The Useless Tree

Reply to Eric X. Li: Cultures are not Incommensurable and the CCP is not Confucuian

Over at the Huffington Post, Rachel Beitarie interviews Eric X. Li, under the title "Democracy is not the Answer."  Li, who describes himself as a Shanghai venture capitalist (which carries a bit of irony, as I will attempt to demonstrate), is a well known apologist of authoritarianism, author of such pieces as: "Why China's Political Model is Superior."  In the most recent interview he engages in a bit of facile Confucius-citing, so I figured that brought his arguments into the general ambit of this blog.  As you might guess, I disagree with him fundamentally.

Li's general project is to construct a kind of Chinese exceptionalism, to show that, whether in the political or economic or cultural realms, China is sui generis and, as the second title above suggests, superior to others.  As an American I am quite familiar with exceptionalist type arguments and, anticipating the Chinese nationalist critique that this post is likely to inspire, I state here that I also reject claims of American exceptionalism.  Whether American or Chinese or French or whatever, exceptionalist arguments are generally historically flawed, deeply flawed, and, bascially, intellectually uninteresting.

Let's go right to a big issue.  Li states:

...And cultures are fundamentally incommensurate to each other, as they have been developed under vastly different conditions, including hard conditions such as geography and climate. On the abstract end, one can claim we all want certain things, such as dignity - who can argue against that? Sounds universal? Yes. But what dignity means not only can be different but also totally opposite among cultures.

Incommensurability is a big philosophical idea, with various debates surrounding it.  In ethics, the notion of "incommensurable values" raises quesitons arising from the idea that: "Values, such as liberty and equality, are sometimes said to be incommensurable in the sense that their value cannot be reduced to a common measure."  I think this is what Li means when he says "cultures are fundamentally incommensurate with one and other..."

But this is where he goes wrong: moving from incommensurable values to incommensurable cultures.  These are not the same and the difference makes a difference.

Most problematically, Li does not define what he means by "culture."  And he provides only the crudest intimation of what he is getting at, something about "geography and climate."  Obviously, he wants to say that "Chinese culture" is not the same as "American culture" or "Western culture," etc.  But at this level of abstraction the invocation of incommensurability makes little sense.

The basic problem is that "culture" is not a useful category for discussing value incommensurability becuase  the value incommensurability problem exists within every category of "culture" that Li implies.  The tensions between freedom and liberty, or -  to invoke a case that Chinese exceptionalists seem to focus on - between individual and collective interests, are common within "American culture" and "Western culture."  We argue about them all the time. 

To avoid this obvious reality, Li has to conjure straw men:

One fallacy in the modern Western political ideology is the so-called freedom of speech. It makes a presumption that speech, unlike acts, is harmless and therefore can and must be allowed absolute freedom....

A quick class in constitutional law would yield rather quickly the understanding that speech is not an absolute freedom, that is it limited in the interest of public safety ("imminent lawless action" anyone?) and other public goods (obscenity). Now, Li might argue that the parameters of free speech are wider in the US than in China, to which there are two responses: 1) this is a political, not cultural, practice that can be developed in various cultural contexts; thus, speech is freer in Taiwan than in the PRC;  2) within American culture there continues to be wide divergence among various groups on what appropriate limits on speech should be, with some American groups coming much close to a "Chinese" standard than others.  Value iIncommensurability, in other words, is not simply an inter-cultural phenomenon. 

The problem here, for Li, is the underdeveloped concept of "culture."  It seems that he wants us to believe that "cultures" are distinct and impermeable and unchanging.  And that is simply historically and empirically false.  "Cultures" (I put it in scare quotes precisely because of the variability of any specific definition of any particular "culture") are always, and have always been, dynamic and open and overlapping.  Li seems to recognize this when he writes:

This is not to say that aspects of alien cultures cannot be imported and absorbed. Buddhism came into China from the outside and became a major feature of the Chinese civilization. The success or failure of such importation depends on how consistent it is with the fundamentals of the host cultures, whether in its original or adapted forms. Marxism found deep resonance in China's Confucian egalitarianism and its modern features were much needed in China's desperate attempt to modernize. As such, Marxism's adapted forms have taken roots in modern China.

But this just killed his assertion of cultural incommensurability.  If Buddhism is imported and absorbed then it becomes a local expression of the more general category of "Buddhism," and that general category provides a measure by which it can be compared to other examples of the general category - which seems to me to be the very definition of "commensurability."  Same with Marxism.  Now, we can argue that there are important differences between Chinese and Soviet Marxism (there are!) but that discussion operates within the framework of "Marxism" which, again, provides a set of measures to draw similarities and differences.  Commensurability, again.

This shows how useless the term "culture" is.  "Chinese culture" is a collection of many, many practices and ideas and beliefs.  It is big and vast and complicated. Within it are its own instances of value incommensurability (which is one possible way to understand Chen Guangcheng's stance v. those who seek to repress him).  In its vastness, there are similarities and differences with "American culture."  Most aspects of "Chinese culture" are certainly commensurable with "American culture" or other instances of "culture" globally.  (I am not quite ready to say all instances of "Chinese culture" are so commensurable - I am open to suggestions for more specific instances of incommensurability operating at something less abstract than the level of "culture").  Here are two examples:

1) Scientific research.  We must recognize science as a "cultural" practice, in the conventional sense of "culture" as a set of orientations and beliefs and practices.  As such it clashes with other cultural practices - i.e traditional forms of epistemology; magic; superstition; etc.  Scientists in China perform research according to widely held views on proper methodology and reporting. They also perform it within a broader "Chinese cultural" context.  Science, much to the delight of Chen Duxiu, has become a part of "Chinese culture," in a way that it was not at the beginning of the twentieth century.   And they're good at it.  Moreover, they want to be good at it -  a Nobel Prize or two would be highly coveted.  They may have some rather small variations to the usual practice of science, such that we could refer to something as "Chinese science."  But, even if that is the case, there remains a rather well articulated measure for valuing the practice of science.  Thus, that part of "Chinese culture" that expresses itself in scientific research is certainly commensurable with other forms of scientific research world-wide.

