The Confucian Factor

By Richard Bernstein

CHINA PERCEIVED: IMAGES AND POLICIES IN CHINESE-AMERICAN RELATIONS

by JOHN K. FAIRBANK

245 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $7.95.

Nobody in the West has done more to clear up the mystery of China than John K. Fairbank, professor of Chinese history at Harvard. His latest book, a collection of 17 essays written between 1946 and 1974, continues a lifetime of combat against what he calls "the original sin of ignorance" about East Asia. It is a sin, Fairbank feels, that can be resisted only with the help of a great deal more historical knowledge than most Americans now possess. The various pieces in the book are unified by the author's persistent attempt to show that the present behavior of both China and the West are largely determined by historical-cultural traditions that nobody, not even Chairman Mao or Henry Kissinger, can escape.

Fairbank begins with a stunningly impressive analysis, written in 1946, on the prospects for democracy in China at that time. They were nil, he concluded, not only because the Communists were more vigorous and popular than the American-backed Kuomintang, but also because "the inertia of tradition" did not permit Western-style solutions in China. Fairbank was of course right, and since that essay--as textbook writer, as target of the McCarthy campaign, as a mover and shaker in the field of Asian studies in the U.S.--he has stuck to his main theme. The great Confucian system of government that evolved by the 2nd century B.C. has resulted in a yawning cultural gap between East and West that is still responsible for much of the tension between them.

Confucianism consisted of rule by a scholar elite steeped in the great ethical classics of Chinese antiquity. By the 8th century a complex system of civil service examinations, based on literary and ethical knowledge, had become the principal route to bureaucratic advancement. The scholarly ruling class jealously guarded its monopoly on correct ideas and prevented anybody else, merchants or soldiers, for example, from gaining power. It stressed tranquillity and order, not struggle and change, as the primary goals of society.

Fairbank argues that China has not freed itself from this Confucian past, despite Mao Tse-tung's revolution. Like the China of old, the People's Republic is still "massive, profoundly collectivist, and professedly anti-individualist." Important habits of the Confucian tradition have been modified: rule by an imperial figure still persists, for example, and so does adherence to ideological orthodoxy, whether Confucian or Communist. Ironically, the methods used to overthrow the old system are reminiscent of past methods. The Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution had their prototypes in the antiforeign Boxers of the 19th century. In Confucian times, too, crowds of villagers used to gather to hear mandatory lectures on ethics.

The highly bureaucratic, anticommercial, inward-looking and extremely self-satisfied culture of China was and is the virtual opposite of the dynamic, restless, expansive, entrepreneurial West. Since the mid-19th century, the U.S. has been part of a gigantic "conflict of civilizations" brought about by the Western invasion of the East Asian cultural sphere. To Fairbank, America's painful expansion into Viet Nam was only a final burst of gunboat diplomacy as invented by the British against the recalcitrant isolationism of 19th century China. In an ominous foreshadowing of Viet Nam, in 1856 a British consul in Canton "had the Royal Navy bombard the Canton viceroy's yamen [headquar ters] with one gun at ten-minute intervals" in order to exact trade privileges for Britain.

Recent U.S. aims in China -- and Viet Nam -- had little to do with trade advantages. But from Fairbank's historical perspective, even Western attempts at benevolent reform -- like the U.S. effort to induce Chiang Kaishek, and later Ngo Dinh Diem, to permit a loyal opposition, thereby broadening political participation -- are exercises in delusion and sentimentality. And while that view may by now have become part of the conventional wisdom, the author laments the fact that few Americans today seem anxious to discover what it was about Viet Nam or China that made them so resilient to heavy doses of American good will. "The United States got into Viet Nam partly out of sheer ignorance," writes Fairbank, "and now we want to get out and remain ignorant. Neither move does us much credit."

Faded Bloom. Though Fairbank agrees that a new era in East-West relations may now be dawning, his essays contain an implicit warning: there will probably be less true change than the proponents of detente believe. Indeed, once the bloom of new acquaintanceship has faded, both Americans and Chinese will still face many of the same old problems: the Taiwan question, the clash of American individualism with Chinese collectivism, the arrogance of China's "implacable self-esteem." Most important, as Americans we must give up the enduring historical hope that "bringing China into the world" will somehow make the Chinese more like us.

There is perhaps too much fatalism in Fairbank's philosophy. Much of China Perceived was written at the height of the Cultural Revolution's xenophobia. Though Fairbank repeats his basic message too often, he does so readably, with dashes of wit and grace and a lack of scholarly ponderousness. The book, in any case, is a useful antidote to the current euphoric tendency to assume that fusty yesterday has little bearing on the shape of a bright tomorrow. "With no past," says a Chinese proverb, "the present is formless." > Richard Bernstein

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