Status Updates From The Soul of China

the arrogant feeling of being the only civilized “Middle Kingdom” (Zhongguo) surrounded by “barbarians” has not altogether disappeared. Backed by the longest continuous civilization in history, the Chinese are not likely to be easy-going partners for other nations in the twenty-first century

Magic is the response of people who face an external challenge but who cannot understand the logical articulations of that challenge. This irrational response is based, as Chinese culture was, on the presumed laws of correspondence of natural sympathy and antipathy: like attracts like.

If we go back to the onset of the Marxist revolution, and uncover the deep-rooted feelings which the Chinese had concealed for so long under layers of urbane courtesy, we find in the first half of the twentieth century an immense hatred for the West which had been constantly swelling for generations. This hatred was based on a multiplicity of sentiments: the despair of a collapsing civilization

its theoreticians now talked in terms of a “socialist commodity economy.” For the new leaders of Pink China, what was left of Marxism was no longer an ideology; it was simply a methodology.

Chinese, under the spur of the Confucian vision of things, have always been universalists. In the old days this universalism implied that the human race consisted of “civilized” men—that is, the Chinese—and “barbarians,” which included all the non-Chinese portion of the human race

universalism implied a unification of the entire human race and the elimination of frontiers between states and nations

revolution was to be ruthlessly brought about, and accompanied by the massive destruction of all the buildings and artistic treasures of a despised past. This cultural slaughter was carried out on a vast and breathtaking scale. Only the personal intervention of Premier Chou En-lai could, at times, save some of the precious heirlooms

this new orthodoxy had to conform psychologically to Time-conscious people who had replaced the religious cults of former times with Confucianism and ancestor worship; it has to be a secular philosophy of history which seduces the historically minded Chinese and merely substitutes for the old Confucian, outdated explanation of the past

In China, those liberal and democratic converts to Western ideals were bound to be crushed between the old, strong landlord-dominated Kuomintang and the new Communist faith, ruthless and determined to exploit all the weaknesses and blindness of Western-type liberalism

China was no longer an isolated, self-contained civilized world; she had acquired neighbors and was gradually becoming a nation in the midst of other nations. This fact alone was bound to put an end to her universalist vision of a self-enclosed world and induce the Chinese to seek another, higher form of universalism. But it was inevitable that, in the process, her old, petrified civilization and the exclusivism

The Chinese conception of law was in tune with their world outlook: the Chinese ideal was harmony rather than abstract justice. Law was not an application of some Higher Law established by a transcendent divinity with metaphysical or spiritual sanction, as in the West

Chinese individual was caught in a fantastic web of rites and obligations which imprisoned him from the cradle to the grave and even fettered his mind, an oppression which was far greater than anything experienced by the Indians in their own oppressive caste system.

The humanism of the Chinese springs, once again, from their concept of the cosmos as a vast system of “behaviors” regulated by a protocolar etiquette which is the model for its earthly counterpart, the court of the Son of Heaven. There is no dualism in the universe, no opposition of Matter and Spirit, since everything is intimately related and since the former is a symbolic reflection of the latter

Since cyclical views prevail over linear, since direction is twisted and broken in favor of devious routes, the notion of succession is totally irrelevant and only that of association and interdependence should be considered. Thus all of nature’s phenomena are not to be viewed as being determined events with their own signification, but as mere symbols, as signals from Heaven pointing out related phenomena

The same dislike—indeed, deliberate incomprehension—of the Chinese for the infinite made them conceive the universe, the cosmic totality of heaven and earth, as closed, finite. All numbers, serving as convenient labels for the ordering of things within a finite universe, are perforce limited

the inherent, fundamental socialism of the Chinese. The psychological background is obvious: the lack of true individualism in the Western sense, the predominance of family and clannish collectivism even long before Confucius was born, its compulsory transfer to society and the state when Caesarism and Civilization came about, and finally, the true compromise of Civilization between two forms of collectivism

The Chinese are guided by rationalism and common sense to a greater extent than other Asians. The rational mind of a humanist bent on literary pursuits often makes him a bad psychologist. He is unable to judge other men’s characters through sympathetic, intuitive identification and, being afraid to trust his faulty judgment, will resort to the palliative of mechanical and impersonal means

Intellectual examination as a method for recruiting the best elements in a country can become, in fact, a devastating weapon against exceptional minds or outstanding characters who have to proceed through a crushing mill set for the standards of an average intelligence and which grinds all nonconformists to dust.

essence of the philosophy of Chinese administration, as it was to remain throughout history: rather paralyze the entire administration into hopeless inefficiency than encourage any separatist tendency among the powerful officials in the provinces

ancestor worship is the religious expression of a concern for Time and is the exact psychological opposite of the cult of local deities dwelling in pure Space.
The family itself is the indestructible cell of society, the organic unit without which life would come to a standstill and to the interests of which the individual must sacrifice himself in all circumstances

Social absorption was purchased at the cost of a psychological “conformity” that was definitely consecrated when Chinese Civilization finally petrified