2) Women's rights. In traditional China, women did not enjoy the kinds of legal protections that are now common throughout the world.  Indeed, the Communist Party made a rather big deal of how it was the liberator of women from the feudalistic, Confucian patriarchal exploitation of the past.  The New Marriage Law of 1950 was seen, wtihin China, as elevating the social and political status of women, ideally at least.  And today, women in China complain that their rights are not being duly protected, that the social and political gains of the revolution are deteriorating in the opening and reform period.  Whatever one thinks of these particular complaints, what is notable is that they assume a general standard of "women's rights," a general standard that can be used to measure the progress or backsliding of "Chinese women's rights."  Once again, we have inter-cultural - or perhaps we should say transcultural - commensurability.

We could go on, examning more partiuclar facets of "Chinese culture" to demonstrate commensurability with those same aspects of other cultures.  Indeed, the work of Longxi Zhang is interesting in this regard. But one really needs to be called out: economics.

I, for one, absolutely believe that economic life is  a kind of cultural practice.  Markets are based upon certain cultural assumptions and, as they operate, they change other cultural practices.  Contemporary China is a powerful example of this.  Perhaps nothing has changed "Chinese culture" as much as economic reform of the past thirty years.  And those changes have increased the economic-cultural commensurability between China and the US and the "West" and other cultural formations.  Yes, of course, there are differences in how the Chinese and American economies operate.  But mere difference is not incommensurability, which suggests no general standard can be used for comparison and judgment.  And we know, obviously, that every day business men and investors and traders and, yes, "Shanghai venture capitalists," work hard to find ways to make big piles of money from the dynamic pattern of similarities and differences between China's economy and other economies.  

Further, economics, as an intellectual discipline, basicially rejects cultural incommensurability.  It claims to be a universal science (a claim that I do not really accept because they take it too far, ignoring cultural differences within a broader commensurability).  Ask Justin Lin Yifu if China is economically-culturally incommensurable and I suspect he would just laugh.  

And there's your irony: if Eric X. Li was right, he'd be out of a job.  And the fact that he is a successful transcultural investor demonstrates that he is wrong in his assertion of cultural incommensurability.

So, what happened?  Li made too sweeping a claim to try to defend the political authoritarianism of the CCP.  He is trying to construct a grand China exceptionalist argument to wall off the Party from political critics, like Ai Weiwei and Chen Guangcheng.  But upon scrutiny his Great Wall of Chinese Expcetionalism crumbles.  And he is left with a rather bare political apology. 

To get back to the beginning of this post, Li also tries to argue that Deng Xiaoping was something of a Confucian:

In the Chinese tradition, an enduring definition of the end of political governance was articulated by Confucius two and a half millenniums ago. He called it Xiao Kang (as differentiated from Da Tong -- an unattainable ideal). In contemporary terms it can be described as a society of general peace and prosperity with a just legal order and built upon a righteous moral foundation. Interestingly enough, when Deng Xiaoping launched his reforms in 1979 he declared that the goal of the Chinese nation in the next phase of its development was to build or, perhaps more accurately, rebuild a Xiao Kang society.

It was probably no accident that Mr. Deng, in declaring China's national goal, did not rely on the modern Communist ideologies that were instrumental in the revolution that established the People's Republic, but rather reached deep into China's ancient tradition, to Confucius. Measured by the "end" as articulated by Confucius and by Deng, the current one-party state model has so far served China well, albeit with real shortcomings.

Yes, xiao kang is common in Party decriptions of economic reform.  But it is, in the words of John Wong: "... fuzzy and grossly imprecise, especially when applied to a transitional economy like China."  He goes on: "To an ordinary Chinese [xiao kang] may vaguely convey the feeling of being 'neither rich nor poor' or  buqiong buhu". Moreover, it is not a central concept of the Analects or Mencius, no where near the importance of ren or yi or li.  And it is not at all clear that xiao kang is a concept that differentiates Chinese developmental goals for those of other countries, or at least not as it is used in the China Daily op-ed:

The xiaokang idea came fromthe late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s and early 1980s while he was working on the country's developmental blueprint.

The government's goal now, for 2020, is to make sure that xiaokang is everywhere and the people are well-off, in a way that is similar to developed countries in the West.

Oops - that writer needs to read the incommensurability memo...

But the big laugher here is the implication that Deng Xiaoping was a Confucian.  He was not.  He was a dedicated communist-nationalist.  His highest priority was maintaining the institutional integrity of the CCP, which he guided as the country careened into the Great Leap Forward, and saw destroyed by Mao during the Cultural Revolution, and rebuilt after 1979.  It was the Party that he sought to maintain when he gave the order to kill hundreds and hundreds of people in Beijing in 1989.  Those main lines of his career have nothing to do with Confucianism.  Indeed, Deng was anti-Confucian in his willingness to use force to defend the Party.  Xiao kang is small beer in the fullness of Deng's political life.  He was much more interested in building up China's economy as the basis of national strength, something more in line with Legalist thinking. I think the turn to reform in 1979 was a great thing for many Chinese people, and Deng deserves credit for that.  But he was not motivated by Confucianism.

