quite a few questions to be answered. How does Snow’s story allow for a different interpretation of the Communist Revolution? Ultimate downsides of Snow’s account take what form? What are the biases of each actor in action? Bias creates an ultimate image of what in this account? Each question posed respectively at the beginning of the argument must be answered before it is possible to examine the questions asked herein.

First, Snow’s work can be considered bias by structure because he juxtaposes individuals’ emotional journeys with the CCP with their ultimate utility to the party. In creating such a structure, it gives the reader a vision of the CCP that may not have otherwise been captured: one where personality and “Red experience” signifies a person’s character, not solely based upon function to the Party as a whole.

Second, the actual content of the text can be considered biased due to its exaggerated nature. However, such exaggeration tends to favor a colorful way to tell the story without compromising the reality of the events. The actual substance as a whole seems to reflect the mythical, almost spiritual air compatriots would view decisive events, so in a way it reflects human society in a more realistic way than possible through an “objective” source.

Third, Snow reveals himself as biased in his intent to interview Mao. He is a function of the US’s frustrations with constructing a foreign policy that does not threaten domestic economic concerns. Voicing these concerns is probably the most productive act a journalist such as him could have accomplished, and in part one could claim Edgar Snow is the reason why the US became involved with China during World War 2, in particular the Dixie Mission.

Fourth, Mao is quite obviously biased in his accounts. He has a vested interest in presenting the CCP in the best terms possible and creating a lush story about himself rife with Marxist struggle. Such bias is assumed by historians, however, and the bias Mao reveals shows the audience exactly what the readers are usually looking for: the motivations and ideologies of the CCP and how it operates. In the scope of the argument, it reveals that Mao uses his frustrations with society at large and orthodox relationships (particularly between his conservative father and his progressive self) to attract peasants and intellectuals who have common experiences.

Fifth, the aforementioned bias means little to the characterization of the piece as a whole in regards to “objectivity”. As a historian, one’s interpretation of sources is not necessarily to gauge the amount of bias—that is strictly universal to the human perspective. Rather, it is up to the historian to find the merits in the bias and to see how it reflects on society-at-large. As the previous conclusions have shown, bias is latent in every actor perceiving the events surrounding the Revolution; every actor is a function of his or her surroundings and interests. However, when one figures that such surroundings and interests are facets of what is the essence of history, it becomes clear that “objectivity” is sometimes not the best criteria for a reliable source in the field.

The final result is a visage of the CCP before the revolution as an entity surprisingly different from many sources. It shows a regime that propagates a sense of collective above the individual, yet displays a sense of the individual built through revolutionary experience and voluntarism. A regime usually described in wholly Maoist-Leninist-Marxist terms becomes described in the colorful manner when Snow adopts the vocabulary of traditional folklore. Snow reveals a party desperately reaching out for allies, even beyond their Communist patron, and a leader who charismatically uses his own progressive view of the world to attract disaffected peasants and intellectuals. Ultimately, the view Snow gives of the Communists may very well be propaganda, if so, it shows a side that is not commonly exposed to the outside world. Even if the Party members deliberately created this image of the Communist world, they exposed a highly relevant piece of information regarding how the party operates: the fact that it is not so reliant upon political correctness than its usual ideology states. The portrait given is one of informal relationships, personal magnetism, and magnified acts of heroism. For a split second in Snow’s interviews another Communist Party penetrates into the observers’ mind. China’s rising power of the era had given away its most intimate look possible, and yet some Western observers could not help but claim that it was propaganda. To this end, one may ask, who exactly is the one manufacturing propaganda when a narrative as exciting and elucidating as Red Star Over China is claimed to be nothing more than fallacious political lies?

Works Cited

Bernard, S T. Season of High Adventure: Edgar Snow in China. Berkeley: University of California P, 1996.

Cohen, Warren I. America’s Response to China: a History of Sino-American Relations. 4th ed. Columbia UP: New York, 2000.

Snow, Edgar. Red Star Over China. 1st ed. New York: Grove P, 1973.

Wu-Chi Liu, and Irving Yucheng Lo , eds. Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990.

Zarrow, Peter. China in War and Revolution 1895-1949. New York: Routledge, 2005.

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The definite article…

The Roots of Intellectual Property in China: A Bibliography

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Background

Sectional Bibliography

Central Sources

Regional Sources

Universal Sources

[edit] Cumulative Bibliography

AWAKENED RADICALISM, EGALITARIANISM, NATIONALISM

RADICAL CONTRADICTION

SOME PEOPLE USE MOUNTAINS: Han Chauvinism in Cultural Revolution Xinjiang

THE CHAINS OF IDEA AND THE CAGE OF SOCIETY: Contrasting Gramsci’s hegemony (incomplete)

SLOUCHING TOWARD JOSEPH’S AI: Nietzsche and Weber’s criticism of Modernity, and their proposed solutions

THE EPIC AS NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY, NATIONAL CONQUEST: How Hero redefines the rules of the Chinese film industry

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THE FUEL CELL YUANFEN: Hydrogen fuel cell research policy in China and US, and its implications on relations

ACTOR: THE HYDROGEN FUEL CELL

ACTOR: CHINA ENERGY POLICY

ACTOR: US ENERGY POLICY

On Edgar Snow and the nature of bias

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