To be clear: Confucianism is a valuable philosophy.  We all can learn from it; we all should learn from it.  I teach it to my students. I think about ways it applies to my own life.  But it is precisely because I take it seriously that I reject its association with the Chinese Communist Party.  Were Confucius alive today he would reject much of what occurs in Chinese politics and economics.

Reply to James Fallows: The Return to a Universal China

In a post last week, James Fallows raises an interesting question: "What is the Chinese Dream?"  He is, of course, alluding to the notion of the "American Dream," and wondering whether contemporary China has a similar summarizing cultural symbol that captures the aspirations of the society as a whole. 

It should be noted at the outset that any such endeavor is flawed in the sense that a "dream" of this sort is never fully inclusive of an entire society.  The "American Dream," obviously, often fails.  But Fallows's exercise is still worthwhile, if we are seeking a comparison of contemporary China and the US, at least along the "soft power" lines of symbolic imagery.

One point he raises, that I want to push back on, is the "non-universal" quality of Chinese ambitions.  He writes:

...After China's centuries of seeming to move backward as a society and its more recent decades of tragedy and turmoil, the simple bourgeois comforts are much of what the modern Chinese miracle could and should provide.

But there is a way in which the question does make sense, as an expression of concern about what the rise of a "non-universal" nation will mean for the rest of the world.

He contrasts this immediate, particularist, material Chinese focus with the universal projects of the West:

Through the centuries of Western military, technological, and economic dominance, "universalism" of some sort has been so basic a part of international relations that it barely needed to be discussed. The leaders of the French Revolution issued their Declaration of the Rights of Man -- not the rights of Frenchmen. The Declaration of Independence began, "When, in the course of human events," not "events in the colonies of North America." With varying degrees of sincerity, Western colonialists tried to create replica British, French, or American citizens in their colonies. Long before the colonial era, Christian missionaries wanted to bring people worldwide to their view of the one true universal faith. 

We must first recognize that imperialism and colonialism and coercion were the means by which various universal ideals were imposed upon others around the world.  And we must also recognize the terribly human cost of those impositions. 

But Fallows's point, I think, is that, after WWII, certain ideas - popular sovereignty, human rights, bourgeois materialism - did become widely dispersed and absorbed into the indigenous practices of many, many countries around the world, China included.  And to the degree that those "universal" ideals create hopes and aspirations in individuals in many different parts of the world, they could provide a kind of soft power resource for those places that are perceived to be permitting their expression to the greatest degree.  The "American Dream" can be understood as being consistent with certain globally-dispersed aspirations (thus the large number of people from other countries who seek citizenship in the US to pursue those aspirations).  Can the "Chinese Dream" be similarly conceived?

Maybe it can. And that might be possible because China is becoming "universal," at least in a certain sense.

Nine years ago I gave a lecture on this very topic, entitled, "The Return to a Universal China," later condensed into an LA Times piece: "Pop Culture Leads -- Freedom Follows"  There, I argued that in imperial China there was a sort of universalism:

In imperial times, a universal ideal of Chinese-ness was to be found in the Confucian classics. Anyone, regardless of ethnicity, could learn to live the good life. Qian Long was Manchurian, not Han Chinese, yet he was, in his time, the epitome of Chinese culture. Indeed, the primary means to political power and wealth was cultural attainment, tested by the rigorous bureaucratic examination system. Independent merchants may have made fortunes through their entrepreneurial wiles, but, once successful, they quickly took on the trappings of the Confucian gentleman and made sure their sons studied the classics and practiced the rituals.

The universal civilizational ideal disciplined both politics and economics. This, of course, was lost in the 20th century, with the decline of the Chinese imperial state and the rise of Maoist socialism.  The rest of the story is well known:

In communist China, the party monopolized political power and the state controlled how wealth was produced and distributed. The party-state was also in the business of regulating culture. Mao even launched a Cultural Revolution in a desperate effort to destroy any possible challenge to his own preeminence. The Confucian gentleman was dead and the Red loyalist supreme.

China's universalist aspiration was also killed. It seemed, for a fleeting moment, that traditional Sino- centrism might be replaced by socialist internationalism, that China would be a part of a grand global revolutionary project. But nationalism proved the stronger force. Mao was, in the end, much more interested in socialism in one country -- his own -- than in building a worldwide movement.

By putting "politics in command," Mao rendered a universal China impossible.  

Deng Xiaoping's "opening and reform," however, re-calibrated the balance between culture (which was traditionally the realm of Chinese universalism), politics and economics.  The Party would hold on to political power but would permit much greater latitude for individuals pursuing self-interest in the economic and cultural spheres.  And that has opened the way for new universalist possibilities:

The political liberation of culture and wealth is not unprecedented in Chinese history. In the early decades of the 20th century, the old ways had been discarded and the new was everywhere intoxicating the young. But war destroyed this efflorescence, and communist victory brought back a stricter political regime. Now, however, the openness is even headier. Globalized communications and transportation make virtually any cultural form anywhere available to the Chinese. And they seize the opportunities with passion.

Oddly enough, globalization has also reconstituted a Chinese universalism of sorts. Imperial universalism was founded on the notion that (almost) anyone could become Chinese; now, universalism is a matter of Chinese becoming (almost) anything.

That last paragraph holds up pretty well nine years later.

The issue, however, is that the contemporary cultural transformation of China, the destabilizing openness to a much wider range of expressions of "Chinese-ness," is very much still in process.  The Party tries to contain cultural change at the margins, when it threatens to undermine its political hegemony.  Many Chinese people, especially older generations, are uncomfortable with the loss of traditional (even if that means "socialist") foundations for meaning and ethics.  Problems and tensions abound.  But many Chinese embrace the new possibilities.  They move forward creatively and happily and ingeniously, re-inventing Chinese-ness and China at every step.  

There have been other moments in Chinese history when cultural change and openness shaped identity in new and beautiful ways: the Tang Dynasty.  Perhaps that could be a model for a new "Chinese Dream".  Kaiser Kuo, who named his metal band "Tang Dynasty," suggested as much a few years ago:

Kuo and his fellows tried to conjure up the feel of a time when China grew steadily more enriched by exposing itself to foreign cultures like India, Central Asia, West Asia (Turkey, Iran), East Europe (Hungary) through extensive travel and trade.

"It embraced many non-Chinese cultural elements, from the Buddhist religion to grape wine to Central Asian music," Kuo says.

Maybe that's what a universal China looks like....

Chen Guangcheng: It ain't over 'til it's over

The news this morning, that Chen, with his family, may be able to travel to the US to study at NYU, is good. Let's hope it works out.  But, as we have most chaotically learned in the past 48 hours, the details matter.  There are still multiple points at which expectations could break down, and Chen and his supporters will not be able to truly breath easy until he steps off the plane in New York.

Some hopeful signs include visits by US embassy officials with Chen at Chaoyang hospital, where they report he is receiving "excellent" medical attention for three bone fractures. The same source (Richard Buangan's Twitter) also reports that Chinese officials have been talking to Chen about the abuses heaped upon him by Linyi officials.  If those responsible for Chen's mistreatment are finally brought to heel, that would be a truly significant outcome.  But, again, we'll have to wait and see how far that goes...

Beyond the particulars of Chen's security and travel plans, various political questions remain.

The Chinese media is now starting to frame the story, and China Media Project has a good first take on these efforts.  As suggested by this excerpt from a Beijing Daily editorial, they are laying the basis for ultimately tagging Chen as a traitor:

. . The United States and other Western countries have paid particular attention to Chen Guangcheng for some time. It is through the packaging of the United States and Western media that this so-called “rights defense hero” has been marked as a striking political symbol, and has become established as representative figure opposing society and opposing the system. But looking at again at the situation, it is clear that Chen Guangcheng cannot represent very many. Who he really represents is the backstage boss, namely the interests of the hostile forces of the West. Chen Guangcheng has already become a tool and pawn by which politicians in the United States blacken China. . .

It is not too far from "tool and pawn" of the US to traitor. I expect that to become the central theme of the official narrative on Chen.  What is ironic here is that Chen is precisely the opposite.  He is not someone who is "opposing society and opposing the system."  He has attempted to use the principles and procedures provided by the Center's own project of expanding the "rule of law."  What he has done is not oppose the system but reveal a fundamental flaw in the system: the ways in which the expansion of "rule of law" is obstructed by local level Party power.  This is a big problem. It is even back-handedly recognized by an English-language op-ed in The Global Times:

Admittedly, today's China has some loopholes in grass-roots governance.

There are systems and laws in China, but the sense of the law at the grass-roots level is still weak.

Some local governments and officials act based on local policies and practices rather than laws.

Chen fights against the local government over forceful abortion and sterilization. As a densely populated province, Shandong has higher pressures on implementing the one-child policy.

In Chen's hometown, Linyi, a city in the southeast of Shandong, there are disputes between the villagers and local governments in implementing the one-child policy, and local officials may adopt some forceful ways to stop those breaching the policy.

However, this is just a local case, an interlude for China in realizing the rule of law. If Chen had stuck to proper ways to help people safeguarding rights, this would have contributed to improving grass-roots governance and achieving social development.

The problem is not "loopholes." The problem is systemic. Chen was using the law to redress local problems, he was sticking to "proper ways."  It was the local Linyi officials who used their power to repress him.  That is the problem.  And it has been a problem  throughout the reform period (for detailed stories of local abuses, based on extensive reportage from the 2000s, see: Chen Guidi and Wu Juntao, Will the Boat Sink the Water?  review here).

Sadly, the structural power dynamics (party domination of the legal system) that gave rise to the Chen Guangcheng case, will not change easily or soon.  Thus, even if Chen is able to travel to NYU, should he return sometime in the future, it is virtually inevitable that he will again be engaged in precisely the same struggle that created this most recent dramatic series of events.  And I am sure he is well aware that his struggle for a more humane and just legal system in China is for the long term, regardless of what happens in the next few months or years.

It is also too early to tell how all this is playing out at the highest levels of the CCP.  No doubt this case is becoming enmeshed in the power transition now underway, to be completed this fall, involving the highest political positions in China: the Standing Committee of the Politburo.  A farily common analytic line is that there may be splits among the current Standing Committee, with Wen Jiabao viewed as a more moderate voice, perhaps willing to compromise and work for some form of political reform versus the likes of Zhou Yongkang, who oversees the security apparatus and is assumed to take a harder line.  It is really impossible to know for sure how this is playing out.  It might be best, however, to understand it as a dynamic process.  There is no one end point where one side or another can claim clear victory.  Rather, every aspect of the on-going Chen case will be shaped by current differences at the top levels of power and struggles to shape the future composition of the Standing Committee.  Thus, every facet of Chen's situation - getting a visa; investigating Linyi officials; media representations; permission to return - will be subject to change depending upon how higher level power dynamics are playing out.

So, hold on to your hats.  This saga is far from over....

(cartoon from NYT)

The Core Issue in the Chen Guangcheng case

The story has changed in the past twenty-four hours, but it is important to maintain focus on the central problem in all of this: the PRC government has failed to provide a consistent and fair rule of law and Chen has been brutally victimized, and continues to be brutally victimized, as a result. 

We can debate whether the US government has handled this well or not, and whether Chen himself has made tactical errors (and who could blame him if he has, after a year and a half of unremitting pressure and abuse).  But those are secondary issues.  The core of the matter is the continuing inability of central PRC government officials to recognize or rein in the illegal actions of the Linyi thugs.  Either that, or the central Party leadership is in total agreement with the Linyi thugs and supports the use of illegal means to repress citizen activists. They have either failed to provide rule of law or they do not, regardless of their statements to the contrary, really want to provide rule of law.  That is the issue.

Ths US government cannot solve this problem.  It is not a problem of the US government.  Only the political leadership of the PRC government can solve this problem.

Thus far, the US embassy in Beijing has gone above and beyond the call of duty to help Chen.  The story of bringing him into the embassy grounds reads like a tale of Cold War espionage.  And I, for one, believe that while Chen was in the embassy, the US representatives there made plain that he could have asylum if he wanted it but he did not; he wanted to try to stay in China and continue to press for improvment of the legal system.  Perhaps the most reliable source is Jerry Cohen, a man who has worked in and with China for decades on questions of law and the legal system.  Chen, while at the embassy, asked for Cohen to advise him, via telephone, and Cohen did.  And here was Cohen's understanding as Chen left the embassy:

Cohen said that on Monday night, Chen was undecided and fretful for his family. “I’m very, very fearful. I’m very, very insecure. I’m very uncomfortable,” Cohen said Chen told him on Monday. But throughout the talks, Chen maintained that he wanted to remain in China, according to Cohen and U.S. officials, because he didn’t want to live without his family and felt he could achieve more in China. “Chen is brilliant and to accept asylum and fade away, that wasn’t an appealing option,” Cohen said. “He wants this. He told me in the conversations we had in the last couple of days that he wants the rights of any other citizen.” By Tuesday, Chen was feeling better about the arrangement and by the time he left the embassy he was comfortable with it, Cohen said.

Staying in China necessarily reduced the power of the US government to protect him.  The US cannot contravene the sovereignty of the PRC; the US government cannot become an extraterritorial legal guarantor.  The US can monitor and pressure and protest; but it cannot shield a PRC citizen from the legal force of his or her own government.  Everyone knows this.  Thus, the choice to stay in China was a risky one, dependent on how the highest levels of the PRC government would respond.   It would be quite easy for that leadership to make certain promises behind closed doors and then renege on them in practice.  The US would be in a reactive mode, and would have to calculate what it wanted to give up in order to get the outcome it wanted in Chen's case. 

And we know now that Chinese authorities have responded badly.  First of all, someone threatened Chen's family.  Indeed, the family has been used as a bargaining chip.  Initially, Chen was told, while in the embassy, that if he were to seek asylum and leave, he would have to leave his family behind.  That was the position of the PRC government.  Clearly, that weighed heavily on his mind and shaped his decision to stay.  Then, his wife and children were brought to the hospital but were told they could be sent back to Shandong at any time - which in itself is a not-so-veiled threat of physical abuse.  When Chen was reunited with his family at the hospital, and his wife told him how fearful they were of being sent back, that is when he changed his decision and stated that he wanted to leave China with his family - an option which the PRC government had not made available in earlier negotiations.

Once again, Chen shows himself to be more of a Confucian than the PRC government.  When he finally had a chance to reunite with both of his children, he sought to act in their best interest.  It is important to keep in mind that one of the ways the Linyi thugs have pressured him is to break up his family:

"They broke up and hurt Chen Guangcheng's family," Chen's lawyer, Li Jinsong, said Thursday. "It was the local government officials who wouldn't let the son go home because he was getting older and was better able to understand things, and what the local officials most feared was that Chen Guangcheng and his family would be able to communicate with the outside world. So, he was left with his maternal grandmother."

So we should not blame Chen for the rather chaotic change of direction the story has taken.  But that change has put him and the US in a weaker position.  Quite simply, if the PRC leadership sees that the US values a certain outcome in this case, it will demand something in return.  And the fact that this is all happening while high-level negotiations are going on means that the PRC will likely try to link the resolution of the Chen case to other issues.  Will they say that Chen and his family can have passports and leave if the US backs off its plan to sell advanced jet fighters to Taiwan?  Of course, the US will not allow the Chen case to determine national security and other issues.  But the back and forth on this will drag on for a long time. 

The bottom line here is what it has long been.  If the PRC leadership - Wen Jiabao, Hu Jintao and company - want to treat Chen humanely, they can treat Chen humanely.  Up to this point, they have clearly demonstrated that they do not want to treat Chen humanely.  They have chosen inhumanity.  And that choice creates a systemic problem, as Mencius noted:

...only the Humane are fit for high position: when the Inhumane hold high position, evil is sown among the people.  When the Way isn't in a leader's thoughts, officials stop fostering the law.... (4A.1)

是以惟仁者宜在高位。不仁而在高位，是播其惡於眾也。上無道揆也。下無法守也...

That's the core issue of the Chen Guangcheng case...

What's Next for Chen Guangcheng?

Wow.  Interesting turn of events.  So, Chen is out of the US embassy and, after a quick medical check at a local hospital, has been released.  He plans to stay in China.  The US government statement on the matter tells us:

"Mr. Chen decided to depart the embassy today and travel to a hospital in Beijing. He did so on the basis of a number of understandings. China acknowledged that Mr. Chen will be treated humanely while he remains in China… He has been reunited with his family - his wife and two children - at the hospital, and they remain together with him as a family. He had not seen his son in a few years, and his wife had not seen him (the son) either, so this was a family reunification after a long and difficult separation.

"When he leaves the hospital, the Chinese authorities have stated that Mr. Chen and his family will be relocated to a safe environment so that he may attend a university to pursue a course of study. I think many of you know that he is a self-taught lawyer, that he has long sought the opportunity to study at university... We understand that there are no remaining legal issues directed at Mr. Chen, and that he will be treated like any other student in China."

This is fairly remarkable.  In the past few days knowledgeable analysts of Chinese politics suggested that the Chinese government would not provide any guarantees or assurances on Chen and his treatment.  To do so would risk being perceived as giving in to a dissident and, worse, compromising with the US on a matter of domestic politics, something the Party is loath to do.  It is unclear how firm the Chinese commitment is to keep Chen safe.  But, on the face of it, the mere suggestion that they recognize the need to state publicly that his safety requires their attention is a change from before, and maybe, depending how things play out, a change for the good.

Even more notable is this, from the US statement:

"Chinese officials have further stated that they will investigate reported extra-legal activities committed by local Shandong authorities against Mr. Chen and his family. The United States will take a continuing interest in the well-being of Mr. Chen and his family, including seeking period welfare visits and raising his case with the appropriate authorities. We will look to confirm at regular intervals that the commitments he has received are carried out. "

This is the key.  The central problem in the CGC case has been the impunity of local officials.  They have held Chen under house arrest and brutally mistreated him without proffering any legal decision or reason.  They have flouted the rule of law.  Indeed, Chen is a symbol of all that is wrong with the Chinese legal system. Up until now, Central authorities have simply looked the other way (it is highly, highly implausible that leaders in Beijing did not know that Chen was being held in the manner that he was). 

If a serious investigation is launched by Beijing against the Linyi officials, it could signal that more reform-minded forces are steering the process.  Wen Jiabao has called for some sort of political reform - though he has seemed powerless to pull it off - and an investigation of the CGC case would be a perfect launching pad for a reformist program, even if that meant only a modest improvement in the rule of law.  Moreover, if reformists have the upper hand in this case, that could suggest they are in an advantageous position in terms of the leadership transition slated for this fall.  In that regard, this could be a turning point, or, should more conservative political forces prevail, a repetition of the usual pattern of repression.  Everything is of heightened political significance in Beijing these days because of the looming succession, which was roiled by the still unsettled Bo Xilai affair.

If there is no investigation, and Chen is hounded and harassed and rearrested after Hilliary Clinton leaves, then we will know that reformists at the Center have no power and the hard-line Legalist (who ironically politicize and weaken the rule of law) repressers will dominate the leadership transition.

A lot is riding on what happens in the next few months.

Ominously, the official Chinese statement makes no mention of the assurances noted in the US text.  The incident is framed as US interference in domestic Chinese affairs and an apology is demanded.  Sardonically, it states: "China demands that the U.S. apologise over this, thoroughly investigate this incident, punish those who are responsible, and give assurances that such incidents will not recur."  The irony here is the call for an investigation.  What we have is a situation in which local Linyi officials appear to be acting illegally, brutually mistreating a Chinese citizen, and drawing upon the authority granted them by the higher levels of the Party (the Chinese political system is unitary, not federal, and local officials are clearly subordinate to the Center), and the Center seems to be avoiding any serious investigation of the case.  But they want the US to investigate its role.  I guess they want parity in investigations...

In a sense, the most important political phase of the Chen Guangcheng saga has just begun.  He has become more than a symbol of Chinese law and politics; he is now the crux of reform or repression.

And there may be reason for pessimism.  There are now tweets and reports from Zeng Jinyan - a Chinese human rights activist and wife of Hu Jia - that Chen was forced to leave the embassy with threats from Chinese authorities that if he did not leave his wife and daughter would be sent back to Shandong immediately.  This could mean that the Chinese government is playing a short-term game: get Chen out of the embassy and deal with him a bit later, after media attention has died down. 

Much has yet to be learned....

Stand with Chen Guangcheng

Chen Guangcheng, the courageous human rights lawyer in China, who has been subjected to brutal "house arrest" for years, has escaped his captors and is apparently in hiding, perhaps in the US embassy, in Beijing.  Here's what I blogged five and a half years ago:

  Chen Guangcheng believes in the rule of law.  He believes that the law should apply equally to everyone.   He believes that government officials who break the law should be held accountable.  He is performing a civic duty precisely in line with the Communique of the Sixth Plenum [of the 16th Central Committee].  But he has been arrested and brutalized.  His tormentors have made a mockery of the very idea of the rule of law.  And until President Hu Jintao finds the political courage to allow the law to develop in a truly equal and just manner, until he accepts that idea that honest people like Chen Guangcheng have a right and a duty to demand that the law apply to everyone equally, including Communist Party officials, until then the words of the Communique are empty.

Hu Jintao has not had the political courage to do the right thing for all these years.  Nor has Wen Jiabao.  Indeed, Chen, in the midst of his escape, has put out a video directly asking Wen for justice:

 

Let's hope that the Party Center let's him go free.  I fear, however, that that will not be the outcome.  

 In a way, this is a test of whether the Center is willing to embrace something like a Confucian ethic.  I see Chen as a genuinely Mencius-like figure.  He stands consistently for fairness and justice for the powerless, and he is willing to speak up to the powers that be, demanding redress for legal and economic inequality.  And his righteousness is obvious to all who know him. Clearly, the right thing to do is free him from the brutal, illegal, deeply inhumane assaults he has suffered for so long.

But I am afraid the Center will show itself to be the bastion of hard-line Legalism that it has always been.  They will interpret Chen as a challenge to their power and they will find a way to crush him.  Or if they exile him, they will punish those who have supported him.

All we can do is stand in witness and call for justice:

Free Chen Guangcheng!

Filial Piety: Only for the poor?

Two contrasting articles suggest how demographic and social-cultural changes in China are making it ever more difficult to realize Confucian virtues there.

First, we have a piece in The Economist that reports on the growth of nursing homes - or, old age homes; assisted living centers; etc. - in China, and how that growth reflects a cultural change in terms of expectations of how care of aging parents should be carried out.  One interesting point here is how religious, and specifically Christian, organizations are taking up the responsibility to create old age homes and care for the elderly.  So, Christians are doing the work of Confucians here... or, to be more charitable (a virtue for both Christians and Confucians), what we have here is a felicitous intersection of moral theories.  Whatever.  

The other, less sanguine, implication is that these sorts of facilities are costly.  And, even if public financing arrangements are available, invariably inequalities will emerge.  The rich will have more and better options; the poor fewer and meaner. 

To project forward a bit: it is rather easy to imagine the privileged class having an easier time paying someone else to care for their parents in a place other than their own homes - the American model, if you will.  In short, they will be able to buy their way out of the more strenuous demands of filiality, which might include keeping parents at home and being personally involved with their care. 

To be clear: I do not think that arranging care for elders at arms length is, in and of itself, somehow an immoral thing.  Quite the contrary, from my own personal experience, I very much understand the difficulties of managing the demands of modern life and the physical demise of parents. (NPR is running a series of stories on just this subject: Family Matters)  My first intention here is simply oobservational: China is subject to these same modernizing pressures and old notions of filiality and parental care are giving way to new realities and arrangements.

But I do want to make a critical point, and that is the same point I would make about elder care in the US: the poor should have reasonable access to good and affordable and secure care for the elderly.  We know this is a problem in the US.  And this story from ChinaSmack suggests that it is also a problem in China:

Filial Son Returns Home to Be With His Dying Father

It is a sad tale: a young man, Cheng Jilai,  from a poor family gets a chance to go to college but gives it up when he realizes his father is dying and there is no one to care for him at home.  It is clear that this family has few options because they have little money.  And so it falls to the son, in this case, to orient his life to the care of his father, a truly virtuous course from a Confucian perspective.  If the son had access to, and could have faith in, something like a nursing home for his father, he might be able to choose to continue in college.  But he doesn't have that choice.  He could simply abandon his father, a choice that would be widely criticized, and not just by Confucians.  He has to take care of his father.  He has to do the right filial thing.

Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh here.  Rich people who can afford good and comfortable nursing homes for their parents are also carrying out their filial duty: they are finding the best possible conditions for their parent's care.  Even if nursing homes are seen, by some, as inherently un-Confucian.  But the story of Cheng Jilai, the filial son whose poverty gives him no choice but to give up college and go home to care for his father, on the face of it, seems more true to the standards of Confucian filiality. 

And if that is true, we are left with a rather uncomfortable conclusion: it is only the poor who have to carry out a more traditional Confucian morality because the rich have the means to make other arrangements....

Godless Goodness

There is much to blog about.  In my weeks-long absence from this space - the result of nothing but distraction - I have regularly sent myself emails of articles and ideas to blog.  But it has taken some time to overcome inertia.  In any event, there are many and varied topics to take up.  But the one for today, for no particular reason, is a response to an interview with Alain de Botton (h/t Sullivan) on his new book, Religion for Atheists. 

I haven't read the book, but I will.  Sounds engaging.  The interview, however, gets at some interesting things.  de Botton is drawn to the question of ethics without religion; in a sense: can we be good without God?  He obviously believes we can - he presents himself as an atheist - but there are some intriguing issues along the way.  A few of the problems:

In my book, I argue that believing in God is, for me as for many others, simply not possible. At the same time, I want to suggest that if you remove this belief, there are particular dangers that open up – we don’t need to fall into these dangers, but they are there and we should be aware of them. For a start, there is the danger of individualism: of placing the human being at the center stage of everything. Secondly, there is the danger of technological perfectionism; of believing that science and technology can overcome all human problems, that it is just a matter of time before scientists have cured us of the human condition. Thirdly, without God, it is easier to lose perspective: to see our own times as everything, to forget the brevity of the present moment and to cease to appreciate (in a good way) the miniscule nature of our own achievements. And lastly, without God, there can be a danger that the need for empathy and ethical behaviour can be overlooked.

My response, as usual, is conditioned by Daoism.  The first thing that strikes me is how, from that perspective, none of these really need to be problems.  Indeed, the sensibility of the Daodejing and Zhuangzi is precisely what de Botton is looking for: the individual is not at the center of things but submerged in an unknowable and constantly changing universe, the broadest understanding of "dao;" technology, since it is a human creation and therefore fallible, does not provide ultimate answers for the human search for meaning; our moment in dao is minuscule; and we should be careful not to impinge upon the natural unfolding of the experience of others in dao, which I see as a kind of empathy.

Daoism developed before and distinct from Christianity.  Its early development was not, as far as I know, influenced by Judaism or other forms of monotheism.  It assumed the existence of spirits and ghosts and, as it took shape in interaction with Buddhism as a canonized religion, came to accept the ideas of an afterlife: a heaven and hell.  But Daoism never seems to rely upon the presence of a singular god-like figure to provide moral guidance.  Dao does that, or, better, learning to follow dao will lead some to a better life (yes, I think there is an ameliorative promise in the early texts).  And there is a kind of idealism as well: peole will learn to follow dao, and that will infuse them with humility and simplicity and empathy.  Not all will follow dao; there will always be those who adore "twisty paths."   But that is just the human condition.  To believe in some sort of complete and ultimate perfectability is to ignore the imperfections of humanity.

So, the anxieties the de Botton describes are culturally specific.  And at some level he recognizes this:

Much of modern moral thought has been transfixed by the idea that a collapse in belief must have irreparably damaged our capacity to build a convincing ethical framework for ourselves. But this argument, while apparently atheistic in nature, owes a strange, unwarranted debt to a religious mindset – for only if we truly believed at some level that God did exist, and that the foundations of morality were therefore in their essence supernatural, would the recognition of his nonexistence have any power to shake our moral principles.

Implicit in that last statement is its opposite: that is, if we start with the assumption that God does not exist, and we shield ourselves from the powerful cultural currents that insist that he (it?) does, then our moral principles need not be shaken by the fear of the absence of God.  We can just get on with recognizing the vastness of dao, opening ourselves to its natural unfolding, and not infringinge on how others experience their place and time in dao.  Which could be the start of a moral life....

In yielding is completion.  In bent is straight. In hollow is full.  In exhaustion is renewal.  In little is contentment.  In much is confusion.

This is how a sage embraces primal unity as the measure of all beneath heaven.

Give up self-reflection and you're soon enlightened.

Give up self-definition and you're soon apparent.

Give up self-promotion and you're soon proverbial.

Give up self-esteem and you're soon perennial.

Simply give up contention and soon nothing in all beneath heaven contends with you.

It was hardly empty talk when the ancients declared in yielding is completion.  Once you perfect completion you've returned home to it all.

DDJ 22

Something Beautiful

I've been distracted, too disracted of late to blog or do much else besides the immeidate tasks before me.  I'll get back to it soon.  In the meantime, here's something beautiful...

Thinking about Nothing

In a punchy book review in Sunday's NYT, philosopher David Albert takes down physicist Lawrence Krauss:

Lawrence M. Krauss, a well-known cosmologist and prolific popular-science writer, apparently means to announce to the world, in this new book, that the laws of quantum mechanics have in them the makings of a thoroughly scientific and adamantly secular explanation of why there is something rather than nothing. Period. Case closed. End of story....

Albert is having none of it, rejecting the very idea that physics can explain nothing, or how the universe arose from nothing (which for me, and for Daoists, is an odd question: why assume the universe had to come from nothing?):

...It happens that ever since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, what physics has given us in the way of candidates for the fundamental laws of nature have as a general rule simply taken it for granted that there is, at the bottom of everything, some basic, elementary, eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff. Newton, for example, took that elementary stuff to consist of material particles. And physicists at the end of the 19th century took that elementary stuff to consist of both material particles and electro­magnetic fields. And so on. And what the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all there is for the fundamental laws of nature to be about, insofar as physics has ever been able to imagine, is how that elementary stuff is arranged. The fundamental laws of nature generally take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of that stuff are physically possible and which aren’t, or rules connecting the arrangements of that elementary stuff at later times to its arrangement at earlier times, or something like that. But the laws have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular elementary stuff it does, as opposed to something else, or to nothing at all.

He is aware that quantum physics poses a somewhat different understanding of the "elementary stuff," describing it in terms of relativistic quantum fields.  But, Albert argues, the same problem applies:

...Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true relativistic-quantum-field-­theoretical equivalent to there not being any physical stuff at all isn’t this or that particular arrangement of the fields — what it is (obviously, and ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple absence of the fields! The fact that some arrangements of fields happen to correspond to the existence of particles and some don’t is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible arrangements of my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a fist and some don’t. And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings — if you look at them aright — amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.

Thus, Albert contends, we cannot explain nothing using relativistic quantum field theory.  

To press a bit further, it seems like he is saying we cannot explain nothing in reference to something.  That is, the purported nothing cannot exist without reference to something.  Nothing, then, cannot really exist independent of something and, therefore, the scientist's quest for explanation is rendered impossible, since the thing to be explained (the explanandum - in this case "nothing") cannot be analytically and temporally separated from the thing used to explain (the explanans - in this case "something").

I haven't studied that far into the philosophy of science to know if the explanation of "nothing" poses a fundamental problem.  From Albert I surmise that physics is inadequate to the task and that leaves room for religious and metaphysical speculations regarding nothing.  Nothing, perhaps, is the limit of science.

But it is territory where Daoism dares to tread, at least the Daodejing.  Think of this excerpt from passage 2:

All heaven knows beauty is beauty only because there's ugliness, and knows good is good only because there's evil.

Being and nonbeing give birth to one another, difficult and easy complete one another, long and short measure one another, high and low fill one another, music and noise harmonize one another, before and after follow one another....

That line - "being and nonbeing give birth to one another" - seems to get at Albert's point.  If we want to understand nothing, we can only do so by reference to something.  Passage 11 also suggests this sort of mutually constitutive relationship of something and nothing:

Thirty spokes gathered at each hub: absence makes the cart work.  A storage jar fashioned out of clay: absence makes the jar work.  Doors and windows cut in a house: absence makes the house work.

Presence gives things their value, but absences makes them work.

What is not there - the hole in the middle of the wheel; the emptiness in the center of the jar; the space within the house - gives definition to what is there.

And maybe that is the difference: scientists seek to explain, they want to analytically isolate things, declare one an antecedent and the other a consequent, and that's perhaps where a limit is reached when encountering nothing.  X might logically yield -X but -X is still framed in terms of X.  It is not really absence or nothing, which by definition would seem to be unrepresentable.  It is a negation.  Nothing is more than (less than?) negation. 

But this is a problem only if explanation is the goal.  If we are simply looking to describe, which is more in keeping with the correlative sensibilities of Daoism (and most classical Chinese thought) then there is less to sweat.  We can't explain nothing.  We can't really understand it.  We can only get a general sense of it in relation to something.  There is no certainty in our understanding of it.  And physics really can't explain it to us....